The Church: Why Bother? Part One - Overview / Equipping

For many people a trip to church is like a visit to Grandma’s attic. In Grandma’s attic, you’ll find many quaint, old-fashioned things—dusty old books with yellowed pages, an outlandish hat with peacock feathers, a trunk full of faded sepia-tone picture albums, cracking and brittle with age. We can have a certain amount of fun in Grandma’s attic. There’s something vaguely familiar about the place—it awakens a certain nostalgia in us. It speaks of a gentler time and a simpler life. We might even begin to feel a sense of reconnection with our roots there.

But when you come right down to it, you can’t live in Grandma’s attic. It’s musty and dusty and full of things that are not much use in today’s world. So you don’t go there very often. And that’s what many people think about church.

It’s a musty, dusty old institution that doesn’t have much relevance for today.

George Barna is an expert in marketing research. He has spent most of his career studying the habits and attitudes of churches and church-goers in North America. On the basis of what he has found, he is not optimistic about the future of the church. Listen to what he says in one of his recent books…

• “After nearly two decades of studying Christian churches in North America, I’m convinced that the typical church as we know it today has a rapidly expiring shelf life. Despite the activity emanating from many dynamic congregations, the Church as a whole is losing influence and adherents faster than any other major institution in the nation.

• “Having devoted the last eighteen years of my life to studying the people, their churches, and the prevailing culture, I’ve concluded that within the next few years North America will experience one of two outcomes: either massive spiritual revival or total moral anarchy.

• “As a committed Christian, I am urgently praying for revival. But as a rational social scientist with a warehouse full of behavioral data…I’m not encouraged.”

Among other things, Barna’s research indicates that, as Christians in North America, we have not impacted our culture anywhere near as much as our culture has impacted us. His data reveals in category after category, that the beliefs, core values and behavior of people who identify themselves as Christians is virtually identical to the behavior, beliefs, and values of non-Christians.

All this adds up to one conclusion—the church in our culture is rapidly losing relevance. At best, it has become like a “spiritual pit stop” where we come to get a “shot” of spirituality before plunging back into the mainstream of life. When we come to church, we’re looking for something that will help us to deal with the stress and demands of this crazy merry-go-round that we’re on—something that will make us feel warm and fuzzy and help us to solve our problems. But it better be quick and it better be relevant, or we’re out of here!

That’s why some churches have actually instituted lite services—5 minutes of music, 5 minutes of prayer, a 10 minute sermon and you’re done.

Faith used to revolve around God; but now it revolves around us. Attending church used to be about what God wanted from us; now it’s more about what we want from God. Our needs, our wants, and our preferences become the ultimate means by which we measure our church experience and how we choose to become involved in a particular local church. If a church’s program doesn’t appeal to us, if it isn’t entertaining, if it doesn’t make us feel good, then it’s irrelevant. It isn’t worth bothering with.

That’s why the church growth experts are writing books and holding seminars on how to re-invent, or re-package the church so that it WILL be relevant, it WILL be entertaining, it WILL be attractive to modern-day people.

But I can’t help thinking that there’s something radically wrong with this picture. As children of our culture, we find ourselves all-too-ready to believe the messages of that culture. We are bombarded with those messages day and night. We find ourselves believing that we really do need what our culture tells us we need.

But what if our felt needs are not our real needs? What if our real needs are actually something quite different from what our culture tells us we need? Who is going to tell us that, if the church falls in step with the culture? How is the church going to have a prophetic voice in our culture if all we’re interested in doing is repackaging the church so that it can be acceptable to our culture?

These are some of the issues that I would like to explore with you as we consider the question The Church: Why Bother? (With apologies to Philip Yancey for stealing the title of one of his books.)

I want us all, here at Erindale, to gain a firm handle on what the church is for. What on earth is the church supposed to be doing? How is it supposed to be doing it? What implications does that have for us here at Erindale?

And we’re not going to turn to our culture for the answer to those questions, we’re going to turn to the Bible. Our culture frequently lies to us, but the Bible never lies to us. The Bible is the Owner’s Manual for the church. So that’s where we’re going to go for answers.

Let’s turn to Acts 2:42.

The other day, I was looking at my birth certificate. There’s a lot of interesting information on a birth certificate. It tells where you were born, when you were born, how much you weighed, who your parents are, what gender you are, what your name is, and so on. There’s a lot of information on that birth certificate that identifies you as a unique individual.

