Why do we go to church? Even more to the point, why do we go to our church? For the fellowship? For the worship? For the teaching? For the singing? For the children's sake? Because we have always gone? Because for one reason or another we happen to like it? Or do we go because we know it is where God wants us?
But why does He want us there? Does He have goals for us He wants us to see and accept and work for? What are they? What does God want of us?
The answer to that question is one of the most important a congregation needs to know. Our aim is to pursue it, to seek a vision for the Church.
At the beginning God chose Israel to be a community to serve Him in the world: "Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples; for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." (Ex. 19:5) When they failed to give that service, He chose a New Israel, the Church, to serve Him.
In broad outline God's purpose for His Church is that they be a people
who know Him in the world,
who show Him to the world, and
who share Him with the world.
That is why He calls out a people for His Name in every generation.
• To know
Him ... "You shall be my own possession."
He made us for fellowship. He wants us to be close to Him; He is
Love. He needs our attention, our time, our trust, our willingness to
be and to go with Him.
That means worship, and listening, and prayer, and
discipleship.
• To show
Him ... "You shall be a holy nation."
"You
shall be holy, as I am holy." His people are thereby to give
substance to the truth about Him, in life - and especially in
community life. He wants a people who 'bear His image,' who display
the family likeness. He wants there to be a family round Him whose
life is wholesome and kindly because He Himself is at its heart.
That means fellowship ... caring about each other, encouraging one
another, helping one another, appreciating one another, building one
another up. It means really knowing one another in a way which is
inspired by our shared knowing of Him.
• To share
Him ... "You shall be a Kingdom of Priests."
The
function of a priest, as defined in Heb. 5:1, is to "act on behalf of
men in relation to God." The nation was called to that service; it is
therefore other nations God had in view as the recipients of their
ministry. For the world is full of strangers to Him. They do not know
Him, they do not believe in Him; they ignore Him, or hate Him, or
resist Him - and it hurts ... them and Him. He wants our voice to
call to them, our feet to go to them, our hands to touch them.
That means witness, and evangelism. It means service. It means doing
what Jesus did - going about among them spreading the good news, and
doing good.
We all know this. But how do we break it down so as to give it practical expression, in our congregation? Our church is different. All churches are, of course! Is our church fulfilling those three clear goals?
Perhaps people come eagerly at first because they appreciate the expository preaching the church is noted for. For a while their hunger is met.
But then the Bible teaching turns out to be not really enough. They lack for close fellowship; they long for closer sharing in the truth they have been learning; and feeling starved of it, they look for a church where there is more togetherness and involvement, more 'body life.'
But they can tire of that too after a while. The in-groups can be claustrophobic; and then they look for a church with some real emphasis on outreach. They want to see results for all this learning and fellowship. They want to see outsiders reached and lives changed.
Any church that is going to survive has to have all three - faithful Bible teaching, real fellowship and honest-to-goodness mission.
We shall look at the Book of Acts and the New Testament epistles and ask, "How, under the leading of the Holy Spirit, did the Church's life take shape?
How did it worship?
How did it learn?
How did it fellowship?
How did it grow?
How did it evangelize?
What made it tick?
We cannot of course just mix up a lot of texts into a paste and slap it, like a hot poultice, on a twentieth century church and expect that magically to transform it into the same image. The early church, in its beginning, was wholly Jewish, for one thing, and as it grew out of its Jewish cocoon its patterns changed. Congregational life was not the same in Rome as it was in Jerusalem. Because it was new and vigorous and always breaking new ground, it was fluid. Sometimes it went wrong, as it did at Corinth and at Laodicea; sometimes it went right, as it did at Philippi and Philadelphia.
But what we shall be looking for are principles - basic ingredients of the true mix, whatever varied shape local circumstances may have given them. We shall start at the beginning with Acts; but we shall aim to roam freely among the epistles too.
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