What is the Christian Church?

The early Christian church had no buildings, at least not in the sense of what we would consider church buildings today. First-century Christians were often persecuted and, as a result, often met in secret usually in homes. As the influence of Christianity spread, eventually, buildings dedicated to worship were established and became what we know today as churches. In this sense, then, the church consists of people, not buildings. Fellowship, worship, and ministry are all conducted by people, not buildings. Church structures facilitate the role of God’s people, but they do not fulfill them.

The Visible and Invisible Church

When speaking of the church, theologians often use terms such as the visible and local church as opposed to the invisible and universal church. The visible and local church is, of course, the physical churches that we see around us and around the world, as well as the members of those churches. The invisible and universal church, however, refers to all believers everywhere and is one church, united in Christ, not many physical churches. Everyone in the universal church is a true believer, but such is not necessarily the case with visible and local churches.

Why is it relevant to understand some basic differences between the visible and universal church? One key reason is so that we do not confuse what we sometimes see fallible churches doing with the reality of the universal church. Not only do visible and local churches often host nonbelievers but also the believers themselves are imperfect, resulting in challenges and tensions in every visible church.

What Does the Church Do?

The church is not a building, but a body of believers with a specific nature and purpose. These biblical roles or ministries of the church are foundational to it. What are these roles? They are many, but the key to any church are foundations in worship, edification, and evangelism. Worship is God-centered and Christ-centered. It is not about entertaining Christians with flashy displays or presentations, but about expressing our love by worshiping our Creator. We are to praise and glorify God in worship. As such, every Christian needs to be part of regular fellowship and worship. Edification is also the role of the church. It involves edifying believers, but also nurturing, building up or helping believers to mature in Christ. To this end, churches are tasked with a variety of ministries such as Bible study, continuing education in related areas, praying for one another, acts of genuine hospitality and more.

Evangelism is also a key role in the church. This means reaching out to a lost world with the Good News about Jesus. Since people often have questions or doubts about Christ and Christianity, knowing the truth and being able to defend it (apologetics) is also part of the role of the church. But beyond evangelism in the sense of reaching out with the gospel, the church must also express compassion and mercy tangibly by helping others.

In following Christ’s example to love others, the church, too, must seek to make a real difference in the world while not neglecting to share the message of Christ. If a church fails to fulfill any of these key roles – worship, edification, evangelism – then the church is not functioning as God intends. Granted, there are times when churches face challenges and struggle to one degree or another, but a healthy church seeks to overcome such challenges in a way that honors God and His intentions for His church.

Church Volunteer Opportunities

Volunteering has a spiritual benefit as well. By volunteering, an individual will often want to dive deeper into the life of the church. At the same time, they serve not only as a helping hand but also as a witness of the Gospel message within the community. However, while many may want to give of their time, it can be difficult to align schedules and balance other obligations. So while the desire to volunteer may exist, people often run into roadblocks that prevent them from giving of their time.

Many people travel for work, others live far from their church, and some have families who claim their time during the week. And everyone has unique God-given gifts. So it’s critical for churches to be inclusive and provide a variety of opportunities to volunteer. That’s why we’ve put together a comprehensive list of different volunteer opportunities for your church that will help engage your congregation in creative ways. We’ve divided them into 5 categories to help you determine what might work best at your church.

Holiday Or Special Event Opportunities

One-time events are ideal volunteer opportunities for those whose busy schedules don’t allow them to commit weekly. Christmas and Easter services tend to take more hands to pull together all the details, and numerous volunteers are needed. Normal Sunday volunteer roles are multiplied; more greeters, more children’s ministry volunteers, and more parking attendants.

Here are a few roles you could implement for holidays or special events:

• Fellowship volunteer: have this person pick up donuts, snacks, or bake cookies, and prepare coffee for a table at the front of the event. Great opportunities for this are at Christmas services, Easter services, special events, or group meetings.
• Carnival volunteer: have someone volunteer to set up or tear down games, run a face painting booth, or host a table of crafts.
• Handyman: know a dad or granddad (or lady!) who is great with a hammer? Put them to work building things, helping with set designs for special holiday programs.
• Set up and tear down: this person is particularly vital if you are a portable church, but you will always need someone to fold up chairs and direct others where they go or reorganizing rows of chairs into the right order. This person could also make sure all the technical parts are put away and secured.
• Children’s ministry holiday volunteer: this person could help organize holiday parties, make valentines or halloween treats, find creative holiday themed programming for Sunday school or church preschool classes, help make laminated or cutout projects, organize supplies and colored paper, and so much more.
• Organizer for Christmas child boxes: Operation Christmas Child is a fantastic way to get little kids excited about being generous during the holidays. This person could set up a way for people to get assigned to a box, turn it in, make sure all the pieces are correctly submitted and coordinate mailing them off. This person could also do similar volunteering roles with an Angel Tree or caring for a specific family or coordinating with a homeless shelter to bless a family during the holidays. Another great way to do this is to organize a “Christmas in a box” – including presents, dry goods/ingredients for a Christmas dinner, ornaments, lights, and a small faux tree to deliver to someone who otherwise wouldn’t have a Christmas.
• Organizer for holiday military care packages: deployed servicemen and women are appreciative of care packages, especially at the holidays. Have someone coordinate and organize supplies, packing, shipping, and all the details to keep track of who and where to send it, and what you can and can’t send. This could be several volunteer roles, too.
• Christmas decorating volunteer: include someone who has a great taste for design and decor in decorating and trimming the entire church with Christmas cheer!
• Easter egg hunt egg stuffer volunteer: this person is vital to a successful egg hunt. Several volunteers could make a great assembly line of stuffing candy and treats into plastic eggs.
• Children’s Christmas program/play director volunteer: designate your theater teacher/play director/actor/actress at your church to pull off the best Christmas Pageant ever.

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Social support is no doubt part of the story. At the evangelical churches, I’ve studied as an anthropologist, people really did seem to look out for one another. They showed up with dinner when friends were sick and sat to talk with them when they were unhappy. The help was sometimes surprisingly concrete. Perhaps a third of the church members belonged to small groups that met weekly to talk about the Bible and their lives.

One evening, a young woman in a group I joined began to cry. Her dentist had told her that she needed a $1,500 procedure, and she didn’t have the money. To my amazement, our small group — most of the students — simply covered the cost, by anonymous donation. A study conducted in North Carolina found that frequent churchgoers had larger social networks, with more contact with, more affection for, and more kinds of social support from those people than their unchurched counterparts. And we know that social support is directly tied to better health.

Healthy behavior is no doubt another part. Certainly, many churchgoers struggle with behaviors they would like to change, but on average, regular church attendees drink less, smokeless, use fewer recreational drugs and are less sexually promiscuous than others.

The Benefits

That tallies with my own observations. At a church I studied in Southern California, the standard conversion story seemed to tell of finding God and never taking methamphetamine again. (One woman told me that while cooking her dose, she set off an explosion in her father’s apartment and blew out his sliding glass doors. She said to me, “I knew that God was trying to tell me I was going the wrong way.”) In my next church, I remember sitting in a house group listening to a woman talks about an addiction she could not break. I assumed that she was talking about her own struggle with methamphetamine. It turned out that she thought she read too many novels.