Latest / Andy Stanley Sermons / Andy Stanley - The Fundamental List Part 6 Fundamental with Joel Thomas

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Andy Stanley - The Fundamental List Part 6 Fundamental with Joel Thomas · Andy Stanley Sermons

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Not long ago, I was out with a group of friends and we were
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having dinner one night, and at the location we everving dinner, were sitting
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on a patio and there was a cover band. It was playing music,
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which can go one of two ways if you've ever been out listening to music.
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But this cover band was pretty decent, and they began playing a song,
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and as soon as they heard it, I knew exactly what it was.
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If you're a YouTube fan, you would know exactly what the song was
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because they began playing where the Streets Have No Name, which starts with this
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sixth note arpeggio, which makes me sound like I know a lot more about
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music than I really do. But it's these six notes played by edge the
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guitar that when you hear them, you're like, you know exactly what song
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it is. And so they start playing the song, and the guitar player
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was doing pretty well and he was rocking into this song this iconic start,
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and then the whole band comes in and the lead singer begins singing, and
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they butcher the rest of the song. I mean, it's a disaster.
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In fact, I at one point felt a moral obligation to walk up and
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stop the band and be like, no, no, no, no,
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no, no, you cannot do this to this song. And luckily I
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had some people there that talked me out of that and rescued me from that.
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But I wanted to be like because I had just told somebody this is
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the greatest song of all time, one of the greatest songs of all time,
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and just a second later he's like, this is one of the greatest
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songs of all time, and I'm like, yeah, but it's a disastro
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it's an awful representation of it. Sadly, the reason I bring that up
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today is this same dynamic exists in the church and within Christianity. And I'll
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just give a quick disclaimer today. This could be a little uncomfortable for those
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of us who consider ourselves church people. But here's what we know that because
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of a lot of people out there who are performing awful representations, awful cover
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versions of what it is to be a Jesus follower, there's many people who've
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been turned off. There's many people who resist, There's many people who aren't
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interested in in joining in our faith. I recently was having a conversation with
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a guy in his young twenties, and I was trying to convince him that
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our church was different than other churches he experienced. And I'd love for him
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to come to our church. I want to introduce him to some people.
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We have this great twenties gathering, and I would love for him to come.
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And and and here's here's what he said to me. And I didn't
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know how to respond. He said, Hey, here's my hang up with
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church. My church friends judge me for identifying as gay while they're living with
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their girlfriends. Just out with it, just like that. And I'm the
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pastor, and I'm going, I don't know what to say to that.
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I don't know how to respond to that. And some of you you've had
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similar experiences where you talk to somebody and some of your here and you're going,
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yikes, this is the deep end. It's a little early in the
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sermon, but I can assure you we've locked the doors and you can't get
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out today. So it's gonna be all right. If you're online, don't
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tune me out yet, it's gonna be fine. Here's the thing. It
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turns out he's not alone. Fact, in a very recent study done basically
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surveying people who were not Christian people, only three percent of non Christian people,
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primarily in the Millennial and Gen X generations, only three percent have a
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favorable view of Christians. In fact, eighty seven percent of them said that
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the Christians they knew were judgmental, and eighty five percent of them said that
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they're hypocritical, and seventy eight percent said they were old fashioned, and seventy
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five percent said they were too political. And these were the primary perspectives of
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what people thought of when they thought of Christians. Now here's the thing I
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want to say up front. Surprisingly, while this presents some significant challenges,
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having a favorable view of Christians, especially if you're somebody who's here and maybe
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you're giving church a try again, or you're joining us online and you're giving
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Christianity and another shot, a favorable view of Christians is not one of the
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fundamentals of Christianity. And we should all say amen to that. Nobody did
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last service or this service, but we should all say amen to that because
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none of us are our perfect representation. Today, we're continuing our series called
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The Fundamental sort of recovering the essentials of our faith and the question we've been
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trying to answer is what must one believe to be a faithful follower of Jesus.
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We talk a lot about following and how to follow. We're a church
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that talks very practically about what it is to be a follower of Jesus,
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But what do you have to believe? Like, what are the essential the
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core essentials of our faith? Because as we've said, we've said, when
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the non essentials characterize or they become central, or they define the church or
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Christianity, thoughtful people like yourselves, maybe like some of you who are maybe
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watching us or tuning in online today, you step away at least you feel
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the need to deconstruct, which is a very popular thing in our world right
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now. Lots of people are deconstructing when it comes to their faith. And
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maybe that's you. You've said something was off and in your church experience or
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your experience with Christians, the tone or posture or approach of them towards you
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or towards somebody else you know in love while it was deemed as Christian and
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it seemed very un christ like. And I'll just tell you, in terms
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of deconstructing, there's nothing wrong with this unless we fail to reconstruct, which
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is why we're doing this series, because belief is like a vacuum. Vacuums
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don't remain vacuums. When something's taken out of it, something else automatically fills
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in and substitutes in its place. It fills the space of the things that
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we've removed. And there are some things we need to leave behind. There
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are some things we need to get rid of, but there's some things we
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need to replace those with. There's some core essential So we're asking the question
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what is fundamental, like if we have to strip it all away, what
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are the fundamental things you need to believe in order to be a follow of
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Jesus? What's essential and what's foundational. So far, we started week one
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with this first fundamental that we said is sort of the one that all the
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others derive from. All the others are a sort of a reference point for
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all the others. Jesus is God's son and our king, and Jesus came
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into the world. We're going to revisit this a little bit today, but
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he came to show us what God's like. In fact, Jesus our second
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one is he came and to illustrate and to demonstrate what God's like. So
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if you want to know what God's like, you don't even need to look
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at Christians. You don't need to look at the world. You don't need
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to look at the church. I mean, it would be nice if it
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was a good representation. But if you're somebody who's resisted church and you've resisted
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Christianity, the truth is Jesus said, if you want to know what the
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Father's like, if you want to know what God's like, if you want
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to know how God sees you, if you want to know what God's love
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is like, you watch how I love and how I lead my life and
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how I live my life. Because Jesus came to illustrate and demonstrate what the
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Father was like, and he talked a lot about sin and leaving our lives
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of sin, walking away from sin. And Jesus defines sin. This is
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our third on the fundamentalist. He defines sin as anything that harms you or
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harms somebody around you. And the reason is is because God is love and
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God loves you, and he doesn't want you to harm yourself, and he
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doesn't want you to harm other people around you. And he promised that one
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day he's gonna set everything right. There will be a final judgment, and
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Jesus number four, Jesus promised justice in the end, and he invites us
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to trust him when things aren't right in the meantime, when things don't seem
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like they're going the right way in the world, when we feel like somebody's
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got to do something about this, Jesus says, I'm planning to, but
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because of my mercy, I'm going to delay my judgment. And in delaying
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his judgment, Jesus, as we talked about last time, Jesus died for
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my sin and for your sin to reconcile us to God. He delayed his
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judgment, the righteous judgment that necessitated a payment for the penalty of our sin.
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And not only his mercy did he delay that judgment. He willingly took
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on the penalty himself and his grace, and he paid the payment for us.
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So, if you're new, if you're new to church, or you're
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just checking us out, or you have a bad taste in your mouth about
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Christianity, about church, here's something you want you need to know. As
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it turns out, faith in Christians is non essential for following Jesus. It's
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not essential. However, the reason I bring it up today is a lack
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of faith in Christians is almost universal. For non followers, it matters,
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It makes a difference. Now, we wouldn't blame a songwriter for someone butchering
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their song, but sadly that's often what happens with Christianity. You've seen it,
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you have friends for some of you. You've experienced this, and it's
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not something that's new. Gandhi, who was a student of Christ, he
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actually quoted Christ a lot when he was interviewed and he was asked why he
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wouldn't convert to being a follower of Jesus. This is what's his response.
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He said, Oh, I don't reject your Christ. I love your Christ.
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It's just that so many of your Christians are so unlike you're Christ.
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So we're going to talk about it today. It's going to be a little
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uncomfortable. I promise it'll be okay. But I want to talk about how
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did we get here, why are we where we are, and what could
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be what should be done about it to transform maybe some people around us,
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people in our community, maybe some people around the world, their view of
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what Christ is like as they look at the church and they look at Christians.
