Hopping Your Fellowship Fences

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

I want to start off this session by reading a very familiar passage of scripture to you. If you happen to have a copy of God’s Word with you, you can just look there in Ephesians 4, 11 through 16, or else you can just listen along. And I’m going to try to put an emphasis in my reading on certain parts. Starting in verse 11, and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and the teachers to equip the saints for the work of a ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

Rather, speaking the truth and love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head into Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” Very familiar passage to all of us. Notice that Paul uses the building metaphor in describing what a healthy, maturing body of believers looks like. We see the St. Peter uses the same metaphor in 1 Peter 2, 4 through where he wrote, as you come to him a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Christ Jesus. One of the mysteries that we see in God’s plan for building the church is that we are both masons and masonry in the process.

Jesus, of course, is the architect and the cornerstone of the church, and the Holy Spirit is the enabler and the supervisor of the actual construction. We are the laborers and the building material.

For the sake of this seminar topic, I want to drill down on the role that we play as masons in this process through the practice of fellowship. I’m going to suggest to you that when fellowship is weak or non-existent, the process of building the local church is retarded or hindered, even though the universal church continues to be built. We know that Jesus declared that he will build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. However, the local manifestations of the universal church can suffer from the lack of real fellowship. Beginning with the first century church, God used apostles and prophets to build the foundation of the church. Ephesians 2 19 through 22 says, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus himself be in the cornerstone in whom the whole structure be enjoined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Notice again the building

metaphor. Since the foundation has now been laid and we have the finished written Word of God, the role of the Apostle the Prophet have passed away. Paul alludes to this fact in 1st Corinthians 3 10 through 11 where he wrote, according to the grace of God given to me like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus. Today the building of a new local church begins with the role of an evangelist and pastor teacher. Their job then is to proclaim Christ and to equip the resulting believers for the work of ministry.

Now this should not be news to anyone here. Have I said anything yet that’s like shocking or alarming? Surprising you, it shouldn’t at this point. What I would like us to focus on is what the act of building looks like in a growing and maturing local body of believers. The building starts with a few gifted men from God and eventually becomes a living structure where the masonry becomes the masons. The building is building itself up in love. Now that’s really, if you think about it, a pretty strange picture for sure. That is what Paul is describing in Ephesians 4, that we, the bricks, if you will, are actually constructing ourselves.

I recently had the chimney stack in my house, 50 years old and it was falling apart, so I had to have it rebuilt. And I could just imagine what that would look like if somebody had just thrown a pile of bricks up there and all of a sudden the bricks just sort of started assembling themselves. But that’s kind of the picture of what Paul is describing going on. The word that best describes this overall process from evangelism to self-building is discipleship. The local church grows through the process of making disciples and teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded. Again, nothing groundbreaking. Most of us have a pretty good notion of what discipleship proper looks like.

We think of preaching and teaching and Bible studies and evangelism classes. We tend to think of discipleship in terms of its more formal expressions. But there is more to discipleship. There are the informal, less tangible, in between church program times where much discipleship can and should occur. I say should, although the reality is that much of that opportunity, I believe, is squandered. We rely on the church programs that formally scheduled times to accomplish fellowship, to accomplish discipleship. And we leave the vast majority of our time and our lives to be distracted with other things. This is why fellowship, as I’m describing it, is so important.

It is a major way, if not the prime way, the masonry becomes the masons in the building process. Formal discipleship, as I’ve described it, is vital. But if that is all there is to the building process, then there’s a very real likelihood that the members of such a local church will be filled with the knowledge that only serves to puff up. We must start with true knowledge. That, of course, is obvious. We have to have that. But if we stop there, we will end up being spiritually weak and just sentence fussers. We must add to our knowledge true fellowship that results in a love that builds up, according to 1 Corinthians 8.1.

Perhaps we can say that knowledge is what helps us take the shape of a building stone. It’s what helps shape the building stone. And the fellowship is the mortar that lets those stones take the shape of a building. If all we do is we focus in on our knowledge and our Bible studies, we’ll be well-shaped bricks ready for construction. But no building is going to occur. It requires the fellowship that in between formal times that has to occur if we’re going to begin to see the masonry becoming the masons and the building up of itself in love. I assert to you that fellowship is not a benefit of church membership that you can optionally take or leave.

