For the last few weeks we have seen that the ministry the Lord gave to His church is a team. When the church is led and equipped by this team it will:

1. be built up by the saints doing the work of the ministry, the people will grow until they attain to the unity of the faith, the knowledge of the
2. Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ,
3. as a result of this maturity, the people will not be immature, tossed around by waves, carried about by every wind of doctrine, or fooled by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming,
4. they will always speak the truth in love, helping one another to grow up in all aspects into Christ,

Our verse for this week, Ephesians 4:16, ties all of this together with one final explanation of how this is to be accomplished:

For a body to be fit together properly, each member must know their own gifts and ministries, as well as that of the other members. Therefore, one of the first priorities of the equipping ministries is to help believers identify their gifts and ministries. We must then teach, train, equip, and deploy them so that they are functioning in their calling. Only then can they be fit together and built up by that which every joint supplies.

These parts are then fitted and held together by that which every “joint” supplies. As with our natural body, joints are formed between different parts, not those that are alike. Your hand is joined to a wrist, not another hand. However, if you look at the church today, for the most part, evangelists will be found in one group, teachers will tend to congregate in another, and prophets will stick together, etc... Just as it takes a male and female to make a marriage, the marriage of ministries requires different parts fitting together properly. And we do not want to just fit together with any different part. You do not want a hand joined to a knee. This is why the wisdom of God’s “master-builders,” the apostles, is essential for a church to be structured and built up the way that the Lord intended.

To begin the task, we first must find out which Christians do not know the spiritual gifts and ministries where they are called to function. As I have asked this question in churches and conferences for years, I am convinced that no more than 10 percent of believers even know their place in the body, and far less are functioning in it. Think for a minute, how well could you function if only 10 percent of your body was working?

This is the deplorable state of the church, and certainly one of the primary reasons for the overall ineffectiveness of the church to accomplish her mandate in this hour. How did this happen? It happened because the ministry that has evolved in the church is a major departure from what the Lord intended, and from His New Testament example. Even though much of the church now recognizes the ministries listed in Ephesians 4, and many are claiming the titles as such, it is difficult to find those who are focused on equipping the saints and not just doing the ministry themselves.

Only after the ministries have been identified and equipped is there a possibility of the joints of the body being formed as intended. Just as Barnabas had to go and find Paul, and then both of them get in the right place, Antioch, before they could be released in their ultimate callings as apostles, there are divine connections that need to be made with others that are essential for all of us to be released into our ultimate purpose.

As our verse then states, when this is accomplished it will result in “the proper working of each individual part, (which) causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love." A great deal of the present lack of love and devotion to building up of one another is the frustration the other 90 percent of believers feel that they have a calling but have not identified it, nor begun to function in it. This breeds an insecurity that can be found at the root of many church splits and other problems in the church.

No pastor’s preaching or leadership is strong enough to bind people together in a way that can overcome the pressure of this deep frustration within the people. Let the pastor have a few bad weeks in a row and see how the people begin to wander off. Not only is pressure killing many pastors, it is killing the people as well. We must therefore stop trying to build the church on anything but the only foundation that has been laid, the Lord, and then be careful how we build upon it, because the day of fire is already here that will test the quality of each man’s work. Only the churches that have been built the way the Lord intended will stand the fire, and it will not only stand, it will prevail.