Onward

Picture yourself waking up on a Sunday morning to go to church. You have to leave early for the service just so you can get a good parking place. As you approach the vicinity of the church, you find that the local police have set up traffic lanes especially for the worshipers that morning. At the intersections, traffic cops override the signals in order to keep the traffic moving.

You’re getting close to the church now, and you have to decide which of the huge parking lots you’re going to use. You turn into a long driveway that says Parking Lot D, where you are met by a series of smiling, orange-shirted young people waving fluorescent batons to show you where to park. When you get out of your car, you find that you are still about 1/4 of a mile away from the church buildings, but that’s no problem. You just hop on to the nearby shuttle bus, which will take you right to the front door of the sanctuary.

As the bus approaches the sanctuary, you admire the beautiful architecture and landscaping around the sprawling complex, which is about the size of a shopping mall. You disembark, and walk through one of the sixteen glass doors that form the main entrance. You find yourself in a large atrium, which resembles a hotel lobby. A bank of elevators is over to your left, and straight ahead is a large circular information desk, staffed by about a dozen people. Around the perimeter of the lobby are several direction maps for the church complex, each with the familiar and comforting arrow that says “You are Here”.

A large and bright corridor leads to the Christian Education wing. It looks like an airport concourse, with brightly colored overhead signs that say Age 4, Age 5, Age 6 receding into the distance as far as the eye can see. They don’t call it Sunday School, they call it PromiseLand.

You send your kids off to PromiseLand and since you’re early for the service, you stroll over to the bookstore, where you want to purchase the latest music CD, which was recorded in the church’s very own recording studio, and features the church’s professional musicians.

It’s time for the service, and the lobby is full of people moving toward the main sanctuary. You pick up a program from an usher and make your way to a seat in the first balcony. The six thousand seat auditorium will be comfortably full for this the first of two Sunday morning services. There’s also a Saturday night service, which is always packed. Anywhere from 12 to 15 thousand people will be in church on a given weekend.

Today is a special day. There will be a baptismal service. Three hundred people are going to be baptized. They’ll be honored in the morning service, and then baptized that afternoon in the church’s lake which you can see behind the sanctuary through the forty foot high glass windows.

Can you picture yourself attending a church like this? Well I happened to attend this very church back in June. I was attending a ministry conference in Chicago along with my brother-in-law Mark Crate and we went one Sunday to the Willow Creek Community Church, which is one of the largest evangelical churches in the United States.

I don’t mind telling you that I was more than a little intimidated when I came away from that place. The size and scope of it was overwhelming! It was tempting to think that my little church on Long Island, or, for that matter, Onward Gospel Church in Verdun where I grew up, was pretty small potatoes in comparison.

But that conclusion would have been dead wrong. I know enough about the Bible to know that size of a ministry does not equal its significance; that the Spirit of God is not somehow tied up in the numerical scope of an operation. If that equation were true - if God really is in the numbers business - then Jesus in his earthly ministry should have spent most of his time ministering to the thousands who followed him, instead of pouring his life into just a dozen disciples.

Now I’m not criticizing big churches for being big. I just want to make the point that being big doesn’t mean being better. Onward Gospel Church has never been a large church. Yet it has been a tremendously significant church - a church that God has used down through the years in very special ways. It has made a tremendous impact on the lives of the people who have gone through here, an impact that is being felt today literally around the world. I know because I am one of those people whose life was changed in this church.

The question I want to consider with you today is: What’s the secret of that significance? If size doesn’t equal the significance of a church, what does? Let’s look at the blueprints:

Acts 2: 42-47

Now I’ve heard a lot of sermons on this passage and I’m sure you have too. And most of those sermons focus in on the specific activities of the early church as being the key to its significance. They had teaching, they had worship, they had fellowship, and they had evangelism. And the conclusion that’s usually drawn is that those four activities were what gave the early church its impact.

But I don’t buy that. Because I’ve seen a lot of churches that have all four of those ingredients and they’re dying on the vine. They have teaching but it’s dry. They have worship, but it’s like God’s frozen chosen. They have fellowship, but it doesn’t go much beyond having pot-luck dinners. And they even have evangelism, but they use methods that are so out of touch with where people are at today that they’re wasting their time. They’re not making an impact in people’s lives, or in their community, even though they have these four “Scriptural” ingredients.

That’s because the key to the significance of the church in the book of Acts is not found primarily in what they did, it’s found in how they did it. Certainly it was important for them to be involved in the right activities, but what made that church so dynamic was the qualities that lay behind the right activities. It was the way they did their teaching, it was the way they did their worship, it was how they experienced fellowship and how they did evangelism that gave that church its power.

So I want to suggest to you four qualities about that church in Acts 2 which are the key to its significance, and which have been the key to the significance of Onward Gospel Church in years past, and I hope, for years to come.

1. Commitment

Once upon a time, there was a pig and a chicken who were good friends. They even went to church together. One day, their church announced that it was going to launch a special project to help the poor. “I wonder what we can do to help the poor?” said the pig. “I have an idea,” said the chicken, “let’s invite them to a breakfast of bacon and eggs.” The pig thought about that for a moment and then he said “There’s only one thing wrong with inviting people to a breakfast of bacon and eggs. For you, it involves a contribution. For me, it’s total commitment.”

