What is the church?

The church is an objective community, marked off by baptism and visible to the world by her worship and life. The church is not a lifestyle enclave or a close-knit cell group of like-minded people, but a redeemed community with a priestly service to the world. The Great Commission of our Lord reminds us that the church does not exist for the sake of her own members, but for the sake of the world. In imitating our Lord, we embrace the world without becoming identified with it, and we die to the world without removing ourselves from it.