Reverend Jonathan Waits
All Together Now (1 Corinthians 12)
May 4, 2025
I am not a car guy. Never have been. I really don’t have any level of mechanic skills at all. Well, that’s not totally fair. I can do a few things. I can start the car. I have that one down pretty well. I know how to check the oil. I know how to change an air filter. A tire too. Noah and I worked together with a couple of YouTube videos to install a backup camera on his car. But when it comes to the engine and its operation I’ve got nothing. Not a single thing. I mean, I know the basic theory of what’s happening, but when it comes to what the various parts are, how they work, and what to do when they don’t, I might as well be looking at a jet engine.
But I do know this. All of those parts are necessary if you want the vehicle to be running well. Some of them are big and obvious. Some of them are small and unless you know what you are looking for, you probably wouldn’t be able to find them. Big, small, or somewhere in between, though, all of those parts matter. Every single one of them.
Fun story: my dad used to drive a Chevy Blazer. He would joke that he was going to drive it until the wheels fell off. Then, one morning, when he was backing out of the driveway, the wheel actually fell off. Apparently there was a spot inside that tire that had never been oiled the entire time he had the vehicle. This spot also happened to be the place where the entire wheel was attached to the rest of the frame. Finally, after more than ten years of never getting any grease, it corroded all the way through and snapped. This was a completely invisible part, but it mattered in a big way.
This morning, we are in the second and final part of our short series, Growing Pains. For these couple of weeks we are talking about a couple of the challenges that growing churches face and how to successfully navigate through those. As I laid out for you last week, as a church we are growing. I don’t say that as cause for some kind of a grand celebration, but merely as an observation of reality. There are more people around here than there were not all that long ago. The really shocking fact I set before you is that almost 50% of the people active in this church right now have been here five years or less. While that fact is really healthy and really exciting, it also brings with it the potential for growing pains. Now, growing pains are better than dying pains, but they are still pains to navigate.
Let me give you a really practical—and recent—example of what I mean. Last week after the service we had a quick meeting to talk about VBS and security. The first part of that is because VBS is one month away. The second part is because of the rapidly growing number of kids and youth we have here on Sundays, but especially Wednesday nights. Here’s the thing: having that number of kids and youth is awesome, but it means we can’t keep doing things in the very casual way we’ve done them in the past. But getting over the hurdle between doing them very casually and actively putting in place and operating under the kind of basic security measures that will help make sure that parents today feel safe enough to continue entrusting their kids into our care can be tricky if we aren’t mentally and spiritually prepared for it ahead of time.
Navigating potential growing pains can be tough, but it is made vastly more manageable when we are navigating from the right foundation. With this in mind, last week as we started this conversation, we started with that foundation. And the first thing we talked about was worship. Worship is the one of the key foundation pillars we need to have in place if we are going to successfully navigate through whatever growing pains might be ahead of us. A church that worships together in spirit and truth and with a spirit of unity characterizing their efforts is a church that will have the ability to stand firm and unwavering in the face of all sorts of challenges they may encounter together in their pursuit of the mission God has set before them. We are all about advancing the kingdom of God, and as we said as we worked our way through John’s incredible picture of heavenly worship in Revelation, worship is how we participate in God’s kingdom.
Well, if worship is the first major foundation pillar here, the second is how we work in the church. You have perhaps heard before that the church is the people. Well, that’s true. The church is fundamentally a group of people working together to make the ministry God has directed them to do happen. And it takes all of them to get it done. Find me a church in which the pastor and maybe one or two others do all the ministry that is happening, and I will show you a church that is dying. The church doesn’t work unless every part plays its part. You know that, but I want to talk with you this morning about just how true it is.
In order to do this, we are going to explore some of the apostle Paul’s thoughts on how God designed the church to work. He does this in a couple of different places that are especially significant. One is in his letter to the church in Ephesus, but we’ll have to save that one for another time. Today I want to focus our attention on the other major example in his first letter to the church in Corinth.
If you have a copy of the Scriptures with you this morning, find your way with me to 1 Corinthians 12. This chapter is part of a larger section starting in chapter 11 and running through chapter 14 that is all about the proper ordering of worship in the church. How appropriate, given our conversation last week, that Paul takes some time out of this larger focus to give direct attention to how the church was designed to work. Let’s dive in here starting right at the beginning of the chapter.
