What is the Church to DO!

A lot of people are asking a very good question these days, they are asking "what is the church" or "what makes a church a church". To me a lot of the confusion over what a church is centers on another question. In order to know what a church is we need to know our task, or our mission. There are all kinds of things that pass as "church" today, but most fall short of actually being what Jesus intended when he said, "I will build my church". The church that Jesus built and is still building today is a group of people united around a mission, God's mission. I know that is a little simplistic, but understand my goal in writing this post isn't to define what constitutes a biblical church, but to instead make sure we have answered what I think is an important first question. What is the Church to DO?

I believe that the Church exists to Love God, Love People and Turn the World Up-side Down. I get this from two primary places. The first two parts come from the great commandment found in Matthew 22:34-40, and the last part we get from the great commission, found in Matthew 28:18-20. In both of these places Jesus is condensing what the Church is suppose to do down to their simplest form. For me if you miss any one of these parts as a church you miss the whole thing and cease to be what Jesus intended.

To break it down a little some of us are great at loving God, we enjoy gathering for worship, we enjoy reading the Bible, and praying, but we don't like people very much. We don't like to love our neighbor, and we don't think about our mission other than to occasionally invite someone to come to "church" with us, so that we can preach to them

Some of us love people, and we go out of our way to engage with our neighbor or to have a conversation with a friend or stranger for that matter, but we don't love God very much, because we don't worship Him, or listen to His Word, and we don't engage in conversation with God, through prayer. We think our mission is to engage the world in a conversation instead of preaching the truth of the Gospel.

The sweet spot is to have all three, and really the only way we get our mission right. We need to Love both God and People, and we need to both engage and preach in order to Turn the World Up-side Down. It isn't an either or, it is a both and. You Can't claim to love God and neglect to engage the world that He loves. You can't claim to love the world without sharing the truth of the Gospel, that Jesus God's son came and died on a cross so that we could be forgiven and live our life to the fullest both here and for eternity in heaven.

Chad