I was prepared to begin a new sermon series this morning that I am very excited about. It will be a study of the Book of Acts, which is the story of the early church. Since we are a young church, I believe that it will have a lot to teach us about what God wants his church to be like.
I said that I was prepared to do that but I am going to wait a week. As a congregation, we have undergone a great deal of change in the past four months. Because of it, some folks have decided to try out other churches in the area. It has been an adjustment for other people. I have heard others asking the question, "Where are we headed as a church?" So, before we start into Acts, and here on the first Sunday of the new year, I think that it is a great Sunday to answer some of those questions and concerns. But we are not going to just talk about us, we always need to consider out situation in the light of God's revelation, and not just in the dim light of our reason and understanding.
Our text this morning comes from the Old Testament. It is found in the third book of the Bible called, Numbers, which comes immediately after Exodus. Earlier in the story, God had sent Moses down to Egypt to lead his people out of slavery. He had brought them out, saving them from the Egyptians. He has giving them the 10 Commandments so that they could learn how to be God's people and to live in relationship with the Holy God. It is now time for them to enter into the land that God has prepared for them, which we know as Israel, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, which was called Canaan. The beginning of chapter has God giving instructions as to what they are to do?
The Lord said to Moses, "Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites."
We pick up the story in verse 17, after it names the men who were chosen.
17 Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, and said to them, "Go up there into the Negeb, and go up into the hill country, 18 and see what the land is like, and whether the people who live in it are strong or weak, whether they are few or many, 19 and whether the land they live in is good or bad, and whether the towns that they live in are unwalled or fortified, 20 and whether the land is rich or poor, and whether there are trees in it or not. Be bold, and bring some of the fruit of the land." Now it was the season of the first ripe grapes.21 So they went up and spied out the land from the wilderness of Zin to Rehob, near Lebo-hamath. 22 They went up into the Negeb, and came to Hebron; and Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the Anakites, were there. (Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.) 23 And they came to the Wadi Eshcol, and cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them. They also brought some pomegranates and figs. 24 That place was called the Wadi Eshcol, because of the cluster that the Israelites cut down from there. 25 At the end of forty days they returned from spying out the land.26 And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the Israelites in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land. 27 And they told him, "We came to the land to which you sent us; it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. 28 Yet the people who live in the land are strong, and the towns are fortified and very large; and besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. 29 The Amalekites live in the land of the Negeb; the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live by the sea, and along the Jordan." 30 But Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, "Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it." 31 Then the men who had gone up with him said, "We are not able to go up against this people, for they are stronger than we." 32 So they brought to the Israelites an unfavorable report of the land that they had spied out, saying, "The land that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are of great size. 33 There we saw the Nephilim (the Anakites come from the Nephilim); and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them." (NRSV)
These 12 spies go into the land. They are charge with surveying the whole land. They are to bring back a report about the people, the cities, the productivity of the land. They find a land of plenty. It is described as a land flowing with milk and honey. They pick a single cluster of grapes and it takes two men just to carry it! This is a land where it is easy to grow produce. But there is even food to be harvest from the wild, like the figs and pomegranates. But this wasn't all that they found.
The men there seem much larger than themselves. They look strong. Moreover, it is not just the men who are strong. The cities are strong as well. These aren't nomads. These are people that live behind defensive walls. There was no way that they were going to just hand over the land.
What do you think there assessment was? For two of the men, Joshua and Caleb, they said, "Let's go. We can do this. God is calling us." But for the other 10 they were awed by the inhabitants, by the obstacles, and they wanted no part of it. And their fear gets the best of them. They conclude by saying that they seemed like grasshoppers compared to some of the inhabitants. And they were sure that this is how they seem to them as well.
There are so many similarities in this text to our situation, even if it might not seem so at first. Five years ago there we folks who lived in Clayton and folks up at presbytery, who prayed and felt God's leading to form a church in Clayton. One of the reasons for this is that it has been shown that the best way to reach people who have no use for church is not to invite them to an established church, but to start a new one that is responsive to them. Many of those who gathered to start this new church "came out" from other churches. They formed a new group. They called me to be a the first full-time pastor. Our task, then, was the same as the Israelites -- to spy out the land. We needed to see what kind of people live here.
