Q&R corner provides responses to questions that readers may have about CCMBC and its work collaborating with provincial MB conferences in areas of spiritual health and theology, leadership development, mission, and organizational health in order to achieve the overall mission: “To cultivate a community and culture of healthy disciple-making churches and ministries, faithfully joining Jesus in his mission.” If you would like to contribute a question, please send it to questions@mbchurches.ca
Please note that we will not be using your name in the MB Herald Digest in order to respect those who prefer anonymity. There may not be space to respond to every question—and sometimes we might not really have the ability or authority to respond to some questions (for example, those that relate more directly to one of our provincial MB conferences or to a local church leadership). We apologize in advance if we are unable to publish a response to your specific question.
Note: This month’s Q&R Corner is not a response to one person’s question, but a presentation of one of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) from Article 6 that the National Faith and Life Team has prepared and is now available for feedback. Click here for the full DRAFT of Article 6: Explanatory Notes and Living the Confession (FAQs).
With all the failure and hypocrisy in the history of the church, why is it so important for each and every Christian to become an active member of a local church congregation?
We must acknowledge that there is much failure and hypocrisy in the historical and global church and within each and every local church. While both failure and hypocrisy are part of all human reality until Jesus returns again to establish the fullness of his Kingdom, we want to confess these failures and by the power of the Holy Spirit, pray for greater faithfulness to our calling embodying God’s character and purposes before the watching world. But while we want to confess and repent of our failures, and embrace greater faithfulness, the New Testament does not focus on the failures and hypocrisy of the early church but on its incredible calling.
Despite all its failures, God has not given up on the church. God has taken a huge risk to identify himself so closely with the church called to incarnate his character and mission. One might assume that God would have been nothing but embarrassed by the Old Testament people of God. However, in reference to the Old Testament patriarchs, Hebrews 11:16 notes that God was “not ashamed to be called their God.”
In the New Testament, Jesus also was well aware of all the weaknesses and failures of the disciples and yet this did not stop him from creating the church. The eleven disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane fell asleep when they should have been praying, fled when they should have stood with him, and betrayed him when they should have declared his name (cf. Matt 26; Mark 14). And yet the risen Jesus gave the Great Commission (Matt 28:19-20) to these same eleven disciples. When Paul was persecuting and imprisoning Christians, Jesus confronted him on the road to Damascus and said: “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:5). For Jesus, persecuting the church was the same as persecuting him. Ephesians 5:25 declares that “Christ loved the church and give himself up for her.” While church failures and hypocrisy today need to be confronted and repented of, these are not reasons for disciples of Jesus to abandon the body of Christ. Scripture demonstrates that we worship a God not ashamed to identify with the church and a God who has not given up on the church.
One might assume that God would have been nothing but embarrassed by the Old Testament people of God. However, in reference to the Old Testament patriarchs, Hebrews 11:16 notes that God was ‘not ashamed to be called their God.’”
This must motivate us to have the same attitude and commitment to the church that we see God having. Scripture reinforces this with numerous reasons for why the local church is important in God’s plans and mission:
The first reason for joining a local church is because, according to Scripture, God dwells among his people in a way unlike anywhere else in all creation. The church incarnates Christ’s body in the world (1 Cor 12:27; 4:11-13) and contains “the fullness of him [Christ] who fills everything in every way” (Eph 1:23). In 1 Corinthians 3:16, Paul describes the church in Corinth as “God’s temple” where God’s Spirit dwells (cf. 2 Cor 6:16; 1 Pet 2:5). He continues with a solemn warning: “If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, you together are that temple” (v.17). The New Testament writers had a very high view of the importance of the local church.
The second reason is that the New Testament has no category for Christians who want to follow Jesus independent from a local congregation. The New Testament use of the word church describes physical gatherings of disciples who worship together, fellowship together, participate in teaching and evangelism, and so on. The word church is always a team word which means it is incongruous to claim “membership” in the Church global or universal without pursuing active association with a local church. The New Testament metaphors for the Kingdom are corporate or group metaphors like banquet (cf. Matt 22; Luke 14) or Holy City (cf. Rev 21). Christians are called into communities of worship and mission.
The third reason is that the church has a central and indispensable role in God’s Kingdom mission. Throughout the Bible, God has been creating a new people for a missional purpose. God promised Abram that he would make him into a “great nation” (Gen 12:2) as many as the stars in the sky (15:5) and “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (12:3). This “people” was freed from Egypt (Exod 5:1) and became a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod 19:6). As Christopher Wright notes, God is “totally, covenantally and eternally committed to the mission of blessing the nations through the agency of the people of Abraham” (The Mission of God [IVP, 2018], 63).
The New Testament people of God (called the church) formed around Jesus is the extension and completion of this Old Testament Abrahamic people of God, and now carries the same missional purpose. The church pushes back the “gates of Hades [death]” (Matt 16:18) which cannot withstand this Spirit-empowered community.
Article 6: Note 1 makes several key points about the role of the church in God’s mission:
…it is hard to overemphasize the role of the church in God’s mission of bringing the Kingdom to earth as it is in heaven (Matt 4:23; 6:10; 10:7; 24:14; Luke 4:43).
