Refresh. A Real Church
Refresh. Over the next couple of months I want to do some reconnecting, reconnecting why we are here, our purpose, our values as a church.
Our purpose statement as a church is; Our call is to invite our world to “come and see” Jesus and to provide a grace place where people can experience and know the entirety of God’s Kingdom.
I want to boil this down to this: we are here to be a REAL CHURCH and to be a REACHING CHURCH.
I want to talk to you about your/our commitment to be a real church.
Remember how the Proverbs 3 tells us to trust in the lord and he will direct our paths? In my teenage years I remember how God turned the compass of my heart toward full time vocational ministry, in other words to become a pastor. That is the path that I followed after high school. That path eventually led me to a bible school in Houston, Texas.
The first thing that I remember God breaking my heart over was the condition of his church. There was something wrong and I wanted to be part of fixing it. That’s when I started to think about REAL CHURCH.
In my growing up years and in my college years what broke my heart about the church was the distance between what I saw in the bible and what I saw being practiced all around me. There seem to be a gap between what we say we believe and how we practice it. Hypocrisy has always been something that has galled me. In college I saw all the third and fourth generation preacher boys being groomed to take over their fathers ministries and I was angry about it because I never saw their passion or their calling or their hunger for the things of God. I thought of God’s church as a radical group of sold out Jesus lovers but so much of what I experienced was a traditional “don’t rock the boat” mentality. If I listed the things that I saw that I never wanted repeated in any church that I serve it would be these things:
– Church politics
– Doctrinal / by law rigidity
– Legalism
– Gossip and the treatment of certain people
– Performances
– Arrogance of self appointed people and boards
– Majoring on the minors and minoring on the majors
I guess it really showed what I didn’t want to be in what was rewarded those days: church attendance. People were applauded for never missing a Sunday. That seemed to be the pinnacle of achievement. Not serving, not winning the lost, not dreaming and innovating new ministry, but attendance. I couldn’t see myself as a pastor passing out attendance awards.
This church issue was the first thing that broke my heart. That’s the thing God always starts with, a problem, a burden, a broken heart. What is your heart broken over? What issue has God called you to address?
I wanted to be a part of a real church. My first real call was to be part of the real church.
What is a real church? I think my first clue came in Matthew 16.
Matt 16:15-19 (TLB)
15 Then he asked them, “Who do you think I am?” 16 Simon Peter answered, “The Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 17 “God has blessed you, Simon, son of Jonah,” Jesus said, “for my Father in heaven has personally revealed this to you—this is not from any human source. 18 You are Peter, a stone; and upon this rock I will build my church; and all the powers of hell shall not prevail against it. 19 And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven; whatever doors you lock on earth shall be locked in heaven; and whatever doors you open on earth shall be open in heaven!”
1. A real church is birthed and founded and centered on Jesus Christ alone.
Jesus says it “my church.” It is his idea. It is an extension of Himself. He is the center of attention. The very existence of the church doesn’t come about because a group of people built a building, but because Jesus desired to make Himself known right here in Parkersburg, WV.
Some of these denominations and church organizations that are meeting today can go on forever w/o a new idea, w/o doing anything because they have money socked away and a placed to meet. The REAL church isn’t like that. The real church is “where 2 or 3 are gathered together in my name, I AM THERE!” There is something beyond people meeting in a building, there is the presence of Jesus Himself. And by the way…Jesus says, “THERE I AM”…not “I WAS / I COULD BE / I WANNABE…I AM!!! There is no HUMAN SOURCE for the church.
He is the head, he is the director and he is the cornerstone. He makes the rules, he invites us in. The church is not a building, or a place, or made by men; it is a Jesus inspired, Jesus driven, Jesus centered movement that exists only for the purposes of Jesus. And the only way into it is never by people voting on you, or people joining but the same way Peter came in: confessing and believing that Jesus Christ is the messiah, the son of the living God and you are building your life on that fact.
2. A real church is built and led by Jesus Christ alone.
Jesus said, “I am building my church.” That means he’s crafting it, he is putting it together, he has the blueprint, puts things where they belong, he makes it is big is it needs to be, he arranges the rooms, he is responsible to create it. Building it means his hands are on the project.
I am not building it.
You are not building it.
He is building it.
And it is a constant work in progress. It is fluid, it is liquid, it is in motion, it is changing and yet not changing. Our physical building is pretty old fashioned, outdated and reflects a different age but what Jesus is building is always new, it is always solid, and it will stand the test of time. A real church is not afraid of change, it is not afraid of technology, it is not afraid of new music or new ministry or he even new versions of the bible!
He is the builder, the architect, and the contractor. The church reflects the priorities of Jesus, not man. That is what I thought a real church was: a group that Jesus was intimately involved in.
3. A real church encounters the powers and terrors of hell and is not intimidated.
This means that the real church is a place where God/people takes on the mess of sin, the brokenness, the tragedy, the lostness of the world and by the power of Jesus Christ leads people out of darkness and into the light.
That’s what happens in a real church. The church never runs and hides. The church never assumes the fetal position because the world is gone crazy. The church is never intimidated by the depth and perversity and pervasiveness of the sin problem. The church lives and exists every day at the gates of hell and is not beaten.
