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Curious

January 6, 2015 by Leave a Comment

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Hello: My Name Is Sycamore Creek Church – Curious
Sycamore Creek Church
January 4/5, 2014
Tom Arthur

Happy New Year, Friends!

I bet you ask lots of questions about God, faith, and life.  I know I do.  I’ve always been full of questions about the faith.  I grew up in a Christian home, and prayed for Jesus to come into my heart when I was five years old.  It was a real commitment, but the commitment of a five-year-old needs to grow as that five-year-old grows.  As I got into high school I began asking lots of questions about this whole faith and Jesus thing.

When I was in high school I set up a meeting with my pastor to ask him a question that came up during my time of reading the Bible.  Why did Jesus tell people not to say who he was after he had healed them?  That was the beginning of my formal search for answers to my questions.  I remember that meeting with my pastor, whose name happened to be Tommy, a very good meeting.  I wasn’t chastised for asking questions about the Bible.  He even seemed encouraged that I was asking questions about the Bible.  There even seemed to be a pretty good answer to that particular question.  Either Jesus was still figuring out what kind “messiah” he would be or he was concerned that his healings would lead to crowds that wanted him to be a “king.”

When I got into college, some of those questions led me to leave the Christian faith for a while.  What I found out when I left Christianity was that there wasn’t any more certainty on the side of unbelief.  The only difference was that unbelief seemed to offer no ultimate hope or meaning, whereas belief offered ultimate meaning and hope.  Eventually I came back to put my trust in Jesus, in spite of the uncertainty I felt.  But the questions remained.  Here are some of the questions I’ve asked over the years:

  1. If you have to hear about Jesus to go to heaven, what happens to the Native Americans?
  2. Why should I trust the Bible?  Are there any errors in the Bible?
  3. Why are there two different stories of creation in the Bible?
  4. Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?
  5. If Cain and Able were the first children of Adam and Eve, then who did Cain marry?  His sister?
  6. Where do the dinosaurs fit in?
  7. How can evolution and faith work together?  Can they?
  8. What am I supposed to do with all these seemingly arcane rules in the Old Testament?
  9. Why does God tell the Israelites to wipe out everyone, including all the children and even the animals?
  10. Is it OK to swear?
  11. If sex outside marriage is wrong, what exactly is sex?  Does oral sex count?
  12. What does God think about people with same sex attraction?
  13. What if the Greek for “faith in Jesus” can also be translated “faith(fullness) of Jesus” as I learned in my seminary Greek classes?  What does that mean for what I believe that we are not saved by “faith in Jesus” but by the “faithfulness of Jesus?”

So while I’ve always been very curious about questions of faith, God, and life, I’ve mostly committed to following Jesus except for that short time in college.  My curiosity and my commitment have always made me just a little bit weird.

I’m not the only one asking questions.  I asked my friends on Facebook what questions they’ve asked about faith, God, and life.  Here are some of their questions:

  1. If faith is a gift from God (Eph 2:8), then does God not give some that gift so they can be saved? Does God draw everyone? (John 6:44) What is a person’s part in faith?
  2. How does God care about a little speck of dust like me when He created the universe? Why is it so hard to obtain faith when it’s so free to have it?
  3. How do I make the church relevant in my life?
  4. Why does it seem like most people who don’t believe in God, choose to come to God when they are having difficulty in life?

Here’s some good news for all the question askers at Sycamore Creek Church and in our community.  Sycamore Creek Church is curious, creative, and compassionate.  We’re starting a three-week series today called “Hello: My Name Is Sycamore Creek Church.”  We’re going to spend three-weeks introducing ourselves to the community and remembering what hasn’t changed, even if we have changed our Sunday morning venue.  While we are no longer a “Church in a School” (are we a “Church in a Church”?) we are still curious, creative, and compassionate.  But what does each of those things mean when applied to a church?

Here’s a question to begin the whole thing: where did “Curious, Creative, Compassionate” come from?  Good question.  When we started our Church in a Diner, we were looking for a tag line to describe the kind of community that we were going to be.  It had to be faithful to who we were and it had to be catchy enough to grab the attention of someone who didn’t really see church as something they were interested in.  And it had to be a quick way to describe to them what we were doing, an “elevator speech” if you will.  I believe it was Amberlee McCloud and I who came up with these three words.  Once we had them down on paper, we realized that they didn’t just describe Church in a Diner but these three words captured and described all of Sycamore Creek Church in a way that was faithful to who we have always been and who we wanted to continue to be.  So today let’s look at the first of these three words: Curious.

Merriam-Webster has two definitions of curious:

cu·ri·ous adjective \?kyu?r-?-?s\
1. having a desire to learn or know more about something or someone
2. strange, unusual, or unexpected
~Merriam-Webster

The first definition is obvious.  Sycamore Creek Church welcomes all your questions about God.  You don’t have to leave your questions at the door.  As you heard, I’ve had my fair share of questions too.  Jesus seems to be open to having questions and not being so certain about everything.  When a father brings his son to Jesus and asks if he can heal him, Jesus responds that he can heal him if he believes.  The father honestly presents his uncertainty and questions to Jesus.  We read:

The father instantly cried out, “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!”
~Mark 9:24 NLT

So what does Jesus do?  I’d guess that Jesus would say, “Well, go get your questions figured out and when you can believe without any questions, then come back and see me, and we’ll see what I can do.”  But that’s not what he does.  He heals the father’s boy.  He meets him where he’s at, questions and all.

In the book of Proverbs, the wisdom book of the Bible we read:

It is God’s privilege to conceal things and the king’s privilege to discover them.
~Proverbs 25:2 NLT

God likes mysteries and gives us things to hunt for.  God gives us things to ask questions about so that we can discover answers.  This is a theme that various church leaders have been exploring for hundreds of years.  St. Anselm was a church leader during the 12th century and his motto was “faith seeking understanding.”  He wrote:

“I long to understand in some degree your [God’s] truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe–that unless I believed, I should not understand.”
~St. Anselm (12th Century Church Leader)

Anselm believed that sometimes you have to believe first before you can understand.  He also believed that it was just fine to have faith but then to seek answers to questions you’ve got.  Apparently this meant that faith usually comes before answers.  Faith leads to curiosity.

So the first definition of “curiosity” is seeking understanding.  But there’s a second less familiar definition of curiosity.  Curiosity also means unusual or peculiar.  When we decide to make a commitment to follow Jesus even though we’ve still got questions, we become somewhat peculiar.  This isn’t really new.  Peter, one of Jesus’ closest followers said:

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that you should show forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
~1 Peter 2:9 AKJV

Following Jesus even when we’ve got questions, even when we’re uncertain makes us weird.  In our day and age, we value certainty.  We value having everything figured out before we make commitments.  But if you wait to get everything figured out before you make any commitment, you’ll never make any commitments.  Making a commitment to follow Jesus can make you kind of odd, unusual, peculiar, or curious.

1.     Be curious about what the Bible/God says about a topic
So I’d like to offer you three practices of curiosity.  First, be curious about what the Bible says about a topic.  When Paul showed up in Berea and taught there we are told that the Bereans were a curious bunch:

And the people of Berea were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, and they listened eagerly to Paul’s message. They searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth.
~Acts 17:11 NLT

You see, the Bereans were curious if what Paul was teaching was in line with the Bible.  So they dove into the Bible to see what it said.  Now there are some things that are important to understand about being curious about the Bible.  First, the Bible is sometimes very complex.  Even the Bible says this about itself sometimes.  Peter, one of Jesus’ closest followers and the author of two books in the Bible said that Paul, the first missionary of the church and author of several books of the Bible, was sometimes hard to understand:

This [teaching] is what our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom God gave him speaking of these things in all of his letters. Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as they do with other parts of Scripture.
~1 Peter 3:15-16 NLT

If Peter found Paul complex to understand, then don’t get too down on yourself when you read the Bible and don’t always understand it!

Second, the Bible can sometimes seem to contradict itself, although this is rarely at a fundamental level.  Take the four books that tell the story of Jesus’ life: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  All four tell the story with different details and even seem to tell it in a different order.  But they all agree on some very basic things: Jesus lived, he died, and was raised from the dead!

Third, interpret the unclear sections through the clear sections of the Bible.  If you’re not sure what to think about something in the Bible, then let the things you do know about the Bible guide your curiosity.  If you still don’t know what to do, always err toward love.  St. Augustine, a 4th and 5th century church leader said:

Whoever, then, thinks that he understands the Holy Scriptures, or any part of them, but puts such an interpretation upon them as does not tend to build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, does not yet understand them as he ought.
~St. Augustine (4th – 5th Century Church Leader), On Christian Doctrine

Fourth, reading a little sporadically is better than reading none at all.  Sometimes we really trip ourselves up on not reading every day or as consistently as we would like.  It may be helpful to know that I’m just now getting into day 300 of a yearly Bible.  Sounds pretty good right?  What if I told you I began in January of 2012?  I’ve taken over two years to read a “yearly” Bible.  Yeah.  Be patient with yourself.  Don’t beat yourself up.  Reading consistently is great.  Reading a little every once in a while is better than none at all.  Four websites that I’ve found helpful for reading the Bible include:

www.pray-as-you-go.org
www.youversion.com
www.biblegateway.com
www.blueletterbible.org.

2.     Be curious about what others say about it (especially those who disagree)
So you’re practicing curiosity by searching for what the Bible says about a topic.  A second way to practice curiosity is to be curious what others say about a topic.  It can be especially helpful to seek out differing perspectives on the issue.  Who disagrees with you?  Why do they disagree?  How do they see the issue and the answer?  What questions are they asking?

Seek out what others are saying by participating in a faith community.  Listen to a sermon each week.  Participate live or download the sermon if you missed it, or read it on my blog.  Or seek out others in a small group.  This week we begin GroupLINK for our spring semester’s small groups.  There are over 20 small groups that you can join to begin to build spiritual friendships with people who can indulge your curiosity.  Or seek out what others say about a topic through books or videos or audio online.  I continue to wrestle with the question of homosexuality.  I’ve read about ten books on the topic that cover the whole spectrum.  I’m being curious by seeking out the perspective of other people, some who might not agree with me.  Warning: reading a lot of books can leave you with a lot more question than you began.  Whenever I’m reading several books about a topic I’m reminded of this wisdom from the Bible:

Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
~Ecclesiastes 12:12

So nurture curiosity by asking others what they think about a topic.

3.     Be curious in prayer
The third way to practice curiosity is to be curious in prayer.  James, Jesus’ brother says:

If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.
~James 1:5 NLT

If you don’t know what to think about a topic or if you’ve got questions that you don’t have answers to, then ask God for answers.  Or ask God for wisdom to be able to ask the right questions or better questions.  Or ask God to give you help in seeking answers or to be able to commit while still having questions.

Over the years of being a student, I’ve compiled a bunch of prayers for study.  Here is one of my favorite prayers for praying before you begin studying something:

Most blessed Lord, send the grace of Your Holy Spirit on me to strengthen me that I may learn well the subject I am about to study and by it become a better person for Your glory, the comfort of my family and the benefit of Your Church and our world. Amen

Curious About Our Community – Demographics
So what does it look like when you take this penchant for curiosity and point it out at our community?  We as a church have just moved into a new building.  This means we’ve been curious about our new neighbors.  A couple of weeks ago we hired a demographics expert, Tom Bandy, who helped us learn about our community.  What we found out was that there’s a key group we’re reaching that demographers call “Singles and Starters.”  Experian, the credit reporting company, describes this in this way: “Young singles starting out, and some starter families, in diverse urban communities.”  SCC is currently made up of about 14% “Singles and Starters.”  Here’s the really cool thing.  The biggest group right around our new building is “Singles and Starters.”  They make up almost 28% of the population just around our new church building.  Here’s what Tom says about this group:

“These younger singles, single parents, and ‘friends with benefits’ are not just too busy for traditional church. The church is not on their radar screen. It doesn’t easily fit into any part of their lifestyle…at work, play, or background soundtrack. Music may play constantly in their minds, but spirituality may not… For many people in this group, religion is not particularly relevant now, and perhaps not in the foreseeable future, but they are remarkably open to surprise.”
~Tom Bandy

So apparently this is a group that is somewhat hard to reach.  They make up the largest group of people that we’re already reaching, and there are twice as many of them right around this building.  Wow!  Tom Bandy uses these words and phrases to describe this group:

Looking for “Heroes of Faith”, high energy, contagious enthusiasm, online, music soundtrack in the background, progressive, sociable, seeking fulfillment, high drive for affluence, high pursuit of personal growth.
~Tom Bandy

We’re going to continue to be curious about our new neighbors.  And we’re going to continue to invite them to be curious with us.  We’ll invite them to be curious about the Bible.  We’ll invite them to be curious with our community.  We’ll invite them to be curious with God in prayer.

Are you ready to be curious?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Angels’ Song

January 6, 2015 by Leave a Comment

Christmas2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The First Carols of Christmas – The Angels’ Song*
Sycamore Creek Church
Christmas Eve, 2014
Tom Arthur

Angel’s Song: Luke 2:8-14 NRSV

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.  Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.  But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!

Merry Christmas Friends! 

What do you expect at Christmas?  Often we don’t get whatever it is that we expect.  I came across this prank that Jimmy Kimmel got his viewers to play on their kids.  He asked them to give their kids the worst Christmas present.  This is what happened:

 

 

I kind of cringe watching that video.  It feels a bit cruel at times.  But it makes a good point, whatever we get at Christmas is often not quite what we were expecting.  It even feels cruel at times.  Sometimes this is because our expectations are so high that they can’t realistically be met.  Or sometimes it’s because we just have the wrong expectations. Did you catch that the angels came to the shepherds “by night”?  Here’s a problem I want to deal with tonight:

Christmas can be a very dark time.

I think Christmas acts like a magnifier.  It magnifies the good, but it also magnifies the bad.  So if things are generally going well in your life, then Christmas makes the good even better.  But if things are generally going bad in your life, then Christmas makes the bad even worse!

