Hey, have you ever gone over to somebody’s house that had different customs than you had in your house? Ever done that? I mean maybe in your house you keep your shoes on like you should and you go over to somebody’s house that they don’t allow shoes inside the house that they don’t allow shoes inside the house and so they’re all stacked out front. You ever done that? Sure. Some of you do that now and we’ll pray for you. But or maybe, if you ever walked into a house and done this -- I’ve done this before, you walk into a house and they say, "Have a seat just anywhere."
And so you sat somewhere and you immediately got the feeling you weren’t supposed to sit there. That that’s somebody’s chair. You know I mean that’s just kinda, that’s where they sit or maybe they had prayer over the meal and they held hands and maybe you don’t do that, or maybe you do and they didn’t. I know I went someplace once that not only did they hold hands, they stood and sang the blessing over the meal, which was really, really interesting.
Our campus pastor in Greensboro, Brett, told me about a time when their neighbors invited them over for a dinner and so they took pork chops over and their neighbors were Muslim. And it’s probably not a good idea. He said the relationship survived the night and they’re now able to laugh about it cautiously. But we all have customs and some customs, they’re not bad, they’re just different.
Today what I wanna talk to you about are customs in the church. We call this church Seacoast so we’ll talk about the customs at Seacoast in line with some of your questions. Some of em I’ll dig real deep on. Others I won’t and you can go to a place on our web site called after the message, and you can get a lot more in-depth into some of the things that I’m gonna talk about, some of the things that didn’t make it to the message today. And then I would also say I’d love for you to go to newcomers. If you haven’t been, either here or at the campuses, you need to go. That’s where we kinda tell our story. We all have a story and we tell our story and then we get a little bit more in-depth on the customs that make us who we are.
So what I wanna do is I wanna start and I wanna get through some questions. Before we do, we wanna do a little segment that we haven’t had much audience participation last couple of weeks. We wanna give you a chance to participate. Little segment we’re gonna call two lies and the truth okay? We’re gonna make three statements about our history; two of them are lies. One of them is the truth. What I want you to do is get your cell phone out and text us which one you think is true. Take a look at this.
Sarah: We’re gonna do a fun little segment for you called two lies and a truth. Here’s what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna give you three possible facts about Seacoast history and you vote on which one you think actually happened by texting the appropriate keyword to 99503. All right first possible fact is, once a former Seacoaster got bit by a shark during ocean baptism. If you think that’s true text shark to 99503. Next, an usher one time got attacked by a snake during an Easter service. If you think that actually happened text snake to 99503. And last possible fact is Greg once sacrificed a cat as a sermon illustration. If you think that’s true, text dead cat to 99503. All right get texting Seacoast. Later in the service we’ll reveal what actually happened.
Okay here you go, you ready? Think it’s a shark at baptism, shark 99503, snake at Easter, 99503, dead cat 99503 and we’ll figure out how you guys did just a little bit later in the message. All right here we go, let’s jump in. Why not jump in with a hard one off the start? That sound good? Here’s the question. What percentage of our hard earned tithes goes to pay Greg’s mortgage payments? That one actually came in twice. I’m going to assume the same person.
How many of you know that that is a question with attitude? Huh? Yeah, yeah. Why would a person ask that? I think that there’s a little mistrust going on. What do you think? I think maybe there’s some abuse that has been maybe seen or had at the experience of the church. I thought about it. I thought about why, why would you ask that question?
I’ve seen two extremes. I grew up in a little church. My dad was a pastor and the extreme there was there were some people in the church that their attitude was God, you keep him humble, we’ll keep him poor. Okay? And so the idea was the pastor should not make very much money. You know he should scratch out a living and it doesn’t matter what we make, his deal -- he’ll do that and shouldn’t make any money.
On the other side I’ve seen situation where pastors made tons of money; tons and tons of money. And in some cases it was like he is the pastor, he is the man. We believe that he should prosper even more than we do. Sometimes it’s cultural. Sometimes it’s because of a prosperity gospel; the one that really prospers is the one preaching it. And there’s been a lot of suspicion as a result of some of that. So that might be a couple of perspectives to come from. But when I saw the question I thought what a great opportunity to talk about how a church deals with money and what does the Bible say about that particular issue. And so look at your outline sheet and let’s take a look at what the Bible has to say.
