Difference Makers I, Tour-Bus Christianity

Something that Dave said earlier, if you're newer to expression and worship, and it just kind of stretches you a bit, let me encourage you with something. This is a long journey, this spiritual walk, this Christian faith, and God will always take you to places where you have to move a little bit, because it's just part of the process, and you'll learn to be thankful for it, because it keeps you dependent on Him, and that's where the grace is. That's why he says, in your weakness I will become strong. Well, as I mentioned earlier, this is a time when a number of people are out on the mission field doing some things that are particularly exciting. Most of you know that Charlie Beck's been our missions director here at North Way for quite a number of years. This photograph's going to come up in just a second. Charlie and his wife Sharon are currently over in the nation of China with about 30 students from Geneva College, traveling the mainland, singing together, and rejoicing in the Lord as they go from city to city, bringing the gospel message to people in mainland China. Now, what's so amazing about this is, to my knowledge, this is the first time that Geneva has taken a group of students together, and they came to North Way and asked us if we'd help them to organize the trip, and 30 students are now taking the gospel all over China. I've had the privilege, as you know, a couple of times to go to India, and in one of my trips I spent a couple of days with our medical missionary by the name of John Abraham. John and Abraham have been there for years. They're native of India, and they have a ministry, and I'm talking about the slums of Bombay, or Mumbai is the more current name. Here's a slide of John doing what he does best, ministering medically to children and little ones, and that's really where he concentrates his efforts, and we support him with our tithes as a church. I remember when I visited John, and we spent a day, one of the most difficult days of my life, really. I mean, we can talk about poverty here, and we can talk about soup kitchens and all, but you can breathe the air, even in the worst parts of our cities, and that part of Bombay, you had to put a mask over your face just to breathe the air. I mean, it was unbelievable. I won't go into the details, just because I don't want to fill your mind with a whole lot of difficult thoughts, but it was really difficult, and to watch people who I know were going to die, and those kinds of things. As we were leaving, we were walking back together toward their apartment, and I couldn't help but notice, there's a relatively broad street that we were walking on, a tour bus went on by, just drove by us, full of passengers, and the glass, though, it was smoke glass, it was translucent enough that I could see through, and make out their faces, and the people kind of looking, almost with their nose pressed against the glass, to see these people that were, especially my white skin was sticking out pretty boldly there, in the middle of all those people in India. And they were looking out, and just kind of curiously wondering what these folks were doing. And it struck me then, loved ones, and I'm sure of it now, that just as I saw these people on the tour bus, just watching people out there as they stayed in their air-conditioned comfort, and sort of took in the sights, that there can be Christians who live their whole life that way. Tour bus Christians, if you will. Folks who view the Christian life from a safe distance, in their comfortable environment, and just sort of watch what's taking place, watch others elbow deep in ministry, watch others trying to make a difference, and they just sort of evaluate and keep right on going as they experience their blessing from God. Now I am aware that here at North Way, it's rather difficult to be a tour bus Christian for long. People are continually challenged to get off and get involved, and people are often asked, what's your next step going to be? And they'll hear testimonies and stories of people who, real people whose lives are being changed. They'll often be placed in the opportunity to be part of a small group, or be part of a ministry. They'll be shown how to get into the Bible on their own. But here's the truth of the matter. In the end, you still have to make that decision. And I would expect today, especially in a crowd this large, that there's a decent number of you who are still tour bus Christians. Kind of just sort of waiting it out, just sort of picking and choosing what it is that you're going to be involved in. And so I wanted to encourage you today to be part of the North Way tour. You see, we just purchased the bus with your tithes and offerings. And it's amazing what you can do with computers these days, isn't it? So there's the North Way bus. And I'm going to be your tour guide. I've got my trusty little laser pointer. I did have a bigger get-up, but I didn't want to kind of distract from the importance of what's going on in that bus. So let's look at this together. Let me just say it this way. If you've come and you're kind of committed to being partially devoted, a casually committed, plain vanilla Christian, you came on the right Sunday. Because I have a message just for you. Here it is, okay? So here's five ways to remain a mediocre Christian. How's that for a way to start a new year, huh? So go ahead and grab your outline out of your notes, or don't if you don't care to. I mean, it's not that important. Maybe mediocre, you don't want to take notes, I wouldn't think, but it's up to you. Here's some habits to cultivate if you want to remain sort of mired in the middle in the year 2001. First thing that a tour bus Christian does is they edit their itinerary. They