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Along the way, we're going to discover our next fundamental belief. And
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in order to get there, I want to go back to this number one.
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In week one, we said that this fundamental Jesus is God's Son and
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our King is the reference point for all the rest. And the reason I
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bring us back to it today is because we're going to go back to the
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very same passage that we unpacked in that first week, and it was in
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Matthew chapter sixteen. If you have a Bible and you want to open up
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to it, or you have a device, I'd love for you to follow
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along. In Matthew chapter sixteen, Jesus is asking a question of his closest
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followers, and it's sort of a leading question, but it's a bit cryptic
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to start. And the question he asks is who do you believe the Son
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of Man is? And the son of Man? They would have been familiar
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with this title. The Son of Man was a title that came out of
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the Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament scriptures. As to who has the ultimate
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authority is what Jesus is asking, who has God set up as the ultimate
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authority? In the world. And some of them replied, you know,
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some people think it's Elijah, and other people think it's John the Bappat,
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and some people think it was Jeremiah. Others believe it it was one of
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the other prophets. And then Jesus turned them and he said, okay,
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forget everybody else. What about you? He asked, who do you say
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I am? As if to say, okay, we were talking about the
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Son of Man and this title, this ultimate authority, and I want to
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kind of connect this because I want to know do you think I'm him?
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Do you think that's who I am? Who do you say that I am?
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And Simon Peter He's ready fire Aim if you know anything about Simon Peter.
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He answered, you're the Messiah, the son of the Living God.
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And he actually got it right this time. And it's like it's like,
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hey, I know who you are. I feel completely confident, and I'm
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willing to just I'm willing to just go public with this. And this is
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the first time anybody had declared who Jesus came to represent. He came to
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represent God as God's Son and our king, our final king, and this
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is the only thing as we said that the Church has consistently agreed upon in
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two thousand years is that Jesus was God's son, and he is our king.
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He's our final king. He's the one where to surrender to and live
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our lives according to the way he said he should leave live our lives.
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Jesus replied to him, though, he said, blessed are you, Simon's
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son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood,
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but by my Father and Heaven, basically saying, hey, this isn't
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eternal truth, this isn't just logic, This isn't just because of what you
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saw. This is something that was revealed to you, and it's really really
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important. In fact, it is foundationally important. And we stopped here the
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first week, but what comes after this is absolutely critical to understanding our next
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essential. He actually first refers to Peter as Simon, Simon's son of Jonah,
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and when Jesus refers to him, and this is the way it's recorded
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for us, he says, Simon, son of Jonah, this was not
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revealed to you by flesh and blood, but my father in heaven, And
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I tell you. He goes on. He says, I tell you that
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you are Peter, which this was actually if you go back in the gospels,
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this was a nickname that Jesus gave to Peter when to Simon when he
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first met him. And and the word Peter means or the name Peter means
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Pet's Petros in the Greek and it means rock. And he says, I
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tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock, not you Peter,
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but on this rock I will build my Ecclesiam, my gathering, or
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my church. So what is the rock? Here's the rock. This is
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a wordplay. He's using Simon's, this nickname he's given Simon, and he
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says, hey, look, your name is Petros, and like your name,
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I'm gonna build my church on this rock. The rock being the declaration
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of faith that you just made, the fundamental and foundational nature of your declaration
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of faith in Me as the ultimate authority, as your savior, on this
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rock, on this sort of faith in Me as your ultimate authority, Jesus
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says, I will build my gathering of followers. And that's how it happened.
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Now this is important because we've gotten this wrong before in our history,
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and some people misunderstand Jesus didn't replace himself with a person he could have He
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could have decided. And some people take this to mean, oh, Jesus
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was passing the baton to Peter, but that's not what he did. He
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made it really clear that I'm passing my baton to a gathering of faith,
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a group of people that will join together characterized and surrounding or the central essential
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belief of faith in Me as their ultimate authority. And the Apostle Paul.
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We know this is true because multiple multiple places the Apostle Paul clarified this.
