August 16, 2026 | Building The Body Of Christ - Part 1

I started at Dallas Seminary when I was 22 years old, and I started the same year that uh Chuck Swendah became president of Dallas Seminary, and he was always a hero of mine.

He's still alive.

He was a he was a well-known pastor at 91 years of age right now.

He would always tell the best stories.

And one of the stories that he told, I'm going to share with you this morning.

I'm going to share it and then come back to it because it has to do with maybe a situation that some of you are in.

It's about a guy named Charles McCoy, 72-year-old Baptist pastor.

Perhaps some of you are 72.

And he spent his whole ministry at one church in New York.

Never married.

Cared for his mother until she died.

Earned seven university degrees in his spare time, including two PhDs.

Then his denomination told him at 72 he had to retire.

And he lay on his bed, asking himself the question, talking out loud to God, What have I really done with my life?

I'm 72, kicked out of the church.

What have I done with my life?

What have I done for Christ?

What have I really done?

And I don't know if that's a conversation that you have with yourself, you have with your spouse, or you have someone else, you're like, what was that all about?

I'm still alive?

What am I doing with my life?

What's the point?

What have I done for Christ?

And if if that is you, I am so grateful.

You're asking the question if you have angst, if you have inner conflict, you're like, what am I going to do for the Lord?

That's healthy.

That's good because most people don't do that.

I would even say most professing Christians don't do that.

The reality is that most professing Christians have life revolve around them and not around Christ and the church.

Sometimes Christians treat the church or Jesus like a streaming service.

They subscribe for a while, I'll take Netflix for a while, I'll use it when it's convenient.

It doesn't work so well.

Now I'm going to subscribe to Apple TV.

And they treat church and Jesus like that.

Try it out for a while, it doesn't work out.

Okay, I'll move on.

That's how most people are thinking.

It's about them, not about Jesus or the church.

And the reality is that when you read the Bible, it's about Jesus and the church.

When you look at the New Testament, those people are pretty much about Jesus and the church.

That was their life.

Things revolved around Jesus and the church.

And get this there's never a point where you age out of that.

I know you retired.

I get that.

It's fine.

You retired from work.

Totally great.

But you never retire from Jesus.

You never retire from serving the church.

There is no spiritual social security.

It's not like, well, I contributed in the past.

Now it's my time to collect.

That's that's not the reality in the in the kingdom life of following Jesus.

I believe that each person in here is vital for God's work in this church and advancing in the kingdom in this world.

There is never a time where you retire from serving the Lord.

No matter how sick you get, no matter how hard things get, you can always serve the Lord in small ways, huge ways, praying, serving, using your gifts.

There's a variety of ways.

And we're going to see some of those ways this morning as we're going to look at five gifted people.

And the categories I'm going to give you is this category of apest.

Can I show this slide to you?

A pest.

This morning we're going to talk about what's it look like for an apostle, prophet, evangelist, shepherd, and teacher to serve the church.

So just kind of we'll come back to that in a moment.

But the whole group, the whole goal of gifted people serving the church is for a reason.

So let's look at Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

And I want to start in verse 12.

The whole point of having these five serve and equip the church is for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ.

The whole point of having gifted people serve within the church is so the church can grow.

Now, have you ever seen a church that says uh a church sign that says, come grow with us?

Well, what are they talking about?

We're talking about spiritual growth, we're talking about growth in numbers.

And I think when you look about growth in the Bible and the growth of the church, it's both.

And scholars have used some fancy words of intensive growth and extensive growth.

Intensive growth is the idea where we are we're growing it spiritually, we're growing internally, we're growing in Jesus, and this extensive growth is more of reaching out.

And this morning we're going to focus on this extensive growth, where we are using our gifts to reach the world.

We're using our gifts to reach the world, that a pest, that those those gifts to reach people for Jesus.

Extensive growth.

Next week I'll talk about intensive growth, talk about sound doctrine and following Jesus.

But this week I want us to focus outwardly that our gifts have been given to the church so that we can bust out.

And I'm going to keep saying it again.

You think you're too old.

You're not.

How old was Moses at the burning bush?

80.

How old was Anna in the temple waiting for the Messiah?

84.

God's still using people today, and He's using you to build into the church to reach people for Jesus.

So let's do this.

Let's do this together.

