SPEAKER_00: Welcome, welcome, and happy Mother's Day to all of you moms.
SPEAKER_00: It's good to be with you.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Mac.
SPEAKER_00: I'm one of the pastors on our team.
SPEAKER_00: Also, I want to welcome all of you who are joining us from home.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for tuning in.
SPEAKER_00: We're in a series right now called Maturing in the Mess, where we're going through 1 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_00: And the big idea is that we don't grow as followers of Jesus by escaping the mess that is the church, but rather by maturing in the mess.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the deal: there is no perfect church.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason why is because every church is full of broken and messy people just like you and me.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And yet, this is the primary context that the New Testament points to for us to grow and mature as followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is the context of our formation.
SPEAKER_00: And so doing life with other people, even messy people, is not an obstacle to your growth.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually essential to it.
SPEAKER_00: This is the primary context for our formation in the likeness of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Now, every year in January, I tend to create space with our staff and our leadership team to do some reflection and get a fresh pulse on where we sense God is at work so that we can faithfully join in and lead our congregation in that direction.
SPEAKER_00: This past year, um, I led our staff and leadership team through a SWOT analysis.
SPEAKER_00: It's just a tool that stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
SPEAKER_00: And we tried to approach this prayerfully.
SPEAKER_00: We said, God, what are the strengths you want to affirm in our church community?
SPEAKER_00: What weaknesses do you want to talk to us about?
SPEAKER_00: You know, what are the opportunities?
SPEAKER_00: What threats are in the way?
SPEAKER_00: And what was interesting is that our our staff and our leadership team did these two, the SWOT analysis, independently of one another.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I was present for both, but they largely, we prayed and collaborated independently of one another.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, two threats were at the top of both of our lists.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, one threat was busyness.
SPEAKER_00: There was this shared conviction and prayerful discernment that busyness is very much inhibiting our ability as a church to do life together and to join God's work in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And I actually preached on that threat in March, a sermon called Practicing Presence.
SPEAKER_00: If you weren't here for that, I encourage you to listen to it.
SPEAKER_00: But the challenge there, friends, is that actually busyness is just a symptom.
SPEAKER_00: It's a symptom of a much deeper problem, which is actually priorities.
SPEAKER_00: We have misplaced priorities.
SPEAKER_00: Our priorities are all jacked up.
SPEAKER_00: The reality is, is we make time for what's essential.
SPEAKER_00: We all make time to eat every day.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because eating is essential for us to keep going, yeah?
SPEAKER_00: And so I know that many of us feel busy, yeah.
SPEAKER_00: But if we kind of pulled back the curtain and started doing an audit of our actual lives, it would reveal misplaced priorities.
SPEAKER_00: The reality is that many of us are wasting copious amounts of time every single day.
SPEAKER_00: We prioritize our screens over the scriptures, our kids' activities and sports over our spiritual formation.
SPEAKER_00: In just a few short months, you'll be prioritizing your pontoon boat over prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Like this is this is the reality, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's not that we don't have time, it's that we have misplaced priorities.
SPEAKER_00: We prioritize socializing over serving as the hands and feet of Jesus in the world.
SPEAKER_00: This is the root problem.
SPEAKER_00: It's not busyness, it's misplaced priorities.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not the threat I want to talk to you about today.
SPEAKER_00: I want to talk to you about the other threat that was at the top of our list, and that is politics.
SPEAKER_00: And everyone's arms just started to sweat.
SPEAKER_00: Your arm pits, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Uh relax, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Take a deep breath.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, my goal today is not to stir us up, um, it's to unify us, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So you can take a deep breath.
SPEAKER_00: But it's no secret.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm not telling you anything new, that we're living in a very politically divisive time.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah?
SPEAKER_00: Uh one way people have tried to capture the divisiveness and polarity in our culture is to name that we are witnessing a transition from a bell curve to a well curve.
SPEAKER_00: So let me just uh show you this slide.
SPEAKER_00: This is a traditional bell curve, and this used to kind of point to the political reality of our culture.
SPEAKER_00: That is, the majority of people were somewhere in the middle, and only uh a minority of people were actually um on the ends, in sort of the extreme place, on the right or the left.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: This used to be the political makeup of our culture, which meant most people found themselves in the middle, somewhere in the middle, which meant they could see multiple uh sides to any issue.
SPEAKER_00: They could attend to nuance, sit in tension, dialogue with a variety of people, attend to difference, bridge difference really well.
SPEAKER_00: And it was only the uh people sort of on the on the ends, a minority of people that were sort of in the extreme.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's gonzo.
SPEAKER_00: We're now living in what's more uh uh like a well curve.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So what's happened is an increasing number of people have gone from the middle to the very edges, to the extremes, on the far right or the far left, and now there's less and less people in the middle.
SPEAKER_00: You guys following this?
SPEAKER_00: So people are congregating on the ends, on the extremes, and we're now seeing the full effects of this reality is that we're unable to attend to nuance.
SPEAKER_00: We're not able to see multiple viewpoints when it comes to this or that issue, we're not able to uh bridge difference through dialogue and so on.
