What A True Church Must Be

While building Preaching Christ Church has been the greatest opportunity the Lord has given me I ministry, it has by far been the most challenging. Ask any faithful pastor or church planter and they will tell you that there is not anything easy about building and nurturing a congregation.

While there are many challenges to building a church, there are 3 primary areas that I have tried to stay focused in while establishing PCC.

1. A Church must be Spiritual
It is shocking how quickly churches are moving away from spiritual things. Personally, I love it when the church tackles social justice issues. I think we should be leading the conversation and the actions in areas of human trafficking, world orphans, world hunger and clean water. The church should be helping solve these critical problems.

However, the Church cannot abandon the main element that sets us a part from other social justice organizations or even humanitarian groups. It is the fact that the Church is spiritual. While humanitarian groups may give food, only the Church can offer the Bread of Life. Other organizations may focus on clean water, but the Church has the water of life. Others may build hospitals and send out doctors, but the Church has the Great Physician.

Yes, there are many areas that are important, but the global commandment Jesus gave His followers was not to do social justice. Our command is to make disciples. Social justice should be an outflow of our work in making disciples.

2. The Church must be Strong
Ephesians 6:10 commands us, “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.”

We must be strong in Doctrine. What germs are to the physical body, bad doctrine is to a spiritual body. It is harmful and can be lethal. The responsibilities of the Pastor and Elders is to guard the Church from false doctrine. One of the greatest challenges to the early church was contending against false doctrine and the challenge has not changed even in our day. If we are not strong in doctrine, then we are vulnerable to Satan’s attacks and influences.

We must be strong in Prayer. If anything the Book of Acts models to today’s Church is the necessity of Prayer Meetings. Go back and read the prayer gatherings in Acts and see if it does not cause you to want to gather with other believers and pray.

Yes, Christians may pray on their own, but I think there is something different and very special when we gather ourselves to pray corporately and regularly. I want prayer to be the barometer of my church. I can preach skillfully, we can evangelize creatively, but if our efforts are not saturated in prayer then what effects will they have? Of all the aspects of Church life we should be pursuing, it should be prayer.

We must be strong in Evangelism. While I do not affiliate with a certain denomination, I am proud that I am an Evangelical. When I think of Evangelicals (like Billy Graham), I think of people who are passionate about spreading the Gospel. The Church’s responsibility on this earth is the evangelism of the lost.

This is what Christ meant when He said in John 9:4, “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day, night is coming when no man can work.” This verse became reality to me when I visited the country of Malawi. The villages I worked in did not have electricity so we would preach and evangelize all throughout the day, but when the sun set and night was upon us, our work came to a stop. Up until that point, I had never been in a place where you could not flip a switch and see the lights come on.

The Church today has a small window of time that should be maximizing for sake of the Gospel. Is this not what Paul meant when he wrote, “Making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” Ephesians 5:19

We must be strong in Worship. I am not talking about your favorite style of music. I mean true worship, the kind of worship that sets people’s eyes on Christ and stirs our affections for Jesus. The kind of worship that enters us into the presence of God and reaffirms the truths of Scripture. In our day, it seems we only think of worship as music, but that is not the case Biblically. The way we live should be worship according to Romans 12:1-2.

Certainly music has a large place in the aspect of worship. Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs as Paul describes it in Ephesians 5:19. I once heard worship leader, Bob Kauflin, say, “If the only Bible that was taught in your church was through the worship, how much Bible would your people know?” Great question!

We must be strong in Discipleship. If there is any aspect where we fail the most as a collective Body of Christ, it is in the area of discipleship. I heard someone say once, “I am not responsible to fill anyone else’s cup, but I am responsible to empty mine.”

I think that is a good saying because it may be that you have a difficult time imagining who you should be discipling. But that is not where you focus. Instead, begin to pour yourself out. Get involved in serving, in giving and in sharing your time, skills and knowledge. As you pour yourself out, you will find people around you taking it in. Before you know it, you will begin discipling those around you

3. The Church must be Steadfast.
1 Corinthians 15:58 is a great Scripture for the Church to understand. Paul’s command is, “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” Those are sweet and comforting words when you begin to feel overwhelmed and exhausted.

Galatians 6:9 tells us that we should not “grow weary in doing good, for in due season, we will reap if we do not give up.” A Church that is effective is a Church that is steadfast.

We must be steadfast in our preaching, steadfast in our praying, steadfast in our discipling, steadfast in our fellowship and steadfast in our love of God’s Word.

The worst thing that could happen to my church is that we become “cool”, “relevant” or any other buzz word of the day. No, our responsibility is to be Biblical strong, deeply spiritual and always steadfast.