Meaningful Membership

Good morning.

Today's reading is from Ephesians chapter six, verses twenty-one to twenty-four.

It says, So that you also may know how I am and what I am doing, Tychicus, the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, will tell you everything.

I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage your hearts.

Peace be to the brothers and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good morning.

Though mornings are getting cooler, the evenings are just as hot as always.

Thanks for joining us.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

We uh have got kind of a special sermon today, uh, which I'll explain in a bit, but first, uh a couple of announcements to make.

Uh the kids volunteer thank you thing is after church today.

So if you volunteer with uh Redemption Kids, then you'll just head out after the service.

And we're meeting at the playground at Centennial Elementary School right next door.

So if you just like walk halfway down the sidewalk, there's a gate into the playground, and our kids can run around and play, and we're gonna have donuts as a thank you for serving with the kids.

If you serve with the kids, you get a donut.

And if you don't serve with the kids, we'd request that you could stand outside the fence and look in longingly.

We think it will make the donuts taste better.

Uh sometimes it's nice to, you know, just see the proletariat not have any donuts.

Men's night.

Uh September 23rd.

So Thursday, September 23rd.

If you are a man, we have a night for you.

Uh we're calling it Men's Night.

We focus grouped that term and it worked.

Um so basically we're meeting at John Kushiroff's home uh in Arvada, and there's a great like backyard.

We can hang out, uh, you know, like drink whiskey, smoke cigars, and talk about theology.

Which is that's like as good as it gets to me.

Uh so join us.

Uh sign up.

That way we know how many snacks to bring.

Don't count on meals, we'll just have snacks.

And um yeah, come join us.

It'll be the last time that we did this was like one of the most fun nights of the year.

Uh so just if you like having fun, this one's for you.

Next up, uh on September 26th, that following Sunday, after the midnight, we have baptism.

So we're having a baptism Sunday.

It's going to be very exciting.

Uh if you or someone you know would like to be baptized, sign up.

Uh that way we can meet up beforehand and talk through what baptism means.

And uh yeah, so it'll be baptisms for if you have a new child who is born that needs to be baptized.

We'll baptize them if you're a new Christian or if you've never been baptized.

Uh, come uh go ahead and email us so we can connect.

Uh just email info at redemptiondenver.com.

Uh also uh immediately following our baptism service, we're gonna have like a party.

So there'll be food, there's gonna be Santiago's burritos.

Yeah, we're we're spending big on this one.

Burritos that you can get in gas stations.

And we're also gonna have a bounce house.

Yeah, only for the adults.

So we're gonna need to find something else to do for the children.

I don't know where the we'll put them in the playground or something.

And uh welcome team, this is the last announcement.

I'm having too much fun with the announcements.

Welcome team volunteer training is October 3rd.

So we're looking to expand the welcome team uh and also train up the greeters.

So if you would like to be a part of the welcome team or are currently a part of the welcome team, stick around after the service on October 3rd.

Okay, let's pray and get into today's text.

Holy Father, we pray that you would attend this morning, that your spirit would guide uh our uh movement through your text today.

Lord, I pray that the things that we learn today we might be able to experience in our church.

That these would be truths that we internalize and understand and begin to experience being a part of a church like the ones that you describe in Scripture, uh, with that type of unity and that type of love and hearts that are truly knit together as we seek you.

Lord, sometimes those things seem too good to be true or to imagine.

Lord, I pray that you would begin to sow those seeds today.

Lift that up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So the typical way that we move through sermons in in our church and the way that we structure series is we we preach in a way that's uh called expositionally.

So you exposit texts of scripture, and we just pick books of the Bible and move through them.

So if you've been with us for a couple of years now, you'll know that there's a pattern that we're moving through right now.

At the beginning of the year, we've been moving through Genesis for the past two years.

So for like the first you know, five months or so of the year, we just moved through Genesis.

In 2020, we did the first 10 chapters of Genesis and preached on the flood, like the week COVID hit, uh, which was helpful.

In uh 2021, in the beginning of the year, we preached through the next 10 about chapters of Genesis.

And we're gonna keep going through the first of the year uh at about 10 chapters at a time until we're through Genesis.

In the fall, we're doing that same pattern but with the book of Mark.

So in the fall, we're taking some time to see Jesus.

That's the purpose of that series.

And we went through the first three chapters of Mark in 2020, and so this fall, we're moving through the second three chapters of the gospel according to Mark.

Uh that will begin next week.

