Are We Playing Church or Being the Church?

If you’ve found my blog, you may know that I’ve written two textbooks on Baptist history. The Baptist Reformation is the interpretive history of the Conservative Resurgence in the SBC. A Matter of Conviction is the history of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission and Baptist influence in helping to shape Western civilization.

I haven’t spent much time in recent years poring over Baptist historical texts, but in recent weeks I’ve been preparing to teach a course at Lenexa Baptist Church on "The Baptist March Through History: Who They Were and Why It Matters," so the history of the denomination has been on my mind.

While at Cross Church in Rogers, Arkansas last week, Dr. Ronnie Floyd asked me a salient question: "Who are we as a denomination and what are the critical issues that we must face?" I answered that we are a denomination in search of an "identity." Across the board, I am not convinced that we really know who we are, what we should be doing, or why it matters.

Peter Drucker, famous business thinker, is known for stating,"The first question is this: what business are you in?" I am not at all convinced that the vast majority of our 40,000+ churches and our 16 million+ members of the SBC know how to answer that question. Many might tell you that we should be fulfilling the Great Commandment, the Great Commission, and the Great Contrast (being salt and light in a decaying culture). But the issue, however, is in what we DO; everything else is just religious talk. 

When everything is said and done, there is a lot more said than done. 

Until each local congregation determines what business it is in and aligns its actions with its answers, I see a continued drift.

If the goal of a local congregation is simply to keep the institution from going under, pay its bills, take care of itself, and perpetuate its old guard leadership structure, it is not even in its essence fulfilling the biblical definition of church. The first step in helping the denomination clarify its identity, is to help local churches clarify what business they are in.

If a local church is not thinking and acting strategically on how to:

-Win the lost to Christ

-Disciple those who are won

-Worship God authentically

-Minister to its people and community in which it resides

-Participate in the great task of world evangelism

-Engage in cultural renewal

it is not only falling short of its biblical mandate, it may be simply playing church without being the church. 

These things delineate the business we are in. So, how about your church? Are you being the church, or playing church?