Some More Ingredients Of A Gospel Centered Church

Good morning again, everyone. Great to see you this morning.

I am grateful to gather as the Church of God this morning, and I hope you're anticipating great things. The Lord speaks and through each other, through the Word, through the music, all of these things. Last week we looked at 1st Thessalonians 1, 2 through 5, and I gave us what I called some ingredients of a gospel centered church. And we looked at the ingredients of thanksgiving and prayer, transformed lives, which we said were made up of active faith, sacrificial love and enduring hope, and good gospel centered theology, where we talked about the work of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in our salvation. And we touched upon the idea that God's chosen people, Israel, whom He loved and called, is now extended to the church as well, whom he also loved and called.

And we covered five verses last week, but it was a lot and I sure hope it was helpful for you as you considered your own calling and your life in Christ and in the church and especially for us in this season of church planting. This week is sort of part two for us. In fact, I'm calling today's sermon some more ingredients of a gospel centered church. So last week, some ingredients, this week, some more. Again, that's literally my sermon title here.

And we're going to look at how a gospel centered church today is an example in things like perseverance, joyful expectancy, missional living, and we'll end once again this week with transformed lives. That's where we're going this week, and it's an extension of last week. And so that's why we're doing similarly as we did last week. Speaking of example, as you probably observed being an example or imitation is one of the primary themes in this section. In First Thessalonians 1, Paul is so encouraged because the people of Thessalonica watched his apostolic team, the church planting team there, as they planted a church.

And they watched them grow from this planted church as they imitated the apostolic team. And I think as we think about this, one way people, US Christians grow in discipleship is by seeing examples of different and many times more mature Christians around us, not always more mature. You can actually grow in discipleship by watching someone who's even less mature than you in faith, which is pretty amazing. That's the body of Christ working together in a really cool way, but following other people's example in places where you need to grow in and they can do the same for you. Paul says in First Thessalonians 1:6, you yourselves became imitators of us, the us there is Paul, Silas and Timothy, of course, and of the Lord.

They grew as watching these people like real life in the flesh. Christians living out their lives in Christ and the example of the Lord that they knew. And so Paul came along and his apostolic team not only spoke the word of God to them, but he gave them his life. He says in our next chapter, next week we'll look at this. He was like a father with his children, exerting, exhorting, and encouraging them to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel.

And it worked because then he actually flips the script. It's really cool. Like, they're the example. And then he says, now you became the example for others to imitate as well. In First Thessalonians 1:7, you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.

That's awesome. Like, these are powerful words. These people's lives have been changed. And so he continues to talk about them throughout the books of 1st and 2nd Thessalonians as examples. In fact, in chapter 2, verse 14, it says, you brothers and sisters became imitators of God's churches in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, because you have also suffered like they become examples to other people.

The phrase became imitators is used by Paul as for us to think of as a way that we can think of mentorship, discipleship, growing in our faith. Paul uses it six times in different epistles too. Most famously is probably in First Corinthians 11:1, where he reminds the Corinthians to follow him as he follows the example of Christ. You know, follow me as I imitate Christ is what he says. Speaking of imitation, it's Father's Day this weekend.

There's a lot of thoughts about growing as like our dads are. You know, there's talk about that. There's. There's commercials about that. It's.

It's Hallmark holiday stuff, you know, going on. But Father's Day for me means something extra special, and that is that every year, the U.S. open golf tournament is during Father's Day weekend. It's one of the four major championships of professional golf, and it's going on right now. I may or may not have been watching it this morning while finishing my sermon.

Please don't judge me. I was praying to. I promise. But I like to say that if you don't like golf, you just don't understand it. And I say this because I always thought hockey was really boring.

Sorry. My Canadian friends who are out there right now, until Seattle got the Kraken, and then my friend Dan explained how it was played. We went to a few games, and I started to really enjoy it. I'm a fan. It's a great sport.

