Whether your style is traditional or contemporary, your interest fellowship or outreach, your preference for the young and hip or the older and more sedate, big steeple or no steeple, liturgical or more spontaneous, preaching or story-telling – just about whatever you want in a church, you can find.

Church leaders today feel at liberty to shape and position their churches according to the interests and needs of their communities, or the preferences in style or structure of church leaders. Never before have there been so many different kinds of churches to engage the visions of church leaders or the fancies of prospective worshipers.

In some ways this is a wholesome and welcome development, a fresh change from the days when just about any church you might enter seemed as cold, stodgy, and irrelevant as the next.

However, the danger is that, in seeking to distance themselves from traditional church forms and formats, churches may all be drifting toward a point where, once again, they’re all starting to look and feel the same – only contemporary, at least, for now.

Not ours to shape as we like

Changing, updating, repositioning, and reshaping our churches can be very healthy, but only if we keep within parameters of change and reformation which acknowledge that there are some basic components of shape, form, elements, mission, and so forth which must characterize any church in order for it to be a church.

For, at the end of the day, the church is not ours to build and shape as we like. The Church and all local churches as expressions of the universal Church belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. In His ascended glory He has taken on the task of building His Church. It is the top item on His agenda, because the Church is both the staging-ground and forward outpost of the Kingdom of God.

Moreover, Christ has provided the tools, resources, and designs by which local church leaders must build their congregations. If we would enjoy the blessing of the Church’s Chief Architect and Builder on our facilities, ministries, and people, we should pay special attention to what Jesus intends for His Church.

We are the Lord’s Church

The Church belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ; He alone articulates the vision church leaders must follow if they would fulfill His purpose in having raised them up to build a church. Jesus Christ intends for His Church to be an agent of transformation – salt, light, and leaven – wherever it puts down roots and puts up walls. If churches are not having the kind of transforming effects Jesus envisioned, it may be that we have been building according to the wrong set of drawings.

Today, when the Church in America is more marginal and meaningless than it has ever been, we do well to re-examine the vision of the Church which guides our local efforts at worship and ministry. We may build impressive facilities, attract large numbers of people, and fill everybody’s week with plenty of things to do, but we will not be the Church unless we are following the plans and building according to the designs of the One Who, at the end of the day, must build our churches Himself if they are to be what He intends.

The Church belongs to the Lord. He calls it into being by His Word and Spirit. He indwells it. He appoints our mission. He provides the resources, power, and support we require in order to fulfill that mission.

And He alone knows what He’s looking for – and what we should be looking for – in local churches all over the world. The Church is the Body of Christ, the top item on His agenda as He rides forth each day, conquering and to conquer.

But unless we and our churches are on the same page as the Lord, we cannot expect to know the fullness of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Spirit which comes with being the Kingdom people of the Lord.

Next steps

What are the guiding components of your church’s vision? Talk with a pastor or church leader about this question. How many images, bullet points, benchmarks, or guiding ideas can you discern as comprising your church’s vision?

Additional Resources

Download this week’s study, Christ’s Vision for the Church.

Sign up for ViewPoint Leaders Training and start your own ViewPoint discussion group.

The Church is the flash point for revival, but only if we prepare for it as we should. Order a copy of T. M.’s book, Preparing Your Church for Revival, from our online store.

And men, download our free brief paper, “Men of the Church: A Solemn Warning,” by clicking here.

Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.