In the Old Testament, the equivalent of pastors were priests and the priests were paid a living for doing full time ministry in the temple out of the tithes and offerings of the people. In fact Nehemiah, it’s just kind of a -- it’s got a little piece in it I wanted you to see. We won’t go into the whole context of the story that’s going on there but let me read it to. It says Elisha the priest had converted a large storage room and placed it at Tobias’s disposal. And the room had previously been used for storing the grain offerings, the frankincense, the various articles for the temple and the tithes of grain, new wine and olive oil which were prescribed for the Levites, the singers and the gatekeepers, as well as the offerings for the priest.
And so what he’s saying is that priests got paid. They got paid a portion of the tithes; not only the priest but the singers did too and also, in their case the first touch people, the greeters. Now we pay some of the singers, some of the musicians. We pay the pastors, but first touch people, the greeters, we don’t pay. We’re paid to be good; you’re good for nuthin okay? And so that’s just kind of a principle that we have goin on.
Now if you take -- what about the New Testament? Well it seems that there was a connection in kinda how, there weren’t priests, now there were elders and pastors but there seems to be a connection of them getting paid. Paul writes in I Corinthians 9, kind of a long treatus on it and you need to know that Paul earns his living outside of the church. He’s not paid by the church and he makes a case that he could be and should be and that pastors and elders can but he’s got his own business. He’s a tentmaker and here’s what he says.
"Don’t we have the right to live in your homes and share your meals? Don’t we have the right to bring a Christian wife with us as the other disciples and the Lord’s brothers did; as Peter does? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have to work to support ourselves? What soldier has to pay his own expenses?"
Here he’s gonna make a case for why that they could be paid. "What farmer plants a vineyard and doesn’t have the right to eat some of its fruits? What shepherd cares for a flock of sheep and isn’t allowed to drink some of the milk? Am I expressing merely human opinion or does the law say the same thing? For the law of Moses says you must not muzzle an ox," it compares me to an ox.
Fortunately it’s not a donkey; says, "To keep it from eating as it treads out the grain. Was God only thinking about the oxen when he said this? Wasn’t he actually speaking to us? Yes, it was written for us so that the one who plows and the one who threshes the grain might expect a share of the harvest. And since we have planted spiritual seed among you, aren’t we entitled to a harvest of physical food and drink? If you support others who preach to you, shouldn’t we have an even greater right to be supported?"
"But we have never used this right. We would rather put up with anything than be an obsticable," obsticable, that’s a good word. That’s Greek for obstacle. "To the good news and about Christ. Don’t you realize that those who work in the temple get their meals from the offerings brought to the temple and those who serve at the altar get a share of the sacrificial offerings. In the same way the Lord ordered that those who preach the good news should be supported by those who benefit from it."
So he’s making a case and he just says basically, there’s an Old Testament principle, there’s a New Testament principle, those that work in the ministry in the temple area should be paid for it. Then in I Timothy 5:17 he makes even a harder case. He says, "Elders who do their work well should be respected and paid well, especially those who work hard at both preaching and teaching. For the scripture says you must not muzzle and ox to keep it from eating as it treads out the grain."
And in another place, those who work deserve their pay. So he says that those who work in preaching and do a good job, that’ll be paid well, he says. And what about Jesus? What did he do? What was his practice? Jesus of course, before he went into full time ministry was a carpenter. He made things. How would you like to have a table made by God? You know I think that would be big on eBay.
But Jesus was a carpenter, worked with his hands, then he went into full time ministry and we see no record of he or his disciples having full time employment. They did the work of the ministry. They did the stuff. How were they fed? How were they paid? They had what was called a common purse between em and their followers gave offerings into the common person, then the common person paid the needs of his traveling group that traveled together. And so that’s kinda how Jesus lived.
How does Seacoast set a pastor’s pay? Kind of in response to this question and even before I get to the specifics of that, be a good opportunity to talk to you about how we deal with money here. If you’ve been here more than once or twice, you know we don’t pass offerings like a lot of churches do. We don’t put pressure on people. I don’t believe in high pressure stuff. The Bible says God blesses a cheerful giver. Now he accepteth from a grouch but he blesses a cheerful giver okay?
And so we have our offering boxes at the door and the people here give joyfully a tithe, a portion of what they make. How do we spend that? From the very beginning we’ve operated on a budget and we do exactly what Debbie and I do as individuals and we challenge you to do. If you’ve been here at Seacoast very long we say, "Here’s how you handle your money godly." Basically it’s a 10/10/80 plan. You’ve heard me talk about that. Give 10% to God, at least 10% to God, and then take 10% and set it aside, pay yourself, it’s for future, it’s for savings, it’s for rainy days and learn to live on 80%. That’s living within your means.
