The Purpose of the Church

Who gets to determine the purpose of the church?

Do the people of the church get to determine the purpose of their church?

After all they call it their church.

They are the ones who pay the bills.

They are the ones who do all the work.

Shouldn’t they decide the purpose of their church?

How about the pastor or church leadership, do they get to decide?

The pastor went to school to do this job.

The state recognizes him as the president of the company.

He spends, by far the most time at the church and thinking about the church.

Shouldn’t he provide the mission for the church that he pastors?

The obvious academic answer to this questions is, no.

We cannot set the purpose of the church because we do not own the church.

Someone else already does.

That person is Jesus.

How did Jesus come to own the church?

How does somebody come to own anything?

He paid for it.

This is seen clearly in Acts 20:28 when Paul refers to the flock of people that make up the church as being purchased by the blood of Jesus.

Acts 20:28 KJV 1900

28 Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

It is a perfectly logical assumption that if you pay for something, you get to decide it’s purpose.

He also built it.

This fact is established in Matthew 16:18 during a conversation between Jesus and HIs disciples.

Matthew 16:18 KJV 1900

18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Another logical point of reasoning is that if you are the one who builds something, you get to decide it’s purpose.

If Jesus built the church and He paid for the church, then His words in Matthew 28:18 should come as no surprise.

Matthew 28:18 KJV 1900

18 And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

What power is he specifically referring to?

Well, He is God and He did say all...

So, I’m going to assume that when Jesus claims all power that He is including the power to govern the purpose of the church that He built and bought.

What did Jesus establish as our purpose?

For the answer to that question, all we have to do is keep reading in Matthew 28.

Jesus lays out for us, the purpose for which we associate with a church.

Make disciples of all nations.

This word teach is deeper than what it appears to be on the surface.

A bad teacher has the attitude that their responsibility is to present the material and that’s it.

If the audience or the students don’t get it, that’s their fault.

A good teacher however, is not just concerned with presenting the material, but with the understanding and accepting of the material.

A good teacher takes the extra time needed to insure that as many students as possible grasp the material.

This is the meaning of that word teach.

It looks much more like what we would call “disciple” than lecture.

Baptize them.

Those that receive the message should identify themselves by means of baptism.

Baptism occurs after reception of the message and it says, “I have received and am in agreement with this message.”

Train them.

Help people learn how to live their lives the way Jesus had taught His disciples.

Follow Him.

Remember, Jesus taught them to live as citizens of His kingdom.

This was a huge sticking point for the disciples.

They thought His kingdom would be just like all the other kingdoms they had ever seem established.

They had a completely terrestrial view of what it meant to follow Jesus.

Jesus repeatedly had to get them to think outside their former experiences.

A powerful earthly kingdom had soldiers and military might.

A powerful earthly kingdom had wealth and influence.

When Jesus refused to follow this pattern, the disciples were consternated.

Following Jesus means abandoning a large majority of what many would consider to be common sense.

So, in summary, our purpose is to make disciples, baptize them, and train them to follow Jesus.

How do we accomplish this purpose?

One inescapable method is preaching.

1 Corinthians 1:21 “21 For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”

Preaching is not always equal to delivering a sermon.

It is always equal to a declaration of truth by the spoken word.

There must be, as a part of our ministry, an inclusion of verbal transfers of truth.

Another way that we accomplish this is by going.

This is that outward focus that we try to cultivate as a church.

We are not supposed to be inward focused as that will lead to many issues.

Internally focused churches are more focused on maintaining the internal culture than evangelizing the external culture.

Jesus did not tell the church to stay and teach, He told it to GO and teach.

If we are going to reach our community we cannot afford to sit here and wait for them to come to us.

We have to go and show them that we care enough about them to try and reach them.

Are we operating at every level of ministry to accomplish our purpose?

We ought to regularly stop and examine whether or not what we are doing is reaching people, helping them get baptized, or training them to follow Jesus.

If something we are doing isn’t fulfilling one of these realms of purpose, then we probably shouldn’t be doing it.

We have limited time and resources.

We cannot afford to invest our limited availability into something that is not going to support our mission.

