The Purpose of Church

I have started reading Timothy Keller's book The Prodigal God which I was recently given. The book is a re-examination of the parable of the prodigal son and he makes a good case for spending more time understanding the elder brother, who never went wild, along with the prodigal son. He provides a different look at the father as well, whose extreme love was 'prodigal' in its excess, as is God's love. Along the way he makes some comments about how Jesus attracted sinners and rebels while repelling and alienating the religious community. He comments that while Jesus attracted the irreligious and offended the religious, our churches today do not have this effect. 'The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church' he points out. 'That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did' he goes on to say. This raises the issue of what is the purpose of church services.



His implication is that organized church services should be aimed at attracting the irreligious, the marginal, the rebels, the alienated. Much of the 'seeker sensitive' movement has agreed with this approach, as does the 'emerging church' effort. I disagree.



Church services are not aimed at attracting unbelievers; they are aimed at worship by believers. Jesus did not reach out to the irreligious and sinners in His time of worship. As best I can tell, though, His worship was mostly either alone or at the temple, so I don't know that our conept of worship is all that great either. However, worship is not outreach. The sinners and irreligious were attracted to Jesus during his public conversations with his opponents or during his 'hands on' ministry times (healing, feeding, having one on one conversations, at dinner, etc), not during temple worship. To try to aim worship services at the irreligious is to deny believers a time of group worship and encouragement. Seeking to have teaching times that reach the unbelievers is a valid thing to do, but it should not replace group worship for believers.



Our church states that 'worship is our number one ministry priority' in its statement of core values. I personally think that discipleship should be our number one overall ministry priority, but worship is indeed the number one priority for public worship services. Our attraction to the irreligious should be in our 'hands on' ministry time (feeding the poor, helping the helpless, etc) and in events that raise issues in the public square, as Jesus did. Confusing the attraction of the irreligious to the active work of Christ with attracting them to worship services does worship a serious disservice.