JAN 6 2019 | Run with the Pack S1E1 | Why You Need The Church

Sea Change Church · Run with the Pack · "Why You Need The Church" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · January 6, 2019
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Hello, church. Happy New Year. I'm reading today from Acts 2, 42 to 47. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.

And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number, day by day, those who were being saved. The word of the Lord. Thank you, my man. Jason is OG, old school La Jolla. Went to La Jolla Country Day. Played against me when I was at Francis Parker. And I think we beat them regularly.

But then you beat us in basketball. We regularly send each other. I'll send him our CIF championship, you know, letter. I'll take a picture of it and send it to him on his text. And then he'll send me the basketball, like, banner pictures. And not that I even care anymore, but a good man. And used to beat me up on the line, run over me. Somebody from La Jolla Country Day used to run over me. And I'm pretty sure it was you.

So we are excited to start this new series called Running with the Pack. It's two weeks long. And we really want to set the stage for a soul's adventure of coming together as a community. And looking at the Book of Acts for some cues, but not really an algorithm that we are trying to create some perfect utopian community. And so Running with the Pack means being devoted to a community beyond just what you get from it personally.

It's perhaps the community is taking more from you sometimes, not always, but sometimes, than you're actually getting from it. But you still continue to be devoted to that community. And we're going to see that here. Now, there's a few words in this scripture that I want us to look at when it comes to running with the Pack. There is a, you know, I think, you know, herd mentality. It's interesting that you guys said that because I hadn't thought of that.

There is, it can be a herd mentality. And there are some really good, I mean, huge works of God. You have million person churches in some places that are in Africa and China. These massive works of God. And, you know, God bless what he's doing there. Because of our location and some of the limitations of where we are, I doubt we'll ever be anything more than a medium-sized, small church. It's just who we are. And I don't see us selling the building and moving to, you know, UTC or Claremont or whatever.

I kind of feel like God wants us to be here. But in the midst of that, he wants us to create a pack-like mentality. And, you know, I heard something from, I had lunch with a friend this week. And we talked about the pack. And I've been studying sled dogs. And so somebody came in today. I mean, perhaps you saw the video. And they said, why is there a video of dogs' butts in the thing? And so it was a little bit of an homage to the sermon series.

Granted, I think it was beautiful countryside. But I like watching dogs run. And I found out that there is obviously an alpha dog, a lead dog. And some people put a lot of emphasis on that. But my buddy was telling me, who has a lot of knowledge about this, that there's also a thing called the swing dog. And there can be more than one swing dog. There can be multiple swing dogs. And if you have an alpha without swing dogs that can balance the alpha out, that can bring the trajectory of the sled back on track, it will actually flip the sled.

Matter of fact, the job of the swing dog is actually more important than the alpha dog because the swing dog or dogs bring a balance and a trajectory and the path and keep things on track. And so what we want to do here is allow you the opportunity to be part of a team, to be part of a family, whatever word you want to do, but that has an ultimate purpose that we are trying to accomplish something together. And we'll talk about that in a moment.

But if you get your pen out, I want you to look at your notes. And I want you to circle a few words that I think are missed when we look at this Acts 2 passage. I think the Acts 2 passage has become sometimes the thing of legends and lore more than ultimate truth and reality. I think we look at the Acts 2 passage and it's so easy to turn this into a utopian understanding of what church should be like. We need to be careful with that because the church in Jerusalem in Acts 2 is just one of many churches that are being built throughout the New Testament and all very different in size and nature.

They all have different giftings and different purposes. And there has been a bit of a thrust sometimes in Western Christianity to look at this one church. It's just one church. Now granted, a great church early on. The first church. Amazing things happening. But to turn it into this utopian society that we all need to be like. And if you're not like the Acts church, you're probably missing out a little bit. I want to dispel that notion and say that the church in the book of Acts, the first church in Jerusalem in the book of Acts, is one church that had some amazing qualities about it.

But the Corinthian church had some great things about it. And the church at Macedonia, how they would give out of their hearts, even after that huge earthquake where they were all in poverty, they still gave to support the church in Jerusalem. There was all these different churches. And so every church, God has an identity for that church. There is a global church. But there is an identity. But the one thing that we see that we do want to draw from them is their ability to be devoted to one another and to the fellowship.

