Ecclesiology: Church Expectations

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00:00
So, if you were here last week, as we have been doing in a normal way, I've been spending a few minutes in the Psalms, and then Brother Keith comes and brings understanding in a more systematic way.
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And then if you remember last week, as we were praying and I was anticipating Nicole's baptism, and it made me think, and if you remember I said I'm going to go off script, which I have a tendency to do sometimes.
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And I started to say some things about baptism, and one thing led to another, and if you remember we had a real good conversation tied in with what Brother Keith was doing, and as I was talking with Brother Keith this afternoon, we began to think about, well, let's do it again tonight.
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So, I'm not going to speak from the Psalm directly, but I want to help to give us some understanding on the subject that Brother Keith is going to have as far as the church's responsibility to its members, and the members' responsibility to the church.
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So to be interactive, and I think, I always have thought this way, especially in an environment and in a setup that we're in tonight like this, that being interactive with one another is a very good way to prompt one another, to teach one another, to learn from one another, and to grow.
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So I'm comfortable in this kind of a setup.
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So again, that's what we're going to do tonight.
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I'm going to say a few things about church membership, the responsibility of the church to its members, and then the members' responsibility back to the church, and I'm just going to give you some thoughts, kind of, I just want to get our thoughts moving, if you will, get our spiritual juices flowing, and then Brother Keith's going to come, and I'm sure he's going to put a lot more structure around it, and then I'm going to try to add to it as we're going through it, and that's why I got the little R2-D2 sitting there for a microphone.
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So with that as an introduction, just a few thoughts to get us started, and I want to say this first, and probably most importantly, that the topic of the church, the church's responsibility to its members, the members' responsibility to the church, is of the utmost importance.
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That I'm not sure, I know there are other important truths and doctrines and studies and practices, but the importance of the relationship of the church to itself, and then from itself out into the world at large, is of the greatest importance, and I have only really one reason to give you why that's true, and I would hope that we would all agree that this is the right reason, and it is exactly what Paul says in Ephesians.
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Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, and if there could be no other reason why the responsibility is of the utmost importance, both from, as we say, the church's responsibility to its members, or the members' responsibility back to the church, that is more than sufficient a reason why you and I ought to pay the most attention to this and seek to continually grow in it, and I'll say this, especially as Reformed people, and again, I want to just throw out some thoughts, but especially as Reformed people who believe in the Sovereign God and who believe in the cross in a very right way, that it was particular redemption, and because of that, if you think of it, Christ loved the church, and in that sense, he came to save his people from their sins and to unite in one, as Paul talks about in Ephesians, unite in one in Christ that you and I ought to realize this is of the greatest importance, that Christ loved the church and he gave himself for us, and we who believe, again, in this glorious truth that his atonement was effectual, purposeful, complete, that you and I would understand the importance also of church membership from both sides, because I think, and I hope that I'm on the same vein as my brother, when we think of the church's responsibility to the membership, many times we think of it as the oversight, or those that hold positions within the church, what their responsibility is to the general body, but there's also the other side where the membership has a responsibility to the church and to that oversight also, and so it goes both ways.
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And then I want to just say this as we begin to think about this, there are many misgivings about the church.
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There are many misgivings about the church from both sides, whether it be the church and its responsibility to the membership, or the membership and its responsibility to the church.
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There are many misgivings and if you think about it, I think you would agree that it goes both ways.
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So from the church's side, it could get very easily distorted where the church thinks that its responsibility to the membership is to do nothing but make them happy, and to make sure that they have a good experience, and to make sure that they leave, if you will, better than they came, whether it be on a Sunday morning or whatever.
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That to me is a misunderstanding.
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I'm not saying that those things are not included, but that is not the essence of the responsibility of the church to its members.
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And if you just, I'm going to read a little bit something to back that up.
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So there's that, there could be a misunderstanding that way, and I've seen it, and I'm sure many of you have.
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Then there's a misunderstanding that comes from the membership's responsibility back to the church.
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And there's many misunderstandings.
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Some people think all they have to do is show up.
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That's my responsibility.
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I just come.
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I'm here.
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What else do you want from me? I give money.
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I pay my tithe.
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If you want to use the word tithe, I don't think in today's churches they really want to understand what a biblical tithe is.
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It's more like 23 and a third than 10 percent.
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So we'll have to change the bumper stickers on the back of the cars.
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But nevertheless, some people think that as long as I show up and as long as I put in my money, that I have kind of checked the box.
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And it's the church's responsibility to do the rest.
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I'm here.
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You feed me.
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And that's a misunderstanding.
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And I hope that we will be able to open that up a little bit as we go on.
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And then I'm going to say this.
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I'm going to read quickly.
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And then I'm going to turn it over to Brother Keith, and hopefully we'll get some conversation going.
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And this is my own experience.
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So I'm going to give you an analogy.
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And it's my analogy.
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Not that I'm proud of it, but it's my analogy.
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So it makes a lot of sense to me.
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You know, we're all geniuses in our own mind.
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But anyway, this is my analogy, and it's really born out of – you know I've been a Christian 45 years.
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I've been a minister in now three different churches in different places of the country.
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And this is really born out of experience.
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And I wanted to say this and use this analogy because I really believe it has some truth to it.
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And that is that I have found in my experience that there's three kinds of people that are in churches.
