My wholehearted service to Christ and all of our wholehearted service to Christ is not to help

God do what he otherwise couldn't do.

It's to be a part of what he's doing.

And so we shepherd with all our hearts in the best way we can but when we run out of resources

and we don't know what to do or what to say we don't know how to take care of people

and meet their needs the way they ought to be met we have to lean back and say

but the great shepherd is the Shepherd, isn't it?

Welcome to Grace to you with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.

If you were starting a church from the ground up,

what would you need most?

A reasonably sized building with comfortable chairs,

a dynamic preacher, perhaps a well-stocked

bookstore and maybe a coffee shop. Certainly those things could make for an

inviting atmosphere, but how important are they to building a church?

Well, today on Grace to you, John MacArthur looks at what is really required to build a church,

and more specifically, who is responsible for building a church.

It's part of John's study the anatomy of a church.

So follow along now as John begins the lesson.

Would you turn in your Bibles to Hebrews 13 verses 20 and 21?

And I really want to use this verse as just a point of contact with truth

to move us about some other passages in the New Testament that will enrich our understanding of the work of the Lord for his church.

What does Christ do for his church?

...