So if you have your pen, I want you to circle a couple words we often mix. The first is they. And they. I want you to circle that. They. And I want you to circle devoted. And then go a little bit further on in that sentence and circle the direct article, the. The. Really important. If you miss, especially if you miss the direct article, the, you are going to miss a huge component of what this scripture is all about. Now, I got to say, it's so easy to read this and say, you know, they were sharing everything.

They were selling everything. There was community. The Holy Spirit was falling. You had Pentecost. You had, they were speaking in tongues. Signs and wonders. Woo! And all that stuff is awesome. It's amazing. God wants that. But if you miss what it's trying to say about not looking for an experience within a church, but to look at the, what God's absolute individual body is about and what his calling for them is, you will miss it.

Because so often we have looked at this church, at the experience they had, and we have highly valued the experience. Many people have, especially I've been in the Pentecostal circles. I've been in charismatic circles. I've been in the Catholic church. God is, I'm kind of like a Heinz 57. You know, I've been everywhere. I've been in Young Life, worked for Christian surfers. He just took me everywhere. And every time I got to one of these places, I was like, oh, these guys have the secret sauce.

This is it. When I was at Young Life, it was like, you know, if the church could just figure out evangelism, then the church would be awesome, you know. But they just can't figure it out. And then I got to the vineyard, and God, I didn't even know what the vineyard was, and I got there. And I'm like, oh, this Holy Spirit thing's cool. If the church could just figure out this Holy Spirit thing, then the church would be amazing.

They're missing out, you know. And then wherever I go, I just kept putting on the uniform to eventually I got tired of changing the outfit. And I just think, it's kind of about the Trinity, right? About God the Father, Jesus, having a relationship with him, and having the Holy Spirit. And I stopped valuing the experience and began to value the church. And there's a big difference there. And that direct article is so important, and we can miss it.

So we're going to look at that and get into that. But the first thing that I had in your notes is that we need to be careful, especially when we're at a church, and having a great church experience, is to begin to value the experience you're having more than the church itself. Because if you value a certain type of experience, when hard times come, when difficulty comes, when relationships change like they always do, you are going to be frustrated that it just isn't like it used to be.

And if you have been in church long enough, and if you have been in church long enough, and have had those glorious experiences, you will look back, and perhaps as God changes a work, it is easy to look back at how it used to be and think, it was so good then, I don't like what it's become. Because oftentimes, we value the individual experience we are having more than Christ's work in the world with the church. We'll look at that here more in a second.

But this is a mistake that we can make as churches. And I oftentimes, I remember, I was in a, one of the first experiences I had after rededicating my life to Christ. I went to, I was working for Young Life, and there was about a year and a half to two year season. Now I believe that seasonal things at churches last less than two and a half years. Meaning, there will be a season, and it will be either amazing, some bad seasons can go on for, you know, long.

But if a season is healthy, it usually is going to grow. If something is good and healthy, it's going to grow. So if you're in a really good, healthy season, and you're in a church or in a community, it's going to change. And what I found is I got disappointed when the change happened. When all my friends got married first. And then all of a sudden, you're the single person with all the married people. I don't know if you've experienced that, you know what I mean?

Or they all have babies. Or if you're the married, you know, you're the married couple. We were five years, we couldn't get pregnant for the first five years. And everyone was having babies. And we just didn't want to be in that conversation anymore. Because it was too painful for a while until we were able to have our first child, praise God. But all of a sudden, this experience changed. When I was in Australia, there was a church that was much like this that I was a part of.

And it was a phenomenal experience. But then it began to change. And all of a sudden, you begin to ask yourself, well, I wonder if there's something better down the street. Or I wonder if there's another experience. Or if I can recreate this. Or maybe we need to go recreate this. And here is where this word, the, is so important. Because look at the things that they devoted themselves to. And I'm pre-preaching something I'm going to say in a moment.

