A community that loves

A community that loves:
A talk by Steve Midgley at the BCUK Growing a Culture of Care event in Bournemouth, November 2025.

Chapters

00:00
Introduction to Ephesians 4

03:05
Living a Life Worthy of the Calling

05:57
The Struggles of Church Life

09:07
The Nature of Trouble in Our Lives

11:48
The Call to Care and Cure

15:01
God's Transformative Work in Us

17:52
The Foundation of Love in the Church

21:01
Growing in Knowledge of God's Love

23:58
Reflecting God's Love in Community

26:58
The Pursuit of Maturity in the Church

29:49
Serving One Another in Love

32:59
The Importance of Unity and Diversity

36:02
The Call to Serve Like Christ

39:05
Living Out the Put Off, Put On Principle

42:03
Speaking the Truth in Love

44:58
Conclusion and Prayer

Creators and Guests

Guest

Steve Midgley

Executive Director of BCUK

What is The BCUK Podcast?

Equipping churches for conversation and counsel

Reader (00:00)
So we're at Ephesians chapter four, verses one to 28.

As a prisoner for the Lord then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle. Be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called. One Lord, one faith, one baptism.

one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. This is why it says when he ascended on high he led captives on his train and gave gifts to men. What does he ascended mean except that he also descended to the lower earthly regions. He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens.

in order to fill the whole universe. It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers to prepare God's people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

then will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is Christ. From him, the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.

So I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking. They're darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they've given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity with a continual lust for more.

You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught with regard to your former way of life to put off your old self, which has been corrupted by its deceitful desires, to be made new in the attitude of your minds and to put on your new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbour for we're all members of one body. In your anger do not sin. Don't let the sun go down while you're still angry and don't give the devil a foothold. He who has been stealing must steal no longer but must work doing something useful with his own hands that he may have something to share with those in need.

Steve (03:25)
Thank you Celia for reading that for us and thank you again for coming and spending your Saturday to think about these things together. A few years ago I sort of stopped and thought about the

just coming up to 20 years that I'd been a pastor of ⁓ our church family ⁓ in Cambridge. And I surveyed the headline struggles.

that we had seen in that 20 years. And not the sort of, you know, the kind of lower level, minor ones that are cropping up all the time. I tried to pluck out some of those that were kind of the bigger things that had hit different people in the church family over that 20 years. And, ⁓ bum me, that was the list that I came up with. ⁓ And as you see, it's got sort of weighty things upon it. ⁓

Steve (04:30)
a man, a very highly skilled and successful doctor who was heading for a brilliant career as a cardiothoracic surgeon and developed leukemia in his early 30s, struggled on with three young children, struggled on for another two or three years through a bone marrow transplant, until eventually died.

wife and three young children. A man who bizarrely ⁓

Steve (05:07)
deceived his wife and his family with huge financial fraud that was hidden under the surface and came to light in a dramatic way. And she had no idea of the degree of debt and financial ruin that he had taken the family in. It was extraordinary, the deceit that was involved in that. ⁓ Individuals with profound

mental health struggles, some of the serious mental health difficulties with paranoia and delusional beliefs.

All sorts of struggles in relation to fertility, being unable to have children, stillbirth, children born with disabilities. I don't think that our church is unusual. I guess if you have been in your church for 20 years ⁓ and you surveyed 20 years of your church, you'd come up with a similar list. I think this is the reality of ⁓

Steve (06:17)
the world we live in and the lives that we live. They are full of struggle ⁓ and trouble ⁓ of this kind. And when we look at a list like this, think we end up recognizing that it's a funny mixture of, as I might put it, trouble that comes at us and trouble that comes out of us. But by which I mean that some of the trouble that we experience in life and those around us do is

is kind of external to us. A way that somebody else kind of betrays us ⁓ or hurts us or assaults us. The way that illness or natural disaster or financial crash happens in our culture, in our world, in us individually and it just hits us. Trouble from the outside.

Steve (07:15)
But we also know that sometimes the trouble comes from the inside. That we are the instigator. Think of a man who ruined his marriage through the madness of an affair. And it was... He became deeply, deeply depressed and bordering... You we very worried for a time about whether he would take his own life.

