Essentials: Partnership

Essentials: Our Declaration of Faith  •  Sermon  •  Submitted
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Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Video: This is Church 1:27
Back in my Youth Pastor Days I used to take teenagers out for ice cream or something just to talk. One time I heard that this one particular young man had been kicked out of school for the day and knowing some of the family situation I called to see if we could meet together to talk through what was happening. Well I took him to the food court at a local mall and as we were talking I happened to look over his shoulder and there was this older woman looking at me in the strangest way.
The best description I can offer is that she was giving me the “stink eye”. I mean, she clearly did not like me for some reason, but I didn’t recognize her as anyone I had ever seen before. I don’t know how I realized it, but it suddenly dawned on me that she was taking offense at my t-shirt. It happened to be a cooler spring day so I was wearing a light jacket that was open in the front so that the only part of my t-shirt that she could read was the part that read in big block letters: “Don’t go to Church”.
Maybe a strange choice for a pastor to be wearing, but I figured it would start up conversations and get people thinking, especially when I turned around and revealed the rest of the sentence on on the back of the shirt. Well realizing that this is what was offending this woman, I stood up and took off my jacket and very intentionally turned around to place it on the back of my chair and reveal what it said on the back. The message of “Don’t go to Church” was further clarified with the message of “Be the Church” on the back. When I turned back around again to sit down I looked over at her direction and she had this big smile on her face and she was nodding her head as if to say, “Oh, now I get it.”
Tension
But that is an important distinction in our attitude toward Church. Do we just “Go to a Church” or is it something that we are a part of? Think about the times when you have had conversations with people about Church, do you ever ask: “Which Church do you serve at?”?” You don’t ask that do you? Neither do I, but we could. Maybe like my t-shirt it would get them thinking. Instead we ask, “Where do you go to Church?”.
Not long ago we may have asked them where they are “Members” but we don’t really do that much anymore. Our culture has developed this “commitment-phobia” so we are fine to participate in something when it fits into our schedule but we just want it to be there when we are ready for it we don’t want to be locked in to having to be there for it even to exist.
On top of our propensity to avoid commitment, there are all those past experiences with Church membership that went terribly wrong. Someone calls a “meeting of the membership” and it is rarely good news. You have all this tension and drama and “he said she said” kind of things and nobody wants to deal with all that if you don’t have to. It just seems easier to be able to say, “Yes we go to that church, but we were not members.”
The problem is that the Bible never talks about membership in the Christian Church in this way. The Church is not like some kind of “club” or “society” where some people are the official members and others either sneak in or get in on some sort of daily pass. Churches like ours do have an official process to become recognized as a “member”, but that is just a tool to get to know someone and how we can best minister to one another. That is how the Bible always uses the word “member”, it isn’t talking about some sort of official document or list or roll call, it is talking about one thing that is a part of the whole.
That is why we don’t even use the term “member” here at Friendship Church, we call it “part-ner”. Each “Partner” is a part of the whole - there are no day passes, no seat warmers, no “I am just hear to watch the show!” slots available in a Church. Only an opportunity to play your part in this local body of Christ.
We are going to take a look at this idea of “Partnership” from the book of 1 Corinthians starting in chapter 12. It is on page 958 in the chairs. Let me pray for us and then we will dive into this idea of becoming and being a “Part” of the whole.
Truth
Earlier this summer when we unpacked what “We believe...” about THE CHURCH we said that the Church is recognized globally but organized locally. In other words, when a person first places his or her faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins they are now a part of the global Church, but then they need to find their way to a local Christian Church in order to play the part that God has for them in the Kingdom of God.
I often like to refer to our Church as “One local expression of the global Church”. We see ourselves as just one small branch of the family tree of God’s people and we are looking forward to a family reunion in heaven where one day we will meet many of our distant family members for the first time.
(Can you imagine the pot-luck dinner at that reunion? Favorite foods from around the world an across time? Don’t try and tell me there are no potlucks in heaven - I do not have ears to hear that!)
We will then have eternity to enjoy interacting with that extended family, but until then we are limited in time and space and so we have committed ourselves to a local branch of that family.
Starting in September we are going to be begin a new series where we dive deeply in to the early days of the Christian Church. And one of the things that we will find is that most of the New Testament books are written about and to local Churches. We will be using the book of Acts as a historical timeline as we discover how God worked through many different local expressions of the church like the local church in...
in Jerusalem, in Antioch, in Cyprus, in Antioch in Pisidia, in Iconium, in Lystra, in Pamphylia, in Macedonia, in Thyatira, in Thessalonica, in Berea, in Athens, in Corinth in Caesarea, in Ephesus, in Troas, in Rome, in Malta and even others.
My point is that the New Testament addresses many local expressions of the Global Church. There are very few commands offered to the Church as an abstract global entity - it is always to a local organized Church gathering.
Not to mention how many New Testament books were letters written to specific local churches, including our text for this morning. This letter was written to the Church in Corinth and it was written in response to many questions that this Church had written to Paul about, things that they were dealing with as a local church.
Paul begins chapter 7 of this letter with the words: Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: and then he went on to instruct this local Church about all kinds of things: like purity in marriage, the engagement process, food and idols, spiritual gifts, charitable giving and even how one particular brother wanted to come visit them but he can’t make it right now. Paul assures the Church that he will come visit them as soon as possible. It is a lot of local Church family stuff but then right in the middle Paul addresses what being a “member” of the body of Christ is all about.
It is found in chapter 12 beginning in verse 12 where he says:
1 Corinthians 12:12–14 ESV
12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. 14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many.
The first thing we see here is that

