The Church is God’s instrument to communicate the message of Christ to the people of the world, and the local church is His primary instrument. Each individual believer who makes up the Body of Christ, His universal Church, is responsible to get the message of Christ’s salvation to the world. This is God’s mandate to individual believers who together comprise local churches.
What then is the primary purpose of the church? The primary purpose of the church is to glorify God, to worship Him. But the primary task of the church is to evangelize the world locally and globally. We know that by fulfilling its God-given task under His direction, the local church indeed brings much glory to God.
What is God’s passion for the church? We believe that God’s desire is that the church is to be what He intended it to be! What then is the church to be? The church is to be a living organism, operating under the anointing of the Holy Spirit, bringing people into the image and likeness of Christ. The church is to be transformed from within into the image of Christ and naturally lead others to become true worshippers of God through Jesus Christ with His agenda as them.
This challenge to be Christ-like is founded in Philippians 2:5, which teaches us to emulate Christ: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” The Apostle Peter exhorts us to “follow His steps.” (1 Peter 2:21)
The Full implications of Christ-likeness would have to include having a heart for the lost world, because the unsaved world was always on Jesus’ heart. Matthew 15:11 tells us, “For the son of Man has come to save that which was lost.” If we are to teach people to be like Christ, then we must teach them to have Christ’s global vision, passion and heart.
We are called to intentionally train our people to be “world class Christians.” Jesus said, “Go everywhere in the world and tell the Good News to everyone” (Mark 16:15 NCV).
How do we become “world class Christians?" We need make a radical shift in our thinking.
- We must shift our thinking from self-centeredness to God centeredness.
- We must shift our thinking from local to global.
- We must shift our thinking from temporal values to eternal values.
- We must shift our thinking from security to service.
- We must shift our thinking from comfort to sacrifice.
“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…” (Matthew 28:19)
