Why We Speak — The Church the Wind Can't Move

Picture a thirty-year-old who still gets blown around by every voice in the room. Flatter him, and he's all in. Criticize him, and he's wrecked for a week. A confident new idea shows up on Monday, and he rebuilds his whole life around it — then a different voice shows up on Friday, and he rebuilds it back. Whoever talked to him last is the one he believes.

If that were a four-year-old, we'd smile. That's just what it is to be little. At thirty, something's wrong. Something that was supposed to happen didn't.

This Sunday, we’ll focus on how the apostle Paul says the same thing can be true of a whole church. Turn to Ephesians 4, and the first picture he paints is a small boat with no anchor and no rudder, out on open water: "tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching" (Ephesians 4:14). Notice what he says the danger is. It isn't first the obvious temptations out in the world — it's teaching. Confident voices. Clever pitches. And we happen to live in the windiest moment in human history for exactly this, every one of us carrying a device in our pocket that pipes those voices straight to our hand all day long. So, Paul's question is challenging: are we the boat that gets blown around by all of it — or have we grown up into something the wind can't move?

Then comes the most important part. Three words: "speaking the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15). That's the whole difference between a church that stays four years old for thirty years and a church that grows up. And here's the surprise — it isn't a communication tip. It isn't "be nice while you say hard things." Paul calls it the path of growth itself, the thing that turns a tossed little boat into a body "knit together by every supporting ligament" (Ephesians 4:16), building itself up in love. Slow work. Loop pulled tight against loop, one honest, loving conversation at a time, until the whole thing holds.

And catch who does that work. Not the preacher. Not the elders. You. Paul says the body builds itself up "by the proper working of each individual part" — which means the growing up of this church is waiting on ordinary members to speak the truth in love to the people God has set right beside them.

If you're new to us, here's the best part. You don't have to grow up before you belong. You belong first, and you grow up inside the body, held by the rest of us.

We've spent June saying that truth frees you, that truth has a face, that truth changes you. This month, we ask the next question: how does that truth get from one heart to another? Come find out why we speak — and how a body of ordinary people grows up into something the wind can't move.

Come join us at Cornerstone this Sunday!
5051 Wilmington Pike, Centerville 45440
cornerstone-coc.com