MARKS OF A CONTAGIOUS CHURCH
There is a story told about a hunter walking through the African jungle who found a huge dead elephant with pygmy standing beside it. Amazed, he asked, “Did you kill that elephant?” The pygmy said, “Yes.” The hunter asked, “How could a little bloke like you kill a huge beast like that?” “I killed it with my club,” the pygmy answered. The astonished hunter asked, “How big is your club?” The pygmy replied, “There’s about 60 of us.”
For many of us evangelism is like a huge elephant. As an individual, you look at your own abilities, gifts or aptitude for doing evangelism, and it feels like you are armed with a solitary little toothpick and someone is shoving you forward saying, “Go kill the elephant.” You can imagine going up to this beast, you start poking away, and you can see one of two things is going to happen: it will ignore you like a pesky fly or sit on you.
Take a lesson from the pygmy: Evangelism is not a solo event. God never intended that you or I should take on this task alone. The mission of sharing the love of Jesus Christ was given to the body, the church, to do together. On your own this is a monumental and fearful task. But together we find the courage and the giftedness and support to take down the elephant – the huge task of changing our world.
As we consider becoming contagious Christians and as we plan and vision to grow as a church, this is one unmistakable truth we should be aware of: We are more effective together than on our own. That is how God made us. One friendly person alone does not make a friendly church. One evangelistic person alone does not make an evangelistic church. One radical follower does not make a contagious church that spreads the life-changing infection of Jesus.
So it is not enough to be a contagious Christian, we must also be part of a contagious church. What does a contagious church look like? It looks a lot like the church Paul wrote to in Thessalonica.
1. A Contagious Church Knows Its Purpose
What marks a contagious church is its reason for being. A contagious church knows its purpose in the world and tirelessly works towards that objective.
We can easily be trapped in the Vulcan ideology of our times and think that our purpose is to “Live long and prosper.” Is that what we are here for? Are we here to make the most out of an unjust life until Jesus comes to rescue us? Of course not. Jesus established his body, the Church, on the earth for one obvious purpose: to continually proclaim his good news till he says “stop”.
Bill Hybels said this, “God wants us to become contagious (believers) who will first catch his love and then urgently and infectiously offer it to all who are willing to consider it. This is his primary plan, the one Jesus modeled powerfully: to spread God’s grace and truth person to person until there’s an epidemic of changed lives around the world.”
That appears to be what happened in Thessalonica. Paul commended the Church for their dedication to this purpose: “We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Note that Paul does not say “works producing faith” but work produced by faith. That work, I am convinced, could only be one thing…evangelism. They were doing a work which clearly expressed how the Spirit of God had changed their lives. Paul had said to the Galatians, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” The greatest work of faith is to share God’s love with people who don’t know that God loves them.
This theme is continued in the next phrase, your labor prompted by love. The word “labor” suggests that they were enduring hardship for love’s sake. It is no easy thing to love some people. We talked earlier in this series about loving unpleasant people. Jesus modeled that in his invitation to Zacchaeus to build an unlikely relationship. That is our labor and sometimes our hardship. For the Thessalonians it meant loving people who persecuted them. For us it may mean less in pain, but the same in purpose.
The last phrase “your endurance inspired by hope” supplies the urgency to the purpose of their church and ours. This contagious church had two letters written to them by Paul. Both deal with the imminent return of Jesus Christ. For the Thessalonians there was no time to lose in sharing the gospel with their neighbors. They could endure any hardship for being Christian if it meant that they could help someone know Jesus. The time was short whether Jesus came or some plague ravished their community. Why do we think that we have all the time in the world? Do we know our purpose?
2. A Contagious Church Is Infected With The Gospel
We need to backtrack a bit here. In talking about purpose I mentioned the imminent return of Jesus. While that is a motivating factor in telling our friends about Jesus, it is not the motivating factor. For a church to be a contagious church there must be this distinguishing mark: the gospel of Jesus Christ must mean everything to us. It is our consuming passion.
Paul wrote this of the contagious Thessalonians: “For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction.” They were infected with the gospel so deeply that it got under their skin; it was a disease that spread through their whole body and they did not want the cure.
A fellow named Nygrens said, “The gospel is not the presentation of an idea, but the operation of a power. When the gospel is preached (or spoken)… the power of God is at work for the salvation of men, snatching them from the power of destruction…and transferring them to the new age of life.”
The power of the gospel is real, compelling, gripping. Jesus is no legend or myth. That’s why he is so compelling or so divisive, why he causes such a battle in the hearts of people until they surrender. A myth cannot instigate the antagonism of Hollywood towards Christianity. Jesus lived and died a criminal’s death. He was raised from the dead. The power of this gospel infuriates or grabs you so intensely that you must do something with it. When the Thessalonians believed it they sensed the power of it in their hearts. And they were changed. They were different.
