You Need the Body and the Body Needs You

Tom Shrader addresses a concern raised by a church parent about the role of student ministry versus parental influence, using it as a launching point to teach on the nature of the body of Christ from Ephesians 4 and 6. He argues that no parent or individual possesses all the gifts needed for spiritual growth, and that isolating oneself or one's children from the body distorts God's design for the church. He closes by casting a vision for East Valley Bible Church as a cross-generational community centered on the transcendence of God, depth in Scripture, and genuine community.

“You are responsible for these kids, you steward them, you're just not the lone influence.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: A Study Of The Life Of Jesus Christ (2003/2004)

Recorded: 2003 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 43 min

Themes: community, belonging, spiritual gifts, parenting, church family, generations, unity, discipleship, parent, feeling isolated, questioning church involvement, raising children in faith, new to church, young family, navigating change, homeschool parent

Scripture: Ephesians 4:4-12, Ephesians 6:4, 1 Thessalonians 3:10, Matthew 4:21

Theological Themes: ecclesiology, body of Christ, spiritual gifts, ephesians 4, sanctification, biblical community, priesthood of believers, pastoral vision

Full Transcript

Introduction

Let those Bibles sit down for a second — we'll get to them in just a minute. I want to use the time this morning to talk to you and share some things that are on my mind. I don't do this very often. We have this chance only once every eight, nine, or ten months or so, and usually it takes something to bring it together for me.

I've spent a good number of months thinking, talking, and praying about myself and the church — the church and you, the church and the elders, and all that goes with it. I've been praying about and thinking about East Valley Bible Church, and I assume you do as well, certainly in a different capacity. I have remembered what God has done, and I give Him the honor and the glory. I don't spend a great deal of time thinking about the past. I do spend time examining the present, and I spend a lot of time dreaming about and thinking about the future.

After vacation, when I have five or six weeks to think and make notes — it's almost Harper-esque, the way I write on legal pads; they call me a little Jimmy Harper — I talked to staff, unbeknownst to them as to what I was after, just trying to gather information, and I talked to people in the congregation. I didn't necessarily have any plan of what I wanted to do. But two events happened this week that may seem unrelated and could easily be misunderstood, and those events prompted me to take this Sunday.

I went to Gary on Friday and said I want to change the order of service. He said, "That's great — for what day, what Sunday?" I said, "This one, two days from now." He said, "Really?" So we just made a switch. I've long felt that teaching should precede communion and worship, but that's a separate issue and we'll talk about that after this. I thought that by making this change it would even further emphasize the point I want to make. It is a somber and serious point, but it is also a point that should be filled with great rejoicing and joy.

Two Events That Prompted This Message

The first event was an elders meeting. In the course of that meeting we were talking about the future. Jerry called on me and said, "Why don't you talk about what he and I have been discussing?" So I shared that, and the way it is presented inevitably involves a long discussion. People naturally have a hard time when we talk about the future, because things are undefined and it means change.

The second event was a visit from a man who came to see me. He is a godly man who loves his kids, loves his wife, and loves the church. He came to talk about kids — the role of kids and the role of the church. He was asking and questioning, and I don't mean that in an unhealthy way but in a good way. He said, "I've got kids now moving into junior high, and it seems to me there's been a paradigm shift where all of a sudden you are minimizing the parent and emphasizing the role of the church, perhaps to the exclusion of the other." Those are his words.

While he was adamant that he represents no group — he said, "I'm just here as a concerned dad" — I know how dynamics work well enough to know that he doesn't exist in a vacuum, and he likely represents someone. He is also a man who understands the church; he's been with us a long time and, as I said, loves us. So it got me thinking. We had a magnificent conversation. I gave him some things to think about, and he gave me some things to think about. When he left, I thought: that ought to be a body experience, because it ties into an understanding of what the church is.

What Scripture Actually Says About Parenting

When it comes to parenting, there is precious little information — especially in the New Testament — about how the family functions. Open your Bibles, please, to Ephesians chapter 6, because that is one place where Paul gives us some direction about parenting, and especially about the role of the father.

