Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: 1 Corinthians 12 | Date: January 4, 2026 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

The Series on Ordering the Church

We’re continuing this morning the series on ordering the church. This series has gone longer than originally anticipated. In our last elders meeting, we discussed some things and thought we should, while we have this topic of the church and ordering the church opened up, we ought to address a few more things. As it happens here on the first Sunday of the new year, it has been my custom the last two, three, four years, whatever it’s been, to take a break from whatever series we are in to address a topic that might be a little inspirational, challenging, something like that, toward our faithfulness in serving Christ.

This message this morning, I don’t know that it will be very inspirational, but I expect you’ll find it challenging. All I can say is that if you find it too challenging and it makes you uncomfortable, please see Greg or Eric afterwards.

We discussed this in our elders meeting recently and thought we do need to discuss this matter of membership. We have in this series talked about the foundational matters of the church’s responsibility to be submissive to the authority of Scripture, that we are not on our own, but we are a people who are under orders. We’ve also seen something of the offices of the church: elder, overseer, pastor, and then also the office of deacon as well. We’ve looked at fellow workers, we have looked at the subject of preaching and what the role of preaching is in the assembly and so on.

What Is the Church?

Today we look at the subject of members and membership to see what that is all about and what the Scriptures have to say about that. I think it’s important, first of all, to clear up—and all of this is to bring us into the atmosphere of 1 Corinthians 12—first to clear up our thinking of what is the church. We can’t go into great detail on this, but let’s highlight some of that.

The church, in New Testament language, the church is not a building. The church is not a denomination. It’s not just an institution. The church is a people. In fact, the Greek term that we find in the New Testament translated “church” simply means an assembly. It means an assembly. It can be used of an assembly of the Jews in the wilderness, it can be the assembly of a mob in Acts chapter 19, the book of Acts there, a pagan mob gathered together in anger; that’s an assembly. Or in its particular sense, it’s used in this sense of the assembly of the people of Christ, people that belong to him.

And in fact, there’s another word in the New Testament, the Greek term is—I’ll give it to you—it’s kuryakos, where we get our English word, “church.” The two Ks in the Greek word become CHs in our word. It’s like the Scottish word kirk; that’s where it comes from. The word kuryakos means “belonging to the Lord.” And so it became, a church is an assembly of people who belong to the Lord. That same term is used with regard to the Lord’s Supper. It’s a supper that belongs to the Lord, the Lord’s Supper.

So a church is an assembly, it is a people who assemble, who belong to Jesus Christ. They are people who have been saved by Christ, they’ve been redeemed by his death, he has purchased them to be his own people, they belong to him, and the New Testament even speaks of us then as his purchased possession. We are people who belong to the Lord, an assembly of people who are his.

Now the New Testament uses other metaphors to speak of the church as well. One that we saw earlier on in this series in 1 Peter chapter 5, it describes the church as the flock, the flock of God. So we’re a bunch of sheep. That plays off of John chapter 10 when Jesus speaks of his people as his sheep. 1 Peter 5, the flock is that assembly of people over whom he says to the elders there, “God has put you in charge,” and it says that Christ himself is the chief shepherd. So we’re a flock, we’re a people that belong to Christ, we’re overseen by Christ, and belong to him. We have other metaphors: we are the branches, in which he is the main vine, or the trunk. We’re the bride, he is the bridegroom. We are a household; the New Testament uses that metaphor as well. The church is a temple, it’s a building, a building indwelt by the Spirit of God, and we each are living stones. And here in 1 Corinthians 12, the metaphor is we are the body of Christ. Christ is the head, and we are the body, each of us individually, various members of that body. And that metaphor, of course, is used in many places in the New Testament.

Now, the New Testament speaks of the church broadly in two different senses. One is what we might call the church universal. All of that, the assembly of people who belong to Christ worldwide. For example, in Matthew chapter 16, Jesus said, “I will build my church.” Well, which church do you think he had in mind? It’s not just RBC Franconia. It’s the church worldwide, the assembly of people belonging to Christ. We have that same kind of sense that we find in Acts chapter 20, verse 28, where the Apostle Paul describes the church as the body of people that Jesus has obtained or purchased with his own blood. We find it in Acts chapter 8, where it said, Luke records for us, that Saul persecuted the church, not just individual Christians, but the Christians wherever he could find them. We find it in Ephesians chapters—well, several chapters in Ephesians—where Christ is the head of the church. It’s not just one local church, one person. It is the church worldwide. He loves the church and gave himself for it. That is the church worldwide. One day he will present the church to his father, pure and spotless. That’s the church worldwide, all the assembly of God’s people, purchased by Christ.

