The most exciting growth

The most exciting growth that can happen in a church is not numbers, but grace, when people are spiritually growing up in Christ.The church grows spiritually when each member is using the gift God has given them to help each other grow in love. This is something we all know, but we are often slow to actually pursue it. Not every one of us is required to be a preacher, but every one of us has been given grace from Christ to help increase the grace in others through the principle of love. In other words, we all have work to do and if we are not doing this work, the best facilities, the best worship team, the best resources will not help us actually be the kind of church God wants.Unfortunately, there are many churches which are not passing this test. They have everything you could ask for from a human perspective, but they are not fitly joined together by that which every joint supplies, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part which should grow and increase in love. That is lost.And that's a tragedy. We should ask ourselves, what have we done to answer this rule and duty, what have we done to increase the body in every part? Some I can tell what they have done to destroy and pull down, but what have we done to build up?To get a little more specific, let me show you what I am talking about. It is the mutual work and care of all the members of the church for the short term and long term spiritual good of every member, flowing out of love for God and for each other.Think about the church like a human body. The idea for this comes out of 1 Corinthians 13, where Paul compares the members of the church with the members of a man, whose mutual care and assistance are for the unity of the body. We all know how each part of our body cares for the other parts. When our back hurts, our head is upset. But do we know this care in our churches? You believe you are the church of God? Yes. Then says the Scripture, we are members and are to have the same spiritual care for every other member as the members of the natural body have. But is this the way it is? How unacquainted is one hand with another, one member with another! I lay this principle down, that you are all members of one another throughout the congregation. None so great or wise is but a member, none so poor or cast aside but is a member. And we should seek to care for the whole of our body.Indeed, there is no church life without this love. This love is the bond of perfection. This is the perfect church order. Take a bunch of sticks, some tall, some short, some straight, some crooked. As long as there is a good firm band about them you can take them where you please, and get rid of some as you will; but if you break that band, everything comes apart. If this band - that is our perfection - be loosed, everyone's crookedness will appear, one to be too long, one to be too short, one too big, one too little, one crooked, and one straight. There is no keeping them together. All the order in the world will not keep a church together if the band of love be loosed.This is something I have found in my ministry by experience. I have found when church order was the greatest ease, the greatest relief, that a man could certainly desire or attain. I have known it. And I have lived to see church order burdensome, that many have complained of it as an insupportable burden. Nothing else is the reason but the decay of love. So that any person that is asked to do his duty feels like it is a burden. We love them who as far as we know are lovely but that love which bears all things and believes all things, I am afraid not six of us believe that is a duty. If we hear anything about a brother or sister, it is forty to one we but aggravate it unto the next person we meet. Is this love? No it's not, and unless we repent and return to our first love, we shouldn't expect to experience the most exciting kind of growth as a church. We may grow in numbers sure, but without love, we won't grow in grace.John Owen, The Mutual Care of Believers for One Another, paraphrased