“Now concerning spiritual gifts: brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be unaware. You know that when you were pagans, you used to be enticed and led astray by mute idols. Therefore I want you to know that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says, ‘Jesus is cursed,’ and no one can say, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ except by the Holy Spirit. Now there are different gifts, but the same Spirit. There are different ministries, but the same Lord. And there are different activities, but the same God works all of them in each person. A manifestation of the Spirit is given to each person for the common good: to one is given a message of wisdom through the Spirit, to another, a message of knowledge by the same Spirit, to another, faith by the same Spirit, to another, gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another, the performing of miracles, to another, prophecy, to another, distinguishing between spirits, to another, different kinds of tongues, to another, interpretation of tongues. One and the same Spirit is active in all these, distributing to each person as he wills.”
Paul here is talking about spiritual gifts. That is a whole topic unto itself that we are not going to address this morning at all. What Paul is talking about from a bigger picture standpoint is the fact that God equips members of the church to do the work necessary to make the church work. That’s the context that we need to grasp in order that we don’t miss the forest for the trees. The individual trees are beautiful, but the forest matters a lot. Paul here is talking about the ways God equips His people to serve one another in the church. He equips them by the indwelling of His Spirit in each of them, but this equipping doesn’t manifest itself in the same way in every individual. We are all given different gifts that are shaped in terms of their practice by our individual life experiences, talents, and passions. Each of them, though, is a necessary part of what God wants to accomplish in and through a particular body of Christ. To put that another way, God gifts people in all sorts of different ways to work in the church—that is, to do ministry—and these ways are not independent of each other.
In order to help us understand just how connected all of these different pieces and parts really are, Paul next offers up an analogy. This is actually a pretty natural analogy given that the church is very regularly referred to as the body of Christ (an analogy Paul himself uses pretty frequently). Paul says the church and how it was designed by God to work is like the human body. Verse 12 now: “For just as the body is one and has many parts, and all the parts of that body, though many, are one body—so also is Christ.” Notice there he says, “So also is Christ,” and not, “so also is the church.” It’s like I just said. The church is the body of Christ. It’s not like Christ is one thing and the church is another. We are the body of Christ in this world. If a person is going to encounter Jesus, that is going to happen in conjunction with His body, the church. So also is Christ indeed.
Let’s keep going. “For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and we were all given one Spirit to drink.” That is, the church is to be a unity amid diversity. The diversity is inescapable, but in Christ, the unity comes first. We are all to be one in Christ no matter how diverse of a group we might be. And, given that the worship chorus that will characterize God’s kingdom will be incredibly diverse, diversity isn’t something we should at all shy away from as His body on earth. That doesn’t mean that any one church body, let alone one worship service, is going to encompass all the different ways to worship—that would be impossible. But the church body must be able to tolerate all the diversity God builds into it with graciousness and hospitality; with humility and generosity, all the while never losing sight even for a second of the unity that binds us all together: we are Christ’s body.
Paul doubles down on this in the next verse, and goes on to offer up a further illustration using the human body as his base. “Indeed, the body is not one part but many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I’m not a hand, I don’t belong to the body,” it is not for that reason any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, ‘Because I’m not an eye, I don’t belong to the body,’ it is not for that reason any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye,” that would be really disgusting. Okay, Paul doesn’t say that, but it would be. “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were an ear,” that would also be gross. By the way, now you know that AI can generate a giant eyeball monster and a creature that is nothing more than a giant ear. “If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?”
This same principle applies when going the other way as well. Skip down to v. 19: “And if they were all the same part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ Or again, the head can say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’ On the contrary, those parts of the body that are weaker are indispensable. And those parts of the body that we consider less honorable, we clothe these with greater honor, and our unrespectable parts are treated with greater respect, which our respectable parts do not need.”
Are you with Paul here? There are lots of parts in a body. There are lots of different parts. You have 206 bones, over 600 different muscles, 78 organs, lots of glands, about 60,000 miles’ worth of blood vessels, and something like 86 billion neurons that make up your nervous system. That’s a lot of parts! And although, yes, the analogy breaks down just a little bit here in that you can remove some of those parts and still be okay—I don’t have an appendix, tonsils, or uvula myself—the body was nonetheless designed to work best with all the parts functioning like they were designed.