You know, go Oilers, right? If you're watching the Stanley cup finals right now, I get why Canadians, like, declare national holidays around the Stanley cup finals. I get that. But in my younger days, my sport was baseball. But nowadays, my sport or hobby is golf, and I find it incredibly fun and challenging.

The consistency you need to hit all the shots keeps your attention. And for me, golf is cheaper than therapy, although I probably need both, to be honest with you. And I actually wondered this week, as I thought about golf, if golf was one of the harder sports to play. Of all the sports that were out there, if you've played, you understand why I say that. It is incredibly frustrating at times.

And so I looked up that question this week on the famous Internet and I was surprised by what I learned. The answer was different than I would expect, too. Several years ago, a panel of experts got together and they used 10 categories to think about sports in general. Categories like endurance, strength, agility, flexibility, hand, eye coordination, and more to find out what was the hardest sport to play of all times. And they actually got to rank 60 sports that have traditionally understood to be pretty difficult.

And so ESPN published the results. You can go look at this. Turns out golf is way down the list. It's actually number 51, right above cheerleading and right below horse racing. My gosh, I couldn't believe it.

Do you want to know what the hardest sport is? I wonder if you knew. It's boxing, they say is the hardest sport out there. Second hardest. Hockey.

Okay, I get why it was important now baseball was like number nine. I'm like, have you tried it? A curveball? Do you know what that's like? Anyway, regardless of difficulty, one of the things needed in sports, and especially golfing, I would argue, is to be able to replicate something with consistency.

For golf, it's the swing. When you watch these golf tournaments like the US Open, it's fun to watch them do a slow motion of these golfers swings. And you're like, that is a work of art in some of them. And I learned so much just by watching those videos. And I've probably spent more time on YouTube watching videos than I should about golf and then heading to the course and trying to replicate those things.

I mean, golfers always swing their own swings, but the best golfers swing that swing with consistency. And I'm not ashamed to say that I have learned to emulate a few other people in my own golf swing. And that's been really helpful for me to grow in the game. And following example in sports is key. You know this.

If you've played sports, you've watched this, you've heard this from coaches, that examples are the key for us to grow. This is the way of the Christian life, friends having examples to follow. And I hope some of you have examples to follow in your own life. We say around here that there's no discipleship without relationship. And this is because we believe that the influence that we have on each other can be for good or for ill.

Like no human being is neutral. No human being is neutral in your life. Think, think about that. This is why our friends are so important to our lives. And the maxim that discipleship is more often caught than taught I think is pretty accurate.

And I understand that good teaching and good discipleship go hand in hand. And I'm not negating that. I'm just saying that I've learned so much more in my own life in Christ by watching people like you live out your life in Christ in areas that I've struggled with or I'm going through, or in particular, what Suzanne talked about today was suffering. I've watched some of you walk through suffering and I'm like, wow, that's. That's a PhD in learning how to suffer.

Well, and so again with all this in mind, Paul tells us right off the bat in this passage and I think becomes a big theme of the whole section of the last two weeks, that the Thessalonians were examples to everyone because they had ingredients of a gospel centered church, Church being the people and the Ingredients we see this week to add on to last week's were an example in perseverance, joyful expectancy, missional living, and those transformed lives we think of the last one most of all. I'll end with that one today. But there's so much more that make up the ingredients of healthy people within the body of Christ. And so let's think about these for just a second this morning. Perseverance is the first one.

Paul says in 1st Thessalonians 1:6. You yourselves became imitators of us and of the Lord when, in spite of severe persecution. Persecution. I don't know what sales pitch you received when you were told what it was like to become a Christian, but here's the biblical pattern for disciples of Jesus. Hear the Gospel, believe the gospel, follow Jesus, and then suffer like Jesus and the other disciples did.

That's a pattern in the New Testament scriptures. That's being a Christian in a broken world. Like we die to ourselves and live in such a way that our hope transcends what is going on around us and in the world. I've often thought that becoming a Christian and being a Christian doesn't get rid of the pain of life, but what it does for us is it gives meaning to the pain of life. It helps us actually categorize what pain does for people.

