The glorious church exists to praise God and to give him all honor.The focus on the glory of God means that people are worshipers and recipients of the grace of God, and they are never to be used. People bring their gifts and talents, their faith and their abilities, but what they give to God does not make God more glorious. It makes God’s people more aware how glorious God is. The church adds nothing to the glory of God. Since God has all the glory that exists, there is no glory to be extracted from God’s people. There is nothing from the efforts of people that will ever make the church greater in glory or more pleasing to God. The best it can do is experience the glory that God has made known about himself.

The church is great because of the Christ who is at the center of all we do. We believe that the Gospel has enough power in itself to provide for the needs of the glorious church. The Gospel doesn’t need the church. The church needs the Gospel. Only when Christ is our Substitute, our Savior, our Only Qualification, our Great Hope, are we pleasing to God.

The glorious church does not exist for greater numbers of people and for fabulous amounts of money. That implies that bigger is better in glory. But all glory is already God’s, so the numbers’ game is foolish.

In the glorious church, numbers never come into the equation in considering whether or not to create a new ministry or a mission. Practically, to be sure, there is an accounting of what is possible (do we have people with the gifts necessary to do this work? or do we have enough financial resources available to complete this work?). There will never be indebtedness for ministry. But we will be free from the love of money, knowing that God will never leave us nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).

Our ministry scope and reach is only calculated on the basis of the glory that God possesses, not on numbers and finances. This changes the reasons for which we exist and the purpose for every ministry. We never use the calculus that “if we could attract X number of people, then we could generate Y amount of money.” We may ask, “How can we tell more people about the glory of God?” “Who in our church has a vision-yet-unfulfilled that we can help bring into reality, so God’s glory will be praised, displayed, and experienced through these wonderful believers who have themselves experienced the glory of God and desired to tell others about this glorious God that they have known by faith in Jesus Christ?”

“For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

2 Corinthians 4:6