Part 2 - A Christ centred community, empowered by the Holy Spirit

If you were to take a tour around the world today and visit a variety of churches, you would experience amazing diversity - quiet and loud, informal and formal, traditional and contemporary, small and large in size, and meeting in all kinds of different buildings (traditional, homes, cafes, warehouses, purpose built, even pubs).

So what is the right expression of church and are ALL of these, or ANY of these, what Jesus really had in mind? Of course, no church is perfect today, just as there were no perfect churches in the first century! They faced many challenges including false doctrine, immorality, disunity, and false teachers. However, I believe that if any of these churches today are "a Christ centred community who are being empowered by the Holy Spirit to participate in God's mission in the world" then they truly are an expression of the church of Jesus Christ, as imperfect in some eyes as they may at times be.

Often the measures we use for assessing church success is not what Jesus meant when he said: "I will build my church."

It is important that we know how to manage growth by forming sound leadership and administration, to create effective outreach programmes and pastoral teams. These things are good, but we must take care that what is good does not become the enemy of the best.