FAITH MATTERS
Sticky Faith
1st Corinthians 9:19-23
You are looking at a picture of the Sunshine Skyway bridge. Fo those of you who have lived in this area a long time you can remember the tragedy that took place in 1980 when the Sunshine Skyway bridge collapsed. Here is a picture from that year. Since that time we have all heard of numerous bridges that have collapsed and they are in the news much too often. It is perhaps unfortunate that these bridges that collapse become so prominent in the news. The pictures are hard to forget because they remind us of lives that are lost and families that are changed forever.
But let me ask you this morning to think of bridges in a different way. There is not one of us here today who has not safely crossed a bridge probably hundreds of times to get to a specific destination. If you go on the web to a site like Mapquest to get directions you often find that the directions can be interesting...they can take you to places that are out of the way, they can sometimes cost you extra time. Usually the maps really help but I did find an interesting thing...if you are trying to get from say Atlanta to London the map will direct you from Atlanta to say New York and then it stops there ....I did find one that said drive to the coast and then swim 4000 miles.
No thanks. I want a bridge. And I want a safe bridge, one that will get me to my destination and it won’t collapse. When we started this church almost nine years ago now over a period of several months we worked together to develop a vision statement that would define for us what we are about....where we are headed, that would give us direction for the future. The vision statement that we wrote says this...
Our vision is to enlarge the size of Heaven by taking as many people as possible with us. Simple. Direct. Right to the point. I like it. cause we we have this vision, we will do this...and here it is.....
Two years ago we added a purpose statement: We are Building bridges with unbelievers to cross over to maturity in Christ. These 2 sentences contain about 30m words. Memorize them. Pray over them. Let God show you your role as a bridge builder. The apostle Paul defined it this way...
1 Cor. 9:22 NIV to the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.
1 Cor. 9:22 LB Yes, whatever a person is like, I try to find common ground with him so that he will let me tell him about Christ and let Christ save him. 1 Cor. 9:22 NLT When I am with those who are oppressed, I share their oppression so that I might bring them to Christ. Yes, I try to find common ground with everyone so that I might bring them to Christ.
A common/big mistake that is made in many churches today is that to get people to come to church on Sunday mornings all the church has to do to get people to come to church on Sunday mornings all the church has to do is open their doors. Open the doors and unbelievers will come right in. Not so. They used to. Probably so but not now. Unfortunately in may cases people have been turned off by the church and by pastors in general. Too many pastors have compromised their Christian ethics, some churches are choosing to ordain men to the ministry who practice a gay lifestyle...many churches have suffered one scandal after another and pastors have made the news for all the wrong reasons and as a result the body of Christ has suffered. Research tells us that people are staying away from church in record numbers.
There is a question the church of today must consider and this is it...are we relevant or is it possible we are answering questions no one is asking? And is it possible to be relevant and biblical at the same time? Change for churches can be very hard. Change takes us out of our comfort zone but if we plan to grow as a church we have to talk about change. Now before we get to that topic let me remind you of some things that will never change in this church.....
(1) Jesus. Jesus Christ will never change. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of the Heavenly lights who does not change. In a world of constant change it is comforting to know that Jesus will never change.
(2) The Bible. Isaiah 40:8 The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever."
This amazing book was written down by nearly 40 men involving 3 different languages..Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic over a period of nearly 2000 years and it has stood the test of time. It does not change.
(3) Responsibility to teach the Bible..faithfully without compromise. Paul says in his letter to Titus that those who hold leadership positions in the church that they “must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others. We are not to change it, we are not to water it down and we will never take it out of the worship service or the classroom. It is our textbook. These things will never change. But there are some things that must change.
We change as we grow older. Hopefully we mature, hopefully we have better discernment. We change physically. Someone has said there are 5 signs of getting older: baldness, bifocals, bridges, bulges and bunions. Our culture is changing and the church must adapt it’s ministry to the culture in which we live. Jesus, the Bible, our teachings does not change but our methods do. Worship styles change. When I was a teenager we couldn’t have guitars in church...in fact it was the Catholic church that first asked me to play guitar on Sundays. Music has changed. Jesus preached from a boat on the sea of Galilee..in those mountains it would have been almost like an amphitheater. I use a lapel mike and stand in front of you. Paul wrote scripture down on papyrus with a quill and a bottle of ink...this week I used Windows Vista and the web to help me prepare. The early church studied from scrolls, parchment...we actually know what these looked like. In 1947 a young Bedouin shepherd boy, near the caves of Qumran, threw a rock into one of them and heard something break/shatter. There were the scrolls, more were eventually found in 10 other caves...over the next 9 years over 900 documents were found. All written down on parchment. Now we have dozens of translations bound together in a choice of bindings...colors. My computer has 14 versions of the Bible with a Greek and Hebrew dictionary. Paul wore a toga (a robe) while he was preaching. I don’t and I don’t plan to. The church cannot minister to people in 2007 with methods that are antiquated. The very first verse of the Bible tells us that God is a God of change. In the beginning He created. He doesn’t change but He is constantly changing our world. When I read through the Bible I find verses that tell me about “a new song” a “new heaven and earth,” “new wine”” “new covenant,” new creation, new man, a new commandment. Our God is a God of change and He calls the church to do the same.
