I've often times had people wonder what its like to develop a
sermon. In many ways, I guess its not unlike putting together a
movie (which I have no experience in) or writing a story (again,
something I have no experience in). As you study your passage or
topic, you bring together all sorts of ideas on how to communicate
the information you're gleaning from scripture. You begin piecing
those ideas together, trying to figure out the most transferable
means of delivering the message as well as the simplest segues
between points. In the end, you hope that you have a message that
is true to scripture, flows freely, is understandable, and can be
used by the Holy Spirit to challenge people at whatever point they
are at in their spiritual walk. No small task.
Inevitably, however, there are pieces that get left behind-clips
on the cutting room floor, if you will. This past Sunday was no
exception.
To start our year, we took a look at where God had brought us on
our journey as a church. We spent the early part of the sermon
looking at the history of our church. We celebrated how God had
conceived in the heart of George Bradshaw a simple Sunday School
class that birthed into a church, made it through infancy, grew up,
and today shows many signs of spiritual maturity. We celebrated
that
Ephesians 4:14-15 nicely defines our church. But we also
recognized that we hadn't yet
'attained the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.' We
aren't 'there' yet.
And so, we spent the rest of the sermon identifying what
milestones lay ahead for us. We could see that we would be called
on by God to be sacrificial, that we would need to develop the
characteristic of discipleship, and that we had to spend as much
time reaching out to our 'Judea and Samaria' as we had spent
reaching out to
'Jerusalem and the ends of the earth'. We watched a short clip
from the Lord of the Rings which illustrated for us how scary it is
to move beyond what we are familiar with. But we also recognized
that Christ was beckoning us onward so that we might continue
'attaining the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.'
Two illustrations that I thought were powerful illustrations
ended up not making into the sermon and so for your reading
pleasure, here are both 'clips.' Hopefully they help to further
illustrate the points we were considering on Sunday.
The first is one that I left out because as much as I liked it,
I simply couldn't make it fit into the theme that developed of a
trip or traveling on a path. The illustration was an extension of
the early part of the sermon that viewed the conception, birth,
early growth, and growing up to maturity of our church.
In many ways, our church is much like a high school or college
graduate. We've gone through our schooling, we've gotten good
grades, we've actually learned the material that we've been taught,
and we've celebrated our commencement. Although it seemed to take
so long to get here, we can look back and see just how much we've
grown up and matured. But now what? The natural thing for us to do
would be to go and get a job, begin supporting ourselves-take the
education we've been receiving and put it to practical use. But
what if we decided that we didn't want to do that? What if we
decided that we liked being students and so we wouldn't get a job,
we wouldn't move out. Instead we'd just stay home, continue to
expect our parents to fully support us, and sit around the house
all day? That might work for a short time but any parent worth
their muster ain't gonna' let that keep happening for too long. How
much different is it for us as a church? We have, by God's grace,
grown up and been taught well what He desires from us. Can we
simply continue sitting at home - not practically applying the
spiritual education we've been receiving all these years? Like any
good parent, God will eventually give us a good swift kick in the
butt, tell us to put the education that He's been supporting all
these years to good use, and go to work. We can delude ourselves
into thinking that God wouldn't do that because He loves us, but if
we squander the education He's given us, be certain that the kick
is coming.
The second illustration was not so much cut as much as it was
forgotten. I had every intention of using it but it never made its
way out of my mouth-such is the delivery of a sermon! I always
trust that the words that come out during a sermon are directed by
God and so I don't fret over not communicating this during the
sermon. If God wanted me to say this during the sermon, He would
have made sure I remembered. But now, with the blog, I've got
something to write about so its good all around. :-)
When trying to figure out whether we had 'arrived' I used the
illustration of my kids asking during our most recent trip 'Are we
there yet?!?!' We saw that, in fact, we as a church had not arrived
yet - that we had not yet 'attained the whole measure of the
fullness of Christ.' And thus, Jesus calls us further. But in many
ways, moving on in our journey with Him is like Sam in the Lord of
the Rings at the edge of the field. If we take one more step, we
will be further than we've ever been before. Frodo encourages Sam
to continue on in the journey. I made the point that I am NOT
Frodo-that I am as much Sam as anyone in the church. I realize that
I have a spiritually healthy, spiritually maturing, family of
believers. There would be nothing easier for me to do than to say,
'Everything is good right now. Let's just keep doing what we've
always done.' And that's where I forgot this illustration: If I
said that, it'd be no better than if I pulled off into a rest area
on the trip with my kids and said, 'We're here!! There's food in
the vending machines, water in the fountains, and we can sleep in
the truck. We have everything we will need.' I couldn't do that to
my family. We wouldn't have gotten to where we were going and to
make believe that a rest stop was the same as getting to Oma's
house (the place where we were going on our trip)-well, obviously,
there is no comparison between the two. For me to say to our
church, 'Where we are is OK, we can just keep doing what we've been
doing and not move forward,' would be just as scandalous.
Christ calls us forward on the path with Him. Up ahead, there
are rocks that we will need to climb over. Sacrifice will be
required to make it over them. As we look at the path ahead, we
realize that we will need to exercise discipleship if we are to
make it along the way. There is a hill up ahead that we've not ever
been over called 'Outreach.' And then....I don't know. The path
goes over the hill and I can't see where it goes from there. But
Jesus is beckoning us down this path and I for one don't want to
ever have to travel it alone. And so I go with Him.
"It's a dangerous business going out your door. You step out
onto the path and if you don't keep your feet, there's no telling
where you might be swept off to." - Bilbo Baggins