By the way this infers that there will be confrontation, there will be altercation that will involve the church and the powers of hell. We will be touching people’s lives and meeting resistance. A real church isn’t afraid of hell.
4. A real church is full of imperfect “Peterlike” people who got it right about who Jesus is.
The word “church” means “called out.” The church is simply people like Peter who have been called out to a new community called the church. In this new community we don’t expect perfection but we certainly have lots of room to practice loving each other.
But like Peter the church got one thing totally right; who Jesus is. Peter made an over the top confession of his faith in Jesus, have you?
It’s important to remember that the church is full of Peter’s; people that God has called in, who have been given eternal life, who are gifted to serve but like Peter they are still imperfect people. The church is built on the rock of Jesus that God uses the peter’s. In a real church we understand the Peter principle.
5. A real church is a doorway between heaven and earth and from earth to heaven.
A real church should give the world a little taste of heaven and become a place where God’s power and God’s grace and God’s love are experienced. The church opens the doors to a kingdom experience. So often the churches become an obstacle to someone’s Christian experience. In a real church we become a doorway because the church is the physical presence of Jesus Christ on this earth. We want to give people a little taste of Jesus.
My heart was broken that I had never really been in a real church, a church like that.
That’s great theory but how does it break down in reality?
The bible uses 2 important images that reveals how a real church functions: the word “BODY” and the word “FAMILY.”
1 Cor 12:12-19 (NLT)
12 The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit.
14 Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part.
18 But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it.
Eph 2:19-20 (NLT)
You are members of God’s family. Together, we are his house…
When I think about my broken heart over what I saw as the church I think in this area is the one thing that was most missing; this concept of a body and a family. What I witnessed and what I see still in so many ways was anything but a family or a body. I saw a political structure that disgusted me where some people benefited and others didn’t in the church. I saw it was alike a life mission of some to undermine those who were weak.
Take the words “body” and “family” and extract the dynamics and the core of what the bible is saying about a real church. Here are some of the things that I extract:
– A common location – the family and a body come together in a certain place. A real church has a location.
– A common purpose – family’s and bodies do things. A real church has a purpose that unites it.
– A personality – a real church, like the real family, has a unique personality. One of ours is fun and laughter.
– Dependence – your body is not fighting itself unless it is diseased. Every function and organ of the body depends on the others. Even in the family there is an unwritten dependence that we have on each other. It goes beyond wanting each other to needing each other. In a real church people need each other.
– Roles – in a family and in a body and in a church everybody plays a role.
– Deep Bonds – what I read in the Bible a real church being is not this come and go as you please, quit and relocate when you’re upset, but rather the deep connection and relationship that exists in a body and in a family. In Acts they met together every day, ate together, supplied each others needs, prayed together.
In my family, as in your family, there is no faking it. People know when you’re sick, when you’re upset, when you had a setback, when you hurt. Can you imagine being in a family where everything was faked all the time? Where everyone wore suits every day? Where we only saw the best and never the rest of you? But that’s what we do in church. In a real church we don’t fake it.
In my family, as in your family, there has been yelling, they’ve seen me at my worst, see me in my underwear trying to run through the house, we have wrestled, we have burped, we have spilled, we have taken trips together, they’ve seen the good and the bad BUT THERE IS SOMETHING THAT KEEPS US TOGETHER THAT IS DEEPER THEN THE FACT THAT WE LIVE AT 1610 STEPHENSON AVE. It is called love, commitment, the desire that I have for their success and my willingness to pay and lay down my life to me that happen.
My family does not fly apart at the first sign of trouble. Nobody leaves rather we all pull together. In my body, like my family, there is a life force that keeps it working. In a real church there is a life force that keeps us working together.
That is what I thought a real church was. That is what I was hoping that the church I ended up at would be.
A church that was touched by the supernatural element of God, where God was working dynamically and yet where people came together as a body and a family with the kind of connection that would never tear them apart.
I remember 20 years ago sitting in a church council meeting where I passed out a piece of paper and I said, “I want you to commit to me right now that we will never allow this church to go through this again.” And we committed. It was not long after that that we adopted a theme; building the family and being a family. It was a commitment.
I still strive to be a real church where the real power of God is touching real people.
A church where we can shed our masks and be real.
A church that understands that it is more than a building and a meeting place, that we are brought together, in a specific place, at a specific time, in a specific location, with specific people, and specific gifts and talents, for a specific purpose that we can commit to heart, soul, body, and mind.
A church that has left the decrepit ways of the past.
A church hungry to engage the powers of hell.
A church that realizes people are not perfect but welcome them anyway.
Lastly, I want to finish with these challenge points to get real, to become real when it comes to the church. These are attitudes and commitments that we must uncompromisingly make in order to be a real church.
1. This is where I belong, these are my people, my spiritual family.
2. This is the body where I will serve, the people who will depend on me and I on them.
3. I see myself not as a member or attender, but I see myself as an owner who has responsibilities in this family.
4. I give my best right here, to these people, to this vision, using my talents, releasing my passion with excellence.
5. I am the church 24 / 7 / 365
Pastor Brian Harrell 