By brother, Steve is a body-builder. In his 20s, while in the Marine Corp, he bench pressed 500 pounds and had the perfect V-shape. Now that he is in his late 40s, he can no longer lift that kind of weight (shoulders and knees no longer tolerate it), but he still works out regularly and intensely. His oldest son, Steven, is now in the Marine Corp. In high school, Steven was 5’8” tall and weighed 120 pounds soaking wet. His dad would encourage him to lift weights and build his body, but Steven wasn’t interested. But, in the last two years, he has discovered weight training with a vengeance. Steven is still 5’8” and now weighs about 190 and reminds me of how his dad used to look. A couple of months ago, Steven said to my brother, “Dad, you were right. Building up your body really is a way of life.” As a body builder, he, too, now longs for that illusive three-fold combination of mass, definition, and symmetry that says he has built the ideal body.

As Christians, building up together the body of Christ is a way of life, and it, too takes a three-fold combination: growth, unity and maturity.

We begin with growth. No one gets into body building to be smaller. That’s why they call it body-building. Paul writes,

But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from which the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love (Ephesians 4:15-16).

Growth is important and there really isn’t life without it. But not all growth is good. When people who knew me twenty-five years ago say, “Will, you’re twice the man you used to be, they are not necessarily speaking of good growth.” Experts say that the most important part of body building is nutrition. So, I ask you, body of Christ, on what are you feeding? Are you keeping Christ at the center of who we are and do and are we “speaking the truth in love?” Or are we finding ourselves and even our church at the center and enjoying the junk food of gossip, bitterness and harshness? Then there is another kind of negative growth, the artificial kind. You know, if I had been Jesus, we would have held miracle crusades six days a week! Play the numbers, Jesus! Why waist your time on twelve folks who are kind of flakey anyway? In not only body-building, but in nearly every sport from football to baseball to the Tour de France, the challenge has been anabolic steroids, artificial growth, “doping”. Steroid built bodies look good at first, but over time, it leads to sick bodies, sick minds and sick hearts. As the church, we must avoid the growth caused by flashiness and personality cults and make sure that our growth is centered in Christ and in love. That doesn’t mean we don’t do things that are innovative and creative, but it does mean doing the things that lead to long-term growth.

The second part of building the body’s mass is by overloading it. The muscles are broken down and the fibers strengthen and the body becomes bigger and stronger. One of the great things we discover in the body of Christ is that God lead us into doing things we never thought we could. A retiree tutors and cares for kids and the sparkle in his eyes shows that he is being built up. A teacher and a group of students take up hammers and nails on a roofing job with a mission trip, and the sparkle in their eyes says they are being built up. A scared layperson gets in front of a congregation to share what Christ has done in her life and the sparkle in her eyes and in those who see and hear her says that we are all being built up. There is a sense of inadequacy, risk and usually some stumbling and even soreness involved, but the body of Christ is being built.

The third part of building the body’s mass is resting it. If there is not adequate rest while those broken down muscle fibers heal and recover, then the muscles will become smaller and more prone to injury. God has given us the concept of Sabbath for a reason. My doctor said to me as a young adult when I had collapsed from too many 100 hour weeks. Take an hour a day, a day a week, a weekend seasonally, and at least two weeks a year for vacation and you’ll be healthier for it. In the body of Christ, we need to be able to have that rhythm of work and rest, too. Some of us, preachers especially, need to learn that the church really can thrive without us. Then, when we come freshly back to work in ministry, we enter by healthy choice, not by addiction. Again, that’s why we need to do away with the 80/20 rule. The wider deeper pool of people allows for proper rest. The result is a stronger, bigger, healthier body of Christ.

Now you might be saying, “Is Will saying there shouldn’t be quantity of growth?” Of course not. As long as we are a “go and make disciples” movement, as long as we are a “go ye into all the world” movement, true Christianity will grow and expand. You know, most body builders who are worth their muscle don’t go to the gym to show off their bodies there. Christ would love to show off his body, but he’d like it to get outside the gym.

