The Church’s Main Thing!

Most of us have heard the adage, "The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing." A number of years ago, while serving as associate minister for the Wood Avenue church of Christ in Florence, Alabama, Kenneth Davis wrote about some folks in England who forgot the main purpose of the famous passenger buses used by many in their community. He wrote in a church bulletin article in the early 1990's – "Buses on the Hanley to Bagnall run in Staffordshire, England, often failed to stop for passengers. When complaints began to come in, council member Arthur Cholerton explained that if buses stopped to pick up passengers, the timetable would be disrupted. With the official, it was more important for buses to be on time than it was for them to carry passengers." Bro. Davis went on to ask: "Is it possible that we can let our purposes for being Christians to lie in the realm of being social ... and merely keeping up appearances? ... To please God and be His servants and save our souls should be our purpose in life. Is that your purpose? What IS your purpose?"

How goofy is it if bus people forget the main business of buses is to bus people! Now, what is the church’s main business? From the get-go early Christians believed the main thing for the Lord’s church was to get and stay in the business of preaching the gospel to lost people! Jesus put us in that business in the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20 * Mark 16:15-16). From the beginning the brakes were off and they stayed on the go with the gospel. Even a superficial scan of the book of ACTS makes that clear. In Acts 2:22-41 the apostles, led by Peter, preached Christ as the crucified, risen, ascended Lord and told people how to be forgiven of their sins, and about 3,000 obeyed the gospel on the very first day the church opened to do business for the Lord! From that awesome beginning we see the church in ACTS preaching and preaching and preaching whether results were positive or painful and negative. When authorities ordered the apostles to stop preaching Christ or face trouble, Peter said in Acts 4:20, "We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." In Acts 5:42, even after having been jailed and beaten for preaching Christ, we read that "daily in the temple and in every house, they did not cease teaching and preaching that Jesus is the Christ." You don’t need a Ph.D. in theology to see they clearly believed the main thing for the church was to preach the gospel to lost people! Acts 8:4 says that even as they ran from persecution, "those who were scattered went everywhere preaching the word." The early church never lost sight of the fact that preaching Christ was the church’s main thing. Three words from the apostle Paul’s pen in Colossians 1:28 sum it up – "Him we preach." What is the main thing in the Lord’s church today? Are we seeking the lost? Are we busy as beavers with a lot of good programs and fun activities and even service projects – but failing to really reach out and engage people in talk about their soul and their relationship with God? Have we become a "worshiping society" of silent or at least, stationary saints? Do we ever seek, in the words of Acts 5:20, to "go, stand, and speak" the gospel – or are we content to come, sit, and listen? Do we know what the church’s main thing is anymore? How much do we care? I’m just asking.

– Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN