What Is The Actual Purpose Of The Church?

To understand the horrifically negative impact that Evangelicalism has had on the American Church (and beyond), it’s important to understand what the actual mission of The Church is supposed to be. Now, my definition might differ from others, so let me tell you how I got here. To begin with, in Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable of the sheep and the goats.

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

The first thing to notice is that it says when the “Son of Man” (referring to Jesus) comes again, he gathers all the nations, (which I interpret as everyone who has ever lived), and separates them into two groups. That’s it, that’s all, just two. He takes billions of people and divides them into just two groups. And how does he sort them? By religion? all the Christians on one side and everyone else on the other? After all, that’s what Evangelical Christians teach. What about the Jews and the Gentiles? Because after all, Jews are God’s “chosen” right? Nope.

He sorts them based not on what they believed (or claimed to believe) but based on what they did. How they treated their fellow man. His criteria was pretty simple.

That’s it. That’s the list.

According to this passage, the people who did that are invited into “the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” Now, I don’t have a fancy seminary degree or anything, but that kind of sounds like heaven, no? And it also says the people who did not give drink to the thirsty, feed the hungry, invite the stranger in, care for the sick and visit the prisoner “will go away to eternal punishment.” Which, kind of sounds like hell, no?

Now, I don’t know how you interpret that, but to me it kind of sounds like that flies directly in the face of everything that Evangelical Christians teach about who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, does it not?

So, the New Testament is basically this: Jesus spends three years traveling with a bunch of people, preaching, teaching, healing people and at the same time, basically just pissing a lot of people off. Then he is executed, is resurrected and then poof, he’s gone. That whole story gets told in the first four books and the rest is what happens after he leaves.

Apparently, during that three years, he gave people a vision of a better way to lives After he vanishes, it seems that a bunch of people set out to try and turn that vision into a reality. And for a long time, it was a shit-show. Much of the New Testament is Paul putting out fires and trying to get vastly disparate people to work, live and function together. To create true community. While also, I might add, fighting to integrate his own deeply ingrained religious beliefs into this new way of living.

And buried in Acts 4 is this little nugget, which I interpret as being what it looked like when they finally achieved the vision of real community that Jesus had given them.

The multitude of believers was one in heart and soul. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they owned. With great power, the apostles continued to give their testimony about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And abundant grace was upon them all.

There were no needy ones among them, because those who owned lands or houses would sell their property, bring the proceeds from the sales, and lay them at the apostles’ feet for distribution to anyone as he had need. (Acts 4:32-35

As you can see, “evangelism” was clearly a part of what was happening in the early church, but it was not the only thing, nor possibly even the most important thing. What was actually happening is that “believers” were coming together to eradicate poverty.

Please read that again.

THAT (in my opinion) is the true function/ mission of the church. The reason The Church exists: to eradicate poverty. Not just physical poverty, but also of the heart, soul and mind. But also, physical poverty, which includes having food to eat, water to drink, clothes to wear, and adequate shelter. In fact, those things took precedence over everything else, including “evangelism.”

Also, notice that it was a “multitude of believers.” What people fail to understand (largely because it is not what our churches teach) is that those “believers” were not of the same religion. (Remember those “nations” the Son of Man gathered?) They didn’t call themselves “Christians”, they called themselves “The People of The Way” because they were attempting to follow a different way of life, not a new religion. In fact, they largely kept their own individual religious beliefs and practices.

This was the source of all the “fires” that Paul and Timothy (among others) kept having to try and put out. Because some of those religious practices were actually exploitative. (Wherever you find religion, you will also almost always find exploitation.) In addition, everyone kept trying to convert others to their religion and make them adhere to their religious practices.

To put this in a modern context, imagine all the Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Christians and Hindus all began trying to come together as one community to lead a new kind of life. The Jews want everyone to get circumcised, the Hindus want everyone to stop eating meat, the Baptists want everyone to stop drinking, the Catholics want everyone to be baptized as Catholics so they can take communion, and the Buddhists want everyone to be vegetarian.

Keep in mind that Paul was a devout Jew himself, so he was also struggling with letting go of the religious practices that were actually hindering his relationship with his fellow man. This is a big theme in the second half of the New Testament when believers who came from (and largely remained in) different religious backgrounds were all trying to learn how to function together as one. They were having to learn the difference between performative religious practices that were more like a “who is holier” contest and those which actually fostered and facilitated genuine community. (Hint: it’s generally those “who is more holy” practices that in the end turn out to be the most exploitative).

This is why it is literally miraculous when we read in Acts 4 that ‘The multitude of believers was one in heart and soul,” because they did not all share the same religious beliefs, yet they were “one in heart and soul” because they had finally figured out what actually matters. But it took a long time to get there.

What Paul essentially told them (which he had a hard time with himself) is to remember that our religious practices are (or should be) primarily an offering to God and God knows our heart. Therefore, if your religion prohibits eating meat, but you are invited to dine in the home of someone that does eat meat, then eat the meat as your sacrifice to God. Similarly, however, (because Paul did this often) he also told those who ate meat to be careful of eating meat in front of those who did not eat meat, as it might cause them to stumble in their faith.

In other words, he never put the ball in one court or the other, but rather encouraged everyone to be mindful as a community to protect each other’s faith by doing their best to honor each other’s religious practices in their presence. So, he didn’t tell people who ate meat they had to give up meat out of respect to those who didn’t; he merely told them to be mindful of their practice when they were around them.

In the last 2,000 years, various groups have come closer or strayed further from this model. In America, we didn’t just separate back into Christian, Jew and Muslim, we separated even further into Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, Baptist, LDS, Seventh-Day Adventist, and on and on and on. That being said, up until very recently, the one thing that we (largely) kept was the service mission of the church. Up until about 50 years ago, it was churches that provided America’s largest social safety net. This all changed with the arrival of superstar evangelists and the rise of the mega-church, which I will write about in my next article.

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