The Rescue Church

Impacted and Impactful

In a blog post, Carey Nieuwhof reviews some information coming out of a study done by Barna Group which shows only 21% of those identifying as Non-Christian have a positive perception of the local church. As a whole, only 44% of males and 49% of females surveyed have a positive perception of the local church. While the goal of the local church may not be to make everyone like it, what should the goal be? It’s likely not what culture at large suspects. This is what we will discuss in this week...

Broadcast on:: 16 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

as do they. Alright, we're going to continue our series called counter-cultural and we're going to be in the book of Acts. If you have your Bibles, you can look it up. It's Acts chapter 2. And if you don't have your Bible, that's okay. You can just look on the screen and the words will be up there. Acts chapter 2 verse 42 is where we'll start. And it says this. It says, "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to everyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." It's interesting as I was preparing this week, I was looking at some studies that were out there. If you saw it in the email, you would have seen a couple of the things from it. But according to Barna, Barna Group does a lot of studies that involve church and ministry. And according to Barna, in one of the surveys that they did, 34% of people who would consider themselves Christian but not active as Christians, they would identify as non-practicing Christians, 34% of them would say that they are indifferent to the church. Ten percent of them actually say they have a negative view of the church, which is probably why they've disconnected from the church. And so maybe we can rationalize that. But then there's the group that identify as non-Christian. And those around us, those in our community who would say, "I am not a Christian." Of that group, 33% are indifferent to church. So that kind of makes sense. They're just connected from the church. 33% of them are indifferent. 46% of them, nearly half of people that are not connected with the church wouldn't consider themselves Christian. 46% not only are not indifferent, not only do they not think that it's a good thing, they actually think it's a negative thing. 46%, nearly half of people in our communities that are non-Christian would say the church is a negative. Now, as you would expect, the same study asked Christians what they think, and about 80% of Christians think that it's a good thing, which explains probably why Christians show up and gather in a church. But it had me thinking as I was wondering, "Well, is this truly a message that is counter-cultural?" And I would say if those who are non-Christian and those who are outside of the church, if two-thirds of them would say that the church offers no benefit to them, and actually three-quarters of them would say there's really no benefit for the church. Well, then I would say saying that the church has value and has purpose is very counter-cultural. So that's the basis of where we're coming from today. We've talked already in this series about how we live in a world that is becoming more and more divided. If you existed in this country in the last week and know that there was a debate that took place, you've experienced some of the division that is taking place in this country, I'm sure. I shared with somebody this week, I was trying to find somebody that compared the two, and it seems like you either have a, "This person is all right, and the other one's all wrong," or, "This person is all right, and the other one's all wrong," but there's no one that takes the information that I've been able to find and puts it all together. We are a very divided society, and we need a church that's united. We talked last week, and when I say we, that means that, as he was preaching last week, talked about how the church is, how the Bible addresses addiction and the impacts of addiction. As part of the reason we have at this church, at this campus have hope recovery on Thursday nights. It's, we understand that that is a reality that affects many people, many families, and so we want to be intentional about offering a way for people to find hope even when dealing with things such as addiction. And this week, like I said, we're going to dig into what is the purpose of the church. Now, if you want a little foreshadowing to what's coming next week, next week is the sermon that I told you, if you've been around for a while, that there's a sermon that I've never preached on, a topic that I've avoided, and next week, the topic, well, let's just say, I gave Keith, Keith gets an outline of what the messages are, because he's like, "I want to know for songs, I want to plan around this." And his question to me was, "What worship songs go around the topic of divorce?" I don't know of any, but we're going to talk about divorce. And the reason I've avoided the topic of divorce, quite honestly, is I know that it's impacted many of your families. And I know that's the exact wrong reason to avoid it, but it's been a not wanting to offend or say something negative or that would sit funny. But we're going to talk on divorce and what it says, partially because somebody asked me, they said, "Why does the church never talk about divorce?" And I said, "Which makes it even more personal when it's, "Well, why don't you talk about it?" I'm like, "I don't have a good answer other than it's a topic that isn't easy." So we're going to hit on divorce next week. If you want to avoid it, don't come. But we're also going to hit on the topic of grace. So you should be here. The next one after that, we're going to talk about singleness, a topic that I think gets missed some as well in the church and how God is working through single people and how it's not a curse like some of you may believe it is. And I'm talking about the single people that think it's a curse. The married people think it's a blessing. Anyway, just come that week. We'll see what God says about it and we'll go from there. All right. So background to the text for today. The text for today, Jesus has died on the cross. He has been buried. He has come back to life. He has spent about 60 to 90 days with his apostles, his disciples sharing hope and then saying, "Hey, go to this upper room and just wait for me. Wait for the Holy Spirit there. He's going to come. You're going to be anointed." And they're like, "We don't understand this whole anointing of the Holy Spirit thing." But he's saying, "Go. Just wait. I'm sending someone else, a helper." And they see him ascending to heaven. He's no longer with them. They wait. Holy Spirit comes and empowers them in a way that has never happened before in their lives. And the first thing or one of the first things that they do is they go out into the countryside and Peter starts to preach. Now, keep in mind, this is the same Peter who has tripped over his words many times and said things that he probably wishes he could pull back. I mean, how many of us have had anybody say, "Get behind me, Satan. Let alone Jesus say it in your direction." So that's what Peter had experienced. But now Peter is delivering a message because the power of the Holy Spirit has come on him. And as he's coming and he's preaching, he says things like, he says, "Hey, this message is for all people. It's for men and women. And it's not just men in a culture that it was all about the men, all about the men." He says, "Hey, men and women will prophesy." He's quoting Joel. And he says, "Men and women will prophesy. This is for all people. It will change your culture." And he continues and says, "Anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." As he finishes, as he has he continues in his message right before we get to the passage that we're at today. People are asking, "Wait, based on the light of the fact that we are all sinners, based on this truth of everything that you're preaching, what do we do? How do we respond? How should we act?" And Peter's response in verses 38 and 39 of Acts 2 is, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The promise is for you and your children, and for all who are far off, for all whom the Lord God will call." I'm thankful that it wasn't just for them and their children, but for all who are far off, because this is about 2,000 years ago, and that's really far off. So this truth is here for us today. And then as he preaches, as he brings this message, we're told that there's about 3,000 people choose to follow Jesus at this time, to follow Jesus as Savior, to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins. And they trust Jesus and the New Testament church is formed. The first church formed after this message. And this is a time when people who like to preach about big church will say, "See, God is a fan of the mega church," and I would tell you he is. He's also a fan of the house church, which we see later in the gospels, but are in the gospels, in the New Testament. But the point is, the church is formed. And God begins working in this community and in the world as a result of this church. It happens not because of political means. It happens not because of a social justice initiative, but it happens because of the power of Jesus at work saving lives. And so in this, they say, as we get into this text, we see there's five purposes called out in that passage for the church. We'll go through them here. We'll try and go through them relatively quickly. The first one that is called out as a purpose is spiritual growth. The idea of development of a relationship with God. This is part of the reason that we as the rescue church say that there is an emphasis on grow and growing. And the passage specifically says they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. You might say that they were being mentored by the apostles, mentored by the disciples. They had the opportunity to learn directly from those who had been with Jesus, which coincidentally you and I have through the gospels, but they were doing it directly in person with them. And it says that they were devoted to it. Not just like they were like, eh, it's that thing that if I don't have something else scheduled at the same time, I might show up. They were devoted. They were committed. The word devoted is to give a constant attention to a thing. This wasn't just the thing that at times came to mind when they weren't busy doing this thing or that thing, when they weren't at work. This was a constant attention. So they were devoted to their spiritual growth. The second thing that we see is often called fellowship. And for some reason, I am not a big fan of the word fellowship because it seems like a churchy word. How many of you, when you're hanging out with friends, say, hey, let's go fellowship. I'm guessing not very many of you have said that. I'm guessing that's not a common word on college campuses that, hey, let's have a fellowship today. We just don't say it. So if we're going to use a word that doesn't commonly get used in culture, why not use the original word, which is coinaniya? So coinaniya means