Series focussing on our Koinonia
Vision statement of “Promoting faith, love and hope for all.”
Mission statement of “Serving God in our world.”
· To do this we must S.E.R.V.E
· Sacrifice: to live sacrificially before Father, church
and world
· Extend: to extend by reaching out with
evangelistic initiatives locally and internationally.
· Relationships: first with Father then with each
other.
· Vibrant: in praise and worship, Pentecostal.
· Empower: develop disciples and ministers of the
Gospel.
Last year we looked at three of these statements, not exhaustively, but to begin to understand who we are as a church. We looked at Living Sacrificially, Empowering People and Vibrant Worship. Today, and for the next eight or so Sunday morning preaches I give, we’re going to look at relationships.
Relationships: first with Father then with each other.
I sometimes think this word ‘relationship,’ is overused in our society.
People talk about a relationship for a one night stand. We talk of relationships with food – I am still not sure how this one works as food is not on my plate long enough to have a relationship with it.
For me, I guess the key thing about relationships is how we treat one another. If you feel you have a bad relationship with someone it if going to have its root in how you feel you are being treated by them.
Remember: people will forget what you say but remember how you made them feel.
There are some times in my life where I have had to day some tough things to people. But there needs to be a graciousness about this. I have also had some people say some pretty tough things to me. Some graciously, some not.
To have a relationship with someone is not necessarily to do with a romance, but actually, to do with a long term and established protocol of behaviour.
Relationships need structure.
I have good news and bad news for you this morning. The good news is that the church is like a family. Here is the bad news – the church is like a family.
We know that family is to be the closest relationship we can have here on earth. That is good news.
The bad news is that this is not always the case. Sometimes even the best families get it wrong.
Now this has nothing to do with the size of the church. Come would say that be a family would mean it always have to be small to be friendly. Some come from larger families and would say, “Families need to be big!” When these worlds collide that can be difficult.
My first Christmas in RSA was something to experience. It was great but so different to what I’d experienced before. I was told that the family were coming over for Christmas and I’d get to meet some of them. Barbie and I were still engaged. What I did not expect was 35-40 relatives turning up, some from hundreds of miles away! To top it all they’re all really loud! I melted into a corner somewhere and whimpered. Why? My idea of family was my mum and brother and we were quiet in comparison!
You see families can be large. They can be small. But both are still families and can be effective. How?
It’s to do with the attitude and structure within the family!
1 Timothy 5:1-2: 5 Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.
Paul is giving these instructions to the young Timothy on how he should treat the people in his church. It is obvious to me by the terms Paul uses that we are to treat others like family.
This morning, we are going to take a look at the Scriptures to see what this means as we uncover four pillars of a healthy family and apply it to how we should treat each other in the church. This is merely introducing us to the themes of the next six weeks sermons.
Pillar #1: A Healthy Family Puts God First.
Can I say that Life Church does not exist to meet our needs! The church exists for the benefit of those who are not yet saved.
If we think that the church’s primary reson detre is to keep us happy we will always be disappointed. It will never happen and it an impossible task.
Mark 12:30-31: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
The first thing we should be doing as a church is putting the needs and wants of Jesus first.
The greatest commandment is to love the Lord and we are told that we love Him by obeying what He commands.
Then, we need to look out for the wants, desires, and needs of our fellow brothers and sisters.
Then, we can begin to focus on ourselves. We are not customers but servants. Now this does not mean from time to time that we have needs. But we have to realise that life is not about us too.
It should be obvious in a family of God that we should put God first, but the truth of the matter is that does not happen all of the time.
Sadly the church is more like an opera singer warming up: “mi, mi, mi, mi, mi!”
Then, we start coming to church to get our needs met. We start coming to church for what we can get out of it. We want to worship in the way we personally prefer, in the seat we are comfortable in, and get out in a timely manner so we can get other things done that make us happy on a Sunday. This is not how it was intended to be.
We must seek to put God first in this family. We have to be tuned in through prayer to find out what He wants of us.
We have to seek Him and join Him in His work even if it is not our favourite thing to do.
Then, we have to seek to meet the needs of others especially if they are less mature in the faith or going through tough times.
We have to put our personal preferences aside sometimes to make sure they are getting their needs met.
