Be Wise About Ministry – Part 1

The famous British preacher, G. Campbell Morgan, had four sons and all four of his sons were ministers. And so, one day somebody was interviewing the boys and there was a grandson there and he turned to the grandson and they said, will you also be a minister like your fathers and like your grandfather? And this young boy said, no, I plan on working for a living. You know, a lot of people have a misunderstanding about the ministry. What does the minister do? He preaches once a week, he plays golf or surfs or just, you know, hangs around. Well, what does he really do with his time and what is he supposed to be doing in the church?

There's a lot of misunderstanding about the work of ministry and the minister. Look at verse 5, we'll get there. He says, “who” or literally “what is Paul and what is Apollos, but ministers by whom you believed even as the Lord gave to every man”. That word ministers, we get our word deacon there from. So, we're “diakonos”. It means servant. So, what is a minister? A minister is a servant and a minister is a man that has been given to the church by God for all people in the church that they might be edified and they might be built up. He says, as the Lord gave to every man. So, Paul was for everyone in the church. Apollos was for everyone in the church. Peter was for everyone in the church. Don't be divided over ministers. And it's really a sign of carnality when a church kind of gets into preacher groupies. You know, this is my preacher, that's your preacher. They brag about their preacher and they follow a man rather than following Christ, amen? So, we are to look to Jesus, not to look to any man.

Someone said, my minister is a lot like God. I don't see him all week and I don't understand him on Sunday. And a lot of people have no idea what a minister is supposed to be or what a minister is to do. What is the work of the ministry? Well, Paul is going to explain it for us with these three pictures of the pastor and the church. And I think it's important for the pew to understand what the preacher's job is and what the church really is. So, they were divided over these things. So, Paul knew that they misunderstood the message. He dealt with that earlier on the cross. The preaching of the cross is to them to perish foolishness. But they were also confused about the minister who was preaching the cross. The Corinthians had focused on men and that was the real source of the division that they had. Now here's the three pictures. Number one, if you're taking notes, write this down. In verses 1 to 4. Now we already looked at these verses last Wednesday night, but I'm going to go back over them and give them kind of a little different angle. In verses 1 to 4, we see that a minister is a father, the church is a family, and the goal is maturity. So, what is a minister? He's a spiritual father, not in the sense of a bishop or a pope, but in the sense of that he's to love God's people and to feed the household of God or the family of God. And the goal in doing that is maturity to bring them to a place of maturity.

So, start with me in verse one. Paul says, “And I, brethren, cannot speak unto you as unto spiritual, but even as unto carnal as babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with meat. For up to now you are not able to bear it. Neither are you now able. For you are yet carnal. For whereas there's among you envy, strife, and division. Are you not carnal and walk as men? For while one says “I'm of Paul,” another says “I'm of Apollos,” Are you not carnal”? They were still grouping after their pastors. And Paul says “you are carnal”. Now there are two kinds of people we learned last week. There are saved and unsaved. And among the saved there is the spiritual and there is the carnal. So, we have the natural man, which is the unsaved man, the unregenerate man. Then we have the spiritual man. And then we have the carnal man. The carnal man is a Christian or person. It's a Christian who follows the flesh and is controlled by the flesh. Someone said the Christian matures by allowing the Spirit to teach him and to direct him by feeding on the Word of God. The immature Christian lives for the things of the flesh. That's what carnal means. And has little interest in the things of the Spirit of God.

Turn with me to chapter 4. We'll come back here in just a second. And look at verse 15. Chapter 4 verse 15. Paul says, “for though you have 10,000 instructors in Christ”, that means there's other pastors, there are other ministers that share the Word with you. But Paul says, “you have not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus, I have begotten you through the gospel”. So, Paul is actually claiming there to be their spiritual father in that he was the first in Corinth and he led them to Christ and they came to faith through Paul's ministry. So, there's that sense in which they could call Paul their spiritual father. So, Paul's job was there as a father in the faith to bring them to maturity.

