Presence
From the Series: aone:eight Neighborhoods
Speaker: Mark Batterson
Date: June 28, 2009
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Transcript
(Joe - Video)
Hey NCC!
This summer, we are going to take a look at some of our aone:eight groups that are taking place in Washington D.C. and Virginia and Maryland, and today, we are specifically going to highlight a group that is meeting here at the Longworth House office building. They are Congressional Hill staffers and they are influencing those people who influence the entire country. So, let’s go in and take a look and find out what they are doing this summer.
What is the purpose of your group?
We look at the curriculum and sermons for the next six weeks and say, “How can we apply what we are learning directly to what we do here in Congress?” Things like the means we take, the policies we advocate for, the letters we send out, how do we take the whole idea of who is my neighbor and how do we love that person and how do we apply that directly to how we as staffers run this place.
Are you guys trying to do a service project or something inside of Congress?
We are working on that.
I have some ideas for you. Have a bake sale and all of the money should go back to repaying all the trillions of dollars of debt we are in! My other idea is Congressional backrubs!
Really, though, it’s cool that you have this group.
(Mark)
That is tax-payer dollars well spent right there! I love it! Welcome to National Community Church, we are thrilled that you are here. We are excited about this summer series, aone:eight. I also want to give a shout out to our podcast listeners, webcast watchers, you know we have this extended family all around the world and it’s the coolest thing. This week, I was walking into Ebenezers and a woman catches me and says that I go jogging with her all the time. I’ve never seen her before, she is a doctor in Switzerland! She downloads our podcast and I run with her. I didn’t ask if I slow her down, but there are people like that all over the place, so what a joy, our immediate family here and our extended family around the world.
This series is talking about how we can collectively as a church impact our city and the world, it is so exciting. I can’t wait to see where the Lord takes us. Open your Bibles to Matthew Chapter 5. We are going to jump right in. Matthew 5:13
You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men. You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
This weekend, we are talking about the metaphors that Jesus used to describe who we are. We are salt and we are light. I want to explain that in a couple of moments but first, let me zoom out and talk at a 30,000 foot level about this thing called National Community Church that we are part of because, did you know that we probably have as much turn over as any church that I know of. Part of it is our geography, but we have people moving in and out, hundreds of interns who are part of our church for three months. If we get a college student for four years, that’s like an eternity. People who come to work on the Hill for a couple of years, so we are like this revolving door church. On one level, we hate to see people gone, but on another level, we embrace that as who we are. We are a church scattered all over the place. That’s why we think about our immediate family and our extended family. I know that many of you are new and you’re walking into something wondering about the movie theaters and the coffeehouse, and wondering what this is about.
Let me talk for a moment about who we are and why we do church the way we do it. It was 13 years ago, I can’t believe it, that we were meeting in a D.C. public school, we had a core group of 19 people, just getting started, and a few months in, the school where we were meeting was closed down because of fire code violations. We were on the verge of becoming a homeless church. It was a scary experience because we didn’t really feel like a church yet, I wouldn’t really say I felt like a pastor yet, I thought to myself that this church could go away and disappear forever and only 19 people would know the difference. But it was in that critical moment that the Lord really ordered our footsteps and after looking at all kinds of different places to meet, we ended up in the movie theater at Union Station. We walked in and it was the providence of God. I’ve told this story before, I remember picking up the history on the Station when I walked out and I’ll never forget the phrase, it was a Bill that Theodore Roosevelt signed to establish Union Station, it said: A Bill of Congress to create a Union Station and for other purposes. I always felt like that little saying, they thought they were building a train station, little did they know that they were building a church that would serve God’s purposes. So we land in the movie theater and it grows on you! You’ve got really comfortable seats, amazing screens, the smell of popcorn is our incense and 40 food court restaurants right outside the theater and how many churches have their own subway system! So we decided it could work. At one point, we looked at some property and it was going for $10 million an acre and we thought that probably would not work. So here’s the deal, doing church in a marketplace environment became part of our DNA. We started to thrive on it. We did an event at the largest nightclub in D.C. for a while and we loved going in there and redeeming that space and using it for God’s purposes. We love the movie theaters. Maybe there’s someone who didn’t grow up going to church who might feel a little bit intimidated walking into a church, but they feel comfortable walking into a movie theater. We like to think of it as a safe place where you can hear a dangerous message. So this idea of doing church in the marketplace, now we are in four movie theaters, and there are a lot more movie theaters out there! I am cursed - I can’t go into a movie theater without sizing it up! I don’t know what’s going to happen but who knows? Maybe we’ll have 10, 15, 20 movie theater locations.
