Why Does The Church Exist?

I was recently reading a paper for the Evangelical Homiletical Society and ran across a quote about the nature of the church that was outstanding. The paper was written by Glen Watson entitled “The Preacher As Cultural Architect”.

The church is by nature, missionary. The church does not have a mission; God has a mission, and He sends the church into the world to complete it.
David Bosch says,

“The church is not the sender but the one sent. Its mission…is not secondary to its being; the church exists in being sent and in building itself up for the sake of its mission…Ecclesiology(nature of the church) therefore does not preceded missiology(nature of missions). Mission is not a ‘fringe activity of a strongly established church, a pious cause that maybe be attended to when the home fires are first brightly burning…Missionary activity is not so much the work of the church as simply the Church at work.’ It is a duty ‘which pertains to the whole church’. Since God is a missionary God…God’s people are a missionary people.