The Foundation for a Healthy Church

In chapter four of "The Purpose Driven Church", Rick Warren says, "Your church's foundation will determine both its size and strength. You can never build larger than your foundation can handle."

I remember when my wife, Becky, and I had a house built many years ago. We used to go and visit the construction site every day. For a long time, it seemed like very little was happening. However, in fact, the most important thing was happening. The foundation was being laid. That part of the building process took longer than anything else. Once the foundation was laid, it seemed like the construction process went forward very quickly. There were far more obvious and exciting changes happening every day. But the foundation laying process was seemingly tedious and boring.

Perhaps the same is true in the life of the church. The process of laying a proper foundation for the life of the church can be a long and tedious process. But I agree with Rick Warren, it is the most important part of building a healthy church. Coming to understand, from Scripture, the purpose of the church, and articulating that purpose in writing, is the foundation for everything else the church will do.

Right now, Stowe Community Church is taking time to redefine its purpose as a church. The process may seem slow and boring to some. There are probably people in the church who would like to get moving with new programs. But I believe that taking time to rediscover from Scripture God's purpose for the church is more important than anything else we can do at this stage in our church life.

Today I preached on Acts 2:42-47, offering an overview of the five-fold purpose of the church. I look forward to expanding on each of those purposes in the weeks to come as we prayerfully seek God's will and direction for our part of God's kingdom in Stowe, Vermont.

In the mean time, let me leave you with one of my favorite quotes from C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity on this same topic....

May I come back to what I said before? This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else. It is so easy to get muddled about that. It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects—education, building, missions, holding services. Just as it is easy to think the State has a lot of different objects—military, political, economic, and what not. But in a way things are much simpler than that. The State exists simply to promote and to protect the ordinary happiness of human beings in this life. A husband and wife chatting over a fire, a couple of friends having a game of darts in a pub, a man reading a book in his own room or digging in his own garden— that is what the State is there for. And unless they are helping to increase and prolong and protect such moments, all the laws, parliaments, armies, courts, police, economics, etc., are simply a waste of time. In the same way the Church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became Man for no other purpose.

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