So that's a great thing to invite folks to to become a part of sort of the movement of a series from the beginning, is helpful.

Uh, and likewise, the reason that we put Mark in the fall is because the fall is kind of a reset for many of our lives as kids go back to school and we remember, you know, going back to school ourselves.

And uh we kind of reset and get into the new rhythms of life.

And a lot of people begin to check out church again.

We thought, well, what do we want people to see when they're just starting to sort of reintroduce themselves to church again in the fall?

Well, we want to see Jesus.

So that's why we're spending all that time in Mark.

Now, today we're doing what's called a topical sermon, like a mega church, which is pretty fun.

And so there's a uh so what that means is I'm gonna show like a couple of movie clips, and I'm so I uh yeah, you can I can tell by your laughter that you know I won't.

But there's a so here's how bad I am at doing this.

So the met with the elders and they were like, look, you've got to preach on a topic.

Uh we've got to talk about membership.

So, because this has become such an integral thing in our church, and we want to really fan this into flame.

I was thinking, like, okay, so I'm gonna do a topical sermon on membership.

Now let me pick a text.

And I was going through and I was reading the last section of Ephesians that we didn't preach, and I was like, you know what?

This would really work for membership.

So for my one topical sermon, we're preaching uh expositionally, and uh finishing up uh uh the letter to the Ephesians.

Now, membership is is what we're talking about, and how do we participate in and have meaningful membership?

Uh now uh membership, I've explained before, is part of the structure of our church.

The church structure looks really simple and something we see throughout scripture, from the Old Testament up into the New Testament, that the body of Christ was structured around elders and members.

Now, we don't see the word members as much in the uh uh Old Testament, but we do see the word elders who would be over families or tribes or clans.

And uh that develops as in the into the New Testament when the church expands to include all peoples.

And then we see this term members used, like members of a body is the term.

So just like our arms are members of our body, we are members of the church.

And the structure is elders are like uh pastors or shepherds.

They're meant to oversee the body.

And they're in the body is committed to the authority of the elders as well as to the building up of one another.

So there's a self-consciousness of being a part of the church that we see throughout scripture, where you know explicitly I am a part of this church, uh, this gathered body of Christians, and uh that means I have come out of the world and I could be a part of this church, and at some point, if something goes awry, I would no longer be a part of this church.

And so there's a self-consciousness of membership.

And that's something that we really want to see develop in our church, and it's the way that we've structured the um the really the way that we commune together is through eldership and membership.

It's it's uh we're trying to adopt and and uh live out that biblical model.

Now, I've said a lot of times before that at Redemption Church Denver, we gather and we gather.

That's right, and uh gathering large and gathering small, for some reason that was really sticky and really worked.

And it referred to at the time uh when we were first starting our church that we just had small groups and uh a large church gathering.

That was really all we did.

And as we moved into also at the time we didn't have elders like we just started, it was all very strange.

But we uh have tried to move our church into this biblical structure.

And so I still like the phrase we gather large and we gather small, but it refers to different things than just small groups in our gatherings.

It refers to uh what we call parishes uh and our Sunday morning gathering, which is gathering large.

So in uh we have members at Redemption Church Denver, and members are broken up into parishes.

And a parish is just a small group of members, and those are uh overseen by elders of the church.

And the point of this is that when you're a part of a parish or one of our, which is basically like one of our small groups, that you are connected to the real authority structure of the church.

So you a lot of times will be a part of small groups and it's like, is this really connected to the church in any way?

Like if I complain to this person, doesn't does it matter in it in any sort of functional way?

And we want to be set up to where it really does.

Uh when you look into the terms like what elders are supposed to be and how they're supposed to function in the church, it's a pastoral role, primarily.

And a lot of times we treat eldership, sort of in the United States, it's like the the local church became the model for businesses, but then it reversed itself where businesses became the model for the local church.

And so eldership is frequently treated just as like a board of directors of a nonprofit rather than a pastoral role.

But our hope is that eldership will match the pastoral role that it's called to in scripture.

So one of the books that we read on elder that the elders of our church read on eldership was uh called eldership.

And the point that it made was that uh elders should should smell like pastors, somebody who watches of shepherds, this is the term, shepherds should smell like sheep.

Because they should be around the sheep, right?

Not if you guys are sheep, uh no, but you are, that's the term.

And we uh uh we we should know each other.

Uh and there should be real relational depth to this.

Now, our membership and eldership and the way that we want this to all work were pretty new to this structure.