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And although the faces change, these three things continually run through it.
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And I want to use the analogy, and it's my analogy again, the analogy of a robo.
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And I probably have said this before, but I'm going to say it again.
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So in my experience, you have three different kinds of people and three kinds of different people who are in a robo.
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There's the first group who are in the robo, and they got their hands on the oars, and they're rowing as hard as they can to help the robo go forward.
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Just rowing away.
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Then there's a second group of people.
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And the second group of people are those who are in the robo, and they really enjoy being in the robo.
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And they really enjoy the fact that there are other people who are rowing as hard as they can to go forward, but they themselves have no real interest in picking up an oar.
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And then there's the third group.
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And this might be a smaller group, but nevertheless, I've seen this in every experience that I've had.
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This third group, they're in the boat, and they are rowing in the opposite direction.
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And so the result of all that is either the boat goes nowhere, or it just keeps going around in circles.
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So I wanted to say that because I wanted to ask you to think about something tonight.
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I wanted to ask you that as we go through this tonight, that you would ask yourself which of those three describes you the best.
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Are you in the boat, rowing with all your strength to help the boat to cross the ocean? Or are you glad to be in the boat, happy that there are other people rowing, and yet you yourself really don't have too great of a desire to do much rowing, you'd rather sit while the others row? Or would it best describe you to say that you are someone who's in the boat, and you're rowing in the opposite direction? Again, that's my experience in the churches over the years, and I'm sure Brother Keith's going to use a lot more structure, and I look forward to that, and we'll have some interaction.
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But before I do that, I wanted to, and we just talked about this, what, 3 o'clock this afternoon we said we were going to do this, so I'm sure his is much more structured.
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Mine was in between me going home, eating dinner, taking a shower, and coming here.
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But I wanted to read just an excerpt or two from a book, and the book's title is exactly what I said, Jesus Loved the Church, and So Should You.
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And the author's name is Ed Blackburn, if you've never heard of him, he's a pastor out in Louisiana of a Baptist church.
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He's a real good writer.
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This book is available through Solid Ground Christian Books.
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I've read this book over the years a number of times.
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There's other books that are out.
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Mark Diva has a really good book out on Nine Marks of a True Church.
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There's many, but I wanted to read just two excerpts from the book real quick because they deal with the two subjects that Brother Keith's going to speak about.
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One is the church's responsibility to the members, and then the members' responsibility to the church.
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And so very briefly, and I'm going to kind of just pick out a few things he says.
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And in this chapter, it's one of the marks of a true church, and I really think that that's important because that's the responsibility of a church.
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They've got to understand what's required of them, and so you need to know what the marks of a church are.
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And he says this, he says, the first mark of a true church as held by the reformers, and of course he's looking back in history, was the true preaching of the word through the practice of a thorough exposition of the scriptures.
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By this practice, they asserted that everything in the church and life is subservient to the word of God alone.
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The first mark of a true church is how they handle the word of God.
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And ultimately, I believe that's the first responsibility of the church to its memberships, is to make sure they are true and honest and open with the word of God.
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And then he says, as a second mark of a true church, he only names three, there's more that could be had, but I'm just trying to get us to think a little bit.
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The second mark of a true church, according to the reformers, and again, think about this in church history, this is something that was held 400 or 500 years ago, and it was as true 400 or 500 years ago as it was in the days of the apostles, and it hasn't changed today.
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And the second mark of a true church, according to the reformers, was a proper view and observance of the sacraments.
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A study of the New Testament in early Christian history shows that the apostolic and post-apostolic churches had only two ordinances, baptism and the Lord's Supper, which we witnessed one of the ordinances as Nicole went through the baptismal waters last week, and as we do every Lord's Day, the second ordinance, which is observing the Lord's Supper.
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So he says the first mark of a true church is the presentation of the word of God.
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The second mark of a true church is their observance of the ordinances, so that means no more, no less, right? And then he says this, and this is just the last remark.
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The third mark, and this one is important, and I think this will enter into our conversation as far as the church's responsibility to its members, and the members' responsibility in return to the church.
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The third mark of a true church, according to the reformers, was a careful and faithful exercising of church discipline.
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And then he says, if the word and sacraments were the entrance into the church, church discipline was necessary to maintain the identity of those who entered.
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And I think this particular one is one where we in today's churches is drastically insufficient from both sides, partly because of the misgivings that I say that the church has.
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Because some people believe that the church's responsibility to members is to make them happy all the time, make sure they have a good experience, so they don't go down the block to someone else's church.
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But the church has a vital responsibility to discipline themselves.
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And Ed Blackburn is a Baptist, and I agree with him, and I know we believe that here.
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We are autonomous, right? So we're members of fire, which is what? Independent reform.
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Right.
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It's the fellowship of independent reformed evangelicals, right? So we are autonomous, self-ruled, under God, by the Spirit.
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But we must be those who are willing to discipline each other and every one of us.
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And certainly Paul brings that up, and Timothy even talks about an elder.
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No one is beyond discipline.
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So he lays that out as the three marks.
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And I'm sure Brother Keats is going to expand on that.
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And then I want to just quickly, and then I'll close, another chapter he has is, what are the responsibilities of church membership? And he lists five here.
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There's many more that could be had, but I just wanted to mention to you them.
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He says this, the first responsibility of church membership is loyalty to the church.
