Healthy Church Pt1

Healthy Church Part 1

Rodney Gehman « 1 Thessalonians 5:12-15 « December 21, 2025

[ 001 ] Welcome to River City! My name is Rodney…

Updates on Chase and Angie - [ 002 ]As many of you know, this past week I sent out an email that let you know about a family here at River City who had life sort of turned upside down for them last weekend. If you missed the email, Chase was taken to the hospital by ambulance last Saturday due to chest pains and shortness of breath, but in the ambulance on the way there, he lost feeling and mobility in his legs. After some testing, they took him into surgery last Sunday morning to remove a spinal hematoma that was the cause of those problems.

Many of you have been praying for him all week, and Chase and Angie have expressed gratitude for those prayers, so thank you for continuing to go to the Lord on their behalf.

I spoke with Chase last night, and he is still in the intensive care unit but happy to be seeing a lot of small improvements – gaining more feeling back in his legs and toes, so we can praise God for those things. But as of last night, he still has no mobility in his legs. They did a procedure yesterday to try and figure out what caused the problem in the first place, and are waiting for the results of that.

So Chase asks that we not only continue to pray for him and his healing, but for Angie as she no doubt carries a lot of emotional weight as she stays with him; For their 4 young boys, and Chase’s parents who are taking care of them; for Chase’s brother Cam and his wife Hannah [who are here today], who are helping out with school schedules and stuff.

There’s no MealTrain or anything like that right now, but in the coming weeks as he comes back home that may end up being a way we can help. For right now, though, we want to collectively pray for Chase and Angie and their family. So here’s what we’ll do this morning – I won’t make you get up and spin your chairs around, but just turn to the person next to you, or the people on both sides of you, and the two or three of you pray together. I’ll give you a minute or two.

PRAYER

And if you’re wondering hey, I didn’t get an email – how do I get an email on things like that? [ 97000 ]Grab your phone, text one word “rivercity” to 97000, and it will prompt you to enter your email address. DISMISS KIDCITY

[ 003 ] If you’re just joining us this morning, our sermons most of the time are long stretches of going verse by verse through one book of the Bible at a time, and since October we have been studying 1 Thessalonians. Long story short, it is a letter that was sent from the apostle Paul to a very young church he had started in Thessalonica, a city in what is modern day Greece.

Last week we saw that Christians do not belong to the night or the darkness, meaning they do not participate in willful, spiritual ignorance and moral apathy. Instead, Christians have had the light of the glory of Jesus shone into their hearts, and they now belong to the day! They are the people of light, and we looked at how that should shape the way that we as the people of God look forward to the return of Jesus. But today we carry that same hope forward, not just shaping how we look forward to Jesus’ return, but also how we live together with him in the here and now, as we wait. Today, we’re going to see that we not only belong to the day, we also belong to the family of God.

This week on Facebook, I posted this question: What comes to mind when you hear or see the word FAMILY, [ 004 ] and thank you to those of you who participated in that – I appreciate the vulnerability there. But you can read through those answers and find that

For some people, when you think of family, there are good things that come to mind; joy, unconditional love, connection, safety, companionship, support, things like that.

For other people, there is obviously a little less sparkle when they think about family. That word brings to mind dysfunction, heartache, absence, distance, conflict, disconnectedness, or maybe it’s simply the fact that yours doesn’t look the way you hoped it would at this point in your life.

For still others, that word maybe doesn’t carry anything you would be excited to talk about, much less post on Facebook. Abuse, neglect, separation, silence, brokenness, hostility, empty seat at the table. Anger.

In the last 16 verses of 1 Thessalonians, Paul is going to use the phrase “brothers and sisters” five times. Anyone who has ever prayed the Lord’s Prayer knows that Jesus invites us to refer to God as our Father. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

So if we are in Christ, and Christ is in us, if God is our Father, that makes us brothers and sisters in the family of God. But what’s sad is that the comments left on our Facebook page about your earthly family are unfortunately and tragically often the same kinds of comments that are made about the family of God. Some people think about the church as something they wouldn’t want to talk about. Spiritual abuse, neglect, silence, brokenness. Those words shouldn’t define the church, but sometimes they do. Dysfunction, conflict, isolation, division. Those shouldn’t define the church either, but sometimes they do. Why? How does that happen in the family of God? How does a church go from helping people to hurting people? How do pastors go from available and encouraging to bullies who only want to promote themselves? I don’t know if you pay attention to this kind of thing like I do, but we lost some big name pastors this year who admitted to some serious wrongdoing, and were removed from the church. How does that happen?