something a little bit different than the Christiany word fellowship. It means actually close mutual friendship and participation in life together. Close mutual friendship and participation in life together. That sounds a lot different than the word that we often call fellowship. When we say, hey, we're going to have fellowship, it's, hey, we're going to go hang out, have a meal and go home. That doesn't mean that there's a close mutual friendship form. It doesn't mean that we're participating in life together. It just means that for that one set period of time, we're going to fellowship. We're going to hang out together and then go on with our lives as if that other time didn't exist or maybe just without giving it the same priority. But for them, this was a big deal. This was something that not only was it happening for that time when they were together, but they were, they were, I hate this phrase, but I can't think of a better one. They were doing life together. I hate that phrase, but it's the idea that everything that they did was considering the impacts on each other. It's the relationship that they maintained outside of the gathering time. So it wasn't simply being at the same place at the same time. It was truly having that deep relationship. And it says, in the passage that we read, it says they devoted themselves to breaking bread and every day they continue to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread and ate together. That's all said in that passage. The third thing we have is worship. It's worship of God as Lord and celebrating Jesus as the Messiah. That was important to them. That was critical to them. We mentioned just a minute ago breaking bread. Depending what translations you have, if you have the NLT, if you have, I think maybe even ESV, maybe even NASB, depending what translation you have, what letters you're using, it may even say the Lord's Supper there. Because part of the idea is when they would get together, they would celebrate what we would call communion, the Lord's Supper. It was a time for them to gather and enjoy eating together for sure and hanging out together for sure and getting to know each other more for sure. But they also took time to remember the fact that Jesus as Messiah had come and died and gave His life that they could have forgiveness in a relationship with the Holy God. And so they would worship Him in those times. The idea of worship is truly the idea of elevating and putting high and focus on something. And in this case, that is the Messiah and God as Lord. Part of that worship, like I said, was eating together, hanging out together, gathering together, learning together. We've talked about a little bit of that, but it also talks about praying together, that they took time to pray. And if you continue and read into chapter 3, verse 1, it says here, it says that they gathered daily at the temple for a time of prayer. You see, so much of what they did involved their Christian community and their relationship with other people. It wasn't just a Sunday morning at 10 o'clock gathering or a Sunday morning at whatever time gathering. This was a thing that involved their entire life and their entire week. They made time daily to worship together and to pray together. They also made time to serve together. They served together. We would likely use a churchy word ministry, but I guess if you get out into the community and say, "Hey, it's a ministry." I don't know how many people would go, "Oh, okay, I get that." I mean, maybe here in the Midwest and maybe throughout the country, I don't know, but I figured it would be a little bit clearer just to say serve others, to use that to encapsulate this. Part of the way they served is the disciples continued to perform miracles like Jesus had performed miracles, and it says that they perform signs and wonders. Now, I don't know why we don't still see as much of that today. I have theories. I have theories that in this part of the world, we don't see as much of it because we don't necessarily believe it's necessary. We maybe rely more on medical expertise, and I'm not saying that that's not important and great, but maybe we don't see it as much because we don't rely on it as much. I don't know, but that's a message for another day and probably a study for another time. It also says beyond that though, that they sold their possessions so that everyone among them had needs met, or gave to anyone who had need. If we continue into Acts chapter 4 verse 34, it says that there was no one among them who had needs that weren't met. So they were intentional about meeting needs. If you go to Acts chapter 4, you'll also see that when they saw that there was a group of people that had need, which was in that case the widows, what they decided to do was that they would elect leaders that would make sure that the widows were taken care of. So they were serving their widows. In the church's history, we can look back and we see all sorts of examples of the church meeting needs that were real practical needs in society. We see groups from the church who say, "Okay, we're going to reach out to this group of people that has leprosy and we're going to choose to live with them when all of society has abandoned them." It was Christians who gathered and did that. It was Christians who formed many of the hospitals around. In fact, if you look at the names of a lot of our hospitals, they're named after churches or saints or things like that because it was the church that did it. Now, I'm not saying that Sanford is a saint. Don't hear me wrong. It's not