Speaking of the careful, detailed design of a human body, the same care and intentionality goes into the design of the body of Christ. Look back to v. 18 that we skipped just a second ago. What does Paul say there? Pay attention here because this is important: “But as it is, God has arranged each one of the parts in the body just as he wanted.” Got that. If you are here, that’s no accident. God did that on purpose. He created you in a unique way that He plans to use to make this church stronger and better equipped to make disciples who make disciples. The same God who by His wisdom designed the human body and the body of every other creature that has ever existed to work so wonderfully and well and in levels and layers of detail that we are still trying to fully understand in that same wisdom saw fit for you to be here. Don’t ever doubt that you have a role to play in what God is accomplishing in and through this body of believers. That goes, by the way, no matter how old you are. God does what He does on purpose, and Paul makes clear here that He put you in this body on purpose.
He built this body the way it is, and as He sees fit He will continue to add more and more pieces so that together we can do more and more ministry for more and more people. But no matter what shape He currently has us in, we are still one body. No part—that is, person—is unimportant. And the parts that seem like they matter least are the very parts that are often the most essential. “Instead, God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the less honorable, so that there would be no division in the body, but that the members would have the same concern for each other. So if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and individual members of it.”
Now, do you know what follows 1 Corinthians 12? First Corinthians 13…because that’s how math works. More importantly than math right now, though, do you know what Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 13? That’s the love chapter! It’s the one we always hear read at weddings. And that’s a fine and good thing to do. But do you remember what we said is the larger context of this whole section? The proper order of worship in the church. And Paul has just been talking about how the church was designed to work. We’re not going to read it right now, but you should definitely do that when you get home. For now, what chapter 13 does is to put all of the work Paul talks about in chapter 12 into its proper context.
Let’s leave Paul’s body analogy and jump back to our automotive metaphor from the beginning of our conversation. Love is the oil in the engine of the church. Last week we said that prayer is the fuel that keeps the church running. Without the proper fuel, we don’t go anywhere. We also said last week that worship is the engine. You need the fuel to make the engine work in the first place, but without the engine, that fuel doesn’t do anything. Well, the people serving in the various ways God designed them to serve are the various parts and pieces of the engine. If a part isn’t working properly, the thing may still go. I’ve got lots of parts on my van that aren’t working properly, but it still starts every time I turn the key, and gets me safely where I want to go. But it’s not running at full capacity. In the same way, the church can’t run at full capacity when all the parts are not functioning as God designed. Love, though, is the oil in the engine. It’s what keeps all the parts working like they should. Without it, the parts will work for a little while, but eventually the whole thing is going to grind to a big, ugly, noisy halt. Or a wheel is going to fall off. One or the other. Either way, we won’t be going anywhere.
Okay, then, but what does all of this mean? What does it look like in practice? Well, it looks like this: If God made you a part of this body, then be a part of this body. Let me talk for just a second to the folks here who are members of this body. If God made you a part of this body, then be a part of this body. One of the other major potential growing pains that a growing church can run into is not enough people to do all of the work that needs to be done in order for the church to do all the ministry God has set at her feet to accomplish. The more people who connect, the greater the ministry workload gets. That’s a good thing, but it is one that has to be managed. Yet when the same pool of volunteers keep trying to do the ministry for a growing body of people, they can quickly find themselves overmatched and out of margin. New people have to be integrated into the work of ministry or the whole thing quickly begins to topple under its own weight. No one is served well by that.
Fortunately, no church has to face that. This is because of what we have already talked about. Remember how God builds the body? “But as it is, God has arranged each one of the parts in the body just as he wanted it.” God makes sure a church has enough parts and pieces to do all the ministry He has designed it to do in a given season. And when the season changes and He gives a church more to do, He’ll equip her with more parts and pieces to make sure all the work can be done. Well, if you are a connected part of this body, again, that was on purpose. So, if God has made you a part of this body, then be a part of this body.
