INTRO.- Church happenings. What is happening in our churches?
ILL.- A group of women were talking. One lady said, “Our congregation is sometimes down to thirty and forty on Sunday night.”
Another said, “That’s nothing, sometimes our group is down to six or seven.” An old maid added her bit, “It’s so bad in our church on Sunday night that when the minister says, ‘Dearly beloved,’ it makes me blush.” That’s bad.
ILL.- It was a fixed habit of Theodore Roosevelt to attend church on Sunday, and continued it all his years in Washington even as president of the USA. The pastor of his church always received a letter or phone message from the president when he expected to be out of town, explaining his absence. HOW I WISH!
Is there anything good happening in the Lord’s church? Is there anything happening at all in the church? Here are some church FACT happenings in the US.
Fact: Most new people attending their congregation for five years or less have changed congregations within the same denomination (transfers: 57%). Only 7% are first-timers who are new to the faith.
Fact: Denomination is less important to mainline Protestants (59%) and those under the age of 25 (48%).
Fact: Many new people (47%) visit for the first time because someone invited them; only 6% came for the first time due to advertising. (I don’t think advertising hurts, but it’s not the most important factor in bringing in new people.)
Fact: Most new people visit between 1 and 3 congregations before choosing their new home.
Fact: People return because of the quality of the sermon (36%), the friendliness of the people (32%), and the overall worship experience (30%).
Fact: Services in growing congregations are more likely to include contemporary music and laughter.
MORE FACTS: AN UP CLOSE LOOK AT CHURCH ATTENDANCE IN AMERICA
1. Less than 20% of Americans regularly attend church—half of what the pollsters report.
2. American church attendance is steadily declining. In 1990, 20.4% of the population attended an Orthodox Christian church on any given weekend. In 2000, that percentage dropped to 18.7% and to 17.7% by 2004.
3. Only one state is outpacing its population growth. Hawaii, where 13.8% of the state’s population (1.3 million) regularly attends church, was the only state where church attendance grew faster than its population growth from 2000 to 2004. However, church attendance in Arkansas, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee—all of which have higher percentages of church attendees than Hawaii—was close to keeping up with population growth in the respective states.
4. Mid-sized churches are shrinking; the smallest and largest churches are growing. While America’s churches as a whole did not keep up with population growth from 1994 to 2004, the country’s smallest (attendance 1-49) and largest churches (2,000-plus) did grow.
5. Established churches—40 to 190 years old—are, on average, declining.
Someone said, “The Church is the body of the Lord. Without Jesus, there can be no Church; and without the Church, we cannot stay united with Jesus. I’ve yet to meet anyone who has come closer to Jesus by forsaking the Church. To listen to the Church is to listen to the Lord of the Church."
PROP.- In the first church, let’s take a look at what happened and how it relates to the church today.
1- the proclamation of the gospel
2- the persecution of the apostles
3- the proliferation of the church
I. THE PROCLAMATION OF THE GOSPEL
Acts 4:1-2 “The priests and the captain of the temple guard and the Sadducees came up to Peter and John while they were speaking to the people. They were greatly disturbed because the apostles were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead.”
One thing is sure: the early church proclaimed the gospel to others! They were bold in their proclamation of Jesus.
ILL.- Two brothers, one a famous baseball pitcher and the other a preacher, met after a long separation and spent some time talking about bygone days.
Finally the minister said: “How is it, Bill, that I spent four years in college and three years in seminary, and you’ve never done anything except to play ball, and you’re getting a salary of one hundred thousand and I’m getting ten? I don’t understand.” (this was a long time ago)
Bill thought for a minute and then said: “I’ll tell you how it is, Jim. It’s all in the delivery!” I would say that delivery makes a difference in both pitching and preaching.
However, the content of the preacher’s sermon is what is most important. A good delivery is important but what is he preaching? If he isn’t preaching Christ and His Word he is just wasting his time.
Some actors and actresses give some great performances but what are they accomplishing when it comes to eternity? Movies can’t save anybody. They may entertain and motivate in certain ways but they carry no eternal value.
ILL.- An influential man was genuinely saved in a church service. The pastor’s heart was overjoyed! His joy, however, was somewhat dulled when he asked the new convert what it was in his sermon that brought him to Christ. “Ah,” said the convert, “It wasn’t your sermon; IT WAS YOUR TEXT!”
Every preacher wants to believe that his sermons do some good, but sometimes, it may well just be the text that is read that does the most good. Or sometimes, it’s just something very simple that has a tremendous impact on someone’s life.
No matter what we talk about in life we all must realize the importance of talking about Christ when the opportunity rises.
I Pet. 3:15 “But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”
Are we always prepared to speak for Christ? How prepared must we be? Not much really. We just need to be willing to speak a good word for Christ.
ILL.- For example, suppose someone brought up the Virginia Tech tragedy again, saying, “I don’t know why that happened?” What would you say? Or would you say anything at all? Would speak a good word for Christ? To me it would be a great opportunity to say something like, “Well, I believe it was a very evil thing whether that Cho guy was evil or just insane. There is evil in this world and there is one answer for that evil and that’s Jesus Christ!”
We must always be ready and willing to speak up for Christ and point to Him as the answer to life’s problems.
We believe that in Jesus we have the hope of eternal life. But are we talking about this and witnessing about this truth? Apparently the early Christians were not afraid to talk about this. What’s wrong with us? Is our faith lacking? It could be.
