Parkview Training Podcast

Hi, I'm Thomas, one of your pastors here at Parkview, and in this lesson I wanna talk to you about another aspect of learning Jesus. Specifically, I want us to talk about growing with God's people. Now, it's only natural that when we think of growth, we think of growing as individuals. And of course, God does want us to grow as individuals. But one thing that sticks out as we read the Bible is that when the Bible talks about growth, it talks about it in corporate communal terms. Think about the Bible itself. It's hard to think of a book of the Bible that is describing only one person or to think of a letter, for instance, in the New Testament that's written to only one person. Almost all of them are written about communities of faith to communities of faith, about how they might grow as communities of faith.
And so when we think about growing as God's people, when we think of taking the next step with Christ, the first thing we have to remember is that God expects that our growth in Christ would happen in the context of relationships with other people. Now, in the time when the Bible was written up to about 500 years ago, this was only natural. In fact, it was basically impossible for it to happen any other way until the printing press was invented. And, and we now to this day, have almost an average of five Bibles per household before then the Bible itself, the scriptures themselves would, would only be accessible to communities. If you wanted to read the Bible, you wanted to read the book, or in that time the scroll of Deuteronomy or the letter to the Ephesians, you needed to go down to your local congregation or in the old, in older times to the synagogue to be able to access it.
Hopefully you'd be able to memorize it so that you might be able to meditate on it on your own. But certainly you wouldn't have a copy of your own copy of the Bible unless you were completely, incredibly wealthy. And so for throughout the Bible and throughout Christian history, growth has happened in community. The idea of sort of a solitary individual growing as a Christian just by sitting down me with my Bible and prayer only has only been a possibility to even think about for the last a hundred years or so. And so the first thing that we have to establish is that growth happens in community. Now, this is even more obvious when you read the epistles, when you read the letters that are specifically written to churches, just as we might have had one written to us all those years ago, for instance, the book of Ephesians or something like that, written to a community, not too much bigger than or smaller than Parkview is today, it's often lost on us because of the English language.
In the original language, often the the commands that are given, the, the instructions that are given, the promises that are described are written using plural language. And this is lost on us because when it gets translated into English, well, unless you're from the Southern United States, you have no category for the plural second person. Here's what I mean. When the Bible says rejoice, always, again, I say rejoice. We read that as individuals. We say, ah, I should be rejoicing. And yet in the original language it says, y'all rejoice. You all rejoice. The entire Bible is written to a community of learners. In fact, it's clear throughout the scriptures that the church God's gathered people are meant to be a robust learning community where anyone can join. And through the those around them, the the influence that we have with one another, the gifts that God has given to each member, each of us is able to take a next step through the support and challenge and instruction that God supplies.
We see this most clearly in Ephesians 4 verses 11 through 13. I'll read those to you now. It says this, he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood or if we're being cheeky, whole discipleship to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That is each of us with the gifts that God has given us. Of course, we, we read the evangelists, the the teachers and so forth. God has appointed certain roles and offices within the church so that we might learn, but he is also given everyday people to help us and encourage us as we take the next step. And one thing that marks a whole disciple that marks a ever-growing taking the next step forgiven child of God is a dedication to the learning community that God has given the church to growing with God's people.
And so while disciples are of course committed to growing with God's people in, in our day and age, of course it's not never been easier to do that individualistically. So what we'll see if we're growing as whole disciples in this realm is a commitment to community, a commitment to growing in community, a commitment to growing with and from and alongside our fellow believers, particularly for those who are at Parkview with other Parkview people. So what does this actually mean in plain language? Well, simply it means that you as a growing disciple of Jesus would expect and look to and depend on the body of Christ here at Parkview, the church to help you grow in Christ. Some really simple things that that would look like is worshiping together regularly, coming to worship God, to learn from God's people, to learn from the word together as we preach the Bible and so forth.
Sunday mornings should be our flagship of learning Jesus together. It would look like being committed to a learning community, like a community group devoted to the the things that we've provided, like podcasts and other learning opportunities. It would also look like looking to other members of the church to be a source of encouragement and learning. For instance, if you're a parent, it might be only natural for you to look to a book to to think, I need to grow as a parent. I'm struggling with a certain issue. It's only natural for us as 21st century people to think, ah, I have a learning deficit. I need to grow in this area and boo boo boo type over to amazon.com or click over to it on my smartphone and look up the latest childcare book or whatever it happens to be. And that's great. Wonderful. I hope there's so many wonderful Christian books out there.
But if we're growing in this area of the Christian life as whole disciples, we would maybe not only do that or maybe first we would go to a fellow member who we have seen be a good parent. Maybe there's a generation ahead of us, they've raised kids of their own, and we would look to them and say, I know I need to grow in this area of my life. Would you help me? Would you recommend a book to me? Could I just sit down with you? Could I buy you dinner, buy you lunch, and just pick your brain about what it looks like to grow in this area? It might also look like here's, here's a really simple one, practical one. And by the way, if this caught on your life and the life of our church would be transformed, as much as we want to press you to consider for yourself, what is my next step with Jesus?
What would turn this church upside down in about 10 hours would be this. If each of us looked to one another and said, dear friend, would you help me by telling me where you see that I need to grow in Christ? Inviting that kind of help as a learner of Jesus, to be devoted enough and humble enough to ask others to guide you and to point out your weak spots and blind spots to be open to their correction, open to their encouragement, open to their instruction for those who are farther ahead of you in the Christian life. And so growing as a whole disciple means growing with God's people, learning Jesus in God's given learning community: the church. Now one solid practice. I hope I've given you lots of ideas here, but one solid practice that you might look to is joining a community group.
This is our fundamental learning community. Apart from the Sunday worship gathering, apart from what we hope are wonderful organic little friendships and relationships that you form in the church, to have a group of people that are dedicated to one another, growing in Christ, our groups have a simple mission statement. Community groups make whole disciples by cultivating an environment of relational safety, where the spiritual initiative of the group leads to the growth of each member. Community groups are where we intentionally look at one another and say, I'm here to help you grow in Christ. So that's one simple practice, and I hope you've learned a little bit through this lesson about what it looks like to grow as a whole disciple by learning Jesus, by, by growing with God's people.