Readers of past posts may recognize sermons in this series. To anyone who may be disappointed to see a "rerun," I apologize. I dare say, however, that for a preacher, revisiting familiar sermonic ground is as delightful an experience as a walk in a familiar wood or a stroll on a favorite beach. (Click on the pic to visit the church's website.)October 16, 2011
Genesis 12:1-3; Luke 10:1-11,16-20
There are all kinds of churches in the landscape of American Christianity. There are large churches and small churches. There are country churches and city churches. There are old churches and new churches. There are high-church “smells-and-bells” churches, and there are low-church “meet-and-greet” churches. All kinds of churches.
Years ago, my friend and my former boss at Furman University, A.V. Huff, Jr., a South Carolina historian by trade and a Methodist minister by calling told me the story of a Furman student who came to him for counsel. The student felt called to the ministry, but he also felt confused about what kind of church he was being called to. He told A.V. that he was wrestling with whether to remain Methodist, as he had grown up, or to become Episcopalian, as he had been introduced to by friends and a favorite professor while at Furman. The young man had done his homework, and he laid out for A.V. the argument that he was having with himself over Methodist and Episcopalian theology and ecclesiology and which was better.
When he finished his lengthy monologue on the merits of being Methodist and the merits of being Episcopalian, he finally asked A.V., “How do you decide which way to go on a question as important as this one is?” To which A.V. responded, “It’s very simple, actually. You need to decide whether you want to spend the rest of your life going to pot-luck suppers or going to cocktail parties.” There are pot-luck-supper churches and there are cocktail-party churches. There are all kinds of churches in the landscape of American Christianity.
Not so long ago, it was enough to identify churches by their middle name: First Baptist Church, First Presbyterian Church, St. Andrews United Methodist Church, Holy Trinity Catholic Church, and so on. These days, there are still “middle-name churches,” churches for whom their identity is primarily defined by their denominational brand. The most important thing to those churches is that they are Lutheran, or they are Episcopalian or they are Baptist. It used to be that knowing a church’s middle name was enough to know what kind of church it was. But times have changed.
The landscape of American Christianity has shifted dramatically over the last 40 years, and among the most dramatic shifts is a decrease in the importance of middle names when people are looking at a church. These days, people choose a church less for its form and more for its function. People are looking less at middle names and more at missions. If we look at functions instead of forms, if we look at missions instead of middle names, we could say that along with “middle-name churches,” there are four other types of churches these days.
In addition to the middle-name church, there is the “member church.” The primary function of a “member church” is the care and feeding of the people who have signed up to be members. You can always tell a member church by the way the people in it introduce themselves. “Hi, I’m Bob. I’ve been a member here 42 years.” “My name is Alice. I’ve been a member here 11 years.” People in member churches don’t identify themselves by the ministries and the missions they are engaged in through their church. They don’t introduce themselves by saying things such as, “I sing in the choir” [on the praise team], or “I teach children’s Sunday School,” or “I work in the soup kitchen,” or “I volunteer at the FLC.” The most important thing in a member church is how long it’s been since you signed up for the care and feeding of the member church.
Middle-name churches and member churches have been around for a long time. A third type of church was introduced to the American religious landscape about 40 years ago. It’s called a “seeker church.” The seeker church was originally developed in the 1970s as an evangelistic tool to reach a particular group of people whom observers of American religious life call “seekers.” “Seekers” are people who are seeking spiritual fulfillment but who haven’t found it in middle-name churches or member churches. Seeker churches were designed to attract people with no previous experience in the great and lasting traditions of the Christian faith. Seeker churches were created to provide an “entry-level” Christianity that contemporary unbelievers could understand and be comfortable with. A seeker church is not designed for people who have already found Christ and profess the Christian faith but to attract unbelievers who are still searching. The seeker church.
A fourth type of church is the “disciple church.” Disciple churches are designed primarily to teach and equip—or “disciple”—people who have already found Christ. Disciple churches focus on turning people who have professed the Christian faith into people who understand and live by the Christian faith that they have professed. The worship of disciple churches is designed to nurture believers in traditions that are centuries old, to turn believers into followers of Jesus. Disciple churches are essentially “program” churches. They offer “programs” in Christian Education and Spiritual Formation and Faith Development, Bible studies and book studies and denominational studies and all manner of things to help people who have professed faith to understand their faith and live by their faith. The disciple church.
There is a fifth type of church in the American landscape that I’m going to call the “sending church.” The biblical mandate for the “sending church” is found, among other places, in the mission of the seventy in the tenth chapter of the gospel according to Luke. If you look at the beginning of Luke 10, what you see first are verbs of sending and going. Verse 1 tells us that Jesus “sent them,” apesteilen in Greek. The English word “apostle,” which means “one who is sent” on a mission on behalf of someone else, comes from the same root word as the verb apesteilen, Jesus sent them. In verse 2, Jesus says to the 70, “ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers,” “send out,” ekbale in Greek. Ekbale means to “throw,” “to cast,” to sling ’em out there. Then in verse 3, Jesus says, “Go on!” “Go!” “Scram!” And then he says, “I am sending you,” apostello. It’s the “apostle”-word again, one who is sent on a mission on behalf of someone else. Four times in three verses: “send,” “throw,” “go,” “send.” It doesn’t look as though Jesus is trying to draw a crowd or maintain a crowd; it looks as though Jesus is in the business of sending a crowd.
