The Family—Week Two
Hey, if we haven’t met, my name is Jonathan. I am so glad you’re here today. Today is a fantastic day for you to be here, and I’m not
making that up. I say that a lot
of times, but I really think today is just a great day for you to be here
because I think today is going to be a defining day in the life of our church
family—what we’re going to talk about today—because we’re doing this series
that we’re calling “The Family,” and we’re not talking about family like the
people you’re related to “family;” we’re talking about family like “church
family,” and what that’s all about and what that means. Last week Mike kicked off the
series. It was a fantastic
message. If you have not heard
Mike’s message, actually we didn’t get the message recorded, but we have a
transcript of it and I posted it on my blog. You can go to JonathanEverette.com
and find that and read it. It was
just a fantastic way to kick off this series, where it really talked about what
God does in the church is He takes this extremely diverse group of people and
He throws them all together and He says, “You’re a family. Get along. Do your part.
Play well with one another.”
And it’s really, really cool.
I loved how Mike kicked off the series last week and we’re going to pick
it up where he left off today. And
here’s what I want to do. I want
you to think for a minute, or try to answer for yourself this question in your
mind. Not out loud, Jason
Holden. Oh, he’s with the
kids. He’s not in here. What is it that makes up a family? If you were to define “family,” what
would you define “family” as?
Right after church today Liz and I, we’re going camping. We bought a camper a couple weeks ago,
so we’re like living the life of luxury.
We were camping in a tent and now we’ve got a pop-up. Ooh, yeah. And so we’re going to use it for the first time and
hopefully I won’t die pulling it to the beach, because I’ve never pulled
anything in a trailer before, so this is… You might want to videotape
this. But we’re camping at Myrtle
Beach State Park and when we’re reserving our spots for Myrtle Beach State
Park, they ask you how many cars are going to be there, and my brother’s coming,
so I’m like, “Two cars.” And so
you have to read the little instructions.
Actually, it’s three paragraphs of things that you can and can’t do at
the state park, because South Carolina’s like that. And one of the things is they define what a family is. And that is one to two adults with their
children that are tagging along, basically is what it says. That’s their definition of a
family.
But if you try and define what a family is, if you were to go out in the
street and say, “Hey, could you tell me what’s a family? What makes up a family?” you’d get all
kinds of answers, wouldn’t you?
Because there are all different shapes and sizes of families. You’ve got your traditional family with
Mom, Dad, two kids and a dog—not a cat, because those are of the devil. Then you’ve got single-parent families,
which are… Man, it would be so difficult being a single parent, I think. You’ve got families that are adopted
families. You’ve got immediate
families. You’ve got extended
families. You’ve got families
where you’ve got grandparents raising grandkids. You’ve got foster families. I mean when it comes to families, there are all kinds of
families. That’s why when it comes
to defining what a family is, it’s really tough to nail down. I mean every type of family is
represented in this room today, and so we really can’t answer, “What makes up a
family?” But there is another
thing that we all know is true about whatever family it is that we come from,
and that is that no matter what kind of family you’re a part of or what kind of
family you come from, we all have that one family member that we kind of wish
wasn’t a part of the family. You
know what I’m talking about? It’s
like your own Cousin Eddie. I mean
you’ve got that one family member that you wish was a part of somebody else’s
family. I mean you just can’t
stand them. You just don’t get
along, you know? Which leads to a
whole other…
Take, for instance, last week—where we were last week—we were at Liz’s
family’s reunion. I have never
been to Liz’s family reunion because they’ve never had a reunion, because up
until two years ago, the family wouldn’t even talk to one another—like they
hated one another. And then God
did some work in the family. It
was pretty cool. And so they had
their first ever Harris Family Reunion.
And some of you know this about Liz’s family; others of you, you’re
going to learn this right now. But
Liz has somebody famous in her family.
Actually, her cousin is the star of the reality show “Lizard Lick Towing”—Ronnie. Anybody watch that show? I have never seen it, so I can’t say
that I have, but I learned that there was a show—I didn’t even know there was a
show of that—but Ronnie is her cousin and he is this redneck, kind of… I don’t
know. He’s weird looking, man. He’s a weird looking guy. If you’ve seen the show, you know. Man, he’s a weird looking… He’s got
blonde hair; he’s a big… So I went to this family reunion expecting everybody
on that side of the family to look like Ronnie, you know? And so I kind of prepped myself for
this. I was a little worried,
okay? I was just nervous. Ronnie didn’t show up, because he’s too
famous for a family reunion. But
his brother and sister showed up, and you know what? They were normal.