SPEAKER_00: We're seeing the full effects of this new political reality.
SPEAKER_00: Vitriolic and demeaning political rhetoric rooted in us versus them, partisan tribalism.
SPEAKER_00: That's where we are now.
SPEAKER_00: Diminished capacity to listen and converse with others to bridge difference.
SPEAKER_00: And I think we're witnessing actually a societal regression in terms of our emotional maturity and our conversational capacity.
SPEAKER_00: We're becoming less mature rather than more mature.
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps the worst part about this cultural reality, and this is gonna be our focus for today, is that this political climate, that is our culture and our country, hasn't stayed out there.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually come in here.
SPEAKER_00: It's infiltrated the church, and it's causing division in the church, and it's actually dividing the church.
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to name that I think this is grievous to Jesus, abhorrent to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I think that um it compromises our witness in the world.
SPEAKER_00: It's a big problem.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the problem isn't that there's a church in America, the problem is there's too much America in the church.
SPEAKER_00: And one one artifact, one indicator of this is the elevation of partisan politics over our allegiance to the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Quick disclaimer: I know it's Mother's Day.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I know this.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I know this isn't your typical happy clappy go mom's type of Mother Day, Mother's Day message, but I will tell you this, it's not completely off target.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not joking, because as I talk to parents, the number one thing they want with their family is good relationships.
SPEAKER_00: That's what they want.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, if you reflect on your own family dynamics over the last 10 years, what's placing a ton of pressure on your family dynamics?
SPEAKER_00: Politics.
SPEAKER_00: Politics isn't just dividing the church, it's dividing families.
SPEAKER_00: And so, again, my goal today isn't to stir us up, it's to help us.
SPEAKER_00: It also can't be avoided because we don't follow just the American holiday calendar.
SPEAKER_00: We follow the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: So we're just walking through the book of 1 Corinthians, and this happens to be our text for this morning.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 1, 10 through 17.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what it says.
SPEAKER_00: This is Paul speaking to the Corinthians.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, that's family language.
SPEAKER_00: I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say, and that there be no divisions among you.
SPEAKER_00: Note that word divisions, but that you be perfectly united in mind and in thought.
SPEAKER_00: My brothers and sisters, again that family language.
SPEAKER_00: Some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you.
SPEAKER_00: What I mean is this: one of you says, I follow Paul, another says, I follow Apollos, another says, I follow Caphas, still another, I follow Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Is Christ divided?
SPEAKER_00: Was Paul the one who was crucified for you?
SPEAKER_00: Were you baptized in the name of Paul?
SPEAKER_00: I thank God that I didn't baptize any of you, except for Crispus and Gaius.
SPEAKER_00: So no one can say that you were baptized in my name.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, okay.
SPEAKER_00: I also baptized the household of Stephanus.
SPEAKER_00: Beyond that, I don't remember if I baptized anybody else.
SPEAKER_00: Kind of senior moment for Paul there, right?
SPEAKER_00: For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: I love how Paul just, oh yeah, and I also baptized them.
SPEAKER_00: I forgot, sorry.
SPEAKER_00: The church at Corinth is being torn about torn apart by divisions.
SPEAKER_00: The Greek word Paul uses here is schismata.
SPEAKER_00: So there are fractures and schisms, uh, tears in the fabric of this community.
SPEAKER_00: And we unfortunately don't know all the details to the situation.
SPEAKER_00: Scholars and commentators hypothesize about the details.
SPEAKER_00: But we do know this.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Paul's the one who planted this church.
SPEAKER_00: He started it, he led it for a bit, and then he moved on to plant other churches.
SPEAKER_00: And when he left it, he left the church of Corinth in a harmonious state.
SPEAKER_00: So they were unified.
SPEAKER_00: And then, somewhere along the way, he gets word from Chloe's household that is no longer the case.
SPEAKER_00: There are rifts and divisions here.
SPEAKER_00: And the most straightforward reading, I think, of what's causing these divisions is that they're divided around leaders.
SPEAKER_00: People are sort of attaching themselves to different leaders or personalities and then forming camps around those people.
SPEAKER_00: So I follow Paul, I follow Apollos, I follow Caphas, who's Peter, and then there's this group that's like, well, I follow Jesus, which you think would be the right answer, but the way Paul is alluding to this group is that they're actually orienting to these divisions with a sense of superiority, implying that the other groups aren't followers of Jesus, and that they're the only right group, and so their posture and attitude is actually contributing to the division, not helping solve it.
SPEAKER_00: It's a mess.
SPEAKER_00: Now I want you to think about this for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: I want you just not just to notice what Paul is saying, but what he's doing.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Remember, Paul is a pastor, and he's now going to approach this in a pastoral way.
SPEAKER_00: So if you put on this lens of like, how is Paul pastoring this community that's divided, I want us to notice three things he does.
SPEAKER_00: First, I want you to notice that he names the problem.
SPEAKER_00: He says flatly in verse 11, there are quarrels among you, there's divisions among you.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he doesn't ignore the problem, he doesn't pretend there isn't a problem or just hope it goes away.
