Getting Personal

[This message was shared yesterday during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Matthew 4:18-22
I once heard a megachurch pastor talk about a survey his congregation conducted to understand what caused their newer members to join. This congregation’s worship attendance had grown explosively: By the time this study was conducted, the church’s weekend attendance was about 10,000. 

The survey determined that the number one people joined the church was this: anonymity. People joined this big church so that they could show up, consume what was offered, and leave without anyone knowing them. Most had been members of other, smaller churches and they started attending the megachurch in order to avoid any personal connection with Christ and His Church. You can imagine how disappointed the pastor and church leadership were to see those results.

A congregation doesn’t have to be of megachurch status for people to keep themselves anonymous. The church growth experts would classify Living Water as a middle-sized congregation. But even our Sunday morning numbers are sufficiently large for people to keep themselves anonymous if they choose to be. Anonymous Christians are folks who show up on Sunday mornings (sometimes) and make regular offerings but really aren’t engaged with Christ or the Church in any other way.

Of course, we all go through seasons of life when we can’t be that involved with other Christians in our church community. Ill health, overtime hours, parents or spouses or children in need. A lot of things can diminish our capacity for engagement. 

But some people choose to remain anonymous Christians. They want just enough of Jesus to say they know something about Him, but not enough to heed His call to follow Him and to love their fellow disciples as He has loved us. 

That’s sad because living in community with the Church is how God supports us in living joyfully and confidently in the grace God gives to us when the Word of Christ meets the water at our Baptism.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been involved in a series on Living Out Our Baptism. We began by remembering that at Baptism, the saving Word of Christ comes to us and we are given a share in Christ’s death and resurrection. 

Our call from that point forward is to trust in God’s baptismal grace, even when temptations assail us or when we feel that we’ve committed unforgivable sins. 

Two weeks ago, we remembered that Christ gave us the Church and one week ago, we remembered that He gave what Martin Luther called “the little church,” the family, to help us affirm and grow in the relationship with God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--that God initiates with us in Holy Baptism. 

Today, in this last installment, we discuss a tool used by Jesus, but often forgotten by the Church, a tool designed to support and encourage people in their faith and to challenge us and ensure that people are praying for and with us as we each daily seek to follow the God Who saves us by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.

I want to point you to a few places in Scripture where we see Jesus focusing on the use of this tool. Look first, please, to Matthew 4:18-22. This comes after Jesus’ baptism at the Jordan and His temptation in the wilderness. It says: “As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will send you out to fish for people.’ At once they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.” 

Matthew 10:2-4 gives us a full listing of the names of the twelve people who Jesus called to be His apostles: “These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.” I think that Matthew takes the time to name them because each one of these people were important to Jesus as individuals, just as you are important to Jesus as an individual person.

It was into this group of people, the twelve, that Jesus poured the second greatest amount of time and energy during His ministry. He met with these men, traveled with them, talked with them, ate with them, laughed with them, and showed them that He was (and is) the way, the truth, and the life, the Savior of the world. During Jesus’ time on earth, the twelve were a small group.

But Jesus had another tool He used to prepare His disciples for living out their relationship with Him beyond the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Jesus seems to have poured His great attention and energy into three of the apostles: Peter, James, and John. 

• When Jesus raised Jairus’ daughter, He took these three apostles with Him. 
• When Jesus went to the mountaintop to be transfigured and speak with Moses and Elijah, He did so in the company of these three men. 
• When Jesus went to a secluded spot to pray on the night of His arrest, He asked these three to accompany Him. 

Peter, James, and John formed another kind of group. Some call them cells, relating to the Church, the body of Christ, the way the cells relate to our entire bodies. Some call them micro-groups. Around here at Living Water, we’ve taken to calling them triads or quads. (Or when we’re being silly, quad-daddies.)

Why exactly did Jesus start small groups? Did He want to have in-groups and cliques? 

You need to look no further than John 3:16 to know that Jesus wasn't into cliques. Jesus told Nicodemus that, “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” 

Jesus didn’t come into the world to start exclusionary cliques. He came into the world to do what everybody in the world needed to have done for us: He offered Himself as the sinless sacrifice for our sin and to rise from the dead so that all who turn from sin and believe in will share in His death and His resurrection! God “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3-4). All who believe in Jesus will be saved!

