Believing the Best About Our Church

As you come to him, the living stone, rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Note carefully, you are, like living stones, being built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood. Alright, then in Mark chapter 12, verse 29, one of the teachers, that's 28, one of the teachers of the law came and heard them debating and noticing that Jesus had given them a good answer, he asked him, of all the commandments, which is the most important? The most important one answer, Jesus, is this, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. And the second is this, love your neighbor as yourself. On a recent flight from the West into Pittsburgh, a young, casually dressed, but rather hip-looking fellow with glazy eyes sat down in the seat next to me. As the conversation inevitably does, it moved to the topic of, what business are you in? Well, I, wanting to postpone the shock as long as possible, told him I was in the building business. And he said, well, what do you build? And I say, well, churches. Oh, he said, you're in construction. Then I knew where I was headed with this. He said, well, sort of. I said, I'm a pastor. At which point he nearly swallowed his tobacco chew and began to say, well, it wasn't really meaning all the things he'd said previously during the flight. He said these words, I never heard of a pastor who built a church. I thought, you know, that's really odd. Because the Bible uses the analogy of building all the time when it comes to churches. A few weeks ago, we read in Matthew 16 where Jesus said, and I will build my church. Remember that? I will build it. I'm not just going to say it and let it happen. I'm going to build it, Jesus said. We just read here in 1 Peter 2, 24, that we, or 2, 4, we are like living stones being built into a tabernacle of the Lord's dwelling. Paul frequently uses the word build. He said, verse 10 of 1 Corinthians 3, by the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder. And someone else is building on it. You see, the Lord is in the building business. He's taking living stones and putting them into order. And how many of you believe that God knows what he's doing when it comes to building? God is a wise builder. He knows exactly what's going on. He's not getting surprised by some faults in the construction process of his church. He's looking to build a place where he can bring people and say, now look here. This is my church. This is my house, we just read in 1 Peter 2, 4. These people are different. These people have different values. These people have different priorities. These people treat each other with respect and with love. These people have determined that their lives are going to make a difference, eternally speaking. During the course of the study break that I recently enjoyed this summer, a question kept gnawing at me. It just kept kind of haunting me week by week as I just sought the Lord and prayed and read the word and just relaxed. I asked the question, Lord, are you really still building the church? I mean, if I look around here in America, I don't really know if I see it the way it says it here. And I had the statistics, Lord, to bear me out. Did you know that since 1965, the last 25 years, that the number of unchurched people in America has grown from 61 million to 78 million? We've literally lost ground. Did you know that the major denominations have all lost members over the last 25 years? Over 6 million and counting, rising all the time? Did you know that since 1980, just more recently, that the percentage of adults who are classified as born again in America has been absolutely dead flat even? 32%. That's who say they're born again. I don't believe it's that high. Dead flat even. No growth. And that's despite the fact that in the 80s, we had a massive outpouring of dollars spent on evangelism, billions. We had incredible amounts of television. We have over 1,000 Christian radio stations. We published over 5,000 Christian titles in that decade. No growth. What's happening in the building business? Maybe Jesus decided that we in America really didn't need the church anymore. Maybe he looked down from heaven and said, you know, they're doing okay. They're Americans. Maybe they don't need me anymore. Maybe there's enough churches in America. You ever ask that question? You know, you go down into Pittsburgh and you see one here, here, here. There's enough churches. The problem is what? They're all empty. There's enough buildings, probably. There's not enough churches. Here in America, it's what I call 3D. We're living in 3D America. Remember when you were kids? And even occasionally you'd see them. They'd bring out the glasses and you'd put them on. You'd see things, you know, with that extra dimension of 3D. The 3D of America is divorce, drugs, and debt. That's America's 3D. And I was thinking about this related to you. And you know what I believe the Lord put in my heart? That every person in this room has been affected by one of those. And many people in this room have been affected by all three of them. Profoundly affected. It's fair to say, without a lot of documentation, that America needs Jesus Christ like it never has needed him. So then what's going on? Why aren't churches growing? I mean, why is a congregation like this the exception? And I have things to say about this congregation in a minute that aren't all that rosy. But why is it, folks? Is Jesus moving out of the building business? Well, I believe it's both an outward and an inward problem. Outwardly, we know the reasons why people reject church, don't we? I mean, the rap on church out on this street is, as this fellow was telling me in the airplane, it's irrelevant. It doesn't talk to