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Why Newark Naz.? Matthew 16:21-27

I have had a broken heart for a long time.

Some of you are wondering who died and why am I so sad. For nearly twelve years, from 1990 to late 2001, I spoke in an average of 60 different churches a year. You see a lot. You do a lot of observing.

After clearly studying the mission that Christ left the church to do and trying to match it with what we are doing I had a very hard time making or finding a link between the two.

Oh, we are busy doing church. People show up and sit right where they are supposed to sit and act exactly like they are supposed to act and then they go home.

It is heart breaking. It is enough to make you angry and frustrated. I have been searching for some time for a mirror big enough to install on the platform of churches around the country. Not for the individuals in the seats to see themselves but for the whole church to corporately own up to or deal with the question: How are we doing with the mission that Christ left the church?

A few weeks ago, I spoke in a church and tried to convey this message. It was tough. It wasn’t a glorious Sunday morning message. Nobody went home grinning from ear to ear, or feeling all warm and fuzzy. Yesterday, I spoke twice to two different groups of people at the same conference. If you can imagine, I spoke for one hour in the first session about this subject and it was deathly quiet. People left that session weeping. It’s not very rewarding as a public speaker, when you don’t leave them laughing.

The point is, that it is too critical of a subject to play around. There is only one way to hear it and that is straight forward and laying it on the table.

It is our intention this morning to call us to remember and embrace the mission of this church.

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. . .” Matthew 28:19-20

For years churches almost never used this verse unless they were thinking about missions. Well, I’m fine with that because guess what? We now live on the mission field. You can’t escape it, you may choose to ignore it but that will not make it go away. It used to be so convenient to send missionaries on planes or boats around the world to deal with those awful pagans. I mean we could just dig down into our pockets and give a little money. . .and we would be fulfilling the great commission. We were making disciples of all nations.

Are you making disciples as a church? Are you seeing people from this culture turning to the Lord? Are people getting saved? Are they looking our way for spiritual help?

God is calling us as a church very specifically to respond to the needs of the unchurced. You see most of the church people in America have made church about them. I don’t want to startle you, but this church paid a heavy price to escape that mentality and we are not going to go back to it. Let me say it again, we are not going back to making church about church people. There is a selfish, self serving attitude that prevails and we cannot and will not go back in that direction. Now let me tell you why and let me remind you what we are about.

1. A Clear Mission

“From that time Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day.” (verse 21)

Jesus in this story wanted to communicate something to His disciples. He wanted them to understand what was going to happen to Him. How many of you understand that the disciples were not the “sharpest knives in the drawer?” They very rarely understood what Jesus was trying to say. He always needed to explain the message to them separately so they would get it.

Do you think it is possible that the church has missed the message and mission that Christ gave the church?

2. A Complete Miss

“Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!” (verse 22)

When I read these words recently the hair stood up on my arms. “Then Peter took Him aside.”

I have a feeling that we have been taking the Lord aside as the institution called the church for thousands of years. We have become very slick at making church about us. We do it like we are comfortable with. Our highest goal most of the time is to do church like we remember it as a child.

If that is the way you are looking at things you are going to die in this culture. You will sit here by the side of the road until the last funeral of the old-timers has been conducted and then someone will come and close the doors and give the keys to a realtor.

Do you know why? Because you have taken the Lord and the message so far aside that the culture can’t even find you and you can’t find them. It is not the job of the unchurched to be finding you anyway, it is our job to do whatever it takes to reach them.

We are human and we hate change don’t we? We love the familiar, the comfortable, the predictable. We may just love it so much that the people we are responsible for sharing the message of Christ with will go to hell and some day we will stand in front of God and the horrible truth will dawn in upon us. No we didn’t drink, smoke or chew or go with girls who do, but we made church about us and we refused to do the things that would reach the times in which we live. Do you think God is going to be happy about that?

Let’s look at Jesus reaction.

3. A Convicting Message

“But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan!”

