Engaging Scripture

A Discussion Guide for Church Leaders and Followers!

A few weeks ago I started creating discussion guides that Faith Church’s small group leaders could use if they wanted to guide their group through a further consideration of a recent sermon. Last week I introduced the sermon saying that the concept of “majority rules” could be good, but also really bad. Faith Church is congregational, but that doesn’t mean the congregation votes to approve every decision in the life and ministry of our church. Instead the congregation approves leaders, which I suspect is the case at your church too. And that raises a lot of questions about the hows and whys of leadership. Here is a discussion guide that you can use to study the concept of leadership in the church.

What kind of person should become a leader in the church?

In the story in Acts 6:1-7 we realize that not anyone can be a leader in the church. Instead there is a very specific criteria for who can be a leader. In verse 3, the apostles give us the first description of what the next generation of leaders should be like. Full of the Spirit and wisdom. Next in verse 5 we learn another criteria for choosing these new leaders. They had to be full of faith. Paul would later further describe what kind of person can become a leader in the church when he wrote to two young pastors. See 1 Timothy 3:1-13 and Titus 1:5-9. How are the lists in Acts 6 and Timothy/Titus similar or different?
Follow-up Question: Summarize the kind of person who can become a church leader in one phrase. At Faith Church we synthesize the passages listed above by saying that church leaders must show beyond the shadow of a doubt that they are spiritually mature.

How do you become a leader at Faith Church?

Back in Acts 6:1-7, the Apostles called a church congregational meeting and asked the church to select seven leaders based on the qualities we discussed above. Then it was up to the church to decide on selecting these seven. At Faith Church our Nominating Committee administers a process of selecting leadership candidates through applications, interviews, prayer and discussion. Once a candidate has proceeded through those steps, their name is placed on the congregational meeting ballot, and the congregation elects them by simple majority. How does your church select leaders? Is your congregation structure intentional about making sure only the spiritually mature can become leaders?
If you are a leader, how can this passage and process be a safeguard for you?
If you are not a leader, what can you learn about yourself and the possibility that God may have gifted you to be a leader? Read Romans 12:3-8 and discuss.

How should church leaders lead?

What does the word deacon mean? The word deacon give us an important clue as what a leader should do. Deacon means servant.
Remember what Jesus told his disciples at the last supper? Peter was there that day. When Jesus came to wash his feet, do you remember how Peter reacted? Read John 13:1-17. What can we learn from this story about how leaders should lead?
It is possible Peter remembered the Last Supper when he wrote 1 Peter 5:1-5. Read that, and discuss what he says about how leaders should lead.
Leaders also set the example. Paul would say a couple times in 1 Corinthians, “imitate me” or “imitate me as I imitate Christ”. Paul would also say to Timothy 4:12 “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and purity.” Leaders, are you setting the example?

How should non-leaders support leaders?

Read Hebrews 13:7 and 17. What principles does the author of Hebrews (we don’t know for certain who wrote it) say a congregation should apply when supporting leaders?
Remember what Peter said? In 1 Peter 5:1-5, pay special attention to verse 5. What principles does Peter teach followers to adhere to?
How will you support your leaders when you disagree with them? There are some clear warnings in Scripture. What cautions can we learn in the following two passages: Proverbs 6:16-19, Matthew 13:24-43?
In Acts 15 there was a sharp disagreement in the church. What was the disagreement? How did they respond to and solve the disagreement? What principles can we learn from this?

No matter if you are paid staff, volunteer leaders or non-leaders, all must be committed followers of Jesus. What will it look like for you to “deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow him”?

How “majority rules” can be so good and so bad

Do you believe that “majority rules?” I am reminded of the game show, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, and their “Ask The Audience” tool. If a contestant doesn’t know the answer to a trivia question, they have the option, one-time only, to ask the audience which answer the audience would choose. Audience members then pick up a key pad and enter their answer to the multiple choice question. The contestant then sees the results, hoping desperately that a large majority of the audience chose one answer. Sometimes the audience does just that, making it easier for the contestant to go with the majority. But sometimes, particularly on hard questions, the audience is not able to pick one answer with a large majority. How often do you think the audience majority is right on Millionaire?

In the church we often think majority rules. We often create a system of church governance based on majority rules. We Americans especially love this because of our culture of voting. Everyone gets one equal vote. We all have a voice, an equally important voice. So churches, particularly in America, have adopted at least a partially congregational form of governance.

Is a congregational style of church governance a mistake? I suppose it would better to ask, Can we support a congregational approach with biblical teaching? Yes, some will say. No!, say others. And still others, maybe. Take a minute with me to think about this.

Faith Church is officially called Faith Evangelical Congregational Church. Isn’t that a mouthful! The Evangelical Congregational (EC) part of our name is a reference to our denomination, the EC Church. (To my EC brethren, can we please consider shortening our name somehow? I say that with a smile on face, but I also consider it a legitimate concern.) The EC in the EC Church is not just two really long words. They mean something. I dealt with that word “Evangelical” a few weeks ago (and why we’re removing it from our church sign), and now let’s look at the word “Congregational” (which, by the way, we’re also removing from our sign, but just because it is such a long word!).

Basically, the word “Congregational” speaks to our polity. “Polity” is little word that refers to a form of government. You can see how it is related to the word “politics.” People often complain that a church can get so political, insinuating that to be a bad thing. But the reality is that all churches have some form of government, and thus by their very nature are political entities.

EC Churches are congregational in polity. What that means, historically, is that we each own our property, and we are self-governing. We voluntarily commit to and connect with the denomination. Locally, we also see the will of the congregation as important. We have an annual congregational meeting where all members can vote on things like who will fill leadership roles, our annual budget, large purchases, and any changes to our by-laws.

I suppose some congregational churches could try to be even more congregational than we are. They might try to have a congregational meeting monthly or even weekly and vote on all kinds of matters. We don’t do that. Our congregation long ago decided that they wanted to turn over the administration of the ministry of the church to a smaller group comprised of members of the congregation. That group is our Leadership Team. In the Bible these people are called “elders”.

But even the Leadership Team, meeting every other month, cannot devote enough time to organizing the ministry of the church, so the congregation decided to create seven Serve Teams, one for each major ministry area of the church: worship, fellowship, discipleship, outreach, missions, stewardship (finances) and operations (physical plant). 5-7 volunteers from the congregation serve on each of those teams, and thus in the serve teams we see congregationalism as well.

