THE STATE OF THE CHURCH - Part 1: Twelve Essential Activities

As I begin a series of posts analyzing today’s Church, I want to offer my qualifications for doing so. First of all, I have been a member of a local church since childhood. Secondly, I am a pastor’s son, a perspective not shared by most Christians. Thirdly, I have spent my adulthood both as a layperson (17 years) and as a minister (21 years) and thus have experience from the pew and the pulpit with the subject at hand. Fourthly, as a music and worship leader, I have served on the front lines during sweeping changes in church practice. Lastly, and to me the most important, I am a disciple of Jesus, the Bridegroom, and thus have a strong desire that His Bride, the Church, fulfills Her mission in a manner pleasing to Him.

I also want to assert at the outset of this series that I have no preset agenda in writing. There is no prepared outline that I intend to follow, no talking points I want to argue. In fact, I do not know as I type these words where my thoughts will take me. I have decided to share what’s on my heart in a conversational, impromptu forum. Picture in your mind a family member calling loved ones to the den to share honestly and tenderly his or her feelings about them. This is the spirit in which I will deliver the following assessment of the Church. Be that commentary negative, positive, or neutral, it will always be offered in love and with the realization that I am a member of the body I address. I promise that no opinion will be given unless it first passes through my heart, my head, and my prayer closet.

If the disciples of Jesus were to visit our churches in the twenty-first century, what would they commend? What would they condemn? What things that we fret over would they shrug off? What things that we neglect would they ask us to resurrect? What church activities, programs, and organizations would they keep or omit? What aspects of our behavior as church members would they encourage us to change?

To find possible answers, we must go back to the New Testament and discover what these early Christians considered important. Granted, the culture and climate in which the Church was birthed was vastly different than ours today. This notwithstanding, it still is a worthwhile endeavor to find within that early fellowship of believers what was primary and needs to be continued and what was secondary and can be discarded as culturally obsolete. Put another way, to analyze where the Church is now, we must first assess what the Church was then. We must remember from whence we’ve come before we try to discern where we are and where we are headed.

Although the Church went through many changes in the first century, a study of the New Testament reveals several essential Church activities common to each decade. These essential activities were never listed in New Testament writings but rather were lived by New Testament Christians, week after week and year after year. To abandon any of these was never considered, because these very activities defined the Church.

In all, I have identified twelve essential Church activities which, I predict, would be the focus of the first disciples if they came to us today. They would want to make sure we are doing every one of them, for the simple reason that they would want the Church of the twenty-first century to still be the Church of Jesus Christ.

TWELVE ESSENTIAL CHURCH ACTIVITIES

(in alphabetical order, for none is to be considered more important than the others)

baptism
belief
benevolence/charity
Bible study
communion/Lord’s Supper
discipleship
evangelism
fellowship
organization
prayer
repentance/conversion
worship

It is important for us today to distinguish between these twelve essential Church functions and other activities that can be deemed nonessential. As the name implies, these essential activities were and are nonnegotiable. They describe who the Church is and what the Church does. They are the distinguishing marks of the true Church of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, many church activities, then and now, are dispensable. They can be omitted or altered without changing the core identity of the Church. Some examples of nonessential activities today are bus ministries, construction projects, choirs, daycares, funerals, patriotic services, revivals, sports activities, Sunday night worship, technology, visitation programs, and weddings. This in no way implies that any of these is bad; in fact, many of these activities are extremely beneficial to the Church today. We must recognize, however, that none of them are mandatory or requisite. Put very simply, the twelve essential activities have been the Church’s goals since the first century and will never change.  The nonessential activities, including but not limited to the ones just mentioned, are tools or means the Church has used to accomplish these goals. The essential activities cannot and will not waver; the nonessential activities can and will change.

Our task in the next few weeks will be: (1) to analyze each of the twelve essential functions of the Church; (2) to assess how well today’s Church is performing these activities; (3) to acknowledge nonessential activities that could be abandoned and others than could be initiated; and (4) to address the responsibilities and opportunities facing Christians in the twenty-first century Church.

NEXT WEEK
Part 2 – BELIEF