The story was told about a parrot who had a job working for a nightclub, and had been
trained to tell saucy stories to those who came to that particular place of entertainment.
One Saturday night there was a fire, and up there in the attic that parrot was able to
find a hole to escape the fire.
He went down the street about two blocks until he saw a big building that had a large high
ceiling in it, and so he managed to find a way to get in there, and he roosted up there
in that huge wooden archway in the high ceiling.
What he didn't know was it was a Baptist church.
And so Sunday morning came, and the parrot woke up with the sound of the organ, kind
of forgotten what had happened.
He looked down, and he saw the preacher behind the pulpit, and he said, Ah!
New bartender!
He saw the choir come in, and he said, Ah!
New chorus girls!
And then he looked over to the congregation, and he said, Ah!
Same old crowd.
We've been talking about what it means to be a part of the same old crowd the last couple
of weeks, I hope not the same kind as the parrot was talking about.
As we talk about the new you as members of the body, actually the Bible speaks of two
bodies of Christ.
Did you know that?
There is the body of Christ that is physical, and when we think of the physical body of
Christ, we think of Bethlehem, where our Lord was born.
In that body, he possessed all of the gifts and the power that was needed that he might
accomplish God's assigned purpose to him.
That was to originate, to institute the gospel through his suffering for our sins, his death,
and his resurrection from the dead.
But then there is also the spiritual body of Christ mentioned in the New Testament.
When we think of this body, we don't think so much of Bethlehem as Jerusalem, because
it was at Jerusalem that this body originated with the coming of the Holy Spirit on the
day of Pentecost.
And in this body of Christ, too, there is the power, the gifts that are needed to fulfill
its mission, which is the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ to every creature
in the world.
As the Lord Jesus Christ represented God, the Father, personally, we, his spiritual
body, represent God collectively or corporately.
Our Lord had a mission in coming into the world, and we too have a mission as his spiritual
body.
It is that we might get the gospel to every person in our region and beyond, to every
corner of the earth.
All genuine Christians are described in the New Testament as members of the body.
I want you to notice the plurality of that, members, with an S, members of the body.
Because in this picture, the emphasis is upon what we are together, not so much what we
are individually.
An important aspect of this description, members of the body, is in this emphasis, the mutual
relations that we have as members of the body.
The theme I want us to explore this morning is that the new you is not only an addition
to the body and an extension of the head, but the new you is also in connection with
other members of the body.
We are in connection with each other.
There are a couple of ideas that flow out of that.
One is that the body of Jesus Christ, of which we are members if we are Christians, is a
unity with diversity.
We see it in our text in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, which I invite you to turn once more today.
We have looked at verses 12 and 13, but I want you to notice some earlier verses in
the chapter as we think about the fact that the body is a unity in diversity.
He says in verse 4, there are varieties of gifts of the same spirit.
In other words, among us, there are many varieties of spiritual gifts, those special abilities
that God gives to all of us Christians to serve him.
Tremendous variety!
The same spirit, though, who gives all of the gifts.
He says there are varieties of ministries, diversity in the way we serve.
Some serve up front, some serve in places where they are seldom noticed.
Some serve within the walls of the church and its programs, others serve outside the
walls of the church.
Diversity of ministries, but it is the same Lord that we are serving.
In verse 6 he says there are varieties of effects.
That is, the results of what we do vary.
It is the same God, however, who works in all of us, and to him be the glory for whatever
effects he chooses to bring to pass.
The body is a unity, it is one, and yet it is many, just like our physical bodies.
We are one person, we have one body, and yet the body is composed of a variety of organs
and extensions and members which perform different functions.
The diversity in the body of Christ originates with the creative wisdom of God.
In the first place he has made us different physically, and that causes some difference
among us.
There are some who are very energetic and have lots of strength and go 20 hours a day,
and there are others of us who need 8 or 9 or 10 hours of sleep a night.
Is that wrong or right?
Well, it is not a value judgment, it is just a reality that we are made differently physically,
and therefore there is diversity.
God has also made us so that we have different personalities.
Not everybody can have a wonderful personality like you.
Some of us have to have obstinate personalities.
No, not obstinate, different.
We are all made differently.
We see things differently.
God has made us that way.
That is good.
God has also given us different gifts for spiritual abilities.
I believe that each of us has a gift from God with which we are to serve him in this
life and that that gift is really a custom blend of a variety of abilities.
There may be a major one or two and then a number of minor ones, but God knowing just
who we are and what our function is in the body gives us a gift that is custom blended
so that we are special, each of us, in our diversity.
God loves diversity.
God has placed diversity throughout his creation.
I have been watching a film called The Journey of Life, one of Moody Institute of Science
films now on video.
In that film they talk about the miracle of seeds.
They talk about how many seeds, different kinds of seeds to plants there are in the
world.
