A New vision for the church - what is the church for?

What is the church for? That is an interesting question, especially if I am wanting to explore whether it is worth keeping. So I googled the question, and found a list. This is probably not a complete list, but seems it serves as a good starting point. The purposes of church are:

Worship. This is not just about singing, of course, although this is a significant part of it. The whole context of worship is a difficult one, because I think that many things I do outside the church are worship, and there is a strong position that argues for worship being everything. However, in this context, I think the churches context of worship is something corporate, focused on God. Singing might be a part of it, but not necessarily - worship should be far bigger than that.

Worship is a very difficult thing to define, although it is far easier to know when you are doing it. For now, I think I will leave it at that, but it is worth bearing in mind that a clear definition of worship is extremely difficult to achieve, because we use the word in a whole lot of different ways.

Spiritual disciplines. What does this mean? I think the core is aspects like prayer, study and exploration of our faith, the drive to be a better Christian, to improve all of the time. I do have questions over whether the church does in fact do this, or whether it enables us to avoid to these. But church should be there to encourage us to improve.

Discipleship. This is the other side of the disciplines, which is about teaching others. Many churches will give opportunities to teach others, or to explore with others, but I think that discipleship is more than this - like with worship, it can cover a whole lot of aspects that are not always included. There is something important in learning to explore and explain what we believe and why with others, and helping them to also explore their beliefs.

Fellowship. In essence, this is about meeting with other people, and is a critical part of what church does. It allows us to meet with others, probably with food or coffee.

Service. This is about doing things for others outside the church group, but doing them because of ones faith. Once again, it can be a difficult thing to define clearly, because all that we do for others is a part of the outworking of our faith. This even applies when we would rather not discuss the activities and our interactions with others.

Evangelism. This is about telling other people why we are Christians, what our faith means to us. It doesn't mean ramming ideas at people, or telling people what they should believe. It means working with people, listening to people, and being open about our faith with other people. It means being open and honest about who we are in all situations.

In truth, the church is quite poor at this. It does tend to "organise" evangelistic events and stuff, but these are more the church as a body getting out - good in itself, but not necessarily helping individuals to be better evangelists themselves.

So this is what churches are for? Is there more than this? Because if this is it, there are alternatives.