Are You Really a Christian?
Tom Shrader and guest speaker Walter walk through Romans 16, examining the diverse cast of people Paul greets to illustrate how God builds His church through slaves, businesspeople, women, and unknowns alike. The teaching is framed around the launch of East Valley Bible Church Tempe, a church plant nine weeks away, and serves as a call for the congregation to step up in service, hard work, and ownership of the church planting ministry. Key principles drawn from the passage include that God uses all kinds of people, true intimacy is found in serving together, hard work is essential, character leaves a lasting legacy, and those who are remembered are those who risked.
“The only thing that walks back from the tomb with the mourners and refuses to be buried is the character of a man — what a man is survives him.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Standalone Teachings
Recorded: 2001 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 1 hr 19 min
Themes: church planting, legacy, service, hard work, community, ownership, faithfulness, risk, feeling overlooked, new to church, church member, pastor, considering church involvement, young adult, wanting to make a difference, navigating life transitions
Scripture: Romans 16:1-16, Acts 18, Mark 15:21
Theological Themes: ecclesiology, church body, missiology, sanctification, spiritual gifts, servant leadership, biblical community, stewardship
Full Transcript
Introduction
I am going to read you an email that I received yesterday, and it provides a good introduction to what I want to talk to you about this morning. "Hi, Tom. My family and I attended East Valley Bible Church during the last year while we lived in Chandler. I just want to tell you that East Valley Bible Church has really spoiled us with our expectations of what the local church can be. The commitment to excellence in all areas of worship, service, teaching, and daily living has been a much-needed sanctuary. I encourage you to continue the path you're on. We really enjoyed the worship, the teaching, the friendship—the opportunity to teach first-grade Sunday school class with a cool bunch of kids." It's from Gary Davis. He has moved, and they are in Richmond, Virginia, and his question is, do you know a church like East Valley Bible Church in Richmond? The answer I gave him back is, no, I don't. Good luck. Why would you move, you idiot? That is my response to him.
But it really is a great introduction to what we want to talk about this morning. I have said this to you many times, and I really believe it: this is not a perfect church, but it is a really good one. It is a very good church, and it is a very good church for some very basic reasons. We cling to what God teaches, and we try to teach that. We try to do it in a way that draws attention not to ourselves but to Him.
We are really serious about equipping and encouraging people for ministry and personal growth. I talked with a fellow last week who pastored one of the big, cutting-edge churches during the 70s and the 80s, and he said to me, "Every church has a season, and right now you are in yours." I said, I don't know if that is right or not. The implication was that this necessarily goes away, and I don't know if that is true. What I do know is this: we are extraordinarily grateful to God for what He is doing.
What God is doing in this church is no occasion for us to be puffed up or arrogant, or for a second to presume that He must continue to do this. What we try to do is to be obedient to the vision that He has given us and to be faithful to the call of ministry.
Legacy and Church Planting
For me, I spend an awful lot of time thinking about my own life and the church, and right at this point they are so interwoven. There is not a day that goes by that I do not think about dying. You all know that. I think about it every day, not in a morbid way, but I simply wonder, what is the legacy? We talked about it right here last Tuesday with Mike Nothom, Sr., and you saw the legacy. That service was an incredible service, to see the legacy that he left.
I want you to understand that just as every individual has a legacy, every church has a legacy—what they are known for. A good part of our legacy for me in the last four or five years has been pushing the idea of church planting. When we first began this church, there were a lot of people who were really skeptical of us, and I must have heard three dozen times, "Who do you think you are to start a church?" I got really sick of hearing that, so finally I came back and said, "We are not starting a church, we are starting a denomination." That was in the old days. I was a little cockier then, a little in the flesh then. But there is a sense in which we are beginning to fulfill that.
What we are saying is something beyond us. You know that in nine weeks, East Valley Bible Church Tempe holds its inaugural service, and we are so excited about that. We will talk to you about that today and next week, and we want to keep that fresh in your mind. But I want to keep equally fresh in your mind that East Valley Bible Church Tempe is just part of a church planting ministry. We at this church are committed to church planting, and this is clearly the first of those plants—it is not the last.
