Stretching Our Capacity | 11/16/25
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When have you experienced spiritual or personal growth that only became possible because you were part of a community?
The sermon highlights that discipleship is not meant to be a solo journey. What barriers, habits, or fears make it hard for you to intentionally share your faith journey with others?
Think of a time in life when you thought, “I could never do that,” but later discovered you could — often with support. How might this memory shape how you approach your spiritual next steps?
In the spiritual community, we learn to extend grace to people who do not think, look, or live just like us. Where is God stretching your capacity for grace right now?
The running imagery emphasizes perseverance, companionship, and shared finish lines. What “race” are you currently running, and who is running it with you — or who might you invite to join?
Transcript:
The love of God invites us to step into the flow, which is really the invitation of today. You’re going to hear it in the scripture that I read. I hope that you hear it in the words of the message. I hope that you feel it today, as we again consider the gospel and what it means for each one of us as a part of this community of faith.
I’m going to read for us a few verses from the letter to the Ephesians in the New Testament, the third chapter specifically, and I invite you to listen in and follow along if you’d like on the screens:
“I ask that Christ will live in your hearts through faith. As a result of having strong roots in love, I ask that you’ll have the power to grasp love’s width and length, height and depth, together with all believers. I ask that you’ll know the love of Christ that is beyond knowledge, so that you will be filled entirely with the fullness of God. Glory to God, who is able to do far beyond all that we could ask or imagine by his power at work within us. Glory to him in the church and in Christ Jesus for all generations, forever and always. Amen.”
This is the Word of God for the people of God — and God’s people say, “Thanks be to God.”
Would you pray with me? Come, Holy Spirit, and breathe life into the words that I speak, that they might carry a word from you into our hearts and lives this morning. Amen.
I thought I hated running. I really thought I hated running. I was a college tennis player, and running was something that to me felt like a necessary evil — something that I had to do to stay in top condition for peak performance, or on some occasions, something that felt like cruel and unusual torture that our coach put us through at the end of a really long practice. I thought I hated running, but never one to back away from a challenge, I decided at the ripe age of 20, in my sophomore year of college, to sign up for my physical education required class with Dr. Sandor Molnar.
Dr. Molnar was a former Olympic Hungarian wrestler who had become quite the fitness fanatic — so much so that some of the people who had gone before me as students at Furman had dubbed him “The Optimal Man.” He was quite fond of this title. In fact, he had knee-high socks made that said The Optimal Man down the side, and you could see him running in them all over campus and all over town — miles and miles and miles.
What everybody knew about Dr. Molnar’s physical education class was that if you committed to showing up for every class and if you accepted his challenge to run the mountain — Parris Mountain — five miles up, five miles back, as your final exam, then you were guaranteed an A. That sounded great to me, and it sounded like a challenge, so I jumped in.
Dr. Molnar’s plan for getting people to that point was impeccable. You started with a mile, and it was on flat ground. Then, in the next class, you ran a little farther, and then a little farther, and then you started adding a little bit of incline. You never actually ran the whole thing until the day of the final exam.
Did I mention that this was winter term? January and February in upstate South Carolina can bring some pretty cold weather and strong breezes. And on the morning during study week, when we were supposed to take our final exam, there was also freezing rain coming down. I woke up, looked outside, crawled out of bed, and went to my old rotary-dial phone. I called my friend and teammate, Todd, and said, “Are you going?” And I heard back through the phone, “Are you going?” Well, we both went — and we both made it. Part of it was because we did it in community. We did it with each other, and there was support and encouragement and accountability in that.
Fast forward 20 years. Now I'm at the ripe age of about 40, and I’m still playing tennis, but I have an injury that is keeping me from being on the court. I wanted to stay fit and stay conditioned, and I had a friend who invited me to come run with a group of his friends. I didn’t know anything about running groups at that time — running clubs? Those people are crazy.
So I went that day thinking in my mind that a two- or three-mile run was a pretty good run. And I heard people, as we gathered in the parking lot, talking about five miles, ten miles, 15 miles, 20 miles, and I was thinking, “What in the world have I just gotten myself into?” I don’t know if you know this or not, but the disease that people in running clubs have is highly contagious.
Suddenly, I found myself doing a 5K, and then a 10K, and then a 15K, and then a marathon. A big part of it was the community. It was the fact that it was something we shared together, and there was support and encouragement, knowing that other people were going to be there, and also accountability. People expected you to show up because they were coming too, and you were going to do that long run together.
I never would have thought in my life that I would run a marathon before I got connected with that crazy group of people called a running club. Never. But isn’t that the way it is in life? There are so many things we can do, far more than we ever would have imagined possible when we have the support and encouragement of a group of people — a community — around us.
The same is true with our faith. Spiritual formation in community is a beautiful and wonderful thing, and you know what? It’s part of our DNA as Methodists. Just this past week, I finished facilitating a class that coincided with our most recent worship series, Knowing Who We Are. One of the segments of that class was about the importance of small groups in the movement. John Wesley understood the power of community. When he decided to take the good news of the gospel out of the church pulpit and out of the walls of the church — into fields and streets and other public places where he was meeting people who didn’t feel connected to the church building, or even felt like they wouldn’t be accepted in the church building — he knew that as they heard the good news for their lives, they needed to connect with others, to share in the journey of faith.
