Sermon from February 3, 2008 A wise man once said to me, "Life up your eyes to the hills, but keep your nose to the grindstone." We have kept our nose to the grindstone the last three Sundays. We have talked about why we gather like this to worship, what it means to be members of a local church, and how we worship with integrity.
Sermon from February 3, 2008
A wise man once said to me, "Life up your eyes to the hills, but keep your nose to the grindstone." We have kept our nose to the grindstone the last three Sundays. We have talked about why we gather like this to worship, what it means to be members of a local church, and how we worship with integrity. Today, we need to lift up our eyes to the hills. I don’t want to become so theoretical that I lose you. I hope I can inspire you with a vision of the Church that Jesus Christ is building.
Jesus said, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it” – Matthew 16:18. I think even the great men and women of faith around Jesus would do a double-take at the global reach of the Church in 2008. The vision of the Church I want to inspire you with has roots in the Bible. Turn with me to 1 Corinthians 12:15-17.
The Body of a Giant
If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?
We read this passage when we talked about membership. It’s easy to understand, when it has to do with one person’s need for another. That’s how Paul used it in this passage. Most of the time, that’s how we benefit from the passage. But BVBC is not the whole body of Christ. The vision I want to inspire you with sees BVBC in connection with other congregations the way we see individuals in this congregation in connection with each other.
Let me give you some specific examples from recent experience. Two weeks ago, I had the privilege of speaking at Union Baptist Church in Wilmington for Martin Luther King Day. Pastor MacAdoo has agreed to speak at BVBC on Good Friday. In a political environment that highlights racial divisions, our two congregations have taken small steps to foster racial harmony. We could do a lot more, but whether we do little or much, the two congregations do together what neither could do alone. That’s two members of the one body of Christ acting together.
I spent this past week at a Pastors’ Network Gathering. I spent it in company with about four dozen of my peers, senior pastors in churches our size and much larger. We were all part of our association of churches, the Baptist General Conference. We came from a dozen states. We established the agenda that we wanted to address in the four days we had together. Best of all, we had private conversations over a meal or in a hallway, when we could get very specific about issues we face.
What you could never get on to an agenda was the surprising help that emerged from these conversations. Very few other gatherings like this exist for pastors like me. We could always do what we do better, but we have already done together what we could not do alone. In effect, the experience of four dozen churches, ministering to tens of thousands of people can be brought to bear on BVBC.
One more example will segue to the next part of this vision. When we left the hotel Thursday, I claimed our luggage that had been stored during our final session. I said to one of baggage handlers, “I like your name.” He said, “Yes! God is with us. Emmanuel!” He was from Haiti. I told him about our Haitian missionary, Esperandieu Pierre. We rejoiced in God together in Baggage Claim. He earned his living as a baggage handler, but he was my brother in Christ and representative of Jesus’ breath-taking results in building His church worldwide.
The Global South
I want to give you a feel for those breath-taking results. Look with me at Acts 2:41. The first 40 verses tell what happened on the birthday of the Church, the Day of Pentecost. Peter’s sermon took center stage. Verse 41 reports the outcome of that sermon. Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day.
Here’s what takes your breath away. Results like that are happening many times every day throughout the world. Let me give you an example that I saw last week. Carole and visited the headquarters of Campus Crusade for Christ. We were there less than an hour. We only visited the department that handles the Jesus Film Project.
They showed us a brief video that told the story of the first showing of the Jesus Film to a people group in Southern Ethiopia in February, 2007. A retired American couple donated $37,000 to make the film available in their dialect.
The video showed those dear people responding to scenes in the film. When Jesus healed the blind man, they cheered. When they crucified Jesus, people wept and turned their heads away. According to the Campus Crusade representative, more than 15,000 people in that people group have become Christians as of January, 2008.
Like a tsunami of conversion, that has been happening all over the earth for the past 40 years on an unprecedented scale. It has resulted in a shift in how we view Christianity. Scholars now talk about the Global South, when they talk about the Church. The Global South includes East Asia and nations south of the equator. Missionary scholar, Andrew Walls, puts it this way: “These southern expressions of Christianity are becoming the dominant forms of the faith.” (The Missionary Movement in Christian History, 24)
Within the next decade the Church in South Korea will send more missionaries to other cultures than will the Church in the United States. But this is not about competition. This is aboutthe foot not saying, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” or the ear saying, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body.” The principle is the same, but the scale is worldwide; the body of Christ is a global reality.
Our Director of Missions, Dianna Shatley, has served us well the past three years. In 2005 she had as one of our missions speakers an evangelist in training from Bangladesh. In 2006 our speaker was an Indonesian pastor, whose ministry has touched Al Qaeda leaders in his country. Last year, Pastor Adama from Senegal preached to us. Next Sunday, Dianna has brought to us Rafael Anzenberger from France, who faces in France difficulties we expect to find only in Communist or Muslim countries.
The Pastoral Center of Gravity
In a moment we will share the bread and wine of Holy Communion. We commune with our Lord, Jesus Christ, in this act of worship. So do the more than two billion brothers and sisters from places like Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Thailand, China, Australia, Peru, Brazil and Colombia. The missionary labors from 1800-2000 have born fruit. The Church is now a global community of faith. We are privileged to be part of it. We can’t do without them; they can’t do without us in the one body of Christ.
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