The Day North Way Told the Truth

Verse 14, Ephesians 4. If you don't have a Bible, please ask your neighbor if you can look on or just listen carefully as I read. And then we will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is Christ. And from him the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work. The day North Way told the truth is what the sign says on the road. A few weeks ago when I first announced this title, one of our regular attenders said to me in a supermarket, they said, and it kind of pulled me aside in a hushed voice, Jay, I'm gonna be away that weekend. Could you tell me what you're gonna say? I've had phone calls this week asking me if I was going to expose people. Well, you know what I mean. Why when you say the truth do people infer it's gonna be a scandal or that you haven't been telling the truth up till now? I didn't say that for the first time. I just said truth, you know. On this 11th birthday celebration, I want to do what it says here in the book of Ephesians chapter 15. I want to speak the truth in love. And I pray that as you listen today, you'll sense something in your heart quickening to what I say. Dear ones, this is a very important message. If you have any inkling at all that God has brought you to this church and you plan to be part of its future, you're gonna want to know what I have to say today. And by the way, I want to, to our visitors whom I, by the way, didn't officially greet this morning, I want to welcome you and tell you how delighted we are that you're here with us. And normally in this portion of the service, we honor the gift of teaching here, whether it's myself or one of our other leaders or someone that we bring to our platform. But today we're going to honor a different gift. We're going to honor the gift of leadership. It's also a spiritual gift, my leadership and the leadership of the elders and other staff here at North Way, because we want to help you as leaders to visualize what our future is going to look like. And I want to do this in a way that you're not going to forget. So I picked up a prop, all right? It's this wonderful-looking, color-coordinated chair. Now Ephesians 2.6 says that we're seated with Christ in the heavenly places. And so let's just imagine for a moment, or for a few moments, that the church is represented by this chair. Okay, it's our chair seated next to the throne of God. Are you with me in that picture? And the chair stands on four legs. Those four legs give it stability and strength. And those four legs, and this is in your notes if you're taking notes in your pool out there, the four legs that it stands on are, number one, celebration, number two, community, number three, cause, and number four, corporation. The church exists to celebrate. It exists to be a community. It exists to carry out a cause. And whether or not you like it, it also exists as a corporation. Let me talk about each of those for just a moment, because they're all important. First of all, celebration. Ephesians 1.11 says that the church exists for the praise of God's glory. The first church worshiped God, and we too put a priority on celebration. It's a calling, a summons, what we've been created to do as God's people. Worship and praise are a unique practice. I mean, when else in your week, may I ask you, do you get together with a few hundred or a few thousand people and get your focus off of yourself and off of the worldly stuff that you do and put it on God, and in concert with hundreds of others, extol His name? I mean, it's a unique thing. You may get together a lot of people and party and clap and shout, but you don't worship anyplace else but in the church. And that celebration is not based on skill or achievement or experience or worthiness, but on the unmerited favor, the grace of God. Dear ones, we worship today because God said, come into my presence through the blood of His Son Jesus. That's the only reason. And we worship the one whom the Bible says was the same yesterday, when? Today and forever. Now, the metaphor of worship in the New Testament is the temple. We are a temple, individually and corporately. The core value of celebration is wholeheartedness. In other words, not just sort of, you know, restricting yourself and inhibiting yourself, but wholeheartedly opening up before the Lord. And the heroes of worship are those people who week by week come and present themselves undistracted by the one on their right and their left, undistracted by the mistakes or the slickness of the worship team, just simply coming before the Lord each and every week and worshiping Him. And the reward, the reward of celebration of worship is what? What does God promise when we worship Him? He says, I will inhabit your praises. The presence of God is the reward. We exist to celebrate. Number two, we are a community. The church exists in community, in relationship with one another, taking the masks off, getting down to knowing each other on a deeper level than we normally would in the world. You know, back in the book of Acts, chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, the Bible says that they were of one mind and held all things in common. They shared meals and they experienced what was called koinonia. That word in the Greek means fellowship. They were real together. They participated in one another's lives. Over and over