On the one hand, the church is spoken of in this universal sense. More often in the New Testament, the church is spoken of in a local sense, an assembly of redeemed people who meet corporately together in service for Christ. They collectively belong to him, and each of them are members of the church, and the church then is spoken of in that local sense. So you have the church at Antioch, the churches of Galatia; Romans chapter 16, Paul lists a number of the churches in Rome, the church that is in her house, the church that is in their house, the church that is in their house. You mention the church at Colossae, the church at Ephesus. All of these are referenced to not the church worldwide, but the church in its individual expression in its local assembly.

In either case, whether we’re speaking of the church universal or the church local, the church is a people, not a building. It is a people who belong to Christ. Put another way, the church is its members. The church is its members. They may or may not have a building to meet in. They may or may not have a denominational structure. You don’t see that in the New Testament, in my view. Apart from its members, there is no such thing as a church.

Now once we see that in the New Testament, we really should be careful. I don’t expect that we’ll correct our language; it’s too built in, the way that we speak about the church. You drive down Allentown Road, that’s our church. It really isn’t. The church is the people. I try in my talking about the church to refer to this place that we meet in as the church building to help clarify the difference, but the church, the church that meets here in Franconia—when we leave here, the church is in Telford, the church is in Souderton, the church is in Perkasie, the church is in Quakertown, the church is in Lansdale. The people are the church. The building is not.

Now there are marks then of a true church, what a true church is, and we’ve covered some of them in this series. We have a couple of more to do. A true church is one that is submissive to the authority of Scripture given to us by the apostles. A true church is one that has—it’s not just an assembly of believers who do anything, it’s an assembly of believers who have organized with particular officers that the New Testament designates. A true church is one that observes the ordinances that our Lord has imposed on the church, and a true church is one that exercises church discipline. All of these are marks of what a true church is according to the New Testament.

But still, the church is its members. And when we speak, as we have in this series, of the ordering of the church, or what is, according to the New Testament, a well-ordered church, it has nothing to do with buildings. It has nothing to do with grounds. We may or may not have any of that. We’re speaking of a people who belong to Christ. Through his death on their behalf, he secured them for himself, and they now assemble with a particular purpose and a particular function and a particular role in the world and among themselves. That is the church.

A Concept of Membership in the New Testament

Now our topic for today then is members and membership in the church. And of course we have then the local church in view. The New Testament had, the New Testament church had a clear understanding of who’s in and who’s not. And that’s what we mean very simply by the members of the church. You’re wondering about that and some people have expressed questions about that. Is there a concept of membership in the New Testament? And the answer very clearly is yes, there is. And we have some indications of that in Acts chapter 2, verse 41, for example, we read that those who received the word were baptized and there were added that day about 3,000 souls. So they counted the numbers of those who followed Christ in baptism, and they made record of it.

Later in Acts chapter 2, the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. Acts chapter 4, many of those who heard the word believed, and the number of men there came to 5,000. So they kept track of who’s in and who’s not in, who belongs to the people of Christ and who does not. This is tedious, but I want you to see that there is indication of this in the New Testament.

There are other indications. For example, in Matthew 18 and 1 Corinthians 5, there’s the instruction regarding church discipline. When someone who is on the inside sins in a particular way, he is to be removed and put on the outside. Again, there’s the evidence that there is this record of who’s in and who’s not. In 1 Corinthians 14, we find Paul describing the meetings as when the whole church is come together; it reflects some kind of idea of what we would call a membership roll. In 1 Timothy 5, Eric mentioned this morning in the Sunday school hour, there’s an understanding of the widows in the church; they’re on the roll, and we are responsible to care for them under certain circumstances and so on. In 1 Peter 5, the flock of God is described as those in your charge, those who have been allotted to you. All through the epistles, there’s this sense, clear sense of belonging, a clear sense of responsibility, both of the leadership of the church toward the members and the responsibilities of the members toward the leadership and the members toward one another. All of that includes, entails this idea of what we call membership in the church.

Paul commands the overseers of the church to manage the household of God well. Well, who is it they’re supposed to manage? To whom are they accountable? And for whom will the leaders give account? All of that entails this idea of membership. Everywhere in the New Testament there’s this sense then of who’s in and who’s not.

