Country Club to Church: The Mission

COUNTRY CLUB TO CHURCH: THE MISSION
THEME: FUNCTIONING AS A CHURCH WITH THE OUTSIDER IN MIND.
TEXT: ACTS 15:1-11
While I was at Hartsville Pike church of Christ, one of the church members invited me along on a weekday morning to pay golf at the private Gaylord Springs Country club. Rick worked for J.C. Penney, and one of the executives from the company was also going to join us. Both of these men had memberships to this excusive golf course. So when I was invited I was honored and excited to attend this golf outing. I knew I was in for a special treat as we pulled up to the antebellum club house. It held all of the southern charm for years past. We did not go park the SUV, because we pulled up to the club house and stepped out of the vehicle. There to meet us was two attendants who quick when around back to unload our golf clubs. As they pulled the golf bag out of the SUV they placed the cub on the back of a golf cart and begin cleaning the clubs up to a nice shine. Then one of the attendants jumped in the SUV and drove off. As we were waiting for our clubs to be cleaned a nice younger lady asked us what refreshments we would enjoy. I selected an orange Gatorade. In a matter of moments the bottle was placed in the cup holder on the cart. We drove over to the driving range and hit an unlimited amount of practice balls on the range. We should hit the links on a perfectly tended course. The round flowed smoothly without any long waits or inconveniences. After a respectable 92, with a few extra shots allowed, I was playing with gentlemen; we finished the round on a nice sunny day. We went into the club house where an attendant met us who cleaned our golf shoes and nicely passed them back to us. We waited for the attendant to pull out the SUV as the kind attendant placed our clubs back of the vehicle. The executive friend handed over a tip and we were off.
This was a great country club experience. It was totally all about me. It was about my happy, my comfort, my preferences, and my desires. The country club is there to service my needs, wants, and ideas. Unfortunately, this attitude is how some think about the church. I want to be nicely greeted, I want a nice sermon, I want good parking, some good classes for the children, and some positive singing. We sometimes think of the church through our own eyes. We think of the church in ways that should please us. We want to turn the church into a well run country club. In fact, if you look across the Christian world today, many congregations are functioning in this way. The church is predominately given to service the member’s needs want wants. This is where the major of the money is spent. This is where the most of the time is given. Most churches prefer to be church country clubs. But we want to address this mistake in the next two weeks. We want to go back to a church of the first century. We want to deny the current church culture, and be first century Christians.
This was not just a 21 First Century problem; it started in the 1st century. In the early church there was a group of people who wanted to make the church serve their particular likes and dislikes. It was a group that wanted certain qualifications for membership. It was the classic controversy between the insider’s mindset verses the outsider’s mindset. In fact this was the major