again in the book of Acts, you read together, together, together. Or you see one another, one another. Thirty-three times the Bible says one another. They cared for, shared with, forgave, supported one another. Or just the word we. And I want to tell you, in the early days of North Way, 10, 11 years ago, folks, community happened spontaneously. I mean, it just sort of effervesced out of us one to another. And we were far more concerned in those days about being the church than trying to build a big one. We wanted community to be pure and genuine. Even in the selection of our name. It's not North Way Christian Church. You know that. It's North Way Christian Community. We wanted it to be a reminder that that's why we are here. And in those early days, other people who were searching for community sought us out and entered in and shared in those relationships together. Now, the church and community metaphor in Scripture is the family. We're brothers and sisters in Christ. We're a family together. We're bonded in Him. The core value is love. We throw our doors open, wide open here every week to people. We don't say you have to believe like we do. We don't say that you need to be perfect. You can come in your failures, you can come in your shortcomings, and you can be among us and share our love. People have told me many times, they said, Jay, I've experienced more love here than any place I've been before. And I can tell you in my own life, I've had relationships here that define what love means to me outside of my own intimate family. Community puts the heart in the church. All right. So the church exists to celebrate. It exists as community. And thirdly, it exists for a cause. Now, in those early days, we had community. We really did. I mean, we had community. I mean, we shared together, we laughed together, we ate cake together, we cried together, and we sacrificed together. But we also had a cause back then, a purpose that gave direction and focus to our energies. You know what the cause was back then? It's the same thing that that cause is today. Eleven years later, the cause hasn't changed. Our cause is to make fully devoted disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, who will be loved, nurtured, and equipped to minister to God, each other, and the loss of the world, and the power of the Holy Spirit. We exist not just to have church, but to make disciples. And that cause is burned in our spirits in the early days and just has continued to do so. We determined that every so often we'd break out of the holy huddles of our community, and we'd go out and establish some relationships with unchurched, unsaved, hell-bound people. And we'd sacrifice the comfort of just rejoicing together, and reach out in love to them, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with them. And then we'd invite them to come with us and experience our celebration and our community. And they could hear, as they came to this place, a life-changing message about Jesus Christ. And I want you to know, for the last 11 years, a number of us have broken our backs to provide you with a service, the best service possible, where you can celebrate, where you can experience something of community, and yet still have your friends come and make sense of what's going on, so they too can share in it. We do that because we want to serve you and be a team together in affecting other lives. Because we've had a cause beyond ourselves, and I've continually stood up here and reminded you of it, we have seen fruit over the years. Dear ones, I think you just heard a testimony of that. And many others, like TJ and Linda, could stand up here and say, because this church opened up wide enough, they're here today. And best of all, they'll be with us in eternity. And I think it's okay to say amen to that. See, we chose not to just focus on ourselves, but to open up our eyes and see the needs around us. And when you talk about the cause of the church in the scriptures, the metaphor changes again. What is it now? It's the army of God, right? I mean, all kinds of references in the Bible about military type of things. Fellow soldiers, Paul and Timothy called each other, pressing the kingdom, advancing it by force. The heroes in the cause are those who are most committed among us to perpetuating the cause. The ones who stand week by week, month by month, year by year, giving of themselves, fighting for the cause. Those who make sacrifices, in some ways martyring their own desires for the sake of something bigger. You know, I just read the other day a portion, once again, of Elizabeth Elliott's story about her son, or her husband, Jim, who gave his life down in the jungles of Ecuador. And I want you to know, there is something that's, I mean, that same spirit has got to be in the church that says, my life isn't the most important thing here, but the cause of God is. The core value is winning the war. Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. In other words, they're not going to be able to stand the onslaught of God's church moving ahead, advancing the purposes of God. Every church needs a cause. And thankfully, thank God, we've had one. Finally, we also have been a church that's had a corporate side of ourselves. Now, Paul said in 1 Corinthians 14 40, that the church should do everything, what, decently and in order. Not just the charismatic expression of the gifts, but everything. As the community grows, and celebration happens, and the cause progresses, the church needs to find itself organized in such a way that support can be funneled to those exercises. The organizational aspect becomes very, very critical. People ask, where are we going to meet? Will there be enough parking? I mean, will the lights work, and the heating, and air conditioning? Not usually. You know, will there be classrooms for our children? Will there be materials for us in our training? Will there be supplies for the things of the cause that are out there, training for battle? Who is going to finance this thing? And will there be monies there in the future that would remain viable? See, the metaphor changes. In celebration, it's the temple. In community, it's the family. In cause, it's the army. But in corporation, the metaphor is simply business. Jesus said, you know, do business until I come. Kingdom business, but do it. The heroes are the planners, and the administrators, and the accountants, and all the donors who are enough a citizen of this kingdom that they realize that without their support, that the functions that they love to do, community, and celebration, and cause, will grind to a halt. Now, Jesus made a hero of a little lady who gave two cents, two pennies. He said she was a hero, or a heroine, because she gave what she could. The core value in the corporation is frugality, and wisdom, and careful planning, and wise investing, and the reward is stability. I mean, things aren't up one week and down the next week, but stable. In Acts chapter 6, very clearly, the elders were concerned about that, so they appointed deacons to help in the administration of the church, and so that ministry could continue on uninterrupted, and unbroken, and the cause could be achieved, and community could flow, and celebration could pour forth. Now, I've taken that much time to remind you of those four core values, because we want to be strong, and you see, my observation, and that of our elders, is this. Dear ones, just take one of those particular dimensions of the church away. Take it away, and what's going to happen is you're going to get out of balance, and let's just say we take away one of them. Say we take away community. What happens? Well, you may not notice it at first. I mean, the church will still stand there, but as soon as you put a little bit of pressure, a little bit of stress, in the name of Jesus, what happens? You know, you start to get out of balance, and it isn't long before the church goes down, and we, as those that the Lord has graciously allowed to serve this body in leadership, we have known the risks of being out of balance, and we have endeavored over the years to keep that balance alive, and we have erred in it. There have been times when we've been way too far out in community, and kind of lost the cause. There have been times when we've been way too far out there in celebration, and community's kind of gotten lost, and you see, if those things happen, it isn't long before people start being uncertain, and they lose their stability, and they begin to drift, and they ask questions. Now again, we've made mistakes. I mean, some of you have the gift of reminding us of those, but we've endeavored to remain balanced through the years, and what I want to do, having established this image I trust in your mind, is I want to just address a few of these specific supports. I'm going to put the church back on its feet, if I could. Let me share what's going to change in the next year, and how you can enter into that change, and be part of it, all right? Let me talk first of all about the cause, and though the cause is still the same after 11 years, the cause hasn't changed. The culture has. We are not the same people living in the same comfort zone of 11 years ago. Just ask parents today what their kids are going through. Statisticians tell us that our culture is shifting away from God, and church, and biblical values. In the last 11 years, church attendance has gone from 44 or 3 percent down to 36 or 7 percent of the population. Roughly translated, that means 15 to 20 million of your neighbors and friends no longer care about church enough to go on a regular basis, and it's thrown many of us off in our stride. We're not sure how people relate to God anymore, and so we're a little defensive, and just a little fearful. To wit, let me just ask you a tough question, can I? Would you give me permission to ask you a tough question? When was the last time you personally shared, gave witness to your faith in Jesus Christ to another person, one-on-one? Let me turn it up one more notch. When was the last time you had the privilege of leading another person to a personal relationship in Christ, to pray a prayer with them, look into their eyes, and know that there had been an eternal transformation take place? I was just absolutely nailed by the Holy Spirit preparing this message this week, and broken before God when I realized just how long it had been in my own life, how ineffective I'd become, and in some ways how calloused, and something in me wants this cause to come back online, and I'm becoming more committed to not letting myself slip back into that indifference that I've ever been. And I know one of the reasons. For the first time in the last year and a