SPEAKER_00: I um glad to be I'm glad to be back and as I'm sitting here I've got this kind of uh rush of emotion coming over me just trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So uh I haven't written down what I was planning on doing, but uh just kind of so much has happened, and it's kind of a convergence of experiences right now in my life because um right now I'm in a in uh some coursework for a master's degree, and that coursework uh is really talking about strategic planning, but the emphasis this week is what is the future of the church?
SPEAKER_00: And talking about globalization.
SPEAKER_00: So that so one piece is what is the future of Christianity?
SPEAKER_00: The other piece of the course this week was writing a paper on the leaders' responsibilities in a culture of globalization.
SPEAKER_00: And you understand that globalization is something that is uh very rampant in the marketplace as uh corporations go overseas to try to, you know.
SPEAKER_00: For example, if you go to McDonald's in California, uh they piloted this about 2006.
SPEAKER_00: If you go into the drive-thru, you might hear somebody on the drive-thru speaker who is actually from North Dakota or Hawaii or Wyoming because they have a call center now.
SPEAKER_00: And and the reality is there was rumors even at one point that they were going to uh ship that or uh move those operations to like India.
SPEAKER_00: And so you'd go into a drive-thru at McDonald's and you'd bring an Indian call center that would then take your order, they'd put it on a screen for them to process, but uh increasing timeliness and so globalization is a big deal right now.
SPEAKER_00: Uh another one, there's um I forget what the company was, but it's in the UK.
SPEAKER_00: In the UK, another call center, but it was farmed out to India where they actually taught them to speak with British accents, but on their screen it would pop up on the screen, it would say um where they were, their sports team, whether they won or lost, what the weather was, so they could carry on small talk.
SPEAKER_00: So, how's the weather?
SPEAKER_00: I said, you know, beautiful day here in wherever.
SPEAKER_00: And how about that?
SPEAKER_00: Uh what's what's the soccer team?
SPEAKER_00: Um Manchester United.
SPEAKER_00: Is that right?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sorry, I'm a football fan.
SPEAKER_00: Not a football fan, however you say it.
SPEAKER_00: But um, so I'm sitting here and all this is converging.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, John 3.16, what does it say?
SPEAKER_00: For God so loved the world that he gave his only son.
SPEAKER_00: And and also as I was working on this paper and thinking about that, today is uh April 26th, and just coincidentally, as I was working on this paper yesterday, April 30th in 1492 is when Christopher Columbus stood before the Queen, and uh she was reluctant to let him voyage across the ocean.
SPEAKER_00: But the one of the aides, one of the uh, I forget the role of the man who came along her side and stood there and said, but for the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so with that there was this adventure and kind of this concept of manifest destiny to go out and cross the oceans.
SPEAKER_00: Now, granted, there was certainly a trade component to that, right?
SPEAKER_00: They were looking for trade routes to India, but there was also this sense of manifest destiny.
SPEAKER_00: And I think of World War II, shortly after World War II, speaking of, you know, there was this it unfortunately becomes kind of an ugly blend of imperialism and the move of God through the planet.
SPEAKER_00: But after World War II, we we discovered that we as Americans could mobilize people to go to Germany or Japan or other places for war.
SPEAKER_00: But there were many men who came back with a spirit that says, Well, if we can do this for imperialism, we can do this for the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: If we can reach these people groups to advance democracy, then certainly we can do the same with the gospel, can't we?
SPEAKER_00: And you have the missionary movement that really began out of that, particularly in the 1950s, where they went out and reached the Alka Indians, with John Elliott, Jim Elliott in the group there, that with this pioneering adventure that says we can reach the world.
SPEAKER_00: And so there was this advancement, but then the world today, what do they do?
SPEAKER_00: They um, because of cultural relativism, begin to say, who are we to impose our beliefs on other people?
SPEAKER_00: No, I understand, as you look through the course of history, there is that challenge where how do you define Christianity?
SPEAKER_00: Because people would come into the United States and they wouldn't bring Christianity so much as they would bring European culture, Spanish culture.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, even in Africa, there was a church that was built in Africa and it had this massive steeple upon the roof as the Europeans came and settled and established a mission post there.
SPEAKER_00: And then another man came and says, Why this peak on the roof?