SPEAKER_00: He names it and confronts it head on.
SPEAKER_00: There's divisions among you.
SPEAKER_00: He names it.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, he exposes the faulty logic at work that's causing these divisions.
SPEAKER_00: And he actually does this by way of correcting their theology.
SPEAKER_00: He asks a series of rhetorical questions.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Wait, wait, wait, is Christ divided?
SPEAKER_00: Have you dismembered the body of Christ?
SPEAKER_00: Is Paul the one who is crucified for you?
SPEAKER_00: Were you baptized in my name?
SPEAKER_00: He's going, look, this is ridiculous.
SPEAKER_00: What are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the one who went to the cross for you.
SPEAKER_00: You were baptized in Jesus' name, so to divide over human leaders is to fundamentally misunderstand the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: We're unified around Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And then thirdly, and this is actually where Paul starts, is he challenges them to regain their unity by giving their allegiance to Jesus, not to these human leaders.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 10, he says, agree with one another.
SPEAKER_00: He says, There should be no more divisions among you, be perfectly unified.
SPEAKER_00: And note that this is all done in, quote, the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You're doing this because Jesus is Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So if we just ask the question, how is Paul pastoring here?
SPEAKER_00: He's naming the problem, he's not ignoring it, there's divisions among you.
SPEAKER_00: He names the problem that's causing this.
SPEAKER_00: There's theological confusion.
SPEAKER_00: If you're really centered on Christ, this wouldn't be happening.
SPEAKER_00: And then he names the solution, which is to regain unity by way of shared allegiance to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The root of the problem, you see, isn't names or personalities or leaders, it's an allegiance problem.
SPEAKER_00: Are seeing what Paul is doing here?
SPEAKER_00: Yes?
SPEAKER_00: Here's a problem.
SPEAKER_00: Here's why it's a problem.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what we need to do about it.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to ask this question.
SPEAKER_00: If Paul were here today, what would he say to us?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: He would say the exact same thing.
SPEAKER_00: You all are divided.
SPEAKER_00: There are quarrels among you.
SPEAKER_00: The only difference is it's not over apostles, it's over politics.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you say, hey, I'm on team red.
SPEAKER_00: I vote right.
SPEAKER_00: I'm conservative politically.
SPEAKER_00: And then some of you are like, no, I'm on team blue.
SPEAKER_00: I lean left.
SPEAKER_00: I'm progressive.
SPEAKER_00: I vote Democrat.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are on team red, some of you are on team blue, and then there's a bunch of you who are straight up purple, and you're just like, I wish everybody would get along.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm just gonna name this.
SPEAKER_00: Again, uh, there are political divisions in the church, in this church and the American church at large.
SPEAKER_00: And if I'm gonna learn how to pastor the way Paul is pastoring the church in Corinth, I can't ignore this.
SPEAKER_00: I can't pretend these divisions don't exist.
SPEAKER_00: I can't just hope that they go away.
SPEAKER_00: My job is to name them as your pastor because I care about you.
SPEAKER_00: And I care about our faithfulness and the trajectory of our church community.
SPEAKER_00: Is this making sense to you?
SPEAKER_00: It's part of my pastoral obligation.
SPEAKER_00: There's political divisions tearing the fabric of the church apart.
SPEAKER_00: It's easily one of the biggest threats facing the American church today.
SPEAKER_00: And underneath this is actually not politics, it's allegiance.
SPEAKER_00: You all want to say, hey, Jesus is Lord, I'll pledge my allegiance to Jesus, but in reality, Jesus isn't Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Your partisan politics have become Lord, and Jesus has been displaced.
SPEAKER_00: And so you're more aligned with the red or the blue than you are the life and teachings of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's an allegiance issue.
SPEAKER_00: I want to share with you what the research is telling us about how politics is dividing the church.
SPEAKER_00: I'm drawing from research firms like Barna and Pew and Lifeway here, but here's what the research is showing us about why and how politics is dividing church communities.
SPEAKER_00: Couple points I want you to be aware of.
SPEAKER_00: Number one is that what's happening is political identity is becoming stronger than spiritual identity.
SPEAKER_00: And so, an increased number of people, what's happening is they're actually leaving churches they've been a part of for a long period of time, churches where they have a sense of theological alignment in, to go to churches that where they feel more politically aligned, even though there's not theological alignment.
SPEAKER_00: You see that?
SPEAKER_00: So political identity is actually becoming the primary marker of belonging.
SPEAKER_00: Think about this.
SPEAKER_00: If you're leaving a church because the pastor or the staff or whoever doesn't agree with your politics, but you guys agree on theology, and then you go to a church where you don't agree on theology, but you agree on politics.
SPEAKER_00: That's jacked up.
SPEAKER_00: That's pretty messed up.
SPEAKER_00: It's no bueno.
SPEAKER_00: So here's the deal.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just naming things as honestly as I can, is people show up to church every week expecting their pastor to affirm their politics from the stage.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's happening.
SPEAKER_00: You guys come in and you expect me to validate your entrenched political convictions.