all hospitals are that way. But some of them, that's what they are doing. That's who they are and why they are called that is because the church got behind making sure people were taken care of. But beyond all of that, the point is they were just meeting the practical needs of people in their community. The next thing that we have is that they were sharing the gospel. They shared the gospel. Now, historically, the word that's been used here is the word evangelize. And again, for the same reason I've avoided some of the other words, is evangelize probably doesn't mean much to some people today or maybe even has a negative connotation behind it. But it's the idea of telling people about the hope of a relationship with Jesus. It's the preaching the gospel, telling people the good news that God loved them so much that he died on the cross carrying on himself our sins so that we could have a relationship with him. In Acts 4.4, we're told that the church was continuing to grow. What we see in this situation, there was about 3,000 members. Well, in Acts 4.4, they're up to 5,000 men. Now, if we figure that it, okay, that's just the men. There was probably an equal number of women who knows maybe more women because they're smarter and catch on quicker. But we'll just say the same number. Now, we're at 10,000. And then if we were to say, okay, that there was probably some kids and some young people that were in there. Now, we're up to, you know, let's say just one for every one man. Now, we're up 15,000. In theory, this church could have been up to 15,000 to 20,000 people at this time because they continue to make an impact in their community. They continue to share the hope of Jesus with the world around them and lives were transformed. All of this to lead up to the fact that our community, the community that sees the church is irrelevant, the community that sees the church is not making an impact or just existing needs the church to be impactful and not to simply exist. Our community around us needs to be able to see that the church doesn't just exist but actually desires to make an impact in the world around them. Let's take a step back on that and kind of go, okay, we've gone quickly through this. Let's take a look at this. If it's true that outside of the church, people don't see a value of the church. Why is that? What causes the people in our communities not to see a value? Some of it I believe may be because we've gotten away from the idea of coin and eah. The idea of church when people think of going to church is likely a service that it takes place once a week where they sing songs, they may go through liturgy, they may not, they may read the Bible, they may corporately pray. Who knows? It looks different in a variety of ways. But does the church today truly reflect that idea of coin and eah where there's gathering throughout the week, where there's a true desire to know each other outside of a weekly gathering, where there's a desire to make sure that people are taken care of? I think no, and maybe I'm wrong, but I think that often it's just a place that people see as a place to go. Now I hope that we're different, and I like to think that we're different, but I have a bias, obviously as I'm the pastor here. So I have a true bias, but I'd like to think that we as a church care about each other outside of a Sunday morning and outside of this time that we do take time to pray with each other, to pray for each other, to meet each other's needs, to help take care of each other, that we would be willing to sacrifice for the good of other people who were a part of the church, and probably already to some extent would sacrifice or have sacrifice for the good of the church. Now let me be very clear that what I'm not advocating for and what God does not advocate for is not socialism. This isn't an idea that the government should take care of everybody evenly, and I don't mean this as a political statement, but I want to say this as a clarifying statement, in that this is the idea that the church Christians should care for each other and help make sure each other's needs are met. If there's somebody who is sick, we should come alongside them, we should be praying for them, we should be walking with them as they go through that thing. If there's somebody who is struggling financially, we should be willing to go through that with them, to walk with them, to care for them. If there's somebody going through a marriage that falls apart, we should be able to be there with them, walking with them, taking care of them, letting them know that they are not alone. When someone loses a child or a parent, they should know that they are not all alone. In a society where so many of people feel like they don't have those true connections, we're told that we should have, and it depends who you listen to, one to three, in some cases, one to five, in other cases, close personal connections with people if we are truly going to be healthy. My guess is if you were to go into our community or wherever you live, I'm guessing most people don't have that. They may have contact with a lot of people through their phone, through the Facebook, through Twitter, through Instagram, through any of those things. They have contacts, but do they truly have close relationship with people who would drop everything to take care of them if something went wrong? Or is it simply the thing where they could post on Facebook that, "Oh, what was me? This thing happened?" And somebody would say, "I'll pray for you." And I'm not minimizing the power of prayer. I'm saying sometimes