This week we are talking about another of the fundamental nuts and bolts of getting the church right. Like we did a couple of weeks ago, though, this week we talked less and showed more. Today we’re talking about the importance of discipleship in the church. From there – which you can watch in the embedded YouTube video of our service – we experienced together what discipleship in action can look like as we heard and celebrated the stories of our Guatemala mission trip team. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Growing Together

I am not generally well-known for my physique. Unless you happen to be going for scrawny, in which case I am your man. It may not come as much of a surprise to you to learn that over the course of my nearly 41 years of life, I haven’t spent all that much time in a gym. Or it may surprise you…but then we probably need to have a conversation about what muscle looks like, but we can do that another time. Yes, because I haven’t spent more than a few hours in a gym exercising and lifting weights…ever…big, bulging muscles aren’t really my thing. Indeed, if you want to build muscle, you have to work out. Simply wishing yourself strong isn’t going to work. If you want to enjoy the payoff, you have to put in the effort. Well, kind of like we talked about last week, what’s true of the human body is also true of the church. 

This morning we are in the fourth part of our teaching series, Nuts and Bolts. For the last few weeks with a few more yet to go, we have been talking about the church. We’ve been talking about how the church was designed to work. We’ve been talking about what it looks like to get being the church right. We started off with a pretty convicting conversation about what the church is. We experienced together what the church is for. Then, last week, we reflected together with Paul on why church membership is such a big deal. 

As a part of our conversation last week, we touched a bit on some of the responsibilities of church membership. While the church isn’t like any other club, like any other club, there are some expectations that come with being a member. Joining simply so you can have your name on a list somewhere doesn’t make you a member all by itself. We all have to do our part or there’s no real reason to think our membership means anything. The other side of the responsibilities, though, is that church membership also comes with some privileges. One of those privileges is what I want to spend a few minutes talking about with you this morning. We’re just going to reflect on that for a few minutes, though, because kind of like we did a couple of weeks ago, today we are going to experience a bit of what we’re talking about together.

So then, what is this membership privilege that is so worth our attention? When you make yourself an active part of the church, you are putting yourself in a context in which you have the opportunity to grow to reflect the image of Jesus more fully in your life. Now, that may not sound like such a big deal to you, but let me assure you it is. When you consider that the whole point of following Jesus is to come to reflect His image more fully in your life to the glory of God, this means that when you are an active part of the church, you are able to actually do the thing you signed up to do in the beginning. That is, you have a chance to fulfill your life’s very purpose. That’s a big deal. 

You do not, by the way, have a similar opportunity when you are not an active part of the church. If you’re trying to be a solo Christian (which isn’t actually a thing even though people still try it all the time), you can engage with the Scriptures and prayer all you want, but without a community with whom you can regularly put into practice the things you are learning, they won’t do you any good. That’s just another reason why church membership is such a big deal. Telling someone that one of the benefits of being an active part of the church being in a context in which you have the opportunity to grow to reflect the image of Jesus more fully in your life, though, is quite a mouthful. Thankfully, there’s a word that captures this idea in a bit more bite-sized of a way. This word is discipleship. And discipleship is another one of those truly fundamental nuts and bolts of getting being the church right. 

Now, there are several places we could go in the Scriptures to talk about discipleship, what it is, and why it matters. Very quickly this morning—because I want to give the Guatemala team plenty of time to share some of their incredible stories with you—I want to take us to an idea from the apostle Paul that at first glance doesn’t seem to have anything to do with discipleship. But I think there’s more here than meets the eye. If you have a copy of the Scriptures handy, find your way to Ephesians 4. 

Paul’s letter to the believers in ancient Ephesus—a church that gets more attention in the Scriptures than just about any other church—starts off with three chapters’ worth of proclaiming the incredible truths of the Gospel. Starting in chapter 4, Paul says this in v. 1: “Therefore I, the prisoner in the Lord, urge you to live worthy of the calling you have received…” In other words, what’s coming next is going to apply all of the theology in the first half of the letter. And where do you think Paul starts when he does this? He starts with the church. He talks about the unity the church should have in their pursuit of Christ; a unity that exists in spite of a variety of gifts Jesus gives the church to complete our mission. If that sounds quite similar to what Paul was saying last week, that’s because it is. 

