The Church Everyone Wants To "join"

The Church Everyone Wants to “Join” David Owens

Scripture Reading: Acts 2:42-47 8.17.25

Introduction:

A. Good morning, brothers and sisters! Praise God for another Lord’s Day to gather to worship God and to encourage each other.

1. As you know, we just completed a sermon series about eternal questions and in that series we talked about death, heaven and hell.

2. Before I jump into a new series in September, I want to share a few stand-alone sermons on some important subjects.

3. Today, I want us to think about being the kind of church that everyone wants to join.

4. I put the word “join” in parenthesis, because the Scriptures tell us that the Lord adds people to the church as they are born again.

5. So, in a very important sense, no one can join the church they can only be added by God.

6. Therefore, what I am really talking about is how can we be the kind of church that attracts people and causes them to want to be a part of it.

B. Let’s start with a story told about a preacher who decided to take on the challenge of a church in a small Oklahoma town that was really struggling - attendance was down to almost no one.

1. He decided he would start his new ministry in that town by making personal visits to each of the people who used to attend that congregation and invite them to come to his first worship service.

2. The following Sunday, church was all but empty.

3. So the new preacher decided to place a notice in the local newspaper, stating that, because the church was dead, he was going to hold the special service to give the church a decent Christian burial.

4. The notice said that the funeral for the dead church would be held the following Sunday.

5. With morbid curiosity, a large crowd turned out for the “funeral.”

6. There in front of the pulpit was a closed casket, covered with flowers.

7. After the preacher delivered the eulogy, he had the funeral director open the casket and invited the people to come forward and pay their final respects to their dead church.

8. With great curiosity, all the people eagerly lined up to look in the casket.

9. As each “mourner” peeped into the casket, they quickly turned away with a guilty, sheepish look, because in the casket, tilted at just the right angle, was a large mirror.

C. Why do I start with this story?

1. Because in some respects, the life or the death of our congregation is determined by the person we see when we look in the mirror.

2. Our congregation began back in the late 30s in Syracuse and then moved to Liverpool.

3. Our our church has had a blessed history, but what about our congregation’s future?

a. Will our congregation grow in spirit and in number?

b. Will our congregation stagnate and remain the same?

c. Or will our congregation slowly lose ground and experience diminishing numbers and weakened ministry?

3. Only God can see the future and we know that it is God’s desire for His kingdom to grow and for people to be saved.

4. We also know that God can do more than we can ask or imagine (Eph. 3:20), but we also know that we have to cooperate with God and move into His power and will.

5. We have to make ourselves open and available for God to employ us in His good plans.

D. Let’s spend a minute with a piece that someone wrote called “The Church of My Dreams.”

1. This is the church of my dreams:

The church of the warm heart, of the open mind, of the adventurous spirit.

The church that cares, that heals hurt lives.

The church that comforts old people, that challenges youth,

that knows no division of culture or class, no frontiers, geographical or social.

The church that inquires as well as the church that preaches,

That looks forward as well as backwards.

The church of the Master, the church of the people,

High as the ideals of Jesus, low as the humblest human.

A worshipping church, a working church

A witnessing church, a winsome church.

The church that interprets the truth in terms of its own times

And challenges its times in terms of the truth.

The church that inspires courage for this life,

And hope for the life to come.

The church of my dreams is the church of the living God.

2. Wouldn’t you like to be a member of a church like that?

a. The aspirational goals expressed in that piece are truly the ideal that should be striven towards by our congregation and others as well.