SPEAKER_00: Well, to keep the snow from collapsing the roof.
SPEAKER_00: Because we impose our culture sometimes rather than our faith.
SPEAKER_00: And that could be problematic and a roadblock for many people to come to the church, is because it becomes a cultural thing.
SPEAKER_00: And the reality is this, is part of the studies that I'm working on, which is none of this is in the sermon, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: So this is my it's all converging right now.
SPEAKER_00: But uh part of it is as you look at it, is there's really three trends in the church today when we think of it.
SPEAKER_00: And one of those trends is kind of the decline of the Western church, the the American and the European church.
SPEAKER_00: And if you go over to Europe, you'll see many a cathedral door that has been closed.
SPEAKER_00: And part of that comes out of the age of reason, and people began to reject it because evolution could explain away God, because science could explain God, and so they checked reason, which is what we've been addressing the last few weeks is the importance of reason in our faith.
SPEAKER_00: It's a reasonable faith.
SPEAKER_00: And so they've seen the decline.
SPEAKER_00: But uh just Thursday I was uh at, is it Paul Paul Paul Litchfield, I think, um, Campus Crusade for Christ, I'm not totally certain of the name, but he was speaking in Fargo and talking about how the Jesus film had gone out and reached so many languages, and somebody afterwards says, Well, but isn't the church dying?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the church is not dying, it's just the center of the church is moving.
SPEAKER_00: Because if you look at South Korea and you look at Africa and you look at China, the church is exploding.
SPEAKER_00: See, God is still on the move, and God is still doing a thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's just maybe not such a European sort of church anymore.
SPEAKER_00: As a consequence, another one of the trends in the church of the future today is that what we're seeing is more of an incline towards Pentecostal charismatic movements.
SPEAKER_00: Now, you and I use those words a little bit hesitantly because they create in this, you know, snake-handling kind of concepts, right?
SPEAKER_00: And it's not so much that, but it's seeing miraculous things work.
SPEAKER_00: And you go to South Africa and you go to Korea and you go to all these places, and you do see God doing some miraculous things.
SPEAKER_00: But even here in the United States, what do you see is more of a bent towards away from the rational, more towards the emotional, experiential side of worship.
SPEAKER_00: And you go to a culture that is essentially an illiterate community, they're going to be much more inclined to see a God who's moving than a God that you study.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's certainly on the rise.
SPEAKER_00: And the third trend that people are prostig uh pro never mind, people telling the future.
SPEAKER_00: I can't get that word out of my mouth.
SPEAKER_00: What they're seeing is a decline of denominations, specifically in the sense more of denominations of the seven mainline denominations.
SPEAKER_00: Now, part of that, of course, is nobody, and I would say that's probably true for many of you who are here, and you may love the evangelical free churches.
SPEAKER_00: I love the evangelical free church, but what you're saying is what's really important is not the label, but the preaching and the worship, because you're more inclined for that than the tradition of a denominational brand.
SPEAKER_00: And so you see churches that once said First Baptist Church is now, I don't know, Karas Church, or you know, you just put a name on it, it's a little more catchy.
SPEAKER_00: Ignite.
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm part of the Ignite denominations where I've been attending lately.
SPEAKER_00: The formerly known as the Baptist General Conference is now Ignite.
SPEAKER_00: And part of that is just because this the labels of the traditions of the well, I'm a Baptist, and my parents were Baptists, and my parents before them were Baptists, and I will always be a Baptist.
SPEAKER_00: The same with Lutherans or Methodists or Episcopalians.
SPEAKER_00: So the church is definitely moving in a different direction.
SPEAKER_00: But the church is still definitely growing.
SPEAKER_00: Now, but and you all understand, right, that the church is not walls and roofs.
SPEAKER_00: The church is the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: From the Greek word ekklesia means the called out ones, and God has called out people across generations, across regions, across boundaries to call us to be part of the kingdom of his movement.
SPEAKER_00: And yet when you go and you do Man on the Street reporting and you ask someone, so tell me about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Well, he was a good teacher, he uh was a kind man, he uh you they're generally pretty kind, but you say, tell me about the church.
SPEAKER_00: The responses are far different.
SPEAKER_00: They're misogynistic, they're um dictatorial, they're legalistic, and the names are not, labels are not nearly as kind, are they?