Starting with the way Jesus equips leaders in the church to equip others, Paul says this starting in v. 11: “And he himself [that is, Jesus] gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers…” Just a quick note on this list. There’s a fair bit of debate as to exactly how we are to understand all of these things. Are they all given to one person, is this a list that some people have some of, and others have others, are these just things given to church leaders or is this a general congregational list? However exactly we should understand this list, though, the results of it are clear. 

Stick with me in the text at v. 12 now. Jesus gave these gifts so the people who have them can be “equipping the saints [that’s you guys] for the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God’s Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness.” In other words, when you are in the church, and when the church is working like God designed, you are going to become more fully who God made you in Christ to be. More than that, we are going to become more fully who God made us in Christ to be. That’s discipleship. 

This discipleship, though, isn’t just something that happens. It is something that has to happen. If we are not actively growing in Christ, we are actively moving away from Him. Or at least, He’s moving away from us, because He’s going somewhere, and if we’re not actively following, then the distance between us and Him is going to get bigger over time. Indeed, if we aren’t actively following and thus growing in Him, we will be following something in the world around us. When we start following something in the world around us, we can get in over our heads very quickly. Look at v. 14: “Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning with cleverness in the techniques of deceit.” Some of the most dangerous and deceptive heresies in the world came into existence because someone thought he was following Jesus, disconnected from the church, got on a slightly perpendicular track, and the distance between him and Jesus quickly became insurmountable. 

Discipleship is simply a must in the church. And it takes all of us. Look at just two more verses here and we’ll wrap up this part of our service. “But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head—Christ. From him the whole body, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building up itself in love by the proper working of each individual part.” When every part plays its part, we all grow together. This is the heart of discipleship: growing in Christ together. Discipleship is how the church grows stronger. 

There are two things this means. The first is that you need to make sure you are being poured into so that you are growing in Christ yourself. This happens in two ways. It happens first and foremost when you are engaging with the Scriptures and prayer on a daily basis. Without those two personal disciplines in place, you won’t be growing regardless of what else you’ve got going on. The second way it happens is when you are engaged with a smaller group of believers than the whole body gathered here with whom you are engaging with the Scriptures and prayer together. For just nearly all of you, then, that means getting engaged with a Sunday school small group and/or our Wednesday night Bible study time. Many of you are far enough along in your journey with Jesus that that is where you need to be. If you are newer to the whole following Jesus thing, though, come and talk with me, and we’ll get you in a place where you are getting more than that. Discipleship is how the church grows stronger. 

The second thing this means for you is that you need to make sure you are actively pouring into someone else. Like I said last time: if you are not actively pouring out what God is pouring into you through your own personal engagement with the Scriptures and prayer, it will eventually become stagnant and start doing you more harm than good. If you are teaching one of our Sunday school groups, great. You are doing this. But not everybody is called to that particular approach to discipleship. We’re not all built the same, which is just how Jesus wanted it to be. Every follower of Jesus in this community is, however, called to be making disciples in the ways God did design you in Christ to do it. And, honestly, most of the people who really need that pouring into are 25 or younger. There are lots of opportunities for you to do that including and especially our Student-Adult Connection, or SWAG nights. Talk with Nate or me if you want more information on how to get more involved in being a disciple maker among some of our younger people. Discipleship is how the church grows stronger. 

That’s about it from me this morning. But we’re not done quite yet today. Rather than telling you more about discipleship, I’d rather let you see and hear for yourselves what it looks like when it gets put into action. For that, I am going to invite the Guatemala team members up to share some stories from their trip. These are stories they experienced, but which you helped to enable. These are our stories. They are stories of discipleship in action. They are stories of the church growing stronger. Discipleship is how the church grows stronger. What you are about to see is one great way that happens.