It's good for us to sing new settings for our faith. I don't know if you noticed the words carefully as you were trying to learn the tune as well, but it's a tremendous hymn. All of us have been in much prayer this last week for Mark Corman, one of our young men who was injured playing softball with one of our teams on Monday night. Just as a word of update, he had surgery midweek on his spine, and as yet there has been
no recovery of mobility below his chest. He has surgery scheduled again for Tuesday morning, and the last time they came in from behind to do their work, this time they go through the front, through his neck. and will strengthen the spinal column and remove what they think is another piece of bone in the area of the spinal cord. But the word that we have from the surgeon is that the spinal cord has been very badly crushed,
although not severed. At this point, the surgeon does not seem especially hopeful that Mark will walk. We want to be praying. and asking God for a miracle. Debbie is here this morning, and Betty, his mother, and other family members, and we just continue to assure you, as your church family, of our love, and want you to know that we will continue to uphold you in prayer, and Mark as well, in these important days and critical days. I'd like for us to bow right now and have prayer
as a church family for Mark. Would you? Join me, please. Father, I thank you that whatever befalls us in this life, that because you have chosen us and called us as your own children, nothing happens by accident. Behind even the dark things, the difficult things that happen, we see your providence. And while we cannot always understand why things happen as they do, we can rest upon the fact that there is a reason known in the good, kind, and eternal purposes of God.
Now, Lord, that is our faith. We rest upon that truth. And yet you enable us to come to you and offer our petitions. As Mark's church family, as those who love him dearly, we intercede on his behalf. Father, we pray that if it be your will, you would cause him to regain the use of his limbs. We pray that Mark will be able to walk again and will be entirely restored. We come confidently to the throne of grace to offer
this petition because you've invited us to. And even Mark has said, the will of God be done, and we concur with that. But Lord, that is our heart. That is our petition to you. And we pray that the surgery on Tuesday will go well. And we pray that that will be part of the process of him being restored entirely to health. And this petition we bring to you in the name and authority of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.
Thank you. And now would you open your Bible with me, please, to Ephesians chapter 4, as we look again at verses 15 and 16. A song heard frequently on radio stations, especially around Christmas, is titled Childhood. It's a secular song, but its words capture something of the joy, freedom, and innocence that belong to the early years of life. But it concludes with the realization that once you've passed its portals,
you can never return again. Growing up, whether in a physical sense, or in a spiritual sense, does not come without cost. As we grow up, there are some things that must be laid aside, but the result of that is, the positive side is, that even better things come as a result of the process of growing. Growing up entails a certain cost, but the benefits of the process are well worth it. I suppose that one could resist paying the price of growth, but the result would be
sad and even tragic. It would be to miss out on the deeper, more meaningful issues of life. In a spiritual sense, God has not called us to remain spiritual children playing ring around the rosy while the world goes to hell. He has called us to grow up, that we might make the most of the opportunities which he has given to us in this life. Now, when I say growing up has a cost, I'm thinking of growth in two respects, in a personal respect and in a body or corporate
or whole church respect. Our text today mentions both. He says we are to grow up. in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body. And so you see there is a personal aspect in which he speaks as well as one that affects all of us in the
corporate body of Christ. So first understand that personal spiritual growth requires a cost. It is not without price. I believe that we can summarize the price by saying this. The price of growing up personally and spiritually is a deepening commitment to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. For as we grow up, we must also grow down deeply into His Lordship to be rooted. As you and I determine by the grace of God to pay the price to grow up spiritually, it will involve
several things. It will involve new areas of concern. that may be uncovered and which will have to be dealt with. These may be habits, attitudes, or actions which in our childhood were thought acceptable, but which as we grow up into the Lord will be called into question by His Lordship in our lives. This can be any number of things, but let me suggest just a few that are common. One would be in the way that we use Sunday, our use of the Lord's Day, how we employ these hours
on the first day of the week. When one is in spiritual immaturity in childhood, Sunday is, in many ways, just another day of the week. But if one is going to grow up spiritually, it means facing how Sunday is used for the glory of God. For some people, an issue like this would be smoking. There are some people who believe that a person cannot be saved until he stops smoking.