After two sections of correcting some misunderstandings about the Lord’s return, Paul now moves toward wrapping up the letter with some final comments and encouragements, specifically around what a healthy gospel-centered church family can look like.

We’re going to break this up into [ 005 ]three sections:

Healthy leaders

Healthy people

And next week after Christmas, part 3, healthy worship.

PRAYER?

And today starts off with one of the more awkward verses I’ve ever had to preach. I was hoping someone else would get to preach this. I told my wife a couple weeks ago that I’m going to have to preach this verse that tells the church to honor your pastors, and she was of no help at all. She just laughed and basically said, have fun with that.

So here it goes:

[ 006 ] 12 Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to give recognition to those who labor among you and lead you in the Lord and admonish you, [ 006-2 ]13 and to regard them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves.

Now, remember – this is Paul writing to a very young church in Thessalonica. Paul had come through town, preached for 3 weeks in the synagogue and led a bunch of people to faith in Jesus. Now, it’s not written explicitly here or in the book of Acts, but it’s apparent that Paul did what he often did as he started churches around what is Eastern Europe today. And that is, he must have appointed elders of this church before he had to leave town, AND as evidenced by the word “those”, he must have appointed multiple leaders, which fits the way Paul talks about church leadership in several other scriptures:

Acts 14:23 [ 007 ]“When they had appointed elders for them in every church and prayed with fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.”

Acts 20:17–28 [ 008 ]“Now from Miletus, he sent to Ephesus and summoned the elders of the church…Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you as overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.” This verse helps us understand that when Paul uses the term elder, overseer, or pastor, he’s talking about the same person. The same position. So we can use those terms interchangeably.

Titus 1:5 [ 009 ]“The reason I left you in Crete was to set right what was left undone and, as I directed you, to appoint elders in every town.”

In those passages, you will notice that the word “elder” is plural, that there should be multiple pastors, multiple elders, leading churches. Now, if you wanted to start a business, or a company, and you went to your business coach and said I”m thinking about appointing 3 or 4 or 5 CEOs, none of them more powerful than the others, what do you think? You would at least get a strange look, if not a full rebuke. It wouldn’t take long to discover this has the potential to be a very frustrating and slow model of leadership. It might even end up a total disaster.

However, scripture doesn’t treat the church like a business. God doesn’t always choose what makes the most sense to us. [ 010 (blank) ]God is not appointing CEOs when he appoints pastors. In fact, in all of the places elders are appointed and qualifications are laid out in scripture, not one place says elders must be visionary, organizational, or entrepreneurial. It doesn’t even say they HAVE TO be extroverts that love being around people. Instead scripture says they must be men that are self-controlled, respected inside and outside the church. They must be gentle, hospitable, and disciplined. Women must feel safe around them. They must manage their own family well, and have children who are obedient and faithful.

Having a plurality of pastors is not necessarily meant to be the fastest or most efficient model of leadership either. It can be messy. It’s slow. But I believe God set this up for a reason:

Plurality of leadership forces pastors to be patient. It forces pastors to defer to someone else, even if it means they have to promote an idea they didn’t initially like. It forces pastors to willingly take a back seat and let someone else shine when the situation requires their gifts, expertise or strengths instead of yours. It forces us to depend on the Holy Spirit instead of just looking to one person to make the decision. It forces pastors to listen to other opinions and viewpoints, and weigh the argument. It forces pastors to focus on what is most important, and be able to agree to disagree on the stuff of lesser importance. It forces pastors to put aside agendas, and figure out how to love and respect the people they disagree with. And it slows everything down so the church is protected from whiplash and rash decisions.

In other words [ 011 ]- having a plurality of pastors forces the leadership team to behave amongst themselves the exact same way the Lord expects the rest of the church to behave amongst themselves. Isn’t God just so brilliant in this?! I think it’s genius. God is so good! So wise! So loving to both pastors and the congregations they lead by setting things up this way. Leaders don’t get a pass on the stuff they preach – they have to model it, or they disqualify themselves. It’s incredible.

