What Does the Church Do?
What are the irreducible actions of a church? What practices makes a church a church? If we are the church, the next question is what should we do? In this sermon Pastor David explains how the Bible teaches churches must have an upward focus, an inward focus and an outward focus.
A church must do only a few things in order to be a church: (1) the people must devote themselves to the teaching of Scripture and the worship of God by regularly gathering to hear God’s Word preached, to sing, to pray, to give, and to practice baptism and the Lord’s Supper. (2) Church members, those who have covenanted together, must lovingly care for one another, serve one another, even through the practice of church discipline. They must encourage one another, show hospitality to one another and build one another up. (3) They must, in love, also seek to extend the Gospel to the ends of the earth and be actively be making disciples.
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another. (Hebrews 10:24-25)
Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:15-16)
How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? (Romans 10:14)