Jesus started groups for this reason: The life of a baptized disciple of Jesus Christ is not to meant to lived anonymously. In fact, it really can’t be lived in any sustained way anonymously. 

Christ took on human life in order to know us personally, from the inside of human experience, and so that, as one of us, He could offer His sinless life for us. 

And after He had risen from the dead and ascended into heaven, He didn’t tell the eleven remaining apostles to print up brochures or tracts to be anonymously distributed by the post office; He didn’t tell them to sell advertising; He didn’t tell them to hold mass meetings. Being and making disciples, living as baptized disciples of Jesus, was never meant to be an anonymous enterprise. 

A literal rendering of Jesus’ words in the Great Commission are, “As you are going, make disciples of all nations…” Living out our Baptism--being disciples and making disciples--is intensely personal, something to be done as we're going about the world, interacting with other people. 

But, studies show that, at most, we’re incapable of having any kinds of close relationships with more than seventy people. And even then, most of those relationships will be little more than, “Hey! How are you today?” 

Living out our Baptism is best nurtured when we’re part of a small group whose members read and reflect on God’s Word together, hold one another up in prayer, and call each other out when it’s appropriate. Interpersonally. This is how faith best grows. This is how our confidence in Christ most grows. “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another,” Proverbs 27:17 says. 

Weekly worship with the whole congregation is important. But when we rely on weekly worship to keep our faith sharp, it’s too easy to be anonymous, to grow dull in our faith, to forget about God’s love for us given in Christ, to forget to read and reflect on God’s Word, to forget to pray, to forget to trust in Christ, to forget to repent for sins that, left unchecked, can overtake our lives and our faith.

I would like to invite you to be part of a small group. 

Our Life and Learning Team will be meeting again the week after next to start new small groups...although several have been meeting for a while now. 

But you needn’t wait. If you have two other folks in the congregation who would like to join you in a small group, this is what you need to do: 

• 1. Pick a book of the Bible that each of you will read a chapter or a paragraph at a time on your own during a daily quiet time. (Maybe shoot for three to five days a week for a quiet time initially.) 
• 2. You can structure your daily personal quiet time with God in this way: Stop (to talk with God about your life, confess sins, seek guidance, ask God to illuminate His Word as you read it); Look (read God’s Word and discern what He may be telling you that day); Listen (ask God to help you see the implications for your day of the passage that struck you as you read); and Respond (ask God to show you what He wants you to do in response to His Word). 
• 3. Then, when you get together in your group, maybe every two weeks, ask each other what God has been telling you in His Word; share, as you feel comfortable, what’s going on in your life; pray for each other, and set a time to meet again.

Simply put, a small group is composed of a group of baptized believers gathered around the Word of God--the Word about Jesus Christ--seeking to help one another grow in confident faith in Jesus. While one person may act as a facilitator, there is no “teacher”: the Holy Spirit, the One Who comes to us in Holy Baptism, is our teacher. 

If you’d like help in starting a small group, just write something on the attendance pad like, “I want to be part of a small group.” 

I’ve been part of several small groups over the years. Some have thrived. Some haven’t. But I can tell you that it’s in these small groups, where Christ gets up close and personal, that my faith in Him and my love for fellow believers has grown the most. The same can be true for you. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Called Out of the Christian Ghetto

[This was shared during worship with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Luke 10:1-20
As a pastor, I tend to spend most of my days in the Christian ghetto. Most of the people I see and interact with each day are Christians. 

That might seem wonderful to you. You're likely thinking, “If you knew some of the people I interact with each day, Pastor, you’d be thankful to be spending so much time with Christians.” Well, I do appreciate Christians. The Bible teaches that you and I need each other in the fellowship of Christ’s Church.

But I also think that it’s not a great thing that I spend the vast majority of my time each day with other Christians. How on earth are we going to share the good news of new life through faith in the crucified and risen Jesus with the whole world if we spend all or most of our time with just other Christians?

The Church is growing in other parts of the world, making Christianity the fastest growing religion by conversions on the planet. But the Church in our world--in North America--is shrinking, the number of people who follow Jesus for new and everlasting life is decreasing.

