Revival and the Cross

Over the last several weeks I have been encouraging all of you to help us by doing four things:  1.) Pray daily for Revival in our church and Spiritual awakening in our community, 2.) Unless providentially hindered attend every service, 3.) Call members who have not been here for awhile and encourage them to come back, and 4.) Invite unchurched friends and neighbors to come to church with you.  Over the next several weeks I want talk to you a little bit more specifically about each one of these activities. Beginning with the first and most important, praying daily for revival and Spiritual awakening.

When most of you think about the word “Revival” you probably think about having an evangelist come and preach a week long meeting.  I was saved in that type of meeting and have always been fond of them, however, that is not what I have in mind when I ask you to pray for revival. There is a major difference between having a “meeting” and having “revival.”  A real revival occurs whenever the Spirit of God begins to focus our affections on Jesus.  In other words, a revival occurs when we are drawn by the Holy Spirit back to our first love, Jesus.  Revival always begins with a deep sense of conviction over sin and a desire to turn away from any habit or attitude that would be displeasing to Jesus.  2 Chronicles 7:14 says, “if my people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

I don’t know about you but over the last several weeks God has been dealing in my heart with some habits and attitudes that are sinful and displeasing to Jesus.  My heart has been broken as God has revealed to me the depths of my depravity and the subtle ways in which my wicked and faithless heart will be carried away from Jesus by the allurements and enticements of this world.  But as I have been preaching through Exodus over the last several weeks and spending time with God in my quiet times, He has been drawing me back to my “first love.”  In the beginning this is a painful and difficult process.  As God shows us the wickedness of our hearts we often recoil in shame and our pride rises up against the things of God.  But if we will continue in prayer, if we let the Holy Spirit do His deep work in our lives, He will always bring us to Jesus.  He will always bring us to the cross where our sins were pinned on the broken body of our savior and the wrath of God was poured out as He slaughtered His precious Son.  At first, such language and such a horrible scene will turn our stomachs and offend our sensibilities.  But as we linger on the thought, the glory of the cross begins to shine through the darkness and we begin to praise God for the price that was paid to bring us salvation.  The more we gaze at the horrible, rough, brutal cross, the more beautiful it becomes.  There, on that cross, the Son of God, died in agonizing pain to pay the ransom to set us free.  When we think of the cross and all that Jesus did for us there, how can we do anything but cast ourselves at His feet and shout “Hallelujah, What A Savior!”  When we look to the cross, all of that in this world seems to lose its pull on our hearts.  When we look to the cross, all of the pleasures of this world and the enticements of sin lose their grip.  When we look to the cross, we encounter a love goes beyond anything this world can ever comprehend.  When we look to the cross, we see awfulness of our sin and the beauty of God’s grace and it drives us to praise. When we look at the cross, we see the hope of the nations and it drives us to be on mission.  When we look at the cross, we see Jesus and it drives us to love Him more than anything or anyone in this world.

Brothers and Sisters, look to the cross.  Look to the cross and live.  Look to the cross and repent.  Look to the cross and gain hope.  Look to the cross and be revived.  Pray with me everyday that God would grant us a new vision of the cross.  In closing, I leave you with the words of my favorite hymn.  I encourage you this week to reflect on these words and to pray for a new vision of the cross.

When I survey the wondrous cross,
on which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss,
and pour contempt, on all my pride.

See from His head, His hands, His feet,
Sorrow and love flow mingled down;
Did e’re such love and sorrow meet,
or thorns compose so rich a crown.

Were the whole realm of nature min,
that were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.

 

End of Summer Roundup

I need your help as a Pastor and am asking for your help.  As most of you know our attendance in the months of June and July slumps off because sports and vacations.  We always pick back up in the autumn and I am sure that we will this year as well.  However, this autumn is special in the life of our church.  On Sunday, September 13th, our building committee is going to present to the church the plans for our new building and on September 16th we will be having a business meeting to vote on whether or not to move forward and start building early in 2010.  This is a very exciting time in the life of the church and I want this fall to be one of the biggest that we have ever experienced.  With that said, I want to use August as a roundup month to start getting our worship and Sunday School attendances back up.  I am asking that everyone who reads this make the following four commitments:

1.)Pray daily for God to pour out a Spirit of revival in our church and Spiritual awakening in our community- Revival occurs when God’s people are reawakened to God’s presence and their affections are turned to away from themselves and the world to Jesus.  Spiritual awakening occurs when God begins to make people in a community receptive of the gospel.  We desperately need both of these to occur.

