Spiritual Gangrene: Necrosis Of The Body Of Christ

When it comes to the church, church growth is naturally related to church health. Healthy churches, like healthy people, must grow.

In his book, The Purpose Driven Church, Pastor Rick Warren says that if our church is healthy, attendance will be the least of our problems. He writes that "Healthy, lasting church growth is multidimensional. His definition of church growth has five facets.

Every church needs to grow:

* larger through evangelism

* deeper through discipleship

* warmer through fellowship

* broader through ministry

* stronger through worship

First, we looked at the first facet of church growth that says: Churches grow larger through evangelism.

Upon reading the first four books of the New Testament one would find this large group of people that were following Jesus around. The Bible refers to this large group of people as the crowd. The KJV Bible uses the word multitudes.

Jesus had no problem finding the crowd because it was always following Him around. The crowd followed him around because He had the goods and was delivering them.

Evangelism is taking the Gospel or the Good News of Jesus Christ to the community and producing a crowd of people who are interested in knowing more about Jesus.

The Christian who evangelizes sometimes has to meet the tangible needs of an individual in order that he or she might be willing and able to have their spiritual needs met.

Evangelism is vital to church health and growth, but focusing on evangelism alone won’t produce a healthy, growing church. This brought us to the second facet in our outline of what makes a growing, healthy church: Churches grow deeper through discipleship.

A disciple is a learner or follower of Jesus Christ. Jesus is calling men, women, boys and girls to follow Him. In calling His twelve disciples, Jesus taught them the ways of God and gave them opportunities to put what they were learning into practice.

Jesus wasn’t merely concerned with imparting a lot of head knowledge, He wanted to reproduce Himself in the lives of His followers. One can tell from reading some of the letters of His followers that are recorded in the New Testament that Jesus was successful. Many of the words of the disciples found in New Testament books such as 1 John, James, Peter’s epistles and the writings of Paul are direct quotes from the lips of Jesus. Most of Jesus’ 12 disciples died because of their faith in Him.

Jesus commands us to make disciples of all nations. (Matthew 28). However, along with discipleship being a mandate for the church, the Scripture teaches there are five benefits to the one who is being discipled:

Teaching - Preparing the believer to live a Christ-honoring life

Encouragement - Propping the believer up when he or she is faltering

Accountability - Provoking and stimulating the believer to love and good deeds

Commitment - Pouring yourself into the life of a believer.

Haven - Providing protection for the believer - prayer

Evangelism grows a church larger, discipleship grows a church deeper . A third facet in our outline of what makes a growing, healthy church says that “Churches grow warmer through fellowship.”

Churches Grow Warmer Through Fellowship

The word fellowship in the New Testament is the Greek word, koinonia. Koinonia is translated, partnership (Phil. 1:5), a participation or (social) intercourse (1 Cor. 10:16). It is also translated, administration (Eph. 3:9) contribution (Romans 15:26) communication, sharing (2 Cor. 8:4) communion, and distribution.

The Greek stem koin- has a base meaning of "common," out of which a number of shades of meaning emerge. For example, in Jewish literature produced during the time between the writing of the Old and New Testament, the Greek root koin- was used to express ideas such as friendship and table fellowship. Josephus, the first century Jewish historian, used the koin- stem for Jewish people who lived in co-ops and held all of their property "in common" (compare Acts 2:44).

In the larger Greek world the koin- stem was often used to describe the sense of bonding and closeness which the members of social, religious, and philosophical organizations shared with one another. Pagan religions could even use the koin- stem to describe union and communion with their god or gods.

The Apostle Paul and other New Testament writers used the word koinonia or “fellowship” to describe the bond of common purpose and devotion that binds Christians together and to Christ.

Spiritual Gangrene

In 2 Timothy chapter two Paul warns Timothy to avoid godless chatter because it will spread like gangrene. Sin, like gangrene, has a way of spreading and causing division in the congregation.

I want to talk briefly about what we will call spiritual gangrene; this is what sets in when a person distances himself from the rest of the body of Christ.