Now what are the marks of maturity? Go back with me to chapter 3. A mark of maturity is the diet that a person has. Babies drink or eat, what? Milk. And the mature, they live on the meat of the Word or they live on solid foods. Now all the children that we have had, as they're growing up, you get all excited when they begin to first take a little spoon and you feed them and they start taking, you know, mush is really what it is. I was never ever tempted to eat baby food. It's really sad that we give that to babies. It's so gross. I mean even the little peaches, you know, I saw peaches, I said “peaches, that's good”, you know, oh that stuff's gross. I don't know why babies have to eat that stuff, you know, they eat mush and all kinds of stupid stuff. But you know, I mean, when you grow up you want to graduate from baby food, right? I can't imagine a grown man coming home from work, you know, and yeah, I want some peaches ground up. You know, you don't eat baby food, right? So, a mark of immaturity was that they were living on milk, notice verse 2, “I fed you with milk and not with meat for up to now you are not able to bear it”. So, the father is to feed them the milk but then they are to graduate on and to grow. Now the milk of the word is the basic elementaries and then the meat of the word is the graduating into the doctrines and then even deeper the things that Christ is doing now in heaven. I want to show you what I mean by that. I hope you don't have any trouble here.

Turn to Hebrews chapter 5 and sometimes people have a hard time finding the book of Hebrews. It is in the New Testament. Hebrews 5 and you start reading at verse 11, Paul talks about the difference between the milk and the meat. He says, verse 11, “of whom we have many things to say”, that “of whom” is Melchizedek. This is the deeper things of God. This is the meat where Melchizedek, a type of Christ, was a picture of what Christ is doing as our high priest in heaven. “Of whom we have many things to say and hard to be uttered seeing you are dull of hearing” or literally, “become dull of hearing. For when the time you ought to be teachers you have need that one teach you again the first principles,” there's the milk, “of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk and not of strong meat. For everyone that uses milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongs to them that are of full age, even those by reason have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil”. Now the context here is that he's been teaching about Christ our high priest and what Jesus is doing in heaven. And he says, I'd like to say more, I'd like to talk about more, but you can't digest it. You can't handle it. You can't understand it. You're not discerning in these things. When the time comes that you ought to be teaching you have need that you go back and you just kind of eat the milk of the Word. But the meat of the Word is in the context I would say described as what Christ is doing now for the believer in heaven.

And I meet Christians like this all the time. They've been saved a long time but they have no ability to understand the Scriptures. They don't really know the Bible. They don't understand Bible truth. They don't understand Bible doctrine. They don't understand the things of God. Every Christian should know what the Bible teaches about itself, about God, God the Father, about God the Son, about God the Holy Spirit. What it teaches about salvation, what it teaches about the church, what it teaches about last days, future things, what it teaches about the intercessory work of Christ in heaven for the believer. And so go back with me to Corinthians.

They couldn't handle the meat of the word. So, the goal of the spiritual father is to not entertain the believers but to edify or build up the believers by feeding on the Word of God. Now a little secret here, lest I miss it as we go through, each one of these pictures which describe the minister and the church and his job involve him preaching, teaching, sharing, ministering the Word of God. How do we mature the babes in Christ through the Word of God? This is the job of the pastor, to share God's Word. But notice also that a mature Christian, practices love and seeks to get along with others. Notice verse 3, “you are carnal, for whereas there is among you envy, strife, and divisions, are you not carnal and you walk as men?” So, a mature Christian is into the meat of the Word. A mature Christian loves people in the body of Christ and they get along with one another. They use their gifts to build up, not to fight with one another. So here is the picture, the pastor, the minister is a father, the church is a family, and the goal is maturity. That's who we are, that's why we are here, that's who I am, this is what we are here to do, is to bring you to maturity, to wean you off of the milk and to bring you into the meat of the Word.

Here is picture number two, verses 5 to 9. The minister is a farmer, the church is a field, and the goal is quantity, to produce fruit. So, we produce maturity and then we want to produce fruit, much fruit. Go with me to 1st Corinthians 3, verses 5 down to verse 9. Paul says, “who then”, or “what then is Paul and what is Apollos? They are ministers”, as I pointed out, they are servants “by whom you believed even as the Lord gave to every man”. They are gifts from God to the church. God gave to the church pastor-teachers. Then notice in verse 6, “I have planted”, Paul says, “Apollo's watered, but God gave the increase”. Paul was the first one in Corinth and he was the one that planted the church. And then he left and Apollos came along and he watered what Paul had already done. Verse 7, “so then neither he that plants is anything, neither he that waters but God who gives the increase. Now he that planted and he that watered are one and every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are laborers together with God”.

