The Mission and Message of the Church

 “What Are We Here For? The Purpose and Mission of the Church”

 Message @ Jericho Ridge Community Church –Sunday, April 19, 2015

Text: I Corinthians 3:6-17 // Series: Messy Church

This past week, I was working on the message, and working and something didn’t settle with me.  As we have moved into our Messy Church series in the New Testament book of I Corinthians, I was tasked with defining the nature and mission and message of the church.  Who are we. What are we here for.  But I was really struggling with what I had prepared from I Cor 2. So on Friday afternoon, I did something I very rarely remember doing.  I marched into Pastor Keith’s office and said, I don’t think I can preach the text I have in the Info Sheet.  The more I pray and listen and discern, the more my heart and mind go to chapter 3 which you are preaching on next weekend.  So I asked him if I could steal his text.  Straight up Pastoral robbery. And he graciously said yes.      

Part of what was bubbling up in my heart is the notion that when it comes to understanding the purpose and mission of the church as a church, there are multiple word picgtures uses in the Bible to help us understand not only what the church IS but how we are to act toward one another.  In fact, if you read through the New Testament, there are 96 different images used to describe the church (Minear qtd in McKnight).  Now trust me, this sermon is not going to be an exploration of all 96 of them this morning, let me be clear J.  But the writer of I Corinthians, the Apostle Paul brings three of them very clearly into focus in Chapter 3 and its there that I invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning. 

Paul, under the guidance of God the Holy Spirit, is writing this letter to correct some of the messy thinking that he observes going on in the church in the first century city of Corinth.  One of the things that he sees is that they are glomming on to personalities or leadership styles and forgetting what’s at the heart of the church.  Let’s look at I Cor 3:6 I’ll read through verse 9 and I want you to watch and listen for the first of three word pictures of the church that Paul uses in these verses.  I Cor 3:6-9              

What was the word picture?  A field.  Why would Paul use that kind of language to describe the church?  Just like Jesus taught about the kingdom of God in parables, Paul here wants his images to carry along both a narrative of his experiences with the Corinthian church and also a teaching component.  Both a story that can be remembered and an action point that can change behavior.  Author Len Sweet calls this a narraphor.  It’s a both a metaphor and a narrative – so a narraphor.  I point this out also as justification that I am not the only person who makes up words, as Pastor Keith and Tammy in our office often accuse me of.  Narraphor may indeed be a made-up word but the Rev. Dr. Leonard Sweet got it past both an editor and a publisher and wrote a book about it so therefore that gives it automatic credence, right?  But I digress.  We’re supposed to be talking about Paul’s words, not mine. Our first narraphor is that the church is like a field.               

Why is this helpful for us?  Well, look at what the Corinthians are fighting about… they want to know who’s in charge of their church, Paul or another leader and teacher named Apollos.  Some in the Corinthian church are saying “Man, do I love Paul.  He founded this church.  He’s an apostle.  I love his teaching.  I’m a Paul person all the way!”  And others were saying “Are you nuts?!  This church belongs to Apollos! That Paul guy left years ago to move on to other places and all he does is write the occasional letter!  Apollos has been working his tail off here for years, teaching and caring for us.  He’s made it what it is today.  Forget Paul – this church belongs to Apollos!”

And I love what the narraphor does to blow apart their argument!  Paul says to them “oh, you want to talk about who owns this church?  Well, if the church is a field, then sure, I planted the seeds.  The seeds of the gospel and saving faith in Jesus Christ.  And yes, Apollos then watered and nurtured this seed of truth in your hearts and there was growth in your lives spiritually and in the church.  But if we want to talk about who’s in charge, well that’s neither of us.  That role belongs to God.”  Look at how many times Paul points them beyond the workers to the field owner.  In verse 5 he says to “We are just servants, we received our assigned work from God.  In verse 6 AND again in verse 7, he says the most important part isn’t the planter or the waterer, it’s God who makes things grow.  We don’t make the church grow.  We do the work that the Lord gives us to do – we don’t sit around.  In verse 8 Paul reminds us that we’ll be rewarded for our hard work.  But ultimately, we can plant and water and work ourselves to the bone, but it is the Lord alone who brings growth.  That’s true in your own life and also in the life of the church. 

This is because ultimately, it is our job, but it’s not our field.  God owns this field we have the privilege of managing it and working in it.  The church belongs to God.  This is a challenge for me because we can say “oh yes and amen.  The church belongs to God” by then our language gives us away.  We say things like “my church does it this way” or “at OUR church we don’t argue about silly stuff like that”.  Sometimes those pronouns are completely innocent. But sometimes they aren’t.  Sometimes they are indicative of a possessiveness that is an affront to the true Owner.  You see the church doesn’t’ belong to those who work in the field.  The church, this church, belongs to the field Owner: God.  It doesn’t belong to the people who have attended since the start.  It doesn’t’ belong to the people who give time and money to this ministry.  The assignments & outcomes for Jericho Ridge are all firmly in the hands of God as Owner.  Everything flows from here.  Our structures – those who lead, lead under the authority of the Head of the Church which is Christ Jesus.  Our Decisions – we make them in light of “would the Owner be pleased if we invested ourselves as a faith community here?” and our attitudes. 

Here’s where it pushes into application for me…  If God assigns the work to you and me and us, if He is in charge of the outcomes and makes things grow when and how He wants to, and if it’s His field, then when things go well, you and I have nothing to brag about.  And when things are hard, but we are being faithful to our assignment, then we have nothing to fear or to worry about.  Understanding the church as God’s field This should produce incredible humility in us.  We are called to serve well and with diligence to pray hard, to invest with integrity and passion and the gifts God gives each and every one of us.  But not with a burden of ownership or control.  The church does not belong to us.  It belongs to God. 

In his commentary on I Corinthians, Dr. Gordon Fee points out that the sentence construction in the original language Paul wrote this is, Greek, makes this abundantly clear.  When the take the Greek and you translate it directly into English, well, I just couldn’t help myself but think of a certain small green purveyor of wisdom from the Star Wars series.  Master Yoda.  Because the sentence reads like Yoda speaks: “God’s we are, being fellow workers.  God’s field, God’s building you are.” (Fee, 134).  The emphasis is all on who God is and what God is doing and not on how great we are.      

You can see in that sentence that Paul doesn’t waste any time at all introducing his next narraphor!  .n fact, it butts right up against the first one in verse 9.  Look with me at I Cor 3:9-11.

Why the narraphor of A building?  As a church, you are God’s building, Paul says.  Now, as Pastor Keith mentioned last weekend, this can give us language confusion because we use the word in so many different ways.  “Oh, there’s a church up on 96^th Ave at 210” by which we mean a physical building.  Or we might say “which church do you belong to? Or “What kind of church do you go to?” and we’re trying to establish denominational affiliation like Mennonite Brethren or stylistic orientation.  Or we say “I’m going to church today” by which we mean a service of worship.  But when Paul says the church is like a building, he is using an architectural and construction narraphor which he uses in a lot of other places in his writings. Paul speaks of Christ as the foundation or cornerstone in Acts 4:11.  He’ll speak in Ephesians of growth in the spiritual life being like a building process or of Christians being built together in Christ.  What is he getting at? 

In his field narraphor, Paul is working to address who’s in charge.  With the church as a building, his driving question seems to be (?) What’s the Plan?  Is there a blueprint for building this thing called the church?

This is a very legitimate question that has been argued about down through history.  Is there a “biblical” way to do church?  This has been the source of schisms and splits and division… It just gets messy.  One group sees the various core elements or marks of the church in one way another group in another way.  History has been littered with the carnage of messy church divisions over issues like infant baptism vs. adult baptism.  In recent history, churches get into messy places in discussions around things like “are we a seeker sensitive church vs. organic / house church / simple church”  “Are we attractional or missional?” 

We had to wrestle with these questions 10 years ago when we planted Jericho Ridge out of North Langley Community Church.  The launch team talked a lot about what shape a church might take that could reach people who God was brining to this area.  What would leadership in that church look like?  What would gatherings feel like?  While I can’t offer a full perspective on those discussions this morning in this text, Paul seems to suggest a few key things that whatever the structural realities, should be commonly understood and practices by all churches everywhere… 

God gives people both gifts and roles (I Cor. 3:10)

Paul says “I have been given God’s grace and part of that grace involves a skill set which I have put to work building and growing the church”.  We can trace this through Paul’s story as we read it in the book of Acts – he is a good foundation layer, or we might use the term church planter. 