If you’re new to River City, we have 3 pastors or elders right now, and have two more that are just about finished with their two year process of preparation. But we met yesterday, and it is so fun to sit around the table with four other guys from completely different backgrounds, completely different preferences about some things, even different ways we talk about experiencing God. It can be a very beautiful thing when everyone comes in humility and dependance on the Lord.

So Paul appointed multiple leaders here in Thessalonica to oversee this brand new church. And you can see there in verse 12 three pieces of the role of elders:

[ 012 ]They labor among you - Whether it is study and the preparation of sermons, attending and leading meetings, or hospital visits, counselling, working ahead to schedule out several months, overseeing ministries, or being diligent in prayer and intercession — there are a lot of things pastors do between Sundays. But the emphasis isn’t on how hard pastors work, the emphasis is on WHERE they work – Paul says they labor AMONG YOU.

Several years ago, we as elders went through a book together called “The God Who Goes Before You”, and it was all about how pastors lead the church – not from above the church, but from within. Because we’re still men that are wrestling with our own sin, struggling through our own identity issues, still in the process of spiritual maturity and growth ourselves. Still learning the heart of God, still needing to hear the gospel preached to us, and be shaped by its transforming power. Pastors primary work is not being over people, or even sitting in his study all day preparing sermons. His primary work is to be among the congregation in the ordinary stuff of life.

That brings us to the second role of Elders [ 012-2 ]then in verse 12: They Lead you in the Lord – Notice the order here, that working AMONG the people came before any hint of authority OVER them.

But even then, this word “lead” is not talking about the boss at the top of the org chart, saying, “we’re going this way, so you’d better get in line or go find a new church.” Some of you may have grown up in churches like that, where the pastor was the lone authority and his board or his council acted as the people who simply carried out what he wanted. That’s not the biblical picture of church leadership. In Romans 12, [ 13-1] this same word for leadership is used among all the other care ministries, like prophecy, serving, encouraging, teaching, giving, showing mercy.

In Mark 10, Jesus called his disciples over to him and said to them, “You know well how the rulers of the Gentiles abuse their authority? You know how they throw their weight around over the people they lead? Yeah, you’re not going to act like that. [ 013 ]On the contrary, “whoever wants to become great among you will be your servant, 44 and whoever wants to be first among you will be a slave to all. [ 013-2 ] 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Jesus didn’t tell us to serve others without doing it himself. He showed us the way to lay our lives down for the sake of others. He showed us what it means to be in a position of authority, and not abuse it. He showed us what it means to be worthy of honor, worthy of praise, worthy of recognition – and not play that card, but to serve as a slave, going unrecognized, depending on the Father to exalt him when it was time.

And so, the primary role of the elders, and I would say, the primary role of husbands and dads in earthly families, is to say, “I’ll go first in following Jesus.” So when we preach about giving, we should be the first to give. When we tell you to forgive the people who have wronged you, we should lead the way by forgiving the people who have wronged us. When we say love your wife, train up your kids in the Lord, work hard, respect your boss, love your neighbor – we go first.

In 1 Cor 11, the apostle Paul said “follow me as I follow Christ.” That’s not arrogance. That’s not saying, imitate me because I’m nailing it. That’s just Paul saying, we’re going to follow Christ together and I’m willingly putting myself at the front of the line, making myself a slave of the church, even if that means taking more shots from the enemy than the rest of you. But we’re following Christ! He’s taken ALL the shots of the enemy at the cross, and he rose again in victory! So let’s go!

And last in verse 12, pastor/elders [ 014 ] also Admonish you – This is where pastors carry some authority from God. This is the role of teaching and warning and counseling, instructing, correcting behavior, rebuking when necessary. And according to 1 Timothy 3, this is to be done gently. Lovingly. Carefully. Patiently. Not harshly. Not as a bully. Not demanding. But full of grace and truth.

That’s healthy leadership. Now, as you look back through those first two verses, [ 015 ]you can see how Paul says the people should respond to the healthy leaders who do this well: Give recognition to them. Regard them, verse 13, very highly in love because of their work. And then, look at this: when leaders work hard in caring for, serving, giving, listening, teaching, correcting and encouraging in the Lord, and as the people of the church, the brothers and sisters, recognize, respect, and love and care for those who lead them, look at verse 13 – the outcome is peace! It’s the fruit of the Spirit’s presence in the church! It’s the fruit of leaders and congregation working together in the Lord to show love and honor to each other. There is peace. Harmony. Unity. Fellowship.