Christmas can be a very dark time.  This is the case literally.  December 21st is the winter solstice and that’s the shortest day of the year.  In the darkness of this time of the year, many suffer from S.A.D. (Seasonal Affective Disorder).  For others Christmas is an emotionally dark time.  Maybe you’re still grieving from a death in the family.  Maybe this is the first Christmas you’ve had without a loved one.  Or maybe an addiction is wreaking emotional havoc in your life.  Or perhaps you’re struggling with something like depression.  Christmas can also be dark relationally.  Maybe your family is broken or maybe you don’t have any family and you’re just plain lonely.  For others of us Christmas is a dark time financially.  We have no money to celebrate Christmas or we have spent too much money celebrating Christmas and have taken on way too much debt to make Christmas fit our expectations.  For many of us, Christmas is a dark time.

Christmas isn’t a celebration because everything is right with the world.  We need Christmas for the very fact that we’re in the dark.  The circumstances of Jesus’ birth are certainly in the dark.  Jesus is born in poverty, placed in a barn feeding trough.  He is born to an unwed teenage girl who lived in the affordable housing section of her day.  The first people invited to Christmas were the night-shift shepherds.  Shepherds were kind of like the garbage collection job of their day.  And it wasn’t just any shepherds invited to Christmas.  It was the night-shift grave-yard shift shepherds.

Maybe this Christmas is the worst Christmas or this year has been the worst year you’ve ever had.  When you’re walking through your worst Christmas ever, where do you turn?  If you don’t naturally turn to the story of the birth of the savior, then I’m even more glad you’ve come here tonight, to hear this story of Christmas.  It’s my hope that in the midst of the darkness you might find some peace in the birth of Jesus.  This leads to a basic question I want to deal with tonight:

Do you have more peace than you did last year?

Do you know anyone named Irene?  Irene is Greek for “peace.”  “Irene” was popular at the turn of the 20th century but then fell out of favor.  It’s making a comeback though at the turn of the 21st century.  Irene is the word that Luke uses in the angels song:

Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!

Peace means something that was once broken or fractured has been brought back together.  In the New Testament portion of the Bible (that’s the part of the Bible that comes after Jesus’ birth), there are ninety-two different instances when the word “Irene” is used.  About half of those references to peace refer to peace with God and the other half refer to peace between humans.  I want to explore both tonight.

Peace with God
What does it mean to have peace with God?  I’ll never forget Barb Smith.  Barb came to our church in my first year of being pastor here.  SCC welcomes everyone, but we tend to attract a younger crowd.  Barb’s silver hair stuck out a bit.  We send $5 gift cards to first time guests so I sent her a card.  She sent it back and told me to give it someone else.  Barb came back several weeks in a row and then I didn’t see her much.  So a couple of weeks later I called her.  When she picked up her phone she was in Missouri visiting family.  She told me that she had just been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and was given three to four months to live.  She was doing some last visiting with her family.  The peace in her voice over the phone was palpable.  I asked her if I could pray with her on the phone, and she really appreciated that, but what I really wanted to do was to ask this woman who seemed to have so much peace in the face of her imminent death to pray for me.  A couple of weeks later she was back to her home in Lansing and asked me to meet with her to plan her funeral.  They train you to plan funerals at seminary, but the training always assumes that the person has already died.  While I sat in Barb’s living room planning her funeral with her, I saw again the peace that she had.  There was some fear of the dying process and the pain involved, but Barb was not afraid of death.  Her trust and hope was in Jesus, who also died but was raised from the dead by the power of God.

Friends, to be at peace with God means entrusting our life and even our death into the hands of God.  Being at peace with God means trusting that we have been forgiven through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection.  Being at peace with God means receiving the peace that passes understanding, a peace so deep that even when we look death in the face, we know that Jesus has already walked through the valley of the shadow of death and will walk alongside us too.

The angels said that “A Savior” would be born, but what will the savior save us from?  During Jesus’ time, Israelites probably hoped to be saved from the Roman Empire.  If you were around during the American Revolution, you might want to be saved from the British Empire.  Today, if you are black you might want to be saved from the police.  But Jesus doesn’t really promise to save us from any of these things.  He promises to save us from us, from ourselves.  Through Jesus we are saved from our narcissism that makes everything about ourselves.  We are saved from our unforgiveness, which is like drinking rat poison and hoping the rat dies.  We are saved from our bitterness that turns any joy into rottenness.  We are saved from our prejudice and racism that steals the gifts of a rich diversity in our relationships.  Ultimately we are saved from our rebellion from God, a rebellion that cuts us off from our creator, the very source of our being.  At Christmas we cannot forget that Jesus is born to ultimately die, a death that rescues us from ourselves.

So here’s a big question for you this Christmas:

Are you more at peace with God than you were last year?

Peace with others
I mentioned that there are ninety-two references to peace in the New Testament.  About half speak of peace with God, and half speak about peace between humans.  So how are things going living at peace with those around you?  What are you doing to push back the darkness? To bring peace to this world?

Sometimes we get really tripped up on the whole “world peace” thing.  Right?  I mean, who can really bring about world peace?  We pray for it.  We hope for it.  But that prayer and hope is so big that we kind of give up on even trying.  I like what Mother Teresa had to say about it.  She encouraged us to do small things with great love.  Small things don’t often seem like they’re fighting back the darkness but they may do more than you can imagine.

One of my favorite movie series is wrapping up this month: The Hobbit.  Hobbits are small creatures about half the size of a normal human being.  They’re called “Halflings” because of their size.  They don’t seem like creatures who would save the world.  They’re too small.  But Gandalf the wizard sees something powerful in their smallness:

 

 

Gandalf says that Saruman, another wizard, “believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I have found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay.”

Jesus lived and taught about peace in these small kinds of ways.  He taught us to love our enemies.  This isn’t about warm feelings, but about doing loving things toward them (even when they don’t deserve it).  Jesus taught us to forgive our enemies.  He taught us to turn the other cheek and to give someone our shoes when they steal our coat.  He tells us to forgive over and over again, and the prayer he taught us tells us that we’ll be forgiven in the way that we forgive others.  He told us to do acts of mercy to those who are in need.  He told the story of a man who is robbed and beaten and thrown on the side of the road.  Two church leaders walk by and leave him in the ditch.  Then a Samaritan walks by and helps him out.  Samaritans were hated by Jews.  Jesus is breaking down racial lines and prejudices in this simple story about helping someone who is different than you, even someone who might not do the same thing for you.

Christmas isn’t just about being at peace with God.  It’s about being at peace with those around us.  So here’s a question for you:

Are you more at peace with others than you were last year?

I find that a benefit of being part of a faith community like SCC, a community that seeks to be curious, creative, and compassionate is that we’re always doing our best to provide opportunities to do small things with great love.  This past year small groups socialized and sang carols at local nursing homes.  Another small group offered coffee to the homeless or near homeless downtown.  Individuals gave food, care, and rides to those stuck at home by health.  Together we collected over 5000 items for Compassion Closet, a personal needs bank in Lansing.  We served meals and built friendships at Maplewood Women and Children’s Center.  We helped organize two different garden work days at North Elementary.  Last year at Christmas Eve we received and gave away over $11,000.  Over all our years giving away Christmas Eve offerings we’ve received and given away over $46,000.  If you add in all the other offerings for missions that take place other than Christmas Eve, the total is more like $176,000 or about $12,000/year!  This year our four Christmas Eve offerings will be entirely given away to three things:

1.     Our Nicaragua Medical Missions

2.     Local Emergency Needs

3.     The Imagine No Malaria Campaign

We are seeking to be a compassionate community that is creating more peace in our world through small acts of kindness done with great love.  So here’s another question for you this Christmas:

Are you creating more peace in the world than you were last year?

If you don’t know where to begin, then begin with prayer.  Begin by asking God to help you have peace.  Here’s a prayer that you might find helpful:

God, I want peace.  I want peace with you and peace with those around me.  Forgive me for the ways I’ve ignored you and not sought to live at peace with others.  Give me the peace that passes understanding and help me walk in the way of Jesus so that I might have more peace in my life this year than last.  Amen.

Friends, if you’re ready to live at peace with God and peace with others, would you let me know? Drop me an email (tomarthur@sycamorecreekchurch.org) or check out my blog post: So You Want To Follow Jesus.

 

 

*This sermon is based on a sermon first preached by Adam Hamilton

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The Benedictus

December 22, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Christmas2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The First Carols of Christmas – The Benedictus
Sycamore Creek Church
December 21, 2014
Tom Arthur

Merry Christmas Friends!

Christmas and Christmas Eve are just around the corner.  I’m excited about SCC’s Christmas Eve services this year.  We’re going to be 1 Church in 2 Locations over 3 Days with 4 Christmas Eve services!  We’ve sent out 10,000 postcards to our neighbors inviting them to celebrate Christmas Eve when it works for them.  We handed out almost 1000 Christmas Eve invites with MSU Men’s Basketball schedules on the back at last Sunday night’s game.  So how is your own inviting going?  I want to continue to encourage and challenge you to invest in and invite three people to Christmas Eve this year.  Write those names down, and then pray for them.  Get on our Facebook event page right now and share it on your own timeline.  Make some special individual invites through Facebook.  Do it right now.  I think it’s going to be a great Christmas at SCC this week!

So today I want to wrestle with a problem.  On one level it’s a problem we’ve just been dealing with.  Here’s the problem: we tend to want the benefits without the cost.  We don’t want to go all the way.  We want the ends without the means.  We want to be fans of Jesus, not followers of Jesus.  We want the benefits without the cost.

When it comes to our church, we want the church to grow and reach more people, but we’re not always willing to take the challenge of inviting someone.  But this shows up in all kinds of other places too.  Take for example my own desire to play the guitar.  I’ve always wanted to learn to play the guitar.  Jeremy, our worship leader, led a small group this past summer that was about learning to play the guitar.  I participated and while I was in the group I set about fifteen minutes aside each day to practice.  But since the group has been done, I haven’t really wanted to put the time in that is needed to learn to play it.  I want the benefit of knowing how to play the guitar and the joy that comes with it, but I don’t really want the cost of setting time aside each day to practice and learn.

Wanting the benefit without the cost shows up all over the place.  We want money without work.  We want energy without exercise.  We want health without nutrition.  We want knowledge without study.  We want healthy relationships without confession and forgiveness.  We want happiness without holiness.  We want salvation without righteousness.

Today we’re continuing a series called The First Carols of Christmas.  We love singing Christmas carols this time of the year, but do you know the first carols?  There are four books in the Bible that tell the story of Jesus’ life.  One of them was written by a doctor whose name was Luke.  Luke tells the story of Jesus’ birth in a unique way.  It’s almost like a musical.  People are talking normally and then all of a sudden they break into song.  There are four songs in Luke’s telling of Jesus’ birth and one scene that was later turned into a song.  We’ve look at two of those so far: Gabriel’s Ave Maria and Mary’s Magnificat.  Today I want to look at Zechariah’s Song which is also called the Benedictus, or Blessing.  I want to explore the cost that Zechariah sings about that goes along with the benefit.

Zechariah is the father of a better known figure, John the Baptist.  Zechariah is a priest, and his wife, Elizabeth, is barren.  One day Zechariah is chosen by lot to offer incense in the temple.  While in the temple he meets Gabriel who tells him he will have a son, and he is to name his son John.  Zechariah isn’t quite so sure about this, because he and Elizabeth are old and past the childbearing years.  So he asks Gabriel how he will know this is going to happen.  For his lack of faith, Gabriel strikes Zechariah mute until John is born.  So Zechariah goes home mute and he and Elizabeth conceive a child.  He may not have had much faith with Gabriel but he had enough faith to jump into the sack with his wife!  In the meantime, Gabriel goes to Mary, and says, “Hail Mary, full of grace!”  This is the Ave Maria.  Then Mary goes to visit Elizabeth and sings the Magnificat.  Then Elizabeth gives birth to a baby.  They take him to the temple to be circumcised, and the temple leaders ask what his name will be.  Elizabeth says that his name will be “John”, and the temple leaders wonder why he’s not being named after his father, Zechariah.  Zechariah writes “His name is John,” on a tablet.  His tongue is loosed, and he is able to speak again.  At this point he breaks into a song that is usually called the Benedictus (Blessing) or the Song of Zechariah.

I found an animated version of this scene that I think shows well the musical nature of this story.  The animation is for children, but I think all ages can gain something from watching it:

 

 

Here’s the Benedictus as found in the Bible:

Luke 1:67-79 NRSV
Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy: Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

The verse I really want to focus on is this one:

Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

Two Ways We Serve God – Holiness
We serve God in holiness and righteousness.  Let’s look at both.  First, holiness.  Holiness means being set apart for God.  What does it mean to be set apart?  Well, we set things apart for special uses all the time.  I set apart special decorations for Christmas.   They are holy.  I set apart special clothes for working in the yard.  Those clothes are holy.  I set apart special drinking glasses for special drinks.  One set of glasses for wine, one set for coffee, and one special set for anything else.  They are holy.  Then I have special, set apart time with my boys every Friday morning.  That time is holy.  I have special, set apart time with Sarah every Friday night.  That time is holy.  There is also special, set apart intimacy for marriage.  It’s called sex.  Sex is holy.  Then there’s special, set apart time for family vacations.  Vacation time is holy.  There’s special, set apart money for the church, my tithe.  It’s holy money.  We have a special, set apart candle for baptism anniversaries.  It’s a holy candle.  I have a special, set apart journal for prayers.  It’s holy.  I have special, set apart space to pray.  It’s holy space.  I have special, set apart toys for long trips in the car with our young boys.  Those toys are holy.

Speaking of those holy special toys for longs trips…After getting home from a trip to Indy for thanksgiving and putting away those “special toys,” I had this conversation with my four-year-old:
Micah: Daddy, where are the special toys?
Me: I put them away.
Micah: Why?
Me: They wouldn’t be special if we had them out all the time.
Micah: I don’t want them to be special.

Isn’t that just about how we all react to what is holy or set apart?  We say, “I don’t want it to be special.  I don’t want it to be holy.”  We want the benefit of special things without the cost, being set aside.  We want the happiness that comes with holiness but not the cost of it being set apart.