Now in our setting, historically, the circumstances are a bit different. And so we have, in our practice, a formal procedure for membership, for joining the church. And many in recent years have questioned: Is there a New Testament precedent for that? Do we see evidence in the New Testament that they had a formal joining routine like we do? Well, we have to answer that question, yes and no. No, we don’t see Christians in that day in the New Testament trying out this church and then another church and then another, shopping back and forth to determine which they will join and then finally throw in with one in particular. That was not their historical circumstance. They didn’t have the luxury of choosing among churches. In that day of virgin evangelism, there was a church in town or there wasn’t.

So we can ask the question in another way. Did they in the New Testament church have a clear understanding of who was in and who was not? Answer: yes, they did. We can ask another question. Did they have a practice of determining who was in? The answer is yes, they did: baptism. Through their conversion to Christ, as evidenced by their baptism, they came to identify with Christ and with his people. And by that practice, they were known to be on the inside.

Now in our Christianized West today, the circumstances are different. I suspect that missionaries in virgin mission fields practice something like what we see in the New Testament. When you go to, like we saw today in Papua New Guinea, in that area, there is no way those people can say, “Well, I’m not going to join this church, I’ll join that church.” There’s only one. And so a person comes to Christ, he evidences that by his baptism, and he belongs to Christ and therefore to his church.

Our joining process that we have is simply an attempt on our part to conform to the New Testament model. We have to have some way to define who’s in, who’s out, who’s under our charge, who’s accountable to us, to whom will we as leaders give an account, and so on. What you don’t find in the New Testament is the sense that we have in America today of what I have to call something like American individualism. “I’m a Christian, but I don’t belong to any particular church.” That’s unheard of in the New Testament. Never do we find in the New Testament a Lone Ranger, someone who’s a Christian but unaccountable, unrelated to a larger assembly of Christians. By definition, a Christian in the New Testament is always someone who is a recognizable part of a larger fellowship of Christians. And so that’s what we mean then by members and membership. And let me summarize it this way in case we drift a little later: a member then is one who has—there is in the membership in the New Testament, membership of churches is evidenced in a clear sense of belonging, a clear sense of responsibility, and a clear sense of accountability. A sense of belonging, a sense of accountability, and a sense of responsibility. Responsibility to a specific people, and that is the church.

The Unity of the Members in Their Diversity of Functions

All right, all of that to bring us into the larger context of 1 Corinthians chapter 12. 1 Corinthians 12 is the most extensive and most pointed treatment of church membership in the New Testament. It’s not exhaustive, but it is the most pointed, and particularly with regard to the responsibilities of the people who constitute the church. It’s a familiar passage to you. Paul develops this idea through an extended metaphor. It’s the metaphor of the church as the body of Christ. Christ is the head. He has his body, and the individual Christians belong to him; they constitute his body. They are the members, the body parts, if you will, each with a responsibility to the whole.

Long and short, then, of 1 Corinthians 12—and we’ll see this a little bit more in detail—but the long and short is that membership, according to 1 Corinthians 12, means something. We’ll explore what it means. But membership is not just a name on a roll, not just a formal association with, but membership means something. It entails belonging, accountability, and responsibility.

Now, one leading reason that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians is that there were some misunderstandings regarding the ministry and the work of the Holy Spirit. He takes that on at length in 1 Corinthians 12 through 14, and he focuses on this matter of spiritual gifts. Or we might translate it, “gifts of grace.” The Greek word for the gifts is charismata, where we get our word “charismatic.” All gifts are charismatic. That is, all gifts are gifts of grace given by the Spirit.

Now, of course, as you know, there was an abuse of that in the New Testament in the church at Corinth. There was a focus in particular on the spectacular gifts and there was some sense of self-aggrandizement because “I can speak in tongues” and “I can perform these miracles” or whatever it was. And that was the problem that Paul had to address in Corinth. But he’s dealing here with the larger point here as well, and that is this matter of giftedness in the church. And he has several important points that are theologically foundational to the whole discussion. Let me just mention some of them quickly.

First of all, and again, Eric has dealt with this in a Sunday school series, you will remember it in 1 Corinthians 2 and 3, he tells us that it is the sovereign work of the Spirit that makes us spiritual in the first place. “Spiritual” is not a higher class of Christians. Spiritual, by definition, is what a Christian is. We belong to the Spirit. He tells us in verse 13, we’ve been baptized by Christ in the Spirit, and so we belong to him. And so we are spiritual people. We’re controlled by the Spirit now, no longer controlled by the flesh. But we’re controlled by the Spirit. And it’s in that sense we come to chapter 12, verses 1 to 3, where Paul tells us that the Spirit of God enables a right confession of faith in Christ. No one can say, “Jesus is Lord,” except by the Spirit. That’s one of those verses you can’t walk away from and still be an Arminian. Anybody, on one level, anybody can form those words, “Jesus is Lord.” What he is speaking of, obviously, is a right confession of faith in Jesus. No one can confess truly Jesus as Lord except by the enablement of the Spirit of God.

