The Church Is... - Week 1: June 14, 2026

Good morning.

Wasn't that amazing?

What a great day to praise the Lord with the kids and the choir and the band.

What a what a great start to our service this morning.

Thank you, all of you who participated in that.

You kids were awesome.

Hey, I want to like bring us down a little.

I don't want to, but I'm going to bring us down just a little bit after that great rousing, exciting song.

Today we're starting a new series on the church.

And as we think about what it means to be the church and part of the body of Christ, that's the sermon for today.

I want us to remember our brothers and sisters in the Philippines.

So you know that Connect Church is a part of the Wesleyan denomination, and the Wesleyan Church has had churches in the Philippines for probably close to a hundred years.

And there was an earthquake in the Philippines early last week, and five Wesleyan churches were hit hard.

Their buildings were destroyed.

So while we are having a great time praising God and worshiping this morning, our brothers and sisters in Christ in the Philippines are struggling.

And so I want to remember them in prayer this morning as we get started, and then I'll stop crying, I promise.

God, we just thank you that we can praise you today.

We can praise you when our church building is great and filled with kids and music and liveliness.

And we can praise you when the walls are literally crumbling down around us.

And I pray that you would be with our brothers and sisters in the Philippines right now, as they are not able to worship in their church buildings.

And maybe they're having to go through the rubble, and maybe they're having to go through the rubble of their own homes too.

We thank you that no lives were lost among the churches there at least.

And we just pray that as they continue to work through this tragedy, that you will give them strength, you will give them peace, and you will give them hope.

Hope that they will continue to be a thriving church in that area, that they will maybe even through this experience, more people will come to know you.

And so we pray for them as they uh work in these terrible conditions and work to restore things back to what they were, maybe better than what they were before.

We pray that you keep them safe, and we pray that your church will continue to thrive and grow in the Philippines and more people will come to know you.

Amen.

All right, so I'm done now.

Um I'm a crier.

If you don't know me, I I cry pretty easily, and I didn't expect that this morning.

But today we get to talk about the body of Christ.

So we're starting this um series.

Um it's called the Five Metaphors of the Church.

So if you were at the um birthday celebration of Connect Church last week, that was pretty exciting.

Were you all there last week and to celebrate 90 years of Connect?

All right, it was a fun time.

I'm sorry that you missed it if you weren't there.

But it it was a really cool thing to think about this church being in existence for 90 years, lasting for 90 years, and thinking about what it looks like for this church in the future.

But when you when you think about that, you might wonder like, what keeps a church going for 90 years?

Because we've probably all seen churches that don't last that long, right?

They're open for a little while and then something happens and they have to close.

So, what is it that makes a church exist for 90 years?

That might get you thinking about what what's the purpose of a church?

And how do we know if we're fulfilling our purpose?

Because I think if we know our purpose and we know that we're fulfilling it, we're gonna be able to sustain what we're doing for a lot longer.

So, guess what?

Well, Connect Church has been in existence for 90 years, the church universal has existed for about 2,000 years.

And the people who planted those first churches 2,000 years ago have left us kind of a handbook to know what our purpose is and how we are to fulfill that purpose.

And so as we begin the series, we're gonna talk about that a little bit, the purpose.

But this handbook first tells us that the name of this church, what we call church, in biblical Greek, the term is ekklesia, and that means the called out ones.

And the handbook also discusses the purpose of this group or called out ones and how they are to accomplish that purpose.

So in this five-week series, we're starting today on the body of Christ.

Um, we're going to explore ideas, the idea that as believers in Jesus, God has called us out to do something big and bold.

He audaciously calls us to participate in one of the most unrealistic human endeavors ever conceived, and that is to get along with a bunch of other people who are Jesus followers so we can work together to show the love of God to the rest of the world.

Getting along together, I think, is probably the hard part there, right?

It's such an inconceivable sort of idea that those first church planters had to describe it in a multitude of ways, and they used metaphors to do it.

Now, metaphors are useful when to describe something that is too incomprehensible or too complex to describe in just regular words.