Sometimes following Jesus makes life more difficult for others of us. In here, the Greek word that Paul uses for persecution here is a really interesting word. It's the word flipsis. That's the Greek word. And this word has some depth to it.

In fact, it carries imagery of severe pressure being applied to an object. You can think of it as like pressure cooker type stuff, right? And most often it's distress that is brought about by outward circumstances around people and not just the pain of life because we live in a broken world or because our bodies are broken, but actually outward pressure that's pushing in upon us. And Paul is speaking to those who have great trouble that's directly related to their lives in Christ. And I would say this.

We need examples on how to fight the battle of the faith when we're facing this severe persecution in this life. Now, with this said, I know that Christians in the west don't face much difficulty for being Christians in the West. Moreover, many fight extremely hard to keep a place of power and to make our nation a more Christian nation. So we don't suffer. But we have to admit that we in the west are privileged for being Christians.

We do. We live in a privileged place of society and you can argue with me. Are you sure? I don't feel very privileged. I don't feel like I.

I get preferential treatment in things that I do because of my faith in Christ or because of my beliefs that are biblical. But I would say you still. I still have a place of privilege here in the West. And if you don't believe me, just ask someone from the developing world who's a Christian or someone who's suffering in the Muslim world as a Christian. The pattern of the New Testament Church, again I remind you, is to suffer rejection, suffer some of those things, suffer the loss of relationships and, and even the limiting of career prospects because of our discipleship to Jesus.

That's persecution in the text. And Christians in that area of the world where suffering is real can, can teach us so much. And their examples of faith can be so helpful for us. The late British theologian Geoffrey Wilson says it was never Paul's practice to portray an easy road to heaven, for he knew that all who became imitators of the Lord are called to share in the rejection which he met from that unbelieving world. And that's our calling.

And for those of us who have faced suffering and persecution, and maybe we don't see them in much in this building today, but we can look at them in our modern world by the beauty of technology and some of the things we hear coming out of the developing world, we can look at their example and say, wow, that is what following Jesus is really like. And so this teaching that Paul brings to the Thessalonians here is just simply wrapping up what Jesus is had said earlier, the example of Christ, where he said in Luke 9, if anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me forever, wants to save his life, will lose it. And whoever wants to lose or whoever loses his life because of me will save it. My wife puts scriptures on our mirror in our bathroom really beautifully. She changes them every now and then.

But she left Luke 9, 23 and 24 up a little too, too long for me. And I kept looking at every morning when I'm taking a Sharon, I'm like, oh, man, are you trying to speak to me, Lord, about something like this? Like, take out my cross and follow you. I always thought that was a really beautiful verse until I read it every single morning. I was like, oh.

It started to sink in. Good news, she did change it recently. I'm glad for that. It got a little too uncomfortable. But what distinguished Christians and the early Christians as well as the Apostles were the examples that they had of following people and in acceptance of persecution and living out their faith in the midst of persecution.

I think we can learn so much from that here and I want us to consider that as part of our calling, as being the church in our culture now related to persecution here, Paul also notes an example of the Thessalonians is in Joyful Expectancy, Part 2. Here these are really connected because it says in spite of severe persecution that's happening, you welcomed the message with joy from The Holy Spirit first. Thessalonians 1:6, you might say, what message? Was it the message of the Gospel? Was it the message of persecution?

This is an exegetical question. You can try to answer yourself. I have a perspective on it, but I think they knew what was coming and they went ahead with joy. That's what we kind of see here. This is the key, I think, to handling persecution like rejoicing in Christ in the middle of afflictions and learning how to have joy in the midst of suffering.

Do you remember the very last subject that Jesus addressed with his disciples before leaving the upper room for the Garden of Gethsemane, when he was heading to his own suffering and rejection and death? His final message, like his mic drop moment, was from John 16. I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace, you will have suffering in this world. Be courageous. I, I have conquered the world.