2.) Be here at every available worship service- your attendnace is a great encouragement not only to me but to everyone else as well.  Plus the series that I am preaching right now from Exodus is one of the most important that I have ever preached.  I believe that God is going to use them mightily in the coming months as we begin to finally “make” the move to our new location.

3.) Call members that you haven’t seen for awhile and invite them to come back- often times people just fall out of the habit and need to be reminded.  At other times people are hurting and need to know someone cares.  In either case, members who aren’t coming to church regularly need to be called.

4.) Invite unchurhced friends, family members, and neighbors to come to hear the gospel- Our summer interns discovered this summer that the majority of the unchurched in our community would come to worship if someone they knew would invite them.  We could see hundreds of people saved if each one of us would just make the committment to get on unsaved person to come to church with us in the coming months.

Perhaps this sounds like a desperate plea and it is but I firmly believe this fall could be one of the most important in our churches history.  If you are willing to make these commitments I encourage you to leave a note in the comments box and to email or Facebook this link to other church members and encourage them to make the commitments as well.

In His Service,

Bro. Joe Buchanan

 

GCR Declaration Pt 2

Last week I began a series of articles examining the Great Commission Resurgence Declaration that I and 4294 other Southern Baptists have signed.  The intent of this declaration is to lay out the commitments we must hold in common if we are to lead our churches and the Southern Baptist Convention back to a focus on fulfilling the Great Commission.  The first article in this declaration calls for full submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, it reads:

I. A Commitment to Christ’s Lordship. We call upon all Southern Baptists to submit to the absolute Lordship of Jesus Christ in all things at the personal, local church, and denominational levels. (Col. 1:18; 3:16-17, 23-24)

Scripture is clear that Jesus Christ is Lord of all. Therefore, Jesus Christ must be our passion and priority and we should aspire to both know Him and love Him more fully. We must long to see Him have preeminence in all things. We desire to see a Convention of Christ-centered, “Jesus-intoxicated” people who pursue all that we do by God’s grace and for His glory. We believe we need the ministry of the Holy Spirit to lead us into a new and fresh intimacy and communion with the Lord Jesus that results in greater obedience to all that He commands. Christ’s Lordship must be first and foremost in a Great Commission Resurgence or we will miss our most important priority and fail in all of our other pursuits.

The doctrine of the Lordship of Christ is one of the most important teachings in all of the Bible.  On the day of Pentecost the Apostle Peter said, “let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”  We will sometimes hear people say, “you’ve got to make Jesus Lord of your life,” but the plain truth of Scripture is that God has already made Him Lord, regardless of whether we acknowledge it or not.  When we say that Jesus is Lord we mean that He is master of all things.  In other words, Jesus is the supreme boss and we must strive to please Him in everything we do.  Romans 10:9 makes confessing the Lordship of Christ mandatory for everyone who will be saved, “if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your hear that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”  In other words, if we want to be saved from our sins then we must acknowledge that Jesus is now the master and commander of our lives.  We must be willing to submit our wills to His.  But the Lordship of Jesus involves more than just our initial salvation.  Once we are saved the Bible says that we are to continue to live our lives under the direction and control of Jesus.

Colossians 3:23-24 says, “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.”  This verse teaches us that the Lordship of Jesus is to apply to every area of lives.  No matter what we are doing the Bible says that we are to do it “heartily, as to the Lord and not to men.”  In other words, if you are a construction worker, these verses say that you are to do your work on the construction site as if you are doing it for the Lord rather than your boss.  If you are a stay at home mom, you are to go about your day doing your housework as if you were doing them for Jesus.  Why?  Because, Jesus is our Lord and everything we do in this life reflects upon Him.  Therefore, we must set it as a goal to constantly bring glory to Him in everything we do.

This applies not only to individual Christians but also to local churches and denominations.  The truth of the matter is that First Baptist does not belong to us.  The question is not about what we want to do as a congregation but what does Jesus want us to do.  Jesus, our Lord and Master, has told us to go to the ends of the earth to tell the nations the good news about His death, burial and resurrection.  The question, is not what does He want us to do but will we do it.  Being surrendered to His Lordship means that we say yes to His call and trust Him to guide us and provide for us.  The doctrine of the Lordship of Jesus calls us to obedience but even more than that, it gives us a source of encouragement.

The work that Jesus has called us to do is humanly impossible.  We cannot save a single soul or change even one life.  But thankfully, Jesus has not left us to do His work in our own power.  Jesus has poured out His Holy Spirit upon the church (Acts 2) and has filled us with His power to accomplish all that He has called us to do.  We can accomplish His task not because of who we are but because of who He is.  He is our master and Lord.  He has been given all authority and all power to carry out His divine purposes.  Therefore, as we commit ourselves to a Great Commission Resurgence here at First Baptist, let us once again submit ourselves under the Lordship of Jesus.

