Sep. 08, 2024

Which Church do You go to? (08 Sept. 2024) — Pastor John Custer

Introduction - This lesson is admittedly new material for me, and I’m sure it is for all of our church.  I pray that you’d consider it,and if it is scriptural, that you’d act upon it with your whole heart.  This teaching challenges a long-standing Western church culture, one in which the unspoken rule is that the church you belong to is the best and the most important in the whole world.  Sometimes we develop such a fierce loyalty to the culture of it (the building, the pastor, the worship style, etc.) that the structure of what we can see becomes more important than the Lord for Whom it all exists.  

I want to start by reviewing a bedrock Scripture with you.  I introduced this idea to our church and to local pastors over three years ago after the Lord showed it to me during a period of illness.  It is important because it reveals what God considers the local church to be.  

Revelation 2:1-7 1 “Write this letter to the angel of the church in Ephesus. This is the message from the one who holds the seven stars in his right hand, the one who walks among the seven gold lampstands: 2 “I know all the things you do. I have seen your hard work and your patient endurance. I know you don’t tolerate evil people. You have examined the claims of those who say they are apostles but are not. You have discovered they are liars. 3 You have patiently suffered for me without quitting. 4“But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first! 5 Look how far you have fallen! Turn back to me and do the works you did at first. If you don’t repent, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place among the churches. 6 But this is in your favor: You hate the evil deeds of the Nicolaitans, just as I do. 7 “Anyone with ears to hear must listen to the Spirit and understand what he is saying to the churches. To everyone who is victorious I will give fruit from the tree of life in the paradise of God. NLT

Contrary to our heritage and culture, our particular church, wonderful as it is, is not what the Lord is referring to in each of the seven letters to the churches of Revelation 2 and 3.  God always referred to the church in a city as a singular church. He never said this about an entire province, only a city and the near environs.   The Greek word for church here is ekklesias, the singular word for church.  It is a noun in the genitive feminine singular case.  This means that God treats, appraises, rewards, and nurtures the church in a given city as one body of people.  In His mind there is no Presbyterian church, Catholic church, Lutheran church, Pentecostal church, Orchard Christian Fellowship, or any other church, large or small.  As a result of not understanding this, we devote immense amounts of time and energy in an effort to make our congregation the best it can be.  Hundreds of church growth books and seminars exist on how to make your church the biggest.  For example, Many individual books are devoted to “closing the back door” that is, how to keep people from leaving your church.  The whole point of this modern teaching is to create a large business model in which everyone stays in the congregation. The church is to get bigger and bigger. The truth is, God is not focused on any of that.  He is interested in making the church smaller, much more mobile and reproductive, and scattering it like a virus throughout the planet, thus making it infinitely more vast than all the mega churches in the world combined.  Our church, therefore, is not just the Orchard Christian Fellowship, but the church of Monessen.  This is a big, new concept! 

Let’s explore another text which we need to shape this idea a bit further:

Acts 2:41-47 41 Those who believed what Peter said were baptized and added to the church that day—about 3,000 in all. 42 All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer. 43 A deep sense of awe came over them all, and the apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders. 44 And all the believers met together in one place and shared everything they had. 45 They sold their property and possessions and shared the money with those in need. 46 They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity— 47 all the while praising God and enjoying the goodwill of all the people. And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved. NLT