And so, verses 4 and following then, so also he enables each church member to serve the body. That’s the point of these following verses. In verses 4 to 6, he tells us, in fact, the source of these gifts is Trinitarian. It is not just the Spirit working on his own. But, verse 4, there are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit. Verse 5, a variety of service, but the same Lord, that is Jesus. Verse 6, there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all.

And all of this of God sovereignly at work to give enablement to the members of the body to serve the others works into his larger point here of the sovereign placement of each member in the body by Christ. Verse 11, all these are empowered by one and the same Spirit who apportions to each one individually as he wills. So why does one person have this ability to serve and another another ability to serve and a particular effectiveness? All of that is apportioned by God. Verse 18, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as he chose. Verse 24, God has so composed the body.

So we have this picture here of God at work in the congregations of his church, placing members in according to his own will, each with his or her own responsibility, his own or her own area of service to be done for the rest.

Now this is important with regard to spirit baptism in verse 13. In fact that’s foundational to the entire discussion. In one Spirit we are all baptized into one body and we’re made to drink of one Spirit. All of us in Christ by means of the Spirit, baptized by the Spirit. Just a side note here, some of our Pentecostal brothers and sisters will still refer to the baptism as tongues. And so they will ask you even, “Have you received the baptism?” I love it when they ask it that way, because I love to say, “Yes, I certainly have.” And of course they’re puzzled because here’s this Reformed guy who speaks in tongues. And then after they puzzle long enough, you can clarify: no, spirit baptism is something that is true of every single believer by definition. A Christian is one who’s been united to Christ by his Spirit given to us. And so spirit baptism has to do with our union with Christ by his Spirit. There’s no one who is, no Christian who is not baptized in the Spirit.

All right, then that brings us to the larger emphasis of the passage here in 1 Corinthians 12. And that has to do with—and I want you to hear both of these words here—this passage has to do with the unity of the members in their diversity of functions. The unity of the members in their diversity of functions. So not only is there a common source of our varying giftedness, same Lord, verses 4, 5, and 6, the same Spirit, same Lord, same God, but in fact, and he emphasizes this that is really so obvious you wonder why you have to press it, but he does for a point, there is just one body. Verse 12, 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. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body. So there’s one head of the church, that is Christ, and Christ has one body, not many bodies. There’s an essential oneness, an essential unity in the church. The elders are not one body of Christ. The deacons, another body of Christ. The Sunday school teachers, another body of Christ. The music team, another body of Christ. Those who do the greeting and the welcoming and the hospitality, another body of Christ. There’s one body, and each individually a member of that same body.

Now, that’s as obvious as it gets, but Paul presses here that there are entailments to that. And here we come closer to his point. Verse 6: there are a variety of activities within one body. That’s obvious enough. Not all the body parts do the same thing. You don’t do with your toes what you do with your nose. You don’t do with your ear what you do with your eye. There are a variety of activities, a variety of members, but one body.

Verses 6 and 7, he stresses this, that there’s a common purpose to them all. Verse 6, there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all and every one. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit—underline this—for the common good. That’s his point. And that gets to the heart of his emphasis here. A variety of activities, all given sovereignly, distributed sovereignly by God in the church, but for the common good. The idea there is for the benefit of the whole. Common benefit of the whole body.

The whole problem at Corinth was exactly that, that people were individually focused, they’re looking for their own benefit, looking to make themselves look grand by the spectacular kind of gifts that they can display, and the whole problem with that was chapter 13, they lack love, and they need to look unto the good of others. So he’s telling us there’s one body, many members who make up that body, but the members in that body all serve the same purpose, and that is to serve the entire body.

Verses 15 and following then extends that analogy and that metaphor, and he tells us here that no body part exists by itself. No body part is independent of the others. Each is necessary for the others. There’s no boasting of one against the other, like “you don’t need me,” right? There’s a mutual dependence of one for the other.