Steve (07:46)
Trouble had come from within him, left him in a desperate state, but it had come from within. It had been his folly, his madness in the decisions that he took. So trouble comes at us and trouble comes out of us in smaller or greater ways. And of course, usually it's a funny mixture of the two, isn't it?

because we often don't respond well to the trouble coming at us and then we become troubling in the midst of that. So it often is a funny mixture of both of these things. And a question that we're trying to think about today is in a sense, what do we want in the midst of this troubled world? Well, we want therefore, I suppose, both to

to care and to cure, if I can put it like that. We want to comfort the afflicted. Where we see people in the midst of terrible suffering, we want to offer comfort, the comfort of the gospel, the comfort of Christ, the comfort of God's people gathered around.

Steve (09:02)
But we also have an ambition for what we might call cure, for transformation. Because trouble comes out of us as well.

God's ambition for us is a transformation which means that less trouble comes out of us, that we become people who respond better to the things that go on around us. So that mixture of care and cure, if I can put it like that.

Steve (09:38)
We want to care like Christ. Christ was the good shepherd, constantly moving towards those in need. You think about the gospel accounts and you think about those marvelous moments when Bartimaeus is crying out ⁓ and the crowd are all telling Bartimaeus,

Steve (09:55)
⁓ And Jesus pauses. Call him. And Bartimaeus is brought before Jesus. What do want? I want to be able to see. It's just a beautiful picture of the world, no time for Bartimaeus. Jesus has time.

Steve (10:17)
So

there's a beautiful picture of the way that Jesus cares. But there is also, of course, ⁓ Jesus's extraordinarily varied ways of going about curing people. When you think about that, you think about the conversations in the gospel accounts, and it's intriguing, isn't it, the different things that he does. He finds a rich young ruler ⁓ and unsettles the rich young ruler profoundly by

Steve (10:47)
By making him aware that his godliness isn't as full and complete as he first thinks it is when he asks him to go away, give away all he has, he sort of zeros in on the rich young ruler's reliance upon his wealth. And the rich young ruler goes away troubled, ⁓ spiritually sort of unsettled, because Jesus knows that's the way to try and love him into the kingdom, actually.

but then a very different encounter with the woman at the well in John 4, isn't it? Where much more sort of invitational, offering her this living water and enticing her in almost by the loveliness of what he has on offer for her. ⁓ And she is drawn ⁓ to him.

And then the lovely encounter where she says, she goes and gets to town and brings them and says, come and meet a man who's told me everything I ever did. And you kind of think, oh, ouch. I mean, I'm not sure I feel very confident about a man who told me everything I ever did. But actually, she has been won over by him, by his grace towards her, a Samaritan.

Steve (12:06)
the

beautiful way that Jesus engages with people to bring about care and cure. As we seek to live in his image, as we seek to do the ministry that he's appointed us to do, the goal is always godliness, isn't it? The goal is always moving people closer to Christ,

Steve (12:38)
and growing people into the likeness of Christ.

Steve (12:44)
And

God's ambition for that is quite extraordinary. He's committed to that. I said to Helen earlier on, there's a real danger of me mucking up my timings because I'm throwing in something. I was having a little jog up and down the promenade this morning. And I went past a man.

Steve (13:10)
sort of old man gazing out to sea and and sort of leaning on the ⁓ on a sort of bench beside him was this extraordinary sort of mucky bit of wood and i thought it's funny and i thought

Steve (13:26)
he salvaged that bit of wood. I couldn't work out what the bit of wood was doing there and I thought you know it's just funny bit of wood. But I turned around and I come back and as I come back out of sight I almost didn't spot him and he sat on a bench and he's got the got the this sort of mucky bit of driftwood on his lap.

Steve (13:50)
And he's got something like a sort of, I don't know, what is it, sort of a little braddle or something. And he's picking sort of muck out of this bit of driftwood. And I said, okay, he has salvaged that. And he's gonna work with it and it's gonna become something.