Of course, that's ridiculous. But the fact is that when one is maturing and growing up in Christ, very often one of the first things the Lord will put his hand on is an issue like that in the life that defiles the body. When I was growing up, we said that smoking stunted one's growth. Now we know it also shortens one's life. It's foolish to do that. But one can be a Christian and still smoke. But as one grows up, the lordship of Jesus Christ will begin to reach into areas
like that. Another issue similar to that would be social drinking. Can one have a beer with his meal and be a Christian? Well, the answer is yes, he can. But as a person grows up and understands more and more the lordship of Jesus Christ, there's a price to pay for that growth. And the lordship of Jesus Christ will touch things like that. I remember we had a man in our church who testified to that well over a year ago now,
before all of us. And there were some who kind of gasped when he mentioned having a beer before his meal because of the heritage he grew up with. but that now he had laid that aside as he understood the lordship of Jesus Christ. There is a price to be paid to grow spiritually. It is an ever -deepening commitment to the lordship of Jesus Christ. It involves areas like careless speech, even the casual ways in which some people use
jargon to speak of God. Like gosh and gee. Now there are some people who are not at all offended by those terms. And I wasn't either at one point until I began to understand what those words really mean, what they stand for. And my heart became sensitive to the use of them. And I do not feel comfortable using terms like that any longer. It was careless speech that the Lord dealt with in my life. It can involve areas like television, the kinds of shows that we watch.
My point is this, and I'm only being suggestive because there could be so many applications, that if you and I wish to grow spiritually, there is a cost with growth. It does not happen without a price being paid. The price in general can be said to be this, a deepening commitment to the lordship of Jesus Christ over our lives. And he will begin to touch areas of life that before we did not have any sensitivity about.
But now as we begin to grow, as he enforces his lordship more widely, we begin to see that some things have to fall away, that we may grow. A new understanding of sin in our lives. It means that we must deal with those things, for Christ will not lead us onward until we put off those sins in our lives which grieve him. My point is this, that the walk that leads to higher ground is a narrow one, and it becomes increasingly
narrow the further along one gets. That walk to higher ground has less and less room for excess baggage. The extraneous, the extravagant, the urgent, even the good will gradually be squeezed out of our lives so that we can experience God's best. There is a cost to growing up. This has been reflected. In an anonymous tract that has been written and widely circulated, perhaps you have seen it, it's entitled, Others May, You Cannot. Listen to the provoking words of the
author. If God has called you to be really like Jesus, he will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility. and put upon you such demands of obedience that you will not be able to follow other people or measure yourself by other Christians, and in many ways he will seem to let other people do things which he will not let you do. Other Christians who seem very religious and useful may push themselves, pull wires, and work schemes to carry out their plans, but you cannot do it.
And if you attempt it, you will meet with such failure and rebuke from the Lord as to make you sorely penitent. Others may boast of themselves, of their work, of their successes, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing. And if you begin it, he will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works. Others may be allowed to succeed in making money. or may
have a legacy left to them. But it is likely God will keep you poor because he wants you to have something far better than gold, namely a helpless dependence upon him, that he may have the privilege of supplying your needs day by day out of an unseen treasury. The Lord may let others be honored and put forward and keep you hidden in obscurity. because he wants to produce some choice fragrant fruit for his coming glory, which can only be produced in the shade. He may
let others be great and keep you small. He may let others do a work for him and get the credit for it, but he will make you work and toil on without knowing how much you are doing. And then to make your work still more precious, he may let others get credit for the work you have done. and thus make your reward ten times greater when
Jesus comes. The Holy Spirit will put a strict watch over you with a jealous love and will rebuke you for little words and feelings and for wasting your time, which other Christians never feel distressed over. So make up your mind that God is an infinite sovereign and has a right to do
as he pleases with his own. He may not explain to you a thousand things which puzzle your reason in his dealings with you, but if you absolutely sell yourself to be his love slave, he will wrap you in a jealous love and bestow upon you many blessings which come only to those who are in
the inner circle. Settle it forever, then, that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit and that he is to have the privilege of tying your tongue or chaining your hand, or closing your eyes in ways that he does not seem to use
with others. Now when you are possessed with the living God, so possessed with the living God, that you are in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this peculiar, personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of heaven. I believe the author has found the secret that we're talking about this morning. God's plan for us is to grow up. But beloved, for us to grow up personally, there
is a cost that is extracted from us. Are you willing to pay that price, whatever it may be? Are you willing to lay down the price to grow, however dear that price may seem to you? There is no growth without paying a cost. Not only does personal growth involve a cost, but so does church growth or corporate growth. As we grow up and grow out as a church, it means that there is a price that must be paid. Our Lord's plan is for the church to grow up in verse 15. It