So when I met with the staff and planning this series, we had this discussion on what a metaphor is and what it isn't.

So I'm gonna go back to English high school class a little bit and say there's a simile and there's a metaphor, right?

Simile says something is like the other thing.

A metaphor, though, compares two things that are different.

And I'm gonna read the description here that I found.

A metaphor is a figure of speech that directly compares two unrelated things by stating that one thing is another.

Rather than just making a simple literal comparison, it borrows the qualities, emotions, or actions of the one thing that we know to help explain or visualize the thing we don't yet understand.

So we're gonna look at these metaphors where the authors of the New Testament say the church is this and this.

Okay?

Here's some examples of metaphors to help us understand.

This is from William Shakespeare, it might sound familiar.

All the world's a stage, and the men and women merely players.

That helps us understand a little bit like what Shakespeare thinks, this is why people act, right?

They're on this stage.

Here's one that I really love from Emily Dickinson.

Hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul.

That's kind of a nice, beautiful picture of the fleetingness of hope.

And here's one from the Bible, actually.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.

So we know that God's word is not literally light, it's not a lamp, but it guides us in our in our walk with Him, right?

So those are all metaphors.

In this series, we want to explore five different metaphors used to explain the church to help us better understand this humanly unrealistic thing that God has called us out to be a part of.

So today it's the body of Christ, then it will be the family of God, the house of God, a living temple, and the bride of Christ.

And for each metaphor, we're gonna ask three different questions.

The first question is, why does the author use this particular metaphor?

What is the author addressing with their original readers?

The second question is, what does this metaphor say about the purpose of the church to those original readers?

Because they have a different context, different point in time and history and things going on around them, right?

And the third question then is how might this apply to us today?

So if it meant that for them, what does it mean for us today?

And today we're going to begin with a metaphor that the church is the body of Christ.

This is probably one of the most familiar metaphors that's used in the Bible, and one reason is because the Apostle Paul liked to talk about this a lot.

We find long discussions about it in three different books of the Bible letters that Paul wrote to early churches.

So maybe it feels like old news.

If you've been in the church for a little while, you've heard things like, you know, things about the feet and the hand and the sense of smell and that kind of thing, right?

So it might be kind of old news to you, but what if Paul talks about this so much?

Because it's really an important concept that the churches needed to hear multiple times in different ways to be able to grasp it.

And maybe we do too.

So we're going to read these three passages from different books of the Bible, and we're going to read them all.

I'm going to read them to you, but you're going to read along on the screen all together, and it's a lot to take in at once.

But as we read through these, I want you to be looking for common words, common themes and ideas that kind of help us as we go through this process of understanding.

So the we're we're going to begin first in Romans chapter 12, verses 3 through 8.

Romans 12:3–8

Paul writes this to the church in Rome.

But rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.

For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, from one body and each member form one body, and each member belongs to the others.

We have different gifts according to the grace given to each of us.

If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith.

If it is serving, then serve.

If it is teaching, then teach.

If it is to encourage, then give encouragement.

If it is giving, then give generously.

If it is to lead, do it diligently.

If it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

And now we're going to first Corinthians chapter twelve, verses twelve through twenty-seven.

And Paul writes this to the church in Corinth.

Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.

For we were all baptized by one spirit so as to form one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free, and we were all given the one spirit to drink.

Even so the body is not made up of one part, but of many.

Now if the foot should say, Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.

And if the ear should say, Because I am not an eye, I don't belong to the body, it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.

If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be?

If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?

But in fact, God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be.

If they were all one part, where would the body be?

As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, I don't need you, and the head cannot say to the feet, I don't need you.

On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor, and the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment.

But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.

If one part suffers, every part suffers with it.

If one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

And then we're going to go into Ephesians chapter one and read verses twenty-two and twenty-three, and then skip ahead to chapter four and read a few verses there.

And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

And then down to verse 15.

From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.

Whew, the end.

Okay, that's a lot to take in.

