Preached · April 23, 2017
Three questions
Last week, Easter weekend, we talked about resurrection — the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the fact that this is a real thing that happened in history, April 22nd, nearly 2,000 years ago. This week, we're continuing on in The Story, marching our way through the whole of Scripture from beginning to end, and we're in the book of Acts. We're looking at the beginning of the early church. Jesus is resurrected, and he sends his disciples out on a mission, and we're going to talk about what that looks like.
And we want to answer three questions today. Question number one: What is the church's primary mission? Why does it exist? Number two: How did the church accomplish that mission? And number three: What does that have to do with Good News Community Church?
The kingdom of God
So, Jesus is resurrected, and Jesus spends 40 days after his resurrection hanging out with his disciples, with those who follow him. About six weeks of time he spends with them, and he's teaching them, training them, showing them signs and wonders and miracles. He's eating with them, going fishing with them, disappearing in and out of rooms to show what a resurrected body can do. And the first chapter of Acts tells us that Jesus' main purpose, his main message during these six weeks, is to talk to them about the kingdom of God — which was Jesus' primary message before his resurrection, and it's his primary message after his resurrection. It's all about the kingdom of God.
And the Gospel of John says that Jesus did and taught so much, and performed so many signs and wonders, that the whole earth could not hold the amount of books it would take to tell it. Which — I say to the author of the book of John, well, you could have at least tried.
But anyway, here are some of Jesus' final words in the book of Matthew. This is Matthew 28, or The Story, page 388. Jesus tells his disciples — these are his final words to them:
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.
And so here we see that the church's number one, primary mission — the last thing that Jesus tells them to do — is go and make disciples. Disciples, followers of Jesus, make disciples. An apprentice, someone who follows their rabbi, makes disciples. And Jesus tells us, in the book of John, that he is the way, the truth, and the life. That means a disciple does what Jesus did, says what Jesus said, follows where Jesus leads. That's what a disciple does. And the disciple makes more disciples who do the same thing with Jesus.
And Jesus says the way you do that is by going, by baptizing, and by teaching. So by going, you get out of your comfort zone, out of the regular patterns of your life, and you go and you meet people who don't know Jesus yet, and you invite them to know Jesus. You introduce them to this rabbi, to this teacher, to this Messiah, the King of the world. And you baptize them, you invite them into a new identity. Baptism is about being brought out of your old identity of the world, and into a new identity, where God himself is your Father — a good Father — and he calls you son, he calls you daughter, he calls you his own. And so you go, you baptize, and you teach. You tell people what Jesus taught. You tell people what Jesus is all about. Which means that we have the responsibility of knowing what Jesus taught, of knowing what Jesus is all about.
And Jesus continues in Acts chapter one. He says, "You're going to receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. And you're going to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." And so the disciples aren't all by themselves; they aren't alone. They are filled with God's Holy Spirit, filled with God's power. And like our worship leader John mentioned earlier, when you know Jesus, when you've been saved, you have the Holy Spirit. You are filled, indwelled by God's very Spirit, and you are therefore empowered by God himself to go and make disciples. You are identified in baptism as God's son and daughter. And therefore, what can be said of Jesus as God's Son can be said of you. If Jesus says he has authority, you have authority. If Jesus is beloved by God, you are beloved by God.
The ascension
And so then Jesus ascends. He spends 40 days, six weeks, with his disciples, and then the book of Acts tells us that he ascends into heaven. A quick note on the ascension. The ascension is one of those weird, wacky things that the church doesn't talk about all that often, because it's kind of hard to explain and kind of embarrassing. We get this image in our mind of Jesus kind of floating off into space, and it doesn't make sense. But remember, Jesus is a resurrected, bodily, physical human being. He's still human. He's still a physical person. And so the ascension shows us that you don't have to die to be in God's presence. It shows us that heaven is not something you wait for the end of time or the end of your life to get to. It means that, just as Jesus said, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Jesus isn't floating in space hanging out somewhere. He is with God as a physical human being. And that means Jesus is showing us that we too can be with God in a real and meaningful way — that God's rule and reign and kingdom is right here among us, if we would just have our eyes open to see it.
