Irresistible Series

ME:

Welcome

Good morning, Gateway Church. Whether you are joining us online or here in house, we are so glad you are with us today. This week we are wrapping up our teaching series "UNITED WE STAND."

Our focus is on building UNITY in the body of Christ… Healing the disunity in the church so the church can help heal the disunity in our world.

WK 1 - Disunity disrupts the mission of the church.

WK 2 - When we serve together it brings us together.

WK 3 - How we fight the battle will determine what war we win.

Last Week - The Only law that matters is the law of love.

And as we were wrapping up last week, I said that when the church learns to follow the law of love, we will become IRRESISTIBLE.

And that's our focus today as we wrap up this series.

Open your Bibles to HEBREWS 12:1. Pg. 823.

WE:

Have you ever found something that was IRRESISTIBLE.

• Chocolate?

• Doughnuts?

• Coffee?

• Top Gun or The Princess Bride on a Saturday afternoon?

There are just some things that we find IRRESISTIBLE. The flip side of that is that there are some things we find TOTALLY RESISTIBLE.

• Liver…

• Rap music…. Or soft-pop from the 70s/80s… (No Air Supply or Hall & Oats for me)

• Dentist visits…

For most Americans… the Church has become VERY RESISTIBLE. How do we know that? The numbers don't lie.

Not only is church attendance down (both pre and post COVID). But across the board, Americans want less and less to do with the church and with the faith we claim to represent.

• In 2000, 8% of American's said they had NO religious affiliation.

• In 2018 19% of American's said that had NO religious affiliation.

• In 2000 73% of Americans who DID believe were a part of a church.

• In 2018 only 64% of Americans who believe are a part of a church.

[That means almost 1 out of every 3 people who claim a belief in Jesus, do not belong to or attend a church.]

And since COVID… those numbers are accelerating. Many people have given up on God/Jesus, but even more are giving up on the Church… They are finding the church to be VERY RESISTIBLE.

And the group that is driving this trend the most are our young people. The people who are my children's age (18-26) are least likely to believe and if they believe they are the least likely to engage. We are losing the next generation because the church has become RESISTIBLE.

What happened? Why did the church, that used to carry so much influence in our culture, become one of the least influential institutions in our culture? Why did the church become so RESISTIBLE?

And before you say "Our culture changed… our nation has gone the wrong direction… America has turned it's back on God…. etc." Stop and think about this. Those may all be true, but IF we were the influencers we have claimed to be… and our nation still went in a direction that many of us find appalling… Maybe we have something to do with it.

Maybe we haven't been as IRRESISITLBE as we thought.

So, I'll ask it again. Why did the church become so RESISTIBLE?

• Maybe we are too concerned with gaining/maintaining influence through politics and fighting the culture war.

• Maybe we became irrelevant. (The message did not, but we did)

• Maybe we have become more concerned with saving America than we have with saving Americans.

• Maybe we have become distracted and gotten away from our mission

• Maybe it's because we care more about winning at the polls than we do winning souls.

• Maybe it's because we are divided and divisive.

Whatever happened, you need to know that it wasn't always like this. Once upon a time the church - the Jesus Movement - was very IRRESISTIBLE.

[THE IRRESISTIBLE CHURCH]

• The church started small [12 disciples (minus 1) or 120 followers]

• They didn't have a large amount of influence.

• They did not have a large voting block (no one could vote anyway)

• They couldn't lobby their local Roman senator (by this point Rome was a dictatorship)

• They couldn't picket the local court house, or arena

• They couldn't enact laws that would curb the behavior of their fellow Roman citizens/subjects.

• They, essentially, had no rights and no authority to bring about the changes their culture desperately needed.

And yet, somehow, this small group of people who believed that a Jewish carpenter turned Rabbi had lived a sinless life - showing them how God wanted THEM to live - died on a cross and then risen from the dead on the 3rd day… This group became so influential that they radically transformed the most powerful, violent, controlling empire anyone had known to that point.