SPEAKER_00: And the moment your views get challenged, the moment you get a whiff that, oh, we may not see that issue the exact same way, what happens is you feel threatened and you feel uncomfortable, and oftentimes people end up leaving.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm just gonna name this this is not a sign of maturity, it's a sign of deep immaturity.
SPEAKER_00: If you can't handle difference in a relationship, a difference of conviction, and you hit the eject button anytime someone thinks or believes differently than you, that is not a sign of maturity.
SPEAKER_00: It's a sign of deep immaturity and insecurity.
SPEAKER_00: So what's happening, friends, is that our political identity is actually trumping our spiritual identity, which leads to the second problem, which is the research is showing that congregations now are becoming ideologically homogeneous.
SPEAKER_00: Now that is a big word, but essentially it means this.
SPEAKER_00: Just think about this.
SPEAKER_00: If people are choosing churches predominantly on political alignment, I want to go to a church where uh every method sort of validates what I think or believe or where I stand politically.
SPEAKER_00: Um, what's happening then is conservative Christians are congregating, they're gravitating to churches that are conservative politically, and progressives then are kind of gravitating toward or finding churches that are progressive in their politics.
SPEAKER_00: You see this?
SPEAKER_00: Well, what then happens to the makeup of a local church is now it becomes an ideological echo chamber.
SPEAKER_00: Rather than it being a place of political diversity, the diversity that is the body of Christ, it's becoming a place of political uniformity.
SPEAKER_00: And so instead of being a diverse body of Christ, formed and centered on the person of Jesus, what ends up happening is politics actually become the premise of belonging.
SPEAKER_00: I'm choosing a church because of their political alignment, and then everybody else does the same, and now we're just sitting in giant, massive group thing.
SPEAKER_00: A political echo chamber.
SPEAKER_00: And notice how Jesus is being displaced because the entry point isn't following Jesus, it's the validation of my political perspectives.
SPEAKER_00: This is no bueno.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is no longer the center, rather, the the tribe, the political tribe you're a part of has become center.
SPEAKER_00: So notice this political identity is replacing spiritual identity.
SPEAKER_00: Congregations then are becoming um ideological echo chambers, and then thirdly, the research is showing that churches then are shaped by political pressure.
SPEAKER_00: This is shaping the messaging that's coming from pulpits.
SPEAKER_00: Listen, I'll just tell you, churches and pastors in particular are under immense pressure about what they say, about what they don't say, what they validate and don't validate every week.
SPEAKER_00: And the moment that they don't validate someone's perspectives, man, the blowback and pushback is crazy.
SPEAKER_00: Tons of pushback.
SPEAKER_00: Now note this one strategy pastors are using to not have to absorb so much garbage is they just start preaching either right-wing politics or left-leaning politics.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because if I were to just start preaching sort of to the right, what is what ends up happening if political identity is the primary attractor or grid people are using to find a church is then I'll attract a congregation that's full of right-wing people.
SPEAKER_00: And then when these big political moments happen in our culture, well, they're actually not much tension among us because we already agree.
SPEAKER_00: And the same thing happens on the left.
SPEAKER_00: If I were to preach just consistently to the left, I'd attract a group of people that lean left, and then when these big moments happen politically, there's actually very little tension among us because we all think the same.
SPEAKER_00: But see, for pastors who refuse to bend their knee to the right or the left.
SPEAKER_00: Quite frankly, for pastors who want to stay anchored in the life and the teachings of Jesus, their job is going to be much more difficult because they're not going to attract just one kind of person.
SPEAKER_00: They're going to attract a diverse group of people politically.
SPEAKER_00: Which means at any given moment, when a cultural issue bubbles up, there's no winning, friends.
SPEAKER_00: Because there's such a wide range of expectations and viewpoints among us.
SPEAKER_00: It's a mess.
SPEAKER_00: A couple months ago, when the conflict in Iran broke out, I, like many other pastors around the country, led us in a time of prayer.
SPEAKER_00: I was very careful about how I did that.
SPEAKER_00: I anchored it in the life and teachings of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I reminded you all that one of Jesus' titles is the Prince of Peace.
SPEAKER_00: That in his Sermon on the Mount, he calls us to be peacemakers.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are the peacemakers.
SPEAKER_00: That the kingdom of heaven is not marred by division and conflict and war and violence.
SPEAKER_00: It's a peaceable kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And we're to be a sign instrument and foretaste of that kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And so I led us in prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah?
SPEAKER_00: Well, not long after that, we had a couple leave our church.
SPEAKER_00: And when we got attentive to the reasons why they were leaving, one of the reasons why is because they said Mac is anti-Trump.
SPEAKER_00: And we asked, hey, what's the evidence for that?
SPEAKER_00: They said he prayed for peace.
SPEAKER_00: Which, quite frankly, is confusing to me, I'll be honest, because I thought he wanted to be the Nobel Peace Prize winner.
SPEAKER_00: Like you'd think you could actually spin this to be a validation of Trump.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But I do know this.
SPEAKER_00: If you're going to leave a church because the pastor prays for peace when a war is breaking out, what's causing you to leave is not the life and teachings of Jesus, it's political idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: That's what's happening.