Pentecost and the earliest church
And so 10 days after Jesus' ascension is the Jewish feast, the Jewish celebration of Pentecost, or in Hebrew, Shavuot. This is 50 days after Passover, and Shavuot celebrates the giving of God's law to the Jews. And so God, in his wisdom and power, doesn't give a new law to the church. He gives his Holy Spirit. He gives his power to the church. And so the law is now written on our hearts. And just as Jesus said it would be, the temple is now defunct, because God's people, God's church, are the very presence of God on earth. We are God's dwelling place.
So on that day, Peter preaches this magnificent sermon. Peter, the disciple of Jesus, the follower of Jesus, preaches this absolutely magnificent sermon, and 3,000 people get saved that day. How many people would love to be there for that? I know I would love to get 3,000 people saved in one day. Probably not in the cards for me. That's okay. Peter can do it.
So what do they do? 3,000 people come to know Jesus, call Jesus their Lord, their Savior, their Messiah, the King of the universe that day. What do they do with 3,000 new people? Do they build a big massive building? Do they start a big tele-evangelism ministry? Maybe kick off a 31-week-long preaching series? No. Here's what they do. Acts chapter 2:
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, and to the breaking of bread and to prayer. And everyone was filled with awe at the many signs and wonders performed by the apostles. And all the believers were together and they had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone as they had need. And every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. And they broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
It sounds so ludicrously simple, and yet for us it can be so hard. They get 3,000 people saved in one day. And so what do they do? They open up their homes. They meet for daily teaching and eating. They hold a common purse. No one makes a claim of personal property. They share with everyone as they have need. They meet in public and evangelize, and people are getting saved every single day.
The spaces we gather in
Now, we can talk a lot about the things that they did, but today I want to put our focus on something a little different. I want to talk about the spaces that they met in — the spaces in which they did the things they did.
There is a sociologist, an anthropologist, in the 60s and 70s named Edward T. Hall. His primary work was in what he called proxemics — the proximities of how people relate to one another, and the natural ways in which human beings gather together in groups. Edward T. Hall did a lot of work looking throughout history, throughout geography, at how there's almost this universal system of how people gather together in groups, how they arrange themselves.
First of all, he noticed public space. Groups of hundreds or thousands. In modern life, we would put this in malls, or stadiums, sports arenas, airplanes, restaurants. It's in this public space that we are the least transparent with one another. It'd be weird to start turning to the person at the restaurant table next to you and try to ask them some deep, dark questions about their life. We know when people cross the awkward line in public space. It's the place where we're least transparent with one another. Jesus worked in the public space. We see this when Jesus works with the crowds, when he feeds four or five thousand, when he teaches people on the side of a mountain or from a boat. He gives his parables, but with no explanation. It's the place where Jesus teaches, but with the lowest amount of challenge and the highest amount of invitation. It's where Jesus is inviting people in to get to know Jesus, to get to know God the Father. But there's also not a lot of accountability, not a lot of challenge in this.
And in the church, this is where we meet together as congregations — Sunday morning services. We gather in the hundreds, some churches in the thousands. That's our public space. We come to be inspired, to be uplifted, to hear testimonies, to lift our voices in worship. And we also know that there's a certain amount of anonymity. If I ask you how you're doing, or you ask me how I'm doing in the hallway, you expect a pretty glib answer. And if I break down that public-space expectation and start telling you my deep, dark secrets, start crying and telling you everything that's wrong in my life, you would say, "Whoa, buddy, that's more than I asked for." That's public-space expectations. There's a certain lack of transparency, and that's okay. There's a certain amount of anonymity when you come into a gathering like this. And that's kind of the point.