In fact, sending looks to be the business of God from the book of Genesis on. In Genesis 12:1, the call of Abraham, “the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go!’” “‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.’” God whom we worship and serve has always been a sending God. Do you remember last Sunday’s OT lesson from Isaiah 6:1-8, our model for the drama of worship, in which God asks, “Whom shall I send? And who will go?” Those of you who were in the Bible study on the book of Exodus last Wednesday evening will remember God saying to Moses at the burning bush, “I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:10). God whom we worship and serve has always been a sending God.
So it stands to reason that if First Baptist Orangeburg is in the business, as it were, of “building a community that glorifies God and reflects Jesus Christ,” as the mission statement of this congregation says, then we, too, must be in the business of sending. Not just middle-naming. Not just membering. Not just seeking. Not just discipling. But sending also.
I want us to look this morning at the “mission of the seventy” in Luke 10 as a biblical mandate for a sending church. The first thing to see about this biblical mandate is that a sending church has a global vision of its mission. Why are there “70”? Why not 64? Why not 36? Why not 120? Why 70? Over the centuries of Christian interpretation of the gospel of Luke, there have been a variety of proposals to explain the number 70. Here’s the one I think fits Luke’s gospel best. Way back in Genesis 10 after the great flood, we read that the descendants of Noah spread abroad “in their lands, with their own language, by their families, in their nations” (Genesis 10:5,20,31). “These are the families of Noah’s sons,” says Genesis 10:32, “according to their genealogies, in their nations; and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood.” And guess how many families there are in Genesis 10? That’s right: 70. The number 70 in Luke 10 points back to all the families of the earth in Genesis 10.
Now look at what the Lord says to Abram in Genesis 12:3 when God calls and sends Abram: “In you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Abraham is sent to bless and to be a blessing to “all the families of the earth.” Now look at what Jesus tells the seventy that they are to do first when they go out. “Whatever house you enter,” Jesus says, “first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’” Speak shalom to it, Jesus says (Luke 10:5). Before you know anything about the household, good, bad, or indifferent, says Jesus, pronounce a blessing upon it: “The peace of God be to this house!” Just like the mission of Abraham who was to be a blessing to all the families of the earth, the mission of the followers of Jesus is to pronounce a blessing on every household to which they come: “The peace of God be with you.” The sending of the seventy, like the sending Abraham, is a global vision of blessing to all the families of the earth. That’s the global vision of a sending church that is mandated in Luke 10.
The second thing to see about this biblical mandate is that a sending church has a holistic vision of the gospel. A holistic vision. In verse 9, Jesus instructs the seventy to do two things: cure the sick and proclaim the gospel. Jesus says, “cure the sick who are there” and then Jesus says, say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” Jesus tells his followers to meet both the physical needs—cure the sick—and meet the spiritual needs—proclaim the good news—both of them. Not just one of them. Both of them. That’s the great both/and of Jesus. The sending church both proclaims the gospel and feeds the hungry, gives a drink to thirsty, clothes the naked, welcomes the stranger, cares for sick, and visits the imprisoned (Matthew 25:31-46). The great both/and of Jesus, is the holistic vision of the sending church mandated in Luke 10.
This morning while the offering was being collected, we saw a video that highlights the missions efforts of this church. It highlighted ways in which this congregation responds to Jesus’ mandate in Luke 10 to meet the physical and spiritual needs of people outside these four walls. That’s missions. The root meaning of our English word “mission” is “to send.” Instead of coming from the Greek verb apostello as in apostle, it comes from the Latin verb mittere, “to send,” and the Latin noun missio, “the act of sending”; and it’s exactly the word that is used in the Vulgate, the great Latin translation of Luke 10: “I am sending you.” “I am giving you a mission,” Jesus says. If Luke 10 is any indication, being sent—missions—is at the heart of the church. Show me a church without a heart for missions, and I’ll show you a church on life support. Show me a church without a heartbeat for missions, and I’ll show you a church without a pulse.
There’s nothing wrong with being proud our middle name, and there is every good reason to teach and to learn and to cultivate in the world this congregation’s great old General Baptist understanding of the gospel that is grounded in John 3:16, that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever [whosoever, mind you!] believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Our middle name says, “whosoever will,” and that’s a part of our mission. Taking good care of the members of this congregation is a good thing. We come together to be “mutually encouraged by each other’s faith,” as Paul says in Romans 1:12, and to “encourage one another and build up each other,” as he says in 1 Thessalonians 5:11. Care for our members is a part of our mission. Certain parts of this congregation’s worship and its ministry are specifically designed to communicate to seekers—unbelievers—and engage them in the gospel of Jesus Christ in ways they can understand and connect to. That’s a good thing. It’s part of our mission. Various programs of this church are designed to disciple: to teach, to equip, and to empower believers to understand and live the faith that we profess. That’s a part of our mission.
But Luke 10 reminds us on this morning of missions emphasis that following Jesus means not just gathering here and drawing people in but being sent out into the world to share the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ by addressing both physical and spiritual needs of people to whom God sends us. Jesus said, “I am sending you out.” “Go!” “Go on!” “Scram!” “Get out there!”
Copyrighted © 2011 by Jeffrey S. Rogers. It may be copied or disseminated for non-commercial use, provided this notice is included. The author can be contacted at jeffrogers110@bellsouth.net.
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