(As props, we used three wooden boxes, each of which had wording that expressed our core church mission.)

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1 Series: Hope Church Message: Simplify (As props, we used three wooden boxes, each of which had wording that expressed our core church mission.) Are you familiar with the KISS principle? Some of you are thinking: I didn t know it was a principle. I just think it s fun. I m all for this KISS principle. Well, the KISS principle has nothing to do with kissing and nothing to do with a wild-eyed rock band. KISS is an acronym for four words. Some of you know what they are: Keep it Simple Stupid. We ll adopt the kid-friendly adaptation: Keep it Short & Simple. It s a principle used in journalism, photography, engineering, software development, and other disciplines. My question for us today is this: Is KISS a good principle for a church? Is a church bestserved by keeping things a simple as possible? Some people aren t so sure. They are afraid that a church, in trying to keep things simple, will end up diluting some really important truths. It is possible to oversimplify some things, but simplifying is a very important practice. A critical piece of simplifying is to clarify what is most basic. It is clarifying what is core. I see Jesus doing this more than once, and I d like for us to try and do it this morning. I want to start then with this question. Think about it, but don t answer out loud. What is the single most important thing that a church does? If we did one thing and nothing else as a church, what would than one thing be? (Think about that for a moment. Perhaps you want to discuss some options with someone around you.) Jesus was once asked a question that is similar. I think His answer will help us to answer ours. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: "Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" (The Bible, Matthew 22:35-36 NIV) Time out for a second. This is a setup; it s a dangerous question. It s like your wife asking you what quality about her that you love the most. Any answer could be trouble. I d expect Jesus to say, you can t possibly answer such a question, but He doesn t. He answers the question. Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. (The Bible, Matthew 22:37-38 NIV) The most important thing you and I will ever do is to love God. If our church could only do one thing, it would have to be this: Love God with everything we have: With passion, with time, with words, with serving. Love God. This is simple. We have to be a church that loves God. We have to be a church that fosters a love for God. Love God. What does it mean to love God? What does that look like? It means to obey Him, to trust His words and heart. This is love for God, to obey his commands. And his commands are not

2 burdensome. 1 John 5:3 Loving God means to learn about God His heart, His ways, His instructions. It means to honor God to thank Him, to applaud Him. It means to enjoy God walk humbly with Him. BTW, God doesn t ask us to love Him because He is love-deprived or attention-starved. He asks us to love Him because it is the single most beneficial thing we can ever do. Ignoring God is bad for your health. The most important thing we ever do is to love God and encourage others to love Him. Jesus said it is the single greatest command ever; it is core. But Jesus didn t stop there. He added: And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." (The Bible, Matthew 22:39-40 NIV) Jesus: You asked for the greatest command, but I have to tell you the top two, because they are extremely closely related. The second follows naturally on the heels of the first: Love people. Love people. In Jesus estimation, it is virtually impossible to have one without the other. This is an important theme in the Bible. Listen to this Bible instruction from First John: We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother. (The Bible, 1 John 4:19-21 NIV) It is impossible to love God without loving other people. If you are going to obey God, you have to follow the command that is dear to His heart: Love people. This is not feeling love; it is the choice to love. If you choose to love God, there are going to be people you don t like so much. But you can t stay there. You can t say: I m going to love God, but certain people can go to heck, for all I care. If you choose to ignore and mistreat people, you are choosing to ignore and mistreat God. Oh, and you can t pick and choose who you will love. When Jesus was asked what the greatest command was, He said: Love God with all you have and love your neighbor as yourself. So, the guy asks him the logical question, Who is my neighbor? Jesus tells the story of how a hated foreigner assisted a Jew who had been mugged, and then he asked: Who was the neighbor? Jesus calls us to love everyone. We are called to love foreigners. We are called to love our spouse. We are called to love our enemies. And God calls us to love the toughest group of all: other Christians!! Love all people. Loving people is at the very heart of Who God is and who He wants us to be. Listen to some things the Bible says about loving people: This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. (The Bible, 1 John 3:11, NIV) The commandments, "Do not commit adultery," "Do not murder," "Do not steal," "Do not covet," and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule:

3 "Love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (The Bible, Romans 13:9-10 NIV) Don t commit adultery. Don t murder. Don t steal. Do those sound familiar? What are they? Sure, the Ten Commandments. The Bible says: You can sum up much of the Ten Commandments with this: Love people. Listen to this quote from Jesus: "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." (The Bible, John 13:34-35 NIV) The command to love was not new. What was new was this: Love people like I love you. Extend the same grace, respect, forgiveness, and generosity that I have extended to you. Once again, Jesus moves toward simplicity. You know what is the one quality that will mark you off as my follower? Love people like I love them. Love people. If our church only did two things, these would have to be these two things: Love God. Love people. So vital are they that Jesus says this remarkable thing: All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. Do you realize what He is saying? The first half of the Bible, what we call the Old Testament, can be summed up in these two commands: Love God with all you have and love your neighbor as yourself. They are inextricably tied together. O.K. Rog, if the church has to pursue two things at its very core, why do you have three boxes on stage? Well, that s because there is a third thing that is inextricably tied to the first two. We must love God above all else, and loving people is inseparable from loving God. Well, then, there is something that is inextricable to loving people. Let me read another Bible teaching and you see if you can figure out what it is. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. (The Bible, 1 John 3:16-18 NIV) What is inseparably tied to loving people? If you love people, you have to do what? You ve got to act like it. You have got to serve. You cannot possibly love people without serving them. There is no such thing as love without action. You cannot separate love for people from serving people. Love acts. So, then, the third thing that a church must do is: Serve the World. This is, I believe, the core calling of the church: Love God. Love people. Serve the World. They are inseparably tied to each other. Notice God s very words: If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Love God and serve the world are inseparably tied together. You can t say that you love people without acting on their behalf. What does that involve? (Turn box 3 over.) It involves giving to others, providing for needs. It involves helping and assisting in times of need. It involves befriending listening, affirming. Love takes action; love serves. A song from years ago said Love stinks. No way. Love serves, though you could probably