kind of pick and choose what they want to see. Mediocre Christians, loved ones, here's what they do. They edit scripture. They're very good. They know that the Bible's important, they believe that God inspired them and all that stuff, but when it comes to really taking it to heart in their lives, they're just kind of choosy about what they're going to pick and apply into their lives. In Larry King's biography, Larry King, the talk show host that most of you would recognize, he writes in his biography about growing up in Brooklyn, New York, and being involved, you know, looking for things to do that wasn't full of all the entertainment options that we have today. So they used to go out and play stickball in the streets, but it was always a great find if they could find a vacant lot to play stickball in. And Larry writes and says, you know, sometimes we find a lot and the next day the proprietor, the owner of the lot, would put up a sign on that lot because he didn't want the kids to play there, and the sign would read this. It would read, private, no stickball playing allowed. But Larry King writes in his book, he says, you know, we weren't going to be discouraged by that. I mean, that wasn't what we had in mind. In fact, they read the sign differently. They read the sign this way. Private? No, stickball playing allowed. That's amazing what just a tiny little change will do, isn't it? I mean, so there they were. Had a great time playing stickball. Now, mediocre Christians can do the same thing with Scripture very easily. They interpret the Bible in a way that gives them the permission they need to do what they want to do to kind of keep their feet in both worlds and kind of keep things going. And this goes way back. I mean, Thomas Jefferson was a reported Christian who didn't believe in miracles. And so it's reported in pretty reliable sources that he cut out, physically cut out from his Bible all the passages that related to miracles. He didn't believe in miracles, so he cut it out. And what do you think happened when he opened up his New Testament? Yeah, someone said in the first of it, he's got a holy Bible. You know, there's just a lot of gaps in there. I mean, a lot of just blank spaces. Now, committed Christians, really devoted Christians, will underline major portions of the Scriptures they're reading. Things that jump out, they'll take a marker like this, and they'll underline it, and they'll highlight it and make sure that they grasp it. If you want to be mediocre, use this. Use the black one and just mark through it, you see? This way you can just eliminate. Let me give you an illustration of how easy that is to do. On your outline, I talk about a rather challenging verse. If you're a mediocre Christian, you read this one. I know you well. You are neither hot nor cold. I wish you were one or the other, but since you are merely lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth. You say I'm rich with everything I want. I don't need a thing. And you don't realize that spiritually, you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. See, a mediocre Christian can read that, and they can just take their marker, and I think they can make some adjustments there. How about that? I know you well. You're neither hot nor cold. I wish you were rich with everything. See how easy that is? It's amazing. And there's all kinds of verses that we edit out of the Bible. Earnestly desire the spiritual gifts. Well, you know, that's just for the more extreme people. I'm kind of comfortable. I don't really care about spiritual gifts in my life. Or, you know, give cheerfully to the Lord. All right, if you exact an offering from me, you know, go ahead. But do I have to give cheerfully? Thursday night, I was invited to be a guest host on CTV, on Channel 40, talking about it was the week of prayer, and my program was on forgiveness. And so I had to talk about the Lord's Prayer, the part that said, forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Or, if you're from a Catholic background, our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And as the program started out, you know, it was just sort of slow, and I looked over at the phone bank, and there was maybe 18, 20 people, and a couple of the phones were ringing. But as we got into that topic of forgiveness, I watched it just happen. The phone started lighting up, and the workers were on, and they'd hang out, and another call would come in. By the end of the program, they literally stayed over almost 20 minutes answering calls on this topic, because it strikes so at the core of who we are, this matter of forgiving and giving people the same forgiveness that Christ has given us. Afterwards, a worker came up to me and said, you know, we had a lot of responses, and he said, here's one that I really don't understand. This woman called and said, I won't ever forgive my husband. In fact, I don't even think about getting to the place where I would think about forgiving him. She said, what do I say to a person like that? Well, that's just a person who's editing out the Bible, because the Bible says, forgive one another as Christ has forgiven you. How has Christ forgiven you? Completely. That's right. Now, it doesn't mean you forget. It doesn't mean that there aren't things that you have to deal with, but it means that forgiveness is something we have to give. Let me be specific, loved ones. If you want to be mediocre, just edit your way through Scripture, and you'll be fine. No one will bother you. It's kind of like the television program, like the Ripley's or whatever those are, where people do these bizarre stunts, and on the bottom they have to put this legal disclaimer that says, don't try this at home, you know, like jumping off a 20-story building with a homemade