Let's start in verse 7.

But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.

If you're a believer in Jesus, he has graced you with a gift to use to serve the body of Christ.

Now notice again in verse 7, it says, but to each one of us grace was given.

Grace is the concept of He is gifted you with grace in using you to use your gift.

And when you don't use your gift in the body of Christ, we all suffer.

One of the things I talked about with our staff on Monday mornings, I meet with the pastors and I like to have a little discussion before our meeting.

And this week, the topic that I brought up is how can we as a church get momentum when from week to week we have a different congregation?

Let me explain.

The people who are here this week, some of you were here last week, some of you weren't new people here.

It's like a constant turnover because I get it.

People travel, see family, things are going on.

I understand that.

That's the nature of our congregation.

But how can you get momentum going or moving all in the same direction when we have this disjointed nature of people are here some Sundays and then they travel that there's nothing wrong with that?

But how can we get momentum?

And I don't really have a big solution to that, but I think one of the solutions is this when you are here, when you are in town, use your gift to serve the body of Christ.

Step up and serve when you are here.

Use your gift to serve the body of Christ.

Now you may wonder, this is some of you, you're looking you're wondering, well, what's what's my gift?

How can I serve the body of Christ?

Did you know that there are lists in the New Testament of gifts?

You can look them up later on.

Romans chapter 12 has a list.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

1 Corinthians 12 has a list.

1 Peter 4 has a list.

There's a variety of lists in the Bible of gifts that Christ gives to people to serve the body of Christ.

Some of you have taken spiritual inventory tests, which is fine.

Have you been part of a church where they have a name tag, and under the name tag, they have the gift of that person?

That's fine too.

But there are different people with different gifts.

I just think about the gift of encouragement.

There's a guy that greeted you this morning, Chuck Holbert, very much the gift of encouragement.

Alice Moore, gift of encouragement.

I'm so sad for Alice.

I mean, I just saw her.

That woman full of joy, the gift of an encouragement to others.

So we're we're all gifted, and we're all gifted in certain ways where we are to serve the body of Christ.

Now, how do we get these gifts?

Look at verse 8.

Therefore it says, when he ascended on high, he led captive a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.

Now this is a reference from Psalm 68, 18.

And in the Old Testament context, the Psalm is calling for God to move in triumph, like he did from the wilderness to the promised land.

The images of God ascending to his dwelling place on Mount Zion with the conquered people, Caftive, in his training, giving gifts.

You can think of like a championship parade when a team wins and all the trophies come home and the city shuts down, the confetti falls, and the players hand the celebration to the fan.

The victory belongs to everybody.

And so that is the victory image we have in the Old Testament.

And what we have in the New Testament, what Paul does is he says, Let me show you the ultimate victory.

Look at verse nine.

Now, this expression, he ascended, what does it mean except that he also had descended into the lower parts of the earth?

He who descended is himself also he who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.

The imagery here is of Jesus, the Son of God, coming down in the incarnation, lived a perfect life, death on the cross, resurrection, and so he is now ascended to the right hand of the Father, and he's conquered sin, Satan, and death, and he's taken captives.

And the captives are the people he's rescued from sin, Satan, and death.

That is Jesus.

You are his plunder from this war.

But what he does is he turns the plunder, which is you, into the provision.

The idea is that God takes the gifts that he's received by securing salvation, and he takes these gifts and then he gifts gifted people to gift to the church.

Got that?

He is gifted gifted people to gift to the church.

So the person sitting next to you may not look like much, but they are a gift to you for the church.

No offense.

And he wants you to serve the church.

Now I learned something this week I've never heard before.

I'm sure.

You know, I'm I'm just kind of out of loop on everything.

But I learned this week about something called a cruise to nowhere.

Anybody ever been on a cruise to nowhere?

You're like, you're describing my life.

Well, a cruise to nowhere is when you leave a port and you just kind of cruise around and then you come back to the same place.

You you go nowhere.

You just go out there, mess around, and then come back.

And in fact, they're illegal in the United States now because of immigration and all that stuff.

But but think about a cruise to nowhere.

I wonder if some of you see church like the cruise to nowhere.

You show up, and you know a cruise to have food, and you're like, hey, this church has cookies.

Right?

And a cruise has drinks, you're like, this church has coffee.

