No one really accomplishes anything on their own. As we go through our journeys, there are all sorts of people who are pouring into us and enabling us to accomplish the things we do. Some of this is formalized and intentional; a great deal of it is unplanned and circumstantial. But all of it shapes and directs where we go and what we accomplish on the way. This is true about life in general. It is even more true about the growth and development of our faith. As we continue our look at how God designed us to be as a church today, we are talking about the second part of our identity: growing. Growing in Christ is never something that happens on its own. Let’s talk about how it actually works, and what that means for us.
Team Sports
On occasion the world discovers an athlete who seems to have gotten really good at some sport entirely on his own. In the 2024 Olympics in Paris, there was a member of the Turkish shooting team named Yusuf Dikec who took the world by storm and was the source of an endless number of memes. In the 10-meter pistol competition, while all his other competitors had expensive headphones and glasses and guns and uniforms, Dikec was just…casual. With his rumpled shirt and shorts, a pair of Dollar Store ear plugs, and his normal, everyday glasses—and his non-shooting hand stuffed casually in his pocket—he calmly won the silver medal. Everyone else absolutely looked the part. Dikec looked like somebody’s dad who had woken up late and just slid into the parking lot in time to make his scheduled slot in the event. His nonchalance instantly became legendary. As much as they made for fun stories and speculation, the truth is a little more complicated than that.
Dikec has been a career member of the Turkish military. For most of that time, he was a pistol specialist and has been shooting in competitions for more than 20 years including multiple previous Olympic Games. He trained under good teachers like all the other competitors at these most recent games did, and has even been an instructor himself. His journey from somebody with my level of skills with a pistol—which is to say, none beyond rocking some arcade games when I was younger—-to a silver medalist didn’t just happen on its own. Nor did it happen overnight. Growing in something more generally doesn’t happen on its own, and we don’t typically accomplish it on our own. We need help.
This morning, we are in the second part of our teaching series, Going Somewhere. What we are doing for these three weeks is taking a fresh look at who God made us to be as a church. This is something we do every year. The reason for this is that while I remind you of the one sentence summary of who God made us to be each and every Sunday morning as soon as I walk up to this podium, hearing that over and over again is one thing. Really thinking through the key elements of our identity as a group of Jesus followers is a whole other deal. God made us to be a people with whom anyone can connect to grow in Christ and reach out for His kingdom. That’s simply who we are. This series is about understanding more fully exactly what that means.
Last time, we dove deep into the first element of our God-given identity: connecting. With Paul’s personal example of his mindset toward connecting with other people for the sake of sharing the Gospel with them in 1 Corinthians 9 fully in view, we talked about the centrality of connecting people not just with us, but with Jesus. If doing that is going to be our goal, then we have to make sure that the community we create here is one that is open to anybody’s being able to connect no matter where they come from or how they got here. I was actually digging around in my desk this past week and I found a sticky note where I wrote down a quote from another preacher I heard years ago. It was buried deep enough in this particular drawer that it has probably been sitting there for years. It said this: “If the Gospel is for everybody, then the culture of the church can’t exclude anybody.” That is exactly on point with who God created us to be as a church. The Gospel is for everybody, and it’s our job to help them receive it. This means we have to be willing to pull out all the stops and remove all the roadblocks save the Gospel itself to that end.
Today, I want to dive into the second central piece of our identity with you: growing. Connecting here is a good thing. That’s who God made us to be. If you aren’t fully and officially connected here, let me leave a question to rattle around in your heart and mind: What are you waiting for? A sign from heaven? If that’s the case, consider this your sign. Are you worried about walking down to the front at the end of the service? I’ll grant you that it may be the most terrifying 40 feet in the world, but I promise you can do it. I’ll be right there to meet you and pray with you, and everyone else in the room is going to celebrate with you. If you haven’t yet experienced the joy of being baptized—something we highly value for all our members to experience—and are a little nervous about that, rest assured: you can do it. I’ll be right there with you, and everybody else in the room is going to be celebrating you.
Being fully and officially connected to a church is a good thing. It is a good thing that you need in your life, maybe more than you realize. A wise friend once described it to me as a little like getting into a marriage—which, given the model for that relationship is the relationship of Christ and the church, was an entirely apt comparison. With that in mind, going to a church for a long time without actually joining is a little like moving in with someone without being married to them. I know a lot of people do it, but that doesn’t make it wise, let alone right. And it’s easy to get into that inherently-less-stable-than-marriage situation and get so comfortable that you don’t ever bother to actually tie the knot. But that just leaves both of you without the kind of covenant that actually binds you together in the ways you need and which will be better for both you and your kids in the long term. Making that connection official allows you to do more than just show up and receive. It allows for you to give and serve in ways you can’t without that kind of connection.