We don’t believe living within your means is living on 100%; it’s living on 80% within your means. We do the same thing as a church. The first 10% we try to give toward planting churches, toward mission work that we do. Somebody told me the other days, as a church we take like 27 or 28 mission trips this year to go and help support ministries that we support. We plant churches. This church over the last 6, 7 years has helped to plant -- help me on this, I think it’s 78 churches, 2 brand new churches today are being planted in the United States and we give every month of our money to go toward that and to help in community transformation and people who are less fortunate.
And then we take 10% and we set it aside for a rainy day. And then here’s how we break all the rest of it up. 50% of our income that comes into Seacoast goes to support people who are in ministry, 50%. It’s been that way from day one; about 47 to 52 I think is the highest that we’ve ever gone. And by the way that’s about the average of churches, especially large churches in America. Think it’s about any church in America except for really, really small churches have a higher percent going toward people usually.
Then the next 10% is toward just stuff. You know the stuff that you gotta do to -- you gotta buy a copier here, you gotta do this, that or the other. All of that is about 10% and then 20%, 15 to 20% goes toward the buildings and leases and things. We have 13 campuses and it costs money to run every building and all that kinda thing and it’s about 15 to 20% and that’s how our budget runs every year. It’s just pretty much right in those figures.
Now how do we pay employees and pastors? We use industry standards. Some of your companies do the same thing. What we do is there are about 3 or 4 companies in America that collect data from churches all over America. They have 350 some thousand Protestant churches in America and they collect data from as many of em as they can and then they- what we do is we ask em okay, we’re in the southeast of the United States, we’re this size church, this employee has been here for this long, about what do people pay that type of employee?
And what they’ll do is they’ll give us a range. Here’s a low range, here’s a medium range, here’s a high range. Now stick with me on this for a minute. I’m gonna do a Paul right now. I’m gonna make a case for Seacoast pay in the high range. This church is ranked as one of the 100 largest churches in America. It’s also ranked as one of the 100 fastest growing churches in America. There are only about 20 or 30 churches that are on both lists. We’re on both lists and we’ve been on both lists for 4 years.
It’s also you know, from -- these are kinda subjective things but there’ll be polls every once in a while that say we are one of the most influential churches in America today. And I’m not doing that to brag, I’m making a case here, just telling you about it. So I can make a case, I think, that we would be on the top edge of the pay area but we’re not. We choose not to be. We choose to be right in the middle. All of our employees are either just under the middle deal or just maybe just a hair over, nowhere close to the high end. A lot of times over the years we’ve had employees leave Seacoast, go to another church and they get a substantial raise. I don’t think we’re vastly underpaying, I’d like to do better, but what we have said over the years is we’re not gonna let it be a stumbling block to anybody.
How does my pay -- is my pay set? Is it just arbitrarily set by myself? No. We have a group of overseers, which are five ministers outside of this church, not related to us in any way who make recommendations to set my pay on the basic same thing and it’s set at about middle, it was at the very low end and it’s just below the middle range right now. So that’s kinda how we set the pay here.
So with that in mind, let’s go to this question. What percentage of our hard earned tithes goes to pay Greg’s mortgage payment? Well, to be honest with you, it’s not really a percentage in one sense, in another sense it is. Let me just say it like this, I don’t get a percentage of anything around here. I get a paycheck just like you get a paycheck and if this church grows a whole bunch, I get the same paycheck.
Now on the other end, if the church doesn’t do as well, I get a smaller paycheck just like you do in your business. In fact, through the kinda economic downturn, we’ve had to pull back on just some basic benefits that we give to our employees. We’ve frozen some hiring and there’s no raises or anything like that; some of the same things that you’re doing in your company. That’s just kinda how we operate. So I’m not on a percentage. But on another -- in another way you could say okay, well you’re not on a percentage but how do we pay for your house?
Well let’s talk about my house. I pay for it, you don’t pay for it. It’s my deal. I live in about a 2800 square foot house with 3 bedrooms. Now that’s bigger than some of your houses and it’s smaller than some of your houses. It’s kind of in a mid range okay?
My car, I drive a 5 year old car. I usually trade in cars about every 6 or 7 years. This one I may keep longer because it looks like an old man’s car but it’s got a really hot engine in it. It really does. And I kinda relate to that, it’s kinda like me. I look like an old man but in here there is a hot engine. Okay? So let me answer the question. What percentage of our hard earned tithes? Here it is right here, it’s 0.003 if you want a real number and that’s what it is. All right?