SPEAKER_00: Which raises the question for us is what can we do here?
SPEAKER_00: Because certainly we we we're missionally minded.
SPEAKER_00: Acts 1.8, of course, says, you shall be my witnesses from what?
SPEAKER_00: Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: So we send out missionaries, we go on mission trips, we invest in missionaries because we care about it.
SPEAKER_00: But then yet the church has this picture of, or the world has this picture of the church, it is not a very favorable one.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, trying to decide really how much do I even dive into this.
SPEAKER_00: But uh I'm just going to share some of my passions first with this.
SPEAKER_00: Why the church?
SPEAKER_00: You know, in Genesis, at the very beginning, God said to Adam, and is not or said, that it is not good for man to be alone.
SPEAKER_00: And I've shared with you that over the year, over the last year, I've been working in a cubicle world, right?
SPEAKER_00: And it's an interesting place to work in the cubicle world, and uh because you would think in close proximity you have relationships, but the truth is you have no relationships with the people there because of shh, I'm working.
SPEAKER_00: And uh we all are desperate for relationship because God created us for relationship.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, early on in the history of the United States, as we were, the homesteaders were moving across the country, you know, they would go and they would stake their claim, and a lot of times they would have the races to go and claim land.
SPEAKER_00: And they would take their flag and they would put it in the center of their land and they say, This is my land, as they looked to the north and the south and the east and the west, they would say, This is my property, and they would build their homes in the center of their land so that they can enjoy the land that they had been given.
SPEAKER_00: But what sociologists found that in time, those homes moved from the center of the property to the four corners, so that there were four homes in close proximity.
SPEAKER_00: Because we're all desperate for relationship.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what the church is.
SPEAKER_00: The church is a connection of relationships around the person of Christ who has called us out.
SPEAKER_00: And we are all desperate for relationship, but people level accusations at the church that we're hypocrites.
SPEAKER_00: Are we hypocrites?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we are.
SPEAKER_00: And hypocrite simply means, you know, it's a Greek word that means uh it's a term from the stage, and it means to wear a mask.
SPEAKER_00: And so people would put on a mask that would say, This is who I am, to play a part.
SPEAKER_00: And I think so many people tend to be upset with the church today because so often we play a part.
SPEAKER_00: We pretend to be something that we're not.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't, sometimes hypocrisy I think is misunderstood.
SPEAKER_00: For example, if there was an alcoholic who came to you and said, you shouldn't drink, he is not a hypocrite.
SPEAKER_00: Because he understands the evil of the bondage that he is in with alcohol, and he's warning others that no, stay away from it.
SPEAKER_00: Don't get caught into the same trap that I am.
SPEAKER_00: But he's not standing there saying, No, I haven't touched this stuff in years.
SPEAKER_00: It's the alcoholic who pretends that he doesn't have a drinking problem and hides it from others and wears a mask and pretends like he has it together that becomes the problem.
SPEAKER_00: And so often in the church we want to put on masks and pretend like we have it together, pretend like we have it all figured out when in reality we're desperate for relationships and to be authentic with other people, and that's what the church is to be is a place where people can be authentic and real and no more masks.
SPEAKER_00: It's also been said of the church that the church has done so many terrible things throughout history.
SPEAKER_00: And um certainly there are some occasions in which the church behaved badly.
SPEAKER_00: We look at the crusades, and as the church went out with the symbol of the cross upon their shields to take the lives of others, not a real opportunity to brag about, right?
SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing, as you and I know, and really I think the world knows too, is that that stands in stark contrast to what the principles of Christianity are about.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why it's so hard for people to accept because they know that, well, Christianity is not about this.
SPEAKER_00: Why would they do something like that?
SPEAKER_00: It's in contrast to the nature of the faith.
SPEAKER_00: In contrast to that, though, consider, for example, Mao Zedong in China and his cultural revolutions.
SPEAKER_00: And the reality is this in scale, in comparison to the Crusades, it's not even close because the Crusades killed maybe thousands of people, but Mao Zedong killed millions and millions.
SPEAKER_00: Mao and the revolutions were in complete step with his philosophy, his atheistic beliefs.
SPEAKER_00: Same is true with Adolf Hitler and Lenin.
SPEAKER_00: Their actions came out of their character.
