Showed video here - man on the street interviews about the world's impressions of Christians
We’ll talk about that video in a little bit.
For a few weeks now we’ve been talking about our vision as a church...
Today, I get to wrap this up by talking about making CCC a place that welcomes unchurched people to be part of us here each week. I’ve called it, “Putting our best foot forward, every time!” because the first thing I think of is dating.
Dating isn’t real life, is it? Do you always dress like that? Do you always laugh at every joke? Do you always not order the dessert? Or is it possible that, when we’re dating someone, we’re trying hard to give them a strong impression up front?
It’s scary to my wife that I would say that. Our first date was a double date – a movie – “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.” That’s right. I know how to show a girl a good time! She should have caught on then! Somehow, she stuck around. It’s going to be 30 years this year. She’s still sticking around, but she doesn’t want me to quit trying. She still wants me to impress her.
What if every impression we gave was our best every time? That would be impressive, wouldn’t it? In the Lord’s Church, that’s something that we can shoot for, and I want to suggest how we can get there.
(I. Setting Aside Our Rights)
I want us to just jump straight into the Bible text where we’re going to camp out today.
1 Corinthians 9:1-27 (NIV)
1 Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not the result of my work in the Lord? 2 Even though I may not be an apostle to others, surely I am to you! For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.
3 This is my defense to those who sit in judgment on me. 4 Don't we have the right to food and drink? 5 Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas? 6 Or is it only I and Barnabas who must work for a living? 7 Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat of its grapes? Who tends a flock and does not drink of the milk? 8 Do I say this merely from a human point of view? Doesn't the Law say the same thing? 9 For it is written in the Law of Moses: "Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain." Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10 Surely he says this for us, doesn't he? Yes, this was written for us, because when the plowman plows and the thresher threshes, they ought to do so in the hope of sharing in the harvest. 11 If we have sown spiritual seed among you, is it too much if we reap a material harvest from you? 12 If others have this right of support from you, shouldn't we have it all the more?
Paul had rights, didn’t he?
I wonder how many of us here today - who aren’t Apostles, who haven’t repeatedly risked our lives or given up everything we have for Jesus, who have been handed an awful lot of privilege and comfort just because of the time and place we’re living, who are already enjoying those things on a regular basis – I wonder how many of us even then think about what we want in the church and say to ourselves, “I have a right to this. I have a right to what I want. I have a right to be comfortable. I have a right to say how things should be. I’ve been here longer. I have given more money. I have given more time. There are more people like me than the others.”
OK, if that gives you certain “rights” in the Church that belongs to Jesus, let me appeal to your standing, your position, your clout and ask you to consider what you’ll choose to do with it.
Take a close look at what Paul chose…
But we did not use this right. On the contrary, we put up with anything rather than hinder the gospel of Christ. 13 Don't you know that those who work in the temple get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is offered on the altar? 14 In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel. 15 But I have not used any of these rights. And I am not writing this in the hope that you will do such things for me. I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of this boast. 16 Yet when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, for I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! 17 If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. 18 What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make use of my rights in preaching it.
There are 2 places in life that really help us grasp how this works: marriage and parenthood. When I said “I do,” I was also saying, “I do give up the rights I had as a single guy.” I set aside a lot of freedoms to be a married man. That’s part of the deal. I learned this from my dad.
Ill - One year when we were living in IN, for Christmas, Carrie and I offered to take my parents to see the Nutcracker Ballet in Ft. Wayne. Now, the ladies thought this was great – you know, dress up fancy, live orchestra, men in tights, all that. This just wasn’t my Dad’s cup of tea. In fact, as we sat in the auditorium and people were piling in, my dad, listening to the orchestra warming up, looked around at the whole scene, and said to me, “Son, you want to go find a John Wayne movie somewhere?” This just wasn’t Dad’s scene! But here he was. He laid aside his rights to do something else because he loved my mom and wanted to please her.
