Church on the Move; Where are We Supposed to Be?

Church on the Move

April 15, 2007

Pastor Matt Sturtevant

Bono, the lead singer of U2, has a new book out.  And to be honest, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed if it were not very similar to the title of our new worship series, Church on the Move.  So I looked up the book and found that it is filled with pictures from his trip to Ethiopia as he surveyed the depth of destruction that the AIDS virus is causing there.  I found a very provocative paragraph.  Bono writes:

Colin Powell, a five-star general, called it the greatest WMD of them all: a tiny virus called AIDS.  And the religious community, in large part, missed it.  The ones who didn’t miss it could only see it as divine retribution for bad behavior.  Even in children.  Even when the fastest growing group of people with HIV were married, faithful women….  Aha, there they go again!  I thought to myself: Judgementalism is back.  But in truth, I was wrong again.  The church was slow, but the church got busy on this, the leprosy of our age….  Love was on the move.  Mercy was on the move.  God was on the move.

The title of his book, On the Move, and the power of this paragraph help us to ask the question that we will ponder over the coming weeks: Where are we supposed to be?

It’s a funny word, isn’t it?  “supposed” 

The guard at the high-security military facility: “You’re not supposed to be here”

A guilty admission from the boys sneaking past the No Trespassing Sign: “I don’t think I am supposed to be doing this”

The hall monitor at school: “Where are you supposed to be this hour?”

It implies an expectation or an assumption, a set of rules or standards that are “supposed” to be followed.  But when we start talking about the church, it gets fuzzier.  There are no signs saying “Christians not allowed here” or “God-friendly zone” that help us to know where we are “supposed” to be.  So when people like Bono – a leader of a band that doesn’t sing on a Christian album – starts talking about the AIDS crisis, we ask “Are we supposed to agree with this or not?”  And when Madonna – whose pictures and song lyrics would not be found in your average Christian bookstore – wears T-shirts from the One Campaign, whose goal it is to end poverty, we ask “Are we supposed to support this or not?”  And when Al Gore – whose politics or personality are not agreeable to everybody in this room – starts talking about environmental issues, we ask “Are we supposed to listen to him or not?”

It seems like when we listen to some Christians talk, there are only a few political issues or cultural causes that are truly Christian.  But I want us to think beyond that…to look at all issues from God’s perspective…to try and see the morality of every issue.  We as Christians are not locked into those issues or causes that are stamped by the religious aristocracy.  That should be apparent to us as Baptists especially.

If you go to Green Lake this year, you will see a huge lodge by the lake named after Roger Williams.  Roger Williams helped to found the first Baptist church in America and helped to found the colony of Rhode Island in the name of religious freedom.  But his journey was not a placid one.  He was often persecuted or imprisoned due to his views in opposition of the powerful Puritan leadership in Massachusetts.  One of the causes that got him into trouble often was the way he treated Native Americans.  The ruling Puritans chose to see them as enemies of God’s plan that deserved to be massacred and removed.  But Williams chose to see them as equals.  According to Williams, the church is “supposed” to be about the work of freedom and equality, even when it runs counter to the religious leadership of the day.  So he helped found Rhode Island as a place for religious freedom and a haven for those persecuted by the Puritans.  The religious leaders called RI “the cesspool of New England” due to the people that rested within it’s borders, but Williams stayed firm to his convictions that this was a cause worth fighting for.

Williams was right – God was on the move!

Bono is right – God is on the move!

The question of the day is this: Is the church on the move with God?

This month and next, our worship series will center on the book of Acts, the original “church on the move.”  We will study the figures and accounts of the early church and how it reacted to the religious leadership of the day.  And the first account that we read this week comes from chapters 3 through 5.

Let me set the stage.  It all begins with Peter and John, disciples of Jesus.  One quiet afternoon as they are traveling to the temple for prayer, they heal a man who was crippled from birth.  You might remember the famous line from Peter: “I have no silver or gold, but what I do have, I give you: in the name of Jesus Christ, stand up and walk.”  This starts a chain reaction of events.  The man tells everybody what has happened to him and Peter and John start to get some attention.  So they tell their story to the Jews in the temple court: “This shouldn’t be a surprise to you…the God you have worshiped for generations is the same God that healed this man, through the power of Jesus Christ.”  And then they go a step further.  They couldn’t leave well enough alone.  They cross the line into where they were not “supposed” to go: “What you should be surprised about is why all these religious leaders killed Jesus in the first place.  Of course they could not stop God – he raised Jesus from the dead three days later.  But you need to repent for the sin in which you are complicit.”