That's a lot to read through all at once, but I think it's really great to see all those side by side so that we can really get the big full picture of what Paul is talking about here.

So we're gonna dig in with our first question.

Why this metaphor?

What was going on with the churches in Rome, Corinth, and Ephesus that Paul was trying to address by talking about this?

Excuse me.

So each of these cities was a predominant city in its area.

They were large commercial centers in different parts of the Mediterranean at the time.

And each that meant there were lots of people there and lots of people doing immoral things, not great things, lots of people worshiping other gods and doing all sorts of stuff.

Each of these cities had temples.

Rome had temples, of course, to Roman gods, and Corinth and Ephesus had temples to Greek gods.

And some of the immoral things happening in these cities were connected to worship practices at those temples, because religious prostitution was often part of the worship of some of these gods.

So that's a little bit of what's going on.

And while there were some Jewish converts who were part of these churches, they were predominantly made up of non-Jewish or Gentile believers.

So these Gentiles in the churches would have been people who had formerly participated in some of these practices in those worship, in those temples at the time.

And we learned from reading the letters to these churches that some were still continuing these practices, even as they were a part of the church.

Now, the Jewish converts who were part of the church also brought along some of their worship practices.

They weren't necessarily immoral like the Gentiles, but some of the Jewish Christians were continuing to follow Jewish laws related to eating food and preparation of food and how to practice the Sabbath and that kind of thing.

And they were expecting other people to follow some of these same laws and rules too.

So here's something when I was reading about this that I found interesting about the church in Rome.

Up to the time of this letter that the letter of Romans that Paul wrote to the church, that church had never received any teaching from any apostle, neither a letter nor an in-person visit.

So maybe they had some of those letters that were written to other churches kind of handed off to them and they could read those.

But for the most part, it seems like this church was kind of flying on its own without any apostle apostolic teaching or anything like that to help them know what they needed to do as a church.

So maybe that's why the book of Romans is such a long one because Paul had a lot to say to them because they hadn't had any of that teaching yet.

So, but the church in Corinth, that church was a bit of a mess.

Because of the prevalence of Greek temple worship, immorality was an issue in this church from early on.

Paul had even written to them prior to this letter of Ephesians.

It's a letter that we don't have, but he mentions that in the book of Ephesians, that he has written to them before, he's addressed it with them, and it still continues.

And so he's writing to them to say, man, you guys need to take some action here.

You need to knock this off.

You're gifted, you got lots of good gifts, lots of good people, but you're immature and unspiritual, and that has got to change.

And then there's the church in Ephesus, which is very different because Paul had used that church in Ephesus as his headquarters for about three years of his ministry.

And so, of course, they knew Paul well.

They knew his teachings.

He'd probably talked many, many times to them about what it means to be a follower of Jesus and what it means to be a church.

And at the time of this letter, this church was probably cooking along just fine.

They were doing pretty okay.

So Paul's letter wasn't addressing any real concerns, he's just writing to expand their understanding of God's purpose and plan for the church.

So these three churches are different in many ways, and yet in his letters to all three of them, Paul is compelled by the Spirit to present this metaphor to them, that the church is the body of Christ.

So, why this metaphor to these three churches?

Now, if you paid attention while I was reading the scriptures, you might have noticed some repeated words, ideas, phrases.

Now, there was one word that was pretty prevalent, and that is body, and that's obvious because he's using body as the metaphor.

So he says the word body a lot.

But another church, another, sorry, another word that Paul says a lot is the word one.

So you can see up there, there's several, several things that are repeated multiple times, and some of those that really seem to stand out.

And so to the Romans, Paul says that in Christ the believers form one body.

To the Corinthians, he writes that they were all baptized by one spirit into one body and given the one spirit to drink, meaning like the Spirit came to live in them.

And to the Ephesians, Paul says, there is one body and one spirit, and they were all called to one hope.

There is one Lord.

They have one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.

Now, there are two fairly obvious points we can draw from the collection of these ones that Paul talks about, which can help to answer the question of why this metaphor.

