Transition - Jerusalem

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 drive toward the church, you find that the local police have set up traffic lanes especially for the church-goers that morning. At the intersections, traffic cops override the signals in order to keep the flow moving.

As you approach the church, 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. As you enter the lot, you are met by a series of smiling young people wearing orange T-shirts, 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 building, but that’s no problem. You just hop on to the nearby shuttle bus, which takes you right to the front door of the sanctuary.

As you step off the bus, you admire the beautiful architecture and landscaping around the sprawling complex, which is about the size of a shopping mall. You walk through one of the sixteen glass doors that form the main entrance. You find yourself in a large atrium, which looks something like 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 a little arrow that says “You are Here”.

A wide corridor leads to the Christian Education wing of the complex. It looks like an airport concourse, but instead of gate signs, there are vividly-colored overhead signs that say Age 4, Age 5, Age 6. They recede into the distance as far as the eye can see. This is Sunday School at the mega-church, but they don’t call it Sunday School, they call it PromiseLand.

You send your kids off to PromiseLand. Since you’re early for the service, you stroll over to the bookstore, where you can pick up the latest music CD, which was recorded in the church’s very own recording studio on the premises, featuring the church’s professional musicians.

It’s getting 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. Today, 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 visit that very church a couple of years ago. I was attending the CBA Annual Meetings in Chicago and I worshiped on Sunday at the Willow Creek Community Church, which is the largest evangelical church 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 our little church on Long Island 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 mega-churches like Willow Creek for being big. I just want to make the point that big doesn’t necessarily mean better. Lynbrook Baptist Church has never been a large church, and it probably never will be a large church. But it has been a very significant church - a church that God has used down through the years in many special ways. As a church, it has made a real impact on the lives of the people who have gone through here; an impact that is being felt today literally around the world.

But now LBC is facing some changes. The pastor and his family are leaving. Another key family in the church are moving away as well. Those kinds of changes can be threatening, especially for a smaller church. The people who are left are tempted to look around and say “What are we going to do when these key leaders leave? Are we going to be able to survive as a church?” Other people may be tempted to say “Well, that’s it. I’m bailing out of here.”

Those questions and those doubts are not new. As a matter of fact, the first followers of Jesus were feeling just what many of you are feeling today. Let me ask you a question: What’s the average Sunday morning attendance here at LBC? 120. Let me ask you another question: How many believers were there in the upper room in Acts 1 before the Day of Pentecost? 120. And they were full of doubts; they were asking the same questions. Jesus had just ascended into heaven. He wasn’t around anymore. And they were saying “What are we going to do now that our leader is gone? Jesus has left us. Maybe it’s all over. Here we are, all on our own. Just us 120 people in big bad old Jerusalem. So what are we going to do?”

And that’s when God stepped in and supplied the answer! And the answer exceeded their wildest expectations. He did it for them, and I believe that he’s going to do the same for you here at Lynbrook. Those 120 people in Acts 1 went on to make a world-changing impact. In fact, we are here today because of what they did 2000 years ago. But they had to go through a time of transition first.

Let’s look at what they did to see how this church can not only survive, but thrive, and have a real impact for God in the years to come:

Acts 2: 42-47

I’ve heard a lot of sermons on this passage and I’m sure you have too. Most of those sermons have tended to focus 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 point that is usually made 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 activities and they’re dying on the vine. They have teaching but their teaching is dry. They have worship, but they worship like they’re God’s frozen chosen. They have fellowship, but their fellowship 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 literally wasting their time. So many churches are not making an impact in people’s lives, or in their community, even though they have those four “Scriptural” ingredients from the book of Acts.

The key to the significance of the church in the book of Acts is not only in what they did, it’s in how they did it. Certainly it was important for them to be doing the right things. But what made that church so dynamic and so alive was the spirit in which they did those right things. It was the spirit in which they did their teaching, it was the spirit in which they did their worship, it was the spirit in which they experienced fellowship and spirit in which they reached out to their community that gave that church its power and its impact.

So I want to suggest to you three qualities about that church in Acts 2 which were the key to its significance, and which will be the key to the significance of Lynbrook Baptist Church 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, the church announced that it was going to launch a special project to help the poor. So the pig turned to the chicken and said, “I wonder what we can do to help the poor?”

“I have an idea,” said the chicken, “let’s invite the poor 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 the poor to a breakfast of bacon and eggs. For you, it involves a contribution. But for me, it’ll take total commitment.”

You can’t read about the early church without coming to the conclusion that those people were totally committed to what God was doing in their midst. They devoted themselves to the various activities of the church; they gave wholeheartedly of their time and their money. The church wasn’t just something that they tacked on to their busy schedule. It occupied the center of their lives.

We are living today in a culture where true commitment has lost most of its meaning. Marriages break up because husbands and wives don’t feel committed to each other anymore. Their needs aren’t being met. Star athletes sign multi-year contracts, but then a couple of years later, they want to renegotiate them because the market values have changed.