SPEAKER_00: So let me just do some expectation setting while I'm on it.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to know the way I see my job.
SPEAKER_00: Um, my job is not to validate your politics or to appease your political convictions, to placate you.
SPEAKER_00: That is not my job.
SPEAKER_00: If I'm seeking to placate you, I can't lead you.
SPEAKER_00: Nor is the pulpit a place for every week to give political commentary on whatever's happening in the world.
SPEAKER_00: I don't see it as my job to stand up here and give you max hot takes on what's happening over here, what's happening there.
SPEAKER_00: That's not my job.
SPEAKER_00: My job is to simply point us to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That is my job.
SPEAKER_00: Now, am I going to do that perfectly?
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm not.
SPEAKER_00: I want to give myself permission to be human-sized, which means I'm going to make mistakes, I'm not going to do it perfectly, other people on staff aren't going to be doing it perfectly.
SPEAKER_00: But I want you to know what we're trying to do is to point us to Jesus in these supercharged moments.
SPEAKER_00: And if I say something you disagree with, whoop-dee-doo.
SPEAKER_00: Honestly, get over it.
SPEAKER_00: I say things I disagree with.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: If I say something you disagree with, oh then what?
SPEAKER_00: Then what?
SPEAKER_00: Like who cares?
SPEAKER_00: Relax.
SPEAKER_00: If if the only people you surround yourself with are people who never disagree with you, you're going to end up only being friends with yourself.
SPEAKER_00: That's the reality.
SPEAKER_00: Your world is going to shrink to this tiny group of people who see things just like you.
SPEAKER_00: And it's going to be counterproductive to your formation as a follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: About a month ago, Cameron and I were at our district conference for the CMA, our denomination.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, there's 46 churches in our district, so we were together for uh the better part of the week.
SPEAKER_00: And this was the topic, friends.
SPEAKER_00: When uh the president of our denomination was asked, hey, what are the challenges or threats?
SPEAKER_00: He said, It's politics.
SPEAKER_00: When we talked to other pastors, I said, Yeah, it is, ah, it is so hard.
SPEAKER_00: No matter what we say or do, people are angry with us.
SPEAKER_00: And I just named that to go, these are different pastors, different contexts, and yet it's the same dynamic.
SPEAKER_00: It is ubiquitous.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just here, it is here, but it's everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: It's everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: So politics is dividing the church.
SPEAKER_00: At the root of this is not difference.
SPEAKER_00: It's not difference, it's allegiance.
SPEAKER_00: We've allowed our commitment to partisan politics to replace our commitment to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So, where do we go from here?
SPEAKER_00: Here's our bottom line.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the way to restore unity among us is through allegiance to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The way is not political uniformity, it's loyalty.
SPEAKER_00: The way to restore unity is not political uniformity, all of us are thinking the same way.
SPEAKER_00: It's loyalty, it's loyalty to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Unity in the church is not about sameness, it never has been.
SPEAKER_00: You look at Jesus' disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Did you know that not all of his disciples were the same?
SPEAKER_00: They were actually a very diverse group of people, even politically.
SPEAKER_00: He had a tax collector and he had a zealot.
SPEAKER_00: Those were the opposite ends of the political spectrum.
SPEAKER_00: And yet walking with Jesus over three years taught them how to love each other.
SPEAKER_00: You look at the early church, it was comprised of Jew and Gentile, which was by far the biggest barrier you could imagine.
SPEAKER_00: It was sort of a paradigmatic, if Jesus can bring these two groups together, he can collapse any, break down any uh barrier or dividing wall.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't about erasing differences.
SPEAKER_00: We're all going to be different.
SPEAKER_00: It's about reordering our allegiance.
SPEAKER_00: Our task is to recenter our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: It's to get our loyalty and our lives fixed on the person of Jesus, to allow Jesus to become the center of our church.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus becomes our top priority.
SPEAKER_00: We seek first the kingdom of God, and everything else, including our politics, is way down here, not even a close second.
SPEAKER_00: So, how do we do this?
SPEAKER_00: How do we become a unified community with Jesus at the center without erasing our differences?
SPEAKER_00: I want to present to you a tool that I came up with probably about a decade ago.
SPEAKER_00: I've spent a lot of time working on this, um, sitting with it with our staff and our leadership team, and they're like, man, you've got to keep teaching this to our congregation.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying it's perfect, maybe you have a different way of thinking about it.
SPEAKER_00: But this is my best attempt to go, here's how we become a church unified uh around Jesus, faithful to Jesus, given our cultural climate.
SPEAKER_00: So this is a matrix.
SPEAKER_00: Um, you all know I love these.
SPEAKER_00: Um the the let's start with the horizontal axis, the x-axis.
SPEAKER_00: Um, on the right hand side is kingdom distinction.
SPEAKER_00: What I mean by that is individuals and churches that are faithfully living out the life and teachings of Jesus, following Jesus faithfully.
SPEAKER_00: All right, that's the right hand side.
SPEAKER_00: The left hand side would be churches or individuals that are not doing that.
