Introduction: Nancy Ortberg, one of the teaching pastors at Willow Creek Community Church, tells the story of when as a nurse she was asked by a co-worker what she was going to do on her day off, which happened to be Sunday. She told him she was going to go to church. His response was, "Why on your only day off would you want to waste one hour going to church?" When she told him that her involvement in church was more than one hour on Sunday, he walked off in disgust and disbelief.

She states that, "I would not bother either with church as usual. I wouldn’t bother with church as usual either one hour a week. I absolutely will not bother with habitual inherited Christianity or a version of church with a weak, watered down faith where I come to a service and after do 20 minutes of small talk and gossip and then I go home and see you again next week. I will not bother with a religion that is about external rules that I get so tired of trying to keep and I can’t and that I know the truth about the inside of myself that I move to faking it. I won’t do it. I absolutely won’t bother.

"But I tell you what I will bother with, and that is what the Bible calls an internal relationship with Jesus Christ. A following of Christ on a daily basis as best I can, that touches me in the deepest parts of who I am and it touches me if I let it almost every hour of my day. I will bother for the rest of my life with an authentic, vibrant, shared ministry life changing church."

I believe that there is no reason for you either to bother with church as usual. I believe that her definition of what church is is a definition of what you long for also. I know it is for me. I have no interest in merely living out the most vital years of my life and ministry doing anything less than striving for the kind of definition of what church should be. Woody Allen said, "Eighty per cent of success is just showing up." I believe church is more than that.

How are we going to do more than "show up" as a church? How can we maintain a clear course of direction with all the distractions and diversions to keep from merely doing church as usual? We do it by continually reminding ourselves why we are here. Why we are here at First Baptist Church is defined by our mission statement. Our mission statement defines our reason for existence. It calls us back to what we want to be. It is our purpose for our being located at the corner of Main and Jefferson. It is not about numbers or budgets. It’s about something bigger. Ken Blanchard says, "Knowing where you are going is the first step to getting there." Our mission statement tells us and reminds us where we are going.

"The purpose of First Baptist Church of Jonesboro is to:

• Nurture, challenge and build believers for service and ministry.
• Honor Jesus Christ in a personal relationship through worship, prayer and study of the Bible.
• Share the unconditional love of God by proclaiming Jesus Christ as Savior to the communities of our world."

What I want us to see today from these words we have just read is that the reason we are here is to prepare, lead and enable believers to be fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. We want you to live like Jesus daily, encounter Jesus personally and with others and to influence others for Jesus with the Good News.

When we lived in Fort Worth while in seminary, Kathy and I often went to the Amon Carter Museum of Western Art. The museum housed the paintings of my favorite western painters, mainly Fredric Remington. The paintings viewed as originals were breathtaking and unbelievably expensive to buy. Yet in the gift shop you could by an authentic reproduction. We purchased one for my parents that was mounted on canvas and at a distance looked very real but it was a reproduction. It was as close to the original as I was going to get.

In Ephesians 4:1-13 Paul tells us that the task of leadership in a congregation is to so prepare God’s people that they are an authentic reproduction of Jesus Christ. To be so much like Jesus that we are as close to the real thing as humanly possible. For Paul nothing less than an authentic reproduction will satisfy. He says in verse 13 that the goal of all ministry or the responsibility of leadership is that believers be unified in faith, know God’s Son in a mature way and are full-grown in the Lord. How does that happen? He tells us in Ephesians 4:12 that leadership’s responsibility is to "equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ."

Leadership in a congregation is to "equip" God’s people. The word means to prepare or put right, set something that was broken or repair what needs mending. Leadership in a church is not here to entertain or carry on the forms of past methods of church. Leadership is to be intentionally applying biblical truth to our lives, continually holding up Jesus as our model so that more and more daily we look like him! Leadership is to think creatively and continually about ways to help you as a believer to do God’s work and build up the church.

Our mission statement describes how we desire that to happen by stating what we do for one another and what we do for others. First, we want to nurture, challenge and build believers. That means that our reason as those in leadership and as members of the fellowship we are pledging ourselves to care for one another, confront onw another and develop one another. It means we realize and take seriously that the world you live in is hostile at its core to everything we believe. It means we realize and take seriously that you aren’t interested in just showing up. It means we realize and take seriously that the world needs you to be an authentic reproduction of Jesus Christ.

Why? So that we can stand back in awe of how spiritual we might be? No, because the second part of that statement says "for service and ministry." It’s not what we do for one another that ultimately matters. What matters is what we want you to do for others—serve and minister in the same ways that Jesus did. There are places of service that are waiting for someone to fill. Not a Sunday School class or a committee position which are important. We need someone to serve and minister to prisoners, to an apartment complex not a half-mile from this place that needs the flag of God’s kingdom planted there, to persons in the workplace and the ever-pressing needs of language groups from Asian and Hispanic. Those places "out there" and countless others "in here" need a believer to step forward and say, "I’m here to serve and minister."