Okay, let’s go to the next question. Here’s what I wanna do. I wanna just, before I hit the next question on the outline sheet, I wanna do three quick ones. Three quick ones, there were a lot of questions asked. I’ll hit three quick ones as quick as I can. Let’s stick with money just for a minute cause a lot of people have asked, when I tithe, a tithe is 10% of what I earn. It’s based on my profits, what comes in, 10%.
For everybody here, that’s what a tithe is. People ask me should you tithe on the net or the gross? Have you ever heard that question? And wanted to know that question; let me just deal with it real quick. Remember that tithe is really on the increase. It came out of an agrarian society. It costs so much to plant the seed, you kinda subtract how much it cost to plant the seed and whatever came out is the increase, is what you tithed on, and that’s kinda the way it is today.
Many of you are like me and you receive a check from a company and you receive the same check every week or every two weeks or every month or however it is. And here’s kinda how that goes. There’s a portion of your check that’s withheld right? And a part of it goes to the government, do you ever see that? You’re gonna see less and less of that probably it looks like to me. If we keep -- whatever, that’s a whole nother deal.
But so part of it goes to the government, you don’t see it. That’s the government’s money. And so I would tithe on the net of what the government gets and then if they give you a check on the way back, then you’d pay a tithe on the tail end of that at the end of the year. So if you’ll be getting a government check in the next month or two, pay tithes on that government check. And then you have retirement taken out and retirement money, you don’t see either until the end and so you pay your tithe when you get the money in.
Some of you, like me, have your savings taken out of that. That’s your money and that you need to pay tithes on because you control kinda where that goes and that would be a rule of thumb for me. And if you wanna pay it on the whole amount, God will bless you on that too. If you have your own business, I would suggest that you do this, that you pay your tithes on your profits of your business, including your salary. It cost a certain amount to make the business run. That’s not your profit but your profits and your salary I would pay tithes on -- just a thought.
So if your spouse is not in agreement with you, do not, I mean don’t force your spouse to do what they’re not in agreement with. If you have some discretionary funds, you pay tithe on your discretionary funds. You let God deal with your spouse. And some people feel guilty cause they go by the box. I mean college kids or folks who don’t have money comin in and they feel guilty, and I would say you know, don’t feel guilty, it’s based on the money that comes in and some people go ahead and they put money in, which is great, that’s very generous, but the solution to that is just get a job okay? And when you get a job you’ll be able to do the whole deal. That’s fine.
Another one, here was a question, who decides -- how do you decide who preaches when? When I don’t feel like preachin, I have somebody else do it. It’s just as simple as that. Okay? So real quickly, real quickly, we started this church, for the first several years I preached all the time. I preached almost every weekend and I preached on Wednesday night and I hit a wall. I said this is not healthy for me. It’s not healthy for our church.
What happens if I go out and hit by a car, this is the only teaching the church gets. Besides, you know it’s just not healthy for either one of us. And so we developed the teaching team. And I teach about 60% of the weekends at Seacoast, 60%, plus I do about 8 to 10 first Wednesdays and just a few months ago I came to the church again and I was preaching 5 weekends, or 5 services on a weekend, I hit another wall. And so I just can’t do this. And the church so graciously said, "Hey let’s do the right thing," and so now I’m committed to preaching 3 times every weekend.
We have video at some of the service -- we’re gonna start putting video into this service, I’m gonna start moving around just a little bit. I’m not gonna tell you in advance. You just gotta come and figure it out because it works. Whatever, but I’m preaching three times on the weekends, so I do about 100 messages per year and then the teaching team, we divvy up the rest and I gotta tell ya, I’ve had people from outside of this church say, "Seacoast has one of the best teaching teams that I’ve ever heard in America." And I really believe that and that’s a good time for applause for the other guys.
But so that’s kinda how we handle that. All right let’s go on to the next one and it’s this, are we a spirit filled, tongue talking, Satan resisting church? Wow, is that a mouthful. That was a literal question. Have you noticed some churches have their entire belief system and statement in their name? I had looked up a couple; the Praise All Day Church of the Redeemer Christ Our Everlasting King. Here was another one, the Fire Baptized King James Only Church of the Living God. I mean that’s incredible.