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In fact, in one place he clarified it with a metaphor. Using a
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metaphor, people would understand. He said this the human body, using the
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body as a metaphor. The human body has many parts, but the many
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parts make up one whole body. And so it is with the body of
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Christ. He's basically saying, look, the body of Christ has many parts,
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and he points out that in the same way it's unnatural and dysunctional for
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the human body to be dismembered. I skipped those verses your well because they're
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a little gross. In the same way that that's the case, the same
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is true of the body of Christ and his sort of land. Near summary
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statement is this, He says, Look all of you together, not not
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on your own and not separate. All of you together, gather together are
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Christ's body, and each of you is a part of it. All of
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you together, the gathering of Christ. You're what's going to represent Christ.
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Christ passes baton not to an individual, He passes baton to a body of
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believers who exhibit faith by saying, You're the ultimate authority, and I'm going
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to surrender my life to you. Not each of us on our own again,
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but a collection of people who are gathering together to represent Jesus. This
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was his plan A for how he was going to build his church. This
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was his plan A for how he was going to move the movement forward.
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This was his plan A for how people would experience him and experience his life.
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In his book Connecting, Larry Crabs one of the best books I've read
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on the the value of the gathering of the local church. In his book
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Connecting, Larry Crab says this why this is so critically important. He says
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this. He said, the absolute center of what he God does to help
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us change is to reveal himself to us to give us a taste of what
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he's really like and to pour his life into us. And a critical element
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in the revealing process is to place us in a community of people who are
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enough like him to give us that taste first hand. The gathering, showing
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up with one another, showing up for one another, is how we encounter
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Jesus. The reason is is because the church fundamental number six, the church
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is God's agent of transformation personally, culturally, and globally. The church is
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how we experience Jesus. And when we experience Jesus in the body, when
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the body gathers together, because the body gathering together is the representation of Jesus.
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Remember that's who he passed the baton to. And so when we gather
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in the body, we experience the transformational power of Jesus, and we are
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transformed personally. And as we become more like Jesus, and as we're transformed
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in the community of the Body of Christ, we become agents of cultural and
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global change in the world around us. It's the way Jesus designed it to
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work. However, as some of you know, in our world, the
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gathering is swimming upstream a bit. In fact, in more ways than one,
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and the current's getting stronger. We're now deep into what's known as the
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information age in our world. And some of you are more students of culture
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than I am, but just a quick broad sweep, I mean, the
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information age is characterized started around the mid twentieth century, is characterized primarily by
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technological advancements in our world and in our societies. And these technological advancements have
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revolutionized efficiency, they've transformed connection in our world, and they've fostered individualization.
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And all of these can be positive things. And it's done all of these
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things for better and for worse. And while many of these advancements you experience
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the improvement personally, the way you're able to get more done in less time,
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the way you're able to stay more connected with more people, the way
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people are actually able to succeed and launch and develop more businesses on their own.
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Entrepreneurship is at its highest rate in history. I mean, all of
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these things are positive things. And while many of these have improved our world,
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they also have some unintended consequences, and we're just beginning to understand what
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some of those are. And we don't realize what it is when we make
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something else king. And this has seeped into the church gathering as well.
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You see, instead of Jesus and the gathering and experiencing Jesus in the body
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being king, information in our society has become king. And when information is
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king, isolation is not far behind. And we saw this, we've seen
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this, You've experienced this, some of you know, some of you,
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you've seen this in your kids. Gen z is statistically, you can do
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your own research. Statistically, the most highly connected and yet also the loneliest
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generation in history, The most highly connected, yet also the most lonely generation
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in history. Social media and YouTube and online gaming. It connects people and
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informs people in unprecedented ways, but it isolates people in unprecedented ways as well.
