[Audio of this message may be heard here.  The manuscript is below.  Note that the sermon was not preached from the manuscript, so there may be slight differences between the two.]

“Just Once Before I Die”

Introduction

Acts 2:42-43
42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.

About a year ago, I met and began a friendship with a pastor here in Georgia who I’ve come to respect greatly.  He’s in his 60’s and would have to be considered “successful” by any standard.  He’s faithfully pastored his church for a number of years, and it’s grown to a strong size.  He has a good repoire with the people in his church, a good reputation, and is the kind of pastor that most younger guys would like to become in time.

Last year he was talking to me about the church he pastors, and he made a statement I’ll never forget.  This is what he said:  “You know, just once before I die I want to pastor a New Testament church.”

He went on to explain that he did not want to reach the end of his years as a pastor, or the end of his life, and have achieved all of the benchmarks of “success” while missing the most important benchmark of all:  leading his church to be faithful to God’s plan for the body of Christ.

I think what he was saying was that faithfulness is more important than success and that obedience is more important than having “arrived.”

I’ve chewed on his words for over a year now.  They’ve stayed with me.  They’ve almost haunted me.

“Just once before I die I want to pastor a New Testament church.”

That resonates with me.  When Luke writes in verse 43 of our text that "awe came upon every soul," I think, "Yes!  That's what I want!"  I want it for me and I want it for you.  I do not take "awe" here to mean giddiness or the absence of troubles or an escape from the burdens of life.  On the contrary, I take it to mean that the presence of Jesus Christ and the power of His gospel brought "awe" upon His people because Jesus is awe-some.  I ask you:  who doesn't want that?

It resonates with my own heartbeat and my own desires, yet it collides with a disturbing but true reality that I’ve come to see as the greatest threat to pastoral ministry today:  it’s possible to be a successful pastor without being an obedient pastor.  It’s possible to achieve success without faithfulness to God or to His vision for the church.

I heard Francis Chan speak about this a few weeks ago.  He's a young pastor in Simi Valley, CA.  He was talking about how his church really took off and grew and became big and everybody was excited and he had "arrived" and all of these things, but he knew deep down that when he read the book of Acts he was reading about something qualitatively different from his church that everybody was bragging about.  In fact, he says his greatest moment of crisis came when he realized and told his wife that if Jesus had a church in Simi Valley, his (Chan's) church would likely be bigger than Jesus'.  He wasn't being arrogant in saying that, he was just highlighting the fact that it's possible to have a successful church and impress all the Christians and not be Jesus' church.

Now, we don't have thousands of people, but I'm convinced that that sad reality happens at every place on the growth scale.  If we're not careful, we can be successful but not be New Testament.  Even worse - and here, I would argue, is our great danger - we can become comfortable with our little successes and not be New Testament.

Friends, I don’t want to do that and I don't want to be that.  I want to pastor a New Testament church.  But that’s a surprisingly difficult thing to say.  I mean, you’d think that would be an easy thing to say, but it’s not.  It’s a hard thing to say and it’s an even harder thing to work for.  Why?  Because moving towards a New Testament model of church will necessarily mean moving away from a number of false models of church that we’ve embraced for so long that they are now assumed to be biblical.

Let me put it to you another way.  Let me quote the words of Soren Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher and Christian who saw this same problem in the state church of Denmark so many years ago.  Listen closely to this:

"What we have before us is not Christianity but a prodigious illusion, and the people are not pagans but live in the blissful conceit that they are Christians.  So if in this situation Christianity is to be introduced, first of all the illusion must be disposed of.  But since this...illusion is to the effect that they are Christians, it looks indeed as if introducing Christianity were taking Christianity away from men.  Nevertheless this is the first thing to do, the illusion must go."1

In other words, trying to embrace a New Testament church model is difficult because many who profess to be Christians will not like it.  Amazingly, many will appeal to their own assumptions and traditions in combating a New Testament direction without realizing that many of our sacred cows are really pagan cows.  This will mean, practically speaking, that the most difficult people to convince of the need for a New Testament church model…may just be the church.

Hurdles To New Testament Actualization at FBC Dawson

As I see it, we will face 6 major hurdles towards becoming a New Testament church:

Hurdle #1 - A Disintegrating Concept of “Membership”

Let me show you something that may surprise you.  I want to show you how many people are on our church roll and how many people actually attend our church:

Now here is where our traditional notions of what is acceptable in church conflict with a New Testament model.  Whether the New Testament church had a formal membership roll or not (and I think there are clues that they did), what this sad graph depicts certainly would not have been acceptable to apostolic churches. I want to acknowledge that a certain number of these on our roll simply cannot attend.  They are unable to because of health or infirmity.  And there are other exceptional cases:  church members in the military, members on extended business assignments, etc.  There are legitimate exceptions, and I certainly do not want members who cannot attend to feel in any way ashamed.  You are with us in spirit, and we know that.  But even given these legitimate exceptions, this graph depicts a level of non-association and non-commitment on the parts of over half of those who have stood before this church and committed themselves to walking together with this particular congregation.