Two Ways We Serve God – Righteousness
Holiness is one way of describing the cost of salvation, but another way of describing it is righteousness.  Righteousness is being in a state of right relationships with God, oneself, others, your stuff, and the created world.  Righteousness and justice are closely related.  In fact, they are often the same exact word in the Bible.  Righteousness is well being for all, a soundness through and through.  I’m reminded of a car I saw one time up north in Petoskey.  It was a real junker of car.  What I would have called a hoopty.  But this hoopty had some seriously righteous rims.  They were fine.  But somehow the whole thing didn’t work.  The rims were righteous but the car was not.  God wants the whole car, not just the rims.  Or as C.S. Lewis puts it:

God became a man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man.  It is not like teaching a horse to jump better and better but like turning a horse into a winged creature.
~C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Righteousness and holiness are the cost of salvation.  We often want to be saved, but we don’t want to be holy and righteous.  We don’t want to be set apart for God or to work on having right relationships.  So here’s a big question for today:

Are you more holy and righteous than you were last year?

Two Keys to Holiness and Righteousness – Self-Evaluation
What I want to do with the time we have left is give you two tips for being holy and righteous.  The first is to set aside regular time for self evaluation and examination.  I suggest starting with these three simple questions:

  1. Am I avoiding evil and avoiding doing harm?
  2. Am I doing good?
  3. Am I staying in love with God?

I use these three questions each morning while I’m journaling.  I reflect on the previous day and evaluate if I avoided harm and evil.  I reflect on whether I did good.  I reflect on whether I was intentional about staying in love with God.

I’ve created an inventory that we use around the end of each year or the beginning of each year here at SCC.  I also use it in our partnership classes.  It fleshes out these three simple rules into all areas of your life.  I’d suggest taking some time as 2014 wraps up and 2015 begins to take this inventory.  Then create an intentional spiritual growth plan for how you’ll seek God to help you improve in each area.

Two Keys to Holiness and Righteousness – Confession & Authenticity
If self-evaluation is the first key to holiness and righteousness, then confession is the second key.  Now confession brings up a lot of negative connotations for many of us.  We think of “going to confession” in a little booth and telling a priest our sins.  Kind of like this Seinfeld clip:

 

 

Confession isn’t so much about a little booth and priest as it is about being authentic with yourself, God, and others.  Here at SCC we seek to ignite authentic life in Christ and fan it into an all consuming flame.  Authentic life in Christ is the real deal, not the hypocrisy of saying you’re one thing when you really are another.  Now it’s impossible to stamp out all hypocrisy, we are humans after all.  But here at SCC we’re seeking to be holy and righteous by creating an environment where you can be open about who you really are.  When you examine yourself, do you share your faults with others?  If not, you’re missing out on some real opportunity for growth.  Take last week for example.  I started last week’s message confessing about the time I was in the back of a cop car.  I asked if anyone else wanted to claim that experience with me.  About a third of you have been in the back of a cop car.  Being authentic just means telling the truth about yourself, even when the truth hurts and isn’t pretty.  In this way, self-evaluation and confession lead to holiness and righteousness.

Being Light
Zechariah continues his song:

By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
~Luke 1:79 NRSV

I want to be that kind of a church.  I want to be the kind of church that gives light to those who are in darkness.  Giving light is not be being perfect or having all the answers.  But being light is about seeking holiness and righteousness.  Being light is about having the benefit of salvation because we were willing to pay the cost.  Giving light is about showing others who are in the darkness where you found light.  It’s about searching for healing from abuse.  It’s about searching for meaning amidst hopelessness, peace amidst a gluttony of stuff, friendships amidst loneliness, a way forward amidst confusion.  Giving light is about searching for God amidst uncertainty.

It’s my hope and prayer that SCC would be a community set apart to practice right relationships, a community inviting others into the light, into holiness and righteousness.  We invite them into that light especially at times like Christmas, and we do it every day. So let’s go back to that big question:

Are you more holy and righteous than you were last year? 

Prayer
God, I confess that I have not always set myself apart for you.  Too often I have wanted the benefits of following Jesus without actually following Jesus.  Forgive me, and continue to make me into a new person.  Make me into a person who is holy and righteous, set apart for a right relationship with you, with myself, with others, and with the world around me.  I give myself to you today.  In Jesus’ name and by the power of his Spirit working in me, amen.

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Magnificat*

December 17, 2014 by Leave a Comment

Christmas2014

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The First Carols of Christmas – Magnificat*
Sycamore Creek Church
December 14/15, 2014
Tom Arthur

Merry Christmas friends!

Have you ever sat in the back of a police car?  Anyone want to claim that one?  I will.  I’ve only sat in the back of a police car once.  It happened one night when I was in high school.  Some friends and I decided to try to impress some girls one night by taking them to what we called “The End of the World.”  “The End of the World” was a local quarry of some sort.  There was a kink in the fence that we would sneak through and hang out near the “edge” of the world.  As we finished up and were walking back to the car, we saw lights flashing and found police officers at our cars.  We were questioned about what we were doing and when they found that we were not drunk or high, they let us go home on our own.  I found out later that the company that owned the quarry was considering pressing criminal trespassing charges, but through my dad’s intervention, they dropped the charges.  We deserved the charges.  We had done the crime, but we were all shown some mercy that night.

Today we’re talking about mercy.  Mercy is not giving or getting something bad that you deserved.  This is in contrast to grace which we talked about last week.  Grace is giving or getting something good that was unearned.  A classic moment of grace is found in the movie, Les Miserables.  Jean Valjean, a paroled convict, steals silverware from a bishop who offers him hospitality. When he is caught, the bishop shows him an amazing mercy.

 

 

So when was a time you received mercy?  I asked my friends on Facebook about this and one friend, Tiffany, told of a time when she ran out of gas.  She called her dad expecting to be berated for her mistake.  Instead, he came and helped her saying, “We’ve all done it.”  The mercy her dad showed her in that moment has informed all of her own parenting since.  Another friend of mine, Marilyn, told the story of working in a high stress cancer clinic, having to do medical procedures and diagnostics she was not completely comfortable with.  She was patiently helped by a more experienced and knowledgeable colleague who never seemed to get upset or impatient with her lack of knowledge.  Another friend, Gretchen, told about a time when she was driving fifteen over and got pulled over.  The cop only gave her a ticket for five over which saved her from getting points on her record.

Of course, the right mix of mercy and justice is not always clear.  The struggle between mercy and justice is evident in places like Ferguson, Cleveland, and New York City where Michael Brown was shot by Darren Wilson, Tamir Rice was shot by Timothy Loehmann, and Eric Garner was put in a chokehold and strangled by Daniel Pantaleo.  Then there’s protests that have followed, most of which have been peaceful but the ones that get media attention turn violent.  There’s a problem we all face: We are quick to demand justice for others and mercy for ourselves.  Portia, in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice says, “In the course of justice, none of us should see salvation.”  One thing we can all agree upon is this: The world is broken.

Enter the Christmas Story…

Today we continue in a series called The First Carols of Christmas.  We like to sing Christmas Carols at Christmas but do you know about the first carols?  The book of Luke is one of four books that tell the story of Jesus’ life.  Luke’s telling of the birth of Jesus reads like a musical.  People are talking normally and then all of a sudden, they break into song.  There are four songs in Luke’s telling of Jesus’ birth and one scene that was later turned into a song.  Last week we looked at the scene of the archangel Gabriel telling Mary she would be pregnant that was turned into a song, the Ave Maria.  Today we’re looking at the song sung by Mary: The Magnificat.  “Magnificat” means to magnify, expand, or make great.   In the Magnificat, we’re going to learn about God’s mercy.  We’ll learn two things:

  1. God uses his power in merciful ways.
  2. God is merciful by using his strength to humble the powerful and lift the lowly.

Mary is one of the lowly. She is a young girl who is probably twelve or thirteen years old.  In ancient days, girls married and had children much younger than today.  Mary lived in Nazareth, the low income housing of Galilee.  Nazareth had a population of about a hundred.  God chose to come to a girl in Nazareth rather than Sepphoris, the capital of Galilee four miles northwest.  In Nazareth we find the most affordable housing option on the market: caves.  Mary was likely visited by Gabriel in a cave.  Ten days before Mary sings the Magnificat, Gabriel shows up and says, “Hail Mary, full of grace…”  You’re going to become pregnant and have a child.  Mary has not been sexually active so she is a bit befuddled by this declaration.  So Gabriel says God is going to cause her to become pregnant.  Now this is a detail of the story that is so familiar to us that it loses its impact on us.  Thomas Paine, one of the great founding fathers of America was a deist and skeptic of most things religious.  He wrote in his book, The Age of Reason, “Were any girl, that is now with child, to say, and even to swear to it, that she was gotten with child by a ghost, and that an angel told her so, would she be believed?”  No. She’d be locked up in a mental institute.  But back then she more likely would have been stoned by Joseph, her fiance’s family.  Mary is terrified and goes to Elizabeth, her old cousin, who also has had a surprising pregnancy in her old age.  Elizabeth lives a hundred miles away.  It is not unrealistic to think that Mary’s family is attempting to cover up Mary’s unwed pregnancy.  Mary comes to Elizabeth hoping to get some clarity on whether she is crazy or should be put death.  Elizabeth is filled with God’s Spirit and tells Mary that she’s not crazy.  Instead Mary is blessed.  At this point, having Elizabeth’s confirmation, joy finally grips Mary and she breaks out into song—The Magnificat.

Now the Magnificat is not just a touching and beautiful little song.  If you think that, you aren’t paying close attention.  The Magnificat is a very dangerous song.  It’s so dangerous that Kathleen Norris tells us that during the 1980s civil war in Guatemala, the military regime banned the reading of the Magnificat in public.  It is said that elsewhere in Nicaragua peasants carried copies of the Magnificat during similar repressive regimes.  The Chris Tomlin Song, My Soul Magnifies the Lord, a great song built on The Magnificat, cuts most of this dangerous stuff out.  So now that you know the context of The Magnificat, let’s read it:

Luke 1:46-55 NRSV
Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for the Mighty One has done great things for me and holy is his name.
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”

I think we can learn at least two things from The Magnificat.  First, God uses his power in merciful ways.  Second, God shows mercy by humbling the powerful and lifting up the lowly.  In other words, God shows mercy to those without power, which in comparison with God is all of us.  If we go back to Portia in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, we see the same sentiment:

Earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy season justice
~Portia (Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice)

Last week I asked this question: are you more grace-full this year than you were last year.  Today I ask you this question: Are you more merciful than you were last year?  I’d like to offer you three tips on nurturing mercy in your life.

1.     Forgive
Forgive those who have hurt you.  Let me give you a very small example from my own life.  Several years ago Sarah and I had a Subaru Legacy wagon that had served us quite well over the years.  It had nearly 200,000 miles on it and was rusting out in several places.  There were literally holes in the body of the car.  One day someone hit our car and put a dent in one of the body panels that was all rusted.  Technically, it was my right to have that panel replaced.  But this would have likely caused his insurance to go up.  The car was already rusted.  It had another dent in the hood from the time I hit a deer.  It wasn’t worth it.  So I just told him to forget about it and we went on our way.  I used my power in that moment to extend mercy rather than exact justice.

I’ve spoken a lot about forgiveness in the past.  Today I want to focus on one very practical indirect step: go watch the movie coming out on Christmas day, Unbroken.  You don’t have to go on Christmas day, but go see it or rent it when it comes out.  Unbroken tells the story of Louis Zamperini, a WWII POW in Japan who forgives his captors even after horrendous torture.  Louis Zamperini is a real person and the story is based on his life.  Few of you have faced harder situations of forgiveness.  You can learn powerful lessons about nurturing mercy through forgiveness from his story.

Become more merciful by practicing forgiveness in your life.

2.     Advocate for those who have less power.
Second, nurture mercy in life by advocating for those who have less power. Recently I had the opportunity to meet Nate Aquino, a staff attorney at Legal Services of South Central Michigan.  Nate’s job often consists of seeking mercy for others.  Legal Services advocates in civil lawsuits for those who can’t afford to pay for an attorney.  I learned that Nate could make a lot more money working elsewhere, but he likes making a difference and using his life’s privileges to serve those who haven’t had the same privileges.  If Nate was a lawyer during Jesus’ time, it is likely that he would have been an advocate for Mary or her neighbors, because he does a lot of affordable housing legal work.  One example of seeking mercy for the poor is in subsidized housing.  Technically, someone who receives subsidized housing is not allowed to have anyone else live with them, but following this rule is not always as easy as it sounds, and if you are caught with someone else living with you, you will not be allowed to receive help with housing again.  Nate advocates for people in this situation and is motivated by the bigger picture of showing mercy to those who don’t have as many resources in life.  Nate’s work encourages me to be merciful by advocating for the poor.

I came across another moment of mercy when I was reading about the protests in Ferguson.  Several black residents defended a gas station from looters that was owned by a white man.  Of course, the white man was in the minority in that particular context, and his black friends used their power of being in the majority to defend their friend.  While it may not be obvious from the media coverage, the peaceful protests outnumber the ones that turn violent.  These are moments when people of all colors come together to advocate for those who have less power.

If you’re a supervisor, advocate for your employees.  If you’re a husband, use your power to serve your wife rather than abusing her physically, verbally, or emotionally.  If you’re a parent, advocate for children.  If you’re in the majority, advocate for the minority.  If you’re rich, advocate for the poor.

Become more merciful by using whatever power you do have to advocate for those who have less power.

