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What is the church?

It’s an important question. If we are looking for a faithful church to be part of. If we are looking towards church planting or established pastoral ministry. If we are wanting to be good members and servants of our church week by week. We need to know how to approach this thing which is the centrepiece of God’s eternal plan, the bride of Christ, the agent of mission, the great means of grace and growth for God’s children.

There are various different ways to express the key marks of a healthy, biblical, God-honouring church. Tony Merida gives the following in Nature, Marks and Purpose of The Church (Acts 29 conference, Nairobi 2017):

  1. Headship of Christ
  2. Rightly appointed leaders equipping the saints for ministry
  3. True believers
    1. gathering regularly
    2. worshipping
    3. hearing the gospel of Christ preached [see Merida, Christ-Centered Expository Preaching (2017 Nairobi conference) or his more recent book]
    4. receiving the sacraments rightly administered
    5. under the exercise of church discipline

To these Merida adds that the Nature of the church is ‘called out’ people and the great Goal of the church is worship (to declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light) which will happen as people from all nations are brought to the joyful worship and obedience of disciples (the great commission).

A somewhat overlapping list of marks is given by Mark Dever in his Nine Marks of a Healthy Church (sample). His emphasis is not so much on the essential nature of the church but on those aspects of church practice which are most in danger of being lost in the contemporary church:

For a short explanation of each mark with Bible references and a video see the 9Marks site. As we mentioned in a previous post, Dever has also floated a possible tenth mark: Church that is outward-looking.

Personally, though very grateful for what Dever has done in putting his finger on weaknesses in the western church, I'm keen to look to the Scriptures (and their reception in church history) for the marks of the church and its worship. How about these for starters:




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