We’ve been encouraging people to join a house group or to start going again if they’ve got out of the habit. If you go to one of the house groups you’ll see from the first session of ‘The Anatomy of a Healthy Church’ that a healthy church is a growing church. And there’s a useful table to show from the book of Acts that when Jesus said he’d build his church he meant it to be taken literally and numerically.

I agree with John James when he says that a healthy church is a growing church. But just three notes of caution.

First of all, church growth teachings (and prosperity teachings too) need to be tested in the toughest settings in the world and it’s a whole lot easier to be part of a numerically growing church in some places than in others. France, Tunisia, Morocco – healthy churches but small churches. Great difficulties, great pressures. Bonsai.

Second, numbers don’t necessarily indicate health. You may know that the largest churches in the world at the moment are in South Korea. We had Korean students at Spurgeon’s College and they were at pains to nuance very carefully indeed the growth of the Korean churches.

 Third, there are other kinds of growth other than numerical. To be fair he does point this out but there’s a whole programme in that. How frustrating it is for the individual Christian to try to measure spiritual growth! I’ve bought a talking pedometer with my token from the ladies Fellowship. And it tells you you’ve burned 50 calories or 60 – it’s discouraging to listen to it every five minutes because you only see the results in the long term. But the long term is of the essence. And that’s a parable of the spiritual growth of the individual. Of your spiritual growth, whoever you are.

In “The Winters Tale” by Shakespeare, Hermione is wrongly accused by her husband of having an affair. He decides to send her to prison and as she prepares to leave she says ‘this action I now go on is for my better grace.’ Well, the commentators don’t know as much as Shakespeare about the spiritual life. They can’t understand this saying. They say she can’t be referring to spiritual growth because she knows she’s innocent.

But you and I know better – we know that there’s no end to spiritual growth.  We agree with the hymn writer who said that, ‘Those who fain would serve thee best are conscious most of wrong within.’ We know that the feeling of having arrived in the spiritual life is the most glaring sign there is of a spiritual problem.

No, the further on we go in the spiritual life, the more we know that the Lord has his work cutout with us. And we learn that he is prepared to use all the means he has to make us grow in grace. I almost said ‘even through hardship’. But I mean, ‘above all through hardship’. People say, ‘These things are sent to try us!’ We know that as we face a period of illness, unemployment, bereavement, depression, uncertainty, yes even as we face death we know that we have every reason to declare with Hermione, ‘this action I now go on is for my better grace.’

And it’s not only individuals who grow. Churches grow. And they don’t only grow numerically. Churches grow in other ways still. You may have been wondering why I had that passage from1 Corinthians read. Well, it’s because in the Bible the imagery of growth and the imagery of building are very closely linked. It’s almost as if some of the writers were country folk – Raglan people and others were townies – Newport folk. And of course, they change the imagery anyway. Paul changes to a  building from a field in the very passage we heard. And in fact, even when he’s saying the same kinds of things he changes  to the image of a body. And all that even in the scope of this one letter. The apostle is talking about the development of the Christian community.

And what he has to say boils down to this:  God builds his church not only by adding other members to it  but above all by developing relationships. The details of the problems at Corinth need not always concern us – often we don’t even know what they are. These words don’t even only apply to problems of conflict in a church. They mean broadly that in our common life will be our growth. Specifiaclly here an invitation to grow up. And that In our diversity will be not our weakness but our richness. And as they are committed to the community life, Christians and through them the church grow in commitment. In love. In the ability to forgive. In the ability to give the credit for every good thing to God and not to people. In the ability to think Christianly.

Now, I made an appeal at the beginning of the sermon for people to join the house groups. All I’ve said about the Church as a whole applies also to the house groups, perhaps even more so, although I’d hate to think of them as pressure cookers or greenhouses.