But is this version of church polity a biblical one?

Sometimes, to reveal a bit of my thinking, I wonder about the value of congregationalism. I see pros and cons. On one hand, I think it is really good and important for as many people as possible to get involved and invested in the life and ministry of the church. Giving, serving, praying, helping, leading, teaching, you name it. But on the other hand, is it possible that congregationalism, at its root, is based on the assumption that majority rules? Don’t get me wrong. I think Faith Church’s polity is very balanced.

It also seems very possible that the concept of majority rules is faulty when it comes to church polity. Should we ever make any decisions just because the majority says so? As Nelson Mandela famously said, sometimes the people are wrong.

In those moments, we need leaders to step out and lead, even if our leadership is unpopular.

The concept of “majority rules,” and therefore congregationalism, is not always best. In fact there are some wonderful biblical passages we will look at to delve into this further. Just as the congregation is not always right, because sometimes people have the wrong ideas, people should not all have equal footing to impact decisions. Before you think I am being discriminatory, let me explain. In our society, we are right to consider all people equal. But aren’t there really limits to that? Not all are equal when it comes to performing heart surgery, right? You don’t want just anyone managing your 401K, do you? Furthermore, not everyone should be teaching our kids, should they? So let’s look at congregationalism and leadership a bit further.

Some people want to be leaders and some don’t. Some people who want to be leaders have no business being leaders. Some people who don’t want to be leaders would be great at it.

Is it wrong to want to be a leader? Does wanting to be a leader automatically disqualify you from being a candidate for leadership? Maybe. Maybe not.

What are the factors going on behind the scenes in a decision like this? Who should be a leader? Why should they be a leader? And how should we select them to become a leader?

Once they become a leader, how should they lead?

And for those of that are not leaders, what posture should we have toward our leaders?

As you can imagine, this coming Sunday I will be preaching on leaders and leadership, and to an extent, followership also. My spell-checker doesn’t like that word “followership”. It underlines “followership” with a squiggly red line to alert me that it might be a typo. I double-check, and it is not a typo. So my computer has not heard of followership before. It should have. Have you heard of it? You should have also! A few in the church will become leaders. Most will be followers. So just as leaders should learn the art of godly leadership, followers need to learn the art of godly followership.

When Christians should stop inviting people to church

I appreciate a good provocative title. My wife says if I use them too much, people will become callous to them. She’s right. But I really am serious about the title of this blog post. At first I titled it “WHY Christians should stop inviting people to church.” But that was a smidge misleading, and I could be accused of manipulating the truth when I really just want to grab your attention. I don’t want to be manipulative, so I changed it to what you see above. “When” rather than “Why.” “Why” could give the impression that Christians should never invite people to church, and that is not what I intend to communicate here. I do, however, think there are times when a Christian should not invite a friend to church. But when? I’ll get to that in a minute.

Let me set the stage for that discussion first. I’ve been preaching through what we are calling Faith Church’s Growth Process. It is a process we believe that followers of Jesus should be going through as they seek to live like Jesus lived. You can check out the previous sermons in this series by searching this blog site for “growth process”. To summarize, the Growth Process suggests that most people start as worshipers, move on to fellowship with a local church, but most importantly of all, should cross the Matthew 7 line and move on to discipleship to Jesus. Today we see that there is a natural outflow to disciples of Jesus.

One of the best examples of Jesus’ teaching on what this outflow should look like is found in Matthew 25:31-46, a story often called The Sheep and the Goats.

Did you hear what Jesus said? Just believe in him and pray the sinner’s prayer? Nope. Just answer an invitation an evangelist or pastor gives to walk forward to the front? Nope. Go to church? No. Worship? No. He said that we are distinguished by what how we live out our faith! There should be an outflow. We show that we trust in him by obeying what he taught. We actually do something! God wants his abundant life to take deep root in our lives, so that it flows out of us into the lives of those in need around us.

This is why our church has a passionate outreach with CVCCS. We are seeking to help the Conestoga Valley community reach those in need. Many people from our congregation volunteer at CVCCS, give donations, and serve clients. This aspect of outreach is vital. Throughout the Bible in the Old Testament and New, we see God’s heart for the poor, the oppressed, those in need. We Christians speak the Gospel incredibly clearly and faithfully by reaching out to those in need.

Then we also reach out 1 on 1 to the people in your life, as Jesus said that one of his disciples’ primary mission goals was to make more disciples. I’ve heard numerous times over the years that people have a desire to reach out to their family and friends, but they don’t know how, or they are really concerned that people will reject them if they start talking about Jesus.

So the conclusion that people have come to is that actions speak louder than words. Or as St. Francis of Assisi suggested: “share the Gospel at all times, and only if necessary use words.”

People have said others will look at Christians living out the abundant life of Jesus and think “Wow, they are different. They have something I don’t have. I want what they have. Peace. Joy. Even in the midst of difficulty, they seem like they are grounded.” And then those people will come up ask the Christian “you are different. I want what you have. Why are you different?” “And then the Christian will be able to say “I’m different because of Jesus.” And they Christian will have the opportunity to share Christ.

Actor Stephen Baldwin tells the story of his nanny. She was like that. Always joyful. It got under Baldwin’s skin, and finally got to the point where he asked “What is going on with you?” And she was able to share Christ with him, and he became a Christian.

Can I be honest though?

How many of you have actually encountered this situation in your life? I don’t know that I ever have. If you haven’t had someone come up to you and ask “why are you different?”, is it possible that you are not different? Is it possible that there is no or very little evidence that people can point in your life that speaks that you are a disciple of Jesus?

Or maybe it is because you’ve said arrogantly, self-righteously, “Well, I’m a Christian, so I don’t do _______!” That kind of harsh statement only divides, creates a barrier. We need to be gracious and loving about our decision to follow the way of Jesus.

Because Christians have behaved badly like this, we all need to examine our lives and invite others to examine us as well, others who will speak the hard truth to us. Is it possible that that the Gospel we have been preaching with our actions has not been good news? Is it possible that people around us have not seen much off the Fruit of the Spirit flowing from us?

Or maybe people don’t ask that question because the premise of the question is faulty. We think that is what should happen, that they are so lacking something in their lives, that something feels missing and deep down they are not at peace, can’t be at peace, and they are longing for hope, for joy, for peace. We call this the god-shaped hole, and some people have said that God created all of us with a god-shaped hole in our lives. A longing to be in relationship with God. An inner ache, an inner emptiness that only a relationship with God can fulfill.

