True Church VS False Church VS Parachurch Organization

The Belgic Confession provides several marks that are helpful as we seek to identify a true church of Christ. According to the Confession, a true church is characterized by the right preaching of the Word of God, the right administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and the exercise of church discipline. Such a church is one, holy, catholic and apostolic (The Belgic Confession, 1561, Article 29).

In identifying a false church, the doctrinal standards implied in the right preaching of the Word are especially helpful. While an attitude of tolerance ought to exist toward nonessential doctrines, church discipline should be exercised against those who compromise cardinal doctrines. When a church compromises a doctrine which has historically been understood to be a cardinal doctrine and which is essential to the truth of the gospel, then the organization is not a true church. Similarly, if an organization fails to exercise discipline against a church leader who adheres to false doctrine, the trueness of the church may be brought into question.

A parachurch organization is a specialized institutional ministry which functions to assist the local church, but is not under the authority of a local church. The administration of the sacraments and the exercise of church discipline are helpful in distinguishing the parachurch from the church. If an organization administers the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, then this organization might more rightly be defined as a local church. And if the exercise of church discipline is employed within this organization, the group’s parachurch status might also be brought into question.

The Goals and Vision of Adult Discipleship in the Local Church

I''ve been considering what the goals and vision of an adult discipleship program should be. Here are some of my thoughts.

Ephesians 4:11-16:

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming, but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

Here the Apostle Paul speaks of the mutually edifying ministry that is to take place in the church. God gives various gifts to the members of the church body in order that we might contribute in different ways to the growth of the church. This includes growth in our reliance upon Christ, growth in Christlike character, and growth in spiritual understanding.

If I had to try to summarize this in a one-sentence purpose statement, I might say something like this: To cultivate a Christian community in which believers love one another, exercising their spiritual gifts in mutual edification so that the whole community might be built up in Christlike faith, character, and understanding.

Implementing Change in Pastoral Ministry

Sometimes change comes easily. Church leadership may observe something that needs to be changed and those involved may embrace the change whole-heartedly. But implementing change can often be challenging. I think pastors need to have mature expectations about change. Sometimes this means recognizing that changes will not take place overnight. A long-range approach to change may, at times, be necessary.

Some of this depends upon the amount of ownership felt by lay leaders towards the item that is targeted for change. I think that ownership is generally a good thing, but it can make change difficult. I have personally found it helpful to talk to ministry leaders to get a sense of the level of ownership they have toward an item targeted for change.

If there is a strong sense of ownership regarding a particular aspect of the ministry, then it is generally a good idea to develop some leadership training designed to instruct leaders about the issue at hand. For example, imagine your children's ministry was using a curriculum that was not gospel-centered. Instead, they were using a law-centered curriculum (“law” refers specifically to how God calls us to live whereas “gospel” refers to the message of redemption in Christ that enables us to obey God’s law and experience the subsequent blessings that come with obedience). Law without gospel is simply legalism (gospel without law, incidentally, is antinomianism, the idea that there is no need to follow God’s laws because we have already been forgiven). So you have a legalistic curriculum that presents children with moral direction, but fails to teach them how they can only come to obey moral guidelines through the life-transforming power of the gospel. As a result, your children fail to live morally (because they are sinners like the rest of us) and begin to have a sense of guilt to which they have no answer. They then feel frustrated, they come to think that Christianity is all about obeying a list of rules, they begin to dislike Sunday school, and they are inclined to look to other things to make them happy (idols). So, you conclude, you need a gospel-centered curriculum!

Now, let’s say the teacher of this class really likes the current curriculum because it “takes sin seriously.” The curriculum comes down hard on sin and strongly presents God’s hatred of sin. Moreover, let’s say this teacher has been able to choose his or her own curriculum for the last five years. Based on conversations you’ve had with the teacher, you discern that if you change this curriculum it will likely be very ill-received.