For more information on the GCR go to http://www.greatcommissionresurgence.com/

 

An Examination of the Great Commission Resurgence Pt 1

Last week in my Sunday morning message I shared with you the exciting news about the passing of a motion to instruct president of the Southern Baptist Convention, Dr. Johnny Hunt, to appoint a Great Commission Task force.  The purpose of this task force is to examine the current state of the Southern Baptist Convention and to bring back to next years convention recommendations for how to return our focus on fulfilling the Great Commission.  As a Pastor and long time supporter of our convention, I am thrilled with the passage of this resolution and hope that you will be as well.  Thirty years ago, we were a denomination facing the serious threat of theological liberalism in our seminaries, churches, and agencies.  In an unprecedented move that has become known as the conservative resurgence, our convention became the only major denomination ever to have returned to from the abyss of theological liberalism.  Since then we have faced many challenges but none so great as we face right now.  A recent report by Lifeway Research says that if our current baptism and membership trends continue we will experience a 50% decline by 2050. If we are going to survive as a convention we must find a way to turn these statistics around.  We need a Great Commission Resurgence.

The call for a GCR was started a year ago by Dr. Johnny Hunt, president of the SBC, Dr. Danny Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Dr. Al Mohler, president of Southern Seminary.  This call culminated in a declaration that has to date been signed by 4232 Pastors, including myself.  This declaration outlines the essential elements of a Great Commission Resurgence (see http://greatcommissionresurgence.com/)  Over the next ten weeks I plan to go through this declaration article by article and share with you some of its most important characteristics.  My goal is not to get us involved in the denomination, as much as it is to see our church experience a Great Commission Resurgence ourselves.

I am fully convinced that while the convention has taken a positive step in the passing of this motion, that it will ultimately fail if local churches do not adopt a similar action.  Put very simply, God has given the Great Commission to the church not to the denomination.  If the local church fails to carry out the Great Commission it has lost its reason for existing and no denomination can every take its place.  As a local church we must therefore, carefully and prayerfully consider what we are doing to fulfill the Great Commission.  Like the convention, we have become bloated and inefficient.  We must hold every program, activity and ministry that we do up to the light of scrutiny and ask ourselves how it contributes to the fulfilling of the Great Commission.  Next week we will start looking at the first article.  I hope that you will begin praying with me now that God will bring about a GCR here at First Baptist and across the Southern Baptist Convention.

For more info on the Great Commission Resurgence see:

http://betweenthetimes.com/

http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/edstetzer/

http://www.bpnews.net/BPnews.asp?ID=30757

 

Love Your Neighbor

“You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
Matthew 22:39

Last week I preached on the greatest commandment, which is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37) This Sunday, God willing, I will preach on the second greatest commandment, which is “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Jesus say that on these two commandments hand all the Law and the Prophets.  In other words, these two commandments capture the essence of the Old Testament.  Along with the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20), these three commands form the foundation of the Christian life.

What I want to challenge everyone in our church to do is to begin looking for intentional ways of serving their neighbors, friends, and family with the goal of sharing the gospel with them.  As I have shared on several occasions in the past, I believe that servant style evangelism is the key gaining a hearing in today’s culture.  We live in a time when Christianity is looked at with a high degree of suspicion.  Gone are the days when we could just walk up to someone on the street or knock on their door and automatically have credibility because we represent the church.  Today, people do not trust the church and therefore, we need to work very hard at demonstrating that we are genuine.

What I want to challenge you to do this week is to intentionally perform an act of kindness for an unchurched neighbor or friend.  It could be anything from buying their lunch, or mowing their lawn, to baking them some cookies or washing their car.  Some of you may live near a widow or widower and could simply visit with them and spend some time just talking to them. Others of you know young couples that could use a night out, why not offer to babysit their children and give $20 to go see a movie.  Now some of you are reading this and saying, what does all of this have to do with sharing Jesus.  Why should I bother?  Let me give you two reasons.

First, by demonstrating the love of Jesus in a tangible way you show the reality of the gospel in your life.  In other words, you show them that you are real and that Jesus has made a difference in your life.  This is more important than you can possibly imagine.  In reality, a person usually does not become a Christian without first getting to know a Christian.  Some studies have shown that the unchurced are very turned off by the Christians that they have met and encountered.  Why?  Mostly because they view them as fakes or hypocrites.  Sadly, most Christians are doing little if anything to break this stereotype.  You can make a difference.  Intentional acts of kindness are a very effective way of demonstrating authentic Christianity and building relationships.  Try it and you will see what I mean.

