Immanuel Sermon Audio
I Am a Church Member: Functioning
preview of what we're going to be talking about over the next couple of weeks. In the lobby, there are books called "I Am a Church Member." We purchased some for this series. We purchased enough for every family to have one. If you would like more than that, you can purchase them. We're just going to charge you what we bought them for, $5 a piece. So the books are out there in the lobby. If we run out of what is out there now, we do have more that we can get out. In this series, we're going to basically follow some of the ideas that Dr. Rainer talks about in his book "I Am a Church Member." I promise you, I'm not going to read the book to you. You can do that for yourself. We've purchased them. It's a short read. It's an easy read. So I'm not going to read it to you. I promise that I'm not going to preach the book. Some of you may have concerns and say, "Wait a minute, we're doing a series based on a book. Why don't we do a series based on the Bible?" And I promise you, the series will be based on the Bible. We will open up Scripture each week, and we will see what the Bible has to say. But we're going to use the book as sort of a framework for some of the topics that we're going to be discussing. If you pick a book up, if you purchase a book, we're not going to move chronologically. And we are going to tweak a few things as we go. But it's an interesting read, and I think it will be a good companion to what we're talking about here on Sunday mornings. In your bulletin, there is an outline, and there is also a green slip of paper. And you can just hold on to that green slip of paper. We're going to use it later in the service. But right now you might take your Bible out, find 1 Corinthians 12, and you may have your outline ready. Tell you a story about how things usually go in my life when I try to make plans. In 2006, Brooke and I lived in Louisville, Kentucky, and despite all the plans we had made up to that point in our life, things were just not exactly going as we had planned. They weren't necessarily bad. It was just sort of a different plan than what we had in mind several years earlier. So it was 2006, and I had just made the decision with some advice from family and friends. I was going to apply for the PhD program at Southern Seminary. I had no intention of going to school again after we just graduated with my master's degree, but that's where the Lord led us, and so I'm trying to decide what do I want to study in this PhD program? Do I want to study New Testament? Do I want to study Old Testament? Do I want to study systematic theology? Do I want to study languages, Greek and Hebrew? I made my decision based on some of the faculty that were at Southern Seminary at the time. Tom Rayner was the president of the School of Evangelism and Missions at the time, and you may or you may not know Tom Rayner. He's arguably, in fact, I would say not arguably, he is the world's leading scholar on things like evangelism, in church growth, in church health, in missions. He is the guy who has written all the textbooks, and so I thought, what a neat opportunity to study with the guy. Not just that's done it, but that has written the textbooks, the world's leading expert. So I applied for the program to study under him, and I was so excited when I got accepted to that program, and I was ready to go sit in class with Dr. Rayner, and my first semester, he moved. He left. He left Southern Seminary, and he became the president CEO of LifeWay, which is the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, and so he took this different job, and he left. But the men that I studied under were great, but that's who Tom Rayner is, just to give you a little bit of background about him. In 2013, he wrote this book called "I Am a Church Member," and I had our staff in 2014, and our elders sit down and read through the book. You've picked it up in the lobby. You know it's short. It is quick to read. He's a great writer, and so it's not difficult to move through the pages. But as we read it in staff meeting, and as we read it with our elders, they encouraged me. We need to somehow get this in the hands of people. Maybe we give it to people at a new member class. Maybe we just buy everybody in the church a copy. Maybe we preach a series on it, but the stuff in this book is not complicated. It's really pretty simple stuff, but it's solid stuff, and it's things that you've probably never heard somebody just sit down and talk about. Even if you've been in church for decades, you've probably never had anyone just sit you down and say, "This is what it means to be a church member," and that's what Dr. Rayner does in the book. He talks about church membership. Let's start with some statistics just to lay the groundwork. I've taken multiple statistics classes in college and seminary, and so I know enough about stats to know that you can make them say just about whatever you want them to say. With that risk being acknowledged, let me share a couple of stats with you. Tom Rayner says from research of tens of thousands of churches in this country, "Nine out of every ten churches in the United States is either declining or growing slower than the rate of the growth in their community." Does that make sense? Only one out of ten in the United States is growing and growing at a rate that they're growing faster than the growth in their own community. Nine out of ten, not growing, truth be told, the majority of those nine are actually declining. Not just growing at a slow clip, but declining. Nine out of ten. Now you could step