REVOLUTIONARY SIMPLICITY AND YOUR CHURCH

REVOLUTIONARY SIMPLICITY AND YOUR CHURCH Matthew 6:33; Matthew 28:18-20 July 20, 2008 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introduction At the ripe age of 57 I finally learned how to tie my shoes. It’s true. I was at an appointment with an orthotics expert who had just finished sizing my feet. I was getting my shoes on and about ready to leave and he was watching me lace my shoes. He said, “Let me ask you something; do your shoe laces come untied a lot?” I answered that I probably retie my shoes a couple times a day. “Would you like me to give you a little advice?” I told him that would be fine, and he proceeded to show me that I was tying my shoes with a “granny knot,” or a “slip knot.” But if I would change the direction of my first knot, bringing the right lace under the left lace instead of under it, my shoes would stay tied all day. He was right! Even now as I tell this story on myself I feel a little foolish. I mean, after all, tying one’s shoes is what one learns when he is three or four years old! I’m more than a half-century late! What I learned from that little experience, besides how to tie my shoes properly, was this: 1) it’s never too late to unlearn something wrong, 2) it’s never too late to learn something new, and 3) it’s a good to listen to expert advice. I’ve been re-studying the scriptures and reading the writing of some very sharp church leaders and theologians, and I have to tell you, I’m learning things I wish I had understood years ago about the Church of Jesus Christ. I want to share some of these insights with you as we study the Word this morning and see if we might together grow in our understanding, with a view to making our lives more serviceable to the Lord. Pray with me to that end, will you? Recapping the series We began this series on Revolutionary Simplicity a couple weeks ago with a look at the subject of Time. We considered how time, as a created, temporary, revocable gift from God, is really our opportunity to serve Him and glorify Him, as long as we have it. We learned that when we use it properly, not only is God glorified, but we are blessed as well. The key is to simplify our lives, focusing on the important things. Then, last week, we studied another gift from God—our money and possessions. These, too, are a gift from God. And when we use these resources wisely and in keeping with His will, again, God is glorified and we are quite fulfilled. The key issue, with our money as well as our time, is to use it, or spend it, in keeping with the clear purposes of God in our lives. We always do better at focusing on God’s purposes when we are vigilant to keep our lives simple, tightly aiming all we do on the target of His will. Radical simplicity is the art of living our lives so gripped by the grace of God and so intensely preoccupied with what He wants from us that other things of lesser importance—things self-serving and merely carnally gratifying—fall aside. Jesus said that when we pursue Him with all our heart and soul and mind and strength, there simply isn’t time, resource, energy or interest in things less important. To this He has called His Church. The other way He said it was to not focus on the things of this world that we may desire. Rather, focus on Him and we’ll have everything we need and everything we want. Read with me the verse we’ve been memorizing for two weeks: But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33) Today, in our third message on this principle, we are considering the Church. Once again, a gift from God to us, a stewardship for us (both personally and corporately) and a means by which we may glorify God here on earth. My point is simply this: when we keep the purpose of the church clearly in mind, focusing on God’s will through His church, then (and only then) will we be certain we are glorifying God and fulfilling His will. Radically simplifying our approach to doing church means focusing exclusively on what Jesus has called the church to do. Please read with me again, this time from the familiar text called the Great Commission: 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 will be with you always, to the very end of the age.” [webmasters note: Matthew 28:18-20] There it is, in simple, uncomplicated terms. The clear will of Jesus for His followers, summarized in one beautiful passage. The rest of the New Testament bears out the truth that this is precisely what the Lord has called his church to do. There is one imperative verb in this command of Jesus. It is not “go”; it is not “baptize”; and it is not “teach”. These three words are participles in the original. That simply means they do not carry the weight in the sentence that the main verb does. What is the main verb in the text? It is matheteuo – the imperative form of “make disciples.” Although we are certainly to go, baptize and teach, these are incidental to our mission – TO MAKE DISCIPLES. Discipling is what we do What is a “disciple”? A disciple is anyone who is learning to appreciate who Jesus is, trusting more in what Jesus has done for Him, loving Jesus more, growing more and more into the image of Jesus, and becoming more of a servant of Jesus. Notice: it is not CONVERTING people. It is simply making people hungry for salvation through Jesus and continuing maturity in Him. Somewhere along that process, the person will be converted by the conviction of the Spirit of God, but our job is simply to instruct them through the Word and through example. Discipling: that’s what we do. We don’t do anything else, except what we incidentally need to do in getting discipling done. Discipling is what we