half or so, two of my three children are now in the public school system. They'd been Eden Christian Academy kids, and that'd been wonderful, but now they're in a public school, and therefore as a parent, you know, I decided, well, I'm going to do my part. And I started rubbing shoulders with parents at basketball games, and practices, and concerts, and you know, chaperoning dances, and all that kind of stuff. And as I would rub shoulders with these people, and sit across the table with them for a couple hours at a banquet or whatever, and talk to them, and enjoy their friendliness, and just get to know them as people, I would think to myself, these are great people. They're friendly. They're, you know, they're bright. They're intellectual. They're reasonable. And then I'd go home at night and think about these people that I might be seeing week after week at a practice or something, and realize, but they're lost people. They're without Christ, and they're without hope, and they're separated from God for eternity unless they come to Christ. And it's stuck in my soul, because I've asked myself, who's reaching these people? When you drive through all these housing plans, and apartment complexes, and condominiums, who's reaching them? I think about how many churches around here are holding up a cause that they really get behind. You know, where teachers are standing up and encouraging people to break out of their little, you know, holy huddles of community, and get out there, and take some risks, and share with people, and build relationships of integrity that give you the right to share what Christ has meant to you. The fact is, dear ones, we need to see the church more and more, not as a little holy enclave with a big fence around it, but we need to see the church in terms of a missionary outpost, placed by God, and whether or not you'd like to hear it, placed by God in a heathen culture that doesn't have the time of day to give to God. And in the next decade of our life, I'm going to call us just that, a missionary outpost. We've been put on assignment right here in the North Hills. We're aliens in this culture, or should be, and strangers, the Bible says. And Jesus came and said, you know, it's the sick that need a doctor, not the healthy, and I'm the great physician. Would you accompany me as I go on my medical mission to heal sin sick souls? Every one of you in these seats today, you need to have a cause. You need to be part of what Christ has called us to be, and that is ambassadors for Jesus Christ. This spring, in just a couple of weeks, actually two weeks from today, we have an opportunity to open up ourselves just a little bit more to the needs of people around us. This has been a very difficult decision for us, because we know the implications. Last night in our Saturday night service, the room was full to the banners, and I believe that service is continuing to grow now. As you can see here, we're about two-thirds full, and in the next service, I'd be willing to say, if you stick around, there won't be many empty seats. And so we've prayerfully decided the best way that we can serve you and make it accessible for you is to try to add a service in this morning slot that you can come to and find seating and parking and easy access and egress. And it may not sound like a big deal to you to add another service, but trust me, for those of us who do it, it is a big deal. That means we're going to need another whole contingent of volunteers to make this thing work. And so we're going to start an 8 15 a.m service on Palm Sunday, and the second one will be at 9 45, and the third one at 11 30. And what we need is for about a hundred of you people, maybe 200 of you, to see that 8 15 service. And those early birds among us, you know, who'd like to be up anyhow, to be here at 8 15 so that the 9 45 service doesn't become maxed out overnight. And I'm going to challenge the 11 15 people the same way. And what that will do would provide for us excellent seating. Once we get back in the corners back there, over here on the sides folks, you're not really part of things. If you sat there, I know why you're sitting here. It's the only way we can continue to grow and make room for people. And I'm going to challenge you. Would you consider serving this cause by being part of that seed planting 8 15 service for the next six months? Would you do that? And if that's too early for you, would you consider this? Would you consider coming to one of the other services and serving at another one? I mean, our greatest desire would be for a number of you to come at 8 15 and then serve at 9 45. Serving the overhead, serving the children's ministry, serve back in the back, helping things to take place so that we can carry forth the cause and open our arms wide to people around us. One more thing. You do know, most of you, that we, even this just last 10 weeks, planted a brand new church out by the airport. I mean, it's not like we're just not trying to do things. I mean, God just keeps bringing and bringing and bringing. And that's bearing fruit. I'm happy to tell you it's bearing fruit. I stepped on a plane last Sunday at one o'clock in Seattle, Washington. Sat down in my seat with Bob Mason and over walks this flight attendant. She says, aren't you Pastor Jay? Seattle, Washington? You know? And I said, yes. And then she said, well, I've been to North Way a couple of times. And I said, great. Well, why don't you come back? She said, well, you know, it's just too far for me. I said, well, where do you live? On the other side of the airport. Ah, let me tell you about Westridge. And she was all excited about that. You see, if there's one reason above every other reason that we need to press ahead and build a new facility, it's not so we can be more comfortable. It's so we can make more room for people to come and find Christ Jesus and get to know him and spend eternity with us. Let's lift our eyes off of our own need, church, and look ahead and look to the people around us, people like TJ and Linda and many others of us here. Let me move on to the corporation for just a moment. There's some exciting things happening here. Now we've been blessed in this facility and there's no doubt about it. Barry McGuire said the great church, you know, it's flexible and inviting and all that, but we have some major limitations, don't we? Four years ago, Tom Egan, one of the men that we love and support here at North Way and has been friends with us for many years. Four years ago, he drove in and said, you have a parking problem. And that's when we had David Weiss accessed and all the rest. Now what would he say? Did you know that the classrooms back here where our children are this morning, did you know that those are temporary and they are on a permit by McCandless on a temporary basis? And if someone wanted to, they could yank that permit tomorrow and you know where all the kids would be at every service? Take a look at your lap, okay? Plus this building was never designed to handle this many people at once. And that's why, you know, we're crowded in the halls and we can't really relate and find people and that kind of a thing. You know, it's easy to take potshots at building programs, but I challenge anyone who really examines what's going on in this church, come any night of the week, stick around here this afternoon or this evening, and you'll see kids everywhere. You'll see practicing and rehearsing going on. Come tomorrow night, you'll see over 125 people gathering together in generations and then spreading over the sanctuary for small groups. Every night of the week, something happens here in our church. And I say, we're using this building to its maximum and it's time that we all rise up and decide that we're going to be part of the solution to this, that we can make a difference, we can invest ourselves together and raise up an inviting and accessible worship facility, adequate classroom space, a good recreational place for our youth, a training center for our adults, and raise up a building that we can hand to the next generation and say, here's a base of ministry on into the next century. I want to be part of that. We owe a debt of gratitude, we really do, to our leaders on the elders council and our volunteer consultants and our accountant and our building committee, people who are working. And believe me, the hours are long and tough and the emotions get stretched because we're trying to make the right decisions. But these are dedicated people. One of our elders, at his own expense last week, flew to Seattle and spent four days of his time, he could have been with his family, because he wanted to grow and serve this church better. And if we can proceed as planned with the planning and approval process, we hope to break ground late this summer, maybe early fall, and ideally be in a building that will serve us for years to come, within 12 to 14 months. Folks, I don't think we can comprehend how much of an improvement this will make in our ministry, what a lift it will be, but it's going to take some sacrifice. First of all, it's going to mean that we, along with our staff, determine that the ministry is going to belong to you. And that means we're going to have to make some difficult decisions and streamline our staff and return some of the ministry to you that we've been doing, so that you can be trained and equipped and do as much as you possibly can to carry the ministry on. All non-essentials are going to be stopped. Our doughnut budget's $14,000 a month. Did you know that? Tell your neighbor that was a joke. All right, it's not. And secondly, along with the streamlining, it's going to be absolutely imperative that many more of you who consistently come and take of the ministry, weekly worship and teaching and singles and generations and home builders and home groups, that many of you who take also learn to become givers. You know how people can come week by week and listen to the teaching and enjoy the worship and drop their kids off in children's ministry and go out and enjoy the resources and pick up the tapes and yet sit with their arms folded every week that the offering basket goes by. How people can do that, I just don't know. But hundreds of you do. Somehow you think that someone else will keep carrying the load for you and it's time you decide, wait a minute, wait a minute, I love Jesus and I celebrate Him here. I'm part of this community and I belong here. I believe in the cause here and I'll become part of the corporation here and I'll do my part. And you can make an enormous difference even if what you have to give is just a little thing. If your tithe is eight dollars a week, it's eight dollars that will make a difference, that God would have you to invest in what we're doing. People say, well, I just can't afford to give anything now. Well, let me tell you, if that's where you're at, you're more needed for your own sake. I can point you to a man in our church who when he was on unemployment and welfare, tithe, God so blessed him now, it's phenomenal. I'm praying that God will move in your heart, not just in this next minute, but in the next month, in the next year. And you'll get up and say, I'm going to be part of things. And I'm praying that April will become the greatest month we've ever known as a church, because everybody does something to own this vision together. And if our projections hold out and we do what we believe we can, we can move into a new facility sometime late next year. We can see new ministries start up, better quality ministry going on. And in 1996, we can have the whole thing paid for and hand it over to God for the glory of the kingdom of God in the next generation. Let me end quickly in talking about the most important issue, I suppose. Let me take a little poll here. How many of you think, this is just an opinion, so there's no wrong answer, so enter in, would you? How many think North Way over the years has been kind of, well, soft on the cause? Anybody? Yeah, we have times. Okay. There's three green berets back there who put their hand up. All right. How many believe we've been a little soft in corporation? Okay. How about celebration? Okay. Few. How many think that we've been a little soft in community as of late? That's my feeling. That's been the toughest part for us to sustain. You know, when we get out there and talk to church leaders around in America, what we find over and over and over again? That nobody knows how to sustain community when the church gets to a certain size. It becomes increasingly difficult. What was spontaneous, what happened naturally seven, eight years ago, is tough to do right now because, you see, you over here don't know these people, let alone the people of the service that's following or the one that preceded it. And yet, dear ones, the same hunger is there. Eighty percent of our Discovering the Way graduates, eighty percent say, we want to be part of the home group. Beyond that, I hear people saying over and over again, they say to me, you know, my job is demanding, my lifestyle is isolating me, and all I really want is a friend. I want a friend. I want someone to share with, someone who knows my Lord and shares my values. Well, I'm here to say that we're hearing this heart's cry of yours, and I want to supplement the fantastic job that our home group leaders are doing, and we're going to make two big changes. All right, first of all, I'm starting immediately in the process of restructuring how our pastoral staff work, and we're going to move them out of specific focus tasks and age groupings and so, and we're going to use their energies to develop a small group-based care and ministry team that will build relational networks geographically all throughout the area. We're going to be moving away from task responsibilities and on into small group development and mutual care and fellowship. We're going to place the highest priority in helping people to connect with other people in meaningful small groups, home groups, ministry groups, community groups, to raise the relational thermostat a few more degrees around here, so that every one of you know that you're connected somewhere, so you can hear your life have a testimony like you heard T.J. and Linda have. Somebody cared for me when I needed them. Secondly, we're putting into place a volunteer intensive ministry called the North Way Care Force that's going to provide very clear direction of the identification of your spiritual gifts and training and assigning you into a ministry where you can flourish, and the office, by the way, it's going to be right out that door. Every time you leave here, you're going to stumble over it, and you'll be able to find your place in ministry. Well, let me end here today. The truth about all this is that it represents a major paradigm shift in our thinking. You may not have picked it up, but folks, we're moving away from what we've been slipping into, which is institutional thinking, and we're moving into what I want to call innovational thinking. We're going to take some risks here, but we need to do it together. If we want to improve the quality of our ministry while continuing to maximize the outreach potential, it's going to take people who have a heart to do it together. When I was sharing earlier this week about this message, someone said to me, you know, in the early days, Jay, when there was a log in our path of progress at North Way, I mean, you just needed to issue the call one time, and people would come flocking to it. I remember once when we had a clean up the building day, we had like 300 people show up here. If I did that today, there might be three, and they said, now it seems when a log gets in our way, no one's really sure who's supposed to be there, so nobody bends down and picks it up. That's got to change. The only way we're going to progress is if we do it together. Let me end with this story. This past summer, at my summer study break on a Saturday night, which I never get to do because of the service, I donned a little disguise and slipped down to a paved h