The Real Mission of the Church
How do you think most Christians would answer this question: What is the mission of the local church? I’m sure the answers would be wide-ranging: To worship God. To help one another. To strive for social justice. Those and many more are good answers—even somewhat correct answers—but they fall short of a biblical understanding of the local church’s mission.
What if we looked at a typical, modern church to get our answer, based on what the church actually does? Then the answer plainly would be: gathering together (typically on a Sunday morning) to have a worship service. However, while that may be the “main thing” for a church to do these days, it isn’t our biblical mission. Don’t get me wrong: Christians should certainly worship God (John 4:23-24). We should sing songs of praise (Eph 5:18-19). We should participate in the Lord’s supper (Acts 20:7). Those are all well and good and biblical, but none of them are the mission given to the church.
Well, what are some of the other things that most churches spend time and resources on? Fellowship meals. Men’s fishing trips. Seniors’ luncheons. Youth basketball. Ladies’ night out. Most churches have some avenues they routinely use for getting people together for fun and fellowship. Again, fellowship is encouraged (2 Cor 13:11) and is even a mark of a true church (Acts 2:42). But it’s not our mission.
Then surely our mission is to do good deeds. At the very least, Christ told us we should feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, welcome strangers, and visit the sick and imprisoned (Matt 25:34-40). We should absolutely do all those things, and more (Is 1:17). In fact, it is when we work together as a church that we can accomplish in a significant degree the social goods we are called to perform. But that is not our mission.
So, what is our mission? Quite simply, it is to honor God by following His commission to “Go and make disciples” (Matt 28:19). I may be a Reformed, evangelical Baptist, but I like the definition of church mission used by my brothers and sisters in the United Methodist Church, from their Book of Discipline: The mission of the Church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world by proclaiming the good news of God’s grace and by exemplifying Jesus’ command to love God and neighbor. In other words, we spread the Good News by not only telling people the Good News, but by living it and—in turn—helping others learn to live it and tell it as well.
We should incorporate our mission of making disciples into almost everything we do. We need to be wary of over-simplifying this into an “everything is missions” mentality, but we do need to intentionally plan how to include our mission into all the major activities in the church. Are our regular church gatherings focused on making disciples? When we carry out activities in our community, do we do so with an intention of making disciples? Is there room for disciple-making in our fellowship times, our hospital visits, our meal ministry, our clothes drive, our women’s shelter, our... whatever?
The real question is: how well is our church accomplishing our mission? Would God consider it a successful mission, a failed mission, or an aborted mission? And please, be honest in your answer.