{"id":706,"date":"2019-04-20T17:28:05","date_gmt":"2019-04-20T23:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=706"},"modified":"2019-04-17T16:29:09","modified_gmt":"2019-04-17T22:29:09","slug":"the-purpose-of-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/?p=706","title":{"rendered":"The Purpose of the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[To follow The Ewellogy<\/em><\/strong>, please click on Leave a Comment<\/em><\/strong> above, fill in your name and email, and check the box: Notify me of new posts by email<\/em><\/strong>. If your comment is, “Notify me,” it won’t post publicly. If you don’t start to receive the blog by email right away, please write to me at bob@ewell.com, and I will see that you get on the list.] <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve written the last few days about church: that’s it’s more than grand cathedrals and that its members are to be <\/em>the church, not just go<\/em> to church. For some of you, this may be a tough sell. It’s a different message from what you’re used to. For example, a pastor of a large church, bemoaning the drop in attendance because of bad weather, recently wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nothing can replace being here in person. The purpose of the church is to gather in worship and glorify the Lord together. <\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Really? “The purpose of the church is to gather in worship and glorify the Lord together” sounds good, but is that the purpose of the church? Not according to the Apostle Paul:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He handed out gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, and pastor-teacher to train Christians in skilled servant work<\/strong>, working within Christ’s body, the church, until we’re all moving rhythmically and easily with each other, efficient and graceful in response to God’s Son, fully mature adults, fully developed within and without, fully alive like Christ. (Ephesians 4.11 – 13, MSG, emphasis mine)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mission of the church is to train, and there are few, if any, skills that can be trained in a large group environment. For example, we don’t learn to play piano by attending concerts! Concerts are important for inspiration and motivation, but the work of training people to make music happens in the teacher’s studio and the student’s practice room. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pastor’s ministry strategy is not to put on a worship service every week. It’s to invest in people. And those people (“reliable”–not necessarily ordained, seminary-educated people!) train others. This is the counsel the Apostle Paul gave to the young pastor Timothy: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others. (2 Timothy 2.2) <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve written the last few days about church: that’s it’s more than grand cathedrals and that its members are to be the church, not just go to church. For some of you, this may be a tough sell. It’s a different message from what you’re used to. For example, a pastor of a large church, … Continue reading The Purpose of the Church<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8X9bo-bo","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=706"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":708,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions\/708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/drbobewell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}