This question has three major sections of answers. The first review the catholic and then Protestant Prospective on the Church. The third section has it’s own question Why there are so many churches? The term “Church” is used by the Christians in two different ways. It can be refer to all Jesus’ followers or can be refer as specific institution for the community. But anyway the Church is very important, because God does not save people in isolation. The important part of what needs to be restored is our relationship with other people and that can only be done by the community or so called church as a whole. God most often reaches us through other people. God in the poor is just example of a more general Christian principle. Because the large part of our problems is self centeredness, a large part of the remedy is to be learning to depend upon other people, to represent Christ to them and allow Christ to speak to us through them. The Church is also the group with which we worship. As such it has responsibility to preach the word of God and to administrator the sacraments. These are critical elements for maintaining our fellowship with God and other people. The Church also has responsibility to encourage its members to make spiritual progress, and to show their faith by their behavior, both through their ethnics and their good works. This responsibility includes administering brotherly correction. Traditionally the church has left a responsibility to disciples, and if necessary exclude, members are equally careful about carrying this out. It is in fact one of the more difficult responsibilities to get right. It is very, very easy for church discipline to lead to self righteousness and intolerance. Jesus refer to the Christian community with several reasons, with one reason he that he was the vine, and all of his followers are the branches. In another, he referred to the to the church as his body. All of these images emphasized that his followers are spiritually united with him and with each other. But one of the major problems today is that this union is not completely reflected in the way Christians act. Normally the using terms “Church” is refer to the universal church. However, sometimes it is used to refer individual communion such as the Catholic Church or the Pentecostal Church.

..Organizational Power:

By the end of the 1^st Century, authority in the church centered on Bishops. Those Bishops seen as successors to the Apostles. Bishops are consecrated by other bishops (normally at least three). So in principle every bishop can trace their authority back through an unbroken line of consecrations to the Apostles, and then Christ. This is referred to as the “Apostolic succession”. Currently Bishops are normally responsible for city and the surrounding territory. Of course, the exact area depends upon the population density and other considerations. Bishops have several different kinds of authority and responsibility. They have the responsibility for maintaining proper doctrine in the area for which they are responsible. They are responsible for the proper conduct of the sacraments. They normally conduct such sacrament personally. In other cases they delegate the authority to the priest. So this priest having second role in the present church leadership is called Elders/Pastors. The responsibility of churches was given to them. They would subject to overall doctrinal leadership. The office of the Elders/Pastors developed slightly later. Originally they were seen primarily as assistants to the bishops. Elders/Pastors are typically responsible for guiding the life of congregation and for conducting most normal sacraments. Elders/Pastors are ordained by the Bishops. This is just issue of who has permission to do it. At ordination, elders/pastors receive spiritual authority. Without that authority, the transformation of the bread and vine into Christ’s body and blood in communion will not occur.

 ..Authority:

Two distinguishing characteristics of the Church are its concepts of teaching authority, and it approach to the church discipline. The church was given authority by Christ to make decisions which includes both doctrinal and moral issues. In appropriate circumstances, they decision can be infallible. The teaching authority of the church is referred to as the “magisterial”. The teaching responsibility as carried out ordinary preaching as well as through pronouncements. Although the teachings of the ordinary magisterial are not exactly infallible, they are part of the process that is guided by the Holy Spirit. Thus it is expected that elders/Pastors will receive such teachings authorities. There are two ways of doing this ecumenical council, and direct papal decisions.

  ..Mark of a Church:

For the Christian church tradition the key marks of the church are defined by four phrases used in the Apostles creed. It is one, holy church. The term church means universal and it is one, its doctrines can be traced to the apostle. Of course there is question how literally the church can be said to be one at the moment. There are at least three major branches of the church ie Catholic, Orthodox & Protestant. However, they maintain the full continuity with the original apostles and thus the entire body of Christ is centered in their community. While the originate of the church should be based on the Bible. This includes apostles, bishop, elders, pastors, deacons. That means they are set apart in a special ceremony, and that they have the authority to celebrate baptism and communion. As a fact that some churches allow only pastors in communion services to lead, but it is not necessary to do so and observe that why only pastors have power. The exact set of leaders varies, if there is the pattern of elders and deacons in the church. In this pattern deacons are typically responsible for charitable activities, and elders for policy decisions. In the reformed tradition all leaders are ordained. Since the distinction between lay and clergy was traditionally ordination, in some sense this means that the reformed churches no lay leadership. However, for most purposes, reformed deacons and elders are thought of as lay, they are not full time positions. The positions tend to rotate among the active members of the congregation.

   ..Why are there so many Churches?

This is because the people are imperfect. The ideal that Jesus taught was very clear. All of his followers were to form a single community, united in him. He used the image of a vine and its branches. Unfortunately Christian has often been unable to agree on the matters of belief and practice. In many cases the disagreements have been serious enough that it would be difficult for both approaches to coexist. Thus it has often been necessary for the group to separate.

  ..Multiple Churches Do not always reflect serious disagreements

The difference is often exaggerated. The first thing to note is that not all churches were founded because of disagreement. Many Christians consider the basic unit of Christian action to be the individual congregation. Larger bodies, such as national churches, exist as a matter of convenience, to help the congregations do things that require cooperation. Thus many Christians do not particularly want a single, huge organization that includes all Christians. For those who take this approach, the unity of that Jesus was talking about is a spiritual one, not a bureaucratic one. The second thing to note is that disagreements among Christian are usually over details of how we go about implementing Jesus teachings. There is agreement about many beliefs and practice.  

 ..Marginal Groups:

This document tries to represent a “generic” Christian viewpoint, which would be acceptable to most Christians. However, there are few groups whose ideas are for enough away from the mainstream that it is nearly impossible to include them and still say anything of substance. In general a group as marginal when it rejects major doctrines such as the trinity or Incarnation. All group that do this also differ from the mainstream in significant issues of practices as well. The best known group of this sort is the Jehovah’s witnesses and the Mormons. Both of them differ significantly with the mainstream with the nature of God and Jesus. The Mormons are large enough to be significant force. There are number of smaller groups with similar properties. A number of people who reject the Trinity are active. This trends to make it appear that there is more opposition to common doctrines such as the Trinity than actually exist.

  ..Controversies over Liberalism:

The third major division is over what is calling “ Liberalism “ The church has been challenged by a number of different trends, all of which could lead to major changes in belief and practice. Among these are.

• Scholarship that challenges traditional assertions about the Bible. This includes attacks on its consistency, authorship, and accuracy.
• Attacks on the coherence of major Christian doctrines such as the trinity and incarnation, and claims that these doctrines are not properly grounded on Biblical or other evidence.
• Demand to relax ethical standards, particularly in the area of sexual ethics.

 These attacks trend to go together. While it is not always the case, those that maintain a high concept of the Bible tend also to hold to the traditional doctrines and ethics.

It is beyond the scope of the documents to deal with these in details. We will observe that these issues tend to cut across the historical lines. There are liberals and conservatives among the Christians. Indeed many of the group has been created by disagreement over these issues. However, as a new issue come up, there is normally a significant spread of opinion within each group. All most all Christina groups have rejected the extremes of liberalism. There is a fairly clear pattern that the more liberal groups are unable to retain their members. There is a fairly consistent tendency for members to be more moderate than their leaders. In both directions the Bible clears strict positions on ethics and to be skeptical of theological such as those that condemn all non Christians to hell.