Rediscover Church (2)

Does ‘Church’ Have a Future?

Since March 2020 many have asked the question: can ‘church’ survive? In the first few weeks of the lockdown as churches explored on-line options attendance actually increased.

However, the novelty has worn off, the excitement of new technology has been diminished and attendance in many places is around 30% of what it was prior to the pandemic. On-line attendance has dwindled as well.

Our church building was designed and built in the late 1980’s. Some of our classrooms have held as many as 25 kids at a time. Social distancing was nonexistent.

In today’s world most parents would not allow their children to be packed like sardined in our small 12x12 classrooms.

In addition to attendance declines, COVID-19 impacted our volunteers. For legitimate health reasons many volunteers are no longer willing or able to serve.

Add to that this fact: the average age of senior pastors is 57 yrs of age.

The same study reports:

While a quarter of religious communities are at least half senior citizens, some congregations are more likely to be lacking youth. Among mainline Protestants, 42% of churches are at least half 65 and older.

https://research.lifeway.com/2021/11/01/americas-pastors-and-churchgoers-are-getting-older/, accessed on 4/26/22.

So the question: Does the ‘Church’ have a future? needs to be asked.

Just as important: Does Community Baptist Church have a future?

Read Acts 11:19-26Acts 11:19–26 (HCSB)

How can the past help us learn about the future?

Jeff Iorg, Pres of Gateway Seminary suggests:

The story of the church at Antioch is an inspiring drama, a model of a transformational church in the first century for the church in the twenty-first century.

Antioch is an ancient model for the future church. This church, composed of transformed people, transformed its community, the Mediterranean region, and the world as we know it.

Iorg, Jeff. The Case for Antioch (p. 7). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The Church: God’s Purpose Revealed

Most of what we call the NT is a collection of letters and documents written to - churches! A ‘church’ is not a building. Neither is a ‘church’ the same as the Kingdom of God.

A ‘church’ is understood according to the NT in two ways. There is a sense in which ‘church’ is universal. In other words, ‘church’ can be used to describe gatherings of God’s people all across the globe, past, present and future.

In another sense, church as used in the NT most often identifies a group of believers in Jesus Christ gathering on a regular basis for teaching, fellowship, service to one another, and seeking to fulfill the Great Commission of Jesus in the spirit of the Great Commandment (thanks to Jeff Iorg for that phrase!)

I would suggest that ‘church’ in a generic sense is

God’s ultimate purpose for the universe. Creating humankind, redeeming believers, and sustaining them as His eternal companions is God’s ultimate purpose for all He has done or will do.

Iorg, Jeff. The Case for Antioch (p. 183). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

God’s People Revealing His Presence and Purpose

From before the foundation of the world (see Eph 1:4) God intended to display His perfections, His power, and His purposes. The universe in which we live is a majestic display of immense power. The planet on which we live is a preeminent display of God’s marvelous grace - just the right distance from a star that enables life as we know it to thrive.

However, the pinnacle of God’s glory is found as we look at human beings - created in His likeness, and in His image (Gen 1:26-28).

But sin.

When sin entered the world tragedy ensued. No longer could the man and woman live in God’s Garden. Their first children demonstrated the depth of sin as Cain killed his brother Abel.

Another son was born to Adam and Eve - named Seth. In his line we find God beginning to fulfill the promise He made to the woman and the serpent in Gen. 3.

Listen to Genesis 4:25-26

Genesis 4:25–26 HCSB

Adam was intimate with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, for she said, “God has given me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him.” A son was born to Seth also, and he named him Enosh. At that time people began to call on the name of Yahweh.

We don’t have time to review how God insured that He always had a people, that God always preserved those through whom His presence and power were clearly seen.

Recently we celebrated Easter. When Jesus died on the cross most of His followers simply gave up. With Jesus’ death sin had won, the adversary was unbeatable.

Yet Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and is the promise of God’s power for all who believe. God is not done. Sin has not won. God continues to make His presence, power, and purposes known through His people.

But persecution...

