What’s At-Risk?
At-Risk series, Message #3, Discover Church
February 3, 2008
I hurt my toe 4 years ago, and –because I didn’t want to pay the money, or stop my running routine, I didn’t do anything about it. Ignored it, hoped it would go away. Well it didn’t, it deteriorated, and I eventually had to have surgery to fix it. I learned a valuable lesson: doing nothing is risky, and –had I waited another year or two it could not have been fixed at all.
The definition of risk is to act or fail to act in such a way to bring about the possibility of (an unpleasant or unwelcome event). (Oxford American Dictionary)
It’s been said that “When we choose to avoid risk in one area of life, we automatically engage in an opposite action of risk by default.” Michael DiMarco, All In: Gambling in Life, Love, and Faith This reality that risk is unavoidable, and that inactivity is as risky as new activity has been a rude awakening. When I first followed Jesus, I was a risk-taker for the right reasons: to obey God and pursue God’s purposes for my life. What about you: are you basically a risk-taker or risk-avoider?
I see in my life what I know to be true about people, about you: the older we get, the more risk-averse we can become. Here are some signs I’ve noticed that, as we age, we become reactionary instead of visionary, conservators rather than innovators, preservationists instead of producers, resistors of change rather than initiators of change. Life’s a lot like a football game: you fight and take risks to get ahead, and the temptation is to adopt a prevent defense –sit on your lead, avoid getting burned big, but you play less aggressively and often give up a lot of ground in little bits with that strategy. On offense you resort to grinding it out on the ground to eat up the clock, avoid coughing up the ball or getting sacked, and finishing the game of life just a little bit ahead. The reality is: you don’t win big in football, in life or faith with that strategy.
When you’re ahead of the game Doing nothing can put you at-risk! Let me give you three examples:
A. The American Auto Industry: One stat says it all: domestic share dropped to just 47.1% on 02/01/08 [http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/news-blog/domestic-automakers-market-share-slips-to-471/] A prevent defense hasn’t worked.
B. The American Economy: In S.E. MI: 1948 340K manufacturing jobs; 2008: less than 40K;
C. The American Church: Here are some Surprising facts about the American Church from Dave Olson, a religious researcher [www.theamericanchurch.org; author: A Church In Crisis, Zondervan].
• Actual church attendance is half of what pollsters report: 17.3% nationwide, 19.5% in MI 2006,
• Church attendance has been declining for 45 years, was flat in the 90s, and resumed declining in the 21st century and (5.4% in MI) continues to slow down
• 91+ million more Americans arrived during this same period of time.
• New churches can only accommodate one fourth of these new Americans. When factoring in churches closing: only one ninth.
• Based on current projections, less than 15% of Americans will attend church regularly by 2020.
The reality is that the “Big 3 as–usual, Economy as-usual, church-as-usual has left us at-risk, and they show what I shared on January 13th: if you don’t change, you’ll self-destruct, and you’ll never achieve your potential. Life-as-usual can leave you at-risk. To live life fully, and avoid stagnation and self-destruction, you must take risks. That’s what Tom Watson, American entrepreneur and founder of IBM believed. He said: “In a changing world, the risk of doing nothing is unacceptable… Solve it. Solve it quickly, solve it right or wrong. If you solve it wrong, it will come back and slap you in the face, and then you can solve it right. Lying dead in the water and doing nothing is a comfortable alternative because it is without risk, but it is an absolutely fatal way to manage a business.”
Change is risky, but so is stagnation. Let me ask you: Is water or air that does nothing harmless? No, it becomes stagnant; it‘s not part of any flow or current of movement; it not only contains no fresh, renewing activity, it’s the breeding ground for germs or disease like Giardia, Salmonella, Typhoid, and a host of others. doing nothing is resisting and avoiding the natural flow of life, because it’s not the nature or design of the human being to be inert. (John Marks Templeton Discovering the Laws of Life ).
God did not create you to avoid risk, be inert, or become stagnant. When his son, Jesus came to earth he challenged the stagnant religious system and the people it produced, to change radically, and I know he’d do the same thing today. EARLY SERV ONLY: He’s been challenging Discover church through the words that you members have been impressed to share with us on Sundays this year: launch into the deep, get into the river of God, become God’s miracle-working hands and feet. You’ve confirmed some things God has said to me last year: Go. Go for broke. Wade into the harvest. Focus on the front door. That’s how Jesus approached life & faith.
