Life in the Church

Introduction

Vision

House Keeping

Grant Sterley joining the Grace Empire staff as our new Kid Min Director.

Andre Osario is leaving us because he has taken a full time worship leader position at _____________.

Memory - Korean funeral - incense, picture in a frame, food and money presented. I remember asking my mother, why Christians did this? And she just explained that its just a part of the korean culture.

Thats when I got to thinking:

What are some things that we do in western culture that is counter to what the bible says?

In other words,

Kingdom Culture vs My Culture

I think its important to note, that this sermon is probably one of the most important sermons I have ever preached.

You know we tend to idolize and look up to the Lone Rangers in our world. The one guy that turned everything around. The Abraham Lincolns, the Martin Luther King Jrs, the Steve Jobs, the Batmans, the James Bonds. These are individuals that stood alone to face all odds...

I think its safe to say in our iPhone, iPod, selfie stick world that we love our individualism. We love to be set apart, self sufficient, and self reliant. And for the most part I don’t think this is bad. I think theres a healthy measure to this and definitely something to be proud of.

But there is time when this ideal gets in the way of what God is trying to do in our lives.

So I recently I sat down with a friend and he filled me in on what was going on in his life…then he said something that I heard probably a hundred times from different people and different individuals, but it never occured to me how much of a problem this was until that moment.

He said, “No one knows this but...”

And he explained his current difficulty…

And I thought…how come no one knows this? Especially cause he attends church regularly and is part of a life giving church…but then I realized that Im in the same boat. Im part of this amazing church, but often I find myself bearing the weight of, what feels like the world, on my shoulders?

But we all know the answer to this question, right? Cause its embarrassing to share, or its unmanly, or we don’t want to burden anyone with our problems, people have so many other things to worry about, its not that big of a deal, how can they help me anyway, I can handle it, I got this.

We have a long list of reasons that sound legitimate, rational, and even considerate of others for not sharing the burden that we all carry.

What does this have to do with discipleship?

Everything...

The New Testament is full of commands to do this or that for “one another.”

Love one another. Pray for one another. Encourage one another.

So how can we teach people to “observe all that I have commanded,” if we dont have anyone to love, pray, or encourage. It is impossible to “one another” yourself. And we cannot follow jesus alone.

While every individual needs to obey Jesus’s call to follow, we cannot follow Jesus as individuals.

So whats the main idea of today?

We are going to be looking at discipleship from the context of the church. We are going to look at what it really means to live together as a church - a body of Christ.

Next week we are going to be talking about how to reach our local settings and the rest of the world, but we have to start right here.

We are called to multiply and make disciples of all nations. Its time to take up our place within the body of Christ. Its time to Go Fish.

VIDEO

I want to start with a quote,

“First, let’s make sure that we are not guilty of belittling God’s church in any way. It’s not a social club; it’s not a building, and it’s not an option. The church is life and death. The church is God’s strategy for reaching our world. What we do inside the church matters.”

Excerpt From: Francis Chan & Mark Beuving. “Multiply.” iBooks. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/multiply/id567310376?mt=11

Programs and events are not what make a church. These things are there to help facilitate the life and community of the church, but to we dont measure the health of the church at how many people show up to an event.

Ever take a bit of an apple or peach you thought was going to be good, only to bite it and find out it was rotten on the inside. Measuring the health of the church by well attended events is just like this…it COULD show you that the church is healthy, but its only when you pull back the layers and see the core of the people will you know if the church is truly healthy or not.

Out of 114 times that the church is mentioned in the New Testament, at least ninety of them refer to a specific LOCAL, not global, gathering of believers who got together for connection and to focus their mission to build the church.

God intends for every person on this planet, to be a part of his global church, but also to be plugged in to a community of believers that we are serving and being served. To challenge and to be challenged.

But despite the clear priority that Jesus and the Bible puts on people being connected and intertwined with other believers there are a lot of Christians that try and live the Christian life apart from series, personal commitment to the local church.

I want you to say this word with me: interdependence

Heres another scary word: accountability.

and the last word: submission

Look, I want to say this next part very carefully because I know what it feels like on the other side of this. I’ve been hurt by church a time or two and there have been many occasions that I wanted to do spirituality, my relationship with Jesus, apart from the church.

But solitude in a spiritual battle is death. You have to know that.

We do this because we are self reliant, self sufficient, and the kind of mutual interdependence, accountability, and even submission, sounds exhausting, a hassle, and even scary.

We hop from one church to the next looking for the “perfect place,” or the “perfect people,” or the “perfect fit” because we are afraid to commit to the people in the church. We want our church experience to have as little awkwardness as possible…but intertwining our lives with people is always going to be messy and a little bit awkward…in some cases, a LOT awkward.

Bearing One Another’s Burdens

Last week, we explained that the job of a pastor is to equip believers to do the ministry of the church. That the job of ministry is the job of the whole church, for every believer.

