What The Church Does
Pastor Mathew Magera – 6/4/17 – Sermon 231
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Fifty days after Easter, the
Holy Spirit rushed onto the scene. The book of Acts calls the Spirit's entrance
the blowing of a violent wind. But, unlike the wind of a tornado or the wind of
a hurricane this wind, this Spirit of God came to empower, not destroy. The
disciples who were gathered together were filled with the power of God by this
Spirit. They were equipped and called to ministry, the very same calling that
we, the Church, have been called to do: To go out and share the Good News. To
teach, serve, love and attend to the needs of all people. From this point on
something was different. Something had changed. Until this point, after Easter,
Jesus had just been spending time teaching his disciples, concluding with the
Great Commission and telling them to anticipate the coming of the Holy Spirit. But,
now that the Holy Spirit had come, their ministry was going to change not just because
it could change but because it had to change.
In 1942 Albert Einstein was
teaching Physics at Oxford. He had just given an exam to his senior Physics
students and was walking through the campus when someone came up to him and
asked, "That test that you just gave the senior Physics students, wasn't
that the exact same exam you gave them last year?" Einstein said,
"Yes, yes it was." "Professor Einstein, why would do that?"
Einstein replied, "Because the answers have changed."
In Einstein's case, what was
true in 1941 was even more true in 1942 when he gave that exam. We might use
that to say that what is true for the church 40 years ago is more than true for
today. The questions may be the same but the answers have changed. I'm not
saying that Jesus is no longer the answer. That's not the type of answer I'm
talking about. I'm talking specifically about the sought after answers that
come from the questions of ministry and how to be the church. How do we grow as
a church? How do we reach the unchurched? How do we convey meaning in our
worship as a church? What are the tactics we use? What has gotten us here, to
this exact moment can no longer get us any further.
A few weeks ago I watched a
video of a man named Paul Rulkens give a presentation on what it takes industry
leaders and professionals to move from stale results into high performance. You
might say the church is in the business of making disciples. That's the purpose
of the church. When I re-watched this presentation, I did so as if it were
talking about the church and it became a bit more meaningful, and I
incorporated a lot of what was said about business into the ministry of the
Christian church in the 21st century.
One of the big things that
affected the ministry of the early church was how it thought about ministry.
How to minister, who to minister to. What do we do about Gentiles? What about
unclean food? Sacrifices? The Holy Spirit changed the ministry of the Christian
church from the inside out. The Spirit had to open the church up to innovation
which was not easy to do. One of the big things that is affecting the ministry
of the church today is how we think about ministry. We have good intentions but
the results just aren't there. The good old days are engraved on our minds. When
the Church hits a wall in some kind of ministry it will tend to do one of two
things. The church will either do more of the same thing to try to achieve
different results (we have to do more of this because it’s just not working) or
do less of the same thing to try to achieve different results (we’re doing too
much of this and we need to slow down). What rarely happens is that the Church
tries to do something completely different. So, as a church, we have three
options in front of us when it comes to ministry, one that leads to something
new and different and two that lead us right back into that wall we've been
smashing into.
If you have your bulletin,
take a pen or pencil and draw a nice large box on the back. We're likely familiar with the phrase
'thinking outside the box' and I think that phrase is appropriate here because the
church tends to think inside a box. We think and live within a box that has set
and defined boundaries. There are things like legal boundaries. A legal
boundary might be that when the offering plate is passed we don't steal the
money. At least I hope that is a boundary for you. There's also physical
boundaries, technological boundaries, moral and spiritual boundaries. But, this
box that we are in is much smaller than we think it is.
For example, if I were to
walk up to so and so and say let's get together for dinner tonight we might
consider several different options. We might suggest going down to Greenville
and go to a restaurant, we might order pizza or we might decide to cook a meal
at home. But, of all these possible suggestions we would likely not offer to
drive down the road, pick up a dead animal, bring it home and cook a nice
dinner. It's a disturbing thought but in other parts of the world this would be
a perfectly normal response. What is shows is that our box of thinking is much
smaller than we think it is and the church box that we operate in is also much
smaller than we think it is too. As Christians, as Lutherans, as Lutherans in
Western Michigan with a Danish past, we might be able to see the small box that
we live in right here. Draw a smaller box within your box. The larger box is
Jesus, the smaller box is us. And the boundaries around us are defined by our
standards or norms. These norms change all the time as the make-up of the
congregation changes but we are none the less living inside this box within a
box.
