Well it’s been a year. Hardly seems possible in some ways and yet on the other hand it seems like we’ve been here forever. Now understand that while we have only been here for a year in this church building this church body has been in existence since six of us started meeting in our living room in January of 1995, and the neat thing is that five of us are still here. Can you imagine being in Stan and Karen Wickwire or Ian and Sylvia Richardson’s shoes when I began to cast a vision for a church that only existed in my mind and my heart? And yet here they are twelve years later.
But not everyone that we cast that vision to bought into the dream, there were some who were looking for a church that was all ready up and running with a full slate of programs that we just couldn’t offer and there were still other’s who just didn’t think there was a lot of potential for a brand new church like we were envisioning. But through the years there have been those who have decided to invest themselves into the dream and help make it a reality.
When the church was in it’s infancy a gentleman told me that there are two types of people in every church, the goers and the whoaers. And I’ve met both types, you know what he meant those who when you talked about new things and changes were willing to say let’s go and others’ who would brace their feet and say whoa.
People like that have always been around. In the scripture that was read this morning we got a great glimpse into human nature. Most of us know the story. Moses has sent 12 Spies into the Promised Land with instructions to do what spies do best, spy. He wanted to know who lived there, were they strong or weak were there lots of them or just a few, did they live in little villages or big fortified cities. What was economy like was it a wealthy land or a poor land. And when he got all through giving instructions he said, “Oh by the way bring me back some fruit.” Now I don’t know why Moses wanted fruit, maybe it was so he could see what the produce was like or maybe it was because he hadn’t had a grape for a while. I don’t know
Well you now what happened right? They spied out the land, found grapes so big it took two men to carry back one cluster and they came back to report what they had found. We can read about their findings in Numbers 13:27 This was their report to Moses: “We arrived in the land you sent us to see, and it is indeed a magnificent country—a land flowing with milk and honey. Here is some of its fruit as proof.
From that point on the story progresses like a good news bad news joke. You know there’s an old Chinese story told about how two farmers met and the first asked the second how life was treating him and he said “Well not too bad but last week one of my horses escaped” “Oh that’s too bad” said the first man. “No actually it was good” replied the second man “Because he came back and brought another horse with him” “Why that’s great” “No not really, the horse was still wild and when my son tried to ride him he was thrown and broke his leg” “That’s terrible” came the response, “No that was great because the warlord came looking for young men to draft into his army but wouldn’t take my son because he had a broken leg.” You get the picture?
The spies start by saying “What a land, you just wouldn’t believe what a beautiful land it was. And the fruit, I mean just look at this there are grapes as big as softballs.” And everyone was excited and they were like “Wow this is great, Margaret pack your suitcase we going to the Promised Land.” Not so fast because the rest of the story comes out in the next verse Numbers 13:28 But (one of the hard and fast rules of Biblical Exegesis is that after the but comes the truth.) But the people living there are powerful, and their cities and towns are fortified and very large. We also saw the descendants of Anak who are living there!
“Wow, hey Margaret you really didn’t want to go to the Promised Land anyway did you?” Now this may have been a majority opinion but it wasn’t a unanimous opinion. You see Joshua and Caleb said “Hey if that’s the land that God wants us to have then that’s the land that God will give us.” You see that is the reality of life, some people are eternal optimists and others are eternal pessimists. In this case there were ten whoaers and two goers.
The optimist is the person who sees the glass half full, the pessimist sees the glass half empty. There are other reactions to the glass as well, the idealist says “the glass should be full”, the anarchist says “break the glass”, the capitalist says “sell the glass”.
An optimist is defined as the guy who fell off a twenty story building and when he went by the third floor he was heard to say, “So far, so good”. On the other hand the pessimist is the guy who blows out the candle just to prove how dark the room is.
The fact that ten out of twelve of the spies were pessimists probably isn’t all that surprising when we look at society as a whole. That however shouldn’t be the case with the people of God. It’s unfortunate though that “shouldn’t” and “isn’t” are two different words. You would think that after all the miracles that God had performed bringing the children of Israel out of Egypt. Starting with the parting of the Red Sea, and feeding the nation with manna and quail from heaven. The water that poured out of solid rock and the column of smoke that guided them during the day and pillar of fire they followed at night. You’d think that with all of that in their history that even the pessimists would have been convinced, but nooooooo. They still doubted the power of God to provide what he had promised.
