SOTC - State of the Church

This post is a copy of the Annual Pastoral Report given at Grace Evangelical Church’s annual congregational business meeting on Sunday, February 25, 2024.

There is no such thing as a matured Christian on this side of eternity; not the person reading this, not the person next to you, and certainly not the person who wrote this. How can I make such an audacious claim? Because the Bible sets the target of Christian maturity so Divinely high – “to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph 4:13).” When I behold the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ revealed on the pages of Scripture, I find myself falling woefully short.

To complicate matters, my job description as a pastor is laid out in the previous verse (Eph 4:12), which says that Christ gave us pastors “to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph 4:12-13).” When I read that word “until,” I realize that no one retires in this line of work!

Christian maturation is an ongoing work of God in the believer’s life that only reaches its fullness after the believer passes through the thin veneer of this life, fully sanctified, and ultimately when we receive our glorified bodies at the Resurrection. So let’s get this straight. My job as a pastor is to equip every believer to do ministry, which is to build up the local church, until we all attain unity and knowledge of Christ to such a degree of maturity that none of us will achieve until we’re dead! Whew. Now that we got the hard part out of the way, where does that leave all of us?

I pondered several directions I could go with this report. I could highlight various “achievements” of the past year or give a list of customary thankyous like an Academy Award acceptance speech. Instead, it seemed most fitting to evaluate where we are now in relation to the Big Goal given to us in Ephesians 4:12-16. That goal is why I accepted the call of ministry to Grace in June 2021, and it’s the goal that centers our focus as a church every day since. The goal can be summarized succinctly: Discipleship. We can evaluate the viability or appeal of our church in any number of ways, but we cannot ignore that the very reason we exist is to glorify our Great God and Savior. And our Great God and Savior has established His church and commissioned us to be disciples who make disciples.

Discipleship is an all-hands-on-deck endeavor of the entire church. Ephesians 4:12 explains that pastors exist to “equip,” but they equip “the saints” (believers in the local church) for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ. Therefore, whatever equipping work I do through instructing and leading is only useful insofar as we, the saints, use it in ministry that builds up the body of Christ. Hebrews 3:13 says, “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin,” highlighting the role of the entire church to constantly disciple one another.

Genuine discipleship only works in authentic community. We can’t come alongside one another if we are at arm’s length with one another. We can’t be accountable to one another if our lives are a mystery to one another. At least 80 percent of our church has come in within the last two years, which may seem daunting to foster community among so many new faces. But glory be to God and thanks to His work through all of us, there is an authentic, loving church family here at Grace, and the fruit is beginning to ripen. Over the past year, many in the church have come alongside new believers and welcomed them into the church. Many have personally poured into others in the church, encouraging with Scripture. Many have built others up in sound doctrine and lovingly corrected when necessary. Many more have rejoiced together, mourned together, shouldered burdens together, walked through trials together, and celebrated victories together. All are critical aspects of discipleship, and all of us have played a role.

Sometimes, discipleship takes a very formal approach involving a predetermined day and time each week where a more mature believer meets one-on-one to instruct and counsel a less mature believer. This is certainly an effective model, and one that has sprouted organically between a number of people at Grace. Yet, the work of discipleship and disciple-making cannot be limited to formal one-on-one catechizing. Scripture talks about discipleship in two broad categories: Instruction and Imitation.

Broadly speaking, instruction discipleship uses words to teach the Truth of God. In Colossians 1:28 Paul states, “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.” Proclaiming, warning, teaching, and sharing wisdom all require words to disseminate truth. Paul’s discipleship goal in Colossians 1 is the same as Ephesians 4, and that is to present everyone mature in Christ. In 2 Timothy 2:2, Paul commands Timothy, “what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” Paul taught Timothy so Timothy could teach others, so those others could then teach others. It’s a ministry of multiplication: disciples who make disciples who… you get the point.

All of us can look around our church and identify someone with a deeper understanding than us, and we can also identify someone who has a fledgling understanding. As disciples who make disciples, we all should seek out other believers in this local church to learn from, and we all should also seek out believers to pour into. None of us individually possess a perfect understanding of every facet of the Christian life, but there are people in the church who can instruct us in our deficits. Conversely, we may sometimes feel like we don’t have anything profound to teach others, but God has taught you something in your walk with Him that would greatly edify another believer in our church family.

The other kind of discipleship discussed in Scripture is the discipleship of imitation. Numerous times, Paul availed himself as a godly example by encouraging his audience to imitate him (1 Cor 4:16, 11:1; Phil 3:17, 4:9; 2 Thess 3:7-9; 2 Tim 3:10-11). This facet of discipleship is far less formal, even to the point where you may be discipling someone and you don’t even realize it! Younger men in this church are observing and learning from older godly men, as are younger women from older godly women (Titus 2:1-6). People observe how we pray, how we serve, how we worship, how we treat our spouse, how we parent, how we respond to criticism, how we handle conflict, and how we handle the Word of God.

Cumulatively, how we live among one another teaches volumes on what the Christian life looks like. With this in mind, we all must be mindful how we walk (Eph 5:15). Just as every believer should seek out instruction from a more mature believer, we should also seek out an example to follow from a more mature believer. Likewise, all believers have received the miracle of regeneration, so all of us can offer an example of the redeemed life. 

So how are we doing in relation to our Big Goal? Have we met it? Of course not, and we never will until we’re all together at the Marriage Feast of the Lamb. But I can say with great certainty that we are collectively pursuing Christ and becoming a church of disciples who make disciples. Ephesians 4:16 tells us what happens when the entire church body is engaged in discipleship: it “makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” That’s the kind of growth we’re after, and it takes all of us.

With much love,

Steve German