You can’t read that passage in Acts 2 without coming to the conclusion that those people were committed to what was going on in that church. They devoted themselves to the various activities of the church; they gave wholeheartedly of their time and their money.

There is something magnetic about commitment. When a person is wholeheartedly committed to the goals and mission of an organization, his commitment influences other people and attracts them.

That’s what I remember about the people at Onward. It began with my own family, with my parents. As a child, I knew without being told that Jesus Christ and his church was the most important commitment in the lives of my parents. There was no question where we would be on Sunday - we’d be in church.

I think that it is important for us to realize that we’re living today in a culture where true commitment has lost much of its meaning. I’m sure that you were all deeply touched by the wedding last week of Elizabeth Taylor to the construction worker Larry Fortensky. They pledged their love for all time, or until they no longer love each other, whichever comes first. Marriages break up because the partners don’t feel committed to each other anymore. Star athletes sign their names to multi-year contracts, then want to renegotiate those contracts when market values change.

Market researchers tell us that people have very little brand loyalty anymore. In our consumer approach to life, we want to keep all our options open, and that goes for spiritual values as well. Church growth specialists tell us that people are increasingly reluctant to identify themselves as members of a particular church or denomination. They want their freedom to pick and choose what suits them.

So when you talk about commitment today, it doesn’t mean what it used to mean. People interpret commitment to mean that you’re committed to something until you’re no longer committed to it. When your needs change, when circumstances change, that’s when your commitment ends.

When I was growing up here in Verdun, I was always interested in airplanes. I would ride my bike out to Dorval airport and sit at the end of the runway and watch the planes take off and land. My very first job was with Air Canada, and I was in hog heaven! Down on Long Island, we live along the flight path for JFK Airport, so I get to see lots of airplanes there.

When an airplane takes off, there are two critical decision points that a pilot reaches as he accelerates down the runway. They are called V1 and V2 - V standing for Velocity. V1 is the final point at which the pilot can safely abort the take off. If he’s not satisfied with everything at V1, he can shut down the engines and slam on the brakes and still have enough runway to stop.

Then there’s V2. That’s the point at which the pilot is committed to getting that airplane off the ground. There’s no possibility of going back once he’s reached V2. The plane either flies, or crashes.

Following Jesus Christ demands a V2 commitment. Christ is not interested in disciples who only want to make a V1 commitment of their lives. They want to sit on the fence, they want to see which way the wind is blowing, they’ll follow him as long as its convenient, but they want to keep their options open. No, a V2 commitment is what Jesus is looking for. He’s looking for people who will lay it all on the line for him. No going back, they’re in it for keeps. And its only when a church has people who have made a V2 commitment of their lives to Jesus Christ, that that church will be effective. The first quality is commitment.

2. Celebration

Every two months, I go into lower Manhattan to lead a service at the Bowery Mission. The Bowery mission is located in one of the worst neighborhoods of New York City. The streets there are littered with the broken lives of people who have been destroyed by alcohol and drugs. Men and women dressed in rags live on the streets in the heart of one of the wealthiest cities on earth.

I park my car in front of the mission, and one of the staff watches it so that it won’t get ripped off. But when you go into the mission, the whole atmosphere is different than out on the streets. There are people in there who know Jesus Christ. They have a group of men and women who are in a discipleship program. These people have come off the streets, have found Jesus Christ, and now they’re growing in him. They’re getting their lives back together.

You should hear those people sing. You talk about soul music! One of their favorite hymns is “What a Friend we Have in Jesus” and they sing it with rhythm. They close their eyes and they raise their hands, and they sway to the beat, and man, you know they mean what they’re singing. They’re celebrating the gospel! For them, it really is good news.

A church that really celebrates the gospel, is a church that will have significance in people’s lives. You look at the church in Acts 2, and you know they were excited. They were filled with awe. They had glad and sincere hearts. They could sense God’s presence, and they knew they were a part of something BIG that was happening.

So much of what churches do today under the label of “worship’ is just a kind of tired, old, going through the motions. We need to party more! Author Tony Campolo says that the kingdom of God is a party. When you become a Christian, you’re stepping into the biggest party in the universe. But you’d never know it by walking into most churches on a Sunday morning.

Down in Lynbrook, we’re trying to get hold of this concept. We’re launching a praise band that’s got drums, bass, rhythm guitar and keyboards. We’ve been talking about how we can restructure our schedule so that we can gather the church at the end of the week on Friday night for a TGIF celebration - a Christian party that people can come to just to celebrate our oneness in Christ. We’re excited about being Christians, and we want to create forms that will allow us to express that excitement.

I’ll always remember the good times we had here at Onward. During the early seventies, we had a pretty hot youth group. Back then when the guitar was the king of the musical instruments, we had eight guys in the youth group who could play, and I remember all eight being up here leading us in choruses of praise. There was a sense of excitement, of celebration, that made a tremendous impact on the lives of those who were involved.