Now that is strong I’ll give you that. Peter so completely missed what God was saying that Jesus rebuked him with very strong language. We’ve kind of made this saying a cute little thing to say when someone tempts us to do something we shouldn’t. Things like taking another piece of cake or something silly. It was not funny or silly. In the most serious of tones Jesus turned on Peter and responded with these words.

What I want you to see this morning is the startling words that he followed with in this dialogue.

You are an offence to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of Men.” (verse 23)

Every major move of God since the beginning of the church has happened because leaders were not afraid to lead into areas that were not comfortable.

Change produces stress, discomfort, and forces us to place our faith again and again in God versus traditions and habits. Churches are just like any other organization, secular or sacred, the tendency is to get organized, create structures and policies, and then to become institutional. The final result is that we become inflexible and aloof to the world around us. We have become an organization instead of a living organism.

4. A Challenging Mess

Most Christian churches in America are completely plateaued or declining. That can be proven statistically.

The life of the church is the heart of God. The heart of God is to serve a broken world. God’s heartbeat is to seek and to save that which is lost. The serving that we are called to requires direct contact. You cannot wash the feet of a dirty world if you refuse to touch it. In pathology, atrophy is the wasting or decreasing in size of any part of a body. When the church refuses to serve the world, she begins to waste away. She finds herself deteriorating, withering, and losing strength. Like a muscle that has been in a cast. The real tragedy is not that churches are dying but that they have lost their reason to live. Dying is not all that bad. We must be willing to die to our conveniences, our traditions and our preferences—everything that places us above others. The only way to be effective in America with your church and the gospel today is to totally view our wonderful nation as the mission field that it is. Here is our response to the mess that has been created by the American church:

Eight Core Values

...are the application of biblical truth through the unique personality of Newark Church of the Nazarene.

Authenticity

Somewhere along the way church became known as a place where people that are really good at “faking,” get together to compare notes. As “a real place for real people” we believe we can’t be what God has called us to be if we play games with each other. Whether it’s what happens on stage, within our small groups, serving teams or in our homes, we need to be able to share our faults and weaknesses and not fake it. That’s authenticity, just being real.

Biblical Truth

Newark Naz. is a place for people on every part of the spiritual journey, from those just investigating whether there is a God, to those who have made following Christ the priority of their life. This is a safe place for everyone. But safe doesn’t mean serenity. The Bible presents a dangerous message of life change. We don’t assume everyone believes, or even knows the Bible, but we do assume everyone who comes through our doors is open to exploring it. We believe the Bible is God’s inerrant truth and it is foundational to everything we do.

Culturally Relevant Communication

"Why did they do that?" "What does that have to do with church?" How many times have you heard (or thought) that after you saw something during a service here at Newark Naz.? Maybe it was a movie clip or a secular song. Stuff that seemed to be the last thing you would have expected in church. Well, believe it or not, there is a reason for all of this. There is a method to the madness. Culturally Relevant Communication: is one of our 8 Core Values!Newark Naz. is a place that helps connect those who are spiritually exploring God’s love and truth. To do this, we’re committed to doing anything to help people connect God’s timeless truth from the Bible with their day-to-day life. We do not engage in anything immoral or anti-scriptural to do this, but we do embrace creative methods used in our current culture. The challenge for us is that the Bible was written a long time ago for people in another culture. The fact that we are in Newark, Ohio in the twenty first century doesn’t change the message that God gave 2000 years ago, but it does mean that we need to do some work to connect it to our lives today. That’s what we mean by "Culturally Relevant Communication."It’s nothing new. It’s the kind of thing the Bible referred to in Ecclesiastes 12:10 which says, "The teacher searched to find just the right words." In fact, it’s exactly what Jesus did. Whether it was stories about sheep and goats, vineyard workers, or a guy who throws a party, Jesus used the current language and daily life of those around him to communicate truth. And this doesn’t just apply to what we do at church. It’s the way we need to live our lives if God is going to use us to be communication bridges of his love and truth. So whether it’s the music at our weekend service, a brochure at the Info Center or the way we connect with our friends that don’t know Christ, we need to be about bringing God’s timeless truth in a timely way to those around us. That’s culturally relevant communication.

