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Introduction
At 7:00am on Friday,
November 7th last year Zach Zehnder, the 31 year-old pastor of a church in
Mount Dora, Florida, stood up to preach and he did not stop until 12:18pm the
following Sunday, setting a new world
record for longest ever sermon. It lasted 53 hours and 18 minutes, spanned
Genesis to Revelation, using 200 pages of notes and over 600 PowerPoint slides.
I
thought, I could beat that. But maybe
not today. You see, for the record to be valid, there had to be at least ten
listeners at any one time. And who would volunteer to listen to me non-stop for over
two days? You see, no hands raised, as I expected…
Anyway,
asked about what was most difficult, Zehnder answered “Eating. I didn’t eat
enough the first 24 hours but I got more comfortable eating in front of people
while talking. I got so comfortable
that I even ate steak and lobster at hour 36 while preaching through the Sermon
on the Mount! It doesn’t get better than that.”
I
think, for the congregation, it probably does
get better than that!
I’m
not going to be long at all this morning, certainly not record breaking. I just
want to say a few words about our reading from Acts 13 and try and relate it to
where we are at All Saints’ at the moment.
So
we’re continuing with Paul and Barnabas’ mission to take the gospel further
than it had ever been before.
They
arrive at a place called Pisidian Antioch and are invited to say a few words as
guest speakers at the local synagogue.
So
Paul, because he was the one with the mouth, stood up and preached. You’ve
heard his sermon already so I’m not going to re-preach it. He talked mostly about
Jesus. Jesus lived about 33 years – but Paul only talked about three days.
He
talks from v27-41 only about Jesus’ death and his resurrection.
His
death, because that’s how we get our sins forgiven, our guilt lifted and our
conscience cleansed.
His
resurrection because, without it, we would go to our deaths as forgiven people
–which is great for this life- but we’d stay dead and that would be the end of
it. But because Jesus was raised from the dead, he has conquered the grave for
everyone who believes in him.
By
his cross he saved us from sin. By his resurrection he saved us from spending
eternity, dead as a doornail. That’s why our message is the empty cross.
But
the two things that stood out for me when I read Acts 13 this week were what he
said about David.
A Heart for God
Firstly, in v22 God
says, “I have found David son of Jesse a man after my own heart” or as the
Good News Bible puts it, “he is the kind of man I like, a man who will do all I
want him to do.”
A
healthy church is just ordinary people who have a heart for God. Have you got a
heart for God? Not for the church building. Not for its history or its heritage.
Not for its structure or systems – these are good things but they’re for our
heads. But what about your heart, what you care most about, where you direct
your affections, what you are passionate about – do you have a heart for God?
What
does it look like to have a heart for God? Kris Vallotton put it this way, “I want to be so full of God that, if a
mosquito bites me, he flies away singing ‘There’s power in the blood.’”
That
is what God is looking for because in v22 he says “I’ve found David – a man
after my own heart.”
Serving God’s Purpose in Our Generation
The second thing was
in v36. “David served God’s purpose in his own generation…” I love that
expression. The full verse says, “Now when David had served God’s purpose in
his own generation, he fell asleep; [he died] he was buried with his
ancestors and his body decayed.”
It
may not thrill you to have me remind you of this but, unless the Lord returns
first, every one of here will die and our bodies will either decay in a tomb or
be burned in a crematorium.
I
would say that the majority of us here will have had a positive influence on the
world by the time we come to leave it. The aggregate of good things and bad things we say and do will
be positive for virtually everyone here. That’s not what we’re here for though.
The question to ask is, “Will my impact on the world help it look more like
Jesus wants it to look?”
Will
we serve God’s purpose in our generation?
As
we look to redefine our vision as a church, that is basically the question we
are asking.
Strands Coming
Together
As
the MDT and PCC sifted through the feedback from Bishop Paul’s weekend last
year, and tried to discern what God was saying to us through it, there were
recurring themes that resonated with people. Here’s a bullet-point list of
things that we felt God was particularly highlighting to us as important.
Two overall
priorities
- Transform our community
- Saturate everything in prayer
Two requests to stay focused
- Give regular ministry updates in Sunday services
- Regularly review how we’re doing so we ‘hold the vision high’
Two aspirations for our relationship with our parish
- Prayerfully walk round its streets
- Relaunch Community In Touch
But most of us live outside the parish so if our vision is going to be relevant we need to look up and see further. We saw that “communities” rather than “parish” seemed to be the word people used.
So, two desires for
our communities:
- Know who are the neediest in our area
- Share good news as it relates to people’s felt needs
We need, in other words, to scratch where people itch - but we also need to scratch the people who itch the most.
But that’s not all. Because two significant and separate developments have emerged in parallel with our search for a new vision.
Firstly, there are changes
taking place in the Deanery of Stockton. For a few years now, delegates from
All Saints’ have been meeting with people from other local Anglican churches to
explore new ways of working together. That will come to a conclusion with the
morning on January 24th. Basically, we’ll be working more as a team of churches
and sharing resources.
We
felt that was significant because one of the most effective ways God uses All
Saints’ is as a resource church. Whenever we give ministry and resources away some
of our DNA gets passed on and it acts as a catalyst for new life and growth
elsewhere. We’ve seen that in Long Newton, in central Stockton and now in
Egglescliffe – people sent from here, having been nurtured here, are
transforming communities beyond our little parish.
Secondly,
Bishop Paul has been defining what our Diocese is about; “from the Tyne to the
Tees and from the Dales to the Sea, blessing our communities in Jesus’ name for
the transformation of us all.”
We
think that fits us absolutely perfectly.
How Do We Bless
Communities?
As
we looked at what it means to “bless our communities” we asked the question
“how does that work?” and we happened upon an obscure verse in Leviticus 9
which answers that question.
It describes Moses
and Aaron entering the special place where they met with God at the time when Israel
was in the desert before entering the Promised Land. As soon as they had met
with God, Moses and Aaron blessed the people – and then the glory of the Lord
appeared to them all.
Everyone
here by faith in Christ can meet with Almighty God and enjoy his transforming
grace. That’s why we come here on a Sunday.
And
the truth is that we cannot bless anyone unless we have ourselves been touched by
the holy presence and awesome glory of God in Christ. But when we have been
there, when we’ve been touched by grace, I believe we will be a blessing to
others and his glory will be revealed.
So
that’s where we’ve got to.
Do
you want to be part of a church that is not only blessing its local community but
also other communities all over the town, wherever we are living and working?
Are
you willing to soak in the presence of God so deeply that it transforms you and
so that when you bless others they see the glory of the Lord?
That’s
the feel of where we’re going – but it's still quite general. There’s more work to
do. We need to define things more sharply, own it as a church and then commit to it.
This week, we’ll be
putting up a long sheet of paper at the back and I’m inviting you to write on it
over the next six weeks what your dreams and aspirations are as a member of All
Saints’. What do you yearn to see God do amongst us? We’ll also have a few more
presentations in our services like the five we had today to help us see more
possibilities and dream more dreams.
I’d like to
encourage you to talk amongst yourselves, over coffee, while you take a walk together,
whatever – what are the things you’ve heard today that excite you?
The week after half
term, 23-27 February, we’re going to have a week of prayer and fasting to come
before God as a church and seek his will for us.
And at the end of
that week, Saturday 28 February, we’ll have a vision morning together in which
we will aim to pin down in one or two sentences what our new vision is.
This
is not just me or a few cronies deciding what we’re doing - anyone can play. Let’s look to the Lord,
hear from him, agree where we’re going and then get on with the job.
Let’s
pray…
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 11th January 2015
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