See, it used to be the case that you didn't need to do that if you were starting a new church in one of the mainline denominations. You would just go to the new place, hammer your sign in the ground that reads, "First Presbyterian Church," and people would come. But this doesn't work anymore for two reasons.
First, there is no denominational loyalty any more. It used to be the case that if you were presbyterian or lutheran, and you moved to a new town, you would go to the same kind of church that you just left. The current state of denominational loyalty is that you might try the lutheran or presbyterian church first, but if it doesn't suit you, there is not hesitation in moving on to something else. The identity and culture of a church no longer resides primarily in the denomination, but in the local congregation. People are looking for a congregation, not a denomination.
The second reason why just trying to start a generic, standard presbyterian church doesn't work any more is that there is no consensus on what that is, even among presbyterians. That proved to be the case in this church. Some folks who were driving from here to First Presbyterian Church in Raleigh said, "A new presbyterian church in Clayton? Great! Now we can have 'First Pres., Raleigh,' with all of the organ and hymns right here close to home." Others said, "A new presbyterian church in Clayton? Great. We don't have to sing the hymns and have the organ like they did in our old stuffy church. We can have new music." There is no consensus any more.
Therefore, one of the first tasks of a new church is to establish its identity -- who is it going to be. This can be difficult, particularly when it comes to music. I read of a church in New York City that split over the issue of music. The question which drove them apart was, Would they play the old music they some people loved or would they play the new music that connected to the folks who rarely darkened the door of a church? The surprising thing about the story is that it occurred in 1750! The issue for them was whether they would sing just Psalms that were set to music, or they were to sing these new songs called "hymns," which seemed to reach people outside of the church. Did you get that? It was the hymns which were the "contemporary" music! The reason why folks wanted to sing them is that it connected with outsiders. All of this speaks to the incredible power of music.
In this church, from the very beginning we had advocates for different kinds of music. For a while we tried to make everyone happy. We had two different kinds of services in trying to please everyone. It didn't work. Some large churches can do this, but we were just too small. We didn't have the resources and it was preventing us from finding out who God was calling us to be and, more particularly, who God wanted us to reach for him and for his kingdom.
Therefore, what we needed to do as a new church was to spy out the land. Like the Israelites, we found plenty. We found new people moving in by the droves. We found people who had left good churches behind that were looking for a church. We found people who were not involved in churches in the last place that they lived, but might be open to it as they tried to make connections in this new place.
We needed to look around at who was moving into Clayton and what they were like. We needed to survey the landscape and figure out what kind of music would speak to people out there. One of the things that we had to consider was that the traditional mainline church are all in steep membership decline. They are living off of their past successes, and they are failing to reach new people. If we just tried to do the "same old thing" we could expect to reach less and less people. Regardless of the tradition, all of the trends seem to suggest that music will be more with guitars and percussion and less with organs and hymns. The churches that are growing sing with music that is more in keeping with what people listen to during the week.
This is why we hired Jesse to come and lead us in worship. We didn't just want to look locally. We wanted to cast the net as wide as we could and get the best possible candidate. That is why we made the position full-time. Not a great salary, but full-time nonetheless. Fortunately, God called Jesse to us. We are grateful for his skills, his beautiful voice, his deep faith, and his desire to see this church grow. We are doubly thankful for the songs that he writes that leads us to God.
In all of our decisions we need to keep one eye on what is going to help us grow spiritually, and the other eye on the people "out there," what is going to help us reach new people.
In our text the Israelites found a land of plenty. There were such an amazing resources. They found grapes and produce more abundant than they ever could imagine. The land that God had for them was beautiful, rich and abundant. But it was also filled with challenges that we larger than they had ever imagined. The inhabitants were huge. They would be fearsome opponents. This prospect was too much for most of them. 10 of the 12 men were terrified. Their fear spread to the rest of the people. They wanted to go back into slavery rather than face these giants. For they rightly accessed that it would be hard and demanding and that they would suffer loss.