So this begs the question, whom should you be ministering too?

Dont be overwhelmed by the task of ministering to others. Like I said last week, God has placed people in your life for you to serve. Initally, just look around and you will have a good place to start.

Galatians 6:1–5 NLT

Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ. If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important. Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else. For we are each responsible for our own conduct.

Acts 2:42 NLT

All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.

Galatians 6:1–4 NLT

Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ. If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important. Pay careful attention to your own work, for then you will get the satisfaction of a job well done, and you won’t need to compare yourself to anyone else.

Galatians 6:1–2 NLT

Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ.

Discipleship and ministering can sound foreign and intimidating if you don’t understand the practical nature of it.

Heres the skinny. Do you know anyone thats carrying a heavy load? The first step is simple, help them.

You don’t have to be a bible scholar, lead a marriage retreat, or be a psychologist to begin helping.

You could be on the other end of the couch when someone is moving. You could bring a meal to a family that just had a baby. You could take a buddy to a movie. Or in my case, you could sit down and help me figure out how to find insurance for myself and for my family.

You have to understand something, YOU have a special function in this church that only you can fill. You may not be obvious to you, but that may because we have a narrow view of what helping and serving is. As we share our struggles, HOW we can help will become clear.

So this week Jay sat down with me and helped me figure out my insurance…to him he was just doing his job, but he had NO IDEA how much Amy and I have been worried about it all, but thats a part of the problem, he had NO IDEA because I kept things to myself.

A lot of times we dont know how we can help the church cause the church is either too proud, too self conscious, too self reliant, uncommunicative, or we dont want to bother anyone.

But unless people know, we cant help. It’s a circle of interdependence. Some of us dont know how to use the God given talents he has given us because some of us dont know HOW to be dependent on others.

By bearing one anothers burdens, we participate in the transformation of people’s lives. Yes it is the gospels, that ultimately transfroms people, but God wants to use us to particpate in that. Think of it like this, the Gospel is the medicine, but we get to be the capsule in which the medicine is delivered.

Do we want to be a healthy church? Do you want to attend a healthy church?

If we want to be a healthy church then we got to play in the game. If we want to be a healthy church and sit on the sidelines, we love the game.

Getting beneath the Surface

So ok…we help them…? But what if the help someone needs isn’t as simple as helping them paint their house? What if the help they need is much deeper than that?

I think people generally tend to gravitate to quick and easy solutions and we give these out just as easily. Go read this book…or just apologize…or just quit....it seems so easy to say on this end of the problem right? But the truth is…helping someone is usually not that simple. It’s about getting invested and involved with a person. Its actually being there. It’s picking up the phone when it rings for the 20th time that week. It’s making the effort to talking and having a conversation after a long day of work.

Real love takes time and energy and some sacrifice.

Francis Chan writes,

“It’s not that Christians are uncaring. Very often, we really do want to help the people around us however we can, but we get so focused on finding a quick solution to the external behavior that we overlook the real problem.”

Excerpt From: Francis Chan & Mark Beuving. “Multiply.” iBooks. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/multiply/id567310376?mt=11

Cause the real problem isnt external, its internal.

When Jesus’ disciples started eating without going through the necessary cleansing rituals, the Pharisses accused the disciples of defiling themselves. But Jesus’ response calls us to look beyond the external to what is going on in the heart.

Mark 7:18–23 NLT

“Don’t you understand either?” he asked. “Can’t you see that the food you put into your body cannot defile you? Food doesn’t go into your heart, but only passes through the stomach and then goes into the sewer.” (By saying this, he declared that every kind of food is acceptable in God’s eyes.) And then he added, “It is what comes from inside that defiles you. For from within, out of a person’s heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, wickedness, deceit, lustful desires, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness. All these vile things come from within; they are what defile you.”

Christianity is not behavior modification. We don’t become like him through conditioning or mantras. Its not about changing the external, its about changing the internals.

change of heart illustration

explains that our actions, what we do and what we say, are a result of whats in our heart.

I don’t know about you, but thats really telling...

It makes us take a long look at ourselves. The anger we have towards other people and the anger we had towards the church. What does that say about us?

We still need transformation friends. I do. Im okay to admit that. Why?

Because transformation doesn’t belong to me. God isn’t in a rush to get me some place he knows im going to go. Im okay to admit that I need transformation because I know that bearing one another’s burdens is not easy, but also its not optional.

We face the challenge head on: a church filled with isolated individuals will feel defeated and joyless and that is not what God had intended. A body of believers that comes together, shares life with one another, and takes their responsibility to bear one another’s burdens seriously is a church that the “gates of hell, wont prevail against it.”

Which brings us to our last point.

Every Member Doing Its Part

The church is a body. Thats how its descibed in the

Ephesians 4:15–16 NLT

Instead, we will speak the truth in love, growing in every way more and more like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church. He makes the whole body fit together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

Eph 4

If we want to be a healthy church then we got to play in the game. If we want to be a healthy church and sit on the sidelines, we love the game.

