What is the Church’s Job and What is God’s?

A Vital Question

Proceeding on with our look into the functionality of the Church, I want to move onto what I believe may be the most important (if not, my favorite) question we can answer about the Church. We have looked into why we should even go to church, and why Christians seem to be falling away from the gathering, and we’ve even addressed both of those issues with biblical solutions. And while those topics may be the most talked about and the most noticed by our society, the most vital question I believe Christians must ask themselves when it comes to the Church is, ‘What really is the job of the Church?’. I find this question undeniably momentous for two reasons. First off, if we don’t know what the job of the Church is, we won’t know whether or not the gathering is fulfilling its purpose or if it’s falling way short. The Church could be doing too little and not fulfilling its job or even be doing too much and trying to fulfill God’s. As for my second reason….it’s that I believe the Church is doing just that. When we take a step back and look at scripture and then look at our culture, I believe the Church is putting down its God-given mandate to try and pick up God’s. For whatever reason that may be, I think we can all acknowledge that this is an incredibly thickheaded and impossible thing to do.

Scripture’s Take

To answer this vital question, we’re going to take a look at where the Church first started in the book of Acts. In Acts chapter 2, we can see an accurate description of what the apostles intended for the Church to be. Acts 2:42 says, “42 They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” To put this into context, the beginning of Acts shows us in Chapter 1 that the Holy Spirit came down at Pentecost and filled the house of believers. Shortly after that, Peter, using his God-given gift, began to preach to the believers who now had the Holy Spirit, just as he did. We then pick right up in chapter 2 verse 42 and see what the Holy Spirit intended the gathering to be all along. Our Lord intended the Church to be a place where we can sit under sound, biblical teaching, fellowship with other believers, communion with our brothers and sisters, and pray with one another.

There it is, that’s the purpose of the gathering on a Sunday morning. If a church is lacking in any of these areas, I believe that they are failing mightly at what God has ordained His house to be. However, what’s even more surprising is that many people don’t like to finish this chapter and see what God’s job is. The responsibility of the Lord is listed right at the end of chapter 2 and we gloss over it all of the time. Through verses 43 and 46 of Acts chapter 2, we can see the amazing outcome of the believers meeting together and being the Church. Yet right at the end in verse 47, we see what God is doing behind the scenes. “47 the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.” We can clearly see that when the Church operates how it was designed to, God adds to their number. It’s just as Christ said in His parable of the talents in Matthew 25:29 “29 “For to everyone who has, more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have shall be taken away.” Those that keep the law of our Lord in their church services will be entrusted to keep and disciple more sheep than others.

How the Tables Have Turned

Taking all of this into consideration, I think we can see why this is a major issue in our nation and society today. Our culture has turned these responsibilities upside down and has tried to swap duties with God. Way too often, church gatherings share the mindset, ‘If we can just get people through the door, God will do the rest.’ When in reality as we just saw, it is quite the contrary. What we should be doing and saying is ‘If we can dedicate ourselves to teaching, fellowship, communion, and prayer, God will add to our number.’ This is the method that God has designed for the Church and sadly, we would much rather try and gain an audience than let the Lord build His house. Now I want to be clear here, just as I mentioned in my first-ever blog post, I absolutely believe that it is the Church’s responsibility to evangelize and reach the lost, however, we are talking strictly about the weekly, Sunday morning gathering here. We must stop spending our time and energy on a week-to-week basis on how we will grow our numbers and instead spend our time dedicated to Acts 2:42.

Time to Turn Back

Even with all of this considered, I can still hear people asking, ‘What about the churches that don’t do this and are still successful? ‘What about the places that don’t have much obedience to God’s Word and yet, more is still given to them?’ To those churches, I would graciously remind them of the story of Job and our Lord’s response to his accusations. Job 40:9 in particular God says, “9 do you have an arm like God, And can you thunder with a voice like His?” Just because you think you can do God’s job, it doesn’t mean you should try, and just because you can grow an audience, it doesn’t mean it’s a blessing from God. If we want to receive God’s blessing that He gave the Church in Acts 2:47, then we need to run God’s house His way. We can’t just sit around and pretend that if we do whatever we want, God will fill in the gaps. We must remember what our God-ordained assignment is, because, at the end of the day, God will certainly remember His.

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Sources

[1] “Access Your Bible from Anywhere.” BibleGateway.Com: A Searchable Online Bible in over 150 Versions and 50 Languages., www.biblegateway.com/. Accessed 2023.