HERE’S THE CHURCH
SUNDAY, APRIL 24, 2022, 11:15AM
ED YOUNG
I don't know if you realize it or not, but during these tumultuous times, there's a shortage of building supplies. Have you heard about that? Maybe you're trying to build your dream home and you're realizing, "Woo, it's costly." I mean, the manpower, what's happening in our culture? Yeah, most of us still diesel on and we go, "I'm going to build that dream home. I don't care how much it costs, I'm going to have the courage, I'm going to build my house." Yeah. Well, there's another house being built, and it takes courage and it's very costly, it’s God's house, this dream home. I'm talking about the church. Jesus said in Matthew 16:18, "…I will build my church,"
Now and then people will ask me this question, they'll say, "Ed, how was Fellowship Church built?" And normally when they ask me that question I think, "Well, are you talking about bricks and sticks and real estate? Are you talking about numbers?" Then though, I end up giving them some biblical concepts, some building blocks, the material that God has used to build Fellowship Church.
The Bible says in Acts 2:42 (NIV-1984), these words, “They devoted themselves…” “they” being the early church. “…to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” It's a pretty good name for a church, right? Fellowship. Fellowship is not just who we are, it's what we do. As I've been saying for a long time, the church is not just a noun, it's a verb.
When I say church, what do you think about? Some will go like, "Oh church, I'm a Catholic" No. "I'm a Lutheran." No, that's not the church. "I'm a Baptist." No, no, no. No. Some think it's in his institution, others think it's a building. You say church, there's Fellowship Church in our different locations, it's a building. I hear you. The church though is the body of Christ. The church would be those believers who have been baptized, those believers who have followed Christ, those believers who've made a mutual commitment to glorify God and to help one another become all they can be. That's the church.
The church, we go to buildings, the church though is you and me. You might be here and you're like, "You know, I'm not a part of a church. I'm thinking about becoming a part of a church." Great. This is a perfect time for you to show up at Fellowship. Others are like, "Well, I've been a member of Fellowship Church for a long time." Good. Thank you so very much for your activity and your presence and your involvement. Others of you are like, "I don't even know about church. I don't even know if I even believe in God or the Bible." That's fine. You'll discover the brilliance of the church; you're going to see the brilliance of the family of God.
Fellowship Church is built on 10 principles. Please take out that drawing I did of a church. The first word I want to talk about is FOUNDATION. What is the foundation of Fellowship Church? Jesus. We're built on Jesus. The church is the bride of Christ, the church is the body of Christ, the church is the family of God.
How many people work out here? Okay. A lot of people go to a gym. Have you ever seen these guys run a gym that look like martini glasses, big upper body and low martini glass legs? You know what I'm talking about? Those guys have always puzzled me. They have a poor foundation.
If you're going to have a solid foundation, you've got to be solid. In Matthew 7, Jesus said we have a choice, we can either build our lives on the foundation of sand. You want to live in a sand trap? You have an opportunity to build your life on the rock. The church is here to glorify God, the church is here and will be in forever, forever, and ever, and ever. The church is here for you and me to do life in community together. There's nothing like building the church. It's the only thing Jesus ever constructed, the church. Our foundation is Jesus.
There are over 2.2 billion believers worldwide. They're more believers worldwide than in India and China combined. We have the Jews, the sauce, don't we, to truly go after the world's problems. Universities don't. Governments don't. Parachurch organizations don't. The church does. The church is the hope of the world.
The church has this ENERGY. Kids, I'm going to write in cursive. I'm not writing in Hebrew, it's called cursive, okay? Energy. The energy of Fellowship Church comes from the Holy Spirit of God.
Act 1:8 says, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you;” Power. I'm talking about power. We become followers of Christ, the Holy Spirit invades our lives, the Holy Spirit works from the inside out to produce supernatural fruit, I'm talking about love, joy, peace, and along life's journey we have in feelings of the Holy Spirit, power from the Holy Spirit, the power source at Fellowship Church is the Holy Spirit because Jesus went up, Holy Spirit came down, the disciples went out, and the lost came in. That's the deal.
