Recent Sermon at Harbor Church

Next week, July 11 2010, Harbor Church will host a pastoral candidate that the pulpit committee is excited about presenting. Pray for this very important decision to be made by the congregation. With that in mind I preached this sermon from Jonah. You can listen, download or watch the sermon.

The picture is from my phone as I looked out my bedroom window one morning last week. Do you see them both? Maybe we should call it a deer feeder rather than a bird feeder!

Running High School Graduates and a Chasing Gracious God

Last week I spoke at my daughter’s Senior Chapel. As a Pastor, speaking to Christian School audience, you would think the talk would be on making a great impact on the world with great the Christian education they acquired. Not this time. Using the Biblical book of Jonah, the theme was “Running from God!” Why? The statistics below say that, of the 45 seniors in the 2010 class at least 30 will run from God over the next months and years of college.

Here are some of the findings cited by the Youth Transition Network (YTN), a coalition of some of the nation’s largest denominations and ministries that are working together to help reduce the dramatic loss of youth from the church:

“An Assemblies of God study showed a loss of 66% of their students within one year of high school graduation.”
    
“A Southern Baptist transition project estimates an 82% loss of youth within one year of high school graduation.”
    
“Fifty to eighty percent of high school students walk away.”
    

These are staggering statistics if your child is graduating this year. My concern is Karen, she graduates in late May.

What does Jonah have to say about this crisis?

There are 2 basic reasons anyone runs from God – even prophets like Jonah, Christian young people or even you. They really think that God has a propensity to give us less than the best, and that the world has so much more to offer them. The second reason is that we know what God wants from us and we are unwilling to follow his lead. So the desire is to leave God is the rearview mirror on the way to college.

The problem with that strategy is that you cannot run from God. He loves you so much, He will pursue you!

When you run there are some common characteristics:

            You never run to safety but to dangerous, self-destructive places. The Jews were landlubbers. For a Jew to get on a ship for ANY reason was serious business. But think about it – as Jonah later said, "I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land." What sense does it make to get in a dangerous boat?

Jonah – don’t get on a boat!  (Have you said things like that to friends? You are doing what? Seeing who? Marrying who? NO WAY – DON’T DO THAT!)

                        Secondly, when you run from God everything seems great at first, but eventually your life tends to unravel. One common result is the tendency to make the worst relational decisions of your life.

            I told the senior class to make sure not to marry anyone while running from God – a serious mistake. Someone needed to tell them!

                        Thirdly, you always hurt the ones who care the most for you, when you run.

The great news for those that truly know the God who made the sea and land is that you cannot win a race with Him. He always pursues. Running and chasing are synonymous with sin and grace. God is gracious to pursue!

            The senior class loved the story I told about how Karen responded to spankings. She was unique compared to our other 4 children. She would fight it, making it much worst for her. Why would parents inflict pain in the form of a spanking or grounding? Good parents know that rebellion and pain must always be linked, even if there is a quick repentance. I think Jonah repented when he saw the big fish but there was still the first 3-day submarine ride he had to endure. The reality for our Christian children, when the parents are not there, is God will link rebellion with pain and it will always bring a result of repentance, because if they are truly one of God’s children, He will not let them go. They will come back, maybe with a limp, or tattoos, or grandchildren.  Even if 75% of High School seniors run from God, 100% of His children will come back. They will come back and God will run to them. (see John 15 in the Bible) Parents be ready to run to them too!

Pictures from this weekend

Great Article about Young People and Church

Read it here.

Inviting People to Church - an hilarious video

Check this out.

Check out the Revamped Advent Website!

www.adventchurch.net

One of our members took our website from mid-90's motif to a more modern look!

Let me know what you think.

There are a number of things we have yet to put on the site so check it often and pray as we launch our Mission Church on the 28th of this month (Palm Sunday) at 6:30 PM in the Southwest Middle School cafeteria!

Should you join a Church?

Last night when the core group of Advent Mission Church was meeting someone asked a very important question, "Why join a church? Can't you just go?"


There was a number of good answers given. One great point is made in
the short article below that I kept in my files for such a time as
this! Read it and let me know what you think!



I sent this an a e-mail this morning to the group and thought my blogger friends would like it too!

John Stott on Church Membership

by Thabiti Anyabwile

Last night I began reading through John Stott's The Living Church: Convictions of a Lifelong Pastor.  A dear member of the church gave me an autographed copy after a visit to London and All Souls where Stott served for so many years.

After reading the preface and the first chapter, I'm a little saddened that I've left this book unread for so long.  It's vintage Stott-- relentlessly clear and biblically centered.  In the opening chapter, he spelled out a couple assumptions undergirding the book, assumptions pertinent for recent discussions here on the blog.

Stott writes:

First, I am assuming that we are all committed to the church.  We are not only Christian people; we are also church people.  We are not only committed to Christ, we are also committed to the body of Christ.  At least I hope so.  I trust that none of my readers is that grotesque anomaly, an unchurched Christian.  The New Testament knows nothing of such a person.  For the church lies at the very centre of the eternal purpose of God.  It is not a divine afterthought.  It is not an accident of history.  On the contrary, the church is God's new community.  For his purpose, conceived in a past eternity, being worked out in history, and to be perfected in a future eternity, is not just to save isolated individuals and so perpetuate our loneliness, but rather to build his church, that is, to call out of the world a people for his own glory. ... So then, the reason we are committed to the church is that God is so committed.

A little later, Stott meditates on Acts 2:47 and the hints there of the early church's commitment to evangelism.  Acts 2:47 reads, "And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."  One of the truths Stott directs us to is:

The Lord did two things together.  He 'added to their number... those who were being saved.'  He didn't add them to the church without saving them, and he didn't save them without adding them to the church.  Salvation and church membership went together; they still do.

In our day, we unfortunately have broken apart what the early church seemed to view as a natural, necessary, and seamless chain of events: gospel preaching and evangelism, leading to conversion and baptism, leading to church membership and communion.  It's difficult to imagine that Paul or Peter or John could conceive of something called a 'Christian' that was not a baptized, communing member of the church.
I think Stott is absolute correct when he refers to such creatures as a "grotesque anomaly."  Part of what is critical to healthy community in the church is the conceptual and temporal tightening of the events
in this chain.  The clearer these things are (the gospel, conversion, the practice and meaning of baptism, church membership and the privilege of communion) and the more joined together they are in practice the stronger will be the ties that bind the church.  Loosen these and you unravel the church.