It is the bulk of the work that is to be done if a local church is to succeed in building itself up up in love. Simply put, no fellowship, no growth of the building. You got a pile of beautiful beautiful bricks and that’s it. It requires fellowship for the building to occur. Now I’m stating this point in strong terms so that those of those of us who have been lax in practicing fellowship will understand that it’s a fundamental failure of our faith to not engage in it. Now I hope I have you at least a little bit fired up at this point and then with the remaining time I would like to talk about the problem of what I call fellowship fences and how they hinder a body from building itself up in love. So what do I mean by fellowship fences? I dare say that most of you live in homes that are at least partially surrounded by fences. Is that Probably pretty true most of you There’s a saying that you may have heard in the past that good fences make good neighbors Benjamin Franklin had his own variation of it and poor Richard Zalman act which where he said love your neighbor

Yet don’t pull down your hedge The first modern appearance of good fences makes good neighbors is found in Robert Frost poem mending wall and in that poem Frost is describing the annual activity of the neighbors coming together to mend the stone wall Fences along their property lines that have fallen down Due to weather or in some cases due to careless fox hunters that were jumping over the walls and kicking the walls down Now frost in this poem doesn’t really care for fences the opening line of the poem says Something there is that does not love a wall But over his objections throughout the poem his neighbor. He’s walking along the wall he’s on his side of the properties neighbors on the other side and his neighbors just picking up stones and putting them back in place and Frost keeps complaining and objecting to the fence But the neighbor just keeps on building the wall and every time frost brings an objection He just the neighbor just says good fences make good neighbors stacks nutter rock

Frost persists in questioning the need for offense. Here’s an excerpt from the poem. I won’t read the whole thing to you. It’s a pretty long poem. Just an excerpt. As they’re working with the stones and piling them up, he says, we wear our fingers rough with handling them. Oh, just another kind of outdoor game. One on a side, it comes to little more. There, where it is, we do not need the wall. He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across and eat the cones under his pines. I tell him. He only says, good fences make good neighbors. Spring is the mischief in me and I wonder if I could put a notion in his head.

Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall, I’d asked to know what I was walling in or walling out. and to whom I was like to give a fence, something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down. The poem ends with this neighbor ignoring Frost questions and the very last line again, the neighbor says, good fences make good neighbors. We are a culture that generally likes fences. Even at a national level, we are fighting over building fences along our southern border. National and residential fences do have merit to them, but it is when a build the wall mentality crosses into our relationships with one another that we have a problem.

Fellowship fences, by definition then, are those figurative walls that we use to keep others at a safe distance and thereby limit the effectual building up of the local body of Christ in love. Now, this is not a problem where we we don’t have enough kumbaya time. The problem is that the church is doing a terrible job of spreading the faith and passing it on to the next generation. You only have to look at church history to see how much the local church has waned in areas where it’s once strong. It is pretty tragic if you were just to see a visual where the gospel waxed and grew strong, and then it just wanes to just a remnant.

And then, of course, it picks up and gets strong somewhere else around the world. But why doesn’t it stay strong and keep getting stronger as it goes across? This is a very sad state of affairs. There is a very sad state of affairs recorded in Judges 2, 8 through 12. We read there about the death of Joshua. It says, and Joshua, the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of 110 years. And they buried him. So Dave, you still got like 30 plus years to go. And they buried him within the boundaries of his inheritance in Tamnath-Hareys in the hill country of Ephraim, north of the mountain of Gaiash. And I probably slaughtered those names, but you get the idea.

And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the side of the Lord and serve the bales. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. Now get this. Joshua was in his early to mid 70s when he led Israel into the promised land. So that means in 30-ish years, Israel went from receiving God’s promise of their own land to an entire generation that did not know him, in just 30-something years is all it took.

That’s pretty incredible. Sadly, this is a pattern that has repeated itself over and over in church history. Fellowship is one of the primary tools that can help stop this pattern from repeating itself. So what are the reasons for these fellowship fences to exist? I just brainstormed with myself just a few that I could think of, and there’s more that we could add. You can see some of there up on the screen. Season of life or age differences, gender, ethnicity, life experiences, social economic status, political views, personal likes and dislikes, personality types, likability of others, indifference, don’t see a need, avoidance of exposure or rejection, avoidance of the work required, doctrinal differences.

