Tom Ascol emphasizes the crucial role of the local church for Christian families striving to live for God's glory. He asserts that the most vital step for a Christian family is to find and integrate into a healthy church, which involves more than mere attendance. True belonging requires being known and knowing others, pledging one's life to the community of believers. Ascol highlights the centrality of the church in the lives of Jesus's disciples, arguing that the church is God's plan for cultivating and impacting the world for Christ's glory. He warns against the misconception that Christians can thrive spiritually apart from the church, suggesting that a lack of love for what Jesus loves indicates a deeper spiritual issue. Submission to Christ's authority is enacted through the church, and many of Jesus's commands can only be fulfilled within this communal context. Ascol stresses the importance of families building their lives around the church's rhythms, fostering a shared identity as God's people. He acknowledges the imperfection of churches, families, and individuals but encourages collective growth under Christ's lordship, emphasizing the need for communal learning, trust, and repentance over time.

The local church is indispensable for families if they're going to live for God's glory in the world. I say often the most important thing that an individual Christian or a Christian family can do is to find a healthy church and build your life around it. That doesn't mean just showing up, just attending a church, but it means belonging to a church where you are known and you're willing to know people. It means pledging your life to that body of believers and when you read the New Testament you see that the church was central in the life of the disciples of Jesus. The church isn't an afterthought with God.

This is his plan for how Christians are to be raised in the world and how they are to impact the world for the glory of the Lord Jesus. So there's no substitute for giving yourself to the lordship of Christ in a local church. And in fact, I would say that a Christian who thinks that he can serve God well and he can grow as he ought to grow apart from a church, there's something seriously wrong with him and he may not be a Christian at all because if you don't love what Jesus loves then you ought to ask yourself do you really love Jesus? Do you really live under his lordship? Christ exercises his authority in the church and if we're going to be submissive to his authority, we're going to submit ourselves to him in the church.

There are things that you simply cannot do apart from being linked to a church, being united to a church. You can't obey some of the commands of our Lord Jesus if you're not in a church. You don't have shepherds of your soul who will give an account for you if you are not submitting to Christ in a local church. And so there's no substitute. It is vitally important and our families ought to build their lives around a church which means that the rhythms of our family life ought to be the rhythms of the church and our identity ought to be bound up as the people of God in this assembly and we've got to give ourselves to the church to do that.

We got to work to make the church as holy as possible, as healthy as possible, knowing that no church is perfect, no family is perfect, no Christian is perfect, but We all live there together under the Lordship of Christ, learning more and more what it means to trust Him and to turn from sin and to do that a long time together.