Now, when we read 1 Corinthians 12, our tendency, I think, is to think in terms of, “What is my gift?” God gifts everybody in various ways, to serve in various ways, and our tendency is to think, “What is my gift?” And you come up saying, “Well, I may only be a little toe, but God says I’m important.” And although that’s true enough, and that is one application, an important one, in the passage, but that’s not the focus of the passage. The focus of the passage, again, verse 7: to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. God enables each with a particular service and a particular ability for the good of the whole.

We have that in verse 24. God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it. Now notice the purpose clause here. God has so composed the body, giving the greater honor to the part that lacked it, that, or in order that, there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. That’s the common good that he speaks of in verse 7.

Verse 26 expands: if one member suffers, all suffer together. If one member is honored, all rejoice together. And then verse 27 restates the foundational principle. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. Now what you can’t miss, even in quickly running over all of this, is that you are not here simply for your own benefit. In a sense, that’s the whole long and short of the passage, isn’t it? You are not here for your own benefit.

Now, on one level, of course, you’re here for your own benefit, of course. Why would you go to a church where there’s no benefit? But God has placed you in the body, he says, so that you may serve the common good, enabled by God to serve the rest of the body.

Of course in that Christ himself is the model. He came not to be served, but to serve. To give his life a ransom for many. And that becomes the model for the church. The church by definition is a service-oriented organization. We even have an office of servant. We call it deacon. We give the Greek letters instead to point out the official nature of it, the office of servant.

And every office, every function in the church is designed for the service of others. God puts overseers, elders, pastors in the church. It’s not to serve themselves, it’s to serve the others. God puts deacons in the church. Their purpose is not to serve themselves, it’s to serve the others. God gives us teachers in the church, teaching Sunday school, working with youth, whatever it is, and it’s not to serve themselves. Whether it’s music or hospitality, whatever it is, the purpose of it is the common good.

That’s the nature of the church. We give up our time, we give up our resources, our energy, we give up conveniences that we would like otherwise to have in order to serve others. That’s the nature of the church.

So all of that then to say—and all of this is familiar to you and that’s why I can just highlight it like this I think—but all of that to say that membership means something. It’s not just a name on an official roll. And here I think I can deal a little more pointedly with some matters that we discussed in elders meeting. There’s a bit of frustration on our part, and a bit of guilt to tell you the truth as well, where we need to make some confession as well.

We make a point at our membership interviews, and many of you will remember this, we make a point at our membership interviews to highlight the mutual responsibilities that we have to one another. And so at the membership interviews, we will tell you what you can expect from us, the church, and we also are careful to say what we should be able to expect from you as you come in. We’ll highlight things like your attendance to the meetings, the giving financially, but also your involvement in the body, ministering to the rest of the body, and so on.

And so we do that at our membership interviews, but I think—and this is our confession—we really haven’t done enough to enforce it. And that’s what we need to address here. We seldom, if ever here, address matters like attendance at the meetings, giving in the offering. Oh, I hate to preach on that. It’s just so sensitive. You heard me preach on that, I think, one time in the 18 years I’ve been here, and that’s because it was the topic at hand in 1 Corinthians 16. And yet it’s an important part of Christian stewardship.

Involvement in the body, we rarely press you on that. And it’s because, if I can give my little excuse, we don’t like to be legalistic. We don’t want to lord over people. We don’t want to put guilt trips on people. We recognize that there are varying degrees of limitations that people have when they get older or whatever it is. And we don’t want to lord over people’s lives as if we can tell you how to live every detail of your life. We want nothing to do with that. But backing away from that responsibility on our part can result in what I think we have to call meaningless membership. And that is there’s a name on the roll, they’ve officially joined, and yet there’s not the involvement that Paul calls for here in 1 Corinthians 12. Some may join, attend Sunday morning if it’s convenient, never a Sunday school, Sunday night, Wednesday night groups, no involvement on other levels. And at some point we have to ask, what does membership mean? People may be happy to take advantage of the church’s resources, but there’s not that accompanying sense of responsibility to the body. And yet they’re members, and we say then, what does membership mean?

That issue becomes a little more complex with our situation in that we have a partially congregational rule in our church, congregational government, not entirely, it’s elder-led, but it’s congregational in that we vote on the budget, we vote on the Constitution, vote on the officers. Is it fair to the body to allow people who are not involved in the body to have a vote and a say in how to direct the body? So how do we police that? And again, we don’t want to be over-demanding on people. We don’t want to lord it over their conscience. And if you say, “Well, those people don’t show up at business meetings anyway,” well, then all they do is mess up the quorum. And then I have to say this as well, and this is a problem related to this on another level, and that’s those who will never join at all. Again, we don’t want to appear authoritarian. We don’t want to run people’s lives. But when there’s never this commitment to the body, what does it mean to be a Christian according to the New Testament? And if pastoral leadership means anything, at some point we have to say something. And we have to press conscience. And so this subject today.