Doing Life Together

We aren’t interested in being a church where a lot of people get together for an inspiring service but never move beyond the casual arm' s distance relationships of an auditorium. We want to grow by really "doing life together." Community is knowing and being known, loving and being loved, celebrating and being celebrated, and serving and being served. The people who really grow at Newark Naz., are those who move beyond the auditorium through serving and/or being part of a small group, service team and building friendships in which all of these happen.

Excellence

We don’t believe in striving for unrealistic perfection. We do believe excellence is about bringing your best to God’s work and to life in general. Whenever we do anything as a church we want to bring our "A game." Whether it’s our communication and music, how we hold babies in the nursery or how we take care of the building, we want it to reflect this.

Functional Structures

We believe that ministries are only valid when they are functional. Ministries that no longer support the mission of the church or are not functioning effectively will be reviewed and eliminated. New ministries will proactively be encouraged and affirmed to meet the changing needs of the culture and our community.

Growth

We don’t expect everyone who walks into this church to be a committed Christ-follower. But we do expect everyone who is around our community for any length of time to be growing. We expect every person to be moving closer to being the complete image of Christ in every area of life. When it isn’t happening we need to ask why. The answers aren’t always comfortable. In fact we often grow only when we are pushed out of our comfort zone.

Reproduction

Reproduction is about recognizing something that God has created and then going about being a tool when He reproduces that element in other places. Newark Naz. wants to be a place where Christ-followers reproduce Christ-followers; leaders reproduce leaders and churches reproduce other churches.There are 3 things that are important to us as a church and you are going to see them everywhere, because they describe what we are going to be focused on. There are no secrets. Some of you want to know or have been wondering, today ought to answer many of your questions.

      1. Celebration
      2. Community
      3. Call

5. A Christ-like Measure

“If anyone desires to follow Me, let him deny himself and take up is cross and follow Me...” (verse 24)

“For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels and then He will reward each according to his works.”

You see the bottom line is, I can tell you why I believe this church has grown. God will allow any church that makes the sacrifices to reach lost or unchurched people that this church has made to actually get to influence and interact with the unchurched.

Four monkeys were put into a room. In the center of the room was a tall pole with a bunch of bananas suspended from the top. One particularly hungry monkey eagerly scampered up the pole, intent on retrieving a banana. Just as he reached out to grasp the banana, he was hit with a torrent of cold water from an overhead shower. With a squeal, the monkey abandoned its quest and retreated down the pole. Each monkey attempted, in turn, to secure the banana. Each received an equally chilly shower, and each scampered down without the prize. After repeated drenchings, the monkeys finally gave up on the bananas.

With the primates thus conditioned, one of the original four was removed from the experiment and a new monkey added. No sooner had this new, innocent monkey started up the pole than his (or her) companions reached up and yanked the surprised creature back down the pole. The monkey got the message—don’t climb the pole. After a few such aborted attempts, but without ever having received a cold shower, the new monkey stopped trying to get the bananas. One by one, each of the original monkeys was replaced. Each new monkey learned the same lesson. Don’t climb the pole. None of the new monkeys ever made it to the top of the pole. None even got so far as a cold shower. Not one understood precisely why pole climbing was discouraged, but they all respected the well-established precedent. Even after the shower was removed, no monkey ventured up the pole.

Spiritual apathy is one of the deadliest sins of the “seven deadly sins” because it involves the lack of energy to start afresh, to launch into the deep, to be open to change.

Pay it forward clip: Think of a way to change our world and put it into action.

It always is going to seem hard but the facts remain that lost people matter to God and the church is the primary vehicle for Him to use to touch unchurched people. If you are a part of this church, go ahead and dream of how God wants to use you, because He does. Think of the possibilities.

Prayer.

2004/09/19