I’m sure we could add to the list, but you get the idea. There are a lot of reasons we can find to avoid fellowship with that person. We can easily build up so many of these fences that we end up effectively walling out everyone but ourselves. It reminds me of anonymous quote, a former coworker of mine named Mike used to put at the bottom of all of his emails, the quote went something like this, I like to hike. I especially like to hike alone. It is those times when the number of rude, obnoxious, boring people I have to deal with is reduced to one. Most of us are very familiar with Galatians 3.28, which says, there is neither Jew nor Greek.

There is neither slave nor free. There is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. So my question is, why is it, if the front door of the church is only limited to persons of faith, that we set up so many limits to fellowship with those who’ve already entered in? It is harder to exist within the church than it is to get in the front door because of these fellowship walls that we set up. It really is pretty ironic. It’s like someone is greeting people entering the building and directing them to separate rooms, you upstairs and to the left and you down the hall to the right and you people are out back.

Now perhaps you think I’m overstating the problem of fellowship fences, but consider your own fellowship experience. I’m not talking about the formal trellis that the leaders have put in place. That only makes up for a few hours of a week at best. But what about the in-between time? Are you really in fellowship? And if you are, is it more like just birds of a feather flocking together? Now in urging us to start hopping our fellowship fences, I’m not saying that none of these things should ever limit our fellowship. For example, there are prudent limits between men and women that they should have in their fellowship.

There are some doctrinal differences that will prevent us from having close communion with others. The Bible asks, as Dave mentioned earlier, what fellowship can light have with darkness, of the person in fourth stage church discipline, that’s going to be limited. So there will be limits, there will be limits on an 80 and an eight year old’s fellowship for obvious reasons. Common sense and wisdom need to be applied to what I’m saying. Nevertheless, there are a lot of ways we build fellowship fences that are not necessary and impede the body building itself up in love. Earlier, I stated that the pursuit of Bible knowledge alone will not result in a local body being built up.

Fellowship must be practiced diligently in order for the building to occur. First Peter 1, 22-23 shows this connectedness between truth and fellowship. He says, having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere, brotherly love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God. So in that few verses, he bookends it around the word of God being central, but it has a reason. There’s a four, and that four is for that brotherly love, that sincere, earnest love for one another. The word of God brings about our salvation for something, And again, for brotherly love, Peter calls us to sincerity and earnestness in our pursuit of fellowship.

There is no hint of optionality in his instructions. Now in order for us to get over our fellowship fences, there are four things that I suggest that we need to do or think that will help. First, we need to decide if we truly love the believers that God has put in our lives. Now most of us would quickly say yes to that question, but does it pass the sniff test? Are we like the husband who told his wife, I told you when I married you, I love you, and if I change my mind, I’ll let you know? Is there any real ongoing evidence to suggest that our love for others is authentic? Again, think about what you’re doing with your life in between the official church structured programs, And is there evidence there to say, yes, I clearly love my brothers and sisters in Christ?

Second, we need humility to admit that we need the fellowship of others. No one here has reached the point that they are complete in Christ. Fellowship is one of the primary ways we mature as we work through the messy parts of our relationships with others. To believe we don’t need anyone is arrogant and not true according to God’s blueprint for how we grow, how we develop. Third, we need to be passionate about contributing to the body being built up in love.

If we stand on the sidelines during the building process, it is having a negative impact in some way. Even the least among us can contribute and or be used by God to affect others. I remember a life example of this is as a young boy, while my dad was building an addition to our house, I came as a large family when we moved to Sacramento, we were already nine kids and it was a tiny three-bedroom house. My dad converted the garage into a, built a new garage and then he put a big dormitory on top of it. I was too young to work with the power tools, so my job was to go around picking up all the bent nails on the floor.

So people wouldn’t step on them as they were building the place. But it gave me a part and a job. And do we have that commitment to building? Do we see ourselves as a part of that process that we have a job to do? Or are we standing on the sidelines and just assuming that somehow this local body of believers is going to build itself up in love? If you aren’t sure how you can begin to practically involve yourself in the building process, start by studying all the one another commands. there’s at least 23 one another commands alone to get you started in how you can meaningfully be helping build up the body in love.

