Not long ago, I was watching a local sports channel when an advertisement caught my attention. It was a commercial for Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh, Pa. The commercial was not a typical gambling advertisement. Usually, a gambling commercial is populated by young people, drinks in hand, laughing while gathered around a gambling table, supposedly living the high life. This commercial had none of that. Instead, people were working in the community and wearing shirts that read, “Rivers Gives.” This ad was highlighting the work of the charitable arm of the casino. An establishment traditionally on the take is now playing Robin Hood.

What struck me most was what Dr. Rahmon Hart, director of community relations for Rivers Gives, said while standing beside a sign for Ebeneezer Baptist Church: “We do things like landscaping. We pass out turkey and ham during the holiday season. Anything that the community needs, Rivers Gives does that.” The message was loud and clear. We do what the church does. The subtext was obvious—we do it better.

The commercial raises an important question. What does the church do? The lecture by Dr. Hart had a way of nettling me a bit. I wanted to tell him exactly what the church does. I was tempted to say, and maybe I did start talking to the television a bit, if only for a moment, “The church’s primary task is not benevolence but gospel!” In a cooler moment, I would temper my stark “this and not that” response by saying that a cold cup of water leads to gospel. And so, benevolence does have a place in what the church does, but in service to the gospel rather than supplanting it.

But let’s take a breath. It’s never a good strategy to allow an opponent to bait you into a quick response. If we answer the question “What does the church do?” without first knowing what the church is, we will be headed in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, the church herself often falls into the snare of describing what she does before knowing who she is.

Thinking about Existence

About 25 years ago, I established the first of two churches that I would plant in my denomination. At that time, some men suggested I read some of the current church planting books on the market. I did and discovered that, down to the last of them, the authors prodded me to ask questions about purpose and mission. They, too, wanted me to answer the question, What does the church do? One man I was speaking to at the time put the question this way, “What is this church’s place in the community? What will be the work this church does in this community? Will it be food distribution, after-school tutoring, helping abused women, or something else? When people think of this or that need, will they think of this church?” But it seemed to me then, and it seems to me now, that such a course is wrongheaded. The church must have a firm grasp on her identity before she can know her place in a community or culture.

Almost 75 years ago, H. Richard Niebuhr wrote a book called Christ and Culture, which may well have been titled Church and Culture.¹ It is helpful for the categories it provides. But the book really answers the same question we are trying to avoid for the moment—namely, What does the church do? For Niebuhr, the church either avoids the culture, or the church is infiltrated by the culture, or the church transforms the culture.² But all roads lead back to the same question: What does the church do?

My grandfather would sometimes take my brother and me to his workshop. On one occasion, he handed us a homemade tool, a tool he invented and manufactured, and said, “What is it?” My brother and I turned it this way and that while offering guesses about its usefulness. My grandfather took it from my hand and said, “This is a trimmer.” It was not a very creative name! Nevertheless, when ceramic products, like sinks and toilets, are taken from the kiln and the mold is removed, the piece will have a “lip” around where the molds came together. My grandfather designed and manufactured the trimmer for the purpose of removing the rough edges. He told us about is-ness before he told us of usefulness.

Americans have been pragmatists for a long time. Usefulness is a virtue in the land of the free. When Dietrich Bonhoeffer visited America, he diagnosed American Christians as pragmatists but lacking sophistication. Yet there is a large and important difference between the 19th-Century pragmatist and today’s school of thought. According to the older pragmatists, philosophical theories were simply tools for coping with reality. In other words, even pragmatist philosophers believed that the world had a given order and a given meaning, and thus their theories were required to conform to the world’s reality.

Today such is not the case; people believe that the world is simply raw material out of which purpose and meaning can be created.³ So, before we go further, we need to answer the question, What is the church?

What Is the Church?

Before the apostle Paul’s conversion, he was breathing out threats against what he believed to be a new and heretical sect within Judaism. But Luke, the author of Acts, understood things differently. Paul, who was then Saul, “was ravaging the church” (Acts 8:3). However, God had different plans for Saul.

The risen Christ met Saul while he was on his way to Damascus for the purpose of persecuting the believers he would find there. While on the road, a bright light shone around him, he fell to the ground, and he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4). Saul asked what all of us might have asked in that situation, “Who are you?” The voice identified Himself as “Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (v. 5).

With a cursory reading, Jesus appears to have a referent problem. Saul was on his way to persecute Christians in Damascus, but Jesus claimed that Saul was persecuting Him. The assertion is startling. But rather than an example of grammatical confusion, this is a glorious example of Jesus identifying with His people, to whom He is united, describing them as His body. That is how we ought to think about the church.

Our Culture and Its Need

It should not surprise us that the world devalues the church, which is the body of Christ. In fact, it doesn’t even recognize what the church is, let alone what it does. And that is not at all surprising because the world doesn’t even recognize the physical body of a man or woman. How then can it know that the church is the body of Christ? This is the state of things in our world.

I tried to reach out to Rivers Casino after watching that commercial. I wanted to speak to Dr. Rahmon Hart. I wanted to tell him that our world’s greatest need is not ham at holidays or beautiful landscapes that will lay a veneer over corrupt businesses like the casino itself. What the shapeless and aimless community needs is the gospel, which sounds forth from the well-formed body of Christ.

The seminary is vital for training men to serve in the tumultuous current of our present culture. Yes, seminarians will learn how to handle the Scripture rightly, but they will learn more, or at least they should. Seminarians should learn from pastors, men who know the languages of the Bible, the theology of Scripture, and the history of the church, all so they might proclaim the message of Christ. Seminarians will learn what the church is even as they learn what it is meant to do.

Notes