The Purpose of the Church

Maybe I am a bit slow, surprise, surprise. But tonight something I have known for a while finally made sense. Something triggered in my brain and it made a connection.

For such a long time I viewed the church as a place to go and be fed. The purpose was to go and get filled up and rejuvenated for the week and then off to the real world. Then you have small/home/community group for a little pick me up until Sunday. I think many people have this view of church.

Now, over the years I have heard teaching on the value of independent study time. Of the importance of having time every day to spend with God. Using this time for prayer, study, and personal worship. Any teaching I have heard on this subject has always come off more as quite time is your daily supplement, like a vitamin, but church is where you get the bulk of your food.

Tonight I had an epiphany! This line of thinking that I have been taught and come to know as my own is completely backwards! My personal time with God is where I should be getting the bulk of my food and church is where I get the supplements that help me digest the food.

This whole revelation came from a statement from the teaching tonight at church. Jack basically said that his job as the leader of our church is to help us become people who can feed ourselves so that on Sunday we can serve and not rely on being fed there. As soon as he said a phrase from all of my education classes came to me. The ultimate goal of teaching is to create independent learners. Meaning that you don't just teach them what they need to know you cultivate a desire to continue learning even when they are not in your classroom.

At that moment I realized that purpose of the church is to create independent worshipers. A people who go out and have a desire to learn more about God everyday not just in the sanctuary on Sunday morning. The church is the place where people are to be equipped so that they can fully grasp all that God has for them.

In Hebrews chapter 5 the author says this to the Jewish believers, "In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's words all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil." (emphasis is mine) This could be said to so many of the believers today. As an infant we are fed milk and someone has to feed it to us we lack the ability to feed ourselves. As an infant milk is enough to sustain us but as we get bigger it is no longer sufficient. As we grow we begin to eat solid food that is fed to us. Then we attempt it on our own with occasional assistance someone might need to cut up our meat. But eventually we learn how to eat on our own. We even learn how prepare our own food and then feed it to others. However, too many of us are satisfied on a spiritual diet consisting only of milk. As young Christians we need this milk, however our growth will be stunted if we don't learn to eat solid food.

And like anything we learn how to eat by practice. It isn't like we just woke up one morning when we were 6 months old and could all the sudden us a fork and knife properly. It takes constant use of the tools we have been given in order to learn how to eat. The same is with learning how to take in spiritual food. The tools we have been given take practice to learn how to use them. I can be given a reading guide and study tools but if I don't take the time to use them it will do me no good. Or if I only try to use them once a week when everyone else is watching me I am not going to learn either. Daily practice is the only way we get better at anything.

Now don't get me wrong, corporate worship is very important. Like I said it is the place where we get the tools in order to be able to digest what we have been taking in. It is also the place in which we are to serve others and help them grow in spiritual maturity.

What kind of spiritual food are you living on? Are you expecting for someone else to feed you or have you come to a place of maturity in which you can feed yourself? If you have reached a place of maturity are you then preparing that food for others and helping them mature?