The first is that they are all part of one entity.

Like they all, they're all different, but they all belong to the same one church, right?

The second thing is that they have in common essential pieces of the Christian faith.

They all have in common this one faith, this one understanding of the Father, this of the Son and the Spirit.

They have the same faith in Jesus' death and resurrection, and they were all baptized in the same way into the church.

So they have these common things that it seems like Paul's trying to help them remember.

You know, the way Paul is pointing out their similarities and shared beliefs, it makes me wonder if it's the opposite way of saying that there's a problem here, right?

You know, like when you're correcting a child, it's often the better to like phrase what you want them to do in the positive.

Instead of saying, don't do this, you say it in the positive.

For example, in our house, we use crayons on paper, right?

And the opposite, then, what you're trying to say is don't draw on the walls, right?

And maybe that's what Paul is doing here.

It seems like it's he's emphasizing the oneness because there are differences that are preventing each of these churches from acting as one unified body.

And it's no big surprise that there are differences, right?

Imagine this church.

It's not a church in a building like this with like chairs in a row, and like Connect Church on any given Sunday, you can have 300 to 400 people, and these churches aren't that big.

They're house churches.

So it's a group of people, maybe 20, 30, 40 people meeting together in someone's house, and like in the largest space they have in the house, or in a courtyard, so that they can all fit.

And so it's a group of it's a small group of believers, is what I'm trying to say there.

But it's they are very diverse.

They consist of several Gentile families, and so the men, the fathers of those families, have been in the habit of worshiping at a Greek or Roman temple, worshiping a panoply of gods to cover all their bases.

They're doing the things that men do at those temples.

And they've also, these families have been part of the Greek or Roman culture for all of their lives, which didn't place, as you might be surprised, a huge emphasis on humility, gentleness, confessing your sins, love for others.

So they come from this cultural context of kind of living, living in a way that is not what Paul is talking to them about here.

And then there are a few Jewish families interspersed here as well, and they come in with a belief in one supreme God.

They don't worship different gods, and they were raised in the teachings of Pharisees or Sadducees, and they've been in the habit of observing some fairly religious laws about what kind of food you can or can't eat, or about Sabbath observances.

Jews had also been taught that all their lives that they are not to interact too much with Gentiles, right?

They can't definitely can't, definitely, oh, they definitely can't eat with them, they can't intermarry, they shouldn't partner in business with them.

And this has been a tradition, a teaching, a way of life for thousands of years from the Old Testament onwards.

That there is this enmity between Jews and Gentiles.

They're enemies, they have they war against each other to control land.

Or territory.

And now here they are worshiping together in a shared faith.

There's different nationalities, clashing cultures with ingrained habits, different opinions on the ruling empires.

And you can add to that too, there are people from different socioeconomic statuses as well.

There are some people there who are indentured slaves or servants.

There were men and women with who men and women had very defined roles about how to behave in society.

And Paul's expecting these people to put aside all of their differences and work together to form a healthy operating group of people, just like the body operates with all its varied parts.

But actually it's more than that.

Paul says that they are to be Christ's body, his presence in the world operating together to do that.

So here's why Paul used this metaphor of a body in which each person functions, but they operate as one body.

It's because when the church learns how to do this together, when we believe that one person is not worth more or less than another, when we have learned to get along and remember that we all agree on the ones that Paul talks about that defines the faith, then the church is pointing to the future culmination of what God has intended from the beginning of time.

We read this in Ephesians 1, 9 and 10, a verse we haven't read yet, where Paul writes this to the church at Ephesus, and he made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment, to bring all things in heaven and earth together under one head, even Christ.

This is God's will, Paul says, that heaven and earth will one day be brought together under the leadership of Jesus.

It will all be as God intended from the beginning of creation when Adam and Eve walked in the cool of the garden with God.

And so these churches have to learn how they can operate together as one body with Christ as their head.

Paul's urging these believers in these early churches, with all of their messiness, all their misunderstandings, their pride and ungodly cultural biases, to do the seemingly impossible, get along with each other, love each other, work together to demonstrate to the world that God's ultimate intention is to unite heaven and earth in his love and peace.

