On a message board I frequent, someone posted some really good questions about the purpose of church and their role in it. After much thought and prayer, here's what I came up with...
Anyone can "play church" but truly following Christ goes much deeper than that. I believe God never intended for us to do this life on our own. We need people to pray with us and support us in our struggles and celebrate with us in our victories. We need others to encourage us to keep going and we need to be held accountable to each other as well. My pastors call our church a place where "we do life together". It's intended as a place where we can gather together as a "family" and pray and seek God's guidance for our lives, a place where we can belong, and feel valued and accepted, a place where we can sing praises to God together, a place where we can learn to get along with each other, and the one place we know we can go to when we've totally screwed up and know that our church family will still love and accept us and help us out of the hole we've gotten ourselves into. It should be a place where we can hear God's word taught and be able to apply it to our lives and our daily struggles. It should be a place that's constantly moving in the direction God intends. As Christians I don't think we ever "arrive". It's a process, a life-long process. The more we walk and talk with God the more we trust Him and we slowly start letting Him into those dark places in us so He can heal them and He can mold us into the person He intended us to be before the world got to us. The church leaders should be concerned about our spiritual growth and have programs and classes in place to help us in this area and they should help us discover the spiritual talents and gifts God has given each of us so we can use them to do with our lives what God has called us to. Christianity is about loving and serving others so a church should have opportunities for us to reach out and serve our community, local neighborhoods and other countries, not with the willful motive of making these people converts to our religion but just serving and loving others. God converts, not us. We are only called to be God's hands and feet and to show them the love Christ has for them.
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