What a great word from Jesus who knew what was about to happen to him. How do we have joyful expectancy in the midst of persecution or in receiving that message with joyful expectancy? Well, it seems like to me that Paul is saying the Holy Spirit is key for us here. Relying on the power of the Holy Spirit, Paul observes that they had exhibited joy. Not from themselves, they didn't work it up.

I'm going to feel good. I'll take it. Take one for the team. I'll rub some dirt in it and keep going. But rather something supernatural happened in the midst of people experiencing persecution.

And that is the joy of the Holy Spirit was overwhelmingly given to them so they could live out the lives that God had called them to live out. That's pretty cool to think about. Like this isn't to say that Christians shouldn't grieve or say when bad things are bad, like that is welcome here. Like we always say, we want you to come in. Not with a made up personality or look on your face when you show up here on Sunday morning.

Everything's fine, brother, sister, I'm okay. You're okay. No. Life is painful. We face suffering and all that kind of stuff.

We can grieve. But even with our grieving through the Holy Spirit, we have access to joy. We have access to joy. How does that happen? I think in so many ways, like.

And sometimes you might even say that, and some of you could probably testify to this as an example to the rest of us, that even in your afflictions, sometimes some of you have experienced the deepest of joys. I don't mean that the nicest of joys or the happiest moment of your life, but through suffering and through pain and through perseverance, the Holy Spirit has been poured out into your heart, as Romans tells us, and you've been given hope. And through that, you experience some deep joy that's even hard to explain. And when people look at your life of suffering and they say, how do you do that? You say, I don't know.

I don't know. But being a Christian has given me the gift of the Holy Spirit, where he brings comfort in affliction. He brings joy in the midst of deep pain and suffering. I think one of our favorite podcast series that we did over the last few years through our Abound in Hope podcast was the one we entitled the Word of Their Testimony. If you didn't know, we have a podcast in imprint church like and subscribe.

Just kidding. I don't care. But no. Oh, my gosh, I can't believe I said that. This is this, this sermon series.

The word of their testimony was based on Revelation 12, where the Bible says, the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have now come. Because the accuser of our brothers and sisters who accuses them before our God day and night has been thrown down. They believers here conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not love their lives to the point of death. Romans 12, 10, 11. Like, if you want to be encouraged, like, listen to some of these stories, the examples of people.

Some of the folks that were on this. Many of you told us your story of coming to faith in Christ. Some of you told us stories of deep suffering that you experienced in your life and how the Lord actually supernaturally gave you joy in the midst of that thing. Some of you are still walking through suffering. When we were going over the podcast, and there's something really beautiful about the example of other believers who are living lives together, who are overcoming the evil one by the word of their testimony, by the blood of the Lamb, the work of Christ, and by not loving their lives, even to the point of death, saying, I'm going to walk through this, and I'm willing to walk through it to kind of live my life on display for the body of Christ to see.

And so we got to hear stories of victory, suffering, pain, and so much more. And it was so cool to watch the interaction of the stories of yours that lived out in like trying to learn how to live a life of faith and trying to learn how to live in suffering and trying to have joyful expectancy. And actually what came out of that for me was a joyful expectancy. The Holy Spirit helped me and our listeners, and we talk about it often around here, that we think it was our highlight out of our podcast series together. So perseverance, joyful expectancy, check those things are we ought to.

And the Thessalonians ought to live out before other people. But the Thessalonians were also an example in another thing, and that's missional living. And that's 1 Thessalonians 1:8. The word of the Lord rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place that your faith in God has gone out. Now, I like the perseverance and joyful expectancy thing, but I actually think this is the high point for me.

In this section that ends with verse 10, like these believers became examples in gospel words and gospel actions. And I want to spend a few minutes here this morning because I think it's so important for us and I want to lay a foundation of why I think we as the church should learn to be missional from the text of the entire Bible. I want us to consider practical ways for us to live missionally as the church and as individuals as. As we make up the church. And so let's start the foundation of mission in the Bible a little bit and think with me theologically for just a second.