That's a pretty big endeavor.

But it's not a human endeavor.

It is God's endeavor, powered by the Holy Spirit, as we look to Jesus as our head.

And so this, as you can see, answers our third question, right?

Our third question was what does it mean for us today?

The answer is surprisingly, it means the same darn thing it meant for the churches in Rome, Ephesus, and Corinth.

The purpose of the church hasn't changed.

It remains the same.

And in case you hadn't noticed, those barriers that I talked about that those early churches were facing, and still exist in the church today, don't they?

Various forms, different nationalities, clashing cultures with ingrained habits, different economic and social statuses, different opinions on ruling empires.

And Paul is expecting us today, just as he did those early churches, to put aside our differences and work together to form a healthy operating body.

But actually, it's more than that.

He says, Together we are to be Christ's body, as a demonstration to the world that God will one day unite heaven and earth under Jesus' leadership in his love and peace.

So here's a thing that I've been thinking about.

It's one thing for those early Christians to think about, to think in terms of collectively working together, because that's really how their culture was at that point in time and point in part of the world.

Whether you were Roman, Greek, or Jewish, the culture was one of a strong group orientation, meaning that there were expectations that individuals would act in such a way as to maintain the status quo of their group, whether it was the family, the village, the city, or the nation.

You didn't just go do your own thing.

The phrase you do you was not a phrase bandied about by early Romans, Greeks, or Jews.

It really is quite a contrast to our American hyper-individualism, isn't it?

I think it's common for us as Christians in the US and maybe other Western nations to view our faith as an individualized way of relating to God and acting in the world.

I claim to have a personal relationship with Jesus.

I have my own personalized, private, individual way of growing in that relationship and understanding who I am in Jesus.

I'm happy to learn what my spiritual gifts are and use them in the church, and then I feel like I'm doing my part in the body of Christ.

Now, I want to just have a little aside here.

This is important, this idea of understanding what your spiritual gifts are so you can use them in the body of Christ.

Paul wrote about that a lot.

We know it's important.

And I don't want to spend too much time on that right now, but if you don't know what your spiritual gifts are, if you don't know what spiritual gifts are in general, here's a QR code.

You can bring out your phones right now and snap this QR code.

This leads you to an online assessment.

It's a list of questions that will help you understand what your spiritual gifts are and how you can use them in the body of Christ.

Now I will say too, you can do an assessment because I think that is really helpful.

But you can also begin to understand your spiritual gifts by thinking about like when I volunteer someplace, what kinds of things do I like to do?

What am I good at?

Or what am I good at at work?

Like, where are my skills at work?

Those could be good cues to what your spiritual gifts are.

But taking an assessment like this could also introduce you to new gifts you didn't know were spiritual gifts and help you understand how you can put them to use in the body of Christ.

Okay, so I can leave that QR code up for just a little bit because people might still want to do it.

But I'm gonna move on.

We're gonna skip over spiritual gifts.

That's not the point of the sermon today.

So we're gonna go back to rugged individualism of the US.

This idea of such an individualized faith doesn't work well within the biblical understanding of how the church should function.

It's not about me, Paul says, it's about us, all of us together as one body.

So much of the New Testament teaches this idea that I must put aside thinking about myself as the top priority, that I should consider others better than myself, that I should love others and serve others in love, that I should forgive others when they offend me.

The church is a body made up of different parts, and if the different parts can't serve each other, can't submit to each other, can't forgive each other, if we're divisive and only hang with the people who are like us, then the body doesn't work.

It can't serve its purpose.

It can't demonstrate to the world that God wants to bring heaven and earth together in his peace and love.

In fact, we read a verse that I, the first many times I read over it, I didn't even didn't even catch my eye, but God really brought this out to me as I was preparing for today.

The verse is Romans 12, 5.

It says, So in Christ, we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

This is something I'm not sure I know what to do with.

What does it mean to belong to others?

