Equip the Saints
Transcript
G'day guys, my name is Raz. It's good to be with you this morning. Excuse me, I'm sorry, I was singing so loud that my throat is super parched. I want to begin this morning with a simple, pretty easy question. What does a mature church look like? That's really the question.
What does the mature church look like? What are the marks of a mature church? What kind of things do they do? What is it that qualifies them to be called a mature church? Typically, when you talk about maturity, a good starting place is age. Typically, youngers, kids are not so mature.
You could say, oh, he's mature for a nine-year-old, but really you're saying he Acts 10. But otherwise, age plays a factor. And our church is just about to turn five. We started about five years ago in March. Are we, by nature, an immature church because we're only five years old? Is a more established church, maybe 50, 100, 150 years old, are they inherently more mature because of their age as an establishment?
Maybe not. Maybe it's more to do with the age of the people in the church, right? Not the establishment, but the people who make up the church. Maybe their age plays some kind of a part in it. If you look at our church with the current rate of reproduction, our average age is going down month to month as kids are added over there. But if you exclude Kid City and just kind of ballpark this room, my guess is somewhere in the mid-30s would be where our kind of spectrum meets, somewhere in the mid-30s.
So because we're a church with an average age of mid-30s, are we inherently immature because of that when there's other churches out there where everyone's in their mid-70s? Are they inherently more mature? Maybe age has nothing to do with it. Maybe it's to do with tenure. Tenure would refer to how long the people in the church have been Christians. So if this church, the average tenure is eight years, and that church, the average tenure is 30 years, are they inherently more mature as a church based off of the amount of time people in there have been Christians?
Maybe. Maybe it has nothing to do with age or years or tenure or anything like that. Maybe it's more to do with how is this church structured versus how is that church structured? What is their position on this doctrine? How strict are they when it comes to that thing or that thing? Maybe it's how good is this church at engaging the culture where they're at?
How good is this church at bringing new people in? Maybe all of these different things factor into what it is that makes a church mature. How do we measure that? When we see it, how do we know? What is the metric? That's kind of the question that I want to open with today.
Um, we're in this middle of this Ephesians series. Last week, we kind of turned the page. We moved from the first half of Ephesians into the second half. So Ephesians is a six chapter book, six chapter letter, really. The first three chapters really cover a lot of theological ground. They cover a lot of these things are true about Jesus.
These things about true about the gospel. These things are true about who you are as Christians. And then in the second half, it kind of says, because of all these true things, this is what life looks like. Because of all these true things, here's how you go and do marriage, how you go and do life together. This is how you go and do work. This is how you go and do submission to leadership, that kind of stuff.
That's all true. This is how we live. And we turned that page last week and entered into chapter four. And we talked a lot about unity, how unity in the church is one of the big goals. And we had that recurring theme of one, one, one, one God, one faith, one baptism, one Holy Spirit. And this week, we're going to move pretty quickly from that idea of unity to the idea of diversity and how those go hand in hand in the life of the church so that we can have one kind of vision, one kind of goal for the church.
But it actually takes a pretty diverse crowd to make that goal happen. I'm going to pray for us as we as we open up the word and then we're going to get into Ephesians four. Father, we thank you for the opportunity to learn from your word this morning. I pray that it can be foundational for us as a church, as we understand who we are, how we factor into your big picture and what we can contribute. I pray that as we look at Paul's words to the Ephesian church, that that can be mirrored, that their strengths can be mirrored in our church and in our lives. It's in Jesus name we pray.
Amen. If you've got a Bible, open up to Ephesians four. If you've got one of these blue guys on one of the chairs in front of you, it's going to be on page 568, but only for a little bit. Then it's going to go into 569. So kind of a deceiving slide up there.
It's a bit of both. We're going to be reading starting in verse seven. It says, but grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, it says, when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. And saying he ascended, what does it mean? But that he had also descended to the lower regions, the earth.