This reason for our being here focuses on our spiritual life personally and as we gather with others. We understand that your faith needs to be mature and maturing in respect to serving and ministering to others. But that service and ministry must have a constant source of renewal or it will run out. There is no question that we want you to be so mature that you will live daily as an authentic reproduction of Jesus Christ. Yet to do so demands that we do as he did and take time to restore our own soul. Even Jesus took time regularly and intentionally to encounter His Father personally and with others. Mark records how after an exhausting day and night of teaching and healing that "The next morning Jesus awoke long before daybreak and went out alone into the wilderness to pray." (Mark 1:35). Luke would write, "Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed" (Luke 5:16). If you would live like Jesus daily then, my friends, you must encounter him daily personally and encounter him with others consistently.

The verses from Colossians describe the necessity of encountering Jesus Christ in worship, prayer and study of the Bible. The words of Christ are, he says, "to live in your hearts." That will not happen in your life or mine unless we deliberately provide a time and place for us to encounter Jesus Christ by ourselves and with others. The words of Christ are the words found, we would say as Christians, in the Bible. Those words will not magically be absorbed into your heart unless they are placed into the bloodstream of your soul. Somehow, some way, through your eyes and your ears you must encounter Jesus Christ and the words of Christ. This is not something we can make you do or force you to do. We can use guilt or shame to motivate you but that will only last for a time. So how do we as a church accomplish this? We do it by leading you to encounter Jesus Christ.

The words "lead" and "encounter" are very important. To lead means that those in leadership model what those who follow are to do. That means that ministerial leadership must themselves be people who are personally as well as with others encountering Jesus Christ in worship, prayer and study of the Bible. To lead defines the method or manner in which an encounter is provided for you. It means we are to seek under the Spirit’s leadership to create quality experiences of worship, prayer and Bible study that you don’t want to miss them.

To encounter means "face to face." What we desire is that when you stop all the other activities of your day that you will personally encounter Jesus Christ. It means that when you are here in this place that you are encountering Jesus Christ as Paul describes in our singsongs to God, praying to God and teaching and sharing God’s word. You should expect that our worship is sincere, our praying is authentic and our study of the Bible applies to your life.

Let me say, though, that the primary reason that you need to encounter Jesus Christ personally and with others is that you will never hear the truth about yourself and your world without it. You will never be confronted with the truth unless you are encountering Jesus Christ personally as well as with others. If we never hear the truth then we will believe and live a lie. The world doesn’t need more Christians who are living a lie but those who have encountered truth. We are here to lead you to encounter Jesus Christ personally and with others.

Jesus’ words are powerful in describing the reality that as salt and light make their presence known so must those who are believers. Those verses describe the most effective way for you and for our church to fulfill our reason for existence—influencing others one life at a time.

Now I want to be honest with you about something: I am not nor have I been the leader to you in evangelism and personal witnessing that I desire and the numbers of baptisms in our church since I came reflect that. Yet I am not going to stop seeking to improve in an area of weakness for me or for you. But neither am I going to try to be something I am not or try to return to methods of the past or those of others to get "the numbers up."

The evangelists of our day are the influencers who understand what Christ meant when He talked about being salt and light in a tasteless and dark world, and they live it day in and day out. They live so effectively that others are compelled to ask how and why they know what to say is the source of their hope in a hopeless world. Influence you see is gentle, gradual and yet persuasive. And for believers, it is not an option.

For that reason we are here to enable you, to give you the tools needed and necessary—to influence – to live and speak personally as salt and light – your community – from your doorstep to your school, relationships and work place to your place of residence, to your globe – one life at a time – you and I influence people personally one life at a time.

That’s why we say we are going to do this by sharing God’s unconditional love. That doesn’t mean that we deny the reality of hell by saying we are going to share his love. " God," John says, "so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son…." John 3:16). We do that by proclaiming Jesus Christ as Savior. We proclaim by our words and by our lives that there is no other hope for humanity but Jesus. Let others look for other saviors but we will only proclaim one Lord and Savior—Jesus Christ. We share that love and proclaim Him to the communities of our world. That means from places and people near and a known to places and people unknown and unfamiliar.

It is my desire that we model for you and that you are provided opportunities to enable you to build an authentic relationship with a non-believer. We want you to be able to share a verbal witness with that person at some point. We want to provide places or services that will be specifically designed to influence them further. All of us working together to influence others one life at a time.

Conclusion: In five months I will celebrate five years of service with you. On the birthday cards I send you it says, "I thank my God in all my remembrance of you" (Philippians 1:3) and I can’t say that to all of you enough. I owe you the deepest gratitude for your love, support, kindness, patience, understanding, and willingness to trust and follow. I came here and didn’t have a clue (some would say I still don’t) and you have loved me and my family unconditionally.

However, you and I are not here to do church as usual. We are here for a mission and that mission has a purpose. That purpose is to prepare you, lead you and enable you to become a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ. I pray that this year we would come closer to that ideal so that you decide this place and this family called First Baptist Church of Jonesboro is something you and I will "bother" with for the rest of our life.

Sunday, January 21, 2001

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas

btippit@fbcjonesboro.org