That gets the attention of the religious leaders.  They are preaching against them after all!  So they are arrested and told not to preach this nonsense anymore.  Needless to say, they and the apostles don’t obey this ruling and continue to preach the good news – Jesus is the Messiah that all of the Jews have been waiting for.  And by the way, these guys killed him.  Quickly, they gain a following.  The controversial words that they speak and the healings that they perform in Jesus’ name get them more and more attention.  They become like the Jerusalem dream team.  Everybody wants to see them.  Believers by the hundreds start to join their movement.  People would push in close to Peter because they believed that simply his shadow passing over them would cause them to be healed.  They are starting to become more popular in the temple than the temple rulers.  The leaders, obviously jealous, have had enough.  They have them arrested again and put them in jail.  The plan was to bring them before the council in the morning and tell them what they were “supposed” to be doing.  But during the middle of the night, an angel of the Lord comes and opens the gates of the jail and by morning, they are back in the temple, sharing the good news.  Meanwhile, the council sends the guard to pick them up, only to find them gone and back doing what they have been told not to do.

So they round them up again and confront them – tell them not to preach anymore.  Now we read another famous line from Peter: “We must obey God, rather than human authority”.  In other words, “My ‘supposed to’ and your ‘supposed to’ aren’t the same.  God is on the move, and we are just trying to catch up.  And by the way, you killed Jesus, God’s Messiah”

That was the final straw for some of the council.  They were ready to have them killed then and there.  Then a curious thing happens.  An older Pharisee named Gamaliel steps up and sends out the apostles.  History doesn’t know what to do with Gamaliel.  Some of them think that he was a pre-Christian, somebody that was almost ready to accept the Gospel.  After all , Paul later claims that he was one of his teachers, maybe helping to create in Saul/Paul the man that would become the greatest Christian missionary in history.  Others think that he was simply another Pharisee, complicit in the death of  Jesus and one of the primary persecutors of the early church.  While history will continue to debate this man, it is clear that his words were powerful on that day and since.  He tells the council to slow down.  Remember, he says, Theudas?  This guy claimed to be something and gained a bunch of followers.  But he was just a fad and people barely remember his name any more.  And remember Judas the Galilean?  He got a bunch of people to follow him, but he was another fad and his followers scattered to find the next big thing.  The same principle should be applied to these men: “Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God."  So they let the apostles go and they continued their preaching.

Here the words of a skeptical, cynical, but wise, old Pharisee.  If it is not “supposed” to work, it won’t.  But if it is “supposed” to, if it is of God, if it is a part of God acting in this world, you won’t be able to stop it anyway.  Our “supposed to” is not always God’s “supposed to.”

I grew up in Frankfort, Kentucky, the state capitol, but still a small town of about 30,000.  And in many ways, it was the stereotypical small town.  If anything new came to town, everybody had to try it.  And that included churches.  If a new church plant was started, or if a dynamic new pastor came to town, or if a new program or service was initiated, there were a group of folks that would flock to that church to try it out.  The “church hoppers” we called them, were always looking for the next new thing.  It is a sentiment that Gamaliel foresaw 2,000 years ago.

And his words still ring true – there are fads, even in the church world, that will burn out.  If we tie our name and our hope to the fad – the phrase or the gimmick – it will fail.  We might be able to attract other church folks for the new church fad and we might be able to get numbers that way, but after a few years, it will burn out.  But if we are on the lookout for what God is doing, where God is moving, what ministry is happening, we will be where we are supposed to be!

Where are we supposed to be?

This and similar questions are what we want to ask today and the Sundays following:

Where is God already at work, inviting us to join him?

Are we more about programs or people?

Are we more about being in the church building or being in the community?

Are we about saving our institution or saving our world?

How are we to be in the world, but not of the world?

This is not just about the church universal, but for us, as First Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas:

If we are on the lookout for what God is doing, we will be where we are supposed to be!

If Faith Forest continues to be a place where the Bible is exciting and the love of God is proclaimed…We’ll be on the move with God!

If the conneXion gathering and the traditional worship services are places where people can offer themselves to God in a way that makes sense to them and new believers can find a home…we’ll be on the move with God!

If our small groups continue to teach the Bible and become places of love and community…we’ll be on the move with God!

If all of our programs and ministries look to God first…we’ll be on the move with God!

If God is in these movements, there is nothing we can do to make them fail!

Where is God?  On the move!

Where is the church? Let us ever be on the move with God!