Untitled Sermon (18)

Scripture Introduction:

We are going to take a break from the gospel of Luke this morning. You might have noticed out in the foyer a couple of couches and some signup sheets. We are, Lord willing, going to be relaunching our life groups.

This morning I have a couple of goals. First, I want to try to convince you from God’s Word of the absolute necessity of being and living and doing life together in a Jesus-shaped community.

And secondly, I want to cast a vision for how we could do that here at Calvary. But here is what I want to do with this…I don’t want you to think that the two are on the same level. I am convinced that the first one is an absolute must.

Let me say it this way:

If I am not pursuing and living in community with other believers then I am likely being disobedient to God’s Word.

But you can decide that life groups at Calvary are not how you can best fulfill that biblical mandate. If that’s the case. You aren’t sinning. We believe life groups will help you obey, that command. But if they don’t—okay.

We’re going to be in Hebrews 10:19-25 in just a moment but before we get there I want to remind you of what happened in Acts 2.

What happens when the Spirit indwells people, they get excited and centered on Jesus, and they come together with other people that Jesus has also gotten hold of?

We see people who are devoted to the apostles teaching (that’s devoted to the Scriptures, to truth), devoted to fellowship (self-sacrificing conformity to a shared vision), they are devoted to the breaking of bread (that’s being centered on the Cross and the gospel of Christ), and devoted to prayer. And this is ultimately a community which is shaped by the work of God in saving people as soon as we are saved we are drawn into community.

But we also know that community is difficult. There is no hurt quite like church hurt. There can be abusive systems that find a welcome home in church. Spiritual abuse can be devastating as well.

And I’ll just say that this is why I worded things the way I did earlier. A quick path to spiritual abuse is to say you must do it THIS way. You take a biblical command and then fill in the gaps.

Biblical command—gather together.

Calvary life groups purpose to gather together, therefore if you aren’t in a life group at Calvary you aren’t following the Bible.

But that’s just simply not true. And thinking like that is often the pathway to spiritual abuse. And so that’s why I phrase that the way that I did. You need to know that we all answer to God, and what He has said. I’m not your handler. You have the Spirit of God within you if you are a Christian. I believe as such you WANT to obey God’s Word. And so I’m presenting life groups not as a way of saying—do this or be in sin—but to say, here is what we feel as a church is a good way to work out that biblical command..if you think it’s helpful for you then sign up.

But I’ve chased a rabbit again…community can be tough. And awkward. And difficult. So if community is so tough how in the world do we move towards it? I think we have an answer to this in Hebrews 10:19-25. The author of Hebrews has been building a case about the sufficiency of Jesus and urging his audience to hang on to Jesus. I find it interesting how this involves the community.

Hebrews 10:19–25 ESV

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

What this tells me is that Christ has accomplished for us what is needed for us to live in community, but it also tells me that community is not optional.

And I think this was one of those passages that was very much abused during COVID. “Not neglecting to meet together” we quickly equated to “be sure to gather in a church building on Sunday morning”. Friends, the text doesn’t say that.

Don’t neglect to meet together. We wrestled through how do we follow Hebrews 10:19-25 in a the middle of a pandemic. Many different questions, different opinions on that. But again, I’m trying to help you see that there is a difference between the biblical command “do not neglect to meet together” and what exactly that looks like.

What does that look like for a shut-in? What does that look like for someone with health concerns? What does that look like someone working through trauma and spiritual abuse?

If we read in Hebrews 10:19-25 “do not neglect to meet together” and equate it with Sunday morning attendance then what happens is that somebody who is still very much connected to the local body, still praying, still gathering when able, etc. feels a weight of guilt because they aren’t “meeting together”.

And so we want to not do that. But we do want to structure ourselves and our programs etc. to do a better job of fostering the type of biblical community that we are called to?

And so I want to do that. I want to give you an idea, maybe you can even try it for a season. If it doesn’t work okay. We’ll try something else but it will not relieve us of the responsibility of living in vital community with one another. Community—and we are talking, hopefully you see this by now, about far more than just coming to a building with like-minded believes a couple times a week. Biblical community is much deeper than this.

So here is what we have in Hebrews 10:19-25. Here is the argument…

The author of Hebrews has been arguing for many chapters that because of the sacrifice of Jesus we have access to God..unfettered…unhindered access to God.

So what then should be our response to this:

v22 “let us draw near with a full assurance of faith.

That means let us not have one of those relationships with the Lord where we’re constantly living in fear, and distance, and wondering if we are loved and accepted, and trying to earn stuff…no let us confidently enter into His presence because we are confident we are accepted because of what Jesus Christ has done on our behalf. You are accepted.

v23 “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”

Don’t throw away your ticket. Don’t throw away this access. Don’t squander it. Don’t trample it underfoot. He is faithful and he will bring us home. Believe that.

v24 “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works”.

So what that means is that you’re confident that you are loved, you aren’t throwing away your ticket, but instead you are actively engaging others. Stirring up one another…to love and good works.

Helping one another look more like Jesus. now we have verse 25…not neglecting to meet together…that’s connected with the love and good works. So when you are meeting together you should be stirring one another up…encouraging one another. That’s what is happening here.

Helping each other hold on to Jesus. Encouraging us to keep going and to dive deeper in love and good works.

That is the command. That’s the not optional part of this. You and I are commanded by God to encourage one another to hold fast to Jesus. To grow in love and good works.

So this leaves me saying, if we are a group of blood-bought followers of Jesus and we are commanded by God to fulfill this passage of Scripture together…and this “meeting together” ought to look something a bit like Acts 2:42-47…then what does that look like? What can we do as a church to help facilitate this type of thing?

And this is where one avenue is sermon-based small groups or Life Groups which primarily will meet on Sunday evenings.

Let me explain what this will look like and then give a bit of a reason why we are structuring it the way that we are.

I would love to have 5-6 life groups meeting in homes throughout our community. Groups will decide their own start and end time.

I led a life group in Jasper and it looked like, snack foods, introduction, gather prayer requests, then discuss about 6-10 questions related to the sermon from the AM service. We followed that format and it was very effective.

Again we are trying to build better community—and ones that are centered upon the Word, were fellowship runs deep, we are centered on the Cross, and our prayer for one another is far more intentional and relational. And so sermon-based small groups or life groups are intentional.

Why not do a study on something? Why connected to AM sermons? Again, we don’t want to micromanage..you know your group…maybe a study would work well—if so, please clear it with us, though, we don’t want to micromanage but our job IS to make sure that our content is good and biblical.

But I think sermon-based questions are the best method here is why:

1) it connects them to our Sunday Am and creates excitement based on that. 2) Keeps it on whatever level your group is at. 3) It can stand alone each week with new people being able to join at any point. (Difference between open and closed groups). Leaders will be provided with questions and a brief commentary from each passages to assist with some of the questions that might come up.

It’s best to have groups of about 12-16 people. If your group gets above that you might want to consider creating a new group.

So why do this? I see at least 5 major reasons.

1. Evangelism. Let me tell you about Jeremy. Wife had been praying. Couldn’t get him to church. Had a view of Christians. But she was able to get him to come to one of our small group nights. Eventually God got ahold of him. He became a regular to our small group and kept hearing the gospel. We baptized him within a year. This happens often.

2. Training more leaders and sharing the load of ministry

a. Shadow leader could eventually become a new leader, but we don’t force groups to split.

b. Sharing the load. End up with folks going to small group leaders. They become first calls. I celebrate this. My hands are small and my shoulders aren’t incredibly broad. The more folks who can lead and shepherd the better we will be as a church.

3. Creates a culture of grace/transparancey, etc. We have addictions, marriages falling apart, deep loneliness, and a host of other things in our church. Often we don’t know about this until its way too late and so much damage has already been done. Let’s be honest, churches aren’t often known as places you can spill your guts. But we want to be a gospel-saturated community. That means authentic relationships and vital companionship. Sometimes this happens in Sunday school but I know of some who have painful things in their life who have confided in me and said they weren’t comfortable sharing in SS class.

4. Stickiness. This is really connected to all of these but small groups have a way of making your church sticky. We know that if we could get someone in a small group—and often even that night, then we knew that they were going to become a part of our church.

a. If you look at church numbers a church does really well if they have a 33% retention rate. That means that a visitor coming, or a new member comes and joins, and stick around within a year. If it’s 33% you’re doing pretty good.

Do you realize this means to double from 200 to 400 we’d need to have 670 new members at this rate? Even to grow by 100 & hit a solid 300 it’d require 340 new members to get there. That’s tough in a community like this when lots of people would say, “I used to go there”.

b. But what small groups do is create stickiness. I’ve seen this with my own eyes and other studies bear this out as well. It cultivates a culture in your church where you have something closer to a 70% retention rate. Then in order to double you need only 273 new members or even the more modest 100 you need about 130-140 new members.

5. Small groups make us missional. Move church outside of a location in our minds. It helps us revolutionize the way I think about my neighbors. Cuts up that church/home distinction. It’s a little easier to get your neighbors to come across the street and join a home bible study than it is to get them into church on a Sunday morning.

So those are at least 5 reasons.

Now a couple of questions you might have...

1. Why do you suggest Sunday evenings?

Your group doesn’t have to meet on Sunday, but I’ve found that it’s more effective to invite someone on that evening instead of saying, “hey want to come to my house 4 days from now”.

Visitors on Sunday am (vulture culture at Jasper) (How much easier to ask a few hours from now versus a few days from now?

One concern we see sometimes with life groups is something like “This could split the church with factions”

a. Benefits of a sermon-based (also a concern…pastor bashing, why training leaders is vital)

b. What if it starts a church? Praise God. Kingdom-focused, remember? So long as it is healthy then we would even celebrate that.

What are our next steps?

1. Host. Lead. Join.

Sign up for those and we’ll spend the next week or so ironing these out. We already have a couple still meeting. That’s awesome. Just sign up still and we will work all that out.

Is God working in your heart to be a leader? To be a host?

2. We might have a few teachers who are “homeless”. Their homes aren’t conducive to having a group there. Would you be willing to open up your home for a life group?

3. Join a life group. Try it out. See if it helps in your relationship with Jesus. See if it’s something that God might be using within our church to help reach our community. Just give it a shot.

Centered on the Bible. Community deepens. Centered on the Cross, eating together. Prayer deepens.

What better way to not neglect “meeting together”. Not to abandon one another. But to spur one another on? We believe this is an effective way for our church to do this.

What does a group look like?

How to leave room for growth?

Can we meet every other week?

You own it!!! Make it yours!

Sign up!