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First responsibility of church membership is loyalty to the church.
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By loyalty to the church, I mean fidelity to the teachings of the church as far as they are loyal to the Word of God.
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Get it? That one of the great responsibilities of the church membership is to be faithful to the church if the church is being faithful to the Word of God.
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There ought to be a loyalty that comes out of that.
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Then he says many other things.
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So that's a mark, that's something that we need to discuss.
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That if the doctrine is being taught and you are, you have covenanted to be part of a local body, you have a responsibility to be loyal to what's being taught, right? And to make sure what's being taught is, in fact, the Word of God.
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Then he says this.
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Attendance at all church meetings is another responsibility of church membership.
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And he goes back to the book of Acts, and he talks about how in the book of Acts, especially in Acts chapter 2, that the first Christians and members of the first church faithfully attended all church meetings, and so should the members of all Christ's churches 2,000 years later.
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And I'll just give you my thought on this.
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Sometimes churches are so pressed to have so many different ministries and so many different events and so many different opportunities that you wind up fracturing the church because you'll have this group who plays in this sandbox, but they don't play in that sandbox.
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And they attend this faithfully, but they don't attend anything else because they attend this faithfully.
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And I think we miss sometimes with that.
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I really do.
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I think we miss that as the apostles gathered in the first church, they held all things in common.
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I don't believe they worried about what time of day it was or would they get home in enough time to watch the football game.
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I don't think that was there.
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But anyway, I wanted to mention that, that that's another responsibility of the church, attendance.
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A third responsibility lies in the matter of financial giving.
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Giving is requisite so that the congregations can support its offices, take care of its necessary expenses, sustain benevolence and works of charity, and carry on the work of missions and the cause of Christ around the world.
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That is another responsibility of church, membership.
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And I think that could be opened up in many different ways.
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But nevertheless, that's a responsibility of the membership.
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And I said I was just going to talk for a second.
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People, again, let my analogy of the boat.
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You got some people who will row or give and give and give and give.
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And then you got other people who are in the boat, they're glad that the lights are on and the air conditioning is working, but they're not really that concerned about giving because they know other people are giving.
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Mutual ministry is another responsibility of church membership.
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Many people think their pastor and elders are the only ones who are to labor and serve Christ in the church.
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This is unbiblical thinking.
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And he opens that up.
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But that's another responsibility.
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And then finally, a fifth responsibility of church membership is to minister to the ones primarily responsible for ministering to the body, the pastors and the elders.
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In other words, the church has a great responsibility.
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The membership has a great responsibility.
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Those that have oversight have tremendous responsibility.
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Almost to the point where it's better not to than to.
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If you follow what I'm saying.
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You're better off not being in the ministry if you can avoid it.
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But the membership has a great responsibility to the elders and to those who have the oversight.
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And it's not just the elders, it's those who have the oversight in the church.
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And he says it this way.
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They are those who have pastoral oversight over you.
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They are not supermen, but servants of God who wrestle with weakness, temptations, sins, just as you do.
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You must encourage and honor these men because of their office and call.
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So I just wanted to kind of get your thoughts going with that.
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And with that, I want to turn it over to Brother Keith.
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And then maybe we'll have some interaction.
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And I'm sure he'll give this whole subject a lot more structure as we go.
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Thank you, Brother.
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I have handouts.
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I guess I should...
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Well, let me make sure I'm...
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It's the same one from last week.
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It's the same one from last week.
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Then you already have the handout.
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Anybody need one? I know Nicole wasn't.
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We're good.
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We're good.
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You were enjoying this soft mat, is what it was.
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Well, a lot of what Andy said, I will just say yes and amen.
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Last week, we looked at church membership.
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And on the first side of our handout, there's three questions.
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Is church membership in a local congregation biblical? We said yes, and I gave reasons why I believe that is true.
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How has church membership been misunderstood? I didn't really answer that question last week except to say, I think church membership has for far too long been understood as more of membership as in like a country club versus membership in a body.
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Whereas, when we come into a country club, we join for the benefits and entitlements of membership.
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And that's often the reason why we would join a club or a group because there's some kind of benefits or entitlements.
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But joining the church, the purpose of it is not for benefits and entitlements, but it's for service and for promoting the cause of someone else.
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I don't join the church to promote my cause.
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I join the church to promote the cause of Christ in whatever way that He will allow me to in His body.
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And then the third question is, what is church membership in a biblically functioning church? That's what takes us to the other side.
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And that's where we're going to be tonight.
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And Brother Andy, as I said, has already given us a lot.
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And I enjoy this going back and forth.
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And that's why we talked earlier.
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I said I really enjoyed how last week went.
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I said I'm going to give you your own microphone.
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So if you want to opine, people can actually hear.
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I have a microphone up here.
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You probably can't see it, but it's right here on the mega desk.
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I call this mega desk.
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This is my giant pulpit.
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Do you need one, Jack? Yes.
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A handout? No, I'm sorry, bro.
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Thank you, sir.
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Here's the front and back.
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So what I had done, when I was putting together Biblically Functioning Church, which is the book that I wrote on this subject, I wrote out what members should expect from the church and what church should expect from the members.
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And as I said, Andy's gone through a couple of these.
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But I have nine on the one side and nine on the other.
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And what I want to do is I want to help you to understand how these work together.