CP Assessment I can remember   

I am deeply grateful that in Jericho’s history and in our present, God has graced us with gifted people who have stepped into roles with a posture of humility and have served well with the right mix of gifts God has given to them.  When we launched, we had people with entrepreneurial spirit who loved the excitement and push of getting something new off the ground.  As that phases felt like it was finishing, some of those people transitioned because they laid a foundation and now others were building on it.  There are people like our current elders team – Ralph, Karen, Tyler and David – whose gift set God is using to accomplish His purposes at this juncture in Jericho’s life.  I want to encourage you to consider that God has brought you here to Jericho at this time for a purpose.  To be part of building this church at this season in our life and in yours.  I believe that God has graced each of you with a unique set of gifts and passions and that it is no accident that He has brought you here at this season in the life of Jericho.  So I want you to ask yourself “what gifts do I have and what role can I play at this specific season in the life of Jericho?”   We’re going to explore this more as we come to the end of I Corinthians when we talk about spiritual gifts but I want to get you thinking about that now because God has placed you here for a reason in this season.  And it doesn’t mean that you’ll be here forever.  Paul laid a foundation and then moved on because he had fulfilled the role God had called him to for that season in Corinth.  But he understood his role and His gifts and how to apply them in ways that matched up with what the church needed at that period in its life.              

The other thing Paul is communicating to them with this narraphor is that you don’t get to simply pick & choose how you build.  You build on a solid foundation. God gives the church both a foundation & an ethic (3:11)

We talked about that foundation two weekends ago at Easter – that the church is birthed and built on message of the gospel - the life, death, resurrection of Jesus Chris as the Son of God.  This forms our message and shapes our mission.  Paul is going to warn them in the following verses that if they build in ways that don’t honour the instructions Jesus left for His church or if they build in a manner that is not consistent with the character of Jesus, the ethics of Jesus, an ethic of love for people, that this will be a problem.  HOW you build is as important as what you build.     

There some guidelines for life together that Paul is going to expound upon more as we get into the rest of the book.  Let me sketch them out briefly here for you using a construction metaphor that Paul likely didn’t imagine.  When you go onto a contemporary construction site, you often see a sign the highlight the “Site rules” – wear your safety equipment, etc.  Otherwise, if people don’t follow the guidelines, they can get themselves into big trouble – like this guy [photo of crane tipped on end] did!    

Joseph Hellerman, as he studied the 96 narraphors in the New Testament, isolated some common characteristics of what it means to build on the foundation of Christ in a way that is consistent with how the foundation has been laid.  We might say that these are

God’s blueprint for life together on the building site

1. We share our stuff together – ethic of generosity
2. We share our hearts with one another - authenticity
3. We stay, embrace the pain & grow up with one another – ethic of community we invite others to speak into our decisions and actions in ways that help shape us into the people God wants us to be
4. We set an example by how we live for a watching world

Do you remember how excited you got as a kid to take something you had built by hand to show and tell?  To be able to hold it up and say to others “look what I made!” and to explain to them how it was a reflection of who you are as a person.  Ephesians 3:10 says that God feels that same way about His church.  “God’s purpose is to use the church to display His wisdom in its rich variety to the watching world”.

“The church is God’s world-changing social experience of brining unlikes and differents to the table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together are designed by God to be. The church is God’s show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a family” (McKnight, FOD, 20). 

The church is God’s Show and Tell project… That’s why how we do life together at Jericho matters.  Its why how we handle conflict or disagreements matters.  Its why how we relate to other churches here in our city matters.  Because people ought to look at our corporate life and say “I want to be a part of that!”  I want to have people around me to pray for me when I am sick.  I want to work together to serve people who are poor and make a difference in the world.  I want people who are so vastly different from me in gifts or life-stage or race or education level to look me in the eyes and tell me they love me and are here for my growth.”  God’s express plan to change this world is to build His Church.  God loves His church and I want my heart and my life to be invested in the things that matter to God.  That’s why despite whatever challenges or celebrations we face as a community of faith, I love and want to continue to be a co-builder with you.  Because God is building His church and He is calling us to be workers in his field and co-labourers on His job site.       

