Should We Go to Church?

            It’s Sunday morning.  What should we do today?  Go to church?  No, not this week.  We can go next month when they have the potluck.  Today, let’s sleep in and then take a morning walk.  We can hit the IHOP around 10:00, take our time, and then go to the small-town art festival before the crowd gets too big.

            It’s Sunday morning, and ohhh, I am hung over.  My life is falling apart.  A DUI and now a likely divorce.  O God, what will I do?  God!  Why would God listen to me, if there is a God?  I haven’t given God a second thought in years.  Now I want to cry out to God?  What a crock!  Do I even know how to pray?  What would they do if I showed at that church on the corner?  Would they kick me out?  Everyone else has.  Why not try it?  What do I have to lose?

            OK, Sunday morning!  Get the kids up and start getting ready.  We don’t want to be late for Sunday School a third Sunday in a row!  Can we stay home today?  Not on your life.  As long you live in this house, you will go to Sunday School, to worship, and you will sing the songs and listen to the sermon.  God is important and we won’t learn anything about him or grow closer to him staying home.

            Which one most closely resembles how your Sundays go?  I know, I know, you can think of an option that’s not even remotely close to the ones I cited above.  You can think of 10 options not like the ones above.  Fine. What are your Sundays like?  Is church a major part of your Sundays, and if it is, why is it?  Is church important because you want to see friends?  Does it make you feel good?  Is worshiping God a crucial part of your life?

            Or is church a part of a few of your Sundays, but definitely not all of them?  I recently read “the new normal for church attendance is one-and-a-half times a month.”  Assuming that one-and-a-half times is mostly at the same church, that church gets a chance to be with that attendee or family 18 times a year.  I don’t know where the person who said that got that statistic because he doesn’t cite a source.  My own observations lead me to think that’s about right.

            I am church pastor.  Most of the core members of our church are in worship more than 30 Sundays a year.  But, we have a lot of casual attendees that we see anywhere from 10-20 times a year; less than half the time.  Where are they the other 32-42 Sundays?  On those few Sundays that we see them in worship, what led them to decide to go to church that particular day?  The rest of the time, how did they decide to do whatever they are doing when they aren’t in worship?  And is it important?

            Hebrews 10:24-25 says, “Let us be concerned about one another in order to promote love and good works, not staying away from our worship meetings, as some habitually do, but encouraging each other and all the more as you see the day drawing near.”  Of course no one, is going to come to church because a pastor says they should.  No one is going to come to church because a pastor says the Bible says they should.  That’s what people expect pastors to say and pastors are easy to ignore. 

            The Bible indeed in many places including this passage from the New Testament book Hebrews insists that followers of Jesus must gather together regularly.  Solitary faith is foreign to the Bible.  I can follow Jesus in my own way.  It’s a very individualistic sentiment and our American cultural ethos just adores individual autonomy.  But the follow Jesus in my own way idea makes no sense from a Biblical perspective.

            So what do we do then?  We can’t force people to come to church (and we shouldn’t try).  We can’t shame people into coming to worship every week (and we shouldn’t try; convicting the heart is the Holy Spirit’s job, not ours).  What do we do?

            First, each individual Christian/church member has to decide not only to come to church every week, but to do so with a joyful heart.  Church isn’t just some “thing that we do.”  Church is the gathering of people to worship the risen Lord, the present Holy Spirit.  If we come together in love and in genuine joy, that will be attractive to people.  Life is hard and people are lonely.   More people take medication for depression and varieties of personality disorders than at any point in history.  Our addictions to our phones has left us inept at actual person-to-person, face-to-face conversations and relationships.  If people can go somewhere that’s free where they are welcomed and loved, they’ll come back.  We have to come in joy.

            Second, we have to maintain that joy no matter how many people are in church on any particular Sunday.  It might one of those Sundays where most of the people who attend once a month or less are not there.  We can either focus on the empty seats, or put our energy into sharing joy and love with the few who are there.  We’re joyful regardless of the crowd size.

            Third, we heap love on people when they come.  If someone walks through the doors Sunday morning, someone who hasn’t come in a couple of months, we smile and welcome them.  They know how long it’s been since they last came.  They don’t need us pointing it out and making a big deal of it.  Remember, it’s the Holy Spirit’s job to convict the heart.  We share joy and love.  For the person who came early in February and now in May is finally back, why do we think he came back?  To be lectured?  I think we’ll have a better effect on him loving him than lecturing him. 