Second, by doing something unexpected for someone else it naturally leads to an opportunity to share.  We live in a culture where people simply don’t do nice things for others very often.  When you do something nice for someone, they will often ask, “Why are you doing this?’  Here is your opportunity to share the gospel with them.  For instance, imagine that Steve goes to over to his neighbor John’s house one day and begins to cut his grass.  John’s natural response is going to be to thank him and ask him why he did that.  Steve could say something like, “You know John, I am a Christian and Jesus said that we are to love our neighbor as yourself.  Because Jesus has changed my life I want to show his love to the people that I care about.”  From here the conversation could possibly lead to Steve being able to share his personal testimony and inviting John to come to church with him.

Servant style evangelism opens doors and changes peoples lives.  Not only does it change the unchurched person who receives the ministry but it also changes the Christian who becomes the channel for the love Jesus to flow into a dark world.   A friend of mine did something really neat at his church.  He printed up little cards that had the church information on one side and on the other side it simply said, “Because we care…”  He challenged his folks to simply pay for the car behind them whenever they went through the McDonalds drive-in and to ask the cashier at the window to simply hand the little information card to them and say, “Your lunch has been paid for.”  Three things surprised me about his story.  First, he said that what usually happened was that the car behind them would pay for the car behind them and that sometimes this would happen for five or ten cars in a row.  With every one of them asking the cashier what was going on.  Therefore, he started having his folks give the cashier five or ten extra cards.  Second, he told me that his people got caught up into a frenzy of service.  They began to come up with their own idea about how to intentionally serve their community and soon the church was handing out several hundred of these service cards a week.  Finally, he told me that people began to show up at the church and ask, what was going on.  Many of these people ended up being saved and joining the church and guess what, they immediately went to work serving others and sharing their faith.

A similar type card for our church will be available this Sunday. Pick them up, use them, and watch what God will do.

 

Missional Lifestyle Pt. 1

Over the past two months we have been engaged in an ongoing discussion about what being missional means here in Metropolis.  You will remember that being missional essentially means that as a church and as individual followers of Jesus, we see ourselves as missionaries to our community.  Being missional is far more than just a program or strategy for church growth.  Being missional is ultimately a lifestyle that reflects the attitude, character, and purposes of Jesus.   Over the next few weeks I want to lay out some of the characteristics of a missional lifestyle.  My prayer is that God will use these articles to challenge you and help you to live out a missional life in your neighborhood, community, workplace, and family.

The first characteristic of someone who is living a missional lifestyle is that they are singularly devoted to Jesus Christ.  When asked what the greatest commandment was Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord Your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37) What this verse tells us is that Jesus is to occupy the first place in our life.  There are to be no rivals.  Jesus must come before our own pleasures and delights. He must come before our families and other relationships.  He must come before our careers and even our church.  Jesus must be first in our lives. The Apostle Paul expressed this characteristic in Philippians 3:8 where he says, “Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ…”  Paul is saying in that verse that in comparison to knowing Jesus nothing else in this world has any value.  Jesus had so consumed his life that for Paul nothing else mattered.

When we are uniquely dedicated to Jesus we will desire to serve and honor Him above all else.  Personal comforts, pleasures and preferences all will take a back seat to what Jesus desires.  We will  begin to reflect the character of Jesus in real and tangible ways.  His desires will become our desires.  His concerns will become our concerns.   Most notably, we will begin to exhibit the attitude of a servant.  According to the Bible this attitude of service was one of the distinguishing marks of Jesus’ character.  Matthew 20:28 says, “the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”  Philippians 2:6-7 says Jesus, “did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant…”  But it is also telling that the most frequent word Jesus used to describe His followers was “servants.” In other words, we cannot really claim to be dedicated followers of Jesus if we are not serving others.

Being a servant is an essential part of what it means to live the missional lifestyle.  A life lived solely for its own pleasure or preferences is the direct opposite of being missional.  A missional Christian is always on the look out for ways to serve others as a reflection of the way Jesus served us.  That means that within the church we look for ways to serve other followers of Christ.  Philippians 2:3-4 says, “Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.  Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.”  Being a servant means we don’t get upset when someone is in our seat on Sunday morning and are gladly willing to give it up so someone else will have a seat.  It means that we gladly accommodate visitors by letting them have our parking spots or sitting in the balcony so that they won’t have to.  It means that we are cook meals for members of our Sunday School class when they are sick.  It means that we work in the nursery and children’s ministry and don’t complain about it.  Of course, the list could go on forever but you get the point.

