Today in our sermon
series we finally take a look into what has become one of the most popular
topics for churches around the nation; that is church growth. If you attend any type of pastor’s seminar or
venture to take a look at some of the books in a Christian bookstore geared
towards churches, you will surely find many that deal with this topic of church
growth. 5 easy things for church growth,
10 ways to tell if you church is
growing, Is your church growing or
dying? Now these are some made up book titles but I bet you would be able to
find some actual books out there that are eerily similar. Online you can find
signs, coffee mugs, Bible studies, and sadly yes even sermons, that are
guaranteed to help your church grow; well maybe not the guaranteed part, but
you get the point. Even in our conference there seems to be seems to be a push
towards more numbers, as we record and analyze our average worship attendance
each week as part of our Vital Congregations initiative. This push for growth
is not unfounded either, Jesus tells us in Matthew 28 to, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Now here in the third chapter of 1 Corinthians Paul addresses this issue of
church growth. Finally we are no longer talking about a theology of Jesus as
the head of the body of Christ, no longer are we talking about unity in the
church, no longer talking about wisdom and spiritual disciplines, we are
talking about church growth! How exciting, except we are still talking about
all those things, because while we are talking church growth is very different
than what we normally discuss.
Paul’s discussion about church growth is not a discussion
about numbers, in fact Paul’s message to the Corinthians in our chapter for
today is not even explicitly evangelistic. So far we have been talking about
what it takes, what it means to come together as the body of Christ, and here
Paul does not abandon this idea. Paul
picks up right where he left off. If we recall last week we talked about the
power of the Holy Spirit and how we had different means of grace by which we
are able to experience the grace of God.
Paul talked about how because we as humans are both physical and
spiritual beings, and that through the power of the Holy Spirit our spirit is
able to connect to the spirit of God. Now Paul picks up by talking about growth in
the church, but here Paul does not discuss growth in numbers, rather he
discusses growth in spirit.
In fact Paul calls the members of the church of Corinth
babies. Yes you heard that right he says, “ And
so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but
rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.” Paul calling the
people of Corinth babies, or infants cuts two different ways. The first is a
harsh indictment of the church, or in other words Paul is intentionally
insulting the Corinthians. He goes back
to the division that has been going on in the church, and calls their actions
into question. He once again mentions
the divide that has been caused by following the different leaders of Paul and
Apollos and essentially calls the conflict childish.
He says, “for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is
jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving
according to human inclinations? Paul tells
the people that though they claim to be spiritual people, full of spiritual
gifts, they act no different than those of this world. That through their
actions there is no way to tell whether they are Christian or
not. That people who were spiritually
discerning God’s will would be able to recognize that the way they are acting
is not conducive to growth as the body of Christ. They are acting like babies.
Paul drives the issue home further,
he says, “ For when one says, "I belong to
Paul," and another, "I belong to Apollos," are you not merely
human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to
believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave
the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything,
but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters
have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of
each.” Paul acknowledges that though he and Apollos may have had their
differences, that they are still working together fulfilling their own role in
kingdom building. Paul is the planter, Apollos is the waterer, but God gave the
growth. We actually lose some of the
intensity of this point in this translation, for the Greek actually says
something more in verse 8 more along the lines of, “the
planter and the waterer are one.”[1] That though Apollos and Paul differ, though
they have different gifts and responsibilities, that they are one because they
both work together in strengthening the body of Christ. Paul calls the Corinthians infants, because
they have failed to see that how they are behaving spits in the face of body of
Christ.