Like they looked like normal people. And I was like, “Wow, I can handle this. I can get along with these
people.” But it was just strange. But he’s like the outcast in the
family, you know?
But when it comes to families, there is this whole other dynamic that
comes into play, and that is “Is your family a healthy family or is your family
a dysfunctional family?” Now if
you’re like most families, you kind of have a combination of both, right? You’ve got a little bit of health and a
little bit of dysfunction. That’s
how it is with my family.
Sometimes we’re healthy.
Other times we’re a little bit dysfunctional. But this whole health and dysfunction dynamic that plays
along with the family, which makes me wonder a very, very important question,
and that is: What is it that makes
a healthy family? Like not what
makes “family,” because there are all kinds of different families that come in
all different shapes and sizes.
But no matter what family you come from, what is it that makes a family
a healthy family? You ever wonder
that? Well, I was thinking about
that this week and I think that there are really two things that are essential
ingredients to a healthy family. I
want you to write these down.
Actually, I hope everybody got a bulletin, because there is a place on
the back for you to take some notes.
I want to encourage you to write some stuff down today. I’m going to give you some things to
write down because it’s so important that I want you to write it down and not
forget it. You can type it into
your “notes” section on your iPhone or whatever other worthless phone you might
have… but don’t be on Facebook.
Just kidding.
But what makes a healthy family?
Two essential ingredients, I think, for a healthy family: LOVE and COMMITTMENT. See, healthy families—not perfect
families, because there is no such thing as a perfect family—but in healthy
families people love each other and they know that they are loved, and they are
committed to one another, and they know that they are committed to one another. That’s what makes a healthy
family. They love one another and
they are committed to one another.
But what’s interesting is that the two ingredients that make a healthy
family also make a healthy church family.
Like in order for us, as a church family, to be healthy, we have to love
one another and we have to be committed to one another. And today, I want us to talk about what
it means to be a healthy church family that loves one another and is committed
to one another. And the reason we
need to do that is because when it comes to the church, I mean think about
it—we are a bunch of mismatched, mixed-up, mixed bag of sinners and messy
people that God has kind of thrown in together and He says, “Now you’re a
family.” And since we’re all these
different people with different personalities and all this, we’ve got to figure
out how it is that we can be the healthy family that God has created us to
be. Now don’t hear what I’m not
saying. I’m not saying that I want
us to be a perfect church family, because there is no such thing as a perfect
church family. You’re a part of
it. So you know that you messed it
up for the rest of us. But there is
a way for us to be a healthy church family and that is for us to love one
another and be committed to one another.
I want to show you a verse that Paul wrote in 1
Timothy 3:15, where he really tells us what God’s family is. Look at this. In my mind, this is our theme verse for this whole series. Paul is writing. He says God’s family is the “church of
the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.” God’s family is the church of the
living God. We, as the church, are
a part of God’s family. Now if
you’re here and you’re not a Christian, and you’re like, “I’m not a part of the
church. I don’t even like the
church,” then He’s not talking to you.
He’s talking to those of us who call ourselves “Christians,” those of us
who call ourselves followers of Jesus.
He says, “If you’re a follower of Jesus, you’re in the family of God,
and the family of God is the church of God.”
So what I want us to do is I want us to talk about how we can be
committed to one another as a healthy church family. We’ve talked about how to love one another in the past. We’re going to talk about that in the
future a little bit. But today I
want us just to narrow in on this whole idea of how it is that we, as a church
family, can be committed to one another, so we can be a healthy church
family. And here’s what I want to
do. I want to teach you something
today. Something I learned back in
grad school—I read a book in grad school called A Purpose Driven Church
by Rick Warren—and in one of his chapters he talks about this thing where it’s
different levels of commitment, and it’s called “Community Décor” and he shares
different ways of being committed to one another as a church family, and I want
to teach that to you. And this is
what I want you to write down. I’m
going to kind of describe each level of commitment to you and then we’re going
to go back to the Bible and we’re going to open up to the story of the early
church, and we’re going to see how each of these levels of commitment is
illustrated right at the beginning of the early church, right when the early
church got started.
So here we go. Are you
ready? You guys ready?
(Yeah.)
Two and a half of you.