3.     Christmas Gifts
One last way to become more merciful is tied to how you celebrate Christmas.  Every year I challenge you to give away as much as you spend at Christmas.  This may seem a strange tie-in to mercy, but by nurturing a willingness to give up something (a gift a Christmas) to give something (a financial gift to a need), you nurture mercy in your own life.  You are in essence, using the cultural power of Christmas gift giving to make a difference in our world.  This Christmas season we’ll be receiving a special Christmas offering all the way through December, and especially on Christmas Eve, that will go to three things: our medical missions in Nicaragua, local emergency needs such as utilities and rent, and the Imagine No Malaria campaign of the United Methodist Church.  Pauley Perrette from NCIS used her own celebrity power to advocate for Imagine No Malaria:

 

 

This year Sarah and I decided that it was time to change the way we celebrate Christmas going into the future for good.  We wrote a letter to our families letting them know that we wanted them to no longer give us gifts for Christmas, but to give to our church’s Christmas offering whatever they would normally spend on us.  So this week Sarah’s parents gave me my Christmas present, a check to our church for the Christmas offering.  Together we all get the chance to become more merciful by giving Jesus a present on his birthday.

So three ways to nurture mercy in your life:

1. Forgive those who have hurt you.
2. Advocate for those who have less power than you.
3. Give away as much as you spend on yourself at Christmas.

A Community of Mercy
Imagine with me for a moment, a church full of people who were becoming more merciful.  Imagine with me for a moment a church that was a training ground for forgiveness.  Imagine with me a church that advocates for those on the bottom of society.  Imagine with me a church where everyone gave away as much as they spent on themselves at Christmas.  If you can imagine that, then you can imagine a church that blesses the community and region around us with God’s mercy.  While we are not perfect, I believe we are a church that is on the mercy road.  Why not extend an invitation to your friends, family, co-workers this Christmas to join us on that road of mercy?  This Christmas Eve we’ll be one church in two locations over three days celebrating Christmas Eve with four services.  Can’t make it on Christmas Eve because of family events?  Come on the Eve of Christmas Eve.  Can’t make it then?  Come on Monday to Christmas in a Diner.  Bring a friend and you both get a free $10 Christmas dinner.  What three people can you invite to Christmas Eve this year?  Would you spend some time praying about who you can invite and praying that God would open the door for you to invite them?  Imagine with me a church twice our size helping more and more people to be more merciful this year than they were last year.

Here’s a favorite prayer of mine that speaks to God’s power and mercy.  May it be true of us too.

O God,
you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity:
Grant us the fullness of your grace,
that we, running to obtain your promises,
may become partakers of your heavenly treasure;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

 

*This sermon is adapted from a sermon originally by Adam Hamilton.

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Ave Maria*

December 12, 2014 by Leave a Comment

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The First Carols of Christmas – Ave Maria*
Sycamore Creek Church
Dec 7/8, 2014
Tom Arthur

Merry Christmas Friends!

What a way to start Christmas!  Right?  We are holding our first worship service in our new building!  Thank you God!  This building is a blessing to us, but as we will soon find out, a blessing is meant not to be held on to but to be given to others.  Thank you God for the blessing of this building.  Thank you God for the opportunity we have to use it to bless others too.

Today we begin a new series called The First Christmas Carols.  We all love Christmas carols and singing at Christmas.  We decorated our house this Thanksgiving weekend and put on our old favorites.  I noticed that some radio stations were even beginning to play Christmas music before Thanksgiving!

Throughout this series we’re going to look not at the classic Christmas carols we sing at Christmas but rather the first Christmas carols in the Bible.  Have you ever noticed that the story of Jesus’ birth in the book of Luke reads almost like a musical?  People are having normal conversations and then all of a sudden they’re singing.  There are four Christmas carols in Luke and one scene that has been made into a song.  Today we begin with that scene that was made into a song, the Ave Maria.  Let’s turn to the book of Luke and read.

Ave Maria: Luke 1:26-28, 39-42 NRSV
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgins name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings [ave], favored one [full of grace]! The Lord is with you.”

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”

You may wonder where the phrase “Ave Maria” comes from.  The early church used a Latin translation of the Bible and the word “Greetings” is “Ave” in Latin.  Another way to translate Greetings or Ave is “Hail.”  Maria is of course Mary.  Thus, this is known as the Ave Maria.  So let’s see what there is to greet Mary about.

Mary holds a special place in some Christian traditions, particularly the Roman Catholic Church.  While we are not Roman Catholics (we are catholic in the original sense of the word which means “universal” or the “universal church”), we can learn from our Catholic brothers and sisters.  In the 2nd and 3rd century this phrase from Luke became part of the church’s liturgy (“liturgy” literally means “work of the people” although we generally understand it as the order of readings and prayers in worship).  The church would recite this phrase from Luke: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.  Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.”

Later in the Medieval church, Mary became one who was deeply honored.  In the 1400s and 1500s a phrase was added to the one from Luke: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”  While we don’t generally pray to the saints, I don’t personally have a problem asking the saints in heaven to pray for us.  Thus the church began asking Mary to pray for us.  Today this prayer is called the “Hail Mary” or “Ave Maria.”

Mary was from a very small town called Nazareth.  It probably had a population of about 100.  Most people there probably lived in limestone caves.  Limestone was easy to dig into.  These caves were the ancient from of mobile homes.  They were the affordable housing of their day.  Nazareth was close to another better known town, Sepphoris.  Sepphoris was the cultural center of the region.  It was wealthy.  There were plenty of shopping opportunities.  It was kind of like the fashion mall of its day.  Josephus, an ancient Jewish historian, called it the “ornament of all Galilee.”  And yet, God chose Nazareth, not Sepphoris.

Mary was probably about twelve or thirteen years old.  While that seems very young by today’s standards to get married, it was average for its day when the life expectancy was thirty or forty.  A girl was considered an adult when she had her first period and could conceive a child.  Boys married a little older around fourteen or fifteen so that they had a couple of years in their trade or career to support the family.

Gabriel shows up to deliver a message to Mary.  Gabriel literally means “Mighty One of God.”  He is an archangel, or chief angel among many.  In other words, he’s an important guy.  He greets Mary saying, “Greetings favored one.  The Lord is with you.” Mary “wonders what kind of greeting this might be.”  Let’s unpack that greeting a bit more.

Another way to translate “greeting” is “hail” or “hello” or in Latin it’s “ave.”  Thus, here’s where we get “Ave Maria.”  Gabriel goes on to call her “favored one.” In Greek, the language that Luke was written, the word Gabriel uses is from the root word “charitoo” which is where we get our word “charity” which   Thus, Gabriel is saying, “Greetings highly charitable one.”  Charity can also imply grace.  So Gabriel could be saying, “Greetings one full of grace.”  So now you see where the Ave Maria or Hail Mary gets the, “Hail Mary, full of grace.”

What does it mean to be “full of grace”?  Well, let’s talk about what grace is.  Grace is getting or giving something undeserved or unearned.  Grace is in contrast with mercy (which we’re talking about next week) which is not getting something you did deserve.  So grace is showing kindness and expecting nothing in return.  Grace is my parents paying off my college debt when I did little to work on scholarships or pay for college myself.  Grace is Sue Trowbridge, a local artist and pastor, giving me a painting of hers after I mentioned that I liked it a lot.  Grace is the gift of cash in an envelope that we would get every year anonymously from someone at the church we worked at in Petoskey.  Grace is coming home from the hospital with a baby when no one gave you a parenting test.  Grace is charity, and not charity in the sense of giving to the poor, but in the sense that charity means Christian love, loving your neighbor as yourself.  Grace is a blessing, a gift.

Mary, then is “one full of grace.”  She is full of charity, full of blessing others, full of love for others.  God chose Mary, not just because she was poor, but because since being a little girl she was grace-filled, or graceful.  God has a tendency to use people who are graceful, or full of grace.  In fact, God’s solution to the problems of the world is for us to be grace-filled.  If someone is hungry, you give them food, not because they earned it but because it is a gift to them.  Marriages survive on grace.  We can’t expect to earn the love of our partner.  We must give and receive it freely.  People need basic toiletries and so SCC gives over 3700 items to Compassion Closet, a personal needs bank.

Each year as we look toward Christmas, we encourage you to be grace-filled.  Give away as much as you spend at Christmas.  For some of you this means rearranging your discretionary spending so that you just match what you spend.  For others it means spending half as much so you can give half away.  Remember, Christmas isn’t your birthday, Christmas is Jesus’ birthday.  Is there a gift to Jesus under your Christmas tree?

As usual, our church will be receiving a special Christmas offering this year.  What’s different this year is that we usually receive this offering only on Christmas Eve.  But this year we’ll be receiving this offering throughout all of December.  You can mark on your giving envelop if you want to designate a special offering above and beyond your tithe to the Christmas offering.  Then at our four Christmas Eve services (you heard me right, one church in two location over three days with four Christmas services!) all of the offerings those days will go to our special Christmas offering.  We will then give 100% of this offering away.  We’re going to give it to three different needs:

First, we have a long-term relationship and commitment to providing medical missions in Nicaragua.  This Christmas offering will help us continue to support our medical missions in Nicaragua.  Second, our conference (the United Methodist Churches in West Michigan) is focusing on the Imagine No Malaria campaign.  Together we can literally eradicate malaria!  Check it out here or watch this brief video.  Third, we’ll use the offering to help with local emergency needs when people in our community are looking for help with rent, utilities, getting a car fixed, etc.  This year and every year at SCC you have the chance to be grace-filled by giving to this special Christmas offering.

My family is taking this challenge to be grace-filled this Christmas pretty seriously.  We recently wrote a letter to our family telling them of our intentions to try to celebrate Christmas differently this year and in the years to come.  We asked them to give whatever they would spend on the adults (my wife and me) to our Christmas offering.  We asked them to limit their gifts to our children to one each.  In doing so, we invited them to participate with us in putting presents under the tree for Jesus.

All of this leads to one big question in my mind: Are you more “full of grace” than you were last year?  Would the people closest to you say you are someone full of grace?  If not, begin to pray that God would fill you with grace.  You see, our nature is to hold on to stuff.  Our nature is unwilling to give free gifts away.  Our nature is to look out only for me and my immediate family.  Our nature is a mixture of grace and self-interest.  But God’s nature is different.  God’s nature is to save.  We are saved by grace, through faith.  We don’t earn our salvation.  We cannot do enough good works to save ourselves.  And yet, our faith in God’s grace is expected to show itself in our good works to others.  God’s presence with us, God’s Holy Spirit, fills us with grace in the same way that God filled Mary with grace and blessed her.

One warning before we pray.  Being blessed often causes trouble.  When Mary was declared to be blessed, remember where she was?  She was at her cousin’s house, Elizabeth.  Why travel ten miles to her cousin Elizabeth’s, rather than talk to her mother?  Mary’s blessing meant that she was an unwed pregnant engaged teenager on the edge of losing her fiancé and being executed for her “unfaithfulness.”  Mary doesn’t feel blessed, she feels burdened.  Later on she ends up fleeing her hometown and becoming a refugee, alien, and immigrant in Egypt.  Thirty-three years later Mary has to watch her son die on a cross.  None of this sounds like a blessing.  William Barclay refers to it as the “paradox of blessedness.”  He says, “The piercing truth is that God does not choose a person for ease and comfort and selfish joy…”  When you are full of grace and blessed, that blessing will require something of you.  You are blessed to be a blessing.  Your blessing is to be a “pass through blessing.”  You pass the blessing through to someone else.  The more you try to hold on to it yourself, the more the grace will slip away.

So let’s go back to that big question: Are you more full of grace than you were last year?

Prayer
Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit
of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary,
Mother of God,
pray for us sinners now,
and at the hour of death.

Amen.

 

*This message is based on a message originally given by Adam Hamilton

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: , ,

Who’s the Coach?

November 24, 2014 by Leave a Comment

coach

 

 

 

 

Put Me In Coach – Who’s the Coach?
Sycamore Creek Church
November 23/24, 2014
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

What did the coach say to the vending machine?  Give me my quarterback.  Ugh!  Today we’re talking about coaches.  I promise it will get better.  What is a coach?  We’re in this series called Put Me in Coach.  Throughout the series our key thought has been this:

There are too many fans of the game and not enough players in the game.

Take football for example.  Football consists of 22 people on the field in desperate need of rest and 22,000 fans in the stands in desperate need of exercise.  I don’t want to be a church that has 22,000 fans in the stands. I want to be a church with everyone on the playing field.

So far in this series we’ve explored some fundamentals of the game: What’s the game?

What’s a team?  What’s my position?  Today we look at who’s my coach?  Now if I ask you who your coach is, I’m guessing you’ll have an answer pretty quickly.  Jesus.  Right?  Nope.  In this series Jesus is not your coach.  Jesus is the team owner.  So who is the coach?  Maybe it would be good to begin with a definition. What is a coach?  According to Merriam-Webster, a coach is a horse drawn carriage.  Opps.  Wrong kind of coach.  A coach is “one who teaches, trains, and directs.”  So who does that in the team we call the church?  To answer that question, let’s turn to Paul, the first missionary of the church.  Paul planted several churches all around the Mediterranean and then wrote letters to them coaching them about how to be a church.  One letter he wrote to the church at Ephesus.  Last week we looked at playing a position through the lens of Ephesians chapter four verse eleven.  Paul says:

The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers…
~Ephesians 4:11 NRSV

But that’s where we stopped.  What comes next?  What does the next verse say about each of these specialized positions in the church?  God gives people these gifts and talents…

to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.
~Ephesians 4:12 & 16 NRSV

“To equip.”  In other words “teach, train, and direct.”  Guess who the coach is?  Anyone who has unique talents on the team to teach, train, and direct the rest of the team.  One key coach on the team is the pastor.  But I’m not the only coach on the team.  I’ve also got some special teams coaches: the staff and the team leaders.  Anyone who leads a team of people in the church is a coach.

Here’s the catch.  The coach doesn’t actually play the game.  The coach coaches the players to play the game.  When was the last time you saw Tom Izzo bench his team and go out on the court and play the competition?  When was the last time you saw Coach K bench his center and go play center himself?  Never.  Because he’s not a player.  He’s the coach.  (OK, the metaphor breaks down a little bit here because as a pastor I’m also a Christian which means that as an individual, I’m still playing the game, but when it comes to the team, I’m coaching others to play the game).  Thus, the staff are equippers.  The Team Leaders are equippers.  Their job is not to do the work they oversee.  Their job is to teach, train, and direct others to do that work.  The more we grow the more essential the role of coaching will be.