Like I said earlier however, Paul’s
use of the word infant has two sides to it; it was an insult as we have just
discussed, but at the same time it was instructive. In chapter 2 Paul has just
told us that we are able to obtain the mind of Christ through the power of the
Holy Spirit. That since we are spiritual beings the Holy Spirit connects us
closer to Christ. As we talked about
last week however this is not an instantaneous event. Our first moments as a
Christian does not mean that we know it all; in fact if we can look at our own
spiritual lives and realize that there is still a lot that we have to learn. It
is for this reason that Paul calling the Corinthians infants or babies is also
quite fitting, for we are all infants in our spiritual walk. It is a reminder that Christianity is not a
name it and claim it title, where we are baptized and then are allowed to go
about living our lives as if nothing has changed, for if we go about living our
lives as if nothing has changed, then spiritually nothing really has changed.
We receive grace from God, inviting us to come closer, but if we do not
continually seek to be closer to God,
why would we expect it to happen? Jesus in the gospel of John tells us
that we must be born anew, born of the spirit, and at baptism that is exactly
what happens, but we must remember that is but the birth. If we do not seek to
be drawn closer to Christ through the grace of God, then we are exactly what
Paul says we are; infants. For this reason we must continue to seek the
grace of God through those means of grace that we talked about last week. We
must continue to pray, both in private and with others. We must continue to
receive the sacraments, as often as possible in fact. We must continue read the
Bible and to also discuss it with others, because though our culture tells us
the importance of our personal faith, we must remember that we are members of
the body of Christ, and therefore our faith is not just a personal faith, but
one that is connected to all members of the body. We must be in service to those in need,
seeking justice where injustice lies. When we talk about church growth, we must
first talk not about growing in numbers, but growing in in faith, or in
spirituality as Paul puts it.
Paul makes a wise observation about
growth however, and that is that things change when we grow. It is in making
this point that I believe Paul’s term of infant is so powerful. After calling
the Corinthians infants, he makes an interesting analogy using baby food. He says, “I fed you
with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food. Even now you
are still not ready,” Paul reminds us that in our own
physical lives the nourishment we receive changes. When we are infants we are
fed milk, when we grow a little we begin to eat baby food, mashed up carrots or
peas, pretty bland food, As we grow we begin to eat more and more; when often
begin to like spices that we didn’t use to, and we begin to recognize our need
to eat healthier as well. Our growth in Christ is very much like this. When we first came into the church we
probably came and grew from simple messages of faith. Jesus loves me this I
know, for the Bible tells me so. “For God so loved the world that he gave his
only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him shall not die but have
eternal life.” The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.” We were satisfied with just sitting back and
being passive listeners in worship, and an occasional Bible study would fill
us, and we would never really wrestle with some of the difficult
questions. Why do bad things happen to
good people? What really is the
trinity? How do we interact with other
Christians who have some different theological ideas than us?
Paul reminds us that in the beginning of our new life as
a Christian we are fed what he calls baby food. This sounds harsh, but in
reality there is nothing wrong with this. For most of us when we are young in
our spiritual lives this is what we need to ground and strengthen our faith. It
would be almost foolish to demand answers to those hard questions from someone who
is still young in their faith. The
problem arises when we never move past baby food. If we live with a shallow
understanding of our faith, then our faith will be shallow. As we have said our
goal as Christians, our goal as the body of Christ is not to be baptized and
then just sit and wait, but we must continue to grow closer to God. We must
continue to strive towards Christian perfection, that is to love as God loves.
That means we need to move past baby food, and start feeding us with the rich
nourishment that God provides to us through those means of grace that we talked
about last week. It might mean a more
active role in worship or in the life of the church, it may mean taking more
time for prayer, or reading the Bible more, or even reading in through the lens
of views that might challenge your own. Just like our bodies that grow when we
take on the nourishment that we need, so too will we grow both individually and
together as we continue to grow in our faith. You see those church growth
seminars, books, and vital congregation statistic collection is not wrong about
our need to grow by reaching out to others and bringing them into the church,
but real church growth begins with how we push ourselves, challenge ourselves
and grow in our faith. Because others will see that growth in the church, and
see the growth in our personal lives and say, I want that in my life, I want to
be a part of that. The real growth of
this church, the real growth of any church, begins within.
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