Steve (14:09)
but it was precious to him and he was sat there working with it. Did you know that God has that for us? He salvages us, mucky as we are, and he determines to begin the work of cleaning us, to begin the work of perfecting us. He has a vision for what we can be.

and what he can do with us individually and as churches together that transcends anything that you would have imagined. Just as that man could see what he was going to do with that bit of driftwood this morning.

may be quite emotional on my little run down the promenade this morning to think about that. Well, what we're going to do, we're going to think a little bit about six features of the way that God goes about that. And we're going to do that from Ephesians chapter four. And just pick out

Steve (15:15)
some of the things that will enable us, as it were, to be God's co-workers in this work of transformation, in this culture of care that God has in mind for us in our church families. So let's whizz through these. Here's the first, that we need to be clear that the...

We are to be churches, we're going to be communities in our churches that are founded on love. It's so obvious, but obvious things need saying sometimes, don't they? Church is built on the redeeming love of the Lord. We see that in Ephesians 1.5. Paul begins his letter with this point. He chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. He has that vision.

He's determined to make us holy and blame us in His sight. And in love, therefore, He predestined us for adoption through sonship. You get the same emphasis in chapter two as Paul presses on. But because of His great love for us, God, who's rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ, even when we were dead in transgressions.

See, what most fundamentally do we know about God? That he's judge? That he's sovereign? That he is a God who speaks? That he is a God of absolute power? Well, all of these things are true, aren't they? Bible reveals all of these truths about God for us. But...

Nowhere are we told that God is justice.

or God is power.

or God is control, but we are told that God is love. It's striking that that's the way. God is love, not God is loving, but God is love. It's such a fundamental to his nature. As the Father has loved me, Jesus says in John chapter 15,

I have loved you. The very love that exists within the Trinity. As the Father has loved the Son, so we are loved. There is no deeper, richer, greater love than that love within the Trinity itself. And yet that's the love that is extended towards us in Christ.

Steve (18:08)
And we see this everywhere in the scriptures, don't we? Whether we look at the prodigal son and the parable and the father running down the road to find his son and welcome him in.

We see it in the most famous gospel summary, God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish. Every church is built on this foundation, foundation of love. And then second, every church needs to be a community that is growing in the knowledge of that love.

Steve (18:43)
So we press on through Ephesians, we are going to get to Ephesians 4 in a minute, I promise. We press on through Ephesians and we get to this prayer at the end of chapter 3, which is Paul's great sort of culminating prayer of the first half of a letter really. And he prays that you might have power, together with all Lord's people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love that surpasses not.

Steve (19:14)
It's an extraordinary prayer, isn't it? It kind of messes with your mind a bit, doesn't it? That he's praying that we might know this love that surpasses knowledge. You can't know it, so I pray that you know it. It's impossible to know because it surpasses your ability to know it. Well, but I'll pray that you know it. I think, I take it that the sense must be that you'll never get to the end of it.

You'll never encompass it because it's beyond the human mind. The compass. So great, so rich, so full is this love.

Steve (20:02)
And I think it's an important prayer, and for lots of reasons, it's an important prayer partly because it emphasizes that we mustn't imagine that the love of God is a beefed up version of our love. You know, we say, well, I know how people have loved me. Well, I suppose God must be like that, except a bit bigger. God defines love. And any loving that we do is derivative from his definition.

Steve (20:31)
and his demonstration is the sacrificial love of Christ on the cross. God demonstrates his love for us in this.

And to say that we need to grow in the knowledge of God's love is another way really of saying we need to grow in the knowledge of Christ.

Steve (20:53)
because this knowing isn't based on an accumulation, as it were, of intellectual data.

I guess you know that. It's not knowing about God, it's knowledge of God, ⁓ personal knowledge, relational knowledge.

⁓ There's a moment in John chapter 6, if you remember the incident, Jesus has just fed the 5,000 and then he gets in a boat and he disappears off to the other side of the lake and the people there realise that he's gone and so head off in pursuit.