Pretty incredible.

So that’s what it looks like to have healthy leaders. Now, part 2, these next couple of verses have Paul jumping into the specifics of how a church at peace, a healthy congregation, operates as a body – how the church should relate to the other members of the church. Check this out: [ 016 ]

Verse 14 And we exhort you, brothers and sisters: warn those who are idle, comfort the discouraged, help the weak, be patient with everyone.

This isn’t only instruction to the pastors now – this is for the whole church! And like you would expect from a letter, this builds on the topics he’s been talking about in the previous two chapters:

Warn those who are idle – Back in chapter 4, there were people in the church who had quit their jobs because they thought Jesus was coming back soon. And it was the attitude, hey, if Jesus is coming back soon anyway, what’s the point of working? And instead of it being a great move of faith like they thought it was, it ended up that they became lazy, undisciplined, and were mooching off of other people. He’s going to speak a lot more about these people at the end of 2 Thessalonians.

Comfort the discouraged – There was a group Paul wrote to at the end of chapter 4 who were distraught and grieving, thinking their loved ones who died already had missed out on heaven, which made them fearful and timid thinking about their own death. When Paul told them Jesus is coming back soon, they thought only people who were alive when he returned would get to experience heaven while everyone else missed out.

Third, ...Help the weak – That’s probably referring to those from early in chapter 4 who struggled with sexual immorality, and giving into temptation, or even just behaving inappropriately toward other church members. This could also refer to those who are anxious about their own salvation. That word “help” is a verb that means “hold on to them”, “cling to them”, “put your arm around them” (Stott, 122-123).

Fourth… you can imagine that if you have a church full of people who are idle, discouraged, anxious, and lacking sexual self-control, you’re going to face some emotional highs and lows. You’re going to face some challenges. You’re going to have some difficult conversations. You’re going to experience people who don’t change overnight, which of course leads to Paul’s next instruction… And be patient with everyone. That’s a reminder those church leaders no doubt needed from time to time.

And lastly for today [ 017 ] 15 See to it that no one repays evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue what is good for one another and for all. Be on guard against revenge or retaliation, which is of course looking out for yourself, and always pursue or run after what is good for the body as a whole.

Again, isn’t the Lord so good!? Yes, pastors have an important role in the church, but the way God designed the church to function is that the bulk of the every day ministry that involves warning, comforting, and helping is done by the people in the church who care about the person sitting next to them the same way they would care for their own brothers and sisters in a healthy family.

[ 018 ]In a healthy family, if you saw your brother becoming lazy, being undisciplined with what he watched or how he used his time, and always leaving his stuff laying all over the house – out of love for him and for the good of the family, you eventually call it out. If you see someone in your family that seems discouraged or sad, you pull them aside and say, what’s wrong? Are you doing okay? If you see someone in your family really struggling with addiction or drifting back into those same old sins that used to have a hold on them, you would go out of your way to put your arm around them and care for them one way or another.

And what Paul is saying is that’s how a healthy family of God can look! And as one of the pastors here, I want to celebrate this with you, because for the most part, you are doing a great job of this, River City. I am blown away sometimes as to how much ministry happens around here that we as leaders hear about after the fact. People meeting together. People counseling each other, putting their arm around someone and walking with them through hard stuff. People reading the Bible together. Praying together for healing and deliverance, praying for our nation, lifting each other up, doing a podcast together, Going to conferences together. That’s how it’s supposed to be!

In Ephesians 4:12, Paul says the job of church leaders is not to be the ones who do all the church stuff, but it’s “to equip the saints (that’s you) for the work of ministry, to build up the body of Christ …(that’s you).” We as an elder team have the responsibility to equip you and build you up, and to make ourselves tired doing that. So it’s our job to be among you, listening, walking with you, and hearing where you need to be equipped and built up so that you can be effective in the things you are doing in the everyday stuff of life.

It’s never going to be perfect. There will always be the messiness of relationships. No two people are perfectly compatible, much less 200. People hurt each other. People sin against each other. There will need to be forgiveness asked for, and forgiveness offered. There will need to be repentance and healing and people set free from sin patterns that have been kicking them around. But the marker of a healthy family is what happens next, right?