It means that we as a church are continually sending people to minister. We are developing people, pouring into their lives, and making an investment of time and energy and effort and money in people's lives. We are making that investment, and the dividends are going to be paid to another group somewhere else. That is fine with us, because we are not about building our kingdom—we are about building His.
It means that the people who leave here need to be replaced. It means that there is always an opportunity for those of you who are serious about your faith to grow here, to be prepared for ministry either here, at another church plant, or at another church somewhere.
Preparing East Valley Bible Church Tempe
The first of those church plants is East Valley Bible Church Tempe. I remember when we first started talking about it, one of the guys said, "It is really important that that first church succeed." I never knew exactly what that means. I am not sure exactly what we mean by success, and I am sure there are all sorts of ways we can measure it. What I will tell you is this: that church has been prepared and readied for that day five hundred times more than we were here. There have been thousands of hours of planning and preparation and prayer, and now implementation, for that church.
When Walter first joined us, it was a treat for me to get to know him and to watch him. What has been a real joy is watching him over the last three and a half to four years as God has continued to mold him, shape him, and build him for what I believe is the ministry that lies before him. I do not want to presume for a second that all of you know Walter, so let me take one minute. Walter has been with us on staff for about four years, originally working in junior high and high school ministry. We expanded his ministry to include college and then also gave him children's ministry, so a very broad scope of responsibility. God continues to work in his life, and his real area of giftedness is from the front—in teaching and in identifying and developing young men that God will
The People God Uses
I want to take just a few minutes to look at Romans chapter 16. The reason for that is this: you have Paul writing what is probably the greatest theological book in the New Testament, but you don't hear a lot of preaching on Romans 16. Most people treat it as just a list of names, as if it isn't really important. It is so important, because if we take time to look at that list of names, what we find is these are the people God uses, who He uses, and how He builds a church.
I don't want to recruit you today. I really only want to see the people there that God wants to bring. But I think it is critically important, as Tom has pointed out, that a church planting ministry requires the vision of all the people — not just the people who go.
Tom has said this over and over as we've talked: "Walter, you're taking some of the best leadership we have. You've got some of the best young men." And he's right. What that means is, if you're going to do this once, twice, three times, or however many times the Lord would allow, other people have to step up. That is what this message is today — a call to step up.
It's a call for many of you men to stop saying, "I'm building a business. I could really get involved in planting a church, but there's always something." There's always the boat. Hopefully you've gotten rid of the boat after Tom has mentioned it so many times. But there's always this idea that it's somebody else — that you're not gifted enough, you don't have enough free time, you don't have this, you don't have that.
What we find in this list of names is people from every walk of life. There's no sense at all that it's only the articulate and educated, or only the highly motivated. These people are just like us. So let's go through them and develop some principles.
Phoebe: Faithful Stewardship in Action
Pick it up in chapter 16, verse 1. What you have here is Paul in Corinth, writing this letter to the Romans. Somehow that letter has to get from where Paul is all the way to Rome. That was a dangerous task and a difficult task — one you could only entrust to someone you absolutely trusted. It also had to be someone who traveled regularly, because travel wasn't easy. It had to be someone who knew their way around the empire.
Typically in that time, such a person would be a businessperson, someone who traveled for commerce. So this first individual we meet, Phoebe, was probably a businesswoman — probably wealthy and well-traveled. The fact that you have the book of Romans right in front of you is because God, working through Paul, gave the responsibility of carrying that book to Rome to a woman. Because of her faithfulness, you have that book in front of you.
*"I commend to you our sister Phoebe, who is a servant of the church which is in Cenchrea, that you receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the saints, and that you help her in whatever matter she may have need of; for she herself has also been a helper of many, and of myself as well."*
That little phrase at the end — "helper of many" — the word in the Greek is where we get our word *patron*. A patron is someone who supports and gives financially. So we really believe that Phoebe was someone who was financially contributing not only to Paul's ministry, but to many others. The first person we meet is a wealthy businesswoman, and God uses her in a significant way by taking desperately needed truth to the church in Rome.
