It's good for us to sing new settings for our
faith. I don't know if you noticed the words
carefully as you were trying to learn the tune
as well, but it's a tremendous hymn. All of us
have been in much prayer this last week for Mark
Corman, one of our young men who was injured
playing softball with one of our teams on Monday
night. Just as a word of update, he had surgery
midweek on his spine, and as yet there has been
no recovery of mobility below his chest. He has
surgery scheduled again for Tuesday morning,
and the last time they came in from behind to
do their work, this time they go through the
front, through his neck. and will strengthen
the spinal column and remove what they think
is another piece of bone in the area of the spinal
cord. But the word that we have from the surgeon
is that the spinal cord has been very badly crushed,
although not severed. At this point, the surgeon
does not seem especially hopeful that Mark will
walk. We want to be praying. and asking God for
a miracle. Debbie is here this morning, and Betty,
his mother, and other family members, and we
just continue to assure you, as your church family,
of our love, and want you to know that we will
continue to uphold you in prayer, and Mark as
well, in these important days and critical days.
I'd like for us to bow right now and have prayer
as a church family for Mark. Would you? Join
me, please. Father, I thank you that whatever
befalls us in this life, that because you have
chosen us and called us as your own children,
nothing happens by accident. Behind even the
dark things, the difficult things that happen,
we see your providence. And while we cannot always
understand why things happen as they do, we can
rest upon the fact that there is a reason known
in the good, kind, and eternal purposes of God.
Now, Lord, that is our faith. We rest upon that
truth. And yet you enable us to come to you and
offer our petitions. As Mark's church family,
as those who love him dearly, we intercede on
his behalf. Father, we pray that if it be your
will, you would cause him to regain the use of
his limbs. We pray that Mark will be able to
walk again and will be entirely restored. We
come confidently to the throne of grace to offer
this petition because you've invited us to. And
even Mark has said, the will of God be done,
and we concur with that. But Lord, that is our
heart. That is our petition to you. And we pray
that the surgery on Tuesday will go well. And
we pray that that will be part of the process
of him being restored entirely to health. And
this petition we bring to you in the name and
authority of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.
Thank you. And now would you open your Bible
with me, please, to Ephesians chapter 4, as we
look again at verses 15 and 16. A song heard
frequently on radio stations, especially around
Christmas, is titled Childhood. It's a secular
song, but its words capture something of the
joy, freedom, and innocence that belong to the
early years of life. But it concludes with the
realization that once you've passed its portals,
you can never return again. Growing up, whether
in a physical sense, or in a spiritual sense,
does not come without cost. As we grow up, there
are some things that must be laid aside, but
the result of that is, the positive side is,
that even better things come as a result of the
process of growing. Growing up entails a certain
cost, but the benefits of the process are well
worth it. I suppose that one could resist paying
the price of growth, but the result would be
sad and even tragic. It would be to miss out
on the deeper, more meaningful issues of life.
In a spiritual sense, God has not called us to
remain spiritual children playing ring around
the rosy while the world goes to hell. He has
called us to grow up, that we might make the
most of the opportunities which he has given
to us in this life. Now, when I say growing up
has a cost, I'm thinking of growth in two respects,
in a personal respect and in a body or corporate
or whole church respect. Our text today mentions
both. He says we are to grow up. in all aspects
into him who is the head, even Christ, from whom
the whole body, being fitted and held together
by that which every joint supplies, according
to the proper working of each individual part,
causes the growth of the body. And so you see
there is a personal aspect in which he speaks
as well as one that affects all of us in the
corporate body of Christ. So first understand
that personal spiritual growth requires a cost.
It is not without price. I believe that we can
summarize the price by saying this. The price
of growing up personally and spiritually is a
deepening commitment to the Lordship of Jesus
Christ. For as we grow up, we must also grow
down deeply into His Lordship to be rooted. As
you and I determine by the grace of God to pay
the price to grow up spiritually, it will involve
several things. It will involve new areas of
concern. that may be uncovered and which will
have to be dealt with. These may be habits, attitudes,
or actions which in our childhood were thought
acceptable, but which as we grow up into the
Lord will be called into question by His Lordship
in our lives. This can be any number of things,
but let me suggest just a few that are common.