Stop right there in the middle of verse 9. The minister is a farmer, the church is a field and the goal is fruit to produce in quantity. Remember when Jesus gave the parable of the sower and the seed. Actually, we call it the parable of the sower and the seed. But more rightfully it is the parable of the seed. The focus is not on the sower, the focus is on the seed. And you know what the seed represents? The Bible, the Word of God. And seeds are amazing things, right? They have life in them. You can put a seed in a drawer in the kitchen, shut the door, leave it there for a couple years, take that seed out, put it in the ground, pour water on it in sunlight, boom, a tree grows, right? And there's no batteries. You don't plug it in. It's got life in it. I mean I found myself looking at seeds thinking, man there's life in the seed. And there's the ability for the seed to produce fruit and in that fruit is more what? Seed to produce what? More fruit. To produce what? More seeds to produce more fruit. So, the Bible is like the seed and when it's sown, and the field is the heart of man. And the man's heart is represented in four kinds of soils. There's a hard heart and a seed bounces off; it doesn't take root and it brings no fruit. And then there's the shallow soil and it takes root and it sprouts up immediately but it lacks depth and when the sun hits it, it withers away and it produces no fruit. And then there is the cluttered soil. That soil has weeds and it grows up and the seed takes root and then the weeds grow up and it chokes out the fruit and it brings forth no fruit. A lot of people let the cares and the deceitfulness of riches of this life choke out God's Word producing fruit in their life. I'm just too busy for the Bible. I'm just too busy for Wednesday Night Bible Study for the Word of God and their lives bring forth no fruit. And then the fourth category, I call the fruitful heart. It is soft, not hard. It is deep, not shallow. And it is clean, not cluttered. And the Word of God goes into that heart and I pray to God tonight, that as the Word of God goes out that you have a fruitful heart. And that God's word like seed is being planted in you and it's bringing forth fruit, some 30, some 60, and some 100-fold. God wants our lives to produce fruit.

Now some lessons from these verses. We see also, first of all, the diversity of ministries in verse 6. Look at with me, verse 6. Paul says, “I planted, Apollo's watered but it is God who gives the increase”. What I want to point out to you is diversity here. Paul says, I planted but Apollo's watered. We don't all do the same thing. And not every minister has the same ministry. There are ministers who have a planting ministry. There are ministers who have a watering ministry. Now either way we're using the Word of God. But we are to use the Word of God to bring people to Christ then others will come along and water that. And you may have a watering ministry. You share the Word and maybe you water the Word but you don't get to reap the Word. You don't lead anyone to Christ or you don't get to see them grow. Maybe you just minister to them. But we're all to be sowing the seed and we have diversity of ministry. One plants, one waters.

But then notice also secondly the need for humility. In verse 6, God gives the what? It is God who gives the increase. Only God can grow His church. Only God can produce fruit in the life of His people. We can't do that. So, in verse 6 he says there that God gives the increase. Verse 7, “so then neither is he that plants, is anything nor he that waters”. But again, “but God”, the end of verse 7, “that gives the increase”. So, the end of verse 6 and the end of verse 7, he says the same thing. It is God who gives the increase. God is the one who produces the fruit.

And then thirdly, we see the unity of purpose in ministry among ministers. Verse 8 and verse 9. “Now he that planteth and he that watereth are,” what? “one”. That's unity of purpose. Doesn't matter who they are, where they are. We're planting, we're watering, we're preaching, we're evangelizing. We're all doing it for one purpose. We have a unity of purpose. And then notice in verse 9. “For we are laborers together with God”. So, in verse 8, he uses the phrase “are one”. In verse 9, he says, “we are laborers together with God”. So, there's that unity of purpose.

Now the goal here is quantity, much fruit. And that much fruit is to be born, as we're going to see at the end of the chapter, for what? The Glory of God, not the glory of man. He that waters is nothing. He that plants is nothing. It's God who gives the increase. And to God be the glory. Great things He hath done. We're not to glory in man, we're not to glory in some man's ministry. And he's trying to correct them and get them an understanding of what ministry is all about. So, he focuses there on that. They're supposed to produce fruit for the Glory of God. The church, verse 9, is His field. That word field there means you are God's tilled field. So, the picture there is a farmer sowing seed in the field. So, the minister is a father, the minister is a farmer. I like this picture. It works good for me. Farmer John. I think I should preach in my overalls; you know. Just going to sow some seed here tonight. And that's what the church needs. It needs a pastor that sows the seed of the Word of God. Amen? And that word takes root in people's hearts, and then that word brings forth fruit to the Glory of God.