Any time people experience difficulty in life and we are called on to minister to them in some form, we should point them to Jesus as the help they need in life. Somehow or other, WE NEED TO BE PROCLAIMING JESUS TO PEOPLE!
II. THE PERSECUTION OF THE APOSTLES
Acts 4:3 “They seized Peter and John, and because it was evening, they put them in jail until the next day. The text also reads, “They were greatly disturbed because….” Because of what? Because of what the apostles were teaching and proclaiming in Jesus.
Persecution. That word doesn’t sound very good or inviting. Nobody wants to be persecuted for any reason but a certain amount of persecution is inevitable if you follow Christ.
II Tim. 3:10-12 “You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose, faith, patience, love, endurance, persecutions, sufferings—what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch, Iconium and Lystra, the persecutions I endured. Yet the Lord rescued me from all of them. In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”
ILL.- John Wesley was riding along a road one day when it dawned on him that three whole days had passed in which he had suffered no persecution. Not a brick or an egg had been thrown at him for three days.
Alarmed, he stopped his horse, and exclaimed, “Can it be that I have sinned, and am backslidden?”
Slipping down from his horse, Wesley went down on his knees and began praying to God to show him where, if any, there had been a fault.
A rough fellow, on the other side of the hedge, hearing the prayer, looked across and recognized the preacher. “I’ll fix that Methodist preacher,” he said, picking up a brick and tossing it over at him. It missed its mark, and fell harmlessly beside John.
Whereupon Wesley leaped to his feet joyfully exclaiming, “Thank God, it’s all right. I still have His presence.”
I have preached over 40 years and have never yet had anyone throw a brick at me or beat on me. Is something wrong with my life and preaching? Not necessarily, however, if we present the truth of Christ some people won’t like us. They may even speak unkindly to us but it’s not likely we’ll be physically abused or persecuted.
ILL.- Recently, Elaine and I had a carpet man at our house to give us a price on carpeting for our sun deck. Suddenly Elaine asked him, “Do you go to church anywhere?” He said, “No.” Elaine said, “We’d like to have you come to our church.” And he responded, “I don’t believe in religion. More people have been killed over religion than anything else.”
Then he proceeded to talk about the Muslims and how they would gladly die for their faith. I said something to him about being opposed to Christianity and he said, “I’m not opposed to Christianity…”
But he didn’t go on and explain himself and I didn’t exactly want to provoke him because he was probably 6’ 2” or so and weighed in the area of 300 lbs!
Brothers and sisters, perhaps the reason we don’t get any kind of persecution at all is because we are not speaking for Christ at all!
III. THE PROLIFERATION OF THE CHURCH
Acts 4:4 “But many who heard the message believed, and the number of men grew to about five thousand.”
Wow! 5000 believers, followers! That’s proliferation of the church! That’s growth in the church! And we need it today!
ILL.- The city of Glasgow in Scotland was settled by religious people who adopted a motto: “Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the Gospel.” As one generation succeeded another, the city grew into an important commercial and industrial center. Business loomed larger than religion in the minds of its civic leaders. Finally, its Chamber of Commerce shortened the motto to make it read: “Let Glasgow Flourish.”
In some ways, this sounds so much like America. We tend to believe that many of our founding fathers were Christians and believed in the importance of building America on Christian principles, BUT LOOK AT WHAT IS HAPPENING IN AMERICA TODAY? We are definitely going the other direction in regard to faith and Christianity.
ILL.- A Methodist layman visited a great city church in Ohio during a business trip. After the service and sermon, he thanked the preacher for the message.
“But,” said the manufacturer, “if you were my salesman I’d discharge you. You got my attention by your appearance, voice, and manner; your prayer, and logical discourse aroused my interest; you warmed my heart with a desire for what you preached; and then—and then you stopped, without asking me to do something about it! In business, the important thing is to get people to sign on the dotted line.”
The early church got people to sign on the dotted line. We need to get people to sign on the dotted line. What’s that?
ILL.- Admiral Sato commanded the Japanese submarine fleet at Pearl Harbor. He said that he really believed the Emperor was divine and indoctrinated the cadets in that belief. When asked what happened to him when the Emperor announced he was not divine, his reply was: “The world turned upside down. I had been ‘purged’ by the occupation, my rank as admiral taken away, my income cut off, and I has forced to work on a farm.... And now my faith was gone. I felt stripped of everything—orphaned, estranged, alone. I thought of suicide....”
And then he said he saw the Christian faith at work in a peasant family, bringing peace and joy amid poverty. He broke down and wept at the sight of it. He surrendered to Christ and was baptized on Easter.
Somehow, we need to convince people to confess their faith in Christ and be baptized! That’s getting people to sign on the dotted line and that’s proliferation of the church!
CONCLUSION-------------------------
Some good things should be happening in the Lord’s church!
ILL.- A cartoon showed a little boy sitting beside his father and mother at church. The little boy said to his father: “Mom wants to cook the dinner, you want to play golf, I want to play football. Why are we here?”
Brothers and sisters, could this be why we don’t see more good things happening in our churches? BECAUSE WE REALLY DON’T WANT TO BE HERE! And because we really aren’t that committed to Christ and His church?
Committed is needed if the church is ever going to see good things happen in the future. Will you commit yourself to Christ and to His church?
