Mixin It Up – A Basic Recipe

Mixin It Up – A Basic Recipe
Sycamore Creek Church
January 16, 2011
Tom Arthur
Matthew 5:3
Luke 6:20

Peace, Friends!

What things do you like to mix up?  Are there things you like to mix together that are a little unusual?  I love scrambled eggs.  There’s nothing really unusual about mixing together eggs and milk, but when it’s all mixed together, I like to put a little ketchup on top of it all!  Now that’s mixin it up!  Ketchup and eggs…

Today we begin mixin it up.  A dash of small groups and a pinch of missions.  There are a lot of different ways to mix up missions and small groups.  There’s some pretty basic ways like a hand whisk.  Then there are some pretty complex ways like a Kitchen Aid.  Some take more commitment than others, but they all do the same basic thing, mix it up.

Now on the one hand it may seem like small groups and missions go together just fine just like eggs and milk.  And that’s right.  I’ve heard a lot over the last year and a half about how each small group would really like to be doing service projects.  The only problem is that as a church, we’re not mixin it up very often if ever.  I’d like to explore a basic recipe today for mixin together missions and small groups.  Let’s begin with what missions is.

Missions is Friendship

Missions is about friendship first and foremost.  Friendship with God and with one another, and friendship is a two-way street.  Thus, missions isn’t just about us giving, but it’s also about us receiving.  We’re going to explore missions as a two-way friendship more fully next week, but today we’re going to begin looking at the giving side of missions: friendship with others, meeting people’s physical needs, and friendship with God, meeting people’s spiritual needs.

There are two key verses for today.  The first comes from what is often called The Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew chapter five through seven.  At the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus lists a series of blessings, often called the beatitudes.  He says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3, NRSV).  Then in Luke we find what is sometimes called the Sermon on the Plain.  Here Luke shares Jesus’ teaching but with a slight twist.  He says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20, NRSV).  Here we have the two sides of missions.  Ministering to the poor in spirit (meeting people’s spiritual needs of friendship with God) and ministering to the poor (meeting people’s physical need of friendship with one another).  Let’s begin with the spiritual needs, the poor in spirit.

Missions is Evangelism

Missions is evangelism.  Evangelism comes from the Greek work evangelion which means “good news.”  Thus, missions means sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with others.  What is the good news?  In a nutshell I would say that the good news is that God became friends with humanity so that humanity might become friends with God.

Here I think of missionaries who go to other countries to share this good news with those who have not yet heard it.  This is a classic image of the missionary going to exotic locales and meeting indigenous peoples and bringing the message of Jesus and the Word of God.

SCC is itself a mission.  We invite people to join this good news by joining our community as we seek friendship with God where our spiritual needs are met.  We seek to ignite authentic life in Christ by connecting people to God and others, growing in the character of Christ, and serving the church, community, and world.  When we invite people to join our community by worshiping with us or attending a small group, we are participating in missions.

Several years ago our church embarked on a major ad campaign to invite people to join us.  We had billboards around Lansing.  We bought commercial time on TV.  We made various invitations for you to invite your friends, neighbors, family, and co-workers to come join us.  This was missions.  We must resist the temptation to think that missions only happens separate of what we as a community do on a regular basis in worship and small groups.  SCC is itself a mission, and we continue to invite people to join in friendship with God by joining our community as we seek ever deeper friendship with God.

Missions takes place every time we make an invitation card for a message series.  Those cards are missions.  How many people have you invited to join us?  How did you come to SCC?  Did someone invite you?  All Christians, then, are missionaries.  We are missionaries to our school, our workplace, our neighborhood.  Anywhere we go is a missions field to invite people to join our community as we seek friendship with God.

Thus, when you serve the church by making our ministries happen—Kid’s Creek, StuREV, FYBY, worship, media, praise band, set-up and tear-down, small groups, and more—you are participating in missions.  We seek to help those who are poor in spirit connect in friendship with God and others and to grow in the character of Christ by serving in our church. This is the first aspect of missions: serving the poor in spirit by meeting the spiritual needs.  Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Missions is Service

The second part of missions is service to meet people’s physical needs.  Blessed are the poor.  What kind of good news is it if the good news is only after we die?  Sure, good news after we die is good news, but if that’s all we share, then we’re missing half of the good news, and the first part of missions, friendship with God, loses credibility.

Neglecting people’s physical needs has, at times, been a legitimate critique of missionaries.  But there is another image of missionaries that comes to mind that helps balance out this critique.  That is the image of the missionary who goes and builds hospitals, schools, sanitation, agriculture, and more.  Here I think of Emma Trout who recently went to Tanzania to help build wells.  Or Lori Miller who has gone to Ghana to help learn and teach about sustainable sanitation.  Or Teresa Miller and the many of you who have gone with her to Nicaragua to provide medical clinics.

