"Church"

I (Cliff) have been doing some thinking since we have been here in the Philippines on this trip. This mostly stems from what I feel are misconceptions people have about the church, Christianity and living for Christ.

I feel that all people who are saved belong to the same church. This is church in the sense that its a group of believers. I have heard some people talk about how this cannot be, how there is no such thing as a universal church, but I feel that they are not reading the Bible correctly.

The only other option I have ever heard is that there is no relation between believers who do not attend the same local physical church building ie 2nd Christian Church on Elm street. Yes that is a church- because a church is a group of believers but those people that go to 2nd Christian in Rolla MO are also part of the larger Body of Christ.

An easy way to illustrate why I feel we are called into the same 'church' is the great commission says for us to go into all nations Matthew 28:19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you..., 

So if each of the local churches are not connected to one another then each local church (using our made up example of 2nd Christian Church on Elm street)  they would have to send someone from their church to minister to every group of people in the entire world.

You run into a couple problems trying to do this,
1. Most churches don't have enough people to send one to every area in the world and set up effective local churches.
2. You simply run into a money problem because if the local church is the only one that matters then each person sent should be 100% supported and funded by 1 local church and funding people to live abroad is expensive.
3. Even if you send just a single person or single family to each country, there's a problem there too. I googled it there are anywhere from 189 to 196 countries in the world depending on whose counting. So just averaging that each local church on their own would need to send 193 missionaries into the world. Most churches couldn't send 193 members away and still function as a church.

Before everyone gets all excited I believe the local church is important, it is the functional unit of the church. My wife and I were talking & she used this illustration so I'm going to steal it.

The church is like Walmart. Walmart is an organization that has many different local buildings, that all are working to fulfill the overall goal: to sell stuff. Each local store is set apart from the others, but is still connected to them and is working with all the other local stores worldwide to fulfill the goals of the organization. I believe the church is like that. The Church, the Bride of Christ, is the group of believers, and each church building is simply the local place that people in that area meet to fulfill the goals and mission of the Church. 

We as Christians are connected to all believers all around the world to fulfill what God calls us to; just like all walmarts are linked together to sell us more stuff. See the stores use their collective power to buy stuff cheaper so they make more money, we as the church should be using our collective power to be accomplishing more for God, that is reaching more people and helping the reached people get a deeper relationship with God.

To me this also means that churches should work together to reach people. What I mean is that if you have 2 churches on the same street in a poor neighborhood, I don't feel like both churches should be running a soup kitchen and a drug addiction ministry. What they should do is pattern together and support each other so one can run the soup kitchen & the other can help with the drug problem. Its just a better use of resources & more would get done.

So looking larger picture, I feel that some local churches are called to do soup kitchens & drug ministries, and others are not. Other local churches are called to support the ministry in another way, this could be anything from providing the money for the churches soup kitchen or sending missionaries to other countries or maybe that church decides to start doing things like working for Habitat for Humanity. I feel all these things are ways churches can do God's will but we need to partner together to more effectively work. I'm nor just talking about the people who we share a denomination with, mostly because I strongly dislike denominations but we should be reaching across the small differences and working together to do what we are called to.

I have heard it said that Christ only cares for the local, Baptist church. I don't believe that is true. We are all called to work together, across nations, races, personality types, and backgrounds. This implies that there is a connection between all churches and all Christians. That connection is the Church. We all are the one and only bride of Christ, not many independent local churches and brides.