He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things. Now, in this, we're going to keep reading. But in this first little section, there's a little quotey bit there that's indented and quoted and that kind of thing. That's a little chunk out of Psalm 68. And what Paul is doing is he's referring to some Old Testament history, a little bit of Old Testament foresight and prophecy, and also a little bit of Old Testament, old fashioned imagery of what kind of happened back in the day. So these words were actually written by David, King David, a thousand years before Jesus was even a part of the picture, really.
I mean, Jesus has been a part of the picture forever. But before Jesus was born as a baby into the world, this happened a thousand years before then. And back then, what would happen is when the kings would go to war, there's all these different nations, everyone's vying for power. The kings would go to war, and when they would conquer a particular area or a city or a village or whatever, they'd beat the other army, and then they'd loot all of the villages and that kind of stuff, and all of the valuable things they would collect. And they would bring it all back before the king, and the king would give portions of those as gifts to the people who were pivotal in the military conquest.
And so the commanders or the guys who fought bravely or whoever trained the horses, I don't really know who got the gifts. The king would say, you were important, here's your share in the loot, basically. And so what Paul is doing in this little section here is he's laying the groundwork to say, Jesus also does that for us. When Jesus conquers death, conquers sin, he is also a king who destroys all of his enemies, and he gives gifts to the church just as a king used to do back in the day. So that little brackety part and the quotey part, that's what's going on there, is Paul saying, just as David talked about this back in the day, Jesus both fulfills that and does that for the church today.
We're going to talk a little bit today about what those gifts are and how that plays out. Now, before we keep reading, before we get into the next chunk, I want to kind of illustrate like ahead of the game so that I can refer back to the picture that I'm about to paint for you. And I thought, what better way to appeal to my audience is to speak in American isms. And I would normally, you know, kind of lean into my foreignness and come up with some interesting foreign thing to explain. But I actually think this is going to be helpful.
I get the opportunity now to explain American football to you. And I'm obviously going to crush it because you guys have no idea and I know everything about it. And so bear with me as I struggle my way through this. And it's relevant because I just watched a game for the first time last week. I'm kidding. I've seen more than one game.
But I did watch the Super Bowl last week. So it's fresh in my mind. I'm going to crush this. It's going to be great. In football, I'm just, I only know half the game. So I'm just going to refer to the offensive team.
Because in America, you have multiple teams on your team. And that gets confusing. So I'm just going to, let's pretend we're only on offense. Okay, we're only on offense. Now, the offensive team has one goal. That one goal is get the ball that way, like down the field.
It doesn't matter. I mean, it's got to get a certain distance. You've got to get to the line that the TV magic's on there. And then you've got to get beyond there. And you've got to just keep going until you get to the logo, right? That's called the end zone.
See, guys, I know some stuff. Your goal, get the ball to the end zone, make the touchdowns, get the Ws, that kind of stuff. As a team, all of our team is united in our effort to move that direction. As a team, we want the first down. As a team, we want the end zone. As a team, we're working together to just go that way.
And when somebody doesn't go that way, everyone goes, no, go that way. Because that way is the goal, right? But within the team, there's all these different people who have different jobs. And I am about to crush this as I explain all the different jobs on the offensive team. You have the catchy dudes on the side. Their job is to catch.
They line up with everybody else. They stand on the side. They run forward. And they go that way. And then that guy throws the ball. And they catch it.
And sometimes they do the flip. Sometimes they do the thing where they jump over the other guy. They're the nimbly, bimbly dudes who spin around and keep running. They're quick. You can't catch them if they take off. They're the catchy dudes.
They stand on the sides on either end. They're called receivers, guys. I looked it up. Don't worry. Then you have the running guys.
They're called running backs. I don't really know the difference except that these guys aren't expected to catch the ball. So you give it to them. I guess they can't catch. So rather than standing on the side and running that way, they have to run across, grab the ball in the middle, then keep running.
And they either run straight into all the people and stop or they run around and they go all the way. That's the running dudes. So you've got catching dudes. You've got running dudes. You've got big dudes. They form the line.
