FAQ : What is the Church for?

The Church's job is to carry on the work of Jesus. He gave his Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20) to his disciples collectively, not to separate individuals. Before that he called them together as a group, to be the forerunner of the Church.

This Commission was to make disciples and to baptise. During his earthly ministry, Jesus repeatedly told his disciples that he was not offering them an easy life. The job of the Church is not to market a feel-good factor or to make life easier for people. If we were a commercial concern, business consultants would tell us we had got our product wrong or, at the very least, we should keep quiet about some of its side effects.

This is where some of today's would-be disciples go wrong. They do not get what they were expecting and go away complaining that Church did not make them feel happy, help them forget their problems or hand out useful tips. Sometimes we need to hear about pain and sorrow and our worship needs to help us express these feelings. If we ignore them and only want something cheerful, we are likely to get something superficial in return, that does not touch the whole range of our emotional and spiritual selves.

Lent and Holy Week are times when our worship reflects these darker themes. The music, for instance, is deliberately sombre because even dirges can touch us when we are in the mood. We are not forgetting our problems for an hour on Sunday but we are together bringing them to the altar of God, where his transforming miracle takes place.

The Church, then, aims to be transforming not merely uplifting. Her job is to make disciples - God's holy people - and to uphold us in our attempts to live holy lives day by day.

PMP