So today I want to explore three fundamentals of coaching.  This means I’m going to be doing some teaching, training, and directing with my special teams coaches while the rest of the team gets to listen in on it.  I’m going to be equipping them to coach.  I’m going to be coaching my coaches.  I think the rest of you will still get a lot of out of this, so don’t tune out.  When was the last time you got to sit in on Mark Dantonio’s pep talk to his special teams coaches?  So let’s get to it.  Three fundamentals of coaching…

1.     Coaches Recruit Players

One of the key roles a coach does is fill the roster with the best players that the coach can find.  Again, the coach isn’t the one playing.  The coach finds the players.  But sometimes there’s a kind of art in finding the right players.  It isn’t always obvious who those best players are.  In the movie Moneyball, which is about the applications of statistics to the game of baseball, we see the Oakland A’s hiring a statistician to build a unique and unexpected team.  Here’s how it happens:

 

 

The A’s recruited a team of “undervalued and overlooked players.”  They found “value in players that no one else can see.”  They built a team that was “an island of misfit toys.”  The world undervalues and overlooks people all the time.  The church is different.  This team finds people that the world discards and overlooks and puts them in unique positions that fit their gifts and talents and calling.

Where are the undervalued and overlooked players in our church?  Just look around.  They’re everywhere.  Someone who is a “fan” sitting in the stands but hasn’t yet gotten in the game.  Or maybe sometimes it’s someone who is in the game but isn’t yet in the right position.  Or maybe it’s someone who is in the game but just needs to switch positions for whatever reason.  Sometimes it’s fans who are just sitting at home not doing much.  They’re rooting for SCC, but they don’t show up very often.  Consider the launch team that I put together for our Church in a Diner.  Half of that team was not attending SCC Regularly.  One member of that team was a neighbor of mine who wasn’t even yet a Christian!  Coaches, who are the overlooked and undervalued players all around you?

So how do you find them?  Let me give you some tools.  We use a little website you may have heard about recently.  It’s called assessme.org.  Over one hundred and thirty people in our church have used this to have their spiritual gifts assessed.  That’s one hundred and thirty scouting reports of people who could be on your team.  That’s one key tool for finding players.

Another key tool I use for finding players is the church directory.  Susan is continually updating it and you can email her and ask her for the most recent copy any time.  If you’re looking for someone to do something, just begin flipping through the pages and let those names jog your memory.  I hear you saying to me, “I did that a month ago and nothing came of it.  Why do it again?”  Because someone’s life situation may have changed.  You may know someone better than you knew them before.  You may just see their name when you didn’t notice it before.  Use the directory.  And here’s a bonus tip: we print a list of skills and stuff in the back of the directory.  You need a plumber?  Look it up.  You need a crafty person?  Check out the skills and stuff.  You’ve also got some personal directories to help you.  Consider Facebook. Just look through your friend lists.  Or look through your email or phone contact lists.  These are all just tools to help jog your memory.

Another great tool is our interest inventory sheets.  We have been doing this for three years now.  We’ve got three years of data about people expressing interest in serving in particular areas.  I don’t just look through this year’s data.  I look over all the data from the previous years.  You never know.

Don’t forget to always be listening…listening…listening…  Listen to what people say they like to do.  Listen.  And when you hear them say they like doing something that is in your area of coaching, make a note of it and bring it up right there or bring it up at another more appropriate time.

Of course, at some point you have to make the BIG ASK!  You’ve got to ask this person to be a player on your team.  Here’s how not to do it: On Sunday morning as they’re walking out the door to go get their hungry toddlers home for lunch say, “Umm…you wouldn’t happen to want to volunteer for a little job that won’t take you all that much time and really is no big deal, would you?”  FAIL!

Here’s how to make the BIG ASK:

  1. Write it down.  Don’t bring it up first in person.  Send them an email or a Facebook message, or if you really want to impress them, send them a handwritten note in the mail.
  2. Include a job description of what you’re asking them to do and an explanation of why you think they’d be good (i.e. You saw that they had this particular spiritual gift on Assessme.org).  This job description should also have an ending period.  When are they done with it?  People don’t like to commit to things that don’t ever end.
  3. Include in the written note that you will follow-up with them on the phone or in person in the next week and ask them to pray about meeting with you to go over the job description.
  4. Meet in person if at all possible.  Go over the job description.  Answer any questions.  Invite them to pray about it some more and let them know you’ll be in touch next week.
  5. Call back next week and get your answer.  It will likely be a YES because of how thoughtful you’ve been in asking them and how you’ve given time and space for the Holy Spirit to turn their initial NO into a YES.

So the first fundamental of coaching is this: recruit your players.  Coaches, don’t play the game yourself!  Equip!  Equip!  Equip PLAYERS!

Coaches Run Practice
The second fundamental of coaching is that coaches run practices and practices are not about what’s easy, they’re about what’s effective.  The movie Miracle is about the 1980 Olympics USA hockey team that beat the Russians and went on to win the gold medal.  There’s a scene in the movie a moment after a defeat when the coach makes the team do something that isn’t easy but is essential:

 

Friends, this is hard for me and for almost every special teams coach I have.  Most of us want to be liked.  Most of us are people pleasers.  Add to that the fact that we’re recruiting volunteers for a team called the church that is supposed to be “nice” and all of us fear losing volunteers.  We fear losing players if we ask you to do what is effective rather than what is easy.  But that’s what a good coach does.  A good coach makes the team practice hard when that’s what it requires to win.

So what does it mean to practice?  To practice means praying together.  It means learning together.  We learn together when we read together.  Leaders are readers.  If you don’t know what books to have your team reading, ask the head coach.  Not a big reader yourself, farm out a book to a team member who is a big reader and let them give a book report on it.  Or learn together by listening together.  My coach, Nelson Searcy, provides me with hundreds of audio resources for equipping our church.  Listen to these audio resources or audio books in your car.  Listen while you’re exercising or cooking or in the shower.  I’ve heard people say, “But I don’t get it all when I’m just listening to it.”  So what.  If you only get half of it, that’s half more training than you would have gotten had you been listening to the radio.  We learn together by conferencing together.  When was the last time you went to a conference with your team?  Did you go to the Reach Summit back in October?  Are you planning on going to our weekend with Tom Bandy December 5th and 6th?  You can also learn by visiting other churches together.  See how they run their special teams.  Meet with the special teams coach who is your equivalent.

So practice means praying together and learning together.  It also means…captain obvious…meeting together.  I know, meetings SUCK!  Don’t they?  Who wants to go to another meeting?  So how do you make meetings more meaningful?  Make them informal.  Don’t meet at the church building just because we have one.  Find somewhere else with more of a party atmosphere to meet.  Meet in your home or the home of one of your team members.  Include food.  Food always makes meeting together better.  Don’t do all the food yourself.  Equip your team to bring the food.  Meet when you’re already gathered before or after church so that you don’t have to add another time into your schedule.  Do something spiritual with your team.  I take the staff on a one-day spiritual retreat every year.  No business.  Just time together with God.  Do something fun at each meeting.  Don’t just start with the “business.”  Or maybe just meet to have a party.  I also take the staff away for a one-night fun retreat each year.  I’ve used several of your cabins to make that happen.  We don’t do anything spiritual other than just be spiritual friends together.

Coaches recruit players, and they run practices.  Those are the first two fundamentals of coaching.  Here’s the third fundamental.

Coaches Praise the Players
My coach, Nelson Searcy, says that I have two responsibilities on Sunday morning: to preach and to praise.  I should have equipped coaches and players all around me so that all I have to do is teach the message and praise the rest of the team and thank them for being here.  My job is to be Rocky Balboa’s coach:

 

That gets your blood pumping!  Doesn’t it?  Anytime we gather I should be saying “Thank you…thank you…thank you!  Way to go…way to go…way to go!”  Now let me be honest, this is hard for me.  It’s hard because I’m an introvert.  It’s hard because my love language is not words of affirmation.  It’s hard because I’m not naturally demonstrative, effusive, and overenthusiastic.  If you really want all that, you turn to Jeremy, our worship leader.  He’s a natural praise giving and cheer leading coach.  I find myself watching him and learning from him all the time.  So I’m working on praising the players and special teams coaches more and more.

How do you praise your players?  I personally like face-to-face one-on-one meetings.  Coaches, when was the last time you met one-on-one with each of your team members?  Of course you can say a quick thanks on Sunday morning or Monday night.  I’ve also been utilizing Facebook a lot lately to praise my team members publicly and invite you to join with me.  Of course, a handwritten note is especially meaningful in our day and age when we rarely get anything handwritten in the mail.  Coaches, consider writing a handwritten note once a day.  Bring notes for your team to write before or after your meeting.  Then write a really good thank you note.  Here’s how to do it:

  1. Be very specific.  Mention a very specific moment and behavior.
  2. Mention the cost you know it was to them to do what you saw them do.  Maybe they had to give up some family time or an evening relaxing at home or some sleep to volunteer.
  3. Describe the benefit to the mission of our church.  How did what they do help us accomplish our mission?  How did it help us play the game well?
  4. Explain what the value was to you personally.  How did they help you play your part?
  5. Then thank them.

“I don’t like getting personal handwritten thank you notes for the time and effort I put into volunteering at church.”
~Nobody

So coaches, how are you doing?  Are you playing the game yourself or are your recruiting players?  Are you practicing or are you just doing what’s easy?  Are you praising your players or are you just hoping they’ll know how much you appreciate them?  Here’s the truth, we coaches all have room to grow.  You don’t have to be perfect here at SCC to be a coach.  But you do have to be committed to growing and getting better.

So players, how are the coaches doing?  Will you take a moment sometime this week and praise a coach in your life?  Send them a thank you note.  Praise them on Facebook.  Take them out for coffee.  But best of all, get in the game!

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What’s My Position?

November 18, 2014 by Leave a Comment

coach

 

 

 

 

Put Me In Coach – What’s My Position?
Sycamore Creek Church
November 16/17, 2014
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

We’re continuing in the third week of this series: Put Me In Coach.  So far we’ve explored some fundamental questions of the game we’re playing here at Sycamore Creek Church:

What’s the game?
Who’s my team?
Next week: Who’s my coach?

Today: What’s my position?

There’s a key thought throughout this whole series:

There are too many fans of the game and not enough players in the game.

Take football for example.  In football there are 22 people on the field in desperate need of rest and 22,000 people in the stands in desperate need of exercise.  I don’t want to be the kind of church that has 22,000 people in the stands watching 22 people play the game.  I want to get those 22,000 people in the game.  This series is about that: getting in the game.  It’s about serving.  It’s about volunteering.

When it comes to getting in the game there are different distances people have from getting in the game.  Farthest from the game are those who simply aren’t fans.  They don’t even want to watch the game.  Then there are those who are fans.  They watch the game from a comfortable place.  Next closest to the game are the fanatics, the season ticket holders.  The next step into the game is the farm team.  These are the people who are working on playing the game and getting better at the game.  Then there’s the first string players.  These are the ones who are all in.  They’ve committed everything they’ve got.  Where are you at?  I’m guessing if you’re reading this then you’re at least a fan?  Are you a fanatic but not yet in the game?  Are you on the farm team or are you a first string player?  But if you’re a player, what kind of player are you?  What position do you play?  That’s the question I want to explore today.

In any sport, while there are specialized positions, there are some positions or some plays that everyone on the team plays.  The same is true of the game we play here at SCC.  There are some positions that we all play.  We all play the position of praying.  Are you praying for your church?  We all play the position of inviting.  Are you inviting by sharing our events on Facebook?  Are you inviting when we do a big buzz series or a big day?  Are you considering how you can invite by joining the “launch team” of our new venue?  We’re buying a building to be our Sunday morning venue.  It’s like we’re launching a new church.  So we should have a launch team.  Launching is about inviting.  Are you inviting?  Every player on this team invites.  Every player on this team also plays welcoming.  We’re all on the hospitality team.  When someone invites a friend to worship with us, they’re depending on you to be welcoming.  We welcome by running the 5-10-Link play.  FIVE minutes before the service and FIVE minutes after you cover a zone TEN feet around you and you meet the people you don’t know.  Then you LINK them to other people you do know.  Are you welcoming in this way?  We all play welcoming by engaging the meet and greet question at the end of worship.  It’s designed to prime the pump of conversation with those around you that you don’t know.  Are you playing welcoming?  We all also play the position of giving.  God has given each of us a certain amount of resources.  How are you doing being a steward of God’s resources?  How are you doing giving 10% back to God?  We all play the position of giving.  We all play the position of praying.  We all play the position of inviting.  We all play the position of welcoming.  But we all then specialize in one or more other positions too.  These positions are called spiritual gifts.

Throughout this series we’ve been exploring Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.  Paul was the first missionary of the church and he wrote a letter to the church at Ephesus.  The letter is in the Bible and is six chapters long.  Go home today and read all six chapters.  It will take you about thirty minutes.  We’re really drilling down on chapter four in this series.  Paul tells the Ephesians:

The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.
~Paul (Ephesians 4:11 NLT)

You’ll see here that Paul is listing some very specialized positions in the church.  The Bible contains several different letters Paul wrote to different churches, and in two of those other letters Paul lists some other specialized positions.  They can be found in chapter 12 of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians and chapter 12 in the letter to the Romans.  Throughout this series we’ve been exploring fundamentals of the game.  Today is no different.  Today with Paul’s help, I want to explore three fundamentals of playing a position in the church (I’m indebted to Bruce Bugbee’s book, What You Do Best in the Body of Christ, for giving me the framework for these three fundamentals).