SPEAKER_00: The accusations of Christianity stand in contrast to what the character of Christ and Christianity is meant to be.
SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_00: One of the very reasons we believe the church to be what God created is because of the character it's meant to have, not always the character it does have, because we are sinfallen people in the context of relationships.
SPEAKER_00: We need to see the church as an authentic community of Christ followers, not simply Christ talkers.
SPEAKER_00: We need to walk it out.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's the reality, as it says in Matthew 13, verses 24 through 30, it talks about the parable of the wheats and the tares.
SPEAKER_00: And it says that the tares will be sown among the good wheat.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing about a tarare is a tar looks very similar to the wheat as it grows up.
SPEAKER_00: But they're a poisonous weed known as the bearded Darnell.
SPEAKER_00: And while it looks similar, according to Smith's Bible Dictionary, the grains of this plant, if eaten, will produce convulsions and death.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the picture that Christ gives of what the church is.
SPEAKER_00: Is that within the church there will be those who are tares.
SPEAKER_00: And so there are many who are true, authentic Christ followers.
SPEAKER_00: Yet there are those who are here that are far from God.
SPEAKER_00: And in 1 Corinthians 11, 18, Paul writes, When you come together as a church, I hear that divisions exist among you.
SPEAKER_00: And in part I believe it, for there must also be factions among you, so that those who are approved may become evident among you.
SPEAKER_00: Did you hear that one little word?
SPEAKER_00: There must be factions.
SPEAKER_00: Must be two words, sorry.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying that there will be, there must be, so that those who are truly followers of Christ will become evident.
SPEAKER_00: The church with a capital C is believers across this globe who see Christ as their Lord and Savior.
SPEAKER_00: The church is not made up of necessarily just those within the walls.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, there are those within the walls that aren't part of the Capital C church.
SPEAKER_00: The question that was asked before Jesus gave this response of the wheat and the tares was this do you want us to go and gather up the tares?
SPEAKER_00: In the parable, that's the description.
SPEAKER_00: Do you want us to go gather these weeds, pull them out, burn them up?
SPEAKER_00: He says, Don't do that, because in the moment that you do that, you will also pull up the wheat and it will be destroyed as well.
SPEAKER_00: So the expectation is that you continue to let them abide with you.
SPEAKER_00: And as Christ followers, our hope is that they might know Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You know, another reality of Christianity is that our lives would be reflected in it.
SPEAKER_00: Early on in the Christian faith, in around 250 to 270 AD, there was a terrible plague that swept across the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: It killed nearly 5,000 people a day.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of running like the city leaders, the city leaders ran out of the city.
SPEAKER_00: The physicians ran out of the city.
SPEAKER_00: Christians stayed and cared for the sick.
SPEAKER_00: And because of the love that they showed for the sick and the dying, it became a testimony to others of what Christ could and does do.
SPEAKER_00: Recently, Christian doctors in Liberia stayed to fight the Ebola crisis.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because they understand that God is a God who cares about eternities, and there's and hope is found in the healing of Christ, that there is hope in the eternal, but there's also hope in the now.
SPEAKER_00: And that comes through the church living out as God intended it to do.
SPEAKER_00: Another roadblock when it comes to faith is this.
SPEAKER_00: Half of the Christians I know are more screwed up than I am.
SPEAKER_00: You know, God doesn't grade on a curve.
SPEAKER_00: My kids, I I don't think my kids have experienced a teacher that grades on the curve.
SPEAKER_00: But in my fresh, my sophomore year, Chuck Jorgensen was my geometry teacher, and it was always, uh, class, today the grades are here.
SPEAKER_00: He did sound a little like Yogi Bear.
SPEAKER_00: Um but he would come in and the grades would be up there, and there'd be a hundred up here, and then you know, like a 50 down here, and there'd be, you know, tick marks at the different places showing who got what grades.
SPEAKER_00: And so now, if the highest grade was 85, then that became the A, right?
SPEAKER_00: You know what I'm talking about, grading on a curve?
SPEAKER_00: Some of you youngsters maybe not.
SPEAKER_00: But uh, so got so that was awesome, except for what?
SPEAKER_00: There was always that one guy, right?
SPEAKER_00: The curve buster, who came and he studied, ruined it for the rest of us.
SPEAKER_00: But that's how we treat God sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm better than that guy, or I'm better than that girl.
