So, who’s it going to be? The dentist, the bartender or the deputy? We know it won’t be the postal worker as she was the first person voted off this Thursday. When Survivor Two began in Australia last winter the smart money was on Kel Gleason, the US Army intelligence officer who graduated from high school in Fredericton. He lasted two whole shows. Oh well. After the first show Deputy Jessie Camacho had a 98% popularity rating and the Vegas bookies were giving the best odds on Ethan to win, but how you start doesn’t always dictate how you’ll finish.
By now you all know the concept of the show, 16 people form two tribes who compete in various test of skill, physical fitness and lunacy and at the end of each week one of the contestants is voted off the show either to live in obscurity or infamy as was the case of Kel Gleason who has making the public speaking circuit in the Maritimes. The final contestant wins $1,000,000.00, of which half goes to the US government, as well as various other prizes. They are courted by everyone from Larry King, to Oprah to Playboy and then they eventually drop into the collective chasm of public forgetfulness. After a year what is Richard Hatch the winner of the original Survivor remembered for other than being a homosexual who wandered around naked on his birthday? Quite a legacy. Poor Tina the winner of the second show is even more forgettable. She also claims that most of her winnings are gone, what can you expect she’s had it for six months. But what can we learn from survivor? What can Survivor the show teach us about Christianity the life?
1) It’s Important to Start. An Old Chinese proverb says “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” And so in order to play the game you first have to begin the game and that happens by sending in a video and letter to the network outlining why you would make not just a good contestant but a great contestant then being chosen for an interview and auditioning. Then if you pass through those requirements and you fit in to the blend they are looking for on the show, male, female, black, white, heterosexual, homosexual. And you look good in a bathing suit you can begin. By the way we’ve been told that there won’t be a survivor show done in the arctic until they can come up with a polar bikini for the girls to wear.
Everything we do in our lives needs to start at some point. The dream for Bedford Community Church began in Brisbane Australia when the Atlantic District of the Wesleyan Church approached me about beginning a new Wesleyan Church in Bedford. Bedford Community Church had its official beginning on April 9 1995 when we had our first service at the Lions Den Community Centre on Holland Ave. Thursday evening we met to discuss the possibility of acquiring land and building a church home, and the group voted unanimously on this motion “I am in favour of beginning the process of acquiring property and constructing a permanent church home for BCC. I understand that before any financial commitments are made by the leadership of Bedford Community Church that the congregation will be consulted.” That will be noted as the official start of that project when we as a church said “we want a permanent church home.” Personally I can look to Friday August 3rd I was driving Deborah to New Brunswick so she could begin her summer employment at Caton’s Island and for most of the trip we talked about how great it would be to have a church building, a permanent location that wouldn’t have to be set up and torn down every Sunday, a place where the youth would have a room of their own, a worship centre where couples from our church could be married, where babies could be dedicated and where funerals could be held. For three or four hours the preacher and his daughter dreamt of what could be. And as I drove home the next day I built churches in my mind, I worked out the finances tried to think of where we could build and how we could build. It was the start of what will be one of the most exciting phases in our history as a church. This dream, this building will be a start but just a start.
Everyone here today, who is a Christian, had a point where that relationship began. You might not remember exactly when and where it was, but there was a time in your life that you embraced the words of Jesus Christ when he said in John 3:3 “I assure you, unless you are born again, you can never see the Kingdom of God.”
That very concept of a new birth indicates a start, a new beginning. Regardless of what your life was right up to that point. Regardless of how good or how bad you were, when you surrendered your life to God it became new. One of the great promises made in the word of God is found in 2 Corinthians 5:17 What this means is that those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun! The old life is gone, all the mistakes, all the sins, are gone and you are given this wonderful opportunity to start again.
I don’t know who Carl Bard is but he said “Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.” Have you started your Christian life? Then why not now? Listen to what the word of God says in 2 Corinthians 6:2 “At just the right time, I heard you. On the day of salvation, I helped you.” Indeed, God is ready to help you right now. Today is the day of salvation.
Not only is it important to Start, 2) It is Crucial to continue. Once the contestants are selected for the show and are taken to wherever the show is going to happen the fun has just begun. From there they have to survive, thus the name of the show, “Survivor.” They have to figure out how to collect food and water, how to build shelter, how to get along with their other tribe members. And just for fun the producers of the shows throw in various challenges, from eating live bugs to standing on one foot while balancing a phone booth on your head. Well they haven’t done that one, not yet. And so it’s not enough that the contestants started they have to keep on keeping on. And that’s what life is all about, it’s not enough to have been born, to have started, you have to continue.
William Golding said this “Consider a man riding a bicycle. Whoever he is, we can say three things about him. We know he got on the bicycle and started to move. We know that at some point he will stop and get off. Most important of all, we know that if at any point between the beginning and the end of his journey he stops moving and does not get off the bicycle he will fall off it. That is a metaphor for the journey through life of any living thing, and I think of any society of living things.”
Thursday night we began a process that will culminate in a building, a church home for BCC. But at that point God did not speak and in a flash we had a building, it was the beginning of a process. At the meeting we discussed a couple of things that had to happen before the building would happen. The first thing is we need to get our financial house in order. If you’ve had a chance to look at the bulletin this morning you would have noted that there is a new addition and that is a financial report box. This is to keep you as a congregation aware of how we are doing financially. And right now it’s not a pretty picture. I know I can almost see you holding on to your wallets, here he goes again preaching about money. Gotta happen, probably the same reason why Jesus spoke about money, it is a reality of life. If you are a guest at Bedford Community Church this morning this part of the message is not for you, you can read your bulletins now if you want. This is for those of us who call BCC our church home. Presently we are about $400.00 a week behind budget, which translates into an $8,000.00 deficit as we speak. That needs to be cleared up and we need to start making budget.