If I’m not careful, I’m going to start preaching another sermon here. We’ll save that one for another time. The point here is simply that: connecting here is a good thing, and you should do it if you haven’t yet. Don’t let another week pass without having a conversation with me about taking that step and making things official. But, connecting here can’t be the end of the journey for you. The church—this church—isn’t to be simply a place to connect. It is to be a people with whom you connect so that you can grow more fully into who God made you to be. Well, like with last week, I want to look together at something Paul said that will help us get our minds and hearts wrapped a bit more fully around this idea.
Paul had a passionate concern to see others grow in the faith and knowledge of Jesus. We see this passion throughout his letters. There were a few people, though, who he took special pains to pour into. One of these was a young man named Timothy. Both of the letters we have from Paul to Timothy in the Scriptures are filled with counsel on how to better do the things God had called him to do in pastoring the church in Ephesus where he was serving at the time. In the middle of his first letter, Paul calls Timothy specifically to the work of growing in godliness. If you have your copy of the Scriptures handy, join me in 1 Timothy 4.
Look at this with me starting in v. 6. “If you point these things out to the brothers and sisters, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, nourished by the words of the faith and the good teaching that you have followed.” Pause there a second so we can talk context and make a couple of observations. First the context. What are “these things”?
To answer that, we have to step back to the beginning of the chapter. Paul there tells Timothy that the Holy Spirit had explicitly taught “that in later times some will depart from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons, through the hypocrisy of liars whose consciences are seared.” That sounds like a setup for Paul to start teaching against some pretty wild stuff. But as we keep going, it becomes clear that the kind of tinkering these folks were doing in the hearts and minds of unsuspecting believers who were still not fully formed in their faith and commitment to the Gospel wasn’t an attempt to draw them off course into things that were obviously false, but rather to slip into the regular, mundane parts of their lives to set them on paths that only slightly departed from what everybody else was walking—and all in the name of keeping them more fully on the right path. But the thing about slightly divergent paths is that while they might be only slightly divergent at first, over time, the gap between the two only ever gets larger. Given an infinite amount of time, they are separated by an infinite gulf.
Paul counsels Timothy to remember that God created everything for our good and if we are receiving it to His glory, we can do so confidently and with a good conscience. These are the things Timothy is supposed to pass along to the rest of the brothers and sisters in his church. But look at what he says after this. He doesn’t simply instruct Timothy to point these things out. He says that if he does it, “you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus.” Part of Timothy’s being a good and faithful servant of Jesus involved his passing along good and right teachings about living the life of Christ to the other members of his church community.
This wasn’t the only thing Paul put after that conditional. If Timothy points out (that is, teaches) these things, he will be a good servant of Christ Jesus, and he will be “nourished by the words of faith and the good teaching that you have followed.” Don’t miss this, because this is really important. The way Timothy was going to be nourished well himself by “the words of faith and the good teaching that you have followed,” much of which Paul had had a direct hand in passing along to him, was by pointing them out to others. Are you with Paul here? Is what he is saying connecting? If you want to grow and be nourished in healthy ways in your own faith and knowledge of Jesus, you need to be involved in helping others to do that same thing. The more you teach it to others, the better you will understand it yourself.
Paul goes on to warn Timothy again against being drawn aside by all the nonsense people were teaching that seemed to mirror the faith but was really contrary to the good and faithful work of following Jesus well that was common in his day and which has persisted in one form or another all the way to our own day. “But have nothing to do with pointless and silly myths.” The myths Paul has in mind here were not the various Greek mythology stories you may have learned in school. He’s talking about so many of the stories about the faith that people tell as a way to explain things better or in human terms rather than simply receiving the truth already revealed for us in the Scriptures.
These kinds of things are so pernicious still today. There is so much on social media—and especially places like TikTok where there is such a glut of content that it’s really hard to know what’s true and what’s not. And the stuff that’s just nonsense is so easily disguised as serious truth from the Scriptures. Just about anytime you come across a teacher—especially on social media—who proclaims that everybody has been telling you wrong forever, and this one teacher is telling you what’s right and true from the Scriptures, your deception radar ought to be working overtime carefully comparing what they are saying with what the Scriptures actually proclaim when taken fully in context and understood properly. Odds are, there’s some daylight there that you shouldn’t tolerate. Don’t have anything to do with that. When somebody starts majoring on a minor, tune them out, and instead double down on your efforts to “train yourself in godliness.”
In other words: You have to grow. And you can’t delegate out your growth to someone else. You have to do the work yourself, spending diligent and dedicated time in the Scriptures and prayer and engaged with the community of faith. Don’t let someone else do your thinking for you. Listen to sound teaching from trusted teachers, but the real work in the Scriptures has to be yours. It’s not always going to be easy. It’ll take work. But so does growing in any other discipline. Like he so often does, Paul compares this process with the training of our physical bodies. If you want to lose weight or build muscle, yes, we have miracle drugs today that will make it a whole lot easier than it used to be, but there’s still no substitute for doing the hard, long-term work of exercising regularly and eating more healthily. But as good as that is for your body, training yourself in godliness is far more important. “For the training of the body has limited benefit, but godliness is beneficial in every way, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance. For this reason we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.”