This is true even among people who are on church rosters. This past week, Dr. Leonard Sweet posted daunting facts on Facebook. “[Fifteen] years ago,” he wrote, “40% of church members attended four times a month. In 2018, only 10% attended four times/month, a 37% drop in worship attendance. So you could have the exact same membership church and on Sunday mornings it looks like you’ve lost over a third of your members.”

Christians might look at that data and think, “That’s a relief. At least those missing people are still members.” But there’s a difference between members and disciples. When people aren’t regularly in worship, they are at risk of growing out of touch with Christ altogether.

Acts 2:42 says of the early church, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” The early Christians worshiped together; they saw that as the first thing they needed to do in response to the free gifts of forgiveness and new life we have through Jesus. But they also gathered as often as they could just to pray and consider God’s Word together. Like a football team, they huddled before each play, coming together to get ready for whatever came next, for life outside the Christian ghetto.

Sweet’s data shows that many Christians are distancing themselves from all those annoying Christians, annoying because those other Christians are as imperfect and as in need of God’s grace in Christ as you and I are. We forget that, by the power of the Holy Spirit who comes to Christians in our baptisms, those other Christians might have things to teach us from God. We forget, in the words of Proverbs 27:17: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” We need the sharpening and the formation that only happens when a fellowship of imperfect Christians is forged together in the fire of the Holy Spirit.

But the number of people who consider themselves Christians here in our country and in our own neighborhoods is also shrinking. The 2010 census shows that in Montgomery County, the percentage of our neighbors who claimed no religious affiliation was 51.5%. It seems likely to me that that number will be bigger when the 2020 census is taken, that well over half of our neighbors will have no connection to life through Jesus Christ!

This state of affairs will not change if we follow the easy course of staying in our Christian ghetto. Even pastors, ministers of Word and Sacrament, will need to spend more time outside of the Christian ghetto if we’re to make a dent in the spiritually disconnected population. 

Simple compassion for those who are in danger of facing a Christ-less eternity should motivate us. “Salvation is found in no one else [but Jesus],” God’s Word tells us, “for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12) Love for God and love for others should fill us with a sense of urgency about sharing the gospel with our spiritually disconnected neighbors and friends.

Jesus had this sense of urgency for the lost. He said that He had come to seek and save the lost. And He wanted people to understand that the miracles He performed and the grace He showed to the most notorious of sinners pointed to Him as God and Savior of the world, the One Who offers eternity with God as a free gift to all who believe in Him. 

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus sends out seventy-two of His disciples to prepare towns and villages for His appearance among them. 

There were, Jesus says, lots of spiritually disconnected people to reach who were like crops ready to be gathered into the kingdom of God: “The harvest is plentiful [Jesus says] but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” (Luke 10:2) 

Jesus says that we Christians need to pray that God will send faithful disciples among the spiritually lost so that they can encounter Jesus and His saving grace. We need to be praying for disciples to go into the harvests in Centerville, Miamisburg, Springboro, West Carrollton, Beavercreek, and all the Dayton area.

But Jesus says that we also need to be prepared to be the ones He sends into the harvest, despite the possibility of rejection and other dangers: “Go! [Jesus says] I am sending you out like lambs among wolves.” (Luke 10:3) 

Jesus goes on to say that if people do reject us, we cannot be discouraged. When you know that you belong to Jesus Christ, discouragement is not a long-term option. 

We believe, as Martin Luther writes in The Small Catechism, that as we rely on Christ, He frees us from the temptation to “false belief, despair, and other great and shameful sins.”

Jesus spends much of today’s gospel lesson telling disciples intent on following His call out into the world among non-Christians about the awful consequences of our refusing to prepare others to meet Jesus and of others refusing to hear us tell them about Jesus. He says that those who spurn Him, the Author of life, will go to Hades (Luke 10:15), the place set aside for those who choose death over Jesus. 

And He tells disciples who seek to faithfully share Him with others: “Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me.” (Luke 10:16)

Our lesson ends with the seventy-two disciples exulting in all the lives that had been touched by God’s grace and mercy shared in the name of Jesus. Jesus shares their joy. “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” (Luke 10:18) 

When we share Jesus’ name in love with others and they receive Jesus in faith, the powers of sin, death, and hell, all those things that keep us living in the freedom, hope, and peace that Jesus brings, those dark powers are decimated! 

