We Love Hurting People

Here at Flannel Pilgrims we bring you time and time again great quotes from our collection of silly church marquees... Enjoy!

And the parachurch DEFINITELY can't survive without the church.

As was said in an earlier post, there is a nasty tendency for parachurch organizations to cut themselves off from the church and attempt to function as a separate entity. Since these organizations are not coming out from the local church and aren't really working alongside the church, i would say they shouldn't be called parachurch in the true sense of the word.

But first things first. I've been asked for a more clear definition of what constitutes a local church and what constitutes a parachurch.

For starters, read this sermon by John Piper for some more insight. I think he makes some good points. A local church is comprised of Christians who have appointed leadership. Those leaders guard the church and the ministries of the church. They also administer the sacraments and work with other means of grace such as fellowship and teaching of the Word.

Those are not functions of a parachurch. Parachurch ministries work within the auspices of a local church, but are specialized to do a specific task. The specific task of our organization is to engage the campus we work on with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We do our minsitry among non-Christians, while the church is comprised of Christians. Our ministry is guarded by the local church, and the church works through us to reach the campus with the gospel. If the local church can say "Yes, we are doing evangelism on campus and we are doing it through InterVarsity Christian Fellowship," i feel like i'm doing my job.

Our Christian students are church members who have a mission field on campus, just like other church members have a mission field at work or in their neighborhood. It's not too different. These students are part of the ongoing ministry of the church and are encouraged to be in discipleship relationships, attend small groups, Sunday school, and other church activities like any other member. The difference is, we've taken on the task of training and encouraging these students to make the most of their opportunity to share the light of the gospel.

What about parachurch orgs who don't come out from and work alongside the church? I would call them "amputated ministries." If ministries make an effort not to work within the realm of the local church i have lots of questions, but i'll save it for another day. My guess is someone will bring it up in a comment!

Couldn't help it.

We inerrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this brief intermission:

Here is a great parody of Rob Bell done by our friends CanonWired on youtube. The link can be found here. Both funny and true.

The church can't survive without the parachurch

Well, my blogging friend has asked me to draw first blood. The two topics he's chosen are the two most important to my vocational mission and are very near and dear to me, but the topic that most people really honed in on in my last blog was church/parachurch relationships. This topic is a bit touchy, though it has been beated to death in the past few years.

I won't hold my cards too closely here since you've probably read half the stuff off the old blog: Ole and i work for a parachurch ministry. I struggled with parachurch ministry for a while, even while working for one, until a conversation with John Piper made me start rethinking parachurch structure.

I think the model for parachurch ministry we have working in our organization is a good one, though we are still learning.

There is a nasty tendency for parachurch organizations to attempt to function outside of the auspices and authority of the local church. Even in my own organization this runs rampant, and too often ministries attempt to be a separate entity from the church. This in effect stops being a true parachurch and starts being something else. The Greek work para means "out from" or "alongside." I think it is significant to note that a parachurch must be serving alongside the church or it becomes something other than a parachurch. For me, I place all of my personal ministry under the authority of the elders in my church and i am accountable to them. We also have requirements for our leaders regarding local church involvement. One of my greatest tasks in ministry is to get students into local churches and discipleship relationships in those churches.

With good working relationships with the local church, we get to focus our ministry on being a missional branch of the local church, engaging the campus with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Along the way, i've spent an awful lot of time making the church take on the role of making disciples and teaching college-age students. Students involved in our ministry have an incredibly high rate of local church involvement after college because of the values and love for the local church instilled in them in our minsitry.

The title of this post is that the church needs the parachurch. This comes from a realization that, for example, the apostle Paul's missionary journeys, church small groups, prayer meetings, and outreach events are all parachurch ministries. John Frame goes so far as to say that each congregation is in fact a parachurch ministry if we have a right understanding of the Church. When we try to separate church/parachurch and pretend we can have a ministry that is a separate entity from the local church we get into trouble. For me, the parachurch is the most strategic place i can be in order to serve the local church and the universal Church. I love the local church, so i work in the parachurch. Who agrees? Disagrees? Do you think in a perfect world we wouldn't have the parachurch? How can we work on better church/parachurch relationships?