Jun. 05, 2022

Church in the City - You were once a Kid! -- 05 June 2022  Pastor John Custer

Introduction - In the past few weeks we have been teaching about the fact that God looks upon the church over a widespread area and rewards or judges that “church” based upon their faith and actions.  Although He knows infinitely the comings and goings of every person and every congregation on earth, He pointedly evaluates the spiritual health of a large number of congregations as an aggregate, as seen in Revelation 2 and 3.  The earthly welfare of our families, churches, and cities really depends on this aggregate spiritual evaluation.  It therefore  is important all the churches succeed, not just our own.  

1 Corinthians 13:11 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. NLT

Just thinking about us and our own concerns is childish. We are all born with the inclination to do this, since we are born in sin.   We have to learn to be concerned about the welfare of others; it does not naturally occur.  God spends lots of words in the Bible teaching this idea.  

Romans 15:1-2 We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves. Let every one of us please his neighbour for his good to edification. KJV

As a church gets older, we naturally want to retain in the congregation everyone connected to us.  We do this all in the name of love, but sometimes is impedes what God is actually trying to do in the lives of our spiritual and physical sons and daughters.  In God’s plan some departures are normal and natural.  (I’m not including people who leave because of offenses, which is a defeat.)  On the positive side, a man leaves his mother and father to be married to his wife, for example.  

 Ephesians 5:21. As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” NLT

It is natural for our kids to leave our circle of acquaintances and to enter a circle of their own.  This includes church life, although there were some biblical figures who had sons serving alongside or after them, such as King David and his son Solomon, who took over his kingship after David’s death. Our children must be given the chance to build their own convictions, which always comes with a cost.  Everyone partakes of this training, which is one of the main ways God Himself trains us.

Hebrews 12:11-13 No discipline is enjoyable while it is happening—it’s painful! But afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way. So take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weak knees. Mark out a straight path for your feet so that those who are weak and lame will not fall but become strong. NLT

Generally, our kids need to go find their own churches and circle of friends, with some exceptions.  We’ve had our chance to train them.  Let’s send them and get them to their mission.  We must not make the mistake of loving their friendship so much that we stunt their growth by not letting them fly out of the nest. In Pennsylvania, mother black bears kick out their yearling bears, forcibly moving them out of the family circle to find their own food supplies.  This often results in bear sightings in towns and backyards as the confused teenage bears learn where to find new territory. Similarly, there will also be grown people who will be sent from our midst to do their God-appointed callings.  This is normal and appropriate.  God is in the business of sending as well as gathering.

Concerning gathering, a beautiful situation exists for our congregation with young adults right here in Monessen, which is almost the converse of the situation concerning our own flesh and blood children.  In our early days, we reached out to the youths of Monessen by starting a youth group called Fishgate.  It was a program manned by a handful of hardy adults like Alice Kelly, Deacon Jim Williams, Deacon Matt Fisher, Margaret Poprosky (all deceased), Pastor Mike Fisher, Evangelist Leonard Larkin and Rose, and others.  It was interesting to me that few of our own children ever got involved with that group.  Instead, we had a healthy gathering of youths from the community.  It was a rough-and-tumble, but blessed experience, getting to know these kids from an urban culture.  We got to know some as early as first or second grade in a program for younger kids called Guppies.  Both groups were programs, which you could describe as an activity led by a few leaders and participated in by a larger number of passive attenders.  I can’t recall ever having even one parent participate or join our church as a result, although I could have overlooked someone.  The old wives’ tale “If you can win the children, the adults will follow” never worked for us.  What was accomplished was the birthing of lots of spiritual sons and daughters.  These relationships are as alive and fresh today as the day they first attended Fishgate.  Most of the young adults presently reside right here in Monessen.  Many of the young adults have children.  

Recently, I attended Brayden Speck’s High School graduation.  On the way to the High School gym, my wife and I passed several of the young adults we knew from Fishgate.  As we re-introduced ourselves to each other, One of them exclaimed “Fishgate!  It was the greatest thing!  It would be great to have it now! It was the best thing that ever happened to me!” It indelibly impressed on me the current, ready, right-now fact that there’s a whole community of kids out there ready to be invited, with their little kids and all, into the small group communities we are developing.  We did not have the groups in place to incorporate the parents then.  It is different now. God is in the business of creating self-sustaining church planting movements.  This is how he will retake the earth.  He will be using us to do this.  We have an urgent teaching role to “fold” God’s flock into little church groups which keep on splitting and multiplying.  We must teach this to our flesh and blood children and to our spiritual children as well.  

It is unlikely that we’ll develop another community-wide youth outreach program like Fishgate because we can do better.  Rather than dropping kids off at a weekly activity session led by a paid youth pastor, we’d like to see them learn to lead a small meeting themselves by participating in small gatherings where entire families are involved.  They will certainly meet and fellowship with other kids, but they also learn to teach and lead themselves by actually doing it.  This is actually happening in some of our meetings presently!  This is a good thing for kids to learn in these years:

Lamentations 3:27 - It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. ASV

Conclusion - We must see the church in this region as God sees it, the present spiritual condition of it, and the history of our forbears here, as well as the future of the church here.  We can’t just live for our congregation’s needs alone.  It is possible that any congregation can be changed by the Holy Ghost to come into the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  

Ephesians 4:11-13 Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. NLT

There is an awakening amongst the pastors of this city to understand the church as it really should be.  Right now there are two things you can do:  keep praying for apostolic and prophetic people to be noticed and received, and, be ready to receive some cross-cultural families with kids into your branch group. Our pastors are working on a Fishgate reunion to reconnect with some wonderful young parents.  This is our chance to be adults!