Fourth, we need to repent from any fears, biases, or laziness that we use as an excuse not to participate in fellowship. Fellowship is work and it’s not without some risk. We come up with lots of excuses to skip fellowship. Someone will discover the sin in my life And someone will find out that I don’t know the Bible all that well. I’ve had many times people who were like, please don’t ask me to read or don’t ask me to say anything about the Bible. They’re afraid that their ignorance of the Bible will come out. I don’t really like being around people, some will say. I’m already tired. I don’t want more responsibility or work.

The point I want to make here is that while some do a good job at making fellowship a priority, Most believers tend to be very limited in both the amount and the inclusivity of their fellowship. That has to change if local churches are going to experience significant spiritual growth in their assemblies. So with the time remaining, I’d like to drill down on just one of those fellowship fences that I listed. It’s the fence I call Seasons of Life or Age. I’m going to cap on this one for a couple of reasons. First off, I once was young, but now I’m old. So I think I actually have something to say from both perspectives.

And secondly, and most importantly, I believe this particular fence contributes enormously to the failure to propagate the faith from one generation to another. In this seminar talk, when I refer to older and younger generations, I’ll be generally thinking of the older generation is those who are somewhere past the child rearing years of life and the younger generation are those who are just entering into that season or who are in the midst of raising kids. But the principles I’ll be sharing have application among all generations. We live in a culture that tends to encourage division along generational lines. There is no shortage of memes and stereotypes of both the daughtering, clueless, elderly, luddite, and the self-absorbed, easily offended Generation Z snowflake.

Just go Google those terms and you’ll find lots of examples. One survey of older persons concluded that young, independent adults lived geographically, on average, 18 miles or more away from their parents. In our location, the number is actually closer to 26 miles. So basically, if you have adult kids, on average in this area, your adult kids live about 26 miles away from you on average. Now, on the one hand, that doesn’t sound so bad, but how much real meaningful life on life occurs even with that kind of a distance? We are a population that is spread out. My situation is really terrible. I got to go from Germany to South Carolina to Spokane to find them all.

So it really does get bad. In the case of local churches, when all ages are present, we typically see them segregated. The senior saints attend young at heart meetings, while younger adults frequent gatherings aimed at their particular interests and needs. Churches that have the resources will often have a contemporary worship service, followed then by a traditional one to accommodate all the personal preferences. Quite often, new churches will spring up that by design target a younger demographic. That seems to be the pattern. You see a new church start, and all their marketing and everything they’re doing is aimed at the younger people.

The hope is that this approach will attract the unreached and the disenfranchised and any others not already in church. I mean, that’s usually what their desire is. But what usually happens is that this new church does not draw much from the on church, but instead, they cause a version of musical chairs where nearby churches are the chairs and the players are younger Christians looking for something new and exciting. The loser in this game are the churches that fail to keep up with the times and eventually end up with fewer and fewer younger people to pass the faith onto. It’s only a matter of time until this local church, the local church will end up shutting down, which is good news for the next microbrewery that’s looking for a cheap building.

Now, you may want to argue that I’m overstating the problem, but am I? The Hartford Institute for Religious Research cites a study that estimated that out of approximately 300,000 non-Catholic, non-orthodox churches in America, the median number of attendees is just 75 people. Think about that. Half of the churches, half of that, 300,000 churches have 75 or fewer people attending them. I recognize that statistics and estimates are a tricky business and can often be twisted to make the presenter’s point, but even if these numbers are just closest to accurate, it’s still pretty astounding. You be the judge if this is concerning or not.

My question is to what degree is poor intergenerational fellowship contributing to this slicing and dicing of the church. There are some disturbing trends within what is loosely called the church, the Christian church in America. According to a Pew Research poll taken a few years ago, 35% of those in the millennial generation claim themselves as unaffiliated with any particular branch of Christianity. The same poll found those unaffiliated within the baby boomer and older generation hovered around 15%. So old people like me, there was still 85% of us that identified ourselves as being affiliated with some kind of a recognizable faith tradition.

But among the millennials, it was dropped down to 65%. Could say, yes, I identify with some kind of faith group. The data clearly shows that the younger a person is, the more likely they are to be disconnected from any organized faith group. Thorne Rayner, president of Life Away Christian Resources, claimed in a recent article that 6,000 to 10,000 churches per year were dying out. Now, like any pile of data, there are lots of caveats and possible ways to interpret the data, but suffice it to say that churches in America are not doing an awesome job of passing the faith on from one generation to another. I maintain that a significant reason for this is lack of rich, meaningful fellowship between the generations.

