Thursday, January 8, 2009
What's The Purpose of Church?
I got into an interesting discussion today with some other pastors. I want to give you details of the discussion; however, I will do my best to not give you my opinion. I do want to hear your comments and see what you think about it. Here it is: "What is the purpose of church?" Is it so that we can save souls? Is it to strengthen the body of believers? Is it to equip the people to do ministry outside of the church? These are all good questions. One of the youth pastors feels that it is not necessary for churches to worry about trying to get people saved in their Sunday Morning ministry. He said that the place to get people saved is outside of the four walls of the church. The Sunday morning should serve only to give believers the knowledge and wisdom on how to reach others and grow spiritually. I find this to be interesting. His feelings were that we forsake holiness in our church services in order to attract the world to our churches. He doesn't feel as if the world is attracted to our churches anyway, so why lower our spiritual standards by allowing willingly sinful people into our services on an on-going basis if they aren't trying to change. What do we do with the passages of Revelation where Jesus tells some of the churches in chapters 2 & 3 that if they allow people in their congregation who are practicing sin to continue to show up then God will remove His Spirit from there? What do we do with the passages of scripture that tell us to beware of wolves in sheep's clothing? These are all good questions. Our fear is that if we react to this frame of mind then we become cold-hearted and unloving. Is there a way to be both? Can you be warm, loving and totally closed-minded to sinners who are fully embracing their sin? Notice that I said, "fully embracing", this does not refer to sinners who are coming but want to change. There is more dialogue to this conversation; however, I would like to hear what all of you think about it. I am willing to give my input, but for now I would just rather hear yours. I'm not saying that I agree; however, I am not saying that I don't either. I'm searching at this point.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
It was a happy day for him when he gave us our new lives, through the truth of his Word, and we became, as it were, the first children in his new family. JAMES 1:18 LB
I love this discussion and I think it would do all Jesus lovers and ministry servants to explore this areana often. My camp happens to be very anti-seeker at the expense of growth and bringing new people into the kingdom of God. I think it is a tragedy if/when we get the crazy notion that the church exists to bless the believer! I personally believe that the local church should be the hope of the world and with that every person that receives the life-changing message of Jesus at some point realizes what a privilege it is to partake of such an amazing gift and what a horrible injustice it would be to keep it to ourselves. The purpose of a Sunday morning service is arguable to some, but the purpose of the church, the purpose of every believer is wrapped up in the great commission! Jesus came to seek and save the lost, he left the 99 for the ONE, and spent loads of his time with non-jews and sinners! He taught his disciples to be fishers of men and somewhere along the line we became keepers of the aquarium. Do our churches need maturity? absolutely! Do believers need to grow up and not be selfish "fix me" addicts? A hundred times yes! The answer to most questions in the church is "Balance", but my personal opinion is that besides a handful of churches, most of us are far from our potential in the evangelism deptartment. I believe that Bible teaches that the deeper we go in God, the more fruitful we should become. So no condemnation to those who are in Jesus, but we still have a lot of work to do!
Post a Comment