Now, fast forward a little bit and at some point the idea of not just doing church in the marketplace but creating a marketplace, I can’t tell the whole story for the sake of time, but God birthed this dream of building a coffeehouse called Ebenezers and really the rational was this, I think it’s important for us to understand this, all of us who are part of this church, listen, Jesus didn’t just hang out in the synagogues with religious people, He hung out at wells. Wells were the natural gathering places in ancient culture. It wasn’t just a place where they went to draw water, it was where everybody had to go so it was where community happened, it is where conversations happened. It just seems to me like coffeehouses are post-modern wells, natural gathering places. So what we wanted to do was create a place where the church and community could cross paths. And everyday, hundreds of people walk through Ebenezers and we rub shoulders with them and we don’t just serve coffee, we serve Christ while we are serving coffee. This is a place where a lot of people have made that first step toward a relationship with Christ. We do our Saturday night service in the performance space and we do a lot of events during the week, but there’s more good news! Every penny of profit goes toward local outreaches and missions. Hey, the coffee already tastes good, but that makes us feel good! Last year, $89,000 in net profits went toward outreaches and missions, so all on the same page here, here’s what I’m thinking, we’ll give about half a million dollars to missions this year and that’s what drives us. The day will come when we are giving millions of dollars to missions. The day will come, we will get there. Here’s how it is going to happen, as we give generously, that’s the traditional way it happens but there is more than one way to skin a cat. It seems to me like if you have a chain of 10 coffeehouses that are eventually each netting somewhere in the neighborhood of $100,00, it seems to me like it’s another way of not just being in the community blessing people, reaching people for Christ but it’s another way to give a million dollars to missions, so marketplace is the way we want to be salt and light in our community. I’ve got to take it one step further and look into the future because this is so exciting, I want us to keep this on the radar. Last year, we hosted an amazing event here called the Convoy of Hope, and many of you served in that outreach. We gave away 80,000 pounds of groceries in one day and about 10,000 people came, we did free haircuts, job fairs, a festival for children. It was incredible! Part of what made it so amazing is that there were like 75 churches and organizations, every size, shape and color at the table, serving arm in arm, it was beautiful. Here’s the deal, about a month before that event, as we were praying for it, the Lord began to do something in our hearts and we realized that what we thought was the end goal of just pulling off an event wasn’t the end goal at all! It was a means to an end, the Lord wanted us to be doing that 24/7. That might be a place it might be ok to say Amen! Amen! We need to establish a ministry center, a place where we are reaching out to our community. We are going to whoever walks through our doors. I don’t care what political party you are part of, I don’t care what your socioeconomic status is, I don’t care what your background is! If you are walking through our doors, it is a divine appointment that you are here and we are here to love you, to serve you and to help you find Christ and grow in a relationship with Him. That’s what we are about, that’s what we do. We are called to be salt and light. And I want to remind us on a corporate level, isn’t it exciting to be part of something that is not just about us? For a while that’s nice, but at some point, there’s gotta be more. We exist primarily for the people who are not here yet. I feel like I want to make sure all of us are on the same page corporately, we are part of this thing called National Community Church and we are called to be salt and light in our community.
