One of the things that we’re working on at the Deacons’ board is getting clear job descriptions for the various people in ministry here at Wentworth. It’s always easier for everyone if expectations are clear, so, here are some job descriptions I’ve downloaded from the internet as a first step towards that.
Senior Pastor: · Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. · Is more powerful than a locomotive. · Is faster than a speeding bullet. · Walks on water. · Gives policies to God.
Youth Pastor: · Leaps short buildings with a running start. · Is as powerful as a switch engine. · Is faster than a speeding BB. · Walks on water if he knows where the stumps are. · Talks with God if special request is approved.
Children’s Pastor: · Runs into small buildings. · Recognizes locomotives 2 out of 3 times. · Uses a squirt gun. · Knows how to use the water fountain. · Mumbles to himself.
Church Administrator: · Lifts buildings to walk under them. · Kicks locomotives off the track. · Catches speeding bullets in her teeth. · Freezes water with a single glance. · When God speaks she says, “May I ask who is calling?”
This morning we’re going to be talking about growing into maturity as a church, but first we need to talk a little about job descriptions. This follows on from last week, when we looked at some of the ways in which we are all different. One way is that we’re all differently gifted. Eph 4:11 gives a list of what I usually refer to as leadership gifts. We’ll talk about those more in a couple of months when we talk about the whole subject of spiritual gifts. This morning I want to focus on what Paul says about the purpose for those gifts.
Eph 4.11-12 says, “11 It was [Jesus] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, 12 to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.”
So God provides these gifts to the church; apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, for two reasons – to prepare God’s people for works of service; and so that the body of Christ may be built up. Please note! He didn’t provide these people in the church to do the work. He provided them to prepare God’s people to do the work.
There’s a huge difference there. It’s the difference between hiring one or two professionals to do everything in the church, and having everybody in the church involved in doing something. Someone once told me that, “we pay you to pray.” I think he was joking, but it is a common thought. The pastor, or any other person who spends the majority of their time in what is normally called “full time ministry,” is not paid to do the ministry. His or her job is to prepare God’s people to do the ministry.
It’s the difference between a solo performer and the coach of a well-coordinated team.
What Paul is saying here is that pastors and teachers are more like coaches or trainers than they are like a solo sports superstar like Tiger Woods.
[Now, before I go any further, I need to make a bit of a disclaimer.
If you ever take a writing class there is one thing that the teacher will usually try and drum into you. “Write about what you know.” That’s why so many novels are set in the kind of town and the kind of family that the writer grew up in. They know what they’re writing about.
The same would apply to speaking in public. It’s always a good idea to only talk about something if you know something about it. Mind you that doesn’t seem to stop a lot of people; from the guy in the supermarket checkout line, through radio talk show hosts, to politicians. Still, it’s a good idea to only write or talk about things when you know something about them.
That puts me in something of a bind this week. I know a fair bit about the passage of scripture this week (Eph 4:12-16). I’ve translated it out of the Greek into English. I’ve studied it. I’ve looked at what other people have said about it. I’ve done all that. However, as I read and studied, more and more I realised that the way Paul looks at the church here, as a body, also connects with looking at the church as a team, a sports team to be exact.
Now the problem with that is that I’m not really “sporty.” In fact, I only went to my first football game a couple of weeks ago. So, I’m going to ask you to bear with me as I preach this morning because I’m going to refer a number of times to that visit to Ivor Wynn. If I make any really glaring errors, you’re at liberty to point them out to me. Only be gentle!]
God is into bodybuilding! Did you know that? It says so right there in verse 12. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers are given, “so that the body of Christ may be built up.” God is into bodybuilding! But you don’t have to all go out and enrol in one of those fitness clubs that are so popular. God already has a fitness programme that he has put in place. He builds up the body of Christ, by preparing “God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.”