I don't really know what their job is except weigh 600 pounds and start here and go to here. That's their job. And then there's one special big dude. He's in the middle. I don't know if he's called the snapper, but that's what I call him. He gets the ball and he goes like that.
And then he goes like that. Two jobs. Gets the ball. One Job. Second Job. Two jobs.
Snappy dude. And if he does any of those jobs badly, he gets in a lot of trouble. Two jobs. Then there's the tight end. He thought I was going to skip the tight end, but I'll look this one up too. I didn't look up what he does.
I just looked up the name. So I might not get this bit right. The tight end, I think, is probably the most multi-talented person on the offensive team. I don't know for sure, but he seems like he's got a lot going on because he's expected to be able to do this. But if there's nobody to do this to, he's expected to run and then catch the ball as well.
And if somebody else catches the ball, it's his job to stop the other people from stopping the guy who catches the ball. And then sometimes he's expected to come this way. And if that guy doesn't get the ball, he's got to get the ball and run all the way around. So the tight end, he's got a lot going on. But he's bigger than most of the other people.
So he's not that fast. So he normally gets stopped. He's a little bulldozer-y. He can kind of plow his way through some people. But anyway, that's the tight end.
Then there's that guy. He stands back here. This is the stud muffin of the team. The quarterback, I think, if my movies have taught me well, he's the prom king. He dates the head cheerleader. He gets paid like $300 billion a year.
And his jobs are to catch the ball and throw the ball and not get injured. I think prom king paid lots of money. Don't get injured. That's pretty much what he's... That's his job. And it's actually pretty cool.
Like, I've been... When I first moved here, I thought, you know, the quarterback does absolutely nothing. But then, you know, when they play the highlights, it's pretty awesome. When he throws... Like, he does math in his head. Like, that guy's running that way.
That guy's running that way. I know he's going to turn. So I'm just going to throw it there. And he's going to... Like, that's pretty cool when that happens. Like, it doesn't happen all the time, especially when you're watching college football.
But when you're watching NFL, it happens all the time. And it's really cool. All of that is to say, everybody on the team working together, one goal. Move the ball that way. Everybody on the team, diverse in their skill sets. They're not all expected to do all the things.
They're all expected to do one thing pretty well. And if you mess up your one thing, like, everyone gets real mad at you. You've got to be able to do your one thing. You've got to be able to do your one thing super well. The point is, unity in the mission, strength as a team, only when everybody's doing their part, right? So that's the goal of the illustration.
Now, it's not perfect, but it is going to help explain what's about to come next. Because just as a strong football team needs that diverse set of skills, so also a mature church is going to need a variety of strengths, too. We're going to look at verse 11. Verse 11 through 14, actually. And it says, So when it says, and he gave, it's talking about when we talked about earlier the conquering king giving gifts. This is Jesus, our conquering king, giving gifts to the church.
It says, And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Paul is saying this. He's saying, The church is gifted with different kinds of complementary leadership, whose Job it is to equip the saints for ministry, so that we will attain unity of the faith, become mature, and reach the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That's what he's saying.
Now, that's a complicated sentence, so we'll break it down. Now, to be clear, those five categories that he lists, apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers, it says that those five categories are given to equip the saints, to equip the church. That gives us an indication that these five people are leaders in the church, and what Christ is doing is he's giving these forms of leadership to the church to equip the church. Now, I don't think that list of leaders is exhaustive. I think there's other ways you can lead the church as well. But I do think that they give a good picture of what it looks like, at least as far as a team that is functional, what kind of five categories of strength are needed in order for the church to be strong.
Paul is saying that these five types of leadership are present in the church to equip the saints for ministry. Now, a mature church, a strong team that can get the ball to the end zone, a good team, a good church that can move the ball down the field, needs to show signs of these five different types of leadership. They need to show signs that all five of them are present and working together at the same time. We're only going to really scratch the surface on this, but in order to explain the strengths of each one of those, I'm going to do a little bit of defining those strengths. And I say that deliberately as defining strengths, because when I was talking about the football team, I was really trying to distinguish different players from each other and say, this is how they're different.
