First Christian Church

“Don’t Go Solo” Sermon Series

In our busy and fractured modern world, where the popular cultural gods of individual freedom and economic security have taken on religious intensity and proportions, living as a productive and caring Christian community, where fellowship and togetherness are important values, becomes an increasingly difficult and almost foreign ideal. I mean, c’mon, who has time to invest in personal relationships anymore?! And, with the scary world in which we live where economic and security fears seem especially palpable nowadays, who wants to risk what is required in building meaningful, long-term community?!

We’re kicking off a new sermon series called “Don’t Go Solo (in 2010)” that will take us right up to Easter and will focus on encouraging one another to do the work of producing Christian koinonia, or “fellowship” (see these links for more about koinonia: Definition of “Fellowship” in the Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, Scriptural use of word “Fellowship” found on NetBible.org.) Let’s face it… We all at times feel lonely and isolated. We could all use more koinonia in our lives!

• “Alone in the Garden” (Genesis 2:8-18) – Feb 21 – God doesn’t want us to be alone.
• “Alone on Top” (Exodus 18:13-23) – Feb 28 – The need to share responsibility.
• “Alone in the Palace” (2 Samuel 11:16-26) – Mar 7 – The isolating effects of sin.
• “Together With Friends” (Matthew 9:10-17) – Mar 14 – The need for friendship.
• “Together in Transformation” (Mark 9:2-13) – Mar 21 – The long process of change.
• “Together on the Path” (John 6:60-70) – Mar 28 – Sharing the burden of the cross.
• “Together in Celebration” (John 20:19-22) – Apr 4 – Celebrating the resurrection.

We look forward to seeing you on Sunday mornings!

Signs I’ve Given Up Being Cool

Okay, so this doesn’t have much redeeming value and certainly doesn’t have… well… anything to do with church or following Jesus, but I thought I’d share with you something with which many of you can probably identify. A few mornings ago, as I was pulling out of the driveway with the kids in the back seat, I noticed 3 signs I’ve arrived at that point of apathy about being cool that comes with parenthood and a little age.

1. I’m driving a minivan with a few dings in the back and I really don’t care… in the least. It needs a few things done to it. The shocks need to be replaced. The brakes squeak. The engine sounds, well, like it doesn’t work… well. But I really don’t care. So, I’m a 36-year-old man, sitting in line to pick up my daughter at school… driving a minivan. And I have no goal to drive anything fancier.
2. My daughter asked me to hold her windchime she made in VBS this past summer. It’s a little upside down clay pot with a few colorful beads and bells hanging on some wire. So, being an in-the-tank parent, I say with enthusiasm, “Why don’t I put it on the rear view mirror?!” And I realized a few seconds after I’d attached it, ‘Wow, that really does look pretty dorky!’ And, finally…
3. I’d been looking for literally the last few years for those clip-on sunglasses that will fit over my glasses. Y’know, the ones you find in Walgreens or CVS that are all together on a display. But I hadn’t been able to find ones that fit my nerdy hipster Verizon-guy glasses… until last week. It said, “Fits plastic frames.” I finally found them, and I was excited! I even tried on those gargantuan plastic sunglasses that fit over the entire frame, just to see. And I was excited. Actually excited that I finally found them.

So here I am, 36-year-old man, pulling out of my driveway in the morning in a dinged-up minivan, with my child’s homemade wind chime hanging from the rear-view mirror, and goofy clip-on sunglasses… signs I’ve given up being cool. At least I’m not wearing those clip-ons with the flip-up shades my grandpa used to wear… at least not yet!

BEYOND Sermon Series

We’re kicking off 2010 with a sermon series called BEYOND that is the theme for this year’s North American Christian Convention, a yearly gathering of independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ from around the world. It’s a great opportunity to learn about what God is doing among our churches. We’ll be joining with two churches in Johnson City (Grandview CC and Buffalo Creek CC) as well as hundreds of churches around the country in preaching through this 6-week series together! Pretty cool, huh?!

If you are hungry to follow Jesus with courage and faith, then let’s go:

• BEYOND the Old Life (Mark 1:14-20) – Daring to follow Jesus past the edges of the way things are–even when you know it means leaving treasured things behind–so he can lead you to a new place. You need to drop some nets, because the life you are living right now is the Old Life. In so many ways, Jesus is calling you BEYOND.




