Audio at: www.sermonlist.com/Presenting.m3u
What do you want this church to look like to outsiders? What do you want it to accomplish? As Christians, we should want this church to look inviting to outsiders; a place that is warm and friendly, not a place that is distant and cold. As far as what we want it to accomplish, I think that is simple.
We want this church to spread the Good News to other people. But how can it spread that news if there are no other people coming in to the church?
Today, I want to talk to you about these things, but I also want to include how we, as the people in the church, can make or break this church without realizing it. I want to talk about what is expected of each one of us, as we work to grow this church for Jesus.
God has blessed us immensely. We began this church with just 14 people six months ago. Now, we are nearing 40, and even though that is still a very small number, it shows that this church is growing.
Today, I would like to focus on what the future of our church looks like, and how it will be affected by what we are doing today. The best way I have found to be healthy is to take action to thwart off those things that can make you unhealthy.
Most messages are meant to keep you spiritually healthy. This message will do that, but it also includes how to keep the church spiritually healthy.
And, since none of us want to be here all day, this will not be a very long sermon, as we are going to have our first annual business meeting after the service, and then we will have our monthly board meeting.
Let me tell you about when I was in the Navy. I was a flight weather forecaster. I gave weather briefings to pilots, telling them what kind of weather they would encounter between their flight’s origination and destination points. I am not bragging, but I was consistently given accommodations for my accuracy. Now, to prove to you that I am not bragging, let me tell you how I accomplished that.
I would take the weather forecasts from up to 50 reporting stations around me and simply average them out to get my forecast. I was not plagiarizing their reports, but I was using their intelligence and know-how to help my forecasts. Many of these people knew much more than I did, and many had more experience than I did; so I relied on them to help me.
I know many pastors throughout this nation, and I do the same thing with them. I borrow ideas from them to help me deliver better sermons to you, and I feel free to ask them for help whenever I run into a problem.
The reason I rely on them is to make sure you are getting everything possible out of a church that is truly focused on Jesus Christ.
Now, that being said, I want to talk to you about …
1. MAKING A CHOICE TO DO GODLY THINGS
I believe too many churches expect nothing more of their congregations than to come in, sit, listen, and then go home, just to come back next week and go through the same motions.
And some churches do this without telling them what their obligations to that church are. This makes for a content, albeit somewhat non-focused, congregation. And a church that is not properly focused cannot do its Godly job of leading others to Christ.
A pastor asked a ten-year-old boy after service one morning if the boy knew why the church served coffee to the adults after church. The boy said, “Sure. It’s to make sure they wake up before they drive home.”
I would hate to think of this congregation ever getting in that shape because if you were not focused on the word of God in the sermon, you wouldn’t be focused on anything of God in the church.
Each of you were led to this church for a very special purpose, and each of you are a very special blessing to this church. As your pastor, I will do all I can to keep you informed as to not only what direction we need to travel, but what God wants from each of us as we go there.
Here is a thought that very few people ever consider. If we go to a church on a regular basis, do we owe that church anything?
I have always felt that if we go to a church regularly, we owe it several things. We owe the church to try and build it strong for the Lord’s work, and that means we have to focus on God’s vision for the church, not what we might personally want in the church. And what is God’s vision for CrossRoads Church?
God simply wants us to focus on Him to the extent that we can bring others into the fold and disciple them into being mature and productive Christians. There are many ways we can do that in, but first, we must choose to do Godly things.
We must …
2. FOCUS ON HAVING UNITY IN THE CHURCH
What does unity mean? It does not mean just being near to each other every Sunday. It means being dear to each other, too. You can be unified without having unity. There is an old story that illustrates this very well. If you two cats tails together and throw them over a clothesline, they will be unified, but they will fight until one is dead. That is being unified without having unity.
The congregation of this church can be unified, but that will not accomplish God’s tasks for His church. In addition to being unified, we must be in unity. That means to care for one another so much that you gladly give up something you want so they can have something they need. There are some people who appear to be perfect Christians … until somebody comes in and sits where they usually sit.
Different people may have different duties within the church. I know that, as humans, we tend to take on something called “ownership,” but in a church setting, that can be as divisive as outright selfishness. If you are doing anything in the church and someone else offers a suggestion, here is what you should think:
‘Which way would exalt God more, my way or theirs?’