Thank you very much. Mike
was the half. Sorry, I don’t know
where that came from. That wasn’t
in the notes. I apologize. I love you, Mike. I really do.
Let me say this. Let me
tell you why I want to share this with you. The first reason why I want to share this with you is I want
you to understand what a healthy church family looks like, because in all
honesty, most of us have no idea what a healthy church family is supposed to
look like. You will after
today. You will after today. And then what I also want you to walk
away from here with is a picture—an idea—of where you are as far as being
committed to Jesus’ church. I want
you to do a little self-assessment this morning. So let me talk about each one of these.
We’re going to start off with COMMUNITY. And I think we’re going to put a long paragraph on
there. You don’t have to write all
this down, but you can, and maybe you should. Or you can just take a picture of it with your phone and you
can save it that way. Some people
take notes like that. I think
that’s kind of cool. I’m not that
technologically savvy. But let’s
talk about COMMUNITY. The community
is people who don’t yet attend Hub City Church. That’s who the community is—people who don’t yet attend Hub
City Church. They may or may not
know that our church exists. They
may have a friend that comes to Hub City.
They may not have a friend that comes to Hub City. But basically, the people who are in
the community are people who have no real connection to Hub City Church. I mean there is just no connection to
Hub City Church. Maybe they come
to Movies in the Park or something like that, but basically, there is no connection
to Hub City. Now I want you to
think about what our community is as a church. Our community is Spartanburg County. Now in Spartanburg County there are
around 270,000 people. I don’t
know if you realize that or not, but there are around 270,000 people in
Spartanburg County. And a study
was done a few years ago that showed that 70% of the residents of Spartanburg
County are what you would call “un-churched.” They are not involved in any kind of church family at
all. They are not involved with
any local church, which means that in our county—Spartanburg County—there are
189,000 people who are in our community—who are people who we either want to be
a part of our church family or we want them to be a part of another church
family. Actually, I think we need
lots of churches to reach 189,000 people, because I know I don’t want to be a
pastor of a church of 189,000 people.
But that’s who is in our community. That’s the community for us. These people, they haven’t been a part of our church; they’re
not a part of our church; they’re not a part of any church—there is 189,000 of
them surrounding us right now.
Most of them are at home right now watching television, drinking their
coffee; they’re going to play golf, but they’re not a part of any church
family. So that’s the first level
of commitment. And they’re level
of commitment is really zero.
There is no commitment there whatsoever.
Which leads us to the CROWD.
Let’s talk about the CROWD for a minute. The crowd represents people who either come a few times a
year or they even come to Hub City once a month, but really when it comes to
being committed, they are not committed at all. This isn’t on the screen, but you might want to write this
down. They are curious but not
committed. That’s what people in
the crowd are. They are
curious. They are curious about
what we’re doing. Maybe they’re
curious about Jesus. But they are
not committed to anything we’re doing.
But what’s unique about someone who’s in the crowd—because we’re the
only church they know anything about, if somebody were to ask them on the
street “Hey, are you a part of a church?” they’d say, “Yeah, I’m a part of Hub
City Church. I only go twice a
year, but that’s my church, man, you know? Hub City Church is my church.” They are in the CROWD.
They are curious but not committed. And here’s what I think. Some of you who are sitting in this room today are in the
crowd. And there is nothing wrong
with being in the crowd. But there
is something wrong if you call yourself a follower of Jesus and you stay in the
crowd—as we’re about to see. See,
what God wants for each of us who call ourselves His followers is He wants us
to move up to the highest level of commitment as His followers—and we’ll get to
that in a minute. The CROWD.
Then next we’ve got the CONGREGATION. Now these are people who attend more regularly. They come two to three times a
month. They may serve
occasionally. They may give
sporadically. These are people who
have made a decision to follow Jesus.
They have been baptized.
But what designates someone who is in the congregation from someone who
is in a different level of commitment is they are consumers rather than
contributors. That’s huge. They consume what we, as a church, have
to offer rather than contributing to what we have to offer. We have a leadership team here at Hub
City Church—our leadership community—and we were talking about this a couple of
weeks ago, and we really think that the majority of you are in this level of
commitment right here. You are in
the CONGREGATION level of commitment.
You come a couple times a month.
You help out here or there.
You give some here or there.
