The MOST Important Question: A Sign

What are the primary reasons for the church's existence, and, by extension, why should there be CityWell churches?

These are first order questions, the answers to which will determine the answers to pretty much every other question. So, here is my first response: The church exists, and hopefully CityWell churches will exist, to be a sign, a foretaste and an instrument of the Kingdom of God. I'll address each of these elements in successive posts.

To say that the church is a sign of God's Kingdom presupposes something about the world, as well as something about God's intentions for the world and strategy to realize those intentions; namely, the world exists, from creation unto eternity, to be the theater of God's life-giving love, the stage where divine dance constantly creates and invites the creation to joyful participation. That’s why we’re here, you know – to join in the dance, to share life with God, to enjoy the Lord forever!

Well, obviously things in our world don’t always resemble a divine dance; we often experience destruction rather than creation, and our lives are as often marked by brokenness as by joy. Yet however far astray from God’s intentions we have fallen, God remains determined to reclaim all that is lost, to make everything sad come untrue (thank you Jason Grey for that phrase), to make all things new, to bring His kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven!

So what does that have to do with the church, and in particular with CityWell churches? In short, everything! The church is to be a sign of this coming Kingdom of God; our whole identity, our mission, our very existence is determined by God’s prerogative to bring about a new creation. To say that we are to be a sign of the kingdom is to suggest something both exalts and humbles the church.

First, the church is exalted in God’s grand scheme to route evil and reconcile all things to Himself, as God has designed that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known (Eph. 3:10). There is no escaping the fact that, for reasons only God knows, the church is at the center of God’s strategy to right the world again.

Second, though, the church is humbled by it’s role as a sign, for a properly functioning sign also points beyond itself. Being a sign, means to always bear in mind that this isn’t about us; this is all about GOD and His Kingdom. The church must assume the posture of John the Baptist, who seeing Jesus said, “I must become less, that He might become more” (my paraphrase of John 3:30).

So, CityWell churches will have to continually ask of themselves: Do we recognize the magnitude and significance of what God is calling us to? Are we trifling with religious consumerism or are we engaged on the front lines of the invading Kingdom? Are we aware that this is not all about us, and that we can easily be distracted from a Kingdom focus by seemingly more pressing concerns such as attendance, budgets and our own institutional survival? Is our ministry geared more toward the church or more toward the world into which the church is sent as a sign? When people who do not know Jesus come into contact with us, will they see us lifting up ourselves, our interests and our programs, or will it be clear that we are about Jesus’ agenda for the world? When people look at our life together will they see a dance? Will they see joy and creation and beauty? Will they see the signs that God is in fact busy making all things new?

I pray that CityWell churches will be signs - hopeful, joyful, life-giving signs that God has indeed inaugurated His kingdom through Jesus, and that this kingdom is coming to completion!