A Church for Ninety Years

⁵What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. ⁶I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. ⁷So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. ⁸The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each. ⁹For we are God’s servants, working together; you are God’s field, God’s building.

¹⁰According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. ¹¹For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. ¹²Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—¹³the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. ¹⁴If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. ¹⁵If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.

¹⁶Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?^£ ¹⁷If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur there was once a crude lifesaving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea, and with no thought for themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Many lives were saved by this wonderful little station, so that it became famous. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and their money and their effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews were trained. The little lifesaving station grew.

Now some of the members of the lifesaving station became unhappy, in time, however, because the building was so crude and so poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable, suitable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. And so they replaced the emergency cots with beds, and they put better furniture in the now enlarged building, so that now the lifesaving station actually became a popular gathering place for its members. They took great care in decorating it beautifully and furnishing it exquisitely, for they found new uses for it as of a sort of club. But fewer members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions, and so they hired lifesaving crews to do this work on their behalf, and in their stead. Now, don’t misunderstand, the lifesaving motif still prevailed in the club’s decoration and symbols - there was a ceremonial miniature lifeboat displayed in the room where the club initiations were held, for example - so the changes did not necessarily mean that the original ideas were totally lost.

About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold and wet, half-drowned people. They were dirty people and they were sick people, many of them had different colored skin as the lifeguards. The beautiful new club, as you might imagine, was thrown into chaos, so that the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where these recent victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside the main clubhouse.

At the very next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s lifesaving activities for being so unpleasant, as well as for being a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted upon lifesaving as their primary purpose, pointing out that, indeed, they were still called a lifesaving station. But these few were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own lifesaving station down the coast. And so, they did just that.

Now as the years passed, the new station down the coast came to experience the very same changes that had occurred in the older, initial station. It evolved into a club, and yet another lifesaving station had to be founded to restore the original purpose.

Well, history continued to repeat itself, so that if you visit that seacoast today, you will find a great number of exclusive clubs along that shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown!” [1]

I’m sure you’ve heard me tell this story before. It’s a modern day parable examining the foundations and goals of a church. What is a church about? What is th eprimaryh function and goal of any given church?

For a church to be true to its calling and remain a church, a few concepts – a few elements are essential and must always remain so.

The first is and most important is the centrality of Jesus and a few others are Synergy and Harmony. We’ll remember our foundation in Christ in a few minutes but first lets consider Synergy and Harmony.

Two horses were pulling in a competition at a county fair. The two winning horses each pulled an amazing amount of weight. The horse that was runner up in the contest pulled 8000 pounds. The horse that won was able to pull a total of 9000 pounds! The two owners were so impressed with the prowess of the two animals that they got together and decided to enter their horses in a new category for each of them. The two huge horses were entered into a contest together, in a pulling competition for horse teams.

At the end of the contest an amazing thing was learned. The novice team won the competition, but the most impressive thing to the two owners of the champion horses was that although the total amount that they expected the team to pull was 17,000 pounds, the total of what the two horses pulled individually. However, as a team they pulled 30,000 pounds!

This is what is called synergy. It’s the same effect as when two flames are brought together. As you now know, the height, the heat and the brightness of the two flames together are much greater than each individual flame, but also much greater than if the two flames are left alone, not touching, separate and side by side.

Harmony is similar. In order to recognize harmony, one needs to look at accomplishments when more than one party work in unison together.

A pastor once commented to a conductor with whom he sat in a concert hall. “I wish I could fill my church with the numbers of people with which you fill this concert hall!”

The conductor replied, “You might if you were able to find one hundred individuals who worked together as well as the members of this orchestra.”

The bows in the violin section all shined together as they moved up and down in unison and caught the bright lights of the stage. The trumpeters fingers all pumped their valves up and down at exactly the same moment with exactly the same motion.

The two timpanists mallets pounded their big kettle drums with just the same speed and intensity, working up and down to make a sound like thunder!

“A great church is somewhat like a great orchestra,” he thought, “the members must not only make the right moves but must make them together.”

A musician who only wants to repeatedly play his own favorite piece and refuses to play what the rest are playing or even decides to play with less emotion or care will destroy the integrity of the piece.

No matter how technically well or expressively the orchestra plays, a few wrong notes played out of step or sourly will destroy the sweetness of the whole.

Christ and the Holy Spirit of God are what keeps synergy and harmony in place and helps a church pull in the same direction in unison.

Over the summer during one of the children’s sermons, I made an analogy of the church as a spinning wheel. I said that Christ is like the axle of the church’s wheel, that if the church is to spin true, Christ must be at the very center of everything done, and that if Christ is not at the center, the wheel will be skewed and cockeyed and won’t turn for very long at all!

