Like any family, the church needs proper discipline and order so that our personal and corporate life together will imperfectly but truly reflect the fact that the church is an embassy of Christ and the age to come even in this present evil age. God’s law, not our spontaneous sincerity, defines what we should do.

How many times have you heard that the church is not a place but a people? Across the board, from more traditional to more experimental approaches to ministry, the dominant perspective seems to be that we gather on the Lord’s Day primarily in order to do something for God and each other rather than first of all to receive something from God. Drawing on Darrell Guder, Emerging church leader Dan Kimball has recently argued that in its emphasis on the “marks of the church” (preaching and sacrament) the Reformation inadvertently turned the focus away from the church-as-people who do certain things to the church-as-place where certain things are done.

But there’s nothing inadvertent about it. With Scripture itself, the Reformers were very explicit about the fact that we come to church first of all because the Creator of the universe has summoned us to appear before him in his court. Entering as his covenant people, we invoke the name of Christ for our salvation, God addresses us again in judgment and forgiveness, and we respond with our “Amen!” of faith and thanksgiving for who God is and what he has done for us. The gifts of the Father in the Son by the Spirit come first; our action is a response to God’s action.

Why We Need the Church

Because the church is first of all a place where God does certain things, it becomes a people who do certain things. We cannot take God’s action for granted or assume that it has been done in the past. Christ, both Lord and Savior of his church, appointed an official ministry (including officers) so that he could continue to serve his covenant people and extend his kingdom of grace to the ends of the earth by his Spirit. Even in the present-every time we gather-it is God who summons us in judgment and grace. It is not our devotion, praise, piety, or service that comes first, but God’s service to us. This is why we must assemble at a place where the gospel is truly preached, the sacraments are administered according to Christ’s institution, and there is a visible form of Christ’s heavenly reign through officers whom he has called and sent.

Pastors, teachers, and elders are not “life coaches” who help us in our personalized goals for spiritual fitness, but gifts given by the Ascended Lord so that the whole church might become mature and less susceptible to being spiritually duped (Eph. 4:1-16).

From “Every-Member-Ministry” to “Self-Feeders”

The reigning paradigm of churches today, however, seems to be quite different. Two characteristics especially stand out when we think of American Christianity: activism and individualism. Known for our self-confidence, Americans do not like to be on the receiving end. Even when we are receiving something, we prefer to think of it as something we deserve rather than an outright gift.

We’re also individualists. We do not like to be told who we are and what we need by someone else-even God-but would much rather decide who we are or will be and determine our own felt needs accordingly. Our emphasis on choice in this culture collides with the biblical emphasis on God’s electing, redeeming, and calling grace as well as the covenantal, communal, and corporate nature of our growth in Christ. Even when we come to church, it is often as individual consumers of spiritual experiences, with opportunities for self-expression in worship and “finding our ministry” in the church rather than being beneficiaries of God’s gifts to us through servants whom he has called to be our shepherds under Christ (see Eph. 4:1-16).

Not surprisingly, ministers today are regarded more as “life coaches” who facilitate our self-transformation than as ambassadors of Christ, devoted to the Word of God and prayer, so that they can spread a feast on behalf of the King for his people in this world. If the focus of our message falls on our “willing and running” rather than on God’s mercy (Rom. 9:16), it will follow that our methods will concentrate almost exclusively on finding the best techniques for transforming ourselves and others. It is a simultaneously activistic and individualistic approach. Yet this subverts God’s whole intention on the Lord’s Day. He comes not to help you “become a better you,” but to kill you and raise you together with Christ as part of his redeemed body.

God’s Service Creates a Redeemed People on Pilgrimage in This Present Age

Churches of the Reformation have always agreed that the true church is found wherever the gospel is truly preached and the sacraments are administered according to Christ’s institution. But this means that the public ministry provided on the Lord’s Day is primarily God’s ministry to us. We are not individuals who come together simply for fresh marching orders for transforming ourselves and our culture, but sinners who come to die and to be made alive in Christ-no longer defined by our individual choices and preferences (the niche demo-graphics of our passing age), but by our incorporation into Christ and his body.

Even the purpose of our singing is not self-expression (witnessing to our own piety), but is to “teach and admonish one another in all wisdom” so that “the word of Christ [may] dwell in you richly” (Col. 3:16), “giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of Jesus Christ” (Eph. 4:20). We come to invoke the name of our Covenant Lord, to hear his law and receive his forgiveness. Only then are we able to receive his gifts with the “Amen!” of faith and repentance, with a heart full of thanksgiving toward God and love toward our neighbors.

But if “church” is primarily about what individuals do (even if they happen to do it in the same building), then it stands to reason that our services will focus on motivating us for action rather than ministering to us God’s action here and now in the Spirit, through Word and sacrament, that which he has already accomplished for us objectively in Jesus Christ. The liturgy will be replaced with various announcements of church programs; the songs will simply be opportunities for self-expression; the preaching will largely consist of tips for transformation; baptism and the Supper will afford opportunities merely for us to commit and recommit ourselves rather than serve as means of grace.

Before long, it will be easy for churches to imagine that what happens on the Lord’s Day is less important than what happens in small groups or in the private lives of individual Christians. In fact, this is explicitly advocated today.

In a fairly recent study, Willow Creek-a pioneer megachurch-discovered that its most active and mature members are the most likely to be dissatisfied with their own personal growth and the level of teaching and worship that they are receiving. From this, the leadership concluded that as people mature in their faith, they need the church less. After all, the main purpose of the church is to provide a platform for ministry and service opportunities to individuals rather than a means of grace. As people grow, therefore, they need the church less. We need to help believers to become “self-feeders,” the study concluded.⁽¹⁾

The Ultimate in “Self-Feeding”

How far can this trajectory take us? Evangelical marketer George Barna gives us a good indication. Like the recent Willow Creek study, Barna concludes that what individual believers do on their own is more important than what the church does for them. Barna, however, takes Finney’s legacy to the next logical step. A leading marketing consultant to megachurches as well as the Disney Corporation, he has recently gone so far as to suggest that the days of the institutional church are over. Barna celebrates a rising demographic of what he calls “Revolutionaries”-“millions of believers” who “have moved beyond the established church and chosen to be the church instead.”⁽²⁾ Since “being the church” is a matter of individual choice and effort, all people need are resources for their own work of personal and social transformation. “Based on our research,” Barna relates, “I have projected that by the year 2010, 10 to 20 percent of Americans will derive all their spiritual input (and output) through the Internet.”⁽³⁾ Who needs the church when you have an iPod? Like any service provider, the church needs to figure out what business it’s in, says Barna:

Ours is not the business of organized religion, corporate worship, or Bible teaching. If we dedicate ourselves to such a business we will be left by the wayside as the culture moves forward. Those are fragments of a larger purpose to which we have been called by God’s Word. We are in the business of life transformation.⁽⁴⁾

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