Speaking of examples, I owe so much of what I'm saying here to Christopher Wright. I When I was in graduate school, I read his book the Mission of God. It was brand new at the time. And it was at a time when I was thinking about church planting and I was having discussions with my friends about God's design for the church. And it was beautiful to me because I love talking about Bible and theology.

I'm a Bible and theology nerd. If you've been here for a minute, you kind of know that about me. And I felt like the church had separated people like me, which is kind of more Academic thinkers a little bit with people who are doing ministry as practitioners, like the people who have more pragmatic approaches to ministry. And I was like, should I even go in ministry? Like, I love talking theology and stuff.

Should I be a pastor? No one wants that guy. And so I was wrestling with this all the time. So Wright comes along, Christopher Wright comes along, writes this theology of missions through the Bible. And I absolutely ate it up.

It's such a great book. And he argues that often the church has separated theology proper as a discipline of who God is or learning about God is, who God is about God, what God is like, what God has said and what God has done from missions work, being about us and the church and what we do, like they're two separate topics, in other words. And however he comes along and he says our mission as the church as God's chosen people, an extension of Israel's calling of God, now extends to the church as well. He says, now it's derived, our mission is derived from God's own mission since the beginning of time to make himself known. The mission of God, in other words, is a reflection of us knowing who God is.

And so there's a unity between theology and missions in the scriptures that is key to understanding the whole narrative of scripture. And he says we're not just people, even if you're like the missionary out there who do missions for God, but God himself is a missionary of God. And we by extension, as we become people who are in Christ, become people who are on God's mission as well. So we identify through God's character that's being given to us as we become Christians as missional as God was missional. We follow and emulate our Lord in what he's doing in the world.

And when we do this, it gives us a better story than the one that says there are certain people who do missions for God and other people who don't. It gives us a great story. And to make this practical, our theology of God must include this idea that God's missional character or his self revealing character is one of the theology proper categories that we have. We might say things like, God is holy. Yep.

God is just. Yup. God is true. Yup. We also say God is self revealing.

God is missional. The Bible paints a picture of this being God's very purpose from the center of his being. If you want to use that language, for example, check these examples out. Making himself known is the purpose of God's creation. Psalm 19.

The heavens declare the glory of God and The expanse proclaims the work of his hands. Day after day, they pour out speech. Night after night, they communicate knowledge. Creation is an extension of the character of God, of God, like saying, hey, I want to make myself known to you, to creation itself. And so I created everything to display that.

Or in his election of Abraham, God makes himself known, right? And then he launches his great agenda of bringing blessing to all the nations of the earth. In Genesis 12, that promise is repeated five times in Genesis. Paul defines that in Galatians 3:8 as the gospel that was preached ahead of time. That God wants to bring blessing of who he is to the nations, all the nations of the world.

God declares his desire to be known through the redemption of his people, Israel, who are just morons most of the time, right? I love what Kathy Boone said last week when I said, why did God choose Israel? And she's like, because they're failures. I was like, oh, that's good. That wasn't my answer, but it was a good answer, right?

And I thought about that often this week. God declares himself to be king over the whole earth, the king over any other gods. Even through his judgment, God wants to make himself known. That's what judgment is for. Through the plagues.

Like, we just got off of Exodus here, and Pharaoh kept asking, who's the Lord? The whole theme of the first part of the Passover story is, I don't know who God is. Who is God? Moses doesn't know, Israel doesn't know, Pharaoh doesn't know. And then through all the Exodus, God's like, here, here's who I am.

Let me tell you who I am. Then. Israel was used to show the nations God's uniqueness and sovereignty over the whole earth during their exile. Isaiah 40 is an example of what God wanted to do there, where it says, the glory of the Lord will appear and all humanity together will see it. This is in.

In context of the exile that God wants to remain fully committed to his people in the midst of their own disobedience because he wants to reveal himself to the world around them. And then that's just. Christopher Wright's an Old Testament theologian. So again, he's doing most of that. But in the New Testament, Jesus fulfills God's revealing mission.