Notice what was happening amongst the people as this addition of souls was taking place: they were having a lot of interaction with one another.  Some of this was peculiar to Jerusalem, like the shedding of excess properties and the giving of the proceeds to the poor. Lord was probably preparing them for the coming persecution spoken of in Acts 8:2 in which the Romans would make it impossible for Jews to own any property in the Roman protectorate.   All of the interaction between the saints was led by the Holy Spirit.  We will experience the same fellowship with believers anywhere He is constructing His church (breaking bread, praying, the Lord’s Supper, prayer for healing and signs and wonders, a sense of awe, etc.).  Notice that Acts 47 says “each day The Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.”  It is the Lord who adds people to a church not us!  By Acts 4:4 the number had grown to 5,000 men, not counting women and children, so there were conservatively 8,000-10,000 people saved and added to the church of Jerusalem.  This is church growth led by the Holy Spirit!  No denominations, no formal potentates, no robed dignitaries, no programs, no seminaries.  Lots of person-to-person visiting and interaction! These numbers are revered by church-growth pastors worldwide, making even the most conservative ones salivate.  The Holy Spirit control of it all, sadly, is not revered. Most pastors read of this miraculous evangelism, but turn immediately to programs, intense prayer and fasting, cold canvassing, door knocking, and other evangelism methods to win the unsaved.  Anything except the interaction described in Acts 2.  God is well able to add the unsaved whenever he wants!  He is simply waiting for the saved to interact with one another.  We don’t need the Day of Pentecost to happen all over again to start something new.  It has already happened.  God already has Christians in this city we live in.  We just need to start interacting!  At present, we are all divided up into denominations because it has been the way of the church since 400 AD.  These are not just polite, respectful divisions; there has actually been slaughter and warfare between Christian sects throughout history.  Why would God bring thousands of new converts into a dysfunctional church?

Luke 11:16-17 16 Others, to test Him, were demanding of Him a sign from heaven. 17 But He knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and a house divided against itself falls. NASB

Since the 4th century, when emperor Constantine thought he would do the church a favor by giving it government protection and formal recognition, man has taken over the work of the Holy Spirit, making 39,000 different denominations and counting.  The Scripture above refers to satan’s kingdom, but the principle is universal.  The church is divided and powerless.  This is probably why so many pastors ask where are the miracles? Where are the signs?  We are so busy trying to add people to OUR church that we miss the Holy Spirit’s instruction to BE the church.

What will these new thoughts mean for us?  No big changes will occur immediately, or probably ever.  We all just need to go visit other congregations (yes, go!).  I recently had the opportunity to visit the St. John the Divine orthodox church here in Monessen.  It was a thoroughly beautiful time in a very beautiful building with beautiful people.  They loved me and were very appreciative of the new face in their midst.  It was obviously a different style of worship than we are used to, having its own beauty. The sincerity of the people and their pure love for Jesus ,however, was the same as I experience.  I felt right at home.  

Generally, our church family and all the little church families we know will continue to meet and worship as we always have.  Nothing will replace the church family (congregation), just like nothing will replace the human family in the development of humans.  We, as individual Christians and as a local congregation,  must adjust our lifestyle and priorities to the perspective God has of His church, which is that our church is actually the church of the city of Monessen.  We must take a little time to do something out of the ordinary and rub elbows with other people in other congregations.  

The biggest changes will be for the pastors, who are trying to do something noble by protecting their people  from harmful influences by keeping them isolated.  One of my favorite stories is about farmers who kept their ducks in a river, each separated by boundary walls.  A storm came, raising the level of the water, and consequently the ducks, up over the tops of the walls.  The ducks were elated, floating freely and quacking with their new friends.  The farmers, however, were panicked because they had lost control.  A pastor from one of our local churches told me that he felt that pastors are the most insecure people in the entire Body of Christ!  Being one, I understand the pressure.

Conclusion - I not suggesting that we all must start some all-consuming commitment to a six month leadership course in a sister congregation or enroll in a marriage improvement seminar there.  We just need to realize that our real church is something bigger than just our congregation.  This is not a widely understood idea.  People will certainly question it because it is not natural, but spiritual.  I urge you to take your liberty to visit and interact with other churches in Monessen and the surrounding area.  I see the value of the Lord’s wisdom in this, but I will fail at this attempting it by myself. But, we all, collectively, can make many more visits to sister congregations than any one person can, and the collective effect of that will be powerful.  Every one of us has time to sneak in a visit at our sister church’s fundraiser dinner, church service, basketball tournament, prayer walk, bible study or the like. God is well able to add many people.  We so know that Jesus is building His church the right way:  

Matthew 16:18 ..upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it. NLT

Maybe this is our chance to be a part of His masterpiece!