I never attended seminary, and neither did my husband. Yet, God has called to ministry, not by vocation but by spiritual identity. We are the church. When we join a local church, we do so with the hope that this body will allow us to be active members. During my husband's military career, we have rarely lived in the same city for more than two years. At each new location, we have visited churches, become members, served, been loved, and said goodbye. Through our experience of visiting dozens of churches across the U.S. and abroad, we have found two main types of churches. One church equips and encourages us to be the church daily, while the other primarily invites us to attend church as consumers of its programs and ministries.

On the surface, these two churches look the same. The websites that lead us to visit have the same “What we believe” page. The mission statement or motto of the two are similar: "We exist to glorify God, love people, and make Jesus known.” The calendar of events or “get connected” pages offer similar options: small groups, men’s and women’s studies, and events for youth. Both websites have links to annual Bible-reading plans and an archive of live-streamed sermons. The sermons are biblical. The worship is gospel-centered. It is not until we visit for several weeks that the main differences in these churches become clear.

Church on a Hill

After visiting several Sunday services, I asked a church staff member how I could get more involved. I had yet to meet anyone. She walked me to the welcome center and gave me a small stack of papers listing all of the church’s ministries. Each sheet of paper advertised a different, exciting way to get connected.

Do I want to pray? Join the prayer team!

Do I want to study the Bible? Join one of these four Bible studies!

Do I want my kids to be ministered to? Come to Wednesday night's kids and youth gatherings!

Do I want to serve the community? Join us on Saturdays at local parachurch organizations!

Do I want to serve in the church? Contact the children’s ministry director!

Are you a woman? Come to the monthly ladies’ breakfast!

Are you a man? Come to the monthly men's breakfast!

Do I want to be in a home/life/community/discipleship/care/small group? Email this person to find out when they meet!

Do I want to fellowship? Come to the next potluck!

I want to do all of these things. I want to pray, study Scripture, offer discipleship to my children, serve the church, reach the community, and grow in spiritual fellowship with people in my church. The problem with this ministry system is that very few people can join all of the programs. Those of us who do not work in full-time ministry (and even many who do) cannot commit to everything. I have to choose which aspects of church life I can participate in.

I reached out and requested to join a small group, hopeful that there I could participate in all the aspects of church life: prayer, Bible study, evangelism and community service, church service, and fellowship. However, the small groups were focused on fellowship, and the existing groups were all full, so I was put on a waitlist. I joined a Bible study and helped serve food and wash dishes during a weekly fellowship meal alongside two staff members. I spent three evenings each week at the church building. I studied Scripture in the Bible study group and served the church body in the kitchen. My time in the church was lacking many other aspects of church life. Six months later, I knew the names of about ten people. Some of them knew mine.

Grace Church

Less than one week after arriving in the heart of the Middle East, I sat on a church member's living room floor with two women who asked how they could pray for me. The small group had split into even smaller groups to spend time praying for one another. As my mind rested in their care, tears spilled over, and I shared my jet-lagged and overwhelmed thoughts about settling into our strange new home. The women read Psalm 63 over my weariness. They prayed for me, asking God to sustain and strengthen me, asking that his goodness would satisfy and fill me. When we finished praying, we rejoined the rest of the small group and studied John 1:1-5 together. We prayed again as a whole group for the corporate prayer requests of the church and our community. We ended the evening with a song of worship.

In our two years at this church, we saw new disciples come into the group. The small group size ebbed and flowed as we welcomed new people and branched into more groups. We met outside of the group to fellowship and share meals. We ran errands together, cooked for each other, and watched each other’s children. We prayed for and encouraged each other to share the gospel with coworkers, neighbors, and friends. We held each other accountable, and we heard each other’s sins. We taught each other, sharpened each other, and grew in spiritual maturity together. We joined with other small groups to serve the whole congregation. We sent group members into the mission field. Grace Church had one central ministry with a single goal: deep discipleship of the church by the church. In this place, we did not go to church. We were the church.

The Two Churches

While there are many ways these two types of churches contrast, one of the most significant is how they view the role of the church member. Many churches we visit welcome us to attend their services, while church leaders run everything. Other churches invite us to be the church alongside them. This key difference significantly impacts the church's growth, spiritual transformation, and effectiveness.

In the first church, a small group of church leaders and staff drives the bus of programs and ministries. Everyone else is to get onto the bus, sit down, and come along for the ride. The passengers are kept busy with a long list of activities on the bus. The staff drives in circles seven days a week. Dizzy people exit and don’t come back. The drivers wonder at the decline. They have meetings about it and brainstorm fun new ways to make the bus more appealing. The bus population doesn’t grow. The passengers do not mature. The bus never leaves the church parking lot, though the staff are exhausted from the heavy load of driving day after day.

The other church is a body. Each member is a foot or a hand, an ear or an eye. They care for one another, suffer together, and rejoice together (1 Corinthians 12:21-26). The staff members are not spread thin. Their primary role is to shepherd, teach, and equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ (Ephesians 4:12). They do this by encouraging each to do his or her part with their spiritual gifts. Each part of the body teaches, serves, edifies, encourages, and prays for the other parts. This body then walks through the city, the nation, and the world. Jesus Christ is the head, “from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love (Ephesians 4:16).” This body moves through the world serving and loving people, inviting them to join this strange body, to become one of its many parts, to work for the glory of God’s Kingdom. This body branches and multiplies to fill the world.

We visit and try local churches, praying that God will give us a place to be the hands and feet of Christ to those around us. And so we avoid, to the best of our ability, local churches that see ministry solely as the job of vocational ministers. We avoid churches that give us a list of programs to participate in instead of a community to invest in. We avoid local churches that define a serving church member only as one who stacks chairs, brings food, and takes an occasional shift in children's ministry. We seek out church bodies that view the church members’ spiritual service to each other as necessary for the growth of God’s Kingdom. We look for local churches that desire to see us participate in discipleship and offer us a path to do so in a relational community as active members of the Body of Christ, His Church.

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