And I don't so much want to make you think of these leadership characters, these leadership positions as distinct from each other, so much as each one has a particular strength, a particular leaning that they're better at. So it's not to the exclusion of all others, so much as this one is stronger over here, that kind of thing. So we'll walk through them. They're apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, and teachers. Apostle literally, when translated from Greek, it means sent one, a person who is sent. Apostles lend themselves towards entrepreneurship.
They're really leaders. They're pioneers in their field. In the church, they have a vision for the gospel moving forward, and they rally people together to do that mission. And they're church planters. They're missionaries. They're the people who train future leaders because their vision for the future of the church is specific, and they want to move people towards that area.
That's kind of how an apostle leans in its strength. Prophets is the next one. Prophets are mostly concerned with maintaining faithfulness to God. That's true in the Old Testament when we think of the word prophet. Israel would stray from God's path, or Judah would do something that's in conflict with what God has instructed them to do, and he would send a prophet, and that prophet would just be the person who's supposed to correct the direction that the church or the nation at the time was headed. And they function, you know, we don't have this title of prophet today, but the leadership function is pretty similar.
These guys are concerned with holiness in the church. They're concerned with calling out sin. They're concerned with pointing people back to the truth. And it's not just in the church. It's in society as a whole. People who show that prophet leadership style are fairly politically engaged.
They stay up to date on the controversial issues of the time, and they're not really afraid to hold their ground in those situations. The next one is evangelist. Evangelists proclaim the gospel. The gift of evangelism is really the ability to speak to people about Jesus in a way that is easily received. So these guys are typically pretty convincing, pretty lovable.
They're good storytellers. They're naturally infectious. That kind of personality that draws you in and is easily able to explain to you why something is better than something else. And the next one is shepherds. Shepherds are mainly concerned with relationship. They're mainly concerned with community.
They're mainly concerned with family. They want to make sure that the relationships are working the way that they're supposed to. And so when they see conflict, they help other people solve conflict. When they see weakness because of, you know, this area of the church or this area of this group of people are fighting about something, it's the shepherds who want to maintain that unity in the family. Teachers are mainly concerned with the transfer of knowledge and wisdom from one generation to the next. So for millennia, we have relied on the Bible for all of our source of truth.
It is the teachers in the church who really take that to heart. This is what we have believed forever. This is the truth. This book is foundational for us. We must make sure that the next generation believes that about this book as well. That's essentially the function and the role of the teacher.
So you can see even with a basic overview, apostles being the leaders and the pioneers, the prophets being the ones who maintain faithfulness, encourage others to maintain faithfulness to God, the evangelists who are proclaiming the gospel, the shepherds who are concerned with maintaining unity in the church, and the teachers who want to make sure that the next generation is equipped as well. With all of those playing at the same time, you can see how that would contribute positively to the life of the church, at least to make that team strong so that as we're moving towards Christ-likeness as our end zone, we stand a chance because we've got those five different categories leading well. So we have these five categories of leadership in the church. The question becomes, what do they do?
Now we're going to pick it up in verse 12. It says, They equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. I think that this verse in particular, verse 12 in particular, it raises an important question because we've just discussed that it is the leader's Job to equip. The question in this verse becomes, whose Job is it to do the work of the ministry? And it says that the leaders equip the saints for the work of the ministry, right?
So whose Job is it to do the work? Typically, I think the cultural understanding, the normal social understanding of whose Job is it to do ministry would be ministers, pastors, church staff, employees kind of deal. That's certainly what, when you would ask that question without any context, whose Job is it? To do ministry, people would typically fall back on minister or pastor. Maybe a little, but that's certainly not how Ephesians 4 reads, right? Now, for definition's sake, there's a word in there that might trip us up.
