Do you view your church as a social agency or a spiritual body?

I was sent an interesting article covering a speech given by Margaret Thatcher. In part she says:

But we must not profess the Christian faith and go to church simply because we want social reforms and benefits or a better standard of behavior – but because we accept the sanctity of life, the responsibility that comes with freedom and the supreme sacrifice of Christ expressed so well in the hymn:

When I survey the wondrous Cross
on which the Prince of Glory died
My richest gain I count but loss
and pour contempt on all my pride.

Here Thatcher is touching on a profound truth. The church is not a building, rather it is a body of people, and each indivdual is a component of the whole¹. Just as a finger is useless and dead when not attached to a healthy body, christians who are not attached to the body of Christ wind up useless and dead: that is why we are commanded to meet together². In summary, the correct reason for going to church is that we might be part of a living body and useful to our Lord³.

However, many in the church have forgotten this and see the primary purpose of the church as being to provide “social reforms and benefits” – one example of this is those churches whose primary purpose is to act as a social agency or a welfare agency. I once heard a person state that she planned to go to X church because “they give out food parcels”: she had no interest in their spiritual values or in what she could give to others, only in what she could get from the church. Church welfare programmes very rarely produce church members who are devoted christians with deep roots, but they do produce plenty of cargo cult members.

God does want us to help the genuinely poor ⁴, first those in the church then those outside⁵. Christian beliefs have also led to social reform. However, these things should not be the reason for our attendance at church meetings. When a church forgets to serve God and instead serves man first and foremost – whether that be by welfare programmes and/or by massaging the egos and emotions of the attendees – it then becomes a cargo cult and more harmful than a welfare state⁶.

Do you view your church as a social agency or a spiritual body?

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1. Rom 12:4-5; 1Cor 12:12-13

2. Heb 10:24-25

3. Eccl 12:13

4. “genuinely poor” does not include those who have spent their welfare benefit on alcohol and cigarettes. Remember that the biblical definition of a poor person was someone who had enough food for one day (often less) and slept outdoors wrapped in his cloak (Deut 24:10-15).

5. Gal 6:9-10; Matt 15:21-28

6. the welfare state is also a cargo cult, the members of which vote for those who promise to deliver the most cargo. Just as the welfare state corrupts people by removing the incentive to work (Prov 16:26; 2Thes 3:10), so do welfare churches corrupt people. Not only do they remove the incentive to work, but what is far worse is that they give an incorrect perception of God and the Church. See also the comments on this post.