It all starts individually with us the people of the congregation. Are we individually looking for Christian answers to our questions? Are we looking into the word of God or listening to the counsel and teaching of the Godly? Are we feeding our own hunger for Christ? If we are not, our wheel will be out-of-kilter and will not turn.

And as a community, if Christ is at the center of everything planned, that center may even be obscured or a little difficult to find, but it must be there. If the steps at the front of the church are going to be repaired, the purpose must be recognized as the safety, love and care of all who come to worship Christ in this building. Even if that purpose is not expressed to the contractor who comes to do the work, that’s why it is done.

If the youth group goes to a baseball game or to the beach, the purpose of the event is not to entertain the kids, or even introduce them to other Armenian kids, so that they’ll marry a good Armenian boy or girl. The purpose is to build a community, a cohesive group of young people, within which the spirit of Christ and the gospel itself can be planted and that such young people may come to know as well the purpose and mission of the church even as they themselves are saved and touched by the eternity of God!

Even if a fundraiser is planned and carried out, money or survival can’t be the central axles around which the event turns, but knowledge that the ministry that is being supported, the goal that is hoped to be achieved, the Christ-centered purpose and mission that must be sustained with the resources that are raised must remain the center of even that endeavor. If one or two people are a bit off base and are only wishing to be competitive and make a big splash with a particular event, without the ultimate purposes in mind, the whole event can go sour and compromise the integrity of the entire church, regardless of how much money is collected or how huge the event seemed to be on the surface.

The Apostle Paul knows these concepts and teaches them to his friends in the Corinthian church. In the passage from 1 Corinthians 3, he makes an analogy not of an orchestra, or a lifesaving station, but of a building.

He speaks of how in a community of Christians, there are many workers and many accomplishments. However, its foundation must be Christ. Regardless of who lays it down, Christ must be the keystone around which the church forms.

Upon that foundation, many will add their contributions, and there can be no room for jealousy and all dissension must be dealt with and let go.

The Apostle Paul insists that through synergy and harmony, through the adding of one person’s contribution upon another’s and proper working together of all the parts to create the whole, the final structure produced is far more spectacular and successful than anything that could be done by individuals.

In the analogy of the Apostle Paul, the structure that he talks about is not some great and grand church or temple. It is not a literal building that he speaks about but what he calls “God’s temple.” On several occasions throughout his letters, the Apostle Paul calls the body of Christ, the people of God, the Temple of God and the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. In this case he has described how it is to be built, with Christ as the foundation, with synergy and with harmony.

There is one more thing that the Apostle Paul says about this building and the people that build it. The results of the attempts to create something together, says the Apostle Paul, will be apparent. Even if not immediately, the results of the church’s work will ultimately be revealed on “The Day” – that is on Judgment Day, the day of reckoning at the end of time when everything will come out in the wash, where all imperfection, righteousness and unrighteousness will be dealt with before the throne of God.

We don’t know how our church will come out in the end, but if we look closely, we can begin to guess.

Next week, we celebrate the ninetieth anniversary of the Ararat Armenian Congregational Church. The fact that the church has lasted as long as ninety years is an early indication of two things. First, as I insisted last week, ninety years of ministry and vitality for this church is a clear testament of God’s miraculous grace. If not for God’s goodness, none of it would have happened.

Second, it is the beginning of the revelation that the apostle Paul speaks of in his letter. It is early proof and a testament itself that this congregation, this community of believers has shown that this church has been for 90 years 1. founded on Christ 2. an example of synergy and harmony.

This has been the legacy of this congregation for ninety years. That even despite difficult years, even despite lean and desperate times, even despite times which have tested the cohesion of the church, have divided, despaired and all but torn apart this church, the congregation has stood on the foundation of Christ and has pulled together to do what Christ has called it to do. And it has done it with harmony, by taking advantage of the increased energy, heat and power that comes from the joining together of the spirits and hopes and efforts of dozens and over the life span of this church hundred and perhaps thousands of individual Christians.

This is among the legacies of this church. As we celebrate this momentous anniversary of the church, we’ve got to accept that legacy and pick it up and continue to carry it along for as long as we are able in our time, and after we are through, God will send others to continue the work and add their gifts and their fruits and their abilities to ours until the final day, when it revealed once and for all what we have been about and how we have made an impact in the world around us for God’s sake!

In the story of the life saving station I began with this morning, I insisted that it was a story that forced the examination of the goals and purposes of a given congregation. We have not yet done that. Today we have only looked at some preliminary concepts.

Next week, as we celebrate our anniversary, we’ll look again at our purpose, dreams and directions as a church, looking a bit more closely at how Christ is or is not at the center of our life together and what direction we might recommit ourselves to pulling, with synergy and harmony.

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