mentions that. And in verse 16, the implication is the growing out of the body. One of the prices that has to be paid, and it's one of the most difficult, is changing our way of thinking about our church. Do you know that the reason that most churches stop growing is not lack of space or the change of the neighborhood? or the change of leadership. The reason that most churches stop growing is because the people have not been able to change their way of thinking to adjust
to the church as it grows. In other words, the limitation to growth is psychological and not spiritual. There is no spiritual reason why a church could not grow to be 10 ,000 or 50 ,000. Indeed, there is one church in South Korea that is said to be over half a million in size. Now how is that? How can a church grow like that? Because, for one reason, the people are able to adjust their thinking in some cases to allow
for additional church growth. Did you realize that more than three -fourths of the churches in the United States of America are 100 or below? Part of the reason for that is that many of those churches are in small communities. And in some cases, the growth has reached its maximum simply because of the limitations of population in an
area. But even in this metro area, with almost an unlimited population of people, some two million strong, Think of all of the small churches that you pass by on your way to Grace Church from your home to here. Why is it that churches stop growing? Because of the thinking of the people. There are certain thresholds that churches get to. One of them is about 100. It's the first challenge. If a church can get by 100, then it
can grow to several hundred. But normally, when you reach 1 ,000, you reach another threshold. Most churches never get beyond a thousand people because the congregation is unable to think in terms of a church that large. Once a church gets past a thousand, it can often go on to between two and three thousand. But then again, there is another plateau, there is another threshold that requires another adjustment in the thinking
of the congregation. So what I'm saying to you this morning is this, that one of the prices that must be paid if a church is going to continue to grow is an adjustment in our way of thinking about a church. It perhaps is the most challenging aspect of church growth. The fact is that most of us in this congregation this morning have come from smaller churches. How many of you have come from churches of 100 or below? Would you lift your hand? All right, 150 to 200 or below.
Would you lift your hands? It's a good half of us. When we come out of smaller situations, in the kind of situation that I grew up in, there's a tremendous challenge in coming into a church that has several hundred people in it. It requires an adjustment in our way of thinking. Because you see, there's a basic fact of life that many people have not... come to understand, and that is that a larger church is not a small church that has grown larger. I want to repeat that.
A large church is not a small church that has grown larger. A large church is a completely different kind of a church. It's a different kind of animal when you begin to deal with a large church. We have to understand that. There's a gentleman by the name of Lyle Schaller who has written a great deal about church growth, who would not be of our doctrinal position probably, but who nonetheless has some tremendous insights as to the growth patterns and principles in churches.
I'd like to share with you just briefly, and I don't have time to comment on them, but I would like to share with you briefly what he observes as some of the distinctives of a larger church. I think some of these may surprise you. This comes after decades, literally, of study of churches. So he's not writing down just some thoughts. He's writing down what he has found true over and over and over again in churches. He says, the larger the church, the more difficult it
is to enlist lay volunteers. Did you hear that? I've heard it said by some people in our congregation, understandably so, why is it that when we have something that requires volunteers, we get a meager response from our church? Look at all of those people. The fact is that the larger a church becomes, the more difficult it is to
get volunteers to do something. And there are some very logical reasons for that that I don't have time to go into, but one of them is the fact that volunteering often is based upon relationships. And in a larger church, there aren't a lot of those close kinds of relationships among all of the members. There are deep relationships among groups within the church, but not among the congregation as a whole. He says the larger the church, the more conflict there is over the
use of rooms. I have seen that true. I have not sensed it true here in this church particularly, but there has been some of that, because you see in a larger church, often there are rooms set aside for specific purposes. In a smaller church, you have three rooms, and everybody understands you've got to share those three rooms. In a larger church, you have sometimes a room set aside for the choir, and a room set aside for the toddlers,
and a room set aside for this. And then when people began to use those rooms for other purposes, problems developed. He says the larger the church, the more important it is to have off -street, convenient parking. Now, we have people who park all the way down B2, as well as across the street in that parking lot, and even down in the high school parking lot. One of our great needs at the present time is to increase our parking, to get people off the street. so that the parking
is convenient as well. We say people should be willing to ride a shuttle, but they aren't, and particularly newcomers are not. I wish I had more time to talk about that, but I have to go on. The larger the church, the more vulnerable the church is to unexpected changes. We often think of a large church as being like a fortress, and nothing can shake it. But the fact is that the larger the church, the more fragile it is,
and the more unstable, potentially, it is. An unexpected change would be like the leaving of the pastor. A larger church is much more susceptible to problems when that happens than a smaller church. The larger the church, the more important it is to accept the fact that the senior minister cannot be the shepherd to every member. That should be obvious to us, but sometimes it's not.
