Joshua 3:5-17 Psalm 78:1-8 Ephesians 3:14-21 John 5:16-24 January 13, 2008

Community of Hope David Drum

God Does Not Have Laryngitis

a.k.a. Community of Hope’s Call

I have good news and bad news for you today. The bad news is that I haven’t always known what I was doing. Now, that may not qualify as “news,” because you already knew that. But what we’re in the middle of now here at Community of Hope is not a well-conceived plan of mine born out of much study and consultation.

About 18 months ago, I came before you with the question, “What is the primary purpose of the church?” I knew that few would feel like they could put it into a sentence or less, and of those who felt they could, few of them would end up agreeing. When I posed the question, I knew the response wouldn’t be very impressive. And I was right. I had been your pastor for 16 years and yet we still weren’t even close to being clear on what our primary purpose was. I confessed to you then that this could only mean one thing – poor leadership – clearly a problem, but a correctable one. I vowed at the time to improve. And I think we have been more focused in the last 18 months than before. But let me assure you, we are not where we are today as a result of my improved leadership. The bad news is that I haven’t always known what I was doing. The good news is that God always has.

A lot has happened in the last two months. Three months ago, church planting was a line on our balance sheet, part of a long range vision of ours, something that probably 95% or more of us wouldn’t think about once in a given month. I can assure you, church planting was not high on my list of priorities 3 months ago. But it was high on God’s list. And as it turns out, God has been leading us along this path for quite some time. And leading us rather well, I might add. One of my favorite Martin Luther quotes is this: “You can serve God willingly, or you can serve God anyway.” If we tweak that slightly to “You can serve God knowingly, or you can serve Him anyway, I fit firmly in the “anyway” category. I’ve been willing, but for the most part, that’s meant putting one step in front of another. When I came before you less than 2 months ago and told you that God was calling me to be a church planter, all I knew was that step. Like you, I didn’t know what the future was going to look like. I just knew that obeying God is always a better idea than disobeying Him, and God had rarely gotten my attention so clearly and dramatically.

After the fact, I ended up titling that message on November 18, “My Call.” Today’s message could be called, “Community of Hope’s Call.” I titled it, “God does not have laryngitis,” but the other title would fit, too. I just got back from a weeklong training conference for church planters sponsored by the Evangelical Free Church. Eight hours a day for five days of jam-packed instructions drawing from the best experience of pastors from dozens of different denominational backgrounds. A notebook of 400 pages of Biblical insight and experience from kingdom-moving churches around the country. What this last week did was two things – it put dozens of puzzle pieces together and painted a clear picture. Turns out that all kinds of things that we’ve been doing have been leading us to today – I just didn’t know it. And the other thing this last week did was pump me up even more with confidence that we are exactly where God wants us to be. He’s been leading all along – I just didn’t know where He was leading us. Now I’ve got a much clearer picture, and, well, you might want to stand back a step or two when I’m talking with you, because I’m so excited that my hand gestures might accidentally injure you.

Here’s a promise – church planting at COH will not be the new sermon series. The focus of sermons needs to be on Jesus, not COH. This is a one week interlude. You can see from the bulletin insert where we’re going next. I debated about saving today’s message for Wednesday night, where the focus will be on the practical implications of all this stuff. Or, even saving it until the congregational meeting in two weeks. But I felt this message today needed the broadest audience possible, because as our congregation gets more focused and more clear, we’ll more effectively be able to keep the focus firmly on Jesus. He’ll get all the glory, and the world will be a better place as a result.

I know that there are plenty of us here that are still a little confused about what’s going on. Lots of people are unclear about what these Wednesday Plantation things are all about – and that’s because it’s something totally new – we’ve never done anything like this before. And still last Sunday, I had someone ask me when I was leaving COH to start a new church. Many of you heard “church-plant” and immediately short-circuited over to “someplace else.” I totally understand that. That’s what planting a church normally means. But God’s first plan for us is to become a place of greater energy, greater focus, greater purpose, right here. Right here is where He’s put us and where He needs us to be. My biggest wishes are coming true – I get to be here, with all of you, doing something that is in the absolute center of God’s will for us. Life doesn’t get any better than that, because the local church is the hope of the world, and there’s just nothing like the local church when the local church is working right.

So here are my goals in the time left this morning. I believe God wants to clear up a bit of the confusion. And I believe He wants to encourage us by showing us how He’s been leading us down this path all along.

Where we’re at is much like what our Scripture readings today describe for us. It should be no surprise that I didn’t have the whole picture of where we were going or how to get there – because neither did Jesus! In John 5, Jesus says that he can do nothing by himself. Apart from the Father, Jesus could raise nobody, heal nobody, lead nobody, and teach nobody. And that’s true of the Son of God! Anything we accomplish will still be always and only because of Him. It’s just that now He’s pulled back the curtain a lot farther on where we are and where He’s leading us.

Joshua learned what we’re learning – God is able to do amazing things. Joshua and the rest of the Israelites had seen God lead them out of slavery and through the wilderness. Now they were on the verge of the Promised Land. But God didn’t part the Jordan River for the Israelites until their feet were wet. God had the leaders step into the river when it was at flood stage, and then He parted the waters. When God reveals the next step, our sole job is obedience. We’ll have to get our feet wet if we want to see the really big things God wants to do. And like Paul prays in Ephesians, God is able to do immeasurably more than all we might ask or imagine.

