Ankerberg Show

Announcer: Welcome to the John Ankerberg Show discipleship segment. Whether you've recently discovered your faith in Christ or have been a longtime follower, we aim to provide you with the tools and encouragement to strengthen your relationship with him. We are dedicated to equipping you to confidently share the hope that resides within you, as instructed in 1 Peter 3:15. Join us now for the John Ankerberg Show discipleship segment as we embark on this journey of spiritual growth and learning together.

Have you ever taken a log out of a fire and seen what happens? It stops flaming and quickly grows cold. The same thing happens to us when we don't gather with other believers. Our love for God grows cold. The Bible says we need each other. Find out today how the church can encourage you in your walk with Jesus by joining us for this session of the John Ankerberg Show.

John Ankerberg: Welcome. I'm John Ankerberg and today our topic is the church. What is it? And my guests, my friends, are Sunder and Shama Krishna. And Sunder, when we come to the topic of the church, people always think just in terms of a building that's down on some block or some other place in town. The Bible does not think that way at all, does not teach that way, and it's not true. What is the church?

Sunder Krishna: There are actually four beautiful pictures that we find in the Bible to describe the church, and they are so important because images have a way of conveying truth to us and we don't forget them. And you rightly pointed out it's not the buildings made of brick and stone that's the church.

First of all, most of all, it talks about the church as the bride of Christ. In Revelation chapter 21, we see a beautiful picture of the church as the bride. What that says to me is that Jesus loves the church. If you are part of a church, no matter how insignificant your group may be, wherever you are, whatever the neighborhood is thinking of you, you are the beloved of Jesus.

And it says in Ephesians 5, he loved his bride so much, he gave himself for her to present her to himself holy and radiant. What a beautiful promise it is for me to remember that the church, which is so often marginalized—and maybe in the country that you're listening to, the church is marginalized and even persecuted—Jesus is making you holy and radiant as his bride.

John Ankerberg: Let me just throw in here, so then we're talking not about a building, but we're talking about the Christians, the people themselves that come together. A little group of people, Jesus calls the church. And those are the ones that he says are my bride. Those are the ones I've died for, I've cleansed, and those are the ones that I'm using.

So we're talking about people, and that's a whole new concept to people not only in America, Europe, Britain, Canada, Africa, and in India. All over the world, people think of a building, not people. So when we think about people, it changes the whole topic.

Sunder Krishna: Right, and that particular group of people of which you're a part, you're part of the bride of Christ. Secondly, he says you're part of the body of Christ of which Jesus is the head. And he compares each one of us to the individual members of our body: arms, feet, eyes, and nose.

The implication of that image is not just that you are the object of his delight like a bride, but that every one of us is interdependent on everyone and everyone needs the other person. In other words, the eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you." Every single person in the church is needed by everybody else to do their part, and when the entire body functions together, there's nothing like the church.

John Ankerberg: The Bible calls this that God has gifted every person that has come into a relationship with Jesus Christ. Whether they know it or not, God the Holy Spirit gave them a spiritual gift to be used in the body or even outside of the body, but as part of the church.

And we're going to talk about gifts a whole lot more in a separate program up ahead. But just know, if you're a Christian, you've got something that God wants you to use in that body. Every Christian is important. And Paul says if you don't do that, then the church is going to suffer.

Sunder Krishna: So that's the second image. The third one is the image of the family, of which God is the Father. This teaches us the fact that we have a sense of belonging in that family of God. Some of you have paid a tremendous price for your faith in Christ. You've been kicked out of your families, maybe, but you have another family of which you are a part, and you will never, ever be kicked out of that family. You belong in that family. It just shows that relationships are absolutely crucial.

And then finally, we are given the picture of a building, but not the kind of building with mortars and stones. In Ephesians, we are told that we are made up of living stones. Each one of us is the stone and putting it all together, he says, you are being built up into a holy temple in which God's spirit himself resides.

So we are a bride, the object of his love; we are a body, we are interdependent and have a meaningful role to play; we are a family, therefore we always belong; and we are a building made up of living stones, and God dwells with us whenever you gather together. Four powerful pictures of what the church really is.

John Ankerberg: All right, now I want to ask a big question. There are five million Christian churches supposedly in the world. Two million of them have a pastor that had seminary education. Then you have about another million or a million and a half that had about a sixth-grade education, and they may or may not have a Bible in their language because they were taught with another language. And so they have a hard time teaching.

And then you have maybe a million and a half to two million people down below here that have no Bible and they have no Bible in their language. Now, the fact is, the question I want to ask you is people that have a pastor in a church—you're talking about America, Canada, Europe, Britain—they become a Christian. They've invited Jesus into their life and they really want to follow him and they say, "How do I pick out a good church where I can grow?"

