Marks of a Great Church

What makes a church great?  Is it the building?  Is it the programs?  Is it the talent-pool the church may possess?  Is it the size of the congregation?  Is it the number of young men and women who have gone on to what we sometimes call “full-time Christian service”?  It is a rich history?

No doubt these are important qualities for a church to possess.  But are they the greatest?

As Paul closes the first chapter of Ephesians (1:15-23), he gives us some insight into the qualities that make a church truly great.

He begins by praising the Ephesian church.  It was common in a first-century letter to praise the recipients but this praise usually came much earlier in the letter. Paul’s reflection on the wonder of God meant the Ephesians had to postpone hearing his words of praise about their church.

It’s important to recall that at this time Christian congregation had no buildings he might have praised.  He would not be writing about architecture, stained-glass windows, or acoustics; he was praising something less tangible. 

Having praised the church, what does he do?  He doesn’t give them a plaque or certificate from a denomination’s headquarters.  No, he puts the church on his prayer list!  In effect, he says, “You’re already a great church, so I’m going to pray that you develop some qualities that will make you even greater.”

It’s as we analyze the elements of his prayer that we get a glimpse of the qualities that mark a great church.  We will discover that none of these qualities require a church to be wealthy, large, or famous.  Each is needed if a church would make a difference in the world.  None is out of reach for any church.

A great church is marked by…

Loving-Faith

For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all God's people…

Paul begins by mentioning their “faith” and their “love.” The sentence structure tempts us to think of them as two different qualities; yet, there is reason to think Paul is linking them.

In some manuscripts, the word “love” is not found but interpreters believe the notion is implied.  In his modern English translation, J. B. Phillips follows this notion. He translates the verse as, “I heard of this faith of yours in the Lord Jesus and the practical way in which you are expressing it towards fellow-Christians….”

Whether Paul used both words are not, it’s clear he thought of them as being interrelated.  Faith is expressed in love; love is an outgrowth of faith.  Love and faith are essential ingredients of the Christian community.  They are like salt and sugar in a cake; leave either one out and you know something is amiss.  Congregational life is truncated if either of these qualities is absent.  The same can be said of the individual Christian’s spiritual life:  The Christian life begins with faith in Christ; that faith will lead to love.  As A. Skevington-Wood says, “Faith finds its focus in Christ and expresses itself in love.” 

Such love is inclusive.  Note the word “all.”  This love ought to be expressed even toward those “saints” who are sometimes unsaintly.  That breadth of love is impossible without a faith-based link to Christ.  Only that way will we see the potential of marred, flawed believers to become vibrant saints.

Such love is trusting.  The Twentieth Century New Testament speaks of this loving-faith as including “confidence in all Christ’s people.”  The church—God’s one new people—was made up of people of diverse backgrounds.  It could not continue to exist without loving trust.

Both the key individuals in this story are gone now so I feel I can share it.  Several years ago our church decided to place a cross on its outside wall—hardly a rare act for a church.  It would be a simple white Roman cross, mounted on a white wall.  According to the original proposal, made by an artist, the cross was to have been white, giving the feature a bas-relief appearance.

Marian, who agreed the building needed the cross to announce it was a church, favored a white cross. But Lloyd, who joined the discussion later, favored the dark cross.  He began to crusade for the dark cross, visiting church members in their homes, not only arguing that a white cross against a white background couldn’t be seen but also telling all who would listen that anyone who favored a white cross was “ashamed of the cross.”  As pastor, I told Lloyd he could certainly argue for the color he favored but passing judgment on those who differed from him was wrong.  He didn’t listen. 

In the end, the matter was forced to a vote—after an acrimonious debate.  Lloyd “won” by only one or two votes. The cross would be dark brown.  Those who first proposed adding a white cross left the church over the issue.  Though disappointed, Marian remained with the church but never again became involved in any project.  Lloyd did not trust the men and women who shared pews with him.

A great church needs faith reflected in love; love rooted in faith.

A great church is marked by…

Experiential Knowledge of God

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.

Paul prays for the Ephesians to “know God better.”  The prayer is not that they might know about God—important as that may be—but that they know God.  The goal is to link head knowledge with heart knowledge.

Modern evangelicalism is rooted in the revivals of the eighteenth century.  Evangelists like George Whitefield spoke of the importance of “experimental religion.”  According to historian Frank Lambert that refers to

Of course, that involves knowing something about the character of the God to whom Paul prayed.  This is the God Paul wanted the Ephesians to know, the God we need to know if we want our churches to be great, if we want our spiritual pilgrimage to be fruitful.

This God is a “glorious Father.” The phrase is more often translated as “Father of glory.”  John Gill reflects on its meaning:

The Father of glory; or the glorious Father; who is glorious in himself, in the perfections of his nature, and in the works of his hands; and as a father, he is a glorious father to Christ, and is a father to him, as he is to none else; and has been honoured and glorified by Christ, and from whom Christ as man has received much honour and glory: and he is a glorious father to the saints, to whom he has shown inexpressible love, by adopting them into his family; and pities them, as a father does his children; takes care of them, and protects them, and makes a glorious provision for them; not only of good things now, but of an eternal inheritance hereafter: and he may be so called, because he is the author and giver of eternal glory and happiness; and because all glory is due unto him….

