CONTRIBUTING TO THE GROWTH OF THE CHURCH

Text- Ephesians 4:7-16

Introduction

A very large church needed a new building to hold all its people.  Everyone in the membership was in agreement on that point, but whenever they began to plan to build, the members got into all sorts of disagreements about how and what to build.  The pastor of the church was at his wit’s end, and decided to have a special day of prayer.  Very few members bothered to attend the service.  Many of the dedicated women went and one of them took along a five year old girl.  As the people prayed, the child began to understand that they were praying about building a new church.  When they went home, she asked her mother many questions, and then became very quiet thinking about the whole matter.  The next morning when the mother went to the child’s room, the girl was missing.  In a frenzy she began looking for her and eventually ended up at the pastor’s house.  As she approached she saw her little girl standing in the front yard with her toy wheelbarrow, and in it were two bricks.  She was talking to the pastor, and tears were running down his face.  The little girl had brought the bricks to start building the new church.  The following Sunday the pastor told the story to the entire church and God touched each one of their hearts and multiplied the two bricks brought by the girl into a beautiful new church building.

Tonight, the title of my message is, “Contributing To The Growth Of The Church” and my text is found in Ephesians 4:7-16.

Oftentimes, when the topic of church growth is mentioned, people immediately think about numerical growth.  It seems like every church wants to be a mega-church with thousands of people attending.

But while a healthy church should be growing numerically, all healthy church growth must begin with spiritual growth.  Numerical growth without spiritual growth is like a large tree with no roots and an empty trunk.  There is no hope for that tree and it will soon fall over with the smallest wind.  But a church that says it is growing spiritually without having numerical growth is only fooling itself.

Like the little girl in the story, each one of us as men, women and children are to contribute to the church’s growth both numerically and spiritually.

As we study this passage I would like us to consider three aspects of church growth and how we can all contribute to the growth of the church.