1.     Be Aware of Your Spiritual Gifts

The first fundamental of playing a position is that we are expected to be aware of the spiritual gifts that we have.  Paul says:

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed.
~Paul (1 Corinthians 12:1 NRSV)

So what are spiritual gifts?  What gifts does God give to us?  The first gift of God is God’s very own self.  God’s presence with us is the Holy Spirit.  We must remember that God doesn’t give us unique abilities independent of giving us God’s very presence.  James A. Stewart, a 20th century preacher in the Church of Scotland said, “Many want the Spirit’s power but not the Spirit’s purity.  The Holy Spirit does not rent out His attributes.  His power is never separated from His glorious Self.” If we expect God to use us to the fullest, we must be aware of how God is present in us purifying us and calling us to be ready for what God is going to do in us.  It’s out of the relationship with God, the source of all power, that the Holy Spirit works through us and gives us special gifts.  Hudson Taylor, a 19th century missionary to China, said, “I used to ask God to help me.  Then I asked God if I might help Him.  I ended up by asking Him to do His work through me.”  God gives us God’s very own self and when God is present with us, then God works through us.  This happens in one of two ways.

First, God gives us certain God-given talents, passions, or abilities that are to be used in the service of God’s purpose in our lives.  They are at times supernatural talents, but at other times, they are natural talents used to accomplish supernatural results.  Paul says:

We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.
~Paul (Romans 12:6-8 NRSV)

If you want to know more about your spiritual gifts, we have an online tool that we use that will take you about ten or fifteen minutes to fill out.  You’ll get a report on your personality, leadership style, and spiritual gifts.  It will help you know what specialized position God has you playing.  You can find the tool at www.assessme.org/2364.aspx.  The tool is free to you through us, but if you did it on our own it would cost you $15.  So take some time to learn about your spiritual gifts.  When you take this inventory online, your results will then be available to use to help get you in the game.

The second way that God uses spiritual gifts is to give us the unique gifts in the moment that we need them to accomplish God’s purposes.  This may mean that God supernaturally empowers you in a moment in way that you have no natural aptitude.  But because you have received God’s first gift, God’s very self, God can use you in a way that no one, even yourself, could have imagined.  Thus, the spiritual gift and passion may not come until the purpose is pursued.  This happens because while the world may count you out, God does not look at you in the same way the rest of us do; God sees your heart.  There’s a great modern classic movie about baseball called Moneyball.  It’s about the use of statistics to build a team.  There’s a scene in the movie when the coach goes to recruit a washed up catcher to play a position that he would never have imagined playing, but the statistics say he’ll do well enough at to benefit the team in other ways.  Watch what happens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyvu1nWjOlI

This is a real life story.  Scott Hatteberg was the catcher for Boston Red Sox.  He had an elbow injury which meant he couldn’t throw the ball to second base.  This resulted in his inability to play the position of catcher.  But the Oakland A’s saw something in him no one else did and recruited him to play first base.  It was a risky move by most recruiting standards.  But Hatteberg ended up hitting a walk off homerun to help the A’s make an American League 20-game winning streak record.  Sometimes you won’t be able to see what position you can play and how you have the talents to play that position until you say yes to the position.

The first fundamental of playing a position in the game of following Jesus is to be aware of your spiritual gifts.

2.     Expected To Use Your Spiritual Gifts.

Paul gave some advice to a young preacher named Timothy and we have two letters he wrote mentoring Timothy in how to play the game.  Paul said:

Do not neglect the gift that is in you.
~Paul (1 Timothy 4:14 NRSV)

God expects us to use the spiritual gifts that God has given us.  When it comes to using those gifts, we can underuse them or we can overuse them.  We underuse them when we’re ignorant of them.  Or we underuse them when we’re just flat out disobedient.  When our spiritual gifts are underused then it’s like a part of the team or the body becomes dead.  The rest of the body ends up having to overcompensate.  This puts stress on the rest of the team and leads to burnout.

But we can not only underuse our spiritual gifts, we can also overuse them.  This happens when we use our gift to dominate the team.  We don’t allow the rest of the team to develop.  There’s a great scene in the classic basketball movie Hoosiers when the coach intentionally benches a player who is on a scoring streak.  As you watch the scene, ask yourself: “What’s wrong with this guy doing all the scoring?”

 

A team and a church can’t be dependent all on one person.  Pastors and key leaders in a church tend to fall into this trap quite a bit.  Let me give you an example of how I’ve been over using a spiritual gift I have for the last couple of years.  I’m a pretty creative guy.  I love creating new ideas.  Most of the sermon series we do around here have been my ideas.  Most of the big outreach events we do around here are my ideas.  But about a year ago it hit me, we’re being creative but it’s all based on me.  If I’m in a car crash tomorrow or if the bishop appoints me to another church, then there is no creative team to keep this work moving forward in a creative direction.  So I’ve been busy over the last year beginning to build creative systems and teams to provide the creative scaffolding for what we do at SCC.  Two quick examples.

First, instead of planning the preaching calendar by myself for 2015, I pulled together a team.  We met on a Saturday in October.  I was a bit nervous about how this was going to work.  I was giving up something to allow others to help make decisions about what we’d be teaching at SCC from the “pulpit.”  I was nervous about how the creative process would work.  We scheduled the entire day from 9:30AM to 4PM to accomplish as much as we could.  I went in thinking that the day would be successful if we got through half the year.  What were the results?  We had the entire year of 2015 planned by 2:30PM!  This was a serious team effort.  The players came ready to play with really good ideas.  And now if I die tomorrow, there’s a system of creativity that isn’t based on the pastor overusing his creative gifts.

The same thing has been true when it comes to creative elements in worship.  Most of the creative worship elements we’ve used in the past have been developed by me and Jeremy, our worship leader.  But this wasn’t a sustainable team.  We needed to include more.  So now each month we invite people to join us for a two hour brainstorming session of a series that is two months out.  We just met this week with a group of people to help us plan January’s series.  We came up with more ideas and better ideas than we would have had we done it by ourselves.  And we’re making more positions for people to use their gifts rather than Jeremy and I overusing ours.

The second fundamental of playing a position is that you are expected to use your spiritual gifts.

3.     Held Accountable for the Use of Your Spiritual Gifts

Peter was one of Jesus’ closest team members.  Peter wrote a couple of letters that we now have in the Bible.  In one of them he encourages us saying:

Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.
~Peter (1 Peter 4:10 NRSV)

We don’t often use the word “manifold” but “mani” means “many” and “manifold” can mean assorted, multiple, or various.  There are assorted, multiple, and various gifts of God’s grace that God gives.  And we are each stewards of those manifold gifts and graces.  A steward is someone who does not own the property he or she is using.  Someone else owns it and the expectation is that they will use it well and return it well.  Some day God will ask: “How did you use the gifts that I gave you?”  How did you play  your position?  Will we be left making excuses?

Perhaps one of the best athletes to play any sport is Michael Jordan.  There’s a great commercial where he’s talking about the game.  But the kicker comes at the end.

 

 

Will you be left standing before God making excuses for why you didn’t play your position?  Will you be left standing before God making excuses why you didn’t get in the game?  Jesus tells a parable about a master handing out talents (Matthew 25)

Parable of the Talents.  To one servant he gives one talent.  To one he gives five.  To another he gives ten.  Then he goes away.  The five-talent servant and the ten-talent servant use their talents to make more talents.  The one-talent servant goes and buries his talent.  When the master comes back, he rewards the five and ten-talent servants and he’s furious with the one-talent servant.  He’s not upset because the servant has only one talent.  He’s upset because he buried it and didn’t even risk trying.

So one day you will be held accountable to how you played your position.  One of the ways you play your position is you volunteer somewhere in the church.  You can explore volunteering by filling out our Service Inventory Sheet.  On it you’ll find all kinds of ways you can serve in our church.  You circle the ones you’re interested in. You’re not signing up for the position, you’re only expressing interest.  When this series is over, someone who leads each area you circled an interest in will be in touch with you to talk further about that position to play.  You can download a Service Inventory Sheet here.

Here’s the three fundamentals of playing a position:

  1. Be aware of your spiritual gifts.
  2. You’re expected to use your spiritual gifts.
  3. You’ll be held accountable to using your spiritual gifts.

Let’s go back to that image I used at the beginning of the message.  How far are you from the game?  Are you not a fan?  Not even watching the game.  Probably not or you wouldn’t be here today.  So you’re at least a fan.  You watch from the stadium.  Or are you a fanatic?  You’re a season ticket holder.  You come all the time.  You cheer.  You cry.  But you’re still not in the game.  Or are you on the farm team?  You’ve made a commitment to serve somewhere.  You’re learning a position.  You’re exploring a position.  You’re learning the game.  Or are you a first string starter?  You’re all in.  You’re playing a position and while you do commit errors or fumbles from time to time, you’re learning from them and you’re in it to win it.

Team, I hope throughout this series you’re saying to yourself:

I don’t want to be watching the game at home.
I don’t want to be tailgating.
I don’t want to be in the stands.
I don’t want to be on the sidelines.
I don’t want to be on the bench.
I want to be in the game.
I want to be on the team.
Put me in coach!

Prayer
Almighty and merciful God, it is only by your gift that your faithful people offer you true and praiseworthy service: Grant that we may run without stumbling to obtain your heavenly promises; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

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What’s A Team?

November 10, 2014 by Leave a Comment

coach

 

 

 

 

Put Me In Coach – What’s a Team?
Sycamore Creek Church
November 9/10, 2014
Tom Arthur

 

Put me in coach!

When I was growing up I played little league baseball every summer.  At the end of the summer the league would pick the best players from the various teams in our local league to play other local leagues in the first round of the Little League State Championship.  Every year I got a call to be on this team, but we never made it out of the local round.  When I was fourteen I didn’t get the call.  I apparently had an abundance of confidence because I assumed that I had just missed the call from the coach.  So I called him and told him I had missed the call and wanted to know when the first practice was.  He somewhat sheepishly informed that I had not missed the call, I just was not asked to be on the team.  I hung up the phone a little stunned that I wasn’t on the team and that my last season of Little League was over.  Or was it?  Apparently my call impressed the coach and a couple of days later he called me back and invited me to join the team.  It was an amazing team.  It felt like nothing could keep us back.  It felt like there wasn’t any competition that was too difficult to beat.  It wasn’t easy, but that year we were the first team in our local league to win the local round and advance to the regional tournament.  We felt invincible.  Until we actually began playing at that level.  We lost our first two games and were out of the tournament.  But oh, what fun to be part of a team that worked so well together!

Today we’re continuing a series we began last week called Put Me In Coach! The key thought for this whole series is this:

There are too many fans of the game and not enough players in the game.

It’s like football.  In football there are 22 people on the field in desperate need of rest and 22,000 people in the stands in desperate need of exercise.  It’s time to get out of the stands and get into the game.  This is a series about serving, volunteering, and getting in the game.  Last week we looked at three fundamentals of the game.  In the coming weeks we’re going to look at what your position is and who your coach is.  Today we’re looking at your team.  This game we play isn’t an individual sport game.  It’s a team sport.  You play the game on a team.  Today I want to look at three fundamentals of teamwork.

1.     A Team is United in Purpose & Calling
Throughout this series we’ve been studying what Paul, the first missionary of the church, had to say to the church of Ephesus.  The letter he wrote is known to us as the book of Ephesians in the Bible.  Ephesians is six chapters long, and I recommend you take some time this week to read through the book.  Very specifically we’re focusing on chapter four in this series.  Paul begins chapter four saying:

Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you [plural] to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God.
~Ephesians 4:1 NLT

Something that gets lost in translation is the plural version of “you.”  If you’ve ever studied a foreign language you know that in English there’s only one version of “you” and we use it to refer to you (singular) and y’all (plural).  But in Greek, the language that Paul was writing to the Ephesians, there are clearly different forms of “you” and the “you” in this verse is the plural version of “you” or “y’all.”  So Paul says, “I beg y’all to lead a life worth of your calling, for you have been called by God.”

We are one, but one person is a lonely person.  On the other hand, “one team” is a team of people ready to dive into a mission.  Y’all on this team are called by God to play this game.  Paul is begging you to live your individual life united with the life of your team to accomplish God’s mission in the world.

Throughout this series we’ve been watching some clips from the great classic sports movies.  There’s a great moment in Hoosiers when the coach realizes not everyone who has showed up for the practice is united together in one purpose.

 

In the same way that basketball is a “voluntary activity”, church is a “voluntary activity” too.  No one is putting a gun to your head to be here.  We want to welcome everyone and show compassion to everyone, but if you’re going to play this game on this team, you’ve got to be united in the purpose, mission, and goals of what we’re all about here at SCC.  Paul makes this abundantly clear when he says:

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.
~Ephesians 4:4-6

Did you catch that?  One team!  One purpose!  One mission!  One calling!  Last week we explored in detail what that one purpose was.  Here are the three fundamentals of the game:

Q: What’s the Game?
A: Igniting authentic life in Christ and fanning it into an all consuming flame.

Q: How do we score?
A: When we help someone connect with Jesus and grow deeper in the character of Christ

Q: How do we win?
A: When we are all unified together ALL THE TIME serving to create environments where someone can connect and grow.

Two tools we use here at SCC to play the game in this way are www.assessme.org/2364.aspx.  If you’ve already taken assessme.org or if you do it during the month of November, you’ll be entered into a drawing to win two MSU basketball tickets.  So get online this week if you haven’t done so already and join the team.

We also use a tool that we call the Serve Interest Inventory.  It has a list of all the areas in our church where you can serve.  You circle the ones you’re interested in and someone who leads in that area will be in touch with you.  You’re not saying you’ll do it, you’re just expressing interest.  Download one here.  So make sure you fill one of those out this week and get on the team.

The first fundamental of teamwork is that a team is united in purpose and calling.

2.     A Team Knows the Competition

A team is also crystal clear about the competition.  Let’s make sure we are clear too.  The competition isn’t the church down the street.  We are one church with Trinity.  We are one church with Pennway Church of God.  We are one church with Riverview.  We are one church with Mt. Hope UMC.  We are one church with Mt. Hope “church of the flags.”  We are one church with Journey Life.  We are one church with Pilgrim Rest Baptist.  Yes, sometimes our family members embarrass us, but other churches are not the competition.

