What are we doing here, anyway?

Ephesians 4:1-16 (p. 1158 )
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I'm going to interrupt our series on the life of Abraham this morning, because there is something else on my heart. In a minute we'll read Ephesians 4:7-14.

First, some thoughts on baseball. Have you ever watched a group of 4 or 5 year olds play baseball or softball for the first time? I remember some of our kids first baseball games. They were great entertainment. You never knew what is going to happen. You have 18 kids bouncing around with excitement, running around the field, yelling at each other -- and most of them had no idea what they were there for.

Oh, they knew that it has something to do with hitting a ball and running. But they didn't know where they're supposed to stand, where they're supposed to hit the ball to, or where they're supposed to run. So interesting things happen -- like a batter hitting a foul ball and running straight over the pitcher's mound to second base.

It's even worse out in the field where you get centerfielder's practicing ballet steps while the ball rolls past them, and infielders fighting with each other for the ball.

They know there's a game. They're excited about it. They know it has to do with running around. They just haven't yet learned with the goal is.

It reminds me a little bit of the church. We get together every Sunday, we even get excited about worship and about being together. And we run around DOING all sorts of things -- programs and meetings and activities. Some of us put out enormous energy, and we cheer each other on.

But what is it all for? Do we have a purpose in being together? Some of you will say, well our purpose is to Glorify God -- and you would be right. But how? What are we supposed to DO to glorify God. If Glorifying God means ANYTHING we should be able to get more specific than that.

Look at any institution and you can pretty easily figure out what their main mission is: Tailgate makes coffee and sandwiches, Dunkin Donuts makes donuts, Mount Holyoke turns out intelligent, educated women, South Hadley Electric produces electricity, The congress makes laws.

But what about the church? What does the church produce?

Look at Ephesians 4: 1-6
This gives us a marvelous picture of a caring & loving community. People bearing with one another in love. Unity of the Spirit. Peace. People belonging to each other. It gives an image of a close-knit, caring fellowship

So perhaps the main product of the church should be a deep sense of community. After all the New Testament places enormous emphasis on love among Christians.

And the Bible presents a wonderful image of what Christian community could be like. God says that Christians are supposed to be members of the church in the same way that my hand, or my foot is a member of my body. That's a pretty strong attachment. It's not like BJ's membership or membership in a health club. It's a deep sense of interdependence and identification. My hand can't simply cancel its membership in my body. It belongs to my body in a rather intense way. Every part of my body needs every other. If one part of my body hurts, my whole body suffers.

It would be wonderful to have a church that was a closeknit as that.

So maybe the task of the church should be to work toward that kind of community. To make Stony Brook the kind of place where everyone who comes immediately knows that they are loved, and accepted and valued and indispensible. Then people looking on would say, "Wow! Look at how they love each other."

Now if that's our main task as a church, it should be pretty simple to work toward it. Basically we just need to get better at many of the things we already do.

We already help each other out with practical needs -- we would just emphasise that and do more of it. So we would all swarm over to the Hartleys after the service and say, "Please let us know when we can come over and help you paint your house." And whenever anyone new comes to church we would be sure that they got at least 5 invitations to join a Home Based Fellowship. I'm sure that no one would ever eat a meal alone -- and we would probably have church meals every Sunday just because we loved being together so much.

So is that the answer? Is community what the church is all about?

Skip to verse 14 -- Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.

Now these verses give quite a different picture of what should be happening in Church. Here the emphasis is on growth and maturity. The image is of a church where people act like grown-up Christians. Where they value truth and challenge each other. A church where people aren't tossed around by every fad because they are grounded scripture and they know their doctrine.

Is this what the church should be producing -- mature, well-grounded Christians who know their Bibles and know their creeds and love to read good theology? And it needn't be all book knowledge. Imagine a church that really challenged people to grow in their walk with God in practical ways -- a church where people are hungry for good teaching and where every member is challenged to study and understand the scriptures. A church where we constantly challenging each other in spiritual habits like prayer and Bible study and encouraging each other in holiness. A church where people have a passion to be closer to Jesus, a passion to hear God's word, a passion for holiness.

I could go for that kind of vision -- its sort of a medieval monastery model of church. We spend as much time as we can pursuing God and discussing theology and we don't let the world distract us.

Now if maturity is our goal, then we would probably want to work on a few things in our church:
-- Probably you would be begging me for longer, meatier sermons, right?
-- We would certainly want to put more energy into our Christian Education program.
-- I'm sure that everyone in the church would be signed up for the Course on Martin Luther that starts tomorrow night.
-- And we would want our Home Based Fellowship groups to really concentrate of solid teaching -- none of this fluffy fellowship stuff -- let's get to the MEAT.