Paul has been giving us magnificent doctrinal truths in chapters 1, 2, and 3, and then some practical application. We are now in the body, we are now together, we are to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Wives submit to husbands, husbands love wives, children obey your parents. Then verse 4 of chapter 6: *"Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord."*

That first phrase seems almost odd to me. I don't know why a father would provoke a child to anger, yet I know I've done it. Paul is saying, dads, watch out against this. I think especially for the audience receiving this letter for the very first time, the culture was very rigid and very disciplinarian — not unlike, frankly, perhaps my dad's generation. They were tough, not necessarily long on saying "I love you" or "I feel for you," and they could discipline sometimes in anger. I'm not singling out that generation, because I accept that tendency in my own as well. But it is a safeguard, it is a warning.

Then Paul gives the father this instruction: bring these children up in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord. As I've talked to parents, they come to that verse and seem to flinch in a direction that says the father is the ultimate person responsible for the kids. There is no question that the father — and certainly the mother — are the chief stewards of those children, the principal guardians, and primarily responsible for them.

The Father Is Not the Sole Influence

Here is the problem. They are not the sole, lone, singular, solitary influence on those kids. It will be very easy to walk out of here thinking we are talking about parenting, but what we are really talking about is the body — and that is where we need to go next.

The Body Needs More Than One Influence

When a man came to see me, here is what he said. He told me he had spoken with somebody who taught my girls when they were in grade school. She told him that all the time she had my girls, they never once missed a Bible question. He assumed I must have spent an extraordinary amount of time in family devotions, one-on-one time, going through the Scriptures, unfolding and unpacking them, training them. I didn't. I spent time teaching them, but not in the way he imagined.

I am not saying the way I did it is right. He was simply observing what he saw as a finished product. I didn't have a set time of family devotions, and I'm not saying there is something right or wrong either way. What our kids saw was truth alive and real.

They would see Susan take a trip to the grocery store and turn it into one of the most profound Bible lessons they had ever heard. They would be at the mall with me and I would say, "Come here, girls. See those thirteen-year-old boys over there? Watch how they look at girls. What do you think that means? What would God say?" That is how it worked in our home.

The man who came to see me was concerned about what he perceived as an overemphasis on the role of junior high and high school in a student's life. I think his confusion was about what that meant for him as a parent. Let me address that directly, because it is very important.

These Are Not Your Kids

These are not your children in the ultimate sense. They are not a little treasure that you bury in the back and bring out every once in a while. These are God's kids, entrusted to you to steward.

You already know that others are going to have an influence on them. You know that, and you may fear it. But I don't know why you would fight that battle. A couple of weeks ago, when we were talking about meditation and how hard it can be, someone made a great observation. He said, "If you can worry, you can meditate, because if you're worrying, you're already meditating — you're chewing things over in your mind."

Here is what I am saying to you as a parent. You know these kids are going to be influenced by outside sources. When my girls were eight, nine, or ten — the ones who never missed a Bible question, the ones I would hold up as pretty good kids — I was praying for outside influences to come into their lives.

I would call up Melanie Klum or see her at church and say, "Melanie, will you come and get the girls?" A sixteen-year-old girl is going to have a profound impact on a twelve-year-old. You as a dad may resent that, fear that, or tremble at that. But understand this: if you are resisting it, you are part of the problem.

Understanding How the Body Works

The issue here is not parenting technique. It is an understanding of the body and how the body works. You are responsible for your kids, you steward them — you are simply not the lone influence. If you do not provide godly outside influence, so many bad things can happen.

Here is one false assumption underneath the lone-influence theory: it assumes that you possess all the gifts and all the interests. You don't. If my kids were only influenced by me, there would never have been much influence for missions in their lives. I understand missions, I support it, I encourage evangelism — but I don't bleed for it the way a Mike Posh would. They needed Mike Posh's influence.

Your children may be particularly gifted in an area of the arts. They may be drawn to a certain way of being engaged that simply isn't yours. When you say, "I will be the only influence on this child's life," you are saying, "I have all the gifts." You don't. That is exactly why God gave you the body. And it is the same for a thirty-five-year-old — you cannot go it alone, you need the body.

Rugged Individualism and the Body of Christ

If you as a parent take the approach of being the sole influence, I believe you distort the role of the body. You promote the idea of rugged individualism — the notion that you can do this on your own. In doing so, you play right into the weakness of the culture we are in.