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And we've seen this. We've seen this throughout our world and we're just
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beginning to experience the effects of it in our world. But there's a second
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significant casualty, and it's not as documented, it's not as much talked about,
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it hasn't been as much research. But when information is king, isolation
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is not only far behind, but incarnation gets left behind. Now, incarnation
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might be a new word for some of you. Incarnation really just means embodied
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in or taking on flesh, and it's usually attributed to Jesus. Jesus took
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God was God, He came and he the incarnation of God was when Jesus
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came and he took on flesh and human form. It was God's way of
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saying, I'm not some far off impersonal cosmic dictator that's ruling the world or
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regulating the world without personal concern for your lives. God came to be with
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us. In fact, Jesus came to be with us em manual. This
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is what we celebrated Christmas. Em Manuel God with us. God came to
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relate and restore and to reconcile and to redeem. And if the physical presence
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of God wasn't important, come on, Jesus would have stayed in heaven.
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Why would he have come, Why did he need to come? Why would
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it all powerful God just not do it some other way. It's because incarnation
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is important, but it's getting left behind. And Jesus when he left the
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earth, he passed the baton to you and to me, and he sent
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his spirit to empower us collectively, not just individually, but collectively to be
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his representation to be His agent of transformation for each other in each other's lives,
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as we speak truth and we encourage and we challenge and we build up
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one another, but also his agent of transformation culturally globally in this age and
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history, the gathering of the local church, the body of Christ is the
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incarnation of God. And we don't realize how significant, how important that is.
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But there's been this recent cultural shift, not just outside the church,
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but within the church, and many view the gathering or the attending or the
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gatherings of the church as non essential. And come on, let's just be
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honest for a minute. I'm just gonna push you just a second. Many
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of us, if you look at our behavior and our activity, many of
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us view the gathering or attending the gathering gathering other believers. We view it,
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at least our actions seemed to proclaim it as non essential. Now,
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this isn't something new. This began over a decade ago, but it was
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accelerated during COVID. In fact, some of you remember you remember this probably
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all too well. You're like, I'm trying to forget. But during COVID,
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all non essential services shut down. Remember this, so only essential services
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kept going and we're gathering, and the church stopped gathering in person. And
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now we know we didn't stop gathering. We continued to gather online. But
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that wasn't the perception of many outside and inside the church. It's like,
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oh, this isn't essential, and there was fallout from that. It accelerated
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something that was already beginning. In fact, the Barna Group did a study
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on the state of the church, and they did a study that looked at
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trends over a ten year period. This study was done right near the end
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of twenty twenty and they were looking at the period from twenty ten to twenty
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twenty in America, and they discovered that practicing Christians Christians that attended church and
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read their Bible and were in Bible study, and that were in groups that
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were active in their faith, they were actively gathering, they were actively a
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part of a local church. Practicing Christians dropped from forty seven percent in twenty
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ten to twenty five percent in twenty twenty, almost in half. And at
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the say, in the same period, non practicing Christians rose from thirty three
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percent to forty three percent. And during the same period, non Christians people
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who said they don't affiliate with faith, they shifted from twenty percent to thirty
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two percent. I don't have to leave the chart up long for you to
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realize things are not trending in the right direction. And by no coincidence,
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it has to do with people practicing and gathering in the local church. Do
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you know that for the first time in American history, like other traditions like
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the Catholic or Jewish tradition, the first time in American history, non practicing
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Christians is greater, in fact significantly greater than practicing Christians. So, after
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decades of Christians disconnected, if you will, as Paul talked about it,
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dismembered from the body, not encountering the transformational power of the incarnation of Jesus,
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as people gather together in the local church, after a decade of that,
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here's where we are. This is how people see Christianity, this is
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how people see the church. And it's by no coincidence that this has trended
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with people's view of the church being non essential. So the question we're asking
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is is the church essential? Is it essential? I mean, here's the
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thing is the gathering of the church is a people attending church. It's you
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showing up at a local body and interacting with other believers. Is that essential?
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And how essential is it? I would tell you because of the way
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things are trending, it's more essential than ever. And we can't have too
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many of these churches. In fact, if you're a part of one of
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our Atlanta area churches and you give to our church, you need to know
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we're not only trying to make help our church succeed, more help our church
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be built up and reinforced, and investing people in our local communities. We're
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investing in other churches. We're trying to help other churches start. We're trying
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to build up other churches. And part of what you give helps us do
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that, not just across the country, around the world, even in our
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local city. We've been investing in local churches because we think it's more essential
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than ever ever. And you didn't know this, but you're helping us.
