Family Values Part Five: Life Together

The New Revised Standard Version The First Converts

42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

Life among the Believers

43 Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. 44 All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45 they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

Values So Far

We belong to the family of Christ. We believe and trust in the saving love of Jesus Christ, which unites us all as brothers and sisters in Christ. So we will strive in all we do to support and encourage our families to live in to that calling.

Everyone belongs here. We hold fast to the truth that the Kingdom of God is free and available to all, regardless of whatever dividing walls our world may seek to establish. We will do all we can to tear down these dividing walls, to befriend the stranger, and to provide a safe and casual space for all to experience the healing love of Jesus Christ.

We will invest in the youth of our church. Young people are not only the future of the church, they are the church. We commit our time, our resources, and our energies to ensuring that young people have a seat at the table, a place to call their own, and a voice in our deliberations. We dedicate ourselves to providing opportunities for young people to have vital encounters with Jesus Christ.

Aspirational Values

We will live in to our namesake as a Laboratory of Faith. We are excited to live in an era where the world around us is changing at an incredible pace, and we recognize that the church must change with it. We strive to experiment, to try new ideas, and to create new spaces for people to practice their faith. We will not be daunted by failure or disappointment, but rather see them as learning experiences along the journey.

Today:

We are a community of faith who lives life together. We know that church is something far bigger than the walls of our sanctuary on Sunday mornings. So we will be a community who lives life together, constantly on the look out for Christ at work in the world wherever we find ourselves. Moreover, we dedicate ourselves to being a supportive family in all avenues and areas of our day to day lives.

Bible Breakdown

The Church is Born

Acts is the second part in Luke’s story.

The same Luke that wrote the Gospel wrote this.

Where as the Gospel is the story of Jesus, Acts is the story of how the church came to be.

And so this story today comes to us right as this thing called “Church” is being born.

For as much as we are crafting our values, we’re doing so in a church that is well over 100 years old.

These first disciples are trying to craft their values out of nowhere.

What if we crafted our values out of nothing?

Devoted

They came up with things that were the absolute essentials.

The text says that the church was devoted to four things, at least one of which ought to make us Presbyterians proud:

Teachings

They were focused on the word of Jesus Christ, that came to them through these disciples who had been there with Jesus, and had a few things to say.

And again, this was less about what they believed, but more about how they lived in to that faith in Jesus Christ.

Fellowship

For them, it was absolutely essential that church was not something that happens on Sunday morning alone. (We might notice this theme come up again and again)

I had my first dartball game this week.

No injuries resulted from my play...

But it was incredible to notice two churches get together just to have fun, enjoy each other’s company, and eat snacks!

The early church said that this was essential, something to be devoted to.

Food!

Presbyterians, rejoice!

Some scholars want to say that this was a devotion to the Lord’s supper, but I’m not as convinced.

I think they mean that they were devoted to what comes when you get to meet someone out in the world, and enjoy a meal with them.

Especially when it happens in someone’s home, right?

There’s a level of intimacy and knowledge and friendship that comes from that, and the early church was devoted to it.

Prayers

They held each other in prayer day after day after day.

In fact, you might notice that the way our bible says this, they were devoted to “the prayers.”

The early church used the bells from the shipping harbor that would ring at 5 distinct times through the day to set their prayer times.

This practice eventually became what’s called “Praying the Hours”

But the point is, it was regular, it was intentional, and they were devoted to it.

Awe/Fear

The result of this devotion is really interesting.

Phobos

The word that gets translated as “awe” in our scripture is really the word Phobos, which is most often translated as “Fear.”

In devotion to Teaching, Fellowship, Food, and Prayers, the people become afraid?

What’s that all about?

Cathedrals

I’ve been to a few in my life.

Cathedrals are built to make anyone who walks in them feel small.

Your eyes are naturally drawn up, and you get a sense of scale right away.

It’s this realization that you are dealing with a God that is WAY bigger than you, way more powerful than you, but rather than be afraid of that God, you get this fear-like awe response.

So these disciples are participating in a life that revolves around teaching, fellowship, food, and prayers, and all of a sudden they find themselves a part of something much much bigger than themselves.

And they’re in awe.

All things in common

The next response to this devotion to these four things is that all of a sudden, everyone holds all things in common.

