SHOW NOTES
What the Church Does, pt1
Leadership in Context with Keith Tucci
Episode 192
There is a lot more talk about what the Church does than what the Church is. If you don’t get the IS right, you’ll always mess up the DOES, because the DOES will get weird on you. Understanding the picture of the Church from Ephesians (which is what we covered in the series before this one) is very critical.
When you look at what the Church IS, you have to translate that to what the Church DOES.
The Church operates in three dimensions:
1. Upward—worship
2. Inward—body life, fellowship
3. Outward—evangelism, the Great Commission
Very seldom are we even on these three things. It takes very strong leadership, sensitivity to the Holy Spirit, and a commitment to the Word to stay balanced. I believe we can have our cake and eat it too. I think we can have all three of these.
Ephesians 2:18
For through Him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father.
Access—that one word describes the reality of the new covenant better than any other word in the Bible, in my opinion. We have ACCESS to God. That access is the privilege that we have.
Your growth and the fruit you bear will be determined by how you use your access more than what gifts and opportunities you have.
Access is the foundation for the UPWARD ministry of the Church. During worship, if you look around, you’ll see some worshiping and some not worshiping. Are we waiting for the presence of God? No. We walk in the presence of God. We have access to the presence of God. Often, not worshiping is a reflection that we are not using that access. People don’t realize that this is a great time to join together and celebrate that access to God.
The first responsibility and privilege of the Church is to worship. In Acts 18, it says that Paul persuaded people to worship God. He didn’t just persuade people to get saved, but to be worshipers. We should be defined as a worshiper of God.
When the Bible talks about worship, in general, it’s not talking about just raising your hands and singing. It’s talking about presenting your life as an offering. Everything you do, say, how you treat people, work, whatever it may be—we do as an act of worship.
Worship is honor, obedience, and gratitude.
Honor—Honor God. Give Him glory. Bow my knee. Because I honor Him…
Obey—I obey Him. I do what He asks me to do.
Gratitude—I’m always full of gratitude, not just for what He’s done and who He is, but the fact that I get to know Him and have access to Him.
Don’t think of worship too narrowly. If worship is just something we do in church on Sunday morning, then we are just dipping our toe in the water. The other side of that, corporate worship, is something we see from the beginning with God’s people—God’s people coming together in adoration. In the worship time, God is the center of it and not man.
The first responsibility of the Church is worship. Everything we do comes out of worship—the broad and the narrow definition of worship.
If everything was taken away, all your liberties, health, resources, your ability to talk to other people—what would you have left? You would have access to God. Nothing can ever stop you from worshiping. In Acts 4, we see the first jail break. When they were thrown in jail, they had nothing—no ability or even rights. But they sang and praised God, and God erupted through them.
I believe God is still doing the same thing today. I believe that if we would put Him front and center, praise Him, give Him honor and glory and obedience, then the inward and the outward would flow a river.
The Church should be all three—upward, inward, and outward. But we have to get the first thing first. We have access to God. We praise God upwardly. When we come together as believers, our greatest privilege is to look upward.
Join us next week as Keith Tucci continues to put leadership truth in the context of the local church. And as always, please like, share, rate/review, and invite others to listen. See you next week!
