The Church Answers Podcast

The Six Purposes of the Church: How They Really Play Out in a Local Congregation. Part 3 of 9: The Practical Benefits of Understanding

The Six Purposes of the Church: How They Really Play Out in a Local Congregation. Part 3 of 9: The Practical Benefits of Understanding the Purposes of the Church

The purposes of the church originate with the early churches in the New Testament. When Rick Warren wrote "The Purpose Driven Church" in 1995, the purposes became commonplace in conversations in churches around the world. Thom takes a detailed journey about the purposes of the church through nine episodes. Keep all of them together to share with your church leaders and members.

Duration:: 11m
Broadcast on:: 17 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Welcome to the Church Answers podcast presented by Chaney & Associates. Chaney & Associates are the accounting firm for the church. Now get ready for fast-paced insights on key issues affecting the local church today. We release three episodes each week, so make sure you've seen or heard them all. And now, here's the CEO of Church Answers, Tom Rayner. Bell and the blank, the purpose-driven blank. Well, if you've been viewing or listening to my podcast, last two episodes in particular, you might fill it in with purpose-driven church, that book written in 1995 by Rick Horne, that has truly shaped local churches today around the world. Has he's taken the purpose-driven church message to church after church after church? Country after country, it's made a profound difference for the positive. However, many of you may have filled in the blank life, because as I said in the previous two episodes, purpose-driven life was a book that sold unbelievable numbers of copies. And when those 30, 40 million copies had been sold, it seemed like, okay, well, that book has supplanted purpose-driven church, not really. Because purpose-driven life was for the individual, purpose-driven church was for the church. And I think, I truly believe, I should say, that the exponential value of equipping a church with this information ended up being of greater import and greater impact than the purpose-driven life. So anyway, we've been talking about the purpose-driven church book. Once again, Rick called me in 1994, 30 years ago, and asked me if I'd endorsed the book, and he told me a little more about it, of course, I gladly did. I was one of many endorsers, if you want to hear some of them, you can go back and view or listen to the first episode about the purpose-driven church. And then the book was released by Zondirvin in 1995. Wow, it hit churches like a storm in terms of its thunderous impact. And it is still being felt today. Now, you've heard me say that, but in the first two episodes, in the first episode, I'm just talking about why we're still talking about it, purpose-driven church, why are we? And part two, we said, how did we land on six purposes? As a reminder, Rick had five purposes. Evangelism, discipleship, fellowship, worship, and ministry. We, primarily through Chuck Wallace and me, we added prayer as a purpose, a sixth purpose to the church. And I went into the why of that in the previous episode. I won't be redundant in this episode. But now we're going to talk about how to use these purposes practically. Rick was writing a biblical book, and I hate it when people start criticizing a book like this because they don't like something about the church that he used to pastor or saddle back. And it may be the worship style, or it may be something about the polity, or it may be even in the days of the clothes he wore in the sandals he wore while preaching. I mean, it's unbelievable how people were nitpicking all the things where they weren't addressing the issue. Rick Warren has established something that I think has benefited churches significantly, maybe more so in 2024 than when the book was released in 1995, or that when I read the first manuscript in 1994, 30 years ago. And why is that? Why is this book so profoundly important? What is it done? What are the practical benefits for the church? Well, let's talk about that for a minute. If you go back and read this book, The Purpose Driven Church, you might say, oh, this is kind of old information, really nothing new here. And it might be because the influence has been so pervasive that the things that are said in this book have been said again and again. Many people have taken credit for it when Rick originally wrote it. And even though the book covers five purposes, it was much broader than that. I told the story of Saddleback his early days until the point that he wrote this in 1994. It talks about some issues with churches at the time that are still important for us today. But it also talked about what you do with these purposes and why they are important. Let me just talk for a minute about that. Prior to this book coming out, not exclusively, but with many churches, the issue was this. We're going to do church according to the way that we've always done it. So if we have a certain order of worship or if we do programs that we have created ourselves or have been sent down from the denomination and usually that top down type of feeling. If we are a part of a tribe that thinks things happen this way, we're going to do it. But what happened with many church leaders and thus church members