4 say that love that doesn t serve stinks! You can t say that you love God without serving people. That s how loving God acts. Listen to this from the Bible: Serve one another in love. The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself. (The Bible, Galatians 5:13-14 NIV) Serve in love. You cannot love people without serving. And since we are called to love every person, we are called, in essence, to serve the world. There is no one we are not called to serve. And once again, there is this radical language of simplification. At its very core, the message of the Bible itself comes down to Love God. Love people. Serve the world. It makes sense, then, that the mission of our church should be: Love God. Love people. Serve the world. The wording of this is not original to me, but it is striking to me at how biblical and simple and memorable it is. This is the mission statement we wish to adopt for our church. This can help you to answer questions about our church. Someone asks you what Hope Church is all about; you can say: We re here to love God, love people, and serve our world. What matters to you guys? We re passionate about loving God, loving people, and serving the world. What do you hope to accomplish? We want to help others love God, love each other, and serve the world. See how simple that is? But it s also memorable. Watch this. If I turn one part of it around, I bet you can still figure it out. And if I turn all of them around, you can probably still remember the mission. Amazing! Now, then, here is another helpful facet of this mission statement. This doesn t simply describe what our mission is; it also describes how we get there. It doesn t simply describe our purpose; it describes our process in its simplest form. Jesus said that the command (love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind) was the first and greatest command. Not only is it the greatest command; it is the first. Everything begins with loving God. In process, the first thing we want people to do is to love God take Him seriously, honor Him, obey Him, call out to Him. What flows, then, from a love for God is a love for people. We begin to take in just how much God loves us, and it begins to influence how we think about other people. We start viewing and treating people differently. That, in turn, moves us to act on people s behalf. Moved by empathy and compassion, we move and give to meet needs. There is a process: Love God. Love people. Serve the World. As a church, then, how will we try to facilitate this? What are the most basic forms we will use to nurture these three core responses? Simply put, we d like to use three kinds of gatherings. There are three ways in which we want to get people together. Especially important to nurturing a love for God are our weekend services. Every weekend we will offer a large-group gathering where we will encourage people to worship God and seek Him and learn about His heart and ways. In order to spur on a love for people, we will offer smaller groups called Life Groups. These groups are specifically designed to help move our love for God toward a love for people. A third kind of gathering we want to offer could be called serving teams. This is a loose term to describe all of the kinds of organized opportunities we provide for people to turn their love

5 for people into serving. Our nursery staff is a kind of serving team. Going on mission trips to Biloxi or Belize is another kind of serving team. Groups going to Hartford or Philly to feed the homeless is another kind of serving team. Musicians and technicians who support our Sunday worship services comprise another kind of serving team. Another kind of serving happens when we sponsor fun events for our community, and hang out with people, and hear their stories and share ours. Our church picnic, for instance, was a kind of serving gathering. Gatherings are a key way in which we learn to love God, love others, and serve the world. That is part of God s design. Consider this instruction from the Bible: And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (The Bible, Hebrews 10:24-25 NIV) Why was it so important to get together? To spur one another on to love and good deeds. Interestingly, the very first church organized around these three kinds of gatherings. They met as a large group in the temple court area. They met as smaller gatherings in homes. And they got together in teams to serve others like poor widows. These are the three kinds of gatherings that we want to build hope church around. We think that each provides a critical environment that will spur you on to love God. Love people. Serve the World. Our core calling as a church comes down to this: Love God. Love people. Serve the World. So, someone may be thinking: Aren t we supposed to help people become followers of Jesus? Absolutely! It s built right into this mission. We believe the God we are called to love walked our planet as Jesus Christ. At core, a follower of Jesus is someone who loves God, loves people like Jesus did, and serves the world like He did. And how is it that we help people to follow Jesus? We love Him deeply; we love people; we answer their questions; and we share our hope. Helping people follow Jesus is built into the very core of our mission. One other advantage of this simple mission statement is that it provides a simple basis of evaluating our character development. It identifies three key areas of growth that should mark my life. I finish today, then, by asking you to do some self-evaluation. On which of these three areas (Love God. Love people. Serve the world) do you most need to work? Which area needs the most attention? Ask God to show you. Perhaps you are spending very little time lately enjoying God, reading His words, sharing your heart, asking for grace. Perhaps there is some instruction of His you are willfully ignoring. Love God needs real attention. Perhaps you think of someone you have refused to forgive, or maybe you realize a prejudice has caused you to neglect or mistreat someone. You need to work on the love people piece. Or maybe, serving others needs attention. You realize, perhaps, that you ve been learning a lot about God, but you haven t been giving out to others very much. You ve become self-absorbed. Take the next minute or so to ask God to show you one of these areas that needs a change. East Hampton Bible Church