So you come in, you get your cookie and your coffee, and you kind of just mill around and you talk to people and then you leave.

You just kind of a cruise to nowhere, it's just aimless.

Like, what are you doing?

Christ has gifted you for a purpose, for a destination to serve this body of Christ.

He really has.

You are the gift to this church, and he's gifted you to serve.

We'll look at some of the specifics of this.

Look at verse 11.

And he gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers.

So here we have the exalted Christ giving gifts to the church, and not all the gifts are listed here, but we have these five, the apest.

We have apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, teachers.

This apest.

Now, this morning we're only going to focus on two.

We're going to focus on apostles and evangelists.

Because I believe the evangelical in the church in America is really good at the other three.

Right?

But we're not so good in thinking about what does it look like?

Apostles?

Evangelists equip the church?

And I would say unless a church is functioning on all five, the church is not functioning as a fully functioning church.

For the last 15 days at my house, my air conditioner has been broken.

Oh, poor me.

It works in the bedrooms, but not in the living room, not in the family room, and not in the kitchen.

We've been duking it out with our warranty company.

You know how that goes.

Hopefully tomorrow it's gonna be working again.

But as it stands now, our house is not a fully functioning house.

When we don't have these five working within the church, I don't think we're fully functioning.

We're kind of we're not using all the strength and the gifts that God has given us.

So this morning, apostles and evangelists.

What does that look like in the evangelical church today?

All right, let's look again.

All right, we have apostles.

He's gifted some as apostles.

An apostle in the New Testament is someone who's seen the resurrected Jesus and has been commissioned by him, many of them, to write the Bible.

We have the twelve.

Matthias replaced Judas, and we have Paul, who also saw the resurrected Christ on the road to Damascus.

So these men took place in preaching the gospel, writing scripture, planning and building churches.

So when you think about this, think about the official position of an apostle.

Do we have apostles like that today?

Please let the answer be no.

Because when you turn on TV, you'll see people claiming to be an apostle.

You'll see that language.

Usually they have a sweet jet.

So they have a nice jet and they want you to give them some money, and they are apostles sent from God.

And I want to tell you that office, that official, that official term referring to a specific office, that thing is done with the death of the apostles.

But don't let the abuse of the title scare you off the gift.

Because if you look in the New Testament, you'll see something very interesting.

You'll see others kind of connect it to the apostles, maybe even called apostles at times, but not the same as the 12 and Paul.

You'll have like a comment about Barnabas in Acts 14 or Titus in 2 Corinthians 8 or Paphrodis in Philippians chapter 2, where they're called messengers.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

They're not like the 12 or Paul, but they're more like messengers or sent one with this apostolic gifting.

So for me, it's helpful to think about, you can think about apostles in the foundational sense, the 12 plus Paul, and in a functional sense, those who are gifted with this gifting of sentences, apostleship, uh, to stir up the church.

And so I like to think of these people as our missionaries, our church planters.

This chant this church was planted by those who were stirred up with such a gift.

You think about missionaries being sent out, they're stirred up with this gift uh of wanting to equip others to go.

And some of you have this in you.

You're like, what are we doing?

There's people that are no Jesus.

We gotta go.

We got to go around the world, we got to get it done.

And so that brings me back to 72-year-old Mr.

McCoy, laying in bed at night, ministry taken away, wondering, what have I done with my life for Christ?

One week later, he met a pastor from India.

And this pastor from India said, Hey, why don't you come over to India and preach?

And he's never been out of the country before.

And he's like, Why not?

And the church is like, You can't go to India, you're gonna die over there.

And he's like, I'm sure India is just as close to heaven as here.

So he leaves the country, never left before, gets over there.

He first sells everything, goes, and he gets there, and pickpocket takes all his stuff.

He's like, and all he had left was like a missionary's phone number that he found in some magazines.

He goes and connects with them.

And then while he's there, he doesn't know any better.

He he makes a goal to meet with the mayor of Bombay.

Now, missionaries have been trying to meet with this guy for a long time.

This guy doesn't know better, and so he just shows up.

And the guy from Bombay, the mayor's like, well, this guy has seven degrees, so he must be important.

And so he throws a little party for him.

And at this party, Mr.

