What Is the Purpose of Church?

Richard Stephens

September 24, 2022

2774 words (9 minutes) + notes

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What Is the Purpose of Church?

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It is not my intention in this essay to engage in theology, strictly speaking. Instead, I am merely attempting to focus on practical doing, taking the commands of Jesus as the guide. I address the question, “What is the purpose of church?” offering an answer that I find most consistent with Jesus’s commands and also his warnings – as in “Lord, Lord” (Mat. 7:21) and “the sheep and the goats” (Mat. 25:31-46).

The perspective that stands behind the inquiry is that of one who, coming from outside the religion,  who is searching for a way to alter character and mind in order to learn how to reject self-centeredness and embrace and learn the means and, in actuality, acquire the means by which  by which to obey the astonishing, seemingly impossible, Great Commandment.

1) Three Views

I can easily come up with three purposes for the church that are commonly discussed. Sometimes heard one of the purposes is singled-out as the only purpose. I have hear a preacher preach that “the purpose of the church is to worship God.” I was told once by a Reformed seminary student that what is really meant by the phase in Matthew 28:20 (NIV), “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you,” is to teach the scriptures.

1. Worship
2. Teach Scripture
3. Disciple-Making

I would like to make use of terms from the Bible to designate these specialized activities:

1. Temple (for worship)
2. Synagogue (for preserving and teaching scripture)
3. Ecclesia (for disciple-making and for following Jesus)

Ecclesia I use a definition that I learned from Chuck Proudfit in a talk he gave in 2017, which I will elaborate upon. Here is the passage that lays out his views on the significance of the term ecclesia.

In Matthew 16:18, Jesus is typically quoted to say, “I will build my church and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” In this passage, the exact translation of the word “church” is ecclesia. This is significant, because the concept of ecclesia originated hundreds of years before Jesus’s birth. Ecclesia originated in Greece as a governing assembly, but it was perfected by the Roman Empire. When Rome would conquer a territory they would win the peace by sending out what they called an “ecclesia:” A small number of upstanding Roman citizens who had moved into the conquered territory. They move in with the locals, acculturating them in the language and the lifestyle of Rome, until everyone around them walked and talked like a Roman. It's striking that in Matthew 16:18 Jesus did not say, “I will build my synagogue,” or, “I will build my temple,” although he loved them both. Jesus said, “I will build my ecclesia,” a small number of fully devoted followers who will infiltrate the culture around them for Christ – and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.”

This was a brilliant strategy on Jesus’s part. He was co-opting a familiar Roman concept and infusing it with Kingdom DNA. The early church executed this strategy with excellence within a few hundred years it had grown from a hundred and twenty believers in an upper room in Jerusalem to become a transformational force for change across the Roman Empire. [1]

Proudfit’s discussion of ecclesia focuses on his personal activities to organize Christians in economically depressed Cincinnati into enterprises that are mutually supportive. He is explaining the idea that the word ecclesia would have in Israel in the first century when used by Jesus meant a group of Christ-following disciples that would acculturate others them in the language and the lifestyle of Kingdom of Heaven, until everyone around them walked and talked like a Christ-follower.

2) Church as Place of Worship

Australian Baptist minister Michael Frost quotes Paul Minnear’s 1972 study of the commands of Christ, noting that:

The surprising fact is that when one looks at the Gospel records, it is clear that “Jesus did not ask for homage but obedience.” [2]

Frost argues that “this does not mean that we believe we that we should not worship Jesus, but it does force us to try to understand what Jesus meant by worship. What it does mean is that our worship must be based on obedience and not just songs.” [3]

Thus, obedience is paramount. After all, Jesus states this fact with absolute clarity in the Great Commission (Mat. 28:20). Therefore what Jesus wants to foreground in his ecclesia is nether worship, nor the teaching of the scriptures.

Let us consider what the act of worship, which is not necessarily a religious gesture, actually is. There is a political usage, as well. The political act of worshiping a prince (submitting by bowing and scraping) is not the same as genuinely loving that prince, but rather an acknowledgement of that prince’s power over the worshiper, or supplicant.

Christians, obviously, must worship God and are enthusiastic about thanking Him. Yet they must love him as well. What is the way one loves God? The answer is not self-evident. It is not by asserting that love, but by acting with love, by being of the sort if heart that loves him through loving Imago Dei (man as image of God), in other words our “neighbor” with the same agape (unconditional, forgiving, unearned, love) that he gives us.