One would be in the way that we use Sunday, our
use of the Lord's Day, how we employ these hours
on the first day of the week. When one is in
spiritual immaturity in childhood, Sunday is,
in many ways, just another day of the week. But
if one is going to grow up spiritually, it means
facing how Sunday is used for the glory of God.
For some people, an issue like this would be
smoking. There are some people who believe that
a person cannot be saved until he stops smoking.
Of course, that's ridiculous. But the fact is
that when one is maturing and growing up in Christ,
very often one of the first things the Lord will
put his hand on is an issue like that in the
life that defiles the body. When I was growing
up, we said that smoking stunted one's growth.
Now we know it also shortens one's life. It's
foolish to do that. But one can be a Christian
and still smoke. But as one grows up, the lordship
of Jesus Christ will begin to reach into areas
like that. Another issue similar to that would
be social drinking. Can one have a beer with
his meal and be a Christian? Well, the answer
is yes, he can. But as a person grows up and
understands more and more the lordship of Jesus
Christ, there's a price to pay for that growth.
And the lordship of Jesus Christ will touch things
like that. I remember we had a man in our church
who testified to that well over a year ago now,
before all of us. And there were some who kind
of gasped when he mentioned having a beer before
his meal because of the heritage he grew up with.
but that now he had laid that aside as he understood
the lordship of Jesus Christ. There is a price
to be paid to grow spiritually. It is an ever
-deepening commitment to the lordship of Jesus
Christ. It involves areas like careless speech,
even the casual ways in which some people use
jargon to speak of God. Like gosh and gee. Now
there are some people who are not at all offended
by those terms. And I wasn't either at one point
until I began to understand what those words
really mean, what they stand for. And my heart
became sensitive to the use of them. And I do
not feel comfortable using terms like that any
longer. It was careless speech that the Lord
dealt with in my life. It can involve areas like
television, the kinds of shows that we watch.
My point is this, and I'm only being suggestive
because there could be so many applications,
that if you and I wish to grow spiritually, there
is a cost with growth. It does not happen without
a price being paid. The price in general can
be said to be this, a deepening commitment to
the lordship of Jesus Christ over our lives.
And he will begin to touch areas of life that
before we did not have any sensitivity about.
But now as we begin to grow, as he enforces his
lordship more widely, we begin to see that some
things have to fall away, that we may grow. A
new understanding of sin in our lives. It means
that we must deal with those things, for Christ
will not lead us onward until we put off those
sins in our lives which grieve him. My point
is this, that the walk that leads to higher ground
is a narrow one, and it becomes increasingly
narrow the further along one gets. That walk
to higher ground has less and less room for excess
baggage. The extraneous, the extravagant, the
urgent, even the good will gradually be squeezed
out of our lives so that we can experience God's
best. There is a cost to growing up. This has
been reflected. In an anonymous tract that has
been written and widely circulated, perhaps you
have seen it, it's entitled, Others May, You
Cannot. Listen to the provoking words of the
author. If God has called you to be really like
Jesus, he will draw you into a life of crucifixion
and humility. and put upon you such demands of
obedience that you will not be able to follow
other people or measure yourself by other Christians,
and in many ways he will seem to let other people
do things which he will not let you do. Other
Christians who seem very religious and useful
may push themselves, pull wires, and work schemes
to carry out their plans, but you cannot do it.
And if you attempt it, you will meet with such
failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you
sorely penitent. Others may boast of themselves,
of their work, of their successes, but the Holy
Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing.