Priscilla and Aquila: Risking Everything Together
Now Paul introduces us to some old friends. We know Priscilla and Aquila — he uses a nickname here: *"Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who for my life risked their own necks, to whom not only do I give thanks, but also all the churches."*
The Church in Their House
Greet the church that is in their house. Greet Epaenetus, my beloved, who is the first convert to Christ from Asia. You remember the story about these folks. We found them in Acts chapter 18. They happened to be in the synagogue in Corinth, because they were thrown out of Rome. All the Jews were evacuated out of Rome. They find themselves in Corinth. They sit down, and here is Paul. He sees that they have a passion for God, but they do not know Christ. He leads them to Christ, and they immediately start working and building a business together. A church begins to meet in their home.
Then two years later, they move down to Ephesus, build a new business there, and have a church in their home. And now we find them in Rome. They have built a business in Rome and have a church in their house. It is also interesting to note the other individual mentioned there, Epaenetus. Paul says he is the first convert in Asia Minor, which probably means he came to Christ in Ephesus.
So what is the picture? You have a church that was planted in Corinth. Then they move to Ephesus, Epaenetus comes to Christ, and that church grows and becomes a very prominent church. And then they say, we are going back to Rome.
There is no sense of, it is comfortable here, we have great music, why would we want to go anywhere else? There is a sense that it is not enough. Even though this is a great work, we want to go and build the work more. And here is Epaenetus, who is a new convert, and now he is a church planter. That is exciting. These are people who lived risky, entrepreneurial, passionate lives — the exact kind of lives that the American dream is all about, but can never quite deliver. But we can find it. And that is exactly what we see here with them.
Hard Work and the Cost of Ministry
Then they greet someone else from the church: Mary. We do not know anything about her except that she was a hard worker. Evidently she was a servant, because she worked hard for others. You are going to see that phrase, "worked hard," over and over. Planting and building and growing ministry is hard work.
You sit here today and enjoy all of this because nine years ago, a group of people — whom everybody said could not do it, did not know what they were doing — went into a church, met in the afternoons, and carried everything in and carried everything out. I have a huge appreciation for this now, because we are thinking about doing the same thing ourselves. I sat down with Lorraine and I said, "Lorraine, how did you get all the children's stuff in and out? How long did it take?" It took a long time. We have no idea what went into it. We walk in here and think it is fabulous and wonderful. But there was hard work that got us to this place. And it will continue to be wonderful as long as the majority of people who attend here say, we need to work hard.
I was at a leadership meeting — our leaders team meets at 6:30 in the morning because it is the only time everyone can get there, early on Saturday morning. I looked at one of the guys and he looked really tired. He had taught some things and done some work. He had actually just changed jobs; he left a position where he was about to become a partner, took a huge pay cut, and took another job so that he could be a leader in the church plant. I said, "You look tired." He said, "I am. It is my first week at a new job." But then he said, "It is a good tired." There is a cost involved, but it is a good cost. That is exactly what we see with Mary and many others mentioned here.
Kinsmen, Prisoners, and Fellow Workers
Then we meet some relatives of Paul and some old friends. Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners, who are outstanding among the apostles, who were in Christ before me. Greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord. Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, and Stachys, my beloved. Greet Apelles, the approved in Christ.
Again, we start to read these names, we cannot even pronounce them, and we think these people have nothing to do with us. But they have everything to do with us. They are just like us. Ampliatus was probably a slave, because it is a common slave name. Urbanus is a citizen's name. Stachys is a very strange, uncommon name, so we assume he was probably a citizen as well, as was Apelles. These are just normal people.
The first couple mentioned are particularly interesting. Andronicus and Junia — Paul calls them his kinsmen, so we know they were Jews. We know they were fellow prisoners of Paul, meaning they were arrested together at some point. And it says they were outstanding among the apostles. But that little phrase at the end is the one that stands out to me: "who were in Christ before me."