Let me say this. Is it ok if I get up in your business a little bit today? We need to personalize this. It is awesome to be part of something corporately, but what is our personal responsibility? What does Jesus mean when He says you are salt and light? Let’s unpack this. I’m going to give you a little bit of history and context then I want to zero in on one challenge.
Seven words, what Jesus can say with seven words. He would be amazing on Twitter! “You are the salt of the earth.” Did you know that according to the modern salt industry. I apologize up front, this week I read a 450 page book on salt. Part of it is that I’m interested in everything, but there are 14,000 uses for salt, so when Jesus said “You are the salt of the earth,” I guess we could go in about 14,000 different directions. I could have 14,000 points this weekend! I’m not going to do that to you. Salt is a preservative. Salt adds flavor, which really seems to be the emphasis of Jesus’ statement in this passage. Salt is also a catalyst. I like this one because we make homemade ice cream. The key is the rock salt! You’ve got to get the rock salt in there because it catalyzes the ice and make the ice cream freeze. So good! I always put a little more sugar than the recipe calls for! Salt is also a fertilizer. Salt is used for so many different things, it is used to melt ice, to remove rust, keep cut flowers fresh, soften water, put out grease fires, kill poison ivy and season a butterfly cut filet mignon with extra butter sauce cooked in a patented 1800 degree oven and served on a plate preheated at 500 degrees. I know these things! Salt is all of these things, so this is quite a statement - you are the salt of the earth. Up until 100 years ago, salt was one of the most sought after commodities on earth. Cities were built around salt works. Rome is a great example. The very first great Roman road was built to bring salt into Rome. Salt was such a precious commodity that it was used to pay Roman soldiers. In fact, the word salt is where we get the word salary and expressions like worth his salt. So just turn to your neighbor and say, “You’re the salt of the earth.” What a huge compliment you’ve just been paid! Are you feeling good about yourself. Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth.” I’m valuable, I’m precious, I’m vital, I play an incredibly important role. Then, if that’s not enough, you are also the light of the world. I don’t even know where to go with this. Light is the basis of everything, but this is interesting. one of the most amazing but least understood phenomenons in astrophysics is this idea of a black hole. In fact, it wasn’t until 1994 that the Hubble Telescope provided the first convincing proof that there actually is something called a black hole, that they actually exist. Whenever you’re talking about something that is way beyond you, you should give a disclaimer and give apologies first, but a black hole is a collapsed star. The gravitational field is so strong that it forms a boundary called an event horizon and what happens is this, light can enter but it cannot escape. In fact, nothing can escape a black hole because the gravitational pull is so strong. As I was thinking about that, I was wondering how many people and how many churches are spiritual black holes, the light comes in but nothing comes back out. I don’t know, these two statements are was beyond my ability to preach them, I think I just want to point out that we don’t have time to discuss 14,000 uses of salt and its spiritual implications and we probably don’t have time to figure out black holes, so here’s what I want to do. I want to zoom in on one thing. One dimension, I think it’s what the Lord has put on my heart this weekend. I think God wants to raise the evangelistic temperature at National Community Church. I think the Lord wants us to be more intentional about sharing our faith with others.