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And here's what we know that the church is never going to be perfect,
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not all these churches we invest in. Our churches won't be imperfect. We're
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not gonna be perfect, and you know why because you're here, that's why,
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and I'm here and we're not perfect. But that's not the goal.
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The goal is not to be perfect. The goal is to be continuing to
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be progressively challenging each other to move forward in our lives and following Jesus to
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build each other up, to challenge one another. And and we do that
25:00
as we gather together. That's where we experience the transformational power of Jesus Church.
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Essential, of course it is. But the next logical question is,
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with so many people having such an unfavorable view of the church, is the
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church salvageable? I mean, it seems like it's in America. The perception
25:22
of the Church of Christianity is descending so significantly that that this is a legitimate
25:26
question. And honestly, I don't have a really good answer to it.
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So I'm going to let Jesus answer the question. Here's what Jesus said when
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he said to Peter. Look, I'm telling you, Peter, on this
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rock your confession, this foundational, fundamental confession, that I'm the authorityan and
25:41
people are choosing to submit their life to me on that sort of faith,
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I'm going to build my church. And here's the thing I want you to
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know. On that foundation, I'm going to build my church and the gates
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of Hades are not going to overcome it. This is Jesus basically going,
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Look, come hell or high water. With the same power that raised me
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from the dead, I'm gonna make my church move forward and against all odds.
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In the hellish sort of position and cultural conditions of the first century,
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it happened. It started amongst the Jewish people, and it spread to the
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Greeks and the Romans. It transformed, It actually toppled and transformed the Roman
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Empire. It swept across Europe, and it shaped the West. It shaped
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the culture in which we live in now. And it happened as those people
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who claimed faith in Jesus as they gathered, as they continued to show up
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for one another, and show up in their communities and show up for people
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around them, expressing the love of Jesus. Showing up was a core essential
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in the First Church, amongst the first believers. In fact, that's why
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the writer of Hebrews he encouraged them. He said, look, let us
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hold unswervingly to the hope we profess. I love this word. Don't get
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off course, don't veer off course, to hold unswervingly, holds steadfast to
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the direction that we're going to the hope he professed, keeping keeping focused on
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that, for he who promised being Jesus is faithful. And let us consider
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how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds. Not giving
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up this is how you. You don't swerve, you be unswervingly. This
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is how not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing,
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but encouraging one another. The habit of meeting together. It was a
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central practice. It was maybe the most important practice of the early Jesus followers.
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It was not optional, it was not peripheral. It was essential.
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They saw the gathering of God's people as God's primary vehicle for building up the
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body and reaching out to people who were outside the body. So I just
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want to push you a little bit today. Look, if you've gotten out
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of the habit of meeting together, it's time to change that habit. This
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is this is me Paul's or the writer of Hebrews. Were is not mine?
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Probably Paul? This is me encouraging you. This is me encouraging you
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that the gathering is essential. It's essential to you experiencing the transformation of God
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to you. Experiencing what God wants you to do in what He wants to
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do in your life. It's essential if you're joining us online. I don't
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want you to feel only guilt. This isn't me like shaming you. I'm
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just saying there's an opportunity, there's an invitation. I don't I don't need
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anything from you, but I want something for you. And the reality is
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is gathering with the local Church is how God's transformational power gets unlocked in your
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life and in our communities, in the world around us. That's why our
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missions church. Our mission is to inspire people to follow Jesus by engaging them
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in the life and the mission of the local church. We believe the local
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church is God's transformational vehicle. God's God's hope for the world. It's how
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He's delivering his hope to the world. Engagement in the Body of Christ is
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God's special agent, if you will, it's his, God's special agent of
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transformation for those within the body, for our next door neighbors, and for
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the next generation. It's how He's delivering life and hope and meaning to the
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world around us. This last year at our sixth grade camp, if this
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was just for our Atlanta area churches. We had one one and thirty three
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sixth graders go to camp. Isn't that unbelievable? It's crazy. As a
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half hearted clap, some of you are thinking that sounds like my own personal
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hell. Eleven hundred and thirty three sixth graders in one place. But is
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amazing. Amazing camp A bunch of kids showing up, and as you can
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imagine, it's hard to get enough leaders and chaperones and all the people you
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need to make something like that happen. Our team's amazing, but you know,
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some schedules don't line up, but we don't have leaders that can go
