Deep thoughts of the Day

Recently I've been doing a lot of thinking (a miracle I know) about the Church.

What is the purpose of the local church?

As a pastor I believe I am serious about outreach. In fact, most of my ministry is probably consumned with reaching people and trying to get them to come to church and trying to help them get saved.

The church growth movement is huge today. There are all kinds of books, seminars, etc. that tell us how to grow our churches.

Churches today are consumned with being "seeker friendly." Rick Warren was a big proponent of this in his book "The Purpose Driven Church." Churches have adopted the world's music (with Christian words) in order to attract the unchurched. They do all sorts of gimmicks and things to attract the unchurched to their church. (See the gas give away post below). While I'm am not oppossed to trying to attract the unchurched, I do have some questions abou this.

What is the purpose of the church anyways? I believe that if you study the New Testament you will find that the purpose of the Church was not for the unsaved. The purpose of the Church was for Christians to come together and worship God as a body of believers.

We have adopted the idea that the church is means for sinners being saved. While God has used the church services for this purpose, I think that we have missed something.

The early Church gathered together to worship God and be encouraged, learn from the Word. Then they went out and evangelized. The new believers were then "added to the Church daily." Again, we have adopted the idea that sinners come in to the church and are then saved. So we chase after the latest trends and fashions in church growth to get sinners into the church.

Obviously there are problems with this. Most of the time this leads to compromise in the church. It leads to people in the church claiming to be Christians yet their lives are not changed. I think this also leads to laziness among the "saints." Now, instead of going out and witnessing and evangelizing the lost, the "saints" either depend on the "coolness" of the church to attract the lost (i.e. Praise teams, rock groups, etc. etc.) Or, they depend on the pastor to do all the work. Or, if there is "evangelism" going on it consists of the "saints" inviting people to church. Rather than actually witnessing and doing the "hard work," now we simply invite people to church and then hope that their not bored by the music program or the pastor's preaching so they'll come back, and those who are really sincere saints hope that the pastor will preach a "Salvation message" on that Sunday so the sinners will realize their need and be saved.

Now, does this mean that I don't want sinners in my church? Absolutly not! In fact, I want lots of them in my church! However, I do think that it's time for a little bit of a shift. A shift away from the idea that church is a primarily a means of getting people saved, and a shift back towards the Church being a place where believers worship God and learn from His Word and are encouraged to live a Christian life in the midst of a sinful world, and then Church body going out into the world and truly evangelizing and soul winning. Then, those new believers are added to the Church.

What do you think?