bungee cord or something dumb. You know, you'd never do any of that. Well, let me just say this. If you want to stay mediocre, don't do this at home. Don't take the Bible and memorize portions of it. And certainly don't take it home and meditate on it, because if you do, it's going to change it. Don't do it at home. So, number one, if you want to stay mediocre, just edit Scripture. Number two, tour bus Christians, or TBCs as I call them, stay in their seat and keep to themselves. They stay in their seat and keep to themselves. They're content to ride the whole time rather than just looking out the window and they don't really care what's going on with the rest of the people on the bus. Non-affective Christians stay disconnected. They grew up thinking, hey, religion is a private matter, and it still is, and let the other people sit in the bus and have their seat and I'll mind my own business. And you know what, loved ones? It is so easy in our culture to increasingly validate that opinion. We are, for three reasons. Number one, we are a noise-filled people. Are we not? Is your life noisy? I mean, when you go out and turn the ignition on your car, is something going to be on that radio? I bet it is. When you walk into the house, right away, you know, on comes one of the football games. When you wake up in the morning, what do you wake up to usually? An alarm. That should say something. Life's not an alarm. I mean, waking up to a good time. But we have noise, and it's so hard to find quiet. You know, cell phones now and pagers, and pretty soon, probably, each of us are going to have our own little GPS thing in our head, and people will find us, and we won't be able to just make some quiet. Why is that important? Because 1 Kings 19.12 says that the Lord will speak to us through a gentle whisper. He's not going to scream over the noise of our lives. Another thing that happens is that we become increasingly busy. I can almost say this with this full authority. You will be busier in 2001 than you were in the year 2000. Why? Just because we have this propensity to keep adding things into our lives. We're going to do more, and we're going to try harder, and we're going to be more this way. How many of you came to the Christmas Eve presentation and saw one of them? Most of you. I saw seven of them. I really liked it. I kept coming back. One of the moments that I remember very clearly was when Joseph came down, and he and Mary met here on the stage, and then they traveled together symbolically through the aisles on the donkey and all. A lot of people ask me, where do we get all those animals? Well, we own that donkey. We find it was cheaper to buy him than to rent him twice a year, so he's now a North Way asset. So Mary and Joseph were traveling, and what were they singing as they went? Do you remember? Be still and know that I am God. Psalm 4610. Be still and know. Be still and know. If you're too busy, God will not be able to get through to you. If you want to be mediocre, just keep busy. Or, number three, just stay superficial. Fill your lives with superficial relationships. Let all your conversations be something like, wow, what about the snow out there, or how's Tiger Woods doing these days, or what's up with the playoffs, or how's the market doing? Just go in that direction. I can categorically tell you that in my spiritual life, I can see the spikes where I connected at a meaningful level with people who were at a different place than I was in a part of my Christian life, and that's when I went up. And that's why I make time in my life to hang out with people like Mark Geppert, because you see, Mark, he has a greater perspective of the world and a greater passion for the lost, so I hang out with Mark because he spikes my passion for the lost. I hang out with Pastor Scott because he's more organized and he's a better planner than I am, and he helps me just to plan and look through things and think more thoughtfully about them. I hang out with Pastor Dave because he's more contemplative and he makes me bring focus back to just being quiet before the Lord. And I hang out with Susie from time to time just to help my creative side be spiked. I hang out with Jeff Painter because I don't know how he ever does that, and I would wish it would just fall off on me. And beyond that, he has a wonderful heart for the Lord. But you see, who do you hang out with? If you want to raise the bar of your Christian life, then hang out with people that are a little farther along with you, and you'll find yourself going up to that level. But if you want to remain mediocre, then don't hang around with people like that. Just fill your life with superficial friends who are stagnant and visionless and without passion, and you'll remain just safely ensconced in your little seat on the bus. And if your world is made up of people who would just rather be disengaged, that's where you'll stay. And if you're tempted just to get involved, if you're tempted to hear someone invite you to be a part of it, just stick your fingers and you'll start singing, I did it my way. You'll get through it. But you know what? You're not going to be all that God wants you to be if you take that posture. I want you to hear a testimony this morning of a couple that had lots of reasons to just stay seated in the bus and kind of do their own thing. Lots of reasons. They're going to tell you about them. But because they had the courage to make a change, Bill and Renee Hagan are new people today. Would you welcome Bill and Renee Hagan as they come to share. Bless you. Thanks so much. These folks, you need to know, they stayed for all three services this year, and I think you'll appreciate what God's given to them. Bless you. Go ahead. Good morning. When we first received