2013 Family Meeting - Our Church's Vision

A few weeks ago we had our 2013 Family Meeting, a time to annually come together and think about the past year and the year ahead. This year we felt particularly led to focus on the year ahead. God is doing great things in our church, and we wanted to cast vision along those lines. Here is what I said about church vision and how we should be personally challenged to fulfill it.

Daniel

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About 70 years ago Winston Churchill was charged with the sobering task of rallying a nation to take on the Germans, an army that had crushed France with its dominance and force. He was the newly elected prime minister, and he had some awareness that any fight with the Germans would be long, costly, and painful. Yet, he also grasped to some extent the competing destinies that hung in the balance. Here is what he famously said in his hour of crisis:

What General Weygand has called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age…. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.[1]

Now the truth is, we live in a day of battle ourselves. That’s why the uniform of the Christian is not a tuxedo or a bathrobe, but a suit of armor—complete with helmet, sword, and shield (Eph. 6:10-17). We, too, are living today in light of a future Day—not just a thousand years away, but the Day when our lives are presented to our God on the great Day of judgment (Rev. 20:11-15).

And don’t we all want to say that, “This was our finest hour”? No one wants to think that our finest hours are behind us, that our future is treading water and remembering more fruitful days.

But what will that mean for us? Churchill challenged a generation to “brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves,” but what does that mean for you and me?

I believe it means three things that are also the vision of our church: Love God, love one another, and love your neighbor. If we purpose individually and as a church to do these three things, our lives may be challenging, but they will not be unfruitful. Our church may face struggles, but it will remain faithful to God. We may face the equivalent of the German army, but we will be able to say, “This was one of our finest hours.”

What do each of these statements mean to us, though? We don’t want to assume we all mean the same thing by loving God or one another. Let’s take each one and unpack it a bit.

Love God

Jesus was once asked what the greatest commandment was. His answer was a summary of all that God requires of us:

And he said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. Matthew 22:37-38

This is the great over-arching call on you and this church—to love God. He is to be our goal, our foundation, and our strength. He is our greatest thought, our highest achievement, our richest possession, and our deepest motivation. He is our Pearl of Great Price, our Treasure Hidden in the Field, our Bread of Life, and our Living Water.

He is the Triune God of all-surpassing glory—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each infinite and transcendent, fully glorious and worthy of unending worship.

This is the God we are to love with all our being. So we are to be like Mary, content to sit at the feet of Jesus and not be distracted by the busyness of life. We are to be like Paul who made it is his great obligation to know Christ and who called knowing Christ the gain that makes all things as loss. We are to be like the prophet Isaiah whose soul was so filled with the vision of an all-glorious God that he was willing to go anywhere and do anything in service to him.

Whether we are a plumber or the President of the United States, the most important thing we can do is to love God. This is the thing that will have the most impact on those around us and on all activities we're involved with. It can be tempting to get all complicated and organized and forget that in the end I just need to love God.

Further, the call to love God means I need to remember the call to simple obedience. To love God we must obey God: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Thus, we are to read the Bible and do what it says. The Bible is crystal-clear on many things, and these we must do. Where it isn't explicit, we just need to pray about it, think about it, and follow our consciences and convictions.

I say “simple obedience” because there is always the temptation to add to the Bible and make my applications part of Christian obedience—whether it’s dating vs. courtship, schooling choices for my children, my approach to media, date nights in a marriage, whatever. When good and conscientious Christians come to different understandings on these secondary matters, we each need to remember our call to love God with a simple obedience. We can be okay with differing convictions if we can remember this.

Part of my obedience is the next piece of our church’s vision: love one another.

Love One Another

Not only are we commanded to “love one another,” but the Bible tells me we don’t love God if we don’t love one another. That is a radical idea:

If anyone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. ²¹ And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother. 1 John 4:20-21

The place where this has the greatest relevance to us is in our home groups—not the only place, but a key place. In fact, part of the reason we have home groups is to create a context where we can love one another in all the ways the Bible calls us to.

We’d all like to think loving one another was as easy as “one-click” purchasing on Amazon.com. Just hit the button and poof! Two days later my product shows up at my door.

Loving one another isn’t so easy. It takes God’s power first of all (“We love, because he first loved us,” 1 John 4:19). But it takes our effort as well, particularly to add three ingredients essential to loving one another.

The first ingredient is time. If you and I don’t have time together, it’s questionable whether we can ever truly love each other. Home groups give us a chance to spend time together, but we also need to be deliberate in our time together.

Brad Hodges shared at our deacons retreat about the importance of “quantity time.” He said quantity time was as important as quality time. There’s simply no way to get around the fact that relationships need time to grow. So, maybe you should consider whether you are spending adequate time in your church relationships to fulfill the command to “love one another.”

A second ingredient to love others is risk. People disappoint. Sometimes they prove unfaithful. They hurt us intentionally or unintentionally. They sin. The risk in getting involved with people is that they might hurt us.

Even when people don’t fail in these ways, there’s the challenge of basic differences between us: different backgrounds, convictions, choices, interests, etc. Sometimes these differences mean that we feel a lack of “chemistry” in a relationship. The risk here is that I might invest in a relationship that never feels easy.

God isn’t calling us to hang out with people just like us who never hurt us! He’s calling us to something far riskier. He’s calling us to love one another. You can sense the risk in passages like 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 which unpacks something of what love does:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; ⁶ it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Patience isn’t required unless someone is being difficult. The command not to be “irritable or resentful” isn’t necessary unless relationships tempt me to do this.

To get involved with others is to risk all of these things. It’s messy and complicated. But in a moment we’ll see that it’s so worth it.

A third ingredient for loving people is creativity. If you're new to home groups, that's creativity in itself. You’re still getting to know your people, and you’re already thinking “out of the box” to do that.

