QUESTION: Are hospitals and schools part of the work of the church?

ANSWER: Hospitals exist for the purpose of healing the physical body and secular schools exist for the purposes of non-religious education. Both of these purposes are admirable and, indeed, may be engaged in by a Christian, often to the furtherance of the kingdom of Christ. However, the works in which the church may be involved will always relate scripturally in some fashion to the great commission, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world (Matthew 28:19-20).”