I believe that there is a potential for a paradyme shift here, that this could change the way you think. I’m going to give you a new definition and I think it will help us think about some of these things in a new light. Last weekend, I had the privilege of coming to church with my family on Father’s Day and worshiping with them. That’s a rarity since I’m usually preaching or doing something on the weekend, but we came and as Father’s Day unfolded, I remember I went home and talked to my kids and said, “Kids, I don’t know how to say this but there’s only one thing I want for Father’s Day, only one thing you could ever give me, and that’s for you guys to grow up and love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength.” I can tell you that there is no desire that runs deeper in my heart than to see my kids grow up and eternalize and personalize their faith. I know I can’t control that, they have free will, I know that’s a decision they have to make, but if you are asking me my greatest desire, or if you ask me what is success, it has nothing to do with pastoring or writing, it has everything to do with my kids, I want to see them grow up to love God. And I am not going to let our culture raise my kids. I will make mistakes, but I’m going to do my best to love my kids and to try to disciple them in a way that they grow up to love God and to serve Him. I don’t care what else they do or who they become because I know this, if they put Christ at the center of their lives, they are going to become who God wants them to be and do what God wants them to do. The only issue here is - are you in relationship with Christ? Are you growing in that relationship. I know there are a lot of things that go with that, spiritual hunger to keep seeking God, but as I was thinking about it and reflecting on it this week, here’s my observation, if you really love people, that’s what you want for them. At the end of the day, if you really really love someone, you want them to have what is most important, a relationship with Christ. That’s it. Nothing else compares to that. Can I go on record and say that I believe one of the greatest joys is to see someone else come into a relationship with Christ, to put their faith in Christ. There is nothing that compares to that moment when a person, by faith comes to Christ. Their past is forgiven, they have a new lease on life, they enter into God’s plans and purposes. The only way you’re going to reach your potential is to be in relationship with the One who created you. To know that their eternal destiny is change, it is a miraculous moment when someone puts faith in Christ. I’m pretty sure that there in no one at any of our locations who would argue with that. But that’s where I want to ask a question of myself and of you - when was the last time you shared your faith with someone?
I know, here we go, on the guilt trip train, going downhill fast. I don’t want to send anybody on a guilt trip. I want to talk about some things that I think can change our perspective in a way that we get rid of some of the guilt and we want to enter into the joy and privilege of sharing our faith. I want to share some good news up front. Some of you are sharing your faith in ways you don’t even know. That will make more sense as we go. Is it alright if I tell you a little bit about my evangelistic journey? I want to put some skin on this thing.
When I was in the 2nd grade, I had what I would describe as my first evangelistic urge. It was the first impulse that I even felt or identified where I wanted to tell someone about Jesus. I don’t remember a whole lot about it because that was a long time ago. We had a teacher, you won’t believe this, she would punish kids by picking them up by the scrape of their neck and would occasionally hit their head on the door. I assume that at some point this guy got caught and lost his job. He was a mean teacher. There was one kid in particular, he was not the teacher’s pet, honestly he was just sort of an outcast, and my heart went out to this kid and I remember praying for him and I remember looking for an opportunity to say something nice or kind to him. Have you ever felt that urge before? That urge to say Jesus loves you. Well, then we moved to Wisconsin. I was a huge baseball fan, I loved the Milwaukee Brewers and we’d go to games, and only in Milwaukee, not fireworks - no! The mascot would fly down into a beer mug! Gotta love Milwaukee. But I loved going to the games and I think I was in 4th or 5th grade and Billy Graham came to town. We had a couple of friends on our block that I knew didn’t go to church and didn’t know Christ, so I felt that urge again and I invited them to go to the Billy Graham Crusade. We went and it was cool being there because it was the stadium, and Billy Graham was preaching and at the end, he gave the invitation for anyone to come down and whoever invited them to come down with them and I have never prayed harder, because to be honest, I felt like it might be my only opportunity to ever go onto the baseball field! Plus, my friends would get eternal life thrown in! So, they went down and it was the most amazing thing. I stood in right field and they got saved! All kidding aside, it was awesome! To see someone take that step of faith and know that it would change their life and to be some small part of that.
Then we moved again, in the Chicago area at this point, and I was in the hospital. I remember it, it was a code blue, they called all the doctors to me room because I felt like I was on my last breath. I was in the hospital for about a week with asthma complications, but I remember in the hospital bed saying, “Lord get me out of here, help me see my friends Rick and Jeff know You, I’m going to share my faith with them, get me out of here and I’ll share my faith with them.” Now, I know it’s pretty pathetic to take that to do that but it was not much after that when I brought Jeff to church. He started coming with me and I remember one morning he got up and walked down an aisle and put his faith in Christ. Then my friend Rick, less definitive than that, but he put his faith in Christ also and there was so much joy in that. And what I’m trying to get at is that this is something that each one of us can experience. Each one of us can be part of this.