And if you begin it, he will lead you into some
deep mortification that will make you despise
yourself and all your good works. Others may
be allowed to succeed in making money. or may
have a legacy left to them. But it is likely
God will keep you poor because he wants you to
have something far better than gold, namely a
helpless dependence upon him, that he may have
the privilege of supplying your needs day by
day out of an unseen treasury. The Lord may let
others be honored and put forward and keep you
hidden in obscurity. because he wants to produce
some choice fragrant fruit for his coming glory,
which can only be produced in the shade. He may
let others be great and keep you small. He may
let others do a work for him and get the credit
for it, but he will make you work and toil on
without knowing how much you are doing. And then
to make your work still more precious, he may
let others get credit for the work you have done.
and thus make your reward ten times greater when
Jesus comes. The Holy Spirit will put a strict
watch over you with a jealous love and will rebuke
you for little words and feelings and for wasting
your time, which other Christians never feel
distressed over. So make up your mind that God
is an infinite sovereign and has a right to do
as he pleases with his own. He may not explain
to you a thousand things which puzzle your reason
in his dealings with you, but if you absolutely
sell yourself to be his love slave, he will wrap
you in a jealous love and bestow upon you many
blessings which come only to those who are in
the inner circle. Settle it forever, then, that
you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit
and that he is to have the privilege of tying
your tongue or chaining your hand, or closing
your eyes in ways that he does not seem to use
with others. Now when you are possessed with
the living God, so possessed with the living
God, that you are in your secret heart, pleased
and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private,
jealous guardianship and management of the Holy
Spirit over your life, you will have found the
vestibule of heaven. I believe the author has
found the secret that we're talking about this
morning. God's plan for us is to grow up. But
beloved, for us to grow up personally, there
is a cost that is extracted from us. Are you
willing to pay that price, whatever it may be?
Are you willing to lay down the price to grow,
however dear that price may seem to you? There
is no growth without paying a cost. Not only
does personal growth involve a cost, but so does
church growth or corporate growth. As we grow
up and grow out as a church, it means that there
is a price that must be paid. Our Lord's plan
is for the church to grow up in verse 15. It
mentions that. And in verse 16, the implication
is the growing out of the body. One of the prices
that has to be paid, and it's one of the most
difficult, is changing our way of thinking about
our church. Do you know that the reason that
most churches stop growing is not lack of space
or the change of the neighborhood? or the change
of leadership. The reason that most churches
stop growing is because the people have not been
able to change their way of thinking to adjust
to the church as it grows. In other words, the
limitation to growth is psychological and not
spiritual. There is no spiritual reason why a
church could not grow to be 10 ,000 or 50 ,000.
Indeed, there is one church in South Korea that
is said to be over half a million in size. Now
how is that? How can a church grow like that?
Because, for one reason, the people are able
to adjust their thinking in some cases to allow
for additional church growth. Did you realize
that more than three -fourths of the churches
in the United States of America are 100 or below?
Part of the reason for that is that many of those
churches are in small communities. And in some
cases, the growth has reached its maximum simply
because of the limitations of population in an
area. But even in this metro area, with almost
an unlimited population of people, some two million
strong, Think of all of the small churches that
you pass by on your way to Grace Church from
your home to here. Why is it that churches stop
growing? Because of the thinking of the people.
There are certain thresholds that churches get
to. One of them is about 100. It's the first
challenge. If a church can get by 100, then it
can grow to several hundred. But normally, when
you reach 1 ,000, you reach another threshold.
Most churches never get beyond a thousand people
because the congregation is unable to think in
terms of a church that large. Once a church gets
past a thousand, it can often go on to between
two and three thousand. But then again, there
is another plateau, there is another threshold
that requires another adjustment in the thinking
of the congregation. So what I'm saying to you
this morning is this, that one of the prices
that must be paid if a church is going to continue
to grow is an adjustment in our way of thinking
about a church. It perhaps is the most challenging
aspect of church growth. The fact is that most
of us in this congregation this morning have
come from smaller churches. How many of you have
come from churches of 100 or below? Would you
lift your hand? All right, 150 to 200 or below.
Would you lift your hands? It's a good half of
us. When we come out of smaller situations, in
the kind of situation that I grew up in, there's
a tremendous challenge in coming into a church
that has several hundred people in it. It requires
an adjustment in our way of thinking. Because
you see, there's a basic fact of life that many
people have not... come to understand, and that
is that a larger church is not a small church
that has grown larger. I want to repeat that.