The Christian church before
Pentecost came around was operating within a box. With no organized religion,
followers of Jesus were still Jewish and still bound by the same Jewish Laws
that had been in existence for many many years. While they had this good news
of Jesus, they still felt tied to their Jewish culture. Throughout the book of
Acts and the rest of the New Testament, there are stories and situations where
the Christian church has to find its own way, it has to find its way to move
and expand its boundaries. But, their religious culture was their norm. They
didn't know how to change. All they knew is what they were taught. It left
little room for innovation. They had to move beyond the current norms of the
day. Pentecost expanded that box a bit, it moved that box to meet the culture
around them, to address the needs of those around them. As the church began to
grow that box began to change more and more. Today, that box still needs to move.
It can't stay in one place.
We need to remember that
Jesus came into this world to be different, to point us in a different
direction. He came to fulfill the law so that we would not be bound by it. He
came to open to us that which was previously closed. He came to give us methods
and opportunities that would otherwise not be available for us to use to grow
His church. The opportunities exist. We just need to brainstorm what those
opportunities are, discover them and, by the Holy Spirit, use them. Take this
example. Imagine living in London, England and you wanted to start a taxi
company. Training to be a taxi driver in the city of London is a bit of a
stressful experience. You need to know everything about how to get from here to
there and potential drivers have had to take what can be historically said to
be one of the more difficult exams in the world, called The Knowledge. Now, if
you considering starting your own taxi business in London, this presents a
problem for you. How can you expand your taxi business rapidly while having drivers
who know absolutely nothing about the city of London? The solution to this
problem is to have two types of taxis. One is a normal taxi with a normal
driver. The other has a sign on it that says, "This driver knows nothing
about the city of London but loves being given directions by you." All of
a sudden you attract a crowd that loves being boss in a taxi and ideas like
this have created companies like Uber that are sprouting up all over the place
competing head to head with taxi companies. For many, looking at this example,
the solution couldn’t be considered because it didn’t fit into that box within
a box of how taxi companies work. But, when those boundaries move, innovation
can take place. The church can benefit from being different too. It can, but
the real question is does it want to? Or would it rather just keep hoping that
the old ways will create different results and die within the box it refuses to
move?
Where are we in all of that?
Where are you? The church can benefit from being different but do you want to? We
have been given the Holy Spirit so that we might break through the standards
that have bound us and utilize the many options we have of growing Christ's
church. The Church began when the followers of Jesus began to do something
different, when they went against the norm, all under Jesus' rule. Over time
that norm has changed and evolved. You can see this by the different Christian
denominations in the world today. But, it goes even further. You see, what is
normal for us today is not normal for our closest NALC congregation in Evart.
What is normal for them may not be normal for us.
The point is that for the
church to get different results, we need to stop hitting the wall. The early
Christian church needed to break free from that Old Testament Law in order for
it to thrive on principles of grace and forgiveness. The gift of the Holy
Spirit is here waiting for us so let's allow it to do its work and bring us
somewhere we've never been before. We might see trouble and start doing more of
the same thing to try to foster different results. We might do less of the same
thing to foster different results. But, in the end, it's not about how you
change the level of what we are doing but changing what we are doing entirely.
You see, it is like Einstein
giving his exam to his physics students, the very same questions he tested his
students on exactly one year prior. Why did he do it? Because the answers had
changed. The questions may have remained the same but the answers had changed.
Can the students make that transition? We may ask how we bring more people into
the church, how to increase our offerings, how we retain more youth and family.
The answers to these questions have changed and the challenge to us now is not
to ask new questions but to seek out different answers that will challenge that
very box inside of the box that you live in.
We need to remember what it
is the church is all about. The sharing of the Gospel message, that good news.
The good news that can and does save lives. It's not about us, it's about Christ
and his love for the world and his desire for us to bring Him to that world.
The Christian Church at Pentecost knew this and they embraced the ability to be
able to share that as many ways as the Spirit would allow. We have the
responsibility of continuing that distribution of the Gospel, to be the Church
and to live for Christ.
Just as the gift of the Holy
Spirit on that first Pentecost filled the disciples with the power of God to
begin sharing the Gospel in new ways they had never been empowered to do
before, this is the gift we are given today, that same Spirit, giving us the
ability to answer these very questions in new and different ways. You have been
renewed and empowered by that Spirit to be a part of those answers. Let that
free gift work within you to consider something new. Let that Spirit remind you
that there is power in the Church and that together we are an opportunity,
polished by Jesus, to be innovators in ministry all thanks to God's love for
you. To God be the glory, now and always. Amen.[1]
[1] Some
content from this sermon was taken from a presentation by Paul Rulkens in the
following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNGFep6rncY