back and you could say, "Well, there's a lot of things that make a church decline." We lived in a part of Kentucky where the population was decreasing because of the economy. It's very difficult to grow a church when the population of your community is decreasing and you have people leaving all of the time, so you could point to things like that. You could look at the denomination of the church and you can break this study down nine out of ten and you can say, "Okay, nine out of ten, that's all of us." Are there certain denominations that are doing better than others? Are there certain denominations that are doing worse than others? And the answer is yes, some are doing better than others, some are doing worse than others. You can look at a lot of different factors. You can look at what does this church believe about the Bible? Whether you realize it or not, that's a pretty good indication as to whether or not this church has even a chance of being one out of ten that's growing. You can look at things like how long has the pastor been there? Church girls studies say that most churches grow the most between the window of the pastor's fifth year and seventh year. Statistically, that's when churches tend to grow the most when a pastor has been there between five and seven years. And so you can look at a lot of these different things. Can we just admit that all the excuses and all the explanations we can come up with are not going to explain away nine out of ten? 90 percent declining or growing slower than the growth in their own community. Here's another way to look at the same situation. Church attendance in the United States is decreasing generationally. Now, I'm going to put you on the spot here and I'm going to ask you to stand up when your generation is called and we're just going to move through and we're just going to look around and see how old everybody is. Ready? Here we go. Number one, the greatest generation born from 1904 to 1924. If your birthday falls in that range, stand up. Anybody in that range? One. Very nice. Thank you for standing. One. Greatest generation. Called the greatest generation because some of the things that they endured economically as well as worldwide military conflicts you know about. Fifty-one percent of the people who fall into that generation attend church regularly. I don't know if that's more than you expected, less than you expected, right about what you would have guessed, fifty-one percent of that generation attends church regularly. Next, the silent generation. They're called the silent generation, here's why, because no U.S. president was born in this window. They just skipped from the greatest generation to the next. So silent generation, 1925 to 1945, if that's you stand up, 25 to 45, okay? You can be seated, fifty percent of the silent generation attend church regularly. One percent difference, no big deal. Next, the baby boomers, 1946 to 1964, if that's you stand up, baby boomers. The boomers, 46 to 64, we've dropped ten percent. You can be seated, we've dropped ten percent. You just get a little applause thrown in at the end. We're not that excited about you guys. Sorry. The baby boomers, 41 percent attend church regularly. Next, generation X, 65 to 79 on your feet. All right, you can be seated. Now we're down to 34 percent, okay? You see the trend here, 51, 50, 41, 34. Next generation, the millennials. This is my generation, okay, 1980 to 2000. Stand up, if you were born in that window on your feet, 1980 to 2000, okay? You can be seated, 25 percent, I don't know that that's anything to applaud about, 25 percent, less than half of the greatest generation. This is a trend that is not turning around anytime soon, 25 percent. Here's what makes this even more troubling, even though baby boomers got named baby boomers because there was a boom of people having babies and there was a lot of you guys, there are way more millennials than baby boomers. Did you know that? Millennials are the largest generation living in the United States today, 80 million strong and only 25 percent regularly attend church. So you sit back and you say, okay, how do we explain this? How do we make sense of it? I think some people would want to say, well, our society as a whole has changed and there have been some political changes and some different things that have happened that have impacted how people feel about church and people going to church and maybe there's some of that. I think the temptation when you look at that list is for each generation to feel a little bit better than the generation below them but not quite as good as the generation above them. And when you look down that list and you start to look down your nose at the millennials or generation X or the boomers, just remember great generation, silent generation boomers, you raised the bottom of that chart. So you may be coming but somewhere there was a disconnect and you sit back and you say, how do we explain that? How do we make sense of that? Maybe we can sit in this building and we can say this is terrible and the problem is somewhere out there but maybe we need to sit in this room and maybe we need to be honest enough to say, maybe the problem is in here. Maybe we don't need to blame the world, our culture, society, maybe we need to look in the mirror. Here's a quote from Tom Rayner, "I'm proposing that we who are church members need to look in the mirror. I'm suggesting that congregations across America are weak because many of us church members have lost the biblical understanding of what it means to be a part of the body of Christ." Now, I'm not trying to