Pentecost marks a significant moment in the unfolding story of the Early Church. It marks the start of the fulfilment of the promise made by Jesus that his followers would be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
It also marks a significant day in God’s unfold story, not just with respect to the church, but also in the context of his story of history. For the Jews, Pentecost had become a festival of celebration for the giving of the law. That amazing time when Moses went up the mountain to meet with God and God wrote the Ten Commandments on two blocks of stone and gave them to the people.
When we hear the phrase “the law” we think about rules and regulations, but from an OT perspective it’s all about teaching and guidance.
The purpose of the law was be a guide to life under the covenant of grace that God established with his people. As Paul puts it: the law was given to supervise and guide until Christ came (Gal.3).
Now, on the Day of Pentecost, a new teacher, a new guide, is given to the faithful followers of God’s purposes.
But, The “Day” is not the only “Pentecost” in Acts.
Four Times
Four occasions tell stories of the coming of the Holy Spirit in a special way.
The day of Pentecost: Tongues of fire, sound like a strong wind, spilling out on to the streets, speaking other languages.
Acts 8: the story of the Samaritan town. Philip had arrived there because of the scattering of the church after Stephen’s death. He preaches, they respond. The apostles come to visit and realise that something is missing? Why was it so? Perhaps God was working out his purposes is the best answer we can give.
Acts 10: Cornelius. The inclusion of the Gentiles.
Acts 19: Ephesus. Breaking geographical boundaries. Baptism of John is the core issue here.
Four questions
#1 What does this all mean?
Everyone in included.
The one thing that these four examples tell us is that no one falls outside of God’s reach. I everyone can be included in the promise of eternal life, if they choose to be included, then everyone who chooses to be included is also included in God’s promise of the Holy Spirit.
From Jew to Gentile, from resident of the Promised Land to non-resident, from college trained to life trained. We’re all included.
#2 Who is it for?
We've already said it, but it bears repeating: Everyone is included. And that's not all. This is not just about getting you into heaven. It’s also about who you will take with you. Yes, the Holy Spirit will guide you and comfort you, he will be there to pick you up when you fall, but don’t ever think that he’s only there to keep you from going backwards.
He’s there to empower you for both ministry and mission.
There’s a place for you in God’s big plan, a place that only you can fill and God’s Spirit is there to help you fill it.
#3 Why wait?
When you read the story of Cornelius you can’t help but notice God’s impatience. I don’t think he was bored with what Peter had to say, I think he was just bursting to show Cornelius how much he love him.
He just can’t wait, and he asks us a similar question: Why wait?
#4 Did you receive?
How straightforward can you get? No big theological discussion, no deep examination of motives and assessment of things. Just a simple question: Did you receive?
The power of everybody
If everyone is included, then what does that mean for the local church?
We might not like being separated into volunteers and paid-staff. We might prefer to think of ourselves as one team, all called, all gifted, all set apart for ministry and mission.
But the bottom line isn’t what’s your preferred title, it’s what are you doing to be a part of God’s plan to involve everybody?
So, are you playing your part?
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Monday, May 14, 2007
God's Big Picture: The Mission
We began by recording on a flipchart what we think about when we hear the word “mission”.
You may have noticed a consistent theme over the last few weeks as we’ve explored together our four big themes of journey, family, community and now today’s theme of mission.
At some point in our exploring we’ve asked ourselves a similar question: What changes? What could we, what should we do differently? We’ve tried to see things differently, we’ve done things a little differently and we’ve tried to think a little differently.
So, when it comes to mission, what’s different?
Important as it is, (in fact crucial would be a better word to describe the overarching importance and significance of evangelism in mission), we know it’s not the complete answer to the question: What is mission?
#1 Influence
One church I came across recently describes its goals in terms of irresistible influence. Perhaps irresistible is not a word we’d want to use, perhaps it’s a little to controlling, dictatorial, for our liking, but we certainly want to be influential.
Think of the way yeast affects bread, or salt affects flavour. Their influence is unmistakable.
Think of the influence light has over darkness and remember that Paul calls us to shine like stars in a dark universe.
Our mission can shape our community. But it’s not easy.
Influencing, or being relevant to our community would be easy if we didn’t want to be biblical. If we didn’t want to honour God, then we could simply imitate the way the world does influence.
But we want to be biblical.
It’s easy to be biblical if we’re not worried about influencing our communities. We can detach from them, separate ourselves through the language we use and rules we employ.
But we want to be influential, we want to be both relevant and biblical.
The answer to becoming biblical and relevant simultaneously is not isolation or imitation, but incarnation. (Rick Warren)
Not just words, but a lived out gospel.
#2 What’s different?
