Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction:

It has become more and more obvious that many church families have a heard time interacting in America.

Many churches are marked by sterility and distance.

Others are marked by dissension and division.

Today’s message dives into relationships in our churches.

Paul is going to touch on a few of the big picture relationships in the church.

The first and foremost relationship that is beginning to flounder in many churches is the relationship between church leaders and their congregations.

We have discussed unqualified and shameful pastors before.

There has been moral failing after moral failing of pastors across America.

And churches should confront ungodly leaders and they should be removed from their positions and called to repent of their evil ways.

But many men do serve their churches with integrity and dignity.

And many of these pastors serving well are struggling because of the overall disrespect of the pastorate.

Pastor disrespect and disloyalty are all at time highs.

Gossip about a pastor’s preaching ability, personality, and weakness are real-time today due to social media.

And these critiques come with an even greater microscope because of pastoral and preaching comparisons with all of the podcasts out there.

It’s no wonder that Barna recently found that close to 40% of pastors thought about quitting in the past year - seen in data released November 2021 (1).

In this same research - only 35% of pastors were considered healthy in a 6-division questionnaire involving relational, spiritual, financial, physical, emotional, and vocational health.

Sadly, although spiritual health was number one in these categories, it only reached 52%.

That means only half our pastors are in good spiritual health.

How are we to lead others and nourish them to spiritual health if we are not healthy spiritually ourselves?

And the relationships of congregants of churches in America isn’t any better.

Consumerism and ministry-driven churches have created a customer service mindset in which people come and are served and have no buy-in to the church body.

No one wants to serve anyone else.

They are there to be served.

They want to order the Christian experience combo from the fast-junk-food drive thru church.

This consumeristic mindset destroys the atmosphere to have real relationships with one another.

It destroys the ability to do life with one another.

How can we survive in a world such as we live in today?

How can CrossPointe thrive and not just survive?

How can we form a bond as a church family that is deep, loving and lasting?

In full disclosure, I think we are a much healthier church than most out there.

I do not say that out of pride in myself or in you.

I say that out of thankfulness and appreciation to our beloved Savior Jesus Christ.

But my friends, it doesn’t take much to change the culture of a church into a gossip-laden, unloving, disrespectful group of people.

We have maintained unity and are growing in our relationships with one another because we are united around the inerrant Word of God and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

May we continue moving forward even further as a church family as we go through Paul’s instructions to the Thessalonian church regarding how we should continue forward in building a healthy church family:

Let us pray.

Prayer.

Today we will see three ways that we can maintain a healthy church family.

The first is...

I.

As a Healthy Church Family Member… You Should Esteem Your Elders (12-13a)

1 Thessalonians 5:12–13a (ESV)

We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work.

For those of you who are not aware, the office of Elder (presbuteros: prez-be-tare-ose), Pastor (poimēn: pew-main), and Overseer/Bishop (episkopos: eh-peez-ka-pose) are all the same office in the church.

Although some denominations confuse these terms - they all refer to the same church office but refer to different functions of that office.

I am to pastor the church - meaning I am to lovingly care for, feed, and shepherd the church.

I am to oversee the church - meaning I am to protect the church from false doctrine and watch out for false teachers.

And I am also called to be an elder - meaning to be someone with authority in the church.

With that in mind, there is an important lesson given in this section of Scripture.

Believers in the churches are commanded to respect and esteem and love those leaders who labor among them and to do so because of their work.

This is an important distinction because one is not a pastor unless he is called and equipped by God.

Anyone can say that they want to be a pastor of a church.

Anyone can apply for a job and try to get it.

However, we are to respect and esteem those leaders who diligently labor for the Gospel.

There is much truth to respecting the position of someone.

We need to respect the position of president even if we don’t always agree with his decisions.

Yet, he remains accountable as well to the people and to the other branches of government.

In the same way, we are hold our leaders accountable in the church.

We mustn’t flatter a leader because of his position as pastor.

We are to respect and esteem those leaders who diligently labor for the church with integrity.

Those who are false teachers and who are in the ministry for shameful gain, we are to oppose.

I know that is a tough word coming from a pastor himself!

But I have seen so many times, a pastor not confronted of his sin because of his position in the church.

He is permitted to live in a way contrary to the Scriptures without anyone stepping up to address his grievous sins.

We are not called to blindly follow a pastor just because he is a pastor.

We are to respect and esteem those who legitimately fill the role of pastor.

With that aside - How do we show respect to and esteem our diligently working church leaders?

What does this really mean anyway?

These two words have two related ideas that we need to touch on.

1.

We are to respect our church leaders.

Those who are worthy of respect are those who labor humbly and serve diligently for Christ and His church.

We respect our church leaders by appreciating their work and praying for them.

We respect them by encouraging them.

We respect them by holding them in high regard and defending them when others seek to gossip or malign them.

We respect them by listening to the taught Word of God.

Next, we see that we are...

2. We are to esteem our church leaders.

This Greek word, hēgeomai -(hay-yeh-o-meh), means to think highly of or regard highly.

This idea is shown well in 1 Timothy 5:17-18:

Note again this is a conditional clause - those who rule well.

And they should be considered worthy of double honor.

The actual literal Greek understanding here is that they are worthy of double pay.

This is even shown further with verse 18 where it shows that the laborer deserves his wages.

This is not a typical Scripture pastors bring up because it seems laced with ulterior motives!

However, we are to preach the whole counsel of God.

If we do not think that our pastors deserve to be paid much for their job - we are actually in disobedience to Scripture.

The Scriptures assert that there is a distinction for those who preach and teach the Word of God.

Their job brings great value to the church and the church is to respond with generosity because of it.

Although God has blessed me to be co-vocational - meaning that I have another job that currently supports my family - I was so blessed to see the church step up in covering my family’s benefits at our recent business meeting which allows me to be more fully present with the church family and work less in my job as a ER physician.

I understand how expensive health benefits are these days.

Thank you, church, for investing in the preached Word of God and showing that you find the diligent work being done as worthy of investing in.

And I am thankful for other leaders in our church family as well as in our convention who loved me enough to let me know that I needed to lead well in this area.

By trying to be completely self-sustaining, I could have been a stumbling block toward this church’s growth in generosity and giving.

I pray God is always blessed and pleased with CrossPointe Family Church.

Continuing with our understanding of esteem - we are to esteem leaders of the church in love because of their work.

Serving the church is a difficult job.

Satan fights hard against those who teach the Word.

He hates us who preach and teach the Word of God.

When a church does not regard their leaders highly, it makes a tough job even tougher.