We introduced it eldership for the first time in 2020, and then it was difficult to meet uh throughout the year of 2020 that we were trying to figure out.

Uh, even the last Sunday that my wife and I were supposed to have our parish over, our whole family got sick, and so we couldn't, and it's like, oh man, this thing's tough to get going.

But we've got this structure in place.

And what I want to talk about this morning is how we can turn that structure into a culture.

Because the structure helps, it's supportive, but we don't really experience it.

The culture of membership is what we really want to see take place.

That's where uh it's it becomes sort of self-sustaining in that regard.

You know, you start off with the uh lattice that supports a small tree, and then the tree grows, and organically it starts to support itself and gain all its own energy.

And that's what we'd like to see for membership in our church, that these structures support this initial growth that then become an organic feature of our church.

So I I I want to share one more one more thing before we get into the text today.

Um Tim Keller posted this great article um uh earlier this week, and it's an assessment of why though uh mainline churches in the United States are deteriorating.

Why is it that there is a mass exodus from the church in our culture right now?

Uh sort of unprecedented in the past 200 years to see a retreat of Christianity uh by the masses at such a scale as we're seeing now.

And so a good question to ask uh when you're in the church business is uh why?

And he puts his finger on a couple of great points.

Uh there is this book that he references by a sociologist named Dean Kelly, who wrote a book in 1972 uh called Why Conservative Churches Are Growing.

That was the name of the book.

Now he was a liberal sociologist, and it was meant to be a provocative title, like to, you know, scare his other liberal academics of like conservatives are coming.

But it's a very helpful diagnosis of why we see such decline in uh churches in the United States.

And he references these four features that the churches that were growing and that were sustaining amidst this time had in common.

And it was features of those who are serious about their faith.

So I want to read these four and see how membership supports these things.

Okay, so uh this is from the this is from that book by Dean Kelly.

Those who are serious about their faith, one, do not confuse it with other beliefs, loyalties, or practices, or mingle them together indiscriminately, or pretend they are alike, of equal merit, or mutually compatible if they are not.

So this means that uh people who are serious about their faith see their faith as something distinct from other worldviews that are on offer.

So they are able to distinguish their faith from the current political movements or from the current social movements, and they see there may be overlap in some of these areas, but my faith is its own distinct thing because it speaks to the highest questions of existence.

So that's one.

Two is they make high demands of those admitted to the organization and do not include or allow to continue within it those who are not fully committed to it.

Now, this is a reason that we decided to structure our church around membership.

And that's because we're seeking to allow communities to develop in which uh there's a mutual commitment.

That's something we rarely experience in our culture.

Uh we we uh tend to say, like, look, if we have more of a revolving door, we'll get more people in.

And that may be true, but we'll also get more people out.

And we're looking to have lives where we actually share an honesty and depth with one another.

And that requires mutual commitment.

We can have freedom in our relationships together when we are mutually committed to one another.

So we seek to preserve a sense of purity in the organization.

Three, do not consent to, encourage, or indulge any violations of its standards or belief or behavior by its professed adherents.

We say the Apostles' Creed uh weekly because we're looking to uphold a standard of our beliefs.

We're looking to bring detail and structure to the beliefs that we share rather than deconstruct the heritage that we have received.

And so we are uh and so the the reason that these things map into membership and eldership is because you have an you have a self-consciousness of I'm a part of this as a member, the church itself affirms you, and the elders of the church affirm you as a member.

And so there's a mutual, we're really in this together.

And when that starts to slip, or if you say, like, I'm actually no longer believe these things or no longer adhere to these things, then you would no longer make sense to be a part of the church.

Because what the church is, is it's a group of people who are looking ultimately to Christ.

Okay, fourth, uh do not keep silent about your faith, apologize for it, or let it be treated as though it made no difference or should make no difference in their behavior.

That's another thing that's held in common.

So this is where we hold our faith with the centrality that we actually uh view it with uh within our lives.

So we're not seeking to uh apologize for our faith or to uh hold it sort of in a back corner or think, you know, this is just a faith that's just for the private part of my life.

It's it's not to be expressed publicly out in the world.

Rather, we view it as something that truly is a public truth uh that is meant to be lived out honestly and authentically.

So those four characteristics are actually characteristics of churches that have continued to grow.

Isn't that counterintuitive?

I think we would expect, like if we were to do, if we were to pull together a committee and do like a focus group and say, like, how would we want to tailor a church to our culture, one that was actually beneficial and one that was accessible and made sense to our culture?