But really, you’re more of a consumer than a contributor. And there’s nothing wrong with being a
consume, unless you stay there forever—because God never intended for His
followers to consume religious goods and services for their own benefit. He created you, as His follower, to
contribute to the mission of the church, which is to make disciples who make
disciples, and to reach the world so that everybody can know Jesus. You were created to contribute. You weren’t created to consume, but the
problem is we live in America, where we’re all consumers, and so we fight
against this tension, where our culture is consume, consume, consume, but God
says, “If you’re going to be a part of my church, you need to contribute.”
Which leads us to the next level of commitment, and that is those who
are COMMITTED. Now when I say
“committed,” I’m not talking about like to an insane asylum, even though some
of you might need to be. But when
I’m talking about people who are committed, I’m talking about people who are
very involved. They serve
regularly. They give
regularly. They attend
regularly. And what really designates
someone who is in this COMMITTED stage is they move from being a consumer to a contributor. They are
no longer consumers, but they are contributors. Now if you’ve been coming to Hub City Church for any length
of time and you were to say, “Hub City Church is my church,” then I have
something very, very important I want to say to you, and that’s why this is
such an important Sunday and this is why I’m so glad you’re here. And that is that the people who are in
this COMMITTED group are what we would call “members” of the Hub City Church
family. Now if you’ve been coming
to Hub City for a while, you know we’ve never ever talked about membership
before. Some of you have actually
asked, “How do I become a church member?” and we’re like, “We don’t really have
that,” because we haven’t. In our
five and a half year history of Hub City Church, we have never had church
membership. But we’re kind of
growing up as a church and it’s about time for us to do that, and so as a
leadership community, we kind of talked about this and said, “Now is the time
for us to kind of throw this out to everybody.” And when it comes to the Hub City Church family, those who
are in this COMMITTED group—those are the ones that we would consider Hub City
Church members. Now I know that if
you grew up in church or you’ve been a part of a church for a long time, the
whole idea of church membership is a little confusing, and the reason why is
because we think of church membership kind of the way… American Express has
that commercial that says, “Membership has its privileges.” You know that commercial? Well, that’s great for American
Express, but that’s horrible for the church, because membership doesn’t have
privileges in a church—even though I think it does—but membership comes with responsibilities
in God’s church. It comes with
responsibilities. That’s why
people who are committed have moved from being consumers to being
contributors. See, in a lot of
churches, the way you become a member is you walk down an aisle and you say,
“Hey, I want to be a member,” and the church votes on you, and you’re a
member. But you know what that
means, basically, is you just get your name on a roll somewhere. Some of you have done it, right? Like someone on our leadership team,
they said that their name is still on some roll… I think it was Darryl. Where are you, Darryl? Darryl, what church are you a member
of?
(First Baptist.)
He’s a member of First Baptist, even though he’s been coming here for
five years. It’s just funny. Because his name is on a roll
somewhere. But think of how
ridiculous that is in terms of family.
It would be like I could have a sign up sheet hanging on the door at my
house, and the way that you can become a member of the Everette family is you
would go and write your name on the sign up sheet on the door of my house. It would be like Nathan having a friend
come over and say, “I want to be a member of your family” and we’d be like,
“Hey, put your name on the list, man.”
You know? “You’re a member
of the Everette family! Thank you
so much. You don’t have to eat
dinner with us. You don’t have to
do anything. But you are a member
of the family.” That’s not how it
works in the Everette home, man.
If you’re a member of the Everette family, being a member of the Everette
family comes with expectations.
Like we expect you to follow the household rules. We expect you, in the Everette family,
to respect the other members of the family. We expect you, as a part of the Everette family, to
contribute to the well being of the family by doing age-appropriate
chores. There are expectations
that come along with being members of the Everette family. Now my neighbors go to church here—Mark
and Lainey—they live across the street.
I don’t have the same expectations for Mark and Lainey and Paten and
Savannah that I have for the people who are in my family, because they’re
not—they’re my neighbors; they’re not my family. There are expectations that come with being a part of the
Everette family. There are
responsibilities that come with being a part of the Everette family. We expect you to love the entire
family, even if you don’t feel like it… which is often, you know? I mean if you’ve got kids, you know
that. But we just expect that of
you. We have that
expectation.
Well, the same thing is true of being a member of the Hub City Church
family. See, we think that
membership comes with responsibilities.
It comes with responsibilities—not like overwhelming, but simple
responsibilities, like attending regularly, being a part of a hub group,
serving somewhere, giving financially to support the mission of Hub City. See, members contribute to the well
being of the entire family. And do
you know why they contribute?