3) Church as Scripture School

The Jews that Jesus addressed, including the Pharisees, Sadducees and Scribes knew the scriptures thoroughly. Yet they were severely rebuked by Jesus. He constantly posed challenges to the common predilection of the pious to learn without becoming reborn, that is without learning to love their neighbors as themselves – with forgiveness. We see Jesus telling the difference in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) and we see him turn away from his devout and respectable students to serve the low status Bartimaeus as he begged for mercy from the Son of David, who had been shunned by the studious ones interested in learning doctrine. (Mark 10:46-52)

Jesus was teaching that piety and religiosity are inadequate.

“Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” (Mat. 7:21).

We know that Jesus, in the Great Commission statement of Matthew 28:20, not only was not foregrounding the teaching of the Scriptures as would have been defined at the time and be understood by the disciples as the Old Testament, but could not have been commissioning the disciples to go to the Nations to teach the New Testament, which did not yet exist. Jesus was showing that the obedience to the commands he had commanded his disciples to obey were what was to lead to rebirth, not knowledge acquisition, piety, or “Lord, Lord” worship.

Here is Rick Warren describing the unified symmetry of the Great Commandment.

Regarding the two parts of the Great Commandment – God says they go together. You can’t love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength if you don’t love your neighbor as yourself. And you can’t love your neighbor as yourself if you don’t love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. [4]

4) Metanoia

It all goes back to the first command made by Jesus in his ministry. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Mat. 4:17). There is a major problem in the translation of the original Greek imperative, metanoeite, into “repent.”

It has been understood that the word metanoia has no good single-word translation since the time of Tertullian (second century). Thus Latin, English and German translations carry the meaning of “viewing or thinking of (an action or omission) with deep regret or remorse.” Which is the definition of “repentance.” [5]

Yet Jesus’s command was not about having a thought, felling or expressing a sentiment. It was about an active, difficult, lifelong process of changing in a certain fashion. Alan Hirsch helps us get to the core of the meaning of the spiritually indispensable concept, “metanoia.”

“Metanoia” [the noun form] means literally “meta-,” or, “above or beyond,” un, “nous” is “mind,” “noia” is “your mind,” or “thinking,” so, thinking above or beyond what we are thinking now, and the best translation, I think actually, that makes sense to us is “paradigm shift.” Metanoia is to have a paradigm shift, to think beyond what you’re currently thinking: to change the rationality of both your own soul as well as the organization. [6]

When we understand the real meaning of Jesus’s command to ”repent,” we will see the rest of his teaching ministry and his commands differently. We are expected to have a paradigm shift that will alter us permanently. This is what is mean by becoming reborn. It is a process, not a decision or a passively received instantaneous inspiration. Rather it is a process that follows a conscious commitment to do the work.

5) Agape

Agape, nonjudgmental, unearned, unconditional love is what God has for his creatures and he has sent his son to teach us how to completely understand that agape love.

Secular professor of cognitive science John Vervaeke is credited by Christian Reformed Church pastor Paul VanderKlay with presenting the best available explanation of agape. [7] This transcript from his lecture on agape gives the gist.

The main metaphor for agape . . . is the way a parent loves a child. You don't love a child because you want to consume it in some way. That's hideous and vicious. You don't love your child when you bring it home from the hospital because it's a great friend to you, [because] it can cooperate. It can't do that at all.  In fact it's not even a person; it's not a morally rationally reflective agent. In fact it's exactly the opposite. You love it precisely because by loving that non-person you turn it into a person. This is the powerful creative . . . , God-like, ability that we have by participating through love in another being. We can transform that being from a non-person into a person – a person that could enter into a community of persons and find meaning, fellowship, belonging. So that radical transformative power of agape – its ability to radically transform us and reorient us – brings about a metanoia: a radical turning. [8]

6) Church as Disciple-Making Community

We understand the meaning of metanoia and that our own acquisition and incorporation of agape is what brings about that process of metanoia (“repentance” in the inadequate English translation). It is specifically the acquisition, incorporation and proliferation of agape which the Great Commandment is about.

Let us now look at the process of how one acquires agape. we know of it through the record of Jesus’s teaching his not disciples how to do it (not just what they must believe and know).

The three years of training Jesus provided to his disciples was experiential teaching, a process of transformation of mind (metanoia) that required challenge, failure and forgiveness. All of the stories of the disciples are stories of lessons designed to cause “paradigm shift,” to lead to being reborn.

The process of discipleship is thus a learning one, and not primarily one of the gathering of beliefs – of becoming one who has heard propositions and has assented to their veracity – but rather the way in which your self is fundamentally transformed.

The experts on disciple-making are the late Dallas Willard and Bill Hull, whose organization, The Bonhoeffer Project, is devoted to taking Willard’s invaluable teachings on disciple-making and assisting in seeing them executed. Here is Willard explaining what discipleship means to Jesus.

