Purpose of Church

I was asked an interesting question yesterday. It was what is the purpose of church? Interestingly it wasn't asked like person who hated church or was against church as I have been asked before. It was just an honest open curiosity of what church was all about. So let me unpack a bit what I view as the purpose of church is to myself and society.





To me church is valuable for a few reasons. The first being that church brings me closer to the God I worship, yes can worship God elsewhere, that is a given. There is just something about being with 3000 fellow believers who are there for same purpose, though. So please don't draw that I am saying you can only find God in a church or that is whole purpose of my blog, only saying for me, I am drawn even closer being around people of same mind-set and purpose than if I was off alone. Sort of a strength of numbers mindset.





Church is also a sorely needed moral-berometer for me, let me unpack that statement. I look around and see so much wrong and wrong being done in name of good and called good. The church I go to, Houston's First Baptist Church or @Houstonsfirst on twitter, challenges the mind-set and behavior of society not sugar-coating wrong or evil because it would be convenient to do so. Instead the church holds up perfection, which is God's very character as what we as Christians should strive for. Our church's worldview is this: "Relevant Biblical Community" Which I will expand on in a moment.





Will try to explain what a worldview is, which actually is fairly easy to understand when you consider it, a worldview is, how you as a person view the world around you and what you believe in regards to the world. So if you unpack our church's worldview the first word is "Relevant" which means that you have a bearing or connection with issue at hand. So too often, the world with good reason, says the church is irrelevant. so being relevant is an important area for church to explore and understand the importance for them to accomplish.

Next in my church's worldview,motto or mission statement as it were is "Biblical" That simply defined is relying on the fact the Bible is true, reliable and can be trusted to live your life by. That being said, at our church it becomes what we base our life on, the Bible is true and the Christ found in it is true. Think about that for a moment. That is a huge step of faith, which putting our trust in the unknown, the unseen and to the world around is scientifically unverifiable. But, truly that is another issue for another blog. My point for this blog being, living our life by what we believe is true, the Bible should be reflected to those around us and in our worldview.

Finally, in the mission statement is "Community" That sounds so easy or the easiest to accomplish of those threee words. Kind of a given,almost. Probably the hardest when we think about what community truly is. Community is family life, at the most simplest definition. This is what makes it so darn difficult to live out, I don't know about you all, but sometimes my family is very difficult to live around, be around or like at all. Yet we are called to not only love them but like them too. Huge. Christian when the word was coined 1000's of years ago, was an insult, saying they were "little Christ's" but that truly what we are to be to the world around us and even more so to our fellow followers of Christ. What kind of statement are we making if we don't love and like those that we claim to be alongside in following the God who is Love?!?

So to answer the question of what church is, to me is a place to be real, to be alongside people who believe the same things I do, trying to live out the call God has put on my life, to be there to help and be helped as we go along life's difficult hard journey. A place where we can be refreshed and get our bearing to go the way God has called us to walk along. A place of preparation to be there with people who may not be as experienced as us or much farther along then we are, sort of gearing up to go to war. Then going out to war for the week and come back and be received by fellow warriors and bind our wounds together to fight another battle.