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"What We're About" Acts 2:42-47
by The Rev. Clancy Nixon
February 19, 2006
Church of the Holy Spirit, Anglican
I don't know about you, but I am ready to celebrate. We've changed our church
affiliation. We've left our captivity in Egypt; we're through with wandering in the desert
and complaining; and we are ready to enter into the Promised Land. Amen? Let's give
God a clap offering of thanksgiving for bringing us this far by faith.
Two weeks ago, at our last meeting, I spoke from Joshua 1 about how our
congregation is like the Israelites at the Jordan, about to cross over. We are entering the
Promised Land. Before we march, we need to review our marching orders. Today we
kick off our new campaign it's called "On this Rock Building Faith." It's for the
future of our church. This campaign is more about building our faith than it is about
raising money. Jesus is the rock of our salvation. Our identity, our salvation does not
come from a building; it doesn't come from a denominational affiliation; it does not come
from how much money we raise. Our identity is in Christ. We no longer have the old
money of the Episcopal Church there to back us up if we falter. Our faith, our trust, our
hope is in Jesus Christ. Anything we build, we build on Him. Thank God, we don't
actually do the building, anyway, we just join God in what He is doing. In Matthew
16:18, Simon Peter has just confessed that Jesus is the Messiah, and this is what Jesus
says to him: "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of
Hades will not stand against it." Jesus is the one who builds His church. And he builds it
on Peter's confession of faith, not on Peter himself. I'll unpack this more for you in
coming weeks, but for now, notice this: Jesus builds the church, not us; the church is
people, not a building; and the church is not in some defensive posture of being protected
from the world or the devil. The church is on the march of conquest, shaking the very
gates of hell, which Jesus tells us will fall when the trumpet blows. We march by faith.
Before we can talk about money and stewardship, we need to get our mission straight.
Let's say our Mission Statement from memory. Ready? "We love Jesus. We love
our neighbors. We make disciples who make disciples. We plant churches that plant
churches." Most of you know that our mission statement is a paraphrase of The Great
Commandments and The Great Commission. The Great Commandments are found at
Matthew 22:37. Jesus said the greatest commandments were these: "You shall love the
Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. The second
is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." The first part of our mission
statement paraphrases the Great Commandments. The second part of our mission
statement comes from the Great Commission, which is found at Matthew 28:19-21,
where Jesus tells his followers to make disciples of every ethnic group. What does that
mean, to make disciples? Jesus tells us: teaching them to obey everything I have
commanded you. These words of Jesus are at the core of His call to the church. Love
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God, love your neighbors, win converts of every race, and teach them to obey me. That
is why we are here. Those are our marching orders.
Last week a man came into my office to learn more about God and our church.
His name is Ron Gravis, and he is Lisa Tobias' father. I found him to be an articulate
man, a sensitive man, professionally accomplished, and Jesus has now turned his life
upside down, or rather, right-side up. His family had been praying for him and loving him
into the kingdom for decades, and he had resisted until a short time ago. Ron did have the
awesome privilege to know God as a Jew under the Old Covenant, but he did not know
Jesus as Savior or Lord. Ron told me that one day about 4 months ago, he decided to try
to pray in the name of Y'shua, the Jewish name for Jesus. And Jesus sovereignly met him
in that moment with an overwhelming sense of His presence which has still not left him.
Jesus turned his life around. From that moment, Ron reports that he has been praying
without ceasing in Jesus' name, that he has a new joy, a new purpose in life. He is
hungry to learn more. He is already planning to go on a mission trip to Chile next month.
Friends, Ron Gravis is a trophy of God's grace. When you are tempted to frustration or
despair because you have been praying for years for a family member who has been
resistant to the gospel, remember Ron. God is restoring a whole family to himself. That is
what God does. I also ask you to think about your own time of coming to faith, and who
did or did not disciple you at that time. Ron is a new believer, and he needs someone to
come alongside him and teach him how to live the gospel way. Ron is a shining example
of why Church of the Holy Spirit is here. Ron, would you please stand so we can give a
clap offering to the Lord for the trophy of grace that you are? [clap] The Great
Commission is about Ron, and millions of others like him.
If you read Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life with us two years ago, you know
that Rick teaches that there are 5 Purposes of the Church. Worship, Fellowship, Service,
Evangelism and Discipleship. These 5 purposes are found in our Mission Statement as
well. When we worship, we're loving God in the most direct way possible. Fellowship
and Service are ways we love our neighbors, both believers and lost ones. Evangelism is
everything we do up to the point a person becomes a believer, and Discipleship is what
we do after initial conversion: teaching and learning how to obey God with every area of
our lives. Evangelism and discipleship are the core of the second half of our Mission
Statement. Five Purposes and a four sentence Mission Statement, Two Scriptures and
one long Vision Statement are too much for some people to get their minds around, so
here is a single phrase for you. I call it our Main Thing.
What is the Main Thing at Church of the Holy Spirit? We are an Acts 2 Church.
Read Acts chapter 2 again this week! We are a Holy Community, like the first Church in
Jerusalem. We are a disciple-making church, because that is what they did in Acts 2
they spent so much time with God and with each other that they put God first, others
second and themselves third, in every area of their lives. We are a church of Pentecost,
believing that the Holy Spirit still empowers us today in the same way that He did on the
first Pentecost. We are a Bible Church, a church that wants to live on the same plan that
the first believers in Jerusalem did in Bible times. We are a sacramental church, baptizing
with joy and celebrating the Lord's Supper regularly. So we're a Three Streams, One
River church: evangelical, charismatic, and sacramental. All that is true because we are
an Acts 2 Church. It's all in Acts 2.