The boot camp I attended was for the purpose of training people who were starting churches from scratch. I knew that many of the things being taught would need some translating into our circumstances. But some needed no translation at all! Like this statement: “Your first task is to define your purpose. Absolutely nothing will revitalize a church faster than rediscovering its purpose.” Sound familiar?

The first couple of days talked about the hard work of laying a foundation, making sure that everyone’s clear on core values and beliefs. Over and over again we heard how important it was to get that foundational work as clear as possible. Well, if I had to name a few of our top strengths, I’d say that’s one of them. We don’t need to do much work on our core values. I looked over them again, and that’s who we are. I think we can adjust our mission statement to more clearly reflect our focus, but our foundation is in pretty good shape.

We heard how important new mission-minded churches are. A few years ago, there was not a single county in the United States that had a higher percentage of Christians in it than a decade ago. Not one! Every single county in our country is going backward. In Pima County, there are 500,000 people who don’t even claim a connection to a Christian church of any kind, including Catholic. The average church in the country saw one person convert to faith in Jesus during the last year. That makes us – average. I won’t take the time now to share other statistics, but it’s consistently true that new churches do the best job of reaching those without a church. And of the church plants that do the best, one of the key factors is the size of the team they start with; the larger the team, as long as it’s unified, the more new people are led to faith. So, there’s a reason that God is calling us in a sense to “start” afresh with the 200 people we have here. God is leading us so that the 200 of us already here can function as effectively as a new church often does in changing its community. He’ll want us to start some other churches in Tucson later, but right now, He wants to make us more effective right here.

The book most highly recommended at the conference when it comes to organizing a church? Purpose-Driven Church by Rick Warren, the one we had our leaders read a few years ago. The most highly recommended leadership conference? Willow Creek’s Leadership Summit that our staff has attended the last two years. One of the most helpful tools on personal evangelism? Bill Hybels’ book, Just Walk Across the Room. The main tool emphasized to monitor continuing church health? Natural Church Development, the one we’ve used several times. When it comes to making sure that what a church is doing to disciple people is actually working the way they think it is, the survey developed by Willow Creek was mentioned more than once – the same survey we were invited to participate in during November. Quarterly leadership development seminars were suggested for once you get going, with the emphasis on making sure that all ministry leaders are developing healthy teams. One of the first people you need to hire? An administrator, so that all the ministries and leaders continue to be encouraged and built up. Can you see why I was encouraged that we’re on the right track? No denomination in the U.S. does church planting better than these guys, and God’s been leading us through their manual.

Here’s the one, though, that moved me to tears when I realized how faithfully and clearly God has been speaking to us and leading us. Perhaps the strongest advice given was to not try to do too many things too soon. Pick the most vital ministries, and make sure you’re doing them well. Don’t burn people out. Bob, our main instructor, shared a picture of an inverted pyramid, saying that if you’re this size (a smaller line at the base), you need to be sure that the number of ministries you’re doing is less than that, not more (inverted pyramid). God had given me exactly the same picture, down to the exact words Bob chose. I shared that picture in several settings. Our biggest problem has been that we’ve been trying to accomplish ministries appropriate for a congregation with a much bigger base. We can’t grow the base until we shrink the top. And this new perspective on church planting is what’s going to help us do that.

Time and again prayer was mentioned as the place to start, and that’s where we’ve been and where we’ll continue to be. There isn’t time to cite all the other examples of how God’s been leading us right through a church planting manual that none of us had ever seen before.

So where do we go from here? Well, the Wednesday night Plantation meetings will be structured as workshops. The list of topics and priorities that I’d been working on already, has been greatly expanded and clarified, so I’ve got a good picture of where we are and where we need to head. The Plantation workshops will be the core of our new focus and energy. You may want to come if for no other reason than some of the awesome videos I’m planning on showing! Everyone has a significant role to play in the church. That’s supposed to be true for every church, but it’s unavoidable in a brand new one. Everybody needs to know that the prayers they prayed, the conversations they had, and the ways they served made a direct contribution to leading someone to heaven.

The Plantation workshops will be temporary. They’ll help us get back on the right track. There are so many awesome things happening already; God is already blessing us in amazing ways. After the most significant season of prayer we’ve had yet as a church, around the time of Pentecost, we’ve seen multiple miraculous healings and heard God speak in very specific ways. That just makes me all the more determined that we not keep such blessings to ourselves. As good as these gifts are for those of us who already know God, can you imagine how life-changing these experiences could be for a person who has no idea that there’s a living God who loves them that much?

And where are we headed? So much of the work I heard about this last week has already been done, that I think we’ll see God moving in new ways pretty quickly. I don’t think it will be very long at all before we see new lives being changed, and we become one of the un-average congregations that helps bring more than just a few people into a relationship with Jesus. And while I was planning on sharing with you this morning a much more detailed picture I think God is painting of what we’ll look like in just a few years, I think God told me last night that this morning isn’t the time. Maybe at a Plantation workshop; maybe at the congregational meeting. I’ll ask, and get back to you.

God wants to see Community of Hope become a place where a whole bunch of His lost kids find their way home. He’s been leading us in that direction for years, and picking up the pace recently. The Promised Land is just over the river. It’s time to get our feet wet. Amen.