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As Andy said, there's a certain structure to what I want to show you.
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Because I do think that one of these will lead to the next all the way down the line on both sides.
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And I think of it like this.
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When someone comes to Sovereign Grace, like today, I did a private meeting today with a family that wants to join.
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They couldn't come to the membership class that we did when Nicole and Mr.
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Ron and Ms.
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Wilma came to the class.
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We had a class.
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Well, they were supposed to be here that day.
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They were sick.
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Couldn't come.
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So they called me.
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Can we do the class? We want to join.
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So can we join? So today I sat down with them for two hours and we just did the class privately with them.
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And we went through this list.
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And I said, you know, you guys are coming from another church.
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I don't know what you expected when you went to the other church.
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And I don't know what that church expected of you.
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But these are the things I believe should be expected.
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And that's why this is what we talked about.
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And the first one is if you go to a church, you should expect biblical preaching.
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Now, one might think that's the only kind of preaching there is.
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I want to tell you very, very clearly, it is not the only type of preaching there is.
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There's unbiblical preaching.
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There's extra biblical preaching.
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And you say, well, what's that? Extra biblical preaching is where people will start with the Bible and then they'll add a lot of extra stuff that's not biblical.
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And so it becomes unbiblical at that point.
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But there are some places that just deny the Bible.
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And that's unbiblical.
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And then there's extra biblical preaching.
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What you should expect from the preacher is that he's going to open the Word of God and he's going to explain the Word of God.
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He's going to apply the Word of God and then he's going to shut up.
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Because that's his job.
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To read the text, explain the text, apply the text, and then stop.
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Because that's the job of the expositor.
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I hope that when I come in on Sunday morning that my goal has been to preach the Word.
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Because that's the goal.
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That is the command Paul gave to Timothy when he was leaving him, when he was preparing to leave.
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The command was preach the Word in season and out of season.
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Remember that? 2 Timothy 4, preach the Word.
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And so I ask you, hold me to account on that.
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Hold our elders to account on that.
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Brother Mike and Brother Andy love to preach.
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But it's because they love the Word.
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I love to preach because I love the Word.
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And so the first thing that should be expected is biblical preaching.
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The second thing that should be expected is biblical theology which is based on biblical preaching.
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As I said, each one of these builds on the last.
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Biblical theology is that you should not only preach the Word but you should have a cohesive message.
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You shouldn't come in one Sunday and I preach something from one part of the Bible and then I come in the next Sunday and I preach something totally contradictory from another part of the Bible.
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This is why I stress systematic theology.
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Because systematic theology is a whole Bible approach to understanding God.
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It's a whole Bible approach to understanding the Word.
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And you'll have some people who will be...
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They'll say, well I really like Paul but I don't like James that much.
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Or they'll say, I really like the New Testament but I don't like the Old Testament.
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You heard this Brother Andy? People will come in and they have an unbiblical theology.
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Because they have a theology that's all based in one or two books.
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I'll give you the big example of this is the people who think Jesus is all love.
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Do you know who the person who preached about hell the most was? It was Jesus.
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I mean honestly the doctrine of hell, though I think it can be exegeted from the Old Testament, is not really focused on in the Old Testament.
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We see certain passages that certainly refer to punishment and eternal punishment, especially the end of Daniel.
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There's a very specific one.
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But it's really not until the Gospels that we get a full orbed view of hell.
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I can't spend this much time on each of these.
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I've got 18 points to get through.
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I've got to be careful.
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But you understand, a biblical preaching leads to a biblical theology.
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Whether it's the doctrine of hell, the doctrine of the love of God, the doctrine of the holiness of God, this has to come from all the Scripture.
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You have to have a cohesive theology.
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It begins with biblical preaching.
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It begins with a biblical theology.
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Biblical theology is necessary for systematic theology.
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We call it the difference between exposition and systematization.
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Taking it from the text and putting it into categories and understanding that.
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Then we have number three, a biblical understanding of the Gospel.
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In fact, I want to say three, four, and five go together.
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Because a biblical understanding of the Gospel will lead to a biblical understanding of conversion, which will lead to a biblical understanding of evangelism.
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And you say, well, what would a new member care? Because the question is, how are we growing the church? Are we growing the church through manly, worldly means that are not true Gospel means, but by what I would say is means of manipulation.
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And if you don't think that churches manipulate people to grow in size, then I've got some property to sell you outside of Oceanfront property in Arizona.
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You can't tell me there's not unbiblical methods for conversion.
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You've all heard the story of the baptistry shaped like the fire truck.
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I said this to the family today because they have little kids.
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I said, if I wanted to have 20 baptisms in one Sunday, I could.
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Because all I'd have to do is go and talk to all the kids.
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How hard would it be for me to talk to all the little ones? Do you want to go to hell? Nobody wants to go to hell.
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Do you want to believe in Jesus? Sure.
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Do you want to get in the water? Did you hear what my daughter said after the baptism Sunday? You probably didn't because I invited the kids up so they could see better.
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But as soon as I baptized Nicole, as soon as she came up out of the water, Hope jumped up and said, Me next! She said, Me next! And so if you see a church that is using an unbiblical method of evangelism, it's probably because they have an unbiblical understanding of the gospel and an unbiblical understanding of conversion.
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And that will show itself in the methods of the church.
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I'll write a phrase for you.
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This is actually, Dr.