is they stop asking the question, why do we do what we do if they ever did ask that question. And it's kind of important when you think about the church being the most important institution, organization on the planet today and going all the way back to this origins in the year when Christ had ascended in 2000 years ago. So here is why this book is so important. It made us, if we truly began to look at what Rick was saying, it made us ask the question, why do we do what we do instead of this is the way that we've always done it. We begin to say, what is our purpose? And so for example, if you use, of course, he used five purposes. And again, I've told you that we've added prayer early on probably by 1996, we had added prayer in a book that I wrote called Effective Evangelistic Churches. So the lot fewer copies in the purpose driven church, I can assure you. But we began to add prayer to it, but think about what happens once you know the purposes of the church. Let's look at one example. You can decide what ministries you're going to do in the church and how much time and money you're going to spend upon those ministries and how you're going to recruit because you now know what purpose it fulfills. In other words, it causes us to be good stewards because we can say, what are we doing in the area of worship? What are we doing in the area of discipleship? In particular, what are we doing in the area of evangelism, which was seriously neglected then? And now, what are we doing in the area of fellowship or ministry or our prayer? And so it forced us leaders who then in turn communicated with members, it forced us to ask the question. Why do we do what we do? Why do we have a budget that allocates money for this, this and this? What is our purpose behind doing that? Why do we have these programs or ministries? How do they fit into our overall structure? Why do we do what we do? And many churches actually begin to design their budgets according to purposes. And they would say, you know what? We've just done this year end budget in preparation for the next year. And it looks like we're hardly spending any money. On evangelism. And it would be a question that they would not have asked. Just a few years earlier, even the year before the purpose of church came out because maybe they didn't think about evangelism being one of the purposes of the church. And worship, worship is not just a style. It is the coming together of God's people loving one another in a time of teaching and music. But also in a time where people are connected to God and connected to one another. What are we doing in that area? That's our purpose. What are we doing in the area of prayer, the sixth purpose that we added to this? What are we doing in the area of ministry? In other words, being the good neighbor to someone. Fellowship. And as I mentioned in an earlier podcast, earlier episode of this. Fellowship was closely tied to the concept of membership. It was to say that you identify with the body of Christ, and that means you're going to work together, minister together, worship together, steady together, singing together. Through this fellowship is not just a meal. We often call it a fellowship meal in many contexts and many tribes. And so fellowship just for a number of churches being just was getting together and stuff in our faces and didn't really have anything else to accomplish. But fellowship was how are we identifying with the different members of the body of Christ. So how is it played out? How is the book purpose driven church? What are the practical benefits is caused just to ask the question, why do we do what we do? How do we do what we do? How do we find what we do? What are the priorities of what we do? And how are we going to make them play out in our church ministries and programs every year? I cannot think of any single book outside of the Bible, of course, that has had such a profound influence on shaping the churches to force them to ask that question. The purpose driven church was thoroughly biblical. It was it was thoroughly thought out. It was not just a book about settled back, though he mentions it. It is a book that has made an incredible difference. So you've been hearing me talk about the purposes of the church, the five that Rick had five, and then the one, the prayer that Chuck Wallace and I later added in around 1996. Now we're going to go out. We're going to go forth and we're going to look at each of the six purposes. So you've been hearing the background of the book purpose driven church. Now, let's take six episodes really briefly, and let's go through every one of those purposes. It's going to be fine. Once again, thank you, Cheney, Steve Cheney, Cheney and Associates, go to chaneyassociates.com we appreciate so much our ministry partnership with them. They are the accounting firm for the church. You gotta love it. Alright, we'll see you in the next episode as we begin to unpack next week, the six purposes of the church. You have been listening to the church answers podcast presented by Cheney and Associates. Cheney and Associates are the accounting firm for the church. You need to focus on ministry. Cheney will focus on finances. Also, please subscribe and give a review to the church answers podcast on YouTube and on your favorite podcasting app. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)