It says, and they, they, that means not the individual. They devoted. We'll talk about devotion in a moment. Themselves. That's an individual. To the apostles' teaching. Why was it the apostles' teaching and not the Bible? Because they didn't have the Bible. Well, they had the Old Testament. And they were still going to synagogue. Many of these Christians were still, early Christians were going to synagogue. But they were actually writing the Bible at the time.

So the reason they were devoted to the apostles' teaching as opposed to the word of God, even though they were in the, in the, in the synagogue, is because they were figuring it out and beginning to write the scripture. You have to realize they didn't have the Bible. I would say now we're not as devoted, we're not devoted in a season of being devoted to the apostles' teaching. We're devoted to the word of God that has been set in stone and concrete.

And we'll see that. So there's a definite change now between seeing people that are giving direct, you know, truth of, you know, from straight, you know, pipeline from God to somebody sharing the direct truth of God's word. So they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship. Now that is so different than fellowship. Take the out. And they devoted themselves to fellowship. Imagine if you go to a church and you were devoted to fellowship.

And many people are. Woo! This is awesome. The coffee is so good. And I go to a great home fellowship and I like everybody. There's nobody in there I don't like until somebody comes in you don't like. And I'm devoted to fellowship, man. And if there becomes a difficult relationship, and relationships are difficult, the hardest thing about church is people, right? And the best thing about church is people. Coretta Scott King said here, and when I use quotes, because I quote a bunch of people, it doesn't mean that I wholly believe in everything that they talk about, but I do think that everyone has some form of truth that I want to speak.

And Coretta Scott King has a lot of great things to say. She says, And I would say there's a lot of truth to that. I would rewrite it and say the greatness of a community is most accurately measured by its ability to sustain loving relationships in the midst of adversity, which might be compassionate actions to one another. But if you cannot learn how to have compassionate actions, short toes, and keep short accounts amongst each other, you will never get to what Mrs. King is speaking about, which is the ability to change the world with compassionate actions, because you're going to continue to have breakdown within the body that you are in.

If you are devoted to fellowship, you are going to be sorely disappointed. If you are devoted to the music that you like, if you are devoted to a particular teaching style, if you are devoted to its stuff, that's Christian stuff, these people were devoted to the fellowship, meaning a larger work of God that was full of difficulties, adversity. And you've got to see, you know, in the New Testament, basically Paul is helping people figure out conflict throughout much of the New Testament.

As he's writing to these different churches, it's the ability to sustain through conflict, through difficulty, and through, which we don't have a ton of right now in this country, persecution. And so one of the questions I want to ask you with running with the pack, okay, this idea of running with the pack, are you devoted to fellowship, which is great? I mean, fellowship's great. Are you devoted to the fellowship? Because when you're devoted to the fellowship, and to what Christ is doing, you develop a thicker spiritual skin.

You develop the ability to persevere through very difficult times, like some of, we just lost Jet Watson, who was at this church, I don't know, 40, 50 years. I know Carol Golden's been here 70. And if you read the history of this church, this particular, the body, whether it be Dick Cotton, CP, Martha, other people that have been here, it has had ups and downs. But one of the characteristics of believers often, especially, you know, old school believers, is the ability to be dedicated to a work of God.

And I have had so many people come to me that were here before I got here, before most of you got here, because these pews weren't filled seven years ago, that said we were going to make sure that there was a church on this corner. Because God wants a church on this corner, and we will sustain, and we will not leave, because we are devoted to the fellowship. So the first thing that we have to agree in, if we're going to run with the pack, and be like the people of Acts, if we were going to build a strong community that can change the world, because that community changes the world, is are you devoted to fellowship, or are you devoted to the fellowship?

And it's a big difference, because one tends to be about us, and what we're experiencing. One tends to be about what God is doing in a place. And we want to call you to see what God is doing here, and to be developed a part of the fellowship. Continuing on, it says in your notes, that faith was never meant to be lived in solitude, but rather in solidarity. Solidarity is a great word. I love it. Solidarity is unity, or agreement, or feeling, of feeling, or action.

