Good morning! I am Tim Roberts the
pastor here at Sunrise Church and I want to thank you for being here to worship
our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ with us this morning.
You know, as a pastor, I hear all kinds
of excuses why people don't come to church, but it wasn't too long ago, I was
taken aback when someone came up to me and exclaimed, "Pastor Tim! Pastor
Tim! I just love coming here each Sunday." Wanting to know more I asked
why. She responded, "Let me tell you, I have a tedious job that gets me all
worked up and when I get home, my kids drive me crazy. So, I love coming each
Sunday." Feeling a bit smug, I pressed for more details as I inquired,
"So is it my message each week, the music, or the Sunday School?" My
friend then kind of looked puzzle and replied, "Well, I guess those could
be good reasons, but..." Now being completely perplexed, I pushed again,
"So what is it then? The friendliness?" "No," she quickly
retorted, "Free coffee and childcare!"
As Tim stated earlier, whatever the
reason that brought you here, we are glad that you are here and pray you
receive a blessing from God this morning.
Today, we are continuing a series of
messages that are based on our Mission, Vision, and Values. If you are new to
Sunrise or a longtime member, this series may help you to understand who we are
and our God-directed goals for being a church in the Greater Winston-Salem
area.
This morning, we look at the last
component of our Vision Statement. Next Sunday, we begin looking at our Values
and this last Vision component is akin to the first of our Values, so this
message will kind of be a two-parter.
Please join me in reading this section
aloud:
We are blessed to be a blessing. Faith must be demonstrated
through action. Sunrise will share the Love of Jesus throughout our community,
region and world.
[PRAYER]
I have a good friend who is the chief of the Lexington Fire
Department. He, knowing that I had been a firefighter in Charlotte, often
traded "war stories." But I remember one story that was very
poignant.
Back in 1912, the City of Lexington purchased two hose
wagons and Percheron Draft horses. The Percheron horses were selected because
of their notoriety for speed. But because of their speed, they had to be
exercised daily.
Each day, at 5:00, the department would hold a drill, in
which they quickly harnessed the horses and ran them down Main Street, from
Center Street to 8th Street. The routine became a good source of entertainment
for the citizens of Lexington as they lined the streets each afternoon to watch
the show of the mighty steeds exercise their position of reaching any place in
their area within just a few minutes. All long the way, people lined up and
applauded as the hose wagon thundered past them down to 8th Street, where they
would turn around and proceed at a normal speed back to the station, still
reveling in the accolades of a job well-done.
Then, by chance, one afternoon, there was a real fire down
Main Street. As the alarm sounded, the horse were raring to go as the harness
was quickly lowered and fastened around their necks. Right out of the station,
the sped down Main Street to where the firemen saw the smoke billowing from the
burning structure just at the corner of Main Street and 9th. The horses never
ran faster. This is what they trained so long for. It looked as if the firemen
would be able to arrive just in time to save the building from complete
destruction, that is until...the horses reached 8th street and began their
routine of turning around and walking back to the station!
I sometimes wonder, is the Church like those horses? Have we
grown so accustom to our routines that we have lost sight of the mission?
I believe this is why God has given us this vision to be
missional - not that we have lost sight of the mission, but to remind us and
quicken us to how we are to be missional. To do this requires no less than a
thorough reorientation as to what the Church is called to be and how we are to
do it.
Before we continue, you may be asking, "What does it
mean to be missional?" I believe in order to begin to answer that
question, we first need to know what it's not.
Being missional is not:
- Not a cool new catchphrase for doing what we're already doing
-
Not Church growth program, although God is concerned with numbers
-
Not a newfound emphasis on outreach and social justice. This may be part of it,
but is not the whole.
So,
if it's not any of these, what does it mean to be "missional"?
1. To be Missional is to be about
the missionary nature of God.
Have
you ever thought of God as being a missionary? If you go back and read through
the Bible, you will come to understand God as a missionary who's goal is to
redeem the world through grace and mercy. To accomplish this feat, God
"sends out" missionaries.
The
word "sending" is the key principle in being missional. Think of how
many times the word "sent" is used in scripture. In the New
International Version, it is uttered 642 times. God is a missional God.
The
gospels record of how God sent Jesus.
The Book of Acts recounts Jesus sending
the Holy Spirit. All of the New Testament testifies how the Triune God now sends
the Church. As the Gospel of John summarizes,
John
20.21 (CEB)
“...As the Father has sent me, I am sending
you.”
2. To be Missional is being in incarnational
ministry in the present age.
If we now understand being missional
means being sent, then being incarnational means how we go and what we do as we
go.
Two weeks ago, our Bishop, Larry
Goodpaster, charged the annual conference to remember:
"A missional faith stays focused on the
heart of God in order to serve Christ in this present age."
As Eugene Peterson
translates John 1:14 in The Message,
John
1.14 (The Message)
“The Word became
flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.”
So
to be missional means that our primary function is one of actively being in our
community to embody the life, word, and deed, of Jesus into every nook and
cranny.
This
means we are missional all the time, not just when we go out
to aid those we see as less fortunate than ourselves, but also to those we see
as our equals and those we see as socially and/or economically superior.
3. To be Missional is to
actively participate in the mission of God.
Let me ask you a question. What is the
mission of God?
[Allow responses]
How do we actively participate in God's
mission? As you ponder that question, take a look at this passage of scripture
from Genesis 12:
Genesis
12.1-3 (CEB)
1 The LORD said to Abram,
"Leave your land, your family, and your father's household for the land
that I will show you. 2 I will make of you a great
nation and will bless you. I will make your name respected, and you will be a
blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless
you, those who curse you I will curse; all the families of earth will be
blessed because of you."
We are blessed to be a blessing. Faith must be demonstrated
through action. Sunrise will share the Love of Jesus throughout our community,
region and world.
You
see friends, we are the instrument that God uses to be
active in the world. We are blessed to be a blessing.
[Invite up to speak those who have
served and those who are serving as missionaries]
David
Bosch, a missiologist from South Africa summarizes it this way: “It
is not so much that God has a mission for his church in the world, but that God
has a church for his mission in the world”
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