There are a couple of ways that will happen. The first is that we collectively will make that up, those who give, will give more and those who don’t give will start giving. You understand don’t you that as Christians we have an obligation to support the local church. That is a Biblical concept. If you are attending but not giving you are parking on somebody else’s nickel. And I understand that sometimes circumstances just plain prevent us from giving. I’m not saying that you need to give us your grocery money or your rent money, but if you consider yourself a follower of Jesus Christ then you need to pray about what God would have you do in regards to giving, and then be obedient. I personally believe in the biblical concept of tithing, you want to know what I give? I give 10% of my income; if you were to multiply my giving to Bedford Community Church by 10 you would get my salary.
Lyle Shaller a church growth consultant in California once stated that if everyone in their church collected welfare and tithed that their offerings would jump by 40%. That’s not the case at BCC, we have good givers, but if everyone tithed their income here I would imagine that our offering would more than double.
Our weekly budget right now is $1,700.00 and it is a bare bones budget, that pays the rent at the theatre and office, our United Stewardship fund which is our share of supporting the denomination that we are a part of, all of our office supplies, the power at the office, car expenses, children’s ministry expenses, the wet wipes in the nursery, youth expenses, music expenses, the Timbits and coffee after the service, and my salary. Trust me when I tell you we are not extravagant in any of that. We provide complete financial reports at our annual meetings and our books are open anytime to anyone who attends this church, all you have to do is ask.
And before we can begin to seriously look at building we need to be meeting our budget, and we are not.
The second way we will make that figure is for more people to come and begin giving, and that depends on them being invited, and so it’s back to you again. Sorry!
Moving on. Our Christian life needs to continue on. You cannot become a Christian and just remain static. Can’t happen. Again it goes back to the bicycle, there is a start and a finish but if you just stop in the middle you will fall off the bike. In the scriptures when the life of the Christian is described it’s with action words, you are loving, caring, praying, you are bearing fruit, you are walking in the light, you are carrying each other’s burdens, you are running a race. The Christian life is never described as motionless or stagnant. Instead it is always growing, always moving forward.
And there will be times that you wish you could quit, and there will be times that life seems hard, but you have to go on. I wish that I could say that when you become a Christian that from that point on that you’ll never have any more troubles, and that you’ll never again be sick, or have your heart broke, or be broke, that life will be perfect. I wish I could say that for a couple of reasons. First of all it would be great outreach, if Christianity promised a perfect life we would have to bar the doors. Think, we could just advertise, Accept Jesus and everything will be perfect forever. The second reason I wish I could say that is because when I watch my people going through rough times it hurts, it hurts when you are sick, when your children are going through tough times, when you are struggling in your marriages. And I wish I could wave a magic wand and make everything alright for you, but I can’t. When I first became a Christian my pastor was a man by the name of Jack Mackenzie and he and his wife are probably the godliest people I know. And yet their oldest son was killed in a plane accident while he was singing in a Christian group from the Bible College he attended and their youngest child contracted Lou Gherig’s disease as a young teen and died before she turned twenty. Fair, no, but it’s part of being human.
And so when life is hard you need to cling tighter to your saviour and continue on. The word of God says in Proverbs 24:16 The Godly may trip seven times, but each time they will rise again. Which brings us to the last point.
Starting may be important and continuing may be crucial but 3) Finishing is Critical. On the show you might have a great start, and you may do wonderful on all the challenges, but if you don’t make it to the end none of the rest matters. We can talk all we like about building the church, we can start to meet budget and raise all kinds of money to build with, but until we actually finish the building we won’t be able to move in. Can you picture the first service, the platform will all ready on Sunday Morning. Setup for the service will have consisted of Mike turning the lights on. The last coat of paint will be dried, the sign will be up out front, the parking lot will be full of cars, the worship centre will be full of people and we’ll realize that we didn’t build big enough.
This building will not be our final home, it will be the first phase and we will need to understand that it is only phase one. But we will be able to finish phase one.
Our Christian life will come to an end one day, and it will be the day that we stand face to face with our God and he looks at us and says, “Well done my good and faithful servant.” And that will come in one of two ways. Either it will happen when we die, or when the Lord returns but it will happen and when it does we will dance on streets that are golden, that is if we finish as Christians.
Billy Sunday was a pro Baseball player in the early 1900’s who became one of the most famous preachers of his day and laid the ground work for Billy Graham in Crusade Evangelism and Billy Sunday said “Stopping at third adds no more to the score than striking out.” It doesn’t matter how well you start if you fail to finish.
In the last chapter of the Bible John had this to say Revelation 21:7 All who are victorious will inherit all these blessings, and I will be their God, and they will be my children. In the New International version it says to all who overcome, but they both mean the same, to those who finish.
So where are you at today? The difference between survivor and Christianity is that Christianity isn’t a game, and it’s not a reality show it is reality. Have you come to the place in your life where you have chosen to follow Jesus Christ? Not just to say that you believe in him but that you have chosen to follow him?
PowerPoint may be available for this sermon, if interested contact me at denn@bccnet.ca
If you could build a church for a dollar . . .
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