That's the word saint. Saint, certainly if you look in a dictionary or just general life, typically brings with it this idea of the person who's super holy, has a little halo that buzzes around their head. In the Catholic Church, it has a lot to do with how well a person lives their life so that they can be sainted in the next life and intercede on behalf of us in different ways, the patron saint of this and the patron saint of that. Most of that seems arbitrary and outside of the authority of Scripture, certainly outside of the context of the book of Ephesians. So in Ephesians, a saint is basically any Christian in the church.
If you are in the room and you are a Christian, you are a saint. Welcome to the club. It's great. You can pick up your halos on the way out. The saints, actually in verse 1 of Ephesians, chapter 1, verse 1, this book is addressed, Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus. He's talking to all of them.
He's talking to the church. He's talking to everyone who is a Christian, who is a believer in the church. So when it says, when we read this passage and it says that the leaders equip the saints for the work of the ministry, what he's saying is the leadership, the apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers, their job is to equip the church. It is then the church's Job, the church's responsibility to do the work of the ministry. That's not exactly what we expect. So what does it look like?
What happens when the everyday missionary, the everyday pew sitter or ugly green chair sitter in our case, what happens when that person takes ownership of their responsibility to do the work of the ministry? Well, this passage says a couple of things. It says they attain the unity of the faith, that they grow in their understanding of the knowledge of Jesus, that they mature, and that they move towards the fullness of Christ. As a church, that sounds like our end zone to me. That sounds like the direction that our team is moving towards. That's what happens first.
And as a result, this is in verse 14. As a result, we see that the church is strengthened. It says, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness, and deceitful schemes. That's what the church looks like. So at the beginning, when I said, what does a mature church look like?
That's a pretty good answer. The mature church looks like this, moving towards that goal, and unshakable. Unmovable, not tossed about, not easily deceived. They're strong, they're capable, and they're unified. The church, I think, starts to look a lot more like Jesus. The church starts to exhibit some of those qualities that we talked about in the leadership.
So the leadership who is equipping the church, the church starts to look a little bit more like that leadership. The church is strengthened based on its ability to be like Christ. Now you might be wondering what that toss to and fro about by the waves would look like. In 2003, I was 14 at the time, so glorious middle school years, a little known author called Dan Brown released a book called The Da Vinci Code. Now it didn't blow up immediately, but it blew up pretty quick after that.
It became a movie, it became all sorts of like conspiracy theories and everything. Now this book, to be clear, is a fictional book. It is on the same bookshelf in the stores as Harry Potter, as Lord of the Rings. It is in the fiction section. This is not a real book. Well, it's a real book, but the content is not genuine history.
But, because it refers to some historical characters, people lost their minds. And so at its core, this fictional book, I'm emphasizing fictional. This fictional book is really just a quest for the Holy Grail novel. There's a bunch of them out there. This book in particular, quest for the Holy Grail novel. And it really, the whole conspiracy about it rests on the fact that back in the day, the symbol for cup is the same as the symbol for woman.
Right? Obviously, guys, woman and cup, same thing. So whenever back in the day, this cryptographer or whatever in the movie says that that mistake was made back in the day and the Holy Grail became this big thing. And so he even bases his argument on Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the Last Supper. You've all seen the Last Supper, the big painting. It's got people eating around.
It's a picture of Jesus and that kind of stuff. It was painted in the 15th century, guys. That's 1,480 something years after Jesus walked the earth. This painting was way after Jesus. And this whole movie, this whole story, based on the fact that they couldn't count 12 disciples in that photo and it looked like one of them might have been a girl. And because cup and girl and woman are the same thing, it must mean that the Holy Grail is actually a woman.
And it must have been the woman in that painting that was painted 1,400 years after Jesus. And you know what? I bet Jesus was married to her. And when Jesus was married to her, that girl must have been Mary Magdalene. And so if Mary Magdalene is the Holy Grail and Jesus married Mary Magdalene and they had kids, then those kids are still in the world today. And those kids in the world today have part of the blood of the Holy Grail in them.