• BEYOND the Great Omission (Matthew 28:18-20) – Making more and better disciples–with Jesus-like passion for both and letting God stir in us an equal passion for reaching the lost and growing up disciples.




• BEYOND Words (Matthew 4:23) – Being Jesus in word and deed through holistic global impact–that makes our mission more than just talk. When the Word becomes flesh, faith becomes action.




• BEYOND Racial Zones (Galatians 3:28) – Moving past our self-segregating ways to the way Christ’s church looks in Acts. When we realize this issue is close to God’s heart we’ll move beyond racism… to gracism.




• BEYOND The Walls (Matthew 5) – Reaching beyond our buildings into our community with uncommon love and service. We need to stop going to church. It’s time to be the church.




• BEYOND Me (Numbers 13-14) – Living today with an eye on eternity will help me make an impact, and finish well. The biggest obstacle to going BEYOND is… me.

On the shores of Galilee, Jesus called out to some friends one day with words that would change their lives forever. “Follow me.” When they dropped their nets and followed Jesus it changed everything. Those first disciples found themselves going BEYOND what they knew to new worlds of trust, love, courage, and powerful action. That’s what it meant to follow Jesus back then.

It still does. In days like these, those who truly follow Jesus are being led BEYOND where we’ve been as disciples. BEYOND where our comfortable Christian lives are these days. BEYOND where our churches are right now. BEYOND the horizons of our expectations, and BEYOND the limits of our comfort zone.

The world is in trouble without Christ. Our culture is adrift. More and more people are hurting and misguided–so many aimless sheep without a shepherd. The colossal problems we see in our families, our communities, our cities, and our nation are overwhelming. It’s truly BEYOND us.

What’s worse, the Christian church in America is losing ground–big time. Many congregations seem invisible. Most have lost their impact. Too many Christians are seen as irrelevant, often missing the issues people–and Jesus–care about. In the world’s eyes, the reputation of Christians is bleak: we are bigoted, marginal, irrelevant, weak.

And inside the church we sometimes wonder if we’re really getting the job done–are we truly making real disciples, transforming lives, changing the world the way Jesus intends?

This is no time for business as usual. We need the Power and the Presence that will take our lives BEYOND where we are now and lead us BEYOND. It’s time for our ministries to go BEYOND our current ways of “doing church.” We need believers with guts and leaders with faith who will drop the old nets and follow Jesus–wherever he leads–even if it means changing everything. Ready to go BEYOND?!

Standing on the Shoulders of Our Forebears

We were recently gone for my family’s annual “Wakefield Family Fall Retreat,” which got me to thinking about something that happened a couple years ago on Sunday morning that particular weekend.

At the conclusion of our time we have a little worship service together that ends with participating in the Lord’s Supper. This time my Dad started by talking about the generations of Wakefields who have followed Christ. He held up pictures I’d never seen and read from a Bible owned by my great grandmother. I felt a great sense of pride and belonging as we sat around the table and listened to him talk about how generations of Christians before me remained faithful, sometimes at great personal cost.

With my arm around my daughter, and my son sitting on my wife’s lap, we heard him talk about his own dad’s faithfulness… How for years he served in church leadership; how he helped plant a church in Southern Illinois; how he was generous in helping those who needed help, even if money was scarce; and how he stood for what was right, once telling the church leaders that if they wouldn’t let him bus in both black and white kids to Sunday School, they could find another bus driver. (”You go, grandpa!”)

And then he read, from that old Bible, these beautiful words from Hebrews 12:1, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (English Standard Version).

Our faithfulness to Christ, recognized as the true founder of our faith, is bolstered when we remember the “great cloud of witnesses” who have gone before. And we are encouraged to keep from sin and remain faithful, like them, based on the foundation of Jesus Christ.

May we stand on the shoulders of our forebears… acknowledging today that Jesus Christ’s sacrifice is reason to remain faithful, no matter the cost to us. Friends, Jesus’ death on the cross was too costly a price to pay for us to be anything less than faithful!