And yet plenty of people give the impression that they don’t feel that way at all.

What should we do when people are expressing no or little interest? In our day and age, there are more and more people that simply have no desire, no interest. What should we do? My recommendation is to avoid the gimmicks. Avoid the events. Invitations to church? They might help, but I think there is a much better way. A much more down to earth approach.

Pray for people.
Be available.
Love. Genuine friendship.
Be ready to share the words of the Good News when people give you permission.

Seriously evaluate the idea of inviting people to church. The simplest form of evangelism might not be to invite people to church. In fact, it might be the wrong choice for some people. They might have had a bad experience with church, and the wound could still be open. They might not be into organized, institutional religious approaches, and let’s call a spade a spade, what we do in our churches on Sunday is an organized, institutional approach. We’re used to it. We like it. But we can blind to the fact that not everyone, and in fact few people, might have a willingness to try it out. Instead it will likely seem extremely odd to many people. Where else in our society do you go into a room where people sit in rows, sing songs, and listen to a lecture? And why would they do it with a group of people they don’t know? Just go ahead and start asking people who don’t go to church, or who have no background with church, what they think about worship services. You might learn a thing or two about how other people view this pretty unique thing we do on Sunday. That doesn’t make them wrong, by the way.

It is also not wrong for we followers of Jesus to enjoy worship services and hold worship services. But we would do well to remember that it is okay if other people think differently from us.

So if there is a person in your life for whom inviting them to church might not be a good choice, or if you have invited them already and they have said “no,” then you’re likely going to have to change your approach about to introducing them to Jesus. So pray for them. Love them in genuine friendship.

One author says it is extremely important that we listen to people. He says “Mission should be done with the posture of humility and compassion. A tangible way of doing this is actively listening to what people are saying. Knowing a person’s story will allow for a more faithful contextualization of the gospel.”

And when people give us permission to talk about Jesus, what should we say? Don’t stop praying at this point. Pray inwardly that the Holy Spirit will help you know what to say. Jesus taught that the Spirit would help us.

The same author I quoted above said this “So what should we tell people about God? How should we do it? A good place to start is with the presenting of the overarching story of the Bible. By doing this we’ll be able to proclaim that Jesus is King, that he is working to right every wrong, and that he is restoring every broken part of this earth! Now that is good news! To me, this is much better news than the individualized gospel of Jesus hiding in our hearts. The reality, is that most of the anxieties that come from evangelism stem from Christians not believing the gospel themselves. Or even worse, they don’t believe that the gospel is good news. When sharing the gospel, tell of the powerful, all knowing God who is on a rescue mission to redeem His world.”

What in the world is Christian “outreach”?

It has been a few years, but for a long time every fall Faith Church held a Harvest Bazaar. Before that it was called a Christmas Bazaar. Many people in our congregation would cook up a storm in their kitchens, creating delicacies for the bake shop. Others would staff the snack shop, making amazing chicken soup. Still others would be hard at work crafting and donating and volunteering and we would have numerous rooms in our church building filled with items that people could buy as Christmas gifts. And buy they did! We would often raise $2500 or more from the Bazaar. But why would we do this? It was a lot of work!

Our congregation initiated the Bazaar decades ago as a fundraiser to pay off the debt we owed on our building. Eventually we did pay off the debt. I still remember the mortgage burning ceremony. We have had memorable experiences with fire in our sanctuary, such as when the Advent wreath caught fire! But I’m talking about the time when we had paid off the mortgage to the most recent expansion to the building, and we celebrating by burning the mortgage documents in a bowl during a worship service.

Though the mortgage was paid off, we kept having the Bazaar for a number of years. Now we decided that the proceeds of the Bazaar would be directed to the Building Fund and to support missionaries. Both good causes. And yet there was discussion about whether or not we should keep having the Bazaar. Was its purpose completed? People had numerous points of view, both pros and cons. It took a lot of work, and people were getting burned out. So we eventually slowed down our pace to holding the Bazaar every other year. The last time we held a Bazaar was three or four years ago, and we have no plans for another.

At one point there was a suggestion made in favor of continuing the Bazaar saying that the Bazaar was an outreach. How was it an outreach? Well, didn’t it bring people from the community into our building? It did. That is true. Probably hundreds of people in the community would stop in, look over items, eat food, and buy stuff. But just because they came into the building could we say that qualifies as outreach?

We’ve heard this before about the Youth Chicken BBQ we hold every spring. People say that not only does the BBQ raise money for our youth group, it also has an outreach element to it. We’ve heard this about pretty much anything we do that brings people into the building. By holding an event or program for which they walk through the doors of the church building, it is reasoned, we are reaching out to them. We have done this quite a bit over the years: Ballroom Dance Classes, Vacation Bible School, Trunk or Treat, Concerts, Breakfasts and now most recently Summer Lunch Club.

In our recent history this approach is how we have thought about outreach. Is that outreach? What should outreach be? And before we can answer those questions, should we not ask the questions behind the question? Why do we do outreach? Should we do outreach at all? We should have solid reasons for why or how we do outreach before we start outreach. But do we have solid reasons?

Join us at Faith Church this Sunday August 14 as we seek to answer these questions.

The extremely important teaching of Jesus that Google (and maybe your church) is missing

Today while writing this post, I googled “the one thing Jesus taught us to do.” I was looking for an image to illustrate the reflection that I usually write about the previous Sunday’s sermon. The results of my image search were very interesting. Can you predict which result was the most frequent? Prayer. I guess the algorithm guiding the search keyed in on the famous verses where the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray and he taught them the Lord’s Prayer.

But that’s not what I was looking for. I guess my search was misleading. As I thought about it, I realized that there was not just one thing that Jesus taught his disciples. So I rewrote my search terms to “the most important thing Jesus taught us.” Guess what happened? A lot more images of prayer. There was more variety this time, though. The first image in the list said “serve others.” I thought for sure “Love one another” would be there. Or “Love the Lord your God”. But those phrases were not there, or maybe they were buried so far down the list, that I stopped looking before I scrolled to them.