Look at Acts 11:19-

Acts 11:19–22 (HCSB)

Those who had been scattered as a result of the persecution that started because of Stephen made their way as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, speaking the message to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, Cypriot and Cyrenian men, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Hellenists, proclaiming the good news about the Lord Jesus. The Lord’s hand was with them, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord. Then the report about them was heard by the church that was at Jerusalem, and they sent out Barnabas to travel as far as Antioch.

The resurrection of Jesus and His subsequent ascension to the right hand of the Father changes everything.

For those who had been forced from Jerusalem for their conviction that Jesus is Lord, the resurrection of Jesus and His assignment to believers was an all-consuming assignment.

Because Jesus was alive these believers boldly and unashamedly proclaimed that God’s purpose - first revealed to Adam, Eve, confirmed to Noah, Abraham, Moses and those called by God - continued to express itself in and through their lives.

As they left Jerusalem - as Acts 9 reminds us - under threat of imprisonment and perhaps even death - they could not be silent. Because of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead they knew God could not be silenced.

From Acts 3 thru Acts 7 the ‘church’ in Jerusalem - believers who met together (in the Temple area as well as the homes of believers) consistently for the apostles teaching, for fellowship - sharing their lives - were able to gather freely.

Luke, the historian who wrote Acts records this observation in Acts 6:7

Acts 6:7 HCSB

So the preaching about God flourished, the number of the disciples in Jerusalem multiplied greatly, and a large group of priests became obedient to the faith.

Stephen, one of the early leaders among believers created a stir when he was called before the Sanhedrin (see Acts 7). He indicted the religious leaders with these rather harsh words:

Acts 7:51–53 HCSB

“You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are always resisting the Holy Spirit; as your ancestors did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They even killed those who announced beforehand the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become. You received the law under the direction of angels and yet have not kept it.”

The reaction was swift: Acts 7:58-59

Acts 7:58–59 HCSB

They threw him out of the city and began to stone him. And the witnesses laid their robes at the feet of a young man named Saul. They were stoning Stephen as he called out: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!”

As a result of this confrontation Jewish leaders, perhaps working hand in hand with Roman authorities, forced many who claimed to believe in Jesus to leave Jerusalem (see Acts 8:1).

This might have been interpreted as a defeat. Believers being forced out of Jerusalem, being cut off from the nurture and safety of the gathering of believers.

A review of the history of God’s people reminds us that these kind of incidents don’t stop God!

In most cases the harder the enemy pushes back against believers, the more rapidly the purpose and plan of God spreads.

It’s not just true of OT era, but even in the 20th century. Our SBC missionaries and those with other evangelical organizations all have personal accounts of intense suffering, of intense persecution.

Yet to a person these men and women - like those believers described in Acts 11: continued - in their grief, in their pain at being separated from loved ones, in their confusion about where to go next, what steps to take - to proclaim the “good news about the Lord Jesus.”

The ‘good news about the Lord Jesus’ is simple:

God is working to fulfill the promise that the whole universe will one day reflect His glory, His presence clearly and distinctly, that God’s power is able to defeat sin and death permanently, that His promises are stable, secure, and trustworthy because Jesus died for our sin, was raised that we might live in new life - resurrected life!

Those people recorded in Acts 11, the thousands and thousands of believers this very moment who are proclaiming the good news about the Lord Jesus will not let anything keep them from their assignment.

But the power of God’s Word...

Many of these believers Luke wrote about were Jewish in origin. This means they were familiar with God’s Word - having heard God’s Word read week after week in local synagogues and having been taught by the apostles themselves.

Perhaps these words from Isaiah 55 were seared into their consciousness:

Isaiah 55:8–11 HCSB

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not My ways.” This is the Lord’s declaration. “For as heaven is higher than earth, so My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. For just as rain and snow fall from heaven and do not return there without saturating the earth and making it germinate and sprout, and providing seed to sow and food to eat, so My word that comes from My mouth will not return to Me empty, but it will accomplish what I please and will prosper in what I send it to do.”

God’s promise is that His Word - His assurances, the expression of His will always bear fruit.

