Or, TEC - The Teen Years (Pt 1)
Scripture: Selected Scriptures
Date: November 9, 2025
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Trinity Evangel Church is about to turn 15. The mid-teenager analogy turns out to be a useful point of comparison. We are not individually all at the maturity of high school freshmen, and thank God. But when considered all together as an institution, there are some typical teen characteristics that apply.
We just finished the Ezra-Nehemiah-Esther series with the case study of what it looked like to rebuild a city and reform a culture. Even though Marysville will not be the seat of the Messiah’s throne when He returns, we are trying to cultivate a certain type of community. When Christ returns, will He find us being fruitful in our work? Will He find us mature?
So after our Old Testament study and before an upcoming Advent series, let’s consider some vision for TEC, with today’s sermon as the overall aim and next Sunday looking at the next five years.
When it comes to the mission of TEC, we understand the practice of making disciples and the purpose of making disciples considered both individually and corporately.
Individually, we want to see “every man” complete in Christ. This is what we learn from Colossians 1:28-29.
Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me. (Colossians 1:28–29 ESV)
Corporately, we want to see the whole body built up in love. This is the emphasis in Ephesians 4:11-16.
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:11–16 ESV)
There are three overlapping aims that come from these texts.
The Pareto Principle began with an economic observation that (in Italy in 1986) 20% of the population owned 80% of the land. The principle has been applied much further; 20% of the customers make 80% of the complaints; 20% of patients make up 80% of health care costs, and so on. Businesses, and churches too, recognize that 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people. This is not okay to expect 20% of any person’s body to be doing 80% of the body’s work.
In Colossians 1:28, note that Paul writes everyone three times. In Ephesians, there is an emphasis also on the saints, on we all, on each part working properly.
TEC is not an audience, we are an assembly. Of course we do not all do the same things, but it’s not the most mature teen who expect others to do their work. Increasing capacity is good, and to be developed more. Serving is not surrogacy, meaning that when you see someone else serving that doesn’t mean there’s nothing for you to do. Serving is part of everyone’s sanctification, it belongs with everyone having a spiritual gift “for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:4-7). God made it this way.
In education terms, students in the Pert stage often need qualifications, whether or not they hear them. Upper-middle school/lower high school students default to questioning, and arguing. They’re the type who says, “Don’t tell me what to do, but also please pay for all of my food, clothes, and sports fees.” Ha!
I understand that not everyone should be a teacher, as James 3:1 prohibits. And also in another way, Colossians 3:16 says that when we are richly indwelt by the Word that we will be “teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom.” The ultimate sign of maturity isn’t that a man can lead a Bible study, and also, a mature man knows the Bible and can talk to others about it.
Have you heard of vibe coding? Vibe coding is when you tell an AI app what sort of app or website you want to make and let it make up the details. You don’t know how it works, you have an idea/feeling/vibe and let that lead. But that’s not how revelation works; we receive what God has given, not what we wish it would be. It’s not how we “do” theology.
Yes, there are different levels of need to understand. There are milk and meat levels of understanding the Word (Hebrews 5:12-13). That said, if we argue that solid food is not for the mature but for the nerds, that would be weak sauce.
What happens in the process as a person becomes more complete in Christ? According to Colossians 1:28, it is connected with hearing Jesus proclaimed, receiving the teaching, and grasping the wisdom. Look at part of Paul’s prayer earlier in the chapter:
And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God (Colossians 1:9–10 ESV)
Or consider from the Ephesians 4 paragraph, how is the body built to be stronger? The body is given pastors and teachers. There is a lot of truth speaking, which requires truth knowing. It is related to the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). Even the idea of making disciples means that we are making learners, and learners who follow not just who fill in notebooks. We teach and they learn to observe all that Jesus commanded.
A Christian who is more complete in Christ has conviction. The word conviction comes from combining con and vincare, so “with conquered.” A judge or jury convicts a criminal when the proof of his guilt conquers his defense. The positive use is a man with conviction who has been overcome by the truth. Your belief lands like a plane.
If we are going to pass the baton of truth to the next generation, then we have to pick it up. Abraham Kuyper talks about the need for defining principles and then living principally.