John 14:7 says, if you know me, you will also know my Father. Like, I hope I've laid a foundation here a little bit to help you understand that God wanting to reveal himself is a part of his character for the world. That's why the whole Bible reveals a God of missional activity that's intrinsic, it's innate. It's part of him and the Bible's grand story. Part of the Bible's grand story.

There's lots of themes, but God making himself known, that's good news. And this should be enough to motivate us as the church, to give us praise, purpose to say, I have a part of this is too we. It flows directly from the theology of God, and it helps us put ourselves in the place of saying, okay, I know my meaning now too. No wonder Paul comes along and says in First Corinthians 3, 9, we are God's co workers. We're doing it with them.

Therefore, if we see God as missional, viewing the church us as missional should be intuitive. It should be part of us. And in order to see the mission fulfilled, God certainly empowers his people by his spirit to join him on his mission in the world. And there's good news in this too, friends, that the redeemed people of God do not just follow God's mission individually, although we do. You might feel the calling on your life individually, but the cool part is the Spirit of God gathers us together in local communities like here at Imprint Church, or all over Washington, all over King county, all over Snohomish County.

These little communities called the Church. And they are found standing firm in one spirit, in one accord, contending together for the faith of the gospel. As Philippians 1:27 says, that's their goal. And then through the ministry of the church, the mission of Jesus is extended when we receive and believe that call that we are to be disciples who make disciples of all nations. No wonder, as I talked about last week, how Peter says, I think probably the best playbook for our church in the west right now, especially in our particular point in time, is the book of First Peter, where he calls the church as the chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his possession, so that you may proclaim the praises of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

We receive mercy for that divine purpose that we may proclaim, claim the Lord's praises. And I love that God's revealing to the world his glory. That's the theology of who God is. And by extension we get to show the world who God is. And I love how we have the example of this in the church.

In Thessalonica, they did it in a couple ways. According to verse eight, it was number one, the word of God rang out from them is what it Sundays. And number two, their faith in God has gone out from them as well. That's the language that Paul uses there, Word and deed. The Thessalonians remind me of African New Life Ministries, where they have the two hands of missional living they talk about.

They have the hand of compassion and the hand of evangelism. It's how they live missionally. It's how they reflect the character of God, who is compassionate, and declaring of who he was as well. They want to communicate the message of Jesus in the world by proclaiming the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and telling people about that good news and actually vocally saying what Christ did for people. And they want to proclaim the Gospel through their words and deeds or through their deeds, works and deeds as well.

So this is our calling now, just like the Afternoon Life Ministries. Our calling is the same thing that we learn how to proclaim the Lord and we learn how to serve the Lord. We learn how to be generous both inside and outside the local church. And we don't serve out of guilt or because we feel like we need to do good deeds in order that God will be approving of us in our lives. Instead, we serve because it's part of our identity.

It's part of what God has extended to us through Christ. So there's all kinds of ways to do this, friends. I mean, this is where we get to be creative and use the image of God that he's given to each one of us to be missional. Like, for so much, I would say, how do you communicate the message to Jesus? Maybe some of us in here have problems actually saying something about the Gospel.

I understand that I'm an introvert. I hide from people in stores. You do it, too if you're an introvert. You understand. I have a hard time talking to people often about the gospel.

And it seems like even when I do around here, it falls so flat. I'm like, this was powerless. Why is this not working, Lord? But one thing I would say to you is that if you can work into building relationships with unbelievers, it may go a long ways in your life of witnessing. You want to hear something crazy?

Gallup, the famous organization, notes that personal relationships with unbelievers account for more conversions than four things. Media crusades, street witnessing, and foreign missions combined. That's what Gallup just said. This is a recent study. They also found a recent study in a variety of countries and cultures.

They concluded that nearly 90% of all Christians came to faith through the influence of their family or friends. Now it's true with this. The little asterisk is it includes your house or your home and your clan, if you will. But the point is this, relationships become one of the best ways and inroads to actually build into a conversation or give you the opportunity to share with someone about the good news of Jesus Christ. And it's essential for our understanding as the mission, missional people of God to build relationships with unbelievers, invite them into the life of the family of God in some way.

