Why does the church exist?
Ask that question to a variety of people, and you’ll get a spectrum of opinions. Ask it to a pastor, and he may say: “It’s the people of God, brought together to worship, to grow, to witness and serve.” To a lonely widow: “It’s my one lifeline to sanity. I don’t know what I’d do without my church to hold on to!” To the parents of young children: “In our hectic, off-kilter world, we need a good place for our kids to find values, to grow up with something to believe in.” To a teen: “Hey, this is where my friends and I can kick back and be mellow. I feel accepted here — even challenged.”
Ask the question to a weary lay leader, and you may hear: “I suspect the church is where committees go to spawn subcommittees.”
Why does a church exist? Consider what Jesus said to his about-to-be church: “Go, and make disciples … ” and what Jesus asked the Father in prayer on behalf of the church: “that they may become completely one, so that the world may know” that the Father loves them (John 17: 21, 23).
God has a plan, and it involves the church, and is not about church for church’s sake. God’s plan is about gathering as many people as possible into the kingdom of God, and the church is God’s goofy, ungainly, counterintuitive means to that end. The church, of all things, exists to point the way, to steer the outsider in, to save the lost, to proclaim God’s glorious reign — that more citizens may be naturalized.
Yes, in God’s benevolent economy, the church does provide a place of solace, a hotbed of godly values, a stage for spirited worship, an organism of relationships, and all the bountiful benefits Christians enjoy. But the church isn’t the church so that we Christians can experience those perks. The church is the church so that other people can meet Jesus Christ and be captured by the Spirit and be incorporated into the kingdom for eternity. A church exists, like Jesus, “to seek out and to save the lost.” The church is not in the business of coddling the cozy but rather of finding the fallen, and will inconvenience itself in order to reach out. The church exists to do what Jesus valued — and did, himself.
James D. Berkley, guest devotional writer, is senior associate pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Bellevue, Washington. To comment on this devotional, e-mail Newsletter@LeadershipJournal.net
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