Market researchers tell us that people have very little brand loyalty anymore, whether it is to cars or cereals or churches. The American consumer wants to keep all of his options open, and that goes for spiritual values as well. Church growth specialists tell us that Americans are increasingly reluctant to identify themselves as members of any particular church or denomination. They want the freedom to pick and choose what suits them, and move on if they’re not satisfied.

So when you talk about commitment today, you might as well be talking a foreign language. 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 your circumstances change, that’s when your commitment ends.

I have always been interested in airplanes. 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 you have 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 are ready to lay it all on the line for him. No going back, they’re in it for keeps. And it’s only when a church is made up of people who have made that kind of commitment of their lives to Jesus Christ, that that church will have an impact.

The people of the early church had that kind of commitment. The people of LBC are going to need that kind of commitment.

2. Celebration

Every two months, some of our people 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 broken lives and broken dreams. People 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.

But when you go into the Mission, the whole atmosphere is different. There are people in there who have found Jesus Christ. There’s a group of guys who are in the discipleship program. These men have come off the streets, have found Jesus Christ, and now they’re growing in him. They’re starting to put their lives back together.

You should hear those guys 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, they clap, and they sway to the beat, and man, you know they mean every word that they’re singing. They’re celebrating the gospel! For them, it’s the best news they’ve ever heard.

What’s the key to celebration? How can it happen in the local church? Some people think that if you change the style of worship, or the style of music, your worship services will come alive. That’s not true. It’s not the style of the music, its the spirit of the people that is the key to celebration in worship.

We get all bent out of shape over what style we’re going to worship God in. But style is not the issue. Spirit is. If your spirit is in step with God’s Spirit, you can worship God in any style. You can worship with Bach, or you can worship with rock. You can go anywhere in the world and worship God in any style, if your spirit is in step with God’s Spirit.

And if your spirit is in step with God’s Spirit, you’re not going to be fighting over style. I remember one time we had some contemporary music in the morning service. We had a drum set up here on the platform. And some people came in and took one look at the drum set, and it was like “Oh no. We’re not going to have THAT kind music are we? How could we POSSIBLY worship God with drums playing in the background?”

A church that really celebrates, is a church that will have an impact 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 and exciting that was happening.

And that’s what LBC needs to capture. We need a spirit of celebration.

Commitment… Celebration…

3. Community

You look at those verses in Acts 2 and you get the impression that those people enjoyed being together. They ate their meals together. They met daily together in the Temple courts. They shared their possessions. But they didn’t get cliquish or ingrown, because they were always welcoming newcomers in.

The population of the world is growing. More and more people are crowding together into cities. Yet something strange is happening. People are getting more and more isolated all the time. There are a lot of factors that account for that.

We are much more mobile than our forefathers were, so 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 neighbors who are living, literally, six inches away from you.

The family unit has changed. In the old days, generation after generation of a family would live and die within just a few miles of one another in one community. But today, it’s not unusual for a family to be spread all over the North American continent.

True community is rare in our world anymore. 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. Nobody knows you. Nobody cares about you. Yet that is the plight of most people today.

But the church has the answer: it’s called Christian community. The church is a place where people can enter into each others’ lives. People can take responsibility for each other. It’s a place where you can know and be known. And you’d better believe that that’s what people are looking for today.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the longest running comedy series on TV went off the air. Cheers was built upon the idea of community. People want to go where everybody knows their name. That cast of characters - Sam, Cliff, Carla, Norm, Frasier, and Woody - became a kind of extended family. They entered into each others’ lives. They shared each other’s problems. They laughed together and they cried together. And that had a tremendous appeal to the viewing audience.

Unfortunately, the world goes looking in bars, or clubs for that kind of community. Maybe they’re looking there because they haven’t found it in the church.

Let me tell you about one of the ways that community is happening here. We have a youth group that is made up primarily of junior high kids. Now you know that junior high is a really tough age. When you’re that age, you’re going through a lot of changes. You’re body is changing, you’re emotions are changing, and it seems like everything is in transition. You’re not quite sure who you are. You’re not a kid anymore, but you’re not an adult either.

In our church, we’ve got a group of College and Career men and women who got hold of a real vision for ministering to our junior high kids. They remembered what it was like to be a teenager. They remembered the struggles and the challenges. And they wanted to help.

So, over the past year, they have been devoting every second Saturday night to meeting with those junior high teens. Building relationships. Sharing fun and laughter with them. And sharing their faith in Jesus, too.

And I think that that is fantastic. Because it shows these kids that somebody here at LBC cares about them. And it also shows them that if you really want to find meaning in life, go find somebody to serve. Pour your life into someone else’s.

If you approach the church from the standpoint of what you can get out of it, you will never be happy. If you just come here on Sunday morning and listen to the sermon, you are not going to find a whole lot of satisfaction in that. But if you ask “What can I do to help somebody else in this church?” then you’re going to find that true joy that comes with serving others.

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

Commitment… Celebration… Community…

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; and their sense of caring and community with one another.

With God’s help, may it happen here.