Rather, the competition is all the other things that compete for complete devotion to Jesus.  Paul says:

Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth.
~Ephesians 4:14 NLT

Several years ago I was at a friend’s house and picked up a catalogue sitting next to his couch.  It was full of audio books and seminars that had a kind of New Age self-help approach.  There was some good stuff in the catalogue.  Some of it was by people I had studied under.  But what really got me was the title of the catalogue.  It was called “Sounds True.”  Sounds True?!  Paul says we need to be careful with things that sound like the truth.  Or as Stephen Colbert calls it, “truthiness.”  So what is the competition?  What sounds true but isn’t?

I think it’s important to point out that sometimes we are our own worst competition.  When the team isn’t unified with a single purpose and mission and goal, then the team itself is the competition.  Consider this scene from the classic hockey movie, Miracle:

 

 

These guys are their own worst nightmare.  The first challenge the coach has is to get them unified as a team.  It is important to note at this point that I’m not talking about the absence of conflict.  Patrick Lencioni wrote a book about teamwork called the Five Dysfunctions of a Team.  He lists the lack of conflict as one of those dysfunctions.  Great teams welcome conflict and passionate debate of ideas.  It’s important to have this kind of conflict because if you don’t passionately debate the ideas, then you don’t come out committed to the decision once it’s made.  Being united is not the absence of conflict.  But it is conflict in the purpose of the mission, not in the purpose of your own ego.  So the first competition any teams faces is itself.

The second competition the church faces is personal decisions about priorities that distract from God.  All of us, those here and those not yet here, live a life of disordered loves.  We love the wrong things in the wrong proportion.  Anything that gets in the way of connecting with God or growing deeper in the character of Christ is the competition.  This could be your job or the pursuit of money.  It could be how often you travel and the mobility in our current society.  Sleep or the lack of sleep could be the competition.  Your own family can get in the way of connecting with God and growing in Christ.  Entertainment can be the competition.  Sports can get in the way.  Both sports that you play and the sports that you watch.  Education can be the competition.  When I first went to Duke I studied so hard that I neglected all kinds of important things in my spiritual life.  None of these things are necessarily competition, it is only when we have too much of a good thing or love them disproportionately that they become the competition.

One last competitor worth mentioning is injustice and oppression.  Sometimes we aren’t able to make decisions about our lives.  Sometimes the system we’re in makes the decisions for us.  We find ourselves in a job market that requires people to work seven days a week and not have time off for worship.  Or we are stuck in bondage to a pace of life that doesn’t let us get a good night’s sleep.  It is not only the individual’s choices that are the competition but the system that contributes to those individual choices are also the competition.

So let’s be crystal clear about the competition.  The competition isn’t the church down the street.  The competition is anything that keeps someone from connecting with God or growing in Christ.  The second fundamental of teamwork is that a team is clear about the competition.

3.     A Team Makes Every Effort
Let’s go back to Paul.  He says:

Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace.
~Ephesians 4:2-3 NLT

A team makes every effort.  They make every effort to stay united.  They make every effort to be humble.  They make every effort to be gentle.  They make every effort to be patient with one another.  They make every effort to allow for one another’s faults.  They make every effort be at peace with one another.  They make every effort to work toward their purpose, mission, goal, and calling.

There’s a great scene in The Blind Side where the coach responds to an injustice by the other team and the refs and in response gets an every-effort-response from his player:

 

 

What a great image of making “every effort” to STAY UNITED!  It results in scoring.  Let me emphasize again that this does not mean the absence of conflict.  Rather it means that we are humble in forgiveness.  If you’re wrong only 1% and your team member is wrong 99% then you confess your 1% (and don’t bring up percentages!).  It means that we give allowance for each others weakness, faults, and failures.  While we strive for excellence, perfection is not required.  We expect failure.  We cover one another’s backs when failure happens or when one of us is backed into a corner of our weakness.

We make every effort to be united by “being gentle” in correction with one another.  Let me give you some tips about how to be gentle in correction.  First, don’t do serious correction with one another on Sunday morning unless it is invited.  Set up some other time to talk to one another.  Second, make sure you know the difference between the “preaching voice” and the “pastoral voice.”  The voice and tone and approach I use in preaching is not the voice and tone and approach I seek to use when offering correction.  Third, a helpful tactic to gently correct is to lay out the facts and ask for input on what should be done about them from the person you’re correcting.  One time I had to fire a volunteer who was visiting a shut-in elderly woman.  The family of the shut-in didn’t want her visited anymore.  Instead of just coming out and “firing” her, I told her what the family had told me.  I then asked her what she thought should happen.  She said that she shouldn’t visit that shut-in anymore.  Right answer!  It was gentle and didn’t require me to be the bad cop.  Another time I caught a teenager under my care with alcohol.  Instead of calling his parents, I asked him what he thought needed to happen.  The teenager said that his parents should be told.  Right answer!  Then another time I had to talk to someone who was about to give a speech about a contentious issue.  I simply laid out the facts and asked what he thought should happen.  He expressed concern that the issue be brought up lightly.  Right answer!  We make every effort to remain united in purpose when we are gentle in correction.

Lastly, we make every effort to stay united in purpose and calling by “being patient” with the growth of others.  People don’t change overnight.  Look for the just noticeable improvements and celebrate them.  Extend your timeline for how long you think someone should change.  We all want justice with others and mercy for ourselves.  Extend mercy to others by being patient with the time it takes them to change.

Let’s review.  The fundamentals of teamwork are:

1. A team is united in purpose and calling.
2.  A team knows the competition.
3. A team makes every effort to stay united in purpose and calling by being humble, gentle, and patient with one another.

So here’s my question for you today.  Are you ready to be on the team?  If so, I invite you pray this prayer:

Prayer
Put me in God!  I don’t want to be watching the game at home.  I don’t want to be tailgating.  I don’t want to be in the stands.  I don’t want to be on the sidelines.  I don’t want to be on the bench.  I want to be in the game.  I want to be on the team.  Put me in coach!

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What’s the Game?

November 10, 2014 by Leave a Comment

coach

 

 

 

 

 

Put Me In Coach – What’s the Game?
Sycamore Creek Church
November 2/3, 2014
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

It’s a good time of the year for sports fans.  The World Series just wrapped up.  Were you rooting for the Giants or the Royals?  Then the NBA & NHL seasons are just beginning.  The NFL is in full swing.  And for those of you whose sports tastes are a little more eclectic, later this month is the Men’s World Squash Championship held in Qatar.  I know, you’re waiting with bated breath to see who wins!

It’s also a good time of the year for us to be thinking about the game we’re all in together here at Sycamore Creek Church.  What is God’s game we’re called to play?  We’re on the edge of closing on a new building.  Is that the game?  Do we win when we move in?  We’ve become respectable now?  What exactly is this game we’re in?

A key thought we’ll explore through this whole series is this:

There are too many fans of the game and not enough players in the game.

Take football for example.  Football consists of 22 people on the field in desperate need of rest and 22,000 people in the stands in desperate need of exercise.  Too many fans and not enough players.  Put me in coach!

Most of us don’t want to be bench warmers.  We want to play.  We want to get in the game.  I know this first hand.  I played baseball growing up.  I loved it.  When I got to high school I found myself at a new level of competition.  Ninety guys were trying out for five spots on the baseball team.  I made it as what was called a “practice player.”  That titled could have been shortened to “practicer” because that’s all I did, practice and not play.  I sat on the bench in uniform and watched others play the game.  After doing this for a season, my love of the game disappeared.  Nobody wants to practice all time and never be put in the game.

So what’s the problem?  Why so many fans and so few players?  Maybe you’re saying to yourself:

I want in God’s game, but I don’t know what the game is.
I want in God’s game, but I’m not focused on the game.
I want in God’s game, but I haven’t trained for the game.
I want in God’s game, but I don’t know my position.
I want in God’s game, but I don’t want to do the work it takes.
I want in God’s game, but I’m not making it a priority.

Here’s a Public Service Announcement from everyone’s favorite classic basketball movie:

 

 

Did you hear what the coach said?  “God wants you on the floor!”  So get on the floor!  Put me in coach!  Today we’re beginning a new series.  Over the next four weeks we’ll explore all the bases and baseboards, all the goals and hoops, all the picket fences and hat tricks, all the bats, balls, mitts, sticks, pucks and pads of the game we play as Christians.  We’ll look at who your team is.  We’ll run you through the drills to determine your best position. You’ll meet the coach (it’s not who may think).  And today we begin with this: What’s the game?  We begin by going back to the basics.  This is a football.  I want to answer four basic questions about the game.  So let’s get on the field and get in the game.

1.     What’s the game?
This may seem like an obvious question, but it’s an essential one.  What is this game that we’re playing as those who follow Jesus?  What game do Christians play?  Let me begin to answer that question by answering what this game is NOT.  The game is not getting a building.  As tempting as it is to think we’re finally in the game because we’re buying a building, the game is not the building.  The building is just one tool on the court to play the game.  The game is also NOT getting safe and comfortable.  These two things are idols of our American culture but it is likely that if you’re going to get in the game Jesus calls us to play, you’re going to be uncomfortable and many of your most cherished possessions will be put at risk.  Likewise, the game is NOT getting to a place where you can coast.  As much as I am always trying to get to a place where I can sit back and relax because I’ve got everything in its place, the game we’re playing is NOT a game we can play with cruise control on.  The game is also NOT about getting as much money as you possibly can.  Again, this is one of those American idols that we are all tempted to worship.  We are tempted to think that we win when we’ve got just a little bit more money.  (Side note: it is November and that means that Christmas is just around the corner.  Don’t forget about our Christmas challenge: give as much money away as you spend on yourself at Christmas!  Begin planning for it.  This is part of the game.)  Lastly, the game is NOT getting what you want.  Whatever goals you have set in life, if they aren’t the goals that God has for you, then they aren’t part of the game.  So if these are all things that game is NOT, what is the game?

Our key verse throughout this series is found in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.  Paul was the first missionary of the church and he wrote several letters to churches all around the Mediterranean.  In chapter four he tells us explicitly what the game is.  He says that the game

will continue until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ…
~Paul (Ephesians 4:13 NLT)  

This one simple verse describes just about everything we need to know about the game.  We’re going to unpack it over the next four weeks.  The game is all of us coming to a unified purpose of helping others come to know through faith Jesus, the Son of God, and to grow in maturity to the point that we are completely full of the person and character of Christ.  Or as we put it around here at SCC: our mission is to ignite authentic life in Christ and fan it into an all consuming flame by connecting (to God and others), growing (in the character of Christ) and serving (the church, community, and world).  That’s the game.  That’s it.  This is a football.  This is the game.  Let’s go further.

2.     Where’s the playing field?
The field the game is played on is big.  Real BIG!  It begins in the cosmos.  Paul says:

God’s purpose was to show his wisdom in all its rich variety to all the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.
~Ephesians 3:10 NLT

Did you realize you were playing on a cosmic playing field?  But the field isn’t just out there in the stars.  It’s right here too.  The playing field is our world and community.  Again, Paul says:

Though I am the least deserving of all God’s people, he graciously gave me the privilege of telling the Gentiles about the endless treasures available to them in Christ.
~Ephesians 3:8 NLT

Paul was a Jew, but he knew that it wasn’t just the Jews who were invited to the game.   The non-Jews or Gentiles were invited to the game too.  It’s not just the insiders who are on the playing field.  The whole world is the playing field.

Paul has a big vision of the playing field, but while he’s thinking cosmic and global, he’s also focused on the very local church.  He says that those with special gifts and abilities have the responsibility…

to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ.
~Ephesians 4:12 NLT

The church, the community of people called out to play the game, is the unique place where God’s game is played most fully.  The game isn’t an individual sport.  The playing field isn’t primarily your family.  As important as the family is, if your family isn’t on the playing field of the church, you’re missing something.  The primary playing field isn’t the government (even though Paul tells us to pray for those in authority).  The primary playing field isn’t some parachurch (alongside-the-church) ministry.  As awesome as The City Rescue Mission is, as great as Compassion Closet is, as amazing as any other local or national ministry is, these are not the primary playing field for God’s game.  Rather, the church is the first and foremost field that the game is played on.   The church is literally those who are “called out” to play the game together.

3.     How do you score?
There are two ways to score in this game.  The first way to score is to help someone connect to God in Jesus Christ.  Back to our key verse for the series:

[The game] will continue until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ…
~Paul (Ephesians 4:13)

Until all of us come to the knowledge of the Son of God.  ALL of us!  We’re talking raw quantity here.  Lots and lots of people.  Not just some.  Not just a select few.  Not just your close friends.  Everyone.  All of us.  This happens in one of two ways.  Either someone comes to make a commitment to Christ for the first time or someone comes to a place where they recommit their life to following Jesus.  Paul gives us a clear game plan for this score:

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.
~Paul (Ephesians 2:8 NRSV)

We come to Jesus by grace through faith.  We don’t connect to Jesus because we’ve gotten good enough to do it.  We don’t get our life together to follow Jesus.  We follow Jesus and then he helps us get our life together.  Connecting to God or salvation is a gift, it’s not something we earn.  And God wants everyone to be saved.  God wants the church to grow.  Healthy things grow.  A healthy sports program isn’t a one-and-done program.  It attracts new players every year.  God wants SCC to grow.  Do you believe that?

