Quotes from Thabiti M. Anyabwile

If churches are to be healthy, then pastors and teachers must be committed to discovering the meaning of Scripture and allowing that meaning to drive the agenda with their congregations.

The mark of Christian discipleship is love—love of the kind that Jesus exercised toward his followers, love visible enough that men will recognize it as belonging to those people who follow Jesus.

As we tune our ears to the kind of preaching that makes the primary point of the sermon the primary point of a particular passage of Scripture, we grow accustomed to listening to God.

In all things essential, unity; in all things nonessential, liberty; and in all things, love.

Serving brings great rewards, but sometimes those rewards come gift-wrapped in trying situations. Those who lovingly serve others can end up feeling like crash dummies designed specifically to discover the heat, force, and pain tolerance of some new product.

Fools despise wisdom and instruction" (Prov. 1:7), but it is the nature of true godliness, maturity, and health in church members to accept the loving instruction and rebuke of others.

If we want to know and reverence God truly, we will dedicate ourselves to becoming biblical theologians who understand the narrative and themes of Scripture.

Churches become unsafe places if its leaders fail to be honest, transparent, and reliable. Sincerity may not be the final basis of truth, but there is no deep truth communicated where sincerity is lacking.

Expositional listening is listening for the meaning of a passage of Scripture and accepting that meaning as the main idea to be grasped for our personal and corporate lives as Christians.

A new commandment I give you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:34–35)

The reason the apostles preached the message of Jesus Christ was not for individual conversion alone. The apostles did not preach so that there simply would be a new me, but so that there would be a new we.

A committed church member is committed to the maintenance of peace in the congregation. "Let us pursue what makes for peace and mutual upbuilding" (Rom. 14:19). "And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace" (James 3:18).

Expositional listening helps us to focus on God's will and to follow him

The one consistent purpose or goal of the public meeting of the church is mutual edification, building each other up in the faith (1 Cor. 12, 14; Eph. 4:11–16). A healthy and committed member comes to serve, not to be served, like Jesus (Mark 10:45); to provide, not to be a consumer only.

This is discussed at greater length in chapter 6, "Seeks Discipline." A committed member is committed to speaking the truth in love to his brothers and sisters, to helping them avoid pitfalls, and to encouraging them in holiness and Christian joy. A committed member will not be wrongly intrusive in the lives of others—a busybody—but he also will not be "hands off" when it comes to caring for and counseling others.

Our agenda becomes secondary. The preacher's agenda becomes secondary. God's agenda for his people takes center stage, reorders our priorities, and directs us in the course that most honors him. The Lord himself proclaimed, "My sheep listen to my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" (John 10:27). Listening to the voice of Jesus as it is heard in his Word is critical to following him.

Christians are people who are reconciled to God through Christ. As a consequence, we have been given "the ministry of reconciliation" (2 Cor. 5:18–21). So, a committed member strives to repair breaches as quickly as possible, even before continuing in public worship (Matt. 5:23–24).

Ministers of reconciliation must be patient and longsuffering. They must be characterized by meekness such that they do not think more highly of themselves than they ought (Matt. 5:5). They must hold up under the weight of disappointments, frustrations, loss, attack, slander, and offense (Matt. 18:21–22; Rom. 15:1). By carrying each others' burdens we fulfill the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2).

Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living in common Christian life with other Christians praise God's grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren.3 Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

Chaos, then, is the enemy of growth. Disorganization, sloppiness, and inattention generally introduce the kind of instability that weakens rather than strengthens. Where there is no order there will likely be little in the environment that sustains and nourishes. Life needs to be ordered.

expositional listening protects the gospel and our lives from corruption.

Members of Christian churches continue to think small thoughts of God and great thoughts of man. This state of affairs reveals that too many Christians have neglected their first great calling: to know their God. Every Christian is meant to be a theologian in the best and most intimate sense of the word. If churches are to prosper in health, church members must be committed to being biblical theologians in whatever capacity they can. This is the second mark of a healthy church member.

The one who is sufficient for the life and work of the ministry is the one who "lives the life of faith and prayer" and who seeks to fill "his head [with] all knowledge and his heart with all holiness" in pursuit of his Lord.

Several passages of Scripture outline for us the kind of growth healthy church members should hope to see in themselves and others. For example, Galatians 5:22–25 lists for us the fruit of the Spirit, evidences of Spirit-wrought virtue and character that typify those who live not according to their own power and sinful nature but by the Spirit. We are to "grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Pet. 3:18).