WHAT IS THE CHURCH?

For most people it is a building that you go into to attend a religious meeting that comprises of rituals conducted and controlled by a chosen few who are deemed to be more spiritual than the rest so they should be paid for being good.

This mindset takes place because the original purpose has been taken over by organisations that say they are doing the will of God but by their very nature they deny this fact.

Anything, whether it is a church or a so called Christian activity that claims to be approved by God that contravenes his word does not have God’s approval. We know this because he said that he cannot violate his word.

Therefore, if I were to say “I will pay your fare if you go to Vancouver” and you went to Toronto and I paid it anyway, that would be a violation of my word. The obvious outcome of this is that when I said something else of this nature, the response is going to be “yes, well, I will believe that when I see it.” In other words, my word is not taken as my word because I have a habit of violating my word.

The church cannot expect to do this, that and the other all of which is contrary to God’s word and expect the same outcomes as the New Testament Church achieved. We are by and large powerless and irrelevant because by and large we have chosen to ignore the word of God and the God of the word.

When you read the New Testament you see a church that is all about people. Not programmes, rituals and pulpits. First and foremost the church is called to go into all the world and make Christians. If you see what today’s church is doing that is what it is doing.

But that is not what Jesus said. He said to go into all the world and make disciples. Most churches don’t make disciples because disciples make disciples. Therefore if you make disciples you make people that are going to go into all the world. Most Christians today go into all the churches and nothing else.

Secondly, the New Testament Church spent most of its time after that, going into all their homes and making sure that everyone had their needs met. In most churches today no one would have any idea what the needs are of the people they meet with. Simply because they are not expected to as all needs will be met through the professional class and the church funds….maybe.

When they weren’t doing that, they were meeting to meet the spiritual needs of the congregation with the gifts of the spirit, ministering as the spirit anointed them to speak into the lives of each member so that they may hear from God for their benefit and edification.

I get so frustrated when I am told that a so called professional preacher gets up and spouts a load of rubbish and in conversation afterward, I am told that as long as one person is blessed it is worth it.

You will not find that idea anywhere in scripture when the church met together. It is totally foreign as a concept and as the teaching of scripture.

The church was a corporate body and it expressed itself corporately so everyone, should expect to be edified, not just one because the preacher didn’t know what he was doing. In the New Testament Church, there were numerous preachers, exhorters, prophets, teachers and spiritually gifted people. All of them functioned to make sure that it was not just one person who was edified. With the spirit in control, everyone was edified. That fact that we often claim to be satisfied with one is akin to saying that we admit the Holy Spirit is not in control, man is because our efforts are puny in comparison to his.

Until people are the purpose of our being, we will not take our hands off and allow the Holy Spirit to do what he wants to do to ensure everyone is edified whenever we come together. Asking people to come to a religious meeting and then preaching at them is not making them central to the life of the church and is not making disciples out of them. All it is doing is making them religious devotees, which most of the time robs them of the abundant life of the Spirit.