throw stones at one generation or another but you understand that if he's on to something here, if this is accurate, this is not a problem that suddenly appeared in my generation, right? This is a problem that was taught to my generation or you could say not taught to my generation and the problem goes back further than we may like to admit. I grew up in Amarillo, Texas, I've told you guys that before and I had a group of about six friends and the thing that we like to do the best was ride bikes. We all had bikes, we like to work on our bikes, like to ride our bikes and our parents just really kind of gave us free reign over Amarillo and we rode from one side of the town to the other all around. We love riding bikes. That was our major entertainment, our activity, go out and ride bikes and somewhere about the beginning of middle school something was thrown into our agenda of bike riding that we were all really excited about. One of the guys in our little bicycle gang became a member of a country club, he didn't become the member but his parents became the members or became members at Tascosa Country Club in Amarillo and all of a sudden an entire new world opened up to us. We didn't have to just ride our bikes around looking for something to do, wishing we had something to do, we could go to the country club and we could go swimming, we could play golf, we had access to food, we had access to a whole world that we had never had access to and we took advantage of it and we loved the fact that we could go to the country club and everything was free. For us it was free. We had the right code or the number or whatever you wrote down on the ticket and so you order a Coke or you go to the pool or you hit a bucket of balls or whatever you do and when they hand you the ticket you just write the right number down there and say this is the greatest thing ever. Now the reality is that those things weren't free, somebody was paying for them, somebody was paying dues for the perks. That's how a country club works, right? You pay your dues, you get certain perks. You pay the bill when they send it to you from the snack bar, you continue to get certain perks. Can I just suggest to you that that mentality has filtered into our churches? That we tend to think of membership in a church a lot like we think about membership in a country club. You say I pay my dues, I pay my ties. Maybe it's not money that you're investing, maybe it's time that you've invested. You say I have invested decades into this church. I put my blood, sweat, and tears into this particular ministry of this church. I've made sacrificial gifts out of my checkbook to bless this church and to help this church. I have paid my dues and then we like to turn around and say now I want my perks. I'm entitled, say what are the perks that people expect? Well, they want you to marry them, they want you to bury them, they want you to counsel them, they want you to fix any problems that they may have in their life with just one conversation or two. They want to visit when they want to be visited, but they want privacy when they want privacy. Those are both perks. And the list could go on, the list could go on. I want music that suits my taste. I want it at the volume that I like, either loud or soft. Here's the list of things that I expect as a due paying church member. I want you to marry my kids, regardless of the sin that they're living in at the moment. What does that matter? I'm a member. I want you to bury this person and I want you to talk them straight into heaven, regardless of whether or not they acted like they loved Jesus at all on this earth. That's a perk. I don't like that kind of music. Why would I pay money and give sacrificial time so that I would come for something that I don't even enjoy? Hey, preacher, I want the sermon to be long enough to be deep, but short enough so that you don't bore me. I want you to get in my face a little bit, but I don't want you to get in my face and be mean. Exactly the right time and exactly the right tone, that's what I expect as a perk of membership. You get the idea. We've confused the two, and Rainer is saying if you're going to look at this generational decline that is showing zero sign of turning around, we can sit in this building and we can throw rocks outside all day long, or we can look in the mirror and say maybe we missed it somewhere along the way. Maybe we need to think about what it really means to be a church member. That's where God's Word comes in. Take your Bible and I want you to find 1 Corinthians 12. We're going to talk this morning about what does it mean to be a functioning member? What does it mean to be a functioning member? 1 Corinthians 12. This is a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. The Apostle Paul started this church. He was the church planter that got this church together on his second missionary journey. You can read about this in Acts chapter 18. Paul goes to town. He stays for about 18 months, starting this church, sharing the gospel, discipling new believers, and then he leaves because that's what Paul did. He started churches. He found somebody to leave in charge, and then he moved on to the next town that needed a church. But as he traveled around, he would have communication with the churches he left behind. He would write them letters and they would send him letters. And it wasn't long after Paul left Corinth, his 18 months in Corinth, that he starts to get word about the church. And the word is not good. He starts hearing rumors, and then these rumors are confirmed, and he gets letters, and he's hearing