What Is Your Idea of Church?

Is it more like a restaurant? 

You are a customer. Church is a service provider for your taste and your preference: the pastor is a cook to provide decent food (sermon), elders are managers and deacons are table servers. As long as you are satisfied with the service (welcoming atmosphere, music, sermon, children’s program) you come back. But if the service is not good for an extended period of time, then you are ready to hop out and find another one.

In a sense, church is a place of table fellowship. “Eating” is an important part of doing life together. And being spiritually fed is not unimportant. We need to be fed well with healthy food, not junk food. And ultimately, we feast on Jesus! Jesus is the bread of life and living water! BUT if church is to be like a restaurant, you are to think of yourself not as a customer, but as an apprentice, learning to cook to feed others. You are to think of yourself as a table servant to serve others.

The problem is not with being fed, but with the mentality of consumerism when it comes to our understanding of what church is. This consumeristic mindset is so pervasive in us because that’s the cultural value we all breathe in and out. For instance, many people have been shopping around during COVID. (For those of you who had good reason to “change” church during COVID and settled in one and made a commitment, that’s good! But there are those who are just roaming around without any intent to make a commitment to a church family. That’s a problem). Now that we have online services provided by many churches, you don’t even have to come out to join Sunday corporate gatherings. You can just stay home and have the spiritual food and services you prefer to receive right on your TV screen at home. The problem is not the online service for those who cannot come out for good reasons. The problem is having a consumeristic mindset in seeing church as a service provider. 

Or is your idea of church more like a hospital? 

You are in need of comfort and healing. You are not well mentally or emotionally. You have been hurt. You come to get help and healing. The Church is a service provider for your needs: pastors are soul doctors and counsellors; leaders and serving members are caretakers to meet your needs.

It’s true that church is like a hospital in that we are all sufferers and sinners in need of God’s healing. Jesus is the Great Physician and Healer. We all need healing and restoration. Jesus provides the healing that we need through the Spirit and his people. We are called to comfort and encourage one another.

But the problem is when we think of church only as a hospital for sick people. The problem is that for some people, they want to stay in bed. Practically they never get out of bed; they seem to never really want to get better. Jesus asks a paralytic, “What do you want?” Do you really want to be healed and change your life? Are you willing to live a new life? Well, then “Get up and walk.” He then says, “follow me!” We are to be healed and then live as wounded healers. We have scars but as wounded healers, we are called to help others in their healing process. If church is thought to be a hospital for sinners and sufferers, it must not simply welcome them and help them be healed, but also equip them to be wounded healers who help others be healed. Church is a place of healing where people are healed and then sent out to live a normal life and bring others in need of healing to get better and be equipped. So we are to think of church not just as a hospital but more like a rehab center.

Have you ever thought of church like a gym?

You are being trained. Pastors are trainers and coaches for you to live a life of faith in the real world out there. Fellow members are those who are being trained together. We are not just trying but we are being trained. There is a goal and desire to win the race. Race of faith. The real action happens not at the gym, but in the world out there. Not on Sunday, but from Monday to Saturday—at home, at school campuses, in our workplaces and in our neighbourhoods, in the marketplace, in the public square.

Church is a training ground to equip the saints for the work of ministry-- in the church and outside the church—in families, farms, factories, schools and streets—in all spheres of life. Many stay to run the race locally; some are chosen to be sent out to run the race internationally (i.e., cross-cultural missions).

It’s not a competition with other churches. We are all teammates for God’s kingdom. The goal is the glory of God, not glory to us. 

So what is your understanding of church? 

A restaurant where you are a customer? A hospital where you are a patient? Or a gym where you are being trained? 

Depending on what your mindset is about the church, you will approach church differently and the collection of members that share a certain idea of church will set the tone and texture of the church. 

We must repent and change our mindset about church. We must first acknowledge together as a church that many of us have a consumeristic mentality toward church. And for those of us whose idea of church is predominantly more or less just a hospital, we need to shift our thinking to think of church more as a rehab center. We need to think of church more as a gym where we are trained and discipled to live out our faith missionally in the world. We must align our mindset about the church to how God has designed and desires it to be. That’s what we are trying to do in this new sermon series on church.

It is my prayer that the Spirit of God will use the Word of God to reshape and renew the people of God—us—so that we, the church of God, will participate in the mission of God and bring glory to God.