I would say of feeling and action. Especially among individuals with a common interest, and mutual support within the group. It's interesting. As I develop a church, it is so easy to give people a fellowship experience. Like if you want to grow a church, give them a fellowship experience, and mutual camaraderie. And many people will come for that, because it is, it feels good. And it's beneficial. It really helps you.

But one of the hardest things, is to give people a common cause. To rally people, and all of us know, what we are about. And one of the jobs that I want to do this year, is get better, at letting us know, as a group, what we are all about. That we are about evangelism. That we are about discipleship. And use easy to understand tools, like the four corners. We have four corners. One of those corners, is the corner here that you're sitting on.

The other is the corner that you live on. That's the third corner. First corner is the corner of your heart. We've got to get that sorted. Second corner is this corner in La Jolla. We want to see it blessed and changed. We want to see La Jolla changed. But not all of you live in La Jolla. So you're our missionary on your corner. You're the third corner. And then the fourth corner, is around the world. We send people out like Chris, to Arizona.

We have people in Africa, and all around the world. And we want to make those people accessible, that you can change the world, wherever you are. But that is our understanding, that we want to change the entire world. But ultimately, we want to all lock down a corner. And our common mission, is to lock down your corner. That you know your neighbors. That you care for your neighbors. That you're there in your ability.

You know where your local hot spots are. The coffee house. You know the people's name. Why do we use Panicking Coffee? Because they're friends, and they're local, and we want to know them. Why do we partner with the Wind and Sea Surf Club? I'm having lunch with the president tomorrow. You know, it's secular organization. You know, the reason is, is because we want to know them. Because they have influence, and culture, and with young people.

And we want to be a part of that. We want to rub elbows with them. We want to change our corner. Why? If you've driven by at night, you'll see the church is purple now. We've lit it purple. People across the street said, would you like us to help you with your lighting? I said, yes. Because you're great at it. The pink house, right? So now if you walk by Purple Haze, the entire church, is beautiful. And I had some, one of the neighbors text me, the church is magical.

It's beautiful. We want to create a beautiful place where people know, and they see it, and they think, that's amazing. You can do the same with your house. You can do the same with, when you walk your dog at the dog park. That is our common mission. And so if we're going to have solidarity, we've all got to understand this mission. And I have to do a better job at having us all sign up for it. To know what it is. To let people know about Christ.

And there's other elements of it. Solidarity is doing something together and understanding what it is or else it's a show. Here's the deal. If we're not doing something together and we don't understand what we're doing together, then we're putting on a show every week that makes you feel good. And it's beneficial. You will walk out and God will bless you and he'll use you and you'll get good little tidbits and understanding.

But we're not doing it together otherwise. This is a congregational church. And it is really hard to rally people to do things together. It's much easier to put a show on. Trust me. Much easier. To hire the right people. To get the right music. To do all the stuff. To get my wood paneling in the background. To do all the things. Get a light show, smoke. Whatever it is you want to do. To wow the people with a show. I watch a lot of church videos.

I watch church videos a lot. People post church videos. And I tend to watch and sometimes I see the stage and I'm just awed by it because the stage is going like pew pew pow pew pew pew pew and I look and I watch the people. This is my job. This is what I do. And I watch the people going and I think you know I think sometimes we err where the stage has become the star. Jesus in you is the star of this congregation. It always has been.

And we want to do everything we can to have casual excellence where this stage never becomes the star. Where we work together like this church in Acts. Where we understand a common mission and we say that we are trying to change the entire world one corner at a time. The first corner of your heart. The second corner, La Jolla. That if you're coming here hopefully you love La Jolla. You care about it. You like it. You at least enjoy going to the farmer's market.

Go every week. Say hi to the same people. It's missions. And then your corner that you live on. Lock down. You guys are in Point Loma. Devin's in Point Loma over there with Eden. Wherever you are lock it down. It is a common goal that we do. We do something together or else we put on a show. And the final thing that they had as we come in for a landing here because it is Communion Sunday is reclaiming the idea of devotion.

When I came into the church in the 70s and 80s devotion to a local work to the fellowship as opposed to fellowship was much more concrete. There was a sense of that's where I go to church and sometimes that's gone too far because you can also create a cult that way, right? We need devotion. Matter of fact, drink the Kool-Aid, sign over all your documents and we're not going that far. But there is a devotion to a body and a certain work.