A friend of mine, Amy Scott, used to work in Petoskey.  While working there she was told of a church group that came in and had a meal.  When they left, the waiter found on the table not a tip but a tract.  Yikes!  On the other hand, a friend of mine, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove who grew up Baptist, tells a story about going to Washington D.C. shortly after graduating from college to help change the world through politics.  On his way to some meeting there was a homeless guy lying on the sidewalk.  He stepped over him and went on his way.  Shortly after doing so, his conscience got him as he remembered his teaching from Sunday school about the poor being Jesus.  So he ran back to his office, grabbed a tract and wrapped it in a twenty and went back and gave it to the guy.  He realized that he had to meet both this man’s spiritual and physical needs and this was the best he could imagine at the time.  Jonathan has gone on to participate in a movement called New Monasticism in which Christians live in the city together and provide hospitality to the homeless.

You need not go to another country to meet people’s physical needs.  Every Christian is called to help meet the physical needs of his or her neighbor, the person whose locker is right beside yours, the person you sit next to in class, the co-worker in the cubicle next to yours, the single mom in the apartment across the hall from yours, the hurting family member, or your small group member who is in the hospital.  All of us are poor at some  point in our life because none of us can meet all our own physical needs by ourselves.  This is mission to those who are poor.  They are all around us and sitting right next to us right now.

Recently I was at a meeting where the book, The Externally Focused Church, was being discussed.  In this book is a list of ways to know your church is being successful. Here is that list:

• The number of cigarette butts in the church parking lot.

• The number of adoptions people in the church have made from local foster care.

• The number of classes for special needs children and adults.
• The number of former convicted felons serving in the church.
• The number of phone calls from community leaders asking the church’s advice.
• The number of meetings that take place somewhere besides the church building.
• The number of days the pastor doesn’t spend time in the church office but in the community.
• The number of dollars saved by the local schools because the church has painted the walls.
• The number of people in new jobs thanks to the free job training center you opened.

How successful is our church?  SCC seeks to help those who are poor by serving our community and world.

Missions is Evangelism and Service

SCC is successful in some ways and in other ways we have a very long way to go.  From my own personal observations, we tend to be a church that is good at giving our money.  I have actually been blown away several times at the generosity of our church in giving to meet physical needs, but we have, I think a long way to go in giving of our friendship to those in need.  I’d like to briefly map out a plan for how we intend to improve this in the coming months.  We’re going to be mixin it up: SCC will love and serve the poor and poor in spirit in our church and community by building and sustaining diverse friendships through support groups and small groups committing to missions.

This plan focuses on both the poor and the poor in spirit.  It also focuses on those needs in our community and right here in our church.  There are two initiatives that go along with this plan: support groups and small groups committing to missions.

Support Groups

Support Groups provide ongoing care for those who are in need of it.  These needs are often of a nature that small groups aren’t able to meet.  We have begun first with an umbrella support group led by Pat Orme and Rick Ray.  It meets on Wednesday nights and anyone can go for any reason.  If you’re struggling with a physical ailment and need support, if you’re struggling in a failing marriage, if you’re struggling with trying to become pregnant, if you’re struggling with an addiction, and the like then this support group is for you.

Another kind of support group that we have is Financial Peace University or FPU.  FPU helps support those who are struggling with debt to find financial peace by living simply, paying off debt, and giving generously.  A new FPU class is beginning in the next several weeks and I know that many of you are in need of this kind of support.  Several of you have taken this class in the past, but you are no longer following the FPU principles.  You need to take it again and find the continued support you need to get out of debt and live not just within your means but below your means.  Make 2011 the year that you get your financial house in order.

Small Groups and Missions

The second initiative is mixing together small groups and missions.  Over the next two or three months we’re going to be turning each small group into a mission team.  Each small group will appoint a mission coordinator for that group.  Over the next two or three months each time they meet, they won’t meet to read a book or study the Bible, they’ll meet to meet the physical needs in our community.

A launch team has put together a list several pages long of local opportunities for service that happen at the exact time or close to the exact time that your small group already meets.  Each week each small group will try a different service opportunity.  Come March 27^th during worship each small group will make a public commitment to serve regularly in one of the opportunities.  How often they serve will be up to each small group, but I would recommend that they serve at least once for every book they read or study they do together.  So if you read a book over six weeks, then you’d serve on the seventh week.  This commitment, of course, will have to be made in conversation with the group and the mission opportunity itself.

Each of these service commitments will then be communicated to the broader church community so that anyone can join whether they are part of that small group or not, but that small group will make up the core team that commits to being there.  In this way service and mission will be a door into small groups and small groups will be a door into service and mission.

There is one last part to this whole mixin it up series.  We’ll be joining together in a church-wide mission project: the Church of Greater Lansing’s Food Drop.  On February 26^th we will join over 30 churches in the greater Lansing area for a rally and worship at Holt High School at 11AM and then will deliver food boxes to those in need in our community.  Over 2000 boxes will be delivered that day!  Jeremy Kratky, our worship leader, will be helping to lead worship that day, and I’d like to see a big showing from our church.  Can we get 50 or more people there?  I think we can!  There are also opportunities to serve that day to make the whole thing happen.  There are even opportunities to serve leading up to that day.  You can find more info here: http://trinitywired.com/food-drop.

Mixin it Up!

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  Being on the discrimination side of segregation, MLK understood this dynamic of missions being about both spiritual and physical needs.  He wrote, “Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.”  Our faith is dying or dead if it doesn’t include meeting both spiritual and physical needs.  As we mix it up in 2011, will you join us in the kitchen?