The Purpose of the Church?

Recently, I had occasion to be in the presence of a group of 10 adults, 11 when I include myself. Each person present is a christian, and all have been saved for at least 5years, some as long as 40 years.

The question was asked: What is the purpose of the church? 5 people answered "to reach the lost".

This opened up a fanatstic discussion with a person whose opinions and thougths on Scripture I value very much. Out of this dscussion, I have drawn some conclusions. I'm sharing them here only to share my thoughts, and to see if, perhaps, they will serve as food for thought for someone else.

I think that the folks who stated that the purpose of the church is to reach the lost are wrong. That sounds almost surprising, until you take some time to look at Scripture and to really think about it.

Christ's command in Mark 16:15 to "go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature" was given to INDIVIDUALS. The commands given to the New Testament CHURCH were to love one another, to exhort one another, to share with each other as there was need, to worship the Lord, and to teach and learn from each other.

We are EACH responsible to reach the lost for Christ. The CHURCH is where we go to become equipped to do that.

I see a lot of churches today that look just like the world. They want things to be comfortable. People often dress for church EXACTLY as they would dress to go to a movie or a ball game. The music in many churches sounds very much like secular music.

All of this is done so that the lost will feel "comfortable" in the church, so that they will come to church, and hopefully, accept Christ as their Savior.

All of that SOUNDS great, but I"m not so sure that was Christ's intention for the chruch. It seem to me that a lost person SHOULD feel uncomfortable in church. They should KNOW that there is something there that they won't find anywhere else. They should KNOW that the people there are different, and they should realize that they are missing something that these poeple have.

Now, I am not at all against evangelism. The church should most definitely be doing things like having visitation programs, missions trips, and other events that they invite the community to so that they can share the gospel with the lost. But we should never lose sight of the fact that the church itself is FOR THE BELIEVER~it is our home, our haven. It's a place for learning from other christians and growning with them, fellowshipping with them, and worshipping with them. This then equips us to go OUT of the church, into the world, and share Christ with the lost.

Think of it this way. If you want to catch fish, you don't go buy bait, pile it in your living room floor, then open your front door and yell "Here, fishy, fishy, fishy!" You go to the store and get your bait, then you take the bait to the lake WHERE THE FISH ARE, and you catch the fish.

In the same way, we do not need to turn our churches into a "haven" for the lost. We need to keep the church as our haven, our "re-fueling station" so that we can then go and share that "fuel" with the lost WHERE THEY ARE~out in the world~in the grocery store, in the mall, in the doctor's office waiting room, at the ball field, in the park.

There's nothing wrong at all with inviting the lost to church. But when they get there, they desperately need to see the difference.

Blessings,
Vicki