We'd think, well, we need to make it low commitment.

We need to make it so that we're uh able to kind of come in and come out.

We need to make sure that we don't actually require or ask people to make affirmations of our faith.

Uh it would be better if it were vague and and exploratory and and deconstructive.

And it's precisely the opposite of what we find.

It's precisely the opposite.

See, uh the church offers some very unique things.

And when we try and make the church just uh map onto the desires of what it seems like uh we would want as a culture, we actually miss the beauty of what is on offer here.

You know, there's a freedom in commitment to one another.

How many of us have real relationships where we feel like we can share what's actually happening in our lives and then expect them to show up next week as well?

Very few of those are out there.

So embodying those values is supported by the structure of membership.

We've seen these glorious pictures of the church.

It knits itself together in love.

We see that every member is given this unique responsibility and gifting to participate in the church and in their participation, not by dissolving into some ideal picture of what a Christian should be that none of us can do, but simply by being their spirit.

Empowered selves support the growth of the body.

We see these glorious pictures of the church in that way throughout scripture.

Today I want to talk about how do we do that?

How do we participate?

How do we take this from just a structure to a culture that we get to experience?

And so we're going to look at a character in Scripture who is this small character, only referenced three or four times.

And he's referenced at the end of Ephesians, and his name is Tychicus.

Now, in Tychicus, we get to see in this really practical, I think it's going to shock you how simple of a way this is.

We're going to see how we can embody these values that Scripture calls us to so that our membership becomes meaningful to one another and not just like some strange church governance thing.

Because there's like me and like four other people that like reading about church governance.

And I don't even like it that much.

All right, so we're gonna look at Tychicus, and then we're gonna look at the two principles, these two actions that we can really do to see how membership can become meaningful.

All right, Tychicus, Ephesians 6, 21 through 22.

Paul is writing, he says, So that you also may know how I am and what I am doing, Tychicus, the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, will tell you everything.

I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage your hearts.

So at the close of Paul's letter to the Ephesians, there's not a lot of uh thank yous and please say hi to this person and tell these people to stop quarreling, and the way that Paul literally usually goes through his list of names and addresses particular people in the churches that he's writing to.

Instead, this time he just says, look, I'm gonna send Tychochus, and he'll explain all that, and he'll share how we are, and he'll maintain this human connection between us and your church, the apostles and the church.

Tychicus was likely from Asia Minor, which is where Ephesus is, and there's even evidence that he was from Ephesus and could have been a part of the original founding of the church in Ephesus, which Paul was not a part of.

And he is uh being sent then, in a sense, like back to his hometown, back to his home church, to share all that he's seen and learned and heard of uh what Paul is doing and how Paul himself is doing, and then to encourage the church that he's a part of.

Tychicus had this role at least one other time in scripture.

Uh, at the end of Paul's letter to the Colossians, to the church in Colossae, he uh it ends it with basically the same exact phrase about Tychochus.

Listen to this.

In Colossians 4, verses 7 through 8.

Colossians 4:7–8

He says, Tychicus will tell you all about my activities.

He is a beloved brother and faithful minister and fellow servant in the Lord.

I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage your hearts.

So, I want to look at these three qualities in Tychochus, these three simple qualities that Paul attributes to him these two times.

The first is he is a, Paul describes Tychicus as a beloved brother.

Now, what does that mean practically in terms of how it played out in Paul's life?

Well, Paul, especially towards the end of his ministry, was just experiencing a series of abandonments by close friends.

People who had been in ministry with him a long time, were just falling off as the persecution by the Roman Empire started to heat up.

And especially as Paul was moving closer and closer to the center of the persecution, which was in Rome itself.

And so these close friends, people he desired to be with and who helped him through seasons in the past, were just falling away.

But Tychicus didn't fall away.

He was a beloved brother.

Paul looks at him and says, I love him.

He's as close as a brother to me.

That was the type of relationship and experience they had.

You know, I I've been preaching and doing ministry now for like five years, and I'm just starting to see the this sort of trend of after it's been it's been five years, you know, for some folks that I've been praying for and ministering to, and I'm just starting to see fruit.

You know, just starting to see like, hey, this is this seems to be really taking place in your life.

You know, there were some real lulls, and this seemed out uh, you know, impossible before.

And and now, just five years, there's, which is a short time, there's this transformation that I'm getting to see taking place in people's lives who I love.

And what what did we do, you know, to see that transformation?