Now, the elders here at TEC are very mindful of the responsibility of one generation to pass the baton onto the next. We’ve actually captured that belief in the mission statement of ECS. I won’t read the whole mission statement, but it begins with these words.

We commend the works of the Lord to another generation, and that idea comes straight from Psalm 1 45 for which says one generation shall command your works to another and so declare your mighty acts Here’s a few more verses that make the same point Psalm 71 17 through 18 Oh God from my youth you have taught me and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds So even to old age and gray hairs Oh God do not forsake me until I proclaim your might to another generation Your power to all those that to come. Psalm 44.1, O God, we have heard with our ears, our fathers have told us what deeds you performed in their days in the days of old. And then there’s even a verse encouraging the older to respect the younger. First Timothy 4.12, let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers in example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, and purity. These verses taken together convey the obligation for the generations to make sure the faith is successfully transmitted between them. It isn’t just a Hallmark’s sentimental thought about Kumbaya, let’s

all get together, Granny and the grand babies and everybody have a good time. It’s an imperative. Hopping the fellowship fence called age is necessary in order for this transmission to happen, I came across an article titled Why Intergenerational Ministry, just that’s the title, Why Intergenerational Ministry by Sari Keene. I thought some of the comments helped reinforce what I’m arguing for. The research that Keene refers to was done by the Barna group. So here’s a short excerpt from the article. The assumption for most of the research material was that now more than ever generations need one another. Alongside surrendering discipleship and disciple-making to professional ministers, over time, church programs have become so radically age segregated that there’s now often little intergenerational contact.

Broad disciple-making interaction or intentional cross-engagement within our faith communities. All sources were clear in their conclusion that this significant gap in the life and spiritual health of our church communities needed some redress. All indicators note that strong intergenerational disciple making relationships were critical to child, youth, and young adult maturity, to faith development, to youth retention, and to longevity across all life stages. Also important note here, findings also indicated the social, relational, and spiritual benefit for adults and the elderly from establishing stronger intergenerational connections and richer engagements across generations.

They came off a website called effectiveministry.org. So again, the point is the value and the necessity and the benefits that occur from that intergenerational content. So with all of this evidence pointing to the benefit and necessity of intergenerational fellowship, why does it remain weak in most churches? I suspect what I’ve been saying so far, you’re probably all thinking, well, yeah, that’s that, I totally agree with that. But if we all agree with that, why is it happened so little? And I’m speaking for churches in general, not necessarily here. Well, I think we can do better too. I suggest there’s a couple of reasons why that’s not happening.

And a couple of reasons, first from the older person’s perspective and then from the younger person’s perspective. And I’d like to just kind of explore those with you a little bit. From the older perspective, I will hear people say things like, why I’ve already, I’ve done my time, or I don’t have anything to offer. Those that say they’ve done their time fall into the same trap our retirement-focused culture does. This thinking says that your main contribution in life happens during the quote unquote prime of your life. After that, it’s time to relax and get out of the way so the next generation can take the lead.

I’ve actually witnessed in my former church a gentleman. I was much younger, so at the time, I probably thought he was 100. He was probably more like 70. But he actually stood up in a church business meeting, and he proclaimed, and he says, I’m getting old now, and I’m tired, and it’s now time for the younger generation to take over. And he sat down. He had said his peace. And all I remember thinking of myself was, Lord, help me never be like that, to never think that way. This mindset is not biblical and something older saints need to resist. The onset of age usually forces one to slow down but it should not mean the cessation of work. Now I’m not talking about working at the factory until you drop dead, but working 40 years so that you can take a 20-year vacation at the end is misguided. The The opportunities that come from being free from the 8-5 job are immense and they should not be wasted.

The other objection the older saints make is that they don’t have anything to offer. This is a virtual impossibility. Even in cases where your life is mostly mistakes and regrets, those experiences can serve to warn the next generation. All that is necessary is a humble heart that can share honestly with the next generation. signs are just as valuable as signs that point this way. I appreciate it when a sign says, you know, big red circle says, don’t go that way, go that way. Both signs are useful. The younger generation does not need to see the older is flawless. They’re already very aware of the flaws. They need to see examples of those who have triumphed and struggled, and cried, won and lost, sinned and repented, been courageous and fearful, and through it all remain confident of a God who exists and who rewards those who are faithful.