Because they’re committed.
They are committed to the mission of Hub City, just like my family is
committed to our family being the best family that it can be, even if we don’t
like each other all the time. If
you ever ask my kids, they don’t want a crappy family; they want a great,
healthy family… even if they’d rather Mom and Dad leave for a few hours, you
know? They want a healthy
family. And we want the same thing
at Hub City, which means we’ve got to be committed to one another. That’s that group—the COMMITTED—they’ve
moved from consumers to contributors.
And then the last group, the last level, and that’s the CORE. Now the CORE really are those who take
ownership and provide leadership for the church family. The people who are in the core, they
have key ministry responsibilities.
They have key roles on teams—they have leadership roles. But I know what some of you are
thinking when it comes to this whole idea of core. You’re thinking, “Are you telling me the core is like the
ruling class of Hub City?” Not at
all. The core has nothing to do
with ruling. It has everything to
do with being the greatest servers, the greatest contributors, and the greatest
givers who have the most responsibility at Hub City. That’s who the core is—the people with the most
responsibility, who provide leadership—essential leadership—to make sure things
happen, to get people involved, to get people plugged in, to help other people
grow as disciples of Jesus.
It’s kind of like this… I was trying to think of a way… something I
could use to illustrate the CONGREGATION, the COMMITTED, and the CORE, and this
is kind of how I would describe it.
I am a Clemson football fan and for 12 years we went to all the Clemson
home games. This past year was the
first year we didn’t go to the games.
But every year that we went to the games, we sat in the nosebleed
section—because we’re cheap like that—way up high, and we loved watching the
games. We’re fans of Clemson
football. The fans of the football
team are like the people who are in the CONGREGATION. They’re fans.
The players on the team are like those who are in the COMMITTED group,
because they are committed. And
the coaches are different from the players. They are still a part of the team, right? But a coach has more responsibility,
don’t they? The coach is more
accountable. A player at Clemson
is not going to get fired if they don’t do their job. They might lose their starting position, but man, if the
team starts losing, Dabo is gone, you know? They’re going to kick him out. Some of you would like that already. I heard that, Janet. God saw you too. I was waiting for a comment there. It’s like in my family—Liz and I
provide leadership. My kids are
the players on the team, you know?
They have to unload the dishwasher, make their beds, clean their rooms,
clean the bathroom and things like that.
There are responsibilities that come with that. But these are the categories—COMMUNITY,
CROWD, CONGREGATION, COMMITED, and CORE.
Now here’s what I want you to do.
If you have your Bible, I want you to open up to Acts
2, because in Acts 2, what we see is really each of these categories
illustrated in the life of the early church, right at the beginning of the
early church. If you don’t have
your Bible, we’re going to put these verses up on the screen for you. You can use your Bible app. If you need a Bible, let me know and
we’ll get you a Bible because really, I think you should go home and read this
chapter this week. Some of you
read it before you got here because I put that in the email. Let me kind of set the stage for what’s
going on in Acts 2. In Acts 1, it
was right after Jesus rose from the dead, and He appeared to the disciples for
a period of about 40 days, where He taught them all kinds of things. But one of the things that Jesus told
the disciple was that “I want you to stay in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit
comes, because when the Holy Spirit comes, the Holy Spirit is going to empower
you to be my witnesses all over the world.” Well, chapter 2 begins with the Holy Spirit showing up. Now let me just say, before I read
this, I know that if you’re not a Christian and you don’t believe the Bible and
you don’t believe in Jesus that what we’re about to read is going to seem
really, really weird. I understand
that, because we’re talking about the Holy Spirit, which if you don’t believe
the Bible, I think it’d be weird to believe in the Holy Spirit. But we actually believe that God is in
three persons: the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit, and right here, what we see is the Holy Spirit
showing up on this group of believers.
So look at Acts
2, starting in verse 1. It
says this: “On the day of Pentecost,
all the believers were meeting together in one place. Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of
a mighty windstorm and it filled the house where they were sitting. Then what looked like flames or tongues
of fire appeared and settled on each of them and everyone present was filled
with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages as the Holy Spirit
gave them this ability.” Now just
picture what’s going on. It would
be like all of us in this room, the Holy Spirit coming down on us, and all of
us would start talking in different languages. Like some of you would be talking in Hebrew; some of you
would be talking German; some of you would be talking Spanish; some of you
would be talking Russian; some of you would be talking some click language from
Africa, you know? It’d be
weird. And all of us start talking
in all of these different languages and the reason we’re talking in these different
languages is because we’re going to tell all these other people about Jesus
here in just a minute. But just
imagine. That’s exactly what
happened here. And I actually
think it’s pretty cool that when the Spirit shows up, He does this incredible
thing and caused people to speak in languages they had never taken a class
in. But what we need to notice
that’s very, very important here is the Holy Spirit is what enables and
empowers this group of people to be the family of God. And just as the Spirit of God enabled
them to be the family of God, so the Holy Spirit of God enables us and empowers
us to be the family of God. We
need the Holy Spirit.