But being a servant is not limited to just those inside the church.  Being missional means we are servants in our neighborhoods, workplaces and schools as well as in our churches.  This means that we intentionally look for ways to display the love of Jesus to the people around us.  We find ways to serve people and show them the gospel in action as a first step towards sharing with them what Jesus did on the cross.  Go over to that neighbor and help them cut their grass or clean up their yard.  Carry someone’s groceries to the car for them.  Volunteer to watch a friends kids so that they can go out.  Don’t do it expecting to get anything back- just serve for the sheer joy of serving Jesus.  I guarantee that if you pursue a lifestyle of missional service you will get opportunities to share the gospel.

 

Missional Preaching Pt .2

Over the past several weeks, we have had an ongoing discussion about what being missional looks like in Metropolis. Last week I began a discussion of what the preaching ministry should look like in such a context. As you will remember, missional simply means that as a church and individual followers of Jesus, we view ourselves as missionaries. In other words, we see ourselves as having the same responsibilities in our community as a missionary on a foreign field would have. A missionary has to learn the language, culture, customs, and distinctive of the people he is trying to reach in order to determine the best way to present the gospel. Our goal is to present the life-changing message of Jesus to the people of our community and see them transformed by God’s grace. However, we know there are all kinds of barriers standing between the people of our community and the gospel. Some of these barriers are supernatural and only Jesus can break them down. Others, however, exist because of differences in culture and language. On the foreign mission field, these barriers are easy to spot and no one ever questions the need to overcome them. It is harder to recognize barriers that keep people from hearing the gospel here in America but they do exist and we must be willing to tear them down if we want to be effective.

Here in the American church we have developed our own way of speaking, dressing, and relating to each other that is foreign to the un-churched. In the past, these differences were much smaller and represented less of a barrier to the gospel. But today that gap has widened significantly. Today when an un-churched person walks into the average church, they are bombarded with a culture that is foreign to them. We speak in a strange language. We dress different. The songs we sing are not like anything they are used to hearing. These all can become major barriers to the presentation of the gospel.

So, you ask, what does all of this have to do with preaching? Actually a great deal more than you might think. If we agree, as we all should, that the mission of the church is to glorify God by reaching the lost with the gospel we must pay close attention to how we deal with these barriers. In fact, it would make good sense to tear down as many manmade barriers as we can as we proclaim the good news. Just consider the preaching of Paul in the books of Acts to see that there is a Biblical mandate to match our preaching to the audience. When Paul preached to the Jews, he went to the synagogue and started his proclamation with the story of Abraham. But when he went to Athens, he went to the Areopagus and started his presentation at creation. He even quoted from the pagan philosophers of his day to drive his point home. (Acts 17:16-34). Paul, like any good preacher, knew that he must speak in a manner that is relevant to the audience. Starting with the story of Abraham or the law would not make any sense to the Greeks in Athens, so Paul matched his message to the audience he was speaking to.

So how does this apply to preaching today? Preaching in a missional context requires the preacher to understand he is speaking to two different audiences- the churched and the un-churched. Too many times sermons aim at only one of these crowds and often that crowd ends up being the already churched. The goal of missional preaching must be to make sure that we speak in such a way that the un-churched can understand the message. What we would regard as the traditional sermon is really a reflection of how this concept has been applied in the past. For instance, the verse-by-verse preaching that I am most attracted to and comfortable with is largely a development of the reformation period. People during that period had been forbidden to have access to the Bible and so there was a great hunger and thirst for knowing what it said. Furthermore, the reformation was part of the larger movement known as the enlightenment, which was marked by a tremendous interest in all kinds of learning. My point here is not to bore you with a history lesson but to demonstrate to you that this kind of preaching was contextualized for the culture they were trying to reach. The same could be said for the three points and poem sermons that became popular in the early part of the twentieth century. What we now regard as traditional forms of preaching were actually developed to make the preaching of the church relevant at a specific point in history. What I would like to suggest is that rather than copying the methodology of the past we should seek to find the most effective ways to preach to our modern audience. There are three characteristics of our modern culture that I think must be reflected in the way we preach.