If they were in Christ before Paul, there is a very good chance they were in Jerusalem. Remember, Paul was traveling around persecuting the churches, and most of the believers were in Jerusalem. So there is a good chance that Saul — before he became Paul — was persecuting Andronicus and Junia before he himself came to Christ. We do not know for certain, but it is interesting to consider how God takes avowed enemies and turns them into fellow workers.
What is also interesting is this: if they were in Christ before Paul, they were among the original people in the church. They are longtime church attenders. They have been in this since the very beginning. And you have no sense from them of any attitude that says —
God's Strategy in Unexpected Places
There is no sense of nostalgia in these greetings, no looking back and saying, "Remember Jerusalem? James was there, Peter — it was wonderful." What there is instead is the ongoing kingdom. They were in Jerusalem, they moved out, now they are in Rome, building the church there. There is no sense of, "Well, I have been a Christian twenty-five years and I am just settling into life." Mike Senior's funeral was an awesome reminder that all the way down to the last breath, someone can honor Christ and die better than they lived. These people were still hanging in there at the end.
Paul then leads us to another group. The previous names would be the unknowns. These are the knowns — the big hitters. "Greet those who are of the household of Aristobulus. Greet Herodian, my kinsmen. Greet those of the household of Narcissus who are in the Lord." It is an interesting group because Paul does not use personal names — he says "household." William Barclay suggests that Aristobulus was the grandson of Herod the Great, so that when he died, his property — wives, children, slaves, servants — would all be taken into the emperor's household. That gives us an indication that there were believers in this household living right around the emperor.
Herodian was also a kinsman, also a Jew, and probably somehow related to the family of Herod as well. Narcissus presents a similar situation. He was a former slave who became secretary for Emperor Claudius and grew incredibly wealthy, because to get to the emperor you had to get through the secretary — everything came through him. When Nero became emperor, he forced all outgoing cabinet members to forfeit their income and commit suicide. The household of Narcissus was then taken into the emperor's own household.
What this shows is that God has a testimony and God has a strategy, and it is significant. We have seen something similar with the church plant, where about twenty teachers were willing to leave the growing, booming districts of Gilbert and Chandler and move into the Tempe district — a more difficult environment where people do not want to teach. In the Tempe area there are 36,000 students in the public school system, with parents and families who can be reached. It is a strategic opportunity, and God is always placing people in strategic positions because He is the great strategist.
Workers in the Lord
Now we meet a group of women. "Workers in the Lord, Greek Persis the Beloved, who has worked hard in the Lord." Trifina is a name that means "delicate," and Trifosa means "dainty" — these were aristocratic names, belonging to well-to-do ladies who did not have to work for a living. Yet they go from being delicate and dainty to something else entirely: workers. God transforms them from an aristocratic posture of not having to bother with things to rolling up their sleeves and getting right into the middle of it. That is pretty exciting.
The same is true of Persis. She has worked hard in the Lord, and she is also called "the Beloved" — meaning not only that she was beloved to Paul, but that she was beloved to everyone. There was a sense that everyone loved her. That phrase appears again and again throughout these greetings: hard work, hard work, hard work, over and over.
A Choice Man and His Remarkable Family
Next Paul greets an interesting man with an interesting mother. "Greet Rufus, a choice man." The word does not really mean chosen or elect in a technical sense — it means "choice," that he is a man among men. He is a choice man in the Lord. Paul adds, "and also his mother and mine." Paul's mother and Rufus's mother were not the same woman, so why would Paul say "his mother and mine"? Because she was one of those big-hearted, everybody's-mother ladies. You may remember someone in your neighborhood growing up whose mom was always the one you went to because you knew you could get fed — the lover of the neighborhood. We have people like that in our church. Evidently, this was that kind of woman, special enough to Paul that he calls her his mother and mine. She was a woman who loved not only her own son but also Paul.
What is also interesting is not just the mother, but who Rufus's father was — and you already know him, you just did not know the connection. In the account of Christ going to Golgotha, scourged and beaten and carrying the cross, the text says, "And they pressed into service a passerby — Simon the Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus — to bear His cross." His father is that passerby. Simon was obviously not a follower of Christ at that moment, but he came to follow Christ, perhaps through witnessing the crucifixion and the resurrection. He came to Christ, and then the mother and Rufus followed — and God raised up from that family a very choice man.