Steve (21:40)
and they sort of skedaddle around the lake somehow and they catch up with Jesus on the far side, if you remember that incident. And you kind of, your anticipation was, well this is exciting, know, the people are really keen to be with Jesus. know, good, excellent, this just sort of feels like a sort of peak moment. And so it comes as a bit of a surprise that Jesus actually seems to kind of resist them.

Do you remember how goes? He says, let me quote it for you. Very truly I tell you, this is John 6 26, very truly I tell you, you're looking for me not because you saw the signs I performed, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Don't work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life.

Steve (22:31)
It's fascinating what Jesus is doing there. He says, you didn't see the signs and work out who I am and get excited by me. You ate the bread and you quite liked having the bread and so you've come for some more bread. In other words, you're after me for the stuff you can get from me.

but I want you to be after me for me.

And I think that really presses to us, doesn't it? Don't come to Christ because you can get forgiveness from him, though you can. Don't come for Christ because he'll give you eternal life, though he will. Come to Christ for Christ. Do you see what I mean? Of course, when you come to Christ, you do get forgiven and you do get eternal life. Of course you do. But don't just take his stuff.

Don't take the gifts and fail to embrace the giver. I think that's what Jesus is pressing at at that point.

Because the real food, the food that lasts to eternal life is him. He's the bread of life.

And that, I think, is the knowledge, that's the engagement, that's sort of...

but tying in with Christ that Paul is praying for here. ⁓ I looked at this quote yesterday, but I like it so much I'm going to show it again. So forgive me if you were here yesterday and you saw it before. This is John of Edwards saying, thus there's a difference between having an opinion that God is holy and gracious and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. Just as there is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey's sweet and having a sense of its sweetness.

It's such a lovely quote, isn't Because it captures that sense of, you can have data about honey. You could be a scientist. You could determine the chemical formulas for honey. Honey has a chemical formula. But you can have all that data and information. Very different thing to have tasted it. And to be an expert in honey in that way, as a personal experience of honey.

and Jonathan Edwards is saying that's the engagement with Christ and with the gospel that we should long for. And third, a community that reflects this love. So having known it and experienced it as people who are experiencing it to then reflect it to others,

Steve (25:21)
And the big pivot point, know Ephesians, if you're familiar with the letter you'll know chapters one to three are kind of describing the things that God has done in the gospel and chapters four to six then become, now this is the way that you work it out, this is how you respond.

to what God has done. And chapter four begins with this emphasis on love. Be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another ⁓ in love. ⁓ Or on in ⁓ chapter five, ⁓ follow God's example therefore as dearly loved children and walk ⁓ in the way of love just as Christ loved us. Here's the hallmark of the church. ⁓

to be a community that loves as we have been loved.

which

is the thing that the people ought to see. A new command I give you, Jesus said, love one another. As I've loved you, so you must love one another. By this, everyone will know that you're my disciples if you love one another.

Steve (26:34)
A number of years ago, I probably about 10 years ago now, a woman came to our church. She'd never been to church before. She was ⁓ middle-aged, but had never had any experience of church. I can't remember the reason that she came, but she started pitching up in the evening. ⁓ And it soon became pretty clear that she was bowled over.

Steve (26:59)
by what she saw, by this community. She'd never come across anything quite like it. I don't think we're that special, but clearly she'd just not ever been involved with a community of lots of people of different ages, all of whom engage with one another and a sense of belonging together. And she loved it. She absolutely loved it and got really, really excited. And she kept telling me how marvelous it was. But then as the weeks went by, she began to become... ⁓

Steve (27:28)
a little bit critical. And she began to say, I don't understand why I'm hearing so much about sin. Why do you have to be talking about negative things all the time? Why can't you talk or just talk about the good stuff?

And as best I could, I tried to explain that the message of sin mattered because the message of salvation mattered. And it was discovering how we are loved, even though we are rebels against God, how we are loved despite our failings. That was the gospel that produced the quality of love that

she was so taken by. But she couldn't get it. And she left. And we never saw her again. But that is the essence of it, isn't it? If we don't understand that we're sinners saved by grace, that that's the way that we've been loved. That's the transforming power. And without that, you don't create a community of love.