“anyone entering a house in ordinary times is not thinking about the foundation on which it rests; and so also in Jesus’ church there can be times when people dwell together and labor together, hardly bothering themselves about any principles. But in times like those we are now experiencing, now when in every area the foundations are being undermined, now when everything is pressing down to the depths and people are proceeding restlessly to pry the deepest principles loose, now in these times it would be all too naïve, all too negligent, for people to sidestep the issue of principles any longer.” (Kuyper, Rooted and Grounded)
False teaching had infected the Colossian church. Paul warned the Ephesian church against staying children, and being a child is connected with being tossed by waves because there is no deep ballast of truth. The children are those carried by winds of doctrine without being directed by the rudder of conviction.
Beloved, you know that the propaganda and lies and cunning and crafty scheming was not finished in the first century.
Dualism/Pietism/escapism grows in churches. The poison of Marxist kinds of envy and blaming has been baptized by some Christians as love of neighbor. We have had those among us who have been saved by faith, who have heard the freeing power explained to them in the doctrine of sola fide, yet have turned toward Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy and adding layers back in between themselves and immediate fellowship with God.
Right convictions are not just what you want to be true, right convictions come from being conquered by the truth so as to give yourself for it. Yes, we hold and speak the truth in love, and we hold it fast even to death.
Colossians 1:28 has been bouncing around my mental hopper for years, and yet again, just this past week, another part of it hit me differently.
The aim of this work is for every person to be “complete in Christ.” That’s the NASB translation; I like the bite of the consonants. William Tyndale, the KJV, and other English translations use the word “perfect,” which is also good. These all emphasize a kind of fullness. Think of your soul, of your person and life, in a spatial way, where Christ occupies more and more of the space. That fits, even in Colossians where there is an emphasis on the fullness of God in Christ Himself, surely connects to the fullness of Christ in us.
The original word is teleios, it’s related to the word telos which means end or goal. Teleios is also used in Ephesians 4, so we’re right over the target.
The ESV translates it as mature in Christ. And what does it mean to be mature? The English word has the nuance of being ripe. The seed has gotten to what it was meant for, which includes (at least among fruits that have seeds) having more seed to spread. This is belongs with teleios.
To be mature in Christ, then, includes aspects of fullness and fruitfulness. There is a fulfilling of purpose in fruit. And it is a great temptation for church-going people to want to appear full grown without the work of holding up heavy branches.
Maturity is agency with wisdom. Not just energy or activity, but initiative to figure it out as part of fearing the Lord. It is accountability to the Lord that results in activity. It is faith that follows-through until there is fruit. If there is no fruit, then we dig and dung, per Jesus’s parable (Luke 13:6–9).
All of the above resonates with our one-sentence church mission. The elders recently reviewed the statement, and I’ve spent some time looking back through around a thousand or so sermons to the TEC flock to look for patterns and the main points of emphasis. We have not drifted from the overall mission.
We are laboring in joy to cultivate a Trinitarian community of worshiping, maturing disciples who acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord over all the world.
These kinds of people default to fellowship, even when fellowshipping is costly. These kinds of people are always looking for ways to be fruitful. They don’t only do it when it’s easy, nor do they define fruitfulness in a way that puts up compartmentalized walls. They want to get stronger, and that strength extends rather than isolates. They are lifelong learners, “they still bear fruit in old age” (Psalm 92:14).
There is a phrase of promise and renewal that the prophet Isaiah gives in Isaiah 37:31, where the people would “again take root downward and bear fruit upward.” What a great aspiration by way of application.
As an almost 15 year old, we do need more teaching, so as to know what to do and why. We need more ambition, which, sometimes in God’s providence, requires better waiting. We do desire more maturity, ripeness, and fruitfulness as a church. When the seed fell on the good soil, they heard the word and accepted it and beared fruit, thirtyfold, sixtyfold, or a hundredfold (Mark 4:8, 20). May God give such increase! Next week we’ll consider some of the fruits we’d like to pursue more of in the next five years.
Are you ready to give up some of lesser complaints in order to trade up for bigger problems? Are you ready to give up some of your comfort for sake of your brother’s benefit? Will you pursue maturity in Christ and do your part for the building up of the body?
Do any of you lack wisdom? Ask God who gives generously to all. Do any of you lack fruit? Don’t wait, dig around the roots today and put on the fertilizer for your faith. Pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.
May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. (2 Peter 1:2 ESV)