Simply Churchনমুনা

Why Church?

Devotion: 

Jesus said, “Let the children come to Me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children.” (Matthew 19:14)

The Church should be simple. Easy to understand. Like these children that Jesus refers to. But simple things can become complex. And the church is no different; it gets confusing and inaccessible. We forget why we do what we do.

WHY CHURCH?
In 2010, Simon Sinek went viral with his TED talk entitled “Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action”. He suggested that every organisation knows WHAT they do (i.e. garages repair cars, supermarkets sell food, schools educate children, etc.), but according to Sinek very few organisations know WHY they do what they do.

He suggests that while people are interested in knowing WHAT you do, they are infinitely more inspired when they discover WHY you do it. 

This is also true of the church. We often know WHAT we do (Sunday services, youth groups, social justice, etc), but the church is often guilty of not being able to articulate WHY we do it.

When we fully understand our WHY, it makes such a difference to WHAT we do. It is so much more inspiring. When we understand the purpose behind our existence, it helps everything else make sense. To discover our God-given WHY, we need to go backwards so we can go forwards.

When you want to copy something, you must always go back to the beginning, never copy a replica. To be as authentic as possible you must imitate the original.

An art student won’t paint a copy of a masterpiece by looking at a photograph. The student will visit the art gallery and copy the original painting itself. 

In the same way, if you want to find out what a healthy church looks like you need to go back to the original, the very first church from the book of Acts.

So, what did the Early Church look like? In the reading today, we have a great description of this new community. It provides a clear definition of an authentic church.

The Church devoted themselves to the Apostles teaching (v 42), created fellowship and belonging (v 42), shared meals including communion with great joy (v 42 & 46), were a community of Prayer (v 42), experienced a sense of awe with miraculous signs and wonders (v 43), met together in one place (v 44), shared everything they had (v 44 & 45), gave money to those in need (v 45) all the time worshipping and praising God (v 46 & 47) and meeting regularly in homes (v 46).

A simply defined and authentic Church, based on the original, should be a vibrant community of Jesus-followers that share these same hallmarks.

That’s the kind of Church we all want to be part of.