Just as I relied upon other weather forecasters, and still rely upon other pastors, God expects you to rely upon each other as you do things for His glory. Of course, if you have a suggestion to make to someone, God expects you to offer it in the kindest and most loving way possible, so as not to offend.
Words often hurt more than any other kind of weapon. There is a story of a father telling his young son to take an eye-dropper and fill a glass with water with it. He did, and then his father told him to pour it down the kitchen sink, which he did. Then his father told him to get that water back. The boy said he couldn’t.
And the father said that our words are the same way. Once we pour them out, we cannot get them back.
We have to be ever-watchful when it comes to the words we choose to say - especially if we have a natural barbed-tongue or if we are not in a good mood.
How does God view our tongues?
JAMES 3:6 says,
‘The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself, set on fire by hell.’
I am not a mind reader, but I can tell you one thing for sure. Every time you have ever gotten upset at somebody for anything .... it is because of one reason and one reason only. They didn’t something the way you think they should have done. And left unchecked, that causes dissention with in a church and that is the one thing above all else that cannot be allowed in the church.
It is like recruiting. When people get aggravated, they start talking to others who they think will sympathize or agree with them and thereby building up their side against the side they don’t like. Please do not become a party to this in any way.
None of us will have everything we want in this church. But we can have everything we need to be fulfilled and be happy in this church.
By God’s design, we are different than the church down the street or the church across town. They can reach people we cannot, and we can reach people they cannot. We have been called to do the same thing, but we have all been given different ways to do it.
So, it all boils down to the fact that if you are in a church congregation, you need to know what their focus is so you can decide whether or not you belong in that church. If you have decided that this is your church home, you need to join the church. If you have decided that this is your church home, you need to support it to the best of your ability, in money, talent, and every other area of your life.
And if you have chosen to let this be your church home, you need to trust in me as your pastor and support me as I devote my life to leading you towards the goal that God has put upon my heart.
To do this, we will do the best we can to have the kind of service that “most” of today’s community can relate to. See, “most” of our community does not go to church and does not know very much about Christ.
If we are trying to grow God’s kingdom by also growing this church, we must take into consideration our community when setting up the different formats we use here in this church.
What does that mean? Let me give you some examples. This church will never make a person feel out of place because of how they might be dressed – as long as that dress is modest in nature.
This church will be a place that welcomes others. Let me give some guidance along this line. If you are in this church and you happen to see somebody come in that is not a regular, it is up to you to go to that person and make them feel welcome, whether it is on Sunday mornings, or at any of the events during the week. We are here to encourage people to attend, not to push them away. Let’s always be on the aware of new people, okay?
This church will not just offer the traditional hymns and we will not just offer the modern contemporary songs. We will offer a blend of the two. There will be some in church that love the hymns, and there will be some in church who love the newer songs, and there will be some in church who love the choruses. Again, each of us must be willing to give a little of what we want, so that others might have a little of what they need. We want everyone to be fed in this church, and would rather give some to everyone rather than to give everything to just a few.
In ROMANS, it says to watch out for those who cause division in a church. It says they are contrary to the teaching of Jesus, and they serve their own selfish appetites.
In ZEPHANIAH, it says we are to work for the Lord shoulder to shoulder – in unity.
In ROMANS, it says we are to be devoted to one another, and in 1 THESSALONIANS, it simply says we should try and get along.
We planted this church for God, not for us. So it becomes necessary for us to have those things in this church be along the lines of what He wants, not what we might want. Therefore, we need to be willing to give more than we want to take.
For the future of this church, it becomes absolutely necessary that we bind together and follow the vision for this church. As members of this body, we are called upon to do just that. But to do so, we must be positive to and about our brothers and sisters in the church.
Some people want …
3. THE PERFECT CHURCH
There was once a pastor who decided he was going to do something different for a change, so instead of a sermon, he gave everyone two sheets of paper.
On one sheet, the heading read, “THE PROBLEM IN THIS CHURCH IS …” and on the other sheet, the heading read, “WHAT THIS CHURCH NEEDS IS …”
He had them fill them out and hand them in. The next Sunday, he gave the results. On the sheet that listed the PROBLEMS, such things were listed as:
· Should not serve coffee in church
· Should serve more coffee in church
· Should have shorter sermons
· Should have longer sermons
· The music we have is terrible
· It’s terrible we don’t have more music like what we have
On the sheet with the heading of WHAT IS NEEDED, things were listed like:
· Need to spend money on more chairs
· We don’t need to spend any more money
· Pitch all the songs and start over
· We need a new preacher!