me about the things that I need to know about. I mean, I've got decisions to make in my life and it doesn't speak to me. He said, I went to church after being gone for ten years. I went back to church and it was exactly the same. The same songs at the same place, in the same spot in the bulletin. The only thing that was different was the faces on the platform. The rap on the church out there is that it's religion in there and religion kills. You know, people are smarter than we give them credit for. Religion has always killed and it's still killing. So people stay away from where they think religion is coming from. Out on the street, the question about church is, can I trust them? Do they just want my money? And that's despite the fact that inside, people are more interested spiritually than they've ever been. Pat Robertson of the 700 Club recently conducted a study that said, people today, 60% more people today than five years ago, are interested in spiritual things. They're more interested. They want to find out what's going on. They know that life around them isn't really making a lot of sense. That's external. Now, internally, there's some other things happening that are keeping the church from being built. And the biggest one right now, and I think this is one that affects us right here at Northwest, is that far too many Christians have developed what I want to call a consumer mentality when it comes to church. I want to go, the prevailing question is, where my needs will be best met when I feel like it. It's not uncommon. I talk to people here who attend two and three, four churches a week. It's not uncommon for people to stick around for a few months, then go somewhere else, if they just feel it's a little bit more to their liking. You know, there's a church rating system out there. Well, we'll rate this one six on a praise, and seven on a worship, and four on the preaching, and eight on the singles ministry, and four in the... And people just, you know, consume it. Use it up to meet their needs. Another reason is that internally, we fear change in the church. Why is the church always the last one to kind of sense what the movement of things might be? I suppose if we lived back in the days of the early church, we would have marveled at the fact in Acts chapter 6 when they said, hey, wait a minute. You know, the apostles got to... We're not supposed to wait on tables. We need deacons. I could hear it now, you know. Deacons? We've never done it that way before. We can't have deacons. We can't do it differently. Another reason why the church has ceased growing is that there's a failure, as the church does grow, to embrace the roles of ministry. We'd rather sit back and let the professionals do it. We'd rather sit back and let the people that are more gifted take over. And folks, I know that it's not that easy to find where you fit, but let me say this. To the best that I understand what we're doing around here, the doors are wide open, and if you sense that you're to fit someplace, if God's given you some gifts, then get in our faces and tell us that. We can't afford to have 1,500 spectators and 25 people in ministry around here. The needs are overwhelming. The opportunities are overwhelming. Far too many people passively kind of wait around until everything's just right, and then maybe they'll have a home group luncheon or something. Let me just say that the Holy Spirit just poured into my heart a lot of conviction this summer about where we are in these things, that we've allowed some of these attitudes to creep into our lives together. And you know, in a way, the prosperity of our church has kind of been a liability to us because things have gone relatively well. We've all kind of been able to sort of assume that it's going to keep being that way. Folks, one thing that we determined years ago was that there's one constant that's always going to be around here, and what is that constant? Change. It's always going to change. And that's where we are today. You see, in the middle of all this, the Lord brought me back to the very simple words of Mark 12. Let's look at it again, just in case you've lost track of it. Mark chapter 12. Jesus said that the most important commandment is this. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. The Lord said to me, what's your purpose? Why does this church exist? Why am I building it? Let's just get simple again. Let's focus once again. Our purpose is to be a place where lives are changed. How many of you do not want to play Christian games? I don't want to look at you if you're the same 25 years from now as you are today, spiritually speaking, or two years from now. What we're called to do around here is to take the spark of spiritual sensitivity that I believe dwells in every one of you, or you wouldn't be here, and to just breathe on that little spark and raise it up into a flame of passion that we talked about two weeks ago. It's on fire for Christ. During the course of those long summer weeks, I worked with the elders and the staff on developing a mission statement. For all of you who are consumers, here's my challenge to you. Consider what I'm going to tell you in the next 15 minutes and decide something. Decide, does God want me to be part of what this church is about? Is this what I want my life to become? And here is the beginning of that statement, that mission statement. North Way Christian Community, go ahead, put it up, is to be a place where we forge our character and free our culture. Forge our character and free our culture. Let me talk about those two things for a moment. The driving impetus of my ministry has always been to create a spiritual climate where balance is the operative word. And I get a lot of hassle from some of you about that. Some of you want to be a whole lot more this way or a whole lot more that way, and so I get kind of pulled. But when I read the scriptures, I see balance in these pages, folks. I see Jesus having tremendous vertical relationship with the Father and tremendous horizontal relationship with the people. I see spiritual and practical. I see faith and works. I see receiving and giving. I see personal growth and I see corporate acts of compassion. In the words of Elizabeth O'Connor in the 70s, there's a journey inward and a journey outward. And they've got to be in balance. Jesus' entire ministry reflected it and these words reflected it. Look at it. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, but also love your neighbor. You can't do one and ignore the other. In other words, have a heart that's growing big for God, but also have a heart that's overflowing in compassion for the people around you. And when those two things, either one of them, get out of whack, folks, we just get stuck. The building stops. Forge your character. To me, the Christian life is about character. Let me just step out a second here and talk to you about the recent crusade, all right? The Reiner Bunke crusade, which received an awful lot of media attention. The Christian media, very little anywhere else that I saw. It was a wonderful demonstration of churches working together and certainly the attendance was good and I'm sure that the fruit is being born. I'm grateful for that. But now the crusade is over and we may have a little afterglow meeting and, you know, have a little evaluation meeting. What really is going to matter? I mean, over the long haul, what really is going to matter? It isn't events, folks. They're wonderful, but if that's all we're living for, life will not sustain its meaning. What really has to drive us is what's going on in the inside. What really has to satisfy us is what's going on in the inside. It's the integrity of our hearts that's going to be that which either pleases us in God or doesn't. Character that looks like Jesus. And by the way, you know what your character is? It's just simply the composite of your habits. It's not what you do here. Some of you are very convincing here. I want you to know that. I can look out there and see some people on way out there, you know, some spiritual ride somewhere. But I want to know what you like tomorrow morning because that's what the Lord's looking at. Be careful about those things. Character, hearts of integrity. And then, to free our culture. Our culture that you and I know, despite its pretty pictures, is absolutely in the grips of desperate sin. Jesus said to us, love your neighbor as yourself. In other words, do what's good for them. Care for them. Free them from their sin. The church of Jesus, the one that he's building, isn't going to ignore the problems that are out there. The needs for healing and forgiveness and restoration and friendship. And I believe that we have got to press ourselves. You know what I find? Most of us want to slip back into number one and leave number two kind of out there for someone else to do. It's sort of natural. And so as I was wrestling through these things, let's put that mission statement on now. And here are the four ways we're going to do this in the next how many ever years. We're going to shape our culture and we're going to forge our character through nurture, worship, commitment, and care. The church that Jesus is building here in the 90s is going to have these four ingredients. I want to talk about each one of them for just a minute. Nurture. Let's talk about that. Let's back up to nurture, please. We're recommitting ourselves to nurturing or developing people in this church. We know that there's only one input that really ultimately changes us, and what is it? It's the Bible. It's God's Word. How many of you have a love for the Bible? This church is unique in one way, and that is a lot of ways actually, but one way that keeps touching my heart is that the Word of God is just always being woven into things. And I want to urge you, keep doing it. What we're going to do in the coming months, Wednesday night we're going to shift from being sort of a general meeting where we have praise and worship and ministry, and we are going to bring intense focus on the Word of God. We're going to get down in there. Those of you who like the thick steak type spiritual food, boom, that's when it's going to be, Wednesday night. Some of our teachings are going to... I mean, it's just going to be a full meal. We're going to nurture. We've got lots of other opportunities that we're opening up. Right now, Pastor Scott alluded to discovering the way, and we have Growing in Christ that just started. If you're a newer Christian, or maybe you're not even convinced yet, you can check out the Claims of Christ there, marriage and family and financial seminars. We're going to be doing all kinds of things to build, to nurture, because folks, I want to keep growing, and I know you do too. We're going to avail ourselves of all the best resources out there, and if there's someone out there that can do it better than someone here can, and we can get them or her here, we're going to do it, because you people deserve the best that's out there, and that's what we're going to have. And then worship. We're going to forge our character and free our culture through worship. For the believer, worship. This is just so incredible to me. Now, we all know what's happening at 4 o'clock today. What's happening at 4 o'clock today? The space shuttle's going off, right? No. The U.S. Open, someone said, the only person I'll have the U.S. Open on is right over here. What's it going to be? Steelers and the Browns. Conservative