One time in staff devotions, Sam McRane made a profound statement. He said, "My greatest assets as a marine are my greatest liabilities as a Christian." His greatest assets as a marine were his individualism, his pride, his go-it-alone mentality — a few good men. He said that doesn't work so well in the body of Christ.

I am a free-market capitalist — I'm speaking about myself personally now. But even I know that doesn't translate well into the body of Christ. We live in a time where we simply move from thing to thing to thing. You're a Wendy's person until McDonald's, and then until In-N-Out comes along. You're a Dillard's shopper until Nordstrom arrives.

We carry that same mentality, consciously or unconsciously, over to church. We say, "I'll go it alone. I know what I need." But you were not designed to live that way. You were designed to be part of the body of Christ.

What is so striking to me is this: if someone came to you and said, "Let's talk about marriage," you would immediately ask, "What does Scripture say?"

The Body, Not Just the Family

When we talk about church, it becomes very personal very quickly. People say, "Let me tell you what I think. Let me tell you where I was. Let me tell you about a bad experience I had. Let me tell you about this place that didn't meet my needs. Let me tell you when I was sick and the pastor didn't come to see me." But what about the body?

When you take a junior high or high school student and isolate them away from other students their age, I believe — especially if that student is a believer — you rob that student of the opportunity for evangelism and ultimately for discipleship outside a small, homogeneous environment. How many of you were at the baptisms here two weeks ago? It was a magnificent service. It was incredible.

Three high school girls stood up there and just dripped brokenness over their sin. They had been walking with the Lord for a couple of years. All three of them were influenced by another junior high student who invited them to church, who put them in a discipleship group, and who ultimately got them to summer camp. All three were saved at summer camp, have been walking with the Lord for two years, and have begun the process of replicating and multiplying themselves.

That is the normal body Christian life — and it is not isolated to a thirty-five-year-old. My challenge is this: not only would an isolated student miss that kind of experience, but we would miss that student. If a young person has that much figured out, they need to be in a discipleship group where they are sharing that among their peers, learning to defend their faith and share the gospel among their peers.

The Risk of Isolation

While you may think this is about parenting, it is not. It is about the body of Christ. If you take the approach that says "I am the lone influence," you run the risk of distorting that student's view of the church forever — making the church something out there that we don't really need, something we participate in only on our own terms.

Here is my suspicion, and I believe it was true in one particular father's heart: his concern really reflected an unhealthy fear and a distrust of God. This was a godly man who loves his children, loves the Lord, and loves this church. But underneath his concern was a question: What happens when I start to let go? What about my role?

I know this may sound strong, but it is almost as though he was taking it too seriously. It is not your child — it is God's child, entrusted to you. You will be a major factor in shaping that child's life, but not the only one. And allowing other influences to speak into a child's life, even to correct them, is an important thing.

That is what I see in parenting far too often. All of a sudden a child has an issue, someone else points it out, and the parent removes the child. We're done. That is no good. The body learns nothing from that.

Sarah's First Day of School

Let me tell you about Sarah's first day of first grade. I didn't want to take her. I had held her out of kindergarten, and then I took her to first grade. I walked her in, sat her down right next to Matthew Martin. The first person I meet in first grade is Matthew Martin, sitting right next to her. I sat her down, walked out, and I was a mess standing at the door.

I looked back over my shoulder at her. She knows exactly what I am like. She looked back at me as if to say, "It'll be okay, Dad. I can handle this." And I prayed for other influences in her life precisely because I loved her so much. I knew that if all she got was Susan and me, she would get only a partial view of what Christ's likeness truly looks like.

I knew that if she was not in a place in the body where she interacted — even at a junior high or high school age — she would develop a distorted view of the church. Does it always work out that way? No, it doesn't always work out that way. But again, while you may think what I am talking about is parenting, what I am really talking about is the church — the way the church works, the body of Christ.

What Scripture Says About the Body

If you wanted to talk to somebody about marriage, you would ask, "What are the primary things of marriage? What does Scripture say?" We should bring that same approach to the church. Look at Ephesians 4 for just a moment — and by no stretch is this an all-encompassing view of the church.

Paul is writing about the church. He says in Ephesians 4:4: one body, one Spirit, one calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Father. He then speaks about different giftedness and different roles, and in verse 12 he tells us why those roles exist: "for the equipping of the saints and the building up of the body of Christ."

