Good morning, Friends! Thank you so much for coming to worship this morning.
About a month ago, I brought a message which I called, “We Are the Church”. It was about all the good things we do together as a meeting. We’re a small church, but we try to be a good church. We have people here who love God, who want to live good lives.
Then we had two weeks of winter storms, and we had to cancel worship.
Last Sunday we came back, full of fried fish, and the message was called “The Undivided Church”. It was about how we need to respect each other and not let the kind of hate and division that are raging right now divide us.
Today, I want to talk about how to build a church. And as you might guess, I’m not going to be talking about bricks and concrete.
You can put up a building with just about anything. Our first two meetinghouses here at Springfield were log cabins. I’ve been to churches in Africa, where they don’t have a building at all. They meet in the shade under a big tree.
You can put up a building with wood, or mud bricks, or sheet metal, or whatever you’ve got. You don’t even have to have a building. Most early Christian congregations met in people’s homes.
No, I want to talk about how to build a church. A fellowship. A body of people, gathered in the name of Christ.
If you look around our area, everywhere you turn, you see new housing developments going up. It’s amazing. What used to be a corn field last year, you turn around and suddenly it’s 200 new apartments.
I know a lot of you can drive down Main Street, and point out where this family’s farm used to be, or where that shop once was, and now it’s a housing development or another strip mall.
And the sad thing is, they all look just the same. It’s like they’re all stamped out by the same cookie cutter. You can’t tell one from the other. There’s no individuality to them at all.
And most of these new places aren’t built to last. They’re just not made well. They won’t be around a hundred years from now. They’ll be looking shabby and worn out in less than twenty.
And we see the same thing happening, with a lot of new churches. They sprout up everywhere. They take up what used to be good farm land. And a lot of them all look just the same.
I think people mean well. But we don’t always know what it means to build a church. And if we’re here, we don’t remember that a church has to be re-built, every generation.
You don’t just build a church, and then quit. You have to re-build it, because a new generation comes along. And they didn’t live through the same experience. They didn’t learn from the same mistakes.
You have to re-build a church, maybe not from the ground up, but something pretty close to that, in every generation.
That’s what I want to talk about today. And to get us started, let’s read again, as we’ve done for the last two Sundays, from a letter Paul wrote to a new church in a busy city called Corinth.
What, after all, is one pastor? And what is another? We are only servants, through whom you came to believe.
The Lord has assigned each one a different task. I planted the seed, another pastor watered it, but God has been making it grow.
So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and they will each be rewarded according to their own labor.
For we are co-workers in God’s service; you are God’s field, God’s building.
By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation, like a wise builder, and someone else is building on it.
But each one should build with care. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.
If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light.
It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward.
If it is burned up, the builder will suffer loss but yet will be saved—even though only as one escaping through the flames.
Don’t you know this? You yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst!
1 Corinthians 3:5-16
When I read the gospel, when I read what Jesus said and what Jesus did, it’s astonishing that Jesus didn’t do things the way we would do them.
I’m not saying that Jesus didn’t have a plan. He did! Jesus had a very definite plan for what he wanted to do. But Jesus didn’t do any of the things that we would consider, if we were going to build a church.
Like I said, Jesus didn’t put up any buildings. He didn’t bring in church consultants. Why would he? Jesus knew better than anyone else what he was doing!
Jesus carried the only blueprint that he needed, not just in his head, but in his heart. And if Jesus had any questions, he asked his Father whatever he needed to know.
The way that Jesus built a church is kind of scary, and kind of fascinating. He didn’t show up with a bus, and a digital projector, and a praise band.
Instead, Jesus went down to the beach, and he strolled over to the nearest fishing boat. And he said, “Come on with me. Let’s walk together. I’ll show you a new fishing trick. You’ve been catching fish. I’ll show you how to catch people.”
And they tied up their boat, left everything there, and started walking with Jesus.
That’s how Jesus started building his church. It wasn’t like the Temple, which cost a huge amount of money and took years to build. It wasn’t even like the local synagogue.
It was more like a church on the road. Or a church in the field. Or a church in the marketplace, or in the home. The church was wherever Jesus happened to be.
And that’s an important idea. If we want to build a church, don’t just go to a building. Go where Jesus is.
That’s not saying that Jesus did everything just at random. Like I said, Jesus always had a plan.
Let me ask you something. How do you plant a garden? Would you go out and plant your garden right now? This week, at this time of the year? Probably not. Why? It’s not the right time yet.
We need a little more sun, a little more rain, and the ground needs to warm up first. We need to wait for the right season, and only God can bring that.
When you plant a garden, do you just go out in the yard, and throw a bunch of seeds into the grass, and hope something will come up?
No. What do you do? You probably start by digging up the soil. You pull out the weeds, and you pick out the rocks. You hoe it and rake it, and get the soil ready. It isn’t just random.
And once your seeds are planted, you can’t hurry them. Seeds come up when they’re ready, and not before. You may need to water them. You may need to put some straw or mulch down, to keep the soil moist. It takes care, and it takes knowledge, and hope. Planting a garden is a lot like growing a church.
