Developing Our Purpose

What does it mean to be a Christian? How do we decide if someone is a Christian or not? Most of the time when this question comes up I hear people say: “They go to church”, “They’ve been baptized”. They don’t do these things, they do do these things.

While a Christian will go to church and you need to be baptized to be a Christian, there are plenty of people who go to church and have been baptized that are no more Christian than the Dali Lama. If we start making it about a list of do’s and don’ts then we are distilling it down to a checklist. While that is easier, it doesn’t capture the heart of what it means to be a Christian.

Our goal has to be like Christ, that is what discipleship is. A disciple is one who is becoming more and more like the teacher. Paul writing tells us that we are to be rooted in and built up in Him. In other words, we are to be growing.