we throw, "I will pray for you out as an excuse not to actually get up and do something." We feel good about the fact that we say, "Oh, I'll pray for you," because it's our way of saying, "Oh, bless you." And then we move on with our lives, because we wouldn't want to interfere too much with our own lives and what we have going on. And then instead, truly stop to take notice of that person that's hurting or struggling. Again, I'm not saying that's us here in the rescue church. I am saying that that's what I believe society and what statistics are showing that society at large is experiencing. And when people are hurting, they need a church that will support them, that will walk with them, that will be there with them, and sacrifice for the good of them. But it's not just that part of things. It's the challenging each other to be the best that we can be. I need people who are going to challenge me to be the best I can be. You need people who are going to challenge you to be the best you can be. We need people that will mentor us, that will help us in practical areas like our finances. There's people who are further along that have learned something that have applied biblical finance principles that can help teach others. There's people who are further along in marriage who have realized what it means to build a marriage on a relationship with Jesus and can help those of us who are further behind to walk that. And those of us who are where we are that can help others that aren't where we're at. There's that mentoring and learning from each other that we saw modeled by Paul with Timothy. And it's a lot with relevant issues. It's not just Bible topics that don't matter, that don't impact life. But that's what the perception of church is by millennials. There's been a lot of talk about millennials by people my age and older about, oh, millennials this, millennials that. If you're still at the point where you're talking about millennials that way, you're way behind because millennials are now the family, the ones raising families and have kids graduating high school. We have other generations beyond that. But that generation that is raising families right now, that's the millennials. They're the ones that are saying that the church is not relevant to me. More than half of them are saying the church is not relevant today. I bring this up because there is a tendency for us to maybe not talk about the topics that are impacting a world around us and avoid that. Or at least we come across that way. And if we're mentoring and if we're helping and we're walking alongside each other, we can help each other grow in truly relevant ways. As the church, as a gathering too, one of the ways we connect is we actually serve together. We saw that that's serving. I'm going to throw this out now. I don't even think I have this note in my notes. Maybe I do. But as the rescue church, we have a lot of people that serve, which is amazing. We have probably, I would say, a higher percentage of people that volunteer within the church and serve within the church as probably the average church does. But I want to encourage you, if you're not plugging in and serving, please do. We are better when everybody uses their gifts and their skills and helps the group as a whole. It puts us in a better position to reach people. It puts us in a better position to serve people. One of the questions that's been asked of me is, well, what does it look like to do a nursery? Should we have a nursery? We don't have the volunteers to do a nursery. There's your short answer. We would need people that would say, hey, we're going to do that. We've had to go away from some of our stuff online with our weekend service because we just don't have enough volunteers to do that. So, if you are interested in volunteering, if you're willing to serve, please look at, let me know. Go to the rescuechurch.com/connect. You can go to Lexi. You can go to Kelly. Let him know. We'll plug people in because we're all better when we're working together and serving together. So, that was a brief plug that I don't know that was even in my notes. All right, but the body does have many parts. You have different abilities. You and I have different skill sets and we can work together. We can accomplish more if we are serving together. As a community outside of the church, we also have an opportunity to let people know that they're loved. There's things like the bread basket and all these other organizations where we can plug in. Some people have asked me, I have an opportunity this coming week to go to a pastor's retreat. And one of the things that pastors talk a lot about is the idea of co-vocational, bivocational, or what that looks like. And people have asked, you know, am I bivocational? And the idea with bivocational is a pastor who wants to be a full-time pastor but can't afford to be someone who's budgeted for them to be a pastor. So they choose not to, they are hoping to keep serving both entities until they get to a point where the church can financially support them and they can work full-time for the church and not have any other jobs. Would it be great to have us in a position where we could do that? Absolutely. But I will just tell you just so that you all know, that's not where I'm at. Part of the reason I'm co-vocational is I've seen that as a church when you're sitting in the seats where you're all sitting right now and when the pastor is saying, hey, come on, we need volunteers for this or there's this opportunity to serve in that. When the response is, yeah, I'm already serving