First, there must be no mistaking the fact that discipleship to Jesus means primarily learning from him how to do—easily and routinely do—the very things he said for us to do. Obedience is the only sound objective of a Christian spirituality. Of course, we do not obey to earn anything—earning is out of the question—but we obey because doing the things that Jesus said is what is best for us and for everyone around us. [9]

The purpose of the ecclesia is not to “do church,” that is: to worship and learn scripture. It is to create a community that makes Christ-following possible. Here is Lance Ford (pastor and church planter, Lance is a writer, coach, and consultant) on what Jesus wants to see done:

Jesus said, “I will build my church, now you go make disciples.” And we say, “OK, Lord, I’ll build you a church.” And he says, “No, no, no, no, I’ll build my church, you go make disciples.” And we say, “OK, I’ll go build you a church.” And so we’re about the business of building churches and starting churches rather than creating disciples. [10]

7) Two Questions to Ask Ourselves

“A disciple is a learner, a student, an apprentice – a practitioner… Disciples of Jesus are people who do not just profess certain views as their own but apply their growing understanding of life in the Kingdom of the Heavens to every aspect of their life on earth.” [11]

Here are two questions we must ask ourselves: one regarding our individual walk, the other regarding churches’ function and duty.

As a follower (and not merely a “believer” unequipped, having not authentically engaged in the metanoia that leads to rebirth) we need to regularly ask ourselves:

Am I a true disciple becoming more and more like the one I claim to follow? Does my life reflect the quality of the One I love, or, do I fundamentally bear false witness to Him and so damage His cause? [12]

Church members and leaders must ask themselves this question.

“Since making disciples is the main task of the church, every church ought to be able to answer two questions: What is our plan for making disciples of Jesus? Is our plan working?”​ [13]

This – “teaching them to obey all [He] has commanded” –  which has to do with preparing people in the competency of compassion, properly defined [14], is how to honor His Great Commission.

8) Conclusion: It’s All About Compassion

Professor Andrew Dreitcer, who teaches spiritual formation – with a focus on compassion cultivation – notes two crucial facts regarding: 1) compassion involves understanding, not just well-wishing or the act of making a petitionary prayer on behalf of the sufferer; 2) compassion is acquired, that is, learned. [15]

In the Bible, genuine compassion contains three characteristics that inseparably intertwine: understanding, feeling, and acting.  . . . We don’t have compassion, we become compassionate. [16]

[I]n the Christian spiritual tradition, compassion is not a spontaneous reaction triggered by anguish over someone else’s pain. Nor is it information-based understanding. Instead, true compassion transforms [metanoia] feelings and understandings into carefully discerned, practical, effective ways to change individual lives – and the world – for good. [17]

It is not easy to do. Sentimentality, wishful thinking (magical thinking) are easy. Compassion is hard. Our broken nature makes the  suffering of others something we want to run away from, rather than directly address.

“Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it.” [18]

The difficulty of compassion is why churches in this age of decline and the resultant degrading strategies of “attraction” must become laser-focused on disciple-making, the how of Christ-following, the guidance through a process by expert Disciple-maker to novice student, potential disciple, even if it must draw resources of time and energy from those activities which are seen by seminary professors and congregants alike as more important than disciple-making (properly understood).

Only by honoring His Great Commission can there flourish within in the church the crucial process of developing the competency (through the process of profound inner change: metanoia) of compassion.

When we consider how a non-church figure such as Jordan Peterson has captured the imaginations of those seeking meaning in their lives and has not compromised one iota in seriousness, at the risk of attack from various materialist ideological “cults,” we ought to be heartened. For this spectacular Peterson phenomenon lights the path to church revival – not through obsessive petitionary prayer for revival as is touted by insular leaders who lack insightful understanding of church decline – by making disciples who are equipped by careful cultivation by disciple-makers to the embody of the Great Commandment among their neighbors.

