City Life Starter

The Perfect Church

What is the perfect church?  How would you define it?  Would it be based on what your local church offers, such as sound teaching and pastoral care?  Or perhaps children’s ministry for your children.  In our consumer culture, local churches have a daunting task to consumers happy, visitors and members.  In addition to keeping everyone content, we have another issue, competing for the attention of our audiences from outside influences, such as popular mega-churches and Christian movements.  It is not unusual to find members or visitors to be unhappy with the direction of the church or style of the ministry.  Personally, I have heard committed members and visitors make suggestions such as, “Why don’t you do such and such like (Name of popular Christian or Movement)?” or “We should do such and such like (Name of popular Christian or Movement).”  Though making statements or concerned questions like above isn’t wrong, but once it goes beyond a question to complaining, complaining to reproach, and onto causing disunity among fellow members is utterly wrong.

Unfortunately, there is no perfect church.  History is clear that all throughout its 2,000 of the existence of the church, we have made plenty of mistakes.  There were plenty of false teachings, heresy, divisions, schisms, and the list are full of faulty men and women who displeased God.  Then maybe we could reflect on the glory days of old, how about a perfect church, the church found in the Book of Acts, Byzantine Empire where Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire, and the Reformation, where the church was restored from the abuse of the Catholic church?  The problem with these churches is that they were not perfect either.  They had their own issues of their time, The Church of Acts regularly dealt with racism, the Byzantine Empire led to misuse and establishment of false authority, and the Reformation,  it was not all liberation and restoration, but mistakes upon mistakes.

Imperfect Church

In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16 lies the mystery of the church.  Jesus askes His disciples, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” (16:13, NKJV) His disciples replies with various names such as John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.  Simon Peter’s  revelation from the God the Father, proclaimed, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (16:16) Jesus replied to Peter with the promise of building His church:

“Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.  And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.  And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:17-19)

You may wonder why Peter is the leader of the Church.  God appointed Peter to be the leader of the Church, and through the line or apostleship of Peter, the church would be established and continue. Peter was the rock that Christ built His church.  Well, at least this is the doctrine of the Catholic church and established papal authority to continue the line of Peter.  If you look closely, it has nothing to do with Peter, the man, but the faith of an imperfect man, who proclaimed who Jesus is, the Christ, the Son of the living God.  This is the key to the imperfect church and why we exist today.  God established His church through imperfect men and women, who denied Him, grieved Him and made plenty of mistakes, but then went on to lead His church on earth.  Why?  Because there will be men and women, imperfect, unrighteous, who once denied and hated God that will have the revelation of who Jesus is, by proclaiming, “Jesus, You are the Christ, Son of the Living God.”  As an imperfect church we may make mistakes on the way, be disproved by men and the culture, but we press on so that we may carry the mission to make Him known.  We are not arrogant to say that we are perfect, but we are not discouraged when we are criticized by the culture or by our own members, we count it a joy to be the part of this imperfect church and will press on that His Name will be proclaimed and glorified.

This Week on Starter

We continue our Life Series on the topic of finance.  What does Christ-Centered, Spirit-Empowered, and Socially-Responsible finance look like?  Our Contributors will attempt to answer this important topic this week.

Our Contributors

Our contributors come from various professions and stages in life. Their unique experiences in their fields will help you relate to many of the everyday issues of today. Most importantly the contributions shared by these men and women are their passion for God’s Word. It is their commitment to Christ and the church, to exemplify through their actions that allow them to bring God’s Word to readers. I hope you will find yourself “In the Word” this week. JY