Just to make sure they spell it out, the early church was in the habit of selling possessions and goods, and putting it in a common pot.

This is a fascinating idea.

There are people in our culture who think that they can do spirituality on their own, that they don’t like organized religion.

But the reality is that organized religion, specificially the church, can ask us two questions:

What do we really own?

I was reading a book this week, and the author told an interesting story:

They were in line for a sledding hill, and they were super curious how you get sleds.

A bunch of people seemed to have them, but they couldn’t figure out where they came from.

Eventually there was agitation and disruption and even some arguing, when the worker at the top of the hill yelled down

Pass your sleds up!

Because people at the bottom of the line were holding on to their sleds, which they didn’t need to stand in line, and that meant that people at the top of the line who were ready to sled didn’t have one.

No one owned the sleds, but a lot of folks really held on to them!

We do that with just about everything we “possess,” don’t we?

We want to hold on to what’s ours, we want to keep it as long as we can.

Meanwhile, so many of us know the truth of life, that none of us gets to take anything with us when we die.

This is why Jesus invites us to store up treasures in heaven, rather than hold on to our sleds for ourselves in this life.

When we gather together, when we are part of this thing called church, we can be encouraged to realize that our possessions can be put to greater use together than any of us could do apart.

When we’re part of a community like this, we can pass our sleds up the mountain.

How do we eliminate need?

I don’t get the impression that Peter was riding around in whatever the biblical equivalent of a BMW was...

The early church pooled their resources with a purpose in mind:

Eliminate need.

You have doctors bills you can’t cover? We’ve got you.

You need a new horse to plow your land? Consider it done.

Not enough food to get through the winter? We’re in this together.

Again, something that we will talk about a lot more in the coming weeks, but the church in it’s origin never asked for money “Just because.”

It always had some sort of goal, or values system in place.

They wanted to be the kind of church that the community could count on, that they were going to eliminate need in their midst.

And it seems like people caught that vision, and decided they wanted to help out.

The goodwill of all the people

Charis- The same word as grace

This word for good will is the word Charis in Greek, and I’ll be honest I was a little surprised to see it show up.

Charis is the same word that we use all the time for the grace of Jesus.

By Charis you have been saved, and this is not your own doing.

We believe in Charis through faith.

By the Charis of Jesus Christ, you have had your sins forgiven.

That same thing that Jesus gave the church?

The community is giving the church too.

The community is so overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support from this early church, from its dedication to eliminating need, that they’re sending back grace.

Let’s give them a chance to love us.

We have to be honest, the world around us has at best kind of forgotten about the church, and at worst feels openly hostile toward it.

I think in large part this is because the Church (big C, everybody) has kind of lost this mission of eliminating need in our community.

We have become so inwardly focused, so intent on keeping ourselves afloat in this strange season of decline, that we have forgotten about the outside world.

What if we lived in to the early church’s calling of pooling our resources not for ourselves, but so that we could share in the life of the community together?

What if we gave them a chance to love us, gave them a chance to offer us Charis and Grace?

What if we showed up in real ways to the community, instead of inviting the community to us?

What if we worked to eliminate the needs of our neighbors around us, by passing the sled up the hill?

The story in Acts tells us what if...

This is attractive

Day by day

By doing these things:

Being devoted to teaching, and fellowship, and food, and prayer

By sharing all things in common.

By working to eliminate need in their community

We are told that day by day the Lord added to their number

They didn’t have a new members class every year or so

They had one every day.

Every day someone showed up who needed what the church had to offer.

Every day someone showed up with a new story of redemption and healing.

Every day someone showed up with a desire to live the kind of life that the church was advocating.

Salvation, not membership

It’s important to note something here though:

God didn’t give them more members.

They weren’t trying to pad the stats.

They weren’t trying to have huge crowds.

In fact, because of the persecution that they were facing, huge crowds would be something they were actively running from.

They were adding folks who were being saved.

They were adding folks who were meeting Jesus Christ.

They were adding folks who were having their wounds healed by a loving God.

They were adding folks who were interested in growth and redemption and progress in their spiritual lives.

That’s what we should be interested in too.

Everything we do, and I mean everything, ought to be pointed in this direction:

That folks would have a vital encounter with Jesus Christ.

