Building A Church Of Thessalonica For The 21st Century | Part 4 | True Ministry | Dr. Madana Kumar Series

Building a Church of Thessalonica for the 21st century | Part 4 | True Ministry

This is Part 4 of the Series of studies on 1 & 2 Thessalonians

Visit https://youtu.be/umaQ68xYVSg for a video/audio version of the sermon

Good morning. We will continue our study of the epistles to Thessalonians today.

In this series so far, we have seen that the church at Thessalonica was built based on the Macedonian call. The formation of the church was the culmination of a series of God orchestrated events in Paul’s second missionary journey. This church became a model church, and we are looking into some of the factors that contributed to that status of the Thessalonian Church. We saw that the foundation of building a model church is the fact that they had hope in the second coming of Jesus Christ, and they were in high level of anticipation about that event. Thus these epistles become a guideline for all believers who need to be prepared for Jesus’ second coming. Or in other words, how to be a true church. We saw that there were four pillars of true church.

1. True Transformation

2. True Ministry

3. True Fellowship

4. True Evangelism

In the last part of the series, part 3, we looked into the aspect of True Transformation. We saw that True transformation is a cycle of Hearing and accepting the word, imitating Christ, becoming an example and then sharing the gospel with others.

In this part 4 of the series, we will look into the second pillar of the true church namely true ministry.

At the core of the teachings of Christianity are Faith, Hope and Love. Paul starts the letter by commending them on an excellent display of these three core elements in 1 Thessalonians 1:3 remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of our God and Father,. Later on Paul asks them to use these three core elements to shield us from darkness. 1 Thessalonians 5:8 But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation. True ministry is built around these three. True ministry is one that strengthens the faith, continues to give hope and teaches us to live one another. Paul sees all the three of them in the church at Thessalonica.

In part 2 of this series we examined the hope that the Thessalonian church had. We established that one of the main reasons for their success is their hope in the salvation and the second coming of Jesus Christ.

In the next part of the series, part 5, we will examine the core element of love in more detail.

So in this part 4, let us focus on faith. Paul is very concerned about the faith of the Thessalonian church. As we have seen in Part 1 of the series, Paul had an opportunity to teach them personally only for about three weeks. Once he reaches Athens, his concerns for Thessalonian church grows and he sends Timothy to see if their faith has reduced, and to exhort them in their faith. He wanted to know how the church is doing, and he asks his trusted apprentice to go and check on the church.

It is interesting to see how we assess how a church a doing vs how Paul assessed how the church is doing. Yesterday, I was in another city speaking to the professional group of a mega church. A Christian brother invited me for speaking at the session, and after he asked about my availability and willingness, he sensed that I was still reluctant because I knew I had a commitment here, and traveling back from another city in the evening and speaking at this church in the morning was not a very comfortable thought to me. I realise that I am getting older. That is when this dear brother used his final pitch to close the deal. He said “ Brother, this is a mega church with more than 10000 members” . I was on speakerphone and Leslie was listening to the conversation. She shook her head, and once the phone call was over, she asked “what has the number of people in the church got to do with your preaching? “. I am not assigning any motive to this dear brother who provided an opportunity to me to minister. I am thankful to him for inviting me. But I am bringing this up to highlight how we assess the health of a church. When you meet someone new in any Christian gathering, at some point or the other, the conversation will turn to “which church do you attend, or where do you worship”. If you answer is that you worship in one of the mega churches, or one of the well known traditional churches, the conversation will veer away to something else. But if your answer is that you worship in a small congregation that not many have heard about, the very next question is “how big is the church? How many families worship”, or something to that effect. If you meet someone who was part of our congregation in the past, the most likely question is “hey how is BBF doing, has the congregation grown, do you have a pastor now? Etc.”. You see, by our worldly standards, when we want to know how a congregation is doing, the size becomes an important factor. The popularity of the Pastor becomes an important factor. The size of the building becomes an important factor. But not for Paul. His concern is expressed in 1 Thessalonians 3:1-5 Therefore, when we could no longer endure it, we thought it good to be left in Athens alone, 2 and sent Timothy, our brother and minister of God, and our fellow laborer in the gospel of Christ, to establish you and encourage you concerning your faith, 3 that no one should be shaken by these afflictions; for you yourselves know that we are appointed to this. 4 For, in fact, we told you before when we were with you that we would suffer tribulation, just as it happened, and you know. 5 For this reason, when I could no longer endure it, I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter had tempted you, and our labor might be in vain.