Tuesday’s reality

Yesterday I sat with some amazing friends and discussed what, exactly, we believe is the purpose of the church. We swirled around things like ‘compassion’ and ‘serving’ and ‘spiritual formation’ and ‘evangelism’. Ultimately, to each of those responses can be asked, ‘is that a means or an end?’ Why do we want to see Christians grow into maturity? Why do we serve?

I can’t explain to you how energizing this was. Because I was with the staff of our church, and we were having this conversation for the first time. Almost half of those around the table are new to our staff in the past year, and we are feeling the need to articulate what our church is about with this new configuration of leaders. There was no ‘over-talking’, there were nothing driven by egos…. it was just a group of thoughtful people sharing scripture and heartfelt conviction.

It was a beautiful thing. The ultimate purpose of the church is mystical, organic, complicated. Almost too much for one person to completely grasp. But we each forwarded a piece of the picture, and it was amazing to see how we each landed in a place that makes sense, given our gifts and areas of ministry, and how, as a group we can link arms and create a holistic picture of God’s church.

My piece of the puzzle? Eph 4 & 5 describe how a community of God’s children should interact…. Heb 10:19-25 describes why it is that we can worship God, and asks us to worship together…. but all over scripture, we see that the ultimate purpose for what we do is to make God’s name famous.

Where do you land? What is the church ultimately to be about?