What distinguishes a parachurch organisation from a church?

Question 9099.

What distinguishes a parachurch organisation from a church? The question sounds academic until a congregation is asked to fund one, staff one, or send its young people away for a week with one, and then it becomes very practical indeed.

My short answer is that a parachurch organisation is a voluntary society formed to do a particular job alongside the church, and that it is a supplement to the local church rather than an extension or a replacement of it. Working out what follows from that takes a little longer.

What a church is

The New Testament word ekklesia describes an assembly of called-out people. A local church is a gathered body of baptised believers, under recognised leadership, that preaches the word, administers the ordinances, exercises discipline, and sends out the gospel. Those functions are not a job description we have invented; they are given.

Notice what that includes. A church has members who belong to one another. It has elders who will give account for souls. It baptises and it breaks bread. It can remove someone from fellowship and receive them back. Those are the things Jesus and the apostles entrusted to the church, and no other body has been given them.

The church also began at a particular point. It came into being at Pentecost as a new work of God, distinct from Israel and constituted by the Spirit. That matters here, because it means the church is not a useful human arrangement that can be improved upon or restructured at will.

What a parachurch organisation is

A parachurch organisation is formed by Christians to accomplish a task that a single congregation could not manage alone or would struggle to do well. Bible translation agencies, student ministries, prison chaplaincies, publishers, camps, relief charities, and theological colleges all fall into the category.

The defining features are these. A parachurch organisation is voluntary, task-specific, and accountable to a board rather than to a congregation. It has staff and supporters rather than members. It does not baptise, does not administer the Lord’s Supper, and cannot exercise church discipline, because those things were never given to it.

None of that is a criticism. A parachurch organisation is doing something genuinely useful, and often something the churches have neglected. The good ones know exactly what they are and say so in their own literature.

Where the tension arises

The tension appears when a parachurch organisation begins to function as a church without becoming one. A student ministry that gathers weekly for worship and teaching, where young believers receive all their spiritual input and form all their Christian friendships, has become the church in everything but name for those students. When they graduate they often have no idea how to belong to a congregation.

It appears again in funding and loyalty. A member whose giving, time, and enthusiasm all flow towards a parachurch organisation while the local congregation gets the leftovers has inverted something. I say that as someone who supports several such bodies gladly. The order matters.

And it appears in accountability. A parachurch organisation answers to trustees who may live nowhere near the people it serves. A church answers to a congregation who see their leaders every week. When a scandal breaks in a Christian charity, the absence of that ordinary accountability is usually somewhere in the story.

Mission agencies as a special case

Mission agencies sit slightly differently, and I want to be fair to them. Their work is the establishment of local churches in other places, which means their aim is to produce exactly what a parachurch organisation is not. On that basis they warrant the support of the wider body of believers in a way that a general-purpose charity might not.

A good agency plants churches, trains national leaders, and then hands over. It measures success by the congregations that exist after it leaves. When you assess a mission agency, ask whether it is building churches or building itself, because the two are not the same and the difference shows up in the annual report.

How a church should relate to one

Support them, but keep the order straight. The congregation is the body Jesus purchased with His own blood and entrusted with the ordinances. A parachurch organisation is a servant of that work. Where the two conflict for a member’s time and money, the church has the prior claim, and healthy organisations will say so themselves.

Ask questions before you partner. What is the doctrinal basis, and is it more than a form of words? Who holds the leadership accountable? Does the organisation encourage those it reaches into local churches, or does it quietly become their church? Would it survive the loss of its founder?

And be honest about the direction of influence. A parachurch organisation with money and profile can shape a small congregation’s priorities without ever intending to. Fellowship rests on the gospel, a right view of God, and a high view of Scripture, and those tests apply to organisations as much as to individuals.

The historical picture

The parachurch organisation as we know it is largely a product of the last three centuries. The missionary societies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the Bible societies, the Sunday School movement, and later the student ministries all arose because churches saw work that needed doing and no existing structure to do it.

That history is worth knowing, because it shows the pattern at its best. Believers formed a society to accomplish a task, the task was accomplished, and the churches were strengthened. Paul himself organised a collection across several congregations for the relief of the saints in Jerusalem (2 Corinthians 8:1-5), which is co-operative work between churches for a specific purpose.

It also shows the pattern at its worst. Some societies outlived their purpose, kept their fundraising, and became institutions defending themselves. A parachurch organisation without a clear end point tends to acquire one thing above all: a need to continue existing.

Questions worth asking about accountability

Who appoints the trustees, and can they be removed? Are the accounts published in a form an ordinary supporter can understand? Does the founder still control the board? Is there any mechanism by which a supporting church could raise a concern and expect an answer?

These are not cynical questions. They are the same kind of questions a congregation asks of its own leaders, and a healthy parachurch organisation will have thought about them already and will answer them without defensiveness.

Where the answers are vague, be cautious with your church’s money and your church’s name. Association is a form of endorsement, and congregations have been embarrassed by organisations they supported without ever examining.

A word to those who serve in both

Many believers give time to a parachurch organisation and to their local congregation at once, and that is a good arrangement when the order is clear. Paul worked with a wide circle of co-workers who moved between congregations and projects, and he never treated that mobility as a threat to the churches.

What he did insist on was that everything be done for building up (2 Corinthians 12:19). That is the test. If your service outside is making you a better member inside, keep going. If it is quietly making the congregation feel like an obligation you fulfil on Sundays, something has slipped.

Where the local congregation must not be replaced

There are things Jesus gave to the church and to no other body. Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the exercise of discipline, and the recognition of elders belong to a congregation of believers who know one another and have committed themselves to one another. A parachurch organisation may do many good things; it cannot do these.

That is why I resist the language of Christian community used loosely of any group of believers doing something together. A weekly meeting with teaching, singing and prayer feels like a church, and for young believers it will function as one, but the marks are not there and the accountability is not there.

Paul told the Ephesian elders to care for the church of God, which He obtained with His own blood (Acts 20:28). That price was paid for a body, and no society formed for a purpose, however excellent, stands in the same relation to Jesus.

So, now what?

If you serve with a parachurch organisation, thank God for it and then ask whether it is feeding your local church or feeding on it. If you lead a congregation, teach your people the distinction plainly rather than assuming they see it, because most of them do not.

And if you are a student or a young believer whose whole Christian life is happening inside a Christian society, find a church, join it, and stay. The organisation will move on when your circumstances change. The congregation is where you will be baptised, fed at the table, corrected, and buried. Related reading: what parachurch ministry is, the purpose of the church, and the autonomy of the local church.

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

Acts 20:28, ESV