There are so many misconceptions about the church and this is not surprising since so many manmade ideas and traditions have built up over two thousand years and this is reflected in all the denominations and groupings of the church around the world today. Even the Reformation did not change that, in fact Luther, Zwingli and Calvin all resisted those who wanted to take the church back to its first century roots.

 

We are never going to get back to the 1st century church - and we don’t need to.  We would all be wearing togas and many of us would have slaves to peel grapes for us if we wanted to get back to that time! But what we need is a proper understanding of church the way that God intended us to be in the setting of 21st century life and culture so that we can be truly effective in being what God wants the church to be and to do today.

 

What I hope we will be able to do, is to leave on one side our Protestant / Pentecostal experience of church and get a fresh vision that can grow and develop along the right lines for the future.  It’s not that all the denominations have got everything wrong - it’s about looking deeper for the underlying principles that we find in the New Testament and seeking to follow them in the context of our own situations wherever we are in the world - and even within our church traditions / denominations.

 

In further messages we will look at:

The church is People – A picture of the church functioning the way it should.

The church has Purpose – what really is the purpose for which God started the church?

The church needs ministries - but where are they? How should they function?

The church needs leaders – but what should they be like?

 

We will develop each one of these topics over the next few months and I am very open to you sending in your comments and queries.  You do not have to agree with me but hopefully, at least we can start to think about this in a fresh way together.

In our message this month, we are going start with God.

 

The church is God’s invention!  I came to that conclusion, which should be obvious but it came as something of a revelation when I was a teenager, who was somewhat disillusioned by church. My mum and dad had taken me “to church” as a baby and I had grown up in a Baptist church.  I had seen lots of things to discourage me - but even then, I was thinking there must be more than this and wanted church to be dynamic and exciting, which sometimes it was, so it was not all doom and gloom!  

 

Some people say they believe in God but not in the church.  Why is that? Could it be that what they see is what man has made the church to be and not what God intended the church to be like?

 

Right now some of you are thinking – yes – stained glass windows, priests in robes, hymns, boring sermons – no wonder the “world” thinks church is irrelevant to their lives.  Others of you are thinking about your personal experience of church and maybe feeling – my church isn’t like that – we have got it right.  But then the question is - are people attracted to your form of church any more than the first type of church I mentioned?

 

I’m glad I didn’t give up on church when I was young and that’s because of the “revelation” I had when I realised that church is God’s idea.  The problem is not with God’s original plan but with all the other ideas that have been added to the church over the years - by the Catholics and the Protestants – and I’m sorry to say it, but we Pentecostals have our own traditions and ways of doing things too. Manmade ideas can effectively change or even replace God’s concept of church without us even realising it.

 

So our starting point has to be God - and His idea to bring together the ecclesia – the called out ones.  If we have that point clear – that the church is God’s invention, we must not look at all the different “flavours” of church and compare one way of doing church to another way, but look to God’s Word and try to understand how God intended church to be.

 

We cannot wipe the slate clean and start all over again – others have tried to do that and ended up creating church in their own image.  But what we can do, is to bring God’s heart into whatever kind of church we are in and seek to let it work out in our own group, town, city, denomination, day and generation.  That is the challenge before us!

 

The first person to talk about church was Jesus and every word He said in this sentence is vital:

 

“I – WILL – BUILD – MY – CHURCH”

 

There’s a Bible study in each of those words:

 

I – WHO is that? –Yes we know it’s Jesus – but think about Who He really is!

 

WILL – WHEN? – What has he been doing over the past 2,000 years but what is He still to do?

 

BUILD – HOW does He do that?

 

MY – WHAT are the implications of the church being His personal possession?

 

ECCLESIA – WHAT is the true nature of the church that Christ is building?

 

And by the way, when He is allowed to do that:

 

“The gates of hell will not prevail against it!”

 

(We will look at some of those questions in the topics coming up in this series over the next few months).

 

But let us conclude with appreciating what these words of Jesus mean for us right now in the 21st century. They tell us that whatever happens, the real church will be here when He comes again.  

 

It’s been around for 2,000 years and all hell has tried to destroy it by persecution, division and false doctrine,

                             – but the church is still here!

                                             -Nothing can destroy it!

                                                             So….