For just a few minutes this morning I want to focus on Joshua and Caleb. After all I’d be willing to wage that even with Karen having read them less then fifteen minutes ago nobody here can even remember the names of the other ten. So why waste our time on people we can’t remember.
Norman Vincent Peale might say that Joshua and Caleb were simply displaying the power of positive thinking. Robert Schuller would say they were exhibiting the power of possibility thinking. The truth of the matter is that is that Caleb and Joshua simply had faith to believe that if God said it then God would do it. Now in retrospect we can say, “Hey I knew that God would give them the promised land” No problem that’s what my daddy calls 20/20 hindsight. It’s amazing how accurate we can be when we make predictions about things that have already happened. However the heroes in our story didn’t have the luxury of that option, they couldn’t rely on what they could see. And as Yogi Berra once said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.
But can you remember how faith was defined in the New Testament? It was in the book of Hebrews 11:1 What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see.
Caleb and Joshua weren’t simply idealists proclaiming that the glass should be full, instead they were visionary realists. They didn’t ignore the problems or try to gloss them over, instead they looked beyond the problems to the solutions. How about it can you see only problems or do you see solutions to those problems?
We are standing on the threshold of a new chapter in the history of Cornerstone Wesleyan Church. And we can be like Joshua, Caleb and see the great possibilities that God has in store for us or we can be like the other ten spies and see only the problems that lie ahead of us. On one hand we need to see and recognized the promises and expectations of God. God expects us to grow. He expects us to fulfill the great commission and to reach people for Jesus Christ. Those things are expected of all churches. And He will never expect of us things that we can’t deliver. You all right? And so he has made a promise concerning the power to fulfill his expectations. In the book of Acts 1:8 Jesus said “But when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will receive power and will tell people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
That isn’t something I made up. That my friends is the promise of almighty God. And He didn’t say you might receive power, he said you will receive power. And he didn’t say you might be witnesses he said you would be witnesses. You all right? Those are the expectations and the promises of God, he expects us to grow and he will give us what we need to grow.
But remember Joshua and Caleb not only saw the Promised Land but they realized that it would require something from them if they were going to occupy it. They knew that it would cost the Israelites something if they were going to enter into the Promised Land. There were battles to be waged and sacrifices to be made. Their entry into the land of milk and honey wasn’t going to be on a path of rose petals. Sometimes we presume, and sometimes we’re taught that if we’re in the will of God then we’ll never have any problems and that my friends is a lie of the Devil.
For the rest of our time this morning we’re going to look at the cost of church growth. Let’s be honest with each other and acknowledge that this church cannot and will not grow without some cost on your behalf and some cost on mine. Twenty years ago I didn’t realize the price of church growth and blindly led the Truro Wesleyan Church to grow from 119 to close to 200 and in the process we built a half million dollar worship center.
Now in the beginning everyone was gung ho for growth, I mean who wouldn’t be? But as we began to grow some people began to hesitate and balk. Not bad people, good people even Godly people but people who weren’t willing to pay the price. And I vowed that I wouldn’t attempt to lead another church without being up front about what it was going to cost them. You OK?
1) This Church Will Never Be Like This Church Again. Twelve years ago we had 6 adults involved in a Sunday Nite Bible Study, that was Bedford Community Church, a year ago we were averaging 45 in our Sunday Morning Service, today we are averaging 170 in our Morning service. Some people have moved on to other churches, and other people have joined us, and with every new person the church changes. A church of 7 is radically different then a church of 45 which is completely different then a church of 170, which will be different then a church of 250 or 450 or 2000. As we grow we realize that it is a fact of life that the church will change and it won’t be like it was before.
Twelve years ago we were meeting in our living room at 184 Basinview Drive, a year ago we were at the Lions Den Community Center, now we are here in our own church home, things change.
Every new person, every new family will change the personality of Cornerstone. Think about it we are not the same church we were before you arrived to make your contribution. It becomes like a recipe that is changed by each additional ingredient. An egg is an egg, but with milk it becomes an omelet, a little cheddar and you have a cheese omlet, add some flour and you have a popover, some baking soda, and sugar to your popover and you have a cake. Now I like eggs, omelets, popovers and cakes but they are all different.
