Hello Church, who are you?

The Bible warns us that the world will be at odds with Jesus' family, the Church (John 16:33). So, it is no surprise that churches in the United States are marginalized, ignored, and often hated. Still, the church is the ambassador of hope, even for those who think poorly of the church. When the hostile culture looks at the church, what do they find? Do they find a people of expectant hope in God or a people captivated by the clamor of the day-to-day? Who is the church in the United States?

The coming of Jesus as a savior-king is called good news in the Bible. In Isaiah 52:7, we have insight into why the arrival of Jesus is good news. The coming of Jesus is the declaration that God is still on His throne (Psalm 29:10) and that His now-and-not-yet kingdom is here and coming, and nothing will stop this from happening. Here is the hope of Christianity: that through Jesus Christ, we are saved from our sin and will also are being saved into the presence of God. In this season, when the church is in-between being saved from sin and waiting to be saved into the presence of God, Jesus has given the church a mission (Matthew 28:19-20). Therefore, the Church is those who have surrendered to Jesus, are gathered, and are committed and engaged in Jesus' disciplemaking mission (Mark 1:17, Matthew 16:17-19). The good news is that God is and always will be king. The Church is the ambassador of hope, independent of circumstance, because it lives in the expectant tension between being saved and waiting to be saved.

The identity of the Church is clear, but what about the identity of the local church? Answering the identity question of the local church is vital for church leaders and individual Christians. Jesus' disciplemaking mission is articulated differently depending on context. Early in the movement of the church, we see Paul contextualize the good news of Jesus differently for the Athenians (Acts 17) than he did the Ephesians (Acts 19). Every local church has a context that informs its identity. The context of the local church is a combination of location, the age of the church, denominational affiliation, organizational/cultural values, doctrinal values, church leaders, and church members. While the identity of the Church-universal is clear, the local church's identity is unique, dependent on its contextual variables.

Each local church has an irreplaceable role to play in fulfilling the disciplemaking mission of Jesus. Local church leadership must take on a missionary role, becoming a student of the local culture and the contextualizing variables of the church. The culture of the United States continues to change and move further away from a biblical worldview. Yet, the Church and each local church have the God-ordained task in the disciplemaking mission of Jesus to be the ambassadors of hope to a lost and dying world.

"Therefore, we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day. For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory. So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:16-18, CSB).