That folks would taste and see the goodness and grace of our God.

That folks would find fresh and new ways to live, free of self-inflicted pain and suffering.

That folks would be saved and healed.

How we will live in to this value:

Sundays Only?

One thing that strikes me about this description of the early church is that there is no way that this was all centered in Sundays.

They’re devoted to food, fun, fellowship, prayer that is timed by the local business of their day..

All of that happens through the week, doesn’t it?

A percentage game

I did something for us this week that I swore I’d never do again.

Math.

If you come for worship, and let’s be generous, say you come for a bible study or something like that beforehand, that is 1% of your time.

If that’s all you do in the spiritual life, that’s just really not enough!

But before you folks with busy calendars start sweating again, I don’t think the answer is to come to this building more.

In fact, I have a more interesting idea:

Claiming Sanctuaries

Five minutes as a church planter

In seminary I was interested in planting a church.

This is where you do what these disciples did, and start a church from out of nothing at all.

And while I ultimately decided that wasn’t the path for me, one of the questions that kept bugging me was what they taught us in one of our trainings:

What can you name as a sanctuary?

So in church planting, you look not for a building or a church with stained glass windows, but rather a community.

I claim Pancake as our sanctuary.

What can we name as a sanctuary?

The soccer field?

For as long as I can remember, the question in places like this has been “I can’t believe they make these kids do soccer on Sundays! We’ve got to find a way to get them in to church!”

And while I appreciate the sentiment, we need to change the question.

“I can’t believe they make these kids do soccer on Sundays! We’ve got to find a way to get the church to them!”

As I announced in the Lab Report this week, let me know when your game/competition/whatever is, and I’ll be there.

But we can all do this, can’t we?

The folding lawn chair can be a pew.

The whistle can be a call to worship.

We can be just as devoted to prayer and fellowship and food out there in the name of Jesus Christ as we are in here.

Claim it as our sanctuary.

The grocery store?

Your kitchen table?

A firepit?

Sharing what we have in common

Our Values are our aim

What I hope you’ve started to see, and we’ll keep going, is a vision of what kind of church we can be for this community.

Both by living in to our current values even more, and by dreaming up these big aspirational values.

The early church was able to pool their resources because they had something they were aiming for.

They wanted to eliminate need in their community, which is a great goal!

…maybe a bit too lofty for us today.

Our values are what we’re aiming for.

To be a supportive place for family.

To be a place where everyone belongs.

To be a place that invests in children and youth.

To be a place that experiments.

To be a place that reaches out to live life together.

And one more for next week.

What we can do together, if everyone will share.

We can do all that together, so long as everyone will pass their sleds up the mountain.

We can do all that together so long as we all prayerfully consider in the next few weeks what it is we are willing to contribute to the cause.

We can do all of that together so long as everyone is willing to invest not just their financial resources, but also their time and their talents.

And so this week you should have recieved this year’s pledge card.

And here’s my goal, and we’ll talk more about this in the next few weeks too.

On October 31 (spooky) we’re going to have a commitment Sunday.

On October 31, I’m asking us all to to commit to this vision!

But it has to be the right kind of commitment.

This is an actual quote I heard from another Presbyterian Church which shall remain nameless this week. I promise both that it really happened, and that it wasn’t anyone here, so no looking around the room.

“I’m interested in (that thing) being done, but I am in no way interested in doing it!”

This is a mindset we have to eliminate from our church.

So on October 31, I really want to see 100% of this congregation return it’s pledge card.

To do that, we need to do three things:

1) We need to pray.

2) We need to step up a little bit more.

3) We need to return the card.

We need to do all this again, not so that Pastor J can fly around in a private jet.

We need to do this so that we can lean in to and live out our values in this community.

Which leads us to the other thing Presbyterians are afraid of, but I figure if I’m talking about money I might as well go all the way in, right?

Invitations

Day by day, this lifestyle drew people in to the fold of the early church.

Who are we drawing in?

Who can we invite to be a part of this life we’re building together?

Who is it that needs the love of a community like ours?

Who is it that needs to hear that God is ultimately on their side?

Who is it that needs to live their faith beyond Sundays?

Who is it that’s too busy on Sunday’s to be here?

Who can we reach out to in a Spirit of love to invite to what we’ve got going on here?