Just showed up.

You know, just stayed close.

We didn't give up on people, stayed close to friends and and kept praying, kept pulling for their faith.

You know, those are beautiful things.

There's a character in that, a simple character of Tychicus is a beloved brother to Paul.

It's because he's stuck around.

We need each other, we need people in our lives who stick around, who stay close to us in all kinds of seasons because our lives are crazy.

They go through such outrageous things that we would never have planned.

I remember, oh, you know, there are some folks that we had dinner with a while back that were some of our first friends in the church here, before I was working here or anything.

And we were talking through like these past five or six years since we moved to Denver.

We realized, you know, there's been so many changes in our in our families, people moving here, moving away, you know, uh marriages and friends moving away and friend groups changing.

And some of our friends in the church, we realized this is the most consistent feature of our lives was these friendships in the church.

This feeling of constancy from just a small group of people.

That's brotherly love.

Tychicus embodies that.

Next, Paul describes Tychochus as a faithful minister.

And you can see this in just what Paul entrusts Tychicus with doing.

He's meant to go there and share the news of how what Paul is doing, what his activities have been, and to share how Paul and the rest of the brothers and sisters in the church are doing.

And so Paul knows I can trust him to relay the truth.

I can trust him with the word of God in that he'll go to a place and he'll faithfully relay it.

So that when this is given to Tychekus to share the word of God, it's just uh it Paul's like it's off my plate.

You know, I don't even have to worry about it anymore.

Tychicus is going to Ephesus.

We're fine.

You know, we this is a characteristic that we ought to embody with one another.

You know, I'm going to uh this parish dinner, and and I I feel like I can really share how things are going in my life, and that I'll sh I'll receive honest biblical counsel back from my friends.

You know, it doesn't need to be expert, biblical counsel, whatever that means.

It's just, hey, you know, this is remember the gospel.

Hey, I noticed you're like feeling so down and depressed.

Don't forget how beloved you are in Christ.

You can say that to yourself in a mirror over and over again.

And it it may go down into your heart a bit more, but when a friend looks you in the eyes and reminds you of your position in Christ, you're able to receive it.

Now you'll need to grow and develop and become the type of person who can trust others.

We all need to do that.

So that when someone shares our belovedness in Christ, we're able to receive it by just saying, like, look, I trust you.

So I'm going to trust my position in Christ.

But that is a faithful minister.

And finally, Tychochus is described as a fellow servant.

Now, what this means about Tychochus's heart is that he is not a consumer of the church, but he views himself as someone who goes to the church to serve.

He is sent to the Ephesians to be a servant to that church, and he embodies this position.

Now, there are two qualities that I think go into uh embodying the position of a servant.

The first one is, of course, humility.

And that's one that says uh the the judgments that I make of this place uh I see as areas where perhaps I could step in and help.

That there are uh I am in a position where I'm seeking to be of use in this place.

And so there's there's a humility there where you view your your life and you view especially your relationship to the church, not as what is the church doing for me.

Who is it?

What is not at JFK, right?

Yeah, all right.

Ask not, I can't do like a JFK accent.

What you can do for your church.

No, but you know what I'm saying.

So he had that position.

So the first of this character of being not a consumer but a servant is humility.

But the second is confidence because you only serve if you think you have something of meaning to contribute.

So you have to have this sort of dual package that Tychokis has, which is first humility, I'm gonna count others above myself, and secondly, there's a confidence of I think I am actually needed here.

You know, there's there's things that only I can contribute to this body.

And it may be, well, I'm the only one connected in these particular relationships, or I'm brand new, so I can bring a perspective that the folks that have been attending forever simply can't bring.

Whatever it may be, it's this coupling of humility and confidence.

I have something to contribute here that makes a servant a servant.

So there are those three qualities that we should see and be inspired by in Tychicus.

Brotherly love, that he is a beloved brother, he's a faithful minister, and he's a fellow servant.

Now, these characteristics are what we want to see move from just something that's you know supposedly in the structure of our church to something that's really in the culture of our church by looking at someone like Tychicus and being inspired by it.

Now, to say like just go and uh go and be a beloved brother, be a faithful minister, go uh be a fellow servant uh is helpful, uh, but it'd be nice to be a little more practical, right?

So I'm gonna try and be practical.

I'm not good at this.

Uh I'm good at theory, I'm a much more theoretally theoretical person, but let's try and be practical and see these two simple practices that we can seek to do and perform uh in our church body.