You guys, I might be the Holy Grail. That was the point of that book. And in 2003, 4 and 5, the church lost its mind. And the church went, what if Jesus did get married? What if it was to Mary Magdalene? What if I have the blood of Jesus in my veins?
And it just went, and all the pastors all across the world were going, guys, what are you doing? Wrong book. And it's because the church was deceived. And the crazy part is, the crazy part is, when Dan Brown wrote the book, it was not his goal to try and screw up the church. His goal was to write an entertaining novel that would be interesting for people to read and I assume make lots of money doing it. And yet the church, for some reason, was deceived anyway.
That's what it looks like. That is like the furthest it can get for the church to look like to be weak, for the church to look like immaturity, for the church to be deceived and thrown about by the waves. And so for us, it probably won't, look, I hope it won't be that again. But it might come in the form of the next book that talks about how everybody is going to get into heaven. or the next book that, you know, somebody has a dream or a vision and they have a conversation with Jesus and they write it down to try and convince the church that the new thing is this other thing that we've been wrong all this time and we now have to do this other thing.
The next time one of those books comes out, the mature church says, this book over that other book. That's what it looks like for the church to not be tossed about to and fro by the waves. So it continues in verse 15 and he concludes with this. He says, rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped when each part is working properly makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. And I think that really seals the deal, right? This whole idea of the team needs to work together for the team to advance is really summed up in that.
They grow up in every way into him who is the head Christ when each part is working properly makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. When everyone is playing their part on the team, the team gets stronger. The team looks more unified and the team has less weaknesses. And on our team, on the church's team, that team is growing towards Christ. That is our end zone, the fullness, the stature of the fullness of Christ. So I think that what we get to say is the mature church looks like Jesus.
And I think a good way to think about it is back in the day when the Truman Show came out, I remember this distinctly for some reason, the Truman Show came out and the movie poster for the Truman Show was like a million little snapshots from his life. And you know, there was the one little, when you look up close, there's a little photo of him walking his dog and riding his bike and eating food and at the store and at his job and all these little photos of him. And when you stand back, it's actually a collage and you see his face, right? And I think that's the same for the church because we have some people who are really good at conversations with married couples who are struggling.
We have some people who are really good with their finances and coaching other people how to make a budget and be generous with their finances. We have other people who are really good and compassionate with how do we reach out to the homeless and how do we reach out to the people who don't feel loved? And we have all these different people who make up this bigger picture that when we step back and we see the church, hopefully it looks like Jesus. That's kind of how I pictured that, right? So a mature church has all kinds of people with all kinds of talents in every walk of life, all with unity in the spirit, working together to do the work of the ministry, building each other up to grow more like Christ.
So the question becomes, what does that mean for us? How do we become more mature? What steps do I have to take in that direction? I don't think it's too much of a stretch. It's a little bit of a stretch, but it's not too much of a stretch for us to say that the church, us Christians in the room, we should start looking more like Jesus and we should start looking more like those five, at least corporately as a church, our church should start showing signs of those five different strengths, those five different areas, prophet, apostle, evangelist, shepherd, teacher. I think that corporately, if we lack any of those, if we start leaning too much towards, you know, our church is very leadership oriented, our church is very groundbreaking, we're very apostolate, but we're really not shepherdy or teachery or we're really not evangelistic, then we start to topple this direction and be really, show a lot of weaknesses over here in that direction as well.
And so we see that the mature church, not just in the leadership, but in the people as well, is really going to show all five of those different areas. To explain a little how that works, I'll talk a bit about us as a church. And some of this is going to be a little critical, it might hurt a little, I'm not sure how you guys are going to feel sensitivity wise to this. But I'll talk about strengths first. I think as a church, we're pretty strong on that, on the prophety side. I think we're pretty strong on, you know, we believe this book and we don't really move from it.