in this area. I'm already doing this. Do you know what it's like to have a job? I work 50 hours a week outside of this church and now you're asking me to serve more and I realize that if I was ever going to be in this lead role, I wanted to be intentional about having a job outside of the church so I didn't become disconnected and expect anything of you that I would not expect of myself. And so when I am challenging you and saying, hey, there are opportunities to serve in our community. There's people who need us to step up and serve in our communities. I say that understanding and knowing that you have busy lives, that you have a shortage of time, but that God has called us still to make time, to take time, to serve. Whether it's serving in a neighbor, whether it's serving in an organized way, whatever that looks like, there are opportunities to serve. Truly, we talk about the church's obligation and expectation that we're sharing the hope of the gospel. Some of the best opportunities to share is when you're connecting with people and building relationships. Yes, you can go through the whole evangelist thing and we can put up a tent and we can have people come and preach and pray for revival. And I'm not opposed to doing any of those things, but the truth is most people will give you more time of day if you're willing to just sit and have a conversation with them and live in relationship with them. And so I want to encourage us to step in to people's relationships and to get to know our community. My prayer, and I hope yours, and I believe that what we would see in this New Testament church is an example of a church that is relevant to the community, not a relic of the past, not somebody that's disinterested in what's going on, but instead that cares about people that is willing to adjust to reach people because they have a heart for people. We're going to have time for discussion here in just a little bit, but as I wrap up, we're talking about things that are counter-cultural. And culture today tells us that the church is becoming more and more irrelevant, less and less practical, less and less concerned about things that mattered to me. But I would argue that the church today is just as relevant as it was 2000 years ago. 2000 years ago, people were hurting. 2000 years ago, people needed hope. 2000 years ago, people had concerns about politics. 2000 years ago, people were having family issues. There's a lot of things that are different today, but there's still a lot of the core issues that are the same. And so we can take what we're taught about the church. We can be the church. And if we do, we will be relevant. So there's a choice to make. There's a choice of being irrelevant. Let me step back. If people look at the church and say it's irrelevant, I would argue there's probably two different things that we can look at. One is that they're just simply trying to slander the church, and that the church truly is irrelevant. That's a possibility. Or the church truly is relevant, but they just want a bad mouth at it because of whatever. Maybe that's it. The other is that maybe if we're honest, we have become a little bit less relevant, less impactful. And we need to get back to being more intentional with spiritual growth, Koinaniya. I like that word. Worship, serving others, sharing the gospel. And if we're not willing to make more of a focus on those things, then let's just accept the fact that we're not necessarily too concerned about whether or not people are going to spend eternity with Jesus. Let's accept the fact that we're not really all that concerned about whether our community feels loved. And let's accept the fact that we're okay with people not even connecting with the church. Because if we're not willing to do what God has called us to, what He's invited us into, I don't know how we can be equally dissatisfied that people aren't choosing to follow Jesus. So I said it a few weeks ago, I'll say it again. God has given a vision of seeing 100% of the people in this community know the hope of the gospel. That's every single one, every kid, every adult, every person. 100% of people know that they are loved. And 100% of people who do have a relationship with Jesus plug into the church. If that's truly what we're going to do, we need to be a church that's making an impact and not simply existing. Let's pray. Gracious God, thank you for an example set up 2000 years ago of a church that that was willing to love sacrificially, give sacrificially, but it wasn't like they were miserable. They were caring for each other. They were enjoying life together. They had strong relationships. God, you were doing incredible things. So as we wrap up today, my prayer is that you would be working in my life and each person hears life, that we would truly love each other, that we would be willing to sacrifice time, give up resources, to help each other, to care for each other, to walk through life together and to worship you together. God, it's not, I don't know, I don't want to come across this cultish God. So you know what I'm trying to say, and I just pray that your word would speak truth, that your spirit would lead in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for listening to this recent message from the Rescue Church. We pray that God will use this message to encourage, challenge, and inspire you in your faith journey. To hear our messages live, head to one of our physical campuses. If you'd like to learn more about the Rescue Church, please visit us online at therescuechurch.com or email us at office@therescuechurch.com.