This question has arisen from a recent chat that I had with Dave, where the query was raised as to whether churches are so focused on putting all their energies into Sundays and running mid-week programmes that it leaves no time for members to actually get out into the community and reach the world.’
Dave, this is a great question! In fact, this is a question that I hear regularly so you’ve obviously touched a nerve!
My question back to you is ‘what is the purpose of the church’? You see, in your question, I think there is an assumption that the main purpose of the church is evangelism. I’ve heard this same assumption packaged up like this: What’s the point in feeding hungry people if we don’t tell them about Jesus? Here we see that same assumption being outworked. Evangelism is seen as trumping everything else. However, my question is, does it?
When the Westminster Divines were pulling together the shorter catechism (or Question and Answer learning tool), they asked this:
Question: What is the chief end of man?
Or to put this in a different language… What is the primary purpose of the existence of men and women?
Answer: Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.
Or to put this in simple language… our primary reason for existing is to glorify God and one of the primary ways we do that is by enjoying him (see here).
Or to put it in biblical language: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'(Matt 22:37) and ‘Delight yourself in the Lord’ (Ps 37:4).
I don’t think this is particularly controversial. I’m saying that our primary (or main) purpose in life (together) is to be a community that glorifies and enjoys God, for that is why he has made us!
As a result, our chief aim is not to be evangelistic, but rather God-glorifiers and God-enjoyers. I’m not saying evangelism is not important… it’s just not the primary (or chief) reason for our existence. As a result, we need to ensure that everything we do (evangelism, social action, kids and youth work, mission trips) are always the ‘cart’ and never the ‘horse’. The ‘horse’ is that we’ve been called as a community of people to glorify God and to enjoy him now … and forever. When we get this right, suddenly our evangelism gets infused with fresh passion and energy. How? For one thing, the people of God (the church) are not separated from evangelism (which is what often happens). In fact, our Sunday gatherings are not separate from evangelism because glorifying and enjoying God together is part of our witness. When people come and join us on a Sunday and see that we are living as people of a different Country/Kingdom… this speaks and witnesses about the good news of Christianity. Sundays are evangelism. Again, this does not mean we don’t need to run Alpha courses and one-to-one bible studies (we do and they are great!), it’s just ensuring that we don’t lose sight of the fact that before being called to be evangelistic we’ve been called to be worshippers. And one of the primary ways we worship is congregationally (together).
So my encouragement is this: let’s put loads and loads of effort into our Sunday gatherings so that we become white-hot worshippers of Jesus … so then in turn we will be more effective witnesses for him in every aspect of our lives. How does that sound?