So perhaps you would want to develop some leadership training to help all of the teachers come to a deeper understanding of the relevancy of the gospel in their ministries. In the meantime you could supplement the current curriculum with some strong gospel teaching. Then, as you were able to come alongside the teacher and help him or her develop a deep conviction about the centrality of the gospel, you could eventually change the curriculum with the teacher’s support (of course, sometimes it won’t be quite this simple, but you get the idea).

Three Glorious Blessings that Come When We Commit Ourselves to a Local Church

1. Mutual Ministry
Peter indicates in 1 Peter 4:10 that every believer has at least one spiritual gift and that these gifts are given for the edification of the church. He writes, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace” (1 Peter 4:10). Likewise, Paul exhorts the Corinthians who were seeking spiritual gifts for their own edification rather than the edification of the body, saying “So also you, since you are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek to abound for the edification of the church” (1 Cor 14:12). Note that the primary purpose of spiritual gifts is that we might use them to build up those who are part of the church body. This is the purpose for which God bestows spiritual gifts. And since we see here that every Christian has at least one spiritual gift, every Christian is, thefore, called to edify the body in some way. If we’re not doing life together with a group of people in the church, then we will have no context in which to exercise these gifts—we will have no context in which to fulfill the purpose for which God has given us the gift. If we have the gift of encouragement, who are we going to encourage? If we have the gift of mercy, with whom are we going to empathize? If we have the gift of exhortation, whom are we going to exhort? This is why a commitment to the local church is so important. The local church provides the context in which we are able to exercise the spiritual gifts with which we’ve been entrusted. Moreover, participation in the local church also, therefore, allows us to experience the blessing of being built up by others in our church as they exercise their own spiritual gifts in ministry to us. And so that’s what I mean by "mutual ministry." Mutual ministry is what happens when we exercise our gifts to build up others and experience spiritual growth as others use their gifts in ministry to us.

2. Personal Accountability
The second thing we experience when we commit ourselves to the local church is personal accountability. When we join ourselves to a body of believers, we voluntarily place ourselves in a position in which we allow fellow believers to hold us accountable. Our brothers and sisters in Christ help us to see if we’re living in a way that is consistent with our profession of faith. We say that Christ is our Lord and we want to live according to His Word. And so if, for example, we are struggling with the sin of pride, or laziness, or sexual sin, or gossip, or whatever, then our brothers and sisters can lovingly confront us about our sin and encourage us to take the steps we need to take to put these sins to death. Those who are part of our church hold us accountable to live in a way that is consistent with the words we speak—that’s personally accountability.

3. The Rekindling of Our Passion for Christ
A commitment to the local church fans the flames of our passion for Christ. Have you ever noticed that when we get around people who are passionate about the same things we’re passionate about, that we tend to fuel one another’s fire? When you get a couple of guys together who are really into football, the conversation may start off slow. They’re sitting out on the patio, grilling some burgers, and one of them asks, “Hey, did you happen to catch the Nebraska/Iowa State game yesterday?” And so they begin to talk about it and the conversation progresses and they start to talk a little faster and their voices start to escalate, and pretty soon these guys are essentially reliving the game—they’re standing up, yelling about some bad call a referee made, completely oblivious to the hamburgers or anything else going on around them.

Now, how much more true should that be of us as Christians? As Christians, God has given us a passion for Christ. When we come to faith in Christ, God takes our hard hearts and gives us hearts that respond to him in saving faith. These new hearts, then, have within them a desire for God, so that when we come together to study the Bible, and when we begin to consider God’s grace towards us, and as we continue to ponder God’s redemptive work in our lives, the Spirit of God wells up within us and ignites that desire for God within us so that our hearts rejoice in the things of God. Our hearts become stirred as we spend time in God’s Word and have fellowship with other believers—people who are passionate about the same things we’re passionate about—and as we are reminded of the way that God is at work in our midst.

Praise God for giving us a community to which to belong!