What is the church?

What comes to mind when you think of ‘church’? Do you think of the building? Do you think of the denomination? Do you think of the 1½ hour slot on a Sunday when we meet to sing and hear God’s word together?

The Biblical idea of church is much more than a building, or a time or place in which we meet. The church is rather the new community I belong to because of Jesus (Eph 2:19-20). I not only belong to Jesus as an isolated individual, but I belong to the community God has saved me into. Being united to Christ unites us to all the other members of Christ’s body. Through the gospel we have become ‘members together of one body and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus’ (Eph 3:6). You don’t choose whether or not to be part of the church; God has already saved you to be in his new spiritual family. Irrespective of how you feel, if you are in Christ you belong to his community.

The church is also a community that meets regularly. God created us as physical and relational beings. The fullest expression of human relationship happens when we are meeting face to face. Likewise the fullest expression of our community in Christ happens, not in cyberspace, but when we are meeting regularly together. This is why we are not only committed to this community, but we are committed to meeting together (Heb 10:25).

This is consistent with the goal of church, which is to grow together in Christ. Paul states this purpose clearly in Ephesians 4:12-13, ‘that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ’. The church as a community matures as we grow up in the knowledge of Jesus. It also grows as each member of the church works to build itself up in love (Eph 4:16). We meet to speak the truth in love to each other, to encourage each other,  teach and admonish each other, and to keep each other accountable (Eph 4:15, Heb 10:24-25, Col 3:15-16). This ‘building up’ of each other is mutual. It happens in the context of relationships, and in the context of the community that meets regularly. Our commitment to church, therefore, does not depend on what I get out of it, my usefulness in being there, or even whether or not I’ll be missed. The purpose of church is always the mutual building up of the body of Christ, for the ultimate glory of Jesus.

At GracePoint this community is expressed both in our Sunday meeting as well as in small groups which meet during the week. We are united around Jesus. We are committed to meeting regularly. And our goal as we meet is to be growing until we reach full maturity in Christ as a church community, so that Jesus might be praised (Eph 4:16, 20).

Pastor Owen Seto