            Finally, in our preaching, prayers, and teaching, we emphasize the way of discipleship.  Of course discipleship is much more than committing to attend worship 30 times a year.  Discipleship is committing to follow Jesus every moment of every day.  People need help moving from occasional church attendance to committed church involvement to devoted discipleship.  In the sermons, the song, the testimonies, and prayers, we model discipleship and invite all present to consider the disciple life.

            I don’t know if the suggestions I have made here will actually increase attendance at our church or in church attendance in general in our country.  But increasing church attendance isn’t our goal.  We’re not here to get that couple that decided to sleep in and go to IHOP to instead attend our church every week.  We’re here to help them become passionately devoted followers of Jesus.  If we work on that, helping people become disciples, we’re doing what God wants us to do.  God can worry about the attendance numbers.  We can live in joy knowing we are followers of Jesus at church and in all the places of our lives. 

Safe, New, Sent (Matthew 20:16-20)

Sunday, June 3, 2018

            Who we are supposed to be as individual believers and as a local congregation comes from who Jesus is.  We get to know him in the stories we find in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  The Bible is the authority to which we must conform.  The Bible is not to be adjusted in order tos fit in with our lives, with modern day sensibilities, or with current trends.  We adjust our thoughts and our lives to what we understand the Bible to be saying.  We submit ourselves to the God we meet in the Bible. 

            We meet God in story – primarily in the story of Jesus.  There are numerous examples. This morning we’ll look at a few.  First, Mark 3:1-6. 

[Jesus] entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. ² They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. ³ And he said to the man who had the withered hand, “Come forward.” ⁴ Then he said to them, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. ⁵ He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. ⁶ The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

            The man’s withered hand was for him a deformity and a disability.  He could not work.  His condition would be attributed to sin in his life – God inflicted him with a useless, withered hand as a punishment.  Thus, he could not do manual labor and he lived as a social outcast. 

            Jesus welcomed this rejected man.  Jesus interrupted normal Sabbath routine to help him.  What could be better than working a miracle that would ease the man’s pain, restore his social standing, enable him to participate fully in community worship, and empower him to go to work and make a living?  Jesus changed this man’s life, and verse 6 says the powers that be were enraged.  They had constructed a system of rules that marginalized the man instead of coming together as a community to help the man.  The synagogue and the synagogue leaders magnified the suffering the man went through due to his infirmity.  They were the opposite of “safe” for him.  Whatever difficulty he endured in life was increased by the religious leader were supposed to care for his spiritual life.  And churches through the ages have inflicted similar suffering on people.  People already going through various kinds of pain go to church for hope and instead are judged in a way that makes things worse.

            Jesus welcomed the man, loved him, and restored his life. 

            Jesus also condemned the Pharisees who showed no love to broken people and lost sinners.  Verse 5 says Jesus was angry at their attitude.  It also says, he grieved in his heart at the spiritual condition of that synagogue.  If we love the most broken people who come through our doors, we’re safe for them, the way Jesus was.  If we push to the margins people who already feel like outcasts, we cause Jesus grief and he’s angry at us.

            This is what he says in Matthew 23.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them.^[a] 15 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell^[b]as yourselves.

           

            One more example shows how Jesus was safe for the wounded, the outcast, the lost, the confused, and those in great pain. 

And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. ²⁵ Now there was a woman who had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years. ²⁶ She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. ²⁷ She had heard about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, ²⁸ for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” ²⁹ Immediately her hemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. ³⁰ Immediately aware that power had gone forth from him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes?” ³¹ And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’” ³² He looked all around to see who had done it. ³³ But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth. ³⁴ He said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.

            Like the man with the withered hand, this woman suffered a physical ailment that also left her socially outcast and financially ruined.  In every way imaginable, she was down and out.  Jesus was on his way to heal the dying daughter of a very important man.  He stopped walking to the house where girl lay, just as we early saw him stop the synagogue worship.  To him, the person in front of him with great need was not a distraction.  Showing love to that person was the mission.  This woman was labeled unclean, but he called her daughter, healed her, and restored her.

            The first principle of our church’s philosophy of ministry is to embody the way Jesus is safe for people.  Are you full of questions?  This is a safe place for you to ask them.  Have you done some bad things in your life, and now come seeking forgiveness?  It is OK for you to tell your story here.  Is the world an unsafe place for you?  Come into the arms of Jesus.  That’s what we want to be for you.  One of our top priorities must be to be a safe place for people who need a safe place. 

