Cornerstone: Building a Unified Foundation

“So get rid of all evil behavior. Be done with all deceit, hypocrisy, jealousy, and all unkind speech. Like newborn babies, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation. Cry out for this nourishment, now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness.

You are coming to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple. He was rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honor. And you are living stones that God is building into his spiritual temple. What’s more, you are his holy priests. Through the mediation of Jesus Christ, you offer spiritual sacrifices that please God. As the Scriptures say, ‘I am placing a cornerstone in Jerusalem, chosen for great honor, and anyone who trusts in him will never be disgraced.’

Yes, you who trust him recognize the honor God has given him. But for those who reject him,’The stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone.’

And, ‘He is the stone that makes people stumble, the rock that makes them fall.’ They stumble because they do not obey God’s word, and so they meet the fate that was planned for them.

But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light. ‘Once you had no identity as a people; now you are God’s people. Once you received no mercy; now you have received God’s mercy.’”

1 Peter 2:1-10 NLT

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Many of you may know a thing or two about where Methodism started. It started with John and Charles Wesley in the 18th century in the Church of England. Despite the efforts of people like John and Charles Wesley, who saw the need for growth, the church resisted and refused to change. So the movement moved to the Americas. For the first few years, 7,000 small supportive fellowship groups called the United Societies were up and running. They shaped a backbone founded in Wesleyan thought.

Theologically, the Wesleyan perspective of faith is both personal and social. We can understand the Christian religion as an experience of the love of God in Christ changing our hopes and desires – that is something extremely personal. The church is to be comprised of people who share this. Christians by nature of faith are drawn into community, which is essentially social. These small groups would ask each other “How is it with your soul?”  This openness is essential to have true spiritual growth and oneness. Early Methodist people discovered the freedom of living in the grace of God within the context of a disciplined fellowship and became a committed community. That was what the world needed then. The Methodists gave them what they needed.

The churches of today are offering the world everything it needs right? The Christian faith offers programs! We’ve got:

• Choirs
• VBS
• Men’s breakfasts
• Church camp experiences
• Sunday school
• Bible Studies
• Children’s church
• Knitting groups
• Banquet dinners
• Et cetera!

And while programs are good, that isn’t what Christianity is about. Depending on the congregation and depending on the point in the church’s lifetime, each program may have been very beneficial. But eventually, there comes a time when certain programs are no longer what the community needs from us. Yet, when members slowly drift away and the numbers dwindle in our churches, we keep on running the same programs. Eventually we begin to blame the community for not showing up instead of blaming ourselves for not changing with them.

When we as a church are focused on maintaining the structure of our organization instead of focusing on our mission, we have stopped growing our church. We may be personally be operating for the sake of others, but is the church operating for the sake of others? Or do its efforts focus on keeping the A/C running?

The church does not exist for its own sake but for the sake of others.

“But what about those programs, aren’t they important?” Yes of course they are, but they don’t grow churches and they will never be the driving force of the church. In the foundational history of Methodism, the groups embodied the driving force of the church. The groups existed for the purpose of fostering social relationships with each other and their personal relationships with God.

After two centuries and many denominational mergers, Methodism consisted of over 30% of all Protestants in the 1950s. Now Methodism is 3% of Protestant faith – a mere 11 million globally

Revelation 3:14-19 foretells of the church of Laodicea full of wealthy believers. The members didn’t stand for anything. Its indifference to the world led to idleness. By neglecting to do anything for the Christ, the church had become hardened and self-satisfied and it collapsed in on itself. Despite their great God-given potential, they had become nominal, half-hearted Christians who were self-sufficient. While self-sufficiency sounds like a good thing, it left them with no relationships with the community outside the church and became isolated from the people around them.

Understand the cause of the decline: the people were merely showing up for service and offering themselves in ordinary ways rather than extraordinary ways. The walls of the church buildings were full to the brim but the vessels of the church weren’t being emptied into the surrounding communities.

In recent decades, with the Methodist faith permanently closing over 10 church doors a year, we have finally realized the definition of church commitment has to change!

These churches didn’t fulfill the Christian mission because they had no vision on how to do it. So, how do we discover our vision?

How the church and its congregation will be focused is determined by its community’s unique personality. To find that, we can’t focus on programs. That is starting in the wrong place. We need to start with a focus on our mission: Make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world! Where is our mission field? Right here! Churches are inherently local. Find out who the people in our community are, then develop relationships with them! Once you do, learn about their individual needs. Collectively, the community’s needs become clearer. And that is how we reach out to them.

Using this information, we can determine our VISION. When we determine our vision, we will know where we are going. When we know where we are going, we develop relationships with the people in our community; because that is what determines who is coming with us as we move toward our vision. These relationships are essential to the social element of Christianity.

