PAST COLUMN #20

From the West Meadow
By Pastor Wesley Higgins

Why have a church? For that matter, what is a church? What is its purpose, and how does it fulfill that purpose?

Many people think that the church’s main purpose is to evangelize, and for proof they cite Matthew 28:19-20. But this scripture actually commissions followers of Jesus to “go...make disciples...teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.” Jesus tells us that it is God the Father who decides who will be called to Jesus: “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” (John 6:44).

The early New Testament church provided four main functions. “They continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers” (Acts 2:42). Teaching, worship, fellowship and intercessory prayer–these four functions provide a healthy environment for church development and growth: “And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved” (Acts2:47). The main job of the church is not to evangelize, but to teach. Evangelism will be the natural result of a healthy church.

Notice that God didn’t allow new converts to remain on their own, to stagnate. Instead, He added them to His body, the church, where they could be taught. The Greek word translated church–ekklesia–means “called out”, “assembly”, a group or gathering. To put it another way, the purpose of the church is to give God a dwelling place on earth. “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the spirit of God dwells in you?” “Therefore, you are no longer strangers...but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God...in whom you are also being built together for a dwelling place of God in the spirit” (I Corinthians 3:16; Ephesians 2 :19-22).

As the church, we as a group, and individually, are the representatives of God’s Kingdom on earth–extension agents, as it were, of the Kingdom of God. Someday as spirit beings we may have the job of extending God’s Kingdom to the whole universe, but right now our job is to extend it on earth (Matt 5:10) in our local communities.

The job of the church is to train its membership (the extension agents of the Kingdom) to live a life that is interactive with God (see Ephesians 4:11-16), and interactive with the community around it. Just as God’s Kingdom is a kingdom of blessing to the whole world, the church must be a church of blessing to the community in which it resides.

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