What is the Purpose of the Church?
By Pastor Darla Winn

Some of you just went blank – trying to think of what the purpose of the church is. Some of you thought, "Well, it’s to bless the community; others may have thought, it’s where you bring people, in the community, to receive salvation.

Who is the church for? Again, some of you just went blank – thinking, "Well, I don't rightly know, I just go." I believe that over the years that we have lost sight of the purpose of the church. Perhaps many of us have never known its purpose.

I just recently finished reading a book called, "Love, Acceptance, and Forgiveness by Jerry Cook with Stanley Baldwin, that has absolutely changed my whole concept of the church. In all of my training over the years I never learned the real purpose of the church. I have always viewed church as the place of work. I go to church to work; I work at getting people into the church etc. My focus has always been one of number, facility and quality of people. As I have learned from this book, this mentality is one of the church-as-a-field mentality. To me this was where all the work went on. I did not realize that I had this mentality, until reading this book. Jesus said in Matthew 13:38 that the world is the field. The believers “meeting place” is not where the work is supposed to be done. We, the church, are supposed to go out into the field and do the work. I have always worked at getting people into the church sanctuary and then getting them saved. The only problem with that was some people were hard against church and wouldn't have anything to do with going to church anywhere. What do we do with those? The author of this, above- mentioned, book points out the difference between religion and Christianity. He says the focus of religion is on man reaching out to God; Christianity is focused on God reaching out to man. All these years I have been going out into the community trying to get men and women into the church, with the motive of bringing them to God – when all along I should have been taking God into the community.

The church-as-a-field measures success in numbers, finances and facility. The goals of such are to have a great number of people, with a nice flow of money, in a beautiful building. This goal is of course flexible just in case it's not reached. If they don't reach their great number of people the goal changes to one of quality instead of quantity.

So what is the purpose of the church and who is it for? The purpose is to meet the needs of the people. It is people equipped to serve, meeting the needs of people all over the world. Who is it for? The community where it is located. "We" are the church, not the building – we go out into the community giving our self to it rather than trying to take it unto our self. One day when the author of this book was praying for God to give him "the community," the Holy Spirit stopped him and told him to never pray that again, but to pray for God to give "him" to the community. Our community is the field. If we, the farmers of our field, never go out into the field and plant the incorruptible seed, there won’t be any harvest. With the church-as-a-field mentality the field will only get bigger as our building does. So, if the church isn't the field then what is it? It should be a force.

A church that extends love, acceptance and forgiveness is the-church-as-a-force. If I may share a quote from the author: "When love, acceptance and forgiveness prevail, the church of Jesus Christ becomes what Jesus was in the world: A center of love designed for the healing of broken people and a force for God." The emphasis of the church-as-a-force is worship, training and fellowship because these are the things that can produce Spirit-filled believers who can go out into the field and meet the needs of people. The goals of the church-as-a-force are to bring people to wholeness, equip them and release them to minister. The church-as-a-field

has a distorted view of the responsibilities of the pastor. They tend to believe that the pastor is the only one who can do the ministry. He is the one who makes all of the house calls, hospital calls etc. Come Sunday the poor man is so exhausted from ministering all week that he can only manage a watered down message that makes everyone angry. They think, "Didn't he preach that last week? I don't think he is taking time to study."

These scriptures are very clear on what the responsibility of the fivefold ministry is. The pastor trains the saints to do the work of the ministry. I’ve heard of one church that had a member who had an operation and was in and out of the hospital before the pastor even heard of it. The saints did the work of the ministry. When the pastor does the work of the ministry he/she takes the reward away from the people. I heard one pastor share about how one of his members would bring him her friends, from her days out in the world, and he would get them saved. He later repented to her for taking her reward. She should have been the one who led them to the Lord. Many Christians think they are not qualified to do the work of the ministry. The only thing you need to qualify is being born again. As pastors we need to trust Christ in our people – trust our training in our people. They may not do it as well as we would but it gets done. There is an anointing on the people to do the work of the ministry; therefore, they are going to be able to do it.

Listen, we need to get out into the field instead of trying to bring the field into the church. It's not about building our ministries; it's about building people. Our ministries can parish, but once you get the Word into the people they will not. Take note: Your ministry is not the kingdom of God. When people leave your church they are not leaving the kingdom – they are only leaving your church.

