Friday, January 27, 2012

Pioneer or Settler?

This past month, we started a new preaching and worship series titled: Odyssey: In Search of Radical Faith. The goal of the series is to center us on Jesus and encourage us in our journey of faith as we follow Him—what is God up to in our life and neighborhood? Due to a number of requests to “repeat” that message, here is a revised version with roughly the same content and certainly the same goal! If you missed the message, check it out on-line beginning with Sunday, January 8th! --Pastor Tom

Sometimes, statistics can be mind-numbing—think of the U.S. budget deficit now in the trillions. What does that actually mean beyond $48,000 per citizen? Disheartening! Or, how about something ex- citing? In January, at the Passion 2012 conference in Atlanta, college students raised over $2.6 million to go towards fighting the human trafficking/slavery movement. The outpouring of generosity from a group that doesn’t have a lot of money is a sign Jesus is alive and well in the hearts of many. (That’s a great statistic.) But what about the church as an institution? Is it alive and well?

Recently, the Barna Group concluded a five-year study comprised of eight national studies, done on teenagers and young adults, ages 18 to 29. It found that nearly three out of every five young Christians (59%) disconnect from church life, either permanently or for a long period of time after the age of 15. Also, an earlier study also claimed these stats: 30% of committed believers in America no longer attend traditional religious congregations. If the trend continues, in 20 years 70% of committed believers in America will no longer be a part of these congregations. It was author Reggie McNeal who said, “people are leaving the institutional church to save their faith.” People love Jesus, but they’re struggling to love the church.

If we are to believe the statistics, and we don’t have reason not to, isn’t it interesting that people are still cool on Jesus, but it is the institution that is no longer loved? Words like disconnected or irrelevant are often used by people to describe the place that was once the center of the community. Why is that? Michael Slaughter, a pastor in Cincinnati, writes, “I cringe at how we Christians represent Jesus Christ to the rest of the world. We have created in our own image this domesticated Jesus who looks like us, thinks like us, believes like us and votes like us. What we have done has been to create an idol in our own image rather than for us to be transformed into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.” It’s happened in my life, in your life, and as we begin this new series, the challenge to everyone is to take inventory of where we are on the journey of following Jesus: maybe you love Jesus and are ready to leave the institutional church; maybe you love the institutional church but aren’t following Jesus; or somewhere in between.

Look at it this way: when our family took a vacation to Boston last summer we saw a great deal of living history in “ye old towne.” Cobblestone streets, gas lamps, water pumps, etc.--great amenities for these 18th Century Americans were interesting artifacts of a bygone era. But history tells us, that even though the coast was settled, the west was still pretty wild.

And that “wild west” brewed up in the hearts of these early Americans a pioneer spirit to head west. They heard of free, rich land to be farmed, the woods to be harvested, the abundance of game and pelts and early rumors of gold. Many city slickers made a commitment to head west and become pioneers. Here is my point—out of all the people who made a commitment to become pioneers, the majority stopped in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh! That’s how that city was founded—by people who set out west, who decided it was too hard b/c once they got to Ohio, people were dying—the folks who made a commitment to become pioneers, became settlers. Brothers and Sisters in Christ, I would tell you that the same thing has happened in the church. We have settled; we have traded in our pioneer spirit for one of easy settlement and amenities. Somewhere along the way the church became a place of complacency and the pioneer spirit was lost.

So what does that mean in following Jesus? It means the Holy Spirit is calling us back to that spirit of pioneering: a spirit of sacrifice, a spirit of adventure into the unknown. Certainly, Jesus first calls us to Himself, but as His Spirit dwells within us through Baptism, He sends us forth—not on a building campaign or moralism campaign—those are all by-products of our faith, but a campaign to connect people to Him--to tell the world around us about this incredible relationship between God and His creation, between the Savior of the world and His people.

And that pioneer spirit is described as having Jesus as the first passion in our life. That Jesus Christ is our identity, our defining life center. Because the problem in the institutional church is that there are a lot of people who believe in Jesus but their defining life center is not Him. Their center is their profession, their kids, their sexuality, their politics, their possessions. It’s like saying “I love Jesus,” but being passionate about something else. And, what you are passionate about will determine how you live. It was no less Gandhi, the Hindu leader of India, who based his life on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, who said this: “I’d become a Christian except for you Christians who are so unlike your Christ.” Ouch. (I know, I know, he didn’t get the saint/sinner thing.)

But think of it this way: you will become as small or as great as your controlling desires. And, if your life is defined by your relationship with Jesus, then Jesus, His message, and His call on you will define and control you. But if it is not, then something else will fill the vacuum. For instance, in the church, a big substitute for Jesus is Bible knowledge. People, in multiple Bible Studies or who have all this Bible knowledge, but have no passion for the very people Jesus came to save—no heart, no desire to see lives transformed. Things like bible knowledge, bible study and volunteerism have become an idol for some.

We can never forget that God has a call on our lives. We are His; and, as the Spirit works in our lives, we can respond to that call and seek to live as disciples or we can simply say, “I believe” and leave it at that. In Mark 8, however, Jesus says, “Take up your cross and follow me, whoever whishes to save his life will lose and whoever loses his life for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel will save it.” And “losing it” in Jesus’ words doesn’t mean to lose your passion, but it means to make Him the controlling center of all that you are. He isn’t peripheral or “out there” somewhere—He is in you, directing your days for His purposes and plans.

Discipleship is a journey, a meandering odyssey. It is not a linear, one-time thing. Where are you on the journey? You may be a believer or just checking things out; but we all have been invited to participate in what Christ started so long ago. Jesus is calling each one of us to a relationship of new birth in Him. First, through his shed blood and resurrection and then, by the power of the Holy Spirit to say, “There is not an area of my life which does not belong to You.” Because it is that same power that raised Christ from the dead that raises our life to a level of commitment we could not bring about on our own. The cross is our meeting place with God—it is where we die to self only to rise again to follow Jesus by and through His power.

Your task is to identify where you are with Jesus—how much of your life is His and how much of your life is yours. How much of a pioneer are you or have you settled for the things of the world? Christ calls us to come and follow, and to follow, means to be all in. It means not only do you believe, but you practice what you preach; because if you’re not practicing what you preach, you’ve traded in that pioneer spirit for one of a settler.

“Heading West” with you,

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