How to Join Our Church

How to Join Our Church

To become a member of our church, we believe the Scriptures require two things:

ACCEPT JESUS AS LORD

The most important decision of your life is to trust Jesus with your life and surrender to him as Lord. This happens through faith and repentance. We must trust Jesus by believing his message, what he calls the gospel, or the good news. The good news is:

God created us to know him and make him known. However, we have separated ourselves from him and his purposes through our sin, bringing death and hell upon ourselves. To bring us back to himself and rescue us from death and hell, God the Father sends God the Son, Jesus Christ, to live a perfect life in our place, die the death we deserve as a just penalty for our sin, and rise from the dead to bring us life. When we believe that Jesus did this for us, turn from all other ways of living, and follow him as our Savior and King, our relationship with God is restored and we are rescued from sin and death. We become citizens of God’s kingdom, living with him and for him in all things.

Repentance is recognizing that we were going the wrong way in our lives and making the choice to start following Jesus instead as we place our trust in him.

If you have any questions or would like to talk about this further, one of our pastoral staff members would love to meet with you soon.

BE BAPTIZED BY IMMERSION

Once we have placed our faith in Jesus, he calls us to be baptized. Baptism is an act of identification. Jesus commands us to be baptized because it signifies that we have chosen to identify ourselves with him now, in his death and resurrection. This is why baptism is by immersion, because we go under the water to signify that we have died to sin and self in him, and we come out of the water to signify that we have risen to walk in the newness of life with him. Jesus tells us to be baptized before the church because in identifying with Jesus, we identify with his people and join ourselves with them.

If you have any questions or would like to talk about this further, one of our pastoral staff members would love to meet with you soon.

To begin the process of becoming a member of our church, we ask you to:

COMPLETE A DECISION FORM

If your membership is in another Baptist church or similar church, the office will correspond with your previous church and handle the paperwork. If you have been baptized by immersion previously but are not currently a member of a Baptist church, you can join by “statement of faith,” which means sharing your experience in a conversation with one of the members of our pastoral staff.

GET INVOLVED

Attend our worship services, join a Bible study group, and serve on a ministry or mission team. We have many opportunities, and Jacob Chilton at jacob@fbctlh.org, the Associate Pastor of Family & Discipleship, will be happy to help connect you with a ministry that fits your gifts and abilities.

ATTEND A BIBLE STUDY

We believe a key part of following Jesus Christ is participating in small group of other believers who help one another live for him. On Sunday mornings, we offer a variety of Bible Study Classes (SMBS) that begin at 10:00, after our first service, in various rooms throughout FBCTLH. Many of our classes also offer online options.

FIRST STEP

Each month our pastor hosts First Step – on the third Sunday at 10:15 AM in the Welcome Center. Candidates for membership are encouraged to come and discover more about FBCTLH.