So what do we do? Let me read you an example. This is a statement of a church’s bylaws out west. This is a church that takes membership very seriously. And I want you to listen to this and I want you to think: Should we incorporate something like this in ours? What do you think of this? “Any member who does not have a registered attendance,” notice “registered attendance,” “identified financial support, definite service contribution and or expressed interest in loyalty within a six-month period shall be notified by the board in writing within 30 days prior to any congregational meeting that he or she has been placed on an inactive member list and not eligible to vote at any meeting of the church.” So what do you think? I’m not saying we have to copy this. I’m not saying that that should be our model. That’s not bad. There’s a church that takes membership seriously.

Now here’s the kicker. If anyone from that church were to come to this church, we would not let them in. You know why? This statement from the bylaws comes from the Metropolitan Community Church of Los Angeles, the famous gay, lesbian, transvestite, bisexual church. I don’t know what to do with that.

Consider Your Responsibility with Regard to Membership Itself

All right, some applications. Consider two things. Number one, consider your responsibility with regard to membership itself, and number two, consider your responsibility with regard to what membership means.

First of all, your responsibility with regard to membership itself. Just consider there is no such thing in the New Testament as Lone Ranger, unaccountable Christians; they are their own authority without responsibility to the others. There’s no such thing. There is in the New Testament very clearly the importance of the sense of responsibility, the sense of belonging, and the sense of accountability. That’s just undeniable. It’s part of what being a Christian is according to the New Testament.

Now this is really going to sound harsh to you, but I know of many churches, two of them I know very well, who a person comes and visits the church, they are so convinced that if you are not a member of a church, committed to and involved in a local church, that’s a sinful thing. And so if you come to the church for a while, they give you the time, check it out and all of that. But at some point, the elders will talk to you and say, “Are you going to join?” And if not, they will politely invite you to go somewhere else. Because we don’t want to participate in your sin. I told you you’d think this is harsh. It’s hard to argue against that, isn’t it? I mean, what do you say? The requirements that they’re pressing are simply what you see in the New Testament. There’s a sense of belonging, a sense of responsibility, and a sense of accountability.

Your Responsibility with Regard to What Membership Means

All right, second, your responsibility with regard to what membership means. And here are a few things that I’ve written down for you. A church member, as defined by the New Testament, is someone who belongs to Christ, as evidenced by baptism. He identifies with others who are the same. He meets with them corporately for fellowship and instruction. He contributes to the life of the church in meaningful ways. And he’s accountable to and submissive to its leadership. All of that is very plain on the face of the New Testament.

Pastor Greg recommended that we use the words—and give this to you to help steer your thinking—the words “minimalist” and “maximalist.” Some seem to think in terms of, “What’s the minimum that I can do?” And we ought to be thinking to conform to the New Testament model, “What is the most I can do?” So how can I be more faithful? How can I contribute more to the life of this church? In what ways can I minister to the body for the common good? How can I promote faithfulness? How can I promote unity? How can I promote a general good feeling in the church in relations to one another? How can I strengthen relationships? And yes, what financial support can we give to the effort?

Consider all of those “one another” passages that you see in the New Testament. Love one another, be at peace with one another, do good to one another. One of my favorites: do your best to outdo one another in showing honor. In all of these ways, we contribute to the life of the church. One area that deserves, I think, some particular thought is with regard to integrating new members. Some of you have been here for many years and you’re serving wonderfully in capacity of various kinds. The last thing we want you to do is step aside. But perhaps we should think better in terms of how do we integrate new members and bring them along into the ministries that we have here in the various functions.

Well, in all these things, this is body life together is what Paul is pressing here. Meaningless membership is just not an option. We recognize that there are varying degrees of ability, particularly with age and so on. Things happen in physical abilities and so on. We can’t expect from a 90-year-old what we expect from a 40-year-old; we understand all of that. But everyone is able to contribute to the life of the body in some way, at the very least through regular prayer, to whatever degree you’re able, and encouraging one another, hospitality, whatever it may be.

Bottom line is that being a Christian means something. Being part of the church means something. We are not Lone Rangers; we are the church. Each body consists of many members, each member doing its part and fulfilling its responsibility to the whole. Once again, verses six and seven: there are varieties of activities, but it’s the same God who empowers them all and everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. Amen.