Fourth, a community that loves maturity. So many different ways that Paul puts this in the opening section of Ephesians 4. He writes about the church becoming mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Or a few verses later in...

verse 15, that will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him who is the head, that is Christ. We kind of need to be dissatisfied, if I can put it like that, with immaturity. It should bother us that our churches are immature, that we ourselves are immature. We should aspire to grow.

It's also a similar sort of way. Paul is dismayed, isn't he, by the Christians in Corinth. Brother and sisters, I couldn't address you as people who live by the Spirit, but as people who are still worldly. Mere infants in Christ. Gave you milk, not solid food, because you weren't ready for it. You know, it's sort of kind of disappointing. You're not grown up enough for me to give you proper food. You haven't been weaned yet. You're still sort of, you're still on milk.

And just as Paul is troubled by the immaturity of the Corinthian Church, so we should be troubled by immaturity. want... It's a terrible thing, isn't it, to be stuck in infancy? How awful.

Steve (30:25)
Peter Pan is a funny old sort of story, isn't it, when you come to think about it? ⁓ Because I know it's full of jolly japs and flying people and things like that, which is quite funny. But at the end of the day, Peter Pan is the boy who wouldn't grow up. And actually, finally, at least in my reading of it, Peter Pan is a tragedy. It's a tragedy of a boy who won't grow up. ⁓

Steve (30:54)
what he can't get to because he remains immature.

Steve (31:02)
And that means that a church that cares, that does caring well, that's what we're thinking about, we? We're thinking today about how do we become churches that care for one another well? Well, a church that cares for one another well will be concerned not just with, if I can put it like this, symptom relief.

It won't be enough for us just to take away pain. It shouldn't be less than that. Of course we want to take away pain, of course we want to relieve suffering. But actually the ambition that God would have for us is bigger than that. It's an ambition for maturity. It's an ambition indeed. That in the midst of the pain that we experience, we would see the way that God is working towards maturity.

because you know again and again the way that the Bible makes clear that God takes our troubles and uses them for our growth and our maturity. therein is what we want.

Steve (32:16)
We

want people to grow into the likeness of Jesus. It's the pursuit of sanctification to be made into the very image of Christ himself. ⁓

and it's a corporate ambition. ⁓ So often we read the New Testament letters kind of very individually, we read them for me ⁓ and we need to forget that most of the the us are plural us. ⁓

that Paul is writing to a whole community. So when he's urging these verses back here, it is we will grow to be the mature body of him who's the Christ. That is the whole church family together. So there's a mutual concern for maturity. It's the maturity of the community as a whole. Fifth thing to highlight is that church is to be a community that loves to serve.

The beginning of, ⁓ Cecilia read from the beginning of chapter four, and you notice at the beginning a very big emphasis on unity and on oneness. It's there again and again, there's one body, one spirit, one hope, one law, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. It's very big emphasis on the unity that the people of God are to have.

So it's a little bit intriguing that in the very next verses you get this accent on diversity because Baudelaire says, but to each one grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. His particular plan of the particular grace that he's going to give to ⁓ each particular person, which is different.

different kinds of gifts, abilities, different contributions that they will make to the body of Christ because Christ, when he ascended on high, took many captives and made gifts to many people. Paul writes, quoting from the Psalms,

Steve (34:51)
The work of the pastor teacher that we discover in verse 12, getting ahead of myself, the work of the pastor teacher that we discover in verse 12 there of Ephesians 4 is to equip his people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up.

Steve (35:23)
Christ like love is expressed in service.

In John chapter 13

we encounter Christ exemplifying service. So it's the night before he's going to be crucified. He and the disciples all together. And after the meal, he gets up from his seat and he wraps a towel around his waist and he sets about washing the disciples' feet.

Steve (36:02)
And as he concludes that act, and I can't imagine the sort of, you know, the still silence, well apart from Peter's little objection, you know, the quiet and the hush in the room as this took place. And having concluded that, he tells them, I have set you an example.

Steve (36:27)
that you should do as I have done for you.

Here's my example. And John tells us that in that act, he loves them to the end. He loves them ultimately. It is an anticipation of the cross. It's a sort of, it's a worked out kind of visual aid showing how absolutely Jesus is going to humble himself, even to death on a cross, in order to cleanse, in order to give life.