And sometimes, the one who needs the safety of Jesus is someone who’s been coming a long time.  You don’t need to have it all together.  Even deacons and elders and pastors need the church to be that safe place.  Come and meet Jesus in this place.  Come as you are.  Come into the arms of Jesus.

Once we’ve established that we are a safe place, as Jesus is safe, and we have to constantly work on this, then we pray that people will meet the Holy Spirit in our midst.  In meeting God, we are made new.  In the bulletin, it says, “Transformed.”  That word and “made new” are interchangeable.

Listen to this exchange Jesus has with the fishing brothers, Andrew and Simon Peter. 

As Jesus walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. ¹⁹ And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” (Matthew 4:18-19).

            Jesus takes them as they are, a couple of fishermen in the process of fishing.  However, Jesus tells them there will be changes.  Their lives are fixed in that region right along the shore of the Sea of Galilee.  He says that’s going to change.  “Follow me,” he tells them, and it is clear he’s on the move. 

            They’ll fish again.  In the Gospel of John, we see them fishing after the resurrection.  Fishing will always be part of their lives, but it is no longer the top priority.  Job, family, marriage, relationships, physical fitness, career – whatever we put at the top of the priority list is moved down a notch when we do what Jesus invited Andrew and Peter to do, follow him.  Following him means he becomes Lord.  He is master of our lives. 

            He tells them, “I will make you fish for people.”  They have no sense of what this means, we might not either.  This call to evangelism has led many in Christian history into the damaging idea that we are supposed to change people.  Not so!  We don’t change people.  We help them meet Jesus and find forgiveness of sins in Him.  Once people meet Jesus, they are transformed.  When we “fish for people” as he said Andrew and Peter, we are transformed from the lost and the broken to disciples who know the Lord and who work at sharing his love with individual people who are lost and dying in a world that is lost and dying. 

            This is what our church is all about.  We are a safe place where people can come as they are and be loved.  Once here, in our community, they meet Jesus, and upon meeting Jesus, we do not remain as we are.  We have a relationship with the God who created the universe.  That’ll change a person.  We are made new, transformed into the perfect image of God.  We become new creations.

            Safe!  New!  There is a third and final anchor for our philosophy of what a church, what our church, is called to be: Sent! 

            In Luke 10:1-11 we see the first example of what Jesus will constantly do – send his followers into the world to announce the salvation he brings.

The Lord appointed seventy^[a] others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. ² He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. ³ Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. ⁴ Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. ⁵ Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ ⁶ And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. ⁷ Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. ⁸ Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; ⁹ cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’^[b] 10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ¹¹ ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’

A

            Like those earliest disciples, we are sent.  Each week, we are sent from worship into the world to be witnessed who share the Gospel in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and surroundings towns.  This is our Jerusalem.  Sometimes, we send members of our church out on mission trips.  And, when people have to leave church to move and live in other places, we pray over them  We pray a commissioning prayer, a sending prayer that says, ‘go with God’s blessing; go on mission for Christ.’  We live our lives as called people – called to give witness to the goodness of the Kingdom of God.

            Our church is to be a safe place where people are welcome and loved, and then, here they meet Jesus.  In meeting him, we are made new, transformed, and born again.  As new creations we are sent into the world to be the body of Christ sharing the love of Christ with all people.  This is what Carrboro Baptist Church is called to be.  This is who HillSong Church is.  Whatever future names we operate under, in essence, we are the body of Christ, at work, spreading his word in a world that desperately needs Him.

            This construct for church is easily seen in Matthew 28:16-20 – the passage known as the Great Commission.

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷ When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. ¹⁸ And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

            “Go therefore,” Jesus says.  They are sent.  Faith does not sit in one place.  God’s mandate for the church is that we move into the world, the entire world, that all may know Jesus.

            “Make disciples … baptizing them;” we tell the story so that people will hear it, believe it, and give their lives to Jesus.  We are made new and then we try to help others discover new life in Christ.

            “And I am with you always.”  The safest place to be is with Jesus and He is always with us.  Because he is always with us, we are to be welcoming, inviting for other people.  Are people afraid of you because of your knowledge, because of your sense of self-righteousness, of because of a judgmental or intimidating spirit you give off?  That cannot be so, not if you or I want to be Jesus’ disciples.  People must feel safe and welcome approaching us just as Jesus puts people at ease. 