But here's our third picture. This is the biggest section. Verses 9b, or the end of verse 9 to verse 23, the minister is a builder. The church is a temple, and the goal is quality. So, the church is a family, the church is a field, and the church is a temple, or the church is a building, and the minister is a builder. So, I come out and preach with a construction belt on. Hammer, saw, you know, and you come out because we're going to build the church by preaching the word and relying upon the Holy Spirit and prayer. Amen? And we give God the glory.

Follow with me the end of verse 9, Paul says, not only are you God's field, but at the end of verse 9, “you are God's building”. Now, interesting in that same verse, he goes from the church, a field, to the church, a building. And I believe the context all the way to the end of this chapter is that the building of the temple is the church. It's not the believer's body.

Follow me verse 10. “According to the grace of God, which is given to me as a master builder, a wise master builder”. So, following the architect, “I have laid the foundation and another builds there on. But let every man take heed how he builds”. That is those that are spiritual leaders in the church, the ministers of the church. “For other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ”. No pastor, no minister, no preacher is the foundation of the church. And for that matter, no pope, no bishop, no one but Jesus Christ is the foundation of the church.

Verse 12. “Now, if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or stubble, every man's work or ministry shall be made manifest for the day shall declare it because it shall be revealed by fire and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is”. Not how much he does, but the quality now of what he does. So, we move from quantity to quality. And this is talking about judgment day for the believer. It's known as the bema, the reward seat of Christ. B-E-M-A, the bema seat, where we as servants of the Lord will stand before Him and we will be rewarded for our ministries.

Now, notice verse 14. “If any man's work abide”, after it's been tested by fire, “which he has built thereupon, he shall receive a reward”. But “if any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire”. This is not a reference to purgatory. And I honestly, I say that because that's what some people believe. They believe that, you know, we're going to go to hell, we're going to burn for a while, and then we get to pop out, you know, and our clothes kind of smell. But here we are in heaven, we're all black and we're fried, but whoo, we made it, you know. Our eyebrows are singed. Can you imagine meeting somebody in heaven and he's got singed eyebrows? I don't think so. He’s talking about judgment day, that is when we stand before God and are rewarded. When I say judgment, I don't mean judgment for our sin, I mean rewards for our service. So, we will be rewarded for the ministries that we had, especially ministers or pastors. That's why you need to pray for them because they have a great responsibility. They need to bring the church to maturity, they need to bring the fruit as they preach the Word, and then they also need to build the church through prayer and the ministry of God's Word. So, we shall receive the reward, but if you don't do it properly, then you will suffer loss of rewards. And yet you still get to go to heaven.

Then he says, verse 16, I'm going to come back to these verses. “Know ye not that you are the temple of God and the Spirit of God dwells in you”. Now most people think that this verse, or these verses are referring to the believer's body and the fact that the Holy Spirit dwells in them. But it's not, it's a reference to the church collectively, which is a place where God's Spirit dwells. He says, “If any man defile” or destroy “the temple of God”, he's warning them that false ministers or ministers that don't do their work properly, they will destroy the church of God. “Him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is Holy, which temple ye are.

“Let no man deceive himself”. Verse 18, “If any man among you seems to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise”. So, he switches back to that subject of the Wisdom of God in preaching and ministry. Verse 19, “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written”, and he's quoting from Job, chapter 5, verse 13. “He taketh the wise in their own craftiness”. And then again, he's quoting now from Psalm 94, verse 11. “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain.” Or empty. “Therefore”, here's the application, “let no man glory in men”. Paul's coming to the end of this section. He says, stop glorying in man. Remember, I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Peter. Stop glorying in men. “For all things are yours;” In other words, God has blessed every one of you. Wherefore, “whether it be Paul, or Apollos, or Peter, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come, all are yours; and you are Christ’s and Christ is God’s”. Now remember, as I said, the context, that he's talking about the church. The church is His building, verse 9.

