Becoming A Greenhouse pt. 1: Go and Do What?
Jan. 11/12, 2003
Intro:
Frog and Toad: “The Garden” by Arnold Lobel.
Vision:
I want to spend the rest of January talking about what it means for our church to become a greenhouse.
Our church vision is encapsulated by three pictures:
1. Becoming a hospital – which is a vision of evangelism. The idea of a hospital is of a place of healing, and the central idea of evangelism is that of healing the relationship between God and people – winning people to Jesus Christ so that they can become whole, restored, and full of the love of God and confident of an eternity where we will all know complete healing. This first part of the vision is that of our church being a hospital for a hurting world – a place where people who do not know Jesus can find wholeness. It’s a vision of evangelism.
2. The third part, which we’ll talk about in February, is the picture of the church as a festival – which is a vision of worship. Of being focused on God – on who He is and all that He has done, and responding accordingly by worshiping Him fully – celebrating together.
3. The second part is what I want to talk about today, and for the next couple of weeks. It is the picture of the church as a greenhouse.
Back to Frog and Toad:
The church as a greenhouse is a vision of discipleship. It is a vision of growing together as Christians, of nurturing one another towards maturity, of caring for one another and loving one another in the same way that God has loved us. It is a vision of us becoming like Christ.
And that is why I wanted to share “Frog and Toad” with you. I think we are a lot like Toad:
o We are impatient, expecting growth to come quickly, instantly even. After all, we live in an instant society, where we get impatient if our “fast food” takes more than 30 seconds, where we expect to visit the doctor and get a pill to fix whatever is wrong with us (ask the physiotherapists how much people like having to work to see improvement in their condition), where we can now even buy pre-cooked bacon that only needs a few seconds in the microwave. Apparently, when comedian Yakov Smirnoff first came to the United States from Russia, he wasn’t prepared for the incredible variety of instant products available in American grocery stores. He says, "On my first shopping trip, I saw powdered milk--you just add water, and you get milk. Then I saw powdered orange juice--you just add water, and you get orange juice. And then I saw baby powder, and I thought to my self, what a country!" Now, I’m not complaining about those things or wishing we didn’t have them, but they do create in me (and I’m guessing you also) an expectation for instant results. “I prayed about it, I expect an answer. Now, please!”
Spiritual growth, even growth in the natural world, is not instant. It takes time, it takes discipline, it takes effort, and it takes patience. As we build a greenhouse together, we have to commit for the long-haul. We have to measure success in growing to spiritual maturity over a long period of time – most likely in years. We must be diligent, patient, and we must tenderly care for each individual person – each of us – in a way that nurtures us to maturity.
o Like Frog and Toad, we sometimes come to wrong conclusions about why growth isn’t happening. And the result is that the things we try don’t end up having direct impact on the end result. They may be a lot of work, they may tire us out, but are they meeting the needs for growth and nurture? We must regularly ask that question, and seek answers together.
o What I really like about Frog and Toad is that they illustrate 1 Cor 3:4-9 (NLT):
When one of you says, "I am a follower of Paul," and another says, "I prefer Apollos," aren’t you acting like those who are not Christians?
Who is Apollos, and who is Paul, that we should be the cause of such quarrels? Why, we’re only servants. Through us God caused you to believe. Each of us did the work the Lord gave us. My job was to plant the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God, not we, who made it grow. The ones who do the planting or watering aren’t important, but God is important because he is the one who makes the seed grow. The one who plants and the one who waters work as a team with the same purpose. Yet they will be rewarded individually, according to their own hard work. We work together as partners who belong to God. You are God’s field, God’s building--not ours.
The people of Corinth had obviously been arguing about who was better – Paul or Apollos, one of the other teachers in the NT church. Paul nails it right down – it makes no difference!! We do our part, whether big or small, but God makes it grow. Toad thought his seeds grew because he sang, read, even played the violin – we recognize that none of those things caused the growth. That only comes from God.
And that is the most important thing for us to assert as we talk about the church as a Greenhouse: growth only comes from God. Just like when we were talking about evangelism in the fall – it is only God that can convict of sin and change hearts. So also, only God can cause us to grow to spiritual maturity. AND, just like in evangelism, that doesn’t mean we sit back and do nothing – we go to sleep like Toad did – it doesn’t mean we have no role, no part to play – we do because God has assigned us a role, given us a task, asked us to serve. We have to plant or water or fertilize – we must do our part – but we must always recognize that it is God alone who causes us to grow.
So what is our role?
We are fortunate that Jesus, before He ascended to heaven, gave us a pretty clear idea of what our responsibility is, in a very familiar passage of Scripture:
Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." (Matt. 28:18-20)
I want to take a moment to break this Scripture down into it’s three main verbs.
Go:
The first verb is “go.” Jesus says, “go.” Get out there. Engage people. Go to where they are, invade their world, take the message to them. This is a big change from the OT, where the idea was others could come to Israel to hear about God – Jesus turns that around and says “go to where the people are.” One organization that really takes this message seriously is Young Life, a ministry that takes adults into the world of teenagers in our school system, and brings the message of Jesus Christ into their world.
This tells us that being a greenhouse is not about opening our doors and expecting people to magically come flooding through them. We have to take the message to them, we have to go to where they are and help them grow towards faith. That is the primary imagery of the first part of our vision, of the church as a hospital. And then, when the seed is planted, when the healing begins, we have to bring them with us into the church – into the greenhouse – where the environment can be maximized for growth, where people are ready and willing to share their gifts to help those plants to grow. People don’t usually show up on their own, they are invited and then brought by someone else.