Let me ask you something else. How do you start a new job? Do you just walk in, and sit down, and wait for somebody to hand you a paycheck? I can tell you right now, that’s not going to work very well!
You’ve got to start, by understanding what the boss wants you to do. You may have an idea yourself, but if you don’t do what the boss tells you, if you don’t do the job you’re hired for, it’s not going to last long.
If you want to succeed, you need to know your job description, inside and out. You need to show up early.
You need to get to know your fellow workers, and learn from them. They can help you out, and you need to be helpful, yourself.
These days, people are always saying you need to network. Reach out. Make new friends. Cultivate people. That’s how you build. That’s how you move ahead.
On any job in today’s world, you always need to learn new skills. You need the basic skills and values that your grandparents had. But you need to learn new skills and how to use new tools. In the working world, that’s absolutely essential.
Maybe at some time in the past, a person could go to work, and do the same thing, every day. Just tighten the same screw, drive the same rivet, hit the same nail, every day, for 40 years.
I know people who think that church is like that. Do the same thing, every time. Never change. Never learn something new. Don’t look forward. Always look back. Talk about the good old days, when we always tightened the same screw, drove the same rivet, never changed, for a lifetime.
Building a church is actually a lot like learning a new job. The job description is the gospel. The job site is all around us.
A church is built by people who show up to work — not by people who only show up when they feel like it.
I’m sorry, if you’re here this morning, you did show up, and I really appreciate it. The people who need to hear this part are the people who only come once every six months, when the sun is shining. But you get the idea of what I’m saying. Building a church is a lot like learning a new job.
Let me try a different idea out on you. Something a little less heavy. How do you plan a party? Do you just bake a cake and buy some ice cream, and hope that some people will come?
No, of course not. You’ve got to do a lot of other things. You send out invitations and reminders. In today’s world, you put the invitation out on social media. You know people are busy, so you make the party as interesting as possible.
Sometimes a party is just spontaneous, and that’s a lot of fun. But most of the time, you try to find a balance, between the magic of spontaneity and the magic of good planning. Who’s going to cook the food? Who’s going to buy the food? How are we going to serve it? Who’s going to get the DJ?
Even, where are people going to put their coats? (The answer to that one is, people are going to put their coats on every available surface, not just on the bed in the guest room.)
Building a church has a lot of parallels with throwing a party.
I think that part of what made last weekend feel so special, was that event though it was a Fish Fry, it also felt like a party. And it also somehow felt like church.
We weren’t up here, singing hymns or saying prayers. But somehow, the Fish Fry felt the way we all wish that church would feel.
Jesus had that same idea, too. Jesus didn’t put up a building. He got five thousand people together, and he told his friends to start handing out fish and hush puppies.
He didn’t tell them how to do it. He just thanked God, and told them to go ahead. That’s Jesus for you.
Let me try just one more example on you. How do you make a beautiful quilt?
Do you just take a bunch of fabric scraps at random, and throw them on the table, and hope that it’s all going to fit together somehow?
Probably not. It wouldn’t be much of a quilt that way. It would just be a bunch of scraps.
A quilt takes planning, and about a million individual stitches. And every stitch and every piece of fabric counts. If a piece is missing, there’s a hole in the quilt. It isn’t complete.
And if you’ve every made a quilt, or watched someone working on a quilt, you know how carefully it all has to be put together. Sometimes quilters hunt for years, looking for the right piece of fabric.
Sometimes quilters get tired, and work on something else for a while. But sometimes quilters get excited, and stay up past midnight working on a project.
And – let’s be honest – sometimes quilters get mad and swear at what they’re doing, and have to rip it apart and start over again.
Every quilt is different. And every quilt is beautiful, even if it isn’t perfect. There are quilts made with patterns that are hundreds of years old. And there are quilts made with brand-new patterns, that have never been seen before.
And we always need to remember, what quilts are for. Quilts are made to be beautiful. They’re a record of love and care, of skill and imagination.
A quilt is to wrap babies and kids up in, so they feel warm and safe and loved. Other quilts are for young people to remember, how much an older person loved them. People make love under quilts, and have picnics on them, and decorate their homes with color and beauty.
Making a quilt is actually a lot like building a church, if you stop and think about it.
Jesus wants us to be his church. But he leaves a lot of the details up to us.
I want you all to remember what I said this morning. A church isn’t just a building. A church is the people. We are the church. This family. This place.
It isn’t me. It isn’t the pastor before me, or the pastor before them. We’re only servants, and teachers. You are the church.
Don’t be a cookie cutter. Don’t be like everybody else. You’re unique. You’re beautiful. Don’t give up on your own special identity.
The church isn’t just built. It has to be re-built, in every generation. It isn’t what someone built 50 or 100 years ago. This generation is your turn to build it again.
And if you don’t know what to do, that’s normal. Jesus gave a lot of ideas about building a church, but he also left a lot up to us and our imagination.
Just remember, building a church is a lot like making a quilt. It’s a lot like starting a new job. It’s a lot like planting a garden. And it’s a lot like throwing a big party.
But if we work hard, and do it right, Jesus will be right here with us.