Does anyone here drive a Tesla? Those are cool cars. Some are embarrassed to lift their hand. I hope Elon buys Twitter. Don't you? I really do. We need free speech. I just wanted to drop that in. Tesla’s are a cool car, they're fast, but if you have a Tesla, you only have about couple hundred miles. You better know where those charging stations are located, right? We're all Tesla’s. Do you know where the charging station is located? Right here, the church.
We're not made to do life alone, we're made to do life in fellowship with one another. I've gone through some great times in my life. I've shared that with Fellowship Church. I've gone through some bad times in my life, shared that with Fellowship Church. Quite frankly, if you are not a part of a church, I don't know how you make it.
There's another one. Do you want me to keep writing in cursive? I think I will. How about this one? LEARNING, Learning. We're about making disciples. What's a disciple? An incurable learner. Seeing, listening, touching, experiencing, multi-sensory learner. Jesus knew that 2000 years ago, we're just discovering it today.
This summer, for about a month, we will transition Fellowship Church, at all of our churches, into movie theaters. That's right. We're taking movies, this is a series called “At the Movies”. We’ll take feature films and edit them down to thirty minutes, and then edit me and some other people in it where we are actually in the movies talking about the biblical narrative. We’ll serve popcorn, soft drinks, the whole thing. You'll love it, it's an easy invite. It's also powerful. That's a unique way to learn, isn't it?
Like today, we spend a lot of time, like coming up with this little drawing. I'm going to build the church with these words and these words spell FELLOWSHIP, if you haven't figured that out yet. I could have done it the boring way, the easy way, but I wanted to present it to you like, "Oh, okay. So, I can write, I can look, I can see," so you have your senses going on because the key is to affect you and me between services.
Another one is LOVE. Love. I'll use red. God's love from above, that's the solution to our pollution. For God so loved the world. Love is not God. God is love. He's the initiative taker. He saw us and did something about it because of His love.
I was at a trendy coffee shop recently studying, and a woman in her early forties walked up to me and she goes, "Excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you." I go, "No, that's fine. That's fine." She said, "I want to tell you something about Fellowship." I said, "Okay." She said, "20 years ago, I became the follower of Christ. I responded to the love of God at Fellowship Church and because of that, my five family members became believers and we're baptized." And she goes, "I want to thank Fellowship Church. Would you thank them for me?" I was like, "Oh wow." "She goes, I'm sure you hear that all the time." I go, "No, tell me more. Tell me more." Seriously, there's nothing like hearing that.
We respond, God is our pursuing lover. God loves you. He loves you right where you are, but as we've said around here, he loves you too much to allow you and me to remain where we are.
Sometimes I hang out with these people, and I don't really like them just to be straight up. Some of them are jerks. One guy in particular. I won't mention his name. I just don't like him. It's fine not to like somebody as a Christian. We're not called to like everybody, we're to love everybody, we're not supposed to like everybody, and these people are outside the family of faith and this guy's not a believer, but he's a jerk. I just find myself talking to him, engaging him, now and then texting him. One day I'm like, "Ed, why are you doing that?" Then the Holy Spirit of God just whispered to me. "It's because of Jesus, Ed." The only reason that I would give this guy or these other people a time of day is because of Christ. If I did not have Christ in my life, I'd be like, "What?" It's supernatural, the love Of God.
There's another one. Let me make the roof line now, you ready, Chip and Joanna? OBEDIENCE. Obedience is the secret to the Christian life. It is not a doggy downer, it's a positive thing. Man, we had massive crowds last week for Easter. I guess they didn't come back, did they? Do you realize every pastor in America feels so good about themselves the week after Easter? We think, "I finally dialed it in," and then we think too, "They're coming back." No they're not. They're not coming back. They'll be back at Christmas. (Singing) It's okay. It's okay. It's all right. If you believed all the calls and texts I'm going to get tomorrow being, these guys will be so depressed. You know? I'm talking about pastors.
Obedience is the key to the Christian life. God has the best idea. He has an ideal idea for your life and the way to discover it is to get involved in the church, one of the ways of course, you have to know Jesus personally, then you're a part of the family of God, you're born again into the family of God, you're a part of the church, and part of what's going to happen to you as you discover this ideal will be doing what the Lord Jesus wants you to.