            Safe-New-Sent; our church aspires to this.  Spend time this week praying for our church, that our church may live into this calling God has given us.  We need your prayers.  We are entering a season where we re-discover this identify and in discovery, we live into it.  Pray for us and pray for God to show you your part in this church family.

AMEN

10 Years

This blog installment comes on the occasion of the 10th anniversary as pastor of my church.  This is a very personal piece and if you are one of my readers who is not associated with my church, I wanted you to know the personal nature of what I write here.  My approach to ministry is hands-on, and it is invested in personal relationships.  Some pastors lead large churches.  They are more like corporate executives.  I am a leader, but I am also a member of a family - a church family.  It is an approach to ministry that has been a blessing and it is the approach I believe God has mandated for me.

10 Years

            I began as pastor of HillSong Church on September 17, 2006.  Dina Sit had started as our ministry assistant one month before I began.  I was father to just one child, 4-year-old I__.  I had just started a Facebook account.  George W. Bush was president.  No one knew who Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin were.  ISIS did not exist.  No one used the phrase “Arab Spring.”  HillSong Church had one pastoral staff member. 

            Since then, our family has added H and M.  Heather Folliard got married, became our associate pastor, had three children, and is about to welcome number 4 into the world.  Our church has had 3 wonderful youth pastors (4 if we include Jen Moss, and we should include Jen Moss for the simple reason that she’s awesome).  I miss Jonathan & Krystal, love that Emily B. is still in the church as an elder and worship leader, and am happy for Nathan as he and his new wife Emily W-H start their life together.  I am excited about our new youth pastor Enam and her husband Carlin. 

            As I think about the changes and the journey our church is on, I am grateful we are on it together.  In 2006, none of us knew where Kombolcha, Ethiopia or Puerta Plata, DR were.  Now, we’ve been to those places and the people there are as much a part of our church as the people here.  I am grateful for HillSong.

            I am grateful for the leaders in our church.  Each chairman/chairwoman of elders and deacons have been different in personality and method, and I have enjoyed working with each.  Will Allen, Tamara Baker, Todd Baker, Susan Dunn, Patricia Johnson, Nelson Keller, Jess Ostrowski, Nancy Parker, Laura Shrewsbury, Tabitha, Storm, and Betty Thompson: I love each one of you and am grateful that I have been able to be in ministry alongside you. 

            I am grateful for the people I have come to know at HillSong, and there is no way I could name you all.  Many of you have been a mentor to me.  Many have been prayer warriors, going before God on my behalf.  Many have gone out of your way to show love to my family.  There are people who have been essential to our wellbeing and I cannot name all here.  But, you know who you are.  And I promise, before we go to bed at night, Candy and I thank God for you.  We do this all the time. 

            I am not going anywhere, I don’t think.  Beth Roberts and I joke about this, but with the Lilly Grant, I am contractually obligated to HillSong through the end of 2018.  But, it is a pleasure, not an obligation.  It is a joy to be pastor of this church.  I suspect that when January 2019 rolls around, I’ll be enthusiastically working with our pastoral staff and our elders on the vision for our church as move into the future together.  I am very, very excited about that future.  If God told me to leave tomorrow, I would.  But everything I have heard from God is that there are plans for HillSong and I have a role in those plans.  I believe this is true and am working toward a future in which our church is a powerful witness that testifies about the Kingdom of God to our community.  God is at work among us and I thank Him that He lets me be a small part of it. 

            

When We Dream (Joel 2:28-29)

Sunday, November 22, 2015

          We have prayed that God would grant wisdom and give revelation to HillSong Church.  These seven weeks have had an inward focus.  Our direction is Godward.  We have collectively, as a family of worshipers, as brothers and sister in Christ, pointed our faces toward the Lord.  We have joined voices and together asked God to speak.

          In the process, we have reflected upon who we are God’s people.  There is a sense of what a Christian should be.  We describe, generally speaking, what a church should be.  We have emphasized what HillSong Church is called to be in the first quarter of the 21^st century. 

          These prayers will not cease as we conclude this church-wide emphasis on discernment.  Understanding who we are in Christ is a constant process.  However, it is now time to reflect on what has been revealed; this is also the time to cast our gaze down the road and ponder where we are headed and also to see who, from afar, is coming toward us.

          We have talked about HillSong being safe place.  We strive to be a place of welcome where one can come and be loved and be encouraged and nurtured.  This will always tested as we who make up the community are born-again, spirit-filled yet also tempted by our weaknesses and by the devils’ wiles.  We, the people yearning to create safe space, sometimes are the ones who make it unsafe.  But we press on, we try again, as we welcome the next one through the door.