And I want you to, you know, when people say to me all the time, you know, I love your church but they've been coming for like three years. I'm like, you mean our church? Like, it's your church. When you walk outside and if you see trash on the ground, pick it up. So many of you do that. I see stuff get done. Like, this little wall out here wasn't painted white for a long time. I think it's painted white now. It is, isn't it?

I don't even know who did it. It just happened. Yeah, who? Dave Peterson. Thank you, Dave. I know you're in the back. Dave just didn't want the wall to have a brown wall. So we can, I'm not asking you to come to rearrange my office, by the way. I'm just saying, people that care, there's an idea of devotion. And I guess what I want to do a better job at is encouraging us to go back to the biblical model of being a part of a local church because I believe the local church is the most powerful organization in the world.

It has the ability to change. It has supernatural tools. And saying, I'm devoted to a local work. It doesn't have to be this one. Maybe it's this one. But if God is speaking to you and you want to be here to say, I am devoted to that work. I want to be devoted. And these people were devoted not to fellowship but to the fellowship. And so we're going to look at four quick things. It says, biblical understanding of ecclesiastical devotion.

Ecclesiastical means church. That word means church. The biblical understanding of church devotion supposes, it presupposes that you love the people and the work that you're at. That you have loyalty to it. And what does loyalty to a work mean? What does that mean? That I'm in. That I'll show up to pull the weeds on the work day or whatever that little thing is you can do. Not all of you can do that but you have something where you say, I'm blessing the work this way.

Some of you, it's just financial. Not just, but it's financial. You have other stuff going on but you're like, hey, I'm going to do that. Others can't do financial but they come and they mow or they do something. They disciple a group, they're volunteers, whatever it is. But you say, I'm part of the work. And so my question to you is you're at a church that encourages you to do something and be part of the work and you will be blessed in the process.

Where are you being part of the work? And it might even be part of being part of a small group. Here's what they devoted themselves to. Excuse me, let me finish that sentence. They had a loyalty and a heart's offering of time, treasure, and talent for the betterment of a community. And we're beginning to see revival in this community. Because of what God is doing here. I have some statistics, I'll share them with you next week.

Verse 42, and they, together, they, commonality. Before it says themselves, it says they. It's speaking of the corporate identity and this is a Jewish understanding. If you talk to a Jew about their identity, they're going to speak to you firstly about Israel. Especially Old Testament, if you read the Old Testament, what was happening in the community was more important than what was happening individually. And then from community, it was meant to go to tribe, and then from tribe to family, and then from family to individual, but you're always last on the list.

We tend to make you first on the list in Western Christian culture. I say, if we have to get back to us not besmirching ourselves, not not taking care of ourselves, not having no margin left in our lives where we can love, have God love us and be thrive, but to where we are not the star of the show. I want to say, I do not want to create a show. They devoted themselves to what? The study and truth of God's word. We already spoke about that.

God's word offers a compass and an anchor in a world that is crowdsourcing its morals. Straight up. In ten years, the morals of the day will be different than they are now. We crowdsource our morals. Look around, well, who thinks that's right? Oh, okay, well, if I say that, I'm starting to get some feedback on that I don't like, so okay, I guess I'll believe this now. And it's based on this changing algorithm of what people think socially.

One of the things I love about the English Standard Version is that they have closed the changes to it, the English Standard Version Bible. We're not going to change it anymore. One of the struggles I have with, and I'm not, I don't want to be Bible bashing, but the NIV, there's a 1984 NIV from written in 1984 or put together, and then after that is one of the things the NIV is doing currently is changing the scripture to be more socially relevant.

And so in the book of Timothy, where it says, act like men, they've just removed that verse. I believe it's in Timothy. If you look up the scripture, look up Google verse, act like men, and you go look at all the different translations, it won't be in the new NIV. When the Bible was speaking to men and it says, iron sharpens iron like one man sharpens another, it's meant to speak to men because men, even physically, are closer to iron than women.