But, just in case we make the mistake of thinking that the good things that God does through us when we share Jesus has anything to do with us, Jesus warns us: “do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” (Luke 10:20) 

There are people outside these doors and the doors of our homes who only have misinformation and disinformation or no information about Jesus. Jesus wants to use you and me to share the straight scoop about Him: that He is God’s one and only Son, given to us because of God’s love for everyone, Jesus Who died and rose for us and promises that all who turn from sin and turn to Him will live forever with God, starting right here and right now. 

Sharing that message is a big job! But here are four quick pointers on how to go about doing this mission to which Jesus has called us.

First: Make yourself available to share Christ with others. “Lord,” we might pray, “send workers into the harvest and make me willing to be one of them.” 

Second: Connect with the unchurched. Connect with others generally. Walk slowly through the grocery store and the neighborhood (when it’s not raining or too stinking hot). Initiate conversation with others. You don’t have to start by talking about Jesus. (People might think you were nuts if you did that anyway.) But it’s amazing how often God will open up chances for us to speak with others about Jesus when we take the time to show an interest in them. 

Third: Care about the physical needs of others. When we open our hearts to others with service in Jesus’ name, the hearts of some among those we serve will be opened to Jesus. 

Fourth: Ask God to cultivate a desire within you to tell others about Christ. I don’t know about you, but the closer I grow to Christ, the more my awareness of two things grows. First, I become more aware of the enormity of my sin. Second, I become more aware of the enormity of God's grace that covers my sin and fills me with everlasting life with God. The awareness of these two things alone should fill us with compassion for the spiritually disconnected. I always think, “If God has made me part of His kingdom, anyone can receive the gift of new life through faith in Jesus.” Anyone!

Jesus has saved us. Now Jesus sends us to reach others with the gospel...out beyond our Christian ghetto...so that Christ can reach them with the message of their salvation. As disciples, this is our calling from God. May the Holy Spirit empower you to follow that calling! Amen


[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Treasuring the Church ('I Am a Church Member,' Part 6)

[This message was prepared to be shared during worship on Sunday, September 30, 2018, with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. I felt moved to share a different message. That other message will be shared too. But this scrapped sermon is the sixth installment of our series on the Biblical themes raised by the book, I Am a Church Member, by Thom Rainer.]

1 Corinthians 12:27
Revelation 21:2
John 3:29
Lucy Van Pelt, the creepy little kid in the old Peanuts comic strip who always pulled the football away just as Charlie Brown was about to kick it, said, “I love humanity. It’s the people I can’t stand.”

Some people in the Church have an equivalent attitude about all local congregations. “I love Christ’s Church,” they seem to say, “It’s the people in individual congregations that I have no use for.”

But, as Thom Rainer rightly points out in the sixth and final chapter of his book, I Am a Church Member, people who try to make such distinctions aren’t really paying attention to the witness of the New Testament. Rainer writes that “...the universal church and the local church are not mutually exclusive...The Bible is clear that we are to be connected to a specific church in a specific context.”

This insight comes from reading Paul’s letters to New Testament congregations. Each letter was written to individual, local congregations, each committed to living out their faith in partnership with and accountability to one another.

Essential to being a member of Christ’s church universal or church catholic then, is to be a member of a local church. The holy catholic Church is in every local congregation where Christ’s gospel is rightly proclaimed and the sacraments are rightly administered. And every member of every local congregation where those conditions are met is also part of the whole Church in heaven and on earth. We who make up local congregations like Living Water are part of Christ’s body, His eternal fellowship. This is why the apostle Paul says to we disciples of Jesus, “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” (1 Corinthians 12:27)

But church life can be difficult. Like families or workplaces, we can disagree, argue, and not see eye to eye. Why then does God give us the gift of salvation only through the life, ministry, and proclamation of Christ’s Church? And why does He consider the Church such a gift for its members anyway?

Members of my extended biological family experienced a major blow-up with their local church and its pastor. They tell me that they now have “church” at home, inviting companionable friends over for Bible studies that they lead.