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NOTES

[1] Chuck Proudfit, “Citywide Marketplace Ministry as 21st Century Workplace Ekklesia”; Faith@Work Summit, Dallas, Oct. 24, 2016 (posted online Oct 25, 2017); 15:32 - Transcript (2018 words)

https://compassion-renaissance.blogspot.com/2021/11/chuck-proudfit-citywide-marketplace.html

[2] The surprising fact is that when one looks at the Gospel records, it is clear that “Jesus did not ask for homage but obedience.” [Paul Minear, The Commands of Christ: Authority and Implications, 1972]

[3] This does not mean that we believe we that we should not worship Jesus, but it does force us to try to understand what Jesus meant by worship. What it does mean is that our worship must be based on obedience and not just songs. [Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church, Hendrickson Pub (USA), 2009, p. 154, see note 163]

[4] Regarding the two parts of the Great Commandment – God says they go together. You can’t love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength if you don’t love your neighbor as yourself. And you can’t love your neighbor as yourself if you don’t love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. [Rick Warren, "A Faith That Loves My Neighbor as Myself" with Pastor Rick Warren, Pastor Rick (channel), May 23, 2020, 55:27; @8:06]. Another pastor expresses this pithily:  “The Good Samaritan: In order to understand why Jesus told the lawyer to “go and do” we must understand that for Jesus to love God and love your neighbor are virtual synonyms (1 John 4:20a; cf. Matt 5:23-24; 25:40, 45).” [Alan P. Stanley, Did Jesus Teach Salvation by Works? - The Role of Works in Salvation in the Synoptic Gospels, Pickwick Pub., 2006, p. 330]

[5] Oxford Dictionaries.

[6] [United Breaks Out Extra, Alan Hirsch, “Metanoia,” Oct. 14, 2020, New Wine, 30:41; @12:13]

[7] at 16:00; A Conversation so Intense It Might as Well Be Psychedelic | John Vervaeke | The JBP Podcast | S4 E34. Jordan Peterson Podcast, Jun 28, 2021.

[8] Ep. 16 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Christianity and Agape, May 3, 2019, John Vervaeke, 54:38; 5:46-7:04.

[9] Dallas Willard; in Bill Hull, Choose the Life: Exploring a Faith That Embraces Discipleship, 2004. Baker Books, p. 6.

[10] Rob Wegner, Lance Ford & Alan Hirsch With Jonathan Sprowl, “New Life From Every Disciple,” Outreach Magazine, June 7, 2021.

[11] Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus's Essential Teachings on Discipleship, Harper, 2006, p. xi.

[12] Alan Hirsch, blurb for: Lance Ford, UnLeader: Reimagining Leadership... and Why We Must, (Sep. 1, 2012), Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City.

[13] Dallas Willard, Audio Interview with John Ortberg, June (?),2010, Catalyst West conference.

[14] Compassion, properly defined – Here are two treatments of compassion definition by secular experts and one Christian treatment: by Tim Keller.

[15] Compassion is a learnable skill: Elaine Houston, B.Sc. (Scientifically reviewed by Jo Nash, Ph.D.), “12 Best Compassion Training Exercises & Activities,” Positive Psychiology.com, 1 May 2019.https://positivepsychology.com/compassion-training/

British psychologist Paul Gilbert, whom we will hear from again below, specializes in compassion cultivation. He gives this definition: “A deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.” Gilbert states thaT compassion consists of six ‘attributes’: Sensitivity, Sympathy, Empathy, Motivation/Caring, Distress Tolerance, and Non-Judgement.

Social organization experts, Monica A. Worline & Jane E. Dutton, describe the process of embodying compassion as:

1. Noticing - noticing that suffering is present in a person, or in an organization.
2. Interpretation - making meaning of suffering in a way that contributes to a desire to alleviate it,
3. Feeling - feeling empathic concern for the person(s) suffering, and
4. Action - taking action to alleviate suffering in some manner. [4]

Notes on Tim Keller on compassion, from an exegesis of the parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan, with regard to the wounded stranger, passed through this cumulative process:

1. Notice - “looked at him” - took deliberate notice.
2. Examine - “contacted the man, touched the man, came to be where he was.” - this is close examination, (there could not be asking and active listening as would ordinarily be the case)
3. Feel - “felt his misery” - this is empathy.
4. Interpret, decide - “thought about the needs of the man” - interpretation, creative problem solving.
5. Act - Treated the wound, put the man on his horse, took him to an inn, paid for his room and board - effective action.

From: Richard Stephens, “An Outline of the Compassion Process Compared With Petitionary Prayer,” The Compassion Renaissance, Dec. 18, 2021 – https://compassion-renaissance.blogspot.com/2022/04/an-outline-of-compassion-process.html

[15] Andrew Dreitcer, Living Compassion: Loving Like Jesus, Nov. 1, 2017, Upper Room Books, p. 22.

[16] Andrew Dreitcer, Living Compassion: Loving Like Jesus, Nov. 1, 2017, Upper Room Books, p. 32.

[17] Henri J. M.  Nouwen, Compassion, 1982, Doubleday; Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen (1932 –1996) Dutch Catholic priest, professor, writer and theologian. His interests were rooted primarily in psychology, pastoral ministry, spirituality, social justice and community.

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