And these are demonstrated by Tychus.

They're the very thing that Paul calls him to do.

He is called to share and encourage.

These are the two things.

You know, start listening now.

These are the two things that we're gonna practice together.

We're gonna share and encourage.

All right, so first sharing.

Um this is in uh Colossians 4.8.

So we're gonna leave Ephesians, but he's talking about the same person, it's the same task that's given in Colossians.

Colossians 4.8, excuse me, Paul says, I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage your hearts.

So we see those two things.

He's sharing how they are, and he's sent to the church to encourage their hearts.

So, first, sharing.

Tychicus is sent to share something so simple.

He's sent to share how they're doing.

You can share this.

Do you hear you have something to share with the people in your church?

Because what are you being called to share?

What is something that's essential for you to share with the people in your church?

How you're doing.

This would look something like when someone asks, How are you?

you would answer.

Now, look, this is challenging.

I I understand.

This is not something that I am good at.

This is like you we can talk about, I've got like a whole list of things I want to talk about with you.

And me, I am not on the list.

It's in some of you, some of you are the opposite, you know, it's like, hey, like you're finally a listening ear, I'm gonna break it off and take it home.

Uh but there is a there is this biblical call to share how God is working in our lives.

The closeness we're feeling with God, the distance we're feeling with God, the the things that we're praying for and not seeing evidence of, or the things that we're praying for and seeing real answers to those prayers.

So we're called to be sharing those things with one another.

And it's a two-step process to be able to share that well.

The first step is pay attention.

Pay attention to your days, pay attention to your weeks.

We uh taught this class for a while here at RCD, and we would we would open each class each week with two questions.

The first question was, what has God been showing you lately?

And the second was, what's your prayer request?

And that first question, what's what do you think God's been showing you lately in your life?

Can just break open so much.

We were able to create such a depth of community just by that one question.

And so consider in your life, and here's the great news.

You don't have to make anything up.

You don't, you don't, you don't have to fabricate the answer to this.

Don't, in fact.

That would be counterproductive.

But it's what has God been showing me lately in my life?

It's that I'm I'm not good at waiting.

You know, and I think he I think he has me in a season of waiting like that.

And so how do people wait in scripture?

It's like, well, they do a lot of crying out, so maybe you should be crying out to God.

Hey, maybe I could cry out with you.

It's sharing, how are you doing?

So, first is pay attention, and the second, share what God is doing in your life and and and where you are with God in your life as though you were sent to share it.

Share it as though this is news that you've been given, because it's what Tychekus is doing.

You know, he's a part of how they are, and he's sent to share it.

Basically, like this is news that I have of the way God is working in my life, and I'm going to share it as though I'm responsible to convey this.

Because ultimately, our stories are not just about us.

Our stories belong to God, and they are meant to demonstrate his glory in all kinds of ways.

And so we are stewards of the very way that God is working in each of our lives.

And so we ought to share it with one another as though God Himself sent us to each other with these stories.

To say, you know what, this past week I had this really hard thing happen, but then I prayed and I got a phone call from this friend that I just didn't expect.

And you know, it really felt like God was paying attention and that he noticed me there.

You know, when we start to, as a people, become surrounded by those types of stories, our eyes begin to be opened to the tangible work of Christ in the world.

And our eyes are constantly, this is why paying attention as is step one.

It's so important.

It took until the 21st century for the world to realize that the most lucrative commodity you can get your hands on is attention.

And that's why all of you, when you leave here and you grab your phones, you're gonna be, you're gonna be fought over for your attention.

And your attention is constantly trying to be drawn towards ways in which God is absent and not working.

And so we need to recapture for one another our attention for the way that Christ is working in the world.

And that happens in your story, your how your life is uh taking place, and then you sharing that with one another.

So pay attention and share it like you're sent.

You know, like you have a responsibility to share this.

Lastly, the second thing, so share, and the second thing is encourage.

Encourage one another.

It says, I have sent him to you for this very purpose that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage your hearts.

Courage is something that we can give to one another.

Did you guys watch the Michael Jordan documentary?

This occurred to me.

Uh Michael Jordan documentary, it's on Netflix.

Fine, what are you doing?

Uh uh it's called Is it called The Last Dance?

Yeah.

So really great documentary, but he he not that he's like particularly someone you want to emulate, but there's uh oh, he doesn't seem very happy.

He just doesn't.

Uh but the uh uh he talks about Scottie Pippen and how like he couldn't have he couldn't have accomplished all that he accomplished without Scottie Pippin.