But, some of us have been in home groups for years—even decades. If that's you, please take it upon yourself to invest into your groups by adding some creativity. Break out of the mold. Help your home group leader add some break from the routine. Plan a movie night, a vacation together, something that brings your group together.

And of course, don't be a jerk about it and make your home group leader come up with all the ideas and do all the work. Plan it and do the work.

If something requires time, risk, and creativity, then it must be difficult. Love is. But it's also something that pays huge dividends.

When you make the effort to truly love the people in your church, you will be blessed. You will grow. You will be changed. You will be a vessel used by the Holy Spirit in the lives of others—and taste the joy of that service.

So, we are to love God and we are to love one another. There is a third love that God is calling us to: neighbor-love.

Love Our Neighbors

Our love for God has another dimension as well. When Jesus was asked the greatest commandment, he said the greatest was to love God. But then he gave us a second commandment that cannot be separated from the first.

And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Matthew 22:39

When Jesus explained what it meant to love our neighbors, he gave us the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:27-39). The Good Samaritan loved his neighbor by seeing a man in need by the side of the road and helping him. He didn't start a ministry. He didn't adopt the man and make him his son. He simply provided basic care to someone in need.

How is it that we love our neighbors like the Good Samaritan? It is through our evangelism and our service. Practical service tends to the needs of others like the Good Samaritan tended to the needs of the man on the side of the road. Evangelism does the same thing, but it addresses the profoundest need anyone has—salvation.

There are three ways we can be challenged to do love our neighbors.

First, bring evangelism into your home group life. Here are three questions to consider as a home group to help you do that:

1. How can your home group engage in evangelism together? This is where your home group is actually evangelizing as a group. Maybe you host a cookout for your unbelieving friends and attempt to share Christ at the event. Maybe you choose one of your neighborhoods and pass out evangelistic tracts like Two Ways to Live.
2. What events or ministries at SGC can your home group participate in strategically? To do this your group would target a few events or ministries at church and try and use them for your evangelism. Maybe you will invite an unbelieving neighbor to the November 9^th parenting seminar. Or maybe you’ll distribute invitations to the December 15^th Christmas service. Or maybe you’ll sign up as a home group to serve in a ministry like Single and Parenting or DivorceCare or GriefShare.
3. How can your home group support and challenge you in your personal evangelism? This is where you simply make your personal evangelism a regular discussion topic and prayer matter—like we do with other areas of concern like our prayer life, marriage, or diligence in the workplace.

Thinking through these three questions can help you meaningfully bring evangelism into your home group life.

A second way we can love our neighbors is through being or supporting Champions of Mercy. You've heard us talk about "Every-member ministry." This is the idea that every member has been gifted by God to minister to others, and that a key part of the role of church leaders is to equip people to minister in those gifts.

One place we have seen this happen is by God raising up Champions of Mercy. This means people given to certain kinds of mercy ministry. We’ve seen this in the last twelve months with Habitat for Humanity. We’ve seen this in our ongoing work with Hand of Hope.

Others have been involved in ministries at a more personal level. Missy Schlax is leading a Bible study to troubled teens. Maybe you saw Rachel Pannell's blog post about Jim Bastic serving as a chaplain at Duke Hospital. The Rich's and Ruhl's adoptions are examples of people serving others for the sake of the gospel. A couple is considering leading a team to an orphanage in Guatemala—details coming soon!

The list goes on and on.

Not all of us are able to organize others, but we can get involved ourselves. If there is a kind of service you would like to do, but we don't currently have a ministry in that area, please be patient. In some ways we are a big church and in others ways a small church. We offer a lot, but we can't offer everything.

So just know we need more Champions of Mercy, and our desire is to support you as much as possible as you feel God's leading in different directions.

A third way to love our neighbors is through church planting. This area of focus is a longer-term one. We would like to plant more churches, but we think we need to be around 600 people to do that. We see this area as a great place for more church plants—Wake Forest, places east of 401. But we need to grow to do that.

Of course, to love our neighbors is not just the neighbors that are local. It's also the nations. This vision encompasses the nations as well—primarily through our connection to the Sovereign Grace Churches. Through that partnership we are able to support church planting efforts through our financial giving and our prayers. Truly, we can do things together we could never do alone.

Conclusion

Love God, love one another, love your neighbor: That's what God has called us to individually and as a church.

Now to do this well as a church we need what the church has always needed—your best stuff. We need your best stuff. We need the best of your time, creativity, your energy, and yes, your money.

We understand busyness, priorities, and seasons of life. But within those parameters and boundaries, the church needs your best. Whatever your role in the church, we need your best.

If you’re a college student, we need your best stuff as you participate in the college ministry. If you're a single, we need your best efforts to build a church where singles can thrive spiritually and build strong friendships. If you're an empty-nester or retiree or in the thick of the parenting years, we need your best stuff.

We don't ask for this because our church is somehow uniquely worthy of your best. We ask because the church is what Jesus died for, what he shed his blood to purchase, what he laid down his life for (Acts 20:28; Eph. 5:25-27). That is why it is our highest privilege to do the same.

We have had a hard couple of years, and it has taken a toll on many of us. But we do believe it's time to move ahead. It's time to lay down our lives where Christ has called us to be. It's time to take up our trowel in one hand and our sword in the other like Nehemiah says—and build the church.

And if, after 1,000 years, another generation looks back on us and can see that we loved God, loved one another, and loved our neighbor that will be a glorious legacy. They will say this was one of our church’s finest hours. That will be an investment that never fails to bear fruit, and a sacrifice we never regret.

Let's pray.

 

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[1] Churchill, June 18, 1940, to House of Commons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_was_their_finest_hour). ↩