SPEAKER_00: They're in some ways compromising the distinct way, Jesus-looking way, of living life.
SPEAKER_00: Up at the top, the y-axis is cultural connection.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, we're engaging our culture.
SPEAKER_00: And on the bottom are churches or individuals who are not doing that.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if you kind of follow me here, I think this is going to give us a vision, some direction about what we're called to embody and what we're called to avoid.
SPEAKER_00: Very clearly, I'm I'm just gonna name.
SPEAKER_00: Hold on to this.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna end up here, uh, where we want to live out the way of Jesus, the life and teachings of Jesus, in a way that's faithful to Jesus while also engaging our culture.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, we're to be in the world, but not of the world.
SPEAKER_00: We're to be engaging the world in a distinctly Jesus-looking way.
SPEAKER_00: So that's where we're gonna end up.
SPEAKER_00: But first, I want to talk about um some of these other things I think we need to avoid, okay?
SPEAKER_00: We'll start in the lower left quadrant, which I'm gonna name as a being apolitical, not political at all.
SPEAKER_00: Um let's let me fill this out.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I mean by that.
SPEAKER_00: So the lower left quadrant, we have a combination of low cultural engagement and a low kingdom distinction.
SPEAKER_00: We could call this apolitical because uh churches and people in this uh uh space they avoid political discussion or dialogue uh due to apathy or altogether avoidance.
SPEAKER_00: So essentially, they don't talk about the primary issues that are happening in the world, they don't talk about divisive topics, um, and the reason why is because those feel really threatening.
SPEAKER_00: Makes sense, right?
SPEAKER_00: If a culture is really polarized and divided, if there's a lot of uh polarization, uh often the safest thing to do is to not say anything at all, right?
SPEAKER_00: To not ruffle feathers.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the problem, friends, is just because something is safe doesn't mean it's faithful.
SPEAKER_00: And when you look at the life and teachings of Jesus, you'll notice he didn't do this at all.
SPEAKER_00: He was very engaged in the world around him, often said things that were disagreeable and hard, dressed hard topics and so on.
SPEAKER_00: And so did the early church.
SPEAKER_00: When you read the book of Acts, they're constantly turning the world upside down and getting in trouble.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you just one example.
SPEAKER_00: Um, when the early Christians said Jesus is Lord, that wasn't just a spiritual affirmation, it was a politically charged statement because Caesar claimed to be Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So when they said Jesus is Lord, they're actually making a political counterclaim that got them killed.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel, you guys, is inherently political.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus didn't dodge the hard things in his culture, he waded into them.
SPEAKER_00: And so for me, I don't think landing here is a faithful way to engage as a follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's my personal opinion.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if we were if you were to agree with me, you go, okay, yeah, we we we do have to be in the world in a distinctly Jesus-looking way, we can't just avoid hard things, then what?
SPEAKER_00: Well, here's where many people go.
SPEAKER_00: This is the upper left-hand quadrant.
SPEAKER_00: What I'm gonna name as uh fusion, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So here you'll notice there's a high degree of cultural engagement.
SPEAKER_00: They're definitely engaging cultural issues and the politics of the day, they're involved in those discussions, but they do it in a way that actually distorts the way of Jesus, distorts or compromises their faithfulness to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And the tricky thing is for those who are fused, this is despite the fact that they think they're being faithful.
SPEAKER_00: I think people in this category, churches in this category, are deeply self-deceived.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason why is because it's not that Jesus isn't a part of these conversations, it's that they're actually distorting Jesus to fix their politics.
SPEAKER_00: These churches co-opt Jesus to bless their political positions.
SPEAKER_00: They recruit Jesus to baptize their viewpoints.
SPEAKER_00: They use Christianity to support a political ideology.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus and the Bible become tools of political propaganda.
SPEAKER_00: Typically, this shows up in a few different ways.
SPEAKER_00: It always doesn't show up in just one way.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you'll notice that I've highlighted a few different ways that this shows up right here.
SPEAKER_00: So, for some churches who fuse politics with the way of Jesus, they're just pretty forthright that they think that following Jesus means being progressive or left-leaning, right?
SPEAKER_00: And they have a way of cherry-picking certain teachings of Jesus, certain through lines, and they highlight those and go, well, see, obviously Jesus is a Democrat.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's sort of right-leaning churches.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, if you lived where Cameron's from, if if you are out in Portland, Oregon, this is where most churches are going to be who practice fusion.
SPEAKER_00: Here in our area, a lot of them are right here.
SPEAKER_00: They're right-leaning churches.
SPEAKER_00: So in what ends up happening is they just fuse it with, oh, following Jesus obviously means being a Republican.
SPEAKER_00: And just like those on the left, they cherry-pick certain verses and highlight certain things in order to get there.
SPEAKER_00: But both are co-opting Jesus in order to support a political agenda that doesn't work at all.
SPEAKER_00: And then increasingly, what's happening is many churches notice the problem with this type of fusion and that type of fusion, but they just sit in the middle as purple churches.
SPEAKER_00: But the problem is, friends, is Jesus didn't just sit in the middle when it came to controversial issues and both sides things.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we just need to listen and talk to each other.