Well here’s the short answer to this. You can get a longer answer to this after the message in the little web site that we have, but we believe at Seacoast that all the gifts of the Spirit are working in the church today. All of em are working into -- if you see it in the New Testament it’s there. Does everybody have all the gifts? No, but all of them are working. Now, as far as the name of our church, I’d personally like to change it to Seacoast, a Practical, Spirit-Filled Non-Spooky Yet Kind of Mystical Church that Meets in Multiple Locations. But the signage would be expensive so we’re just leaving it at Seacoast all right?
All right, let’s go to the next question, this is a bigger one. This is a bigger one; spend a little time on it. What does Seacoast believe about women in ministry and women as pastors? Now listen, this is a big question because whole dominations have split over this issue. It’s been argued for a long time. it gets hot, it gets heavy and what I’ve discovered is that there are wise people on both sides of the issue, and so I consider it something to argue about, a disputable issue.
It’s not germane to whether we go to heaven or not and I think there’ll be people in heaven over both sides so I don’t think it’s worth splitting a church about. But here’s what I’m going to do. We’re gonna dig deep into some theology for about five minutes. Okay, so I want you to buckle the seatbelt and hang on, we’re gonna go deep. We’ll give you both sides of the issue and then I’m gonna tell you what -- kinda where it fleshes out for us on this.
Two sides; one side are called complimentarianism. Say that together, complimentarianism. Kinda comes from the word complimentary all right? And the biblical basis for this is Genesis 1:27. I’d like you to read this one out loud. "So God created human beings in His own image, in the image of God, He created them male and female He created them."
So here’s what a complimentarian believes, complimentarian believes that God has created men and women as spiritual equals, but they are given distinct, unique rolls. Now these roles complement each other in that the authoritative roles of head of families and of the church is given to men only. While a woman’s role is equally important but nevertheless requires submission to the male authorities and a woman would not be a pastor or even teach when men are present. Because of what it says in I Timothy 2:11; let me read it. It says, "Women should learn quietly and submissively. I do not let women teach men or have authority over them. Let them listen quietly for God made Adam first and afterward He made Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived by Satan, the woman was deceived.
Now, before you get you know, here’s the deal. It’s the truth, the woman was deceived first, but Adam then sinned knowingly. So that’s a problem too okay? So let’s go on, let’s go on. But women will be saved through childbearing, assuming they continue to live in faith, love, holiness and modesty. And so what a complimentarian would say, key point is this. Is that women in ministry -- is that Paul says they are not to teach or exercise authority over men. He’s referring to pastoral and preaching roles in a local congregation, and because Paul appeals to creation, he appeals to Adam and eve, brings them into the story, then it’s not merely expressing his personal preference, which could be limited to his culture, but it’s an enduring theological point.
Let me just explain here just a minute. There are certain laws in the New Testament and the Old Testament that we don’t seem to follow today. Would you agree with that? You read something in the Old Testament or you read -- and this question came in, you read I Corinthians 11 and it says women should wear head coverings, it’s a disgrace if they don’t, or that they should have long hair, that it never should be shorter than a man, some of those types of things.
You say well why don’t we live by that today? Well there are different kinds of laws. First kind is ceremonial or dietary laws and they had to do with a ceremony or a diet. Do we follow those today? You can if you want to but it’s not entirely necessarily. A lot of them had to do with symbolic things. It also had to do with the fact that there was no refrigeration, and so they were limited to that time and place.
Some laws are universal laws, they’re moral laws. They apply I don’t care when, yesterday, today, tomorrow. You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal; you know those types of things. Those are ongoing moral laws.
And then you’ve got cultural laws for a certain culture and it’s you know, that’s kinda customs of the house, certain culture. If you were to go golfing in Charleston, at most golf courses you couldn’t wear denim because it’s culture and I have a fun story about that when I first moved here but I don’t’ have time to tell you. Perhaps if we get close enough I’ll tell you at some point. But anyway those are cultural laws. And so what they’re saying is because he’s appealing to creation, this isn’t cultural, this is lasting.
Now the other point of view is called egalitarianism. Say that together, egalitarianism. Comes from kinda the word equal. It means men and women are not only equal from creation and value on God’s sight, but they would say this, that even after the fall in Galatians 3:28 it says because of Jesus that there is no longer Jew or Gentile. There’s no longer slave or free. There’s no longer male or female for you are all one in Christ. So an egalitarian would say that God not only created men and women as equals, but this equality in Christ means that there’s no leadership role that a woman cannot serve within.
I Corinthians 14:34; how does an egalitarian square up what it says here and I’m gonna read it to you. "Since women should be silent during the church meetings, it is not proper for them to speak. They should be submissive just as the law says. If they have any questions, they should ask their husband’s at home for it is improper for women to speak in church meetings." What’s he talkin about there?