The word "equipping," or a derivative of it, is used to speak of mending, repairing, or making complete. It appears in Matthew 4:21, where James and John and their father were mending their nets. They had finished fishing for the day and were now mending those nets, preparing them for use the next day. That is part of what happens here.

When we talk about equipping, encouraging, and building up the body, part of what we mean is mending — making effective people ready to serve. Paul writes to the church at Thessalonica in 1 Thessalonians 3:10: "Night and day, we keep praying that we may see your face and may complete what is lacking in you."

The word translated "edification" or "building up" carries the idea of one who promotes another's growth in Christian wisdom, piety, happiness, and holiness. That is what the body is all about. It is not uncommon for a couple to come in and say, "Our marriage is in real trouble — can you help us?" We are there for that, and we understand it. And one of the first things we ask is, "What small group are you in?" And often the answer is, "We're not in a small group."

The Body Is Not Optional

When someone calls the office asking about service times, and we say 8, 9, 10, 11, 4, and 6, and they ask if we have any others — we could swing by your house and do it in the backyard, I suppose. But that illustrates the point. The body of Christ is different than the Elks. It's different than the gym. It's like family. We are knit together. We are to love one another and care for one another.

You are terrific at understanding that if you're sick and in the hospital, I probably won't be the guy who gets there first. But when somebody from the church gets there, the church has gotten there. That's the way the body works. That's what's so important.

We live in a culture driven by individualism, by getting your own needs met, by making service available 24 hours a day — have it your way. All of that contributes to a mentality, consciously or unconsciously, that spills over into the way you see the church. It's important to see the church the way God sees it.

The people who sometimes struggle with this — who say, "I'm not sure I need this" — are often people who have grown so much and have so much to offer. It may be that you don't even directly need it for yourself at this point, but you need to be used in the body of Christ in this way.

The Church Is Not a Parachurch

Young Life is not a church. Campus Crusade is not a church. Priority Living is not a church. We live in the day and age of parachurch ministries, and I watch it. I watch men come to Christ at some camp, or at a Young Life event, or a Campus Crusade event — and so often those are the very people who never plug into a church. The renegades, the freelancers — I understand that's a generalization, but it's a pattern.

God did not ordain Priority Living or Young Life or Campus Crusade. He ordained the church. This really isn't optional behavior. It's really important. We are a body. What you do affects me, and what I do affects you. We are concerned for one another, we love one another, and we plug into that.

The vast majority of what we see evolve into crisis could have been easily handled through elementary discipleship in the body of Christ — through foundations of the faith, growth groups, small groups, pouring into one another. Am I saying this has to take place within the construct of East Valley Bible Church? No. But I am saying it ought not to take place entirely on the individual's terms.

Building a Cross-Generational Church

I've spent a lot of time thinking about the future. Since November 3, 1991 — the day we started — I've thought about how this church ages. I have no idea what it means, but I was younger when we started this church than Tim Maughan is now. That's certainly interesting.

I am determined — and when I say "I," I want you to know the elders share this and we've discussed it — that East Valley Bible Church is going to be cutting edge. Now let me tell you what that means. This church is going to be, to my knowledge, the first large church to make a successful transition from one generation to the next to the next. Here's what typically happens: a man comes in, begins to teach, the church grows, and ultimately they have to put him out to pasture. The 5,000-member church drops to 1,500, and then it has to be rebuilt around the next man, who they will ultimately put out to pasture as well, and go through the whole cycle again.

We are not going to do that. We are going to be cutting edge in that we will proactively, deliberately, and consciously become cross-generational. We are determined not to fall into the traditional approach — the flinch response of, "How do we get everybody together? Well, we can't, so we'll do a blue-hair service at 8, and then at 10:30 we'll do pink hair, and at noon we'll do no hair." We are not going to let hair define our congregation. And as much as I say that with a laugh, I am genuinely serious about it. I am giving my life to this.

What "Cutting Edge" Actually Means

So often when people hear "cutting edge," the first thing they want to talk about is music. Music was really the defining issue in the last couple of generations. I was at Borders Bookstore recently, and Borders carries Christian music — not to minister to anyone, but because it sells, which I have no problem with. If they're carrying it, they're carrying it because it's moving.