I do searches like this every week trying to find the right image for blog posts and PowerPoint shows to illustrate sermons. It is most often a matter of word-smithing the search phrase in such a way that the results return what I’m looking for. But this time I was curious as to what Google’s algorithms would come up with in regard to Jesus’ teachings. Those results could be said to be a representation of what people believe to be Jesus’ most important teachings. Therefore the internet is saying that Jesus’ most important teaching is about prayer.

Before you think this is a post about prayer, let me also point out that it was noteworthy what was missing from the search results. This is not actually a post about prayer. While I think prayer is very important, there is another teaching that Jesus gave his disciples that should be at the top of the list. Why did it not show up on Google’s image search? Perhaps it is an indication that we American Christians have not placed proper importance on this one extremely important teaching of Jesus.

Last week I suggested that there are two things that Jesus did NOT tell us to do, but that we do a lot of, and there is there is one thing he DID tell us to do that we don’t do. The two things we do a lot are (1) the building of church buildings and (2) holding Sunday worship services in them. Neither are bad activities, but they can consume our focus, whereas Jesus asked us to focus on something else.

What was the one thing Jesus told us to do?

We often call it the Great Commission. Make disciples. Jesus made disciples and he asked his disciples to make more disciples.

Jesus did not say “I want you to make believers.”

Instead he said that if anyone would be his disciple, that person must deny themselves, take up their cross daily and follow Jesus.

So when Jesus says that we are to make disciples, he is saying that he wants us to interact with people in such a way that they, too, deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him. He does not want believers who keep their thoughts about him in their minds. He wants disciples whose lives are transformed so that they look more and like him, so their lives look more and more like the way he lived his life. That means when people get connected to the family of Faith Church, we do not want them to just be Sunday morning worshipers and fellowshippers, we want them to be people of whom it can be said, they are denying themselves, taking up their cross and following him.

If you say “Well, I believe in Jesus,” you should not be assured that you are actually a disciple. If you say “Well, I believe in Jesus,” and you look at your life and you see that your relationship with Jesus is focused on attending Sunday morning worship and fellowship, you should not be assured that you are actually a disciple.

What does it mean to be his disciple? His central teaching was that to be his disciple, we must deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him.

What is taking up your cross? How do we do that in 2016?

Jesus taught that discipleship was a life of learning from him. To be his apprentice. To learn from him how to live. Gradually he molded his disciples into the men and women who could take over the mission of God’s Kingdom for him.

We need to address what taking up your cross is NOT. We hear the phrase in our culture: “that’s my cross to bear”. Is that what Jesus is talking about? Not necessarily. People can say “that’s my cross to bear” for all sorts of reasons.

“Well, I have to take care of my elderly parents. It’s my cross to bear.”

“My boss is a jerk. It’s my cross to bear.”

All kinds of situations can be our cross to bear. But that’s not what Jesus meant. Usually we say that phrase as a “poor me”.

Instead a disciple carries his cross daily and follows Jesus. Jesus meant that his way, his life becomes our focus. We learn to do what he did. Even if it is difficult. Even if it is putting your life at risk for Jesus and the advancement of his Kingdom. Even if it means you don’t get to experience the pleasures of this world, like you see your friends and neighbors and co-workers doing.

Jesus described it perfectly when he said that taking up your cross starts with denying yourself.

Taking up your cross is a figurative picture of giving up everything to follow Jesus! It is saying to Jesus, “I give you permission to do what you want with me. I give you permission to have control of every area of my life.” And then actually changing whatever areas of your lives he wants to change.

But how do you do that?

An extremely important way to begin is to humbly and teachably read his word and ask the Spirit of God to convict you of any sin in your life that needs to be changed.
The next step is to share this with people who will speak honestly with you. Invite people who are also disciples of Jesus to speak the truth in love to you. To hold you accountable to make the changes you know God wants you to make.
Finally continue in this until you are making changes that God wants you to make so that you can see you are being transformed.

Before you start thinking that I’m describing a pretty horrible way to live, let’s look at what this life is actually like. All this talk of self-denial and being changed and letting Jesus control you can sound really bizarre. Until you look at Jesus’ actual life. I urge you to do that. Read one of the stories of his life: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Decide for yourself. I would submit that if you are not that familiar with Jesus’ pattern of life, you will be astounded by the grace, the joy, the peace, the attractiveness, the mercy and the love that flows from him. His way of life was the happiest, best way of life. A disciple is learning from Jesus how to live.

One aspect of being Jesus’ disciple, therefore, is putting off the old selfish way, and putting on the new way of Jesus. The apostle Paul used that image in Romans 13:14 when he said “Clothe yourselves with Christ.”

It is like clothing. I go out to mow the grass, work in the garden or split and stack wood. I get very sweaty and dirty. Those dirty sweaty clothes represent the old way of life, the selfish way, where certain sins reside in our lives.

I come inside, cool off, get a shower, put on new clean clothes. Those clean clothes, Paul says, represent the new way of Jesus. His way is the way of a transformed heart and life. Paul calls it the Fruit of the Spirit, where the good things of Jesus are growing inside us, and those good things naturally come out.

Jesus taught us, “By their fruit you will know them.” I look at my berry bushes and I know what kind they are. The ones on the left have black berries and the ones on the right have red berries. Then there are also plants with similar leaves growing up in the middle of the berries. But those plants, though they look similar, have no berries. They are weeds.

You know a person by his or her fruit too. If you find within yourself, or if others tell you, that you are regularly grumpy, complaining, angry, upset, selfish, hiding away, escaping to fantasy, manipulative, lying, hurting others’ feelings, rough, harsh, talking too much, having to be the center of attention, then those are the fruits that are coming out of your life.

Here’s the thing though: so often they are coming out of our lives but we are more than willing to let ourselves off the hook and say “Well, I’m not so bad.” Or “Tough, that’s just me.” “Deal with it, that’s how God made me.” If you ever hear phrases like that coming out of your mouth, or even if you think them, you should be very concerned about yourself. You need people to confront you, to tell you the true story of who you are, and you need to listen to them.

So while a relationship with Jesus begins by believing, by trusting in him, it will not be a relationship very long if the trusting and believing is not followed by obeying.

“Trust and obey,” goes a classic song that we teach our children, “for there’s no other way.” Or as James says in James 2, “faith without works is dead.” Even Satan and the demons have faith, James reminds us. They know Jesus is the truth, but of course they do not obey him. That’s where a true disciple is different; a true disciple not only believes and trusts in Jesus, they also give their lives over to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him.

