Series: The Five Habits of Highly Effective Christians Part I: Worship Still the Most Important Thing We Do C. Gray Norsworthy Johns Creek Presbyterian Church January 10, 2016 36 Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah. 37 When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, Brothers, what shall we do? 38 Peter replied, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off for all whom the Lord our God will call. 40 With many other words he warned them; and he pleaded with them, Save yourselves from this corrupt generation. 41 Those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand were added to their number that day. 42 They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. -- Acts 2:36-47, NIV This past week I attended the funeral of the mother of a friend. I have known my friend Dana since I was in elementary school. We went to the same church together First Baptist Church of Atlanta, which used to be downtown at 754 Peachtree Street, just two blocks north of the Fox Theater. Our family joined that church soon after we moved to Atlanta when I was just a toddler. Literally, I grew up in that church. The funeral service was held at the new location of First Baptist Church which used to be the old Avon corporate headquarters. Many of those who attended had long-term ties with that church and with each other. John Glover, the Minster of Music, led the service. He talked about Dana s mom, Jackie, and how she anchored the soprano section of the choir. Jackie was described in the service as the kind of person who had an opinion on everything which she expressed -- but never in a judgmental way. Jackie s husband died at age 36 and she had to raise her two daughters alone, which she did very well. But she always had a soft spot for folks going through a hard time. A number of individuals mentioned how they had once stayed at Jackie s house when they needed a place to call home. Both before and after the service, I saw folks I had not seen since I was in high school. Thankfully most folks still recognized and remembered me. There were folks who walked up to me and who knew both of my parents when they were very much alive. They told me how much my parents had meant to them when they first joined that church. There were at least two other pastors from my youth group who have become some of the most influential preachers in the world Andy Stanley, founding pastor of North Point Church, and Louie Giglio who started the Passion Conference movement and founded Passion City Church. Louie has also helped to produce much of the worship music that is sung in many churches today. 1
The funeral service itself was meaningful, even though it lasted a really long time. But as I stood there singing the hymn "Great is Thy Faithfulness I realized how much all of this had shaped my life. For example, when it came to worship, we were there every time the doors were opened. On Sundays, that began with Sunday School and then Worship. When I was in high school, some of the guys would walk down to The Varsity for lunch. Then we would come back to play basketball all afternoon in our church gym. We would then shower, go to youth choir, youth fellowship, and then to Sunday evening worship. Afterwards many of us would go to some place like Ferrell s Ice Cream Shop just to hang out. It was all day. Every Wednesday our family would drive downtown after school for handbell choir, dinner, and Prayer Meeting. Sometimes we would even have basketball practice after that. Now that was a lot of church, I know. But, I can look back now and see the profound, positive effect it had on my life and the lives of many others. I am also aware of how different it is now. I do not know anyone who attends church like that anymore. I am sad that most of our young people today will never have the benefit of that extended church family that gathered once, or even twice a week, to worship God. But, it changed my life. Today it is a different story. There is a recent trend over the last few years that has been documented: not only is worship attendance across the board decreasing, but it is going down even among those who are active church members. Active church members are attending worship services less often. One person suggests some of the following reasons, based on his research: 1. Greater affluence those with more money have more options 2. Higher focus on kids activities usually choosing sports over church 3. More travel both for business and pleasure 4. Blended and single-parent families those with kids have them fewer Sundays 5. Online options members have access to the online ministry of every other church 6. The cultural disappearance of guilt folks no longer feel guilty when not attending church 7. Self-directed spirituality many distrust institutions like the church and prefer to do it themselves 8. Failure to see a direct benefit it is not meeting their need or want (10 Reasons Even Committed Church Attenders Are Attending Church Less Often by Carey Nieuwhof, http://careynieuwhof.com/2015/02/10-reasons-even-committed-church-attendersattending-less-often/) This is a massive cultural shift. So, instead of folks choosing to attend worship most Sundays, we find ourselves here at the church doing all we can just to get members to be here for one hour a week. This series of messages is called, The Five Habits of Highly Effective Christians. The title is taken from Stephen R. Covey s classic book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. How many of you have ever read it? I am just finishing re-reading it and I want encourage everyone to 2
read it either for the first time or again. It is one of the five books I would recommend every person read. When I think back on the key things that shaped my life, my experiences in worship growing up would be near the top of my list. So, if we want to live an effective life the life God created us to live then what we are talking about today will help us to do that. In thinking about how the church is today compared to when I grew up, how do we decide which is better at helping us live effective lives as followers of Christ? Maybe our reading from the book of Acts can help us here. It is the story of THE First Christian Church that we know of. The event that precedes what we read earlier is Pentecost, which takes place only a few days after the first Easter and the ascension of Jesus. Peter is preaching to a crowd of people from all different nations. At the end of what must have been a very effective message, Peter concludes with the good news God has made this Jesus... both Lord and Messiah. (Acts 2:36, NIV) In response to this, the people were so moved that they ask Peter and the others What shall we do? Peter tells them to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins, and they will receive God s Holy Spirit in their lives. Now, to repent is not about feeling really bad for what you have done. It means to think differently, and then to choose to act in a new way. When they heard the good news that Jesus is the Lord -- the Messiah sent by God to save the whole world -- that good news changed them. And they started doing some new things. Acts tells us that they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching. The apostles were teaching what Jesus had taught them. Soon that teaching would be written down to form the New Testament of our Bible. In other words, they heard sermons based on the word of God. It was what we would call worship. They also broke bread together, which was probably the Lord s Supper. They prayed together. They even shared what they had with those in need. It says that every day they went to the temple courts to gather for worship. Every day! And often they came together in their homes to break bread and praise God again, to worship. What was the result? The Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. In fact, when Peter preached his sermon, 3,000 people were saved. It was like instant mega-church! But, the very first Christian church spent a lot of their time together in worship. You could argue that worship was the most important thing they did. So, if we want to look at worship today that is effective in making disciples of Christ, the example from the first church in Acts talks about particular practices of worship that the believers chose to make a habit in their daily lives. And it was very effective. When we look at this example from the book of Acts, I believe it shows us this: worship is something we do together for God. Effective worship changes us and shapes our lives. It allows 3