Let’s think about that image for a minute. If you want to do some bodybuilding is there any one exercise that you can do that will develop every single muscle in your body? Walking and swimming are both really good exercises but there are still some muscles that don’t benefit fully from walking or swimming.
The fact is that one of the principles of exercising is “isolation.” At Running and Reading we would do various stretches and the person leading the stretches would sometimes tell us which muscle we should feel stretching. If we didn’t feel that muscle then we obviously weren’t doing it right. The stretches were designed to isolate one muscle and stretch that one muscle.
Believe it or not I used to lift weights. (It didn’t work! I’m still skinny.) But among the exercises that I used to do were “preacher curls.” The idea is to isolate the bicep muscle so you could exercise it alone. But the goal is always to have the whole body built up, so you have to rotate the exercises or you get all out of whack.
The same applies to the body of Christ. The body only works well when all the muscles, all the gifts, are working properly and growing together. If we don’t develop all of our muscles equally we’ll become an unbalanced church.
The task of the pastor-teacher is like that of a trainer, to see that the whole body is in good shape and well exercised so that the whole body can be involved in serving God and serving our neighbours.
But you need more than strong muscles to be in shape. You need to be coordinated too. Verse 13 says, “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God.” Another way of translating that is “13until we, who are many, arrive at the point where we are at one in our faith and knowledge of the Son of God.”
“until we, who are many, arrive at the point where we are at one”
We’ve talked about the pastor-teacher as a trainer, helping individual muscles get stronger. But they’re also team coaches, working with the “we, who are many” until we can work together, “as one.”
It takes time to develop a bunch of people into a team, especially when you keep adding new members. There will be mistakes.
On the Labour Day weekend I went to my first Ticats game. We used to live on Glendale and we would have people park on our grass for the games, but I never actually went to a game before.
It was interesting to watch the way the Ticats would move the ball up the field like a machine. I’m still not clear on the “down” system, but they would get to within about 10 or 20 yards of the Argos’ goal line… and then they’d fall apart. Then they’d do it again. Get to within 10 or 20 yards of the Argos’ line. And then they’d fall apart. Again and again there would be a fumble, and at least once Jason Maas threw the ball to a place on the field where there wasn’t a Ticat for yards. (Mind you they’re not quite as bad as the University of Toronto team, which apparently has lost 37 straight games.)
Now, I know nothing about Canadian football but one of the comments I heard was that the team looks great on paper as far as talent goes, but they just can’t seem to work together. They haven’t yet got to the point where “the many” can work together “as one.”
Churches are no different. It takes time to develop a bunch of people into a team. As we seek to learn together what it means to serve God and our neighbours in this neighbourhood, there will be mistakes. You can count on it. People will misunderstand what is expected of them. Just as someone will be over on the left side of the field when the quarterback throws the ball over to the right, someone will be out of town when you thought they were going to take their turn in the nursery or visit that sick person in the hospital.
Recognising where we are fumbling on our passes, and seeking to do a better job of covering the various gaps is part of growing as a church. As we individually become stronger and learn to work together as a group, as verse 13 says, we “become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
That’s the standard, the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. And you know what, we can’t do that alone. I will never be able to grow to the point where I attain the whole measure of the fullness of Christ without you, and you, and you, and you. Because it is all of us together that are the body of Christ, and it’s all of us together that reflect the fullness of who he is.
A team needs training, coordination, and growth, but it also needs good management. Verse 16 says “16 From him [that is Jesus] the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” Another way of saying that is “16Under his [that is Jesus’] direction the whole body is being put together and it is held together by each and every part fulfilling its own special function.” The Church belongs to Jesus. That means that he is the owner and manager. He makes the decision about the direction the church is going. He moves his players around so that they can be most effective.
[It’s been interesting walking through this recent visa crisis with our daughter Sharon. She flew yesterday to South Africa, still without a long-term visa. As she shared her situation with various people she got two distinct responses. Many people would say, “Well, perhaps God doesn’t want you to go to South Africa.” Most people who have worked overseas in missions responded, “Looks like you’re facing real opposition. God must have something good in mind for the enemy to put up a fight like this.”