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James White uses this phrase a lot.
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But if you've never heard it, commit it to memory.
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Seriously.
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No, it's okay, brother.
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I won't even worry.
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I'll say it.
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What you win them with is what you win them to.
32:53
What you win them with is what you win them to.
32:58
If you win them with entertainment, you have to keep them with entertainment.
33:02
If you win them with a party, you've got to keep them with a party.
33:06
If you win them through biblical means of biblical evangelism, then you have won them to Christ, not to you.
33:17
And that will make the difference.
33:20
And this is why I'm not part of the church growth movement.
33:26
There is a movement.
33:27
Oh, thank you, sweetheart.
33:28
There is a movement called the church growth movement.
33:32
And I get emails all the time.
33:35
I get letters all the time from places.
33:37
Do you want to grow your church to 2,000 people? Be kind of hard when we only seat 140, but yeah.
33:46
We could give it a shot.
33:48
What's the method? Well, first you've got to install smoke machines.
33:52
Now, that's not what they say, but it's in there.
33:56
You've got to have a 20-foot LED projector.
34:02
And you've got to make it a show.
34:03
Every Sunday, it's got to be a show.
34:07
Brother, you want to say something? I can smell it.
34:09
No, it's just that in one church I was in, we received resumes from pastors from all around.
34:18
They would send a resume with all their credentials and all their accomplishments.
34:25
And invariably, the first question that they asked as they were kind of scoping out what you might be able to offer them was, how big is your church? That always seemed to be the first question.
34:37
And it always seemed to be that they were interested in moving from a 500-member church to a 750- or 1,000-member church.
34:46
It was always their first question was, how big is your congregation? So usually, I never answered many of them, but what you've got to do is tell them you've got about 75, and most of these guys will say C.
34:59
Not interested.
35:01
Not interested.
35:04
I wrote it down since you were talking.
35:05
Give me a second.
35:06
Thank you for the markers, Ashley.
35:08
You're welcome.
35:09
So the church member coming in, one, you know how they got you.
35:15
So that's first off, right? You know how they won you, and whether or not you got saved at that church, you know how they brought you in.
35:24
I always say a lot of people who come here, especially in the last 10 years, come here because they want to be taught.
35:31
They come here because they know we teach.
35:34
And not a lot of people want to be taught.
35:38
So we don't grow in leaps and bounds.
35:41
But it is what we do.
35:44
So a biblical understanding of the Gospel, of conversion, of evangelism, and how do you know what their position is on the Gospel? Well, it will say it in their documents, but how do you really know their position on the Gospel? Because they may have it written right in their statement of faith, but how do you really know their position on the Gospel? How they evangelize.
36:04
That is the tell-tale sign.
36:07
How they share the Gospel is what they think of the Gospel.
36:10
And if they think Jesus is a commodity to be sold, or a product to be hawked, that is how they will treat evangelism because that is what they think of the Gospel.
36:21
So, a biblical understanding of the Gospel, conversion, and evangelism.
36:25
After that, members should expect biblical church membership.
36:31
That's what this whole course is about, but what is biblical church membership? You should expect to be a part of the body.
36:40
And the next three things really tell what that means.
36:44
Because biblical church membership is discipleship, leadership, and discipline.
36:50
So you are expecting to be discipled.
36:53
I want to ask you a question, and you don't have to say it out loud, but I want you to think in your heart.
37:00
And maybe I'm setting myself up for a dangerous thing.
37:04
I'm going to ask this question.
37:06
Because honestly, when I was away at the conference, this really hit me.
37:09
Do you believe that you are being taught the Bible well? Okay, that's the first question.
37:17
Do you believe that you are individually growing? See, that's the fear that I have.
37:26
One of the pastors there, Pastor Scott Menez from Riverbend, I interviewed him.
37:33
He'll be one of the interviews you'll get if you listen to the podcast.
37:37
And he did say something.
37:38
He said one of the dangers of being a good teacher, he said, is your people will rely on you to know things and won't learn them themselves.
37:49
That really hit me.
37:51
And that's what I say.
37:53
Are you being taught well? You can say yes, but are you learning well? Or do you just expect that your teachers know it and that's enough? Boy, that was heavy for me.
38:05
So discipleship is not just that you're being taught well, but that you are growing yourself.
38:10
You should expect to grow.
38:13
You should expect to be challenged to grow.
38:18
And boy, I'm just, no lie.
38:21
I was like, thank you, Pastor Scott.
38:23
Thank you for that.
38:24
I needed to hear that.
38:26
And part of that is number eight, biblical leadership.
38:32
We talked about who the elders are.
38:34
We talked about the deacons.
38:35
We talked about the role of those leaders in the church.
38:39
And you should expect that they are doing what God has called them to do.
38:45
And then finally, biblical discipline.
38:50
Now, Brother Andy mentioned church discipline.
38:52
And as you know, I believe in church discipline, and I think that it's vital that the church understand it.
38:56
But that's not all that I mean by this.
38:59
When I say biblical discipline, I don't just mean that we have a process by which we do excommunicate those who have fallen into a grave sin and are unwilling to repent.
39:08
That's church discipline.
39:09
No, what I mean is the discipline of being part of the church, which would include you should expect to be expected of.
39:20
Does that make sense? That you should expect expectation.
39:26
Because that's part of being a body.