Now to score in this way each volunteer at SCC is a pick, screen, fake, assist, or score in the play.  Office volunteers put together bulletins that help communicate God’s word.  Offering counters are never seen by anyone except other counters, but the money they count supports everything that we do (rent, salaries, materials, etc.).  Crew Chiefs turn a cafetorium into a sanctuary Sunday after Sunday after Sunday for the past fourteen years.  And they’ll have a unique roll to play to turn a “church” into a Church every Sunday when we move into the new building.  Nursery workers provide safe care for children and free time for parents week after week.  Think about it this way.  A single mom is at her wits end with all the stresses in her life.  She decides to come to SCC some Sunday, but she doesn’t know what she’ll do with her kids.  How can she pay attention or will it just be another wrestling match with her kids to keep them quiet and not do anything too embarrassing.  She looks at our website and sees that we offer a professionally staffed nursery at every service we offer.  She decides to give it a try.  She walks in on Sunday and immediately meets someone at the door who asks her if she needs to know where the nursery is at.   The greeter walks her over to the table, it’s right there by the front door.  She checks her kids in and feels like she’s dropping off her kids, the most important thing in her life, to people who are going to make her kids feel like they’re at home in a place that is safe and secure.  After she’s dropped her kids off something amazing happens.  She’s got some time to herself. She walks back into the Connection Café and sees the free coffee.  She grabs a drink and is surprised to see you can take it into the sanctuary.  Coffee in worship?  What kind of church is this?  She finds a seat and someone next to her introduces themselves with a smile.   The music begins and she’s amazed that everyone is singing with heart led by a really good band.  The pastor gets up and talks about something that she can really relate to.  She finds herself having a “spiritual encounter with God.”  She almost forgets about her kids, but when the worship service is done, she’s surprised that the person who introduced themselves before the service began remembers her name.  They chat for a moment before she gets her kids from the nursery.  As she picks them up and heads out to her car, she realizes something is different.  She realizes she’s not alone.  She knows that God isn’t left in the building.  God goes with her.  She’s still not sure who this Jesus guy is, but she’ll be back next week.

Now how many different people did it take to make that connection with God happen?  Lots and lots of people.  In fact, it took everyone because she could have sat next to any one of you.  But one key position was the hidden volunteers who staffed the nursery.  Friends, we happen to be in a nursery explosion right now.  This is a good thing.  Babies are popping out everywhere.  You have an opportunity: help that single mom, help that couple with kids whose marriage is on the rocks, help that teenage mom connect with God at SCC by volunteering in the nursery.  Will you do it?  That’s one of hundreds of ways to score in this game we play at SCC.  Volunteer and help someone connect with God.

There’s a second way to score.  Back to our theme verse:

[The game] will continue until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ…
~Paul (Ephesians 4:13 NLT)

The second way to score in this game is to help someone grow in the character of Christ.  Connecting is about quantity.  Growing is about quality.  Growing is about deepening and maturing your character and virtue.  You are connected to God by grace through faith, but you grow by practicing good works.  Paul says:

For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.
~Paul (Ephesians 2:10 NRSV)

We’re created for good works.  We’re created to grow into becoming more and more like Jesus Christ. I’m not talking about becoming Jesus literally, I’m talking about being so filled with the Spirit of Jesus that you take on the character and virtue of Jesus.  We score in this game when we help someone come not just to commit to Christ for the first time but also to commit to Christ at a deeper level.  God wants you to grow in maturity.  Not just half way but “to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”

Church, we’re scoring in this way at SCC.  We had an 85% sign-up rate for our fall small groups.  85% of our average weekend attendance signed up for a small group to grow deeper in Christ.  To accomplish that took lots of volunteers.  Seventeen different small group leaders.  A team organizing behind the scenes.  Staff and volunteers creating a GroupLINK sign-up sheet.  Hospitality team members putting stickers on people each week.  Volunteers serving to help people grow deeper in the character of Christ.  Score!

4.     How do you win?
So far we’ve looked at what the game is, where the playing field is, and how you score.  But how do you win?  Here’s a paradox: winning isn’t actually about the score, it’s about how you play the game.  Let’s go back to our theme verse:

[The game] will continue until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ…
~Paul (Ephesians 4:13 NLT)

We win when we all are working together in unity serving with our time, talent, treasure, testimony, and temple (your body) to help people connect and grow.  We win when everyone is united in that one purpose.  We win when we’re all playing the same game in our unique position and role.  We win when we’re all pointed at this one goal with everything we’ve got.  So are you united with God in SCC in this way?

One tool we use to help you get in the game is an online inventory called Assessme.org.  Visit www.assessme.org/2364.aspx and you’ll find four different inventories that will help us put you in the game, that will help you unite with us in this one goal: to ignite authentic life in Christ and fan it into an all consuming flame.

Another tool we use is our service inventory sheet (below).  It has listed all the “positions” in our church where you can get in the game.  You circle the ones you’re interested in and a coach who leads that area will be in touch.

For SCC to win in this way it’s going to take attempting to win all the time.  All the time!  Winning is a habit as Vince Lombardi, the iconic 1960s Green Bay Packers coach, says:

 

 

Vince Lombardi says, “Winning is a habit. Watch your thoughts, they become your beliefs. Watch your beliefs, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character.”

You may be tempted to think that “winning” is below the church.  But Paul says he’s in it to win it:

Don’t you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win!
~Paul (1 Corinthians 9:24 NLT)

We’re not SCC to come in second.  We’re SCC to win.  So put me in coach!  I don’t want to be watching the game at home.  I don’t want to be tailgating.  I don’t want to be in the stands.  I don’t want to be on the sidelines.  I don’t want to be on the bench.  I want to be in the game.  Put me in coach!

Prayer
God, I want to be in the game.  I want to be serving in unity with your church to help people connect with you and others and grow in the habits and character of Christ.  Let my life be dedicated to scoring in that way.  Let my church be dedicated to winning in that way.  God, put me in the game.  Amen.

Filed Under: Sermons Tagged With: ,

I Am the Resurrection

October 20, 2014 by Leave a Comment

IAmJesus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Am the Resurrection
Sycamore Creek Church
October 19/20, 2014
Tom Arthur

Peace friends!

What’s the closest you’ve come to dying?  When I was a teenager I went to a church that was about thirty minutes from my home.  Youth Group was Sunday night.  Often when youth group was over I would hang out with friends for another couple of hours.  Then I would drive home.  One Sunday night on the drive home I fell asleep while driving on the highway at sixty-five or seventy MPH.  I woke up when I hit the rumble strips, but it was too late.  I was already heading toward the steep embankment.  I hit a mile marker and it snapped off and flew into the air.  Quickly I was off the pavement and onto the grass.  I slammed on the brakes and came to a stop just in between two trees.  I sat in my car stunned at what had just happened.  Eventually a tow truck came and pulled me out, and I have never again driven when I felt that sleepy.  I came too close to dying.

Death.  It’s something we all can look forward to.  If you are alive, you will die.  A close brush with death makes us ask some hard questions.  What comes after death?  Am I prepared to die?  Have I lived a life worthy of the gift that it is?

Today we continue the series: I Am Jesus.  And we’ll be exploring a moment that Jesus had a brush with someone else’s death.  Throughout this series we’ve been exploring the “I am” statements of Jesus written down by one of his closest followers, John.  There are seven “I am” statements.  They are:

I am the way the truth and the life.
I am the bread of life.
I am the gate/door.
I am the good shepherd.
I am the vine.
I am the resurrection.
I am the light of the world.

Today’s verse is:

I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live.
~John 11:25 NRSV

What exactly is a resurrection?  A resurrection is when something was dead and comes  back to life.  Of course, Jesus is known for his resurrection, but his resurrection is not the only resurrection recorded in the Bible.  The other is Lazarus.

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”
~John 11:1-3 NRSV

Many of us are in a state of bad news today.  The one you love is sick and dying with cancer.  The job you love is going away.  The dream marriage turned into a nightmare.  A close friendship might not be working out.  The school principal calls to talk about your teenager, and it’s not about the honor roll.  I have received some bad news lately.  My dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.  You may have recently received some bad news yourself.  So how does Jesus respond to the bad news he receives?

But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
~John 11:4 NRSV

Hmmm…Jesus has a very interesting (or as my son says, “in-stir-ing”) response.  Jesus then does nothing for two days before deciding to go.  His disciples tell him it’s dangerous to go to where Lazarus died, because last time they were there they almost got stoned.  Jesus tells them that Lazarus has fallen asleep, and he is going to wake him from the darkness.  His disciples say that if Lazarus is just asleep then all will be OK.  Jesus realizes they’re taking him literally and says that Lazarus really is dead, and he’s going to show you God’s glory.  Thomas responds, I think rather sarcastically, “Well, let’s go and die too!”

Today I want to look at three different ways we die.

1. Thomas: Dead in your Doubts
As I just mentioned, Thomas responds with what I think is a sarcastic response:

Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”
~John 11:16 NRSV

Thomas really has got his doubts about this whole Jesus thing.  He’s really not sure he believes that Jesus is who he is claiming to be.  Thomas is dead in his doubts.

How many of you have had doubts?  Those with your hands down can polish your halo when you get home.  The rest of us are being honest.  We all have doubts.  We all are uncertain about a lot of things.  All of us have prayed for something and God could but didn’t.  Or maybe a professor at college shook your faith.  Or suffering caused you to ask: “If God is all powerful why didn’t he cure so and so?”

Our church took a momentous step last week by voting to buy the old Calvary UMC building and move our Sunday morning venue from a school to a church.  We’ll no longer be a “Church in a School.”  We’ll be a “Church in a Church.”  I’m very excited about this venue change, but if I’m honest I’m also a bit anxious and even have some doubts.  It’s like having a baby.  You’re full of joy but nervous too.  Here’s the crazy thing about being a leader.  You have to choose a way forward in spite of your uncertainties.  It’s human to have uncertainty.  It’s human to question your own decisions.  It’s even healthy to do these things.  Someone who is unwilling to question their own decisions is probably a psychopath.  Here’s the key: we are only dead in our doubts if we allow our doubts to dictate our decisions.  In faith, we use the brains God gave us, and we seek God’s direction, and we move forward trusting God along the way.

Some of us are dead in our doubts today because we’re letting our uncertainties about life dictate our decisions.

2. Mary: Dead in your Discouragement
Some of us today may be like Thomas, but others of us are like Mary.  We are dead in our discouragement.

When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home.
~John 11:20 NRSV

Notice that Mary didn’t even come to see Jesus.  She thought, “Why bother?  I can’t change anything.”  Some of us are just as discouraged as Mary.  We feel always alone, depressed, stuck in a dead-end job, or that we’ll never have the marriage we thought we would have.  We put on our religious language with Sunday clothes and a smile on our face, but there’s no smile inside.

I think ahead to this new venue.  There is sure to be some discouragement ahead.  We all have dreams for this building.  We all have expectations for this building.  We all have hopes for what can be.  Reality will likely not conform 100% to any of our dreams, expectations, or hopes.  I think it’s important to remember what we call the role renegotiation model.  When you’re expectations are broken, don’t gossip about it to someone else, go talk to the person who broke the expectations and renegotiate.  This means that your expectations have to be up for renegotiation too.  Maybe they were unrealistic to begin with.

The temptation when we get discouraged, especially in a church, is to isolate ourselves.  We stop coming.  We stop leaning on deep spiritual friends.  We just disappear.  Our church isn’t quite big enough to not notice when people disappear, but it’s also a bit too big for me as the pastor to always follow up with everyone.  So don’t let discouragement disconnect you from deep friendships.  You are only dead in your discouragement when you allow your discouragement to drive you away from deep spiritual friendship.

3. Martha: Dead in the Delay
Some of you are like Thomas, dead in your doubt.  Others are like Mary, dead in your discouragement.  But others still are like Martha, dead in the delay.

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
~John 11:17 NRSV

The number of days that Lazarus was dead is important here. It’s important because Martha shared a kind of cultural belief about how dead you were after four days.  It’s not a biblical idea, but it’s a cultural idea.  The belief was that a spirit would stick around for three days, and the body would be “mostly dead.”  But after four days, there’s no coming back.  You’re fully dead.   Jesus has a different set of beliefs.

Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.”
~John 11:39 NRSV

The King  James Version translates this saying “he stinketh.”  It’s an unholy stink!  Martha believed that if Jesus had been here, her brother never would have died:

Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
~John 11:21 NRSV

Martha is dead in the delay.  Many of us are too.  I’m waiting but…

All my friends are getting married, and I want to get married but there’s no right person.  I want a baby, and all my friends are getting pregnant but it’s not happening for us.  I’m praying for a loved one to experience God’s goodness but they’re getting further away from God.  I’ve been praying for healing for someone but nothing is happening; it’s only getting worse.

It’s important to know that God’s delays are not God’s denials.  Back to our building.  Let me tell you, it has been a fourteen year delay for us getting a building.  In my first year at SCC we ran a capital campaign to begin saving for a building.  In the next five years at SCC we have considered more than thirty buildings.  We have seriously looked at and considered nine different options: Property on College Ave, the old Girl Scout building in Holt, the old L&L building in Holt, buying our current office location, two churches that wanted to move but needed to sell their building first, two churches that were interested in merging with us, and the old Alternative School Building in Holt which we voted positively on and then the whole thing fell apart.  But, God willing, and Mt. Hope votes positively today to sell us the building, the delay will soon be done.

While Martha was seemingly dead in the delay, she still shows amazing faith:

But even now I [Martha] know that God will give you [Jesus] whatever you ask of him.”
~John 11:22 NRSV

Martha says, “Even now.”  Even as we are dead in our doubts, discouragement, and delay.  We need an “even now” moment.  Even now when you are discouraged in your jacked up family.  When your heart is cold and calloused to the things of God.  When someone or some dream really is dead.  Not mostly dead, but really dead.

Sometimes God resurrects you by giving you a new vision.  SCC looked at Calvary UMC once before I got here and decided it wasn’t right.  But between then and now we’ve had a new vision.  We envision seven satellites in seven venues on seven days of the week. This building looks very different when you think of it as one of seven venues.  It becomes a launch pad for reaching new people.  We also gained a new vision by seeing how God is using other churches in older more traditional venues reach new people.  New Life Church in Chicago has twenty-one venues on Sunday morning alone and most of them are in older church buildings.  Cornerstone Church, the largest UMC church in Michigan, has successfully launched a new venue in an old Christian Scientist building that is now reaching 200-300 people every Sunday.  God resurrected our search for a building by giving us a new vision.

Jesus is in the business of resurrecting that which is dead.

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
~John 11:23-26 NRSV

The resurrection is not an event.  It is a person.  It’s not just what Jesus does.  It’s who Jesus is.

When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
You are raised not because of you, but because of Jesus
God is always glorified by what has happened
~John 11:43-44 NRSV

So where are you dead today?  Some of you are dead in your sins.  Your relationship with God is broken, and the choices you’re making are only taking you further away from God.  Turn around and come back.  Jesus says:

“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
~John 11:25-26

Do you believe?

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