God Builds His Church
God builds His church. There's nobody here in leadership who would say otherwise, and Tom would be the first one to say this is a God thing — God did this. But the idea of continuing to see that happen is because that is what God has always been doing. A church stays fresh and passionate and vibrant as long as it continues to move out. When it builds big things and says, "Everybody come, everybody sit, and we'll make everyone happy," there is a season where that is nice, and then it is not so nice. I have been in some churches like that. I hope this church is always fresh because there is always a huge flow going in and a huge flow going out. That is what God is doing.
He Uses All Kinds of People
God uses all kinds of people. What do we have here in Romans 16? We have slaves and business people, unknowns and knowns, the connected and the not connected, the educated and the uneducated. There is a real sense here where you cannot say, "I am just an hourly worker — God cannot use me." And here is another one: you cannot say, "You do not understand my career or the stresses on me; I just do not have time to work with first graders." That is a choice, gentlemen. It is a choice. There is never going to be any more time. You think you are going to have more time when your kids are older? No — then it is soccer and every other thing that could fill up every moment of your life. It never gets easier; it only gets more difficult unless you set the priorities now. He uses all kinds of people to build His church, and everybody is involved in that.
True Intimacy Is Found in Serving Together
True intimacy is found in serving together for a great cause. Look at how many times Paul says "beloved," "my beloved," "the beloved" — love, love, love, love. These people love each other because they are serving together. Priscilla and Aquila have been lifelong friends. Some of you come to a big church like this wanting so desperately to meet someone and get involved, so you ask, as people have in many churches, "Do you have a ministry for young couples? Do you have a ministry for women?" We do have many different ministries — do you have a ministry for left-handed bowlers?
Godly Parents Who Are Involved
Rufus is raised up as a choice man, a great servant whom Paul points to, and we are still reading about him 1,900 years later. If you want to raise children who will be remembered that long, the bottom line is this: if there is a love for the kingdom, a love for the church, a love for the lost — and a mom and a dad are passionately living that out together — you are going to raise children like that. These are not parents who are godly merely because they are separated from certain things. They are godly because they are involved, because they are in the middle working it. Rufus' father appears to have died by this point, since he is not mentioned, but what we see are parents with a passion for the Lord and the church who raised a choice child.
Young Men Building Business and Church Together
Then we come to what we might call the bachelor-pad church: Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas — and the brethren with them. That phrase, "the brethren with them," seems to indicate a church meeting in their home. All of those names are Greek names, and no wives are mentioned, so quite possibly these are young businessmen in Rome building a business and also building a church. There is no sense from these men of saying, "Once I get my career going, I will really get involved" or "Honey, I know you are involved at church and that is great, but I am building my career." What is exciting is that you can be a young man, successful in business, and still put those things in proper balance — and that is exactly what we see here.
What is also worth noting is that these men will not always be young. Someday they will be older. But right now they have a passion, and many of them are successful in their careers while keeping those things in balance. It is awesome to watch. Then finally, Paul mentions Philologus — probably a nickname meaning "lover of the word," and probably the pastor there — along with Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints who were with them. That is likely another church, one made up mostly of slaves and servants.
No Limit on Who Will Hear the Gospel From You
The interesting thing about Nereus is that he was the slave of one of the highest-ranking couples in the Roman Empire. That couple came to Christ, the husband was killed, and the wife was exiled. We do not know for certain whether it was Nereus who led them to Christ, but what is striking is that God would use a slave to reach the highest levels of Roman society. There is never any limit on who will hear the gospel from you.
Serving Together and Finding Community
The goal of the leadership of this church has never been to gather people who are just like us. The goal is to come, learn, and serve. You will find the greatest intimate relationships in your life when you roll up your sleeves and get next to people and serve.