And so society can come up with a new definition of marriage, society can come up with a new definition of gender, society can tell us when people are allowed to sleep with each other and we say, no, we land here. And I think as a church, that is a strength of ours. Now we don't go out and pick fights. There's some people out there who, you know, just inject themselves into politics for the purpose of ramming the book down people's throats. But as, as those issues come up, I think our church stays, stays pretty true to the word, pretty true to the Bible.
And we don't really have any intention on believing anything that's outside of this anyway. So I think that's a strength for us. I also think that we're pretty good at shepherding and teaching. I don't know if you know this, maybe you haven't been around long enough, maybe you're super new here, in which case, this might just be good information for you about our church. We, we are really into this idea of building up leadership from within. Anytime there's an area in our church that we, we want to see growth, we will do what we can to empower the people that we've got with the, the equipment, with the equipment that they need, with the stuff that they need, with the training that they need to be able to go and do that job so that when Kid City blows up, we take the people we've got and we, we help them lead that well.
When the next thing comes up that we're going to want to corporately sponsor or corporately get behind, we're going to get the people that we've got and we're going to equip them to be able to go and do that. What we don't do is something that's pretty common in every other church is that when a vacancy appears, they form a committee and they hire someone from Texas, Nebraska, someone who Skyped in for an interview and they get someone else to come in and fix the problems that are here. That is a pretty normal thing in the church these days and I think for us as a church, we're pretty strong in that category, it's pretty strong in that area. We take training the next generation pretty seriously and we build up from within and I think that's good for us.
Some areas, one particular area that I think we're not as strong in. When it comes to those five areas, I think we're not the most evangelistic church ever. This is where I get a little bit self-critical of us. I think we're not the most evangelistic church ever. I mentioned earlier that we're coming up on five years old. When we started five years ago, there was eight people in a living room.
Obviously, we have grown since then. But anyone who's been around for a while knows this because we've talked about it some, is that somewhere about probably just over a year ago, we hit the ceiling. We've created our own ceiling. It's somewhere around 100 people so that every time our church grows a little bit, we hit 100 and then we bounce back down. Then we hit 100 again and then we bounce back down.
And something's going on there where as a church, we've just kind of lost our hustle on growth, on expansion. And I think that plays against our evangelistic ability. And so that's why as a leadership, we've come up with this idea for the, you've heard it the last couple weeks and we're doing an everyday missionary training thing. It starts in a couple weeks where we really want to be doing exactly what we're supposed to, equipping the saints for the work of the ministry. And if equipping the saints means identifying that we've got a weakness here in evangelism, we've got a weakness here in this evangelistic category, how do we help our people see that weakness and want to overcome it?
See, identify the issues there that are preventing us from being successful in that area, being strong here and overcome it. So we see the weakness and we're doing what we can starting in a couple weeks trying to raise awareness for this to try and get stronger in that particular area. Because as an organization, we're kind of leaning this way and that area over there, the evangelism category is a weakness for us. Now, I don't think that's a deal breaker. I don't think that makes us a bad church or an immature church, but we need to address that so that we can be mature and continue to grow as a church.
Because if you've got a weakness on your team, you need to fix that weakness or the whole team is going to struggle to move forward. Does that make sense? So, I think that we will see our church mature as we continue to identify our weaknesses and make them grow. So I want to help you out here because maybe you've also seen some weaknesses or maybe you've, it's not necessarily that you've seen a weakness, but you've seen an area where maybe we're just not strong. Maybe it's not necessarily that we're bad or that we're weak at it, we're just not strong there. Um, maybe you've, uh, some examples might be that maybe you've, you've, you've been around for a while and you think, man, I just wish that our church did more for the homeless.
I just wish that our church got behind helping the poor, helping the poor. Sorry. Uh, maybe you, maybe you're thinking, uh, our church doesn't have a very good system for helping people who are struggling with anxiety or depression. Maybe, maybe you think, uh, maybe you think our church, uh, could, could use some help in, in working out how to help new believers take that next step, how to, how to help new believers understand where to start when they want to study the Bible. people. And chances are, if you're asking or, or thinking any of those things, uh, you may not think immediately that you're gifted or strong in that area, but you're certainly passionate about it where perhaps not enough other people are.
