Why I would like to be a member of Remnant Westside Church

Ever since I acknowledged Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior three years ago, God has challenged me in many different ways - one of those ways being my commitment to God. My first “spiritual home” as a believer was a Christian fellowship on Columbia’s campus. It was through this group that I started attending Bible studies by my own choice, became a part of a fellowship of believers for the first time in my life, and even went on missions to Kazakhstan. For the 8-9 months I was part of this fellowship; I was heavily involved and deeply committed and I soon became a small group leader, attended all the meetings and events, and even made a smattering of crazy promotional videos for various events. This whole time I was not attending one church on a consistent basis, I was attending one of the Redeemer services at my convenience or following one of my friends from the fellowship to his/her church depending on the week – for about the first 6 months of being a Christian, my noncommittal church attitude did not concern me at all because I was so faithfully following the agenda of the fellowship on campus.

Then, during the end of my first semester of sophomore year, a series of unfortunate events occurred among members of the fellowship that left me once again jaded about Christianity, but also very disheartened and scared. I saw and heard about things that were clearly wrong and clearly sinful, and I felt it was my responsibility to inform the body of believers about it and especially the leaders, but after mustering a lot of courage to say something, nothing happened to address the issues and I felt ignored and isolated and worst, I questioned God and the purpose of believing in Jesus. My faith started to suffer when my rosy, idealized view of the Christian fellowship started to fade - I didn’t make this connection at the time, but I was soon to find out. After that semester ended, I was convinced by a friend from Columbia who lived in New York to go to the One in Love conference in Pennsylvania, and to my surprise, the conference was focused on the local church.

A speaker named Joshua Harris came and gave a sermon on “Stop Dating the Church,” and I learned for the first time about Jesus Christ’s relationship with the church described in the book of Ephesians as being like Christ and his Bride – His committed and service and love to the church, and how every believer, including myself, is called to imitate that relationship with the church. And what also struck me very strongly about Harris’ message was that having a casual, noncommittal attitude towards attending and serving church is in essence having a casual “dating” relationship with God’s church by hopping around each week to different services to see what style of worship I like, the kinds of sermons a pastor delivers, the time of day service was held, where I felt comfortable and popular – I realized that what I was doing week by week was trying out my options with only the pretense of deciding on a church for God when in reality my actions were selfishly motivated at the core. It struck me like a brick wall during that conference that I was defiling Jesus’ bride, I was dishonoring God, and I was sinning and hurting God.

This was the beginning of my journey to commit to a church. After the conference, I knew God was calling me to leave the fellowship on campus not only because I needed to be serious about committing to a church, but also because I was not growing and being fed spiritually. It was extremely hard to leave – all of my friends and everyone I knew at Columbia was a part of that fellowship, and once I left, I knew that I would lose touch with many of them. And as I set on the journey to find a church, I soon became scared of making a mistake again and was confused about where God wanted me to go. That semester I doubted God even more and felt very far from Him, this was when I realized very clearly that after I had accepted Jesus into my life that I had depended on an organization, a group of people for my faith and not Jesus himself. I realized that I didn’t know what it was like to have a relationship with Jesus yet, and that I had no idea what to love God with all my heart, mind, and soul meant. I felt so dejected, and it was all the more difficult because during this time I had grown very bitter towards all my Christian friends on campus and intentionally distanced myself from them, and therefore I was not sharing my struggles with anyone.

This predicament lasted for a while until, one evening during first semester of my junior year. I heard about a fellowship of Remnant Westside Church being newly established at Columbia through a friend on campus who experienced similar struggles deciding where to go for church and fellowship. I was scared to go to a fellowship again, but since Remnant Christian fellowship was affiliated with a church, I felt more at peace about it and went. That Thursday night, I met Pastor Bruce and he sat next to me and said ‘Hi’ and from there had the chance to share about where God had taken me since I was saved and where I was at the moment in my struggles. Later Pastor Bruce would tell me that I was one of the most scary and intimidating people he had ever met because of all the criticism I had of Christianity, Christian fellowships, and the skepticism I came with to RCF that day. Pastor Bruce invited me to meet with him and talk about things in future – he emailed me a few times right after our first conversation but I ignored him for a while until finally I relented after running into him after a couple of Sunday services and started having lunches together at Seoul Garden. The thing I am most appreciative of is that Pastor Bruce pointed me to the hope of Jesus and turned my eyes away from people, and by encouraging me in that way, God was able to take away the bitterness and judgment in my heart towards people and groups, and as a result I was able to begin to learn about the grace of God, and I never felt more free and more joy in my life than when I was able to genuinely accept grace for the first time in my life. And as God was effectively healing my heart in this way, I slowly but surely re-integrated myself back into the community of believers with RCF at Columbia and started attending Sunday service at Remnant regularly with them. This was a year ago, and since then God has been increasingly confirming that it is His will for me to become committed to His church via messages on Sunday, small group sessions, one-on-one meetings and conversations with various people from the church, retreats, and especially serving. Through the various struggles and disappointments in the past year with the sudden death of my father, God convicting me to commit to Him and His church has been the most significant and powerful way that God has protected, nourished, and made me fall in love with Him more. So with immense gratitude and love for God, I would like to become a member of Remnant Westside Church in order to commit to loving and serving Christ’s Bride. This is so much more exciting than graduating college in May. :)

One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.
Psalm 27:4