One of the most interesting parts of the film describes the various ways God has created
for seeds to be transported so that plants can reproduce.
There are some seeds that are blown with the wind.
Remember the seeds from the tree, the maple tree, isn't it?
The little helicopter that goes down, you used to play with when you were a kid.
That's one kind.
Then there is the seed of the milkweed that is like cotton, it's light and fluffy and
it just blows off with the wind currents.
There are some seeds that are made to drop in the ground.
There are some seeds that are actually made to be spat out, blown out of the pod.
They describe one seed which pod builds up pressure inside.
When the pressure gets great enough, it actually spits the seed out as far as 50 feet.
That's God's creative genius.
Then some seeds are made to be eaten by animals, but not digested.
They can't be digested by animals.
God made them that way.
So they are passed through the animal and are dropped throughout the forest as the animals
travel.
There are some seeds that are made to be dropped into water and water carries them down the
stream or actually to other continents.
The coconut is an example of that.
Improvisous to water.
It can float for thousands of miles until it finally rolls up on some sandy beach on
an island.
God loves diversity and just as he has put it in his creation, God has put diversity
in his church.
We are a unity with diversity.
There are some implications of this truth that I think are worth talking about.
In the first place, we can relax about our God made differences.
Some Christians are very worried that other Christians are not just like them.
And some of them take it upon themselves to go and fix other people like that.
They are fixers in the body of Christ and their goal is to fix other Christians so that
those other Christians function and tick just like they do.
Too bad because God hasn't made us to all function just the same.
We need to rejoice in the diversity that God has given to us.
Relax about that.
So somebody else thinks differently or functions differently than you do in the body of Christ.
Rejoice!
Celebrate the difference.
Now we are not talking about differences where there is sin.
We are talking about differences in giftedness.
We are talking about differences of perspective because of the way God has made us.
This was illustrated to me a couple of weeks ago in an elders meeting when we discussed
an issue about which there was a great deal of difference in opinion.
What was fun is to sit there and watch the men respond almost inevitably from the perspective
of what I would perceive their giftedness to be.
Their difference was born out of the way God has gifted them.
They think differently about things.
And so we discussed with a lot of diverse opinions this certain issue all under the
umbrella of oneness and unity.
Things like that should not threaten us.
We should indeed rejoice in them because God has made us that way.
We are all diverse.
We are many members though a part of one body and it is good for us to think about the implication
of that because we are to guard that unity.
The unity in the essentials.
Not necessarily in the superficial things where there is exterior conformity.
No, no.
We are talking about the essentials that we believe.
We are to guard that.
We are to be jealous to preserve the unity of the Spirit.
Letting the bond of peace, the seal of peace be unbroken in our church.
A text from Ephesians 4 was read earlier this morning that gets right to that point.
And it says that you and I preserve unity in the body by our character.
That is how we do it.
By being patient, forbearing, and humble, and loving, and so on.
By being that way in our character and expressing it then we preserve the essential oneness
of the body of Christ though we are diverse.
Another implication is that when there has been disharmony we need to seek to bring that
disharmony together to reconcile it.
We need to seek to make the body of Christ healthy again.
The body is a unity with diversity.
The dynamic in a local church causes each church to have a distinct personality.
We have had people who have come to our church from other churches and they say, oh we like
your church but it is sure not like our church back home.
Amen.
That is right.
We are not.
We have had people go from here to other places and they write back and say, oh we just can't
find a church like Grace Church here.
That is true.
There is only one Grace Church Roosevelt.
It is the composite of who we are together.
And because we are only here we can't be elsewhere.
There is no other church like this one.
Every church is distinct in its personality.
That is just normal.
That is part of the dynamic of the church of Jesus Christ.
We also need to remember that the size of a church also affects its personality.
It affects the way the church functions.
What do you think of the median sized church in the United States?
The median sized church in the United States.
How many of you would say it would be around 200?
That is a good guess.
Wrong.
Not a bad guess.
Actually the median sized church is 75.
What that means is that half of the churches in the United States are 75 or fewer.
And half of them are 75 or more.
I grew up in a church of 75.
And while we were there the church went like this.
But there were times when we ran 90 or 100.
We were among the largest churches in America.
We were over the median.
But you know what?
That church of 75 or 100 functions a whole lot different than a church of 500 or 1000.
A church has a different personality depending upon its size.
It has to function differently.
Let me illustrate that a little bit.
I think it might help some.
In a small church everyone knows everything.
Boy that was true in that rural church I grew up in.
Whether or not you should have known it, you did.
Everybody knew everything.
So there was no problem with the lack of information.
In a large church that's not true.
In a large church there is absolutely too much happening for everybody to stay abreast
of it.
Everybody in the center of this church doesn't even know everything that's happening in this
church.
And that's okay.
It's not a value judgment.