For the sake of the Kingdom,

Scott

Word Sloth as Soft Bigotry Against God

I have a disease so thoroughly insinuated in me that it could reasonably be described as biological. It’s my parents’ faults, really. At the same time I blame and thank them. They’ve policed my grammar so vigilantly for so long that I both blame them for my does-not-compute aversion to faulty language structure and thank them for holding me to a higher standard. This isn’t simply because it’s important to speak correctly and clearly but because it demonstrates commitment to excellence and most capably describes the world God made. I take it as axiomatic that cultured people keep a dictionary and Strunk & White within arm’s reach of their desks at all times. So, you won’t be surprised when I point out that I am daily perturbed at the casual nature of everyday language, even in published media. Yeah, I’m a word and grammar snob. Deal with it.

Most of the time, I don’t care if someone says “Ain’t” or a sign says, “Kidds eat free.” (True story.) But I couldn’t keep quiet on this one for what it says about our laxity in multiple ways. The pharmaceutical behemoth Merck has a vaccine for cervical cancer called Gardasil. On their commercials young women hold up a sign reading: “One less” to show they are one “less” woman affected by cervical cancer, which is, of course, great. But, grammatically, this is wrong. It’s one FEWER woman. One woman is a quantifiable entity. (”Well, at least in theory!”)

Here’s the rub… There is no way that mistake escaped the dozens of marketing people to which Merck outsourced that campaign. No… possible… way. So, assuming I’m right that “less” did not escape the notice of many well-educated professionals, that means Gardasil’s motto is intentionally incorrect. Intentionally wrong.

Why? Because (I know, don’t start a sentence with “Because!”) it’s easier to capitulate to rules of language passively directed by democratic principles than principles derived from hundreds of years of the evolution of English. Apparently communicating correctly is less important than communicating easily, which is a malady that subtly and carelessly conveys the lie that our world is just chemistry and matter. Casual language doesn’t reckon with the idea that what we say means something, that our words are far more weighty than we are aware. Language is so important it can be sacramental, carrying the weight of eternity.

Jesus came as a written as well as lived Word. When Jesus said “out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” he was stating in principle that our earthy, seemingly mundane existence is never really just that, but that we can help or hurt with our mouths. James writes, “Out of the same mouth come blessing and cursing.”

Of course ‘less’ versus ‘fewer’ often seems to count only in English class and I realize blessing and cursing are far weightier causes than grammatical accuracy, but ‘help’ versus ‘hurt’ is an important principle for language, and disciplining one’s word usage can be part of a lifestyle of using the resource of language to bring God glory instead of disrepute.

Sometimes there really are better words, regardless of the cultural vote. God’s creation deserves better than the soft bigotry of language by democracy. And, while I am sometimes (okay, regularly) accused of straining out a gnat to swallow a camel, God’s creation deserves better, and I don’t think we’re called to succumb to the lowest common denominator.

Fewer shoddy words, less inadequate language… for the sake of God’s glory!

Scott

Are we raising “small” Christians?

I’ve just begun reading a really great book by Gary Thomas called The Beautiful Fight. It’s about “surrendering to the transforming presence of God every day of your life,” especially the transforming part! Great read, people… Great read! He begins by recounting the story of Francis of Assisi coming across a victim of leprosy, one of the most feared diseases of its time.

“During my life of sin,” Francis wrote, “nothing disgusted me like seeing victims of leprosy.” Exuberant in his newfound faith and with joy flooding his soul – and remembering he was now to love and even treasure those things he formerly loathed – Francis chose not to run from the leper, as he would have done earlier in his life. Instead, he leaped from his horse, knelt in front of the leper, and proceeded to kiss the diseased white hand.

He kissed it.

Francis then further astonished the leper by giving him money. But even that wasn’t enough. No, Francis was determined to “drink great sweetness” from what he formerly loathed, so he jumped back on his horse and rode to a neighboring leper colony. Francis “begged their pardon for having so often despised them” and, after giving them money, refused to leave until he had kissed each one of them, joyfully receiving the touch of their pale, encrusted lips. Only then did Francis jump back on his horse to go on his way.

In that indelible moment, Francis’s faith became incarnate. His belief didn’t just inspire him; it transformed him.

Thomas continues…

Witnessing the dynamic witness of a young Francis,… I feel embarrassed at how small-minded we can be when discussing the Christian faith with young people today. The apostle Paul exalted life in Christ as the most exciting and compelling life anyone could choose. In a marvelous take on 2 Timothy 4:7 (MSG), Eugene Peterson recounts Paul telling Timothy, “This is the only race worth running.”