A large church is not a small church that has
grown larger. A large church is a completely
different kind of a church. It's a different
kind of animal when you begin to deal with a
large church. We have to understand that. There's
a gentleman by the name of Lyle Schaller who
has written a great deal about church growth,
who would not be of our doctrinal position probably,
but who nonetheless has some tremendous insights
as to the growth patterns and principles in churches.
I'd like to share with you just briefly, and
I don't have time to comment on them, but I would
like to share with you briefly what he observes
as some of the distinctives of a larger church.
I think some of these may surprise you. This
comes after decades, literally, of study of churches.
So he's not writing down just some thoughts.
He's writing down what he has found true over
and over and over again in churches. He says,
the larger the church, the more difficult it
is to enlist lay volunteers. Did you hear that?
I've heard it said by some people in our congregation,
understandably so, why is it that when we have
something that requires volunteers, we get a
meager response from our church? Look at all
of those people. The fact is that the larger
a church becomes, the more difficult it is to
get volunteers to do something. And there are
some very logical reasons for that that I don't
have time to go into, but one of them is the
fact that volunteering often is based upon relationships.
And in a larger church, there aren't a lot of
those close kinds of relationships among all
of the members. There are deep relationships
among groups within the church, but not among
the congregation as a whole. He says the larger
the church, the more conflict there is over the
use of rooms. I have seen that true. I have not
sensed it true here in this church particularly,
but there has been some of that, because you
see in a larger church, often there are rooms
set aside for specific purposes. In a smaller
church, you have three rooms, and everybody understands
you've got to share those three rooms. In a larger
church, you have sometimes a room set aside for
the choir, and a room set aside for the toddlers,
and a room set aside for this. And then when
people began to use those rooms for other purposes,
problems developed. He says the larger the church,
the more important it is to have off -street,
convenient parking. Now, we have people who park
all the way down B2, as well as across the street
in that parking lot, and even down in the high
school parking lot. One of our great needs at
the present time is to increase our parking,
to get people off the street. so that the parking
is convenient as well. We say people should be
willing to ride a shuttle, but they aren't, and
particularly newcomers are not. I wish I had
more time to talk about that, but I have to go
on. The larger the church, the more vulnerable
the church is to unexpected changes. We often
think of a large church as being like a fortress,
and nothing can shake it. But the fact is that
the larger the church, the more fragile it is,
and the more unstable, potentially, it is. An
unexpected change would be like the leaving of
the pastor. A larger church is much more susceptible
to problems when that happens than a smaller
church. The larger the church, the more important
it is to accept the fact that the senior minister
cannot be the shepherd to every member. That
should be obvious to us, but sometimes it's not.
The larger the church, the more likely it is
that a member who attends at a different hour
will feel like a stranger in his own church.
That's because a larger church literally becomes,
in its celebration, in its worship, a congregation
of congregations. That's what we are here in
this service this morning. We are several congregations
here in this congregation. We have to be able
to adjust to that and understand that that's
the way it is. He says the larger the church,
the more expectation there is of high quality
and planning of events in materials that are
produced and in appearance of the facilities.
And that's true. People expect more out of a
larger church. The larger the church, the more
important that name tags be used, he says, to
identify people. Now, we do that in most of our
small churches. Schaller says that it's important
to do that as people come into worship because
it's only possible for most of us to know 100
people or a maximum of 150 people by name. Now,
we don't even know that many people deeply, but
we can know them by name. So when we come to
meet with 500 people as we do here in this auditorium
in this hour, You can only know one -fifth of
these people unless you are an exceptional person.
Therefore, in order to greet people, in order
for there to be that sense of acquaintance, it
would be good for all of us to wear name tags
even in worship. He says the larger the church,
the more important smaller groups become to a
healthy whole. The maximum size that is suggested
for smaller groups by most people is 70. They
say once it gets beyond 70, you're back into
a larger situation and you lose dynamics. Some
of our small churches have gotten beyond that
point, and that's not good for us. The larger
the church, the more important that the smaller
groups, in our case as we would call that small
churches, become to the healthy whole body. Now
those are some distinctives of a larger church.