The next social space is personal space. Groups of maybe four to eight people. In modern life, that would be the nuclear family — mom, dad, kids — and some of our closer friendships. In this, we allow people a lot more into our lives. These are the people, to put it bluntly, that we would not be as embarrassed if we burped or farted in front of them. Okay? They know some of our secrets. And there's a certain expectation of honesty, transparency. They help us grow. They hold us accountable. We help each other grow up in this personal space. Jesus worked in this space too. This was with the Twelve — the twelve disciples, the people he invested in, poured himself into, for three years. And so the Twelve not only heard the public teachings, the parables, the feedings, but then Jesus pulls them aside and tells them the meaning of the parables, the explanation. There's a high amount of invitation, but also a high amount of challenge. Jesus expects them to live into what he just taught, and he's going to hold them accountable. And so for the church, our personal space might be a small group — groups of four to eight people who gather together regularly. And if they've met together for a long time, they hold each other accountable, they hold each other's secrets. That's the expectation.
There's also private space. Groups of two to four. This might, in modern life, be our marriages, our absolute deepest friendships. It's very intimate. Jesus worked with just three disciples on this level: Peter, James, and John. They're the ones who saw the transfiguration. They saw some healings the other disciples didn't see. And Peter and John in particular become two of the most important, influential voices in the church. In the church, we work on this with accountability groups, or microgroups, or life transformation groups.
And the last space would be divine space — just that space between you and God. Prayer, quiet time, meditation.
The missing space: oikos
But according to our sociologist friend, Edward Hall, his big work was that we missed a space — a space that's existed in nearly every civilization across time, except for our own modern society.
When you think about it, we put a lot of expectations on the nuclear family, on personal space — mom, dad, a couple of kids. We want everything to happen in the nuclear family. We want people to grow up there. We want people to have accountability there. We want people to have deep relationships there. And it's no wonder that all of that weight makes the nuclear family crumble. Our generation has seen some of the highest rates of divorce, because we put so many expectations on just that little group of people that, of course, it crumbles. It's why kids have difficult relationships with their parents. It's why adults have difficult relationships with each other. It's because we've removed, according to Edward Hall, this crucial space called social space. Groups of 20 to 50. Mid-sized groups.
In most societies, there's a larger sense of family, a larger extended network that we have missed out on in our modern life. In Jewish and Greco-Roman culture, it was called the oikos. It's an extended family of not just you, mom, dad, a couple of kids, but also your parents and your wife's parents and your in-laws and your cousins. And back in those days, you had servants, so it included your servants and their kids and their families, and maybe your neighbors who worked in the same trade or profession as you. You're a fisherman. You're a builder. And the oikos was all about protection and provision. It was about protecting you from the outside, dangerous world. It was about providing for the lack that a nuclear family, all by itself, had. And so when your marriage was struggling, it wasn't just up to the two of you to figure it out — you had people in your oikos, people in your extended family, who could help you out. It wasn't just mom and dad raising your kids; it was aunties and uncles as well, bringing everyone up together. When finances got tight, you knew you weren't on your own all by yourself. You had an oikos, an extended family, a social space, that you could rely on.
And we see this in the life of Jesus. Jesus, after his baptism, after being tempted in the desert for 40 days, goes back to Nazareth, where mom and dad and his brothers and their families are. And he goes into the synagogue and preaches a sermon saying, "I am going to bring the year of Jubilee, not just to Jews, but to all the world." And so the city gets enraged by this Jesus. "Who does he think he is?" And they take him to the side of a cliff. And if things were working the way they were supposed to, Jesus' oikos — his brothers, his cousins, who are all builders, stonemasons, big, massive, bulky men — they should be right there next to Jesus defending him. But they're not. They're part of the mob about to throw him off the cliff. And so Jesus' oikos breaks down.
So Jesus then moves to Capernaum, a couple of miles northeast around the Lake of Galilee, where he moves in with a couple of bros he's met a couple of months ago named Simon and Andrew. And Simon and Andrew are fishermen, just like their parents. And Jesus moves in with them. And the first thing he does is he heals Simon's mother-in-law — his wife's mom, who also lives in the oikos. And then Jesus does something kind of outlandish: he starts inviting other people into the oikos — the twelve disciples, and the sick, and the lame, and the demon-possessed. And so this oikos, which used to be about protecting and providing just for themselves, becomes about protecting and providing for anyone who needs it. We have this picture in our mind of Jesus just with the Twelve, and that's it. But we know that Jesus had a network of 72 followers — not just the disciples, but their families, and people like Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus the Pharisee, and the women who followed Jesus around and supported him financially.
