Serving Saints

Or, Building Up the Body in Love

We're talking in this series about our purpose to see the church body blessed. We're talking about some of the principles behind the work. And we'll include some discussion on the particular practices that we're using, practices that should be consistent with the principles and purposes.

Last week we considered the personal nature of the Great Commission, and even distinguished the category of discipleship proper. In this case the proper indicates the scope of focus more than a strict course to follow. Discipleship proper belongs with the ground war, and ground war complements the air war. Preaching and liturgy belong with the air war, one-on-one or at least living room conversations belong with the ground war.

God's Word gives us more than one way to refer to our goal. Actually, God's Word teaches us more than one goal. As believers, the end is Christlikness, to be mature in Christ, to be faithful followers of Christ, which would include being able to reproduce ourselves like adults. As the church body, the end is also corporate maturity, loving truth and loving each other unto strength in unity under Christ as our Head.

The Great Commission is a church-building project; where there are believers there should be body; many members one body. For that matter, the work of the church is a disciple-making project; where the church is healthy the Christians are healthy, and they raise their kids in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and they live as salt and light in a bland and blind world.

Each year we spend some time focusing on our Lord's Day liturgy, not because it is the only important part of our practice, but because it is our uniquely group activity. We do have other practices, not to replace Sunday morning but to supplement the work, and that includes what we call Life to Life Groups. L2L groups are not quite air or ground, but they are a bridge and a catalyst for air and ground campaigns to be more effective.

Growing Ministry

Again, these are Bible-driven purposes, even if putting them into practice takes some Bible-informed wisdom. Just as there is no inspired, one-for-all order of service in Scripture, so there is no inspired, one-for-everyone scope and sequence of maturing as a disciple.

Ephesians 4:11 and following does remind us that one of the reasons that God gives churches pastors and teachers is:

to equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

We're not trying to sneak things into this text, but there is a lot of work (ἔργον) and a good amount of freedom left to the pastors and teachers to figure out how to proceed with the work.

The ministry is service (διακονίας); to serve is to provide, to serve is to be of use in achieving something. As we meditate together on this, what is your purpose for serving and what are the different ways you can serve? As for the goal, that's clear. As for the methods, that is less clear only because it’s less limited.

The paragraph answers why we serve: the good of our fellow body-members, and even more, the good of the group. We have a reputation as a church, we have strengths and weaknesses as a church, not just as persons who confess that Jesus is Lord. Jesus is saving men and women, and He is sanctifying a collective Bride. In Ephesians 4:12-16 we’re looking for:

building up the body
we all attaining the unity of faith
we all attaining the knowledge of the Son of God
together getting to mature manhood
together getting to the stature of the fulness of Christ
adults, not children
growing up in every way into Christ
each part working properly
the body grows
the body is built up in love

The bookends, so to speak, are the built up (εἰς οἰκοδομὴν verse 12 and 16). This is the ministry: edification/building/strengthening of each unto the building up of the whole.

So how do you, can you, work properly toward this purpose? Where does it happen? It doesn't happen in any one way or any one place. It also doesn't happen if you're not (ever) thinking about it or trying to do something.

One reason the elders resist giving too many specific methods is because it is very easy for people to think that "serving" only happens at certain times and places (which note, is following the example of Paul even in the passage). Maybe you’ve heard, if the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Let’s modify that: everything should be for building up the body so use whatever tool you have.

Equipping Ministry

The saints must be equipped to sacrifice in service, and what's the plan for that? What tools and tactics can/should be employed? What training and opportunities are there?

Pastors/elders/shepherds should be the first-step-takers. But even though we have a plurality of elders, we cannot accomplish life-on-life, discipleship proper, with each person in the assembly. In fact, the only women we meet regularly with one-on-one are our wives and daughters. But we can be responsible to oversee, both in providing and protecting, directing and defending, the extension of that work. And to the degree that we pull that off, we're successfully equipping the saints to multiply the serving beyond what the five of us could accomplish by ourselves.

To treat pastors as the only level of leadership in the body is not only impractical, it actually misses the point of Ephesians 4:12.

When we examine Jesus' life, serving, teaching, and exampling, we see that He did not spend the same amount of time with every individual. He did not refuse to talk with anyone, but He did not invest with equality. The principle He modeled is focus on the few to reach the many. And here we are today, even though Jesus had 11 faithful men, among whom 3 were more on the inner circle, at least according to how many times they are mentioned.

The Master Plan of Evangelism by Robert Coleman traces Jesus' steps and is must read material.

So our pastors are not hermetically sealed off from any particular sheep in the field. And also, for strategy's sake, we give more consideration to some men more than others. That next group are mostly, though not entirely, made up of those we refer to as L2L leaders. We have some addition meetings, discussions, and actually even qualifications for that group of men. We're investing a lot of our equipping dollars in that group, so that they can also invest in more men themselves.

L2L groups are also not really places for discipleship proper, though we do anticipate that some discipleship proper relationships will be connected to L2Ls. L2Ls help us with the shepherding of how the saints are building one another up.

Conclusion

Children (see that language in Ephesians 4:14) tend to struggle more with being 1) gullible, 2) fearful, 3) selfish, 4) immature. The work of the ministry is to encourage each other, speaking the truth in love, unto spiritual maturity, to manhood, to no longer being children. Again, try to consider how an entire church might be like a child, or like an adult. Let’s be an Adulting Church.