3. Something is happening (Preview to a Vision week 3)
January 24, 2010
We are Bored
When I was in high school my room was in the basement of my house. Outside my room was a sort of basement living room area where we had a ping pong table set up. Well one day I was sitting around with nothing to do and I got bored. So I thought I would take a ping pong ball and melt a little part of it to see if it would bounce different. So I took a lighter and held a ping pong ball over it. I don’t know if you know this or not but ping pong balls are all sorts of flammable. I turned on the lighter and puff I had a ball of fire in my hand. Of course I lacked the common sense to try this in the bathroom or outside in case of such a problem. I was sitting on the couch at the other end of the basement. Between me and the bathroom was an obstacle course made up of a ping pong table three couches, a fosse ball table and a closed door. Now a ping pong ball is not very big and when it caught on fire it was immediately consumed in flames. I started to notice that those flames were hot as it began burning my hand. So here I am running through the basement with a ball of fire burning my hands trying to move as quickly and yet carefully so as to not catch anything else on fire to the bathroom. I open the door cant stand it anymore and toss the ball into the sink. Of course I failed to consider that it is still a ping pong ball designed to bounce. It launches out of the sink and into the corner of the bathroom. The flame is so strong that it immediately starts to burn the drywall. Well after a great deal of panic and nearly burning down the house I managed to put the fire out. The ping pong ball was gone. The corner of the bathroom was now black instead of blue and I had little burns on my fingers all because I got bored. Have you ever wondered how many crimes have been commited as a result of boredom? How many people take drugs, get drunk, fight, steal, and do other terrible things because they are just looking for something to do? How much property has been damaged or people injured because someone was bored? Boredom can be a dangerous thing in our physical lives. I wonder what happens when we get bored in our Spiritual lives?
I have gone to church my whole life. I have sat in the seats. I have sang the songs. Have prayed the prayers. I have read the Scriptures. I have given communion meditations. I’ve served communion. I have showed up for special events. I have participated in the greeting time. My whole life I have been a Christian. I have done just about everything there is to do inside the church walls. I know how to go through the motions as well as anyone. But I am tired of that. I am bored. I am bored coming to the same services every week singing songs, preaching a sermon and then going home. I am bored spending my week studying and preparing a message that we respond to by saying good job and then leave the same way we came in. After 25 years of life I am bored with church. Not long ago I was in a staff meeting with Jordan, Tim, and Alexis and Jordan started saying some of the same things I was feeling. So we stopped what we were doing to just talk about this for a bit. But rather than me just sharing with you what we talked about I asked them to come share for themselves. This not a gimmick I am using for an illustration, I just wanted to take this morning and to let you hear where we were and how we were feeling about what we were doing as a church.
So Jordan if you would come up here.
Jordan talks about how he was bored in his ministry, tired of what he was doing, looking for something more.
Tim talks about how he is bored with worship being just songs we sing, bored with doing one music set after another and having that be what we consider worship to be
What I realized when we all started talking is that we are bored. As a staff and leadership we are bored. My guess is that if we are bored, some of you are starting to be as well. Some of you have been coming here faithfully for a long time and you are starting to get antsy. Sitting in the seats and going through the motions isn’t really doing it for you anymore and the Spirit inside you is starting to stir as you are feeling driven more than ever to get connected and to be involved with something important. Some of you, like us have started to get bored. Some of you are bored of doing the same thing one Sunday after another. Some of you are starting to get bored talking about it and you want to know what to do.
Boredom comes from living without a sense of purpose. It creates an overall sense of dissatisfaction or discontentment in our lives. Brady talked about this in a communion meditation one time, he has a shirt that says on it: I got out of bed for this? I think that really accurately describers the feeling of dissatisfaction that comes from being bored. Without a purpose we begin to question everything we do. Nothing has meaning, nothing satisfies and we find ourselves asking: why did I get out of bed at all? Did I really get out of bed for this? Boredom comes from a lack of purpose. When someone in the world gets bored it makes sense they are living life with no purpose. What happens though when the bored person is someone in church? I think the reason we get bored in the church is not because we do not have a purpose but because we have forgotten what that purpose is. We look at the world around us and we see darkness instead of seeing opportunity to be the light. Let me show you our purpose:
Mt 5:13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. Mt 5:14 “You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Mt 5:15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. Mt 5:16 In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
Over nine million people die worldwide each year because of hunger and malnutrition. Five of that nine million are children. Approximately 1.2 billion people suffer from hunger and cannot get enough calories and protein to be considered healthy. Some 2 to 3.5 billion people have micronutrient deficiency which is a result of a lack of access to essential vitamins and minerals. Yet, some 1.2 billion suffer from obesity because they eat way more than they should. Guess where a vast majority of those people live? Right here. The problem of world hunger is not that we do not have enough food but that it is distributed unequally. Food costs in poorer areas of the world prevent those who really need it from being able to get it. While those who live in the lap of luxury toss out more waste than would be needed to solve the hunger problem in the first place. The answer is clearly not, mail some African your hamburger but something must be done. I tell you this is darkness. Darkness is more than just sin or Spiritual evil. Darkness is found when people cannot meet their basic needs for survival. If we are not meting people’s physical needs. How can we hope to meet their Spiritual needs? How can you tell a starving child that Jesus loves them without first loving them enough to feed them?
The church is God’s redemptive agent in the world. We are the salt that keeps food from rotting and gives it flavor. We are the light that destroys darkness. Jesus has called us to care for the hungry, the lost, and the hurting people of this world. Jesus loved lost people. He gave His life for them. Jesus died on the cross so that we could be made into righteous children of God. As such we are His workers. We are the light. Just as we see Jesus throughout His ministry meeting people’s needs so we as His followers need to do the same. We need to meet the needs of the world. There is a great need. We have a great task. The church has a purpose we just need to be reminded. In finding our purpose we can change your attitude from I got out of bed for this question mark as a statement of discontentment. To I got out of bed for this exclamation point. This is the reason I get up. This is the reason I work so that I can afford to live so that I can do this. This is the reason I live, I am, and I do all the things that I do. Nothing creates more satisfaction in our lives then finding our purpose. When we turn to God we find all the purpose we will ever need. We chose our attitude. We can look at each day like a check list of things we must do to earn our free time or we can approach every day and activity with a sense of adventure looking for what could God do with this? How could God use this thing to change the world? When we learn to see ourselves as Ambassadors for Christ we find all the purpose we will ever need. We should pray and look for opportunities to tell others about Jesus. We should pray and look for opportunities to help others. We should pray and look for opportunities to encourage each other. Eph 2:10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
For those of you who are tired of going through the motions and you are looking for something more I want to tell you something is coming. Something so big it can change everything. I am not going to tell you what it is right now, but in two weeks something is coming. Something that will give us a new sense of purpose. Something that will give us a direction. Something that will give us meaning. Something that will turn our statement of I got out of bed for this from a question into an exclamation. We are going to put an end to boredom in the church. But before we can we need to be ready. We need to be hungry for change, eager for purpose. We need to be ready to act.
