What is the Church? (Group Study, Video Session 6)
David Fitch defines the Church as “a community of practices which join people together in their submission to Jesus as Lord.”
Before diving into session 6 of the group study, What is the Church: Why It still Matters, take a moment to reflect on this question from Pete’s March 19th sermon: Where in your life right now do you need to practice reconciliation?
(If you would like access to this video study, please contact Groups director Jessica Flake.)
Session 6: The Church’s Role in His Mission
The Kingdom of God
1.What do you know about the kingdom of God from the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John)? How is this kingdom different from what we may imagine?
2. Read Luke 22:24-30 . What does this moment during the Last Supper say about the kingdom of God?
God Brings His Kingdom Through the Church
3. How does the following quote make you re-think our role as the church, or as members of the church body?
“It is not the church that has a mission of salvation to fulfill in the world; it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes the church.”
- Jurgen Moltmann
How the Church Works in the World: Manifest Presence vs. Omnipresence
Omnipresence is Christ’s presence covering the whole world. Fitch says manifest presence is God’s presence through Christ, “centered in the church where He works, is known, and becomes real.”
4. Why does God include the church in His mission? Why doesn’t God just do everything through His omnipresence?
The Two-Fold Movement
5. Read Matthew 28:18-20. How does the Great Commission represent the two-fold movement of Christ that Fitch talks about in this section?
Not From Our Own Strength: God’s Presence
6. What happens when the church takes God’s mission upon ourselves to accomplish out of our own power?
Reflect Together
At the end of this session, Fitch describes the danger of thinking of ourselves (the church) as responsible for doing God’s work in the world.
7. Think about a time when you have been tempted to take God’s mission upon yourself and work out of your own strength. Why were you tempted? How did that go? What was good or bad about the experience?
