Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Defining Church
- The church is a Covenant People.
- The church is Universal. This term does not mean that every human who ever lives is a part of the church. Rather, it means that the church is not bound by time and ethnicity.
- The church is on a Mission. This mission is quite simply to make God known through word and deed.
I really like this formulation for several reasons.
Firstly, note how "mission" is the last of the three characteristics. It comes last for a reason. For the church to have a mission, it must be something of itself and that something then does the mission. Too often we try to define the church by or worse, AS, the mission. This carries with it the huge problem of burning out the people in the church itself. It is like trying to run a car without fueling it. Does great for a while, but eventually it just runs out of gas.
Secondly, have you covenanted with God? I mean committed to the agreement that He has made to be with you? This is serious business. One of the great shames of the ready availability of divorce in our culture, and IN OUR CHURCH, is the loss of seriousness concerning a covenant relationship. When we experience God's saving grace we enter into a contract with Him, binding and eternal. He won't break it, and we do so at our peril. That same contract binds us together, a relationship we should also take quite seriously.
Thirdly, note that a "universal" church emphasizes its eternality. We so often lose that perspective when we "do" church. We are in the forever business. This changes so much about how we do things. It gives us freedom to fail for there is always tomorrow. It gives us freedom to be more concerned with the how's than the results. You see, when we are doing something eternal, we may never see the end game. We must concentrate on the task at hand, for ours is but a small part of a much larger picture. How often do we seek the result instead of understand that the result is not urs to see. How often have we compromised and done the expedient to get to that result instead of done the best for eternity.
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