God the Father is worthy of all the worship we may give to him. On the one hand, this means the church must come before God with reverence and awe.  Our primary business in coming together is to worship him. 

Sir Robert Grant, sometimes Member of Parliament and director of the East India Company, had many earthly honors.  But he understood there was One who merited much more honor.  The hymn he wrote captures this—

O worship the King all-glorious above,
O gratefully sing his power and his love:
our shield and defender, the Ancient of Days,
pavilioned in splendor and girded with praise.

O tell of his might and sing of his grace,
whose robe is the light, whose canopy space.
His chariots of wrath the deep thunderclouds form,
and dark is his path on the wings of the storm.

Yet, this “Father of glory” is a God who wants to know us as his children.  For the Ephesians, both those of Jewish and those of Greek backgrounds, this concept of God would have involved a new way of thinking. 

While the Old Testament sometimes presented God as a Father, the Jews generally hesitated to embrace the notion.  The intimacy implicit in Jesus’ praying would have been shocking to some of them.  He used the term “Abba,” the term of intimacy children used for their fathers.  We might translate it as “Papa.”  The Greeks tended to think of their gods as remote, distant; uninvolved in individual human lives except to punish or to play tricks on.

The great church not only presents God as majestic, but as a God who may be approached by the lowliest.

We need to know him as “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  There are two truths that are the sides of the same doctrinal coin in Christianity.  First, we cannot know God unless he lets himself be known.  The companion truth is this:  God has let himself be known in “our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The great truth we rehearse at Christmas tells us that if we want to know what God is like we should look at Jesus.  One writer reminds us we worship “the Christlike God.”

The deeper knowledge Paul prays for the Ephesians—and us—to have begins with a relationship with Jesus Christ.

No great church forgets that; though some formerly great churches have.  No church should ever treat the knowledge of God as if it were a body of information to be grasped solely with the intellect.  Every church should continually invite men and women to come to know God by initiating a relationship with Christ. 

This implies a truly Biblical understanding of evangelism.   Evangelism is not just about “saving souls,” though is never less than that.  Evangelism is calling people to know the Maker of their souls.  Any church where such introductions take place is a great church.

A great church is marked by…

Hope

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people…

In the musical Annie, the little orphan sings a song called “Tomorrow.” The refrain goes:

The sun will come out tomorrow
Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow
There'll be sun
…

When I'm stuck with a day that's grey and lonely
I just stick up my chin and grin and say, oh
The sun will come out tomorrow
So you gotta hang on
'til tomorrow, come what may!

Of course, it’s a song about hope.  Like Annie, we need hope.  Paul talks about a hope that is surer than the rising of the sun each day: a hope based on what God has done for us. God took the initiative to secure our future.  Because God—not you and I—took the first step, we can be sure his plan is without flaw.

As such, God has “called” or invited us into a situation saturated with hope.  That wouldn’t be so if our salvation rested on what we had done.  But we can be confident because our salvation rests on what God has done for us through Jesus Christ.

That kind of hope transforms our thinking. The eyes of our hearts are “enlightened” so we see things differently than before.  In J. B. Phillips’ words, we are able to look ahead and get a glimpse of “…the magnificence and splendour of the inheritance promised to Christians.”

As a consequence we are able to face difficulties and defeat with a new perspective.  Ann Judson, wife of Adoniram Judson, one to the first Baptist missionaries from America, suffered greatly.  Her husband spent long periods in jail for preaching the gospel, some of her children died, and she was often sick.  Yet she wrote, “In spite of sorrow, loss, and pain, Our course be onward still, We sow on Burma’s barren plain, We reap on Zion’s hill.”

Hope does not deny the trouble of today but it does see a better tomorrow.

We may not face the challenges the Judson’s faced, but we do face challenges.  Both churches and individual Christians face hope-threatening challenges.  They may take a variety of forms, medical, financial, legal, or cultural.  Hope helps us get though those challenges.  To live in hope is to live with confidence inspired by what God had done and will do for us.

The Christians of the first century can teach us to live expectantly.  Peter, who wrote to congregations facing persecution, wrote or the life-changing power of hope.

³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, ⁵ who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

A great church does not look at a resistant culture and gives up; a great church hopes.

A great church is marked by…

Power

I pray… you may know … his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.

In these verses, Paul uses four Greek words to describe the breadth of God’s power.  Taken together they tell us nothing can stand in the way of whatever God wants to do for his people, in his people, or through his people.

But Paul does not leave this discussion of God’s power in the abstract.  He pointed to the resurrection of Christ as the great demonstration of God’s power.  Like the Old Testament prophets who pointed to the Exodus to illustrate God’s power, New Testament writers point to the Resurrection to illustrate that power.

