Turn in your Bibles. To, Ephesians chapter 5 for a time of study in God's word, this morning. We're, for the month of December, with the exception of next Sunday, where we're focusing on Christmas. we are putting our focus on the church and trying to see the church through, through Jesus' eyes, and as we've looked at all the things that we wanted to cover this month, both in Sunday school and in our, preaching time.
the topic fell to me today that we're going to call gospel churchmanship. OK, gospel, churchmanship, what God wants from Christians with regard to the church. Now, I know that churchmanship is not that familiar of a word. I doubt that any of you use that term, this week.
or even in the last year or probably your lifetime, but it's actually a good word, and I want to introduce the word churchmen to you, and I have some definitions here on the screen behind me. Back 100 years ago, 200 years ago, this was a more common word. There were certain individuals, certain men that were called churchmen. And these were not necessarily pastors.
A lot of times it was, it was laypeople. A churchman is basically a passionate adherent or active supporter of a church or the, church and back, a century or two ago there were individuals that just basically they were, they were flaming passionate about the church and whatever intellect, writing abilities that they had, whatever skills, gifts and talents they had, and even some laypeople, whatever resources they had from the wealth that they generated from whatever business enterprise that they had succeeded at. There were individuals that just rose up and said, we're going to give the very best of what we have by the grace of God in service to the Church of Jesus Christ. And those individuals were described by other people as churchmen....