Today’s believers often lose touch with this sense of the glory of being a Christian. We settle for so little – a tame religion, a few rituals, maybe even an occasional miraculous answer to prayer – and so pass our lives without understanding our true identity in Christ, embracing our calling as God’s children, or fulfilling our divine purpose.

Is the Christianity taught today large enough to seize our hearts? Does its promise of transformation so compel us that we would give all we have to take hold of it?

The contemporary American church’s vision of “being a Christian” is anemic and not hardly compelling enough to call people to join in the beautiful fight of transformation into Christlike holiness. If you look at what we’re producing in our churches, you’d think we’re calling people to satisfaction in worldly values instead of God. Instead of “reducing our faith to a set of intellectual doctrines and a list of forbidden practices” (Thomas’ words), we desperately need to call our young people to a compelling vision of the Christian life. For the sake of the continuing witness of the gospel and our childrens’ souls, we must raise young Christians who will forego the values of hipness and security for the sake of the gospel calling of being a witness. Sell the RV and vacation home and cash in the 401K to model participation in something of far greater consequence than earthly gain! At the least we should be systematically and intentionally orienting our lives, families, and resources around Kingdom priorities. Your kids will FOREVER thank you.

Thomas concludes this section:

The ‘Beautiful Fight’ invites you to explore the depths of a truly transforming faith, an incarnational spirituality that doesn’t dwell merely on a list of prohibitions and forbidden sins but powerfully ushers us into something so precious, so profound, and so stirring that we would gladly give up all we have just to lay hold of it. It is what in our deepest longings we truly want to become.

Easter Egg Hunt Pictures

Did You Know?… We’re buying a school?!

Okay, only sort of! Just a cool little tidbit not many in our congregation know about yet…

Steve and Kay Carpenter, and their kids Natasha and Benjamin, are longtime missionaries to Mexico City that we’ve supported through Christian Missionary Fellowship International for a number of years. Their important work has helped establish a new church where they minister, La Iglesia Cristiana Las Aguilas, or Eagles Christian Church. They have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase a fantastic facility at less than 45% of its market value for the church body there. Check out this blog post on the CMFI website and the Carpenters’ website for more info.

That’s where we’ve come in to help a little bit… A few months ago the Missions Ministry Team suggested to our Board of Elders and Deacons that we send them $10,000 from our Missions Fund which is outside of the General Operating Fund, and we’re excited to report that the purchase is going forward and we are helping to support them with $10,000! Isn’t that great?! (This is not an April Fool’s joke, BTW!) Please be praying for the Carpenters and the important work going on for the Kingdom there in Mexico City!

The Disciples’ Call: Jesus’ Parables of Learning and Doing

Here’s an overview of our current sermon series…

We’re studying Jesus’ parables of the process of discipleship: from hearing Jesus’ invitation to follow, all the way through to becoming stewards of our lives in a manner that accords with being a disciple.

• Sun, Oct 26 – The Urgent Invitation (Luke 14:12-24)
• Sun, Nov 2 – The Search (Luke 15:1-10)
• Sun, Nov 9 – The Find (Matthew 13:44-46)
• Sun, Nov 16 – The Decision (Luke 14:28-33)
• Sun, Nov 23 – The Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1-13)

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to (re)visit Jesus’ call to discipleship! Click on the passages listed here to prepare by reading ahead of time (not so subtle hint)… and you can compare the English Standard Version with others (see pull down menu at bottom of page once you get to the ESV passage.)

“Christian Voting”

As November 4 approaches, I think it’s important for us to think about what we’re doing when we vote. Wherever you stand on the issues or the candidates, it’s entirely appropriate that we discuss how Christians approach the role of politics in our lives. Here’s a great little article by John Piper, a pastor in Minneapolis, with some good Biblical thinking about what it means to vote as a Christian. It’s definitely worth the 3 minutes it’ll take to read.

Frankly, I have a specific political view to which I personally hold, and I will vote for my preferred candidate. I expect you will do the same based on your political views.

But no matter what happens on election day, Christians prepared for eternity will be quite fine. For we hold fast, not to earthly powers, but to Almighty God. God’s power dwarfs humanity’s political attempts to usher in policies that can only act as temporary bandaids for the world’s real problem of sin. Friends, only God can change hearts and minds, and for the Christian prepared for eternity… no politician nor government can ever separate us from Christ!

For the sake of the Kingdom,

Scott