Today we will see the Word of God is at the center of what it makes, what makes a true and a healthy church. And that's the question today. What is a true and healthy church?

What we're going to do is dig a little bit deeper still into the nature of the church by contrasting the true church with false churches and considering the functional result of being the true church. What do we do as a church? How does a true church actually function? We want to do that from the scriptures.

Now you might be asking why does this matter? This whole talk about true churches and false churches and it sounds a little divisive to talk like that. So why does it matter?

 I don't know if you've noticed but there's been a monumental thing that's happened in the United States, in the church, in the United States. There's many monumental things that have happened but I'm talking specifically about the United Methodist Church.

The United Methodist Church in the last four years has split. There's been a division in the church, and as of the last day of last year, December 31st, there was like a four-year window in which churches could leave, and a full 25% of churches in the United Methodist Church left the United Methodist Church. I guess it's not united anymore as it was.

The reason that's important is because the Methodist Church used to be one of the really the biggest denomination in the United States. It goes all the way back to the 1700s and John and Charles Wesley began something that came over to the United States. It spread all across the frontier of the United States because they had circuit riding preachers and the Methodist Church has been a big, big deal in the United States for a couple hundred years.

Now it has split. Methodist churches who believed the Bible had to decide— is this a true church or is it not? And whether they frame it that way or not, that's really what the question has been. And those who left saw that the main part of this denomination had become false, that they had lost the message. They had lost the point of it.

These are profoundly important questions for us. To ask of ourselves, to ask of our church, and to ask as we look at the church around us.

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