Its all about good teamwork.

Those of you thats played sports you know what Im talking about. Everyone has to play their part. I have a couple of stories I want to share with you thats outside of your typical sports teamwork story.

AFTER YEARS OF INTENSIVE ANALYSIS, GOOGLE DISCOVERS THE KEY TO GOOD TEAMWORK

In the last decade, Google has spent millions of dollars on measuring nearly every aspect of its employees’ lives – from which traits the best managers share to how often particular people eat together. The tech giant was determined to find out how to compile ‘the perfect team’.

The company’s executives worked hard on finding the perfect mix of individuals necessary to form a stellar team. They believed that building good teams meant combining the best people. But it wasn’t that simple.

In 2012 Google ran a project known as Project Aristotle. It took several years and included interviews with hundreds of employees. They analysed data about the people on more than 100 active teams at the company.

Abeer Dubey, a manager in Google’s People Analytics division, said, “We looked at 180 teams from all over the company. We had lots of data, but there was nothing showing that a mix of specific personality types or skills or backgrounds made any difference. The ‘who’ part of the equation didn’t seem to matter.’’

Google’s intense data collection led to the same conclusions that good managers have always known: In the best teams, members show sensitivity, and most importantly, listen to one another.

Matt Sakaguchi, a midlevel manager at Google, was keen to put Project Aristotle’s findings into practice. He took his team off-site to open up about his cancer diagnosis. Although initially silent, his colleagues then began sharing their own personal stories.

At the heart of Sakaguchi’s strategy, and Google’s findings is the concept of “psychological safety” – a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.

Google now describes psychological safety as the most important factor in building a successful team.

Google ended up highlighting what leaders in the business world have known for a while: the best teams are mindful that all members should contribute to the conversation equally, and respect one another’s emotions. It has less to do with who is in a team, and more with how the members interact with one another.

STEVE JOBS: “TECHNOLOGY ALONE IS NOT ENOUGH.”

In 1986, shortly after he was forced out of Apple, Steve Jobs bought a small computer manufacturer named (drumroll) Pixar.

What google’s analytical study showed us is what the New Testament has been saying for years…we function like a body. We work best as a team that knows how to bear one anothers burdens.

In 2000, he relocated the company to an abandoned Del Monte canning factory. The original plan called for three buildings, with separate offices for computer scientists, animators, and the Pixar executives. Jobs immediately scrapped it. Instead of three buildings, there was going to be a single vast space, with an atrium at its centre.

“The philosophy behind this design is that it’s good to put the most important function at the heart of the building. Well, what’s our most important function? It’s the interaction of our employees. That’s why Steve put a big empty space there. He wanted to create an open area for people to always be talking to each other.” – Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar.

As we close, I want to share one last story with you.

But for Jobs, it was not just about creating a space: he needed to make people go there. The primary challenge for Pixar, as he saw it, was getting its different cultures to work together and collaborate.

John Lasseter, the chief creative officer at Pixar, describes the equation this way: “Technology inspires art, and art challenges the technology.”

Jobs saw the separated offices as a design problem. He began with shifting the mailboxes to the atrium. He then moved the meeting rooms, the cafeteria, the coffee bar, and the gift shop to the centre of the building.

Brad Bird, the director of “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille,” said, “The atrium initially might seem like a waste of space. But Steve realised that when people run into each other when they make eye contact, things happen.”

Even if it came at the expense of convenience, the emphasis on consilience has always been a defining trait of Steve Jobs. Jobs insisted that the best creations occurred when people from disparate fields were connected, especially in an age of intellectual fragmentation.

WHO’S PACKING YOUR PARACHUTE?

This last story proving the importance of teamwork is about a US jet fighter pilot in Vietnam – Charles Plumb. He had completed 75 combat missions when he was shot down. Plumb was ejected and parachuted into enemy hands, where he spent six years in a Vietnamese prison.

One day, a man came up to him and said, “You’re Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!”

Plumb was confused and asked how the man knew about that. “I packed your parachute,” the man replied.

The man then shook his hand and said, “I guess it worked!” Plumb assured him it had and said, “If your chute hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t be here today.”

Plumb thought a lot about that man who held the fate of someone he did not even know, in his hands. He kept pondering how many times he might have seen the guy, and not even said anything because he was a fighter pilot and the stranger was just a sailor.”

Charles Plumb is now a motivational speaker telling this story to hundreds. After telling it, he always asks his audiences, “Who’s packing your parachute?”

In our life, be it personal or work related, many people have a hand in our parachutes. Are you taking the time to acknowledge, thank, and reward them? It is very easy to overlook the work of many. It takes a lot of people to create a team.

Thats a good question…and as a church I want to say...”we are.”

Share Heart for the House - and the need if you feel the Holy Spirit leading.