Sermon Video: The problem with fake Christians

Having warned about the danger of those denying Christ and using God's grace as an excuse for sin, Jude concludes that 'these people' (false teachers, divisive troublemakers, fanatics, and other fake Christians) are harmful within the Church because not only do they fail to produce the Fruit of the Spirit (nor could they, not having the Holy Spirit), they also confuse the Gospel message. Our response, as a Church, to fake Christians? (1) Don't let those without orthodox belief AND a demonstrated commitment to righteous living have any role in church leadership. (2) When necessary, remove from fellowship those who refuse to abandon heresy or renounce gross immorality. Lastly, and crucially, STOP believing the lie that a person can be a Christian without acting like Christ.

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Mega Churches, Cults of Personality, and Longevity

As illustrated in a recent Christianity Today article, {Willow Creek and Harvest Struggle to Move On The departures of Bill Hybels and James MacDonald leave churches waiting for new leadership and hoping to rebuild trust. - by ABBY PERRY} the transition period for churches that have grown to prominence under a charismatic founder can be extremely dangerous, especially if that founder leaves suddenly under a cloud of moral failure.  Churches both large and small are in danger when their pastor(s) is guilty of gross immorality, whether that revolves around sexual sin, financial theft (or gross luxury; i.e. a private jet and a mansion, even if authorized by the church board such compensation is a theft of funds that should be used for the ministry of the church), or simply an ego run amok.  It stands to reason that a small church, one perhaps barely able to pay its bills, if that, with only a few dozen faithful members would have difficulty in finding a new pastor following a disastrous tenure of a minister who was, or became, unqualified to lead God's people.  Much of that difficulty revolves around the limited resources available, both financial and manpower, to conduct a search and find an effective replacement.  Such constraints would seem to be less of an issue at a mega church with attendance upwards of 10,000, multiple sites, a large paid staff, and a weekly million dollar budget capable of paying a well established and experienced minister to be their next senior pastor.  And yet, as the article by Abby Perry shows, the emotional scars and questions of repentance revolving around those who failed to act earlier, are a common problem for both the tiny church and its seemingly very different mega cousin.
Cults of personality are deadly to a church no matter how big it is.  This may seem obvious when that minister is leading the church down a path of unorthodox heresy, and/or displaying dangerous apocalyptic fanaticism (like, for example, David Koresh), but it is also true when the church simply depends upon the personal leadership of that pastor so much that it cannot function without him/her.  Some churches are able to transition relatively smoothly to a second generation of leadership, many struggle mightily, some don't make it at all.  Coincidentally, this same phenomenon exists when a business attempts to replace an iconic founder, and on a smaller scale is equally challenging when a much simpler family business attempts to move on to a second generation.
Which brings into focus the larger question of mega churches.  I myself am not the pastor of a mega church, although if I would have been this church's 12th pastor instead of its 31st, I would have been preaching regularly to a crowd of over 1,000; likely one of the largest congregations in America at the start of the 20th Century.  Franklin today, however, has less than half the people living here than it did then, and 1st Baptist of Franklin is a small church (in a big building) in a small town.  Venango County only has about 50k people, so we're not going to have a church in our area with weekly attendance of 5,000+ (500 seems to be about the height at this point, we have one church a mile away at that number and another a block away a bit under that).  Thus while the mega church explosion is not directly impacting Church ministry here in rural Pennsylvania, and not likely to directly impact most of the sparsely populated areas of the globe, they still have a tremendous indirect influence upon the Church as a whole, especially given their high-profile ministers and multi-media products (think Hillsong's music {songs sung by 50 million people worldwide each Sunday}, Joel Osteen's books and TV show {7 million weekly viewers}, or Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life {32 million copies sold}.  Personally I appreciated Rick Warren's book, am ambivalent about Hillsong's music (not a strong music opinion person anyway), and think that Joel Osteen's theology would be dangerous at a church of twenty, but whether or not a particular manifestation of the mega church trend is in itself an overall positive or negative for the Church as a whole is actually a secondary question, for the Church has always had to contend with examples of poor leadership, with heretical authors/theologians, and cults of personality.  What has changed, differentiating these mega churches from anything previous in Church history is their very size. 
The Early Church began with house churches, limited in size by their obvious location constraints, after the legalization of the Church by Constantine {The Edict of Milan}, the trend toward an organized system of parish churches began in earnest.  Churches were established where another church was needed, and they were spread out sufficiently so as to not overlap, given that they were not in competition with each other.  Local Christians, at Christendom's height that meant everybody in the village or town, excluding any Jews or other religious minority, were expected to attend their local parish, and instances of going further away (travel being limited to walking or riding a horse) to another parish must have been rare.  A church in such a system could grow, if it convinced an even higher percentage of the local population to attend, or if the local population itself was growing, but it couldn't become any type of 'mega' church.  The cathedrals in principle cities were large, but they too were constrained by the simple fact that a 10,000 seat church was not an architectural possibility. 
Things have changed.  Many (if not most) Christians don't attend the church that is closest to their home, they drive past several seeking the one that they're connected to, thus even large rural churches, let alone mega churches, are drawing from a wide geographic area, not simply a neighborhood.
The parish system, by and large, functioned well for more than a thousand years.  We know that mega churches will not replace the far more numerous smaller churches, nor will they drive out of business, as it were, small churches like Walmart did to the small retailers.  Assuming that the reality of mega churches isn't going anywhere, seemingly a safe assumption, what role will they play in the Church of the future?  How stable will they prove as they transition from the first generation of their leadership?  Without the charisma of the founder, will such a massive organization be able to bring in the people and money it needs to continue?  These are certainly questions with implications for the Church as a whole, and largely ones that seem beyond our ability to have more than anecdotal answers to at this juncture; time will tell.  If the struggles outlined in Christianity Today's article at both Willow Creek and Harvest are harbingers of things to come, individual mega churches may not have the longevity of the small local church.