Simply showing up and going home is just not enough. Being connected by itself isn’t enough. You’ve got to grow. That means you need to commit to doing the work that will enable you to grow. It’s not going to happen on its own. You need to do this because there are all kinds of false and wrong ideas out there that will draw you aside into nonsense ideas, popular theological trends rather than time-tested theological truth, and faith fads that will come and go with the changing of the seasons. If you aren’t well grounded, these kinds of things will wreak havoc on your faith. You’ll stop actually following Jesus and just get all caught up in whatever is the latest and greatest “Christian” idea. Don’t do that. Train yourself in godliness.
But, think back with me for a second to what Paul said in v. 6. How was Timothy going to be well nourished in the words of faith and good teaching he had received and was endeavoring to follow? By teaching others. Well, look where Paul goes again now in .v 11: “Command and teach these things.” There are people around you who aren’t fully versed in what is right and true about the life of Christ, and I don’t just mean the people around you out in the world generally. I mean the people sitting around you in this very room.
Now, some of you have a robust and mature faith, developed over a lifetime of carefully pursuing the way of Christ through the Scriptures, prayer, and engagement with the church. That’s great. But come on, others of you aren’t there yet. And that’s okay. That’s why you’re here. But I want to be sure you don’t miss what Paul is saying. One of the best ways for you to continue growing, and to reach new depths of faith than you’ve perhaps even been aware existed is to take what you do know, what you have learned, what God’s Spirit has poured into your cup, and to pour that into somebody else’s cup. If you point out these things, if you command and teach these things, you will be nourished in the words of faith and the good teaching that you have followed.
And don’t make excuses about why you can’t do this. “Don’t let anyone despise your youth,” whether that is a chronological youth or a faith youth. “But set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and in purity.” You follow Jesus faithfully, living out the truths you have learned, and pouring from out of your cup into the cup of those around you who aren’t even as far along as you are, all the while you are continuing to pursue new Gospel depths as you keep digging into the Scriptures, prayer, and engagement with the church in your own life, and let your consistent and enacted commitment to Christ speak for itself. Don’t ever try to use the excuse, “Well, I don’t know very much.” You don’t have to know everything. You just have to study hard and share what you do know. Don’t let fear (which in this case is just a lack of faith in the Spirit to enable and equip you to be faithful to follow His command) or laziness keep you from being a part of growing more in Christ by helping others to do the same.
Paul closes this section by exhorting Timothy in this direction one more time. “Until I come”—at which point Paul would give him more encouragement and training—“give your attention to public reading, exhortation, and teaching. Don’t neglect the gift that is in you; it was given to you through prophecy, with the laying on of hands by the council of elders. Practice these things; be committed to them, so that your progress may be evident to all. Pay close attention to your life and your teaching; persevere in these things, for in doing this you will save both yourself and your hearers.”
Now, there’s a lot we could say about what’s going on here. I was at a preaching conference the week before last, and one of the sermons was based in this text as well, and it was a totally different message than I’m preaching to you this morning. What I want us to see here together this morning is the fact that this growth Paul is calling Timothy to pursue is not something he is able to accomplish entirely on his own.
Yes, Timothy had to take ownership of his own growth. He was to train himself in godliness. You have to take ownership of your own growth. This is the case whether you are connected with this church family or another one. Wherever it is God places you to become more fully who He made you to be you are going to have to do the work to see that happen. You are going to have to commit yourself to diligent, consistent time in the Scriptures. You are going to have to commit yourself to diligent, faithful, fervent time in prayer. You are going to have to commit yourself to being fully engaged with the body of Christ. Do those three things and you will start to grow. Take even one of them away and you won’t. You’ll stagnate at best, and God isn’t interested in stagnant, lukewarm servants. We will give you the tools you need, but if you don’t pick them up and put them to use, they’ll just gather dust, and you won’t be growing. And, just so we’re clear: that’ll be on you, not us.
Yet here’s what you’ve got to know more than anything else today: None of this is going to happen if you are trying to do it entirely on your own. Timothy had others pour into him. Paul talks about numerous other people in addition to himself, some by name and some anonymously, who played a role in Timothy’s faith growth and development. Paul also instructed Timothy numerous times including several times in this very passage to pour what he had learned into others. You get discipled and then you disciple others. That’s how God designed the church to work. That’s how God designed this church to work. We are a people with whom anyone can connect in order to grow in Christ. If we aren’t doing that, we aren’t being the church God made us to be: one that works together to become more fully who God made each of us individually to be. Because growing in Christ is a team sport.