the call asking for our testimony, many excuses came to mind right away, and all of them sounded pretty good. The more we talked, though, the more we realized what a tremendous opportunity this would be to reflect on where God has brought us and the impact he has had on our lives. Our story starts like most everyone's does long before we made North Way our church home. We were both raised in families where religion and attending church was important. We were both thankful for that, but each of our faiths seemed empty. Instead, it was an obligatory thing that we did, mostly out of guilt. Despite all the religious education, we never understood what it really meant that Jesus had died for our sins and that it was even possible to have a personal relationship with Christ. While dating and newly married, we attended church sporadically. We moved from Pennsylvania to Georgia, founded church, and still attended only sporadically. As we looked back, we realized that while we were not faithful to God, he was faithful to us. He was placing people and events in our lives that eventually would lead us to him. While living in Georgia, we started out our family with twin girls, with two needy infants who was easy to come up with excuses to not attend church. 18 months later, I received an opportunity with my job to relocate here to Pittsburgh. We saw this as ideal as it would bring us closer to both our families, Renee's in Ohio and mine just outside of Philadelphia. Little did we realize that it was also bringing us closer to God. This began a very stressful period for us which involved two moves in five months, delivering a newborn son while living with my in-laws temporarily. Our twins were only 21 months old. I was traveling extensively with my job, and we were building a home. Life couldn't have gotten any more stressful, and hectic, and tiring at this time. In November of 1998, we finally landed here in Cranberry and tried to get settled. We thought that this would be the point where everything would start to turn around for us. However, this began the lowest point in my life so far. Bill was traveling. I was home with three children under the age of two and living in an area in which I knew no one. I distinctly remember saying to myself, there has to be more to life than this. We began searching for meaning in life for something more substantial in our faith. Our search eventually led us to North Way in June of 1999. During our first service, we knew we had found our church home. Three or four weeks after we started attending, we accepted Christ together and began the process of building a relationship with him. From this point forward, attending church was not a duty, but a privilege that we look forward to every week. Given our church-going history, we first had to get over the fact that our children would not be in service with us. We soon realized the benefits of being in church without our children and the wonderful benefits they would receive by being involved in the kids' ministry. Our twin daughters, Claire and Emma, thought otherwise. It literally took three months to get them adjusted to the nursery, three months of me missing service to help them adjust, but we persevered. It mattered that much to us. We had found something that truly made a difference in our lives, and we didn't want to miss anything. An elder had suggested taking Alpha, and we had many questions, so we signed up. It would have been easy for us to say no to Alpha, and all of our excuses would have sounded good for that as well. It was on a weeknight that Bill was usually not home. Instead, he adjusted his travel schedule to make it when he could. And given that the children were still not used to others taking care of them, we could have used them as a good excuse for me not to attend as well. However, God provided a wonderful sitter who the children actually started looking forward to seeing. Even given that, it was always hectic for me to get out of the house. Plus, we were new to the church and didn't know a soul. Still, we persevered. We attended Alpha, and through that experience, we had so many questions answered and grew in our faith. We learned through stretching our comfort zone and trusting God. He was faithful, as ever. Our next step to keep growing was to join a cell group. Again, we could have talked ourselves out of this very easily. The kids were still not comfortable with people they didn't know. My travel was still very demanding of my time, and when I was home, we just wanted to be a family. God had a hold of us, though, as we felt strongly that we needed to join a cell group in order to keep growing. So we decided to join a group, and despite all these obstacles, God was always very present, making the blessings of being involved greater than these obstacles. We are still involved in a cell group, and it gives us the time to focus on God while strengthening our faith and fellowship with others. We have grown so much through the study at our cell groups and our individual relationships with God and in our relationship with each other. The next obstacle in our growth centered around baptism. When we first started attending North Way and learned about baptism, we didn't feel it was essential that we were baptized as adults given the fact that we were both baptized as infants. Initially, it was easy for me to come up with excuses why we shouldn't be baptized. We even canceled our first scheduled baptism. However, the more we learned about what the Bible has to say about baptism, we realized that we needed to publicly declare that we had accepted Christ as our Savior and acted in obedience of his word. We realized it wasn't about us. It was about Christ. So this past summer, we had the privilege of being baptized under the stars