When we come to Acts 2, we are looking at the birth certificate for the church of Jesus Christ. A new institution had come into existence—the world had never seen anything like it before—and in verses 42-47, we have a list of identifying characteristics.

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.

Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Now as you look at the various activities that characterized the early church, you’ll see that they fall into four broad categories:

• Teaching - “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (v.42) The word “devoted” there means “to pay careful attention to…” So the early church placed a high premium on the teaching of the apostles. And this teaching was to become the basis for the NT Scriptures. Remember, at the time the early church was born, there was no NT—there was only the Hebrew Scriptures; what we call today the OT. So the apostles began to teach the people what they had been taught by the Lord Jesus Christ.

• Worship - “they devoted themselves to the breaking of bread (the observance of the Lord’s Table) and to prayer (v. 42). Verse 43 tells us that there was a sense of the supernatural presence of God in their midst - they were filled with awe and the apostles performed many wonders and miraculous signs. Verse 47 tells us that they were praising God.

  So there was an awareness of God’s presence in the early church. And the people were actively expressing their response to His presence.

• Fellowship - v.42 - they devoted themselves… to the fellowship. They spent a lot of time together - “they were together and had everything in common.” (v. 44)

  ”Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts” (v. 46)

  And there was a practical dimension to their togetherness. They shared things with one another (v. 45) “Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.”

  There was a communal spirit to the early church. There wasn’t a sense of individualism or independence. If you were a Christian, you were part of that community, and that brought you into close relationship with other Christians.

• Outreach - v. 47 - “they enjoyed the favor of all the people.” (that is, the people of Jerusalem) The early Christians had visibilty—they became known in their community. And they had a positive, attractive image in that community. People thought well of them. So it’s no wonder that… “the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.” They were a growing fellowship; outsiders were being attracted and were becoming insiders on a daily basis.

So here we have an intriguing picture of what a functional, healthy church is supposed to look like.

When I was in elementary school, they used a system of marking in which the highest mark you could get was “E”, which stood for excellent. And when I think of our church here at Erindale, I want us to look like that church in Acts 2. I want us to get an “E” from the Lord.

Now in order for that to happen, we’re going to have to be aware of our mission and our purpose. We’re going to have to pay attention to each of these four components of healthy church life. And we can label each of these four categories with a word that begins with the letter “E”…

Teaching = The Ministry of Equipping: because the Lord expects us to do more than just educate people; He wants us to equip people so that they will know how to live for Christ and how to serve Christ. The ministry of equipping is about more than just head knowledge. It involves practical training; it involves the imparting of skills; it involves mentoring and coaching and practice.

In Ephesians 4:11-12 Paul tells us that the Lord gives spiritual gifts to various individuals in the church:

Ephesians 4:11-12 The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry

Some people think that it is the pastor’s job to do the work of the ministry. WRONG! It is the pastor’s job to equip the people of God to do the work of the ministry. This is what the teaching ministry of the church is intended to do—equip people to live for Christ and serve Christ.

Worship = The Ministry of Exalting: Exalting is when we lift up the Lord and celebrate his glory. I will exalt you, my God the King; I will praise your name for ever and ever (Psalm 145:1)

A church that is a strong, healthy church is going to be a worshiping church—a church that loves to come together and lift up the name of the Lord. They’re aware of His presence in their midst and they want to celebrate Him and lift up their voices to Him.

And I believe that worship includes the ministry of prayer because when we pray, we are lifting up our voices to the Lord. So worship and prayer make up the ministry of exalting. And if we want to have a healthy church, that’s one of the things we’re going to have to do.

Fellowship = The Ministry of Encouraging We have this idea that fellowship means small talk over coffee and donuts. Or having a potluck supper. But the biblical idea of fellowship is much deeper and richer than that. The biblical word for fellowship is the word “koinonia” and it means to come alongside and share things in common. And the purpose of fellowship is that together we would help one another to live the Christian life. It’s about getting alongside one another and lifting each other up. It’s all about encouragement.

In our culture, it’s sometimes hard for that to happen. We can easily coccoon ourselves away from other people. We need to make a conscious effort to get involved with others and not just be out on our own doing our own thing.

A strong, healthy church is going to be a church in which people are relating to each other in significant, meaningful ways. And that is how the ministry of encouragement happens.

