What is a Healthy Church Community?
Community: What Is A Healthy Church Community Ephesians 4:1-16 • FCBC • 01/14/24 Good morning church, it is a privilege to be worshipping with you this morning. If you are visiting with us for the first time my name is Ryan and I am a pastor and one of the elders here at FCBC and I have the privilege of continuing in our series this morning entitled “Our church, it’s purpose: who is FCBC and where is she going?” We’ve been answering that question by going word by word through the name of our church, Faith. Community. Bible. Church. Last week Trent introduced this series to us by looking at that first word in our churches name “Faith.” And he anchored that word to the gospel of Jesus Christ in Romans 3:21-26. We looked at the good news that God in Christ saves sinners through His propitiatory death (that is a death or sacrifice that satisfied God’s righteous wrath against our sin rebellion and treason), his glorious resurrection, and his ascension to the right hand of the father where he is reigning and ruling as King of Kings and Lord of Lords until he comes back to earth visibly and personally to judge both the living and the dead and establishes his eternal reign on earth in fellowship with His people forever! We are saved by Faith in His name and by no other way! We are a Faith people or to say it another way, we are a gospel people, a redeemed people, a holy people, a people of the king. In other words, as Trent reminded us from our doctrinal statement, we are a people who hold to: • “The gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ died a substitutionary and propitiatory death as the once for all sacrifice to God for our sins and overcame death by rising again to life. This sacrifice satisfies the demands of God’s holy justice, appeases His holy wrath, demonstrates His mysterious love, and reveals His amazing grace. This free gift of salvation is provided by grace alone, through faith alone, because of Christ alone, for the glory of God alone." But our doctrinal statement goes on to say that we are also: • We are a community of faith (that is to say, a Faith Community). That is, a group of believers that have been saved by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. We are believers who gather. • And we gather to proclaim this glorious hope we call the gospel. So we see that this Faith in Jesus Christ, this belief, this giving ourselves to the gospel that has saved us leads us into community. And our goal this morning is to answer the question what is a healthy church community? If we are going to identify as a community of Faith or again, Faith Community, then what is a healthy church community? This morning we are going to look to the book of Ephesians and the apostle Paul to help us answer that question, so I’d invite you to turn to your bibles to Ephesians 4 and were going to read verses 1-16 together. Let’s read this and see what the apostle Paul has to say to and about a local church Faith Community. (Read passage) This is in part a bit of a distinctives series and part of the purpose of this series is to get you acquainted with who we are, what we believe, what our name actually means to us, what our doctrinal statement says about us. Our doctrinal statement says this about what a church is: • There is one universal Church, composed of all who in every time and place are chosen in Christ and united to Him through faith by the Spirit in one Body with Christ Himself as the all-sustaining and all-authoritative Head. We believe that the ultimate purpose of the Church is to glorify God forever. • It is God’s will that the universal Church find expression in local churches in which believers gather to hear the Word of God proclaimed, to engage in corporate worship, to baptize new believers, and partake in Lord’s Supper. Each member of the body is called to exercise his/her spiritual gifts in building one another's faith by encouraging, loving, exhorting, discipling one another, and engaging