When I became a dad, I set aside my rights – a lot of them! I set aside my right not to eat everyone’s leftover happy meal. I set aside my right to eat safe food, and instead to eat some of the frozen peanut butter, noodles, ketchup, and flour casserole that my 4 yr old daughter had just made for me. Why would anyone do that? Because I loved my daughter more than I loved my expendable rights.
Paul said about all of his rights,
19 Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone,
Throughout the history of the Church, there have been certain standouts – heroes - people who have rights, and who choose not to use them; people who earn status but never cash it in; those who understand that you become the greatest by becoming the servant of all.
They could have demanded things, could have kicked back and let someone else carry a load, could have insisted on their own ways, but saw that the goal of expanding God’s Kingdom was always a higher and nobler calling. Those people are my heroes. I want to be a man like that! How about you? This is exactly what Paul did. It was a pattern in his life. Talk about not exercising your rights! What could be less use of your rights than to say, “Well, I’m a free man, but I choose to make myself a slave instead!”? Paul, why?!
(19b) to win as many as possible.
That’s what it’s all about! To win as many as possible. And, then at the end of the next chapter he says, “For I am not seeking my own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.”
What would it take to make that our motive? Imagine how it would look if every time something was different at CCC, every time someone wondered or objected or questioned “why?” the answer was “to win as many as possible.” In Paul’s world, that looked like this:
20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21 To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. 22 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.
The point wasn’t that he gave up the truth or allowed God’s plan to somehow get lost. Just the opposite is true. The point was that he gave up his rights for the sake of saving people from Hell!
In my world, your world, that might look like this: “To the poor, I became like a poor person, to win the poor. To the elite, I become like the elite, so that I might win the elite. To the west-siders, I became like a west-sider, so that I might win west-siders. To the educated, I became like the educated, so that I might win the educated. To the uneducated, I became like the uneducated, so that I might win the uneducated. To the millennials, I became like a millennial, so that I might win millennials. To the oldest generation, the Builders, I became like the oldest generation, so that I might win the oldest generation. To the unchurched, I became like the unchurched, so that I might win the unchurched. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.
Why hop up and down about this? Because we are on the cusp of great movement at CCC, but like any critical crossroad, there’s more than one direction it can go. We must go in the direction that Jesus has told His Church to go: out. This isn’t some new idea about how to do church. It’s what the Church was told to be all along, because Jesus said, “Having gone into all the world, make disciples of all the nations…”
It was Dietrich Bonhoeffer who wrote, “When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die.” He said we must take up our cross and follow Him. He said we must die to ourselves, lose our life.
We’ll put our best foot forward when we set aside our rights, or the rights we assume we have.
II. Embracing Change
Ill - 2 caterpillars were walking along the road. A beautiful butterfly went sailing past them. One caterpillar said to the other, “You’ll never get me up in one of those things!”
Let’s face it. Change is harder for some of us. Let me encourage you this morning that you’re not alone. To some degree, change is tough for everyone. But have you noticed that change is at the very core of following Jesus?
Ezekiel 36:26
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.
Matthew 18:3
…"I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Titus 3:5
He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit,
1 Peter 1:3
…In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope…
1 John 3:14
We know that we have passed from death to life…
Romans 6:4
We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
Colossians 3:9-10
…you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.
2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
Romans 12:2
…be transformed by the renewing of your mind...
Ephesians 4:23
…be made new in the attitude of your minds;
2 Corinthians 3:18
…we… are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory…
2 Corinthians 4:16
…inwardly we are being renewed day by day.
Philippians 3:21
…who…will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.
1 Corinthians 15:51
….We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—
Revelation 2:17
To him who overcomes, I will give…him a white stone with a new name written on it…
Revelation 14:3
And they sang a new song before the throne…
Revelation 21:5
He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!"
Following Jesus is all about change – not just a one-time change, but then ongoing, continual change, and a big change that’s yet to come! Jesus calls us to change us, because us, as we are without Him, stinks! I want to be changed, don’t you? That’s where it begins!