The larger the church, the more likely it is that a member who attends at a different hour will feel like a stranger in his own church. That's because a larger church literally becomes, in its celebration, in its worship, a congregation of congregations. That's what we are here in this service this morning. We are several congregations here in this congregation. We have to be able to adjust to that and understand that that's
the way it is. He says the larger the church, the more expectation there is of high quality and planning of events in materials that are produced and in appearance of the facilities. And that's true. People expect more out of a larger church. The larger the church, the more important that name tags be used, he says, to identify people. Now, we do that in most of our
small churches. Schaller says that it's important to do that as people come into worship because it's only possible for most of us to know 100 people or a maximum of 150 people by name. Now, we don't even know that many people deeply, but we can know them by name. So when we come to meet with 500 people as we do here in this auditorium in this hour, You can only know one -fifth of these people unless you are an exceptional person.
Therefore, in order to greet people, in order for there to be that sense of acquaintance, it would be good for all of us to wear name tags even in worship. He says the larger the church, the more important smaller groups become to a healthy whole. The maximum size that is suggested for smaller groups by most people is 70. They say once it gets beyond 70, you're back into a larger situation and you lose dynamics. Some of our small churches have gotten beyond that
point, and that's not good for us. The larger the church, the more important that the smaller groups, in our case as we would call that small churches, become to the healthy whole body. Now those are some distinctives of a larger church. There are others that I could go into. But just understand what my point is. Now one of the prices that we must pay in order for our church to continue growing beyond the point where we are now is that all of us will have to change our way of
thinking about our church. We are not a small church that has grown larger. We are a different kind of thing. We are a larger church. There are some costs that come when one is involved in a larger church. I've listed but three of them here. In a larger, growing church, increasingly major decisions must be delegated to appointed groups of leaders. In other words, the larger the church becomes, the more impossible it is for the whole congregation to have enough facts
to make good decisions. Therefore, the cost is this, that most of us give our decision -making ability to smaller groups of people within the church who make the decisions on our behalf. So there is a cost that is involved. Some people have a very difficult time with that because they come out of church backgrounds where there were 60 or 100 people and everything that was going on everybody knew about and everybody could
vote and make an intelligent decision. But the larger the church, the more impossible that becomes. Each person will have less knowledge of all that's going on and will have less personal input into the decision -making process. That's a cost that we must be willing to pay if we're going to grow. Then in a growing and larger church, the second cost is this, that no one can be expected to be involved in everything, nor should one expect to find that everything will meet his or her
personal need. The reason for that is that there will develop, as a church grows, a variety of ministries. A church will become more like a smorgasbord rather than a home -cooked meal. With a home -cooked meal, you sit down, you take a little bit of everything, and you enjoy the meal that way. But there are times when we enjoy going to a buffet, and we take some of this, and we leave that, and we take some of this, and we leave that. and we enjoy that meal. Well,
a larger church is more like the buffet. We all can't be involved in everything that's going on, and everything isn't for us personally, but it's ministering to somebody here, and that's why it's happening. So there's a cost. Some people are used to being involved in everything. And they feel very frustrated when they can't be in everything that's going on because they come from smaller situations. Realize that you have
to adjust your thinking. You can't be involved in everything that's going on in a larger church. Then in the larger and growing church, there are some traditions that must be set aside to allow meaningful change. I am not talking about doctrine, but I am talking about methods that are used. As a church grows, it has to develop new wineskins to hold its new wine. If a church will not allow that to happen, then it will be
stagnated at some point. I know of a church which has used the same adult curriculum in their Sunday school since back in the 1930s. Now, for the first, it's a seven -year program of going through the Bible. And for the first two or three times going through that, that is up until the 50s, maybe even into the 60s, that was really a pretty dynamic part of that church. But today, I'm sorry to say that that very methodology that was such an important part of the foundation of that church
has become a stranglehold on the church. And the church a number of years ago peaked and is in decline. And one of the reasons is that the congregation is unable to lay aside a tradition that was once used of God and blessed of God, but which isn't effective today. And because they're unwilling to pay the cost, they're not growing. And the fact is that a church never plateaus for very long. A church only plateaus
briefly before it begins its descent. There is really no such thing as status quo in a church. There is not such a thing as just holding your own. A church is either in growth or it's in decline, except for brief periods in between. But having talked about some of the distinctives of a larger church as well as the costs of being involved in a larger church, I would like to remind all of us that there are some tremendous benefits in a larger church. Again, I'd like