The second indicator that the body of Christ is growing is that it works in unity. I’ve never seen an athlete with a healthy midsection that hadn’t been working his or her arms and legs, or one that had strong legs and arms without a strong heart. The truth is that the full development of who you are in the body of Christ is also dependent on others, on us growing together as a unit. But what is this unity that people spend so much time talking about? It is not unity of opinion, style or background. You have three pastors that are strongly united in ministry at St. Luke’s, but the engineer, the cop and the musician are nothing alike. We don’t look alike, think alike, act alike or even believe alike. So what makes us united? We are united by three things: 1) by our experience of God’s saving grace through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit, 2) by God’s call on us to reach the world and help the church become new for a new day, and 3) by our commitment to love each other beyond our differences and our failings. I ask you, “How are those different from the things that unify us as a staff, as church leaders, as all of the growing disciples of Jesus Christ at St. Luke’s?” They’re not, not when we’re a healthy body. Paul writes,

The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teacher, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God…

As pastors, as much as we glory in our God-given unity, have discovered something. We have to feed and protect our unity. Satan will find every way to do his divide and conquer campaign. People and groups, even fellow clergy, will compare us and try to work us against each other. Our own inner competitiveness can do the same work. Or the slickest tactic of them all is to get us so busy on our separate tracks that we are no longer working together. Again, is this any different from all of us? We find it crucial to pray together, to vision together and then strategize together. The praying together is the most important part. In staff each week, we pray and share prayer needs and concerns for up to 30 minutes, sometimes longer. Isn’t it interesting that the staff meetings are no longer now than when we did the six minute devotional and the quick prayer? Maybe unity has something to do with that. Our unity is not uniformity, but it is crucial for the health of the body of Christ.

The body-building connection here is definition. There is a point where in nutrition and exercise the direction moves from building mass to defining what you have built. This part requires intensity and focus. The process allows the different parts of the body to stand out and become more functional. When we are unified in our experience of Christ, our call to reach the world for Christ and renew the church, our commitment to love each other and protect our unity, then we do cause each other to stand out more and become more functional. The world then better sees our oneness and wants to be part of it. The next song the youth sing in November will be directed by John Mayo, a new version of “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love.” It will be accompanied by piano, flute, congas and a slide presentation. Let me remind you of the second verse,

We will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand,

We will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand.

And together we will spread the news that God is in our land.

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love.

Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

The last indicator of a healthy body of Christ is maturity. The body builder who builds the muscle and then diets and exercises for definition may still find the results inadequate if there is no symmetry or balance. Huge biceps and chicken legs will not win, nor will huge legs and a slight upper body. More to the point, overtraining one part of the body while undertraining other parts can lead to injury and lackluster performance of the whole body. The first part of this maturity is our balance of stability and adaptability. Paul writes,

We must no longer be children tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.

I liken this to the body builder training the core – the midsection. To have a strong back and abdominals is crucial to the development of the rest of our body. Similarly, nurturing the core of our faith together in worship, study of God’s Word and action in ministry and mission is crucial for our maturity. Then when challenges come, we are able to take the hits and come back stronger than before. More than half of congregations peak with their founding pastor, and many collapse directly after he or she leaves. The other reason that churches tend to peak early in their development is because they quit adapting. This is not “being tossed to and fro” as victims, it is choosing to adapt as growing disciples so that we cannot only survive but thrive.

But maturity is also about how we coordinate and organize our work together. This is where the people with administrative and organizational gifts are so important in the life of the church. Some of you exercise those gifts every day at home and at work, but assume that those are not needed at church because they are taken care of by staff. And sometimes we as staff have been afraid to let go of some of that because we are afraid we will lose control of what is going on. But the truth is that the body of Christ is not unlike our personal lives. We intend to do lots of things, but we only do a fraction of them. The things we do are the ones we plan for, organize for and coordinate. This is one area where St. Luke’s is growing strongly and we need to continue to do so. Our scripture lesson talks about how from Christ who is the head we are built up as a whole, ligament to ligament.

Growth, unity, maturity. To these three things we are called in building the body of Christ. You know, I have been told about and have read that people really have two main needs: to belong and to do something significant with their lives. I know better place to do that than the body of Christ.