Love Your Church - Paperback

Love Your Church — Eight Privileges and Responsibilities of Church Membership

God calls his people to be devoted to one another in love.

Not casually acquainted. Not loosely connected. Not vaguely committed to a weekly gathering they attend when nothing better comes up. Devoted. The word Paul uses in Romans 12:10 carries the warmth and tenacity of family love — the kind that stays, that serves, that shows up, and that refuses to give up on the people it is bound to.

But what does that kind of devotion actually look like in the life of a real church member, in a real local church, in the real pressures and distractions of contemporary life?

That is the question Tony Merida sets out to answer in Love Your Church — a timely, engaging, and genuinely re-energising book that gives every church member a fresh, compelling, and biblically grounded vision for what it means to truly belong to a local church and to love it well.

More Than Attendance — Genuine Belonging

One of the most important things this book does is challenge the consumer mindset that so many Christians — often without realising it — bring to their local church. The consumer attends church to receive. They evaluate the worship, assess the preaching, rate the children’s programme, and decide whether this particular church is meeting their needs well enough to deserve their continued presence.

Tony Merida calls every reader to something radically different — to stop being a consumer of church and to become a committed, contributing, genuinely devoted member of it.

This is not a call to joyless duty. It is a call to something far better — to the kind of deep, meaningful, mutually enriching community that the local church, when it is functioning as God designed it, is uniquely capable of providing. The kind of belonging that no social media platform, no interest group, and no secular community can replicate.

Love Your Church shows every reader not just why they should love their church but how that love can become real, active, and genuinely life-giving — for them and for everyone around them.

Eight Privileges and Responsibilities

At the heart of the book are eight specific privileges and responsibilities that together paint a full and compelling picture of what a genuinely devoted church member looks like:

To Belong Church membership is not a bureaucratic formality. It is a genuine covenant — a commitment to a specific community of people that gives shape and substance to the abstract idea of being part of the body of Christ. Belonging means owning your place in a particular family of believers and accepting the privileges and responsibilities that come with it.

To Welcome The church is called to be a community of radical welcome — a place where every person who walks through the door is genuinely received, known, and included. This is not the job of a welcome team. It is the responsibility of every member.

To Gather Regular, faithful gathering with the local church is not optional for the Christian — it is one of the primary ways God forms his people, sustains their faith, and builds his kingdom. Merida recovers a high and joyful vision of what it means to gather as the people of God.

To Care The one-another commands of the New Testament are not fulfilled by a pastoral care team. They are the responsibility of every member — to bear one another’s burdens, to weep with those who weep, to rejoice with those who rejoice, and to walk with fellow believers through every season of life.

To Serve Every member of the body of Christ has been gifted by the Spirit for the common good. Serving is not the exclusive domain of those in official ministry roles — it is the calling of every believer, and this chapter helps readers identify and embrace their particular place of service within their local church.

To Honour The local church is a community that crosses every natural boundary — of age, background, culture, and personality. Honouring one another means actively valuing and esteeming people who are different from us, and recognising that their presence in our community is a gift rather than a challenge.

To Witness The local church is not just a place for believers to be nourished — it is a community with a mission to the world around it. Every member is called to be a witness — living and speaking in a way that points their neighbours, colleagues, and friends to the Jesus they have come to know and love.

To Send The church’s mission extends beyond its immediate neighbourhood to the ends of the earth. Every church member is called to participate in that global mission — through giving, praying, and actively supporting those who go.

Together, these eight responsibilities form a complete and compelling portrait of what a truly devoted, genuinely loving church member looks like.

What This Book Will Help You Do

• Develop a fresh, biblically grounded vision for what the local church is and why it deserves your love and commitment
• Understand your specific privileges and responsibilities as a church member — across all eight dimensions Merida explores
• Move from consumer Christianity to genuine, contributing, devoted membership
• Find renewed energy and joy in your involvement with your local church — whether you are new or have been attending for years
• Grow in your ability to welcome, care for, serve, and honour the specific people in your specific church community
• Embrace your calling as a witness and sender — understanding that your church membership connects you to God’s global mission
• Use the discussion guide at the end of the book to explore these themes together with other church members in a small group or leadership setting

Who Should Read This Book?

Love Your Church is ideal for:

• Every church member — whether brand new or long-standing — who wants a fresh, re-energising vision for what their membership means and what it calls them to
• New believers being welcomed into church membership who need a clear, engaging, and biblically grounded introduction to what belonging to a local church involves
• Christians who have grown passive, disengaged, or disillusioned with their local church and need a renewed vision for why it matters
• Pastors and elders looking for a readable, theologically sound resource to give to their congregation
• Church leadership teams wanting to shape the culture of membership in their church around genuine devotion and commitment
• Small groups wanting a short, discussion-rich study on what it means to love and serve their local church
• Anyone who has been attending church for years but still feels like they are on the outside looking in rather than genuinely belonging
• Christians in India navigating the specific challenges and opportunities of committed church membership in a local congregation

About the Author

Tony Merida is the founding pastor of Imago Dei Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the author of numerous books on preaching, discipleship, and the Christian life. He is known for his warm, accessible, and theologically grounded writing — and Love Your Church is a prime example of his ability to take a subject of deep biblical importance and make it personally engaging, practically actionable, and genuinely inspiring for every reader.

About the Church Basics Series

Love Your Church is part of the Church Basics series — a collection of short, accessible books designed to help every church member understand and embrace the foundational commitments of healthy local church life. The series is ideal for:

• New member orientation and church membership classes
• Small group studies on church life and community
• Individual reading for any believer wanting to grow in their understanding of what belonging to a local church means

Re-Energised for the Local Church

It is easy, after years of church attendance, to lose the sense of wonder and excitement that should characterise our relationship with the local church. Familiarity breeds, if not contempt, then at least a kind of comfortable disengagement — a going-through-the-motions that is a long way from the devoted, one-another love that Paul describes in Romans 12.

Love Your Church is an invitation to recover that wonder. To see your local church — with all its imperfections, its ordinary people, and its unremarkable weekly rhythms — as what it truly is: the body of Christ, the family of God, and one of the primary ways in which God is at work in the world.

And to love it accordingly.