Here’s the deal. God never changes. The world does. And the church can no longer get caught in the middle. So i want to share several things that the church must do in order to stay relevant and I want to put it this way. Pan. When we use these we often spray an ingredient called Pam on it to keep things from sticking. If it’s a teflon pan things don’t stick. This on the other hand is velcro. We put velcro on things for one reason. To make them stick.
Listen, every church I know if you were able to survey their congregation and ask them what one word would describe your church. You know what they would say? We’re friendly. Every church believes they are friendly. But here’s the truth...if visitors who come to our church don’t think we are friendly, then we aren’t. You see it doesn’t mean enough for us to think we’re friendly..it’s the unbeliever, the individual searching for a church home and they walk through these doors. Their opinion really should matter. Now how will that happen? Well when you have guests in your home there are some things you do to get ready for company. *clean the bathrooms) you meet them at the door* you may even give them specific instructions where to park * you make sure they know how to get to your home * when you greet them you smile and shake their hand.
So what do we do when guests arrive here? The same things really. We can’t say, here we are, come find us, just come in the door and find your way around, park where you please, not speak when they arrive. Find a seat and sit down. That is not the responsibility of the guest. Here is a good principle to go by. Don’’t treat guests any different at church than you do in your home. Isn’t God’’s house just as important? Now this may seem like a small thing but it is not. We will grow in direct proportion to the level of our friendliness. Let me ask you, how many of you have ever attended a church where people did not speak to you and you felt like an outsider? How many of you went back to that church?Who are these people?
What can we do about it? I want to suggest three things we must do:
There are 3 things that we must do in order to be a sticky church with members who have a sticky faith.
(1) To be a sticky church we must reposition the church: we must tell them church is not like they think. 85% of people in American have been to church more than a few times. A number of people have now said the reason i don’t go to church is because I have already been. I have been and it is not what i expected. There is a reason they stay away. Many have come in the church's front door, checked out what was going on, and are now exiting the back door once more." We must convince them church is not like they think. To mis-quote a car commercial, "This is not your daddy's Oldsmobile Baptist Church." We must be willing to say, "I know your have had a bad experience at church. I know you were hurt. I understand you are turned off by some things. But we’re not that way. Come and see. It will be different."
(2) To be a sticky church we must Deliver on these claims/promises. Many people have come into our churches looking for God and when they got here they didn't find him. 3/4ths of unchurched Americans say that having a meaningful relationship with God is important. Yet, two-thirds of people who attend church say they do not experience God in their worship services on a regular basis. We have failed to deliver. We are sometimes like a restaurant where hungry people came looking for food and walked away still hungry. We must make sure church is not like they think. After we have promised a better church than people have experienced, we had better deliver. If not, we become part of the problem. We don't have to be perfect. In fact we won’t be. Billy Graham says that if you find a perfect church don’t join it because it won’t be perfect anymore. I think in fact that an important part of what people are looking for is a place where people admit the aren’t perfect. A lot of unchurched people don't feel qualified to come to church because it does not feel to them like a place where sinners are welcome. This is why the AA movement is so popular. People long for a place where they can come and say, "Hello, my name is Bob and I am a not a very good person.."
(3) To be a sticky church we must treat people like the friends we want them to be. If we want them to stay, we must love them as a friend. Good Music and good preaching are important but they are not enough. People want to be noticed and they want to feel loved. If we want to change from a Teflon church to a Velcro church, we must love people. It is about stickiness.
I heard of one fellow...woke up one Sunday morning and said to his wife you know I don’t want to go to church today. She said well why....he says well the people there are mean, they ’re not very friendly and no one speaks to me. His wife says we honey you’ve got to go..you’re the pastor! Listen, when I come in people smile at me, they hug me sometimes, they shake my hand...they ask me how I’m doing and I think my this is a friendly church but then I realize I’m the pastor.
You guys are great to me. That’s one reason I stay. It’s sticky here.