Partnership recognizes that we are all necessary parts of the whole (1 Cor 12:12-14)

Paul uses this metaphor of the “body” to help this Church understand what being a “member” is supposed to look like. Our body has many “members” or parts, but they all add up to one whole. If one part of the body is missing then the body is no longer everything it was designed to be. The body does not exists apart from the many individual members, but is made up of them as they come together. In a similar way, the local “Church” is not something that exists apart from the believers who come together to form it.
Let me ask you this: What would happen if we suddenly started just cutting out all the parts of our body that we have no idea what they do?
We may have a good idea what role the members of our body that we can see on the outside do, but unless we have some extensive medical training we might not know what many of our inside members do and so we might end up getting rid of something that was very necessary.
In the mummification process of ancient Egypt they would carefully remove and preserve the parts of the body that they felt were necessary for the pharoah to have when he came back to life. So the stomach, liver, lungs and other internal organs were removed and placed in jars in the tomb with the body... but since they didn’t think it was necessary for anything, they would just scoop out the brain through the nostrils and throw it away. Makes me wonder if that is why whenever mummy’s come to life in our stories they are always like “Ummmm...” The lights are on, but nobody’s home because they didn’t know how necessary that part of the body was.
And there has been many times when the medical world has uncovered the necessity of a particular part of the body that they previously had no idea what it was needed for. In the same way, we need to see every believer as necessary parts of the body of Christ.
And since the Apostle Paul is writing to a specific Church in Corinth, he even points out a couple of areas where the local Church members were not recognizing each other as necessary. In Corinth there was a large Jewish populations and an even larger Greek population and they did not always see each other as a necessary part of the body.
Since the Good News of the Gospel was given first to the Jews, some Jews still had a hard time accepting that people from other nations can also have peace with the One True God through the finished work of Jesus the Jewish Messiah.
Paul addresses the same problem in his letter to the Ephesians when he says to the Jewish and the Non-Jewish believers:
Ephesians 2:17–19 ESV
17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,
The “Household of God” is another beautiful picture of the body of Christ and how each person works together to play their part in a household. Paul is reminding these Jews who previously would never had allowed non-Jews in their home, that they are a part of the same “Household”. And so it is for every believer in the Church.
This was also a difficult thing for slaves and masters to reconcile under. Remember that the word translated “slave” here is the Greek word “doulos” and they were really a middle class of citizens in the Roman world, often “bondservants” who had their own families and homes to return to each night. So in our day they were closer to the blue collar working class then the “slavery” that we typically think of when we hear the word. And the masters were more like the wealthy upper class land owners and these new Christians were struggling to treat those from a different class as just as “necessary” to the body as they are.
And we may not have exactly the same divisions that they had, but we can suffer from the same delusion: That somehow there are some of us who are “necessary” for the Church and that there are others whose involvement matters less or not at all.

