I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. Philemon 1:6 (NIV)
A great biblical principle is evdient here ... when we share our faith, we get more understanding of what it is all about. It kind of works against reason that when we give away more we get a lot more in return.That shouldn't be our primary motivation is sharing the words of Life (Acts 5:20) to others, but it is a reality and we should count on it when we do obey the Spirit's commission. Just think of how much more our family of faith will know and how deeply we'll understand about the riches we have in Christ once we obey His call to share our faith with our friends, families, co-workers and neighbors!
I’ve been thinking about doing this for some time. I get from 30 to 40 minutes to lay out for the congregation in my sermon what I’ve studied for 20 or 25 hours. There’s a lot that ends up on the editing floor in my study on Saturday afternoons. And then after the message, I’m always wishing I would have emphasized something more or not said something else at all. There are times too, when I think of other things during the message and don’t always explore them with the congregation at that moment. Hopefully it will help me and the congregation grasp more of what God is trying to say to us.
The Church on Purpose
Out of all the messages in this series (“We Are Church” based on the book of Acts) this one seems to have fallen the flattest. I know that not every message can be a “hole-in-one.” But I don’t think that the message was a triple bogie either. I always have to be careful about analyzing a message too closely on Sunday afternoon. But I do have some reoccurring thoughts about the focus of today's message!
There were two statistics that really stood out to me in today's message. One was the one from Lifeway that indicated that only 2% of churched people every invite someone to attend church with them. And the second was one from Rick Warren’s research that found that 89% of the church believes that the primary purpose of the church is to “meet my and my families’ needs.”
Now I always assume that CrossPoint is above average in any statistic. But these numbers are so extreme that you’ve really got a stretch to believe that CrossPoint folks have it all together in these two areas.
I sort of wish I would have taken a survey at the beginning of the message on those two questions to see where we really do stand in relationship to those averages. ("sort of" because I'm not sure that I really waht to know the results.) How would you have answered the question, “What do you believe the main purpose of the church to be?” And how would you have responded to: “Have you invited anyone to attend church with you in the past year?”
I’m wondering if I “misread my putt” on this message. Is this more of an issue than I’d like to believe it to be at CrossPoint? Warren’s data also indicated that the clergy of those same churches had exactly opposite results to the same question. For them the main reason is to reach the world for Christ.
As long as I am preaching on subjects related to the closeness and unity of the fellowship people are tracking with me. They like hearing about how to be more effective in becoming more connected to one another even if it is challenging. But when it comes to taking Christ into the world and “speaking to the people all the words of this Life,” there are some huge barriers that we as a church have to break down.
I’ve been doing more thinking about the “prisons” that we are in that hold us back. There was a lot more there than I developed in the message. (To remind you … (1) Reserved and introverted (2) fear and anxiety – “What will people think?” (3) Selfishness – Being more concerned about my friendship than I am concerned about where my friend will spend eternity and (4) spiritual and relational conflicts ) I really think that as a congregation we need to ask the Holy Spirit to help us realize our prisons and experience his deliverance from them.