So, it is His family, it is His field, and it is His building. It behooves every minister of God to understand the church belongs to God. It's not your church. We will use people's names like Pastor Miller's church or this person's church. No, no, no, it's not a man's church. It's God's church. It's His family, it's His field, and it's His building. Amen? And that's what we are. We're getting a description tonight of Revival Christian Fellowship. Now remember that there are some pictures here that we can draw from. It's important that we build with quality as well as produce quantity. The goal in building is using the right material and following the right instructions. If you're going to build a house, you want to use good material, right? You want to lay it on a good foundation. You want to follow the blueprints. You don’t want your house to be crooked when you get finished. You don't want it to blow over in a wind. You want it to pass inspection. So, we want to use our gifts to build up the church.

Now how do we do this? Number one, verses 10 and 11, we must build with the right foundation. We must build on the right foundation. The right foundation is Jesus Christ. May God help us to do the work of ministry here at this church upon Jesus Christ. May we build the ministry of this church not on man, not on programs, not on flash and flare, but on Jesus Christ. Amen? That's what the work of the ministry is to do. Build the church upon Christ. Not on men, not on programs. I remember as a kid growing up at church, the church had a program for growth and they were going to give a six-foot candy bar away to whoever brought the most friends to church. Now I'm in the fifth grade, man, I want that. I'm looking at that six-foot candy bar. I mean, that was the lust of the flesh. So, I got all my friends together at recess. I said, look, I’ll make a deal with you. You come to church with me this Sunday and we'll get that candy bar. And I'll split it all with all of you. We'll cut it all up. I mean, six-foot candy bar. I won the candy bar. Packed the pew. I had three or four pews full of guys. Why do you think they were in church that day? For candy, right? Not to hear the word of God, not to love Jesus, not to worship Him, not to pray. I saw an advertisement for a church one Sunday. It was Father's Day. And whoever brought the most fathers won this big gift. And then the pastor was going to climb a flagpole in a gorilla suit. I'm not kidding. When I came to Revival and saw the flagpole, I thought, oh, man, I hope they don't have a gorilla suit somewhere. And I will climb the flagpole in a gorilla suit. You know. What is that? What kind of insanity is that? They get the phone up on the pulpit, you know, and they call the church across town who has the most in Sunday school that week and wins the contest, you know. That's carnal. That's fleshly. Jesus said upon this rock, I will build My church. The gates of hell will not prevail against it. You know, why do we try to duplicate the world or act like the world or be like the world? You're the family of God. You're God's field. You're God's building. We don't operate in the same kind of way the world does. Nor can we build the church with worldly methods or human wisdom. See, the problem in Corinth was they were glorying in man and they were glorying in man's wisdom. And because of that, they were carnal and there was division and strife in the congregation. And they needed to grow and to mature and to produce fruit. So, we need to build on the right foundation, Jesus Christ. We need to pray for our church that this ministry continues to be grounded on Jesus.

And then secondly, we must build with the right materials. Verses 12 to 17. It's all about the materials that we use. If you build, you can build with gold, silver, precious stones. But the wrong material is wood, hay, or stubble. Now a lot of discussion about what these represent.
And I don't know that I know for sure. I can't be dogmatic, but I think the best thing to do is to say that the gold, silver, precious stone is building God's church with God's Word, God's way for God's glory. It's using the Word of God and prayer and sacrifice and service and looking to God to build His church that is gold, silver, precious stone. Building the church with carnal methods and means, like a gorilla suit up the flagpole or a six-foot candy bar, or angels swinging from the rafters, whatever you can think of. Anything to draw a crowd. The goal of ministry is not just to get a lot of people. I could put on a gorilla suit and a lot of people would show up. What do I put on the next week and the next week to keep the crowds coming? The goal of ministry is maturity. It's fruit. It's quality. Now quality and quantity aren't mutually exclusive. Some people get the idea if you have a big church, it's a carnal church. But you can have a large congregation of mature people if they're growing in the Word of God and depending upon the Spirit of God. God wants us to develop a palate, an appetite, a taste for the meat of the Word. He wants us to grow beyond the milk and begin to want the meat of the Word.