In his landmark book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People , author Stephen Covey talks about the priniciple of synergy. Synergy is what happens when you get a group of people together who begin to get in tune with each other. They begin to sense that together, they share a mission. An inner excitement begins to grow that unleashes unbelievable creative energy.

The group becomes much more than just the sum of its individual parts and it begins to have an incredible impact on the outside world. They begin to accomplish things that were not even thought possible at the start. And if you’ve ever been a part of such a group, you know that it changes your life.

I believe that that is what was happening in Acts 2 - it was a synergy brought about by the Holy Spirit. They were on a mission. They were excited. And so they celebrated what God was doing in their lives.

Commitment… Celebration…

3. Community

You look at those verses in Acts 2 and you get the impression that those people liked being together. They ate their meals together. They met daily together in the Temple courts. They shared their possessions. But they weren’t ingrown, because they welcomed newcomers in.

Although the population of the world is growing, and more and more people are living in urban environments, our isolation as individuals is actually increasing. Because we are much more mobile than our forefathers, we tend not to put down roots. We live in neighborhoods that are no longer stable, but fluid and constantly changing. It’s not unusual to live in an apartment building and not even know the people who are living literally six inches away from you.

Even the family unit is affected. In the old days, generation after generation of a family would live and die within just a few miles of one another. It’s not unusual today for a family to be spread all over the North American continent.

Community is an endangered species. And because of that, people are increasingly isolated, and lonely. There’s nothing more depressing than to be surrounded by thousands upon thousands of people and realize that you are all alone. Yet that is the plight of most people today.

Now the church has the answer to this problem, but it’s not as cut and dried as it seems. Because the church itself is feeling the effects of the forces that are at play in our society.

I’ve been ministering on Long Island for five years now. In that five years, we have had a sixty percent turnover in our church’s congregation. Economic factors, demographic factors, you name it, we have felt it. That makes it tougher to make true community happen for the people in our congregation.

You see, most people today have actually forgotten what it means to live in community. They’re accustomed to cruising through life as an anonymous face in the crowd. And there is a sense in which they cherish the independence that comes with being anonymous. Just because they become Christians doesn’t mean that they are automatically ready to become accountable to other believers, and to become responsible for other believers. They have to be taught what it means to live in a community of faith.

One of the precious heritages that I learned at Onward was that to be a Christian is to be a part of a living community. We weren’t just a bunch of faceless, anonymous people who showed up each Sunday and didn’t have anything else to do with each other. No, we entered into each others’ lives. We took responsibility for each other. We knew and were known.

I well remember the time when I was old enough to become part of Onward’s youth group. 13 years of age. Junior High. Obnoxious. But that was an unusual youth group. Because that youth group had people in it who were in college or working. People in their early twenties. Why would they want to have anything to do with a runny-nosed 13 year old brat like me?

Community. That youth group ran on the assumption that maybe, just maybe, those older Christians could take a bird-brain like me under their wing and teach me what life was all about. They were willing to take responsibility for me.

And I well remember the Sunday that my father died in that cloakroom back there. People in this church reached out and took responsibility for me.

That’s community. And if a church doesn’t have that it isn’t going to make a lasting impact in a person’s life. It can have the largest congregation, it can have the most beautiful buildings, it can have all the fancy programs in the world but if it doesn’t have community, it isn’t worth squat.

Commitment… Celebration… Community…

4. Continuity.

v. 46 - Every day they continued to meet together…

What was happening in the city of Jerusalem in the year 30 AD was just the first page of a book that continues to be written today. And when I think back to my days here at Onward, and the many good things that happened back then, it excites me to know that good things are continuing to happen today.

Just last week, one of my elders returned from a Christian Medical Society conference in Romania. He brought me greetings from Laurel Stevens, who was part of the ministry here at Onward a number of years ago.

Back on September 14, I picked up Doug Anderson at LaGuardia Airport and brought him home for lunch. He was just on his way through New York. He shared with me what God was doing in the Philippines. Doug grew up at Onward.

In July, we were with some of Carolyn’s cousins who live in Toronto. They belong to a growing church that is pastored by Tim Greening. Tim grew up at Onward.

Also in July, I sat down to dinner with Roy Harvey. Roy, who is a petrochemical executive, and his wife Barb have a solid ministry to young adults at their church in Calgary, Alberta. Roy grew up at Onward.

Back in June, when I was in Chicago, I was with Mark Crate, who has now moved to Buffalo to become the assistant pastor at his father’s church. Mark grew up at Onward.

Frank Humphrey has served the Lord long and faithfully at People’s Church here in Montreal. Frank was discipled in his early Christian life here at Onward.

I’m on the maiing list of the Christian Counseling Federation of Philadelphia, and I see the name Ken Hurst on the staff there. Ken was deeply involved as a youth at here at Onward.

Onward Gospel Church has an impact that is felt literally worldwide, and part of the reason for that is continuity. The church has remained faithful to its Lord, and faithful to its mission as a church.

These are the things that make a church significant. Not its size, or its image, or its glamorous programs. But the commitment of its people; their celebration of the Lord’s goodness; their sense of caring and community with one another; and their continuity in the things of the Lord. May God bless OGC!