One Community Away

 

 

 

 

 

Friending – One Community Away *
Sycamore Creek Church
September 21/22, 2014
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

Where have you experienced a community of friends at the deepest level?  Sarah and I probably experienced a community of friends at the deepest level when we lived in this crazy house called Isaiah House while we were in seminary in Durham, NC.  Isaiah House was a “new monastic” house.  Probably the best way to describe it was to imagine living with your small group in the local homeless shelter.  We were a group of Christians who lived together in one very big house and offered several rooms in the house for women and children who were homeless or in transition.  We practiced our faith together with daily times of prayer and scripture reading.  We simply practiced life together with a daily dinner together.  We played together.  We cried together.  We sought to make a positive impact on the neighborhood that we lived in together.  We were in mission together.  I have never been so bonded to a group of friends who shared a similar mission than I was when I lived at the Isaiah House.  It was an amazing, powerful and life changing experience of what is truly possible with a community of friends.  It is not for everyone, but aspects of it are for everyone.

Today we continue this series called Friending by looking at the community of friends we put around us.  This series as a whole has had one key thought:

Show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future.

We’ve also had a key verse through this series:

Walk with the wise and become wise,
For a companion of fools suffers harm.
~Proverbs 13:10 NIV

You will either rise to the level of the wisdom of your friends or you will sink to the level of foolishness of your friends.  Today I want to take that to a community level.  And our key thought for today’s message is this:

You might be one community away from changing your destiny.

Our culture worships independence, but to be independent is to be distinctly non-Christian.  Rather we are to be dependent upon God and upon one another, in a community that is called the church.  Yes, we are to have a personal relationship with God in Jesus, but a personal relationship with God is incomplete.  We need a shared relationship with God.  We are built to experience the power, glory, beauty and love of God within the breadth of a community.  We may be able to be a child of the King by ourselves, but without a community, we will always be orphans of the king.

I’d like to begin our exploration of community today with a look at the early church as described in the book of Acts in the Bible.  The book of Acts picks up the story of the early church just after Jesus has ascended into heaven and passed off the leadership of the community he created to his closest followers and friends.  Here’s what happened:

Acts 2:42-46 NLT
All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.

A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity.

Wow!  Have you ever been in a community like that?  I don’t think that what we read about is a prescription for how every Christian is supposed to live, but wouldn’t it be powerful if you had a community like that?  This is a community centered around Christ, not your neighborhood, not the soccer league, not your local school.  You don’t stumble into a community like this, you intentionally create it with the love of Christ.  Today I’d like to look at three great qualities seen in the passage and other places in the Bible of any great community.

1.     A Great Community Shares Life
We read in Acts 2:44 that this community “shared everything they had” and they met each day in homes and around shared meals.  This is more than just an every-other-week small group.  This is more than a weekly small group.  This is a daily small group!  I think it’s important to point out that while I hold small groups at SCC with a very high value, I do not think they are the end goal of where we’re called as Christians to go.  Small groups create an environment for friendship to begin and to thrive.  But for true friendship and community to go to its deepest levels, it will likely begin in a small group and be nurtured beyond the small group.  The church as a whole creates the environment and fertile soil for this kind of friendship to grow, but it does not do all the heavy lifting of friendship for you.

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to meet and talk with two friends in our church, Erin Umpstead and Lori Welch, whose friendship has really thrived because they both belong to this community called Sycamore Creek Church.  I’d like to introduce you to them.  Listen for the moments when a broader community of faith helped their friendship go deeper.

You probably know some people who could really use a community that would be fertile soil for significant life-changing friendships.  You probably know some people who need Sycamore Creek Church.  Coming up the first weekend of October (5^th & 6^th) we’re throwing a Farm and Zoo Day.  Farm Day is on Sunday at Lansing Christian School and Zoo Day is on Monday at Jackie’s Diner.  This weekend is a great opportunity for families to be introduced to SCC because it’s going to be fun for the whole family, filled with faith, and FREE!  Sunday we’ll have a petting zoo, antique tractor hay rides, a farmers market, a pie contest (bring your pie to enter the contest!), and lots of games for the whole family.  On Monday we’ll have docents from Potter Park Zoo who will have zoo animals that you can see and touch up close and personal.  What three friends do you know who need a spiritual community like SCC that you could invest some time in those families between now and Farm Day and pray for God to open a door to invite them?  Then when you see God open the door to invite them, be courageous enough to hand them a postcard about Farm Day.  Don’t keep SCC to yourself.  Share this community of faith with your friends around you who don’t have a church family.

I have had the fortunate opportunity of sharing life with one of the people I work with.  Many pastors don’t get to have staff that they are also friends with.  But I get the chance to be friends with all my staff. One friendship that has really become important to me is my friendship with Jeremy and Kristin Kratky.  Of course you know Jeremy as our worship leader, but I know Jeremy as my employee, friend, and godfather of my son, Sam.  I probably spend more time with Jeremy than any other person in my life besides my family.  But over the past five years Jeremy and I have take this friendship a step further with our families.  We’ve gone backpacking together.  We organized a Dad Kid Night Out group so we could spend time with our kids and other dads.  Our wives who both enjoy writing meet on the same night to write.  I always find it somewhat ironic that Jeremy and I go out to be social and talk about being dads while our wives get together to sit silently across from each other typing on their computers!  We asked Jeremy and Kristin to be the godparents of our youngest son Sam.  To us a godparent is someone who you invite to intentionally invest in the spiritual life of your child.  You give them a full green light to talk about God and Jesus and faith and whatever comes up.  We’ve even joked about arranging a marriage between our families!  It has been a friendship that thrives because we have this faith community around us.  Are you just showing up for worship on Sunday or Monday or are you sharing life beyond an hour a week in worship?  A great community shares life together

