The Old Landmark
How many times have you gone on a trip to somewhere you haven’t been in a very long time and you searched for landmarks along the way to guide you to your destination? How many times have you looked for old landmarks only to discover that they were no longer there? How many times have you passed a landmark and had it bring back memories as you viewed it and remembered?
I think all of us here today can remember landmarks from our past. Things that always let us know we were getting closer and closer to our destination. We are just about home and glad to be there. For some of us it is an old barn or building. For some it may be a bridge or just a single mammoth stone sat upright into the ground. For some of us it is the old community church with its steeple pointing up to God, drawing pour attention to the heavenly heights, beholding God’s glorious creation.
Landmarks are important to us. They bring back all sorts of memories. Memories about times past that were wonderful to us back then but some memories maybe not so wonderful, regardless landmarks hold meaning for us.
Churches are landmarks for so many of us because they maybe mark the spot where we gave our lives to Christ. They are landmarks because we have memories of VBS, mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, Homecomings, dinner on the grounds, weddings we’ve attended, funerals, parties, Christmas and Easter cantatas, or wonderful revivals where we maybe rededicated our lives to God’s service. Churches hold warm places in our hearts where we keep many treasured memories of times past.
As landmarks disappear from our landscape made from rock, or metal we are often alarmed because we see change coming all around us. Our church landmarks are not immune to these changes. Most of our churches are struggling to survive. Families that once graced our pews have moved on to the church triumphant, to other churches, or on to other things but usually not very far away, still in the area.
The old home church we come to on Homecoming Sunday or revival is slowly fading away. The people are getting older, very few families with children are moving into the community, and those that once filled the pews in the church have moved on, and the fear is that the church will die within a few decades.
Those fears are not unfounded. For a church to survive there has to be outreach to the community. There has to be an effort to reach those that still live in the area around the old landmark, those who were once members, but for some reason left the old landmark. Not only do we as a congregation have the mission to reach out to former members but we have a mission to reach out to the lost and un-churched around our community regardless of race, creed, socioeconomic status, or education. All of God’s children need to hear the good news of Jesus Christ and it is up to us all to reach out and help them come to know the God we love and serve.
The landmarks that are our churches will eventually die if something isn’t done, and done soon to reach out and discover those who are willing to come along side of us and keep the ministries of the churches alive, those who will help us grow the churches ministries and the membership of our churches to keep the church alive, vibrant, and strong as time rolls along serving our communities and the people in them.
It is going to take a strong, organized outreach by dedicated people fulfilling the ministry of all Christian people to reach the lost with the Good News of Jesus Christ and see souls saved for the glory of God’s kingdom. It is going to require prayer, a lot of prayer, fasting, daily devotion to scripture, seeking the face of God and spending quality time in his presence, and an outward missional focus to reach others with the gospel if the church is to grow and continue to exist.
Yes, our old landmarks may be dwindling, fading, and in danger of not existing in 10 or 20 years if there is no one coming up behind us to keep the old landmark going but there is one landmark that will exist forever and that OLD LANDMARK is the cross of Christ. It is where we all have found forgiveness; it is the place where we were set free from the bondage of sin. It is where our shackles were removed and our souls were given the assurance that we have been made righteous in God’s sight because we have been washed in Christ’s blood
We all need to go back to the OLD LANDMARK, the cross of Calvary and remember where we would be if someone had not made the effort to plant a church where we worship today. Where would we be if there had been no one to reach out to us and tell us that Jesus Christ was the only way to be saved? Where would we be if there had been no one that cared enough to go out and invite people to church to keep the old landmark going and growing? Where would we be today if the church closed because it was no longer sustainable, unable to pay the apportionments or to do the ministries it is required to do by the charge of Christ and our book of discipline? We have to remember that Jesus told his disciples, which we are counted among, to go into the world and preach the Gospel, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
It takes all of us to carry out the ministries of the church and I am thankful that I serve a charge that has some willing to step up and take charge of the ministries of the church. We are doing good ministry here but there is more work to do if we want to see our churches grow and thrive. We have to reach to folks, call people on the phones to just say hi and invite them to come and worship with us, to help us grow our ministry and to become active participants in helping folks live into the kingdom of God. We all need to say as Samuel did when the Lord call him “Here I am Lord”.
If we do not reach out to missing, hurting, and lost people, what will we say in that day when we stand before our Savior and the question is asked “Why did you not tell them in about my free gift of salvation and new life” What stopped you from inviting that person or that other person to worship? Why did you not go to them and tell them you loved them and that I loved them too?” What will our answer be that day for God’s kingdom is already here among us and God is waiting for the harvesters?
When Israel was preparing to cross the flooded Jordan River and enter the land promised to them by God’s covenant with Abraham, Joshua commanded the priests to carry the ark before the people so they would know that God was in their midst. They unfortunately only saw God in the form of the ark. They did not understand that God is ever present all around us.
I think too many times our churches have become arks of God’s presence. They are the symbols of God to the world we live in and it seems like God is shut up in our churches because we don’t reach out and our churches are dying.
God is not just found in our beautiful houses of worship but God is out among the people in our communities and God is waiting for us to join Him in His work among them. God is in the highways, the byways, the alleys, the night clubs, the bars, the prisons, wherever hurting, lost people are, God is there at work and he desires that we work along side of Him building the kingdom. There is no building that can contain the presence of God and God’s own creation can not contain Him.
If we want to save our landmarks, our churches, the gospel of Christ must be taken out of the sanctuary and given to the people all around us so we can lead them to the ultimate landmark, the cross. It is the path we walked and continue to walk going on to perfection in Christ Jesus but how many will we take with us on our journeys?
This is the question we must answer for ourselves. Church membership is a way for us to keep our congregations healthy, vibrant, and growing so that we can do the ministry we have been called to do but God doesn’t care about church membership in the whole scheme of things. Church membership will not save us. What God cares about is membership in his kingdom which WILL save us. God does not take attendance by who is on the pew beside us. God takes attendance by who is missing.
Look around us this morning and look to see pews filled today and try to imagine this every Sunday. Remember our fellowship dinners and holiday programs and the numbers of people who attend them. How many of them are attending church anywhere on a regular basis? Look to see the members that are missing and determine in your hearts to reach out to them in love and invite them back to worship in God’s house. Think of those people that live around us that do not attend church anywhere any more and reach out to them.
The greatest mission we have is to bring others to the knowledge of the God we love and serve taking as many as we can with us on the journey. Let us all go back to the OLD LANDMARK. Let us all spend quality time in the presence of God Almighty, block out the world and our daily lives for these precious moments with God, speak to him, ask him what he requires of us, wait for him to speak to us, and then be obedient to God’s command.
Let us take the bread of life, the scriptures, within us on a regular, daily basis, and partner with God in building our church and the kingdom by reaching out to the missing and the lost. Let us lay up treasures for ourselves in Heaven where moth and dust does not corrupt so we may cast our crowns at the feet of Jesus Christ when we see him face to face…..and hear those precious words, “well done thy good and faithful servant…enter into the Joy of the Lord!”.