It doesn't mean that women don't have an incredible strength and a drive, but that understanding, if you want to know what the person was saying, and you want to know the truth of what the word was saying, it said, as one man sharpens another. But now the verse says, as one friend or one person sharpens another. That's not the scripture. They've changed the scripture to be more socially relevant. Pretty soon, you're not going to have a Proverbs 31 woman, it'll be a Proverbs 31 person, and on and on and on.

But there is a time when God says, I want to speak to men. And there is a time when he says, I want to speak to women, and the truth of God's word is something they devoted themselves to. And these are things you need to know as you understand the Bible and how it's changing. So one of the things I love about the English Standard Version, or the King James Version, is that they said that God's word doesn't change. Whether the culture likes it or not, it doesn't mean that we don't have new ways to present that truth in love, and some of the ways it's been presented have been horrible, we need to change, but we need to be aware of what is happening.

They devoted themselves to God's word, and we want to be very honest with God's word and understand how rugged it is as we look at it and how loving. They also, to the fellowship, we already talked through that, I'll skip through that, but one thing at the bottom there that it promises when you're together with people, it says, for where two or three come together, I am there. I am among them. You don't see that promised with the individual.

Now, I believe that God's with you. If he's in your heart, he's there, but there is a biblical promise that if you just get a couple, you know, get your posse together and hang out and pray, that God is there. You can be assured that God is here. The other is the breaking of bread. I'm just going to fly through this. We're going to do this in a moment. Interesting that the breaking of bread, bread is meant to be a symbolic metaphor for the fellowship of believers.

It grows, it sustains. If you look at bread, all throughout the scripture, the understanding of bread, of breaking bread together, that is done physically. They would actually eat together and have communion meals, and that's why we do it, to continue. When you break bread together, it says you're also representing something that is happening physically and spiritually within the church. You are having communion. You're together.

There's a togetherness. You're not just coming in and sourcing what you need as a buffet and walking out the door. We sit together, and I encourage you, if you can, once a month, twice a month, hang out. Today's Bagel Sunday. Yay. Onion bagels, everything bagels, whatever you want. We have it next door. Come sit and hang out. And the final thing they devoted themselves was this, to prayer. If my people who are called by my name, and this is so solid, I mean, if you only get this, circle it, put an exclamation point by it.

If my people, if, keyword if, things don't just happen with God, if, my people who are called by my name, that's us, will humble themselves, oh, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, my people, not just you, a people, then I will what? Hear from heaven. I will forgive their sins, and will heal their land. Here's what's interesting. Revival for the land starts at the heart of the church. We have this idea that we just gotta go out and win everybody.

That's not how it works. You gotta win yourself. You got to, it says in this scripture, we have to repent of our own sin. We have to pray. We have to seek his face. And if we get the first corner right, then God will begin to do supernaturally the rest of it. The problem is, we have all these programs and projects to reach the world, but we don't do a great job on humbling ourselves, getting away from our wicked ways, repenting, seeking his face.

And that's something we're gonna do in the new year. We have a prayer initiative that's coming. We have a whole bunch of things we wanna give you the opportunity to do that. So those are four things. And then next week, we're gonna talk about what those four things do to transform a community. And I guess the question is, do you want to transform your community? When you look at your neighborhood, do you think, I want this neighborhood transformed?

Are you just happy to live there? Do you want to see neighborhood transformation? One of the things you see with social activists, oftentimes, whether you agree with them or not, is that they wanna change the community. Oftentimes more than believers. Secular social activists are all about changing a community. But I feel like we often just live in our communities and go about our own way and don't really care about changing because we're comfortable.

Because we love the fellowship. But God says to be devoted to the fellowship. So for next week, here's a teaser, and don't miss it, that we're gonna look at next week, that these four devotions set the stage for a massive work of God in their community. Those things are relational reconciliation. That means less divorce. That means less kids in jail. That means less broken relationships. Physical healing. You'll actually see physical healing.

Social restoration. Healed hearts. Favor in their community, which I believe we have. And new people coming to follow Christ. If you want that, come back next week and we'll talk about it. But it starts with running with the pack. If we can stand, we're gonna have our communion. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. What's this one?