2.     Risk Vulnerability
A great community also risks vulnerability.  On the first week I mentioned that one of the two greatest needs of all friendships is to be authentic.  What is true of friendship is no less true of community.  Paul, the first missionary of the church and the author of many of the books of the Bible wrote:

Therefore, accept each other just as Christ has accepted you so that God will be given glory.
~Romans 15:7 NLT

A great community is open to not only the hopes and dreams of friends but also the fears and failures.  Earlier you met Erin and Lori.  I’d like you to hear about a time when Erin was particularly feeling like a failure and how Lori supported her through that time.

 

As I was growing up I attended a church that had a youth group about the size of SCC.  Yes, it was big.  I will never forget the night when Tim, one of the senior leaders I looked up to and the son of missionaries, stood up to the mic and shocked us all.  He confessed before a room full of teenagers that he struggled looking at pornography.  He did not go into great detail, but he was in that moment being more vulnerable in a community than I had ever experienced before.  Tim’s vulnerability and confession had a profound impact on me.  Later that week I got together with Tim and confessed to someone for the first time ever that I too looked at pornography.   It was a moment when the evil side of creation cringed: two young men being open with each other and vulnerable with each other in their failures.  That was the beginning of the end of pornography’s hold on me.  And it took place in a community where people were willing to risk vulnerability with each other.

I want you to notice something that happened in that moment.  One person risked vulnerability in community through confession of a sin.  But I did not respond inside the youth worship service itself.  I responded by getting together with Tim one-on-one.  Confession in community often leads to confession, but it does not always lead to confession right then and there.  Community is the soil in which vulnerability can grow.  I think this is true of small groups as well.  Oftentimes in a small group someone will share something very personal.  Others may really resonate with what was said but are not willing yet to share so publicly.  So don’t miss the opportunity that the community provides.  Set up some time outside of the small group to talk further.  Every great community risks vulnerability.

3.     We Fight Predators
Every great community shares life together.  Every great community risks vulnerability.  And every great community fights predators together.  Peter, one of Jesus’ closest followers and friends, wrote:

Stay alert! Watch out for your great enemy, the devil. He prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.
~1 Peter 5:8 NLT

You’ve probably seen the video online called Battle at Kruger (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM).  If not, it’s the scene of a herd of water buffalo attacked by a pride of lions.  The lions scatter the herd and pick off the most vulnerable water buffalo, the baby.  But the herd comes back in force and fights  back.  Eventually each lion is chased off by the herd and the baby water buffalo lives to see another day.  That’s a great image of how the enemy prowls around looking to pick off the vulnerable in our community.  Great communities fight off the enemy so that the vulnerable is not left to fight alone.

Let’s go back to Lori and Erin.  At a very vulnerable time in Lori’s life, she became deathly ill.  Listen for how Erin helps fight of the predators of illness, depression, isolation, and more.

 

Don’t fight cancer alone.  Don’t fight a financial crisis alone.  Don’t fight a struggle in your marriage alone.  When Micah was born I experienced a kind of male post partum depression where I really just wanted to smash Micah against the wall whenever he would cry.  I remember sitting in a reCRASH event at Grumpy’s Diner on a Saturday morning with Ben Shoemaker, Keith Cantrall, and John Brinkhuff and sharing what seemed like a very un-pastoral kind of thing to share: I wanted to kill my son.  They helped me fight off the predators of depression, anger, and frustration.  I went home from that time of being with a community of men better equipped for the challenges that faced me as a dad.  Great communities fight predators together, not alone.

My hope and dream for Sycamore Creek Church is that we would be that kind of community.  A community that shares life, risks vulnerability, and fights off predators.  I want those who don’t have a church family to say to themselves, “I don’t know that I get all this God stuff, all this Jesus stuff, but I want what they’ve got.  I want friends and community like they’ve got.”  Jesus says:

Everyone will know you are my disciples if you love one another.
~John 13:35 NIV

So how do we build this kind of community here at SCC?  Here’s the answer: you have to be it to have it.  Be the kind of friend who does life with the community around you.  Be the kind of friend who risks vulnerability.  Be the kind of friend who fights off predators.  Make SCC great by being a great friend of this community.

I don’t know any better way to begin doing this than by joining a small group this fall.  We run our small groups on a semester basis.  When you sign up for a small group, you’re only signing up for the semester.  If it doesn’t work out, don’t drop small groups.  Just sign up for a different one next semester.  Small groups are like doctors.  Everyone needs a small group community, but not every small group is right for every person.  If you don’t like the doctor you’ve got, you don’t give up on medicine.  You find a new doctor.  Begin the journey of building a great community at SCC by joining up for a small group this fall.  You do so here online.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, you exist within your very being as a community of friendship with the Son and the Spirit.  Thank you for inviting us into that community and giving us a community here on earth called the church.  Help each one of us be the kind of friend that makes Sycamore Creek Church a great community.  In the name of Jesus, the founder and leader of our great community.  Amen.

* This sermon is based on a sermon first preached by Craig Groeschel.