That's just the reality.
That's the dynamics of it.
In a small church communication of information is relatively simple.
You just tell two or three people and it gets around.
No.
I mean if you announce something in the church most of the people are there every Sunday.
Or if you put it in the bulletin it has a way, you know it stays on the back table until
the family that was gone that Sunday comes in.
The next Sunday they pick up the bulletin and they read it.
It's fairly simple in a small church.
In a large church it's complex.
Let me tell you.
It requires redundancy.
It requires saying the same thing over and over again.
There have to be internal, I should say intentional, internal communication systems established.
We have a long way to go in that regard in our church.
But we recognize the problem.
It has to become intentional.
You have to work hard at communications.
In a small church volunteers are easily recruited.
Now I know that there are some people in small churches that would argue with that.
But it's much more difficult in large churches to get volunteers.
The normal thinking is hey there's so many more people, so many more warm bodies.
Surely it's a lot easier to get volunteers.
No it's not.
And there are certain human dynamics that make that true.
One of them being in a small church it's often very close knit and there are family interrelationships.
And because of that people feel even obligated to volunteer when they don't want to.
In a large church there's much less of that kind of dynamic.
And people say oh well somebody else will take care of it.
In a small church there is stability during times of change, particularly staff changes.
A pastor can change in a small church and it usually doesn't make a lot of difference.
The church boss is still there.
No just kidding.
Usually because again of the dynamics of the relationships in the church, the leaving of
the pastor, though there may be tears or there may be applause, it doesn't make a whole lot
of difference.
The church goes on.
The larger a church gets, many people don't believe this, it's true, the larger a church
gets the more vulnerable it becomes to staff changes, particularly the pastor.
But other staff changes as well.
The more vulnerable it is to disruption because of those kinds of changes.
In a small church the pastor has one kind of a role.
It may be mimigrafing the Boltenhoff as one of them.
In a large church the pastor has a completely different kind of role.
In a small church decisions are made one way.
In a larger church decisions by the very nature of the dynamics of the organization have to
be made differently.
In a small church assimilation of new people happens rather easily.
Somebody new walks in the door, everybody turns.
There's a new person.
And that person is hopefully welcomed and noticed and ministered to and feels enfolded
right away.
In a large church a person can come in the door and sit there and go out and never be
spoken to.
It's tragic, but that can happen.
So therefore we have to work hard at organizing a process of assimilation.
It has to be purposed, it has to be intentional.
There have to be people who are willing to stand at the doors and greet, who are willing
to usher and show people to seats, who are willing to help people find classrooms, work
at information desks, and a variety of other things just so that assimilation can happen.
You see a large church is not a small church that's overgrown.
If you'll pardon me for saying so, there's some kind of an evolution that takes place
along the way.
So it's a completely different animal on this end from that end.
Now that's not a value judgment, that's not saying that one is good and one is bad, that's
just the nature of things.
That's the way it is.
It helps us to realize things like that.
Statistically we are among the one percent of churches in America that run more than
seven hundred in a morning worship service.
Only one out of a hundred churches has seven hundred or more people in it.
The dynamics in that kind of a church are unique as compared to smaller kinds of churches.
That's why some of you coming into our church have had a time of adjustment.
I hope it's been eased in some ways and it's been happy in its end, but it can be difficult
because the dynamics are so different in a large church.
And I can tell you from my own experience that when you go from a large church to a
small church, reentry is just as difficult that way because of the dynamics.
The body is a unity with diversity.
It's good for us to remember that.
But the body is also a unity with interdependence.
None of us can be the whole body.
God hasn't created us to be the whole body.
He's created us to need each other and I want you to know that there's nothing that is more
counter-cultural than that idea, especially today.
Because we treasure our privacy.
We value independence.
We exalt self-sufficiency.
And to be a member of the body of Christ is just the opposite of all of those.
God has created us to be interdependent.
The current culture, thanks to live in isolation, is something to seek.
To live with self-reliance.
To have the attitude, I don't really need others, I can make it on my own.
This was illustrated in an article yesterday in the St. Paul newspaper.
Our governor said something I agree with, so I thought I'd better quote him for once.
He was giving a speech last week at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis and he's
talking about the escalating crime problems in our state and it is a serious problem and
he says the answer rests with people, not with government.
He says all we can do is take some small steps forward and I pray that it will be a long,
long journey.
Resources are limited but by working together we can solve the problem.
He would almost say that the decade of the 80s was the I and the me era.
He is absolutely correct.
But he says the focus must shift to we.
Amen, Governor Carlson.
That's exactly where the Church of Jesus Christ is because I want you to know that this I
and me-ism invaded the Church whole scale in the 80s and we need to understand what
that's leading us to.
We need to understand that we need to turn around and see that the Bible says we.
