The church must rediscover its sense of service to others or else face becoming redundant, says Steve Chalke.

Chalke told hundreds of Christians at the start of the Faithworks conference yesterday that the meaning and purpose of life could be found in the serving, rather than simply staying inside the church.

“We sit there and stoke ourselves up but Jesus said ‘take the bread and wine’,” he said. “Nowadays we can only find God in the big band, the lights, we find God in the special instead of the ordinary.

“Find God in the ordinary, in the service. His body was broken for community. In doing that you’ll find yourself and the sense of meaning.”

The conference has brought hundreds of Christians to the new Oasis Academy in Enfield, North London, to explore how the church can build whole communities and develop a ‘360 degree’ vision of engagement in all aspects of community life.

He said serving the community was not only for Christians who had the time but something every believer was called by Jesus to do.

“This is the stuff of faith,” he said. “So often in life, work is debilitating and draining, but Jesus said ‘My work is my food’. This is what we’ve lost and this is where we find it: in committed service.”

Chalke said that while Britain had lost its direction and imagination, now was a time of opportunity for the church to “invest and re-invest” in building whole communities.

The church, he said, had to be interested in the whole of life because God was interested in the full spectrum of his creation, from the financial and political, to the environmental, educational and spiritual.

Chalke rejected the notion of a spiritual wellbeing that did not touch on all areas of life, like employment, health, finances and the family.

“We lost our sense of purpose and mission when we narrowed it down into what we call narrowly ‘spiritual’ when God is concerned about three-sixty wellbeing,” he said.

Chalke was joined onstage by David Lammy MP who told Christians that people were yearning for a sense of community and the things of the soul.

The Labour MP and practising Christian said 2010 was a “soul moment” in which the country needed to invest in people’s souls as well as their skills.

“There is a deep yearning for community cooperation, for very traditional notions,” he said. “We are uniquely placed to contribute to the discussion”.

He said people today were no longer seeking simply employment, but “soulful and just” employment that added meaning and purpose to their lives.

Christians, he continued, had a role to play in bringing ideas and beliefs back to communities that had lost their ambition and dreams.

“This is an important point in our history. It requires men and women like you,” he said.

“I am a hope politician. This is a hope moment, this is a really inspiring moment and beyond this room are men and women, boys and girls in very different parts of this country and the world who rely on us to keep pushing, to stay with the train, to argue for soul, to argue for faith, to argue for community, to argue for cooperation and to argue for solidarity.”