New Attitudes
We see the world differently, we respond to needs and questions differently. Our communities are no longer dark and difficult places where we should not go for fear of contamination, but places where we can and want to bring the salt and light of God’s amazing grace and love to bear.
New Activities
Not only do we want to see things differently, but we’re prepared to do things differently too. We want our mission activity to have influence and we want it to respond to the needs of our communities.
New Associations
Whether through new friendships or new involvements, we want to build effective bridges with the people Jesus misses.
#3 The world deserves a better church
This little phrase may have passed you by last week. It just slipped out as I was talking about the community. This was something of a “God-moment” for me as I said it.
As I thought about our community, as I thought about what it meant to be the DNA of the community, to be influential in shaping it, I suddenly realised that if we wanted the community to change, then we needed to change too.
And I felt for a moment something of God’s heart for the world beyond my safe little world, and I felt his passion for them and I realised that the world deserves a better church.
Conclusion
So my challenge to you and to me is to seek to become more and more effective and influential in our mission.
I’m asking you pray like never before, to seek God’s heart and God’s impact in the lives of the people you love and the people you don’t!
I’m asking you to seek to live your lives in such a way that you inspire those around you to want to seek God’s involvement in their own lives. I’m asking you to choose to live an infectious Christian life.
I’m asking you to become the DNA where you live, where you work, where you learn where you spend any time at all.
I’m asking you to line up with these big themes and allow God to sear them into your heart.
I’m asking you to say, “Here I am Lord, use me.”
I’m asking you to let the love of God so overflow in your life that it spills into and onto everything and everyone with whom you come into contact.
I’m asking you, for the sake of the kingdom and for the sake of the lost and missing, will you do that?
You may have noticed a consistent theme over the last few weeks as we’ve explored together our four big themes of journey, family, community and now today’s theme of mission.
At some point in our exploring we’ve asked ourselves a similar question: What changes? What could we, what should we do differently? We’ve tried to see things differently, we’ve done things a little differently and we’ve tried to think a little differently.
So, when it comes to mission, what’s different?
Important as it is, (in fact crucial would be a better word to describe the overarching importance and significance of evangelism in mission), we know it’s not the complete answer to the question: What is mission?
#1 Influence
One church I came across recently describes its goals in terms of irresistible influence. Perhaps irresistible is not a word we’d want to use, perhaps it’s a little to controlling, dictatorial, for our liking, but we certainly want to be influential.
Think of the way yeast affects bread, or salt affects flavour. Their influence is unmistakable.
Think of the influence light has over darkness and remember that Paul calls us to shine like stars in a dark universe.
Our mission can shape our community. But it’s not easy.
Influencing, or being relevant to our community would be easy if we didn’t want to be biblical. If we didn’t want to honour God, then we could simply imitate the way the world does influence.
But we want to be biblical.
It’s easy to be biblical if we’re not worried about influencing our communities. We can detach from them, separate ourselves through the language we use and rules we employ.
But we want to be influential, we want to be both relevant and biblical.
The answer to becoming biblical and relevant simultaneously is not isolation or imitation, but incarnation. (Rick Warren)
Not just words, but a lived out gospel.
#2 What’s different?
New Attitudes
We see the world differently, we respond to needs and questions differently. Our communities are no longer dark and difficult places where we should not go for fear of contamination, but places where we can and want to bring the salt and light of God’s amazing grace and love to bear.
New Activities
Not only do we want to see things differently, but we’re prepared to do things differently too. We want our mission activity to have influence and we want it to respond to the needs of our communities.
New Associations
Whether through new friendships or new involvements, we want to build effective bridges with the people Jesus misses.
#3 The world deserves a better church
This little phrase may have passed you by last week. It just slipped out as I was talking about the community. This was something of a “God-moment” for me as I said it.
As I thought about our community, as I thought about what it meant to be the DNA of the community, to be influential in shaping it, I suddenly realised that if we wanted the community to change, then we needed to change too.
And I felt for a moment something of God’s heart for the world beyond my safe little world, and I felt his passion for them and I realised that the world deserves a better church.
Conclusion
So my challenge to you and to me is to seek to become more and more effective and influential in our mission.
I’m asking you pray like never before, to seek God’s heart and God’s impact in the lives of the people you love and the people you don’t!
I’m asking you to seek to live your lives in such a way that you inspire those around you to want to seek God’s involvement in their own lives. I’m asking you to choose to live an infectious Christian life.
I’m asking you to become the DNA where you live, where you work, where you learn where you spend any time at all.
I’m asking you to line up with these big themes and allow God to sear them into your heart.
I’m asking you to say, “Here I am Lord, use me.”
I’m asking you to let the love of God so overflow in your life that it spills into and onto everything and everyone with whom you come into contact.
I’m asking you, for the sake of the kingdom and for the sake of the lost and missing, will you do that?