There are others that I could go into. But just
understand what my point is. Now one of the prices
that we must pay in order for our church to continue
growing beyond the point where we are now is
that all of us will have to change our way of
thinking about our church. We are not a small
church that has grown larger. We are a different
kind of thing. We are a larger church. There
are some costs that come when one is involved
in a larger church. I've listed but three of
them here. In a larger, growing church, increasingly
major decisions must be delegated to appointed
groups of leaders. In other words, the larger
the church becomes, the more impossible it is
for the whole congregation to have enough facts
to make good decisions. Therefore, the cost is
this, that most of us give our decision -making
ability to smaller groups of people within the
church who make the decisions on our behalf.
So there is a cost that is involved. Some people
have a very difficult time with that because
they come out of church backgrounds where there
were 60 or 100 people and everything that was
going on everybody knew about and everybody could
vote and make an intelligent decision. But the
larger the church, the more impossible that becomes.
Each person will have less knowledge of all that's
going on and will have less personal input into
the decision -making process. That's a cost that
we must be willing to pay if we're going to grow.
Then in a growing and larger church, the second
cost is this, that no one can be expected to
be involved in everything, nor should one expect
to find that everything will meet his or her
personal need. The reason for that is that there
will develop, as a church grows, a variety of
ministries. A church will become more like a
smorgasbord rather than a home -cooked meal.
With a home -cooked meal, you sit down, you take
a little bit of everything, and you enjoy the
meal that way. But there are times when we enjoy
going to a buffet, and we take some of this,
and we leave that, and we take some of this,
and we leave that. and we enjoy that meal. Well,
a larger church is more like the buffet. We all
can't be involved in everything that's going
on, and everything isn't for us personally, but
it's ministering to somebody here, and that's
why it's happening. So there's a cost. Some people
are used to being involved in everything. And
they feel very frustrated when they can't be
in everything that's going on because they come
from smaller situations. Realize that you have
to adjust your thinking. You can't be involved
in everything that's going on in a larger church.
Then in the larger and growing church, there
are some traditions that must be set aside to
allow meaningful change. I am not talking about
doctrine, but I am talking about methods that
are used. As a church grows, it has to develop
new wineskins to hold its new wine. If a church
will not allow that to happen, then it will be
stagnated at some point. I know of a church which
has used the same adult curriculum in their Sunday
school since back in the 1930s. Now, for the
first, it's a seven -year program of going through
the Bible. And for the first two or three times
going through that, that is up until the 50s,
maybe even into the 60s, that was really a pretty
dynamic part of that church. But today, I'm sorry
to say that that very methodology that was such
an important part of the foundation of that church
has become a stranglehold on the church. And
the church a number of years ago peaked and is
in decline. And one of the reasons is that the
congregation is unable to lay aside a tradition
that was once used of God and blessed of God,
but which isn't effective today. And because
they're unwilling to pay the cost, they're not
growing. And the fact is that a church never
plateaus for very long. A church only plateaus
briefly before it begins its descent. There is
really no such thing as status quo in a church.
There is not such a thing as just holding your
own. A church is either in growth or it's in
decline, except for brief periods in between.
But having talked about some of the distinctives
of a larger church as well as the costs of being
involved in a larger church, I would like to
remind all of us that there are some tremendous
benefits in a larger church. Again, I'd like
to mention three just quickly. One is that in
a larger church we are able to participate in
a higher quality of ministry. In other words,
an example of that would be Music ministry in
a larger church is often of a better quality
than a smaller church. I go home to visit the
church where I grew up in Kansas. Over the years,
the church has changed quite a bit. Some of the
people there have grown older. I don't understand
that. And other people have come in that I don't
recognize at all. I appreciate that congregation
so much. Some of my family is in the choir there.