That being said, there are some things that we can axe without too much examination.

This makes room for us to be creative in new efforts to do what Jesus has told us to do.

What does this exclude and what does it leave room for?

A few things we can be free from.

We are free from the pressure of meeting the expectations of a social club.

The people that give and support the ministry of the Baptist Tabernacle are not “paying their dues.”

When you pay dues, you expect to receive perks and services.

This is an unhealthy expectation.

Though I would hope that you would find friends here at church, we do not exist solely to provide people with friends.

We don’t have to compare with an entertainment company.

Thank God, we are not called to be entertainers.

Many churches seem to be trying to answer that call anyway.

What a foolish endeavor.

Outside of our gatherings I know how bombarded I am by what I listen to, watch, and interact with.

Our mission is dependent on us being able to wow you.

Though we want to do everything that we do to the best of our abilities, our effectiveness is not attached to our entertainment value.

Though many would consider us a charity; we are not a humanitarian organization.

You don’t have to go far to be convinced that there are people that are in need.

Who knows what the future holds.

If we fed every hungry kid, housed every homeless person, paid every doctor bill that couldn’t be paid, and every utility payment that was outstanding, but we never went beyond that, then we would have failed our mission.

Like all of these other things we’ve talked about, there is a place for addressing the felt needs of the people around us.

James 1:27 tells us that pure religion requires and attention to the needs of the fatherless and the widows.

We address the temporal needs for a chance at addressing the eternal needs.

If we are not careful, these and other concerns can drawn out our ability to accomplish our primary mission.

Can you find social interaction at church, yes.

Will you sometimes be entertained at church, sure.

Should we try to help the poor and needy as we have ability, absolutely.

These are not primary.

A few ideas on how we can be creative in achieving our mission.

Getting out into our community.

Collinsville needs to see the Baptist Tabernacle in every day life.

Look at how many people come because they see our building while they are passing by.

They drive by and they say, hey look there’s a church.

I’ve been looking for a church.

Maybe I’ll visit there.

How many more people would we reach if they saw us genuinely living the Christian life on a regular basis.

They might interact with you and say “hey look theres a Christian.”

I’ve been wondering about what that life is like.

Maybe I’ll ask them.

When I say get out into our community, I don’t just mean...

Put up a booth at community events.

Go door knocking.

Sponsor an add at the school.

I mean we as individuals need to be the church out in community.

…and on social media.

Using our facilities for outreach.

The number one misused asset amongst churches in America is the church building.

Many are used 4 hours a week and that’s it.

We want people in here on a regular basis.

Three days a week we have 60 kids and their families here on the property through our preschool.

Last week we hosted an HOA meeting.

Multiple city and homeschool basketball teams practice in our gym.

Not everyone will come for a church service right off the bat.

The more times we are able to host someone in our building, the more we can tear down the barriers that exist in their mind.

Doing a better job of leveraging the internet for off-day ministry.

There is so much garbage on social media.

Too often, Christians contribute to it..

Can’t we do better?

Do we have talk like, watch, or share the same things that everyone else is doing?

So much of people’s lives are lived online.

It is foolish for us as Christians to pretend that...

What I do or say on here doesn’t matter.

If I’m on it, I don’t have a responsibility to uphold a Christian testimony with how I behave on social media.

Our church, during service hours is represented through out livestream.

But, how are we represented on the internet through your lives when service is not in session?

If you are the church, then you must do the same thing we have to do with our ministries.

If a ministry isn’t reaching, converting, or training people, then it is not working.

It either needs to be renovated or discarded.

The same is true with your personal life.

You don’t cease to be a member of this church when you walk out those doors.

If anything, it is more important for you to fulfill the mission of this church when you are not on the property.

Conclusion

Jesus gets to dictate the purpose of this church because He bought it and He built it.

That purpose is clearly spelled out in New Testament.

We are to reach the lost.

We are to baptize new believers.

We are to train Christians to follow Jesus.

That means corporately and personally we need to perform regular audits to see if we are living up to our purpose.

Things that don’t help us fulfill our mission need to be dropped.

By dropping things that aren’t working, we are free to focus more energy into what does.