The Church Answers Podcast

The Six Purposes of the Church: How They Really Play Out in a Local Congregation. Part 2 of 9: How We Landed on Six Purposes

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. If you did not hear the previous episode, I encourage you to go back and view it on YouTube or listen to it on your podcasting app. And I encourage you to just go back and listen to that introduction of the purpose-driven church and why the book is so important and once again, this is not actually the original cover. For those of you who bought the book in 1995, '96 or '97, you know, it was a different looking cover. I have both, but I went on and got this one, so I would have it available for the podcast. Content is still the same. The book was written in 1995. I became familiar with it in 1994 when Rick asked me to endorse it and the church has not been the same ever since. And that's a positive statement. What Rick Warren did through this book was an incredible contribution to local churches. And what I hope to do in these nine episodes is to talk about why. Yeah, we'll be talking about some of the hell, but why this book is so important. Why, after all of these years, 30 years have passed since he wrote it, 29 years have passed since it was published. Why is it so incredibly important? Well, as always, thank you to Chaney and Associates there, the counting firm for the church. I mentioned in the previous episode, we don't, we don't provide sponsor material. We don't provide information that says, here's what we charge for our sponsors or advertisers. We develop these relationships organically. And as we come together, we decide if we're on the same page. And if we are, we develop this ministry relationship. And so it has been with Chaney. Chaney is the counting firm for the church. They'll take so much off your plate that you don't need to be doing. And they'll do better. They'll do it better than anybody else. Counting bookkeeping payroll. You take that off of your plate, give it to Chaney, set up an appointment with Chaney and Associates. Go to chaneyassociates.com as Chaneyassociates.com to talk to them. Okay, in the previous episode, we talked about why we're still talking about the purposes of the church today, specifically the purposes from this book, the purpose driven church. Now, we're going to talk about what are the purposes of the church. And I'm going to just go to one of the pages in Rick's book, and I'm going to give you his five purposes. We'll go into more detail with all of the purposes in the last six episodes. But let's just do a summary of it to begin with. The first purpose that he says is worship. He actually has a subheading. Love the Lord with all your heart. And he said, so one of our purposes is to worship as a church to worship God and to worship together. That's purpose number one. Purpose number two is ministry. Love your neighbor as yourself. He says the church exists to minister to people ministry is demonstrating God's love to others by meeting their needs and healing their hurts in the name of Jesus reading right from the purpose of church. Purpose number three. This is the one that also many churches just her. Negligate is evangelism. He goes straight to the great commission of Matthew 28, 19. Go and make disciples. He says, we are ambassadors for Christ and our mission is to evangelize the world. The word go in the great commission is a present part of simple in the Greek text. It should be reading as you are going. Evangelism is purpose number three. Purpose number four is fellowship and I. I've forgotten this about fellowship until I went back and started reviewing this book. It's now 30 years old. I had forgotten that for Rick fellowship was not just the cornea of some, some type of meal together or event together. Fellowship for him begins, or biblically, he would say begins with baptism. And what are you doing in baptism? You are identifying with what Christ has done for you, but specifically you are identifying with other members of the body of Christ. And so for him, fellowship has very much the connotation of membership. And there's yeah, there's sometimes a visceral reaction to the word membership because, as I mentioned earlier, I wrote a book that. It's sold almost to me and copies called I am a church member. And there were some pushback on that, you know, no, no membership is a secular term. But membership has to do with civic clubs or country clubs or some type of secular meaning to it. And I said, no, membership is in first Corinthians 12 membership is in the book of Ephesians. And it talks about as being members of the body of Christ. Well, for Rick fellowship was the member aspect of it, the connection aspect. And I forgot how much of that was in this book. He says this, as Christians were called to belong, not just to believe. We're not meant to live Lone Ranger lives. Instead, we are to belong to Christ family. Listen to this and be members of his church and his body baptism is not only a symbol of salvation. It is a symbol of fellowship. So the fourth purpose that we'll be talking about a little bit more is the purpose of fellowship purpose number five discipleship. Of course he goes right back to the great commission to teach them all things. And it goes to to several other verses like Colossians 128. We continue to preach Christ to every person using all wisdom to warn and teach everyone in order to bring each one into God's presence as a mature person in Christ teaching them. So he says, teach them what to obey. He said, that's discipleship evangelism is reaching them with the gospel of Jesus Christ and then discipleship is teaching them. Saddle back would later go on to really put this into five words that are literated magnify. That's worship mission. That's evangelism membership. There you have it again fellowship maturity discipleship and ministry. God's love through service. And so he took the five original purposes that I am going back to their original form. And they would later it's settled back talk about magnify mission membership maturity and ministry. Those were the five purposes of the church as articulated in this incredibly paradigmatic shifting book for local churches called the purpose driven church by reward. And as I mentioned in the previous podcast. It was out so some enormously about purpose driven life. Well over 30 40 million copies of purpose driven life for so little over one million of this I still think one million is huge. I mean, you sell a book that says 10,000 copies on when the topic is the local church and it's a big seller. It was a million. And of course it was overshadowed a good bit by purpose driven life, which was for the individual. Well over so by that one, but still I think this one shaped the church more than purpose driven life. And so I wanted you to see those five purposes but then I want you to notice something else. I've looked at the title of this podcast or if you're on YouTube this video cast. If you have looked at the title, it is how we landed on six purposes. Rick had five ministry evangelism discipleship fellowship worship five. We, we primarily been the team at the Billy Graham school led by me also a good bit by Chuck Lawless we added a sixth. And that was prayer. And if you ask Rick why he didn't include prayer in the purposes. He readily admits that there could be other purposes in here he focused on five, but he said to him I just assumed that prayer is in all of these. Well, my perspective on this is that evangelism should be in all of these fellowships should be in all of these ministry. In other words, I see the interconnectedness of all of the purposes and just because you named them separately does not mean that they are in the silos that stand alone. And as I look at what happened in the early church they started with prayer they were praying in the room the Holy Spirit came. And when you look at what happens in acts to beginning at verse 42 and they devoted themselves to and go to the last part of that verse prayer. Prayer was not just another symptom of what the Holy Spirit had manifest in believers prayer was a core purpose of the church. And just for that reason that ever since Rick came out with the five purposes. We have added the six of his as its own unique doesn't necessarily stand alone purpose but it's own unique purpose. And that is the purpose of prayer. So now we have gone over why the purpose driven church was so vitally important as a book that shape churches still is today 30 years later. Now gone over the introduction to the six purposes. We're going to get a little more practical in the next episode. And to finish them up for this week we'll have three weeks of this finishing up for this week. We're going to talk about how you can use the purposes of the church practically in your church. Wow, so much material so little time I'm glad we're doing this over nine podcasts. Once again my name is Tom Rainer you are listening or viewing the church answers podcast. Thank you Chaney and Associates for paying the bill so that we can be here but above all thank you for being a ministry partner that we absolutely love. Come back for the next episode as we continue to talk about the purpose of the church and we talk about the practical benefits in your church. If you really get the six purposes see you in the next episode. You have been listening to the church answers podcast presented by Chaney and Associates. Chaney and Associates are the accounting firm for the church. You need to focus on ministry. Chaney 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) You