When we seek God first and each of us look to meet the needs of the others, our needs will eventually be met either by the blessings of God or by unselfish church members seeking to meet other’s needs.
We must seek to keep things in this order if we are going to have a healthy family. God comes first, then others, and finally, us.
I think you will find that when you stick to this format, everything will fall into place for you before you even try to meet your own needs.
Pillar #2: A Healthy Family Has A Specific Structure.
A woman was once asked: “If you had it to do all over again would you have children?” She promptly responded, “Yes…but not the same ones.”
In a family, we have a certain structure. We have grandparents, parents, and children.
· Grandparents are to be respected and revered because of the life experience and wisdom they have.
· Parents should look to them for guidance and wisdom, but parents are able to take care of themselves.
· Children, however, cannot take care of themselves. The parents and grandparents must feed and care for them. After all, children make mistakes and need the older generations to help them through these times.
The good news is eventually children grow up and mature and become parents and grandparents themselves.
The same holds true in the church. We have spiritual “grandparents” that have been in the faith for years that give us guidance and wisdom.
We must respect them for the life they have lived. We should also have spiritual “parents” that help us grow up and mature in the faith.
Finally, everyone has been in the child stage of spirituality in which you learned and grew and needed the help of others to get you to maturity.
This is the structure our church family should have.
There is a problem with this model however. In a regular family, you have to grow up to a certain extent. After all, the older you get, the more mature your body and thoughts become. Some people progress at faster rates than others, but you cannot stop yourself from getting older.
In the church family, however, you are in charge with your spiritual growth and maturity.
If you wish, you can remain as a child in your faith for your entire Christian walk.
This was the case in the church at Corinth as told to us by Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:1-2: Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.
Cole: “Maturity does not come with age but with the acceptance of responsibility. This is why you can have a mature 17 year old and an immature 47 year old.” (Real Man).
One of the things we need in the church is for people to step into their ministries but alos for more parental roles.
1 Corinthians 4:15-16: Even if you had ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. Therefore I urge you to imitate me.
What is Paul saying? Many can teach but not many want to responsibly father the next generation.
How often is it that you look in the mirror and see your parents looking back?
We become like our parents in the natural and so in the spiritual too. If we have great spiritual parents we will become that to others.
Pillar #3: A Healthy Family Cares About the Whole Group.
How many times do you see people who claim to be Christians walking around with scowls on their face and they are mad at the world.
Somewhere along the line, they forgot that part of being a Christian is being nice!
Christians are supposed to be people who are marked by their love and selflessness.
1 Timothy 5:8: Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
Paul wrote this to talk about natural families, but since the church family is supposed to emulate this, we must make this happen in the church as well.
We must provide for others. We must look out for the entire group. This will involve sacrifice. This will involve doing things contrary to our personal preferences. Sometimes, we must give up our ambitions and make some concessions in order to benefit the church as a whole.
One of the things that we want to provide better is our pastoral care. We want to recognise what is going well and is working but also improve what is weak.
In the coming weeks we will be explaining how our new pastoral care structure will work and outlining this in some detail at the Annual Thanks Giving Meeting.
But let me say this: if we think all the pastoral care has to come from the paid pastors we’re going to be disappointed. It’s not that Gareth, Phil (soon to join us) and I don’t care but that actually churches have to be caring communities.
Pillar #4: A Healthy Family Sticks Together.
The family was designed to stick together in all circumstances. Many times, this is not the case anymore, but it is how God set it up at the beginning.
Healthy families always put others first, and that allows them to stick together no matter what happens. As a church, we must bond together to put up a united front to fend off those outside the family of God who seek to tear us apart.
One of the songs that was popular when I became a Christian was Bind us Together Lord.
Bind Us Together Lord, Lord, Bind us together
With cords that cannot be broken.
Bind us together, Lord,
Bind us together,
Bind us together with love.
We’d all stand around at the end of a service and sing this, holding hands, and sincerely asking God to bind us.
At the time I thought this was potty as a new believer. But there was something sincere in the prayer of this, to be bound in heart and ministry – unbreakable!
Psalm 133: 1: How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!
Wrapping it up:
In the coming six messages we will be looking at the following issues:
ü The Care of the Family
ü Communication in the Family
ü Conflict within the Family
ü Fellowship with the Father
ü Forgiveness, the Key to Healthy Relationships
ü Accountability in the Family.
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