And they're so sincere. And they do the very
best they can, and I thank God for that. I thank
God for that. But after hearing the choir that
God has gifted us with, it sometimes is a little
hard. And there are other illustrations of that
sort. The point is this, that in a larger church,
you and I have the privilege of participating
in a higher quality of ministry. And frankly,
there are a lot of people who are expecting that
these days. because of so much Christian broadcasting
and the availability of recordings and tapes
and cassettes and so on. People are used to better
quality than they were used to 30 years ago.
A second benefit of a larger church is that we
can enjoy a broader range of ministry, where
a larger church is able to specialize in areas.
For example, a larger church is able to have
a better defined youth ministry. The reason that
some of you have come to Grace Church is because
there is a youth ministry here that can be effective
for your family. In a larger church, there are
support groups that are developed for people
who have various kinds of need, everything from
single parents to recovering alcoholics. In a
larger church, there are opportunities to use
a wider variety of gifts often and abilities.
One of the things that we're excited about is
seeing drama increased in our church and used
with our music in some other ways. There are
some people who are very excited about that,
who are part of our church, because they have
training and talents in the area of drama, and
this is an opportunity for them to use it. Well,
often it's the larger church that's able to provide
that kind of an outlet. A third benefit of a
larger church is that we can realize a wider
outreach in ministry. The facts are, normally,
The larger churches will have a greater impact
in an area than smaller churches. One larger
church often has a greater impact than if that
congregation, let's say, of a thousand were in
ten churches of a hundred. More people potentially
can be reached and ministered to, and there is
greater power in a larger church to impact missions,
to train, to send, to do special projects. So
my point is this, that despite the fact that
there are some costs with a larger church, just
as there are costs with a smaller church, I think
that the benefits, the advantages of a larger
church far outweigh the costs. I would not want
anyone to think that my point this morning is
that smaller churches are to be looked down upon
or condemned. They are not. Each congregation,
must develop according to God's plan for that
congregation. It certainly would not be God's
will, I would think, for all churches to be churches
of 10 ,000 or 100 ,000 or even 1 ,000. But I
do believe this, and I believe it without apology
on the basis of what we're looking at in God's
Word in Ephesians chapter 4, that it is the will
of God for every church to keep growing. It may
be at different speeds. But I see no exception
in the Word of God to a growing church. One of
the things, I should say, that can shut it off
is the thinking of the congregation. There are
other things as well, of course, but that's such
a major concern in most churches. If a church
is to grow, there is a price that must be paid.
My message today is intended to help all of us
see that while we look at Ephesians chapter 4
and we talk about the growing up and the growing
out of us personally and of us as a group, that
does not happen automatically. That happens only
when you and I are willing to pay the price to
grow. Are you willing to adjust your thinking?
Are you willing to adjust your expectations of
our church so that our church can become all
that God wants it to be as a larger church? Are
you willing in your walk with God to grow spiritually
and to pay whatever price God calls you to pay?
Are you willing for the Lordship of Jesus Christ
to begin narrowing your walk as you press on
the upward way to higher ground? With that narrow
walk, there will come the laying aside of certain
things that now you're carrying along as excess
baggage. After Mark had been taken to the hospital
Monday night, Pastor Sulak was there in the emergency
room with him. At that point, none of us realized
the extent of his injuries except the fact that
he was paralyzed from his chest down with limited
feeling in his hands. Mark did not know how seriously
he was injured, but he said, Dave, I just want
to be God's man. He said, I want the will of
God. He said, I want God to be glorified in this.
God doesn't call for a price from all of us like
that. But there's a price to be paid if we would
be God's man, God's woman. I reminded Mark yesterday
of those words that he spoke several days before.
He looked at me and he said, Pastor, I have to
tell you that I've come full circle on those
statements a couple of times since then. I said,
I know, Mark, that's normal that you would. But
brother, every time you come full circle, you
come back to that point of being surrendered
to the will of God at a deeper level. Is God
bringing you around the circle this morning?
Is there some deeper level of lordship that he
is seeking to enforce in your life? Please do
not resist him, but continue to grow. Continue
to grow to be the man, the woman that God has
called you to be. For my friend, whatever the
price, it will be worth it. When we stand before
the Lord. Let's pray together.