Barabbas Road Church in San Diego’s view on Parachurch Organizations

Before we can understand whether or not parachurch organizations are a good thing, we must first understand not only what a parachurch organization is, but what the church is as well. A parachurch organization is a church that comes alongside the church in order to assist it in its mission. The elders at Barabbas Road Church in San Diego believe that parachurch organizations can be very beneficial; however, we must understand both the pros and the cons of these organizations.

We will examine the pros first and explain how it relates to the church. A benefit of a parachurch organization is that it can focus on one specific cause and be very mobile. This allows for a parachurch to accomplish something that a local church may not be able to do. For example, a parachurch organization can be a pregnancy center, a law firm or even a publishing company. These types of groups can be very beneficial for the local church; however, it can be very difficult for a local church to try to run these types of groups. This is why a parachurch organization can be very helpful in these kinds of instances, as a parachurch can partner with the local church and work together on a specific cause.

One negative of a parachurch organization is that it is not the church. A parachurch and local church can work well together if they understand their roles. The problem is that the roles are sometimes not clearly understood. What should be understood is that the church itself is who God is concerned with. The Bible, in particular the book of Ephesians,talks about the church in three different ways: as the body of Christ, as the bride of Christ and as the building of Christ. Here God’s concern is very much with the church and in each of these descriptions of the church the examples are of the local church.

As a local church, Barabbas Road Church in San Diego is an organization that is fundamentally organized to make disciples. The result of that is that we are able to see the number of disciples growing and worshipping God through the universal church. This is where parachurch organizations can be very helpful, because as the local church grows in disciples the hope would be that parachurches would get started from Barabbas Road Church by these disciples. At Barabbas, there are examples of people from the church who have started orphanages in South America, built houses in Mexico and who are feeding the homeless. If anyone would start an organization to do these kinds of things then the elders at Barabbas Road Church would commend them in every respect.

The greatest weakness of a parachurch organization comes when the people of the organization believe that their organization is the function of Christianity. We have to understand that every parachurch organization exists to assist, come along aside and be apart of what the local church is doing. It’s the local church that needs to be celebrated. Therefore, if parachurch organizations can understand this and churches themselves can understand this,then this can be a phenomenal thing for the body of Christ.