The Church Answers Podcast

The Six Purposes of the Church: How They Really Play Out in a Local Congregation. Part 7 of 9: The Purpose of Fellowship

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:: 31 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

Welcome to the Church Answers podcast presented by Chaney and Associates. Chaney and 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 is the CEO of Church Answers, Tom Rayner. Welcome to the Church Answers podcast. My name is Tom Rayner. I don't think I've ever done nine podcasts on one topic. It's good they're short, right? Brief podcast. We release three a week, and so I've taken three weeks, three weeks times, three podcasts, nine podcasts. All talking about the book, The Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren. A book that was published in 1995, written in 1994, published in 1995, a 30-year-old book that I still think is left a profound imprint upon local churches today. I mentioned in several of the episodes that Rick's book, Purpose Driven Life, which was a successor to Purpose Driven Church, sold around 40 million copies. One of the bestsellers of all time of any genre, but I do think that the Purpose Driven Church, again, only, that's if you could say that, only about a million copies, so there's no such thing as that in the world of publishing, particularly in this genre. This book, I think, has been more profound, greater impact because it's affected the church, which affects in exponential ways, members that come through the church. The book, once again, is called The Purpose Driven Church. There's so much I could repeat from previous episodes. I'm going to choose not to, but in the previous two weeks, we've talked about the origin of this book. We've talked about how it's used in the book. We've talked about why it's so important, and then we began to talk about each of the six purposes. Rick had five purposes, evangelism, discipleship, ministry, worship, and fellowship, and Chuck Lawless and I added a sixth purpose, which is prayer. And so, we're going to look at all of the purposes, as a matter of fact, we have already looked at three of them. Those are in last week's episodes, and we're going to take this last week of talking about the Purpose Driven Church, and we're going to talk about the final three purposes of the church. Fascinating stuff, absolutely fascinating. Now, because I'm doing it, it's just a reminder to me of how God used for corn with this one book, among other things, of course, to make such a profound difference. Thank you for making such a profound difference in the world of helping churches, in accounting, bookkeeping. Those areas that a church needs to release and let go, the Centurionian Associates is the accounting firm for the church, their cloud base. They're working with over 1,100 churches, they've been working with churches for 21 years. That's what they do. They're not the accounting firm for our software companies, or they're not the accounting firm for our industrial companies, they're the accounting firm for the church. They know the church, they love the church, and they're making a difference in the church. Listen to me, you can look for a lot of different accounting firms about keeping firms, you really want to feel safe and secure that everything has been done right, where you don't have to worry, go to Chaney and Associates. That's ChaneyAssociates.com, ChaneyAssociates.com. My good friend Steve Chaney, the founder and CEO of that company, thank you for making such a difference. Okay, give us a swallow here, because I'm ready to go. By the way, in case you're wondering, diet, Pepsi, wild cherry. That's Pepsi, zero, sugar, wild cherry. I may be old, but I'm a wild cherry kind of man. That was no advertising placement incidental. Pepsi doesn't advertise with us. I just happened to have my drink with him, so I thought I'd share with you. Let's get into the other purposes of the church. We talked about three of them. Now, we're going to talk about Rick's final two and hour plus one. Okay, so now we're going to talk about fellowship. I mentioned this in an earlier episode, but when I went back and reread what he said about fellowship, I realized that he was primarily talking about what we call membership. In fact, he calls it that today. Let me just read a portion of it, straight from his book. As Christians, we're called to belong, not just to believe. We're not meant to live long-range your lives. Instead, we are to belong to Christ's family and be members of his body. When the book that I wrote, I am a church member, subsequent to the purpose-driven church. When I wrote, I am a church member. There were some objections to the word "member" or "membership" saying, "Hey, that's kind of institutional." But you know what? It was biblical before it was institutional. First Corinthians 12 says, "You are a member of the body of Christ and Ephesians." We learn that we are to be members of the body and that we're to equip the members to do the work of ministry. Membership, members, is a thoroughly biblical word, and Rick reminds us of that when he talks about fellowship. Now for many people, fellowship is getting together. In some denominations, fellowship is getting together and eating something. We're going to have a fellowship meal, or we're enjoying the fellowship of one another. The biblical word you probably know is "quenenia," the Greek word. I directly translated into the English as fellowship, but I had forgotten until I started reviewing the Purpose Driven Church book again, and I started looking at what Rick was talking about with fellowship. He's basically talking about what it means to be a part of the body of Christ. To be a member, when we are baptized, what are we doing? We're identifying with Christ, death, burial, resurrecting, buried with Christ, born to raise, and the newness of life, particularly used for those of you who are in immersion, baptism, church, and oftentimes that is the public profession of faith, and so that is the beginning of the identification with both Christ and with each other, and so fellowship is that aspect of being identified with each other, and that's why Rick readily says this is all about church membership. This is about identifying with people. Yes, it's about gathering. Yes, it's about caring for one another. Yes, it's loving one another. It can even be a meal together, fellowship meal, he says, but ultimately, fellowship is where we readily say we are going side by side. Fellowship is a recognition that we're not on our own in ministry. Think about it from Acts 2, all the way to Revelation 3, all of the chapters, all of the books, all of the pericopies that are contained from that large swath of the New Testament are either written to the church, to a leader in the church, or it's about a church, and it's about a local church. You want just a theoretical church, we're not just talking about churches out there. It was a church that was a real church in Corinth, or Ephesus, or several churches in the region of Galatia or Colossae, real churches with real opportunities, real people then that had problems but had a great impact upon the world, known world at the time. And so the idea of the church is that God gave us the church as his plan A for his mission on earth when Christ ascended, and he didn't give us a plan B. So my church really has problems. I have yet to find a church that doesn't. It's just a matter of degree. I've yet to find a church that doesn't have issues that has its ornery people, that may have some type of pastoral issue, I can go down the list. I mean think of the church at Philippi. Paul loved the church of Philippi, he just wrote in grandiose fashion when he begins to open up in Philippians, and then by the time he gets to Philippians 4 he wants to talk about Yodie and Sintiki, who were they? There are two people who were fighting in the church. We don't know what the fight was about, kind of feel sorry for them, that their public grievances, even though we don't know the specificity of them, we know that they were fighting each other, became a part of Scripture. I wonder what they would have thought if they had known that Paul was going to inscribe their names in a letter that was going to be read before the church and ultimately he has a circle of letter read to other churches and ultimately become a part of the canon of the church and become the Bible, oh my goodness, poor ladies, I mean it's like having road rage and someone doing a video on you and posting on social media. I don't know if it's quite like that, but they got caught. And here's my point, fellowship is what we're called to do. We're called to identify with one another, we're called to walk alongside one another. This idea that the church is an incidental activity is asinine. We are to so firmly be connected to the church and connected to each other that when we talk about fellowship, we are talking about how we belong not by ourselves, but we belong to each other as well. Wow, so much to be talking about in these things, we've been going through the purpose of the church and quite frankly, we are almost done with the five purposes, we got one addition as well, but in our next to the last episode of the nine, we're going to go over the purpose of worship and it may not be what you think. All right, thank you, Chaney and Associates for being the accounting firm for the church. Hey, you don't have, if you're not doing your bookkeeping and accounting with them, you're not doing it with the best. Thank you, Steve, Chaney, founder and CEO, and thank you, Chaney and Associates. Thank you listeners on the podcasting app. Thank you viewers on YouTube. Give us a thumbs up and subscribe to the church answers channel. As always, we thank you for being a part of the church answers podcast. We got two more in this nine episode edition on the purpose driven church. We'll 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) (upbeat music)