We're not to seek our own special interests only, but we're to seek our Lord's first
of all and then the needs, the concerns of others, and then our own in that order.
The body is a unity with interdependence.
We need each other's gifts.
We complement with an E each other.
God's made us that way.
My hand complements my I.
My eye can see something and say in its brain, oh, I want that, but only my hand can reach
out there and get it.
We complement each other in our relationship as members of the body of Jesus Christ.
When somebody works in the nursery across that hallway, they are serving us and the
Lord.
It's easy for them just to begin to think, oh, all I'm doing here is babysitting and
nobody cares anyway, but it's not the case.
Anyone who works in that nursery hopefully is exercising a God-given call to that position.
Not only by serving us and serving God, but by serving the babies who by the tender and
loving care and words sense acceptance and warmth right there as a young baby in the
nursery.
Men who serve as ushers in this church or those who serve as greeters serve all of us.
We complement each other.
We're all a part of the same team.
We have different roles to play.
The ones who sing up in this choir, do they come up here and sing because of Mark Rhodes,
because he's so good looking?
He laughed.
Nobody else did.
I don't know why you laugh.
His wife agrees.
Well, despite the fact that he is, I hope they're up here to sing because of Jesus Christ.
Because God has gifted them and called them to serve in that way, and they're not singing
for men, they're singing for God.
They're serving us and helping us in our worship.
You can go through all of the jobs in the church, all of the opportunities in the church,
and you can see how it all keeps folding back.
We're a complement to each other.
We're all a part of the same team, so that God's work gets done.
Therefore, the importance of faithfulness, of doing our job, the importance of when we
say we're going to be in the nursery to be there, and not to let ourselves think, oh,
well, there are so many others in there.
I'm just going to skip this month.
But when we say we're going to teach a class or help in the Sunday school to be there,
because God's gifted us, God's called us, we're members of the body, and what we do
makes a difference there to the functioning of the whole thing.
If a member of my body begins to bail out on me, I've got a problem.
If the members of my body get into competition with each other, I'm going to be sick.
And so are the same as true in the body of Christ.
We're not competing, we're complementing each other.
We're working together, serving Jesus Christ, so the people in this community and around
the world can hear the gospel and be saved.
That's the bottom line.
That's the bottom line of it all.
And whatever we're doing, however we serve Christ in the body, it all comes to that bottom
line, that others may come to know Him and serve Him.
I'm talking about members of the body, and there may be somebody confused, because I'm
not talking about people who are constitutionally members of our church.
That's an important step.
But what I'm talking about refers to anyone who is a regular part of Grace Church, whether
constitutionally a member or not.
If I come to this church and participate in its life to some degree, and if I am receiving
ministry from it, then I am a member of that local body of Christ.
It's just the way it is.
It's not constitutional membership, it's spiritual membership.
And by coming regularly and participating and receiving, I'm a member, I'm connected
in God's mind, and therefore as a connected member on the body, I need to receive and
to give.
I need to be healthy.
I need to be a participating member.
Is that where you are today?
As you evaluate your membership in the body of Christ, are you a connected, healthy, participating
member?
One who is giving out as well as receiving?
One who is serving the head?
One who is interdependent upon others?
One who recognizes the value of his diversity and yet fits into the oneness of the body
of Christ?
It is a beautiful picture.
It is a wonderful description of who God has made you to be.
Don't function as anything less than God has made you to be.
Be a member of the body.
Let's pray.
Dear friend, are you a child of God?
Have you trusted in Jesus Christ as your Savior?
Do you recognize that he died for your sin and rose again, that he might save and rescue
you personally from your destiny of judgment in hell?
If not, would you trust him today?
Would you receive him as an act of faith in your life?
And those of us who have done that, are we, because we have trusted Christ, are we living
out our identity?
Are we who God has made us to be and gifted us to be?
How active are you as a member of the body here or wherever you may belong if you're
visiting?
Spirit of God, I pray that you'll evaluate that in my heart and the heart of every person
in the sound of my voice right now.
Show us whether we're healthy members or unhealthy.
And so work to transform us, to change our attitudes, to change our lifestyle, to change
our willingness to participate, to change our activity and giving so that we will be
functioning as healthy members of the spiritual body of Christ.
Would you stand with me please with our heads bowed?
Sing with me the chorus that we sang just before the message today.
In our church, Lord, be glorified.
Be glorified.
In our church, Lord, be glorified today.
You know the Lord will do that.
He desires to be glorified in our church.
And he is to the extent that he is glorified in our individual lives and we're living in
obedience to him.
As we go out today, let's go with that determination in our hearts to serve him in the power of
the Holy Spirit as he has gifted us.
And so Lord, enfold us, grow us, develop us, mature us as the body of Jesus Christ, diverse
in our oneness so that we will truly glorify you.
In Jesus' name, amen.
We're dismissed.