39:28
I'll tell you this.
39:31
I even wrote an article about this years ago.
39:34
My son played Pop Warner football for a year.
39:38
Maybe two, but I know he played at least one year.
39:41
Cody played Pop Warner football when he was eight years old.
39:47
The expectation of Pop Warner football was daily practice for several hours.
39:57
And they had to have full gear when they went to practice.
40:01
They had their pants that fit real tight that had the knee pads and the thigh pads and the pad that went over their rear end and then they had the shoulder pads and they had a practice jersey and they had a game jersey.
40:14
Well that practice jersey by Wednesday smelled like a dog's foot.
40:18
It was the worst stinking thing and so you had to wash it every night.
40:22
And it smelled.
40:23
It was little boy BO is what it was.
40:25
And it was dirty and it was rancid.
40:28
So you were washing this uniform every night just to keep the flies off of it.
40:35
And you were at practice every day at school.
40:38
You know what I'm talking about brother.
40:40
4 o'clock to 6 o'clock.
40:42
And the special teams had to stay an extra half an hour to practice their program.
40:52
And I watched.
40:53
You know who I watched? Who I was amazed by? It wasn't the boys.
40:58
The coaches.
41:00
These guys were dedicated.
41:02
I had never seen a church member.
41:05
And I don't say this to be ugly.
41:07
I've never seen a church member that would come after work every day and spend 2 or 3 hours a day just for the advancement of the church.
41:16
But these guys would come 2 or 3 hours a night every night for 5 days and then spend their whole Saturday watching the boys play and screaming at them and yelling at them.
41:27
They wouldn't go to church on Sunday because they were too tired.
41:30
But they'd start back on Monday 6 days a week.
41:39
And what they told us when we started expect to be expected of.
41:45
Expect that you will be expected to be here.
41:47
You will be expected to be at practice.
41:49
You will be expected to stay.
41:51
You'll be expected to stay late if you have to.
41:54
And if you can't commit to that, don't join the team.
41:58
And if you're riding the bench, the reason why you're riding the bench is because you were out of practice or you weren't putting out the effort that you needed to to be on the field.
42:07
And they were very serious.
42:09
I read an article about that.
42:11
This year, however old Cody was.
42:14
I was so amazed that there was such commitment to something that doesn't matter at all.
42:22
Pop Warner football is the least important thing in the world in the sense of grand scheme.
42:28
The church is the most important program in the world because we're talking about the only thing of eternal significance.
42:34
And we can't get people to come once every seven weeks to a breakfast.
42:39
See, hey.
42:40
See, in Pop Warner football, there's no such thing as sitting in the boat without rowing.
42:43
That's right.
42:44
You're going to row or you're going to get out of the boat.
42:47
So, I didn't mean to be ugly or if that sounded ugly, what I was just saying.
42:50
The point is we have, we should expect to be expected of as members.
42:58
Nobody should join feeling like there's going to be no expectations.
43:02
So, that's part of the discipline, right? Is that if we're not doing what we should do, we should expect somebody's going to say something.
43:09
And see, we're so afraid to say things.
43:12
We're so afraid to be offensive.
43:14
And I don't want to be offensive.
43:15
I hate confrontation.
43:20
But in 15 years of doing this, I've had to learn to be better at it.
43:26
Because when I was afraid to confront, things just got worse and worse.
43:32
You can't be afraid.
43:34
You have to confront.
43:35
Right, brother? I mean.
43:38
Unless that's not you.
43:39
Unless your goal is wrong.
43:41
If your goal is wrong, you won't confront.
43:43
Sure.
43:44
Absolutely.
43:45
Yeah.
43:46
That's what I said.
43:47
If your mind is right, you're going to confront.
43:49
You have to confront.
43:50
Absolutely.
43:51
Absolutely.
43:52
Alright, so that's what the members should expect from the church.
43:55
They should expect to be preached to.
43:57
They should expect to have a solid theology.
43:58
They should expect to understand the gospel, conversion, evangelism, membership, discipleship, leadership, and discipline.
44:04
Notice on there, there's a lot of things that you might think be missing.
44:09
Well, isn't the church supposed to provide XYZ? No, these are the things that you must expect.
44:13
There are other things we do, but these are things that are non-negotiable.
44:19
Now, what should the church expect from its members? Andy already alluded to this, but I'll say it because the first three go together.
44:28
You'll notice it's participation, participation, participation.
44:31
Participation in worship.
44:32
Participation in fellowship.
44:34
Participation in ministry.
44:36
And all three of those things are different.
44:39
Some people come to worship and that's all they do.
44:44
They come in, they sit, and they worship, and then we don't see them again until next Sunday, and they sit and worship.
44:50
And I'm not saying those people aren't valuable.
44:52
They are very valuable, but there's more to church than just the gathering on Sunday.
44:58
And that's where fellowship comes in, and that's the hard one because it doesn't always look the same.
45:05
I fellowship with Pastor Mike, Brother Mike, Elder Mike, whatever you want to call him, Brother Mike Collier.
45:10
I fellowship with him mostly by phone because he works 60 hours a week.
45:15
But I do commit to spending time with him.
45:20
I get to see Brother Andy on Wednesday.
45:21
I'm thankful for that because usually either we talk before or we stay after, and we fellowship.