Paul’s last narraphor comes in the subsequent verses.  Like the site rules, it comes with a warning.   I Cor 3:16-17

The word picture of the church as a Temple would have immediate resonance for two primary groups: For Christians with a Jewish background, this narraphor immediately connected them to the story of Israel in the Old Testament. The temple was the place where God dwells or inhabits.  The purpose was to be a light to the nations.  But the story of OT is in some ways, Israel’s failure to live up to this mission.  So with the advent of the church, God is about the same project: but he’s doing it with a much more diverse and multi-national family.  Look, for example, at how Paul starts the book of in I Cor. 1:2 – “I am writing to God’s church in Corinth, to you who have been called by God to be his own holy people.  He made you holy by means of Christ Jesus, just as he did for all people everyone who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ , their Lord and ours.”  For those gathered in the church in Corinth with a Jewish background it was VERY radical that what united people in God’s family wasn’t ethnicity or lineage, but was professed faith in Christ as Lord.      

But this wasn’t just radical for Jews, it was also radical for Gentiles or non-Jews.  For those with Gentile backgrounds, when Paul says “all of you together are the temple of God” they would immediately think of the pagan temples in Corinth, whichthey previously frequented. 

If the first question is “who’s in charge?” the second is “what’s the plan?” the third question is “What’s the outcome?”  Why did Jews go to the temple in Jerusalem and why did Gentiles go to temples in Corinth?  Worship.

Here’s where Paul pushes right against the grain of individualism in our culture.  The temple was a place not for individual worship, but for communal worship.  Paul is saying to the Corinthian church powerfully and directly – the Spirit lives in your midst when you gather together.  This is not a statement of individual filling of the Holy Spirit (though that is most certainly true), but that the Spirit lives amongst you when you are all together.  When we gather together in Jesus’ name, we experience the transforming power and presence of God by His Spirit.  Because when you say yes to Jesus, God calls us not just to Himself, but into His family.    You cannot be a Christian in complete isolation.  One of the core purposes God uses the church for in my life and yours isn’t to make us happy, but to make us holy.  God calls us into community to transform us.  To shape us by His Spirit as we gather with others who can help us in our journey. 

Now you might say “well, what happens if I don’t experience this?”  Erin Lane in her excellent book “Lessons in Belonging” which is on our recommended reading list for this series, says it this way:

“To show up in a place of worship is no guarantee that transformation will happen, that I will live differently as a result, that I will be made well by my prayers, that I will find a community that cares. Nor is it to say that because God promises to show up here with me that God will not show up there with you. What I mean when I say that God shows up in a place is that I am able to witness the presence of God, palpably, both because the biblical witness tells me this is where my people have known God to dwell and because the present witness show me how my people make an invisible God visible. By showing up at church, week after week, my body begs a witness greater than its own two eyes can see. It says ‘I cannot do this alone, even though I try.’” (110-111).

You cannot do the Christian life alone.  Even though you try.  That’s what the church is here for.  It’s part of the reason why we exist as Jericho Ridge.  We are becoming and making disciples who together are growing and building and worshipping and becoming the people God wants us to be.  As a gathered community, we receive and proclaim unity and peace and identification with the One to whom we belong.  As we do life together, we are strengthened for work and mission and we contribute to work and ministry.  As the Spirit fills and empowers us collectively, we go out individually into the world as sent ones.  As labourers in God’s field.  We live out our missionary purpose and bring compassion and justice and witness and proclamation.  The Father sends the son, sent the Spirit who sends the church – both collectively and individually.  The messy part comes in living out what God has already declared us to be: His Holy and precious people.  Workers in His Field.  Co-labourers on His job site. Worshippers in His Temple.  And this is a high and holy calling.  It’s not something we can do on our own.  We need each other.  And the world needs to see a fellowship of differents, of people helping not only each other but also a world in need to see that God’s Spirit is alive and well in you and me.  As one author put it, “What the world needs to see is the wonder and beauty of God-possessed personalities; men and women with the life of God pulsating within, who practice the presence of God and consequently make it easy for others to believe in God.” (qtd in Duncan Campbell’s biography).  That’s an incredibly messy task, but it is one that we are called to, both individually and corporately.  Let me pray with you as we worship together.