Let’s take a look at an example in the gospel of John at the risks Jesus took to rescue a woman sinking in a quagmire of life-as-usual in John chapter 4:
Verse 4: Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar,… Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus challenged conventional thinking, which –in that day, was: Samaritans are trash and women are not important –don’t waste your time with either, yet Jesus made irreligious people his prime target. He went out of his way to reach people far from God. He went to them, just like we did for our Christmas celebration. We did something different: instead of just opening our church’s doors and saying “come” we WENT… to a school to reach people who don’t go to church, and almost 650 people showed --our largest Christmas celebration ever! That confirmed what we suspected: that we will attract many more non-religious people to a non-religious site, like a school. It also showed that when you take risks out of obedience to God (“GO INTO all the world and preach the gospel.. Matthew 28:18) God rewards them!!! And that’s a risk we’re making plans to do again.
Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” Jesus extends an invitation to add value to her life, to meet a relevant need. “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. This woman ws drowning in her own quagmire of life-as-usual, and it was killing her. What you have just said is quite true.”“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. 20Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem. Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem… a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” Jesus says that real church isn’t about buildings, or traditions, it’s about believing in Jesus, belonging to Jesus & getting into the flow of what God is doing NOW, about becoming like Jesus. Real church is about believing, belonging, becoming --not buildings, bank balances or many of the metrics we use to measure “church.” Read ahead in chapter 8 of the next book, Acts and you’ll see that these Samaritans believers were later filled with the Holy Spirit
The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”…Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him. Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?” “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
These guys didn’t get the big picture because they were in a rut of just thinking about themselves & meeting their own needs. When you do that, people far from God slip off your radar, and you lose your appeal and impact. Jesus shows them the big picture: Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Do you want joy? Want excitement? Roll up your sleeves and join God in what He is doing: God is connecting people to himself through his son Jesus. Jesus is saving people from the stagnation of sin and self-centered living. Do you want to experience life to it’s fullest? Get into the flow of what God’s doing –that living water! Do God’s thing, not nothing or your thing, that’s how you experience the real thing in life.
"Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” That’s reward! God rewards risk, when done out of obedience to His Word or in pursuit of His purposes.
Look at another person who’s rut became a quagmire in John ch. 3: Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
Why was Nick there at night? He knew that there had to be more than synogogue-as usual. But he couldn’t openly investigate this new thing God was doing because his religion was stuck and stagnant and did NOT tolerate change well at all. Jesus, this radical rabbi confronted synagogue-as-usual: trapped in it’s traditions, turning off people, and turning out hypocrites.
In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” Nick you’ve got to radically change if you want to live life fully, and experience eternal life now! You’ve got to take real risk again to get in on what God’s doing.
“How can a man be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb to be born!” Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. Jesus is saying Nick, you’ve got to get into the flow of that fresh new thing that God is doing through me!
“Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ Getting in on what God is really doing is risky --as risky as when you were born.
“The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”… when you become fully alive to God, get into the flow of what Jesus is doing, pursue God’s thing rather than your thing or no thing –then you’re led by His spirit, and life becomes an adventure again. That’s risky… real risky! But it sure beats slow death by stagnation.
Jesus goes on to say in verse 16: that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Jesus came, lived, died to save you from the stagnation of doing just your thing, or no-thing in life –from life-as-usual, from toxic religion-as-usual. But you’ve got to be willing to part with time worn traditions & habits that don’t hold life for you anymore. Has that become you? Has life become a grind? Are you just puttin’ in time, eatin’ up the clock in the game of life. Has your rut turned into a quagmire? What you’re settling for will poison you, just like stagnant water or air! Time to take the risk of change!
Jesus’ invitation is extended to you today, whether you’re in the quagmire of life-as-usual, or church-as-usual, doing your thing or doing nothing: “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. (John 7:37-39a) Jesus wants to do a new thing- God’s thing: In your life, marriage, family in this county, through this church. Take the risk and go with, or stay stuck & stagnate.
That’s His agenda, that’s the vision He he closes the bible with: I am making all things new!”… “It is finished! I am the Alpha and the Omega—the Beginning and the End. To all who are thirsty I will give the springs of the water of life without charge! Revelation 21:5-6 d In order to that, you need to permit Jesus to do a new thing in your life; to flush out the stagnation and disease of doing your thing, or nothing, and be filled and refreshed with his Spirit as you get on board with what God is doing new, now. Will you go with God? Go with us?
Pray: Dear Heavenly Father, open my eyes to see the ways in which I have stopped taking risks for the right reasons, and how I might be putting myself, my marriage and family, my example to others as a Christ-follower, or my church and community at-risk as a result. Show me any ruts I’ve slipped into, and what I need to do in order to get out and back-on-track with you. Give me the courage and passion to pursue your plans and purposes, and the faith to trust you when I feel at-risk in doing so, and the courage to continue as I get into the flow of what you’re doing! Amen.
Kevin McCarthy, February 2, 2008