us to be change agents in our world for the good. And it takes place best together. By together I mean bodily in the same room with other Christians. Now, can you worship in any place at any time? Yes! Our Book of Order, (which the elders-elect we will soon ordain and install have committed to memory), says that we can worship in all places at all times. But, I have never met someone who was committed to worshipping daily in very intentional ways who did not also see the value in the weekly gathering for worship on Sunday with other Christians. Worship is something we do best together for God. Some may ask if it is okay to just watch the podcast of worship at home in your pajamas while drinking coffee. Certainly that is better than doing nothing, but it is a very different experience to have your own private moment at home, rather than being here in this sacred space with others. I believe God calls us to be here in the flesh which is what our church word incarnation means in the flesh. God could have just sent down a message that we were all loved and forgiven. But, for some reason, as we have just celebrated at Christmas, God chose to send Jesus the Son of God in the flesh. So, if God thought it was important enough to send Jesus in the flesh to die on a cross for you and me, is it too much to ask us to show up in the flesh on Sunday to worship God? Now, some of us might say, Well, I can get all I need at home watching a podcast, or up in the mountains at our lake house, or on a hike. But, in saying that, I believe we have missed something important about the nature of worship. The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once described worship as a great drama with actors and an audience. If I were to ask, Who is the audience? most of us would probably say, Well, the congregation is, of course. And we might add that the actors are those of us onstage trying to give a good performance that you might find interesting, perhaps with some good advice for how to live your life, and music you would find entertaining and inspiring. But Kierkegaard said that in this drama of worship, the congregation is not the audience. The audience is God. And we are all actors and prompters creating this drama together to worship God, for the glory of God, who alone is our audience. We do this not for ourselves we do it for God. To use one of Covey s expressions, that is a real paradigm shift. A paradigm shift takes place when something happens to us that causes us to see things differently. What if we came to worship thinking that all that we do is not about us and getting our needs met, but about worshipping God? I know that when I keep that in mind, it changes everything for me. I am not trying to just hold your attention and hope that you will like something I say. Rather my focus in on sharing what I think God wants me to share. Vic Pentz, pastor of Peachtree Presbyterian Church once said that when we leave worship, the question we should be asking is not, What did you think of the service? He said the question we should be asking is this: How well did we worship God? In those reasons we talked about earlier that suggested why people don t attend church as often one of the reasons was people failed to see the direct benefit. For those of us who are looking for the direct benefit, here it is: without regular, Christian worship with others, we limit our 4
effectiveness in life. If we choose not to come to worship often, we are putting a limit on our spiritual growth, and on our overall effectiveness in life. Now some of us may want to argue with that. I think it lines up with what Covey calls the law of the farm. His point is that growing things takes time. There is no short cut. There are no quick fixes -- as much as we would like them. You cannot forget to plant your seed at the start of the growing season and try to plant them the night before the harvest hoping they will grow over night. There is no short cut to growing things. The same is true for our spiritual growth that leads to our effectiveness in life. It takes time. Covey also compares this to cramming for a test. Can you do it? Sure! Can you try to cram all you can in order to spit it out the next day on the test, hoping you will get a passing grade? Of course! But will you learn the material and let it shape the way you think and who you are as a person for the rest of your life? Probably not! Neither can you expect to drop into worship here and there and expect it to affect your life, or the lives of your kids. That will not result in the same influence of regular, weekly worship of God in the presence of others. There is no shortcut, no matter how much we may want it. I can t change that any more than I can make 2+2=5. But, if we will choose to make regular, weekly worship a priority, it can change us forever and make us effective in our lives. So what do we do? Here is what I want you to do: I want to invite and challenge you to choose to make being here weekly in worship a priority for the next three months. Choose to be here every Sunday you are in town and bring the whole family whether they like it or not. Now I have to say that growing up, we were not given a choice about where, or if, we went to church. My parents were very kind people, but when it came to church they simply told us where we were going. If it were up to me at that time, I probably would have preferred to stay home and slept in, or watched cartoons on TV. But over time, church became almost a second home for me. The people I saw every Sunday were my family. And today I can tell you that experience of being there almost every Sunday, and most Wednesdays, had a huge effect on who I am today. And it did on others in my youth group who today are some of the most influential Christian pastors in the world. I want to invite and challenge you to make weekly worship a priority for the next three months. See if you notice any difference in your life. One way or the other, I hope you will tell me about it. I want to know. If we come to this place and focus on worshipping God together as a family of faith, we will find ourselves changed and our needs met. But, if we come to this place focused first on getting our needs and wants met instead of worshipping God, we may fall short on both accounts. Worship is not primarily about getting our needs met. Today many mistakenly think the church is a spiritual service provider just like any other business. If the church meets their needs, they will keep showing up. They may even support it. But if not, there are other churches down the street. On the other hand, if we view the church as a 5
family of faith, then the paradigm shifts. And with family, unless it is highly dysfunctional, (and to some degree all families are dysfunctional), you stick with it simply because you are family. The church is not a business it is family. And as long as God calls us to be here, we stick with it because we are family. And together, when we worship God, it can transform us. It can help us to live the effective lives you and I were created to live. Choose to live the effective life God created you uniquely to live. It all begins with cultivating the habit of worship still the most important thing we do. In the strong name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 6