Let me flip the coin. I’ll be totally honest with you, I don’t share my faith like I should, I’ll be the first person to go on record to say that. I’m not the kind of person who will sit down and strike up a conversation with a person. Like on an airplane to have someone confess their deepest sin and pray the sinners prayer, I’ve never had one of those conversations. Sometimes you hear about those conversations and they are so encouraging and discouraging at the same time because that doesn’t happen to me. But what I want to suggest is that there is a way to go about this. The Lord wants to speak through your gifts, personality, circumstances, your uniqueness. He wants to use you to plant seeds in other people’s lives. So let’s start going to work on some of this guilt you feel.
First of all, let me tell you what you cannot do. You can’t convict someone of sin. You can’t even draw them to Christ. If you want to experience frustration in your spiritual life, here’s what I would suggest you do. Expect God to do for you what is really your responsibility. I wonder how many of our prayers are like, “God, would You do this?” And God’s like, “No, that’s what I’ve asked you to do.” Then, flip it and a lot of our frustration is us trying to do what only God can do. We try to force it, we try to convict someone, we need to convict them. But no you don’t and no you can’t. You can’t even draw them. All you can do is plant and water. All you can do is share your faith. Listen, it is not just a verbal sharing, it is not just a few questions that evangelists ask, like, 'if you died today, do you know for sure that you would go to heaven?' Those are great questions. I think it’s ok to have that tool in your toolbelt. It’s a good thing to know a Romans Road or how to lead people, but I’m convinced that many of us feel like we are so afraid that we aren’t going to know the answer. We never even engage because we feel so inadequate. What I’m saying is that I don’t think that’s the game. I’m thinking if we just open ourselves up to other people, other people might open themselves up to us. If we listen to other people, other people might just listen to us. What we need to do is in an authentic, natural way, when the opportunity comes us, just share it.
Let me give you this definition and maybe it will help us think about this in a different way. Worship is bragging about God to God. Right? We are singing praises bragging about God to God in this context. I think evangelism is bragging about God to others. In other words, we don’t stop worshiping when we hit the door, we just keep bragging about God, it naturally flows out of us. It’s more about us sharing our struggles and challenges, but also our joys and the forgiveness we’ve experienced and doing it in a way that we are just bragging on God. We love God! We think we’ve got to be like this intellectual apologist for the inspiration of Scripture, or all these different things, but I don’t think you have to be. The Holy Spirit does all the work, so I think our job is to be filled with the Spirit of God so that we are producing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control. When people bump into us, they bump into the Spirit of God and they begin to see those things in our lives and that takes the pressure off of us. Now, I’m going to push a little because I think there comes a moment when you need to have the courage to say some words and speak into a person’s life, but I also love what Saint Frances said, “Preach the gospel every day, and if necessary, use words.” In other words, there are different ways of doing this. And this is where it gets exciting to me because it can literally be a compassionate act or a kind word; it can be simply listening to someone. This is so exciting to me because you are planting seeds in the process.
Let me give you an example. I apologize because the only way I know to illustrate is by my own life. One reason why I write books is because I view them as 200-page evangelist tracts. They are not books that are specifically written with the whole objective being to lead someone to faith in Christ, but I know enough to know that when you are reading a book, like when you’re watching a movie, some of the defense mechanisms are down, it’s a way I can have a 4 or 5 hour conversation with someone. And over the years, people that I’ve wanted to share my faith with but haven’t had that verbal opportunity, I’ll hand them a book and they’ll read it. So I feel like it’s a way that I can share my faith with people, and we’ve got to think in those terms.