He knew this from his own experience and the beginning of his own wrestling in that journey at Oxford. From the beginning, the Methodist movement included bands — very small groups — and classes and societies as ways to encourage and strengthen one another for the journey.
The Apostle Paul also understood the power of community. Most of his letters that we still have were written to communities. There are a couple written to individuals, but most were to communities. Time and time again, he reminds them of their connectedness to each other and urges them to support and encourage and hold one another accountable in love as they live out the love of God together.
Because what Paul understood, and what Wesley understood, and what the Church has understood for generations, is that discipleship is not a solo journey. We can’t do it well alone, my friends. We need each other.
Think about Paul’s story when he had his Damascus Road experience. Immediately, others came alongside him and helped him — not only in physical healing, but spiritual healing — as he began this life of faith. Paul emphasized that discipleship is something shared, something we grow in together. Paul also often prays for the people he writes to. Today’s scripture is a portion of one of those prayers, and as I listened again this week, it struck me how deeply Paul seems to feel this one on a very personal level.
After all, he knew from his life before that experience what it was like to live without Christ in his heart — to live without roots grounded in love — to live apart from believers, even with animosity toward them. He knew what it was like to be empty of the love that could be the guiding force in one's life. And he also knew about the change that happened in his own life — one far beyond anything he could have asked or imagined. So Paul wants his friends to experience what he has come to know because of Christ’s presence in his life.
That is my prayer all the time as a pastor — that people would come to know the fullness of God’s presence in their lives and in their relationships with one another. A part of Trinity’s Vision Statement that we share as a congregation is that we will nurture deeper faithfulness — that we will be a place where people can come and grow and find connection and deepen their life in Christ, together.
So as we celebrate the good this month, as we celebrate the good work of ministry and transformation happening in and through the church, I am excited about the ways we are nurturing deeper faithfulness.
Over the last couple of weeks, we had an opportunity to sit down with a few people in this congregation and invite them to share part of their story about how that is happening for them as a part of Trinity. We wanted you to be able to hear just some snippets of their stories.
So take a look at the video now: https://youtu.be/S6abQNesH6Q
People of all ages — connecting, growing, sharing, doing life together as they become more deeply formed as followers of Jesus.
Friends, the invitation today for you — for us — is to prioritize our spiritual formation, and specifically to do that work within the context of community, within a small group of people with whom you share life. That happens in many ways right here on this campus through Bible studies, Sunday morning small groups, Sunday School classes, small groups that meet throughout the week, and Life Groups. And it doesn’t have to happen on campus — it can happen in a home, on a picnic bench, or in many other places. If you’re wondering how to do it, we’d love to help you think about how to connect with a group of people you can do life with — to go deeper.
Here are four ways I believe we stretch our capacity as followers of Jesus when we do discipleship together:
1. We deepen our understanding and knowledge of Scripture.
When you commit to being part of a group that studies the Bible, you can’t help but become better acquainted with Scripture. All entry points are welcome — no prior knowledge or experience required — because we’re all on a journey. As we learn and grow, some things begin to stick in our memory, and we can recall them in times of challenge, struggle, or when comforting others.
2. We stretch our capacity for relationship-building.
In a small group, you’ll be with people who may not look, think, act, or live like you. As you grow together and experience God’s grace, you become more inclined to extend that grace to others — not only in the group, but beyond it.
3. We strengthen our capacity for discerning God’s will.
Others can notice things about us that we can’t always see ourselves. They can encourage, challenge, and help us recognize how God might be inviting us into growth, service, or action we never would have imagined.
4. We stretch our capacity for trusting God.
You may not always know how God will show up, or where the road will lead, but together you learn to trust — not needing all the steps laid out, but knowing God and your community will walk with you, one step at a time.
As I was approaching age 50, it turns out that most of the guys in my Clergy Covenant Group — United Methodist pastors here in Florida, including David, got the same “disease” that I got when I joined that running club. We run. And the one or two who aren’t runners are excellent drivers — which is very helpful when doing something as crazy as a Ragnar Relay, a 200-mile team running relay.
You can do it with a team of 12, or, if you have an especially serious case of the “disease,” you can do it as a team of six — like we did — running many miles while the rest of your team travels in a van continuously for 200 miles. We did this. We had a really bad “disease.” We were crazy. I ran more miles in 24 hours than I’ve ever run or will ever run again.
It just so happens that I got to run the last leg, which meant running into Washington, D.C., across the bridge over the Potomac River, into the Washington Harbor. As I was nearing the end, I looked up and saw my whole covenant group running toward me. They came to meet me so that we could all run — even the guy who only drives — that last part of the race and cross the finish line together.
When I remember that, it makes me think about how the author of Hebrews uses a running analogy to get the attention of his listeners regarding the race we are called to run not alone, but together.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race set before us. Not me. Not you. The race set before us — looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”
Friends, we were meant to run the race together. And as we do, may our hearts swell with the love of Christ, and may we witness God doing among us far more than we could ever ask or imagine.
Amen.