middle America will be watching, very politely speaking their accolades and showing very little emotion because it's not appropriate to display your emotions in public. Just watch that, all right? Just remember people's spiritual answers to why they don't worship. But anyhow, for the believer, worship needs to continue to be vital. And I have to say it's such an important part of our heritage here. And we want to keep growing in worship. And we want to ask the Lord to just refresh us in worship. You folks have indicated that that's what you want to keep doing. And we know when we do worship, the Holy Spirit shows up and exciting things happen for those of us who have faith to receive. We're going to ask you to consider something here, and I'll explain it in a moment. We're going to ask some of you to consider, those of you who want a more expressive, consistent worship experience, to join us on Saturday evening. We've decided that the best way we can meet both of our goals, and I'll get to it in a minute, is to invite a lot of you who just decide, that's when I want to be expressive and I want to bring wholehearted praise into the house of the Lord, to come Saturday night at 7 o'clock, beginning on the 29th of September. And we're just going to let things kind of happen that night. Let that be our time of just bringing a special praise offering into the house of the Lord together. At the same time, we're trusting that, as some of you come for that time, a lot of rooms are going to get opened up for a lot of people who need a climate in which they can come to terms with who Christ is. Folks, many of you have tried to convince me otherwise, and I'm not buying it. People today are coming and examining the claims of Christ without buying into all the accoutrements. Things have changed since 1987. Let's get out of it, let's get out of our minds. It's not the same that it was 10 years ago. The charismatic movement is over. Reiner Vonky proved that once again. 15,000 people, 14,000 Christians. That's what it was. What we have to understand is, when Jesus ministered, he went out and he spoke in parables, he put the truth in front of people, and then he brought his disciples and said, now look, this is for you. These people deal with where they're at, and this is for you. And what we've discovered, 89% of you agree that this needs to be a place where we can bring the unsafe to hear the gospel. 69% of you said it'd be Sunday morning at 11 o'clock. The problem is, there's no more seats. Now I know your heart is to say, if it means that someone might come to know Christ, I'll give up my seat and come to another service. Isn't that true? Let me see your hand if that's true for you. Alright, I know that's true in your heart. And it's not going to be a whole lot different than it is now. But we're going to give place for people to come. And if you have a friend, an office worker, an associate, a friend in your neighborhood, we're going to be sensitive to them, and we believe, listen, we believe that God has called us to do that. We believe the harvest is just beginning in this church for the unsafe. The third thing is commitment. I've just touched on this, but commitment, the only way I know to forge character and free culture is to be committed. And I want to talk to those of you who maybe have slipped into the consumer mentality. Let me just say to you that the only way I know for this to stop in any church is to recognize one thing, that you've got to abandon the church consumer mentality because it's the Holy Spirit that places you in a body. And the question you have to ask yourself is, did God leave me here? Well, I don't know, did He or didn't He? Well, dear one, the only person in the world that knows if God led you here is you. And if you know that circumstances or relationships or direct revelation from the Lord led you here, then at the risk of your own peace and your own obedience and your own faith, don't move until God says to move. Be part of things, good and bad. Listen, sometimes it's not all good up here. Go ahead and say amen, all right? That's all right. I can live with that. It's not. We're people. It gets ragged sometimes. How about your family? Is every day a perfect day? How was it this morning in your family? Go ahead and look at your spouse. Tell them, well, honey, we're talking about... Well, it's that way here. We're normal people, but folks, if you pull the plug when it's not the way you want it, what kind of church is this going to be? What kind of family would you have? Isn't that the curse of the family today? People pulling the plug when they don't like it. If God's woven you in here, then rejoice with us. Participate with us. Be part of what's happening. And if you're a nonbeliever or a skeptic, there aren't many in this service, but if maybe you're just checking things out today, then I want to say to you, our commitment to you is that every week we're going to bring in front of you the claims of the gospel. We're going to have you come to terms with the fact that there is only one way truth in life, and that's Jesus Christ. And that you've got to come to terms with that. Sometimes we have to shake you up to do it. Sometimes God has to just let your world get turned upside down. We've discovered that most people come to Christ in a crisis. Their marriage, their job, their health, something goes down the chute, and then they say, I don't have it all again. But we're going to be a church that keeps an outward focus. And in the words of Reiner Bonnke, a church that's not winning the lost is lost itself. The fourth way we're going to forge our character and free our culture is through care. Now, folks, how many of you would like to figure out how to care for 