McCoy gets a share of the gospel, and then he gets more and more opportunities to share the gospel, and then he's traveling around sharing the gospel, and then he plants a church, and then another another church gets started, and then his reach starts going wide and wide and wide as he's just sharing the gospel.

It all started at 72 and lasted for 16 years.

One night he was preparing to preach in Calcutta, and the Lord took him home.

It all started at 72, can't sleep at night.

Lord, what am I doing with my life?

Now I know some of you are there right now, doesn't mean you're gonna go to India.

God's stirring you up.

You know he's stirring you up.

I I heard about another couple, I'm I'm just full of stories this morning, right?

Another couple, 72-year-old and a husband and wife, both around 72, 73.

And so these two were like planting churches in in South America, 40 years planting churches in Venezuela, and it was time for them to retire.

And and instead of settling into grandparenting, which there's nothing wrong with that, that they just felt stirred up and they and they left for Spain and started working with those from Latin America who have moved to Spain as immigrants, and they just started cranking out, seeing churches planning even more.

And you may think it's not realistic for you to go to India, it's not realistic for you to go to Spain, it's not realistic for you to do those things.

And I want to say this maybe it is.

The email went something like this we're not settled here, and we're wondering if the Lord wants us to go and join one of the church plants that VPC has planted.

We got about six or seven of them.

So I just gave her the location.

See, I believe God's still stirring people.

I believe He's still stirring some of you.

You have some of this restlessness.

You actually have some of this, I don't know, apostolic gifting.

You're like, who who needs to be reached for Christ?

What do we need you to do?

And you You feel something.

Maybe God this morning is stirring you up in ways that you've not experienced before.

And maybe He wants to give you some specific direction.

Act on it.

And you may be one that stirs up some of us.

And I believe one of the best ways that we see this apostolic gifting is at our missionaries.

We have missionaries all over the world.

And they come here once a year for the most part for something we called our missions conference.

And get this our mission conference is one of the highlights of my year, and it's also one of the lowlights of my year.

Let me explain.

I get pumped being around these people.

They're just aggressive.

They take faith seriously and they take risks for Jesus.

They're bold and I get stirred up and I get pumped.

But it's also a lowlight for me.

You know why?

It is so poorly attended.

Our church gives away 25% of our budget divisions.

No big deal.

I look around at that missions conference and I always say, who doesn't have to be here?

I mean, the pastor and his wife, they should be there.

The elders and their wives, they should be there.

Staff should be there.

Missionaries should be there.

Missions committee and things, they should be there.

Those are all the people that have to be there.

But where's everybody else?

And the thing is, you know, I'm not gonna guilt you into coming.

That's ridiculous.

It's October 3rd, by the way.

I'm not gonna guilt you.

And I'm trying to think about this.

I think, what can I do?

And I think I have a solution.

This is what I'm gonna do to get our missions conference more attended.

On October 3rd, for those of you who are not there, I'm gonna lead a prayer at the conference that God would give you a supernatural and undeniable call to go to the mission field.

So if you don't want to go to the mission field, you better show up.

You don't know, I may or may not, I don't know.

But that's what the missionaries they come here and they equip you.

You get it?

You get it?

They equip you, they stir you up, they get this fire going in you.

And that's a gifting, and that's good for the church to be functioning fully as a church.

But if we just have people that are sent, when they get there, they have to say something, they gotta open their mouths, and that's where the evangelists come into play.

Look at look at verse 11 again.

Do you see it there?

And he gave some as apostles, some as prophets, and some as evangelists.

I mean, every person is supposed to share the faith, to share the gospel, but there are specific people that have the gifting of being an evangelist.

Think about Philip in the New Testament.

He saw the Ethiopian eunuch and he shared the gospel with him.

And in fact, the scripture actually calls Philip, Philip, the evangelist.

You know people like this.

They they are so gifted in evangelism.

They can they can turn any conversation around for the gospel.

You can be talking about the the weather, and 30 seconds later, you're talking about Jesus, heaven, and hell.

They're just so gifted, and they are to help the church, equip the church in two ways.

One, they help us keep the gospel clear.

We don't want to deviate from the gospel.

And two, they they keep the lost in view.

An evangelist is in here.

You know you have the gift of evangelism when you're asking yourself the question: who is not here?

They're people that need to know Jesus.

I see that a lot of the women in our church just fired up to share the gospel and they equip the church.