When we work to build our church it becomes our focal point. We can get the false sense of identity within our ministry as though it is the only place to get restored, healed etc. We begin to think of our church as the only one in town that has the goods; all others are not as good as we are. This again is the church-as-a-field mentality.

I don't know about you but I don't want to labor in vain. I am so thankful for this book. It has really tore up the traditional way I was brought up to view the church. We must accept people the way they are.

I have a real issue with cleavage. I do not like low neck lines on women. Especially women ministers. Today I was in a place of business; it was an office. Now, there is a difference between professional dress and beach attire. Well, in this place of business I noticed there was a new secretary. She was dressed in beach attire. But with my new heart attitude I could look right past her attire and see her. I could see that Christ died for her. Now, it would seem to me that she would know that the way she was dressed was not for the office. But never the less I didn't care and before I knew it we were engaged in conversation and she began to ask about me. She asked me what my profession was. I was then able to tell her that I was an ordained minister in full time ministry. I went on to tell her a little bit about our ministry As I was telling her, her whole face lit up. I then gave her a ministry card and told her to call me if she ever needed anything. My emphases was not on my ministry but on what I could do for her. That ministers to people. When you hand someone a ministry card and begin to tell him or her all about how great your ministry is and when all your service times are, that doesn't minister to them. They can see right through that. They know all your interested in is their body being there for the count.

Conning people into our ministries is exploiting them. We become their friends for the sole purpose of converting them to get them into our ministries.

Remember: The church is a body of believers who minister to the needs of people in the field. The church building is the place where we come for a time of refreshing, worship, fellowship and training. We need to have a time of refreshing from being in the field all week.

Let's examine our motives for all our programs and projects, we wear our self out on. Is it really for the sake of the people, or for building our ministries so we can look good to the church down the street?

I have heard ministers talking about building their ministries. They say you can’t build a ministry with people who come over from other churches on their church, off nights. Are we supposed to be building ministries or people? When we build people it builds the Kingdom of God. When I first started in ministry the Spirit instructed me that I was to build people and He would build my ministry. He would provide me with all the money and people-help needed. Let’s be busy about building people and let God build us. SFWC

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Purpose of the Ministry

Guarantees:

When people come into your ministry you must be able to love, accept and forgive them. Your passion for God produces compassion for people, which produces life-changing power.  Love, acceptance and forgiveness are the three things absolutely essential to any ministry that will consistently bring people to maturity and wholeness.  The minimal guarantee we must make to people that come into our ministries is that they will be loved always and under every circumstance, with no exception.  The second guarantee is that they will be totally accepted, without reservation.  The third thing we must guarantee people is that no matter how miserably they fail or how blatantly they sin, unreserved forgiveness is theirs for the asking with no bitter taste left in anybody's mouth. If people are not guaranteed these three things, they will never allow us the marvelous privilege of bringing wholeness to them through the fellowship of the church. We need to make a bold commitment to love people and then fulfill that commitment.  As believers and ministers we must have the attitude, "If you come around here you are going to be loved no matter who you are or what you have done or how you look, smell, or behave we're going to love you.

Acceptance:

In the Kingdom of God we must first love and then move into acquaintance.  In the world we first get acquainted and then we make the decision whether to love or not.  The result is most people have many acquaintances and few friends, but they are dying from lack of love.  A ministry that can make the commitment to love every person is a ministry that will be a force for God.  No wonder a ministry that knows how to love becomes a force for God.  The ministry should state, "We're going to love and accept people, and if you don't want to love people, you're in the wrong place, because this ministry is going to love people.   When we cultivate the habit of accepting people, they open up to us, they like us, they trust us instinctively.   Because we are accepted in the beloved we must be accepting of the beloved.

Acceptance is not a License

Many times we don't accept people because we are afraid that by us accepting them we condone their sin or past sin.  We have to come to a place where we can embrace a person but speak the truth to their present life style.  Do we accept the Jim Bakers, if so won't that suggest that we condone their past?  What if someone who has sinned against the body of Christ has not repented to the body of Christ, but wants to be restored back into fellowship?  Do you accept them back into your fellowship?  They say they have repented to God and that's all they need to do.

Matthew 5:23

   So if when you are offering your gift at the altar you there remember that your brother has any [grievance] against you,