John Wesley himself in his Plain Account of Genuine Christianity writes:

By experience [a man] knows that social love (if it mean the love of our neighbor) is absolutely, essentially different from self-love, even of the most allowable kind, just as different as the objects at which they point. And yet it is sure that, if they are under due regulations, each will give additional force to the other, ‘till they mix together never to be divided.

What Wesley is saying here is that while self-love and social love are not the same, in the life of a Christian, it’s not only essential to possess both feelings of love, but the two become one unified expression of love. As Paul Chilcote describes in his book Recapturing the Wesleys’ Perspective, “Genuine love of self that is rooted in God’s affirmation – God’s prior love – must find expression in love of others. The two must be held together.”

According to the Wesley’s, God’s Love is the only foundation for discipleship in Christ. Resultantly, Methodist faith is expressed both personally and socially.

So, our vision must be defined this way, and that is how we reach our mission: by making new relationships. But how do we make new relationships? Our personal testimonies. When you share yourself and your personal story to offer, you start by saying: “Let me tell you about my God” It isn’t easy, but growing the body of Christ is the product we get.

We have to continue to understand the church to be the Body of Christ. It’s a very beneficial analogy used by the apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans.

Here is the excerpt from the Original King James Version:

“For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.
Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us.” 12:3-6a

 A man named Bob Farr helped lead a program called the “Healthy Church Initiative” at our church in Missouri. He utilized this analogy of the body and related each part of the church to the parts of the body:

• [Heart] – It keeps us alive. This is our church vision, where we are going.
• [Arms] – Gives us the ability to hold. These are the relationships inside and outside of the church, who’s coming with us
• [Hands and feet] —– They leave the impressions on the outside world. These are the programs, how we get there
• [Skeleton] —– The skeleton is best not to be seen by people from the outside. Not that we keep structure secret or hidden, but skeletons aren’t where the beauty of the body is. The structure is the committees, Safe Sanctuary regulations, laws in the Book of Discipline, tools for holding the body together (the mortar holding spiritual stones together). The Skeleton structure shouldn’t replace what outsiders benefit from seeing instead.

To best understand the scriptural basis behind these concepts lets go straight to the source.

Ephesians 4:11-16 (NIV) says, “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves…. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”

A parallel analogy we can contrast this one with is from 1 Peter, the scripture I read to you first. It describes all of us as Spiritual stones that together are built into the Church. As Peter references Psalm 118, he tells us that Christ and his teachings are the foundation upon which this church is built with Christ as the Cornerstone.

When we think of ourselves as individual stones, we can see how we are hardly much use toward the kingdom when we are scattered and alone. It is when we are brought together, carefully chiseled, and then placed upon one another, that we can be used to lift each other up forming the walls of the church.

In many ways we are taught that the church is built from our spiritual presence and unity, but this image given to us by Peter, the first leader of Christ’s disciples, works as an effective visual.

When we hear “Christ is our foundation and cornerstone”, we then can understand, “the guiding Christian principles are the firm moral code we use to make the tough decisions in life, and they will not be weak, but will be strong and trustworthy.” When we hear “we are carefully chiseled so that we may be placed upon one another to become as resolute as our foundation,” we then can understand, “We are flawed human and broken sinners that are to be made into new people by the mercy of God. Through Christ’s power to forgive and the example He offers, we grow in our ability to support one another in love.”And finally, when we hear “from the lowest to the highest stone, the more stones we use to build our walls, the greater the glory towards God’s Kingdom,” we then can understand, “no matter if you are the placed at the bottom or the top, if you are the richest or the poorest, are the weakest or the strongest, all of God’s children are to be brought together in loving relationships.

The Church is a living, spiritual temple with Christ as the foundation and each believer is a stone resting upon the cornerstone. Peter tells us that one stone is not a temple and not even a wall. Just as Paul’s human body analogy states that one body part alone is useless; only when the body is whole and healthy can it perform good.

Both pictures emphasize community. We are to offer ourselves as living and spiritual sacrifices who daily lay down “our own desires and follow Him putting all our energy and resources at his disposal. Christ will use these resources to build God’s Kingdom, but only if we let Him. Living a life full of loving relationships isn’t always easy or convenient, but is necessary for Christ’s work in the world and in our hearts.

I want all of you to always draw yourselves back to the Word of God through all of the messages I offer to you. Don’t just take my word for it, read the Gospel and see Christ’s example. Read the rest of the New testament texts to find out what the Christians who started all of this had to say.

Well hey! Let’s start right now:

After the Gospels and the book of Acts came the letter to the Romans, and then….1 Corinthians! Here is chapter 9:19-23 from “The Message” translation

“Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!”

Today, above all I want you to take this with you:

Our Mission is our destination; our vision is how we are going to get there, and we build relationships so we know who is coming with us.

Alone, we are mere stones. But to build this church together by lifting each other up and lifting our community up with us, we will raise walls that are tall and broad. When we are bound together in spiritual unity, these walls will stand firm upon the foundation of Christ, our cornerstone. Let’s start building!                          

AMEN.