I hope some of you don't just hear that there is a six o'clock meeting for junior high and high school students and say, "That's just not me. I am not called to work with junior high boys." That might be true — in fact, I don't think anybody is called to work with junior high boys. There is a special gifting of the Spirit to do it for a period, and then you get out quickly. But there is a blessing involved when we simply respond and say, "God, I don't know a lot — use me."
I am so grateful. God has radically changed my life in the few years I have been here, and one of the major lessons I have learned is hearing Tom say over and over, "I'm not anything — God, you have to do this." I think he undersells himself quite a bit, but the principle is the same: it does not matter who you are. It is all about participating in God's work and being in His kingdom. That is where intimacy comes from. That is where we find it.
God Honors Hard Work
God honors hard work. Hard work is seen seven times in this passage. You see it over and over and over. This is what it takes — here, in Tempe, and in every church. I have no illusions about that.
Thinking about carrying equipment into a high school building when it is a hundred and ten degrees — I am not looking forward to that. I have done it before, but I am a little older now, and I have a shoulder problem, so I will probably argue my way out of it. But it is hard work. There was a time when some people got together and worked really hard on Dobson Ranch, and they can stand back now and say, "Look what the Lord has done." It never happens without the hard work.
The older generations understand that. My generation and younger does not understand anything about hard work. Please, as you get older, be an example to them. They need to look at people like you. Junior high and high school students need to look at you and see what hard work means.
I was reading Sports Illustrated this morning — Tom watches political television to get ready for Sunday, but I was reading Sports Illustrated. Lefty Driesell, one of the second winningest active coaches in college basketball, is 69 years old and coaching at an unknown program with a 20 and 3 record. He has a sign on his door that reads: "If the going's getting easier, you ain't climbing." A 69-year-old who is 20 and 3 has something to say about that. I hope we do too.
Character Leaves a Legacy
Character leaves a legacy. Each one of these people — Phoebe, Priscilla and Aquila, Mary, the others — had to make choices that produced a character recorded here in Scripture. They have been dead for 1,900 years, but their memory is not dead. Their legacy goes on.
This reminds me of a quote: "The only thing that walks back from the tomb with the mourners and refuses to be buried is the character of a man. What a man is survives him." There is a real poignant moment in all of this. When Mike Senior was sick, every Friday at six o'clock we would go up and pray just below the "A" on the mountain so we could look out over Tempe and pray. Sitting there with that group of people, I heard Mike Senior's grandson praying, "God, use us to plant this church," and Mike Senior's granddaughter praying, "God, please use us. We don't know what we're doing, but if You would use us to plant this church..."
Mike Senior is now in the presence of Jesus, but he planted four churches. God used him in the process of doing that — three himself, and his grandchildren go on to do more. I cannot think of a much better legacy than that.
Every Believer Has a Role
The Holy Spirit gives every believer a way to serve. Everyone in this room, and everyone in this story, was serving the Lord somehow. Phoebe was carrying letters. She was a businesswoman. Priscilla and Aquila were building businesses and churches. Everybody was working hard, everybody was serving, some were teaching, but everybody was involved. Everyone has gifts.
If you want to have a church planting ministry, it is not just about going on the church plant. It is about stepping up here. I was talking to someone who said, "I usually wait until they ask for children's workers about the fourth or fifth time — then I figure they really need them." We need them the first time, and we are going to need more. Fifty people are leaving children's ministry to go on this church plant. We need people to step up and take their place.
People Who Are Remembered Risked
And here is the last one — you will have to forgive the grammar, but I like the way it sounds: people who are remembered risked.
For these people to go back to Rome was a huge risk. For Priscilla and Aquila to go there was a risk. It was a risk for the slaves to live and maintain a testimony for Christ. It was a risk to move their business. It was a risk for all of them. Yet you never get any sense that they were saying, "I don't know — this could really put us in jeopardy." They were simply saying, "Let's go for it."
That is how I want to live. This is all going to burn anyway. God is going to look at what is left because of our character and our life. What a thrill it is. We enjoy the fruits of others' courage today by being here — the fruits of others' service.
I will close with this quote from Benjamin Disraeli: "The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his time when it comes."