To many of us, particularly in a place like Katy, a church is an institution. This may not be the word that comes to mind, but it’s more than likely the idea that comes to mind. Our question, “what do I want out of a church?” implies institutional thinking when you consider the ways we frame the answer, “we want an exciting children’s program” or “we want a youth group” or “we want a particular style of music and worship.” I understand this way of thinking. I live here too. But the questions reveal criteria that fit an institution. They say, “we’re looking for some entity that will meet my interests.” This is not to say that there can’t be institutional aspects to a church. There’s nothing wrong with having a youth program or children’s program or any other program. But the church’s institutional elements are simply one particular outworking of what it is. The church is first and foremost a family.
Specifically, the church is a family made by the covenant of God. Just like an earthly family has structure and roles within that structure, so does a church family. God has appointed apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, and such for the equipping of God’s people for the work of ministry. As these leaders work to equip God’s people for this work, there will be institutional elements to the shape of a particular church. But we must not mistake the institutional elements for the church itself. When we do we put pressure on churches. “We’ve got to have programs and events to compete with church B down the street.” A church’s measure of success becomes driven by attendance at events and programs.
Instead of attendance, we need to shift our metric to things that reflect the maturity of people within the church. Are our marriages healthy? Are we spending time discipling children? Are we serving the poor and engaged within the community to make it a better place by acting as salt and light? The fruit of the Holy Spirit “is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control… those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” This fruit is the result of maturing disciples, growing up into a mature faith, which God has called church leaders to be working toward as they faithfully teach and preach the Word. So instead of measuring the number of church members (which is God’s department anyway), we want to begin looking at people’s lives and asking, how are we living? You will soon see these “church health” cards during the worship service which will ask questions that are meant to find out if and how you are engaged with the community, growing in your marriage, discipling your children, and serving the poor. So that these don’t become something to grow prideful about, the cards are meant to be anonymous. We want to measure our church as a whole, rather than track you down as an individual. (However, if you have seen God work in a particular way that would encourage our church family as a whole to hear, we want to know).
It will take time to press our new head knowledge about the church into the way we think and feel about it. But be patient and pray for the health and continued growth of Cornerstone. As the family grows, the individual is blessed.
In Christ,
Carter
Otherwise, we can never expect to grow mature, in the sense of “well-rounded”, followers of Christ. If people go from one set of church programs to another, based on their program and style interests, the felt needs of those particular individuals might be met, but whole other areas of life will be missed altogether. Institutional churches will grow increasingly homogeneous as a result. It will be comfortable. It may do one or two things very well, but it will be shallow. Imagine a person who went to the gym faithfully everyday and worked out his arms but nothing else. After a few months he would begin to look a bit off. While his arms might grow to be quite pronounced, the neglected parts of his body would still be weak and frail. Strong arms aren’t very helpful without the back and shoulder muscles to take advantage of arm strength.
Counting people isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In the gospels and Acts we find counts of people. For example, after Peter preached at Pentecost we read, “about three thousand were added to their number that day” and a little later on in the book of Acts we read, “and the number of men grew to about five thousand.” It’s natural to assume, then, that we should be concerned about numbers. But we must also notice the cause of growth, which we find spelled out in Acts 2:47, “And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” At each major stage of redemptive history, in which the Lord carries his plan forward, amazing things happen and are recorded by God’s representative. Acts show us something new: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon not only the Jews but also the Gentiles. The Lord is doing an amazing work. This is what the numbers show. They show how the gospel overpowers everything that sets itself up against it. But we must be careful to make numbers the measure of our efforts. That would be taking credit for something only the Holy Spirit can do. While the great numbers were indicative of the “new thing” that God was doing in Acts, it is not always the measure of the Spirit’s work. Acts 6:1 identifies this rapid expansion with a particular period of time, “Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number…”
