Discipleship: Our Calling to Holiness and Mission

Today’s reading concludes Section V: Discipleship – Our Calling to Holiness and Mission. Read here.

Local churches play a vital role in our formation as disciples by ministering the means of grace in the gospel and experiencing its transforming power in their corporate life.

We affirm that a local church grows and matures as it seeks to ensure that its corporate life reflects the pattern of life that conforms to the message of Christ crucified. Churches do so through the proclamation of the gospel; through regular rehearsing of the gospel in baptism and the Lord’s Table; and by gratefully responding to the gospel in prayer and praise. Within the church, individual believers learn to conduct themselves as citizens of heaven who live lives worthy of that citizenship by mediating the grace conveyed to them by the Spirit to their fellow believers. Within the church, individual marriages are conformed to the loving union between Christ and his people. Within the church, individual families are strengthened in the way of the Lord by life within the household of faith. In this way, both the church and its members are built up in the most holy faith, conformed to the image of Christ by the Spirit, and encouraged to live lives of holiness, faith, and the purifying hope of our Lord’s return. Prepared by the ministry of the gospel within the church and prompted by the compassionate example of Christ, we learn to see the whole of life as worship, to seek the good of those outside the church, and to work for the restoration of wholeness to the world in all we do. (Eph 2:19; Phil 3:20; 1 Thess 2:12; Jude 20; 1 John 3:3)

Local churches also play a vital role in providing accountability and modelling healthy patterns of leadership and governance for ministry leaders, missionaries, and ministry partners.

We call ministry leaders and missionaries to remain in vital fellowship with and accountability to local churches. While this is true of all disciples, those called to forms of ministry outside of their local churches must remain vitally connected to the life of Christ within the church and reflect the ongoing work of God’s Spirit within a local church. In his providence, the Lord has raised up ministries and mission partnerships to collaborate with the local church to sharpen and equip his people to be and make disciples. We affirm the importance of these ministries but also the importance of maintaining a clear focus on and connection to the local church as the embodiment of the new humanity that God is forming in Christ. Such ministries honour Christ when they draw on the instruction given to local churches in Scripture for their patterns and principles of accountability, transparency, and oversight. In doing so, they will adopt structures of plural leadership and governance that preserve the location of spiritual authority in the gospel rather than any single individual. (Acts 6:1-6; 15:1-35; 20:17-38)