⁓ And this picture of service that Jesus presents to us there is the picture that we are to imitate. Imitate me, Paul says, as I imitate Christ. That's what a Christian does. It's a focus on other people.

Steve (37:31)
The second half of Ephesians 4 has this fascinating little section, doesn't it, of put off, put on. So if you've still got it open in front of you or want to glance at it, Paul says that that's not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught, verse 21.

Steve (37:56)
in accordance with the truth that is in us. You were taught with regard to your former way of life to put off your old self which being corrupted by its deceitful desires and to be made new in the attitude of your minds, to put on the new self created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. That there's this image that Paul is going to work with, he does it in other letters as well. Put off the old, put on the new.

And actually what you then have is a little series of kind of worked examples.

Put off, verse 25, put off falsehood and put on, speak truthfully to your neighbour. Why? Because we're all members of one body.

Put off being false to people, put on being true with people. Here's a picture of the relational life of the church, the honesty that should exist within a body. It be very strange to have a body where you've got one, you the arm deceiving the hand.

Steve (39:16)
That would be a very strange body, wouldn't it? You can imagine that wouldn't work very well if you had one bit of your body trying to deceive another part of your body about what was going on. You need the body to communicate accurately in order for the body to function. And that's the imagery that Paul is working with. so deceit doesn't fit within a body.

And then he presses off, put off thieving and stealing and do some honest work with your hands. Then you'll have something to share with those in need. And again, you begin to do this emphasis on looking after the other, caring for the other. Don't be a thief, taking.

Steve (39:58)
have

something available and give, share in imitation of gospel love. Do what will bless others.

and

Steve (40:12)
presses on no unwholesome talk in verse 29 but only what is helpful for building up. I mean is that not one of the most scaring verses in the New Testament? I mean you can just sort of slide past this verse because it's sort of

Steve (40:34)
we should sort of be nice to one another. We sort of diminish it down. But just listen, don't let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs. And it may benefit those who listen. He's not saying when you are giving a sermon, only let wholesome things come out of your mouth. He's not saying, you know, when you are in a very serious pastoral conversation, only let wholesome things come out of your mouth. He's saying always.

at every point.

Steve (41:06)
casual conversation.

Cross with somebody.

worried about somebody, every moment, every word that we say.

should not be unwholesome, but should be helpful for building others up. It's such an extraordinary focus on the other person that I speak in a way that I'm thinking what will bless this other person.

It needs all of the grace of God to do that. And then in times of conflict, get rid of all bitterness, put that off, no rage, no anger, be kind and compassionate to one another. That doesn't rule out conflict, because it might be kind.

Steve (41:59)
So.

confront somebody if you can see that they are falling into error but you do it out of kindness and compassion for them not because you feel put out and you want to give them a bit of your mind on things it's a stunning little series here ⁓ of the ways in which we put off and put on

So it's a community that loves to serve.

Steve (42:38)
And it's nicely summed up in these opening verses of chapter 5, because it sort of draws together everything that Paul has been saying in chapter 4, follow God's example there for us dearly loved children and walk in the way of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself for us ⁓ as a fragrant offering, sacrifice to God.

I used to teach at a theological college in North London for ten years and a few years after I finished teaching there, sometimes when I met students who I had taught there, a number of them sort of individually said that there was one thing

that they had remembered. I thought that was quite good actually. I was happy to have one thing remembered, better than zero things remembered. And they said there was one thing in particular that they somehow had lodged in their minds. And that was something I used to say, which was, in your ministry, as they were all training for pastoral ministry, in your ministry, move towards suffering.

Steve (43:52)
when you see people in suffering move towards them. And that was the thing that they had logged and they had found most helpful. And the reason that I used to say that, and still do, is in all sorts of ways in our churches and in life generally, there is something in us that quite often when we see trouble wants to move away.

For all sorts of reasons, we may think it's going to demand too much of me. haven't got the time. We're fearful because we think I'll say the wrong thing and I'll cause harm. We think to ourselves, I'm sure there must be somebody else in a better place to help that person. But the trouble is, often everybody is thinking the same thing. And actually everybody moves away.

