2022.06.12 Future Church

Future Church

2 Timothy 3:16-17 • Romans 10:12-15

Today is the beginning of a sermon series I’m calling “Future Church”. This will be a challenging series. It will challenge some long-held ideas of what Church is and what Church is not. The foundation of the entire series is this passage:

2 Timothy 3:16 NASB 2020

16 All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness;

Verse 17 says that the purpose of this is “so that the man of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work.”

2 Timothy 3:17 NASB 2020

17 so that the man or woman of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work.

Future Church

We know that church is different today than it was in Jesus’s day, right?

We know that church is different today than it was in Paul’s day, right?

We know that church is different today than it was in Martin Luther’s day, right?

We know that church is different today than it was in John Wesley’s day, right?

We know that church is different today than it was in Dwight Moody’s day, right?

We know that church is different today than it was in the 1950s, right?

We know that church is different today than it was in the 1980s, right?

We know that church is different today than it was in the 1990s or the 2000s, or even the 2010s, right?

So, what does the church of tomorrow look like?

Annual Conference just ended yesterday. I’ll talk about the happenings of Annual Conference at some point, but I went to a dinner where Bishop Emeritus Mike Lowry preached about the future of the Church. He made some statements that brought rousing amens and applause. He also made some statements that brought muddled amens.

In my processing through what Bishop Lowry shared, I think it good to share my thoughts based on his message before I move on in this sermon.

The rousing applause came when Lowry chastised the progressive movement in our church (it was a gathering of conservative Christians). Again, these are my words, not his: Progressive Christians are chastised because they’ve let the culture of today overrun the Church. (rousing Amens and applause) They throw around words like “relevant” and “post-Christian” in order to help people move into contemporary society with their belief in Christ, and “relevance” becomes the subject of their idolatry.

The muddled amens and uncomfortable shifting in seats came when he turned to the conservative believers in the Church. I’m am conservative, so I will use the pronoun “we”. We chastise the Left because they’ve compromised the Church to today’s culture, and we warn that tomorrow’s culture is coming along with something else to push for a further compromising of Christ. But in reality we’re no better. We’ve also let culture overrun the Church … it’s just the culture of a bygone day. We want the culture of the 1950s or even earlier to rule in the Church. We argue against embracing the spirit of the age, by demanding we embrace the spirit of an earlier age. We don’t seem to want to modernize anything, and “we’ve always done it this way” becomes the subject of our idolatry. The Left looks at us the same way we look at the Amish. We’re just stuck in a different time than they are.

In the early 2000s, at a leadership retreat at my home church, I told my fellow leaders that we prided ourselves for not being stuck in the 1950s like so many other churches are … but that doesn’t mean we aren’t stuck. They were shocked to hear me say we were stuck in the 1980s. But they had trouble refuting the evidence.

The Left throws shade at the Right because we’re stuck in yesterday, and the Right throws shade at the Left because they’ve sold out to today.

Meanwhile, Jesus stands in the middle and says … “Hey! Remember me!”

The good bishop reminded us that we have to return Jesus to the center of our churches unless we want to continue (his words, not mine) “as a church on hospice”! Ouch!

Maybe we’d be wise to return to what we know. The only thing we really know is the Scriptures … and if we’re honest, we don’t know them well enough … HEARD?!

The “Future Church” series will be based on this passage,

2 Timothy 3:16 (NASB 2020)

16 All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness;

Paul teaches in this letter to Timothy that the Scriptures have these particular uses ...

and the purpose is that we would be fully capable, equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3:17 (NASB 2020)

17 so that the man or woman of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work.

Future Church

If there is to be a Church of tomorrow … a “Future Church” ... the Truth of Scripture will not change even if our methods do. We will continue to preach Christ, and him crucified because there is no other name by which we can be saved. There is no other way to give life help. There is no other way to rescue people from the hopelessness of society. We will continue to preach Jesus Christ, and him crucified and resurrected!

So, today, I want to tell you the first use for Scripture is to teach us. Teaching, rebuke, correction and training are closely related, but Paul used them all because they are slightly different from one another. So, what does it mean to teach?

Well, the original title of this sermon was “Filling in the Gaps”

Filling in the Gaps

Think of the smartest person you know. Maybe the biggest know-it-all you know. Now that you’re thinking of that person, let be say:

No person knows everything. Heard?

Which means every person has gaps in their knowledge. Heard?

“Gaps in knowledge” is a nice way to say “ignorance”. Thinking about other people, it’s easy to say they’re all ignorant about something or another. But we all have to acknowledge WE are all at least partially ignorant, and that partial ignorance expands into our faith, too. [quietly: “heard”]

Teaching in its simplest form is “filling in gaps” of knowledge. Just doing devotional reading is not sufficient for our need to STUDY God’s Word, and if everyone has gaps in their knowledge … let me say that not being engaged in a Bible study of some sort is a mockery of real faith. [“Ooh, Harold, that one hurt a little!”]

In any area of knowledge … Regarding ignorance, you...

know everything there is to know (or)

are studying to fill your gaps (or)

don’t care about your ignorance enough to engage it

Which is it with you?

Before I move on, let me remind you that Paul tells us the purpose of these uses for Scripture are so that you would be “fully capable, equipped for every good work.” So, if you reject the notion of engaging your own ignorance, you are saying you’re okay continuing to live (by definition) “INcapable, AND ILL-equipped for GOD’s good work.” That is a church on hospice, friends.

Every year, I teach about various topics throughout the liturgical year. I haven’t been here 2 years yet to observe this phenomenon at Temple, but at every other church, I had the same people who would tell me, “I’ve never heard that before” (when I know I taught the same thing last year and the year before that).

Every year I explain:

why we use Ashes on our forehead on Ash Wednesday

why we traditionally ‘give up’ things during Lent

Lent is 40 days not including Sundays because Sundays are little Easters

We call Good Friday “good” because Jesus’ death makes salvation available to us

Pentecost is considered the birthday of the Church

the wise men were not kings

we don’t know how many wise men there were

the wise men didn’t appear at Jesus’ crib, and they didn’t likely arrive until he was around 2 years old

Every year, some people walk out of those services and express how surprised they are that they didn’t know these things. Yet, many of those same people were here last year … when I taught the same thing. Some of them even commented last year that they were surprise they didn’t know these things.

This doesn’t make these people bad people. It demonstrates that we (THE CHURCH) have grown content with our current level of ignorance. We passively tell God, “I know enough about you now. I don’t need any more.”

Future Church

If the Church has any future, if THIS Church has any future, we have to grow discontent with any level of ignorance about our faith! Otherwise, we devolve into just another social club with weekly gatherings where we pat each other on the back and go home unchanged. For many of us … that’s what we already are. “Church on hospice.”

We’ll move to rebuke next week, but for this week...

2 Timothy 3:16 (NASB 2020)

16 All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness;

I walked you through the back door of acknowledging we all have gaps in our knowledge. After that admission, let me ask:

Are we using Scripture to fill those gaps?

Or are we using Scripture only to defend what we already believe?

After confessing to those gaps, let me repeat myself...

not being engaged in a Bible study of some sort is a mockery of real faith.

Are you satisfied with that?

Or are you ready to commit to fill those gaps with Scripture?

The future of the Church depends on your answer.

Future Church