about things going on. And just to put it bluntly, the church in Corinth was a dysfunctional nightmare. They were fighting in the church about which teacher, which preacher, which speaker they liked better. And I don't just mean like discussing, "I prefer this guy to this guy." I mean like, "Let's come to blows." I mean like, "I'm not coming to church if that guy's teaching Sunday school." If that guy preaches again as a fill-in, I'm definitely not showing up. And some of them said, "Well, I just can't get over Paul. I miss Paul. Paul was the best. No one could ever be better than Paul." And then some of them said, "No, Apollo's is great. He's right here. He's part of our church. Apollo's is the best. He's with us. We love Apollo's." And some of them said, "Look, Paul, he's a newcomer to the game. Have you heard Peter preach? Have you gotten on the podcast and listened to Peter? He's amazing. I love Peter." And then you had the really uppity bunch who just stood back and said, "Well, I think Jesus is the best preacher." And there they were, fighting, arguing, bickering, dividing themselves. Paul hears about that. Paul hears about immorality in the church. It was gross immorality. You can read about it in 1 Corinthians 5, everybody knew about it. Nobody wanted to do anything about it. In fact, not only were they too afraid to do something about it, but they were patting themselves on the back about how kind and tolerant and open-minded they were being. Paul says, "You've got to be kidding me. I taught you guys better than this." Then he hears that there's people in the church suing each other because they can't just come to some resolution face-to-face. People in the same church family who can't agree, and so there's a lawsuit in the court between them. It gets worse. Paul says, "Well, surely they're still baptizing people and practicing the Lord's Supper." I told them, "You baptize new people, you practice the Lord's Supper." They were practicing the Lord's Supper. Some of them were coming early, rich folks, and getting drunk at the Lord's Supper. Can you imagine? Meet at the church. We're going to have the Lord's Supper. We show up and there's Corey stumbling around. Are you kidding me? Then there's other people who were poor. They didn't have any bread to bring. They didn't have any juice to bring. They weren't even able to celebrate the Lord's Supper because this crew was too drunk to bring them in on it. Oh my goodness. This is the church that I left behind. Then he hears about their worship service. The worship service was just a free-for-all. They did whatever they wanted to do, whenever they wanted to do it. People hollering out loud, people just total absolute craziness in the worship service. And so Paul sits down. He hears all this. He sits down. He says, "I've got to straighten these guys out." And the straighten and out letter is 1 Corinthians. And so he just starts at the beginning of the list. Okay. Let's talk about the divisions, quit it. Let's talk about the immorality, knock it off. The lawsuits, figure it out. The Lord's Supper, this is how I told you to do it, quit on and on down the list. The worship service, this is how you're to conduct yourself. And then you come to the end of the letter, and Paul starts to go back to some basics about being a member of a church. All this craziness, and he tries to address it as best he can, but then it just is almost like he steps back and he says, "Okay, let's go back to the basics." We're not going to read all of 1 Corinthians 12 and 13. I'm going to encourage you to do that on your own, read through it as you study the book that we've made available to you. But I do want to point out a few verses to you, and I want you to see some very basic lessons about what it means to be a functioning church member right out of 1 Corinthians 12 and 13. So six truths I want you to see. Number one is this, spiritual gifts come from God. If you're going to understand what it means to be a functioning member, you've got to wrap your brain around this idea of spiritual gifts. And the first thing you need to know is spiritual gifts come from God. 1 Corinthians 12, verse 4, Paul says, "There are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit." There are varieties of service, but the same Lord. And there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God. All this stuff going on in your church, all this stuff that ought to be going on in your church, these positive things, these areas in which you're gifted, Paul says they all come from God, from the One Spirit, the One Lord, from the One God. All spiritual gifts come from God. What he's saying is this, if you are a follower of Jesus, if you have repented of your sin and put your faith in Jesus and his death and his resurrection, you have the Holy Spirit living inside you. And when you have the Holy Spirit living inside you, the Holy Spirit empowers you, gifts you to do something for his kingdom. And Paul starts off very basic and he says, "Look, your gifts, your abilities, your talents, the things you're good at, all of that come straight from God." That's lesson number one. Lesson number two, there are many gifts. You can look at verse 8 to 11 and 1 Corinthians 12, you can look at verse 27 to 31. I'm going to give you some other passages if you want to write them down. Other lists outside of Corinthians. You ready? Romans 12, there's a list. 1 Corinthians 7, there's a list. That list is really short, marriage and singleness, both gifts from God. 1 Corinthians 7, Romans 12, Ephesians 4 has a list, 1 Peter 4 has a list. And you look them up, here's