Here's actually a picture of Simon and Andrew's home in Capernaum. They know where it is. This is Jesus' headquarters, his ministry headquarters, during his time on earth. This is his oikos.
No modern parallel
So for modern life, what's the parallel? Sometimes a family reunion — but the whole point of family reunions is that we're all so scattered apart that we have to come back together, and then we scatter again. Sometimes a sports team can resemble an oikos, but usually not into adulthood. We have a common mission, a common purpose — defeat the enemy squadron with more goal points or whatever. But once you become an adult, that doesn't really translate anymore. Oikos has kind of broken down in modern life. And we're beginning to feel the fractures and the stresses that that brings, because we have too many expectations on just the small group, just the nuclear family.
A video that I would be showing you, if our software company didn't break everything, was this great Coke commercial from a few years back, where a man is introducing you to all the people at his Christmas party, handing out Cokes out of a Walmart bag, of course. He's got his mom, his dad, his surprisingly cool step-mom. He's got his soccer team and their mates, and his cousins. And he's got — this is the rhyme — "my office mates, my allergist, my MySpace friends, and my Twitter list." And we know what happened to MySpace, but you get the point. There's this recognition in this brilliant commercial that people should have an extended network of people that they call their friends — the ones they call at 2 a.m. when things are rough and tough. And it's not just acquaintances. These are people who stand in the gap when things get hard. And people crave these kinds of relationships.
A church of missional communities
And so that's why our church desires to be a church of missional communities. This is us doing our best to imitate the way of Jesus. One church puts it this way: missional communities are small enough to care but large enough to dare. They have enough people that they can engage in mission together to love their community well. It can actually be kind of hard to invite somebody into a small group, because small groups are intimate and personal and can get awkward — those social-space expectations get broken down. But mid-sized groups, like a missional community, groups of 20 to 50, are actually easier to invite people into, because you can find affinity. And there's a little bit of anonymity. You're not expected to share your deepest, darkest secrets. But you're also not getting totally lost in the crowd. It's a place of belonging. And it's also the primary way that the first-century church did church, and they were the most successful movement in history.
Let's go back to our passage from today and see how they did this. It says, "Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts" — so that's public space, large, massive space. And then they broke bread in their homes — oikos is the Greek word, social space — and they ate together with gladness in their hearts. And remember, "homes" is not mom, dad, kids. It's mom, dad, kids, and mom's parents and dad's parents, and cousins and aunties and uncles and the neighbors. "They broke bread in their homes" — oikos — "and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God, enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."
And we can track this throughout the New Testament. Acts 5 says, "Day after day, in the temple courts" — public space — "from house to house" — oikos to oikos — "they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah." Saul is a Jewish leader who wants to stop the church, who wants to destroy the church. And so what does he do? He goes from oikos to oikos, from house to house, and drags them off. Saul knew that if you wanted to stop the movement of the church, you stopped them from meeting in homes. Acts 20: Saul now becomes Paul, this great missionary in the Christian movement, and he says, "You know how I lived the whole time I was with you. You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you, but have taught you publicly" — public space — "and from house to house" — oikos to oikos.
Universally, when you talked about churches that met in the first century, they met in homes — the social space of oikos, groups of 20 to 50. Look at Paul, and how he opens or closes his letters to churches. In Romans, he says, "Greet Priscilla and Aquila and the church that meets in the oikos." "Greet Nympha and the church in her oikos," at the church of Colossae. To Philemon, he says, "Hello to Apphia our sister, and the church that meets in her oikos." And just, by the way, notice that it's all women leading these churches.
And so, it worked. It worked. These groups, these oikos, these groups of 20 to 50, worked. This movement became the fastest-growing movement in all history. A landmark study by sociologist Rodney Stark notes that in AD 40, you had 1,000 Christians — .00017% of the Roman Empire. And by AD 350, with no centralized buildings, no centralized religion, no professional clergy, just churches meeting in homes, they grew to 34 million Christians — 56% of the Roman Empire.