Monday, May 7, 2007
God's Big Picture: The Community
How do we understand community?
Question: How many different communities do we belong to? (Church, gym, school, village, online community)
Pictures for community.
#1 two separate circles: disconnected communities (church and wider community)
#2 small circles within a big circle: cluster of communities but still isolated
#3 overlapping circles: interconnected communities
#4 one circle in another larger one: church at the heart of the community?
God and the wider Community
How does God see our community beyond the church? Does he think about it—at all, occasionally, all the time? Does he long to see change and transformation in the lives of all those people with whom we have some sort of contact through our days, and even those with whom we have no contact at all?
Of course he cares, of course he thinks about your neighbours, your work colleagues your school friends. As we’ve said many times: People matter to God.
God’s heart for the community: Transformation
We worship the God of justice. The Psalmist reminds us that righteousness and justice are the foundations of [God’s] throne. In other word they are foundational to his character. He is the righteous one, he always acts justly.
Social Justice: discrimination issues etc.
Economic justice: FairTrade etc.
“Legal” justice: doing the right thing, appropriate punishment for the crime, righteous laws.
God has a heart for the poor, the widows and the orphans. The disadvantaged and marginalized can find a place of refuge and hope in his hands.
Through Jonah, God speaks to the people of Nineveh. He looks beyond the boundaries of the church, beund the boundaries of the included towards the excluded.
God’s heart for the community: Compassion
Jesus healed the sick whoever they were. He healed servants and masters, slave and free. He was not impressed by the rich or put off by the poor. Compassion was a key “emotion” of Jesus.
Paul describes God as: the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort
God’s heart for the community: Mission
Rom.10:14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?
Us and our community(ies)
When God blessed Abraham he told him:
Abraham will surely become a great nation and all nations of earth will be blessed through him. (Gen.18:18)
When an expert in the law asked Jesus: “Who is my neighbour?” Jesus answered him by telling the story of the Good Samaritan. A story where the deepest divide is crossed in compassion.
When it comes to the Christian family and its connection with the wider community, the neighbourly love of the Good Samaritan challenges us to cross whatever boundaries exist to offer the care and compassion that is inherent in the gospel itself.
So what is our relationship with our community?
We all know about so-called “neighbours from hell”, but what makes a neighbour from heaven?
God calls us to love our neighbours.
How do we do that?
Let’s take a moment to think about neighbours from heaven. (Flipchart as a large group)
Think about some (three) practical things you/we could do differently to put being a neighbour from heaven into practice.
How should we relate to our community(ies)
#1 See through different eyes
The wider community is not the problem it’s the potential church. Seeing through different eyes means to look outwards rather than look inwards.
Clive Calver once said (at a Baptist assembly if my memory is correct!) that the problem is not the darkness because it’s the nature of darkness to be dark. The problem is with the light that isn’t shining.
Light penetrates darkness and changes it. You cannot turn the darkness on or off, you can only do that with the light. No one ever goes to bed thinking I’d better switch the darkness on otherwise the light will be on all night!
#2 Proximity
“How well do you know George Bush?” Did you know that you are only 6 degrees of separation away from knowing George Bush!
I know Martin Hallet the minister of Goldington Road Evangelical Church. He knows Patrick Hall, the labour MP for the area. Patrick might not know Tony Blair too well, but he’ll know someone who does through the party or the government. Tony Blair knows George Bush.
Get closer to the community. Develop meaningful friendships with people. Don’t treat people as projects.
Jesus spent most of his time around the famous notorious sinners of his day. When he encountered religious people it was usually because they were trying to trip him up or because they had a religious question for him. Typically he challenged their thinking and their behaviour and pointed out God’s great love for those the religious establishment would usually reject.
If we want to be more effective at reaching our communities then we have to get closer to them. There is no substitute for proximity.
#3 Barbecue first
Not the unchurched friends! This is just a way of reminding us that we need to develop friendships before we share the gospel. If you’re going to try getting closer to your community, then you need to remember that you need common ground on which to build.
So barbecue first.
#3 Persevere
Be in it for the long haul.
Commit to the long-term plan of making connections. God can wait longer than you can for someone to take a step of faith.
#4 Shift the balance
We all know about the great commission. We all know that Jesus has given the church the mandate to be the bearer of the good news about Jesus. We all know this.
We also know that Paul was right when he posed the question: How shall they hear unless someone preaches to them?
If we’re really honest, then we all recognise the most of our resources go into serving the needs of the people in the church. I believe that the balance needs to shift towards serving the needs of those beyond the church.
You and I, if we know Jesus as leader and forgiver, if we’ve accepted his great gift of forgiveness, will have an eternity to work out our problems. People who don’t Jesus, don’t have that opportunity.
