What is the purpose of the church? Is the purpose of the church to provide us with the opportunity to meet new people and make new friends? Is it to make us feel spiritual? Is the church to be a political machine that wages war against the ills of society? Or is the church a gathering place where everyone is encouraged to offer their opinions concerning their interpretation of the truth?

Many people would agree with some or all of these explanations. However, the Holy Scriptures provide a vastly different view of the purpose of the church. The Lord states that the church exists in order to educate God’s people in the knowledge of the truth. The Apostle Paul’s instructions to the young pastor, Timothy, included these words: “I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).

The church is to be the pillar and ground of the truth. In his epistle to the Ephesian Christians, Paul explained how the Lord Jesus Christ had established the church:

"He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love." (Ephesians 4:11-16).

Free Grace Bible Chapel labors tirelessly to present the timeless truths of historical, biblical Christianity and to build up our members until we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God. The goal is to equip every man, woman, and child with a comprehensive, unified philosophy that stands solidly on the sixty-six books of God’s infallible Word.