do. We live for it. Discipling is our calling. I feel so strongly that this is what God would have us understand. We’ve already discussed from several angles how easy it is to get overwhelmed by so much detail, so many things that enter our lives and demand of us so much. We get weighed down with much activity and busy-ness that seems to have little to do with what we are actually called to do. I love the church. But sometimes I wonder if the church is not the biggest magnet of extraneous activities that have less and less to do with who we are and what we are called to. Very often people in the church are extremely busy being busy. And they would have a very hard time telling you what all the things they are doing have to do with the mission of the church: discipling. As a pastor and elder, I confess, I am one of the first to get sucked into the vortex of ministry schizophrenia. Without very diligent attention to the process of Radical Simplicity, church life can get very busy with lots of things, many of which have little or nothing to do with our mission. We must care about what God cares about. Author and management guru Stephen Covey said it well: “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” But there are things that the church gets caught up in—details and peripherals—that keep her from focusing on the singular mission the Lord has given us. Let me suggest four of them: 1. Consumerism. Too often the church falls victim to a consumer mindset. Many have made much of the accusation that church members are too often church shoppers. In their desire to find the church that will meet all their needs, they hop from one church to another, trying to find the church that is perfect for them and their family’s needs. The sad result is two-fold: one, the Christian never really settles down into a body of believers where they can give and receive discipleship, cultivate their gifts and get into a community where they grow and work together as a body. There is, of course, no perfect church, and any believer who wastes his time looking for perfection in a church in this world is doomed to disappointment. There are good reasons to leave a church—such as doctrinal impurity and false teaching, but too often those who understand the problem leave before really trying to bring loving correction. The second sad result is that churches, knowing they are competing with other churches to meet the needs of the consumerist church shoppers and hoppers go to great lengths to please the whims of people in order to gain new members and soon their energies are used up in maintaining programs and expectations that have nothing to do with their mission. 2. Busy-ness. Have you ever in your church career felt as though you have become so busy you have no time to disciple other people? You suddenly stop for self-assessment and realize you’re doing all kinds of good things, but you’re not involved in the real mission of the church? I have come to believe that one of Satan’s most effective strategies is to get Christians so busy doing things they like to do that they lose sight of what they’re called to do. It is easy for our lives to become cluttered with the tyranny of small things. I want to encourage you this morning to stop and assess the things that keep you so busy you don’t take the time to speak to an unbeliever about what Christ has done in your life, to bring a redeeming word to them, to pray for them, to befriend them for the purpose of sharing salvation with them. What kinds of relatively unimportant things are going on in your life that keeps you from training your children in the faith, reading the Word of God as a family and sharing the love of Christ with one another? Several years ago the elders in this church made a decision to not hold Sunday night and Wednesday night services, so that members would not feel obligated to attend three formal services a week. We wanted to make time free for the Christians affiliated with MECF to invite non-Christians into their homes and time to share their faith and witness with those who don’t yet know Christ. Here’s what I’m afraid has happened: Believers found themselves with more time to watch television, go to movies, and generally busy themselves with lots of things that had nothing to do with incarnating themselves in the lives of unsaved people. Our thrust here is to ask three simple things of those who wish to be meaningfully involved in this church: • Attend Sunday morning Celebration to engage in corporate worship, prayer, the Lord’s Supper and the formal teaching of the Word of God.   • Attend a weekly Life Group for the purpose of giving and receiving mutual discipleship, having meaningful fellowship experience and drawing others into relationship with the Lord and the church through inviting them to their group.   • Actively pursue gift-based ministry, where they exercise their peculiar gifts and abilities in ministry to others in the body and/or unbelievers in other settings. That is our attempt to simplify church life, and streamline it so members do not become bogged down in busy-ness that is not missional. 3. Loss of Pure Vision. It is easy, given these first two issues, to lose sight of the calling we have as a church. It is very simple: we are to • Draw people into a relationship with Christ   • Develop believers into mature disciples in Christ   • Deploy servant leaders who will continue to serve Christ Even in a simplified and targeted mission, it is easy to be distracted into the busy-ness of lesser activities and lose sight of the higher calling. Have you been attentive to lesser things and inattentive to missional things? Two self-assessment questions might be “Have I meaningfully shared Christ with an unbeliever recently with a view to salvation?” and “Have I been significantly involved in helping other believers grow into the image of Christ?” 