Well for a complimentarian it’s fairly simple. For an egalitarian, a little more complicated. Let me explain, let me explain. The church services were a little different than this in that there was a lot of interaction. And evidently, Paul is saying women learn at home, men, you could b the one speaking. Is that for today? I’ve been in that situation before. Let me explain it. Have you ever been a small group leader? Anybody ever been a small group leader?
If you’re a small group leader and you lead discussions in small groups, sometimes there are people who can dominate the discussion. Do you know anybody like that? Don’t point, don’t point but they feel like they got an opinion on everything and people who are quieter don’t get a word in. And people, other people in the group are goin, you know, you’re irritating me. You’re causing me to love you by faith. They’re not saying this.
This is what they’re thinking. They’re thinking you know, if you just shut up, this would be a better group, all that kinda stuff. And so as a -- if you’ve never thought that, you may be the one okay? And so a good small group leader will handle it like this. They’ll go, "You know this week we’re only gonna have red-headed people respond," cause they know the dark-headed person in the room is the one that just talks all the time.
And so only people -- or they might say, and I’ve done this before, "Only people who have not spoken in the last two or three weeks are gonna speak today, okay?" And that means just be quiet and let some of the other people speak. And an egalitarian would say, "That was the situation here," that Paul was dealing with a specific problem in a specific church, and it happened to be females, in a specific church, or a specific group of churches where this seemed to be going on. And they would say about I Timothy that we read just a minute ago that it’s referring to Paul’s desire to remain the patriarchal culture of the time.
There are sometimes in the Bible where you’ll read, and God will allow some things. Like for instance multiple wives. Hopefully that question will come up next week. I would love to deal with it in as much depth as I can off the top of my head. Just a rule of thumb, whenever you read in the Old Testament about a man having more than one wife, it’s not a good story. I mean there’s not a real good ending to that whole deal. I’ve not seen one at any point. But God allowed it because of the culture of the time.
And so what they’re saying here is that there was a strong patriarchal culture at the time and so maybe that’s what Paul was arguing for. Then they would say Romans 16:7 says this, "Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives, who have been in prison with me. They’re outstanding among the apostles and they were in Christ before I was." He says, "Greet these people that are relatives of mine," which says that the Surratts are not the only ones that have had more than one relative on staff. Evidently Paul had several of em, and it says this, it says, "He greets Junia," which a lot of commentators, not all, and not even a majority, but a lot of reputable commentators would say Junia was a female. And other than Junia, there are numerous examples of women in leadership; Miriam in the Old Testament, the sister of Moses. Deborah, who was at the very top of the food chain, she was the judge, the ultimate leader of Israel at one point.
Holda was a prophetess; Priscilla was actually her and her husband, Aquila, discipled Paul in the New Testament. They were leaders in the church and so what they would say is that an egalitarian would say if it was part of God’s creational idea that women never exercise spiritual authority over men, then the scripture would not allow these exceptions, and especially not as many exceptions as there are. So that’s the two points of view; theology 101 is through. Now where does Seacoast stand and come down on it? Let me tell a story.
The Saraat family in Christ begins with my grandfather. My grandfather was the first one of us to become a Christian. He was an outlaw. He was a bad man. He shot people and lived outside of the law. And two little ladies felt called by God to go to the community where he lived in Oklahoma with all of this outlaw friends and they decided to start preaching there. And he and his friends made fun of em, tried to run em out of town, all kinds of things.
They began to pray that the meanest man in town would get saved, who happened to be my grandfather. And my grandmother came, committed her life to Christ, to their meetings, and he finally did. Long story, but he came and he committed his life to Christ through the ministry of two women who were preaching in their little town. Ultimately my grandfather became a minister of all things, and my grandmother also became a minister and she was a preacher and could she bring it. She called it skinning hides and she could skin hides with the best of them. And so it was just natural for me growing up.
We were a part of an egalitarian point of view. I didn’t know how to spell it. Recently I’ve started studying it, but that’s just kind of the way it was. And so Seacoast has kinda defaulted toward that. We believe that women in ministry or women in ministry is not an abnormality and women have plenty to bring to the table in that particular area. That being said, we’re studying it right now. We reevaluate everything around here on a regular basis. We’ve got a group of elders in our church that are evaluating both points of view and we will come out with a statement at some point in the future as to where we are now and why we’re doing that. But that’s where we stand on that particular issue. All right let’s go on.
