"He (referring to Christ) is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ's body, in which He speaks and acts, by which He fills everything with His presence." - Ephesians 1:22-23 (MSG)
The church is not a human institution, made up of men and their traditions passed down from their founder. The church is a living organism, made up of men all across time professing faith in Christ, thus the Body of Christ.
The history of the church, therefore, is not a narrative of the rise and fall of varying 'dynasties' tracing a common lineage to Jesus Christ the Founder. Instead, the history of the church is an ongoing narrative between His First and Second Coming. A narrative in which believers filled with His Holy Spirit live and carry out His will in a world that does not want His will to be done. The progress of this narrative can be charted, but its direction ultimately belongs to Jesus Christ.
The ubiquity of the church itself is not a human tradition either, but a principal directive set forth by Jesus Christ Himself in what is commonly referred to as the Great Commission. A part of it reads like this, "...go and make disciples of all nations...", thereby requiring that the church be found in every location where men reside, since nations are made of men, and not land.
The work of the church is also enshrined in the same Great Commission, stating that the making of disciples be the primary occupation of all church members. The imperative words "go" and "make" define the Great Commission as a command, an instruction. The Great Commission itself includes additional (though not optional) descriptors of the work - "baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you". It is interesting how at the end of this Great Commission Christ states how He is with the church always, even till "the end of the age". In essence, He states that He is not absent from this work, but facilitates it by His presence.
Thus, the greatness of the church is not built on its political clout or capital, though these are reasonable things which we tend to possess by virtue of the church being made up of people from all walks of life. But all walks of life mean exactly that, we will have the rich, the poor, the celebrated, the unwanted, the outcasts, and lastly, not forgetting the common man. The greatness of the church is found in its adherence to the Truth, who also happens to be the Founder, who spoke of Himself as "the Way, the Truth and the Life."
In the same vein, the culture of the church cannot be like the world in how it continually searches for meaning in activity. Instead, we have the truth found in the person of Christ, who instructs us in His teaching that meaning in life does not come from groping in the dark, but by 'abiding in Him', so that He may 'abide in us'. Fruitfulness, then, comes not by working to find something meaningful to do, but by remaining secure in Him and doing whatever is available in that God-ordained 'space'. Furthermore, the church must remain relevant to the world it is called to reach without relinquishing its roots in the person of Christ, who is the living Word of God. In other words, the church is a pipe or vessel, bringing freshwater from the aquifer who is Christ, without changing His essence. We are not to be electrical transformers, attempting to step down His power to a more tolerable voltage.
What then is the church? Once again, it is the Body of Christ, by which "He fills everything with His presence". In other words, we are His vessels, designed to pour out who He is into every aspect of earthly life. Till Kingdom come, but that is another topic for another time.
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