A healthy family is not a family that doesn’t have conflict. A healthy family is one that handles conflict with grace and humility because they have received grace.

A healthy family is not a family that never sins. A healthy family is one that owns their sin, asks forgiveness, repents of it, and makes the changes necessary because they’ve been forgiven of an immeasurable sin debt.

A healthy family is not a family where everyone’s personality perfectly aligns with everyone else’s. A healthy family is one that loves in spite of the differences, submits and defers to one another, considers others needs more important than their own - even if no one ever returns the favor – because Jesus served us knowing we would take advantage of him.

A healthy family is not one that ignores or coddles the weak. A healthy family challenges and warns and comes alongside the weak, walking with them, and encouraging them to keep going because Jesus never leaves, forsakes, or abandons us.

What I see Paul saying here in 1 Thessalonians 5 is that you can say the same thing about a healthy church. They handle conflict with grace and humility. They own their sin through confession and asking forgiveness from the people they’ve wronged. They love each other despite their differences. They submit. They defer. They serve even the people who are tough to talk to or don’t return the favor.

The proclamations that the children read this morning all pointed to the One who not only calls us to this, but the One who makes this all possible: The God who eternally exists in family – Father, Son, Spirit.

I love this, because even though some of you would say even hearing the word “family” brings to mind pain and dysfunction and brokenness, God didn’t say, “well, that didn’t work. Let’s try something else.” Jesus left the glories of heaven, and was placed in, of all things, a family – A family that would get side-eyed all the time because of an unmarried pregnancy. A family that would spend the first couple years on the run from a tyrant king that wanted them dead. A family that Jesus never really fit into. A family that thought he was off his rocker once he started into ministry.

Not only that, he belonged to the family of Israel, the people of God. A family full of dysfunction, lies, idolatry, hypocrisy, and a history of killing the prophets who warned them to change their ways. Jesus stepped into that family, knowing from the start that they would hate him, and eventually kill him. Yet He never repaid evil for evil. He never retaliated against those who hurt him. Instead, he even prayed that his Father would forgive them.

Jesus is not only the perfect family member, he’s the perfect pastor. You see him laboring among the people. Ministering to those who were hurting, those who were sinners, those who didn’t bring anything to the table. You see him caring for those the world and even the religious leaders had passed over. You see him coming alongside the weak, not just to heal them of their physical suffering, but to give them eternal life and restore their purpose and value as God’s image bearers.

In the death of Jesus, we see him willingly going to the cross in the place of sinners, so that we could be set free to love him and each other the way he intended us to. And in his resurrection, he promises a new life in the fully realized kingdom of heaven, as part of – you guessed it – the family of God.

With healthy and humble leaders, laboring among healthy and humble people, who take seriously the responsibility to be warning, comforting, and helping each other as we follow Jesus, our Savior King, the church can and will be a beacon of light in a very dark world as we look forward to his return.

I want to give you a moment to respond to this in prayer. We don’t want to just hear the word, and walk away. We want to let it go to work in us. Let it confront us. Let it encourage us.

So I encourage you to take a moment and go to the Lord with this:

[ 019 ]What kind of brother/sister have I been? Even if RC isn’t your home church, and you attend somewhere else, what kind of brother/sister have I been?

Have I become spiritually lazy, undisciplined, and sloppy with my personal life or my spiritual life?

Have I returned evil for evil, only looking for what is good for me, and have little or no concern what is good for the church as a whole? Am I still thankful for the grace I’ve been shown in Christ, or am I on the way to becoming a complainer?

And this sounds very self-serving because of my role around here, but the scripture is the scripture: Am I a grateful brother or sister? Have I ever thanked my community group leader? Discipleship or Flourish leader? Or the elders for the work they do? Do I regard them highly in love, or have I become ungrateful? Complaining? Nitpicking?

Give thanks to Jesus, who has shown us the Father, and made it possible for us to be adopted into the family of God as sons and daughters. Praise him for what the cross and empty tomb accomplished for us.

SOURCES

John R. W. Stott, The Message of Thessalonians: The Gospel & the End of Time, The Bible Speaks Today, (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994)

Eugene H. Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman’s Publishing, 1989)

Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997)