But then look what happens next, because what happens next is we see an
illustration of the COMMUNITY.
Verse 5: “At that time
there were devout Jews from every nation living in Jerusalem.” So the community for the early church
were these devout Jews who were living in Jerusalem. But as we’re about to see, a lot of the people in the
community all of a sudden become a part of a CROWD that wants to find out
what’s going on. Look at verse
6: “When they heard the loud
noise”—that’s all these people in the community—“When they heard the loud
noise, everyone came running and they were bewildered to hear their own
languages being spoken by the believers.
They were completely amazed.
‘How can this be?’ they exclaimed.
‘These people are all from Galilee’”—which means that these people were
all rednecks from some hick town, because that’s what Galilee was, and here are
these rednecks from this hick town who had no education at all and all of a
sudden, they’re speaking in all these languages along with all these other
people, and they are just shocked by that and they’re curious about what’s
going on. So it says: “These people are all from Galilee and
yet we hear them speaking in our own native languages. Here we are Here we are—Parthians, Medes,
Elamites, people from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, the province of
Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the areas of Libya around Cyrene, visitors
from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism), Cretans, and Arabs”—in other
words, there are all these different people, which is a great picture of the
church, right? All these different
people from all these different places coming together—“And we all hear these
people speaking in our own languages about the wonderful things God has done!”
And then look at verse 12:
“They stood there amazed and perplexed. ‘What can this mean?’ they asked
each other.” See? Right here we see something interesting
about this crowd. What drew the
crowd was they were curious about what was going on. This is the CROWD.
They went from the COMMUNITY, who had no idea that anything was going
on, to a CROWD, who was curious about what was going on. And so they showed up to check things
out. But what we see next is not everybody
stayed in the crowd. Some people
thought that the disciples were nuts.
Look at what happened in verse 13.
This is awesome. It
says: “But others in the crowd
ridiculed them, saying, ‘They’re just drunk, that’s all!’” Because we all know that alcohol forces
you to speak in a language that you don’t know, you know? “They’re just drunk. They’re speaking Arabic,” you know? I don’t know. I’m sure some of you have been drunk before and you did not
start speaking a language that you didn’t know. But these people, basically what they did is they blew off
the disciples. They just blew them
off and they went back to the community.
But not everybody blew them off.
Some people were still curious.
And so they stayed around.
And this crowd, they gathered around wondering, “What’s going on? What’s happening here?” All of a sudden Peter, one of Jesus’
closest friends, stands up, leverages the situation that this crowd showed up,
and starts to preach to them. And
basically—I’m not going to read his sermon because it’s kind of long—but if you
were to outline his sermon, he just tells them a few simple things. Basically, he preached that “Jesus
came. You killed him. God raised Him from the dead. We’re all witnesses of the fact that
God raised Him from the dead. And
you need to repent, believe and be baptized.” That was his sermon.
This was a real simple sermon—“Jesus came. You killed Him.
You’re responsible for His death.
But God raised Him from the dead.
We’re all witnesses of the fact that he rose from the dead. You need to repent, believe, and be
baptized.”
After he does this sermon, something incredible happens. All these people that were in the
crowd, listening to the sermon, 3,000 of them moved from being in the CROWD to
being in the CONGREGATION. Look at
verse 41. It says this: “Those who believed what Peter said
were baptized and added to the church that day—about 3,000 in all.” 3,000 people moved from being in the
CROWD to being in the CONGREGATION that day. The congregation was made up of those who believed and were
baptized. This is very, very
important for being a part of the congregation—believing and being baptized is
essential for that. And there were
3,000 of them. And let me just
say—some of you, you’re at the point where you believe, but you have never been
baptized, and I just want to encourage you. There is a place on your connection card that says, “I want
to be baptized.” If you’re
interested in being baptized, I encourage you to take this step of obedience and
say, “I want to be baptized.” And
here is something really cool. On
July 6, we’re going to have another cookout after our worship gathering at
Scott and Debbi’s lake house and we’re going to do baptism in the lake, or we’d
like to if some of you sign up, and so just to let you know that. We have a cow trough that we baptize in
as well, but I think it’s kind of cooler to do the lake… even though I love our
cow trough.