We can see the humor in that illustration, but there is something else we can see, too. We can see the unhappiness of those in the church. We can see the lack of unity as a body of Christians, and there is one more thing … we can see a church that has dropped the ball in its teachings, because nobody mentioned Jesus Christ.
I would say the biggest problem that church had was that everybody was focused on what they wanted, and nobody was focused on what Jesus wanted. Too often, we are mainly concerned with what we want, and sometimes that is not healthy for the church.
I am reminded of the little church that needed a pastor, but they were small and couldn’t afford to pay very much. The only one they could afford was a 74-year-old pastor. He and his wife moved into the very small and very old one bedroom, one bathroom parsonage next door and he began to ready himself for his first sermon.
Come Sunday, he got up and spoke for exactly 30 minutes. Later that afternoon, the elders came by the parsonage and praised him with many praises, then asked him how everything was going. He told them the bathroom was too small and when he and his wife were getting ready for church, it was very difficult. The elders just kind of let that go over their heads and they bid goodbye for the day.
The next Sunday came and the pastor got up and again spoke a very good sermon for exactly 30 minutes. Later that day, the elders again came by the parsonage and told him how glad they were they hired him. Then they asked how it was going. The pastor again told them about the very small bathroom, to which they again let it go over there heads.
The third Sunday, the pastor got up and preached for 2 hours and 45 minutes. Later, the elders came by and asked him why he talked so long. He apologized and told them that the bathroom was so small that he accidentally put in his wife’s false teeth that morning and he said, “…and you know Momma, when they get started they just don’t stop.”
That afternoon, the crew came by to start building their new bathroom. That new pastor was focused only on what he wanted, and sometimes we have to do that, but never at the expense of not caring how we treat others in the church.
But to be able to do the things for God in His church, and do them properly, there is one thing we need to have. That one thing is …
4. FAITH
An architect has faith in his creation even before he draws up the blueprints, and a farmer has faith in his harvest even while he plants the seeds. This church needs to have faith in our growth for God even before we have all the seats filled up.
In 1 SAMUEL, we read that Samuel had absolute faith in our Lord. He told the Israelites to “stand there and get ready to see what God was going to do right in front of their very eyes.”
Then, he called upon God to send thunder and rain where none had been, and God did. The Bible says the people stood there and watched with awe. That means they stood there with their mouths gaping and their eyes wide open … because they saw the fruits of true faith.
I have that kind of faith in this church. And because of that faith, I have a passion. Diana can tell you that she has never seen me have such a passion, too. She recognizes it. It can be nearly overpowering at times, but it is always positive and born of love. Let me tell you what my passion is.
My passion is to see this church become strong for the Lord. To be focused on the visions of our future, not on the traditions of our pasts.
I don’t want this to be a church where its members say they want things a certain way because that is all they have known in the past. I want this church to have members who say they want to reach for the stars so they can affect more and more people for Jesus.
But, to do that, we must be divisive-free in this church. And we can only be that way if we are focused on God, not ourselves. So, as we go forward from today, let us see this church being bathed in the light of the Lord; let us see the vision God has given; and let us continually stay in prayer – for ourselves, and for the others in the church.
There is an old saying that goes … “You cannot fight and pray at the same time.”
So, let me quickly bring this to a close. Today, we were talking about the continued health of our church. The best way to keep it healthy is to practice focusing. We need to focus on each other. We need to care so much for others in the church that we are more than willing to see things go their way without getting upset or talking negatively about them.
JOHN 13:35 tells us,
’By this, all men will know that you are My disciples - if you love one another.’
If someone were to see the way you interact with others, especially within the church, would they see the love in your heart for them, or would they see the impatience and aggravation we so often feel for them?
We are one team – working in UNITY to attain the same goal … creating a church that is able to reach people for Jesus. We cannot do that if we do not feel love in our hearts for others in the church. And we cannot feel love if we are being uncomplimentary about others in the church.
As we go into our time of invitation, let me say that if you feel like becoming a committed part of our church, I ask you to come forward this morning to officially join our family.
If anything I have said today has touched your heart in a personal way, I ask that you come forward and approach the Lord in prayer.
And, if you have never asked Jesus into your heart, I ask that you come forward to do that today.
INVITATION