God loves the world, we must love the world too. We don’t love the values of the world, but we love the world with a passion that comes form the heart of God himself.
Question: How many different communities do we belong to? (Church, gym, school, village, online community)
Pictures for community.
#1 two separate circles: disconnected communities (church and wider community)
#2 small circles within a big circle: cluster of communities but still isolated
#3 overlapping circles: interconnected communities
#4 one circle in another larger one: church at the heart of the community?
God and the wider Community
How does God see our community beyond the church? Does he think about it—at all, occasionally, all the time? Does he long to see change and transformation in the lives of all those people with whom we have some sort of contact through our days, and even those with whom we have no contact at all?
Of course he cares, of course he thinks about your neighbours, your work colleagues your school friends. As we’ve said many times: People matter to God.
God’s heart for the community: Transformation
We worship the God of justice. The Psalmist reminds us that righteousness and justice are the foundations of [God’s] throne. In other word they are foundational to his character. He is the righteous one, he always acts justly.
God has a heart for the poor, the widows and the orphans. The disadvantaged and marginalized can find a place of refuge and hope in his hands.
Through Jonah, God speaks to the people of Nineveh. He looks beyond the boundaries of the church, beund the boundaries of the included towards the excluded.
God’s heart for the community: Compassion
Jesus healed the sick whoever they were. He healed servants and masters, slave and free. He was not impressed by the rich or put off by the poor. Compassion was a key “emotion” of Jesus.
Paul describes God as: the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort
God’s heart for the community: Mission
Rom.10:14 How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?
Us and our community(ies)
When God blessed Abraham he told him:
Abraham will surely become a great nation and all nations of earth will be blessed through him. (Gen.18:18)
When an expert in the law asked Jesus: “Who is my neighbour?” Jesus answered him by telling the story of the Good Samaritan. A story where the deepest divide is crossed in compassion.
When it comes to the Christian family and its connection with the wider community, the neighbourly love of the Good Samaritan challenges us to cross whatever boundaries exist to offer the care and compassion that is inherent in the gospel itself.
So what is our relationship with our community?
We all know about so-called “neighbours from hell”, but what makes a neighbour from heaven?
God calls us to love our neighbours.
How do we do that?
Let’s take a moment to think about neighbours from heaven. (Flipchart as a large group)
Think about some (three) practical things you/we could do differently to put being a neighbour from heaven into practice.
How should we relate to our community(ies)
#1 See through different eyes
The wider community is not the problem it’s the potential church. Seeing through different eyes means to look outwards rather than look inwards.
Clive Calver once said (at a Baptist assembly if my memory is correct!) that the problem is not the darkness because it’s the nature of darkness to be dark. The problem is with the light that isn’t shining.
Light penetrates darkness and changes it. You cannot turn the darkness on or off, you can only do that with the light. No one ever goes to bed thinking I’d better switch the darkness on otherwise the light will be on all night!
#2 Proximity
“How well do you know George Bush?” Did you know that you are only 6 degrees of separation away from knowing George Bush!
I know Martin Hallet the minister of Goldington Road Evangelical Church. He knows Patrick Hall, the labour MP for the area. Patrick might not know Tony Blair too well, but he’ll know someone who does through the party or the government. Tony Blair knows George Bush.
Get closer to the community. Develop meaningful friendships with people. Don’t treat people as projects.
Jesus spent most of his time around the famous notorious sinners of his day. When he encountered religious people it was usually because they were trying to trip him up or because they had a religious question for him. Typically he challenged their thinking and their behaviour and pointed out God’s great love for those the religious establishment would usually reject.
If we want to be more effective at reaching our communities then we have to get closer to them. There is no substitute for proximity.
#3 Barbecue first
Not the unchurched friends! This is just a way of reminding us that we need to develop friendships before we share the gospel. If you’re going to try getting closer to your community, then you need to remember that you need common ground on which to build.
So barbecue first.
#3 Persevere
Be in it for the long haul.
Commit to the long-term plan of making connections. God can wait longer than you can for someone to take a step of faith.
#4 Shift the balance
We all know about the great commission. We all know that Jesus has given the church the mandate to be the bearer of the good news about Jesus. We all know this.
We also know that Paul was right when he posed the question: How shall they hear unless someone preaches to them?
If we’re really honest, then we all recognise the most of our resources go into serving the needs of the people in the church. I believe that the balance needs to shift towards serving the needs of those beyond the church.
You and I, if we know Jesus as leader and forgiver, if we’ve accepted his great gift of forgiveness, will have an eternity to work out our problems. People who don’t Jesus, don’t have that opportunity.
God loves the world, we must love the world too. We don’t love the values of the world, but we love the world with a passion that comes form the heart of God himself.
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