By the way, this week, a friend of mine told me that a couple weeks ago, he befriended a professional NBA basketball player, you would know the name, and he started discipling him and my friend told him to read In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, and they guy said he had already read it! Long story short, I’m sending him copies for him to give to all the players on his team. So it’s kinda this side door or back door evangelism. What I want you to see is that it’s not just praying with someone to receive Christ, that is amazing, but it is having your compassion radar up. Who is discouraged? Who is down and how can I care for them? It’s about the kind words. Can I call it listening evangelism? Hold onto this point.
Frances Schaeffer, one of the greatest apologist, written some amazing books, profound intellectual, was once asked that if he had 10 minutes to share the gospel, what would he say. He said, “I would listen for 9 minutes and talk for 1 minute.” I thought “Wow!” That is good! Help us listen, help us not just be so quick to speak that we don’t even know who we are talking to.
Let’s bring this in for a landing. I want to propose an evangelism experiment. I would sure love it if all of us would participate. I think this is something you can do. I think you can get into this. Here it is. Last weekend, someone came up to me after one of our services and said, “I’m the only Christian in my family and I really want to talk to them, but I grew up in a Buddist family and I’m not sure what to say and I don’t know how to do it. Can you help me?” And the very first thing I did was to affirm that person, because it’s simply the desire to share your faith. Just simply that desire, even if it is a little tiny desire, praise God for that. So it starts with that desire, so my prayer would be for that desire to be there. I love the people around me so I want to tell them about the One I love the most. So what I did was I encouraged him to do something very simple, I said, “Don’t put all the pressure on yourself, this isn’t your job, just pray for an opportunity to share your faith in some form or fashion with your family.” Ya know what? I have a hunch that that will be a prayer that God will answer. Don’t you feel better? You don’t have to manufacture this, you don’t have to create the experience, just pray and be ready for it when it comes. That’s what Paul does in Colossians 4. It says: Devote yourself to prayer, being watchful and thankful. Watchful is the key word there, I don’t have time to talk about it, but have your radar on, be ready, be watching. Then he says specifically: And pray for us too that God may open a door for our message so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ for which I am in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly as I should. Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders, make the most of every opportunity, let your conversation always be full of grace and (this is cool, it ties back to Matthew 5) seasoned with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone.
Listen, if you listen well enough and listen long enough, I believe God will open the door of opportunity for you to share your faith. So what I’m going to ask you to do this week is to pray a simple prayer. I’d love for you to do it every day. You’re not going to get this written down or memorized, so here’s what I’ll do, I’ll post it on my blog, markbatterson.com so you can go there. I’d encourage you to make it your screen saver for a week or print it out and put it on your refrigerator or whatever. This is something I want you to pray every day. I’m ready to close, but I almost always close by praying for you but I’m not going to do it. I am not going to pray for you. I want us to pray this together. I’m not trying to put anybody on the spot, it is not how we do it around here, but sometimes we’ve got to push the issue a little bit and I love you enough that I want to challenge you. All I’m saying is to pray this prayer and let’s see what God does, ok. Here’s the prayer on the screen. Follow with me.
Lord, I pray for an opportunity to share my faith with someone in some way. It’s not up to me to decide who or when or where. But I know why. Because you love them and want a relationship with them. So Lord, surprise me with opportunities to share my faith.
Forgive me for trying to do your job for you. You are the one who convicts of sin. You are the one who draws to Christ. But help me do my part as salt and light. Help me see those opportunities to react compassionately or listen patiently or speak kindly. Through word and deed, help me plant seeds of love in the lives of others. Give me boldness when it’s time to speak. Give me restraint when it’s time to listen. Give me words to say. But more importantly, give me ears to hear.
Lord, help me be sensitive to the prompting of your Holy Spirit so I can see the divine appointments you send my way. Help me not to be afraid of questions I cannot answer. Help me not to be afraid of people’s reactions or rejections.
Lord, help me preach the gospel every day, when necessary, with words.
In Jesus name, amen!
Ministry Transcription
Margaret Salyers
606-706-5006
margaretsalyers@gmail.com