(It’s the Hub Tub.)
It’s the what?
(It’s the Hub Tub!)
It’s the Hub Tub. That’s
good, Nathan. I like that. Don’t take a bath in there. That’s weird. But we’re going to do that. You can sign up on your card about that. But here is something interesting I
find about people who are in this congregation—these 3,000 people. When you think about what they did—they
believed and they were baptized—actually, that is where most churches draw the
membership line. They allow you to
be a member of their church if you’ve believed and you’ve been baptized. If you do that, you can get your name
on a roll. But I think it’s clear
from the next few verses that we’re about to read that these people who
believed and were baptized, they took a next step of commitment. They went beyond just believing and
being baptized. And I think it’s
this next step of commitment that they took, which really designated them as
members of this local church in Jerusalem that had just started. And let me tell you, these here are
some of my favorite verses in the entire New Testament, because these verses
paint a picture of what I want our church to be and what I think God wants our
church to be.
Look at verse 42. It says
this—after 3,000 of them became believers—it says: “All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’
teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s
Supper), and to prayer. A deep
sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous
signs and wonders. And all the
believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. They sold their property and
possessions and shared the money with those in need. They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes
for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity all
the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people”—and “all
the people,” that’s the people in the community. And then look at this: “And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who
were being saved.” Now I want you
to notice out of this passage what these people did to show their commitment—to
show that they were committed, to show that they had moved from the CONGREGATION,
who had just believed and been baptized, to people who were in the COMMITTED
group. They “devoted themselves to
the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship,” which is meeting together, to
eating together, including doing the Lord’s Supper regularly, and to praying
together. They met together
regularly in the Temple, which means they met together regularly in large
groups, which is kind of like our Sunday worship gathering, and they met
together regularly in houses, which is kind of like our Hub Groups—our small
groups. They did that
regularly. And then they shared
their money and possessions to meet needs. They shared that stuff.
I love what happens as the result of their commitment. As the result of them showing these
things, as a result of them doing these things, we read that “each day the Lord
added to their fellowship those who were being saved.” Like more and more people were becoming
a part of the family of God because the people who were a part of the family of
God were committed to the family of God.
There is a link there between being committed to the family of God and
God doing something through the family of God and bringing more people into the
family of God. It’s just
incredible what happens. There is
this amazing link between their commitment level and God using them to turn the
world upside down. And can I say,
that is exactly what I want to happen here at Hub City, with the Hub City
Church family, and that’s why doing life this way is really what it means to be
a member of the Hub City Church family.
So COMMITTED.
But what about the CORE?
Where is the core illustrated in this story? Because that’s the end of the chapter. We go to chapter 3 next and something
else happens. Well, the CORE—that’s
the apostles—the 120 believers who received the Holy Spirit to start off with,
who provided leadership to this new church, the ones who provided direction to
this new church, the ones who had the teaching—“They devoted themselves to the
apostles’ teaching.” The core were
the apostles and the leaders. And
what’s interesting is the early church always had a leadership structure. They always did. I’ve talked to people that have said,
“Well, there was really no leadership in the early church.” I’m like, “I don’t know what Bible
you’re reading,” because there is definite leadership. Just read through the book of
Acts. People were continually
bringing things to the apostles saying, “What do you think about this? What should we do about this?” But what’s interesting is as their
leadership team continued to grow, more and more people became a part of the
team, which is exactly what God wants for each of you. See, I think God wants to grow each of
you into someone who is a leader—to that CORE level of commitment.
So think about these. We’re
going to put all five of them up on the screen: COMMUNITY, CROWD, CONGREGATION, COMMITTED, and CORE. I want you to do a little self-assessment
real fast. What’s your level of
commitment? Where would you say
you are on this list? I want you
just to jot it down on the top of your notes real fast. Just jot it down—where are you? Be honest with yourself. You don’t have to share it with
anybody. I’m not going to check
your answer on the way out or anything, you know? But where would you say you are as far as your commitment
level? And then here’s what I want
to challenge you to do. In light
of where you are, what do you think God wants you to do to move to the next
level? I’ll give you some
suggestions. I think for some of
you, you are kind of at the CROWD level; you have been curious for a long time,
but you’ve never believed and been baptized, or maybe you believe but you’ve
never been baptized—what you need to do is be baptized. Others of you, you come once a month,
maybe twice a month—you need to up your commitment a little bit, start
attending more; you need to start serving somewhere, somehow. Some of you, you need to start giving
to up your commitment level.
Others of you, what you need to do is you’re like, “Well, you know
what? I’ve just kind of been lazy
and haven’t exhibited the level of commitment that I know is needed to be a
part of this church family” and you know exactly what it is you need to do, but
you’ve been putting it off, but God’s been talking to you about it for
months. Well, now is the time, I
think, to up that level of commitment.
What is it that you feel like God wants you to do to move to the next stage? That’s what I want you to do.
Like I said, I’m not going to hunt you down. You can stay where you are for as long as you want and I’m
not going to get mad at you. But
here’s what I know. God has
something planned for your life.
And key to God’s plan for your life is you being a committed member of
the family of God, and that means being a committed member of a local church
family. And I don’t want you to
miss out on what God has for you.
A key part of what God has for you is being committed to your local
church family. That’s what it
means for us to be a healthy family.
And you know, last week Mike talked about how the church is so
revolutionary, if you think about it, because the church is really the only
organization in the world that’s made up of diverse people. Most organizations are made up of
people who are alike. If you’re
part of the NRA, you like guns. If
you’re a part of PETA, you don’t like animals… I mean you do like
animals—sorry. You don’t like
eating animals, or killing animals.
That’s what I was about to say.
You hang out with people who are like you. The church is unique and it’s made up of everybody from
everywhere, from different backgrounds and different personalities, from
Republicans and Democrats and Libertarians and people who hate politics, you
know? And it’s made up of all
kinds of different people and how revolutionary that is.
Well, just as revolutionary as that is—it’s even more revolutionary,
it’s even more countercultural in our noncommittal society for us to commit to
being a part of a local church family.
And when we commit to being a part of a local church family, God uses
that local church family to turn the world upside down, which is exactly what
happened in the book of Acts, and I think is exactly what could happen here at
Hub City if we would up our commitment and be committed to one another. And just one more thing that I’ll share
with you. Like I said, we’ve never
had membership here at Hub City and people have asked, “How do I become a member?” Well, now we can tell you, because
really, it has to do with this COMMITTED level of commitment. And we’re going to talk about it in
more detail in a couple of Sundays.
Actually, we’re going to have our first ever membership class—how to be
a member of Hub City Church family—on Sunday, June 22, from 5:30-7:30 in our
offices. I’ll be telling you some
more about it. Here is the
deal. I invite all of you to come
and be a part of that class. At
the end of the class we’ll give you the opportunity to decide whether or not
you want to commit to having that level of commitment. You don’t have to. You can keep coming to Hub City. Can I pick on you for a minute,
Darryl?
(Yeah.)
Darryl was a little nervous about me sharing this because he doesn’t want
any of you to leave, because you’re like, “Oh, I can’t make it to that level of
commitment.” I’m telling you, I
want what’s best for you, but you can stay at whatever level of commitment you
are. That’s between you and
God. But we want to give you an
opportunity to be the kind of people that God wants you to be. And in order to do that, you’ve got to
be committed to a local church family.
So we’re going to talk about that in more detail in that class.
Where does God want you to
be? What do you need to do in
light of what we’ve talked about? That’s your homework this week.
Let’s pray. God, I thank you for giving us the
opportunity to talk about this. I
love this church family and I am so grateful for everybody who is a part,
people who have been coming for years, people who maybe this is their first
Sunday—I am just so grateful for them.
And I’ve worked for a number of churches and you know that I couldn’t
say that I really loved some of them, but I really do love these people. But even more than me loving them, I
know that you love them and that you want what’s best for them, and what you
want for us as a church family is you want what’s best for us and what’s best
for us is for us to be committed to one another and committed to you and committed
to our local church family. So my
prayer is that you’d give us the courage to make that commitment. It’s going to take some rearranging of
schedules for some of us. It’s
going to take us getting up earlier some days when we want to sleep in. It’s going to take some courage and
some discipline. Would you give us
that courage and that discipline?
We love you. It’s in Jesus’
name we pray. Amen.
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