Now, I’m an advocate of small groups. They are essential for our growth as disciples. But the problem with these family members’ approach to church, of course, is that people who treat a small group as their “church” are more likely to take a wrong turn in their faith.

When you’re only around the companionable people with whom you feel comfortable, you’re ripe for heresy that can pull you far away from God and the truth of His Word. It’s only when “iron sharpens iron” (Proverbs 27:17), when we’re in a church in which we can disagree with Christ’s love, that we grow, that we really learn what it means to love each other as Christ loves us. The approach taken by my family members also leaves them at risk of forgetting all about the entire mission of Christ’s Church, to make disciples, instead, being satisfied to just read Scripture and pray with people who will never challenge them for self-satisfaction or spiritual smugness.

So, one reason that God considers the Church His gift to us is that it helps keep us faithful. I mentioned Hebrews 10:25 in the first installment of this series a few weeks ago. There, we’re told not to give up “meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” So, as the day of Christ’s return grows ever closer, we need the people of our local churches even more. We need to gather around the Word and Sacrament, we need to be challenged and afflicted by God’s Word, as well as comforted and empowered by it. That’s part of what Christ’s Church, part of what this church, does!

Another reason God says we should regard the Church as His gift is that it shows contempt for God to see it in any other way. In Revelation, chapters 18 to 22, we find an idea developed that comes from Jesus: The Church is the bride of Christ. This is rooted in the very language that Jesus used about Himself during His earthly ministry. In John 3:29, Jesus says, “The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom [the best man, John the Baptist] waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom's voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete.”

Jesus here speaks of His joy of being one with His bride, the Church. The marriage of Christ and His Church is consummated in Holy Baptism and strengthened in Holy Communion. And one day, the groom will come to take His bride into His home for all eternity.

John saw this in one of the visions he had while on the island of Patmos, where he records, “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.” (Revelation 21:2)

The Church then, including Living Water Lutheran Church, is a big deal, an eternal fellowship. That’s why Rainer writes, “Church membership is a gift. A gift must be treasured. It should not be taken for granted or considered lightly. Because it is a gift, we must always be thankful for it. And when we are thankful for something, we have less time and energy to be negative.”

The Church ultimately is the fellowship of believers in Jesus in which we learn that Christian faith is not about me, it’s about us as a community of believers submissive to Christ whose only mission is to invite and welcome “outsiders” into that same community so that, believing in Jesus, they too will have life with God.

That’s a truth that we cannot and will not learn apart from the fellowship of the Church Jesus established through His apostles and their successors.

The crucified and risen Jesus tells His Church, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mark 16:16)

The Church then is a gift because through it, we learn and build our lives around the truth of the gospel that God gives new and everlasting life to all who daily turn from sin and daily follow Jesus...and then, by His Holy Spirit, empowers us to grow each day in the likeness of the Lord Who died and rose for sinners like us.

When you have the gift of Christ and the Church that can never be taken from those who believe, you then can keep giving those gifts away--Christ and the Church. And as that happens, not only will more people be given the chance to know Christ, follow Christ, and share Christ with others, those same people--new believers in Jesus--will join us in sharing our free gifts of life with Christ and His Church with others.

The apostle Peter was one of the first to be sent out to invite others to receive the gifts of Christ and Church. One day at the temple, Peter encountered a lame man begging for money and told the man, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.” (Acts 3:6) Peter claimed that he could offer prayer and new life in Jesus’ name and Jesus underscored the validity of Peter’s words by also giving the man the ability to walk and jump once again. That was because Peter was part of Christ’s Church. And you can bet that that formerly lame man was anxious to hear all about Peter’s church after that.

Are we treasuring Christ’s Church enough to respect those with whom we disagree in our congregation?

Or, do we speak of them and treat them like the refuse that some politicians claim their opponents to be?

Are we Lucy Van Pelt Christians?

Or do we love our sisters and brothers in Christ in this church? Do we pray for them, speak well of them, encourage them?

Treasure your church; after all, if we’re saved by grace through faith in Christ, all of the people in every local church of which you may be a part, are people with whom you’re going to spend eternity! Better to learn to love them now than wait until Jesus returns.