to mention three just quickly. One is that in a larger church we are able to participate in a higher quality of ministry. In other words, an example of that would be Music ministry in a larger church is often of a better quality than a smaller church. I go home to visit the church where I grew up in Kansas. Over the years, the church has changed quite a bit. Some of the people there have grown older. I don't understand that. And other people have come in that I don't
recognize at all. I appreciate that congregation so much. Some of my family is in the choir there. And they're so sincere. And they do the very best they can, and I thank God for that. I thank God for that. But after hearing the choir that God has gifted us with, it sometimes is a little hard. And there are other illustrations of that sort. The point is this, that in a larger church, you and I have the privilege of participating
in a higher quality of ministry. And frankly, there are a lot of people who are expecting that these days. because of so much Christian broadcasting and the availability of recordings and tapes and cassettes and so on. People are used to better quality than they were used to 30 years ago. A second benefit of a larger church is that we can enjoy a broader range of ministry, where a larger church is able to specialize in areas. For example, a larger church is able to have
a better defined youth ministry. The reason that some of you have come to Grace Church is because there is a youth ministry here that can be effective for your family. In a larger church, there are support groups that are developed for people who have various kinds of need, everything from single parents to recovering alcoholics. In a larger church, there are opportunities to use a wider variety of gifts often and abilities.
One of the things that we're excited about is seeing drama increased in our church and used with our music in some other ways. There are some people who are very excited about that, who are part of our church, because they have training and talents in the area of drama, and this is an opportunity for them to use it. Well, often it's the larger church that's able to provide that kind of an outlet. A third benefit of a larger church is that we can realize a wider
outreach in ministry. The facts are, normally, The larger churches will have a greater impact in an area than smaller churches. One larger church often has a greater impact than if that congregation, let's say, of a thousand were in ten churches of a hundred. More people potentially can be reached and ministered to, and there is greater power in a larger church to impact missions,
to train, to send, to do special projects. So my point is this, that despite the fact that there are some costs with a larger church, just as there are costs with a smaller church, I think that the benefits, the advantages of a larger church far outweigh the costs. I would not want anyone to think that my point this morning is that smaller churches are to be looked down upon or condemned. They are not. Each congregation, must develop according to God's plan for that
congregation. It certainly would not be God's will, I would think, for all churches to be churches of 10 ,000 or 100 ,000 or even 1 ,000. But I do believe this, and I believe it without apology on the basis of what we're looking at in God's Word in Ephesians chapter 4, that it is the will of God for every church to keep growing. It may be at different speeds. But I see no exception in the Word of God to a growing church. One of the things, I should say, that can shut it off
is the thinking of the congregation. There are other things as well, of course, but that's such a major concern in most churches. If a church is to grow, there is a price that must be paid. My message today is intended to help all of us see that while we look at Ephesians chapter 4 and we talk about the growing up and the growing out of us personally and of us as a group, that does not happen automatically. That happens only when you and I are willing to pay the price to
grow. Are you willing to adjust your thinking? Are you willing to adjust your expectations of our church so that our church can become all that God wants it to be as a larger church? Are you willing in your walk with God to grow spiritually and to pay whatever price God calls you to pay? Are you willing for the Lordship of Jesus Christ to begin narrowing your walk as you press on
the upward way to higher ground? With that narrow walk, there will come the laying aside of certain things that now you're carrying along as excess baggage. After Mark had been taken to the hospital Monday night, Pastor Sulak was there in the emergency room with him. At that point, none of us realized the extent of his injuries except the fact that he was paralyzed from his chest down with limited
feeling in his hands. Mark did not know how seriously he was injured, but he said, Dave, I just want to be God's man. He said, I want the will of God. He said, I want God to be glorified in this. God doesn't call for a price from all of us like that. But there's a price to be paid if we would be God's man, God's woman. I reminded Mark yesterday of those words that he spoke several days before. He looked at me and he said, Pastor, I have to tell you that I've come full circle on those
statements a couple of times since then. I said, I know, Mark, that's normal that you would. But brother, every time you come full circle, you come back to that point of being surrendered to the will of God at a deeper level. Is God bringing you around the circle this morning? Is there some deeper level of lordship that he is seeking to enforce in your life? Please do not resist him, but continue to grow. Continue to grow to be the man, the woman that God has
called you to be. For my friend, whatever the price, it will be worth it. When we stand before the Lord. Let's pray together.