The Bible clearly teaches that God intends to accomplish his primary purposes in this world through his church. The first Christians understood that a decision to follow Christ also included a decision to make the church the hub of their world, even when it required the abandonment of existing social structures. Yale University professor Wayne Meeks makes this point, based on his meticulous research of the early church: “To be ‘baptized into Jesus Christ’ signaled for Pauline converts an extraordinary thoroughgoing resocialization, in which the sect was intended to become virtually the primary group for its members, supplanting all other loyalties.”[i] The experience of authentic community is one of the purposes God intends to be fulfilled by the church.

Some of you may have tried church and have given up (if not literally, perhaps emotionally), because you were receiving a minimal return on your investment of precious time. Some of you stopped attending, not because you were against church but because you found its impact not significant enough to make the short list of activities for which you had time. I suspect you may be more ambivalent toward church than against it — a reasonable attitude if you see church as merely another world to manage. Scriptures tell us that God intends the church to be the very hub at the center of one’s life and community.

If the church is going to accomplish this divinely inspired purpose in a postmodern world, it will need some restructuring. In a speech to a group of pastors, Lyle Schaller, a leading church consultant, has suggested what this restructuring might entail: “The biggest challenge for the church at the opening of the twenty-first century is to develop a solution to the discontinuity and fragmentation of the American lifestyle.”[ii] The church of the twenty-first century must do more than add yet another relational world to an already overbooked society; it must design new structures that help people simplify their lives and develop more meaning, depth, and purpose in their experience of community.

From Connecting Church 2.0 (release date Feb. 15, 2013)

[i] Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1984), 78.

[ii] From a speech given by Lyle Schaller at a Leadership Network Conference in Ontario, California, October 1998.