SPEAKER_00: No, he took sides.
SPEAKER_00: That's what got him in trouble.
SPEAKER_00: You guys following?
SPEAKER_00: This is hard stuff.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm asking you to do some hard thinking this morning to avoid being apolitical and also avoid uh a political fusion in a way that compromises Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: There are two fundamental problems.
SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a lot more than that.
SPEAKER_00: I could honestly talk about this for an entire sermon series, but I'll just boil it down to two.
SPEAKER_00: Here are the problems with fusion.
SPEAKER_00: Number one is that fusion always co-opts Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of Jesus shaping our politics, instead of Jesus shaping and challenging our worldview, we end up using Jesus, employing Jesus to do our political bidding.
SPEAKER_00: The second problem, and this is just a practical one, is that Bible-believing Jesus following Christians actually don't land at the same place all the time on every issue that exists.
SPEAKER_00: Bible-believing, Jesus following Christians actually disagree sometimes on how to live out the way of Jesus regarding this issue or that issue.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna let you in on a horrible little secret.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are sitting next to someone who doesn't agree with you politically.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that terrifying?
SPEAKER_00: So look, I'm not going to check political ID cards at the door.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to do that.
SPEAKER_00: Because I don't care about that first and foremost.
SPEAKER_00: What I care about is that we're following Jesus together as a community.
SPEAKER_00: That's our goal.
SPEAKER_00: We're not going to be a church to the right.
SPEAKER_00: We're not going to be a church that leans to the left.
SPEAKER_00: We're not just going to be a moderate church.
SPEAKER_00: There's going to be times when I'm going to have to say, no, this is our stand on this or that thing, whether it's popular or not.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we want to be a Jesus-centered church.
SPEAKER_00: Are we going to do that perfectly?
SPEAKER_00: No?
SPEAKER_00: But that's what we're trying to do.
SPEAKER_00: Now, uh, let's jump to the lower left-hand quadrant.
SPEAKER_00: All right, this is what I'm going to call the separatist camp.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: And this is people who really prioritize following Jesus in a distinctly kingdom-looking way, but they don't really engage the world on the issues that are happening.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, a great example of this, rather an extreme one, is like the Amish, who are very much centered on trying to live out the teachings of Jesus, but they sort of hived off or separated themselves from the world.
SPEAKER_00: And this broadly would fit a big theme of theology known as Anabaptists.
SPEAKER_00: They tend to orient in this direction.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, if you want to know where I stand on this stuff, uh, here's my own political story in like 10 seconds.
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in a house where we were fused to the right.
SPEAKER_00: That's where I began.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, following Jesus obviously meant being Republican.
SPEAKER_00: Then I went to college and studied nothing but theology for seven years, and I spent about a decade here, down here, going, if we could just focus on Jesus, live out his teachings, then we'd be good.
SPEAKER_00: And over the last decade, I've realized there's actually no way to do that without engaging the world because that's how Jesus lived.
SPEAKER_00: So let's jump to the upper right.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: This is what I'm calling faithful presence.
SPEAKER_00: Faithful presence.
SPEAKER_00: Faithful presence is obviously bringing two things together that are very hard to do.
SPEAKER_00: So we've got to have grace and kindness for ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: But we first and foremost want to be faithful to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We give all of our allegiance and loyalty to him and to living out his way as his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: Presence has to do with the fact that we actually have to do this in the world, engaging what's happening in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And this is gonna be very hard to do.
SPEAKER_00: To live out the way of Jesus together in community in a way that engages what's happening in the world.
SPEAKER_00: It is hard work.
SPEAKER_00: Now, again, I could give probably a six-part sermon series on the politics of Jesus, but let me just note this.
SPEAKER_00: Everything Jesus said and did had political ramifications.
SPEAKER_00: Big picture, what you need to know is that Jesus' kingdom is not established by power over dominance.
SPEAKER_00: Coercion, force, power over is not how the kingdom of God moves forward.
SPEAKER_00: It is moved forward in advance by cruciformity, cross-like self-sacrificial love.
SPEAKER_00: At the center of Jesus' politics are love for God and love for neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: And at the center of that is actually love for enemy.
SPEAKER_00: So any politic that results in power over, dominance and coercion and compromises love for God and love for neighbor is antithetical to the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: What's more is that the kingdom of God is for every tribe, tongue, and nation.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the kingdom isn't a distinctly American thing.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom of God is not the same thing as the kingdom of America because God's kingdom is for every single human being.
SPEAKER_00: Yes?
SPEAKER_00: And the kingdom of God is to reflect that diversity.
SPEAKER_00: So a lot more I could say there, but just note that.
SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be hard work.
SPEAKER_00: There's two caveats I wanna note when it comes to faithful presence.
SPEAKER_00: Number one is that faithful presence, this is a quadrant.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a bullseye, it's not a fixed point.
SPEAKER_00: This is an entire quadrant with a whole lot of space.
SPEAKER_00: And that's important because it means when we're looking at any particular issue like immigration or whatever the issue is, some of us might be here, some of us might be here, we might be all over the place.