So are a you a true disciple of Jesus? What does it look like for you to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him?

Two things Jesus did not tell us to do (but we do), and one he did tell us to do (but we don’t)

I’m super excited that the Olympics start today. Soccer is my favorite sport, so while I’m disappointed the US men’s team didn’t qualify, the women’s team looks to make a gold medal run, and I’ll be cheering them on! In honor of that quest, I thought I’d show you this picture of a Jesus figurine doing a bicycle kick, one of the most acrobatic and impressive ways to shoot a soccer ball. In particular, notice the caption, which is meant to be humorous. As fun as it would be to imagine how good Jesus might be at soccer, this picture raises a question. Obviously Jesus did not teach someone how to do a bicycle kick. But he did teach a lot of other things, and there is misinformation about what he taught! We Christians can do a lot of things thinking that Jesus taught us to do them, when in reality he didn’t.

As the title of the post suggests, what comes to your mind when you think about the possible two things that Jesus did not tell us to do, but that we do…a lot?

A few years ago, I read the book Jim & Casper Go To Church, and in the book the question regularly comes up “Did Jesus really tell you to do that?” The book is the true story of Jim Henderson, an evangelical Christian, and Matt Casper, an atheist, who travel around the United States, dropping in on worship services at twelve churches of varying stripes, shapes and sizes. Jim and Matt spend time discussing what they experience, and numerous times, in response to what he has seen at a particular worship service, Matt asks Jim “Did Jesus really tell you to do that?”

Most often Matt asks that question in critique of churches that have placed great emphasis on buildings and highly-produced worship experiences. Matt’s is a penetrating question. I ask you to think about it because the answer is very easy to come by. Just take a few hours and read through the four Gospels and you will find the answer. I would suggest that there are two things in particular that we Christians do a lot of that Jesus did not teach us to do.

What are those two things? While Jesus spent a lot of time talking about the Kingdom of God, and teaching and leading his disciples, he did not instruct them to build buildings so that they could hold worship services.

First, let’s take a look a the practice of building buildings. On one particular occasion while the group of them were walking near the temple grounds, the disciples remarked how amazing the temple building was. Jesus’ response went in a surprising direction. No doubt the temple grounds were actually an astounding work of ancient architecture. Beautiful and majestic.

If you look at some of the models recreating what the temple mount probably looked like, even the small-scale models are impressive. The temple mount was the pride of the city of Jerusalem, the nation and the people of Israel. But Jesus had other thoughts. He said to the disciples “it will all be destroyed.”

Jesus was saying “Hey guys, don’t put all your eggs in that basket. God’s doing a new thing, and it doesn’t involve a building.” Those early Christians took Jesus’ words to heart. For the first few hundred years of the church’s existence there is absolutely no record of Christians building buildings. They met in homes. Building places of worship was not the mission of God’s Kingdom.

Did Jesus tell us to build buildings? No. He did not. And yet, we have, haven’t we? Lots of them, all over the world. Is it wrong for Christians to build meeting places? No. Jesus did not prohibit the building of meeting places.

But here’s where it gets murky, and where we need to be exceedingly cautious when we Christians purchase property and put up buildings. Jesus’ comments about the destruction of the temple suggested to the disciples that they not become enthralled by buildings. Though God had made a building, the temple, to be a central element of his interaction with the nation of Israel in the past, God was now doing a new thing. God was relating to people through a new means, and Jesus himself was paving the way for that new relationship with God. After Jesus’ death and resurrection defeated sin, death and the devil, making it possible for our sins to be forgiven and for us to have a restored relationship with God, the temple was unnecessary. It was at the temple where sacrifices for sin were made, atonement for the nation. But through Jesus’ sacrifice, the old system of sacrifice and the temple that housed it became obsolete. In fact, one of Jesus’ earliest followers, Paul, would go on to write that we, Jesus’ followers, are the temple of God. Amazingly, wonderfully, God lives in and with those people who give their lives to become his disciples. We no longer go to a building to meet God, he is always with us. So when we endeavor to build a building for gathering, we should be very sober-minded about it. It is all-too-easy for that building to dominate the life and ministry of our church family.

Very much related to building buildings, there is a second practice that Jesus did not tell us to do. He did not teach his disciples to have worship services. Again, read through the four Gospels and you won’t find a shred of teaching about having worship services or what they should include. For as much energy and money and personnel as we Christians put into our Sunday gatherings, you’d think there would be at least a little bit of teaching from Jesus about it. There is none.

But once again, I ask, just because Jesus doesn’t mention it, does that mean it is wrong to have worship services? No. While Jesus’ disciples and the other writers of the New Testament mention nothing about building buildings, they do mention worship gatherings quite a bit. In fact, we read in Acts that the early church did gather regularly, and perhaps, in order to commemorate Jesus’ resurrection, carved out time for a worship gathering on Sundays, which in their culture would have been the first day of the work week. It would be like us worshiping each week on Monday nights. Early in the second century AD, before the church was even 100 years old, there is also clear evidence, through the writings of Justin Martyr, who was discipled by John the Apostle, that Christian worship gatherings had standardized orders. None of this is wrong. In fact, like the building of buildings, a regular day of the week for worship, and orders of worship services, can be used for good. But to answer Casper’s question, Jesus did not teach us to do this. And if we are honest, we have placed an enormous emphasis on it.

At one particular church worship gathering that featured a large building, smoke machines, video screens, and a highly produced service of worship, Casper was particularly incredulous. “Really?,” he asked Jim, “Did Jesus ask you guys to do this?” But we need not focus on a spectacle like that. The reality is that even tiny churches that cannot afford an expensive production can still invest a lot of time, energy and money into their worship gathering. I would guess that tiny churches invest probably a very similar percentage of their resources into the Sunday worship service as a megachurch. I do not know this for a fact. I simply suspect it is probable. Consider the salary the staff makes, and how much of their time is directed to Sunday morning. Consider the infrastructure of buildings, utilities, equipment, and upkeep. Consider the volunteers and all the hours they put into meeting, planning, lessons, practice. Add that all together, and let us humbly remember that Jesus did not tell us to do any of it.

What remains, then, is to ask, “What did Jesus tell us to do?”

Join us Sunday, August 7, 2016, at Faith Church to find out.

How to rehab a relationship

Do you have relationships that need rehab? There is help! Fellowship!