That is the power of conviction, to be so settled in your beliefs that nothing can sway you. A friend and I were talking one time about a spiritual issue of controversial nature. All at once he said, “Well I believe that I am right and that you are wrong.” In my mind I thought that that was absurd. You cannot be right and I wrong; we must both be right somehow. When a person is so convicted of what they believe is true we are offended. That is the thinking of our time: no one is wrong.
Yet that is the difference that marks a contagious church. We are so convicted of the truth of who Jesus is that it is offensive. We don’t need to be rude, obnoxious, or argumentative, just convicted that we have the truth.
Billy Graham went golfing with a fellow one time who wasn’t a believer. After a few holes he stomped off in a fury. He told a friend, “I don’t need Billy Graham shoving religion down my throat.” “Was Billy a little rough on you out there?” the friend asked. “No. He didn’t even mention religion.” That’s what I’m talking about…being so infected with Jesus that you don’t even have to say anything, people can sense Jesus in you. How deep is our conviction concerning this gospel?
3. A Contagious Church Imitates Jesus
Not only do we want people to sense Jesus in us, we want them to see Jesus in us. A contagious church is one that imitates Jesus.
It was high praise of the Thessalonian Christians when Paul said, “You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia.”
The extremely remarkable thing about these Christians is that Paul spent something like three weeks in Thessalonica, established a church, and then moved on. Whatever Paul showed them about Jesus so impressed these people that they decided they had to be like Jesus too. In a short time they became a model to other churches simply by living like Jesus. Because of their faith they suffered ridicule for believing in one god, a poor man who died on a cross; they experienced commercial persecution in that businessmen would have nothing to do with Christians; and they physically suffered, even died for following Jesus. But in the midst of that they had joy – not happiness which is dependent on external circumstances, but joy that comes from the Holy Spirit in you.
That was the model of Christ that had become so famous among the churches. Billy Graham said, “Our greatest need today is not more Christianity but more true Christians. The world can argue against Christianity as an institution, but there is no convincing argument against a person who, through the Spirit of God, has been made Christlike.”
However, no one person that I know of can claim to perfectly imitate Jesus. A contagious church imitates Jesus. I believe that it is only when we act and serve together that we more fully imitate the person of Christ. Each of us exemplifies Jesus differently; our strengths differ; we love differently; we each attract different people to Christ with our unique personalities. That is why I believe that evangelism is a body event not a solo event. Some of us pray while some of us verbalize our faith while still others quietly serve. Together we imitate Christ. Alone we are more susceptible to be called hypocrites because none of us can nail down a perfect imitation of Christ.
4. A Contagious Church Is An Infectious Church
That sounds a bit redundant, doesn’t it? If we are contagious then it stands to reason that we will be infectious. Think of this in terms of having the flu. When you catch the bug, it saps your energy, makes you tired, you don’t feel like eating – you can see it on the face of the patient that something has gotten a hold of them. They are also contagious – you get too close and you will catch what they have. It’s a fast spreading disease.
In terms of the church, to be contagious, to be infectious, means that people who come in contact with us will not help being ‘caught’ by the same bug that has caught all of us. There will be no question as to what has infected them because they will begin to look like us – that is, Jesus.
This is what happened in Thessalonica. “The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia – your faith in God has become known everywhere.” The Greek word for “rang out” or “sounded out” is where we get the English word “echo.” We echo God’s truth as we hear it from him. An echo only repeats what is originally spoken. God has put his voice in us to echo his love.
Not only that, but the way Paul wrote this word suggests two more things. One is that it is not a mere echo heard in the distance but like a sound of thunder. The second thing is that thunder passes, this sounding does not. It keeps ringing continuously. The end result is that a church that keeps in step with Jesus in imitating him and speaking of his love will become known everywhere. It is inevitable. People will hear about that church on Gruenfeld road in Kleefeld, about their efforts to make more room for newcomers, about their service in the community, about the love and grace of Jesus being poured out here – and they will rejoice that Christ is preached here – not in sermons, but in life.
A contagious church will infect its community so that the community will be changed by its influence. Jesus called it being salt and light.
Final Thoughts
So what? What do we do with this?
We have talked for several weeks now about being contagious Christians. In conjunction with this we have presented a vision for Church Growth. I want to say again that building a bigger sanctuary or church facility is not our main aim. There is no eternal reward for having a bigger church than the guys down the road.
Jesus said that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. Though it begins tiny, it soon grows to enormous proportions compared with its size. The kingdom is never stagnant, it is ever expanding. The Church cannot be stagnant either, it must continue to grow.
There are a lot of options on the table for our church, but whatever we do, I know this to be true: If Christ has truly infected the hearts of this church we will be contagious Christians. And people will come to discover this truth in us. One way or the other, whether mentally or physically, we must make room for them to come.
I am so in love with this church, I believe that God has done and will do really special things here. I believe that God has put some really amazing people here in Kleefeld, so I know that we can do immeasurably more than we can imagine through Christ in this place. We have the potential to be very contagious.
Let’s tackle the elephant together.