The next one. I was going to try to get creative, but I can't do it right now. WORSHIP, W-O-R-S-H-I-P. Now, the roof is a little bit wonky, but that's okay. One of the big things in Fellowship Church is worship. What is worship? Worship is glorifying God, worship is expressing our love to God, that's worship. We think, "Okay, I'm worshiping." Okay? We are. Maybe you're like this, maybe you're like this, maybe you're like this, I don't know. There are different ways and styles of worship. It's not just one style. Worship though should transcend everything we do.
The way I talk to Lisa, that's worship. The way I deal with my boss, that's worship. The way I handle my teammates, that's worship. The way I parent our kids, that's worship. The way I handle my finances, that's worship. What I put before my eyes, that's worship. At Fellowship, yeah, we worship corporately, we're commanded to do so, but we need to come to church worshiping as believers. Now, if you're not a believer, you're not going to worship the Lord. You're going to worship; you're just not going to worship Jesus. Oh, people worship. We all worship.
I was on YouTube a couple days ago, watched a Coldplay concert. You ever heard of Coldplay, that band? Okay. Chris Martin? Very talented. Stadium jammed with people. (Singing) Singing, just having such a great time, and that's great. I thought to myself, "Great worship, wrong object."
Now I'm not saying, "Oh, Ed said I should not listen to Coldplay." I'm not saying that you can go crazy at football games, at basketball games, at concerts, good for you. I'm saying don't waste your worship. Realize it's all about Him. It's all about God. It's all about giving Him glory and honor.
We see this house foundation, energy, learning, love, obedience, worship. Now let's keep going. When write this next little word down, I do want to tell you a story about our twins, the twin towers. They're now 27, I believe. But when they were smaller, like little kids, one day I bought them a couple of dolls. One doll for Landra, one doll for Laurie. Same dolls, different color hair, outfits, but same thing. Ladies, you know what happened. After a while, drama. After a while, tears. After a while, selfishness. I noticed that Laurie had taken Landra's doll. So, on the spot I wrote a song. Many of you have heard this song before but let me share it again. Here's the song. I looked at Laurie and I said, Laurie, you take Landra's doll and while you sing this song with me, you share it with Landra. Sing with me, Laurie. “Share, share, share. Laurie likes to share. Share, share.” I still struggle with that song. Let's all sing it together Fellowship and all the campuses. “Share, share, share. I like to share. Share, share.”
SHARE. This is a place of sharing, not comparing. Sharing, sharing our story, sharing our faith, sharing our troubles. So often we'll get in these groups or situations or friendships at Fellowship and we're like, man, I probably shouldn't share that because if I shared that they might judge me and they wouldn't, they would think lesser of me. Just the opposites true. When we share what we're going through, I'll bet you cash money, somebody in your group or teams going to be like, I struggle with the same situation. I've gone through the same pain or I'm in that same flow with my career.
We’ve got to share. Share our talent, share our resources. Do you realize Fellowship is incomplete if you're not involved here, because you have things to share that only you can share?
There's another word. HOSPITALITY. I was working out. It's kind of funny, in the weight room, a weight area in my garage and I was trying to improve my martini glass legs and, I'm serious. While I was doing this, I got a phone call from a friend of mine and he's just been involved in Fellowship, just joined Fellowship and he's a, have a great a family and he does a lot of traveling, speaking, entrepreneur. He told me something that was so encouraging. He said, "Ed, I've been to a lot of churches. I have never seen a church as friendly as Fellowship." And you know what? I agree with him. I go to a lot of churches, speak at a lot of churches and this is the best I've seen. I'm just partial, obviously. The church used to be hospitable, were to be welcoming, were to be understanding and I just love that about Fellowship. People want to do life with one another.
INNOVATION, I-N-N-O-V-A-T-I-O-N. Innovation is another part of Fellowship Church and I've written books on this and lectured on this. The first thing we know about God is the fact that God is creative. The church should be the most innovative place anywhere. We teach using Christ’s method, 70% application, 30% information. I want to be like Tahiti, not the Trinity River.
Does that make sense to you? I want to be clear, not muddy and I don't hate the Trinity River. I fish there a lot. There's some giant trophy Alligator Gar there. So don't be hating on the Trinity River. I'm just talking about when it comes to speaking, when it comes to communicating.