(plug small groups)

Outreach = The Ministry of Extending – reaching out beyond our circle to a world that needs Christ. You know it was always Jesus’ intention that the church look outward. He said “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”

He said “Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.”

He said “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

It was never Jesus’ intention that the church become a cloister—an inward looking, closed community. No, far from being a cloister, the world is our oyster! We are to extend the Good News about Jesus to a world that desperately needs him. So a church that is strong and healthy is going to be a church that places a high priority on reaching out, both locally in its own community and globally around the world.

So if we take these four ideas and put them all together, we have a picture of what God wants Erindale Bible Chapel to be. We can express it as a mission statement.

The mission of Erindale Bible Chapel is to equip the people of God with the Word of God so that together we might…

• exalt Christ in authentic worship and prayer

• encourage one another to live for Christ and serve Him, and

• extend the Good News about Christ to a world that needs Him

That’s the biblical pattern for a healthy church! It’s a church in which all four components receive balanced emphasis.

Now in the time that remains, I’d like to focus on the first one of those areas: Equipping or teaching. Let’s consider five questions so that we can all be on the same page when it comes to the Equipping ministry of the church.

1. What is the church supposed to teach? What is our curriculum to be?

Well, the answer is simple: it’s the Bible. But we need to be clear on that, because some churches nowadays are teaching pop psychology, or political philosophy, or pagan mythology. And some churches aren’t teaching anything at all!

But we are to teach the Bible—the revealed Word of God. Why? The answer is in 2 Timothy 3:16-17

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Just a few verses later, Paul writes…

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

And that is what is happening in spiritual circles today. People are being taught myths. They are being myth-led.

Now these modern myths may sound very plausible. They may sound very up-to-date and relevant. They may appeal very strongly to our senses, and promise to fulfill all our needs. But they are myths! They have no basis in spiritual truth. If we want truth, we need to go to the Word of God, and the church is responsible for taking us there. The church is where we should be able to receive sound teaching in what the Word of God says, what it means, and how to apply it in today’s world. That’s our curriculum.

2. Who is the teacher?

That’s very simple. The Holy Spirit is the master teacher of the church. If you want to understand the the truth of the Word of God, you need the Holy Spirit to illumine it for you. Otherwise it remains as just words on a page. 1 Corinthians 2:11ff…

For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.

This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

You cannot understand the Word of God without the teaching ministry of the Spirit of God.

Now in the local church, the Holy Spirit mediates his teaching ministry through people—both men and women—to whom he has given a special spiritual ability to explain and communicate the truth of Scripture. This special ability is what we call the gift of teaching. Listen to what Paul says in Romans 12:6 as he talks about the spiritual gifts…

We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach …

Timothy was a man who had the gift of teaching. That’s why Paul said to him…

Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching. Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid their hands on you. Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.

So the Holy Spirit has given to the local church gifted people who can teach the Word of God. And as they teach, the learners learn and are blessed by the truth.

Now who are the learners?

They are the people of God—believers. Look again at Ephesians 4:11…

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

What is the aim of their teaching to be? Well, it says that the teachers are to be preparing God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up. But what does that mean? What does that result in? Well, Paul goes on…

until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 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.

I see four results in that passage…

unity - until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God

There are many churches which emphasize their teaching and preaching ministry. They take great pride in being doctrinally sound and rightly dividing the Word of truth. But in these churches, you do not find unity. They are full of fighting and bickering, striving and a combative spirit. But one of the results of sound, Spirit-filled teaching will be unity.

maturity - and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Sound teaching leads to maturity in Christ. A person who is mature is able to live life without being dependent upon someone else. Some Christians are totally dependent on someone else for their spiritual well-being. They are immature. But the goal of solid teaching in the church ought to be to produce Christians who are able to stand on their own two feet spiritually. Because maturity brings with it…

stability - 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.

A mature Christian is a stable Christian. Not one who is swept away by the latest fad in spiritual teaching. Not one who is deceived by cunning and crafty false teachers.

conformity to Christ - Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.

God’s stated purpose for us as believers is to make us like Jesus Christ—to reproduce the character of Christ in us.

And a church that is faithfully equipping people with the Word of God will be producing people like that.

This is the kind of church Erindale Bible Chapel needs to be. A church in which the Word of God is the curriculum, the Holy Spirit is the teacher working through spiritually gifted teachers, building a body of believers in Jesus Christ who are united, mature, stable, and conformed to His image. A church in which the ministry of equipping is taking place.