But Scottie Pippen couldn't really stand up for himself, you know, and he needed someone next to him who was aggressive on the court, but he learned that Michael Jordan had no lack of aggressiveness or self-confidence.

Uh and he learned that when he was standing next to Scottie Pippin, Scottie Pippin became strong.

We need each other to make ourselves strong.

That we we need to encourage one another, give each other courage, give it to one another.

Uh now we've we vastly underestimate the role of encouragement in the Christian life.

Of just saying, like, hey man, get back out there.

Like you, like if you're not praying, pray.

If you're not going to church, go.

Like these things help.

Come on, do you do what you know works, encourage one another to uh uh encourage one another to continue on in the Christian faith.

Now, for Paul, this encouragement is directly connected to sharing our stories.

So listen to this.

This is Colossians 2, verse 1.

Colossians 2:1

Paul says, For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face, face to face.

Paul wants to share his struggles with the others in the church.

If I were to share, here's the way I often think: Paul and I are both church leaders, but here's how counterintuitive this this this is.

I think like, okay, what's gonna make the church work, it's that everything's going great all the time.

And when

What I need to convey to our church, like if this thing's gonna work and not fall apart, it's that I'm fine, everything's fine, it's awesome, get on board because this is so cool and fun.

And there are like seasons where that's where that's wonderfully true.

There are many others where that's not the case at all.

Because what is church like?

It's a lot like life.

Sometimes it's great, sometimes it feels like we're coming apart at the seams.

And so what it it now, Paul isn't like me, he's matured beyond this.

Paul, it's like, I'm gonna, I want to share with them my struggles.

Otherwise, what might they think?

They might think that what's happening with them and in their lives and their experiences and the way the gospel is manifesting in their life, they might think that's strange, but it isn't strange.

This is what it's like out here.

This is what it's like to live in a fallen world.

And what are we proclaiming?

What do we remember that we proclaim?

It's not ourselves, it's Jesus Christ.

And not just Jesus Christ, it's Him crucified.

What is the picture of our faith?

It's that there is this deep suffering in our lives, but our hope is that they end in glory.

And so we encourage one another by sharing our stories.

Paul sharing his struggles.

So that becomes such a source of encouragement if you're feeling particularly down in your faith, or uh you're you're in a season of weakness or whatever it may be, and you come to your parish dinner and uh or you're grabbing lunch with a friend from the church, and uh they they share like, hey, I'm actually like really struggling with this part of my faith right now.

What do you what do you receive in that?

Oh, this is kind of what it's like, isn't it?

You're you're struggling and and you're trusting Christ's faithfulness.

I guess we don't need to turn and run, do we?

This isn't strange, is it?

Christ can comfort us even in these places, can't he?

So listen to how he he ties this in.

Paul says, I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you, and for those at Laodicea, and for all who have not seen me face to face.

And then the next verse, why?

Why does he want them to know his struggles?

That their hearts may be encouraged.

Colossians 2, 2, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love to reach all the riches of full assurance, of understanding in the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ.

There's so much there.

It's just it's such a simple thing that Paul is doing, and he and he makes sure to do with his letters.

He's like, we gotta know how we are, like what things are really like out here.

So I'm gonna send Tychochus, like with each letter that I send, I'm gonna send someone so that they know how we are.

And we're gonna share with them legitimately what our struggles are on their behalf.

What are your struggles for the people in your church, for the for the people that you love?

Share those struggles that their hearts may be encouraged.

Why would they be encouraged?

Well, we we spoke about that.

It's because even in the midst of their struggling, they remain bound to Christ.

That they might be knit together in love, in true love, which sees the reality of one another's lives and then hopes for the best for one another.

And that we might be knit together in that love.

And what does that accomplish when we become knit together to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding?

Okay, so full assurance.

How many of us have a faith that is constantly plagued by are we in or are we are we out?

Do we have any sort of rest in our faith in Christ?

Well, that type of assurance is not something that you can go and conjure up on your own.

There is not enough time, there's not enough space in life, in existence as a human, for you to introspect enough to develop your own assurance.

That's something we have to receive from one another in sharing our stories, in seeing Christ work in the ordinary ways that he works in our lives.

So all in what do we receive there?

It's a riches of that assurance and understanding, and understanding the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ.

Here's what we're looking to expose when we share and encourage one another.

Here's what we're looking to discover with a church governance structure of membership and commitment.

What we're looking to expose is this the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ.