The purpose of “going” is to make disciples. Note it is not to make converts. Not to make a long list of people who at one time prayed a sinners prayer, so we place a tick mark next to there name in our own personal Book of Life and then abandon them for the next person. It is about making life-long disciples of Jesus.
Which brings us to the obvious question: what is a disciple? To put it really simply, a disciple is someone who is walking daily with Jesus and seeking to become like Him. An old proverb says “A student learns what his teacher knows, but a disciple becomes what his master is.” Being a disciple of Jesus means that we are growing more like Him, allowing Him to replace the “old me” with the “new me.” That is a high calling, a costly one. Salvation is free; discipleship costs us everything.
Jesus first commands us to go.
Baptize:
The next verb is “baptize”. I think it is highly significant that this command is here. Jesus commands us to make disciples, and He lists baptism as the first activity. Why is that? Why the importance?
Without getting into a full sermon on baptism, let me simply say this: Baptism is and always has been the public profession of faith through which a person becomes formally associated with God’s people. It is an act of initiation, it is the means through which we are publicly brought “into” the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (you’ll note a footnote in your Bibles offering “into” as alternative translation to “in”).
I parallel baptism to the wedding ceremony – it is the time when two people formally exchange their vows in a public ceremony. Of course there was a previous time when the couple privately agreed to be married, and there are private times of intimacy when their relationship is sealed. That I parallel to conversion – a generally private experience between God and us as individuals. We need to solidify that identification in a public manner through baptism.
So, have you made that public declaration of your faith? If you have invited Jesus to be your personal Savior, to forgive you from your sins, but haven’t been baptized, why not? What is stopping you? Jesus did it as an example for us, and He commanded us to baptize all those who desire to be disciples of Jesus, so why haven’t you? What are you waiting for? It is a step of obedience. If you’d like to know more about taking this step, please talk to me.
Teach:
The third verb is to teach. And while this is not the only activity in the greenhouse, I think it is safe to say this is the biggest. But note more carefully what it is we are to teach: Jesus commands us to teach people not a bunch of interesting ideas, not a divergent bunch of perspectives, not a bunch of Bible trivia, but rather “to obey everything I have commanded you.” It is teaching how to live, how to act, how to conduct ourselves in a way that is consistent with who we are now that we are baptized “into the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
Note that this command comes to Jesus disciples after He had spent three years teaching them. Now, He says, it is your turn to teach. I believe the progression is the same today – we first spend time as learners, then we become teachers. And in fact Scripture expects us to mature to this place – read about that in the last part of Hebrews 5.
That is our role: to go, baptize, and teach. That is how we build a greenhouse. We’ll talk more about the specifics in the next couple of weeks.
Becoming a Greenhouse:
Let me share with you what I believe is God’s vision for us as a greenhouse. I can put lots of words to it, but I think it is better expressed in a dream that a woman in our congregation had for our church back in 1994, which she sent me this past week:
Dream from my journal 1994,
I walked up to our church and there were crowds of people lined up to enter from the front of the building from the back of the building from the corners of the building. They lined all the stairs up and down. They all looked hungry, poor and depressed, at the front of the lines were tables with nothing on them only pastors and deacons on each side of them praying and baptizing them in oils. As each of them turned around they all looked healthy and alive and full of grace. At first I thought “why aren’t we feeding them bread and wine.” Then I realized that they were all being fed with the Holy Spirit and each being baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Now after waking, I asked Christ for discernment and prayed about it for some time. The answer I believe was being told to me was that we must teach God’s Word and they will come hear the Word and go forth filled with the Spirit in them. Keep the focus on Christ and we cannot lose.
This is meant for Laurier. This dream was so real and has haunted me for years and now I see that Laurier was not ready at that time and it was for now.
Will you grab a spade?
Do you know what it would take for that dream to become a reality here? First and above all, it will take a mighty movement of God by His Holy Spirit. Our job is to pray for that, invite it, and make sure we don’t get in the way. What else? Second, it will take teaching God’s Word – that exact phrase was in the dream. I will endeavor to do that from the pulpit, but did you notice that wasn’t the location of the tables? And that there wasn’t one pastor standing there? It was a team – people ministering together. I interpret that to mean that we need to be teaching God’s Word all over the place – in worship services, in children’s classes, in small groups, in ministries targeted beyond ourselves like mom’s morning out, summer day camp, youth ministries, etc… You know what else it will take? Someone to set up the tables. Someone to refill the oil bottle. A whole bunch of people to give financially so that we can keep the heat on and clean up the bathrooms. It will take leaders who seek God’s guidance about where and when and how He wants to meet the needs.
So here is what it comes down to. God has given each of us His Spirit, and with that comes gifts that God desires us to use in service to His Kingdom. Jesus commands us to go, baptize, and teach. That will only happen as we all use the gifts God has given us – each part is essential: imagine what would happen if God called one person to go and another to fix their car and another to provide the map and yet another to pray. If anyone of those people don’t obey, the mission won’t happen. Can’t go without a car. Don’t know where to go without a map. If the prayer isn’t there, you’ll get to the right place but have no impact at all. And if each of those parts are there but no one goes, it has all been a waste.
So here is what it comes down to. God is calling each of us to serve in His Kingdom. He’ll show you where, He’ll equip you, He’ll call others alongside.
And best of all, He’ll be there too. After commanding us to go, baptize, and teach, Jesus said this: “surely I am with you always”.
Where is God calling you to serve Him? Are you listening or resisting? Let me leave this final thought with you: you will only ever experience the fullness of life God desires for you when you answer His call to serve Him in His Kingdom.