SPEAKER_00: But the thing is we need to come together and learn to talk so that we can discern what faithfulness looks like.
SPEAKER_00: We actually need each other's different perspectives to discern what faithfulness looks like moving forward.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is gonna be a place of considerable tension.
SPEAKER_00: Randy, I'm gonna use my pointer, there's Randy.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Randy said, I think there's more tension pursuing this quadrant, which is what we absolutely have to do than all of these other quadrants combined.
SPEAKER_00: This is going to be a place of tension.
SPEAKER_00: Which means we need to grow or mature in two areas.
SPEAKER_00: Listen up.
SPEAKER_00: One is emotional maturity.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've noticed this, but here's what I'm noticing: those who are on the end, the well curve, those who are on either extreme, incredibly fragile and emotionally immature.
SPEAKER_00: The moment you say or do something they disagree with, they erupt in emotional immaturity, become highly reactive.
SPEAKER_00: If we're gonna live in the upper right-hand quadrant, we need to increase our emotional maturity.
SPEAKER_00: And with that, then, we need to increase our conversational capacity, which needs we need to be able to sit and listen and talk and ask questions.
SPEAKER_00: We need to learn to talk in a way that other people can hear, and we need to hear in a way that allows other people to talk.
SPEAKER_00: We need to grow in our emotional maturity and our conversational capacity.
SPEAKER_00: The way to restore unity among us.
SPEAKER_00: There are tears in the fabric of our community.
SPEAKER_00: And the way to restore unity among us is not by becoming red or blue or purple.
SPEAKER_00: It's by way of allegiance to the person of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Placing Jesus at the center of our lives and our community.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna close our time today by taking communion.
SPEAKER_00: I can't think of a better way to close because communion is about declaring our allegiance to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's an affirmation that Jesus is Lord, not politics, not a party, not a politician, not Trump, not Obama, not Biden, not whoever.
SPEAKER_00: It's giving our allegiance to the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The table belongs to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We gather around the table that belongs to Jesus as his disciples, declaring that we are your followers, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So as we prepare to take communion, I want to give you a few minutes to reflect and here's some questions for you to consider.
SPEAKER_00: Where has my allegiance to Jesus become compromised by politics?
SPEAKER_00: Allow Jesus to talk to you about this.
SPEAKER_00: Am I inviting Jesus to correct, challenge, and shape my assumptions and convictions?
SPEAKER_00: And where is Jesus inviting me into deeper unity by forming friendships across difference?
SPEAKER_00: So take a minute to reflect, and then I'll lead us in communion.
SPEAKER_00: And during the meal, he took bread and he broke it.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, This is my body which we've broken for you.
SPEAKER_00: Let us take and eat.
SPEAKER_00: Then he took the cup and he said, This is the cup of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: I'm establishing something new.
SPEAKER_00: My blood, which will be shed for you, for your forgiveness and the forgiveness of many.
SPEAKER_00: Let us take and drink.
SPEAKER_00: Couple action steps as you leave today.
SPEAKER_00: Number one is I want to encourage you to initiate a conversation with someone who's different from you to simply ask questions and listen.
SPEAKER_00: Talk to someone who's different from you and focus on emotional maturity, conversational capacity.
SPEAKER_00: And then second, there's so much I wasn't able to say today.
SPEAKER_00: You guys, a sermon is just a snapshot.
SPEAKER_00: It's just a snapshot.
SPEAKER_00: So so often people come up and they're like, well, what about this?
SPEAKER_00: What about that?
SPEAKER_00: I have 35 minutes and I often got go and tr get into trouble for going over, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So uh I'm only able to say so much.
SPEAKER_00: But we have a podcast called Praxis, and we actually did a two-part um series on God's Kingdom Looks Like Jesus, part one and part two.
SPEAKER_00: And I just encourage you to listen to that because we go into a lot more detail about what it looks like to live a distinctly Jesus-looking uh life.
SPEAKER_00: It is donut day.
SPEAKER_00: Donut day.
SPEAKER_00: So don't run out, hang out, talk.
SPEAKER_00: Might be a good time to talk to someone who's different from you.
SPEAKER_00: Uh remember, ladies, there's stuff in the lounge for you for Happy Mother's Day.
SPEAKER_00: Um love to celebrate you all.
SPEAKER_00: Let's stand for closing prayer.
SPEAKER_00: God, we need your help.
SPEAKER_00: I know I do.
SPEAKER_00: I need your help big time.
SPEAKER_00: Um we are in the middle of this cultural mess, and it's creating a mess in families.
SPEAKER_00: It's creating a mess in your church family.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray that you would steal our hearts, capture our hearts, capture our allegiance, capture our loyalty, that we might live faithfully.
SPEAKER_00: Teach us how to honor one another, teach us how to serve one another, teach us how to listen to one another, teach us how to bridge difference.
SPEAKER_00: God, we want to be your community, your hands and feet that are both in the world, but not of the world.
SPEAKER_00: So shape us and mold us.
SPEAKER_00: We surrender to you to fresh today.
SPEAKER_00: Have your way in us by the power of your spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Go in peace.