I don't know, you guys may remember they did like a testimony workshop.

That's to share the gospel.

Have you ever meet Phil Ware?

He's got this evangelism.

A lot of people in our church have this evangelism gift, but I want to tell you about one guy.

I I went to go see him two weeks ago at Lake Forest.

Can't come to church anymore.

His name is Hal Street.

Homeboy is 94 and a half years old, not quitting the gospel.

He just tells me casually, yeah, every Friday I get together and lead this Bible study.

We just all open the Bible and open our commentaries, and we just sharing the gospel.

Still, that's a gifting of evangelism.

We need people like that to stir us up, to say who's not here, who needs to know Jesus.

How do we do that?

We need those with that gifting to gift and equip the church.

And here's the point, verse 12 for the equipping of the saints, for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.

Those that are gifted in this way equip us to build us up so we grow.

Once again, I do not view you as consumers, I do not view you as customers.

I my my goal is not just to get up here and do a little song and dance and perform for you.

My goal is, in a sense, to be one of the ones that's coaching you.

You don't show up to a game to watch the coaches play.

The coach is to equip you to get going, to get on the field, to be equipped, to use your gift for the glory of God.

And then part of that gifting reaches people for Christ.

So get this.

Once again, Jesus descended, incarnation, lived a perfect life, ascended, saved you, equipped you with gifts.

Person sitting next to you has a gift.

You have a gift.

If you don't know what it is, figure it out.

And you say, Well, I don't know what to do.

I don't have, and I think the number one thing I can tell you, if you want to figure out how to serve the church, it's a crazy idea, I know, is just start serving.

If there's an opportunity, if there's a need, just jump in there and go, I don't know if that's my gift.

Well, you'll figure it out along the way.

Okay?

You'll figure it out.

Just start serving.

You're like, yeah, I see there's a need in the nursery, but I'm not sure if I'm good with kids.

Well, then just start serving, serving, just give it a shot.

Just start serving.

And as you serve, you'll see that you're involved with other people, and part of that serving can equip the body of Christ.

Jesus gave gifts, and the gifts he's given is gifted people as a gift to this church.

And it's not time to retire from serving the Lord.

It's not time to collect spiritual social security.

And the last image I leave you is the image of, you know, this is I this is what I think it's like.

I think that some of the imagery you're familiar with is the idea of pickleball.

The idea of pickleball, and now I know some of you play pickleball, a lot of you don't, but let me just tell you, if you ever go watch pickleball, the stands, like the stands where the uh people viewing the fans would sit, is always really small.

Because let's just be honest, it's really boring to watch pickleball.

I'm sorry, no offense, super boring.

If you show up at a pickleball court, you better show up to play.

You got an injured knee, so what?

Get out there.

Too old, doesn't matter.

Get out there.

You see it?

Everybody can play.

This is not like watching a football game where you have 22 people on the field and that are getting it all done, and 22,000 people who are doing nothing.

Pick a ball, you show up, you play.

Now, as you walked in this morning, I could have handed a paddle to everybody, and it would have been really dorky and all that.

But you understand the concept.

Everyone shows up to play.

It's not a time to spectate.

You're not a fan, you're not a customer, you're not a consumer.

Jesus has legit saved you and gifted you and wants to use you to serve this body and to serve him for his glory until you see him.

Amen.

Let's pray.

You've gifted a variety of us, all of us in different ways.

You saved us, you put your spirit in us.

And we want to see people come to Jesus.

And we need to be equipped by those of the gifting of apostleship or evangelists who can stir us up that there are people who don't know Jesus and we we've got to go to them.

And I just ask, Lord, that you'd make us a fully functioning body that is not lame or limping.

And I just, I just really, I just really pray for the men and women here who feel like their lives are a cruise to nowhere.

They don't know what they're doing.

And and rather than feeling terrible about that, they just want to take it to you in prayer and say, Lord, what do you want them to do?

What do you want them to do with their lives?

They're not done.

What do you want them to do with in their church?

They're not done.

Just show all of us in here that you have descended and ascended, and you have you have taken us, we're the captives.

We've been rescued, and now you've gifted us as a gift to the church.

Show us what it looks like to be a fully functioning church and use our gifts for your glory.

In Jesus' name, amen.