And if we don’t learn to love them now, it may be too late to learn after Jesus comes back and time has run out for us to repent for our half-hearted discipleship. “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” Let’s live out that truth with gratitude and love for one another. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Our Call, Our Privilege, Our Life ('I Am a Church Member,' Part 1)

[This was shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio, yesterday morning.]

1 Corinthians 12:12-28

She was the wealthiest person in the small community where I served as pastor. She was also on the rolls of our church, although I’d been there several months already and hadn’t met her: She was in and out of town a lot. 

Then, one day, she met Ann at a local social gathering. She told Ann that she’d like to meet me and asked if I’d be available that afternoon. It turned out that I would be and, at the appointed time, she showed up. 

She quickly told me that she was an artist (an assertion that I came to doubt that...a lot), that she really couldn’t be bothered with the Bible, that she had a bevy of former husbands, each succeeding one more wealthy than the last, and that she intended to live her life as she wished whether God liked it or not. And, she made it clear, she wasn’t sure about the whole God thing anyway.

The purpose of her visit was plain enough. She was there to get a fix on what I was like, whether this worm in a clerical collar who sat before her was going to “play ball” with her view of the church as her own private country club, whether I was willing to compromise on Biblical truth in order to ensure that she wrote big checks for the general fund. Our conversation was pleasant enough. But I’m fairly certain that I disappointed her. Now, I’m not a perfect pastor or a perfect Christian or a perfect person, but one thing was absolutely clear to me: This woman had no idea what it meant to be a member of Christ’s Church, the body of Christ.

Over the next several weeks, with Thom Rainer’s book, I Am a Church Member, as a starting point, we’ll be considering what God, in His Word, the Bible, tells us about what it means to be a church member. I need to underscore that. While we can value Rainer’s book, it’s God’s Word that we most value. The Bible is, as we Lutherans say, the authoritative source and norm of our life, faith, and practice. 

And, in some instances, we Lutherans have different views of what God’s Word teaches than Rainer. But we will surface those issues in coming weeks.

So, where to start in talking about being a Church member? 

The first thing to be said is that while we who make up the Church may organize ourselves in ways that can look like other organizations in the world (we may even use Robert's Rules of Order), the Church is from God, it’s God’s idea and God’s creation. The Church was instituted by Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, and the members who make up the Church are the only creatures or things that will survive the end of this dying old creation. 

The Church is built not on human will, human power, or human wisdom. The Church is built on the confession that Peter made when Jesus asked His apostles Who they said that He was. Peter confessed that Jesus is Lord, the Messiah, God-come-to-earth. Jesus commended Peter’s confession and told him that on the rock of this confession of Jesus’ Lordship, “...I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” (Matthew 16:18) 

The Augsburg Confession, one of the basic confessional statements of Lutheran Christians, picks up on Jesus’ words to say: “The Church is the congregation of saints [that is, believers in Jesus] in which the Gospel is purely taught and the Sacraments [Holy Baptism and Holy Communion] are correctly administered...It is not necessary that human traditions, that is, rites or ceremonies instituted by men, should be the same everywhere…” (The Augsburg Confession, Article VII). 

The Church is made up of people who receive the gospel Word about Jesus and the Sacraments with faith.

But faith is more than intellectual assent. 

To receive the Word of new and everlasting life from the crucified and risen Jesus with faith is to live with Him, however imperfectly, however often we may need to repent and be made new. (For me, this happens at least twenty times a day!) 

Faith means more than to say, “I believe that Jesus died and rose and I occupy a spot on the membership rolls.” 

That’s the second thing to be said about the Church. It’s composed of disciples, people who daily follow Jesus and seek to honor Him.

So, what are disciples? I'm glad that you asked that question! 

Disciples are people saved by grace through faith in Christ. Their life with God in Christ is a free gift. Even their faith is a free gift. These gifts come to us when we receive the Word about Jesus and when, in the words of The Small Catechism, we “hold it sacred, and gladly hear and learn it” (The Small Catechism: The Third Commandment). 

Disciples are those who turn to Jesus as the only One Who can make them right with God, right with themselves, the only One Who can give them forgiveness and life eternity; like Peter, they say to Jesus, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68) 

Disciples are those who, like the man who came to seek help for his child told Jesus after Jesus had told him to believe, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) Anyone who says they're a disciple and that they never wrestle with doubts or challenges to their belief is a liar.

