Experience Required *

Come and See – Experience Required *
Sycamore Creek Church
March 1/2, 2015
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

Have you ever experienced something new and had to tell people about it?  There are a lot of new things going on here at Sycamore Creek Church, and I know a lot of you are telling all kinds of people about it.  It’s an exciting time at Sycamore Creek Church.  And how did all this get started?  Let’s go back even behind that question and ask the question: How did The Church get started?  Why do people all over the world gather together every week to worship God?  From the earliest days of the church until today, people become followers of Jesus in the exact same way: through an invitation.

Most of us got here because someone invited us.  Is anyone harboring bitterness toward the person who invited you?  OK, don’t answer that.  But while a few of you have been attracted to our church as new things are happening and you got a flyer or saw the new sign outside, or wondered what was going on in this building, or heard about the amazingly awesome pastor and his amazingly awesome preaching, most of you first came simply because someone invited you.  That’s not to say that buildings and marketing and staff are unimportant.  But they are secondary.  Relationships are key.

The secret to the church growing is simple: someone who is following Jesus invests time in someone else and invites them.  The goal of the church has never been to become big, although that may happen when the goal of the church is accomplished.  The goal of the church is to share our experience with Jesus with someone else.  In fact, maybe “experience” isn’t even quite strong enough.  We share our encounter with Jesus, and we invite others to have that same experience and encounter.  Jesus’ followers became followers because of an invitation.

Today we’re going to go all the way back to the beginning of the story of the church and the first invitation.  The story of invitation begins before Jesus with John, Jesus’ cousin, who is often called “John the Baptist.”  John was a weirdo.  He was preaching out in the desert dressed in uncomfortable clothes and eating unappetizing food.  But he had a message that the people of his day wanted to hear: The messiah is coming.  John seemed to be the first real prophet to come along in a long time.  And he’s attracting quite a following.  Then Jesus shows up:

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
~John 1:29 NLT

John recognizes and announces that Jesus is who he has been preaching about, and something happens in that moment:

The following day John was again standing with two of his disciples. As Jesus walked by, John looked at him and declared, “Look! There is the Lamb of God!” When John’s two disciples heard this, they followed Jesus.
~John 1:35-37 NLT

John starts out with two disciples and Jesus has zero.  But then when John announces again who Jesus is, those two disciples begin to follow Jesus.  John 2 : Jesus 0.  John 0 : Jesus 2.  These are Jesus’ first two followers.

Jesus looked around and saw them following. “What do you want?” he asked them.
They replied, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”
“Come and see,” he said.
~John 1:38-39a NLT

“Come and See.”  The first followers of Jesus were responding to an invitation to “come and see.”  So they did.

It was about four o’clock in the afternoon when they went with him to the place where he was staying, and they remained with him the rest of the day.
~John 1:39b NLT

So they spend the day with Jesus.  Do you think if they had a bad experience we would have heard about it?  Their experience that day with Jesus was good, really good.  And they passed that experience on.  It was written down and now we’re reading about it 2000 years later because it didn’t just stop with those first two disciples.

Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of these men who heard what John said and then followed Jesus. Andrew went to find his brother, Simon, and told him, “We have found the Messiah” (which means “Christ”).  Then Andrew brought Simon to meet Jesus.
~John 1:40-42a NLT

Andrew, one of Jesus’ first two followers, goes first thing to his brother, Simon, and tells him about their experience.  First thing.  He calls him on his cell phone (OK, maybe not) and says, “You’re never going to believe who I saw.”  Have you ever done that?  Call someone immediately after you had an experience and tell them, “You’re never going to believe this.  I don’t have time to talk about it.  You’ve just got to come and see.”  Then Simon comes to experience and encounter Jesus himself.

First Jesus invites two of John’s followers to “come and see” and then one of those followers invites his brother to “come and see.”  But it doesn’t stop there.  Jesus keeps inviting.

The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Come, follow me.” Philip was from Bethsaida, Andrew and Peter’s hometown.
~John 1:43-44 NLT

Here’s another invitation.  This one from Jesus to Philip.  There’s an interesting point here about who Philip was.  He was from the same town that two of Jesus’ other three followers were from.  This probably means that Philip saw people he knew and trusted.  He had an affinity with those who were already following Jesus.  Invitation always flows easiest when it is along lines of affinity.  People who are like you are more likely to trust your invitation.  That’s not to say that you shouldn’t invite people who are different than you, but that Jesus begins with the low hanging fruit.  It gets tougher from there.

Jesus is currently in Bethany and decides to go to Galilee.  Galilee is about 60-70 miles from where they’re at.  This means  that they would be walking about the same distance it would be for us to walk from Lansing to Grand Rapids or Ann Arbor.  It would take them about 20-25 hours to cover this distance.  They were about to spend some really significant time together.  Philip is on board because he trusts Andrew and Simon who are from his own home town. But Philip reaches out to someone who is at first a bit skeptical.

Philip went to look for Nathanael and told him, “We have found the very person Moses and the prophets wrote about! His name is Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.”
“Nazareth!” exclaimed Nathanael. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”
~John 1:45-46a NLT

Nathanael isn’t quite as open as the other four have been thus far.  He’s skeptical about Nazareth and anyone born there.  It would be like me coming up to you and saying, “Hey do you want to walk to Ann Arbor with this guy I just met from Dansville.”  It would be a little different if I said he was from LA, Hollywood, New York, or Miami.  Maybe he’d have some interesting stories to tell.  But Dansville?  I drove through there once when I was lost.  But Philip is thinking, “I had this great experience with Jesus this one day, but I can’t really explain it.  I don’t have time or words.”  So…

“Come and see for yourself,” Philip replied.
~John 1:46b NLT

Phillip basically says, “Don’t take my word for it, just come and see, check it out for yourself.”  So let’s see where we’re at.  The first followers of Jesus began when Andrew invited Peter.  Philip invited Nathanael.  And Jesus invited them all.

There’s a really simple strategy ingrained in the culture of the church from the very beginning: come and see.  This strategy results in at first a few individuals, then a few dozen, then a few hundred, to several thousands, millions, and even billions.  The early followers of Jesus didn’t try to explain.  They just said, “Come and see.”  They invited saying, “I think I’ve found what I’m looking for.  I’ve found grace, mercy, acceptance, hope, new life, and a fresh start.”

There’s a big churchy word for what’s going on here.  It’s called “evangelism.”  Ouch.  It’s the word we love to hate.  But evangelism simply means “spreading the good news.”  Over time we’ve complicated things.  Most of us have a negative connotation with this word because we’ve had a bad experience with an evangelist.  When we think of evangelism we think of somebody like Billy Sunday, a White Sox player turned preacher:

Or we think of a bad experience being an evangelist like this awkward invite:

But evangelism isn’t any of those things.  It’s just sharing the experience you’ve had with those around you.  “I can’t explain it, you’ve just got to experience it.”  Think about it this way.  There’s all kinds of things around us that you already do this with.  Have you been to the Hawk Island Tubing Park?  Our Dad Kid Night Out group has gone twice now.  I can’t explain how much fun it is to ride down an icy hill bumping back and forth between ice walls.  You’ve just got to try it out, especially with your kids.  Or have you tried the chocolate cheese at the MSU Dairy Store?  I know.  It sounds weird, right?  Chocolate and cheese?  Chocolate cheese?  You’ve just got to go check it out and try some for yourself.  It’s better than you can imagine.  Speaking of cheese, have you bought cheese at Hills Cheese at the Lansing City Market?  I know it sounds kind of old fashioned to go buy cheese from a cheese store.  But you get to try any cheese they’ve got before you buy it.  You’ve just got to go try it out.  Or have you ever been to the Dickens Pub? It’s in the basement of The English Inn.  It’s Sarah and my favorite pub in the entire Lansing region.  There’s maybe twelve seats in the whole place.  There’s just something about it.  I can’t explain it.  You’ve just got to come and see it some time.

It’s that simple.  You have a new experience that others haven’t had.  You start with “listen to me…come and see.”  Or let me give you one more.  Have you been to Tom and Chee downtown?  I tried this grilled cheese donut.  Yeah.  Grilled cheese donut.  It has mascarpone and lemon all grilled inside a donut.  Sounds weird right?  Forget it.  I can’t explain it.  You’ve just got to experience it for yourself.   Just come and see.

The goal of the first followers of Jesus was not to explain something.  The goal was to experience someone.  Jesus needs to be experienced & encountered, not explained.

I know what you’re thinking, “But you’re talking about coming to church, not experiencing Jesus.”  Jesus thought of this.  He was very intentional about creating a community of followers.  It was never just about one person and Jesus. It was always about one person and Jesus in a community of people.  Jesus instructed people to invite others.  Paul, the first missionary of the church and the author of many of the books of the Bible, understood this community as “the body of Christ.”  This community is the body of Christ that when it is at its best allows you to experience and encounter Jesus in a way that you never could just on your own.  I can’t fully explain it, but when you experience it, it’s something amazing.  The church at its best is a community where people can come and experience Jesus in a healthy way.

Lisa Pender, a partner in our church has a daughter named Colleen.  Lisa and Colleen are some of the biggest inviters in our church.  And it’s not because Lisa has all her questions answered and this life completely figured out.  It’s because Lisa listens to sermons at work and that starts conversations.  It’s because when her daughter invites a friend and that friend comes, they put the name tags on the inside roof of her car and that starts conversations.  She’s simply seeking to follow Jesus and in the process inviting others to seek with her where she’s found some of what she’s looking for.

So the goal of Sycamore Creek isn’t to be big.  The goal is to help others experience what we experience, Jesus.  But when we do that, it’s likely that we will get bigger and bigger.  Because how many people in our area don’t belong to a church?  Lots and lots and lots.  You have the opportunity to do for someone else what someone did for you: invite them to come and see.

If you’re here for the first time, you may skeptical, but if you’ll keep coming, over time you’ll see as you experience Jesus.  Jesus is someone hard to explain, you just have to come and see.

* Based on a sermon originally by Joel Thomas