How strongly does this speak to our human condition?! We would rather have a life without freedom and without adventure, just so that it can be comfortable. They choose what was familiar, even though it was imprisonment, rather than the uncomfortable and unknown, even though it is full of abundance.
Our situation is not different. God has called us here as his people in this new church. There are huge challenges ahead. Building a congregation is not easy. It demands commitment. It demands sacrifice. It demands that we give of ourselves and of our resources. It also demands that we get used to change. You can't operate with 100 people like you did with 50. If there are 200 people, you are going to loose that sense of familiarity. It is a cost and a sacrifice that we all must be willing to make if we are going to reach people with the grace of God.
What is our response going to be? Are we going to choose to follow God? Are we going to live the life of adventure that comes from living life with God? If we do, we will reap amazing blessings. Or, are we going instead to chose ways of life that make us comfortable. Do we just want to go back to the ways of life that we have known in the past, even if it doesn't flow forth in new life? We must make these choices?
What happens after our story is that the Israelites rebel. They revolt against the plan that God has for them. The challenge is too great and the cost is too high. The consequence is that they don't get to take possession of the Promised Land immediately. They will still get it. God is going to fulfill the promises that he made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but not yet. First, the people are going to wonder in the wilderness for forty years, only after that will they get to go into this land of milk and honey.
This looks to be a punishment for their lack of faith, but there is another way to look at it. I see it as a time of training. They are not ready to live in the land. First, they need to learn how to follow God. They need to learn to walk with faithfulness. They need to learn how to trust. For, God was going to eventually conquer their enemies, but they had to trust him to do it. They needed the time of wandering and following to learn what it is to live by faith. For, the comfort of the land would have kept them from learning to trust God. Eventually, that is exactly what happened. The comfort of the land caused them to depend upon themselves. It caused them to look to other nations to protect them. It caused them to look to other, false gods, for blessing.
This scenario recurs again and again in churches all over this country. There are churches where they are more concerned with the upkeep of their building than they are with the circumstances of the people that live around it. There are pipe organs that have better heating and cooling than the people living nearby. For every church there temptation is always there to be more concerned about the preferences of the people within the church than those who have yet to be invited in.
I mention all of this because there have been many questions about land and a building for us. We have looked for the right piece of land and we plan to have a building. But land and a building is not the vision of the church. I want to be emphatic about that as I can. Land and a building are not the vision of the church. They are merely tools. They are a means to an end. The mission of the church is always people. On these banners we express our mission -- to connect people to the God who loves them and died for them; to connect them with other people so that they can grow in their faith; to make an impact on our community and our neighbors for the common good. The mission is always about the people. We need buildings. We need sound systems. We need chairs. We need rooms for kids. We need nurseries. We need parking. But all of these things are not the goal. They just help us to meet our goal of reaching people. They help us to fulfill our mission of helping people find the hope of the gospel.
I have confessed an occasional interest in woodworking. There are woodworkers who just love tools. They collect them, build them, and refurbish them. In fact, they love tools so much that they never get around to making anything with them. This is to lose sight of the fact that a tool is a means to an end. We need to keep our eye on the end and the goal.
I believe that if God had given us land two years ago, we would not have been ready. It was have derailed us and caused us to lose sight of what is really important.
Trust me. I look forward to having a building of our own as much as anyone. Each Sunday as Jesse, Stephen and I set up the chairs, I think about a building of our own. And I believe that it will come. In the meantime, however, I want to let God work in me, and in us, to make us faithful followers of him. I want to be pliable and responsive to him, so that whatever direction he leads, we can follow. We can trust him to meet our needs and provide for us no matter how big the challenge. Then at the end we can say, "Look what the Lord did among us." There will be no doubt that God himself did it, because the obstacles were too great for us to overcome in our own strength. And our faith will be strengthened through it all.
And finally, when the time is right, God will lead us into our promised land. When he does, we will be the right kind of people.