How can we talk about being the Lord’s Church if we’re not willing to be changed?
How can we talk about changing our community, if we can’t first handle being changed ourselves?
This challenge is something we have to embrace, just as the Church has had to embrace it from its very beginnings. Though it occasionally dug into some dark ruts, it was always changing; always adjusted itself to remain effective in a lost world that’s constantly changing. In the Church, bringing in new people means having to change whatever it is we’re doing that’s not currently working. And once they’re here, new people means new challenges, new quirks and different opinions. The alternative to those new things is no new people.
Taking the gospel into places where it isn’t being heard means dealing with new cultures, languages and customs. The alternative to adapting to these new things is not to take the gospel anywhere new.
Being the Church in a world that is in constant flux means using new ways to address the problems and misconceptions of the world we live in. Otherwise, we’ll have a very relevant message but we won’t convince anyone it’s relevant to them.
That takes us to the next point…
III. Recognizing Where People Live
Let me do some audience participation here.
How many of you…
Drive more than 20 minutes to be here?
Are busy at least 4 nights a week with school, church, or some other regular commitments?
Read the news from a newspaper?
Help take care of an aging parent or a grandchild?
These are like some of the criteria Brian Beck pointed out last week that have to do with where you are in life.
Remember the video at the beginning? I know, when I hear someone say that Christians are hypocritical or snobby or that they’re known for killing off of non-Christians, I want to jump into the screen and set them straight. I want to holler about how inaccurate or unfair it is for them to think that. Then, I realize what I really need to do is chill, because no amount of yelling at them is going to fix their view that Christians aren’t really loving.
No, I showed that video simply to say, “Here is what some people think of Christians. This is where they’re at in life. Now, what can we do to reach people who think like that?”
Part of what we need to do as a Church is care about and try to understand where people are at – culturally, spiritually, emotionally. We’ll often disagree with it, and we just may not like it. OK, but that doesn’t change it.
Acts 17, Paul traveled around Athens, and he saw a lot of things there that really disturbed him. When he had a chance to speak to the Areopagus, the philosophers of the area, he simply used what he had learned about them and how they thought, and let it direct the way he spoke to them.
We’re going to best reach the next people we can for Jesus when we recognize where they’re at in life and engage them there.
IV. Moving to Become Inviting
One of the major goals we have been challenged with as a church family this year is to become more inviting to unchurched people. I believe those are the people we’re trying to win, right? So, what will attract and help keep them find a community of belonging at CCC?
Let me make a few suggestions…
• Give them an invitation. This doesn’t begin here in the building. It begins on the streets of Rockford – in your neighborhood, your classroom, your place of business.
• Be on time! If you’re late getting here, aren’t you afraid you’re going to miss something?
• Give them the best parking places outside. If you are able to walk with no trouble, park farther away.
• Give them the best seats – the front row (the back row!) Seriously, who needs to sit in the back? People who need to take a break and leave during services, people who have their babies with them, and people who are scared to death to have someone sitting behind them. Otherwise, move up!
• Get up and meet them. You’re not stuck in your seat. And don’t worry, if someone takes it, there’s room!
• Don’t bother being perfect. I still haven’t met anyone who’s here on Sunday because they’re perfect, so don’t bother trying to look it. Just be yourself! You’re already interesting just the way you are!
The point is that we need to be moving. Or could it be that we’re too caught up in ourselves? Could it be that we got caught up in trying to get along with one another in the Church and then spent not nearly enough time figuring out how to make the Church inviting to the people who aren’t in it yet?
Conclusion:
I’m reminded of the example of another Person. He had rights – all kinds of them. But He chose to lay those aside for the sake of reaching out to a large number of undeserving, ungrateful, irreverent, needy people. And Paul wrote this…
Philippians 2:3-8
3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death-- even death on a cross!
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