First, this is a culture longing for truth but has no idea where to find it. Two generations of Americans have been taught by the education system, media, and world that there is no objective truth. No one really believes this when it comes to things like banking, medicine, or their paychecks, but the majority of Americans do hold this view when it comes to morals and religion. The un-churched in America no longer trust the church as a source of authority and are skeptical of the Bible. When it comes to the Bible, what I am finding is that most un-churched people still have some respect for it but aren’t sure whether they can really trust it. Furthermore, since they have grown up in an era of pragmatism the only test of truth they really trust is whether or not something works. I saw this lived out in a Christian worldview class I recently taught at a local college. During the course of the class I presented all of the typical evidences and defenses of the Christian faith I could think of and none of them had any real impact on the non-Christians in the class. However, as we compared the worldviews of other world religions to Christianity several students began expressing interest in becoming followers of Jesus. When I asked them what had convinced them they all said, “Because it works.” This is an important insight into the mind of the un-churched. We must show them how the Bible works in real life if we expect them to be interested in it. Therefore, preaching in a missional context will require heavy doses of practical application. Thankfully, most Christians sitting in the pew will not object to this emphasis on application because they too are longing to see how it works.

Second, this culture is very skeptical of any truth claim, therefore, we must be willing to wrestle with the text more than we have in the past. There was a day when a preacher could stand in the pulpit and expect the audience to believe what he said just because he showed it to them in the Bible. That day is gone. The un-churched are skeptical, therefore, we must wrestle with their objections. As a preacher that means I must wrestle with the objections that the un-churched are going to bring up in their minds and try to head them off at the past. This is a place where I actually encounter resistance from Christians at times. Sometimes people who have been in church for years will come up to me and say, “Pastor, you don’t need to talk about all of those objections and problems. Just give us the Bible.” I know what they’re saying and appreciate their advice, however, what they don’t realize is that while they may not question or wrestle with the text, the guy sitting beside them does. What I hope will happen here at First is that we will all become sensitive to the needs of the un-churched. After-all they are the people we are trying to reach; therefore, we need to think about them in everything we do. This means that sometimes in the preaching of the Bible we need to raise the problems and difficulties of a passage. We need to be willing to wrestle with the hard things of the Bible.

Third, this is a culture longing for something real and authentic. When an un-churched person visits with us, they want to encounter real people and real life. They are immediately turned off any hint of hypocrisy and preachers that they see as fake or plastic. They are not looking for a preacher to be polished and professional, instead they are looking for someone who can understand them and who is real about who he is. This is a very big issue for many Christians who are used to having Pastors who never admit mistakes, never seem to struggle and present an unrealistic picture of what being a Christian is all about. The un-churched see right through that façade and label it hypocrisy. They want someone who is real and genuine. Someone who they can see is not detached from the real world but struggling with it just like everyone else. This means that the preaching of the church needs to be transparent and conversational. It needs to reflect real life and real struggles.

 

Missional Preaching Pt. 1

This week I want to continue our conversation on becoming a missional church but I would like to start getting more specific.  I’d like to start taking the conversation towards some specific actions and changes we will need to make in order for this vision to become a reality.  Over the next weeks and months, my plan is to lay out a range of specific actions intended to make our worship, outreach, and discipleship more missional in nature.  However, to begin this discussion I want to take a couple of weeks to talk about the preaching ministry of the church.  All of you know that I believe the preaching ministry of the church must be central to everything we do.  If the preaching is not right then it is doubtful that any of the other ministries in the church will be right.  So preaching must be a top priority in the life of the church.  Specifically, I want to share in with you some thoughts about what preaching will look like in the context of a missional church.

One of the primary characteristics of missional preaching is that must be focused on life change.  I just finished reading Andy Stanley’s book Communicating for a Change and found myself to be greatly challenged concerning this issue.  Stanley points out that preachers have basically three options when it comes to preaching.  They can teach the Bible to people, they can teach people the Bible or they can teach people how to live a life that reflects the values, principles, and truths of the Bible.  The first option, to teach the Bible to people, focuses exclusively on the content of the Scripture.  Essentially, the preacher just stands up and explains what the Bible says and then lets everyone try to figure out what to do with it.  This is a favorite approach of many of the men that I love and respect in the ministry but it has no Biblical foundation.  Never in the Bible will you see the content of Scripture being taught without application being made.  The second approach is a little better in that the preacher focuses on audience as he prepares the message.  He tries to make the message easy to understand and memorable by using various means of good communication.  But a gain, this model falls short of the Biblical view of preaching because it aims at understanding rather than life-change.

The third option is the one Stanley advocates and that I think is the most Biblical model for preaching.  In this option the preacher focuses on applying the text to life and showing people how to live the values, principles, and truths of the Bible.  This kind of preaching focuses far more on applying the passage than explaining the content of the passage. Stanley writes, “Preaching for life change requires far less information and more application.  Less explanation and more inspiration.  Lest first century and more twenty-first century.”(p.96) Some will quickly argue that this kind of preaching will ignore the text and focus too much on people’s felt needs.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  To preach for life change requires the same in-depth study of the text but with more attention given in the presentation to showing how the principles are to be lived out.

As I have been thinking about my preaching it has occurred to me that most of my preaching has fallen into the first category.  I am usually more concerned about having a lot of content and do not think much about how to apply all of this information to life.  I went back and listened to a few of my sermons from the last year and tried to put myself in the place of an unchurched person.  Basically, I realized that generally speaking there is simply far too much content even for the average Christian to absorb let alone an unchurched man or woman.  So my goal is to focus more on learning how to apply the Bible to life and showing how the principles, values and truths of the Scripture can be lived out.  To do this I will need to do the following two things and I would like to ask you to pray for me as I strive to get better.  First, I need to focus on smaller amounts of material, specifically, on just one point from the text.  This means that often I will be preaching two or three sermons in a row from the same passage.  But each sermon will focus on just one point.  Second, I need to spend more time reflecting on specific actions that we need to take as a community of believers to live out the truth. This means far more reflection and prayer about what we should do because of the sermon.

I would like for you to help me in this task by doing three things.  First, pray for me.  Ask God to give me wisdom as I preach the Word.  Second, hold me accountable.  Don’t let me slip into my little professor role and focus just on passing on information without showing you how to apply it.  Third, give me some feedback about what is helping you and what is not.

 

A Missional Worldview

As you know, I have been thinking a great deal lately about the problem of the declining church in America and what the solution is. Just the other night KFVS news aired a short report about the decline of Christianity in America. They reported that here in Illinois, the average church attendance is down 8% from what it was ten years ago. Nearly every denomination is experiencing decline. For years, this decline was limited to the liberal mainline denominations but now the trend has carried over to the more conservative groups, including our own Southern Baptist Convention, which has reported three straight years of decline. So what is the problem and how do we fix it?

At least part of the problem stems from the fact that most churches in America are living in a by-gone era and are simply not equipped to reach their communities. In a recent article that appeared in The Tennesean, Ed Stetzer, points out that many denominations simply grew complacent thinking that what they had always been doing would continue to work. In the past churches faced little competition and could count on a culture that was still marginally Christian. He states, “We had home-field advantage. We had gotten used to being the place where people went when they had spiritual needs. And now we are like bears fed by tourists, and the tourists are gone.” I like his analogy of bears that have been consistently fed by tourists. I remember as a kid driving through the Smoky Mountains and seeing all kinds of bears standing around the trash bins and pull offs along the road. A couple of years ago, we took a vacation to the mountains and I was surprised that I did not see one single bear. I remember asking a part ranger why that was and he told me that the bears had forgotten how to fend for themselves because the tourists kept feeding them. This reminds me of the church. The church is declining in America by-and-large because we have forgotten how to go out and reach people with the gospel. Gone are the days when a church can simply hang up a sign or hand out some flyers and draw a crowd. The culture that we live in, even in Metropolis, has lost its Christian grounding and memory. The church cannot sit and wait for people to come to us, we must go to them. We must regain a missional world view.

A missional world view believes that God is on a mission to redeem a people for Himself out of very tribe, nation and tongue (Rev. 5:9). We see this mission unfold from the beginning of the Bible all the way to the end. Throughout the Old Testament God prepared the way for the coming of His Son. In the Gospels we see God accomplishing the work of redemption through the life and death of His Son, Jesus. In Acts and the Epistles, we see that God has invited every believer and every local church to be a part of that mission. This missional view of the world should fundamentally change the way we think about ourselves and the church.

First, God’s invitation to be on mission should cause us to change the way we think about the church. A missional world view sees the church as being God’s instrument for reaching the world. In other words, the local church has a missional purpose. Most Christian agree with that statement in principle but fail to carry it out in practice. The old saying says “the church is the only institution that exists entirely for the benefit of those outside its membership” yet in practice most churches have lost this focus. Far too often we are more concerned about keeping things the way they have always been than adjusting them in order to reach the lost. Obviously, you all know that I am not talking about compromising on the gospel or on the fundamental doctrines of the faith. Churches usually do not divide over those issues anyways, but they will divide when personal preferences become more important than the mission of reaching the lost. Some would divide the church over the style of architecture, or dress, or music, or order of service, or programs. They would rather hold on to what they have always done than to adjust in order to reach the lost. A church that adopts a missional world view, however, will be willing to change how it does things in order to reach people for Jesus. It will be willing to sacrifice personal preference for the purpose of reaching the lost.

Second, God’s invitation to be on mission should cause us to change the way we think about ourselves. A missional world view sees every local church as a missionary in its community and every Christian as a missionary to his or her sphere of influence. The New Testament shows us that the gospel moves along relational lines. For instance, when James was converted he went and told Peter (John 1:35-42) and the woman at the well went and told the men in her village (John 4:27-38). Everyone has a sphere of influence, a group of friends, family members, co-workers, and acquaintances that they influence. To be missional means to see yourself as a missionary to that group of people. You are God’s ambassador to your friends, co-workers, neighbors, and family. This means it is your responsibility to live like Jesus in front of them and to find opportunities to share the good news with them.

The decline of the American church cannot be stopped in a day nor will it be easy. The 1950′s are not coming back and the church, like it has always done, will adapt to the new cultural climate we find ourselves in. Churches that refuse to become missional in their thinking in ministry will slowly die and disappear. Churches that accept the missional mandate laid out in the New Testament will engage their culture and reach their communities with gospel. As your Pastor, my prayer is that we will become a missional church. The only way for that to happen, however, is for each of you to adopt a missional way of looking at and engaging the world.

 

What Does Missional Look Like in Metropolis? Pt. 2

I read a statistic the other day that shocked me, according to a recent study 90% of heart patients faced with the need to make changes in their lifestyle choose to die rather than making change.  That shocked me until I stopped and thought about it for a moment.  No one likes change and if forced to, I would have to admit that I dislike change as much as anyone.  The simple reason that I dislike change so much is that I like to be comfortable and I have gone to great lengths to organize my life in a way that is comfortable for me.  Change means that I will have to leave that comfort zone.  I will have to do things that might make me uncomfortable and disturb my carefully maintained equilibrium.  Do you have the same problem?  I guarantee that you do and if you want me to prove it just let me come over to your house and start rearranging it.  You would very quickly discover that change makes us very uncomfortable.

I think that this basic aversion to change is what hinders the church in America from being effective.  The statistical evidence has been mounting over the last decade to show that the church is in decline in America.  In our own Southern Baptist Denomination, nearly 90% of our churches are either plateued or declining.  Sadly, much of the reason for this decline is the failure of the church to engage the emerging culture around it.  No one can doubt that we are experiencing one of the greatest cultural shifts in the history of our nation and perhaps even the world.  But unfortunately, the church has largely stayed in the 1950′s ministering to a culture that does not exist anywhere except in its own four walls.  This failure to engage the culture has resulted in a devastating decline in evangelism and conversions.

Last week on this blog we began a discussion about what it means to be missional in Metropolis.  Part of this involves being willing to change so that we can engage the culture we live in.  We will discuss specific changes in future articles but I think it is important to understand the difference between principles, methods, and preferences.  One of my favorite professors in seminary was Dr. Elmer Towns.   He was famous for drilling the following saying into the minds of his students, “Methods are many, principles are few, methods may change but principles never do.”  Often this distinction gets forgotten in the church.

There are principles that we should be willing to die for and that are never up for compromise.  For instance, we believe in the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible.  This is a principle that we are not willing to ever give up.  We believe in the virgin birth, the substitutionary atonement, that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone for the glory of God alone.  These are all principles that we should never give up.  They are the foundational, fundamental issues of our Christian life.

Our methods represent our principles as applied to culture.  Methods will change as the culture changes.  We may not like that and it may make us uncomfortable but it is true.  Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:22 “…I have become all things to all men, that might by all means save some.”  What Paul is talking about in this passage is his willingness to set aside personal preferences and adapt his methods to reach his audience.  For instance, when Paul was preaching to Jews he went to the synagogue, dressed like a Jew, talked like a Jew and started his gospel presentation in the Old Testament law.  But in Acts 17, when he preached in Athens, Paul adapted his methods to fit the context that he was preaching in.  He went to where the Gentiles met, the Areopagus.  He spoke the language they could understand, even quoting from popular Greek poets and philosophers.  He started his presentation not in the law but in their misunderstanding of who God is and creation.  In other words, Paul was not afraid to change in order to preach the gospel.  He understood that the principles of the gospel never change but the methods of presentation will.

So what does this have to do with the church?  Simply put, we must be willing to embrace change if we are going to be effective in reaching our community with the gospel.  While we will never compromise our principles we should always be willing to change our methods and sacrifice our preferences.  To be on mission with God, Abraham had to leave his hometown and his fathers house.  To be on mission with God, Paul has to be willing to give up his personal preferences and become the missionary to the Gentiles.  To be on mission Jesus had to leave the glory of heaven and become a servant.  To be on mission we will have to change.  We will have to be willing to sacrifice personal preferences for the sake of reaching the lost and dying of our community with the gospel. I leave you with the words of that famous hymn writer/theologian Bob Dylan:

Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.