95% of five year old’s score on a genius level, as far as creativity, 95%. But when we're 30, 31 only 5% of us score at a genius level. Our culture just beats the creativity out of us. We trade in the artistic for the analytical, imagination for memorization and then we go to church and we expect to be bored out of our gourd. Please player. Think about “At The Movies”, that's innovative. Our team spend a lot of time dealing with this. That's, I believe this is innovative. Drawing a church and using the principles, the concepts biblically that have built Fellowship Church as we build this drawing. This stuff doesn't just happen. We think it through because you're giving us your time. Your time is valuable. So, we're not about impressing you or awing you, it's about how can you take this and apply it to where you live? We’re going to have one homework assignment, that's all.
Just one thing. Now this next line. Now this is where it gets fun. Let me use a different color. This the last thing I'll say. You know speakers are never supposed to say, "This is the last thing I'll say." Did you know that? But I talked to someone the other day, he was this professional speaker and he said, "Oh, yeah, you need to." So, I thought I would just say that.
The last thing PRIORITY. It makes a cross on the top of the church. Priority. The priority is a local church. Let me say it again. The church should be a priority in your life. If it's not, you're not living for the Lord. We're a part of God's family. That's why this is so important. It is God's family. It is God's family. 1 Timothy 3:15 (NCV), “Then, even if I am delayed, you will know how to live in the…” Say it with me, “family…” We are family. I love that song. Pointer Sisters. I love it. “…family of God. That family is the church of the living God, the support and foundation of the truth.” Whoa, this is serious family, isn't it?
Number two, God is using the church for his eternal purposes. You heard Jimmy and I talk about it when we did the series “When the Levee Breaks” on the end times. If you missed it, check it out. The church will last forever. The school will not last forever. Sorry. Your organization will not last forever. Your legacy will not last forever. Those trust funds you're trying to give to your kids will not last forever. What you're building, I mean, it's not going to last forever. The only that lasts forever is the body of Christ. Ephesians 3:10-11, tells us this. 10 “His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, 11 according to His eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Unbelievable.
Number three, Jesus died for the church. If you want to know how important the church is, well, Christ gave his life for it. Really, how important? He gave his life for. He didn't give his life for Texas A&M. He didn't give his life for some foundation. He didn't give his life for this or that. He gave his life for the church, gave his life for it, and we're a part of the body of Christ.
Number four, it's the only good group that has the sauce to tackle the world's issues. Governments, they don't, sorry, but they don't. Hospitals don't, other organizations don't. The church does have 2.2 billion believers. Think about the volunteer base. Think about the prayer power. Think about the unique gifts.
The fifth one, last thing, the fifth one, why the church should be a priority is the greatest privilege in life next to becoming a follower of Christ is to be a member of the church. The greatest privilege is to be a part, to be a member of the body of Christ. Are you a part of the body of Christ?
We're born builders. We build stuff growing up, and then we build stuff bigger and bigger as we get older. We'd build the church.
I've known just a kaleidoscopic range of people over the years, I think back, and I've talked to a lot of high rollers in my day and these high rollers, they're going to talk about, "Yeah, man, I roll the dice and I bought this company over here and then I bought this real estate here and then I'm going to invest there, and yeah, I'm in an investment deal with him I'm going to roll the dice here. I'm going to buy this jet. I'm going to buy this island over here too, and blah, blah, blah. Roll the dice, roll the dice, roll the dice. I'm the alpha male. I roll the dice." But then when they walk into church, they turn into little poodles. They put their dice away.
What are you doing? Rolling the dice for some piece of land or some investment or some this or that. Great. But you are going to turn your back, you going to put the dice away when it comes to the only thing that Jesus ever built, the only thing that'll last forever? During these tumultuous times, it's costly, isn't it and courageous to build? I want to challenge you to build the church.
Here's your homework. After this service, we have Newcomer's Class. It's how you join the church. That's your homework. We have fajitas, you can't beat that. Show up, it's like 30, 45 minutes, we'll take care of the kids, and you can become a part of the living, breathing body of Christ, God's dream home.
Father, thank you for this message, thank you for our great church, thank you for so many of us here who've been a part of Fellowship Church. I thank you for what's happening, I thank you for the freshness, I thank you for your foundation and energy and learning and love and obedience and worship and sharing and hospitality and innovation and priority. I pray, God, that we would live these principles out as we engage ourselves in your church. In Christ's name. Amen.
