One of the interesting things Eugene Peterson talks about in his book, Practice Resurrection, is an ontological understanding of the church; that is, understanding the church for what it is, not what is does. He observes that the functional understanding of the church is pervasive within the context of American Christianity.

Americans talk and write endlessly about what the church needs to become, what the church must do to be effective. The perceived failures of the church are analyzed and reforming strategies prescribed. The church is understood almost exclusively in terms of function – what we can see. If we can't see it, it doesn't exist. Everything is viewed through the lens of pragmatism. Church is an instrument that we have been given to bring about whatever Christ commanded us to do. Church is a staging ground for getting people motivated to continue Christ's work.

This way of thinking – church as a human activity to be masured by human expectations – is pursued unthinkingly. The huge reality of God already at work in all operations of the Trinity is benched on the sideline while we call timeout, huddle together with our heads bowed, and figure out a strategy by which we can compensate for God's regrettable retreat into invisibility. This is dead wrong, and it is responsible for no end of shallowness and experimentation in trying to acheive success and relevance and effectiveness that people can see. Statistics provide the basic vocabulary for keeping score. Programs provide the game plan. This way of going about things has done and continues to do immeasurable damage to the American church.

There is little to add to Peterson's remarks here; he is, of course, spot on. We become so wrapped up in our numbers and statistics and methods and practices that we entirely lose sight of the fact that the church is first and foremost a living body that Christ, as the head, has promised to preserve for all time (Matt. 16:8). It is not primarily about what we do. To be sure, God has entrusted us with certain things that we must do as the church – faithfully preaching the Word, administering the sacraments, and so on – but these are intended to nourish the life of this living body. And what we do in the world – looking after the orphan and widow, bearing witness to the Kingdom of God and embodying an alternative reality of life transformed by the gospel – is not to build up numbers or raise money, but simply to remain faithful to the calling God has entrusted to us, proclaiming the gospel, making disciples, and bringing shalom to a broken and hurting world. If we see numerical growth, praise God! But this should not be our primary motivation.

Recently, there was a church that celebrated an anniversary of some sort (five or ten years or something like that), and to celebrate they wanted to fly some new church planters out to their church so they could see how things are done. I am sure that their intention was only to be supportive and encouraging of other church planters, but what seemed to come to the forefront was a deep faith in programs and methods. Effectively, what they were saying was that they had figured out something that enabled them to go from a small core group to several thousands of members in a short time span, and others needed to adopt these methods if they wanted the same results. It was numbers and statistics that proved God was blessing them.

It is so easy to get caught up in this because we want that visible, tangible proof that God is blessing us. We cannot disconnect from the idea that numerical growth equals blessing and success. We want to see results – big church buildings, big budgets, front page articles in newspapers, people flocking to learn from us. Our barometer for faithfulness is statistics, and when our statistics are not good, we think our strategies have failed. That is business and economics, but the church is neither. Writes Peterson,

This way of understanding church is...very, very wrong. We can no more understand church functionally than we can understand Jesus functionally. We have to submit ourselves to the revelation and receive church as the gift of Christ as he embodies himself in the world. Paul tells us that Christ is the head of the body, and the body is church. Head and body are one thing.

'Ontology' is a word that can get us past this clutter of functionalism... [Church] is far wider, deeper, higher than anything it does, or anything we can take charge of or manipulate... Church is not something that we cobble together to do something for God. It is the 'fullness of him who fills all in all' (Eph. 1:23) working comprehensively with and for us.

Now, I am not saying that big churches are wrong (although I'm a proponent of small, multiplying churches), or that a big church is actually an unfaithful church. The point is that the measure of a church's faithfulness is not so easy to see. Helping to lead people to put their faith in Christ and to be baptised is only one part of the church's task, and we cannot say that our work is done when someone is converted. No, that is only the beginning. A lifetime of discipleship must follow as we walk hand in hand with fellow believers learning to embody the transformative power of the gospel and learning to live in a way that honours Christ's lordship over all of life.

That, of course, is not so easily measurable. But maybe that is the point.

The church is what it is regardless of what we do, and thankfully so, because left to our own devices we make one big mess of it all. It saves us from pride and from putting our faith in what we do. When we come to understand the church for what it is – ontologically – we begin to understand that it is not our responsibility to create or jump-start the life of the church. We are, instead, participants in the life that Christ gives his church. He is the head and we are the body, and anything that we are to do flows from who he is and what he has called us to be.