Okay, so how do we make sure we are getting this right as a body? Well, think about the two sides of this growing process that Paul has been talking about. Growing in Christ is a team sport. Somebody pours into you, and you pour into somebody else. On the first side of that, then, you need to be in a place where somebody else is pouring into you. And while this time is one place that happens, if this is the only place it is happening for you, you are short-circuiting the process. You need to be in a group smaller than this one. You need to be at Bible study on Wednesday nights, and you need to be in a Sunday school group. Those smaller groups are where we can dive more deeply into the Scriptures together, and where we can ask questions and wrestle together with the text so that we all understand it better such that we can live it out more consistently. In other words, so that we grow.
If you aren’t doing at least one of those other two things (and to these we could add our women’s or men’s Bible study groups that meet at other times during the month), you are almost assuredly not going to be growing the way God intends for you to be growing. You may be doing a lot of hard work on your own, and that’s good, but growing in Christ is a team sport. If you are not actively doing it with other people actively involved in the process, you are missing out on the fullness of what God intends for you.
And let me offer you this as an entrance ramp for you to Sunday school. As scary as it can be to walk into this room for the first time when you can reasonably well blend into the crowd, it’s even more terrifying to show up for Sunday school where you really can’t hide. Well, in the next few weeks, we are going to start construction in that other building, and we are going to lose access to all of our Sunday school rooms. What we are going to do for the adults is have one big Sunday school class altogether in this room. The coffee is still going to be here, and who knows what other goodies we might occasionally throw in for some extra fun you won’t want to miss. What this means for you if you aren’t already connected with a Sunday school group is that you can blend into the crowd more easily for a few months as you get into the rhythm of getting up early enough to get here for Sunday school. If you’ll commit to doing that, I can guarantee you three things: You are going to meet some new people. You are going to learn from some really good teachers. And you are going to already have your spot in the sanctuary reserved before the rest of the crowd gets here at 10:00, not to mention a closer parking spot. You’re welcome. Better still: you are going to be growing in Christ more than you were before. Growing in Christ is a team sport.
But somebody pouring into you is only half the battle. If you really want to grow in Christ—and God made us a people with whom anyone can connect to grow in Christ—you need to be pouring into others. When we come out of our construction season, we are going to need more adult Sunday school groups than we have right now. Call it a hopeful prediction, but we’re planning on that even if we experience zero numerical changes throughout the process. We’re also not far from needing to add yet another kids group to our Sunday morning and Wednesday night lineup. This is in addition to really needing to be able to break out our youth into smaller groups on occasion. Well, more classes means more teachers. And although we already have a ton of awesome volunteers serving in these ways, we need more. We need some of you who aren’t already serving to step up and join the fun.
Of course, to do that you need to be an official member which brings us back to that minisermon from a little while ago. This is because I’m not going to put anybody in a position of teaching others in this church until they are a fully committed member. Because we are a people with whom anyone can connect, you can be here casually and believe whatever you want. You’re going to hear the truth, but you don’t have to sign off on it. But to take the step of membership requires something more. It is your expressing that you are committed to this church, to what we believe, and to where we are going. You’re not just kicking the tires anymore. You’re on board. Those are the people we are going to put in place to teach. And, honestly—don’t miss this—some of you need to take that step because you need to be pouring into others (kids or adults or both) given what God has poured into you, and you can’t do that until you’ve taken that step. I completely understand this is a big decision to make. I understand that you want to get a solid experience of the community before you make it because it is like a marriage and you want to take it seriously. I understand you need to pray through it carefully. But at some point, you need to make the decision. Some of you are already functioning like members in how you are engaged here, you just need to actually become one. You need to officially join the team to take your growth and the growth of the people God will bless through you to the next level. Growing in Christ is a team sport.
And don’t bother with the nonsense about not having anything to offer, or being too new in your own faith to be able to teach anyone else. We already heard Paul address that with Timothy. “Don’t let anyone despise your youth.” Do you know who “anyone” includes? You. Growing in Christ is a team sport, and if you are on the team, you need to step up and be a contributing member. You need to train hard so that you are constantly growing, and you need to step into opportunities to pour into the people around you because that’s going to help you grow more. Growing in Christ is a team sport. It’s a sport that you need to be playing.
So, how are you going to play? Are you going to make the membership commitment, or at least actively start that conversation with me? Are you diligently taking ownership of your own growth in Christ? Are you putting yourself in a learning posture before other teachers in the church? Are you going to step up and commit to being a part of pouring into others what you have had poured into your own cup? Growing in Christ is a team sport. And when we all play it together, the kinds of things we will see happen to advance God’s kingdom as the power of His Spirit is unleashed more and more fully through our collective faithfulness will boggle our minds. As Paul himself put it: “Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us—to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” Amen indeed. Let’s get moving.