The Resurrection involved more than bringing Jesus back to life.  It involved enthroning him in the place of highest authority (God “seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms.”)  Nothing in the two thousand years since the first Easter has abated that power.  Christ has been given dominion over all the powers that might dominate us as individuals or as the church.  Later in the letter and also in Colossians (2:15) Paul will speak of how Christ has power over any spiritual forces opposing God. 

For the church, this means Christ can overthrow any power that might threaten control his people:  Fear, doubt, hate, racism, cynicism. 

Paul’s prayer suggests that, to a degree, this power may be demonstrated through the church.  Moments before the Ascension, Jesus told his assembled followers: “You will receive power after the Holy Spirit comes upon you….” He used the same word for power that Paul uses in this passage, dynamis.  It is a dynamic, active power.  We get the word dynamite from it.  It is frequently used for the “mighty works” Jesus performed during his earthly ministry.  This same power, God shares with the church.  It is not political or economic power.  It is greater than that.  It is not the power to dominate; it is the power to serve.

Specifically, God’s power is delegated to the church so we might better serve him.  All believers should understand the church may face any challenge through the great power God has made available.  The church is Christ’s instrument in the world to carry his work in the world.  The church consists of Christ’s people carrying on Christ’s work.  He does call the church to do anything he does not empower the church to do.

But experiencing this power requires any church to develop one more mark of a great church.

A great church is marked by…

Submission to Christ

And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Here Paul uses an image for which he is famous, the picture of the church as the Body of Christ and Christ as Head of the church.  The imagery has important implications for the church that wants to be “great” in the Biblical sense.

As the Body of Christ, the church has a special relationship to Christ.  Though Christ has already been described as having “all things under his feet,” his relationship to the church is one of special intimacy. 

Maybe you’ve watched the TV series The Crown that tells about the early days of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign.  In the early episodes we get a glimpse of the special relationship between King George VII and Princess Elizabeth.  Though he was her sovereign and she his subject, they were father and daughter.  That bond made their relationship special.  In the same way, Christ’s relationship to the church is special.  Later, Paul will use another figure of speech to describe it; he will picture the church as the Bride of Christ. 

Paul calling the church the Body of Christ also suggests you cannot be in the church unless you are in Christ.  You may have membership in a legally organized group identified as a church in a particular locality but, unless you are also in Christ, you’re not part of the church that really counts.  Of course, Paul also seems to be telling us if you are “in Christ,” you are also in the church.  The New Testament nowhere imagines solitary Christians. 

Paul calling the church the Body of Christ seems to be suggesting the church is the instrument of Christ’s activity in the world.  Luke hints at this in the opening words of Acts when he says, “I my first book I told…about everything Jesus began to do and teach….” The story of the church is the story of Christ’s ongoing work.  The church, therefore, should resemble Christ, his courage, his commitment, his compassion.  To borrow Tillich’s phrase, if Christ comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable, the church should comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

We also need to understand the implications of seeing Christ as Head of the Church.  On the one hand, we are reminded that Christ is responsible for the church.  He cares for the church and provides what it needs.  We’ll see this again in chapter four when Paul lists “the gifts Christ gave to the church,” namely, “the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastor-teachers.”  Such gifts were necessary if the church were to carry on Christ’s work in the world.

Just as Christ is responsible for the church, the church is responsible to Christ. 

In our day, it is especially important to remember Christ shares his Headship with no one.  But from time to time Christians have forgotten that.  Efforts to usurp Christ have taken many forms in history.  One form we see today is called “cultural Christianity.”  Patrick Morley offers this description:

Cultural Christianity means pursu[ing] the God we want instead of the God who is.  It is the tendency to be shallow in our understanding of God, wanting Him to be more of a gentle grandfather type who spoils us and lets us have our own way.  It is sensing a need for God, but on our own terms.  It is wanting the God we have underlined in our Bibles without wanting the rest of Him, too.  It is God relative instead of God absolute.

Failing to recognize the authority of God’s Word may be another attempt to deny Christ’s headship over the church.  Far too often we hear, “I know what the Bible says but I believe.” 

Please understand, refusing to submit to the Bible is not the same as challenging an interpretation of the Bible.  In an age when many false notions are seemingly backed up with Scripture, it’s important to keep that in mind.  Quoting a Bible verse doesn’t make you right.  Properly interpreting the verse yields the truth that demands our obedience.

We know something is very wrong neurologically when a part of the body refuses to obey a directive from the head.  In the same way, something is wrong when part of the Body of Christ refuses to obey its Head.

If any church would be a great church, it must bow to Christ.

Conclusion:

Just the other day I saw a billboard advertising a local church.  Apparently quoting a member it declared, “My church is awesome!”

That billboard started me thinking.

No doubt, today’s churches are much more blatant about advertising than churches were when I first became a pastor.

At the same time, I wonder how many “awesome” churches there are out there that can’t afford a billboard.

Most important, I wonder if the same traits making that church “awesome” to its members are the traits we’ve been talking about.

If a church wants to be great, awesome, if you will…

It should exhibit a loving-faith.

It should have an experiential knowledge of God,

It should face the future with hope,

 It should seek God’s power to do God’s work,

It should, above all, seek to walk in submission to Christ.