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What is the result of making disciples? Why should we help people mature? Chad Harrington presents a scriptural theology of the beauty of the church to inspire us toward making disciples.
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Transcript
Below is an unedited but cleaned-up transcript of the first part of this session.
This is Chad Harrington. I was teaching at my church recently, and we’re going through a class called The Mission of the Church. My session was called The Biblical Foundation of Disciple Making. My particular take on that has to do with the beauty of the church. I wanted to share this with you, and I’m calling it A Theology of the Beauty of the Church. There are different ways we can talk about the mission of the church. In this class session, I cast a vision for why we make disciples, and I talk about it in terms of beauty. So, take a listen and let me know what you think.
I love the church. Do you love the church? Not just the idea of the church, but do you love the people? I remember the first time I was really struck with the importance of the church. It was when I was on the mission field, funny enough. I was in Cyprus, and I was going to convert people to Christ. My goal was something like helping two fathers know God, and then we would get their families too. That didn’t happen. We were trying. I was 20. How do you be a missionary at 20? I didn’t know then, and I still don’t really know now. We were just trying stuff. We’d go play backgammon at the Turkish coffee shop where men hung out. I learned how to play Tavla, which is what they call backgammon in Turkish. If you want to learn backgammon, go to Turkey.
I kept asking the question, “What are we winning people to?” The border between the north and south of Cyprus had just been opened. It was a closed country, and in my mythology, a closed country means you’re not allowed to go in there legally to convert people. Three years before I went, in 2003, the border had just opened. It was possible for people like me to go to the north of Cyprus. It was a fresh mission field. We knew all the believers in the whole country, which was small. There was an Anglican church, another Anglican church, and our team of about 10 or 15 missionaries. I kept asking, “What are we winning people to?” It’s kind of like a dog chasing the mail truck—what does he do when he catches it?
Because there wasn’t really anything there, unlike at Harpeth, where you could just bring a new convert to church. We didn’t have a church. So, what is this thing that we’re winning people to? This set me on a trajectory in my life to muse about the importance of the church. There’s the church, but then what are we doing with it? What are we doing when we win people to Christ? OK, they come to church, and then what? People say you step out of the baptistry and into the ministry. Well, what is the ministry we step into when we step out of the baptistry? The truth is, we don’t step into the ministry—we step into the church, and then we get ready for the ministry. We become part of the ministry. But what is it that the church does?
So, here’s the big question we’re asking today: Biblically speaking, what is the mission of the church? Another way to say it, and this language comes from Jim Putman and his crew, is, “What is winning?” In sports, you know you win in football if you have the most points at the end of the game. It’s simple—you have a scoreboard, and you know how to put points on the board. What is winning with the church? In school, you get a good grade by getting a certain number of points correct, and you get a passing grade. In business, you win by getting the numbers right. What’s the win for the church? What’s the win for your ministry in the church?
So, here’s the big question: I want you to journey with me and walk through this challenge. Biblically, what is the win for the church? How do we measure that we have won as a church? The question is, what is the mission of the church? Biblically, how do we know when we’ve accomplished that mission? The first question is, what is the mission biblically? This is where we’re going to get down and dirty. I could give you a moment of silence to search, but we’re going to make it more heart-driven and memory-located. What in the Bible is the mission of the church? You have to cite actual scriptures.
What does Matthew 28 say? “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
I’m going to disproportionately play devil’s advocate today because this is important. Don’t take this as antagonism, but I really want to push you. That was given to 11 men who were called apostles, sent ones. So, how is the church related to that? The disciples being baptized are forming the church, but there was no church then, so that’s not a great biblical passage for this question. It’s correlated, but I’m really asking what is the mission of the church?
What passage is that? Who can help a brother out? It’s in Acts 2. Where is that found? I just memorized it last week. That’s all right. Come on, you can do it. That’s all right. Anyone can pitch in. There was a group effort here. You see part of the church is functioning in Acts 2. OK, give me a verse. Let’s go back to Deuteronomy 6:4-5: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.” OK, but here’s the problem with that. On one occasion, an expert of the law stood up and tested Jesus with a question. Jesus said that to just one person, and the answer to the question being asked is, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” That’s not my question. My question is, what’s the mission of the church?
1 Peter 3:15: “In your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” How is that correlated to the church? That seems like just something good to do as a disciple of Jesus. We’re talking about the mission of the church. We go to Ephesians 5:25-27: “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”
Would sanctification be tied in with that? I think we’re getting closer. Ephesians 1:3-10: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.”
The church doesn’t have to be mentioned explicitly, but it definitely helps when answering a specific question. Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy. So, why did Christ die? He did it for many reasons, but one very clear, definitive reason is to make the church holy. Did you know the church is called “her”? There’s a big difference between a “her” and an “it.” Martin Buber talks about an “I-it” relationship in his book, “I and Thou.” The difference is that it’s personal; there’s agency to it. The church is a personal entity. Christ’s mission was to make the church holy by cleansing her through the washing of water with the word, to present her to himself as a radiant church.
But that’s Christ’s mission. What is the mission of the church? Let’s look at John 17. What does it say? “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”
Is unity the mission of the church? Knowing Jesus Christ? Those are two different things. Which verse are you using for knowing Jesus? John 17:3: “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” That’s eternal life, but it doesn’t clearly state the mission of the church. Ephesians 4:11-16 says, “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
Now we’re getting somewhere. If you want to talk about the church, you should go to Ephesians. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom…
The rest is unavailable as a transcript.
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