Do Church – Being an Attender, a Member and a Minister

1. Sarah Wheway: Good morning, all. We had a wonderful time of worship – this is why we gather together, to worship our Lord. I just saw a message from George “Come to the Church, come” and it really touched my heart, because this is where we all want to be. We continue our theme of being the Church, and today it’s about being an attender, a member and a minister. If I had to ask some of you why you attend here, you’d probably answer one of the reasons I’ve just given you.
2. First verse John 3: 16, I have quite a lot of verses. Isn’t this verse good news, and this is the main reason why we are gathered here this morning. It’s all about Jesus, He’s reaching out to all of us and brought each and every one of you to this church. I love the Greek word “Ecclesia” and looking at the meaning of the word, which today is just “Church” but it comes from the verb “Ek Kalo” meaning “gathering and assembling together”, also meaning the “Called out ones”, the ones Jesus is calling out to Himself. We are all called today. So, we attend this church because we want to learn more about Him, we want to grow, to mature. Attending Church is God’s idea and not Man’s idea. He loves it when we come together to worship Him and to pray together. His love impacts us in such a way that we want to become more committed to Him, because the more we know Him, the more we love Him. When Jesus calls us to church, we aren’t just participants, but we are a family, a large family world-wide. As in the early church God calls us in smaller numbers so that we can grow together. I want to focus this morning on being a member of this church. When I was thinking about it, I thought about marriage and dating. I my mind attending church is a little bit like dating, you like the place, it’s fun to be there, but you can drop out anytime, there’s no commitment there. Whereas marriage is more like membership, we are committed to our church, we want to see growth in the church body. We get to care about the relationships that are here, we get focused on the goals of the church. We get concerned if one of us falls down, or gets sick. God designed it in this way because He wants us to be invested in one another.
3. The next verse: Hebrews 10: 24-25, isn’t it good that we can spur one another on, encourage one another. And as our pastors say regularly, “Come, we don’t want to lose anyone staying at home”, because we need one another. I would like to thank Pastor Gail for letting me share this with you all. We are living examples of the Gospel message we read at the beginning. We get to represent to each other, that God so loved the World, that He gave His Son, we are saved by that and we are set free from our sins. Some may have been Christians for a long time, like myself, some may not even know Jesus today. I’d like you all to close your eyes and say these words to yourselves, “I’m deeply loved”, that’s what Jesus wants you to know. He wants to come along side you. I remember when I became a Christian, I was 5 years old, but it only hit home to me when I was 8 years old. I was in church that day, like you are here today, when the pastor spoke about Jesus dying for my sins, and that broke me, I cried the whole afternoon, telling Jesus how sorry I was that He had to die for me. That is the truth of the Gospel that we get to share. When I talk about Jesus, I get emotional, because He loves us like no one else can love us.
4. When God called us into our church, it is so that we may become equipped by listening tour pastor. We look at Ephesians 4: 4-8, and 11-12 so that we can look at how we as members of this church we will become ministers. Sometimes we think we need to bring our neighbours here so that our pastors can share the truth with them. Or my neighbour needs counselling, so I want to bring them here for Cecilia to pray for them. Many times, we look at our pastors and think that they are the ones responsible for our growth. And yes, that is true that we learn from our pastors and teachers. I want to focus on verses 7 and 8 where it says that He has given gifts to us all. I also want to focus in on verse 12. It is the duty of the gifted people to equip us all to do the work of the church. This is the message that I want you to take away from this message, that we are being equipped while we are at church, so, devour your Bibles, drink the word when it is spoken from the front. Pastor Brian talked about how God gave apostles, evangelists, prophets, pastors and teachers to the Church. This is to equip us to be ministers. So, when your neighbour or friend wants to know more about Jesus, you can share with them. This Biblical vision of every member ministering, needs to be the foundation of our church, in Greek “diakonia” which is used to describe the work of all the people in the church. It is our duty to take the message of Christ to our neighbours. In the early church, Jesus left His message in the hands of 12 disciples and so Paul and the early church reached out to the people. A quote from Francis Chan (a pastor, teacher and author) “There are so many churches that are not making disciples. The people are not always getting baptized. A lot of money can often be spent, so how is it that the underground church in China grew to 100 million people, without any super preachers or big amounts of money, because every person was the minister of the truth of the Gospel to those around them.”