All those experiences make up the stories that need to be shared with the next generation. We are a people that live and die on the stories we are told. I don’t know if you guys are aware of how much we live on stories, and our culture is full of stories and new stories are being spun every day and it gets a whole group of people heading off in all kinds of crazy directions. All of us are heavily influenced by the stories we embrace and we all embrace some story. We need the stories of older saints with the good, the bad and the ugly in order to counter the false stories a generation that knows not God tells. It is a tragic shame how many beneficial stories are never told and die with us because we either didn’t care to tell them or we believed that they held no value to the next generation.

Now from the younger person’s perspective, the fellowship fence of age can occur for different reasons. One reason is the belief that the older generation can’t relate because of their age. Now it’s true that shared experiences and preferences help with relatability, but it’s not true that the absence of these things precludes any meaningful relationship. An interesting thing happens in how the generations perceive each other, and really pay attention to this because it really is true. The younger generation starts out perceiving the older as parents and grandparents, and That perception typically persists well into adult life.

They look at someone 20 or 30 years, their senior, and think, they are old enough to be my parent. This sets up in the mind of the younger person a certain relational model which tends to put limits on the relationship. I mean, if I’m a younger person, I’m thinking, man, they’re old enough to be my dad. That immediately is going to kind of put some kind of a fence in there and I’m going I have to relate to him like my dad as opposed to anything else. Now contrast that, older people start off relating to the younger as children. But as those children grow into adulthood, the mindset begins to shift towards seeing them as peers.

This is particularly true where there is no natural family bond. I actually remember Dave, Dave Ly commenting in an elder meeting that even though his body feels like 72, his mind, I think you said you still I felt like a 14-year-old in your mind. And a lot of older persons can relate to that. We can look at them, and some of you in this room, I am old enough to be your father, and maybe in some cases, grandfather. But I look at many of you as peers, and as friends, as brothers, and sisters in Christ. To the younger generation, I say, try to see the older generation less like parents and more like older brothers and sisters in the Lord, who have walked the road you are walking.

Include them in your lives and encourage them to tell their stories, especially in terms of what God has taught them. This will break the trend towards privatizing faith and help the younger generation realize that there really is nothing new under the sun. I hated to break it to you, but those crises and those situations you’re facing as a younger generation been there, done that, most of the people in the room here. There really is nothing new under the sun, not to belittle them and say they’re not difficult. That’s one more reason why you need an older person to come alongside to say, you will survive. A second reason the younger tend to shy away from fellowship with the older, is that they see all the mistakes the older generation made.

How many of us have recalled something from the way we were parented and thought, I’ll never do that when I’m a parent. If you’ve got kids, you’ve thought that to yourself. Truth be told, there’s an endless list of faults we could find with the generation that preceded us. This can create in our minds a barrier to fellowship. We begin to think of the older generation as members of the, quote, dark ages, and wonder what we can possibly learn from them. We are enamored with the new philosophies and ideas and ways of doing things better. Now again, this sounds a bit extreme, but if we’re honest, a certain amount of this kind of thinking creeps into each new generation’s minds.

What is forgotten in this line of thinking is that each generation without exception stands on the shoulders of the generation that came before it. I want to say that again. Each generation without exception stands on the shoulders of the generation that came before it. Each generation does not start over from scratch. All they can do is build upon and hopefully improve what came before. Now sitting or standing on someone’s shoulders gives one a wonderful vantage point from which to criticize them. One of the most annoying sayings tossed around by progressives today, who push for trashing thousands of years of social norms is when they say, and you’ve heard them say this, You don’t want to be on the wrong side of history is heard that same sentence Now they miss the irony in that sentence The irony is that they don’t have any historical side to point to While objecting to what many previous generations that the greed is good How can you be on the bleeding edge of history and claim you’re on the right side of history?

You don’t have any history yet to even make such a statement In some cases, the progressives may be right, but don’t be so arrogant as to assume your wisdom necessarily outmatches the wisdom of all the past generations before you. The point to all of what I’m saying is that the generations have a lot to learn from each other. When both sides approach fellowship with humility and respect, there is tremendous benefits to be gained. As I wrap up, let me leave you with a closing thought, a few closing thoughts. Imagine a nation where every 40 or so years it takes a third of its wealth and destroys it. There’s simply no desire to preserve it.

