There is no living body on earth like the Church. Not congress, the UN, Habitat for Humanity, you name it. There is nothing like the Church. You know, we often complicate church so that we dont have to be the Church.

Church (big C) vs church (little c). The Church (big C), the body of Christ is a living, breathing body--made up of many parts and bound together by the Holy Spirit. A church (little c) is a building in some cases, or in others a group of people who meet together a couple times a week. What makes the difference between a group of people who meet together weekly and the living, breathing body?

I’m sure there are other reasons but I want to focus on one. Purpose. Have you every seen someone who has lost all sense of purpose? They just show up where they are supposed to show up, perhaps they engage in fun things as long as there is no risk. A church (little c) that meets together but lacks purpose is like someone in a coma. The parts are there and functioning to a degree, but they arent being used for their purpose. The hands are not working, handling things. The mouth isnt speaking, the knees arent bending, the eyes arent seeing. But the body is technically alive. I think some of our churches are like that. 

The Church (Big C) is filled with purpose. In one of the earliest recorded postmodern discussions, long before it was cool to be postmodern, Pilate asks Jesus “Are you a King” to which He replies “For this cause I was born and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth.” To which Pilate asks “What is truth?”

Oblivious to the Truth itself, or Himself rather, standing before him, Pilate gets slapped with one of the clearest articulations of Jesus’s purpose statement.  The whole reason he came into the world was to bear witness to the truth. Guess what, He is still IN the world, He is in it though us. Through the Big C Church. Awesome!

What an amazing privilege it is to be the body of Christ. Imagine meeting Jesus in the flesh. Knowing that it’s Jesus, most of us would do anything He asks. Actually, it doesnt have to be Jesus, many of us would serve sports, rock, and movie stars in the same way. There are some people on Earth we consider it an honor to serve. The same should be true of Jesus. But even greater than the honor of serving Him, we have been elevated to the level of being His body, a part of Him, in Him. Now of course we don’t glory in that honor, but are humble in the fact that we are chosen for such a great call.

This is the purpose that drives the Church, to be Jesus’s body. And if we are His body, then His purpose statement, to bear witness to the Truth, becomes our purpose statement.  When we get this revelation, we can and will change the world. When the light shines in the darkness, the darkness cannot comprehend it. We complain about the dark all the time, but we can defeat it--it’s been defeated in fact.

So this is our Purpose. To be the Church. And the Purpose of the Church is to bear witness to the truth. Can we be that radical witness? Can we shine in the darkness? We can. In fact, to do anything less is to fall short of our calling.

Last update : 19-02-2009 21:04