together. I centralized my life and started attending MOPs, Mothers of Preschoolers, here at North Way, and bringing the children to Pioneer Clubs. In MOPs, I felt God calling me to leadership but doubted whether I could handle this responsibility. I had many reasons why I could turn this down, and again, people would understand. After all, I was not only new to North Way, but I was a baby Christian. Could my family and I handle taking on this responsibility? Bill and I talked it over, and I spent much time in prayer over this decision. This was the first time I had ever prayed about a decision and wasn't really sure how I would know what God wanted me to do. But I was willing to listen and try to discern what he would have me do. God again was faithful and gave me clear direction. I now coordinate the MOPs group, and through this experience and the other people that God has placed in my life through MOPs, I have grown tremendously in my relationship with Christ. MOPs is definitely a time and a heart commitment for me. However, the growth in Christ and the growth of the other women that has come out of my obedience to God's call in my life have far outweighed any concerns I had going in. One thought that keeps recurring to me over and over again is that I cannot do this on my own. I cannot coordinate MOPs, be a good mommy, be a good wife, be a good friend, pay the bills, clean the house, on and on, on my own strength. And that is probably the biggest obstacle for me to overcome. I can only be all that God has intended for me to be when I am in close relationship with him. As it says in Philippians 4.13, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. In him I find my strength. I need to let go of trying to do it in my power and let God in with his. Our walk with the Lord has been relatively short so far. We are still growing in our faith and anticipate continuing on this journey for the rest of our lives. What we have found so far is that God is faithful even when we are not. His blessings on our lives have been tremendous. And in every obstacle that we could try to put up, he can be there with a solution if we let him in. We are so grateful that God sought us and that we now know what it means to have a personal relationship with Christ. We owe him everything. And we are humbled to be known as his. We pray that our story would touch you in some way and be an encouragement to move beyond an obstacle that is in your life. God will be waiting to help you through. Thank you. Great God. Thank you so much. You see it's for the Bill and Renee's that are all around us. By the thousands that our church is here. That's why God put us here. I'm convinced that's why he's given us a visible, practically impossible to get by kind of location without seeing us. Because he loves people so much. He just doesn't want them to miss his plan and purpose for their life. But then it takes someone who says, I'm willing to get off the bus. Bill and Renee told you this story. They could have just sat there and been safe. They had lots of reasons. Lots of reasons just to get on the bus and kind of buckle down and ride their way to heaven. But I'm so impressed when I heard the testimony last night. They said it this way. That the blessings that God provided far outweigh the obstacles. A lot of you still look at the obstacles. A lot of you, when it comes to getting involved, or making a commitment, or fulfilling a pledge, or being partisan, you look at the obstacles. You look at your schedule. Or you go back and rehearse the last ten years of your Christian life that have been righteous, steady, flat. And say, well, I'm not sure I want to change that because I kind of have it under control. Loved ones, that is the question. Who is in control? Because if it's you, then it's not Jesus. And the final point I want to touch on in this message is this. Many of us tend to see the tour guide as our pal. We want to see Jesus as our friend. We want to see him kind of alongside of us. And he is our friend. He's my best friend. I talk to him all the time. And I know when he's pulling, allowing me to pull away. And I know when he's very, very close. And I hear his voice and I understand who he is to me. And that's how he wants to be with each of you. But you know what? That's just one of the things that he is. Because if all you know of him is his friend, if all you know of him is just your pal, people say, oh, the big guy up above. However they phrase their sort of common language about God in his heavenly realm. The Bible says a couple more things about this Jesus that they maybe sometimes fail to get a hold of. Just take a glance at your outline there. It talks about him in his heavenly throne. Look at the last verse in Roman numeral 3. To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb, that's Jesus, be praise and honor and glory and power forever and ever. And John writes, the four living creatures said amen and the elders fell down and worshipped. You see, you need a vision of this Jesus who's high and lifted up. You need to see him as the one who's fully revealed himself as the eternal God of the universe. The one who controls all things, upholds all things, the Bible says. By the word of his power, Hebrews 1.3, he holds the whole universe together. That's the same Jesus that is our friend. That's the mystery of it. So I just want to say today, are you on the bus? Are you ready to get off and make a difference? You say, well, you know, Jay, the problem is I want to, but I have all these obstacles. I have all these heartaches. I have all these problems. I have all these other things that are important to me. Well, here's what I want to say. God knows that. And I am convinced, as I think Bill Rene said, the Lord has a way when you step out.