What happened?
And so we're left with the question: what happened? Why don't we see that kind of growth today? Well, I think it's because we began to buy the lie, the myth, that you can be discipled — that you can grow up in Jesus, do what Jesus did, say what Jesus said, follow the life that Jesus lived — in just one size of gathering. The vast majority of Western American Christians try to cram all of their discipleship, all of their growth, into just one hour in a public space on Sunday. Maybe they'll add 15 minutes of quiet time. Maybe they'll add a little bit of personal space in a small group. But different things happen in different-sized gatherings, as they should. And we need each of those gatherings to grow us up in a particular way. It's the way of Jesus. It's the way of the disciples.
Let me try to illustrate this another way. At Good News, we talk about three things: growing, connecting, and serving. Those are our three missional principles of how we're going to accomplish our vision. We also talk about growing up in a three-dimensional way, a three-dimensional Christian life, and we call that the dimensions of up, in, and out. Well, different things happen in different spaces. In public space — that's our congregational space this Sunday morning — that's really good at the "up" dimension, the growing dimension. That's where we get teaching and inspiration and hear testimonies and lift our voices up in worship. There should be other dimensions of connecting and serving as well, but that's not what it's primarily about. In personal space, that's really good at the "in" dimension, at connecting people together, creating friendships, creating those 2 a.m. friends. And then the social dimension, groups of 20 to 50, mid-sized groups — that's really good at the "out" dimension, of actually making an impact in our community, of inviting people in to know Jesus. And that social space, groups of 20 to 50, is the primary, number-one way that the church gathered in the first to fourth centuries. And no wonder they grew at such an explosive rate — they were so focused on the "out," the serving dimension, that people were continually saying, "I want to be a part of that."
So let's look at our passage again with this in mind. Acts 2: they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching — growing up — and to fellowship — connecting in — and to the breaking of bread and to prayer — serving out. Because remember, eating together, praying, that's an outward sign of serving. You invite people to eat with you. You pray for other people. And so everyone is filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. Every day, they continued to meet together in the temple courts — public space — and they broke bread in their homes — social space. They ate together — connecting — with glad and sincere hearts — praising God, growing up — and enjoying the favor of all the people — serving out. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. The result was growth. The result was explosive, dynamic growth. People were coming to know Jesus. People were getting saved.
"Ain't nobody got time for that"
Now, I know there's probably a question hanging over all of this for all of you, and that question is, "Ain't nobody got time for that!" Let's talk about that.
First of all, when we talk about time, there's a principle I always try to keep in mind: everyone has the same amount of time in the day. There's no one in this room who has the spiritual gift of 27 hours a day. It doesn't exist. Every single person has the same amount of time in the day. The difference is how you prioritize it. I try to make it a habit in my life to never say, "I don't have time for." Instead, I try to say, "I have chosen to spend my time in this way," or "I choose not to spend my time in that way." So when I look at your calendar, or you look at my calendar, my response to you is not going to be, "Oh, wow, you have so much more time than me." It's going to be, "Oh, I see what you value." Everyone has the same amount of time.
Number two, these social spaces, these discipleship contexts, are nested within each other. For illustration, I want to talk about my wife Emily and me. We go to church, a public space gathering, once a week. And some of you are thinking, "That's not fair, you get paid to be here." I promise you, even if I didn't get a paycheck, I would be at church every week. That's what we do. It's a priority. We make time for it every week. Well, within our church, we have a social space gathering called a missional community. And that missional community meets about two times a month, sometimes less, sometimes more. We serve at our food pantry once a month, and then we gather together in a group of about — it feels like 50 when you include all the kids — about 50 people, all gathered together in a home. And it's an exciting dynamic, because we're trying to model for our children what it looks like to talk about Jesus, and to disciple one another as adults, and to disciple our children together. It's a cool dynamic. But we also have a personal space gathering, a small group, or what we call a huddle. And that huddle also meets about two times a month, always on the off weeks of our missional community. And so we're never meeting with a group more than one time a week. And that huddle, that small group, is a special time. It's where accountability happens. It's where we share some of our secrets, some of the dark stuff of our lives. It's high challenge. It's accountability. But that small group is within our own MC. And then we also have our daily practices, those non-negotiable parts of Emily's and my rhythms. We're going to read Scripture together. We're going to pray together. We're going to have some silence and some solitude. And we make this happen because it's what we value. And we still manage to get the house basically clean. We still have our TV shows. But this is the rhythm of our lives, because it's what we value.