In the very first account of how the earliest Christians interacted with one another, Acts 2:42-47, we read that they devoted themselves to the fellowship? What is fellowship?

That word “fellowship” in verse 42 is defined by Louw & Nida as “an association involving close mutual relations and involvement.”

This passage describes how these first Christians practiced fellowship. They clearly had close mutual relations and involvement. Their relationships went far beyond just seeing people for an hour or so on a Sunday morning at church. They didn’t have Sunday morning church. They had no church building. Instead we read that they were together often, meeting in the temple in Jerusalem (presumably for larger group gatherings), and then sharing meals in homes. Everyday.

When you read the whole description, they were sharing not just meals, but their whole lives.

Jump ahead a few chapters to Acts 4:32-37, and here we see more information about how the first Christians shared life together. People would sell off property in order to raise cash to help those in need! They saw none of their possessions as exclusively theirs, but as capital they liquidate if needed to help the suffering.

From Acts 2 to Acts 4 our best estimates are that only a few months have gone by from the very first day of the church. That means Jesus was still very, very close in their hearts and minds. And what are these first Christians doing? They are following his teaching. We’ve seen how they are interacting with one another. Why did they do this? Jesus taught them to! What did he teach them?

In the final hours before he was arrested, put on trial and killed, John 13:34-35 tells us about the last teaching that Jesus gave his disciples: “A new command I give you: love one another as I have loved you. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, that you love one another.”

Relationships in the church, Jesus taught, should be clearly known by love. Can it be said of you that you are loving the people in your church? How do we practice this love?

In Romans 12:9-21 Paul says “weep with those who weep, mourn with those who mourn.” We need to walk with people through the difficult aspects life. We need to be there for them to talk, we need to listen, we need to allow them to face sorrow knowing that people who love them are right by their side.

In that same passage Paul also says “rejoice with those who rejoice.” Loving relationships include celebration. Lots of celebrations happen for married people (bridal and baby showers, etc). But what about celebrating people and events that would be considered unconventional in our culture? The church needs to celebrate singles as well, when you get jobs, new houses, or achieve accomplishments. We also need to spectate at your hobbies, your sports, your extracirriculars. We churches should throw more parties!

We can also look to deepen relationships. Like the early church, one excellent way to deepen relationships is to have people over to your homes. Get to know them. Start with the people in your Sunday School class. Invite them to your home! Maybe then move on to the people in your small group. Who are you doing life with? Who are you caring for in ways that push your comfort zone a little bit? Call them, text them, email them, go out for coffee. Take the initiative to care for them. Fellowship has to go beyond the structured programs.

Certainly not all people and all personalities aren’t going to be best of friends. Some personalities connect more easily with others. For example, Jesus, though he had hundreds of followers, focused on twelve. Within that 12, he focused on his inner circle of three: Peter, James and John. And even within that three, there was one who was called his Beloved, his best friend, John. But Jesus was certainly focusing on others, doing life with them, sharing meals, talking through real life issues, and he did that for more than 1 or 2 hours a week.

Are you doing life together with people like the early church did, like Jesus did?

In this Growth Process sermon series, I said in the last sermon that Jesus doesn’t just want Sunday morning worshipers, he wants people to worship with their entire lives. That means moving on to Fellowship.

But Fellowship isn’t just hanging out with people on a Sunday morning for 15 minutes, or even going to the church picnic or Family Night. The kind of Fellowship that Jesus desires for his followers must be marked by “love one another”.

I’m not saying that you have to be best friends with everyone in your church family. That’s not possible, even for a congregation that is less than 50 people. But it is possible to get really close to a smaller group.

So have you moved beyond being a Sunday morning worshiper to becoming a fellowshipper?

How does a disciple of Jesus move beyond just Sunday morning fellowship into “love one another” and “life together”?

Examine your life and your relationships. Pour your life into one other. Love and reach out to those who are more difficult for your personality to love. And to those who you are already in relationship with, seek to go deeper, interact more. Pray for and encourage one another on a new level.

Do you have relationships that need rehab?

Do you have any people in your life that you feel are just hard to get along with? Think about the people in your family. Any family members rub you the wrong way? What about school? Is there a person that you really struggle with? Maybe that classmate, when you see that they are in your class, you immediately know that class is going to be a drag? Maybe they are the know-it-all who raises their hand constantly to answer questions. Or maybe they raise their hand to ask a million questions, and you think to yourself “just let the teacher teach!” Or maybe it is the teacher that you don’t like. Their style, their voice, their mannerisms. Is it your co-worker or your boss? Many of those same tendencies that bugged us about students and teachers are the same tendencies that irritate us about our co-workers or our boss. The group projects where one person is lazy. The boss or teacher that is demanding. The classmate or coworker that is loud and boisterous and arrogant.

But thank God we never have these issues in the church.

Ha!

You’re laughing…or you should be…why? Because we DO have the same problems. As many pastors joke, the church would be great except for the people. That’s funny because the church is the people, and the pastor is one of the people too. I am the pastor, and I might be the one you think is difficult! I hope not, but I know it can be true because of interactions I’ve had with people in the past. I’ve been at Faith Church nearly 14 years. In that time I’ve seen many times that it is impossible to please all the people all the time.

But I want you to be clear that I believe about myself something the great English writer G.K. Chesterton is said to have written in a letter to the editor. A British newspaper asked for people to write letters answering the question “What’s wrong with the world today?” Lots of people responded with many ideas, but it was Chesterton’s reply that was the most memorable…and the shortest. What’s wrong with the world today? Chesterton answered “Dear Sir, I am. Yours, G. K. Chesterton.”

So we do have issues in our relationships in the church, all churches do, and I would be remiss if I didn’t see myself as part of it. I also want to be part of the solution.

You may have heard the comment that if you found the perfect church, don’t join it. The moment you would join it, it would cease to be perfect. There is no perfect church. Because you and I are a part of it.

What is all this suggesting? That relationships in the church can be hard. We people can rub each other the wrong way, offend one another, hurt each other. But relationships in the church can also be wonderful. This coming Sunday we continue our series called Our Growth Process. We’re at Step 2 – Fellowship, which is all about relationships in the church.

As you get ready for gathering for worship on Sunday, I want to ask you, who are the people in your church family that you have the hardest time with? Just visualize them. And pray that God will speak to you about your relationship with them.

Join us on Sunday at Faith Church to learn more!

