Can You Be a Christian and Not Trust the Church?

Churches today have not made it easy for people to trust them.

I don’t need to go long on this. We have all heard stories of scandals, corruption, abuse, power grabs, and cover-ups. We also see fighting and disagreements about core issues of theology and practice.

As Christians, we often see this, and our gut response is to just stick with the Bible and not trust the church. But that’s easier said than done. The Bible teaches that the church matters deeply for the growth and maturity of believers (1 Cor. 3:16-17; 14:26, Rom. 1:11-12), and that we must not neglect to gather as a church (Heb. 10:25). But how can we let God’s design for the church bring us closer to Jesus if we don’t trust the church?

What Are We Even Asking? (Do You Have to Go to Church to Be a Christian?)

Already, you may be feeling some ambiguity and slippery language. What do we mean by “church” anyway? Are we talking about the people you visit on Sunday morning, or the people who lead the group? Maybe we are talking about capital-C “Church,” referring to Christians all around the world.

Further, what do we mean by “trust”? Is it blindly accepting everything they say, submitting to their authority, or giving them access to your life so they can make it better? It’s hard to talk about trust unless we nail down what we are trusting them for.

For many, these questions are irrelevant because they’ve seen people claiming to be Christian who have lived in a very un-Christian kind of way, and they want nothing to do with it. Church and trust—however defined—don’t go together.

But again, if you want to be a Christian, then you need to understand what God expects of us. Since that includes church life, it will involve some sense in which we trust the church. Don’t just take my word for it; it’s in the Bible! (Yes, there was a subtle pun there.)

There are two senses in which I believe all Christians must (and can!) learn to trust the church:

1. As part of God’s program
2. As carrying weight in how we think about God

The Church as God’s Program: Why Did God Create the Local Church?

Let’s get something straight: churches are all over the board. Some are great, but some are not. Of course, we are far more likely to hear about churches when they are doing poorly than when they are doing well. Even still, it’s impossible to make a blanket statement that we must trust the local church gathering down the street when that church may be far from trustworthy.

But here’s a crucial point that many Christians fail to realize: Even when the Corinthian church was involved in sexual sin, or when the Colossian church was adding false spirituality, or when the Galatian church was becoming legalistic, Paul fought for those churches to find their way again. He instructed them, he encouraged them, and he never told the “faithful few” to abandon ship and give up on the church. So the issue of “trust” isn’t about trusting that any particular local church has it together. It actually goes much deeper. It’s about trusting that the local church (generally speaking) is part of God’s program, and it’s worth fighting for.

The fact is, God is establishing his kingdom through churches. Most of the New Testament writings were written for churches. Some of the strongest rebukes in the Bible are against people who were causing division in churches or leading churches astray. When Jesus gave the Great Commission, the result was churches. Then we see Peter, Paul, and others visiting these churches, training them in the ways of discipleship. Even the biblical model of Christian discipline takes place within the church (Matt. 18:15-17).

Why is so much of God’s vision for the church? Ephesians 3:21: “To him be glory in the church…” Part of trusting God, then, is trusting that God knows what He’s doing when He gave us the local church.

The Weight for Thinking about God: Is Church Tradition Important?

Another way in which Christians should trust the church is by trusting in the important theological work they hammered out over the course of history. Of course, the messiness of church history is comparable to the mess of churches today, but there is a stream of knowledge that has remained consistent from its beginning until today. For example, the belief that Jesus is fully God and fully man, that God exists as three in one, that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus, that the Bible is God’s authoritative word, etc.

Yes, even some of these issues were debated in the early church, and some debaters lost the battle and were condemned as heretics. But this doesn’t mean the options on the table were equally valid until the winners simply decided what counts as heresy. There’s a reason certain theological beliefs didn’t make the cut, and as we learn from Acts 15, councils are an important part of settling disputes!

As Christians, we owe a great deal of gratitude to the work of faithful Christians who came before us—those passionate for truth and the expansion of God’s kingdom, who prayerfully worked through the theological challenges of their day. Since we won’t get it right all the time, we need them, and we need to trust them. Not only that, but we can trust that God was in their work, helping to preserve the apostolic message from the time of Jesus until now.

Balancing Scripture with 2,000 Years of History

Ultimately, the Bible is the highest authority, even over church tradition. That is why I prefer to think of trusting the “weightiness” of church history in our thinking about God and theology. So if you are reading the Bible and it seems to go against how church tradition understands it, that should carry a good deal of weight in how you continue to think about the matter. If you read a passage and think one way, but you have thousands of years of Christians who read the same passage yet thought differently, slow down. Read in humility as you listen to others who came before you.

And for the love of all things holy, don’t run your mouth on Deconstruction TikTok with some mic-drop “revelation” under the ridiculous fantasy that you’re going to shatter 2000 years of church history! (Sorry. I’m calm again.)

Finding the Right Church: How to Find a Good Church

If we are going to trust in God’s program for the local church and trust the weight of church history, then it’s time to find a solid, historically-grounded, Biblically-based church. No church is perfect, but if they are trying to follow God in a way that prioritizes the Bible for theology and practice, all while staying rooted in tradition, there’s probably a lot going on there that you can trust.