We have really amazing volunteers here who do all kinds of amazing work. But we need more. We need more volunteers helping with our kids and with our youth. We have folks who are looking to be able to transition smoothly to other areas as God moves them into different seasons of life. We need to be able to fill those holes with the new people God is raising up for that work. We need more people to work in our nursery. We need that on Sundays during this time, during Sunday school, and on Wednesday nights. We have great and faithful workers there, but they need more help. As you are going to get a glimpse of next week when we have our Parent-Child Dedication service, we have a full nursery right now with lots of babies in it and on the way. If you love loving on babies…we have a place for you.
There’s more. We need greeters. We are a welcoming church. We’ve talked about that. You’ve experienced it. But we need some folks who are specifically focused on making sure every guest who walks in our doors is welcomed warmly, is helped to find a seat—because one of the biggest fears plaguing the mind of every first time guest is that they are either not going to be able to find a seat, or that they are going to sit in someone’s seat—and has all their questions answered, especially about what we have planned for their kids if they have them. If you are an extrovert who loves people, Jesus, and this church, we have a job for you.
We need more people specifically engaged with our security team. We don’t ever anticipate having problems, of course, but it is nonetheless important that we have folks who are thinking in those terms, have a plan for how we will handle various situations as a church, and how all of our kids are being kept at least as safe as they are at home when they are here.
We need tech volunteers. We have a terrific group of ladies and gentlemen who make sure all the technical things that need to happen in order for the service to run and sound like you expect it to run and sound are happening. If you have ever benefited from our livestream. These folks are the reason. But there aren’t many of them. They are incredibly faithful, but they also need to be able to be off sometimes too. We are also in the process of designing a new website. I know how to do that, but I don’t have the margin to do it. We need some web-savvy folks with a keen designing eye to help get that personalized so it is ready for public reveal. We need those same folks to be involved in the week-to-week management and updating of the website.
One more for now (although there are even more places than this). As The Gathering Place continues to thrive on Wednesday nights, we need more dinner teams. If you are not already serving on a dinner team, and you like cooking or serving food (or are willing to do dishes as nobody actually enjoys doing dishes), there is a place for you to be a critical part of what is perhaps the most vital weekly ministry happening in Oakboro.
In short: we need you. If God has made you a part of this body—and remember: if He has, He did that on purpose—then be a part of this body. We won’t be able to do all God has called and created us to do unless you are plugged in and serving in the places He has designed for you.
One more thing, and then we’re out of here. Let me talk for just a second to folks who have gotten pretty plugged in here, but who haven’t yet taken the last step of making your relationship with First Baptist Oakboro official. I have one question for you: What’s stopping you? We can’t do all that God has designed us to do without every part playing its part. For some of you, it’s pretty clear you are one of those parts. We know it. You know it. You just haven’t quite stepped all the way out on faith to make it fully official. If God has called you to be a part of this body, then be a part of this body. Don’t wait any longer. We are weaker without you than we will be with you, and you are too without us.
If you aren’t fully connected as a member here, it’s time to get that fixed. Again: what are you waiting on? A sign from the Lord? Well, here’s your sign. Meet me down front at the end of this service in just a second. Send a text to me this week that says, “Jonathan, we want to join. How do we do that?” and we’ll get together to talk about it. Listen: you are welcome here whether you are a member or not. Period. We don’t do most of what we do just for members. But with very few exceptions, members are the ones doing it. If you are benefiting from it, then why not make yourself fully a part of it? Both we and you need for you to take the plunge of membership so that God can continue to unleash more and more of His kingdom-advancing power through all of us together as we work to bless the community around us. You have gifts that we need to see fully unleashed…that this community needs for you to fully unleash as a member of this body. Don’t wait any longer. If God has called you to be a part of this body, then be a part of this body.
Listen friends: God is doing His good work among us, and in His grace and favor continues to do more and more of it. Following Him into bigger and broader expansions of His kingdom isn’t always easy. It comes with growing pains. But it is always good. At the end of the day, He gets the glory, we receive the joy, and our community and beyond will be transformed because of it. Because of you. Doing here what God has designed, equipped, and now called you to do. If God has made you a part of this body, then be a part of this body. Let’s keep reaching out to expand His kingdom together!