“A Day-to-Day Reality”

Acts 2:42-27

One of the best books that I’ve read in recent years is The 21^st Century Pastor by David Fisher. In it he describes a conversation with someone who was looking for a church home. She asked him this question: “Can this church be a safe place where we can heal and grow?” I firmly believe that this is a question every congregation needs to ask about itself on a regular basis.

Can this church be a safe place where we can heal and grow? Do those seeking a church home, be they believers or non-believers, perceive Grace Presbyterian Church as a safe place where they can heal and grow? What kind of aura do we give off? What kind of signals do we send out? What kind of impression do we make on those who visit our worship services, attend our fellowship events, or deal with our members on a daily basis?

In describing the early church that sprang into being after that first Pentecost Sunday, Warren Wiersbe wrote: “Their faith was a day-to-day reality, not a once-a-week routine.” Luke makes that very clear in today’s text from Acts. He also makes it very clear that this church – this body of believers whose faith was a day-to-day reality – “had the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.”

Their faith was lived out in ways that grew the church on a daily basis. They obviously projected, among other things, a perceptible sense of healing and safety. The Gospel was preached and taught faithfully. There were great demonstrations of God’s power. There was an incredibly strong attitude of loving, caring mutuality. From the outside looking in, they projected a healthy sense of Christian community, one that was scripturally sound and theologically orthodox, but also one that made clear to all that this was a place where pastoral care was practiced with passion and integrity. As William Barclay described them in his commentary, they were winsomely attractive to those outside the church.

Some more questions: Are we winsomely attractive to people outside this church? How strong is our fellowship? How inspiring is our worship? Is the Gospel faithfully preached and taught? Do we care about and are we accountable to one another? How generous are we in sharing the gifts God has given us?

We may honestly believe that the answer to each one of those questions is yes. We may sincerely think that this is, of course, a place of safety and healing. Is it? I’m not at all implying that Grace is not a good church. It is. There is something about this place that grabbed hold of me the first time I visited it, and has yet to let go.

But if we, pastor and people, are going to be honest with ourselves, we need to examine ourselves more closely, especially from the perceptive of someone on the outside looking in. We need to measure ourselves against the following statements, and if those statements too closely describe who and what we are, then we’ve got problems.

The first two come again from David Fisher: “[Ministers] are called to lead God’s people as they follow Christ, yet many [of God’s people] would rather stay comfortable where they are.” [and] “It is a sad fact of church life that [our] institutional values are usually guarded more carefully than the gospel.” The third comes from Henri Nouwen in his book The Wounded Healer: “Many churches decorated with words announcing salvation and new life are often little more than parlors for those who feel comfortable in the old life…”

If we boil those four statements down to their basic essence, what we end up with are some more of those uncomfortable questions. What comes first here, our comfort level or the honest exercising of our faith? Are guarding and preserving our institutional values and traditions more important to us than honestly proclaiming and then seriously living out the Gospel? Is Grace a community of faith which offers and upholds the new life in Christ, or is it just another ecclesiastical parlor in which we emphasize the unchanging, unchallenged comfort of the old life? Are we willing to do whatever it takes to make this church a community that lives out its faith as a day-to-day reality, or are we simply one more church living out a once-a-week routine?

I truly believe that the answers to those questions are mostly no. If not, I’ve come to the wrong place. Allow me to share some history with you, and as I do, please don’t hear it as sour grapes. From June of 1989 until last August I served or worked with indirectly a series of small, mostly historic churches. Were these bad churches? No. Were their congregations made up of bad people? No. Did they do some good things? Yes. Do I love them? Well, mostly I do?

In many cases, however, they were churches where institutional values were more important than the Gospel. This wasn’t so much openly expressed as it was unconsciously lived out. One of those churches, with $100,000 in the bank, asked me to cut back from full- to half-time. At the same Session meeting they voted to spend over $20,000 to build a picnic shelter that has rarely been used since and accepted a memorial gift of $8,000 to replace a carpet that probably wasn’t half as old as the carpet here.

At another of them, as we engaged in a discussion about the church’s true mission, one elder, in all sincerity and with no malice, said that his church’s primary mission was to maintain the history and traditions of the local culture. When I questioned that he essentially told me that I didn’t live in the real world. Looking back, that was probably an unintended compliment.

At yet another anytime somebody took the time and energy to carry out a much-needed task, he or she was either criticized or corrected by the church matriarch and her daughter. Sometimes they even came along after the person’s work was done and did it over, as they described it, the right way. Feelings were hurt. People left the church. It was not a safe place. Nor was it a place of growth and healing. But by-golly it was historically correct!

At all of them there was little money for mission, but there was always money to preserve the building’s historical authenticity. Carpets, pew cushions, stained glass windows and the like were always more affordable than feeding the hungry, supporting a missionary, or going on a mission trip. Again, these are neither bad churches nor bad people. Simply places where priorities are misplaced and the Gospel of Christ must play second fiddle to culture and tradition.

All that was then and there. Before us today is the here and now in which we are called to be a faithful people working together in a faithful church. A faithful church is a church where people can experience a healing that comes only from Christ, a church where people are given and then take advantage of opportunities to grow in their faith.

A faithful church truly is winsomely attractive to the unchurched, a place where people can literally feel the moving of the Holy Spirit. A faithful church is one in which the Gospel is faithfully preached, taught, and most importantly, lived. A faithful church is a welcoming, friendly, loving church, but also a church where moral and ethical accountability is practiced. Anybody is welcome. Some behaviors are not.

A faithful church is one willing to change if such change is necessary in order to follow Jesus. A faithful church has its traditions, but it always puts Christ and his Gospel first. A faithful church exercises sensible stewardship in the maintaining of its facility, but it doesn’t allow that facility to become an idol.

Is Grace a faithful church? I think so. Is it perfect in its faithfulness? Of course not. No church ever is. Do we possess that winsome attractiveness of which William Barclay wrote? Yes. Could we be more winsomely attractive than we are? Certainly. Every church can. The bottom line question, however, is this: Are we willing to faithfully strive to become a church similar to the one described in Acts 2:42-47? If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t be here. Amen.