Why our worship services are not good enough (and God might even hate them)

Worship services could actually be keeping us from worship. Sound impossible?

Peter Rollins, in his book Insurrection, suggests that it’s actually very possible. In the Old Testament, God pointed out to the nation of Israel that their worship was not acceptable to him. They were going through the motions of worship, but they weren’t actually worshiping him.

Consider what God said in Amos 5:21-23:

“I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps.”

And then there is this in Malachi 1:10:

“Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you,” says the LORD Almighty, “and I will accept no offering from your hands.”

Clearly there were times when Israel’s worship was detestable to God. What if our worship is also?

This past Sunday I started a summer sermon series called Our Growth Process, through which we’re looking at how disciples of Jesus can grow to be more like him. Last week I suggested that the foundation to this Growth Process is to learn to focus on the Kingdom of God. We have for too long focused on church, on church buildings and systems, whereas Jesus taught about his Kingdom. People who want to grow as disciples of Jesus focus their lives on Kingdom of God, and how it enters our lives and world, transforming them. So where do we begin? With worship.

In Romans 12:1-2, one of the earliest followers of Jesus said this:

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

Paul says we should offer our bodies as living sacrifices, but sacrifices are usually dead. A sacrifice could be an animal. A grain offering. Money. All dead stuff. A sacrifice is also that which is given over to something or someone else. In this case, Paul says we are the sacrifices. We are not dead, but alive, and thus when we offer our bodies as living sacrifices we give our lives over to God, such that our lives are used the way he wants. Paul calls this our act of worship.

That might sound like a lot. In fact, it is a lot. Giving up of our entire life over to God? What more could there be! Is God asking too much? Paul says it is reasonable for us to give our lives as living sacrifices because of God’s mercy. The word “therefore” at the beginning of verse 1 points back to chapters 1-11 where Paul goes into detail explaining how far God went to show us mercy. He gave his own son out of love for us. Jesus gave his life to us. So therefore it is reasonable that we give our lives back to him. This is worship.

Too often we look at worship as what we do in a church building for an hour or so on Sunday. Paul’s teaching in Romans goes way beyond that. When you give your body as a living sacrifice, you are striving to worship the Lord all day every day. How in the world do we worship all day every day? Is Paul suggesting that we need to be singing praise songs nonstop? That we need to listen to sermon podcasts every day?

A few years ago I was at the gym running on the treadmill listening to music on my phone. A praise song came on, one of my favorites, and right there in gym pounding away on the treadmill, I was praising God, even getting emotional about it. Is that what Paul meant? I certainly don’t listen to music every time I run. In fact, I almost always run without listening to music. And in my car I prefer to listen to podcasts or books on CD. So I have to confess that I don’t sing or whistle or even think about worship music all day long. How about you? What could it possibly mean to give ourselves as living sacrifices?

When I think about people who get connected to Faith Church, Sunday morning worship is most often where it starts. We’re very glad for guests on Sunday morning. We’re happy when people continue to attend worship. But there is a serious concern if people only worship on Sunday morning. Being a living sacrifice means that we need to move on to a life of worship. So attending the Sunday morning worship service, while very important, is not enough to qualify as a genuine disciple of Jesus.

In Matthew 7:21-23 Jesus gives us a sobering warning about this:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’”

Jesus is referring to people who looked outwardly like true disciples. People can come to worship services and look outwardly like true disciples. But Jesus says that though those people looked good, they clearly did not have what was important! They did not have what mattered, and he says “away from me.” What is scary is that those people thought they were good to go. They assumed that Jesus should accept them. But they were wrong.

Likewise, our worship services are not enough. If all a Christian does is attend worship services they do not have the kind of relationship with Jesus that he wants. This is why worship services can be like a security blanket, as Peter Rollins says. I’m going to rely heavily on what Rollins says in the discussion below.

Rollins asks us to imagine the scenario of a child with his blankie accidentally wandering into a room full of adults who are strangers to him. But he has his security blanket and feels safe. The child does not feel fear that should normally be there. In his mind, he feels okay. Why? His blanket is providing an emotional safety net.

Take away the blanket and the child doesn’t gain new information or discover something that was being withheld. He now feels the fear that naturally rises up within a child when they are in a room full of adults whom they do not know. The blanket, Rollins says “enables the child to consciously accept a situation without experiencing the psychological horror of it.”

Here’s the twist: the blanket is not the problem. The blanket is the solution to the problem! The blanket allows the child to cope in a potentially overwhelming scenario. So the blanket, the stuffed animal, the pacifier, the thumb-sucking are all helpful. They are not bad things.

But they can become bad things, can’t they? What will happen if we allow the child to have them too long? The child can remain in a state of immaturity, Rollins says, and find it difficult to function in social situations as he grows.

Anything can be a security blanket. And we adults can have them too. Do you have one? Something that is acting as a security blanket keeping you from growing mature.

Worship services can be like a security blanket! Rollins asks us to imagine a worship leader one Sunday leading a congregation through songs that express doubt, anger or abandonment. He says that a healthy, mature congregation would embrace the honesty, the doubt, the frustration expressed in the music and thus bring them closer to the reality of the Cross. But if those songs created an anxiety in the congregation, we realize that regular happy worship is acting as a security blanket, protecting the congregation from experiencing the pain of the Cross.

It is possible then to imagine a church where the worship service is actually a security blanket protecting the worshipers from truly experiencing discipleship to Jesus. In other words, Rollins says, we can affirm the Crucifixion without having to feel it. We are able to look at the Cross from a distance without ever needing to enter into a direct participation with it.

Much of contemporary church resembles a drug that prevents us from facing up to the suffering and difficulty that is part of life. In the Great Depression, film worked this way. Despite the poverty across our nation, theaters were packed, showing films about gangsters, comedies and musicals. They offered people a way to escape their dire reality for a few hours.

Is worship a security blanket for you?

To investigate this a bit, ask yourself what qualifies as good worship? When you leave a church worship service, and you think to yourself “worship was great today!”, what was it about that worship service that made it great?

Loud music? Vibrant, hand-clapping? Or maybe you prefer quiet music? Hymns? Maybe it was just that you got to sing one or more of your favorite songs?

Perhaps what made it good had nothing to do with the music. Was it that you got to see your friends? Maybe someone encouraged you. It could be that the prayer time was meaningful.