5. Great movements don’t always happen because of great preachers, but trusting God’s Holy Spirit to equip all of us. Let’s pray over one another in this church that we’ll receive an anointing over all of us to understand our personal ministry. Paul describes the church as being anybody as people dedicated to doing whatever it takes to help others. Like the early church, renew your mind with Scripture, and as we get close to the end, Matthew 28: 18-20, Jesus gave us the Great Commission, and for some of us it is to stay in the local church in our local neighbourhood and minister there, for others like myself, it was to leave my home country, and now Greece is my own, called to work with the Roma community and with our team to hand out a New Testament to every home in Greece. We do all these things to build His Church, for others to be touched, like I was as an 8-year-old child, that Jesus died for my sins. I had a vision as I was preparing the message, of a life-raft and we who were on this life-raft were reaching our hands out to pull people in. As you leave church this morning, have this vision of being on this life-raft and you are the one ministering and pulling people in to join us. Continue to read your Bible until it falls apart from wear. When Jesus’ Word is in us, we won’t be a mess and your love for one another will grow.
6. I’ll read 3 sentences for you to think about, 1) Who do you know who’s going through a tough time and could use your help. What’s the one thing you can do for them this week. On a scale of 1 to 10 in your mind, how connected do you stay to this body throughout the week. What’s one way that you can stay more connected, like the bible study on Wednesdays, meeting with one another for coffee or a meal. Think of a way you can stay connected after this service is over, and how you can use your God given skills to minister to others and serving our church.

1. Stavros Antoniades: We thank our sister Sarah; she said a lot of things which I also had in mind to say. The Lord is good always, and He is always good. He loves us so much and, in some way, He always manages to take care of showing us His love for us. It could be through someone else, or through a sermon or even directly, as happened in my life. My wife is a great support for me, but sometimes when I’m on the road, I’m filled with this love, this mercy, this grace and I thank the Lord that in this way I receive the courage to continue.
2. We are continuing in the series that we don’t just go to church, but we are the church. But don’t forget that to be the church we must go to church. Because God has placed people there who can teach us, direct us, and to bring us to a point, as Sarah also said, that we may become strong and become workers in God’s work in the Body of Christ.
3. Philippians 2: 7, This verse has impressed me greatly, recently. A God who is full of glory, full of all the wonderful things that you could imagine in your life, and only GOOD things, He decided to lay all these things aside, and to come down to this earth and to become a slave (servant), why should we not do this as well in our lives? I genuinely thought about this during this week, and I genuinely tried to do it. I came to the point where I said, “my God I lay all things aside” It’s easy to lay the good things aside, but you have things inside of you that are not so good, things that will come to irritate you mind in your mind. I’ll call it sin, it’s there continuously and it irritates you, and you then decide to say, “Yes my Lord, I lay everything aside, I stand here and I ask that you guide me”.
4. You know that when you take such decisions in your lives, how easy it is to stand before the Lord and expect answers, because you know that you have done something good. You’ve put the bad things aside, and you’re asking the Lord to strengthen you and lead you. You’ll ask, what about the other things, what do I do from now on. As our sister Sarah said, God has given us all the directions required in His Word. We read the Bible, we come to church, we converse with one another, we pray together. These are the things God wants us to perform. And again, we rejoice that we have abandoned the evil things and we ask for strength to continue. And I’m sure that as we grow, and mature, we begin to understand what the bad things are that we are laying aside. Our minds begin to understand certain things, but our hearts have an abundance of things in it and as we mature these things begin to come to the surface. We remember the decision we took, to put these things aside, not allowing these things to ruin our lives and in this way, we can proceed, and in such a way we may become the Church of God.
5. I thank the Lord, for He is good, He’ll never leave us or forsake us. He started a work in us, He’ll continue it and will bring it to its end. Remain firm in the Lord. Do not move away from the Lord. Genuinely we have nowhere else to depend on. It is only the Lord who loves us perfectly, He's the only one who can understand us completely. Whatever we have in our hearts, which are well hidden from sight, we can confess it to Him, beside the fact that He already about knows it, but when we actually confess it to Him things become completely different. We are unburdened, and we receive strength to go forward.
6. Lord, I thank You, for the unceasing love that You have for us; Hallelujah, You continue to work in our hearts, no matter what the problem might be, You are over and above all these things. You showed Your love on the cross, when you laid aside all Your glory, You took on the role of a servant. You came and walked here on earth, and You were not afraid to go to the cross, because You knew that it was the Father’s will. You obeyed the will of Your Father, yes Lord, help us to also be obedient to You. I thank You for all things.
7. At this time if anyone has a need, whatever that need may be: healing, financial, believe me no matter what your need may be, the Lord is present here to touch and heal and to give an answer, to give you the strength to continue, until the answer you require is given. So. If you have a need, please raise your hand and we will all together pray for you. I personally have a request from the Lord, look around you, so let us all pray together.
8. Don’t forget, I will say it, the first part was that He emptied Himself, and He then decided to take on the role of a servant. So we lay aside those things, but we make the decision to stand and the Lord blesses. His Word is “Yes and Amen”, and is Truth.