That's for the people in those spots. That's the first part of the question. Second part is for those people that might be in Saudi Arabia, or in Iran, or in some parts of Africa, or other parts of the world, China, where maybe it might be against the law to go to what we call a church. They say, "What should I do if there is no church?" So two parts to that: how do I pick out a good church, and if there's nothing to pick out, what do I do?

Sunder Krishna: In the first case, where you want to know how to pick out a good church, historically in church history, there have been three marks that have been seen to be important. First of all, that the word is preached because somebody has been given the gift to preach. In Ephesians chapter 4, we are told that God gave apostles and evangelists, pastors and teachers to equip God's people for the work of the ministry.

John Ankerberg: In America, in Canada, Europe, and Britain, so on, you've got what we call expository preaching, which means you can teach what the verses actually are saying in context, verse by verse by verse, so people get to know that. But other spots, they don't have that kind of education.

Sunder Krishna: In places like that, I would say gather together with two or three other people who are hungry for this, start reading the Bible and ask the Holy Spirit to teach you. It will be amazing how much insight you can get from those scriptures, so don't ever think that you do not have what is needed, because you have the power of the Holy Spirit. That doesn't mean pastors aren't important—I was a pastor for 35 years—but never be limited because there isn't a pastor.

The second thing I would suggest is a church that in some way or another remembers the poor. Paul first came to the church in Jerusalem and they decided that Paul would go to the Gentiles and Peter would go to the Jews. He said they asked me one more thing: "Make sure you remember the poor." I think a church that is willing to serve the community in which it is, that is community-oriented, not inward-oriented, that would be a second thing that I would say.

And thirdly, a church where pastors and teachers are committed to equip God's people to do the work of the ministry, because in Ephesians 4, he says, God gave to the church apostles, prophets, pastors, evangelists to equip God's people for works of service so that the whole body can be built up. So God's word is taught, Jesus is worshiped—I'm taking that for granted—the community is served by the body, and everybody is equipped to use their gifts so that they function together.

John Ankerberg: Let me ask you another hard question. Let's say that people have grown up in a church. Shama, you grew up in a so-called Christian church. And yet, a lot of people that are in so-called Christian churches, if you examine what is being taught, you say they're not teaching the Bible here. What should they do? What did you do?

Shama Krishna: Well, in my case, as I said, I ended up, by God's grace, being influenced by the ministry of Youth for Christ. And there, for the first time, the scriptures were opened and we were taken right to the scriptures and discovered the life of Jesus.

But going back to what Sunder was saying, in Toronto, we have some churches that actually don't have a pastor there, but what they do is they bring through satellite somebody else's preaching and teaching. So if you don't have access to expository preaching, in this day and age of technical sophistication, you can gather a few people together—and actually Sunder and I do that on Monday, his day off—and we just listen to someone whose teaching our hearts resonate with and who we believe is speaking God's word to us. So I think there's that other option so that you don't have to go without.

Sunder Krishna: And I think Shama mentioned one thing: she talked about Youth for Christ. Me too, in the beginning, growing up in India, like you said, there were many, many churches, but not coming from a church background, I wasn't really attending a church. And God has raised up these organizations that we call parachurch that come alongside the church who also teach.

Like for example, people listening to this very program, they're not listening to it in the church, they might be listening to it all by themselves. And so we can pray and ask God, if you're in those situations where there's no church and you have no access to any believer, you ask Jesus to send you somebody. It's amazing the stories that we have heard about people who have prayed and God has sent messengers to them.

John Ankerberg: It's one of the things that I tell our guests that when we go into 200 nations around the world on different networks, that we've had people that say, "I don't even know a Christian. We don't have a Christian church anywhere in our country." So people have told me, you have to realize that in one sense, you are the church if they're watching on TV, or if they're watching on satellite, or if they're watching through the internet or something like that. And so what we're doing right now is we're helping them.

Boy, that's a tough situation. And we're going to take a break right here. And when we come back, we're going to talk about this thing of fellowship, why it's so important. Another way of saying it is, some people say, "I don't need to go to church every Sunday, do I? Is it that important?" Why is it important that we as Christians go to church? The Bible in Hebrews says, "Forsake not the assembling of yourself together with the believers." Why did the writer of the book of Hebrews say that? So stick with us. We're going to take a break, we'll be right back.

Announcer: Join us next time for part two of our discipleship series, Follow Me: Experiencing the Joy of Walking with Jesus, as Sunder and Shama pick up where we left off this week. Thank you for joining us on our journey of discipleship. To deepen your understanding and grow in your faith, explore our extensive discipleship resources at jashow.org and engage in transforming courses at jabible.org. ATRI is dedicated to encouraging believers, defending the faith, and challenging the skeptics. Join us in this mission by subscribing to our YouTube channel for more in-depth teachings and practical guidance to deepen your faith.