Throughout the decades my wife and I have been pastors, our “closeness” to the church has varied wildly. When we were newly married and didn’t yet have children, we enjoyed being intimately involved in everything the other did. After we had children, although our hearts were very much still in ministry, logistically my wife couldn’t be as involved. As our church became established and our leadership team expanded, she could once again choose what she’d do according to God’s leading, her life season, and her interests.

Having served in all these ways, I’ll tell you that the early church planting days were both the easiest and hardest for us in all our years of ministry. They were the hardest because, as any church planting couple will tell you, the work was endless, exhausting, and uncertain. But they were also the easiest because I didn’t have to wrestle with my relationship to the church—my life and the church felt one and the same. With such little separation, you wouldn’t have much choice, and that lack of choice blurred the lines so drastically and became so normal that years later you’ll still be learning how to have a healthy relationship with your church.

I’m reminded what a healthy distinction between the church and me looks like, and that this distinction is right and good. I am not the church and the church is not me; my identity, in other words, is not defined by the church and my role within it. My emotions don’t have to rise and fall according to what is happening within the church body. The church is not your job.

But the church is certainly a gift to me, and I have a place in it.

I am one member of the body that makes up my specific church. I join with the other members to corporately worship God, exhibit love to the world, experience sanctification, and use my gifts to edify my fellow saints. Psalm 121 reminds me that, whenever I enter the house of the Lord, my mind is to be set on Him, anticipating what work He’d like to do in my heart that day. His Word reminds me that I am not alone. He will lead and help me to love others well. He will move among us as a church.

He alone is God, worthy of worship.

How do you love and care for God’s people while also maintaining a healthy distance from what is not yours to carry?