So, "ain't nobody got time for that" is an excuse. "Ain't nobody got time for that" is a way of saying, "I'm sorry, that's not what I value right now."
Back to the three questions
So remember, we started with three questions. Number one, what is the church's primary mission? It's to make disciples — as our vision statement puts it, to make radical, reproducing apprentices of Jesus. They follow Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life. They do what Jesus did. They say what Jesus said. They live the life that Jesus lived. And they make more disciples that do the same thing.
Number two, how does the church accomplish the mission? The number one way that the early church did it was through oikos — through extended families on mission together. Mid-sized groups of 20 to 50 people, gathering together in homes, eating together, praying for their neighbors, accomplishing good for the sake of the city they live in.
Number three, what does that have to do with Good News? We want to be a church of missional communities. We want to be a church where your number one identity of who your spiritual home is, is not the amorphous blob of who gets together on Sunday morning, but a tightly knit group of 20 to 50 people who gather together and care for each other — your 2 a.m. friends that you can call when things get hard, difficult, rough, and tough. We want that to be the place where every person knows that they belong first and foremost. We have four right now. We want to have 20 in three years.
Next steps
So, what are some next steps for you? Well, maybe your church attendance, your public space gathering attendance, is not once a week. It's more like once a month, or once a quarter, or once a year. The disciples, the ones who closely followed after the rabbi, after Jesus, actually gathered together daily in a public space gathering in the temple. And so, if we want to be the apprentices of Jesus, if we want to follow after Jesus, maybe it's time to step up our game — make the commitment that we want to grow and do what Jesus did and what his disciples did, and come to a public space gathering once a week. And look, we admit — we talk about this quite often — we're not so proud as to believe that Good News is the one church for all people everywhere. And so, if this place is not the place where you can make a weekly commitment, that's fine. But make it somewhere. Make it a place where you know you can belong.
Maybe you've got that down okay, but you need to make a new social space commitment. You recognize the need for a social space gathering in your life. You need connection. You want to engage in mission for your community, kindness to your town. And you want to experience discipleship the way Jesus did it, in groups of 20 to 50 — an oikos, a family on mission, a missional community. We have four right now, and we want to start more. So I'm going to be at the Welcome Center at the end of this service, and if you want to talk to me about how you can get started in that, I would love to talk to you.
Or maybe you need some deeper connection, some accountability with a smaller group of people. Well, the first question I'm going to ask you is, are you part of an oikos? Are you doing discipleship the way Jesus did it? And if you are, then maybe it's time to be part of a small group, or a huddle, or an accountability group. And again, I'm going to be at the welcome counter if you want to talk.
Prayer
So with all that, I'm going to ask our worship team to come forward. We're going to continue on in song together. And I want you to consider what your next step might be. Would you pray with me?
God, we thank you that you have left a record, a testimony in the Bible, of how your Son Jesus discipled people, and of how his disciples discipled people. And I thank you that you left that record and that testimony, God, that now we have no excuse. We are now held accountable by your very word, the word of God, your Scripture, to take action. And so, God, I thank you that your Holy Spirit indwells each of us individually, and together as a community. I thank you that your Holy Spirit empowers us and enlivens us to take action. And so, God, may we, by the power of your Holy Spirit, take a next step today. To maybe make the commitment to be here in a public space gathering weekly — for the inspiration, for the teaching, for the worship that we can come to together. Maybe it's in a social space, maybe it's a personal space, God. Whatever it is, would you give us the power that we need to take that step? And so, God, would we come closer to you? And would we imitate the way of your Son, our Savior, our Lord, the King of the world, Jesus? We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.