SPEAKER_00: I'm certainly not as messed up as them.
SPEAKER_00: And yet yet, people outside the church and say, I'm not nearly as messed up as those people who go to church.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Because the church is not a place for the well any more than the hospital is a place for the healthy.
SPEAKER_00: The church is full of messed up people.
SPEAKER_00: Because we need Jesus as much today as the first day we met him.
SPEAKER_00: It's a place of healing, a place of transformation, it's a place of hope and promise, and it's a place where we can be authentic and real and share in our burdens and our troubles.
SPEAKER_00: And our trials and our hurts and our hopes.
SPEAKER_00: I think one of the major concerns of the church today is this roadblock, this next one, and that's this.
SPEAKER_00: I can worship God on my own.
SPEAKER_00: Because we live in a very narcissistic, self-centered culture that the world of iPods and music lists, as I addressed just a few weeks ago, just we create our own playlists, right, of what we want to listen to and what we want to do.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think this is one of the contributing factors to the fall of the denomination and the tradition, is because we go to what we what appeals to us, the type of preaching, the type of worship.
SPEAKER_00: We don't go to a brand name of a denomination, but we we seek our own preferences and create our own playlist.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'm I'm sure many of you know people who will go to this service on Sunday and this service on Wednesday.
SPEAKER_00: No, this event here, and a lot of times it's about the programs and the things that are available to you, and this is what you pursue.
SPEAKER_00: And yet others say, I don't need any of this church stuff.
SPEAKER_00: I can worship God alone in creation.
SPEAKER_00: I, you know, having lived in San Diego and in the mountains, there were plenty of people who says, I can just worship God on my surfboard, which is a really good place to worship God, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Or on the mountains, on the ski slopes.
SPEAKER_00: But what are we missing?
SPEAKER_00: Relationship.
SPEAKER_00: God has created you and me for relationship.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't find, we can find some authentic community or some pseudo-community, I should say.
SPEAKER_00: Some fake community, some attempts at community where we talk about the weather.
SPEAKER_00: But what God wants us to do is go to authentic community where we can be authentic and transparent and open and honest with other people and struggle together and fail forward in our walk with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And that doesn't happen anywhere outside of the church.
SPEAKER_00: Support groups and chicken noodle soup for the soul aren't gonna do it for you.
SPEAKER_00: They're a good step in the process, but this in the context of Christian community is what God intended for us.
SPEAKER_00: One of my, now I'm gonna start pounding my fist on the table in 1 Corinthians chapter 12.
SPEAKER_00: It says this.
SPEAKER_00: Now about spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be ignorant.
SPEAKER_00: You know that when you were pagans, somehow or other you were influenced and led astray to mute idols.
SPEAKER_00: Do you understand that?
SPEAKER_00: They were worshiping things that had no voice.
SPEAKER_00: They would make them out of stone or wood or gold or silver or whatever, but they would carve them and they had no voice.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, verse 3, I tell you that no one who is speaking by the Spirit of God says, Jesus be cursed, and no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: So you understand, we're talking about the context now of spiritual gifts.
SPEAKER_00: There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord.
SPEAKER_00: There are different kinds of working, but the same God works all of them in all men.
SPEAKER_00: God is working in all of his spiritual gifts.
SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the beautiful things about the church is God has gifted the church.
SPEAKER_00: It says that Jesus is the head of the church, but some of you are hands and some of you are feet, some of you are little toes, some of you are pinkies, some of you are ears and noses.
SPEAKER_00: We all have a part to play, we all have a spiritual gift.
SPEAKER_00: And then in verse 7, now to each one, the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.
SPEAKER_00: And this verse here, the manifestation, this word here, literally means the voice of God.
SPEAKER_00: You worship that which had no voice, the mute idol, but the voice of God is now seen where people hear God when we are using our spiritual gifts to serve God.
SPEAKER_00: Did you catch that?
SPEAKER_00: You worship that which had no voice, but the voice of God is heard here in the context of spiritual gifts.
SPEAKER_00: In 1 John chapter 4.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 12, it says this no one has ever seen God.
SPEAKER_00: But if we love one another, God lives in us and loves, and his love is made complete in us.
SPEAKER_00: No one has ever seen God, but if you love him, there he is.