1,500 adults? It is not easy stuff. I was recently at a conference, and I was told that if a church had 40% of its people involved in some kind of caring relationship, it was excellent. That's where we are, 40%, 45%. But that's not what God says is excellent. I don't believe that. That might be what the church consultants say. You see, it's different than it was in Acts 2. Back then, people just stayed together. I mean, you know, families stayed together. People didn't go 50 directions on the weekend. There wasn't automobiles to go over to the resort for the day or camping or whatever. They didn't fill up their lives with sports and media and entertainment and things like that. You know, Jake would just look at Izzy and say, Well, are you going to home group tonight? Yeah, I guess so. Nothing else to do. You know, that was it. That's the only thing on the menu. But relationships are still what it's all about in the church. The facts are people who don't get connected simply don't grow. I hate to say it like that. If you don't get connected, in the end, you're not going to grow. Jesus isn't building his church in a vacuum. This little block is sitting right next to this little block. This piece of concrete is right next to that one. Sometimes we rub, but folks, I want you to know that rubbing is like honing off my rough edges. And it's making me a little bit more like Jesus wants me to be. What we're going to ask you to do is consider this. We prayed about this, and I know I'm risking some people misunderstanding motivation. We are starting, and I've written about it on the cover of your notes, right now, for the next three and a half months, what we're calling Operation Care. What we're going to do is ask every home group person and person that's actively involved in the network of caring to work with their home group leader. It's all going to be kind of shared with you in an orderly fashion. But we're going to ask the five or six hundred of you in home groups to care for the other six or seven hundred of you who aren't in home groups. Now, listen very carefully. I'm not saying that you're all going to be assigned to a home group. That won't work. I am saying that every one of you will have a home group assigned to you. In the next three and a half months, you're going to get a phone call or a contact of some sort every month, and you're going to be invited to share in what that home group is doing to edify, to build up, to encourage, to support one another. And can I tell you, folks, if every one of you would say, I'm willing to change, I'm willing to try, I'm willing to maybe make a new attempt, I believe God would want a movement to start in this. A new wave, all right? Some new things. I'm tired of hearing why it can't happen. The greatest resource in this church is the Holy Spirit in each of you. Do you believe that? It's the greatest resource. It's not me. It's you. But the greatest need in this church is also you. And all I'm saying is that you're going to care for you and you and you and you. And the only orderly way that we can do this is through the home group ministry. Today, home group leaders are going to walk back, and they have assignments. I want you to pick those up today, home group leaders, and get with your people. And we've all spelled this out, and care is going to start to happen in this church. And then, as we care for each other, I believe we can care for the needs of people out there as well. We have all kinds of ministry, support groups, ACOA, single parents met Friday night. When we have things like that, it's in the church that God wants to care. Let me conclude with this. I want to have communion today, and it's appropriate, and here's why. We can go ahead and turn that off for now. I have more to say, but time's getting by, and I want to allow for communion. At the end of this summer, normally when I get into the fall season, I kind of find myself rising on sort of a plane of energy and expectation. Something happened to me this summer that was a little bit different. I recognized one important thing. I recognized that Jesus needed to get a hold of my heart in a different way, that he needed to keep forging my character, that in some ways I kind of let my own worship life and my own prayer life and my own communion with him just kind of get a little bit stale. The summer was good for me in that. It just restored that to me. I also realize, folks, that just like many of you, I've gotten so busy that sometimes I've gotten a little hardened to needs around me. I hate it when the phone rings in the middle of the night. Don't you? My phone rang three times Friday night, once last night, in the middle of the night, and I thank God that it did because I want to stay soft. I want to love my neighbor as I would love myself. There's not one of us in this place that doesn't need to have our character forged and have our heart of compassion stirred up that we can free our culture from its sin, from its need. But I don't feel like the storm trooper that's taking the beach. I have to say to you, if it's up to me to build this church, folks, we've capped. This is it. Let's just start working through our problem. I want to say, Jesus, you come and build it. You take it right now. You take my life and you take this church and, Lord, you build it. You stir this brother's heart and this sister's heart. You do it, Lord. You let them have no rest until they've found their place. You build it. And I'm just going to wait. I'm just going to trust. I'm not going to press. I promise you I'm not going to turn pressure on people. Jesus is building the church. It's his church. And I yearn, I pray, I deeply desire that it would be all that he wants us to be. Let's stand together.