Disciples are those who have heard Jesus’ call, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 16:24). Discipleship is about dying to our old selves so that our new selves, our God-given selves, can rise to live with God now and for all eternity.

Disciples are those so grateful for God’s amazing grace saving them from death and hell through faith in Jesus that they seek to live that lifestyle we talked about last Sunday: they follow Jesus, go to the world into which He sends them, and they “fish” for people, telling others the good news--the gospel--of new life for all who repent and believe in Jesus.

True church members then are disciples of Jesus. I seriously doubt whether people who don’t participate in a local church or who, like the woman who came to see me in my office that day long ago, really are church members. 

The Bible teaches that you and I need the church and not just when we agree with every decision made by the congregation. 

To be a Christian is to be part of Christ’s community of faith, the Church. Why is that so? 

One reason is that we need to be in fellowship with people who rub us the wrong way. We can get off on our own hobby horses and end up far from God if we aren’t part of a Christian congregation where there are people to set us straight. “As iron sharpens iron,” Proverbs 27:17 tells us, “so one person sharpens another.” 

Another reason is that the Church is the only fellowship in the world built around the Word of God. The preacher in Hebrews told the Church: “...let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” (Hebrews 10:24-25)

Nobody conveys the necessity of fellowship with the Church more graphically than the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:12-28. These verses undergird Rainer’s first chapter. Church members realize that the Church isn’t about them, their preferences, their fears, their desires; it’s about Jesus and about our neighbors and our fellow members. 

The Church is about: 

• reaching up to God in worship and praise every day,
• reaching in to love, support, and provide accountability to our fellow members, and
• reaching out with the good news of Jesus to a dying world

Church membership then isn’t a spectator sport. Church membership is about giving of ourselves abundantly and serving in Jesus’ name without hesitation.

We don’t have time to look at 1 Corinthians 12:12-28 in depth this morning. Please read it before our Tuesday learning group, which will happen over at Christ the King at 6:30. But I want to hold up what I believe Rainer rightly points to as the four elements of being functional members of Christ’s Church given to us by Paul. 

First: “Membership means we are all necessary parts of the whole.” In describing the Church as Christ’s body, Paul drew an analogy between our physical bodies and the parts that make them up. Each part is essential for the functioning of the whole body. We need our hearts, brains, lungs, and other parts to function properly. As Bishop John and others pointed out last week in Denver, when any member of the church decides to sink down to spectator mode, we are all hurt by it; it’s like trying to function without eyes or ears, fingers or toes. 

Second: “Membership means we are different but we still work together.” Rainer cites 1 Corinthians 12:26: “...if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice.” 

Third: “Membership means that everything we say and do is based on a Biblical foundation of love.” I love what Rainer says here, “We are not to love fellow church members just because they are lovable. We are to love the unlovable as well.” I would add this. Jesus says that we are to love others as He has loved us. To see how He loves us, all we have to do is look at the cross. When I realize that Jesus went to the cross for me despite my sins, it makes it easier for me to love others. Besides, Jesus say, when we do love one another, we make the gospel real to each other and to the world around us. “By this,” Jesus tells us,  “everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (John 13:35) 

Fourth: “Church membership is functioning membership.” Rainer observes, “The concept of an inactive church member is an oxymoron.” Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 12:28: “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

Folks, according to God’s Word, the Church is indispensable for the salvation of the world. 

Without the Church, billions of people will be separated from God in hell for eternity. 

According to that same Word, the Church is indispensable for our own salvation and lives. Without the Church, the devil, the world, and our sinful selves would certainly take us far away from God. 

The bottom line is this: In the Church, we need each other. 

And unless a congregation has fallen into unrepentant sin or false teaching about God, heresy, our call as church members is clear: 

We’re each to be functioning church members, grateful for the grace that has saved us, devoted to the Lord and open to His Word, devoted to each other, and excited to prompt, encourage, and challenge one another every time we gather to go into the world and make disciples for Jesus Christ. 

That’s our call. 

That's our privilege. 

And that's our life. Amen

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]