Let’s talk about, let’s go back and answer the question that we asked you to have input in earlier. You remember that, two lies and a truth? Where do we go? Okay, 16% of you believe that the shark bit somebody, 76% of you believed that it was a snake and there actually are some that believe that I sacrificed a dead cat, which is really not a bad idea. But that -- let me look at the screen and you can kinda see what the answer is.
Dale: Hi, I’m Dale Friar, one of the ushers here at Seacoast. I’ve been an usher for about 15 years now and one of the stories I’ll never forget was a Easter service a few years ago. Worship was just about over and a young lady and her family came in towards the end of worship and I seated em up front where I had some seats. Took my place at the far end of the auditorium here, sanctuary to kinda watch over things; make sure the service goes smoothly. And about 10 minutes into Greg’s message, the young lady comes walkin up the aisle lookin at me goin -- so I meet her about halfway up the aisle and say, "Yeah, what can I do for you? What’s wrong?"
She goes, "There’s a snake! There’s a snake!" So I said, "Take a seat and I’ll be right with you." So I’m thinkin, "Oh no, a snake, this is not good." So I get her seated back in her seats and I take a position by the stage and kinda just start lookin at things, checkin the Easter lilies, see if the snake’s comin out at Greg or what’s goin on. And I see the people inside the sanctuary, eyes starting to get real big.
The snake comes out the side of the stage and goes back underneath the stage. So I kinda creep along the front of the stage like nobody’s gonna see me and I get down and in the first row I see women all of a sudden startin to pull their legs back up in their seats and kids’ eyes getting real big and I’m thinkin, "Uh oh, we got a fly in the ointment here." So I come creepin around the front of the stage, like nobody’s gonna see me and as I get to the front of the stage, I look around and I see the snake comin out. By then Pastor Greg is lookin over the stage going, "What is he doing?" And he looks down just in time to see me grab the snake from behind.
And the snake reaches around, bites me in the hand and I’m carrying the snake out of the auditorium as fast as I can. In typical fashion, Greg thinking fast on his feet says, "For those of you who don’t know what’s goin on, he just caught a snake! We don’t usually pull the snakes out this early in the service." So he got a big laugh, I knew all eyes were on me. I’m embarrassed. I get outside and by the time I get out into the hallway, there’s lots of people standing out there because everybody could see what was goin on in the monitors.
And it was no great comfort when four different people told me it was four different kinds of snakes. "Oh yeah, don’t worry, that’s just a water snake." "Oh yeah, that’s a rat snake." "Oh it’s a chicken snake; we used to see those all the time." "Oh that’s just a little garden snake." But I figured since nobody said it was any kind of a poisonous snake that I was safe. So I put the snake back where we keep the rest of the snakes here at Seacoast. No not really, I took the snake outside and released it outside the sanctuary and that’s kind of my snake attack story on a Easter service. I have noticed since that time that we don’t have Easter lilies at the Easter service anymore.
Okay. All right one more question and then we’ll quit. Why church? Why church? Somebody asked you know, why even bother? Is it really necessary, especially with technology the way it is today or you know I can just have a relationship with God without the need for organized religion. Don’t much like church anyway, and why church? Good question. Let me give you a couple, three reasons, because the Bible says we need each other; says we need each other. I Corinthians 12:20-21 says, "Yes, there are many parts but only one body. The eye can never say to the hand, I don’t need you. The head can’t say to the feet, I don’t need you."
See when we try to live the Christian life, outside of and exclusive of the church, I don’t need the church, that’s pretty arrogant cause what we’re saying is I don’t need you. I can just do it on my own. Not true, not true. See, ____ says that, it’s kinda like if you say you know I like God and I like Jesus, I just don’t like the church. Just bad experiences, don’t like the church. The church is Jesus’ bride. That’s like you saying to me, well I like you Greg, but I don’t like Debbie. Let me tell you, if you say that to me, we’re not gonna be close. In fact, we’re gonna have some intense fellowship okay? Don’t test me on that cause I love my wife and Jesus loves the church, the bride, we need each other.
Another reason why church, is because Jesus said, "The gates of hell would not prevail against the church." It doesn’t say that the gates of hell will not prevail against Greg or Tom, Dick or Harry and you put your name in there, because the gates of hell can prevail against you but it cannot prevail against the church. See, when you become a Christian, the devil throws everything in his arsenal against you. In fact, that’s why a lot of people flame out. He wants to discourage you right away.
