16 August 2001 Editorial:
The Church is Not Walmart

Reflections on heaven's goals for the last movement.

Larry Kirkpatrick

Church growth seems a noble goal. God did not hesitate in urging His penmen tell us that the church grew daily as our He added to it "such as should be saved." Inspired history records this, along with exhortations to the workers in the church to do their work faithfully, to prayerfully steward the gifts of heaven granted them to accomplish the work appointed in our Father's house. Nevertheless, church growth is not our primary goal. Our primary goal is to expedite the conclusion of the great controversy with victory for our God. This is our work.

We must be careful not to forget that growth is also the goal of Satan's kingdom. He too is seeking ever more adherents. And so is Shell, Walmart, Sears, Chevrolet, and MTV.

Church growth must never become an end in itself. No, we mustn't forget that we should be seeing a growing church as we do our work. But let's watch and pray and do things "decently and in order." First things first. You can grow a purportedly religious institution by any number of means. If you can get away with it you can hand-out drugs in the foyer. That will bring in a certain crowd. They may not necessarily be interested in holiness, but they might sign on the dotted line and join a structure. Mind you, their motives could be called into question. Preposterous you say? Perhaps. But might there be other similar methods and motivations current, differing but little from this?

If I change the music and make it like the world, or if I make church like watching TV or going to the movies (clowns, puppets, prestidigitation, balloons, or dramatics), or if I make my Father's house like the mall and offer classes and things for the family, or heighten awareness of my local church in the community by such seasonally "relevant" events as bunny rabbits and easter eggs or santa clauses or a float in the parade--then those outside may see. But what do they see?

Shall the goal of the church be known by them merely as that it would grow? Is that what the sin-sick multitudes are seeking? Shall this satiate them? If they will get on board and add their name to the rolls, will they find fulfillment? Is this what the world is waiting for: an ever-enlarging and engulfing church?

What the world needs is healing from sin, deliverance. Right now. If there is none of that in the church then the church is nothing more than a place of merchandise. Heaven's goal for the last movement is that whatever else it does, His church should be a support-structure for His ideas, a concrete manifestation of His community where His gifts are operative, where the water of salvation truly flows. It is a community well aware of its situation, passing through this world only, on the way to the better land. We are not here to plant our stakes forever in the sod of earth cursed, but to be morally renovated and renewed and see the salvation of God; to boldly go where no people have ever gone before. To co-operate with our Father's work of making us what the universe watches for: His restored sins and daughters.

To just do church would be like riding in an airplane in a holding pattern, never able to land. Now in particular, with the airport so visible below, now, as we approach the very borders of the kingdom, when all the great controversy stands nakedly revealed before us, now, when we know God's goal to perfect a people and reproduce the character of Christ in each, when the time of the latter rain is not tomorrow or the next day but today, now we must fulfill God's goal for His church. While we in tandem with the power of heaven do the work of becoming holy, there will be growth in the church. But our first and foremost, even all-consuming goal, must be to expedite the conclusion of the great controversy with victory for our God. That is, after all, His goal.

If we can do our work just like other human corporations and social structures having goals unspecific to moral renovation, then let us be wary in our work. Let us never confuse our mission with mere religious capitalism. Holiness is our goal and heaven is our home. The church is not just another Walmart.

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