I remember talking to a woman who had been recently bereaved and related the way in which she had seen somebody cross the road, someone she knew, cross the road to avoid coming down the pavement in the direction towards her because they clearly didn't feel as though they could talk. And the impact that had on her. I'm so unacceptable.

Steve (45:18)
that people cross the street to avoid having a conversation with me about my bereavement and my sadness.

Steve (45:27)
Let's not be communities like that. Let's flip it the other way. We move towards trouble. Because Christ did. The incarnation is the greatest ever moving towards trouble that the world will ever know.

And then finally, a community that loves to speak the truth in love. And I'll finish with this. There's a very beautiful picture, isn't there, in ⁓ that paragraph verses 14 through to 16. It's one of the many places where Paul does a sort of before and after picture. ⁓

Steve (46:13)
of what the gospel does in a person's life. ⁓ And so he says, ⁓

His before picture is in verse one, then we will no longer be, is what we were, infants tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching, by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. That's what we were, that's the before picture. And it's a picture of immaturity, infants. It's a picture of instability.

Steve (46:46)
tossed

back and forth by the waves and it's a picture of gullibility as well. Blown here and there by every bit of cunning and craftiness of people in their deceit. Immaturity, instability, gullibility. But then Paul gives us the after picture. It will become in every respect the mature bodies, verse 15. Every respect the mature body.

of him who is the head, that is Christ. From him the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. So the after picture is of maturity, of stability, and of growth. So there's a lovely contrast, what you were, what you're to be able to become.

Steve (47:39)
What is very striking is the linking phrase. How do you get from the before to the after picture? How do get from the immaturity to the maturity, from the instability to the stability, from the gullibility to the growth? Well, you get it beginning of verse 15 by speaking the truth in love. Speaking the truth in love, this will happen.

not I think many more misunderstood phrases in the New Testament than this one. Because you know we know that if somebody is going to say to you, you know, I need to speak the truth in love for you, to you.

Steve (48:29)
You sit down. ⁓ You tense, sort of, kind of metaphorically, waiting for the impact of the next words that are come out of their mouth, because you know you're in trouble.

I don't get that. I don't understand how we've arrived at this version of speaking the truth in love. One day in an idle moment I'll try and find out the history that led to that. Because it seems to me that why wouldn't we be able to encourage somebody in love? Why couldn't we?

remind them of the hope that we have in Christ in love. Why can't we reassure them of the promises of grace in love? Because all of those things are true, aren't they? That's the truth. That's the truth about who God is for us and what he's done for us. Why we have shrunk it down to just think in terms of rebuke, I've no idea. Because I don't think that's what Paul has in mind.

It's any speaking of the truth of the gospel to another person out of love for them. Seeing what they need and speaking the truth into their life in order to bring about the transformation that God wants. That's a community that cares.

Steve (50:02)
And in the second talk that Helen's ⁓ going to bring for us, we're going to begin to think about the practicalities of that. I've tried in this first talk to give us sort of a higher sort of overview to try and sort of see the big picture of what God has in mind for us in our churches. But of course, the danger with that is that just remains a kind of sort of

an idea. And so what Helen's going to do in the second talk is try and say, what does this look like kind of day to day, hour to hour, in relationship to relationship? How do we actually get on and do this? Let me pray for us.

Lord God, you do set before us a glorious picture of what it is, what you have destined us for. That one day we will be in your presence, one day we will be perfectly mature.

Steve (51:20)
will be fully conformed to the likeness of the Lord Jesus. And we yearn and we long and we treasure.

⁓ that day that is to come. But we know that meanwhile we live in a world of trouble, we know trouble within our own lives and we see it in the lives of those around us. And we long that our churches might extend care one to another, ⁓ richly, well, wisely, in ways that do bring about our growth in this very maturity.

Steve (52:01)
please would you help us to do that well and we pray again that today might provide some prompts, ⁓ some encouragement to us toward that end in our churches. And we pray in Christ's name. ⁓
.

Amen