He shows that to us by the grace of God shining through the weaknesses and struggles of our own lives.

Look at, look, when we get to know one another's and our own brokenness in a real way that's that we can where you're really known by other people.

What shines forth is not your own glory, it's something much better.

It's the glory of Christ that we get to see.

And who is Christ?

Why uh why does the church have this opportunity to become a culture like none other in the world?

It's because we aren't bound together by the goodness of one another.

We're bound together by the goodness and the glory of Christ.

And a lot of times, you know what that looks like?

If Christ can save them, then he can save me.

You know, I thought Christ wasn't working in my life at all.

And then now that I've gotten to see pictures of the way that he looks, it actually looks a lot like this.

You know, I I thought that I thought that me coming and confessing this sin to this to this group of Christians once again would discredit me from my faith.

And as I remember the gospel, I realize that it knits us together in love, and we're actually enjoying the riches of full assurance of a righteousness which is not ours, but a righteousness that we receive by faith, Christ's own righteousness, which is made ours.

And it is that righteousness that we rest in.

See, this is the point of membership.

This is the point of being a person like Tychicus and sharing our stories of what Christ is doing and encouraging one another.

It's so that we might fully see and proclaim and experience the love of Jesus Christ towards us.

This is not just because it would be a nice thing to be a part of a group like that.

Of course, it would be.

It would be wonderful.

But what's more wonderful than that is these ordinary things are the means that Jesus has given us to participate in his love.

We might receive it.

All right, let's take a question and then we'll take communion.

How do we pursue membership while at the same time enabling newcomers and spiritual explorers to feel part of our community?

I love this question.

It like warms my heart that somebody would ask that.

And it is like the great dilemma of the structure that we've created.

Because uh what's challenging is this seems hard to become a member.

Like if I'm just I'm coming just to check out the church, you know, and and just to kind of maybe dip my toe in and re-experience these things.

So first of all, they're not opposed to one another.

The idea of deep community and being able to bring others in, those are not uh opposed to one another.

They actually support one another.

So what is one of the greatest testimonies of our witness?

John in John 13, Jesus gives this new commandment to his disciples.

And he says, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.

And this is how they will know that you are my disciples by your love for one another.

So, how are people brought in to a community of Christians?

Well, first they have to see something that actually testifies to the authenticity of that community in order for it to actually be compelling to them, for the spirit to utilize it, so that they might see something that's new and different and strange as compared to other communities in the world.

And that's the first testimony to that is our love for one another.

And secondly, we are a sent people.

We are a people who are not just seeking to develop a world that's enjoyable for ourselves.

In fact, if you actually lean into Christian community, what you'll discover is this is a bunch of people that I would not have chosen to be friends with.

And you'll find some of your most wonderful friends there.

And as a sent people, that means our our eyes are open to to look for potential new friends who we we never would have otherwise been friends with, perhaps.

And then how do you how do you move in that relationship to bring them in?

Look, we don't we don't share, listen, this is I think this might be helpful.

We don't share and encourage one another because we finally found a safe place to share.

We share because we understand that we are safe in Christ.

And so we can share in dangerous places for us to share.

Does that make sense?

That allows for a space for people to be brought in, you know, by you sharing your story, even at great risk to yourself.

And then you get beat up a little bit and you come back and you say, What has Christ been doing in your life?

I've been trying to share how he's a part of my life with friends, and I feel so foolish and strange.

Yeah, I know, me too.

You know what a great conversation to have.

Jesus invites us into his table, uh, gives us to one another so that we might participate in his glory.

It's him who unites us, it's him who draws us in.

Let our hearts be fixed and focused on Christ, what he has accomplished for us, abiding in him.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 23 and following, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you, do this in remembrance of me.

1 Corinthians 11:23

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

We have a Lord who gave himself for us.

His body was broken, his blood was poured out, and by coming to him in faith, we might receive his very righteousness to stand confidently before the Lord, as we are, but in him.

Today, if you are a Christian, come forward and celebrate at his table, and then consider what a story he has given you by wrapping his by wrapping your story up with his.

Seek to share it like your sent and encourage one another, that we might be drawn towards a fuller assurance of our rest in Christ.

Holy Father, I pray that you would use this communion, bless this meal that we are about to participate in.

Let us recognize how as a church we come to the same table.

And Lord, let us uh uh by your spirit it enable us to take these structures and turn them into a culture that we might uh gain a new assurance of your love towards us.

We have this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.