New membership classes often teach through a church\u2019s beliefs about Christ\u2019s bride, statement of faith, and membership covenant. These seem like obvious topics for prospective church members.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But in the name of expedience, some pastors may be tempted not to include a class on their own local church\u2019s history. Not so fast! Your congregation’s story is worth retelling for at least three reasons.<\/p>\n
1. It\u2019s a reminder of God\u2019s kind providence.<\/p>\n
First, understanding your church\u2019s history is one way to recount how God has providentially worked amongst a particular group of people. We typically think of God\u2019s sovereignty in the details of our personal lives and great moments of history. For example, we boast that God was wonderfully sovereign in Martin Luther posting the 95 Theses to Wittenberg\u2019s Castle Church door. And we recognize that God is ultimately sovereign over whether or not we receive a job promotion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yet it seems we don\u2019t often think of God as sovereign over the planting and preserving of local churches. The who, what, when, where, and why questions pertaining are all under God\u2019s authority. Teaching potential members how God has sustained your church will encourage them that Christ is still building his church,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Your local church’s history is integral to your members caring for one another, for at least three reasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":585,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[331],"class_list":["post-47130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-membership-discipline","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/585"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47130"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47132,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47130\/revisions\/47132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}