20 Years Deep – Core Values Part I

20 Years Deep – Core Values Part I
Sycamore Creek Church
October 31, 2010
Tom Arthur

Peace, Friends!

When Jesus was first calling his disciples he saw Peter out in the boat after a long night of catching no fish.  He said to him, “Put out in the deep water and let your nets down for a catch” (Luke 5:4).  Peter followed Jesus’ instruction and brought in more fish than he had caught all night!  When Jesus calls us to follow him, he tells us to put out into the deep water.  Jesus always calls us to deeper maturity, deeper growth, deeper faith, deeper commitment.  Next week Sycamore Creek Church turns ten years old.  We’ll be ten-years “deep.”

We’re currently in the third week of a six-week campaign called 20 Years Deep, and during this campaign we’re celebrating the ten years that God has given us, and we’re also looking forward to the next ten.  We’re looking forward by seeking to raise $500,000 over the next three years to put us in a good place to own our own building so that we can accomplish our mission more fully: to ignite authentic life in Christ.

In week one, we looked at our mission: to ignite authentic life in Christ.  Last week we took a look at five points of vision that will guide us over the next ten years.  Today we’re taking a look at the first three of our core values, the values that we’ve brought along with us on these first ten years and that will continue to be the way or manner that we go about living into our vision for the next ten.

This message is part one of our core values.  There are three more, but in between the second part of this sermon, we’re going to stop and celebrate our birthday.  Next week pastor Barb Flory, the founding pastor of SCC, will be here to join me in celebrating our ten-year birthday.  I hope you’ll bring some friends with you to celebrate.

So let’s dive into the first three of our six core values here at SCC.  The first core value is:

People need the Lord.

Core values are kind of like the stuff you bring along with you on a boat ride.  This core value would be the life vest in the boat.  It’s the thing that you put on when you’re sinking, and the truth is that all of us are always sinking.  A life vest is a pretty amazing thing.  It does all the work whether you’re contributing anything or not.  You can be conked out and unconscious, and the life vest will still save your life.  The key thing, of course, is that you have to put the life vest on.

I know the importance of putting the life vest on because I was canoeing one time when we got into really big rapids.  Pretty soon there was so much water in the canoe that there was no difference between being in the canoe and being in the river.  Pretty soon the canoe was floating down the river without us.  I was swimming for my life trying to keep my head above water.  I was working incredibly hard.  Maybe harder than I’ve ever worked before.  I was working so hard because I had neglected to put the life vest on.  It was on the floor of the canoe.  What good does it do there?  None.  While a life vest will do all the work in saving you, you’ve got to put it on for it do the saving work.

Jesus is kinda like that life vest.  Jesus does all the hard work of saving you, but you’ve got to put Jesus on first.  Otherwise you’re just like me in that river floating down stream with the life vest floating down in front of me.  People need the Lord.

While none of the other core values are in a particular order, this one is placed first for a reason.  It is placed first because it flows in and through everything we do around here.  Jesus told his followers to “go and make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 28:19).  Everyone.  We might say all people need the Lord.  Every single one of us has a God-shaped hole in our heart.  It’s a deep longing that is not easy to satisfy.  We try to fill it will all kinds of things.  Money.  Entertainment.  The newest gadget.  A girlfriend or boyfriend.  A child.  A spouse.  Friends.  Food.  All kinds of stuff.  But none of that stuff fits because the hole is God-shaped.  The longing can only be satisfied by God.

There is this sense sometimes that Christians get when they look at other people.  Sometimes we look at other people and think, “They don’t really need Jesus.  They’ve got their life together and they’re happy as they are.”  But what we don’t know is that they lie awake restless at night asking the big questions in life, just like you and me.  Our hearts are restless until they find rest in the Lord.  Everyone.  We pose to one another all the time.  We make it look like our lives are together.  But they’re not.  We’re all sinking in the rapids of life, and we all need a life vest.  We all need the Lord.

The problem each of us has is that we need someone to reach out to us and offer us a life vest.  We tend to think that people already know what they need, but sometimes they don’t.  We all have a general sense of who God is.  God has generally revealed God’s nature to everyone.  We see this in Psalm 19 which says, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork (Psalm 19:1, NRSV).  By this general revelation, as theologians call it, we know God’s power and divinity (Romans 1:20), but we don’t know a lot about God’s purposes of salvation.