This is why, and I'll talk more about preaching next Wednesday night, this is why I believe that there's a real need in the church today for doctrinal preaching. For preaching from the Epistles of Ephesians and Galatians and Romans as opposed to just stories with life application. How to be a better husband, how to be a better wife, how to get a six-figure job, how to be a success in life. Those are the sermons that sometimes people gravitate to but we need the meat. We need the Word of God so that we might grow. So, Paul is telling us here we need to use the right materials. Wood, hay, and stubble is trying to build the church through man's wisdom and carnal programs. Every man's work shall be made manifest. When we get to heaven there will be inspection. For the day shall declare it because it shall be revealed by fire of what sort it shall be. So, you take gold, silver, precious stones and you heat them up with a fire. What happens to them? They endure, right? They stand, they're not consumed, they're purified. You take wood, hay, and stubble and you put fire to it. What happens? It gets consumed, right? It's burnt, it's gone, there's nothing left. So, when we get to heaven what may have looked like a successful church and a successful minister; it's wood, hay, and stubble, it has nothing of no eternal value.
And they go to heaven but they're saved so as by fire. So, what we deem to be a successful church may not be. We need to look at the church biblically and understand what God's view of the church truly is. But if we do God's work, God's way with God's Word, then we will be receiving, verse 14, a reward. It's not looking for, you know, how much we do but the quality of what we do. But if any man suffers loss, he is saved, verse 15 but so as by fire. So how do we build the church? Gold, silver, precious stone? The Bible, the Word of God.

But then thirdly notice that we must build according to the right plan in verse 18. Let no man deceive himself by any means. He that seems to be wise in this world let him become a fool that he may be wise. We cannot build the church using human wisdom. Can't manage the church, build the church with human wisdom. Now the church should be run business-like but it is not a business. The pastor is not a CEO. We don't call in the world for advice on how to run the ministry. We open the Bible and we seek God as to what the church is to be and to do. You are always bombarded with people. Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? Why don't you start there? Why don't you have this? Why don't you do that? And the minister needs to stay on course as to what a church is really supposed to be, what a church is supposed to do. Many churches have gotten away from the Word of God and it's all, you know, fun and dancing and bingo and playing games and hay rides and you know going to the beach and those things, social things are fine. But that's not what the church is supposed to be. We just finished our series on Sunday morning, Alive: The Marks Of A Vibrant, Essential Church. It's a learning church. It's a caring church. It's a fellowship. It's a growing church. They're in the Word. They're an evangelizing church. Those are the essentials of a church, what the Bible defines it to be.

I love it. Warren Weirsby said, he said, the world depends on promotion, prestige, and the influence of money. And important people. The church depends on prayer, the power of the spirit, humility, sacrifice, and service. The church that imitates the world may seem to succeed in time, but it will turn to ashes in eternity. The church in the Book of Acts had none of the secrets of success that seemed to be important today. They owned no property. They had no influence in government. They had no treasury, silver, gold. Peter said, “have I none”. Their leaders were ordinary men without special education in the accepted schools. They held no attendance contests and they brought no celebrities in. And yet they turned the world upside down. We always want to bring a famous person in so we can all clap and go, ooh, ah, you know. And we're not really following God's pattern for growth.

And then finally, lastly, we see here in verse 21 to 23, that we must build for the right motive. We must build for the right motive. And what is the right motive? The glory of God. The glory of God. We are to use God's Word to build up God's people for God's Glory. And that's what he speaks of there at the end of the chapter where he says, whether Paul or Apollos or Peter or the world or life or death or things present or things to come, all are yours and you are Christ and Christ is God. Verse 21, therefore let no man glory in men for all things are yours. We're to do the work of the ministry for the glory of God. The Corinthians were glorying in human teachers and human wisdom. And because of that, they were a divided church. And I believe that as a church, if we glory in God and the wisdom that comes from His Word, we can be a united church. It doesn't matter who preaches, doesn't matter who baptizes, doesn't matter who greets at the door, doesn't matter who leads worship, doesn't matter who teaches Sunday school, we're all workers together. Amen? We're trying to bring the body to maturity. We're trying to sow the seed so that the field produces fruit. And we're trying to build the temple of God where God's Spirit inhabits and God's Spirit dwells. All for the glory of God, not for the glory of man. So, in all of these, the Word of God to grow, the Word of God to produce fruit, and the Word of God to bring glory as we build the way God wants us to build.

Let's pray.