I think a lot of times we come to church, we come to our faith, we come, we we become Christians thinking, I'm just gonna go to church every Sunday, I'm gonna sing some great songs like we did this morning, I'm gonna be encouraged by the pastor, I may shake hands, say hi to a few people, and then I'm gonna go like live my life with Christ by myself.

I don't know what this belonging to others is all about.

If you were here last week to hear Nate's sermon at the 90th birthday party, it was such a great lead up to the series on the church.

Now, I don't remember word for word what he said.

I wasn't taking notes, it wasn't recorded, so I didn't go back and look at it, and I forgot to ask him about it this week, but here's what I remember.

I remember love.

He emphasized that the church is to be about love.

Love for others in the church, love for people who don't know God, love for our neighbors, love for our community.

And Nate said that he has a vision of Connect Church in another 90 years, loving our community in such a way that this property around us, this neighbor, these neighborhoods around us, are transformed physically and spiritually.

Because we're loving our neighbors in such tangible ways without expectation of receiving anything in return.

Loving in that way is how we belong to others, I think.

Or maybe it's the reverse.

I haven't decided on this.

Maybe belonging to others is how we love in that way.

Bringing heaven and earth together in his peace and love is what God has called us out to demonstrate to the rest of the world.

And we can only do it as we live in the functioning body of Christ.

I want to end with this thought of belonging to others as the way to be the body of Christ.

Could you just think with me for a minute?

Imagine what would the church, what would the body of Christ here at Connect look like if we believed and lived as if we belonged to each other?

Not that we just said hi on a Sunday morning.

I want to just think about this for a minute.

I'm gonna ask a series of questions, and I'm gonna pause between each one to give you time to just to think about this for yourself.

Maybe you want to close your eyes, uh, put your head down maybe for a minute, and just think about this, not only think about it, but listen to what God may be saying to you about this.

So I'm gonna ask you this first question.

What makes me uncomfortable about belonging to others?

Is there anyone I already feel like I belong to in the body of Christ that helps me understand what it means to belong to someone else?

Is there someone I don't want to have any part of it belonging to?

Does it feel like our differences are too great?

Do I need to forgive someone in the body of Christ so I can belong to them?

Am I willing to ask God to show me someone I need to belong to?

And the last question, am I willing to allow God to change me into someone who belongs to others?

If you can look up now if you want.

If you're wondering how to do this, here's some suggestions.

This week, read through one or several of Paul's short letters to churches.

The book, books of Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians are all short and easy reads.

So you could read through all of them this week, or you could read through one slowly and just absorb what it is Paul is saying through the power of the Holy Spirit, of what it means, what it looks like to belong to others in the church.

Spend some time there.

Another thing you can do is get to know someone at Connect that you don't already know.

I believe wholeheartedly that none of us here knows everybody very well at all, right?

There are some faces you recognize, but there are a lot of people we don't know very well.

So stay a while after church and talk.

For us introverts, I know that's hard, but this sermon gives you permission to go up to somebody you don't know and introduce yourself, talk to them, maybe even make a time, schedule a time to meet for coffee or lunch sometime in the next week.

Get to know somebody you don't already know.

The third thing is you could join a discipleship group with two other people or a growth group.

Growth groups will be starting up in the fall, and that's a really good way to get to know people more deeply, to really learn how to belong together, and maybe even with people who aren't like you.

If you're interested in that, you can ask John Benda about it.

He'd be happy to help you get started.

These are great ways to learn to belong to others.

Oh, I forgot to mention the class that's happening right now.

Next week, go to that class and learn how to talk to people about one of the biggest divisions in our country right now, spiritual or political divisions.

Thank you.

And uh learn how you can talk to others without being divisive.

That would be a good way to learn how to belong to others too.

But remember, it's not about trying harder or doing better, it's about allowing God to bring about that kind of transformation in me, in you, in the body of Christ, because this is what God has called us out to do this audacious, inconceivable plan to share show the world how God plans to bring heaven and earth together in his love and peace.