That’s why Jesus said, "I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against you." You know with the technology we have today you could do it on your own. You could sit at home today, you could watch Seacoast Internet service. You could watch Life Church, Oklahoma City, you could watch Healing Place Church; all good churches. You could turn on your TV and you could watch Charles Stanley or you could watch Ed Young Jr., or you could watch John Hagee or you could just plug in a podcast and watch it on video if you want to of Mark Driscoll or anybody.
I mean you could do Chandler, Matt Chandler and Dallas great teacher, you could even put mine on. Those are all good, those are all good but they’re not the church. They are teaching. What makes it the church is when you identify, whether it’s on the Internet or you identify here with a group of believers. You say that’s my church, that’s who I’m a part of. I expose myself to discipline by the church. That’s where I’m gonna receive the sacraments of the church. That’s where I’m gonna use my gifts in the church.
Hebrews 10:24 says, "Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works and let us not neglect our meeting together as some people do but encourage one another, especially now that the day of His return is drawing near." This is gonna be a more and more important question the further we go. The church may take different shapes. There may be house churches and mega-churches and we may figure out community on the Internet. But nothing -- you cannot get out from under committing yourself to the local church. That’s the only way that you’ll grow into the image of Christ.
Recently one of our campus pastors from Columbia, Nan and Larry Mayo had a little boy that was born. And when he was born the doctors noticed right away that there were some issues and some problems and so they immediately transferred him to another hospital a few miles away from where momma was. I can’t even imagine what that’s like. And then after they got him to that hospital, the next morning they said, "We gotta take him to MUSC in Charleston and so they put him on a helicopter and momma checked outta the hospital and mom and dad were coming down to Charleston and they called us. And we immediately went and met them at the hospital about 8 or 9:00 at night.
I wanna tell you something. Hell had a chance to prevail there because it does. When you lose somebody, when there’s an illness in your family, when you lose your job or whatever, Satan uses those opportunities to plant thoughts, to discourage you, to get you to think in things that aren’t necessarily true, hell can prevail. It’s when you need the church. And in the midst of that, the church gather, Seacoast church gathered in that waiting room that night at MUSC and we prayed together, and we laughed together. Nan said, "I haven’t laughed in 48 hours."
Well Mary Hart doeth good and if you’re around me, you’re gonna laugh okay? We laughed together, we prayed, we sang, we cried together and the church prevailed. You can’t do that by yourself. You need the church. Why church? Let me give you another reason, because you will never really know God outside of the context of community.
I remember sitting after the funeral of one of my best friends. We went over to the house, we had a meal, and then we sat in a circle in the living room, just got all the chairs around we could, and we began to tell stories about our experience with our friend. You’ve done that, you’ve done that. It was an amazing thing for me because he was my best friend and I thought I knew him well. But as other people began to tell stories I thought, "There’s a facet of him I didn’t see." And when I walked away I thought, "You know what? I know him better in the context of community than I ever really knew him by myself. It’s sad that we have to wait until someone dies to do that, but you know what, that’s the way it is with Jesus.
Sometimes people will say, "I just wanna know Him more and so I’m just gonna shut myself away, shut everybody else out. Read my Bible, I’m just gonna know Jesus more. Well there’s value to having certain times of doing that but you’ll never know Jesus more by yourself. You’ve gotta be deeply involved in community to really know who He is. A lot of you don’t know this but our church name is not legally Seacoast Church. It’s Seacoast Christian Community. That’s what we started it as 21 years ago and the reason is because we recognize that the church is about community. It’s about loving God and loving each other and as we do and serve one another, we will see facets of Jesus we could never see on our own.
Tim Keller and his new book, "The Prodigal God" says this, "It takes a community to know someone. Only if you’re a part of a community of believers seeking to resemble, serve and love Jesus will you ever get to know Him and grow up in His likeness." You know over the next few years, the church will no doubt change. It’s changed a lot since I got involved in church and it’s gonna change more. I’m prayin for the next generation that they’ll take the church to new heights and new ways, but some things will always remain the same. The church is the hope of the world.
I’m in love with my wife. I’m in love with Jesus and I gotta tell you somethin, I’m in love with this church because this is what God is doing in the world today. Let’s pray. Father, I thank you for your grace and your goodness. I thank you for the church. Not just Seacoast Church, every church that calls on the name of Jesus. I thank you for the church. I thank you for what the church has done in my life. I thank you for unselfish people who have used their gifts to minister to my family in various ways. Now God, I pray that you would draw us closer to you and closer to your church, in Jesus name we pray, Amen.