          In the safe space, our community, we worship.  In worship, our hearts are laid bare before the Lord and we pray that we actually meet God in those encounters.  In meeting God, we are forever changed.  We are made new – new creations. 

As new creations, we are then sent into the world to announce that something has happened.  God has done something.  God has come in human form, in the flesh.  That’s Jesus!  He is God in the flesh and in Him the Kingdom of God has come near.  In Him, people have forgiveness of sins and rescue from death.  We are sent to proclaim that He is Lord and King and people can have life in His name.  We are sent to help people become His disciples.

“Safe-New-Sent;” these words have become a mantra at HillSong.  But this is not all God has revealed.  Relationships matter.  We are a relational people.  Watch what happens when the worship service ends today.  People don’t flood to the exits.  I have been in church services where when the final song is over, people head for the exits like the building is on fire.  Here, people linger to talk, laugh, and embrace.  We love each other.

And our relationships are expanding.  New people come all the time.  Now, new congregations are in the fold with Zion Karen Baptist Church and Iglesia del Amor de Dios meeting in our buildings.  When our elders and deacons met a month ago, one of the observations we took away from our conversations was God is bringing the nations to HillSong.  And we are thrilled about that.

As a relational people living in fellowship with a divine calling to welcome the sojourner and seek out the lost that we might help them find the way to salvation, where do we go from here?

I appeal to the words of the prophet Joel.  He spoke of judgment and called a sinful people to repentance, but then, God showed him a new day dawning.  Here’s what God says through the prophet Joel.

^28 [a] Then afterward
    I will pour out my spirit on all flesh;
your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
    your old men shall dream dreams,
    and your young men shall see visions.
²⁹ Even on the male and female slaves,
    in those days, I will pour out my spirit.

          The dreams that come don’t originate with us. God says, “I will pour out my spirit.”  God’s Spirit visits us, and then the dreams come.  The good in our lives, the purpose which drives us to live and to live in a certain way comes from God.

          Joel shows that we dream God dreams.  To be people of faith, to follow Jesus, is to believe in visions and to experience dreams.  What’s more, this is all of us.  This is not reserved for the spiritual superheroes among us.  Nor is this purview of the privileged or the experienced or those more honored than others.  Children prophesy, senior citizens see things they’ve never seen before, and slaves dream and show the truth of God.  The revelation of God is generously shared as God desires to give it.

          But, what in the world does this mean?  The prophecy from Joel is beautiful and inspired and incomplete, because it doesn’t seem to ever become reality. 

          Then Jesus.

          Jesus comes along, and then Joel makes sense.

          In the book of Acts a series of events takes place.  First, Acts picks up right after the resurrection.  Jesus, who died and was buried, is walking about in his body resurrected.  The disciples see Him depart.  He goes to Heaven, to the right hand of the Father.  Then, after 40 days, the Holy Spirit rains down in tongues of fire on the disciples gathered in Jerusalem for Pentecost.   As they are filled, they speak the languages of all gathered there.

          It doesn’t make any sense.  These are Galilean fishermen, not educated linguists.  Yet with unmatched eloquence, they tell the story of God coming in the person of Jesus, dying, and offering salvation to the world.  The crowd, astounded, doesn’t know what to make of it all.

          That’s when Peter stands and says this.

¹⁴ But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵ Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶ No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

¹⁷ ‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
    and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
    and your old men shall dream dreams.
¹⁸ Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
    in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
        and they shall prophesy.
¹⁹ And I will show portents in the heaven above
    and signs on the earth below,
        blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
²⁰ The sun shall be turned to darkness
    and the moon to blood,
        before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
²¹ Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

          Peter’s way of making sense of all that happens is to appeal to scripture – the prophecy of Joel.  But Joel only makes sense when understood in terms of the resurrection.  Why can Peter say that the spiritual phenomena that happened at Pentecost is the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy?  Because Jesus was raised.  That spirit was and is the Holy Spirit of the Lord filling His people.

          Joel’s prophecy continues to be fulfilled as we gather, worship, glorify God in Jesus Christ, and band together as His people.  In this context, the church together, the Spirit pours new revelation and calls us to the work of holy living and holy love in the midst of a hurting and dying world. 

