Sunday's sermon

Everybody has a story.  

I want to start off this morning by telling you the greatest story ever told.  I can do it in two words:

Jesus saves!

In today’s culture, if I were going to tell that story for maximum effect, I would just drop the mike.  Literally and intentionally. And then walk back to my seat. It’s a powerful, simple, and poignant story and I used only two words to describe what the Savior did for me.  He saved me.

I could tell you my story, and some of you know a lot of it, but again, that’s not the purpose of today’s message.  Today I want to talk to you about other people’s stories and the times we have to listen to them.

To do that though, I have to start off by telling you a story about what I saw in Fort Worth when I was there a couple of months ago.

I knew one person in Fort Worth.  His name is Brandon Cole and he’s a pastor of C3 church Fort Worth.  C3 is kind of a new movement in chuches and I had an incredible experience worshipping with them for two Sundays.

I’ll give you the Reader’s digest version of the church:  They’re friendly, they’re engaged in the community, and they’re doing some phenomonal things in Fort Worth.  Just one example of what they do is this: They have “dinner parties’ during the week, which is what their small group program looks like.  They meet at people’s houses, and depending on what area of the city you’re in is what group they try to match you up with. Their participation is about 70% of the membership that worships on Sundays with them.  That’s a huge number.

As I took my seat the first Sunday I was there, I found a little card on my chair that read:

Everybody has a story.  We’d love to hear yours.

Brandon explained to me that what they’re doing that’s working is they talk to people and listen to their stories.  As they listen to others talk about their lives, they listen intently to find common ground and look for inflection points that would be a good time to give them the Good News about Jesus.  It’s a basic thing and an important one to learn and it’s one that I’m horrible at, but getting better.

The thing that has me so interested in why this is so important is that their church is GROWING!  They’re engaging people of all ages, and I saw seven people come to Christ in the two weeks I was there.

Seven people in two weeks!  Let that sink in for a minute.

Seven people.  In two weeks.

Comparing C3 church to our little church on the corner is like comparing apples to oranges. And that’s not my intent. The music and worship styles are completely different.    What we do have in common is that both churches are invoved in their cmmunites. With that involvement comes ample opportunity to meet people and listen to their stories.

What I want to talk about today is just getting us to a different mindset about the people we come across in the ministries we’re involved with.

Please listen to the words Paul wrote in his epistel to the Galatians about the friuit of the Spirit.  

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited,provoking and envying each other.

We do important things and we should not quit doing them, because the things we do are the result of bearing fruit in our own lives.  And I think listening to people is another thing we can and should get good at. The ministries we’re involved with are outward expressions of the fruits of the Spirit in our own lives.  

I believe the Holy Spirit guides us and leads each of us to participate in an area of ministry this church supports, each of using our gifts of time, talent, and treasure, to support those ministries.  

I’d like you to think about this for a minute.  Each of you knows what your favorite ministry we do here at the church is.  And I want you to think about this: Can you put a number on what we do? Like how many bags of food, or how many shoe boxes, or how many dollars we gave, and the list goes on and on and on.

There’s a question I’d like to ask here if you’re a numbers person:  How many got saved?

Quite honestly, I think it’s a fair, and unfair question to ask all at once.  We know that the missionary project we raised money for will go toward that end.  If one person gets saved, then we had a part of it. If we support ministries financially and many people come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior, then we have a part in that, as well.

It’s a question that has a complicated answer, and I only mention it to just remind us not to get too hung up on the number of this or that we do. It’s easy to get hung up on the wrong thing.  Here’s a story from the Bible about it from Luke 10.

8 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one.[f]Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Mary wanted to listen to Jesus.  Martha was worried about all the stuff and Jesus flat told her that Mary chose what was MORE important.  

It illustrates one of the key points I want you to take away today:  First, remember it’s really easy to shift focus from the what and why when we’re looking at the how much.  Numbers have a place and are important, but the why we do what we do is to reach people and point them to Jesus.  Sometimes that looks like a bag of food, or a hot dog. Sometimes though it needs to look like listening to someone’s story and trying to find out that point where your story might be a benefit to someone looking for answers.    I want to say one more thing about the question how many got saved? We don’t do the saving. Remember that greatest story ever told in two words?

Jesus saves.  

Often times, though, He uses people like you and I in the process.  We get to join HIm in the process by sharing what He’s done in our lives with those that don’t know Him and that’s why we need to be a people who demonstrate the fruits of the Spirit in our daily lives.  And I cannot forget the impact that just listening to the stories of other people and getting to know their stories is having in Fort Worth.

Seven people in two weeks came to know Christ, in part because people filled with the Spirit.  Listening to people tell their stories and finding that inflection point to share some of your own story is paying big dividends for the Kingdom of God.

We meet all kinds of people here at the church.  Often times, they’re peope in need. Sometimes we can’t give people the things they ask us for.  I remember a Sunday years back where some guy joined us to worship with us. I spoke with him twice after the service.  The first conversation was about how nice we are, how he liked the church and the message was great, and had nothing but good things to say.  The second conversation was much different: How can we call ourselves Christians, we’re a bunch of, well, not nice people, and he stormed out of the building.  He didn’t get what he wanted from us and that instantly changed his opinion of us. That’s going to happen.

But there are people out there who have walked away from church.  There are people out there that know they need something in their lives but they don’t yet know it’s Jesus.  There are people out there lost and don’t know where to go. And you never know when you’re going to have a little divine encounter with those people.

