By Scott Brown
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Waverly
Focal Passage: Ephesians 4:11-16
God’s desire for His Body (the church) is for it to grow — not only by quantity but by quality. The Great Commission doesn’t end with just making more believers but with making more mature believers by “teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you.”
Something my faith family knows all too well about me is that I can’t stay still long, literally and figuratively. I always have to be making forward motion. I often remind them that “good enough” is sinful when God has called us to great. I fear that there is a temptation in each of us to slow down, settle and accept “good enough” in our walk with Christ, our local church, and our lives.
We stop battling sin and resort to just hiding it better. We stop striving to win souls and reason that we only know saved people or that it’s somebody else’s job. We stop weeping at the altar for revival and spend all our time complaining or talking about the good old days instead. “Good enough” kills churches and ruins Christians.
In this text, Paul outlines some of the roles God has gifted to the church. More important than what are the roles is the question of why are these roles. He says, “to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for building up the body of Christ … we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the Head, Christ.”
God has given the church a prescribed structure and order in which we all have a place and purpose together. Perhaps too many times we focus on our place and jockey for position in the Body and ignore the purpose of that place too much. Whether God puts me in the pulpit or lets me stay after service to stack chairs, I just want Him to use me up as He sees fit in making disciples who make disciples who, in turn, make disciples.
Perhaps there is another temptation where, rather than fighting for position, we retire or disengage entirely from the work of the ministry. We may say that’s what we pay the preacher for or that’s what deacons are for. The entire book of Ephesians is baptized in plural pronouns, showing that we are all in ministry together.
Whatever your age, ability, aptitude or ambition you have a responsibility alongside every member of the Body of Christ together to invest yourself in the work of the ministry for the building up of the Body to the glory of God.
Let us never settle for a good enough walk with the Lord, a good enough church, a good enough hunger for souls, or anything else that is good enough because good enough is just not good enough, my friends, not when God has called us to great in Him!