The sad thing is that we are typical of Baptist churches today.  Please understand:  we are not typical of what Baptist churches used to be.  Our great-grandparents would be horrified if they could speak to us today.  Specifically, the brave men and women who founded this church in 1849 would be aghast if they could speak to us today about our church roll and what it reveals about our approach to "membership" and to "church."

The point isn't just that our church roll is very far from reality.  The point is the deeper and more troubling truth of what this graph says about the way we've come to view church, our commitment to Christ, and our involvement in the local congregation which is the primary form of "church" that we find in the New Testament. 

Hurdle #2 - The Adoption of Churchless Christianity

There is a popular idea among Christians and non-Christians alike that our relationship with Jesus is primarily a private, individualized, and isolated relationship.  It is true that you must be saved, that you must come to Christ yourself and receive eternal life.  But as we will see, the New Testament knows nothing at all of a churchless Christianity.  To be saved by Christ is to be saved into His body, into a fellowship of believers.  To be a Christian is to be, by definition, the Church.

Hurdle #3 - The Adoption of Consumer Christianity

Perhaps no foreign philosophy and worldview has so permeated the church or wreaked such havoc in the church as American consumerism.  We have been trained by our culture to view ourselves as consumers and almost everything else as a commodity.  So we judge everything – including Jesus and His bride – in terms of how it pleases us and whether or not it is a product that we would like to place "on our shelves," as it were.  As we will see, though, consumerism is the very antithesis of New Testament Christianity.

Hurdle #4 – Idolatry

Mark it down:  in the absence of a high view of Christ and His Church, we will turn to other gods and other means of community. (i.e., Materialism, Athletics, Self)  We are now seeing countless people who claim to know and love Jesus have such a small and disintegrated view of church that they have literally substituted alternative forms of community in place of the church.  It is not that these other forms of community and fellowship are all bad.  Some are not.  But none of them should replace the body of Christ as that area where our character is formed, where our primary relationships are built, and where we are sharpened to be more like Christ.

Hurdle #5 – (Blind) Historical Drift

Finally, I fear that we have forgotten the reality of historical drift.  It is this:  every entity will inevitably drift in time away from the original reason for its existence and the original passion that drove the first members of it.  This is true of all entities, and it is especially true of the church.  After 160 years of existence, is it not time for us to ask ourselves whether or not we have drifted from our original vision as the people of God here at First Baptist Dawson?  Should we not go about the hard work of naming where we’ve drifted and of striving to return to a New Testament vision of the church?  Indeed, we should.

Dallas Willard has offered the following three pieces of advice on how to stop historical drift and decline:

The first thing is to heartily acknowledge the practical inevitability of the loss of vision…Second, we must identify, understand, and adhere to the founding vision, Third steps must be taken to live in the central content of the vision.3

Did you hear that?  We must "identify" the vision, then "live in the central content of the vision."  I agree with that, and that is something of what I'm wanting us to do over the next 12 weeks:  identify the vision then commit to living in its central content.

Hurdle #6 - Me

But there’s a bigger difficulty still in trying to embrace a New Testament vision and model for the church, and it's this:  me. 

I don’t really want it.

I don’t. 

I know that may surprise you.  Maybe it won’t.  But deep down I fear and do not want a New Testament model for the church.

Why?  Because a New Testament model for the church will mean, as Paul says, that I am to consider you as more important than myself.  It will mean, as Jesus, says, that I am to carry my cross for you, love you, forgive you, be patient for you, and be willing to die for you.

You see, our current model of doing church – and this is the model that dominates the religious climate in North America today – does not demand of me any real commitment to you, any real love for you, and real relationships or community with you.

In our current way of doing church, we can all pretty much fake it.  We can pretend we have real community here.  We can pretend we have love for one another.  We can pretend that we are Christ-centered. 

But a New Testament model of the church calls for a radical, other-worldly, Christ-imitating kind of love that will demand more from all of us than we currently give. 

Don’t get me wrong:  I think I love all of you as your pastor.  I love this church.  But do I really want to carry a cross for you?  Do I really want to become an undershepherd for you?  Do I really want to “feed the sheep” and preach the gospel and model the life of Christ before you?

That demands so much of me that I’m really having to think about it.

And how about you?  Do you want this?  Do you want to be that for one another?  Do you really want to start down a road that will end with you and I committing to love one another so much that we’d die for one another? 

Is it not possible that our alternative, comfortable, cultural models of church are designed by you and by me to keep us from the kind of life-altering model of church that we find in the New Testament?  Is it not possible that the church as we have made it is designed to keep us from the church as God intends it?

It’s easy to see why the church today shrinks back from the church of the New Testament, from the church of Christ.  I take it for granted that trying to right the ship, trying to move back towards New Testament faithfulness is going to be difficult and it may even be costly.

