Anchored in Christ

If you love the gospel of Jesus Christ, you should love His church, because as Mark Dever says in the title of a book: the church is the gospel made visible.

I love the church of Christ and am so thankful for life-changing tools like online church directories that help people connect to good churches. (I call them life-changing because gospel-proclaiming churches are life-changing!)

There are at least three times you may want to consider using a church directory:

1. When you or someone you love moves. If you get transferred for work or begin studies in a new city, look for good churches near where you plan to live. I would even recommend that you base your housing search around where a good church is.

2. When you travel. I love visiting churches when I’m on the road either for work or pleasure. On a travel reward trip to Spain, my wife and I had a great time of fellowship with a small church in Seville—in fact, our fellowship and time with the pastor’s family was a highlight of our whole trip. Seeing typical tourist sites on vacation is great, but not eternal. Worshipping with God’s redeemed people lifts our eyes from the temporal to what will last for eternity. It’s a taste of heaven. It helps us see how God is at work in a community and expands our understanding of Him and His worldwide mission to reconcile sinners to Himself.

3. When God calls you to move churches. I don’t want this post to encourage anyone to leave their church, but if your church doesn’t preach the Bible or has hurt you in major way, God may call you to move, and a church directory may come in handy.

If you need a directory recommendation, check out the 9Marks Church Search, The Gospel Coalition Church Directory, SermonAudio Local Church Finder, and for my friends in the Spanish-speaking world, directoriodeiglesias.org (on The Gospel Coalition’s Spanish site).[1]

My goals for this simple post is to:

1. Help you find a church if you don’t have one. (Because as I’ve shared before, you’re missing out big time on what God wants for you.)
2. Give you a heads up to great resources.
3. Treasure the church more. (The church is Christ’s bride and part of God’s eternal plan for the world after all.)

Even when the culture hates Christ and His church more and more each day, Christ is building His church all around the world with unstoppable momentum and the gates of hell won’t prevail against it. That’s a 100% guarantee.

What a joy it is to be a part of the body of Christ!

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[1] Note: Churches submit themselves to these directories, meaning they are not to be viewed as an “official 9Marks church”, but rather want to align themselves with ministries hosting the directory, which is a good sign but not a guarantee the church is healthy.