Natural Church Development (NCD) is a way of measuring the health or quality of a church. By using a carefully prepared questionnaire with 30 members of a church, the survey will determine the health of our church in eight critical areas.[1] Some interesting found facts are that no quality characteristic can be missing. Imagine a barrel with eight staves, each representing the Eight Quality Characteristics. The staves in the barrel represent the score of the Eight Quality Characteristics. With this analogy, you can only fill the barrel to the level of the lowest stave. So to increase the capacity of the barrel, we must increase the height of the lowest stave. We must focus on the minimum factor.
In his letter to Ephesians Paul pays so much attention to a single top priority: unity in the church. Minimum factors can change always, but Paul was keenly aware that unity can so easily and often become the minimum factor that hinders spiritual growth of the church. If we follow Paul’s logic in today’s passage, we reach this conclusion: “No unity, no maturity,” and “No maturity, no fruit.” Unity in the body of Christ is an essential prerequisite for spiritual growth and fruitfulness. That is why the unity of the church is so important. In today’s text Paul tells us about how we may maintain unity in the church.
The Spirit
First, the Holy Spirit unites the church. It’s important to remember that unity is something given by the Spirit, not something we create. In verse 3 Paul says, “Make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” The unity of the church is already a spiritual reality. God has reconciled Jews and Gentiles, men and women, masters and slaves to Himself in Christ. God has created one new humanity, one new society, one people, one body. And God gave us a new heart, put a new spirit, one Spirit in us as promised (Ezk 36:26). Our responsibility is to guard, protect, and preserve that unity created by the Spirit.
The secret of growing churches does not consist in pushing or pulling the church in our human strength and efforts. But instead, the secret is in releasing the potential the Holy Spirit himself uses to build his church. Then growth naturally follows. In Mark 4:26-29 Jesus says,
“This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts, and grows; though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, and then full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come” (NIV).
Paul says, “So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth” (1 Cor 3:7, NRSV). It is God who started the church. It is God who unifies the church. Our part is to welcome, honor, trust and obey his Holy Spirit. Then growth happens all by itself. Unity starts out of a trusting heart, not out of toil.
The Word
The second unifier of the church is the Word. The Word unifies the church. In verse 11 Paul says, “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.” This list of the gifts is not exhaustive. But these five were crucial to the establishment of the first generation of the church. These five are all ministries of the Word. These five are all truth agents. The church is unified, strengthened, and built up when we speak biblical truth about God and about Christ and about the gospel.
There is a story about one church in England. The slogan of this church on the front door was always "We Preach Christ Crucified" based on 1 Corinthians 1:23. But many years later the church decided to remove the last word “crucified” because it would offend some people. So now their new motto became "We Preach Christ." They still preached Christ, but not necessarily his suffering, his death, his atonement. Instead, they started focusing more on Jesus' moral life, noble character, and his moral teaching. Then, many people left the church. Several years later the church changed its sign once again. It became "We Preach." From that time on the church started preaching any topics from politics, philosophy, ethics to all kind of social issues. Then more people left the church. And eventually, the church had to close down. The Good News is not simply that we are okay. The Good News is not simply that God is love. The Good News is not simply that Jesus wants to be our friend. In Ephesians 2 Paul proclaims the Word, the Truth, the Good News in a nutshell, saying, “You were dead in your sins. You were not okay. But in his great mercy God rescued you by sending Christ to die for you while you were still sinners. By grace you have been saved through faith.” At the very center of the gospel is Christ’s atonement, Christ’s substitutionary, in-our-place death on the cross. “God made Jesus who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2Co 5:21, NIV). When we humbly believe this biblical truth and proclaim it boldly, God creates, unifies, strengthens his church.
The Love
Thirdly, Christ’s love unifies the church. Paul exhorts us to live out our calling (unifying the church) by bearing with one another in love (v. 2), speaking the truth in love (v. 15), building the body up in love (v. 16). God’s love is agape love. And another word for agape love is incarnational love. God took on human flesh. The Creator and Sustainer of the universe limited himself to the confines of human history and a human body. God took on skin and flesh for us. Why? Love is the answer. Grace is often afraid of darkness. One night after the storytime she didn’t want me to leave her room. I said to her, “You needn’t be afraid, you are not alone here. God is in the room with you.” But she replied, “I know that God is here. But I can’t see him. I need someone in this room who has some skin!” That’s why God took on skin and flesh for us.
Jesus entered our world. The Gospels, especially the Gospel of John, are filled with stories of how Jesus interacts with individuals — Andrew and Simon, Philip and Nathaniel, Nicodemus, a Samaritan woman, a man born blind, Mary and Lazarus, and many others. He always listened. He was always present, never in a rush or distracted. He always walked at three miles per hour. Jesus’ ministry was the ministry of presence, the ministry of love. Henri Nouwen rightly said,
To care means first of all to be present to each other. From experience you know that those who care for you become present to you. When they listen, they listen to you. When they speak, they speak to you. Their presence is a healing presence because they accept you on your terms, and they encourage you to take your own life seriously.[2]
Jesus is our model. As we are fully present and listen in love, speak the truth in love, the whole body will be united and growing and full of love.
The Church, Foretaste of Heaven
Let me illustrate from the 1995 movie based on true story Dead Man Walking. Sister Helen Prejean received an invitation to be a pen pal with someone on death row. It was Matthew Poncelet who raped and killed a teenage couple. Sister Helen enters his world and finds it is not a pretty one. Matthew is not a lovable character. He is arrogant, rude, sexist, and racist, uses the “n-word,” and does not even pretend to feel remorse. Nonetheless, Sister Helen visits him many times and invites him repeatedly to make himself right with God by confessing his sin. At the same time, she gets to know Matthew’s mother, Lucille, and the families of the two victims. The families do not understand Sister Helen's efforts to help Matthew. They accuse her of taking his side. Sister Helen’s colleagues at work also complain she is neglecting her work. But sister Helen does not give up. Over time Matthew begins to let down his defenses. Finally at 11:38 p.m., only minutes before his execution at midnight, she asks him, “Do you take responsibility for both of their deaths?” Crying, he admits his guilt for the first time. A few minutes later, he says, “Thank you for loving me. I never had anybody really love me before.”
C. S. Lewis described hell in The Great Divorce as a place where each person lives in isolation, millions of miles apart from one another, because they can’t get along.[3] On the contrary, as Jonathan Edwards said, heaven is a world of love, for God is the fountain of love. The church is designed by God to foretaste heaven. Christ gave birth to his church for us through his suffering, death and resurrection. We have received this great gift – the church. May we make every effort to maintain the unity of the church and build the body up with love and truth by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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[1] Empowering Leadership, Gift-based Ministry, Passionate Spirituality, Effective Structures, Inspiring Worship Services, Holistic Small Groups, Need-oriented Evangelism, and Loving Relationships
[2] Peter Scazzero & Warren Bird, The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition (p. 190). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
[3] Peter Scazzero, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality (p. 174). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.
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