And so the first cost of growth is change, not necessarily bad change or for that matter even good change. Just change and change has to happen.
Harold Wilson, former Prime Minister of England said “He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery.”
2) You Don’t Get Nothing For Nothing Contrary to popular opinion church growth doesn’t just happen. It requires sacrifice. Sometimes lots of sacrifices. One thing that people don’t like talking about in churches is money, but the truth is that churches can’t function without money. The money has to come from somewhere and the Scriptures are quite clear that the “somewhere” is the people of God. There is a lot of difference between the financial commitment needed to maintain a church and the financial commitment needed to grow a church.
We maintained a church paying $500.00 a month rent for the Lions Den and some office space, that’s two days mortgage payment now. We now have Denn on full time and Jay and Erv on part-time. Mike volunteers 20 hours a week on the administration and Angela probably does the same with the Kids Ministry. As we continue to grow Jay will need to go full time, Erv’s hours will increase and Mike and Angela’s positions will ultimately need to become paid positions as they continue to expand. By staffing for growth we are acting instead of reacting. Whatever the dollar costs are they will not be found immediately with new growth. It takes about two years for giving to catch up with numerical growth. If our growth is coming through conversions it can take that long for people to accept the concept of tithing, and if we are picking up transfer growth then might need that time to build loyalties and trust. Now understand that doesn’t mean that you have to wait for two years.
The same goes for time and service. As the church grows there will be a lag between getting people in and getting people to the place where they are willing to serve. During the transition period it stretches our people as they have to teach more children, lead larger youth groups, take on the responsibilities of more growth groups and begin new ministries to cater to all these “new people”.
One of the greatest sacrifices that is made is the giving up of preferences. As the church grows it sometimes grows away from the area that we are comfortable in, and yet unless those changes are clearly wrong in light of the Scriptures we may have to surrender them in order to see continued kingdom growth. The Moncton Wesleyan Church Manifesto says, “We might have our personal preferences about a big church or a small church, a formal service or an informal service, a long service or a short service, gospel music or liturgical music, fiery preaching or quiet preaching. However, if those preference dictate which church we attend and support, then we can never experience God’s greatest blessings, because our motives are selfish.”
The second cost of growth then is sacrifice, of money, or time and of labor or preferences.
3) We Will Have To Lose Our Smallness. Now when you think of it, this is a really obvious statement and to a certain degree goes back to the idea of our church changing but it is different.
One of the major reasons why some churches are small is because they like being small. Whether we are willing to admit it or not there are a lot of nice things about being a small church. Probably the most obvious advantage of a small church is that you know everyone. You don’t have to guess at names or occupations, and everyone knows you. As the church gets bigger you start to notice there are people that you can’t quite put a name to, and there are people who don’t know who you are.
When a church is small each person has a fair amount of control over what goes on. After all, one vote in twenty has a lot more sway then one vote in two hundred. There is an intimacy in a small worship service that is difficult but not impossible to capture in a larger service. In a small church you usually know what is going on at any given time. In a small church you have more of the pastor. One man has more time for each person in a group of forty five then he does in a group of one hundred and seventy five.
The problem remains that if we stay small because it appeals to us, then our decision is based on selfishness. You cannot see people won to Jesus Christ and discipled without this church growing. The only way we can not grow is by not leading people into a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, and so we would have to make a conscious decision to exclude people from the Kingdom of God in an attempt to make sure that our church remains comfortable for some people.
But listen to the command of Jesus in Matthew 28:19-20 Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” It is a rule of nature that everything in nature is either growing, dying or dead.
Peter Pan never wanted to grow up and I think that as children we are often content to remain children. But that isn’t what God had in His plan when he created us, (although maybe having to grow up was a part of the curse!) even though childhood can be a blast. We can’t be a Peter Pan Church. God has some great things in store for us as we grow and mature, but let’s not ignore the costs that will have to be paid if we are going to grow.
As we stand on the threshold of a new era lets step across it with Joshua eyes, not ignoring the problems but realizing that our God is bigger than any problem we will encounter. Can I count on you, no let’s change that it’s not my church and it never has been, can God count on you to do what needs being done to reach the HRM?
Sure there will be problems but none of them so big that they can stop the people of God.
Powerpoint is available for this message, please contact me at denn@cornerstonewesleyan.ca
