What is the Church For? 

After two thousand years of Christian social action, the central question remains: what is the church for? The history offers many answers. The church has been a worshiping community, an evangelistic movement, a school of discipleship, a provider of hospitals and education, an abolitionist network, a civil-rights institution, a defender of empire, a political constituency, and sometimes a source of persecution.

Each description names something real. None is sufficient by itself. A church concerned only with personal salvation can ignore the world in which its neighbors suffer. A church defined only by social reform can lose the gospel that gives its action meaning. A church reduced to charity may treat wounds while leaving the machinery that causes them untouched. A church reduced to politics may gain the world and lose the freedom to judge its allies.

The church exists first for God. It gathers to worship, pray, hear Scripture, baptize, celebrate the Lord’s Supper, confess sin, and give thanks. This Godward orientation matters because the church is not the savior of the world. Its mission begins with receiving grace, not asserting moral superiority.

Yet the prophets make equally clear that worship without justice becomes religious performance. The God addressed in prayer is also the defender of the widow, orphan, stranger, worker, prisoner, and poor person. Liturgical beauty cannot compensate for exploited employees, concealed abuse, racial hierarchy, or indifference to suffering. Worship should form the kind of people who can recognize and resist those contradictions.

The church exists to proclaim the gospel. It announces the life, death, resurrection, lordship, and promised reign of Jesus Christ. Evangelism is not simply recruiting members or securing assent to doctrines. It is the announcement that another Lord makes claims upon every area of life and invites people into a new covenantal community.2

The church therefore exists to make disciples. Personal edification is necessary, but it is formation for mission rather than religious self-improvement. Christians are formed in love, holiness, truthfulness, courage, generosity, forgiveness, justice, peacemaking, stewardship, and resistance to evil. The question is not merely whether I know more or feel better, but whether I am becoming........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)