My church journey.
Hi, welcome to today's Little Lesson.
This is another one of those special Florida beach editions of Little Lessons and I wanted
to share a little bit in today's Little Lesson and maybe subsequent one or two about my church
journey because a lot of folks, a lot of believers have been on church journeys.
I had some friends years ago who, when I was a pastor, came to my church and then left
my church and then came back to my church and they said jokingly to me, we're not Roman
Catholics but we're roaming Christians and there's a lot of roaming Christians out there.
They tell a story about a guy who was discovered on a deserted island and he'd been, stranded
there for like seven years before they discovered him.
And as they were rowing away with him to deliver him from the captivity to this island in this
little rowboat, the guy rowing noticed that there were three little huts on the beach.
And he said, "Hey, what are those three huts by the way?"
And he said, "Well, one of them's my house."
And he said, "Well, what are the other two?"
And he says, "Well, the one next one over there, that's my church."
And he said, "Well then what's, what's the third little hut?"
He says, "Well that's the church I used to go to."
So kind of a humorous commentary there on how Christians move around because we just
can't get along with each other.
Well, I'm not going to really address the getting along part, but I am going to tell
you a little bit about my church journey because I have a pretty interesting journey and I
think there might be something to be gained from sharing it with you.
I grew up as a Presbyterian and in the church that I attended, it was a very liberal Presbyterian
church.
So they didn't share the Gospel.
We didn't know that Jesus died for our sins.
At least if they said it, we didn't hear it and they weren't calling anyone to repent
and believe in Jesus and be born again and obey Him.
So I had to get the message outside of my church and I got it outside of my church just
reading the Bible that they gave me when I was confirmed at age 12 and so I kind of stumbled
upon Jesus by just reading about Him in the four Gospels.
And I thought I was the only person in the world who was like I was at that time, certainly
nobody in my church was like I was.
I was excited about Jesus and following him and nobody else seemed to be so excited.
So in any case, I began my church journey and I landed first of all in a Bible study
that was conducted by a seminary graduate, actually a seminary student, he hadn't graduated
yet.
And he was teaching us on some of the finer points of some deep things about theology
and it really confused me.
And I can't say that it helped me in the least because it wasn't, as I look back, sound teaching.
And so from there, moved on to my freshman year of college and I got involved in a charismatic
fellowship of mostly college students that was unlike anything I had ever, ever experienced.
The sermons, the messages, were relevant and biblical.
And I remember going up to the leader of that fellowship the very first time I went there
and I told him, you just gave the very best sermon I've ever heard in my life.
I'm sure he was blessed by that.
And the worship was wonderful.
Oh my goodness.
They didn't just sing the old hymns of the reformation.
They sang songs that they wrote and songs that were written by others in churches like
theirs.
And the worship was worshipful.
People closed their eyes and people lifted their hands in adoration up to God.
And you felt a transcendent feeling.
It was so beautiful being in that church with other like minded people who are excited about
God, who love Jesus, who wanted to know Him more intimately and loved to worship Him.
And it wasn't just an old pipe organ upfront.
Anyone who could play an instrument, they said we're gonna put you to use to help us
worship the Lord.
And it was a beautiful, beautiful aroma, I'm sure that rose up to the Lord.
So that, that was my first really positive, good church experience.
And they certainly were trying and they certainly were sincere, sincere folks.
Nothing, nothing negative to say at all about them.
But then I went off to Bible school and I learned that I could be a pastor and I could
lead people.
And so I got a vision for a church that well, guided me for quite some time because I then
entered into full time vocational ministry and started, I pastored my first church, actually
pioneered and pastored my first church in my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
And we started by just meeting as a little Bible study but the goal was to get a church
building as fast as we possibly could so that we can have church services because in order
to have a church, you've got to have church services, or so I thought.
And so we eventually did a find a building, an old vacant church building.
And we started having services on Sunday mornings and on Wednesday nights and people came and
it grew and eventually we bought a building and so forth.
And that's a whole other story.
Now I want to take a pause in my story right here to tell you that we're apt to make a
mistake in our understanding of what church should be and what church is when we don't
understand some of the basic fundamentals of what Jesus is looking for.
All right?
And if you've been watching the lessons for any length of time, you've probably figured
out that I'm going to say that right now, that what Jesus is looking for is he's looking
for disciples because that's what he clearly indicated in the Gospels and one of the last
things he said was go into all the world and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe or obey all
that I've commanded you.
So with that foundation, then we can begin to understand what does the church exist for?
Well, the church exists, maybe not in its entirety, but certainly a major reason why
the church exists is for the making of disciples.
Right?
Right.
Because that's what Jesus wants.
So if we're going to measure our success as in our church, we ought to be asking ourselves
that question.
Well, are we succeeding at making disciples?
Or another way to say it is, are we succeeding in helping people to become progressively
more obedient to the commandments of Jesus Christ?
Okay, so now back to back to my story.
So was I successful at making disciples who are progressively becoming more obedient to
Jesus Christ?
Well, that really wasn't even our vision.
I know that's going to be hard for you to understand, but I didn't know everything I
know now.
I'm getting bitten by little 'No-See-Ums' here.
Yeah.
Our vision was to build a church and to get people to come and our success was determined
by how many people were coming.
And then another secondary means of measuring our success was, how much money did we get
in the offering this week?
Because if we have more money, we could maybe get a bigger building or we could hire another
staff member and we can build our business as it were, just like any business would say,
oh, more money, more income, we can expand and make more money.
All right, well, I'm out of time for this additional lesson, so we're happy to pick
up here on the very next one.
Hope you don't miss it as I share with you more about my church journey.
God bless.