2022.07.10 Future Church : Sending
Future Church • Sermon • Submitted
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· 2 viewsShifting our mentality from "collecting people" to "sending people"
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Future Church : Sending
Future Church : Sending
2 Timothy 3:16-17 • Mark 6:7-13
First, I’d like to thank my friend, Rev. Dr. Chad Wilkin for filling the pulpit last week. I trust he and his family were received well, and that God spoke a message that was biblical and inspirational through Chad.
I don’t like breaking up a sermon series. But sometimes it can’t be helped … and leading a Church is rarely about what I like or want.
As we return to the Future Church series, let me briefly remind you that we’ve learned that all Scripture is inspired by God and useful for filling in knowledge gaps, pointing out things we “know” that are wrong, correcting those wrong beliefs with right ones, and training us up in righteousness. We’ve hung out in the theoretical waters for a few weeks. Today, we shift to an application of these principles that will hopefully help us move into a new type of Church. What a time this is to talk about a new type of Church!
We are still reeling from churches meeting in their living rooms or bedrooms for at least a part of the last 2-3 years, we traded our suits and dresses for pajamas and sweat pants. During the full shutdown, my family and I led worship every week together. It was beyond strange leading worship in a sanctuary without any people except us. We moved worship to different rooms around our building. We recorded one service in the woods. We were forced to use a different medium to provide ‘corporate worship.’
The COVID crisis forced us right out of our comfort zone, and we don’t like being outside our comfort zones. Prior to the pandemic, most churches were resistant to embracing online worship. Now, almost every week I hear from people who watch our stream from outside the geographic area that would allow them to attend in person. That’s a win for Future Church!
As we sit today, the United Methodist Church is looking at diverging paths and this congregation is no different than many others. We’re studying, considering, and discerning what path God would have us take. I’ve already hosted 3 town hall meetings to help inform the congregation about the situation and what the future may look like. More information and more discussion forums will be coming, too. Let me encourage you to pay close attention. Things seem to change more rapidly every day!
Employers used to ask prospective employees about their life’s 10 year plan. Then, it became a 5 year plan. Then … 3. After COVID, many may be asking people what their 3-WEEK plan is. The future seems less predictable every day, so it’s tempting to just sit in the “known-ness” of yesterday. But that’s not really an option. That’s a pipe dream. Yesterday is gone, and it’s not returning.
A few of weeks ago, we talked about what a rebuke and correction are. If you remember, I said that a rebuke is informing someone that their current belief is wrong … it’s kindly saying “NUH UH!” And a correction is replacing the wrong with what’s right … it’s kindly saying “TRY THIS ON FOR SIZE INSTEAD”. These two go hand-in-hand, and I’m going to use that approach for today’s topic.
First, the rebuke:
The Church in the Western World (North America and Western Europe) has used the same basic model for being Church for several hundred years! It’s very comfortable for us. We’ve been very slow in changing anything at all - in the 1970s and 80s we engaged in what became known as the “Worship Wars”. I would propose these skirmishes should more properly be called “music wars”. The Church refused and fought about any updates to the music we sing. That’s because we’ve been preference-driven for as long as most of us have been alive: “I want what I want, so I will resist any changes.”
This approach has left the Church anemic. We’ve focused on ourselves so long we’ve lost the power to even recognize our proper place in the world. If any of my United Methodist supervisors watch this stream, I’ll warn them … you may not be happy with what I’m about to say, but I’m gonna say it anyway.
The statistics our churches report every year, are the stuff of dust and termites. There’s an old saying: “What gets rewarded gets repeated.” I would amend that saying just a bit … “What gets reported, gets repeated.” The reporting process somehow gives incentive to put a lot of energy in the areas that get reported.
Every year, it takes about a month for churches to put together their annual statistical report. And most of the statistics are data I wouldn’t bother telling anybody about, and I would propose very few people even LOOK at them. Our top statistic is attendance.
Historic Church decided that our top priority should be gathering people … the more people we gather, the more impressed others are with our church. And we haven’t moved away from that mark yet. One of the first questions people ask when they find out I’m a pastor is the size of the church, and I know they’re really asking about the attendance figure.
But where, in the Gospels, do we see Jesus intentionally gathering a crowd? We don’t.
Jesus certainly drew crowds. There’s no question about that. But we don’t ever see him telling Peter, James, and John, “Hey, fellas. We really need to get more people here. Go staple these flyers to the pillars in the Temple.”
No, he said in John 12 that his being lifted up on a cross would draw people...”all men” to him.
32 And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to Myself.”
We don’t see Jesus building a structure and telling people to come back every week, or every day. Instead, he says, “The son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
58 But Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens to live in, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place even to lay his head.”
Future Church : Sending
Future Church : Sending
So here’s the rebuke to Historic Church: We’ve been centered around ourself. We want all people to come to our building. We want them to put money in our offering plate, so we can do what we want to do in ministry. Gather people : gather resources. That effort is self-serving and wrong. It is unbilblical, and we need to remove this motivation from our hearts. But I don’t want to leave a void from removing that motivation:
The correction is that Jesus wants us to motivated by sending people! It doesn’t mean we stop gathering together. It means our primary mission is to release people and resources into our community to expose every man, woman, and child to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Just like many of our Facebook viewers today … people don’t have to come to our building to hear the good news. We’ve celebrated the church gathered for centuries … but we lost the First Century apostolic celebration of the church scattered!
Jay Leno starred in a Doritos commercial several years ago that introduced a new slogan. Encouraging us to eat all the Doritos we can, he told us: “Crunch all you want. We’ll make more.”
If you’re afraid of sending resources into the community because resources are limited, let me remind you that God owns the cattle on a thousand hillsides. All the resources of the earth are his. And if we should run low ... if we’re carrying out HIS mission … he’ll make more. :)
Gathering and holding on is not in Jesus’ ethos. That’s the mission of a bank, not a church. Releasing and sending is Jesus’ ethos.
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus gathers the apostles together. Then, he sends them out two-by-two. He gave them authority and sent them out!
12 And they went out and preached that people are to repent.
13 And they were casting out many demons and were anointing with oil many sick people and healing them.
Every week, we scatter. We work with different people. We live around different people. We shop and eat and drive by different people. What are we doing to help those people hear the Gospel? What are we doing to bring them healing?
Future Church : Sending
Future Church : Sending
Historic Church taught us that our task was to engage people and bring them back here. There’s nothing wrong with doing that … but that is not the mission of the Church. We exist to make disciples of Jesus Christ!
Changing someone’s location doesn’t do that. Telling them about the love of Jesus, and encouraging them to repent … anointing them with oil and healing them … THAT’s how we make disciples.
So, today is still more theoretical than practical … but this theory is critical to Future Church! If we don’t change the nature of our task, we will continue getting the same results: dropping attendance; community irrelevance; church stagnation and death; fewer disciples instead of more.
How destroyed were you when we couldn’t meet in the building? That’s because Historic Church taught us all very well, that “the building is the church”. Future Church recognizes that YOU are the church. You carry an infection with you. You are infected with the Holy Spirit, which is more contagious than the flu, the common cold, and coronavirus combined!
So, our primary task needs to change. We must return to the primary task Jesus gave us and forsake the task we’ve chosen for ourselves. From this day forward, we are no longer trying to gather people and resources. Today forward, we want to release people and resources to accomplish the mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ.
Failure is an option! Not attempting is not! If we’re about the Father’s business … send all you want … he’ll make more.
Are you ready?
[transition to Communion]