Joy in the Presence of God Psalm 16:8-11

Not Spectators - Members

Most people who attend church regularly have never once been asked to do anything more than show up and give. Attend the service. Enjoy the experience. Fill out a connection card. Come back next week. It is a model built for consumers — and it has produced exactly what every consumer model produces: people who are passive, dependent, and completely unprepared for the life of discipleship that Jesus Christ actually calls them to. In Week 4 of the Built series, Pastor Kevin Cox works through one of the most structurally important passages in Paul's ecclesiology — Ephesians 4:11–16 — and dismantles the consumer model from the inside out. This message exposes a centuries-old mistranslation that quietly reassigned the work of ministry from the congregation to the clergy, uncovers the Greek word katartismos and what it reveals about the true purpose of pastoral leadership, and confronts the doctrinal vulnerability that passive church attendance creates in believers who have never been equipped to stand. The goal of the church, Paul says, is not a larger crowd. It is a mature body — every joint supplying, every part working, the whole structure building itself up in love toward the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. That body is not built by spectators. It is built by members.

The Biblical Blueprint of The Church

What would it look like if a church stopped trying to improve on God's design and simply returned to it? In Week 3 of the Built series, Pastor Kevin Cox takes the congregation deep into Acts 2:42–47 — the most concentrated portrait of the early church found anywhere in Scripture. In one passage, Luke gives us four devotions that defined the first Christian community: the apostles' teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer. These were not four programs running in parallel. They were four expressions of a single reality — a Spirit-filled community living in wholehearted surrender to its Head. This message works through the Greek word proskartereo — the word translated "devoted" — and what it reveals about the difference between casual church attendance and genuine discipleship. It examines what koinonia actually means and why you can attend a small group for years and still feel completely unknown. It unpacks the dual meaning of the breaking of bread and the word anamnesis — the active, present-tense remembrance that makes communion far more than a ritual. And it traces the fruit that followed these four devotions in Acts 2:43–47: awe, radical generosity, favor with the city, and the Lord adding to their number daily. The blueprint has not been updated. The question is whether we are willing to build by it.

Appropriating God's Power

Many Christians struggle with their identity in Christ. Because of that, they don't realize all that it means to be a child of God and the resources available to them to deal with distractions, struggles, disappointments and really life. Therefore, they’re constantly asking God for more of Himself, more power, more strength not realizing that they already possess the fullness of God. It’s not a matter of needing more of or from God. It’s a matter of positioning yourself to appropriate the resources God has already given you. We do this through saturating our minds with His Word so that we biblically understand who God is, His nature, promises, etc, then applying all that we learn to our hearts in obedience and walking in confidence and trusting in God through faith.

The Lordship and The Body

Every church claims that Jesus is in charge. The question worth asking — the one most churches quietly avoid — is whether He actually is. Not in the statement of faith. Not in the language used from the stage. But in the real, daily decisions that shape what a church preaches, how it spends its resources, what it prioritizes, and what it is willing to let go of when faithfulness costs something.  In Week 2 of Built, Pastor Kevin Cox takes the congregation into two of Paul's most theologically dense letters — Ephesians and Colossians — to recover what the headship of Christ actually means and what it looks like when a church lives under it.  Drawing from Ephesians 1:22–23 and Colossians 1:18, this message confronts the quiet inversion at the heart of so much contemporary Christianity: a church that honors Christ in its confession while functionally running on a different engine entirely. The result of that inversion is not hard to identify — congregations that are numerically impressive and spiritually thin, members who know the songs by heart and cannot articulate the gospel, communities built for consumers rather than formed as disciples.  This message calls the church back to the standard Paul sets without apology: that in everything, Christ must be preeminent. Not first among several priorities. First in a category of His own.

Whose Church Is It? Restoring the biblical Blueprint of the Church

The modern church has inherited a model shaped more by the marketplace than by Scripture — a model built on experience, entertainment, and consumer preference that creates audiences instead of disciples. This series is a return to the blueprint. Over eight weeks, we will ground ourselves in what Christ designed the church to be, call every member to full surrender to Christ and active participation in the body, and release this congregation into the mission it exists to fulfill — the making of disciples in Loveland, in Colorado, and to the ends of the earth.