Loving God – Charles Colson

For biblically the church is an organism not an organization – a movement, not a monument. It is not a part of the community; it is a whole new community.  It is not an orderly gathering; it is a new order with new values, often in sharp conflict with the values of the surrounding society.

            The church does not draw people in; it sends them out. It does not settle into a comfortable niche, taking its place alongside the Rotary, the Elks, and the country club. Rather, the church is to make a society uncomfortable. Like yeast, it unsettles the mass around it, changing it from within. Like salt, it flavors and preserves that into which it vanishes. (p. 175-176).

Most churches are totally dependent on the pastor and church staff. Youth for Christ president, Jay Kesler, sometimes quips, “The western church is like a pro football game on Sunday afternoon: 100,000 people sitting in the stands watching 22 men knock their brains out on the field.” Take away the 22 and there is no game. (p. 178-179).

Beloved pastor and Chaplain of the Senate, Dick Halverson, agrees that “equipping the saints” – which of course means all believers – is the central thrust of any pastor’s calling. “Nowhere in the Bible,” he writes, “is the world exhorted to ‘come to church.’ But the church’s mandate is clear: she must go to the world … the work of ministry belongs to the one in the pew, not the one in the pulpit.” So, he says, the church comes together on Sunday mornings principally to be prepared to carry out its ministry the rest of the week in every walk of life. (p. 179).