In his sermon, Tom Ascol emphasizes the indispensable role of the local church in the lives of Christian families, highlighting that building one's life around a healthy church is crucial for living for God's glory. He stresses the importance of belonging to a church, where individuals are known and know others, and pledging one's life to that community. The church is central to God's plan for raising Christians and impacting the world. Ascol argues that true Christian growth and service to God cannot occur apart from the church. He questions the faith of those who believe they can serve God without being part of a church, asserting that loving Jesus means loving what He loves, including the church. The church's role includes exercising Christ's authority and providing shepherds for believers' souls. Ascol urges families to align their lives with the church's rhythms and live under Christ's lordship, working to make the church holy and healthy despite imperfections.

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.