Here is one account of a recent encounter:

I once met a man in Southeast Asia. He lived most of his life as a Buddhist monk. He grew up in the temple, and he knew all the right beliefs and practices. He even taught them to others.

One day a visitor talked to him about Jesus, and he felt something stir. He took a Bible from the stranger, hid it under his pillow, and read it. He felt convicted of its truth.

Suddenly, in a temple full of jade and marble and gold leaf, the way of life he served was found wanting and lifeless.

He encountered the True God in a space not meant for such an encounter. Now he walks into temples every day to help other monks have such an encounter.

https://www.fathommag.com/stories/metaphors-for-church, Kate Boyd, accessed on 4/29/22.

In case it isn’t clear yet, let me state it as clearly as I know how:

The Word of God - when proclaimed will transform lives!

Over the next few Sunday’s we will see how these who shared the ‘good news about the Lord Jesus’ transformed Antioch into a world mission center, one of the most influential and significant churches of the entire Christian era.

In fact, as Luke recounts, “the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch” (Acts 11:26).

one scholar notes the importance of this:

The term [Christian] only occurs in two other places in the New Testament (Acts 26:28; 1 Pet 4:16). In all three instances it is a term used by outsiders to designate Christians. Evidently the term was not originally used by Christians of themselves.

They preferred terms like “believers, disciples, brothers.” The first extensive usage by a Christian writer to designate fellow believers was by Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, around the turn of the second century.

The term (Christianoi) consists of the Greek word for Christ/Messiah (Christos) with the Latin ending ianus, meaning belonging to, identified by.

John B. Polhill, Acts, vol. 26, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992), 273.

As the next several messages will explore, Antioch became a missionary sending church, a church invested in meeting the needs of other believers, a church noted for generosity, a church where individuals came to know Jesus and grew in faith to be sent out to proclaim the good news of the Lord Jesus to other communities where people became believers, and in those locations people came to know Jesus, grew in their faith and were sent out to ‘proclaim the good news of the Lord Jesus.’

A careful study of how Christianity spread in the first century will show that it wasn’t denominational agencies or even regional partnerships that spurred the spread of the gospel.

The proclamation of the good news of Jesus was not carried out by religious professionals (even Paul was what we would call ‘bi-vocational’ working as a tent-maker).

The proclamation of the good news was done by - look around this room: people like those sitting near you.

A Preferred Vision of the Future

Are we thoroughly convinced that “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name in heaven given to people and we must be saved by it”?

Every one of our neighbors, friends, and family members who have not confessed with their mouth that Jesus is Lord and believed in their heart that God raised Him from the dead is bound for an eternity in hell, an awful, frightening place far from the presence of God.

As those scattered by the persecution travelled they were gripped by the recognition that apart from a personal relationship with Jesus, people with whom they spoke would spend eternity in hell.

I would ask you to join my in praying that we as the people of Community Baptist Church would be re-awakened to the life and death need of those around us for Jesus Christ.

Will we allow circumstances to defeat us? Or will we trust that no matter the pain, no matter the cost God’s power is sufficient for our every need?

Those men and women forced from Jerusalem left behind friends, maybe even family members, jobs, places to live, a community that cared for one another to go to places they had never gone before.

We struggle to go across town or across the street lest we find ourselves in the presence of ‘sinners!’

Jesus Himself reminds us that His purpose was to seek and save that which is lost.

Seeking - getting out of the comfort zones which we enjoy; being forced into environments that make us uncomfortable; finding ourselves at a loss as to where to go - being challenged to depend on God for food, water, shelter…all the things Jesus promised would be ours as we seek first the kingdom of God.

Would those around us describe us as those ‘identified with Christ?’

Something was radically different about those believers in Antioch - so different and out of the ordinary that those who had no relationship with God used the word ‘Christ’ to define them.

A question I often ponder: IF our church closed its doors…would the community notice?

Do we fully recognize God’s expression of our future?

Listen to what John, one of Jesus’ earliest followers saw in his vision of heaven:

Revelation 7:9 HCSB

After this I looked, and there was a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language, which no one could number, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were robed in white with palm branches in their hands.

Our Future is as secure as the Promise, Power, and Presence of God!