          Where do we go from here?  We worship – together.  We give and receive forgiveness – together.  We passionately discuss the issues of our day.  Sometimes those conversations heated, but it is for the sake of the Gospel because when we go over the issues of the day, what we are really talking about is how sin continuously wounds men and women.  When discuss, because we are Spirit-filled Christ followers, our discussion always comes back to figuring out, in the power of God, how we help heal the wounded.  This too is something we do together.  We live into the calling God has placed on us.

          An issue pressing the world right now, shows this point.  I have been in a number of conversations, debates, about how a nation like America ought to respond to the attacks in Paris and to the crisis of thousands of displaced Syrians.  Some argue that sound foreign policy is to send those Syrians elsewhere.

We don’t even think about sound foreign policy.  We know that our security is in the Lord, not in our government.  We want those who hurt at our doors so we can love them and help them.  Refugees who cannot find a shore?  This is our moment.  To care for them is to live into our calling.

Also, this morning, we have seen where we go from here.  In Baptism, in new members sharing their stories, our fires as a relationship people called together are rekindled.  The newly baptized believer and the newly welcomed member sharing there are hearts as we open our hearts to them and to all who come – this is what we are about.  This is who we are.

Next is Advent, that season in which we remember the coming of Christ and anticipate His return and the final, complete establishment of His Kingdom when Heaven and Earth come together. 

I pray that you will dream dreams the Holy Spirit plants in your heart.  I pray each of us will see our individual relationships with God become deeper, more real, and richer in the season ahead.  I pray God will shape HillSong Church so that in this place His love rules, and people grow into a full understanding that we are His.

AMEN

Hungry Teens, a Good Spirit

I think a youth pastor hopes the following things will happen when his or her church hosts an event that involves other churches.

(1) The youth pastor (YP) wants to see a lot churches bring a lot of kids.
- We are hosting 30-Hour Famine and one group who brought a bunch kids last year couldn't come this year; another which also brought a crowd last year dropped out at the last minute; and, two others brought less kids than they thought they would.

(2) The YP wants everything at the church to work.  
- Our video system, which we were counting on for three videos during the Friday night program, went out.  Not only was it not available, but the people who lead worship on Sundays are going to be mad and take it out on the youth leaders.


Not a great beginning and yet, it has been a great weekend thus far.  The kids are fasting to gain an understanding of hunger.  From Noon Friday to supper time on Saturday, the teenagers are going without eating.  Usually at a Friday night youth event there would be pizza and snacks.  Last night we had juice.  And our kids had a great spirit.

Our speakers did a wonderful job of being engaging.  They did not miss a beat when the video system went down.  They were interesting and kept the attention of the middle school and high school students.  One of the speakers, Tamara Baker, works for an important organization that you should check out - No Kid Hungry NC http://www.nokidhungry.org/problem/overview?gclid=CKaB2aLf6rYCFccx4AodwgwAkA.

The other speakers, Randy and Jon, both of First Baptist Hillsboro, were funny and fun and serious all at the same time.  Which is good because this entire weekend is all of that funny and fun (teenagers at church on a Friday night; this should be funny and fun); but we're gathered to pray for the hungry, raise money for the hungry, and appreciate the pain the hungry in the world have to deal with.  Jon shared how researching the experience of hungry people in Haiti changed him.  Randy, a pastor, shared how he was humbled on an experienced preaching in Cuba where his hosts, themselves extremely poor, served him their ration of food for a day.  He didn't realize they were completely giving their meal so he could be treated as a proper guest.  

These stories and others gripped the hearts of the kids from the three churches in attendance.  They were fully into all that was shared.  These teenagers took everything to heart.  They could be out partying, drinking, into self-absorbed, destructive happenings, but no.  They are at church, praying for hungry people.  Today, without having eaten, they will do service projects to help the church and the community.  

One other element that really made the night last night - the band.  Surrounding Jericho is really good http://www.reverbnation.com/surroundingjericho.  Please check them out and book them.  They have great hearts.  They love Jesus and they are talented.  

The 30-Hour Famine (http://www.30hourfamine.org/) is a wonderful event and it thrills me when our church does it and does it with passion.  

We also appreciate Chik-Fil-A (http://www.chick-fil-a.com/) for helping us break the fast by giving us a great deal on food for the kids that we will enjoy this afternoon.  We pray for kids in Orange County and Chapel Hill, across North Carolina and around the world.  Many are not on a 30-hour fast as a youth event.  For many this hunger is a way of life and it affects all areas of life but especially growth and learning.  I hope you will respond to the still small voice of God that is speaking into your heart right now.  I hope you will get involved in fighting hunger wherever you live.