Is that our vision for the church? Should the church be producing good strong, meat eating Christians?

Let's look back at the passage -- Verse 11: It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up. Then on to verse 16: From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Here we have yet another alternative: The church as a place of service and ministry -- a place where God's people are equipped for works of service. where every person there has a vital role and knows what that role is and is encouraged to use their God-given gifts for the building up of the church.

If this is the purpose of the church, we should be placing emphasis on Spiritual gifts. We should be making sure that everyone is challenged to use their spiritual gifts in the church -- Doing spiritual gifts inventories -- making sure that everyone had some area of service -- a full employment church. We could make buttons up with a catchy slogan, like "Every member a minister!" to show what our church is about.

And the results could be incredible. Imagine how wonderful our music would be if everyone with musical talent contributed as much time and energy and John and Al do? Imagine how wonderful our worship time would be if everyone came prepared to use their gifts to encourage each other.

Is that what church is about?

Let me throw out one more possibility. Some of you have been peeking at the outline in the bulletin and you know what is coming next. Surely the REAL task of the church is not community or maturity or ministry -- The REAL task must be missions. After all, missions is at the home plate spot on the diagram.

And why not? The clearest and most direct command Jesus gave was to to and make disciples of all nations.

And even apart from that, there's a compelling logic to making missions central to the task of the Church. If we really do believe that Jesus offers the ONLY hope for a lost world. If we really believe that our friends and neighbors are lost and without hope, then surely we should be doing anything and everything possible to get through to them. We should be warning them, pleading with them, sparing no resources to communicate the Good News to people around us.

What would our church be like if we made missions our central task?

We would certainly have a bigger missions budget!
We would be taking greater personal risks to get the Gospel out.


OK, so here are your choices. Multiple choice. The primary task of the our church should be:

a. To bring people into membership in a caring community
b. To encourage Christians to grow to maturity in Christ
c. To give every member a ministry in the church
d. To bring every

The answer is E -- none of the above.

To see why, imagine yourself in a baseball game.

You're up to bat. You hit a smashing line drive. You're safe on first. It's great. Your whole team cheers. Have you accomplished your goal? Of course not. You don't get any credit for staying on first base.

So in the next play you steal to second. A great cheer goes up from your fans. Have you accomplished your goal? No. The only way to score is by hitting EVERY bas and making it home. And the aim of the team is to keep runners rounding the bases and to bring in as many as possible.

It's the same for the church. Our task is not to get everyone just to first base. That's a great start, and it might feel great to be on first base, but there's a real problem if you want to stay there.

The task of the church is to get as many people as possible around all of the bases:

-- to gather people out of the world and into MEMBERSHIP in Christ's body.
-- to challenge each member to grow to MATURITY
-- to equip every member for MINISTRY
-- and to send each person on a MISSION back out to the world.

The Church is God's chosen tool to take in Godless, self-centered people (like us) and to transform them into self-less, God-centered representatives of Jesus in the world.

That is one mammoth challenge! Basically God wants to use us to take atheists and make them into missionaries. Are you up for the challenge? It would be alot easier to hold up at first base, or even second and settle for a church that had great community, or really valued maturity.

But no lesser goal is worthy of the Church of Jesus Christ than the complete transformation of people's lives from enemies of God to whole-hearted servants.

I want to challenge you as we begin our third year as a church to have a vision for Stony Brook as a place where lives are constantly being transformed. A vision for a church where no one sits still -- where we are constantly striving to move forward and to move others forward from membership to maturity to ministry to mission.

I have three specific applications:

The first two are for everyone:

1. Where are you on the baseball diamond? Are you holding up at one base? My challenge to you is to be sure that you are moving. It doesn't really matter where you are right now. You may be a fairly new member of the body of Christ and you're still learning what it means. That's great. But don't be content to stay there -- strive to move on to maturity. You may have been a believer a long time, and you're using your gifts in the body -- Maybe you need to be challenged to find your part in God's mission to the world.

2. My second challenge is: Who are you helping to move through the process. Every one of us who is a part of the church should be helping to encourage someone else along.

3. Finally, I have a word for those in leadership here. Elders, Ministry Council, HBF leaders. In your area of responsibility, are you doing everything possible to move people forward into membership in God's family, from membership to maturity, from maturity to ministry and from ministry to mission. We have to be purposeful about this. It will not happen of its own accord.