The Purpose of the
Church
By Stephen Terry
“Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All
authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make
disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the
Son and of the Holy Spirit, and
teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you
always, to the very end of the age.’” Matthew 28:18-20, NIV
Today we
commonly meet people who say “I am spiritual but not religious.” Usually, that
translates into “I consider myself on the right spiritual path but I do not go
to church.” When pressed about their position, they will tell of things done by
the church that do not fit what they consider to be particularly Christ-like. But
if asked if they have any idea why the church exists, they are at a loss to
say.
If we look
at the church today, we see it is involved in many things from pot lucks to
passion plays. Churches are often equivalent to social centers in small
communities but struggle to compete against the social alternatives
in the cities. Working hard with innovative forms of outreach, these urban
churches, and to a lesser degree their country cousins, attempt to bring
non-church members from the community into the church building. However, once
the people arrive, the members are not quite sure what to do with them. As the
saying goes, “Standing in a church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than
standing in a garage makes you a car.”
When the
event that brought them into the church is over or becomes uninteresting, the
visitors leave. They leave behind the members who watch their church shrinking
and are at a loss to know how to stop the hemorrhaging. So what’s the answer?
Do we just attribute the lack of interest to the times we live in? Has the
church been overcome by the secularization of society? Do we just withdraw into
our churches with an inwardly focused fortress mentality while we wait for the
end? Is this what God wants of His church? The verses from Matthew 28 quoted
above cause me to wonder if the church is still aware of its purpose. Maybe we
have confused the intentional with the accidental.
When I was
younger, I was fascinated with history and would play table games to re-enact
historical battles. At the start of the game, each player would be assigned a
mission. If he or she achieved their mission, they would win the game. Of
course their opponent’s mission was to prevent the other player from achieving
their mission. For example, suppose a player was required to take their small
force up a valley and capture a building within a certain number of turns. The
force was adequate to accomplish that goal but no other.
Their
adversary then had to decide how to deploy their forces. Sometimes they would
be tempted to place their entire force in the building to defend it. However,
the more successful approach was to deploy along the sides of the valley and
harass the attacker with inconsequential firing. If the attacker ignored the
firing and proceeded to the building, they would succeed in their mission. But
if they responded to the harassing fire coming from the sides of the valley
they would lose. As they pursued the units firing from the sides of the valley,
time would run out, and the mission would not be accomplished. When asked later
why they had lost, the answer was always the same. They had forgotten the
mission.
As a
church, we have only one intentional mission. Jesus gave us that mission when
He left. He also told us we had a limited amount of time to accomplish it. So
how are we doing? In the historical re-enactments, we could tell how
intentional a player was about the mission by how much of his or her resources
were directed at accomplishing the goal. When we see how resources in our
churches are distributed, how would we measure up?
How many
of our resources are truly directed toward the mission Jesus assigned in
Matthew 28? Do we find it easier to justify an expense if there is a financial
return as opposed to a spiritual one? Would we find it easier to justify
spending $20,000 on a promising real estate investment for the church than in
paying the same amount for an evangelistic series? Do we feel that if we spend
the money for the real estate and everything does not go as expected, we at
least have the land, whereas if we spend the money on soul winning and the new
converts decide not to stay, we have nothing? Jesus knew that how we allocate
resources would tell the story of how we are doing with the mission. He said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Matthew 6:21, NIV
Sometimes, we are not so obvious about how we
are doing. Sometimes we are divided. We feel we are allocating resources to the
mission with pot lucks and social events. While these things are not
necessarily bad, they become problematic when they move from the accidental to
the intentional. You see, these are not the mission. Inviting someone to a social
event is not the mission.
What do we hope to do with them once they are
there? Talk them into becoming a Christian? Even if we could accomplish that,
we are expending too many resources in the wrong direction to accomplish the
mission.
Time is short and the Holy Spirit is working on
hearts all over the world to bring souls into the kingdom. We need to find
those who are already drawn to Jesus. As Jesus said to his disciples, “Do you not say, 'Four months more and then
the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe
for harvest.” John 4:35, NIV and again “He told them, The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask
the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.
Luke 10:2, NIV
Even Jesus did not try to push or trick those
whose hearts were not open to Him. Instead, He welcomed those whose hearts had
been prepared beforehand. He said “…This
is why I told you that no-one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.” John 6:65, NIV
We look at studies today that reveal that the
world’s population is growing faster than the membership of the church, and we
panic that the mission should ever be accomplished. We only make matters worse
when we try to win converts by winning arguments about theology or prophetic
interpretation. We don’t have the time for that. Jesus is coming soon. We have
a full time job simply finding and gathering the harvest of those whose hearts
are already ripe for salvation. These will not argue the point with us. The
message of God’s love will be like living water on parched ground to these
souls. (See John 4:10-14)
Perhaps we have misinterpreted the parable of
the lost sheep. We have felt that it has meant that we have had to pursue lost
people who do not know they are lost and convince them to accept the Jesus we
are offering. Maybe instead, we are searching for lost individuals who know
they are lost and are desperately seeking rescue. They know what it is like to
be lost and are only too happy to follow their rescuer to safety.
If we want to be intentional about the mission
of Matthew 28, we need to question our strategy and allocation of resources. If
the harvest is ripe in the fields, should we be pursuing unripe fruit? And if
there are not enough workers to bring in the harvest, should we be allocating
manpower and resources to that which is only of accidental value to our purpose
as a church?
Like the game player in the historical
re-enactment, are we running out of time while pursuing strategies not relevant
to reaching our objective? If we are, we may find that in the end, we will not
only lose the objective, we may lose ourselves in the process.
This Article is a Service of Still
Waters Ministry
