The Local Church is the Hope of the World, Bill Hybels.
Something about that statement use to sit wrong with me. I would say to myself, no Jesus Christ is the hope of the world! I have since been challenged in my thinking. God’s eternal plan to redeem and restore a broken creation includes its execution through His agent, the Church Universal! And His church Universal interacts and impacts time and space in the church local.
So very truly The Local Church is indeed the Hope of the World!
The Purpose of the Church is to be about the Purposes of God, or better yet, the Church was created for the redemptive mission of God.
Christopher J.H. Wright puts it:
…to ask the question, “What is the mission of God’s people?” is really to ask, “For what purpose do those who call themselves the people of God actually exist? What are we here on earth for?”
But to answer that we have to go one step further back and ask, Whose mission is it anyway? And of course, the answer to that has to be – it is the mission of God. God himself has a mission. God has a purpose and goal for his whole creation. Paul called this the “whole will [plan] of God” (Acts 20:27; cf. Eph. 1:9 – 10). And as part of that divine mission, God has called into existence a people to participate with God in the accomplishment of that mission. All our mission flows from the prior mission of God. And that, as we will see, is broad indeed. “Mission arises from the heart of God himself, and is communicated from his heart to ours. Mission is the global outreach of the global people of a global God.”1
It is not so much the case that God has a mission for his church in the world, as that God has a church for his mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church; the church was made for mission – God’s mission.
Wright, Christopher J. H. (2010-09-07). The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission (Biblical Theology for Life) (Kindle Locations 173-185). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
JW Hilliard 