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Acts 2:42-46 says of this first Church in Jerusalem, "They devoted themselves to
the Apostles' teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers.
Everyone was filled with awe, and many signs and wonders were done by the Apostles.
All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions
and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Each day they continued to meet
together...." This word translated devoted themselves is in the present perfect, so it
carries the meaning of continually devoting themselves. This is what they did, day in day
out, moment by moment. Acts 2 is a great picture of the first Spirit-filled, fully devoted
disciples of Christ in community. One way you can measure devotion is by looking at
what they did with their money. The first believers in Jerusalem put God first, and others
second, so that they saw their wealth as resources for God to use, and to help others.
Verse 45: They sold their possessions and gave them to those who had need. They were
radically converted in a beautiful and holy way. Amen? Do you look at your balance
sheet that way?
I suggest to you that this first church in Jerusalem had been radically converted in
three ways. The first conversion is to Christ himself as Lord that happened for them on
the day of Pentecost, when they repented, were saved and were baptized. The second
conversion is to the Church you can see that here in Acts 2, with the daily meetings in
the temple for worship, and sharing meals in their homes with gladness of heart. The
third conversion is to the Mission of the Church. You can see their devotion to mission
by their devotion to the Apostles' teaching and to prayer, by the way that they used their
spiritual gifts to perform signs and wonders, by the natural evangelism that flowed from
everything else that they did, and by their sharing of their possessions with the needy.
That is what we want to be about at Church of the Holy Spirit, too. I never want to play
church; I only want to be the church. If we are going to come into this kind of life, and be
an Acts 2 Church, we need to be fully converted in these three ways. Ask yourself
honestly: Are you converted to Christ? Are you converted to the Church? Are you
converted to the Mission of the Church? Great questions; but how do you know if you
are converted all three ways or not? Look at this picture that Luke paints for us of the
first church in Jerusalem. Does your life look like this? Take heart, church we aspire to
this, and we have a ways to go. Most of us are converted to Christ, but many are not
fully converted to the church and to her mission. Think about your own commitments for
a bit. We'll pray about it later.
At the core of what we do corporately is this: "We make disciples who make
disciples." What is a disciple? A disciple is a fully devoted follower of Christ, one who
desires to please God and who lives a life of joyous obedience to Him. That comes from
the Great Commission. We're not just about making disciples, we are about making
disciples who can multiply themselves. This is from 2 Timothy 2:2 "Those things you
have heard from me...commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others
also." Paul taught Timothy, and now Paul tells Timothy to teach others who will
themselves teach still others. Multiplication in our Mission Statement because our job in
discipling another is not done until our disciple can himself disciple another. The only
way this can happen is for us to spend so much time with our disciples that they receive
the full impartation of the Holy Spirit and the full teaching and training that they need. It
takes a huge commitment of time to make a disciple who makes disciples. It's about our
priorities.
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I want you to understand why I am so passionate about discipleship. I did not
grow up in a Christian home. I came to Christ at age 14 through an Episcopal summer
camp called Calvary Camp in Ohio. The gospel was not preached clearly, and I did not
know what it meant to follow Christ. I wanted to be a Christian, but I did not have a
personal relationship with the Lord Jesus. I had relationships with some Christians in a
seasonal, lukewarm, apostate Christian community. No one I met ever even spoke about
how Jesus was the Lord of their life. As a teenager, I never heard a sermon on obedience,
nor one on holiness, never one on evangelism, nor one on calling. I had no idea how to
defend the faith. All I heard about at camp was God's love. That was a good start, but it
was woefully inadequate when I went to college to keep me away from the temptations of
the world, the flesh and the devil. As a teenager, I had no home church, no youth group,
no mentor, no family members who were believers. No one discipled me. So after four
years of lukewarm commitment, I fell away completely from the faith at age 18 and lived
a secular life until I came back to Christ at age 26. My story is all too common. The
writer Marva Dawn says that in a recent year, almost 3 million people in America and
Europe ceased to be practicing Christians about 7,600 per day. People who are not
discipled easily fall away form the faith.
In my late twenties, I met a man named Ron Soderquist who took the call to make
disciples who make disciples seriously. Ron worked for Campus Crusade for Christ, and
he was discipling a lawyer colleague of mine from Finland whom he met at an embassy
party. My colleague Kimmo invited me to a study a book with Ron called The Master
Plan of Evangelism by still a third Ron, Ronald Coleman. I met with Ron and Kimmo
every week for six years in a small group, as Ron discipled me, and discerned in me a call
to full time ministry. Ron became my mentor, and met alone with me weekly for another
five years. Ron made sure I could multiply myself, and make disciples who make
disciples. I love that man. I owe so much to him.
Discipleship is essential. It's what we are about as a church. As we move through
the On This Rock Campaign, and we talk about money, remember that money is just a
part of discipleship. Discipleship takes time, the kind of time you devote to your children.
If you have never been discipled, you likely have not been converted three ways. Are
you converted to Christ? Are you converted to the Church? Are you converted to the
Mission of the Church?
Let's pray:
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