Make talking about your faith normal with non Christian people in your life. I saw my wife do this yesterday, my son's graduation party. We have friends who are non Christians, friends who are Christians. Really interesting watching so many different kind of facets of my son's life all converge. At a party at our house, we had church people, family, unbelievers, people that we've known forever, our friends that all converged together.

And I watched it happen. It was so interesting. We were sitting there and my wife just started talking about how she was praying for something for my son to our unbelieving friends. And I was like, that was so normal. She did that so well.

Why can't I do more of that? You know? But I loved how normal she made it. And I want us to do that. We can bring our friends to our small groups, to our lives.

We can invite them over to our houses and we can care for them. We can bring them food. We absolutely need Christian friends. Hear me say that you do examples in the faith as we talked about. But we absolutely need to get out of the Christian bubble too.

We need to find friends who don't know Jesus. We need to have people in our lives that we can just talk about our faith normally, as if we're not weird aliens that live in this little bubble on our own. We can live missionally. Let me take this one step further real briefly, to talk about our corporate calling too, as the church. Everything we've just been talking about here is a challenge to the modern Western church.

And I talked about this a few years ago. But in the west, the church has a natural progression. I'm talking organizationally, like us, if you will, that moves away from missional living because of needs and cultural expectations and just plain comfort in the church. And I'm part of this as well. So I'm not picking on me.

I'm. Or you. I'm picking on us. But healthy churches tend to grow. But as they grow, they have hurdles to figure out and redefine.

So most churches, I think, and this is the language I use. Start out kind of as a movement and they are defined by that missional movement. And then it compels them and it attracts other people to be a part of it as well. And if it grows out of that, movement becomes an organization that becomes necessary for the church to stay organized. That's why it's called an organization.

But if it's not careful, that organization can move further and become. What I've said before was an institution. And in general, movements serve the mission. Institutions by definition serve themselves. Let me define some terms.

Movement. Think of the movement of the early church. They understand the mission of God, they understand his character, they understand his mission. And we as a group collectively are called by God to display his character to the world. And we live out that mission together.

And a great example that of course is the early church in Acts, it was characterized by a strong sense of mission and buy in from everyone. It grows and it gets healthy. And hopefully it gets healthy and it's relatively mobile in the way they do things. If it continues to grow, it becomes an organization. It's natural.

It's like later in Acts, in the Jerusalem Council when that came about, when they needed to actually organize themselves and figure out how to care for people or when they started to send out missionaries. You know, the early church sent out missionaries really early. Right. And they did this because they needed to organize themselves and figure out how the mission of God was going to go forth. And when the church gained momentum, there were people in need and there were people that needed to be equipped and sent.

And so some people started to specialize in roles and positions. There are systems and processes that happen in organizations that make it healthy. But then if it's not careful, it continues to grow and it becomes that institution. And institutions that don't keep the message and mission in front of the people, the movement gets lost and it's, it turns into complex hierarchy and structures of things. It becomes bureaucratic, if you will.

The best example is when Christianity spread to the Roman Empire and it became increasingly difficult for the church to actually be healthy. Right. We don't think of the, you know, the. In the first three centuries of Christianity, it moved from a fringe movement to like the religious way of the Roman Empire by the end of the third century or middle of the third century. And we typically don't think of the middle of the third century as the most healthy time in church history, if you, if you know what I mean.

Like, and while Christianity certainly grew under Constantine, it became a state religion. It was corrupted by power because it became this institution today. I, I say all this because I gave you some individual thoughts as well. But as we're thinking about church planning and because God has seen fit to grow imprint church through the years, although it always feels like a medium sized church is that's really intentional by the way. We want to feel small.

We continue to grow. And I think I want to remind us through first Thessalonians of the mission and the movement that God wants for us. I want to think we have to organize, we have to be organizational and all that kind of stuff. But I never want us to get to the point where we think that we're an institution. We don't have to go back to the, the movement of each person's involved in the mission that God has given to them.

