The Purpose of the Church

There were other problems with the churches we had been a part of. But, most could be directly attributed to one of these basic headings. Yet, as we complained and shared our grievances, the sudden realization struck us that we were as guilty of omission in our analysis as the traditional church. We were like inept members of the medical profession who pass out medications to treat a fever without identifying the cause of infection—the name of the disease. All the problems we had named were symptoms as opposed to a source. The repetitious and boring services, the lack of honest self-evaluation, the clergy, laity gap, the overwhelming number of meetings, the mixing of priorities where material wants overlord human need—these were clues, nothing more, to an underlying malaise with which no one seemed to be grappling.

That core group, from whom the ideas of Circle Church were to spring, began to realize they would have to probe more deeply. “Does it not seem there is a basic difficulty from which all these other shortcomings stem?” was our question. The answer began to boom loudly and clearly: The number one problem of the local church is that it has failed to define its reasons for existence, and is consequently malfunctioning.

“Why do we have a morning service? Why have one in the evening? Why a midweek prayer meeting?” Traditionally the answers are that the morning service is worship, the evening is evangelistic, and we gather at midweek for prayer. Yet, the worship is inundated by non-essentials, little evangelism is being accomplished at night, and the prayer usually ends as bridesmaid to another lecture.

The analysis continues further: “What then is worship? What is evangelism? Or, prayer? How do these exercises fit into the total of what is felt to be the purpose of a local church? And, by the way, what are those purposes? How can they best be accomplished? Are our answers biblical? Does Scripture set a pattern of how a church should operate? What keynoted the vitality of the New Testament community? What is important and what is nonessential? What are our priorities?” In essence, “What is the local church’s reason for existence and how should she function?”

This is why Christendom is floundering, why the institutionalized church is held in ill-repute, why we are no longer lighting the world, or salting the earth. It all comes back to the local church. She has become directionless, mired in purposelessness, and consequently ineffectual and limited—no longer in the forefront of establishing societal change.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

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Continuing from my previous blog post—

4. The traditional church was overwhelmed by meetings. I know of one friend who boasted that every night of the church calendar was filled for one month! I guess the idea was to keep the congregation off the streets. As far as I am concerned, it was a pure and simple case of religious hypertension. Spirituality has too long been equated with being regular in attendance. A man can be a vile husband at home, his children reprobate, he may be enmeshed in business debts; but if he is faithful at all planned meetings, not missing a night of the missionary conference, he is a spiritual giant.

Consequently, the church was passing a fatal flaw in her blood stream. The name of the disease was in-grown-ness. She was talking to herself. While the races battled against each other and cried for a message of reconciliation, she was talking to herself. While parents despaired of understanding their rebel offspring, she was talking to herself. While those offspring grasped for values and meaning and cry, “Revolution!” she was talking to herself. “You must be like I am. You must do what I do. You dare not do what I don’t do. You have to have the same skin color, wear the same styles, and think the same patterns.” Then she looked at the Christian minority she had become in relation to the population explosion and dared to ask, “Why?”

5. The church had a strong identification with brick and mortar and little with people who were hurting within the body. Unfortunately most parishioners, when they heard the word “church,” immediately thoughtk of a building. In business meetings people voted to spend a quarter of a million dollars on a new facility without .blinking an eye. Yet, they haggled for hours over a several-thousand dollar raise for their pastor—when the man far more profoundly affected a total congregation than the structure. In fact, if a problem arose (the youth were dropping out), the solution was often building centered: raise money for a new Christian Education facility.

Hours could be spent pouring over architect’s blueprints or arguing whether the parking lot should be expanded, when no one had time to visit the widow (in her affliction) or to act as substitute father to her teen-age boys. The economy may have been shaky, but thank goodness the mortgage on the new auditorium was almost paid.

“What’s that you say? A black church on the south side of town burned down? Too bad, isn’t it?”

Newspaper Item: Whatever-Name Baptist Church will be holding a special dedicatory service for their newly installed $80,000 electronic organ. The leaders report, “We gave the old one to a downtown mission. It wasn’t working, but maybe they can find someone to fix it.”

“It was ludicrous to paint the front of the auditorium a pea green.”

“Bill Miller’s about ready to quit the church. He can’t get the janitor to cooperate in setting up the basement for the boys’ club.”

“I’m so glad we called that man as our new pastor. They say his church in Pennsylvania was a model of redecoration. I think he’ll have a lot of ideas about what to do here.”

“The deacons refuse to have small coat hooks screwed into the kindergarten Sunday school walls. They don’t want holes to mar the appearance. The children have no place to hang their belongings.”

News Report: The members of AnywhereTown Presbyterian Church have requested additional police surveillance, as their building was again vandalized last night. Neighborhood children are suspected.

“You mean they built this place without a recreation hall? How can you have a church without a recreation hall?”

“Let’s stand and sing Hymn No. 45, ‘Souls Are Dying Every Day.’”

“Our church is the one right in the middle of town, the one with the tall steeple.”

