Where Are We Going?

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I have the privilege of taking our two daughters to school in the mornings—one to the middle school, and one to the high school.
One morning a couple weeks ago, we dropped Emma off and were on our way to take Sarah.
Sarah and I got to talking about something, and suddenly, Sarah asked, “Dad, where are we going?”
You see, I was on autopilot, and I had turned to go home instead of going straight to take Sarah to school.
Have you ever had that happen?
In more extreme examples, you may have fallen into what is referred to as highway hypnosis—that almost trance-like state where, all of a sudden, you realize you have been driving for a while, but you don’t remember any of it.
That can lead to scary situations, like the time I was on my way back from a school field trip and the mom driving our car zoned out and ended up going north on 81 instead of south.
We finally pulled over in Woodstock, VA, which was over an hour in the wrong direction.
This was before cell phones, so she had to pull over to find a pay phone and call the police, who ended up sending a state trooper to the school to tell my parents why we were late.
You can only imagine the fear they felt while they waited and waited and then saw that trooper pull into the parking lot.
When we zone out while driving, we can lose sight of where we are going and end up where we never intended to be, unsure of how we got there.
Can I submit this morning that the same can be true of a church?
Most of the folks in this church have been in church for a long time—perhaps even all of their lives.
Doing something repeatedly like that may lead us to zone out, possibly even take a wrong turn, because we have forgotten where we are going.
Over the next thirteen weeks, we are going to ask and answer the question, “As a church, where are we going?”
We are going to start this morning by looking at Ephesians 4 to see a picture of God’s destination for the church; his end goal for us.
From there, we are going to talk about six different purposes God has given the church to help us get there, and we are going to see how we are doing with each of those six based off the assessment our church family completed in the spring.
We are just going to introduce these purposes this morning, and then we are going to spend the next twelve weeks looking at those purposes together, both biblically and practically.
Sound good? Let’s dive in.
We are picking up in Ephesians 4:11-16 this morning.
It’s in the middle of a section where Paul has been talking about how the church should be one unified group through Jesus’ sacrifice.
He has just been talking about how God gave us grace through Christ, who is the “he himself” Paul is referring to in verse 11 where we start.
Let’s read the entire passage, and then we are going to come back and make some observations about the picture God is painting for us about where we are going as a church.
Read it with me...
Paul continues his line of thinking by reminding the church that the various leaders and teachers God had given the church all had one goal: equipping the saints for the work of the ministry.
Remember, the Bible uses the term “saint” to describe anyone who has a relationship with Jesus. It isn’t reserved for a special class of Christians; if you are saved, you are a saint.
Church leaders are gifted by God to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry.
Some of those leaders, like the apostles and the prophets, were offices God gave to the church in the early days to help them get started. We don’t see those offices working the same way today they did then.
Now, “evangelists” are folks who go to other places to tell people about Jesus, so you can think of them as missionaries.
Then, you get to pastors and teachers. The way this is phrased seems to put both of these together, which is something we already saw in 1 Peter 5 when we talked about the role of shepherds. Pastors are called both to shepherd and lead the flock as well as teach them.
Notice, though, the emphasis of verse 12...
These leaders aren’t to do all the work of the ministry; rather, they are to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry.
In other words, a large part of my job as your pastor is to help you grow to maturity in Christ so you can use your gifts, talents, experiences, and abilities to honor Jesus in the unique way he has gifted you.
Let’s think back to our big question for today: “Where are we going?”
God’s destination for this church, in part, is that I equip you to do the work God has called you to do so that we build up his Body together.
We will talk more about the unique gifts God gives us when we look at ministry and service in several weeks.
However, from this part of the passage, we see that God’s goal is for us to be an equipped body of believers.
Notice, though, that the equipping God gives us is not so we can just go off and do our own thing.
Look back at verse 13.
Throughout this passage, you see Paul emphasizing that we are to grow more and more united.
We are all very different people. We come from different backgrounds, we like different things, we are different ages and life stages—how can we have unity when we are all over the board?
Because we are called to unify around Jesus.
We aren’t all called to be the same or like the same things or always agree on everything.
No; we are called to rally around the faith and the knowledge of God’s Son.
“The faith” here is referring to the key truths we believe. That would be truths like: We believe that there is a God in heaven who created us to have a relationship with him. We chose to rebel against him, yet he loved us so much that he would send his Son to earth to die on the cross to take our punishment and rise from the dead to offer us new life. Now, he is in charge of everything, and we are submitting ourselves to him together, trusting him alone for eternal life and being right with God.
We may disagree on some of the details around all of this, but we are unified around the fact that the only way for a person to be right with God is to place their faith in Jesus.
That’s the idea of the unity in the faith.
He goes on to talk about unity “in the knowledge of God’s Son”.
Greek, which is the language this letter was originally written in, has a few different words for knowledge.
The word Paul uses here is the same one we talked about Wednesday night in Prayer Meeting. It is more than just knowing facts, it is actually knowing him personally. It implies first-hand, experiential knowledge.
Our unity is around the faith, but it isn’t just simple facts; our unity is centered around the fact that you know Jesus and I know Jesus and we are growing to know him better.
So, where are we going? We believe God is calling us to become an equipped body of believers who are united around Jesus.
Again, that’s not just for me or for other church leaders—look how many times he says “all” or “whole”.
We see it in verse 13, and we see it again in verse 16...
All, the whole body, each individual part contributing.
The unity isn’t just a head knowledge; it works itself out in the way we work together to build up the body.
That’s not all, though.
We are equipped, we are united, but to do what?
Look back at the last part of verse 13— growing into maturity...