The same data; totally different interpretations. She, and we, believe that God is moving one of his players around and the opposition is trying to block her. But she is moving, “under his direction.”]
Another thing that struck me at the Ticats game was the number of times the personnel on the field changed depending on what was happening in the game. You see I grew up with football (soccer) where you have the same 11 guys on the field for the whole 90 minute game. But I’ve discovered that a Canadian football team has three sub-teams; an offensive team, a defensive team, and a special team (which is actually a kicking team) – but they’re all the same Team.
It’s the same with the church. We have a children’s ministry team, a worship team, a drop in team, a finance and building team, a leadership team, a care team, but they’re all part of the Church Team. Some people are on more than one team. Some people are like the kicker, a specialist, he only does one thing but he has to do it just right every time. The second part of verse 16 says that the church, is held together by each and every part fulfilling its own special function. If each of us doesn’t do what God has called us to do, then we hinder the growth of God’s church.
That’s God’s programme for the church; bodybuilding, coordination, growth, good management and teamwork. But we have a problem. We get distracted.
Have you ever tried to keep the attention of a preschooler for long? They get distracted easily, and Paul warns us against being like, “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.”
Imagine how it would look if you had a football team on the field and, right in the middle of play, the quarterback decided to see, instead of throwing the ball, what would happen if he rolled it along the ground. Or if someone decided that it was really much easier to run the ball over the goal line behind them, since there weren’t any big nasty opposition guys in that direction. Not only would they not score any touchdowns, pretty soon it wouldn’t look like football anymore.
That’s something that we always have to be aware of if we’re going to grow into all that Christ would have us be. There is always one more fad or slickly packaged teaching, whether it’s from outside the church, like the Da Vinci Code, or inside the church, like the Prayer of Jabez or the Left Behind Series. I don’t mean to be nasty, but they’re just distractions that get Christians’ eyes off the ball and distract them from the goal of being like Jesus, and serving him and serving our neighbours.
So what do we do instead of getting distracted?
“Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him
who is the Head, that is, Christ.” (15)
It doesn’t actually say speaking the truth in love in Greek. It says, “truthing in love,” because in the Bible truth is so much more than what you say. It’s something you do. And the more we live our lives in truth, the more like Jesus we become, and the more like Jesus we become, the more we are empowered to live our lives in truth. It’s a process. Jesus calls us to himself and asks us to live the truth we know, and offers us the power to live that truth. Then he takes us on, step by step, growing in our ability to live truth so that “in all things,” in everything we do, we reflect more and more who Jesus is and what his character is like.
That’s what Jesus is doing in his church. He brings the church together and gives gifts of various types to various people. Then he empowers his people by the Holy Spirit. But he doesn’t do it all for us. The end of verse 16 says that the church “grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”
I said last week that there are no ungifted people in the church. Each one is gifted. And the reason for that is that each one needs to do their part, as Christ empowers them:
So that the whole church can grow and build itself up in love.
So that the church, the body of Christ, can serve God and serve their neighbours.
So that the world can know that God loves them.
Where do you feel called to be involved in church? It can be as simple as cooking a meal at the drop-in or fixing things around the church. You may not think you are able, but our skills improve as we use them, especially if you get help from a coach.
Some of you have been following Jesus for years. It’s time you became a coach yourself and invested in the lives of others and helped them learn to follow him.
Some of you have it on your hearts to start something new. I’ve had different people come to me this past week alone about starting groups for young women, teens and college and career folks. I believe our basic response should be to say yes, but remember the larger church team that you’re part of and stay focussed on serving God and serving your neighbours.
God wants his body, his church, to be healthy and growing. That can only happens as each one of us fulfils our role in his body. Spend some time with him this week to discover what it is he’s calling you to do.