What the Church Is NOT, Part 3

Over the years I’ve noticed that the attitudes and actions of many Christians regarding the local church conform more to the patterns of the world than to the pattern of God’s Word. To correct several faulty perspectives on the church (there are many!), I wanted to examine four things the church is not. In the first article of this series, I suggested that the local church is not merely a human organization, but a divine institution—called by the Father, constituted by the person and work of Christ, and united by the Holy Spirit. In the second article, I asserted that the local church is not a supermarket of spiritual groceries, but a covenant community; we’re members of a family that calls for commitment, not customers of a business that’s competing with other shops for our patronage.

In this third installment, I want to address a different kind of misconception about the local church . . .

The Church is Not Just a Gathering of a Few Believers

Several years ago when some of my friends and I prayed for our food at McDonalds two scraggly-looking men approached from across the restaurant and introduced themselves as a church. You see, after visiting all the churches in the area they decided that none of them were preaching the true gospel, so those two men got together and decided, “We’ll be our own church.” I’ll never forget that encounter. There they stood, like the Lone Ranger and Tonto, grinning triumphantly in the bright fluorescent light, obviously proud of their do-it-yourself “church.” Sadly, those men were to Christianity what witch-doctors are to medicine. Whatever they were, they were not a church.

Today some Christians have dropped out of established churches in favor of “home churches” or “family churches.” While the concept of a church meeting in a home has biblical and historical precedence (Rom 16:5; 1 Cor 16:19), many times the organization called a “home church” is not a church at all, but just a bunch of disgruntled believers who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) make it work in a real church. But groups of Christians must have certain biblical marks and works to be regarded as legitimate churches. The church is not just a gathering of a few believers.

Let me be clear. A Bible study is not a church. It’s a Bible study. Getting together in the home for prayer is not a church. It’s a prayer meeting. A herd of Christians, with a guitar and tambourine is not a church. It’s a sing-along. A man or woman opening the Bible and preaching at a willing crowd is not a church. It’s an exercise of free speech. A gathering of saints for eating and gossiping (also called “fellowship”) is not a church. It’s a party. The church is not just a gathering of a few believers.

Some Marks and Works of a True Church

People often invoke Matthew 18:20 to support the idea that informal gatherings of a few saintly lambs counts as a church—“Where two or three are gathered in My name, I am there in the midst of them” But Jesus did not say, “Where two or three have gathered, there is the church.” A true church must consist of certain marks and works. Though pastors and theologians have categorized and listed the marks and works of a church in a variety of ways throughout history, they have generally been in agreement on what the Bible says about what constitutes a true church.

The marks of a local church include 1) orthodoxy—the proclamation of the central truths of the Christian faith regarding God, the person and work of Christ, and salvation; 2) order—the positions of qualified and properly-appointed biblical leaders; and 3) ordinances—the practice of baptism and the Lord’s Supper as the rite of sustained fellowship. Besides these three marks, three essential works of a church include 1) evangelism—gathering others to God by the gospel of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ; 2) edification—growing believers toward maturity in Christ through teaching and discipline; and 3) exultation—glorifying God through adoration and service. Any gathering that claims to be a church must have marks and works like these. If any of these are intentionally missing for a prolonged period of time, that organization is not a legitimate local church in the biblical and historical sense.

These marks and works not only place a church firmly on the foundation of the New Testament, but they also connect every true local church historically to the first church of the apostles. True churches should be able to follow an unbroken chain of orthodoxy, ordination, and ordinances back to the first century church. And today, all true churches are united in glorifying God through building out and building up the body of Christ worldwide. True local churches know are they are part of something bigger than themselves.

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Christians I met at McDonalds years ago were not a church. They had neither the marks nor the works of the church. They had neither the theological and historical depth nor the practical breadth of a true church. But sometimes we evangelicals can fall into the same kind of thinking. We can sometimes go to Sunday school class and think we did church. Or we can stay at home, do family devotions, pray, and sing songs and think we did church. Or we can just listen to a preacher on the radio and think we did church. Those may all be good things, contributing to our biblical knowledge and spiritual growth, but they are not church.

The church is not just a gathering of a few believers.