God’s end goal is that you and I and everyone who is a part of his church would grow into maturity.
What’s the standard for maturity? Pretty straightforward: it’s Jesus.
The measuring rod for us as individuals and a church isn’t how another church is doing. We can’t just look around at someone else and say, “Well, I think I’m doing better than they are, so I’m good.”
No; God’s goal for us is that we would grow into maturity.
Like verse 14 says, that knowledge of Christ will keep us from getting pulled off track by bad ideas about who God is.
In verse 15, we see that maturity in Christ involves what we say and every single aspect of who we are—how we think, how we spend our time, what we do and don’t do—we are growing to look and live more like Jesus.
Again, the passage concludes by reminding us how important it is for every part of the body to contribute, so we can all work together to become all God has called us to be.
There is so much more that we could say about this passage, but just from this quick overview, I hope you are starting to catch a glimpse of where God is wanting us to go.
He wants us to become an equipped body of believers, united around Jesus, growing to look and live like Jesus.
To put is succinctly:
We want to be known as a church who lives like Jesus and leads others to do the same.
You are going to be hearing that phrase more and more in the weeks to come: live like Jesus and lead others to do the same.
But what does that actually look like? What does it look like for us to live like Jesus and lead others to do the same?
Does that mean we are going to wear robes and walk around with a group of a dozen guys and heal and teach?
No; to see a picture of what it looks like when a church lives like Jesus and leads others to do the same.
Turn over to Acts 2:42-47...
This is in the early days of the first church, and they were doing it right.
Read it, and let’s see what it looks like when a church is living like Jesus and leading others to do the same...
This is where we get the concept of the six purposes we are going to be talking about.
Although there are lots of things going on in this passage, commentators often pull out five main purposes for the church that we see here.
Dr. Chuck Lawless, who is one of my professors and is one of the men who developed the assessment we took in the spring, highlights six major purposes for the church that we see here:
Exalt God in worship.
Evangelize the world.
Equip the saints through discipleship.
Edify others through ministry and service.
Encounter God through prayer.
Encourage one another through fellowship.
A lot of that is very church-sounding, so if you are not familiar with those terms, know that this is what we are going to talk about over the next twelve weeks.
There are other things we could add to the list here of what would it would look like to grow into maturity in Christ, but this gives us a great framework to get started with.
In large part, this list covers the majority of what it looks like for us to live like Jesus and lead others to do the same.
This isn’t how a person comes into a relationship with God—that is through placing faith in Jesus alone for eternal life.
This list helps us as a church see how we are to live out what God has done in saving us.
So, where are we going? We are going to strive to become a church who is an equipped body of believers, united around Jesus, seeking to live like Jesus and lead others to do the same.
That brings up the question, then, of how we are doing with that.
That was a question our Leadership Team and Deacons were asking last spring, and that’s why we as a church participated in the Know Your Church assessment.
For those who forgot or who weren’t aware of it, we asked anyone in our church body who was willing to take it answer a number of different questions. The questions covered all six of these purposes, and you were to mark whether you strongly agreed, agreed, undecided, disagreed, or strongly disagreed.
When it was all said and done, seventy-one people took the assessment, and here were the results:
<<Show Know Your Church Results Slide>>
Some of you hate charts, so let me explain a bit of what you are looking at. See the line that says “Unhealthy”? Anything that doesn’t make it to that line is seriously unhealthy. See the line that says “Healthy”? Anything that goes beyond that line is considered healthy—not perfect, but healthy.
If you notice, almost all of our results fall between the two, which means they ranged from marginally unhealthy to marginally healthy.
The three lowest categories were Evangelism, Discipleship, and Ministry.
If we are going to get where God wants us to go as a church, we need to give some concentrated attention to those three key areas.
If not, we won’t be growing up into maturity in every way like we are supposed to be.
It’s the equivalent of skipping leg day at the gym. Have you ever seen a guy who has massive muscles from the waist up, but his legs look like toothpicks? Usually that comes from only focusing on your upper body and never working out your lower body.
This assessment lets us know that, in some ways, we have been skipping leg day.
We are doing pretty well in making sure we have dynamic time together to exalt Christ through corporate worship, and we are doing okay with our prayer life as a church, but we aren’t doing well getting into the community and world and sharing the gospel.
We need to work on that, and that is why we are getting a group of our church leaders—deacons, Sunday School teachers, Ministry Team leaders, etc—together next Sunday to start looking strategically at what God would have us do to address these weaknesses.
Why? So we can come up with a way to be the best church in Christiansburg? So we can become a big church?
No; so we can grow in every way into Christ, who is the head of this church.
It’s so we can become a church who lives like Jesus and leads others to do the same in more ways than we are today.
It’s so we can reach others with the message of the gospel so they find hope and they give God the glory he rightly deserves.
So, what do you need to do?
First, pray. Pray for us as we look at how best to honor God in these areas. Pray for creativity to know how to accomplish God’s plan in an increasingly challenging culture.
Second, examine your own life—if you are a Christian, how are you doing in these purposes? Remember, every part of this body needs to be working properly for us to get where God is calling us to go. We need you.
Third, read along with us. One of our members, Dottie Borisuk, has helped us develop a reading plan that will go along with our study. Each week, you will find three Scripture readings that deal with the topic we are talking about that week. There are two different formats this time: a half sheet for those comfortable looking up the reference, and a booklet format for those who want to have the verses there without having to go searching.
The readings won’t actually begin until next Sunday, but feel free to grab a copy today on your way out. We can make more if we need them.
It’s easy to get on autopilot and forget where you are heading.
Pray with me now that God would break us out of our sleepiness, our distractedness, and get us back in line with his goal for his church...
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