If the fruits of the Spirit are evident in us, then there’s something just different about us.  We’re not perfect people, but we are a people that reflect the attributes Paul talked about to the Galatians.  If we are those people, then there’s something that just draws people to us.

I got to listen to a couple of stories recently.  One involved a guy who just got off the bus and felt the need to tell me I was edging the lawn all wrong.  He had an accent. I chose not to get offended because he didn’t like the way I was doing what I was doing, and I stopped and talked to him for several minutes.  I found out the guy was from Georgia and kind of got stuck here by circumstances. He’s involved with the LDS church. He lives in the neighborhood. And he thinks I need to use the edger we have to edge the lawn instead of the weed whacker.  I found all this out when I asked him a simple question:

How did you wind up in Utah?

I know you were wondering how the fruits of the Spirit were going to wind up here.  That’s why. I could have got all defensive about what he said to me about the lawn, but I just let it go.  I got over myself and just took the opportunity to listen to the guy for a few minutes and invited him to church even after he said he was LDS.

You never know.  

The second story I heard recently was on Friday night.  We have occasion to move airplanes at my job and we use a tow tractor and a big bar to connect the aircraft to the tow vehicle.  We have a group of people whose job it is to operate the tow vehicle. On long tows, the tow supervisor can ride in the tractor with the operator.  I had that opportunity on Friday night and I was just chit-chatting with the driver and mentioned that I was so busy that I hadn’t even had much chance to prepare the message fo today.  He told me the Spirit would give me the messae and just go with it.

And then he opened up to me about where he was at with his walk.  His father was a pastor and so was his grandfather and at a tender point in his teens, he was forced by his father to attend a church across town that his dad had been called to.  He had to leave relationships and a church family he loved for one that wasn’t exactly demonstrating the attributes of the Fruits of the Spirit at work in their lives. It made such a mark on his life that he quit going to church altoghether and these days He’s dealing with God on his own terms and not dealing with God on God’s terms.

There’s a term for that in our society.  It’s called church hurt. I know this and I know this man’s story because it was part of my own story for thirty years.  I told him about that and that I’d experienced something similar and I told him a few things about me.

Like that I’m a Christ follower who worships at a Baptist church, but then again, we’re not just a Baptist church, either.  I like that about us.

The other thing I told him is was in the form of a question to make a point:  I asked him if he were Satan, where would he be on Sunday morning. He wasn’t sure what I meant so I said that if I were the enemy, I’d be in church and I’d be dressed prim and proper.  And I wouldn’t cause lots of fights or arguments outwardly. I’d be a gossip. I’d have sharp little comments about people, and I’d be using tactics like that to cause trouble and dissention in the church.  

He thought about what I said for a minute and the point hit home. That’s why we’re warned about behaviors so much in the New Testament.  If we’re oeople that are walking in the Spirit, we’re not engaged in such nonsense. I just listened to the man’s story and told him when he asked about how I got back to church.  I told him I broke my life and at the low point, I knew where to turn to understand how to get back to Jesus and get to setting my life right again. I was certainly lost, and Jesus certainly knew where to lead me to a place where I was able to be found again.

When I found my way here, the one thing that was remarkable to me was how little church had changed in thirty years.  I would find out that church has changed a lot depending on which church you worship at, but I had to get involved in ministry opportunities outside our church to know that.

The message doesn’t change, but over the history of the church, the delivery method has.  There are all kinds of views on worship styles that have changed over two millenia and that’s a conversation for another day.  What I saw in Fort Worth though, went way beyond worship styles and it became more about relationships they’re building with people.  

The point I’m trying to make here is that if we’re not changing the deliver method, there has to be something different about US.  If we’re to grow the Kingdom and we want to see our church family grow, then we need to be the people who ooze the fruits of the Spirit out in our everyday lives.  We can’t expect church hurt people to be comfortable about being in church with us if our church looks exactly like the place where they became church-hurt in the first place.

There’s an old addage about the Christian community as having a reputation for being the only army that shoots their own wounded.  We can’t be people that do that. It has to change. WE have to change and get more in line with the people God wants us to be.

I thought too about opportunities we have to meet people and how we can put these ideas into practice.  I’ve been wanting to share this message with you because it’s the time of year when we do Prayze dogs.

We feed hungry people, hang out and get to know them a little.  By we, I mean those who support this ministry. I work nights, so we generally isn’t me.  But we, as a church family is the we I speak of. I did have an opportunity to come down once last year and I was so happy to see what I saw:  I saw someone’s wounds being cared for. I saw hungry people getting something to eat. I saw our church BEING the church and it made me happy.  And I think there’s some real opportunity to talk to people about their stories.

For example:  If someone’s having 3 or 4 hotdogs, it’s probably the only thing they’ve had to eat that day.  A good way to talk to that person might be to say something kind about them being hungry and asking them what their story is.

And taking the time to listen.   Because you might find out that the person is starving.  You might find out how that person got to where they are.  Everybody has a story. Even the people we don’t like. Take the time to listen to someone’s story.  If there’s common ground, share with that person about how the greatest story ever told made an impact on yours.  Use the opportunities we have in ministry to develop relationships. Invite people to church. Keep inviting. Sometimes they show up.  Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and even slower to anger. Be kind, loving, and joyful. Be full of goodness.

It has an incredibly powerful impact on people and I saw this first hand.  Let us be resolved to change our city and grow the Kingdom, one person, one story at a time.

Amen