Of course it could be the sermon. When I hear the words, “Good sermon pastor!”, I ask myself, Why did that person think it was a good sermon? What is really behind those words?

Could it be that the person was thinking “Pastor, that was a good sermon because you said everything I agree with.” Or maybe they were think “I’m afraid of the way our country is headed, and you preached conservative values.” Maybe it was “Your sermon encouraged me.”

In all these situations, though, is not the worshiper just affirming what makes them feel good? By classifying it as “good worship” has the worshiper not just revealed that their approach to worship is consumeristic, whereby they the worshiper get to pick and choose what constitutes “good worship” and thus remain unaffected by it?

John Wesley once preached a sermon where likened this to being “Almost Christian”. In an Almost Christian, nothing is missing is terms of our actual beliefs and practice; nothing is missing but participation as disciples of Jesus. An Almost Christian is like the difference between a critic and a lover. A critic is one who studies something very deeply. A critic knows the minute details. But a lover is different from a critic. A lover is committed with his or her life.

Rollins says that when we come to worship, we participate in it either like a lover or approach it from a distance like the critic who examines every detail, observing whether or not it is “good worship” while remaining distant from its transformative power.

So our worship can be like a security blanket, keeping us from getting the real thing. We can sing songs, worship God, hear a sermon, give money, pray, take communion, and we can walk out of here thinking “that was good worship; that is what God desires!” We can worship on Sunday thinking that one hour of enacting religious rituals is the worship that God wants. But God wants so much more. Organized gathered worship in this room can leave us thinking that we have done our duty.

But true disciples of Jesus will not want worship to be a security blanket that keeps us from deeply experiencing the life transformation that God wants to work in our lives. Instead disciples of Jesus will want worship services to invite Kingdom transformation in our lives and help us to worship God as Paul said in Romans 12:1-2, with our lives, to offer our bodies as living sacrifices.

So here are some suggestions for how to move beyond a Sunday morning only kind of worship:

Keep God close. Make prayer a habit. Practice the presence of God. On Sunday morning part of our goal of singing songs and praying and hearing God’s word is to have an encounter with the presence of God. But do we walk out the doors of the church and forget about the presence of God? If so, then make it your goal to practice the presence of God 24-7. But how?

Habits. In worship we learn habits that we can continue throughout the rest of the week. The habits of daily prayer, daily reading, daily worship.

As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.” God does not live in a temple like he did in the Old Testament. You are his temple. He is with you! You can experience his presence everywhere you go! And you should! Develop a practice of the presence of God.

Second, see all you do as an act of worship. In 1 Corinthians 10:31 Paul says that “whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.” Even when you eat or drink. Even work. Even laundry. Cultivate a habit of work as worship, of play as worship, school as worship. Think about the most boring, mundane, disagreeable task as worship. Think about the incessant flow of emails, text messages and phone calls. Think about how grumpy that can make you. Think about all the diapers you change, all the fights you break up, all the weeds you pull in your garden. All of that can be done as an act of worship.

One lady at Faith Church said, “I would like to do one thing that doesn’t get undone that has to redone.” The dishes. The grass. Cleaning the windows. They all need to be done. And you do them today and they will need to be done again tomorrow. If you do laundry two days each week, that’s over 100 times per year. Thousands of times in your life. Ever feel frustrated by the seeming endlessness and hopelessness of these tasks?

Can you transform that frustrating attitude into worship? Yes, you can! Those small repetitive tasks are vitally important. To transform them into acts of worship starts by confessing a poor attitude, and the purposefully inviting God to change your mindset. This transformation may require the help, the accountability of friends. It could involved getting the help of one who has made progress in this area. How did they change their mindset about the dishes? About email at work? About the mundane tasks that have been disagreeable for them?

In conclusion, I don’t want anyone to think that worship is primarily what happens in a so-called sanctuary or church meeting room on Sunday mornings or whenever or wherever your congregation gathers for worship. What happens there is only good and acceptable to God to the degree that through this worship our lives are transformed, so that we worship him with our whole lives. That’s what being a disciple of Jesus is about. You cannot be a disciple of Jesus if all you do is worship him in a worship service.

I urge you then to examine your life. What we do for an hour or so on Sundays is to be preparing us to worship through the rest of the week. What about you? Are you more than a Sunday morning worshiper?

Could a church worship service be a bad thing?

Did you have a security blanket as a kid? Maybe it was a special stuffed animal or a pacifier. Or did you suck your thumb?

I had a blanket as a child. My own kids had a variety of security items, which got progressively bizarre. Child #1 carried around a blanket, which we had snugly wrapped him in as an infant. Child #2 had a stuffed lamb named Lamby (whose ear got wrapped over this particular child’s nose, held in place with the forefinger while sucking the thumb). Child #3 also had a special stuffed pet, an elephant named Ellie. But this child did not suck on his thumb. Instead he sucked on the trunk of the elephant, which got very disgusting. Not to mention that said child would regularly walk around and play with a stuffed elephant hanging out of his mouth. Child #4 reverted quite a bit, as she just had a pacifier.

Did you know that adults have security items? Ours tend to be a bit more socially acceptable, but if left unchecked they can become rather bizarre as well, and sometimes destructive. Security items keep us from experiencing some part of life, usually the painful parts. A bottle of alcohol can protect us from experiencing the stress of finances. Netflix can help us escape from the pain of parenting or work. Or there might be an addiction that we use to cope with the horrible memories of our past awful experience. Do you have a security item?

Is it possible that a church worship service might be a security item? Peter Rollins, in his book Insurrection, suggests that worship services could actually be keeping us from worship. Sound impossible?

This past Sunday I started a summer sermon series called Our Growth Process, which will look at how Faith Church understands biblical teaching about how disciples of Jesus can grow to be more like him. Last week I suggested that the foundation to this sermon is to learn to focus on the Kingdom of God. We have for too long focused on church, on church buildings and systems, whereas Jesus taught about his Kingdom. People who want to grow as disciples of Jesus focus their lives on Kingdom of God, and how it enters our lives and world, transforming them. So where do we begin? With worship.

But what if the way we do worship is focused on the church rather than the Kingdom? What if worship is actually keeping us from the transformation that God wants to bring in our lives? Rollins thinks it could be. But why? And is he right? I encourage you to read the book, but I also invite you to join us at Faith Church tomorrow as we are going to look at what Rollins has to say.