And so I think your role in that situation is, is to be the one who identifies that weakness for us, uh, and helps us take, take steps towards, you know, what, what is it going to look like to equip the saints to, to handle that issue? And let me tell you this, if this starts happening, it'll probably happen first at a groups level for us. Uh, you spend enough time around us, you're just going to feel like we're ringing a gong for groups. And we are, and we will, and we will continue to, until the gong breaks. Because we believe in our community groups, and we believe that that is the best way for, um, for people in our church and people in general to relate in such a way that they can grow, uh, on the back of the, the word of the, of truth that comes out of scripture.
So every week we'll, we'll have a sermon, we'll, we'll have a, um, something going on on Sundays. And then throughout the week, we'll have opportunities to live out that truth in community groups. Uh, and I think, especially when we're talking about teamwork and what it looks like to have different strengths in the team and move that team forward, that becomes most obvious in groups because you know each other well and you know what you want to achieve as a group. So a couple things on that. If you're not in a group, that would be a great first step for you because, uh, that would really be you getting on a team in order to play a team sport.
And if you're not in a team, it's really tough to play a team sport. Um, church is a team sport. Uh, if you're already in a community group, uh, first thing would be to be fully invested in that group. Uh, and that means, that means a couple things, but, but first it means be there. That's it. Be there because we, we kind of, there's a trend.
I don't know if it's a trend so much as it's just human nature is we, we, we make poor excuses for why we don't have to be there. Things like, I'm kind of tired or I'm kind of hungry or I have an exam in a week. All these kinds of things, uh, they, they just come up and they get in the way and, and when you're not there because you were tired or when you're not there because you had an exam, the team feels it because it's a team sport. And if you're not there, the team misses you and you also don't get the benefit of the team. It's, it's a two-way street. You need to be there for the team and you also need the team in your life.
And so when the quarterback is missing, somebody else has to play quarterback and the ball doesn't move down the field. When there's no receivers, the quarterback has nobody to throw it to and we've got to let the running dudes do all the work. That's how it works in community groups. So if you're in a community group, be invested and be there. Unless you have the flu, stay home. If you're already a group, in a group and you're already there and you're already invested, help that group get stronger.
Your role in the group is to play your position well, play to your strengths well, help the group identify weaknesses and grow in those areas. Find its weaknesses and this is what Spencer was talking about last week, what it means to be unified in this effort. With humility, gentleness and patience, speak the truth in love so that your group can find those weaknesses and instead of hating you for pointing the finger at the weakness, they want to be on your side so that your group can grow up to the stature of the fullness of Christ. That's your role if you're already in a group and you're already there all the time.
Help that group get stronger. The band's going to make its way back up and this is where we're going to land the plane and this is what I'm going to leave you with. There is no sitting on the bench on this team. We have a much higher calling than coasting. This is not a spectator sport where in American football you get to say I'm an Eagles fan and therefore I celebrate because the Eagles won. That doesn't work in the church.
You're either on the team or you are not. There is no bench warming. We have been given the responsibility of doing the work of the ministry. That is not a spectator sport. And until we all attain the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, we haven't done that yet. This is what the mature church looks like.
It looks like Jesus. It looks like a team that needs each other, that complements each other, that each person is doing their part on the team so that the ball can move forward. That's what a mature team looks like. And when that's happening, that team is impenetrable. It does not show weakness. It can't be moved.
And when each person is doing their part, working together, the team grows, the church grows up into Christ and is built up in love. That's what a mature church looks like. And that's the kind of church that we get to be. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the opportunity that you have given us to learn from your word. And I just pray that we can show those five signs.
I show that our team can be united in our effort to grow into the fullness of Christ and that we can take seriously our responsibility to contribute to that. I pray that that will rest with us not just for this week but for the rest of the year, the rest of our lives. That we can contribute something valuable to the church that the church may grow. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