45:27
You know, over the years, Jack and I have had very wonderful opportunities for fellowship in Richard.
45:32
And I've been in Richard's house many times and admired his books and sat in his easy chair.
45:37
You know, those are valuable fellowships.
45:40
And I think I've been in most of your homes.
45:42
I haven't been in yours yet, Nicole, but Jennifer and I are going to make time.
45:46
You're either going to come to our house or we're going to come to your house.
45:48
And I know your house is still being built, Ron.
45:51
How far are you along now? Well, doing good, okay.
45:55
Well, one day I'll be at your house.
45:57
But I'm not the only one, right? We want to fellowship.
46:04
Because oftentimes, that's where real ministry happens because it's when I get to sit and talk with you about your life and the things that are really going on with you.
46:17
And it's tough because it's not always just from the pastor.
46:22
A lot of folks, and some of you remember this because you're older than me, but a lot of folks remember when the most important thing that the pastor could do is come by and have a cup of coffee, right? Come by and sit down, have a cup of coffee.
46:34
As long as he did that once a quarter, you felt like he was ministering to you, right? That was it.
46:41
And I do think that's important.
46:43
I try to have breakfast with some of you guys when I can, and I try to have that fellowship action.
46:49
But it's not just me and y'all.
46:51
It's y'all and y'all.
46:52
That's the part that's the issue.
46:54
I love it when Dad calls me and says, I went and had breakfast with Paul and James or whoever.
47:01
I went and had breakfast with the guys, and they didn't need me.
47:04
I mean, I want to go with you, but the fact that they were fellowshipping as brothers in Christ, probably talking about Donald Trump, but they were fellowshipping together as brothers and friends sharing their difficulties, sharing maybe their failures, maybe their successes, right? That's why I say it's not just the elders in the church that need to fellowship.
47:34
The church itself needs to be a body and fellowship, and participation in that is vital.
47:40
The church should expect that.
47:43
The church should expect that the church within itself is fellowshipping.
47:47
One of the things we're going to do, starting this week, the deacons met Sunday with the elders, and the idea was floated, and we had talked about it in years past, but we've never done it.
47:57
But COVID has given us a grand scheme because after church on Sunday, so many of us go our different ways, and a lot of us go to restaurants.
48:09
Well, what some of us are going to do is we're just going to start bringing food to church and just stay after church and eat.
48:18
And I know some of you guys have already been doing that.
48:20
Jack and Shirley, you go get food and come back? Yeah? Well, Jennifer and I, we're going to go buy a big jar of peanut butter, a big jar of jelly, we're going to get a loaf of bread and a big bag of chips, and we're just going to stay and eat.
48:31
And so for an hour after church, we're just going to be here.
48:37
Now, everybody can't do that every week, and that's fine.
48:40
But the one thing we're committed to is we want to be closer rather than further apart.
48:45
And we're already here.
48:47
Why not do it? And I'm telling you, this is where ministry will happen.
48:53
That's the participation in ministry.
48:55
Because often we think of ministry, we think of things that we do ministering, but oftentimes the best ministry, my wife, when she sits and talks to a person, there's ministry happening because she loves that person and she's listening to that person and she's engaging that person.
49:10
And she really cares.
49:14
That's ministry.
49:16
Just loving one another.
49:19
And so that's why I say, it's not just participation.
49:23
I want you to be here for worship.
49:24
Don't think that that's not good.
49:26
That's good.
49:27
Because I will say this, the first one is actually probably the one that's the worst because a lot of folks don't come every week.
49:33
Some people don't come every month.
49:35
Sometimes we don't see people every six weeks.
49:37
And I don't understand how somebody can carry on a consistent walk with the Lord if they're not meeting with the body consistently.
49:44
I don't.
49:45
I mean, I just know for me, if I go two or three weeks without church, which I really don't because this is obviously what I, I'm always here.
49:51
But the times that I miss worship, I really feel like I've missed something.
49:58
I feel like I'm, even when I go to other churches, I love to go to other churches, hear other preachers preach and have a break to hear and be ministered to.
50:07
But it's never the same.
50:09
I never feel like I was home with my church.
50:13
And so I would say participation in worship and fellowship and ministry is vital.
50:20
And like I said, ministry goes beyond just the one-to-one.
50:25
And that's why I would say number four comes in.
50:27
And I am going to get through these.
50:28
I'm going to take just another five minutes because I can do these relatively quick.
50:32
I promise.
50:33
I know Shirley always laughs when I say that.
50:35
But I promise.
50:36
Because I don't want to carry this over.
50:38
We could.
50:38
We could talk about this for weeks.
50:40
But next week we're going to get into worship.
50:43
We're going to talk about what worship should look like.
50:47
So contribution of spiritual gifts.
50:49
I don't know if you remember this, Ron, when we had our new members class.
50:53
Did I ask you what your spiritual gift is? Did I ask you guys? Did I? One of the things I try to do when we have new members classes is I try to ask people if they know what their gift is because some people don't.
51:05
And I don't like to do the spiritual gift survey because I don't think that those always are the most effective.
51:12
They're really not.
51:14
But I think that knowing where you fit in the body is helpful to being effective in the body.
51:21
And like today, it was Rachel and Jordan were here.
51:26
They're the ones who want to join the Hill family.
51:30
And he asked me, he said, what are the ministries here that we could be a part of? He wants to know because he knows what he's good at.