But here’s the deal:  I’ve reached the point where my fear of offending the holiness of God has overcome my fear of violating cultural models of church, no matter how popular they might be and no matter how widely and how long they might have been accepted as “just the way things are.”

Please understand:  I am under no delusions that church has ever been or will ever be heaven on earth, utopia, or any kind of perfect community.  It wasn’t in the New Testament and it isn’t today.  Until Christ presents us without spot, wrinkle, or blemish, we as a people will struggle with our sins, our imperfections, our weaknesses, our short-sightedness, and our failures.  The church at its best will require patience, love, understanding, and grace.  I will need these things from you, and you from me, and all of us from one another.

But the fact that we cannot become now what will only eventually be cannot keep us from trying to actualize what we have been called to be.  We will never be found perfect on this side of Heaven, but we must be found obedient.  We will never be able to say, “We’ve arrived!”, but we must be able to say that we are striving.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, we must work towards becoming a New Testament church.

These hurdles will be difficult to overcome, I grant you.  But let me also offer you 4 predictions that are driving this series.  These predictions are so dire and so frightening that they make they make me want to overcome these hurdles.  The predictions are secondary to the fact that the holiness of God calls for our obedience to Him, but they nonetheless take their place as warning signs that are calling us back to vigilance.

4 Predictions Driving This Series

Prediction #1

If we do not return to a biblical, meaningful concept of “church,” our children will have little motivation to love the body of Christ or her Lord and we will lose our children and grandchildren.

Prediction #2

If we do not return to a biblical and meaningful concept of “membership” we will eventually abandon the concept of “membership” altogether and, with it, one of our primary means of community, accountability, and encouragement.

Prediction #3

If we do not name the false gods that our members are currently pursuing, their addictions will become their childrens’ assumptions.

Prediction #4

If we do not return to the primacy of Jesus Christ, the gospel, and a biblical concept of “church,” we will collapse under the onslaught of aggressive atheism, evangelistic secularism, and/or radical Islam.

For these and a whole host of other reasons, then, it is imperative that we strive for New Testament enactment here at First Baptist Church.  But that raises a question. 

A Question and an Answer

If we were to become a New Testament Church, what would we look like?

Let me offer the following as an answer:

An authentic community around the whole gospel for the glory of God.

This definition of New Testament Christianity will become the outline of this sermon series.  Over the next 12 weeks, we are going to break down these three components:  (1) An authentic community, (2) around the whole gospel, (3) for the glory of God.

Let me give you a quick overview of where we’re heading and let me show you what I think that looks like.  This will be our basic working model of "an authentic community around the whole gospel for the glory of God."

I believe this model is biblical, is God-honoring, and will serve as a useful working tool as we discuss New Testament actualization at First Baptist Dawson. I also want to point out this this model is thoroughly Trinitarian.

It sees the church as for the Father, through the Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

Authentic Community

As we will see, "Authentic Community" was accurately described by our forefathers as "Regenerate Church Membership."  By "Regenerate" they meant, "born again."  By "Church" they meant "a local congregation."  By "Membership" they meant a covenanted and committed body of believers.

Our forefathers talked incessantly about the need for a regenerate church membership.  They did so because they saw it as the New Testament model of the church.  I agree, and I hope to call us back to this model here at First Baptist Dawson.

Whole Gospel

It is a community around the whole gospel.  Not a part of the gospel.  Not those portions of the gospel we prefer.  And not an alternative gospel, be it an American gospel or any other gospel.  The church is a community around the whole gospel.

And by the "whole gospel" we are talking about two things:  the content of the gospel and the implications of the gospel.

The content of the gospel is the "deposit of faith," is the essence of the gospel, our confession and our very life.  And the gospel works itself out in the body of Christ with profound and life-changing implications, primarily worship and evangelism.

Here is where we often make a mistake:  we oftentimes want to put evangelism at the center of the church.  That is a mistake.  When you center on evangelism, you will inevitably dissolve into mere philanthropy, but when you center on the gospel, worship and evangelism bloom and flower in and through God's people.  The gospel must be our center.

In other words, when Paul speaks of the "power" of the gospel in Romans 1:16, he's speaking of that power that makes us a family and gives us fellowship.  This is the power that draws us in.

But he is also speaking of the power that works through us through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, incarnating itself in our witness and in our mission.

For The Glory of God 

And finally we will see that all of these components, from the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord, to the various facets that comprise the body of Christ and her mission are ultimately offerings to and for the glory of God.

The glory of God is the sine qua non of the church, the "without which, nothing."  And when all is said and done, His glory - not our agendas, our assumptions, our preferences, our comfort, our opinions, our goals, our dreams, our visions, or, Heaven forbid, our glory - His glory is our great goal and our lofty ambition.

Oh, God, make it so at First Baptist Church of Dawson.  May we become an authentic community around the whole gospel for the glory of God.

1. Soren Kierkegaard.  Attack Upon Christendom.  (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton Univesity Press, 1968), p.97.

2. Dallas Willard, The Great Omission (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2006), 98-99.