This past Sunday we continued in our new teaching series, Nuts and Bolts. Last week we talked about what the church is. This week, we spent our time experiencing together what the church is for. I say experiencing because that’s more of what this service was. Below is the short message I gave at the beginning of the experience. For the rest of the experience and some powerful examples of what it looks like when we get the church right, watch the imbedded video of the service. When we get the church right, the work of Jesus is made possible. Check out some examples of what this looks like below.
Toward a Purpose
The church gets a lot of things wrong. Have you ever thought that? I have a pretty strong suspicion that even if you haven’t you know at least one person who thinks that. You may know a whole bunch of them. You may live with one—or more. Now, depending on how outspoken you happen to be about your own attachment to the church they may sit on those particular thoughts out of respect for you, but they’re there. Do you know why they think the church gets a whole bunch of things wrong? Because the church gets a whole bunch of things wrong.
This week we kicked off a brand-new teaching series called, Nuts and Bolts. For the next few weeks, we are going to be exploring some of the ideas we introduced in our last series in a bit more detail. We have been talking for the last few weeks about how the church got its start. Knowing that history is good, but it doesn’t tell us how the church was designed to work. That’s what we’ll be addressing in this series. In this first installment, we are going to start with what the church is in the first place. Join me as we talk about what it is and what one powerful implication of that is for our lives. Thanks for reading and sharing.
Building the Body
I remember a season growing up when my dad would make monthly trips to Hutchinson, KS. He went there to attend the board meetings of Collins Industries, a small bus and ambulance manufacturer, for whom he had done some legal work over the years. Now, Hutchinson is located in the middle of nowhere Kansas. I’ll grant you that’s most of the state, but Hutchinson really earns the title. Normally, kids probably wouldn’t have any interest in going to the middle of nowhere with their dads for a business trip. But Hutchinson had one really cool thing going for it: a world class space museum.
This week we are wrapping up our series, The Story of Us. This final part won’t take us to the end of Luke’s narrative of the early church in Acts, but rather to the halfway point. From here his focus shifts from the church itself to Paul and his missionary journeys. This halfway point marks what is perhaps the most significant moment in the story. The question on the table was frightfully important: just how complex a thing was following Jesus going to be? The debate was fierce, but in the end, they decided to follow Jesus in making it a very simple matter. Let’s see together how this all unfolded and what exactly it means for us. Thanks for reading and sharing.
A Simple Matter
Have you noticed that things tend to get more complicated over time? If you haven’t, perhaps some examples would help. Let’s start with the tax code. The original 1913 income tax law was 23 pages long and took about 400 pages to explain. Today, the tax code comes in at about 70,000 pages of text. No wonder politicians from both sides of the aisle regularly promise to reform and simplify things! Or consider a business. Apple started with two computer nerds in a garage. Today it is the most valuable company in the world, employing thousands of people, and is vastly more complex than it was in 1976. Or perhaps consider…churches. Most churches begin very simply. They have a vision and a message. Then over time they add programs and committees and policies and by-laws and buildings and furniture pieces and ministries all of which become enshrined both in structure and in placement such that the message and vision become a mere sideshow to the main event of tradition. And tradition is a complex thing.
A little something different for you this Friday. I had the chance to see Disney’s new movie, The Haunted Mansion, last weekend, really enjoyed it, and will plan to review it next Friday, Lord willing. Today, though, I wanted to share with you a bit of inside baseball. Yesterday I was invited to deliver a message to our local Baptist association’s monthly pastor’s gathering. It gave me the chance to say to a bunch of pastors some things I think a bunch of pastors needed to hear. I shared with them some thoughts on how to go about keeping the main thing of the church (the Gospel) the main thing of the church. What I had to say may not be what you expect. Read on to find out what three suggestions I had with the help of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church.
Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing
Karl Barth was one of the giants of Christian theology in the 20th century. That doesn’t mean he was always right—he very often was not—but in terms of the people who shaped Christian theology in a profound way and whose influence absolutely cannot be ignored when taking stock of how the world thinks about God today, Barth sits on a very short list. Now, in spite of that, I’ll be the first to admit that my knowledge and understanding of Barth’s theology is pretty limited because his influence tended to be much stronger outside the evangelical world, but neither was he simply a theological liberal. He carved out his own space on the theological map.
After a couple of weeks off, this week we are picking back up in the incredible story of the church in Acts. My Minister of Students walked the congregation through Acts 12 last week (click here and tune to the 35:30 mark to catch his excellent treatment of it), so this week we are on to the next part of the story in Acts 13-14. This is where we find the travelogue of Paul’s first missionary journey. Travelogues like this can make for tough point-seeking, but as the story unfolds on Paul’s disciple making efforts, we discover a series of principles worth considering in our own similar efforts. Let’s explore these together as we see that merely making converts to the Christian faith is not our goal.
Not Merely Converts
For nine weeks now we have been working our way through the story of us; the story of the church as told by Dr. Luke in the incredible narrative of Acts found in the Scriptures. And we’ve learned all kinds of things along the way about how we should be doing church if we are going to rightly stand in the long history of tradition that stretches out behind us. We’ve learned that people best connect to Jesus through the three-fold ministry of powerful words, loving actions, and an attractive community. We’ve learned that the way we survive the myriad of challenges all churches face is by being boldly committed to advancing the message and mission of Jesus and by taking the church as seriously as it deserves. We’ve learned that sometimes this kind of boldness sparks persecution, but also that the only response that will get us through these challenges is to double down on Gospel boldness. We’ve learned that when we do our part, pairing our efforts with those of our Father who always does His part, the church grows, and that having as many people as is possible in the church is the point of the whole endeavor. Indeed, if we’re not reaching people with the Gospel message then what on earth are we doing wasting our time and money on all of this for? We’ve been impressed by the fact that our whole identity as Jesus followers is built on the idea of including everybody. “Christian” is an inclusive identity. Just last week, after taking a week off to hear about all the work God did among our students this summer at camp, Nate walked you through the remarkable story of Peter’s miraculous escape from prison, and helped us see that when we pray big, bold prayers, God just may answer them and we need to be ready for that.
The Nexus 