It’s assumed that more wealth can be generated. The problem is that it will take about 40 years for them to replace the wealth that they lost, and then it’s time to get rid of another third of your wealth, and you see the problem. We’d say such a nation is crazy. The best they could ever hope for is to maintain a certain level of wealth assuming that no inflation occurs. I would suggest to you that where intergenerational fellowship is lacking, you have the same kind of loss of wealth going on.

Each generation invariably takes more wisdom and knowledge to the grave than they pass on to the next one. We lose more wisdom and intellect and all the rest of it as we pass on, we take more to the grave than we pass on. Have you ever considered what it would have been like to live back when Adam and Noah were alive simultaneously and all the generations in between and the transfer of information and knowledge and insight and wisdom? We don’t have the benefit of that today and we don’t take advantage. You know, we don’t do anything to mitigate that. We let that experience go to the grave. It is highly likely that most in this room right now know almost nothing about their own family beyond their great-grandparents. Most of us probably just can say, somebody told me that’s my great-grandparent. There’s their picture on the wall, but really could you tell stories? Could you talk about their life?

If you can, yay, you’re in the minority. Extend that thought to those older saints you attended church with over the years and who have now gone on to glory. So think about some older saints that you had rubbed shoulders with and have now gone on to glory. What memories do you have of them? What lessons did you learn from them? How impactful were they on how you’re living your faith today? Does your memory of them go beyond that they were just nice and they always sat in the fourth row, three seats from the left? Hopping fellowship fences is not easy. Sometimes it will put us out of our comfort zone, it probably often will. But what kind of a building will the church be if only bricks of a certain mold stack together to try to paraphrase birds of a feather? At the start of this session I showed the necessity of truth and fellowship in order for the body to build itself up and love. In churches like ours, teaching and knowing the truth has never been a problem.

I think we get high scores on that. Where I think we need to do better is the transmission of that truth through the discipleship process. And by that, I mean the discipleship that is inherent in informal Christian fellowship, the times in between the formal gatherings. The elders of our church have purposefully kept the formal church gatherings to a minimum with the hope that the kind of organic fellowship I’m talking about will abound. How are you doing? with taking advantage of the opportunity. Do you see fellowship as a Christian duty and privilege, or do you see it as something that only the people, people, or the non-busy people do?

If we don’t hop our fellowship fences and really fellowship, we shouldn’t be surprised if a generation or two from now, our descendants, are feeble in faith, and our local assembly is no more. By the grace of God, may our future generations surpass us in the faith and reverse the pattern of spiritual decay so common today. And so here’s to all of us hopping our fellowship fences. Let me pray and I’ll also thank the Lord for the food as we head downstairs. Father, we can’t help but as we think about fellowship, think of where it originated from. you yourself reaching down from eternity, having determined to share your love with us, that is the kind of God you are, a God who must share himself with others.

And as you’ve now called us into that family, and Dave reminded us of our adoption into that family, and with that comes an obligation to responsibility of privilege, a benefit of the fellowship of the saints. Father, forgive us for the times that we have neglected that responsibility, that we’ve shirked it, that we’ve the multiple excuses and reasons that I’ve outlined to not do it. When we’ve allowed fences, when we’ve built fences to inhibit that, and we see the sad results of those fences, Father, we’ve got many, many, many, many years, hundreds of years, thousands of years now almost to see where fellowship has failed, where it wasn’t practiced and how it has failed.

So I just pray that you will stir our hearts that we will consider the opportunities ever for us, that again, we will not escape this life and go on to be with you, not having really passed on our faith, that people really can just remember us fondly, but not really having known us, not really having heard our stories of your goodness and your faithfulness. And so make us a people here, Father, in our local assembly who really do grab this concept and really begin to apply it, perhaps to the point that we don’t even need formal structured programs other than our corporate worship because we’re so busy fellowshiping that we don’t have time for the programs. Thank you for the folks that have prepared the all the behind-the-scenes stuff for us that we can enjoy in this seminar. Think of the meal we’re about to go down and partake in.

Thanks for the hands that prepared it and may you bless it to our bodies. And then as the seminar continues on may you continue to challenge us in our thinking on this topic of fellowship. We pray in your Son in Jesus’ name, Amen.