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from times, we try to recruit some other people to come in and help
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us and show up and kind of get in the middle of that and substitute
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for other leaders. And we actually had this crazy thing happened at one of
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our campuses. One of our leaders, they're car caught on fire, like
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literally on their way to go to camp, and so we last minute we
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had another leader that we had gotten involved and they weren't going to be leading
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a group, and so we got this leader who had been actually a high
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school leader who'd been familiar with our student ministry background check. All the responsible
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things knew what they were doing, and they said that they'd be willing to
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show up for the weekend. They had time. They show up for the
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weekend and serve with this group and lead the group for the leader who wasn't
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going to be able to go. And he got connected with this group,
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and immediately he realized like most of the group was connected, but there was
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this one student that was sort of absent and distant from the group and not
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really connecting with what was going on. And he just decided to show up
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and play his part, and he began to connect with this student in concert
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with a lot of other people that were playing their parts. Speakers that were
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there this weekend, and coaches and people that were doing activities for the kids
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and making it fun, and people are doing security to make sure everybody's safe
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and in the right places, and the staff that are overseeing operations, and
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all these different people that are playing their part. They're showing up because this
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is the gathering. It's just six graders, but it's the gathering of the
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church for their age, age appropriate where God we expect God to show up
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and work in their lives. And this leader, who wasn't even supposed to
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be there, showed up and he began to connect with the student, and
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the student, over the course of the weekend, began to confide in him
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something he had never confided in anybody else, not any of his friends,
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not his actual leader, not his parents. He began to confess that he
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was in a really dark place personally and he was having some serious suicidal thoughts.
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And over the course of a lot of discussions, this leader began to
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help this student experience Jesus in this place, at this camp, in this
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environment, again alongside lots of other people. He couldn't have done it by
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himself, but this student had a transformational experience with Jesus and he began to
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find hope. And this leader continued to walk with him after the camp,
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and he found help and he found healing. Let me ask you, where
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else can that happen? That only happens in the local church. It happens
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best in the local church. The transit report from sixth grade camp it looked
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like this. Eleven and thirty three students attended camp. Three hundred plus students
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gave made a decision to give their life to Christ. They were saved spiritually
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and one student. One the student was saved physically. Skip. Thanks for
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helping me with that moment. Let me ask you, is the church essential?
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Come on? Let hold on a second, Hold on a second,
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hold second. I ask this student right here, ask his mom, it's
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the church essential? Oh yeah, when we show up, When you show
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up for each other, for each other's families, when you show up,
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and just even when you don't know what your part is. Scripture says you're
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a part of the body. When you show up, it matters. When
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you show up, you fulfill your role as part of the body. God
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uses other people in the body to spur one another on, to encourage one
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another, to love one another, to care for one another, to build
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one another up when we can't do it on our own. He knew we
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would need each other, and so he didn't leave it up to one person.
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It passed a baton to a gathering because active gatherings of believers activate God's
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transformational power in our world, and miraculous things happen in our lives and the
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lives of those around us when we gather and each one plays our part,
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marriages, our transform God through his spirit restores families, hearts are mended,
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addictions are broken, purpose is realized, Lives are rescued forever forever. Choosing
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to show up and engage in the life and mission of the Church can make
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all the difference for you and for somebody else around you. It has made
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all the difference for so many, and it will continue to make all the
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difference in our lives and the lives of those around us because the Church is
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fundamental. The Church is God's agent of transformation personally, culturally, and globally.
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So come on, let's make it a habit. Let's make it a
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habit of showing up for each other on Sundays, but not just on Sundays,
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on Monday through Saturday, throughout the week in homes and on Sunday afternoons
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with students. Let's make it a habit of continuing to show up for our
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next door neighbors and the next generation. Let's show up for each other,
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and I believe each of us will experience the transformation that God has for us,
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and maybe, just maybe people's view of Christians, at least in our
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communities will be transformed as well. Assass