It’s only in Jesus that we get the fullest view of what God desires for each of us.  Paul says, “Christ is the visible image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15, NLT).  Here in Jesus we have a special knowledge of who God is, or as theologians say, we have a special revelation of God’s will and purposes for our life.  We learn that God is loving, merciful, and full of grace, and we only know this fully because of Jesus.  That means that each of us and we together as the church need to share this good news with those around us.  People need the Lord.  We need to pass out as many life vests as we can.  People need the Lord.

Sometimes we get very focused on ourselves.  Churches tend to become like that.  The longer they are around, the more inward focused they tend to become, but we must, if we are to follow Jesus fully, focus on those who are not yet among us, those who have not yet put on the life-saving life vest.

Jesus told a parable to make this point.  He talks about a shepherd who has one hundred sheep and one of them goes missing.  He says, “Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others and go out into the hills to search for the lost one?” (Matthew 18:12, NLT).  Yes.  The shepherd is worried about the one lost one.  It’s called the ninety-nine and one principle.  We at SCC must live into this ninety-nine and one principle.  This happens by focusing not on our own needs on any given Sunday morning, but on the guest among us.  It means focusing not on our own needs when we’re out in the community, but on the needs of the one who is lost, who has not yet put on the life vest, who does not yet know they need the Lord.

This also means that here at SCC we’re not satisfied with how many people join us in this journey.  We always want more.  We always want to grow in size, because there is always one more who needs the Lord.  There is always one more who is drowning in the currents of life.  We want to grow in maturity, but we also must never neglect the one who has not yet even joined the journey.  People need the Lord.  It’s the first of our core values, because it’s our first priority.  People need the Lord.

The second core value we hold at SCC is:

We seek to create healthy community through biblical patterns of relating to one another.

What does this mean?  It means that we as a church seek to be a community who follow Jesus’ pattern and way of life.  Jesus says, “For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:30, NRSV).  A “yoke” is a kind of harness that you put on animals so that you can hitch up a plow to them.  Many canoes have a yoke in them so that you can easily carry the canoe.  In fact, if a canoe doesn’t have a yoke, it’s pretty hard to carry.  A yoke makes it easy.

Jesus says his yoke is easy.  His way of life may look hard at first, but when you begin to live into it you find that all kinds of dead weight that you’ve been carrying around in this life begins to drop off.  Your life becomes lighter because you’re living it Jesus’ way.

So what is Jesus’ way of life?  What’s the major thrust of it?  I think one word that describes it well is “reconciliation.”  Paul says, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18).  Reconciliation means making people right with one another, creation, and God.  We are a community of reconciliation.

Now reconciliation is not always fun or easy, but it is ultimately the most joyful way of living.  When you carry a grudge around, you know who it hurts?  You.  When you don’t seek to make things right with someone who has hurt you in the church, who carries the weight of that?  You.  Actually, it’s not just you, because when you’re carrying the weight of that broken relationship in the church, you’re not able to help carry the burdens of those around you.  You’ve got less energy and passion for living into the mission of this church.  So here at SCC we seek to follow Jesus’ pattern of reconciliation by being honest and humble.  We confess to one another when we’ve done wrong.  We show each other mercy by forgiving.

So what happens if someone doesn’t want to be reconciled?  Jesus gives us some direction for that.  He says, “If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Matthew 18:17, NRSV).  Whoa!  Are we talking about excommunication here?  No!  Why not?  Well, think about it this way.  This is being written by who?  Matthew.  Who was Matthew?  A tax collector.  And who does Jesus tell his followers to go seek at the end of Matthew’s Gospel?  The gentiles.  We’re not talking about excommunication here.  When someone doesn’t want to be reconciled, then they become the focus of our mission.  We seek to continue to help them be reconciled to God and one another.  We proactively seek one another out and we don’t hold grudges.  This is sometimes very hard, but it’s what it means to follow Jesus.

We have a model in our church that describes this process pretty well.  It’s called the Role Re-negotiation Model.  At the beginning of every relationship there is a negotiation of expectations and a commitment made to the relationship.  Somewhere along the way in every relationship one of those expectations is broken.  If it’s a small expectation that is broken we call that a “pinch.”  If it’s a big expectation or a small expectation repeatedly over time that is broken, then we call that a “crunch.”  When we experience a pinch or a crunch we have several options for how we can respond.  We can ignore it and live in apathy.  We can leave the relationship without saying anything.  We can say a quick “sorry” without making any changes.  Or we can do the healthy thing of going back to the beginning and renegotiating the expectation.  This is hard work.  It doesn’t come easy.  It takes time.  But we believe here at SCC that this is the kind of hard work that Jesus did for each of us, so we want to do it with one another.