I found a new CD and listened to some of the cuts. The artists are ones you're hearing regularly — Zoey Girl, Watermark, Third Day — current voices in what people call contemporary Christian music. These are groups who came together to put out a record that Borders believed would sell. And I want you to hear what they chose to record.

This is always a little awkward, looking at each other while listening to music, but just listen to a couple of these cuts. Here's Third Day — here's their edginess: *Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh what a foretaste of glory divine.*

The Hunger of a New Generation

There is something significant happening in the music that is resonating with people right now. David Crowder is an artist who captures it well. On the same CD, for the same audience, he moves from a modern, atmospheric song about the beauty and unchanging nature of God — "You are more beautiful than anyone ever / Every day, you're the same, you never change, no never" — to a full-throated rendition of "All Creatures of Our God and King / Lift up your voice and with us sing / Oh, praise Him." The same artist, the same record, the same listeners.

What in the world is going on? What this generation has done is understand that the seeker-sensitive approach and all that came with it is bogus and empty. This generation has understood that they have been malnourished, that they haven't been fed the Word, that they've been treated to a God who responds to them rather than one they respond to. They've understood that God is a transcendent God and He accepts people on His terms, not the other way around. That conviction is reflected in what they think and in how they behave.

Tyler gave me a new book to read called *Young Evangelicals*, which reports the results of a survey done at Wheaton, drawing from students across 38 states, 41 denominations, and 14 different countries. Here is what this generation is looking for in a church: a genuine encounter with God, genuine community, depth and substance, more frequent and meaningful experience at the Lord's Supper, challenging sermons, a serious use of Scripture, participation, a creative use of the senses, quiet and contemplative music with time for reflection, an intimate relationship with God, and a focus on the transcendence and otherness of God — in other words, the holiness of God.

This whole generation coming along is saying: we are serious about this relationship. We are not looking for a show. We are not looking for a presentation. We are not looking for milk. We are looking for meat.

Revival Then and Now

This very morning, I was reading about what was observed during Jonathan Edwards' time — roughly 300 years ago — when revival was breaking out. Consider what they saw in that revival and notice whether it sounds familiar. They saw an awesome sense of the presence of God, the truth of the gospel, a profound awareness of sin leading to deep repentance, uninhibited witness of the power and the glory of Christ with a mighty freedom of speech expressing the mighty freedom of spirit, joy in the Lord, and the fear of sin. That is the same list this generation is asking for today.

The Cross-Generational Opportunity

East Valley Bible Church is as well-positioned as any church I can imagine to be deliberately cross-generational, and that will put all sorts of demands on us as we begin to flesh this out. But do you see what is happening? For perhaps the first time in the history of the church, people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s are all saying the same thing: talk about the transcendence of God, talk about the holiness of God, make it genuine, make it real, no more show, give me the Word, and show me how it lives out.

It is not enough to simply know these things intellectually. How does faith flesh out in daily life? Where do the "one anothers" of Scripture come into play? And if we isolate someone in that process — whether it's a junior high student, a high school student, or a 40-year-old — we miss what God is doing in the body.

That is what East Valley Bible Church is going to be. The same values, the same non-negotiables — none of that changes. But it is a place where we understand that God is speaking to all people. He will do it in ways that manifest a little differently from one generation to the next, but we are at a unique place in time with a unique opportunity.

The Fruit of the Church Growth Movement

When I read that survey list, and I see that young people are saying they want to take communion more often and they want more out of the Word, what I hear is this: we are reaping the fruit of the church growth movement. The passion for the preaching of the Word was set aside, and in its place came entertainment from the pulpit — a cute story and three points. We hear all the time that junior high and high school students have a 15-minute attention span and that is all you can expect. When we say our service is an hour and a half, the church growth voices say it is too long and needs to come down to 45 minutes, an hour at the most.

What Cross-Generational Means in Practice

Part of what this cross-generational vision means in practice is that you have to see it on the platform. You have to see it in positions of leadership. It means you are part of a body, and when a body grows, sometimes it hurts and sometimes it is painful. Sometimes the legs cramp and you need to take in a little more, but that is something we can work through together and figure out. What we are building here is a body where every part is present, every part is valued, and no generation is left to the side.