And it relies on every single one of us to do the work that God's calling us to do. Like gone are the days of someone walking in the back, sitting in the chair and then leaving without saying hi to someone, without serving some way. You're just being part of an institution and you're not being part of a movement. Let's be part of a movement. Let's think of the church as a missional organization run by a family.

That's the way I want to think of us. A missional organization run by a family. That's imprint church. That's what we want for us. We're a group of Christ followers that see the church as the family of God on a mission.

It's no wonder that William Temple, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, once noticed that the Church of Jesus Christ is the only cooperative society that exists primarily for the benefit of its non members. Amen. That's our calling, friends. Let's be mission driven for the glory of the Lord. And if we do this, it will result in something that we saw both last week and this week.

And it's how I want to end this morning. And it's transformed lives. It ends with transformed lives. They themselves report what kind of reception we had from you. How you turn to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for his Son from heaven whom he raised from the dead.

Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath. As you've seen, the Thessalonians were example of living in mission. And the church at Thessalonica was young, but it was a model church for everyone. People saw it and Paul notes the three ways that they were examples. What's crazy is these three things we see here are so Succinct that most commentators and theologians believe that Paul was using kind of an existing formula of what it meant to be a Christian or a disciple in the ways that he said these things.

And I want to attach real quick last week and this week again to finish this section. You know some ingredients of a gospel center church and some more ingredients of a Gospel center church by telling you how this fits so cool together, because we'll see the words active faith, sacrificial love, and enduring hope in the way they're played out. Verse 3 is connected to verse 10. In other words, it's this active faith is your work produced by faith, which is verse nine. You turn to God from idols.

It's pretty cool. And the second part is the sacrificial love, where it's your labor motivated by love, where in verse nine, it's you're serving the living and true God. And then finally it's enduring hope, where your endurance, inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus is people waiting for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead. Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath, like transformed lives, show up again people who live out active faith, sacrificial love and enduring hope for the sake of the mission, for the sake of the movement, for us as a community to have a vision that's based on the character and the theology of God, that we can go out in the world, both individually and corporately, to share the gospel, to serve the gospel, to show people what it looks like to be Christians, to be examples to other people around us. For us in the building as well as those outside the building, those are some more ingredients of a gospel centered church.

Being in Thessalonians is providential for us right now, friends. It is as we think about our calling as the church. And I pray, pray that all of us are pressing into this season of our church life. I want to look at each one of you and say, I am so grateful for you. You're part of my family.

We're a family on a mission. We're a missional organization that's run by a family. And you're part of that. And I hope you feel the calling and I hope you feel a deep desire to have what God has for you in this next season of your life and for our life as a church together. Let's pray.

God, thank you for your word. I'm compelled by this, Lord. I guess I didn't realize, Lord, when it was Tom. Tom and I sat down several months ago and talked about what we were going to do this summer for our sermon series. And now we're in one Thessalonians and Second Thessalonians.

And every week as I've been studying these words, I feel more compelled by the calling that you have for me in my life and more compelled by the calling you have for us as the church corporately. Lord, no matter where we go, if we're new this morning, if we are part of imprint church, we're part of a new church or another church or whatever it is, Lord, this calling is similar for every disciple of Jesus to live out their lives in a certain way for the mission of God to go forth. Lord, things we looked at today, these more examples or more ingredients of a gospel centered church. Lord, will you help us persevere in our faith? Will you help us persevere in the midst of pain and suffering and oppression for being a follower of Jesus?

Will you help us live out that before one another? God, will you give us patience to endure the things we need to? Would you pour out your Holy Spirit to us for those of you who are facing some sort of persecutions as well? God, I pray you give us the ability to live missionally. And God, in this season of our life, may we press back into the church more than we ever have and say what is our calling and what do you want from us?

God, thank you for this. May we have transformed lives both individually and as a community. We love you, Lord. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.