4. Stagnated Commitment. The first three enemies of simple church life inevitably lead to this state of stagnated commitment, not only to the church, but also toward the Lord Himself. Jesus has given us the church as a gift to help us in our personal growth, and to help encourage us in our obedient service to Him. But when we become worldly consumerist, unnecessarily too busy, and mindlessly void of vision, we will inescapably fall into a state of stagnation. Jesus spoke of seed falling on dry ground and weeds of worldly concerns choking out faith. He said that devotion to the materialism always upstages devotion to God. He said the one who sets his hand to the plow must not look back lest he be distracted from his mission. He said that many will say in that day, “Lord, Lord, didn’t we do many good things in Your Name?” but He will say to them, “I never knew you.” [webmasters note: Matthew 7:21] Jesus said, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching…He who does not love me will not obey my teaching…[webmasters note: John 14:23-24] I chose you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last.” [webmasters note: John 15:16] Max Lucado expresses it well in his book, Just Like Jesus: "One of the incredible abilities of Jesus was to stay on target. His life never got off track. Not once do we find him walking down the wrong side of the fairway. He had no money, no computers, no jets, no administrative assistants or staff; yet Jesus did what many of us fail to do. He kept his life on course. As Jesus looked across the horizon of his future, he could see many targets. Many flags were flapping in the wind, each of which he could have pursued. He could have been a political revolutionary. He could have been a national leader. He could have been content to be a teacher and educate minds or to be a physician and heal bodies. But in the end he chose to be a Savior and save souls. . . . . The heart of Christ was relentlessly focused on one task. The day he left the carpentry shop of Nazareth he had one ultimate aim-the cross of Calvary. He was so focused that his final words were, 'It is finished.' How could Jesus say he was finished? There were still the hungry to feed, the sick to heal, the untaught to instruct, and the unloved to love. How could he say he was finished? Simple. He had completed his designated task. His commission was fulfilled. The painter could set aside his brush, the sculptor lay down his chisel, the writer put away his pen. The job was done. . . . . Our lives tend to be so scattered. Intrigued by one trend only until the next comes along. Suckers for the latest craze or quick fix. This project, then another. Lives with no strategy, no goal, no defining priority. ..Living life with the hiccups. We are easily distracted by the small things and forget the big things." If you find yourself thus distracted and in need of Radical Simplicty, I want to offer a couple of suggestions as I close: • To return to simple faith and become the simple church, you will need, first, a willingness to change. For the Christian, that means a willingness to change. Ask yourself, am I willing to cut, change, alter or give up things that I do that are either wrong or second-best in order to focus on the simple, perfect will of God in my life? Are we willing to sacrifice lesser things as a church family in order to focus our energies and resources in His direction.   • To gain a Radical Simplicity that will more perfectly serve the Lord’s purposes in our lives, we must capture and maintain a Matthew 6:33 focus: to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. The church cannot be schizophrenic in its mission and purpose. We must be able to say with the apostle Paul, “One thing I do…”[webmasters note: Philippians 3:13]   • To be a Radically Simple church, we must radically commit to discipleship ministry. Our primary calling is to reach people and to teach people. Everything else is secondary. It may be necessary to get rid of some clutter to heal our focus. A radically simple church is made up of people who agree to radically simple lifestyles—Christians totally devoted to calling people to Christ, cultivating believers into maturity and challenging one another to committed service.   • The first step is Repentance and Renewal. Some of us need to say to God: “I am tired of being busy with non-essentials. I want my life to count for you. Heal me of my preoccupation with the world; deliver me from busy-ness; give me clear focus on what You call important; help me become the disciple and the discipler of others that You want me to be. Make me simple, focused, committed to Your purposes. I don’t want to serve me any more. I want to serve You. During the nineteenth century a group of missionaries in what is now Surinam in South America, wanted to reach the inhabitants of a nearby island with the gospel. Most of these islanders were slaves on the large plantations that covered the island. The plantation owners feared the gospel and its results, and would not even allow the missionaries to talk with the slaves. They would allow only other slaves to talk with slaves. So the missionaries sold themselves into slavery in order to take the gospel to the islanders. Working in bondage in the harsh conditions of a tropical climate, they reached many with the good news. Is there any price too great to pay in order to simply and meaningfully serve the cause of Christ?     [Back to Top]