1. Partnership recognizes that we are all necessary parts of the whole (1 Cor 12:12-14)

2. Partnership means that we work together better because we are different (1 Corinthians 12:15-20; 26)

This is the principle that we have been striving towards all summer. We are working toward unity in our essential beliefs, but not uniformity in all perspectives and personalities because that works against us being all that God has created us to be…as a body!
Listen to how the Apostle Paul somewhat humorously presents this interaction between the parts of the body:.
1 Corinthians 12:15–17 ESV
15 If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?
if we were uniformed in our perspectives, personalities and giftings, then we would be less than the body God made us to be. Which is exactly what Paul says next:
1 Corinthians 12:18–20 ESV
18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
This is such a wonderful picture of how we are to be as a Church. We are united together in our mission and essential beliefs but we each play distinct roles that are each essential for us to accomplish the mission we have been given. We are many individuals and yet we are one body. We are partnered together as one as we each play our part of the whole. And these two ideas are equally important.
In the beginning of this letter to the Church in Corinth Paul stresses the other side of this in how important it is that they remain as one in mission and essential beliefs. He says in 1 Cor 1:10
1 Corinthians 1:10 ESV
10 I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.
We must remain united in our essential beliefs in order to carry out the mission that God has called us to. And from there we can know that we are perfectly arranged together as a body because God is the one who chose to arrange us together like this. If we return to chapter 12 we find Paul continuing to personify the parts of the body and listen to how they are responding to each other:
1 Corinthians 12:21–24 ESV
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22 On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, 24 which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it,
There are all kinds of parts to make this thing called “Church” work. We may think our part is not important or someone else could just cover our little part with little effort so why should I even follow through with it? Because God was the one who honored you with that part. Would you abandon what God has given you to do in the body just because it is not the same as what he gave someone else? Not to mention that, even if someone else could do what you are doing - they would have to stop doing whatever God called them to do in order to now do your part.
My point is this guys, sometimes the best way that we can care for each other as a Church is to be faithful and trustworthy in the part that God has given us - in that way we will honor God and serve one another...
24b But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it,
1 Corinthians 12:25–27 ESV
25 that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. 27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
This is how it should be in every Christian Church so Paul uses similar language in his letter to the Christian Church in Rome where he says in a much more succinct way:
Romans 12:4–5 ESV
4 For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.

1. Partnership recognizes that we are all necessary parts of the whole (1 Cor 12:12-14)

2. Partnership means that we work together better because we are different (1 Corinthians 12:15-20; 26)

3. Partnership is doing and saying everything in the Biblical love for one another (1 Cor 13:1-7; 13)

So 1 Corinthians 12 is immediately followed by 1 Corinthians 13 - nice and orderly that way - and if you have ever been to a Christian wedding then you know this chapter as the “Love Chapter”. And I am not saying that this is not appropriate, but the truth is that this passage is not primarily aimed at matrimony.
In 1 Corinthians 12 Paul explains this metaphor of the Church being a body with many members, then we have the “Love Chapter”in 13 and then in chapter 14 he continues in addressins issues of between the members at Corinth. The “Love Chapter” is actually not about loving your spouse as much as it is about how we as members of the body of Christ are to love one another.
That doesn’t mean that you have to go home and throw away your wedding picture frame with these verses etched in it. My hope is just to help us to reset our thinking so that when we read this passage we don’t just downshift into a default position that says this is for mariages. It is for marriages but it is much more for “members” ...members who desire to live rightly as the body of Christ. With that in filter in place, let’s look at the passage:
1 Corinthians 13:1–3 ESV
1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Do you see how these categories could be used to divide people into “necessary” and “unnecessary” parts of the body. Well I can’t teach like he does or I don’t have the faith that she shows or I can’t sacrifice time, energy or money like they can… but none of that means anything unless love is driving it. The same “love” that is supposed to be drive each one of us in the part that God has given us to play. What is this love each other look like?
1 Corinthians 13:4–7 ESV
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends (13:8a)
Can you imagine what a Church would look like if every member exhibited this kind of love toward one another. It is mind boggling! And this is the kind of “member” that God has called us to be, not the one that is that fearful of membership meetings or commitment but the one whose eyes are capable to see beyond themselves to the well being of everyone else they have covenanted together to serve alongside in love.
Gospel Application
So that brings us to the big question for the morning: How are you serving this small branch of God’s great family tree that is actively serving you? And let me just say that many of you are doing so in so many ways so here me on this...“Thank You!” Sincerely....Thank you for loving us well as you play your part in what God is doing here at Friendship Church.
Some of you have been faithfully loving us here and you are beginning to wonder what it might look like to officially become a “partner” here at Friendship Church. The next step in this would be meeting together with a few of the Overseers to hear your faith story and then discuss any questions you might have about how we operate and what we teach. Particularly if you are interested in holding any level of teaching position here then this would be the next step for you and please let me know and we will find a good time to meet.
But even if you don’t feel like that is where you are yet, there are many different ways that you can get involved and I wanted to make sure that you knew how to do this so I have printed out the names of all our Ministry Teams and leaders on the back of the notes page and you can talk to any one of those men or women and they can let you know what the next step would be to get involved on their team.
But you know it occured to me that those are really just the lanes that we have already have in motion, and you might have a talent, gift or skill that you want to share but you don’t really know where it will fit. Let’s talk on it. God has you here for a reason and there may be some “out-of-the-box” way that God wants to plug that gift in here.
A good example of this would be our new “resident graphic artist” as I have been referring to her as. Some of you know that our own Gretchen Preston has been providing for us unique one-of-a-kind art pieces for every each topic of our series this summer. It has so fun to work with her each week and see her show God’s love to all of us with the gift of her art. I am sure I am “uninvited to her birthday party” again for mentioning it publicly but it is a great example of something that came from just considering what gift God has given you and seeing where you can love and serve your Church with it.
Landing
We cannot be the body of Christ without loving each other as He has loved us. Jesus said in John 16
John 13:34–35 ESV
34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Let’s pray
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