In an otherwise helpful series of reflection questions coming out of Advance09, a conference I would love to have attended, Luke Wisley asked one that left me scratching my head:
1) With the ever changing culture around the church defining what a church is has become more difficult. Can you biblically define what a church is? Why is it important to be able to biblically define it?
The first sentence is what puzzled me. Why does an ever changing culture make it more difficult to define what a church is? Scripture is our only authoritative source for determining what a church is and Scripture does not change (Num 23:19, Prov 30:5-6, Rev 22:18-19).
So, whether your church is in the center of New York City or Canaan, Indiana (yes, that is a town), the definition of a church is the same. The culture has no effect on the definition of a church. Or at least it shouldn’t.
This post is not aimed at Wisley: his point was to ask “can you biblically define what a church is?” and “why do you need to be able to?”
But his lead-in sentence reveals why his questions are so important. The culture pokes and prods at Christians, seeking to mold them into its image instead of into Christ’s image. Christians have to do battle to keep the culture from molding and shaping what a church looks like; instead of a church looking like what the Bible says it should look like.
Wisley’s post is a demonstration of this reality.