God’s Kingdom is what Jesus came to announce was now coming and present in his ministry. God’s Kingdom is where God reigns as Creator, Redeemer, and King over all creation and where the spiritual and physical powers in opposition to God’s Kingdom have been defeated. God’s Kingdom is where God reigns as Creator, Redeemer, and King in the midst of his people who respond to his grace and love with repentance, worship, and obedience. God’s Kingdom is most evident as his people model God’s character and purposes to the watching world….
God’s Kingdom has at its centre the creation of a Kingdom people from all nations saved by Jesus and indwelt with God’s presence through the Holy Spirit. This Kingdom people participates in God’s mission of bringing everything into subjection under Jesus’s feet. This is accomplished most directly by prayer and worship in hon- our of King Jesus; by seeking first God’s Kingdom and his righteousness (Matt 6:33); by embodying the values and priorities of the Kingdom; by doing good deeds in the world; and by inviting all people to salvation and discipleship in Jesus (Matt 16:17-20; 28:16-20)….
The faithful church worships and gives primary allegiance to a different King, lives by the ethics of a different Kingdom, and has a different hope for how the story will end. By these actions, the church challenges and dethrones the physical and spiritual structures and powers of this age (“the gates of Hades will not overcome it” [Matt 16:18]) and is a present witness to and embodiment of the future coming of the Kingdom of God in its fullness.
While God’s Kingdom is universally present across the cosmos and specifically across our world, it is not uni- versally welcomed, acknowledged, and pursued. This is why the people of God, Old Testament and then New Testament, are at the centre of God’s Kingdom because God’s people welcome, acknowledge, and pursue both King Jesus and the Kingdom that Jesus brought, is bringing, and will fully bring when he returns again. God’s Kingdom is larger than the church, but the Kingdom is most evidently present in the midst of his gathered people who worship, serve, and declare his name in the world.
The church is not a building or a human institution but the very “body of Christ” (Christ here means Messiah or King). As the body, the church is the only collection of people in the world called and empowered to embrace, declare in words, and embody these truths about God’s Kingdom. The church is symbolically the “firstfruits” of the new creation (2 Thess 2:13; Jas 1:18) displaying the nature and beauty of the future Kingdom in the present.
Scripture paints a highly exalted portrait of the nature and mission of the church in God’s Kingdom mission. The church is not an optional add-on for individual disciples of Jesus but is central to God’s Kingdom work in the world. When Jesus said that he would build his church (Matt 16:18), he was establishing the primary means through which God has chosen to model and embody his Kingdom in this world as God’s agent of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:18-19).
In light of the New Testament exalted description of the role of the church in God’s mission, joining a local congregation is an act of obedience to Jesus (cf. Matt 28:16-20), an act of faith that God is active and working in the world when it is not always evident, and an act of hope that the church will ultimately be vindicated when the King returns to fully establish the Kingdom.
The life of discipleship was never meant to be a solo journey. Jesus created a family of disciples, sent out disciples in groups, and when he prayed for his followers, he prayed that ‘all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you’ (John 17:21).”
The fourth reason is that every believer needs a local church family for their discipleship journey and the local church needs believers to live out its mission. The local church family prays for, assists, equips, and holds accountable those who have joined the family. The life of discipleship was never meant to be a solo journey. Jesus created a family of disciples, sent out disciples in groups, and when he prayed for his followers, he prayed that “all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you” (John 17:21). Jesus would not need to pray that individual believers become “one” unless he knew that these believers would form communities and these communities would be threatened by disunity and conflict.
The local church also needs disciples of Jesus or there will be no local church where God can dwell by his Spirit and no body to worship God together and embrace Kingdom mission. The New Testament assumes that believers will form church communities for mutual support and more effective mission. The Lord’s Supper is about disciples eating together in community. Baptism is about joining a community.
If believers refuse to form local church communities, there will be no local church witnessing to the diverse Kingdom community that Jesus is creating. There will be no local church community doing things together in the name of Jesus that are bigger than individual believers can accomplish. (The vast majority of Christian educational institutions, mission organizations, and local ministries have grown out of local church efforts [or groups of local churches] rather than from Christians not connected to a local church.) There will also be no local church encouraging, praying for, and holding believers accountable in their discipleship journeys.
Even with all the evident failures that we can see within the lives of local church congregations, these do not outweigh the many powerful reasons for why each and every Christian should become an active member of a local church congregation.
1 comment
Hello MB community,
I appreciate this article, highlighting the relevance and application of our confession of faith based on our collective understanding of Scripture. The local body of Christ is indeed at the heart of Christianity, along with believers’ yieldedness to the Holy Spirit. In response to your last sentence re the failures within the continued mandate of the church, I want to humbly offer a few suggestions from experience that I feel can help MB churches in Canada remain relevant and active in making disciples for Christ through the presence of a local church body (not just in number, but in depth too):
– Commit to growing in our capacity to transform conflict (by walking thru it, not away from it) and seek reconciliation, within the local body. Sadly too many have abandoned the local body b/c of unresolved conflicts.
– Revitalize the concept and practice of lay leadership – the laity need more front-end opportunity to shape the church. Strengthen Elder leadership models, avoid the tendency towards hiring full-time ministry ‘professionals’, engage us as true ‘stakeholders’ of the mandate.
– Deepen our understanding of spiritual gifts, given indiscriminately be our generous Lord. What does this imply re our community, our approach? Sadly I see too many gifts lying dormant often due to an over-emphasis on ‘strategic programming’, perceived efficiencies, or even performance.
I am committed to the local body, but some days its difficult.