SPEAKER_00: No one has ever heard God, but if you use your spiritual gifts, there he is.
SPEAKER_00: God calls us to live using our spiritual gifts.
SPEAKER_00: God calls us to live to love one another so that the world may know that God is real.
SPEAKER_00: These last few weeks, this is what we've been talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Why God?
SPEAKER_00: Because we can see Him at work in the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: In this postmodern world where truth is determined in the context of community, the church is poised for the world to say, look at these people, there's truth here.
SPEAKER_00: But only if we're living it out, only if we're following through.
SPEAKER_00: God has called us to love and to serve.
SPEAKER_00: In Ephesians chapter 6, this came to me last night as I was wrestling with sleep.
SPEAKER_00: It seems so important to include today.
SPEAKER_00: In speaking of the armor of God, put on the full armor of God in verse 13, so that when the day of evil comes you may be able to stand your ground, and after you've done everything to stand, stand firm in them, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.
SPEAKER_00: In addition to all of this, take up the shield of faith, and that's where I want to land.
SPEAKER_00: Take up the shield of faith.
SPEAKER_00: It's an old movie.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are maybe too young for the movie, but in well, and I think it was rated R, so forgive me, parents, if you're offended by this.
SPEAKER_00: But it was gladiator.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a scene in that movie.
SPEAKER_00: When you think of shields, you sometimes think that little round one, like Captain America has, that little tiny one, be good for useless.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what's the point?
SPEAKER_00: Because the gladiators, they had a shield.
SPEAKER_00: It was about two feet wide and four feet tall.
SPEAKER_00: But here's where it worked best, and there's a scene in that movie where they're thrown into the arena, and the gladiators are coming out to go after these fighters.
SPEAKER_00: And what did they do?
SPEAKER_00: They get behind it and they gather together and they squawk, they kneel down behind it with some holding the shields over the head and create a wall of defense around and over them using these shields.
SPEAKER_00: But they're not doing it alone.
SPEAKER_00: They're standing there holding the faith, the shield of faith is what we're talking about here.
SPEAKER_00: They're holding the shields, and it worked works best in the context of relationships.
SPEAKER_00: What do we use the shield of faith for?
SPEAKER_00: To extinguish the fiery darts of the enemy.
SPEAKER_00: The accusations that the devil heaves in your direction, saying you're worthless, you're useless, your life doesn't matter, to go sin, to go consume, to go do this.
SPEAKER_00: But it's in the context of Christian community where we each take our shield of faith and we circle the wagons, so to speak, and we put the shields over our heads and we create this defense that extinguishes the darts of the enemy.
SPEAKER_00: You see, those shields were covered with leather, and sometimes the leather was soaked, but what they would do is the enemy would shoot fire, but it would go into the shield and extinguish it.
SPEAKER_00: In the context of community, relationship.
SPEAKER_00: Each one of us using our spiritual gifts as God has given us so that the world will say, I hear God.
SPEAKER_00: Each of us loving one another as God calls us to, that they can say, I see God.
SPEAKER_00: Why the church?
SPEAKER_00: Because the church is poised to be the voice of God, to be seen by the world, that they might know God.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a global, it is a global church, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: As we saw here this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We have such a tendency towards ethnocentrism, where we think the American culture is the best culture, the Western culture is the best culture, the McDonald's, the Nokia, the globalization of the American companies is IBM, ATT, those that's what it's all about.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not what it's about in the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's about the kingdom of God, which is a global kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And those people in Africa and those people in Korea and those people in China, they're part of the kingdom of God, and they're living in the context of community and a community that's a global community.
SPEAKER_00: You and I are networked to that community and connected to the community and part of that community that the world might see us and say, I want what they have.
SPEAKER_00: Will you be the church that the world might see, that the world might hear, that the world might know that God is real and worthy of following?
SPEAKER_00: Will you pray with me?
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I thank you that we are united by the head who is Christ, that we are the body of Christ, each one gifted and empowered by the Spirit to love one another, to serve one another, to sharpen one another, to encourage one another.
SPEAKER_00: In the context of authentic Christian relationships, may we remove the masks that we might not be hypocrites.
SPEAKER_00: May we love with the love of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: May we serve in the power of your spirit that the world might know that you are Lord.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Neil.