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

Share and Enjoy

Continuing from my Tuesday blog post—

2. There was no evidence of honest self-evaluation. If there were problems it was the fault of the last days, of the younger generation’s carnality, of Sunday sports, of the infiltration of anti-Christian philosophies via the communications media, the increased number of false cults; in short, the fault was anywhere but with the church…

…The staff and I could give constant testimony to the fact that when we leave the openness of Circle Church meetings, where tremendous freedom of expression was not only allowed but welcomed, to go into a traditional ecclesiastical setting, we have to make cautious adjustments. Otherwise we were continually in hot water, creating all sorts of disturbing misunderstandings. The church has been tactful for so long, she has forgotten how to be truthful!

I often hear, “Now if you see anything in this program you don’t like, we would welcome your evaluations.” Hah! I find if I honestly say what I think and feel, most people are upset, become defensive, and react to me personally.

“Well, you have to be careful how you say things.” Yet, when I’m careful, no one understands what I am saying. It has been buried in niceness!

3. There was a great clergy-laity gap. No greater proof of this exists than in the magnitude of sermonizing which was both impractical and impersonal. “Be committed!” the man in the pulpit cries.

“Oh, yes, we want to be. To be committed Christians. But how? How? How?”

“Read your Bible and pray!”

“Oh, yes! We must, we must! But our actions don’t match our intentions. We need practical help.”

“Love your neighbor!”

“Can’t you spell out what that means in today’s world? Be more specific.”

In aloofness, trying to maintain an example of awesome spirituality in the face of his humanness, working to develop a reputation as a biblical expositor, struggling to be an adequate shepherd to the flock, the pastor has unknowingly created unattainable distances. A strange reversal of roles exists where the laity does the clergy’s job in the building—deciding how to run the church, what colors to paint the classrooms, etc—and the clergy does the laity’s job outside—calling on the sick, counseling with neighbors, bearing the burden of prayer, etc. Most churches are very strongly centered around a single minister who is “pooped” trying to do all the spiritual ministrations, preach all the messages, win all the victories, fight all the battles.

Poor clergy! Poor laity! We have come a long way from those New Testament types—Stephanas, Priscilla and Aquila, Fortunatus and Zenas, Lydia, Tychichus, Nympha, Luke, Tertius, Onesiphorus, Erastus, Claudia, and all those brethren without whom Paul or Peter could not have performed their apostolic functions.

Of course certain lay people were able to respond in spiritual involvements but not nearly on the level that was intended by the head of the body, Christ. And often, the most creative types (those with devastatingly analytical minds or the artist who is quickly frustrated by mundaneness) could find no outlet for their particular expression, and their tremendous merit and value are lost.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

Share and Enjoy

As you know, I have been writing sample messages about the “40 Days to Fast and Pray” scheduled for November 21st through the end of the year. I am posting another such sermon starter this week.

I am also writing and will post four appropriate Advent sermons that will remind people of this special emphasis on fasting and prayer, plus a similar Christmas and then New Year’s sermon.

Since beginning this project, I am also attempting to fast and pray for 40 days (not consecutive) myself. The Lord is teaching me a great deal in the process, and at 18 days I have not even reached the halfway mark yet.

I STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU to quickly obtain an excellent DVD that Terry and Barbi Franklin (Heart for the World) have produced that fills you in on what took place in Egypt after a 40-day fast by believers there at the end of 2010. It is most inspiring. They have not set a price on this excellent resource, and only ask that you consider sending a tax-deductible donation of any size to help with the cost of production. Their prayer is that this and similar resources will help spark a movement of unified prayer across America throughout the Body of Christ. Click here to obtain this video.

At this link you will find daily updates, including a Prayer Calendar, Web site links to teaching on prayer and fasting, recommended books and Bible readings, as well as inspirational media links. There are also helps for pastors and leaders.

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Sunday’s coming. Do you have your sermon ready? Is it relevant? Will it effectively motivate your congregation to walk more in step with the Master? What about that Sermon Series you’ve been thinking about?

Or, if you’re someone who plans well ahead, have you asked yourself what you will preach for your Easter Sermon, your Advent Sermon, your Christmas Sermon?

David Mains and Mainstay Ministries can help. We offer a wide variety of Sermon Starters and Full Sermons that will give you Sermon Ideas to help you prepare for regular Saturday or Sunday sermons, Mid-week Bible Sermons, and Sermons for special occasions.

We also offer assistance as you create Topical Sermons, Sermons Series, and sermons for special times of the year. We have resources available to help you with Advent Celebrations, Advent Sermons, Christmas Sermons, Easter Sunday Sermons, Patriotic Sermons, and more.

For more information on how to create better Bible Sermons and how to turn Sermon Ideas into Sermon Outlines, and then into effective, meaningful Sunday Sermons, please click here to visit David Mains’ website.

You will also find a variety of resources for pastors and congregations at the Mainstay Ministries website. Just click here.

Share and Enjoy