the funny thing about the lists, they're all different. None of them are the same. No two are the same. When you look at these lists, understand that this is not an exhaustive list. You don't have to find something explicitly spelled out in one of these lists and say, "I've got to land right here." You could have a gift that's not in one of these lists. In fact, in 1 Peter 4, Peter breaks it down and he says, "Some gifts involve speaking, some gifts involve serving." That's his breakdown. Those are big, broad categories, but understand there are many, there is a variety of gifts. Number three, your gift, if you're a follower of Jesus, you have the Spirit, you've received a gift, your gift is for the good of your church. This is the spot where I think a lot of Christians just sort of go off the rails when it comes to spiritual gifts. They forget this or they don't understand it or nobody's ever told them this, but you've got to wrap your mind around this. Your gift is for the good of your church. Look at verse seven in 1 Corinthians 12. He says, "To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit," that's a gift. Why? for the common good. God has put you where you are for a reason and He's gifted you to do something. And the reason He's given you that gift, that manifestation of the Spirit is for the good, if you remember here, for the good of a manual Baptist church. You take that one step further, the logic is really simple. If your gift is for the good of our church and you're sitting on your gift, our church suffers. Our church is not all that it could be unless you're using the gift that God has given you for the good of this church. Understand, your gift is for the good of your church. Number four, you are part of the body of Christ. You are part of the body of Christ. 1 Corinthians 12-12, just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. In one spirit, we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. And He continues this metaphor in the following verses, but He's saying, "You are all part of the body. You're all different parts, but you're all together in this." You say, "What does that have to do with my gift? You're using it for the good of your church and you're using it for other parts of the body to be built up and strengthened and encouraged." You take the logic one step further, again, it's simple. If you're not using your gift to help out another part of the body, the body suffers. The body isn't all that it could be. You think about a person who comes back from war and they've sustained some kind of injury and they're missing a leg. That affects their life. It affects their well-being. They have to overcome that. They have to try to compensate for it in some way and Paul's saying, "Look, you need all the parts and you're all part of one body if you're part of Jesus Christ." Number five, all members are important. This is the natural outflow of the previous verses. All members are important. Paul talks about in verse 14 down to 26, "You need your eye. You need your hands. You need your nose. You need your feet. Every part matters and every part needs to do what God has designed it to do. All members are important." That means if you're here this morning and you're a follower of Jesus Christ, you have the Holy Spirit living in you. The Holy Spirit has gifted you to do something for the good of this church and you matter. You may say, "But my gift isn't as important as yours. You preach the sermons. I don't do that." Is it really that big of a deal if I do it or not? Because if I don't do it, there's probably somebody else that can do it. I don't know that I'm really that big a deal. Paul says, "You're part of the body. All of the parts matter, the hand, the eye, the nose, the foot. All parts are important." Last idea is this, using your gift requires love. When you think about, "Okay, I'm gifted as a follower of Jesus. The Spirit lives in me. I need to use this gift for the good of my church." What's the next step forward? Do you just keep this in the back of your mind? Using your gift requires love. I just want you to look at chapter 13 quickly. We look at 1 Corinthians 13 and we think for some reason, Paul's talking about weddings. He's writing along talking church, church, church, church, no, he talks about weddings and he's going to go back and talk about church some more. Paul had a little bit better train of thought than that and he's writing along in Corinthians and he's telling him. After he's straightened out all these issues or tried to straighten out all these issues, he's saying, "Okay, back to the basics. You're part of the body of Christ. You have the Spirit. You've been gifted. The gifts come from God. There's all kinds of gifts. You need to use it. All the parts are important." And then he says, "Don't forget as you try to use your gift in your church, you've got to do it out of love." You can read this passage at a wedding. In fact, when I perform weddings, I usually read these verses. Just understand, Paul's not talking to husbands and wives. He's talking to church members. This is how you should relate to each other as you use your gifts and as you operate as one body as the body of Christ. Look what he says in verse 1 to 3, "If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but I don't have love, I'm a noisy gong and a clanging cymbal. If I have all prophetic powers and I understand mysteries and knowledge and I have faith to move mountains, but I don't have love, I'm nothing. If I give away all I have and I deliver up my body to be burned, but I don't have love, I gain nothing. It