Jesus has used my church to grow me up in the faith for the past 29 years.

I started off clueless and scared. And a woman older than me invited me into ministry with her, to work with teens in a drama ministry. This endeavor helped me to grow.

That was years ago. Now I’m in a different ministry, and I think I’m still clueless and sometimes anxious, but that’s where I need to be so I can still move forward in faith.

That’s what faith is, trusting when we’re afraid, and moving forward in courage.

Jesus gave us the church to bring us up into maturity in Him. Jesus gave me the church to grow me.

This theme was the topic of Sunday’s sermon, on October 5, 2025, entitled “Fine Print,” based on the scripture Ephesians 4:11-16.

Often times, we can be a member of a church and have access to it without being there for the right reasons.

Our pastor illustrated this possibility with four things we need to expect when investing ourselves in the life of a church.

We need to:

Expect to be trained.
Expect to be included.
Expect to be pushed.
Expect Jesus to lead.

Ephesians 4:11-12 state, “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…”

Thus, Jesus gave the church these leaders to train and equip me and to build me up. He has given us these resources to train us to serve.

Verse 13 in Ephesians 4 states, “...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 in Christ.”

Therefore, we should expect to be included, to be united in faith, to avoid isolation and individualistic Christianity. In other words, we are all in this together. We don’t want to leave anyone behind. Paul, the writer of these verses, is relentless about all of us being united together under one purpose–to become mature and serve Christ deeply and fully.

In verses 14-15, Paul writes “...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 in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”

Our pastor emphasized that the waves of adversity and trials will come, but we don’t have to be knocked down by shifting and bad ideas, by deception and lying agendas.

We need to expect to be pushed into maturity: to stand our ground and embrace right theology, balanced and genuine teaching of the truth of Christ, and speak the truth in love to each other, having the hard conversations to push each other into true growth in Christ.

Finally, we need to expect in the church for Jesus to be the one to lead us into maturity.

Verse 16 says, “...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.”

Maturity happens in the church because Jesus holds it all together as the head of the church. He is the Great Shepherd. We will never be fully equipped and trained until we know that Christ is the one who holds us together, equipping us and giving us gifts to edify the body.

When we realize we belong to Christ, we will be secure.

We will mature when we realize Christ is the one who gives us grace to serve.

We will grow when we realize that belonging to the body of Christ happens with the gift of the sacrifice of Jesus.

Growing up together in Christ under His lordship should be the goal as we invest our lives in the church.

—Ann Elizabeth Yeager