Seeing the world through a father's eyes

For those of you who don't know, I came to fatherhood later in life than most of my peers.  My wife Nicole and I had already been married for nearly 15 years, I had been a teacher at Portland Adult and Community Education for ten years, concurrently a pastor at 1st Baptist of Palo for five years, and moved here to Franklin PA to be the pastor at First Baptist of Franklin just over three years prior to the birth of our beautiful Clara Marie.  As much life experience as I had: marriage, teaching, being a pastor, all of which had their own unique challenges and lessons to be learned, nothing changed my point-of-view as much as becoming a father.  Books that I had once read, and am now re-reading (I do that a lot), with a father-daughter relationship, or TV/Movies that hadn't struck me that way before, now touch at something in my heart and mind that is both real and powerful.  {For example: The girl in the red dress in Schindler's List, while always being a gut punch, would shake me much harder now}  I consider myself to be a person of empathy and compassion, by the grace of God, it is a characteristic one must have to be an effective pastor, but nothing reinforces these Christian virtues in our hearts quite like having had a similar experience; its just the way we work as human beings.

Clara on the day of her birth, holding dad's finger.

Clara on her way to her first day of pre-school this past August

Hebrews 4:15-16 (NIV)
15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

You don't need me to tell you that our experiences powerfully affect us, both for the better and for the worse, but the words of Hebrews offer an insight into our relationship with God that is truly profound.  Jesus knows what it is like to struggle, to feel tired, to be in pain.  Jesus knows what it is like to wait patiently, to have to trust in your friends, and to be let down by them.  Jesus knows the sorrow of being at the graveside of a parent, the frustration of being rejected by people you're only trying to help, and the joy of helping a 'lost cause' find purpose in life again.  Jesus has been there, and his empathy for your life situations is real.  That alone would be a Truth to "cling to when the rain set in".  But Hebrews tells us something far more important: Jesus knows what is like to be you without the failure of sin.  One of the reasons why we have empathy for other people is that many of us recognize the wisdom of the phrase, "there but for the grace of God, go I".  In other shoes we might equally fail, or we might even do worse, than the person whom we now empathize with in their struggles.  That compassion compels us to act, but that weakness limits how much we can do to help.  Not so with Jesus.  Not only does Jesus know what it is like to be you, but he knows what is necessary to overcome and be victorious in your situation as well.  I, and others like me, can comfort you, maybe even assist you, Jesus can save you.  As followers of Jesus Christ, we can point out the way to hope, Jesus is the way.
What do we do with this knowledge?  Hebrews offers the answer there as well, approach the 'throne of grace with confidence', knowing that in our time of need, our compassionate AND victorious savior, who empathizes with our plight, is both willing and capable of giving us the mercy and grace we need to live righteously, no matter what. 

Sermon Video: Don't Mess with God - Jude 5-11

Jude utilizes six examples from the Hebrew Scriptures to warn his readers about the danger of being ungodly in relation to God {the example in vs. 1-4 was of a group that tried to utilize God's grace as an excuse for immorality}. In each case the story doesn't end well for the person(s) who sought to rebel against and defy the will of God. As a counter-example, Jude offers the humility of the archangel Michael who, according to the Assumption of Moses, did not even slander Satan himself but simply replied, "The Lord rebuke you!" In this vein, consider the arrogance of the Prosperity Gospel (and its many proponents: Paula White Cain, Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, TD Jakes, Joel Osteen, Robert Schuller, etc.), with its tendency to claiming the power to 'bind Satan' and grant material blessings to those who either have enough faith and/or (likely and) send money to the already wealthy 'minister' in question. We are not 'little gods', we are not the epicenter of God's will as they would have us believe, we are instead servants in the Kingdom of God, here to sacrifice on behalf of the Gospel, not to prosper from it. It doesn't end well for those who defy the will of God, who warp the Gospel for their own benefit.

To watch the video, click on the link below:

Sermon Video: God's grace is not a license to sin - Jude 1-4

Jude, half-brother of Jesus (along with James "the just", the leader of the Jerusalem Church), begins his letter by speaking of the common salvation he shares along with those whom God has called, love, and kept for Jesus, a salvation that results in our being given mercy, peace, and love.  Unfortunately, Jude cannot continue writing about these uplifting topics as he must warn the recipients of the letter about individuals within the Church who have embrace a form of Gnosticism (apparently) that both denies Jesus Christ (probably by denying that he came in the flesh, see 1 John for a parallel) and bizarrely claims that God's grace which has been given to us is in fact a license to sin.  The Apostle Paul rejects this same line of thought in Romans 6, for how could God's grace take us further from God by encouraging us to continue to sin?  In addition, taking advantage of grace would be an insult to the blood of Christ, poured out for us, as well as a narrow focus upon our relationship with God being only about forgiveness of sins, rather than about total transformation that must begin here and now.  Lastly, any view of our relationship with God that tolerates the ongoing indulgence in sin is incompatible with the presence of the Holy Spirit in the lives of those who have been redeemed.  For reasons such as these, Jude warns his fellow believers against this dangerous notion.

To watch the video, click on the link below: