Category: Sermons

Working Properly

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This week we are in the fifth part of our teaching series, Authentic Church. So far we have talked about both the foundation and the context in which all of the different elements that make a church a church happen. These are Jesus and worship, respectively. We have also talked about two of the pillars that hold up this structure. These were sharing the Gospel and growing one another in Christ. This week we are tackling another one of the pillars of what makes the church the church. This one has everything to do with our actively being the body of Christ. Let’s talk about serving.

Working Properly

Let’s do a bit of imagining together this morning. First, I want you to imagine a company. Let’s say it’s a large company. It’s a large and successful company that has recently rolled out a new product that is promising to be a huge success in terms of sales and advancing the corporate brand in the minds of present and potential consumers. Managing to create a product like this is the goal of pretty much every company that has ever existed. This kind of product-launch that puts a company on the map can set a company up for success for many years into the future. But with this particular company, not all is well behind the scenes. The CEO is a tyrant who rules by threatening fiat and a demagogic personality. He’s brilliant, but mean. He rewards employees not for their character and competence, but for personal loyalty to him and their demonstration of a willingness to step over or even on top of their fellow employees in their attempts to advance their own careers in the company. This promising product was the CEO’s idea and he doesn’t let anyone forget that fact. Beyond this, though, innovation is stifled and new ideas are generally not welcome. Now, think on this for just a second: How successful do you think this company is going to be in the long-term? 

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Group Work

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Some things are just better experienced together. As we continue in our series, Authentic Church, this week, we are talking about the importance of community (something that will be a part of the next two entries in the series as well). Up first in this journey-within-a-journey is the importance of worshiping the Lord together. Worshiping together acts as the glue that holds the rest of the things that make the church the church together. Using a psalm of David as our guide, let’s explore why worshiping together is so important.

Group Work

In 2014, the Kansas City Royals made the postseason for the first time in nearly 30 years. They earned their official postseason birth in an incredible wild card play-in game against the Oakland Athletics. The game took place on Noah’s birthday. My dad was actually at the game, sitting on the front row behind the inside corner of the A’s dugout courtesy of a good friend of his. He even held up a sign wishing Noah a happy birthday that got put on camera. Watching from home, I stayed up pretty late to see the finish, but when we gave up the lead late in the game, I gave up and went to bed. I couldn’t bear to watch yet another disappointing season come to an end. In the middle of the night, though, I checked my phone and saw that the game was not yet over. I quickly turned the TV on and hit the record button to be able to watch how it actually ended in the morning. It was an awfully exciting time. 

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Growing Up

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This week we are in the third part of our series, Authentic Church. We have been talking about how we can tell when a church is a real church and not just a club that does some religious things on the side. As we talked about last week, authentic churches are active in proclaiming the Gospel to those who haven’t heard it, in inviting people to get into a relationship with Christ. But once we see someone cross that line, our work isn’t done. We have to help them grow. Let’s talk this week about the next thing that makes a church an authentic church: Growing people in Christ.

Growing Up

When I was in seminary, one of the courses we had to take was about practical ministry. Technically, the course was called “pastoral counseling,” but that basically translated how to be a good pastor in the day-to-day of ministry work. The professor tried to touch on a few different areas that we were going to face in ministry and which all the theology and language study and apologetics courses in the world weren’t going to prepare us for. One of the topics we covered in class was some best practices for how to do a funeral. That sounds kind of morbid, I know, but it’s part of the work, and an important one at that. We learned a variety of things the teacher—who had been a pastor for decades at that point—identified as “do’s” and “don’ts” in class, and those were pretty helpful. I don’t remember any of them in particular now, but I remember thinking this was probably actually going to be useful stuff then. But do you know when I really learned how to do a funeral? When my pastor and mentor took me along and involved me in the funeral of a man in the community who died during that semester. I listened to him, watched him carefully, and when I found myself having to do a service on my own a couple of years later, I just did what he did. 

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A Vital Ministry

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Every authentic church is built on Christ and Christ alone. Nothing else will do. But that’s not the only thing that makes a church a real church. If we are founded on Jesus, then it would make sense that we would be committed to the kinds of things to which He was committed. Well, there was one thing He was committed to above just about everything else: Getting people into a right relationship with God. Churches who are authentic churches share this passionate commitment. In this second part of our series, Authentic Church, we are talking about this commitment, why it’s there, and what it might look like.

A Vital Ministry

The U.S. Presidency is an incredibly powerful position. For starters, the President is the commander and chief of the most powerful military force the world has ever seen, and it’s not close. Then there’s the power to veto or sign legislation. That means the President gives the final thumbs up or thumbs down on the laws that govern our nation. And because I know there are constitutional scholars somewhere whose ears are tingling, yes, Congress can override a Presidential veto, and the Supreme Court can declare a particular law unconstitutional, but historically speaking that hasn’t happened very often when a President has signed or refused to sign a particular bill, turning it into a law. A bill is just a bill until it is signed by the President. That’s a lot of power. 

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Built on Christ

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Today we are kicking off a brand-new teaching series. For the next few weeks, we are going to be talking about the church. More specifically, we are going to be talking about just what exactly it is that makes an authentic church. How do we know when a church is really the body of Christ instead of something more like a social club that does some religious activities on the side? While there’s not necessarily a hard and fast rule to help us here, there are some things the Scriptures point to that are pretty good indicators in the right direction. The first one that we’ll talk about today is just exactly what the church’s foundation is.

Built on Christ

Have you ever crossed a picket line? That’s an interesting experience. I’ve done it twice. The first time was when I was pretty little. A new grocery store chain came to town that was not unionized and the union-backed employees of the major chain that had pretty much had a monopoly on the town before the new guys moved in picketed out front of their location around the corner from my house for what seemed like weeks. I’m not sure they ever really accomplished anything. The truth was, most people didn’t care. We certainly didn’t. They were closer and cheaper than the other grocery store, so off we went. I did feel a little bad for the picketers when it started getting cold outside as we drove right past them to get our groceries. Otherwise, though, I mostly just ignored it. 

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