This is our second core value: We seek to create healthy community through biblical patterns of relating to one another. Our third core value is:

Being in a small group is essential to spiritual growth.

We all need friends for the journey.  It’s awfully hard to go it alone.  Let’s think back to the canoe.  Jeremy and I went canoeing several weeks ago.  Have you ever been canoeing?  Have you ever tried to canoe in a big canoe like this alone?  It’s pretty hard.  I won’t say it’s impossible, but it’s certainly not for the novice or even the intermediate.  I put Jeremy up in front because he had all the brawn.  I got to sit in the back and just steer the canoe.  Together we could move forward swiftly and go in the right direction without capsizing.  Following Jesus is the same way, we do it better together.

Consider that Jesus didn’t even do this alone.  He picked twelve followers to walk with him.  He was always teaching them various things about God and life.  Sometimes his closest followers didn’t get it.  We read about one time “later, when Jesus was alone with the twelve disciples and with the others who were gathered around, they asked him, ‘What do your stories mean?’” (Mark 4:10, NLT).  Do you ever feel like you need someone to explain to you what Jesus’ stories mean for your life?  All of us do.  I know I do.

Then even more than understanding we need courage and grace to live into the point of the story.  We each need a community to encourage, strengthen, teach, and mentor us.  The author of Hebrews tells us, “And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage and warn each other, especially now that the day of his coming back again is drawing near” (Hebrews 10:25, NLT).  This verse is originally about meeting for worship, but worship would have originally been a small group in someone’s house, and those early Christians would have then helped one another throughout the week.

One of the key parts of this core value is that Sunday morning isn’t enough.  We need to be touching base with spiritual friends throughout the week.  Small groups make that happen intentionally.  In small groups our spiritual friends help us live into that life that Jesus lived.

I’m in two small groups.  One I lead and one I just show up and participate in.  One of the guys in the group I don’t lead is Chris Alderman.  I asked him if I could share this.  Chris has a job right now that keeps him away from Church on Sunday mornings, but he comes regularly to small group on Wednesday mornings.  Chris is an ex-Marine, and if you know him, he’s a little rough around the edges.  I love Chris.  One of the things I love about Chris is he’s so different than I am.  If you spend much time around Chris you’ll soon realize that Chris is one of the most extroverted guys you’ll meet.  We’ve met several times for lunch or in public.  Chris talks to everyone he meets.  He talks to the waiter or waitress.  He talks to the barman.  He talks to the host.  He talks to the stranger walking down the street.  He talks to the cashier.  He talks to the guy walking by the table.  Now I’m an introvert.  You know what happens when Chris and I get together?  Chris teaches me how to be friendly to strangers!  Every time I get together with Chris in my small group, I learn something about being friendly to people I don’t know.  It’s not easy for me, but because Chris is in my small group, I get the chance to learn from him.  And hopefully we all learn from one another.

Now small groups happen in all kinds of ways.  There are formal small groups and informal small groups.  There are small groups here at SCC then there are small groups that some of you have made up yourselves.  The point isn’t that you have to be in an SCC small group, but what spiritual friends are you meeting with who challenge you each week besides Sunday morning?  When are you meeting with other Christians who aren’t quite like you who push you in ways that you may not want to be pushed?

Several months ago Arlene Bachanov shared how she has become an associate with the Dominican nuns in Adrian.  For Arlene, the Dominicans are her small group.  She was telling me how they pray for her and challenge her in unique life-giving ways.  Arlene occasionally joins a small group at SCC, but her spiritual friends are primarily a group of elderly nuns.  That’s cool.  We’d all probably be a bit better off if we had some elderly nuns who were our friends!  Who are your spiritual friends?  Who is on the journey with you?  What small group are you a part of?  Being in a small group is essential to spiritual growth.

These are the first three of our six core values:

People need the Lord.

We seek to create healthy community through biblical patterns of relating to one another.

Being in a small group is essential to spiritual growth.

We live into these values not just by our own grit and determination, but God’s Spirit helps us.  By doing so we seek to ignite authentic life in Christ by connecting people to God and one another, growing in the Character of Christ, and serving our church, community and world.