doesn't matter what you do in your church, what you do for your church. If you're not doing it out of a heart of love, it's useless and it's a waste. Here's how you use your gifts. Here's how you relate to the person sitting next to you on the pew. Look at Corinthians 13, 4, you got to be patient and kind. Don't envy each other. Don't boast to each other. Don't be arrogant. Don't be rude. Don't insist on your own way. Don't be irritable and don't be resentful. Don't rejoice at wrongdoing, please rejoice with the truth, bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things, love never ends. Paul is saying this is how you ought to treat each other. Should you treat your spouse that way? Absolutely. Just understand this is how you ought to treat other members of a manual Baptist church if this is your church home. Those are your marching orders. Step back with me and let's think. What does it mean to be a functioning member? Based on what we've seen in these two chapters, three very simple ideas. Number one, you use your gift. Number two, you embrace unity and number three, you love other believers. If you're a member of a church, this is your responsibility to be a functioning member. Somebody who uses your gift, someone who embraces and fights for unity and someone who loves other believers. That's it. Now for the challenge, take out the little slip of paper in your bulletin, green this morning. In the book at the end of each chapter, Rainer gives a pledge and we're going to do this corporately, not just individually and I've taken some of the pledges. If you compare them from what you find in your bulletin to the books, you'll notice some of them have been changed slightly, some of them have been expanded, some of the things I took out, but I tried to make them fit for a manual and for our church family. And so just read this with me. I like the metaphor of membership. It's not membership is in a civic organization or a country club, it's the kind of membership given to us in 1 Corinthians 12. Now you are the body of Christ and individual members of it, 1 Corinthians 12, 27. Because I am a member of the body of Christ, I must be a functioning member, whether I'm an eye or an ear or a hand. As a functioning member, I will give, I will serve, I will minister, I will evangelize, I will study, I will seek to be a blessing to others. I will remember 1 Corinthians 12, 26. If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it, if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. What I'm asking you to do is this, each week, I'm going to put a color slip of paper like this in your bulletin. And you notice at the bottom, it's asking for a signature that you. I'm asking you to take this slip of paper. And if you are willing to make this pledge, this vow, this commitment, sign your name on it. If you're not, don't. Let's be honest enough to say that just because you write your name on the green piece of paper, that doesn't automatically make you a functioning church member, agreed? And let's admit, so we're all on the same page. Just because you don't write your name on the green piece of paper doesn't mean you hate Jesus and you don't like the church, okay? But any time we encounter God's word, it is our responsibility to respond appropriately. And one of the ways we're going to do that in this series is to make these pledges each week. I understand that this is what God's word says to me, is a church member. This is my responsibility. And as a church member, as a follower of Jesus, I am making this pledge. And so for you, here's how it works. If you take a pen, if you want to make the pledge, you sign your name down at the bottom. And when you leave, either out the back or out the side, you just take your piece of paper and you put it in the box. If you say, "Well, what if I walk by the box and I don't want to do it and everybody thinks I'm a jerk because I didn't put anything in there?" Well, put a blank one in there, I don't care. Here's what I don't want you to do. I don't want you to say the pastor's putting pressure on me to sign this green piece of paper. So I guess I better do it and I'm going to put it in there without any thought, without any conviction and without any meaning. If you mean it, sign it and put it in the boxes as you leave this morning. I'm going to pray. We're going to sing one more song in a minute so you bow and let's pray. Father, we love you. It's a privilege to be a part of your church. And as we go through this study and as we think about things that are really not complicated, we pray that you would open our eyes and our hearts to understand what it means to be a part of your church. Yes, we're thankful for Jesus, yes, we're thankful for the Bible, yes, we're thankful for salvation, yes, we're thankful for this building. Father, we want to understand over the next few weeks what it really means to be a member at a manual Baptist church. So we pray that you would give us wisdom. We pray that you would give us hearts to respond to your word in a way that is pleasing and honoring to you. Father, I pray that if we sign the paper and make the pledge that we would take it serious, that we would think about it throughout the week, that we would remind ourselves of it in the months and the years to come, Father, we want to be biblical church members. As we continue in worship, we want to lift up your name. We want to sing your praise. We want to bring you glory. Father, we pray that your spirit would work in our hearts even as we worship together as the body of Christ. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.