51:37
He knows what God's gifted him to, and that's great.
51:40
And some people don't know for sure.
51:42
And some people think that their gift isn't usable here.
51:46
But it is.
51:48
Brother Andy says it all the time.
51:50
Say it, brother.
51:52
A man's gift will make room for him.
51:54
Yeah, if God has brought you here and the gifting that you have, then you're supposed to be here.
52:01
There's something for you to do here.
52:03
And it's not just warming a seat on Sunday morning.
52:09
Number five, contribution of prayer.
52:11
I love that we pray on Wednesday night together.
52:14
It's a wonderful time during the week.
52:16
But do you pray for the church other times? Are you contributing to the prayers of the church? Are you praying for me as I pray for you? Are you praying for Andy and Jack and Mike and Richard? Are you praying for the deacons? Are you praying for those in the church that are hurting? I tell you one thing that a church friend of mine, they do, and we did this for a while and we sort of fell away, but I think I might try to reinvigorate this idea, was they took two families a week in the church and they prayed specifically for those two families.
52:47
And one of the things that they do is they literally ask those families to tell us how to pray for you.
52:57
Like Jennifer and I, we are ready to move.
53:00
We were ready to move yesterday.
53:04
We want to be in Callahan.
53:05
We want to be with Dad and Pat.
53:07
That's our goal.
53:09
But we have not taken a step toward it, except for we got the variants, but we haven't taken a step toward it because I have been so busy getting ready for these conferences, all of the stuff is back now, karate and Wednesday night and Thursday night and all these things, and we have not been able to take a step forward.
53:25
So I had asked that you pray for us because this is what we think God wants us to do.
53:31
But we need a door open.
53:32
We need help to know what's the next step to take.
53:37
So that's how you can pray for me, outside of praying for the preaching and the ministry of the church.
53:44
And I want to know how to pray for you.
53:46
That's why we give you those cards on Sunday.
53:48
It's not just for somebody who's sick.
53:52
Write down if you have a need.
53:54
It goes to my desk first, just in case you didn't know.
53:57
All those cards you fill out on Sunday sit on my desk.
54:00
I take pictures of them so that I have them in my phone, and then I give them to Pat and she puts them in a file.
54:06
But I keep those cards, those prayer cards, so that I can know what to pray about.
54:15
And like I said, a lot of times if it's something that is...
54:20
Is that letting us? Are we done? No.
54:25
That was Jack's alarm, letting him know, Keith, you've got to shut it off.
54:29
All right, last four things, I'll go quickly, because Andy already said a lot of this.
54:34
Contributing finances.
54:36
The church needs to be supported financially.
54:40
And when you join the church, that's an expectation.
54:42
Submission to Scripture.
54:44
Submission to leadership, submission to discipline.
54:46
Notice, look from seven on one side and seven on the other.
54:50
They literally follow that pattern.
54:52
Biblical discipleship is submission to Scripture.
54:54
Biblical leadership is submission to that leadership.
54:57
And biblical discipline is submission to that discipline.
54:59
So those three things work together.
55:00
You should come in expecting it, and the church should expect it from you.
55:06
Is there more? Yes, there's more.
55:08
As Andy said, he had a whole book of things that we could talk about.
55:12
But there's certainly not less.
55:14
So we start with these things.
55:17
There's more, but not less.
55:19
And I hope this has been an encouragement to you.
55:21
I have not ever used this in a new members class, but this is now going to be part of our new members class.
55:28
Because, as I was thinking about this, like I said, I wrote this years ago, but I never thought about it before.
55:34
This is what people need to know.
55:35
What to expect, and what's expected of them.
55:39
Anybody have any questions? Anybody want to comment before we close? I know it was supposed to be a dialogue tonight, and I've just been running my mouth.
55:56
My aunt's been taught to raise money, because I was telling her, I don't know what I can do to help my church.
56:04
And she said, Nicole, you make things.
56:06
Why don't you start up a fundraiser somehow? Talk to your pastor, and see if we can put up a tent.
56:16
She knows a lot of ladies.
56:17
She crochets, and they have mountains of things to sell, to do for God.
56:25
She goes to this big Ocean Way church right here, but they won't let her do it there.
56:30
They won't let her do that.
56:32
She goes, Nicole, it wouldn't take much.
56:33
She's willing to sit down with me to teach me how to do it.
56:37
What to charge each vendor who wants to participate, and set up their booth here, and what we would charge them.
56:44
They need a place to go to sell what they're making.
56:48
She's like, we would love for it to be at a church.
56:51
We will talk about it.
56:53
Those are ideas, and that's why we had that meeting.
56:56
Remember the meeting we had? Remember how people shared ideas? Those are the things that the elders want to hear, so that we know we can talk about it, and think about not only how that would benefit the church, but what would be our witness to the community.
57:12
Because we've had things like, we've had bazaars and things like that, especially we've raised money for, one time for a family that was going through a specific need, and we had something like that.
57:23
So that's certainly something we can talk about, for sure.
57:28
Yeah, absolutely.
57:30
Well everybody, I am thankful that you're here tonight, and I appreciate you being here.
57:35
Let's pray.
57:36
Father, thank you for this time.
57:37
Thank you for giving us this time to study, and I pray that you'll bless your people as we leave together.
57:44
In Jesus' name, amen.