Fixing the Church

Realizing that the church has lost sight of its highest calling, a transformation must take place within the church itself to realign ourselves with our intended purpose in the world. With these considerations in mind, how do we go about the messy business of fixing the church?

Part 1: Remember and remind the church constantly of its calling and commission.

The church is composed of fallible, human individuals. We need to remind and encourage each other constantly to pursue the Great Commandment (love God and love others) and the Great Commission (go into all the world, preach the Gospel, and make disciples) in every aspect of our lives. These two teachings of Jesus must infiltrate every purpose and action, both as individuals and as the body of Christ.

Perhaps it is an element of our sinful nature that we so quickly lose sight of our calling and fall into the trap of self-absorption. Knowing our weaknesses and our propensity toward abandoning our core purpose, we must actively and consciously spur each other on, as iron sharpening iron, to ensure that we never lose sight of the command and commission with which we have been entrusted.

Part 2: Reevaluate every current activity of the church.

How many of the church’s practices or activities are dictated by tradition or personal preference rather than by the Great Commandment and Commission? We need to be able to take a step back and objectively view every aspect of the church, both the ways we function internally and the ways we interact with the world.

We must be willing to ask ourselves difficult questions that determine whether a practice or activity measures up to the church’s calling: Does this cause us to grow in our love for God? Does this demonstrate love for others? Will this cause the Gospel to be preached to the lost? Will this help those already in the faith the grow as disciples? If we have difficulty honestly answering “yes” to at least one of these questions in every situation, something needs to change.

Part 3: Engage the world with the Great Commandment and Great Commission as our primary directives.

We must make a conscious decision to turn away from being self-absorbed recluses, hiding within our churches or our local cliques of Christianity and complaining about all that is wrong with the world, our country, and our culture, while doing nothing to share the only message that can redeem a lost world. Instead, we must become people actively engaging the world, whose every action must be firmly rooted in the motives of loving God, loving others, sharing the Gospel, and making disciples.

If the church really understood this, and if we truly believed it and based our lives upon it, the world would be powerfully impacted by the love and saving power of Christ. If we could get the focus off of ourselves and back onto reaching the lost and building each other up in our faith, just think of the difference we would start to see in the world around us.

Our man-made plans for fixing poverty, ending war, restoring the value of family, ending oppression, or preserving the sanctity of life will ultimately fail because they are faulty plans crafted by flawed individuals. Using political or military force, or even appealing strictly to reason, is ultimately futile because hearts that have not been transformed and minds that have not been renewed can never grasp the fullness of life for which we were intended. Our efforts are no match for the redemptive power of God’s grace. The world doesn’t need more crusades. The world needs the Gospel.

We have been entrusted with the greatest commandment and commission ever given, spoken by Jesus Christ himself and recorded for all time. The church is in desperate need of fixing, and we must be the ones to fix it.

It is the church’s only hope.

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