Tehachapi
Church of Christ
We Have Room For You In Our Hearts!
What to Expect
When you come to our gathering on Sunday morning, you do not need to “look the part”. A few of the guys may be wearing suits, and some of the women may be wearing dresses, but most of us will be wearing pants or jeans. The church is a family, so we feel it is appropriate to dress and act as we would in our leisure time at home.
You will be welcome to sing with us, pray with us, and share in the communion (also called the Lord’s Supper). There will be an opportunity for the church family members to give money toward the support of the church and its ministries, but visitors are not asked to join in the giving unless they want to.
Younger children will be dismissed during the sermon time for lessons that are age-appropriate and fun. There is also a private nursery room in the back of the auditorium, and nursery attendants are available on request.
The preaching will usually last 25-35 minutes, and will almost always incorporate PowerPoint slides that will help highlight the main points and the scripture passages that are the source of the lesson. There will be some clearly identified thoughts and ideas to take home and apply. If you ask for prayers, we will be more than happy to pray with you privately or publicly.
Often, we will be working through one of the four gospels that tell about Jesus’ own teachings and actions, and at other times, we will be in a series drawn from one of the other New Testament or Old Testament books.
What NOT to Expect
Most of us enter into new situations with expectations based on our past experiences. If you have never attended church very much, your impressions may come from the entertainment media or religious programming. If that is where your expectations come from, we actually hope that you will see some things that might be very different from what you expect.
On the other hand, If you have attended other churches you will likely see differences as well. Much of how we are different from many other churches is due to our sincere desire to be more like the churches we see in the New Testament. Their worship was very simple compared to churches today that may have traditions that have developed through the many years after the first churches began meeting and trying to help each other follow Jesus.
The very first thing we see in the New Testament is that “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” (Acts 2:42) Churches were also told to “Speak to one another with the words of psalms, hymns, and sacred songs; sing hymns and psalms to the Lord with praise in your hearts.” (Ephesians 5:19) Those were things they did or were told to do when they met together to worship.
Some of the things that churches have changed or added may not be important to God, but we want to humbly attempt to avoid some of the issues and distractions that can arise when Christians disagree on what is best. In other words, the simpler our church practices are, the less we have to argue about.
We hope that you will feel free to ask questions about any teachings or practices that are new to you or seem curious or confusing. Some of those may turn out to be just our own ideas about how to do things, but others may be things we see as direct teachings of Jesus and his apostles.
(Bible passages that speak to these issues: Acts 2:41-47, Acts 20:7, I Corinthians 11:23-29, Acts 16:25, Matthew 26:30, Ephesians 5:18-20, Colossians 3:16, James 5:13)
Following Jesus
Following Jesus is what we are all about. What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus, what should we do when we become a follower of Jesus, and what will it mean as we live our lives?
When we hear how Jesus lived his life, what he taught about how we should live, and what he taught about who he was, we are faced with the choice of whether to believe in him and in what he taught. Jesus’ most amazing claim is that he was God’s own son, and that whoever puts their faith in him and follows him will not have to pay the price for their own bad actions and attitudes.
He left us with a tangible way to show that we are determined to change our very selves in order to become new persons. It is called baptism, and it is the very simple act of being dipped under water after announcing that we believe that Jesus is God’s son. In the New Testament story (the part of the Bible that tells about Jesus and his inner circle of followers) those who decided to follow Jesus were baptized in his name. Why?
Jesus died, was buried, and then was raised from the dead. Baptism helps us to remember that our old self has died and been buried, then we have been raised up to live a whole new life. We also receive a gift at that time to help us live this new life. That gift is called the Holy Spirit, and he takes up residence in our hearts at that point. When we allow the Holy Spirit to over-rule our own spirit, we have the power to think and act the way that Jesus thought and acted. This is what it means to follow Jesus. If you want to be baptized, or you want to know more about baptism, please contact us or tell us in person. We will be more than happy to help at any time.
(Bible passages that speak to these issues: Matthew 28:19, Mark 16:16, Acts 2:38-41, Acts 8:12, Acts 8:26-39, Acts 9:18, Acts 10:47-48, Acts 6:14-15, Acts 16:25-33, Acts 18:8, Acts 19:4-5, Acts 22:16, Romans 6:1- 4, Galatians 3:26-28, I Peter 3:20-22.
There are other references, but notice that those who believed were baptized immediately, and even after the road to Damascus experience as Paul re-tells it in Acts 22, Saul was told that his sins would be washed away as he was baptized. For this reason, we encourage believers to act in the same spirit and to be baptized as soon as they believe.)
What About Church?
After Jesus was killed and then was raised, he told his apostles to wait in the city of Jerusalem. This was where the Jewish people celebrated their religious holidays. He then left them waiting and went back to Heaven.
One of these religious holidays was called Pentecost. On that day, Jesus’ apostles stood up and preached a message about following Jesus. 3000 people were baptized in Jesus’ name on that day. They were told their sins would be forgiven and that they-- along with anyone else who did the same thing-- would receive that gift of the Holy Spirit.
You can read about all of this in the first two chapters of the book of Acts. At the end of that chapter, it says, “…the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” We take this to mean that we are not saved by becoming a member of a church. Instead, we are added by God to His church when we are saved. If God "adds you to the number of those who are being saved", you are already a member of the church of Christ. That is a little bit different from becoming a member of a specific church family like ours, but maybe not as different as you might think.
Those 3000 people who became followers of Jesus on the Day of Pentecost began meeting together in Jerusalem to worship God and serve others in ways that Jesus had loved and served people. As others who lived in other places became followers of Jesus, they did the same thing. They were called churches, but that was really only a description of what they did: they met together. Yet, there was a deeper meaning as well.
There are many letters in the New Testament that were written to churches in different places, and in those letters, they were told that they were family members. They were brothers and sisters in Christ’s family, and they were told to treat each other as loving families should treat each other.
If we are going to treat you like a member of the family, we need to know that you want to be a member of our family. If you are a follower of Jesus and you tell us that you want to be a member of our church family, we have no set of rules or initiation process. As our slogan suggests, “We have room for you in our hearts!”
The reason it is important to be a part of a church family and “go to church”, is to encourage each other to love others and do good to them It is not always easy to do that, and we need to support each other as challenges occur.
If you are not yet a follower of Jesus, or you are not yet sure you want to be a member of our church family, you will still be very welcome to worship with us and participate in other activities as a welcome guest as often as you wish and for as long as you wish.
(Bible passages that speak to these issues: Acts 2:41-47, Acts 20:7, I Corinthians 11:23-29, Hebrews 10:23-25, Romans 12:1-21, I Corinthians 12-27)