Sermon Tone Analysis

God’s Perfect Balance

Greeting

Find someone around you and tell them, “We are better together!”

{SERIES TITLE}

In Matt.

16, Jesus said, “Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.”

HE will build.

And our text shows how He is building it, still today:

Text

{TITLE: “GOD’S PERFECT BALANCE”

What We Are Doing

You have a handout.

This is something I put together months ago in study.

I want you to see the highlighted areas.

I’m not giving you this so you can simply admire what I’ve found.

I want you to open your Bible at home and study the areas pointed out.

We need this burden to sink into our collective spirit.

Put that aside, for awhile, though…

Testimonies to the Small Group Format

“One of the biggest challenges of growth in a church is maintaining the ‘family’ feel as the church begins to expand.

Increasing church attendance makes it more difficult for the pastoral staff to individually touch each life coming through the church doors.

In a report titled ‘Megachurch 2020: The Changing Reality in America’s Largest Churches,’ Hartford Institute for Religion Research and the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) state, ‘Our latest survey shows that small-group practice continues to increase dramatically, but also that the spiritual-health impact of the use of small groups is profound.

When asked if small groups are central to their strategy of Christian nurture and spiritual formation, an astounding 90% of megachurches said yes.’

With this in mind, we need to look at the potential of implementing a small group structure into the fabric of our church program.”

Rev. Darin Sargent, Forward magazine, Winter 2022

“[Small groups] provide a place to connect people with other people in the church.

Sunday services connect them to the message.

My personal experience within our church, TrueVine, has shown that people in small groups speed up their connectivity to the church by two years, compared to just attending Sunday worship service.

The friends and support they receive are invaluable to their long-term membership and growth.

We have done small groups for nine years, and our church has grown 230 percent in those nine years.

Perhaps you would ask, ‘How do I know it was groups that produced the growth?’

It’s because that’s all we changed in those nine years.

Our preaching is the same; music is the same; location is the same.”

Pastor Tom Durrance, Forward magazine, Winter 2022

“Here’s What We Are Doing...”

Now I’m going to read to you directly from our official ministry document describing LifeGroups at New Life Rector:

“We believe LifeGroups groups are an exciting way to ‘be’ the Church, beyond the doors of our Sunday Service location.

We recognize that the apostles continued meeting in ‘the temple’ as well as ‘breaking bread from house to house’ (Acts 2:42-47, Acts 5:42).

We also believe that the Church is far more than a building we meet in on Sunday; it is ‘a house not made with hands’ (2 Corinthians 5:1).

It is a body of believers – and we are that body, Monday through Sunday!”

LifeGroup Ministry Purpose + Structure, New Life Rector

Every last Wednesday of the month will be small groups.

We have three groups for now.

Your name will be in one of them.

You will be meeting those nights at your LifeGroup Leaders home.

We’ll have the address available.

You’ll get there and eat together and talk, and once everyone is done there, we’ll go into a time of prayer and study of the Word.

Each time it will be a different topic to study and talk about together.

It will be conversational.

It will be a fantastic opportunity to grow with one another.

More importantly, it will be a great opportunity to get someone there and reach them.

This is the evangelistic part I spoke of last week!

We are setting a reasonable goal of having at least one new member in each of these groups before the end of the semester in May.

And our goal in that is to eventually have to start a fourth group!

{TITLE}

God’s Perfect Balance

Earth is Balanced in Just the Right Spot for Life

Government Has Checks and Balances

A Good Ball Team Has Offense AND Defense

His Ability to Balance is Under-appreciated

It seems that God shows His perfect balance that has long been known, even in the beginnings of His Church.

We've known of His beautiful balance of such great concepts as:

Justice and mercy

Compassion and rebuke

Encouragement and correction.

Balance: Prophet + Teacher

There’s another I find interesting… that of the prophet and the teacher.

There is a frequent linking of the two in the New Tetament.

They are forever connected, the teacher and the prophet.

A pastor is required to be a teacher.

And teachers are so very necessary.

You probably are quite thankful for much of your knowledge of Scripture that came from teaching.

But I can tell you this, it is an incredible blessing to have a prophetic voice in your life.

“...preachers may help anybody and hurt nobody; but prophets will stir everybody and madden somebody.

The preacher may go with the crowd; the prophet goes against it.

A man freed, fired, and filled with God will be branded unpatriotic because he speaks against his nation’s sins; unkind because his tongue is a two-edged sword; unbalanced because the weight of preaching opinion is against him.

The preacher will be heralded; the prophet hounded.”

Leonard Ravenhill

Initially when you hear that, there might be some resistance rise in you.

But if you will use Scripture as your assessment of those statements, and look at prophets throughout the Bible, it was very often that they would speak of God directly to the masses, many of whom would become riled.

But here’s what’s interesting…

The teacher reiterates and conserves the forever settled Word and explains it.

The prophet is CREATIVE, in that they give a NEW Word.

And the creative role of prophecy is balanced by the conserving role of the teacher!

Isn’t that awesome!

Balance: Temple Courts + House to House

I’m finding in Scripture that there was yet another balance God used in the New Testament church, it seems!

There was meeting at the temple courts, but there was also meeting house-to-house!

I am convinced that, as much as God wishes to live inside of us, He also wishes to be welcome in our homes!

I think that you are going to feel a special blessing come over you when you sit around a dining table with people you know and people you don’t, and you open your Bible!!!

TOUCH MY HOME, GOD!

When Common Places Turn Holy

Here’s something we need to think about…

It’s always the common places that become suddenly holy, isn’t it?

A burning bush - in that same familiar field where Moses punched the clock every day for forty years.

The sitting room - where Esther presented her request to the king.

The upstairs windowsill - where Daniel rested his elbows while he prayed defiantly against the royal law.

The run-down barn - owned by a poor farmer on the outskirts of Bethlehem.

The beach - that Peter had docked at every week since he was just a boy.

How about this… the duplex on a street in Jerusalem, where suddenly… the wind started blowing inside…