My church journey, part two.
Hey, welcome to today's little lesson.
I want to tell you a little bit more today about my church journey.
If you missed the last little lesson, well, I'd encourage you to go watch that one first
because you're going to miss the first part of this story.
But when I left off in our last edition of little lessons, I was talking about the very
first church that my wife and I pioneered and pastored in my hometown of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania.
I was sharing about how right from the outset, the whole goal was to initially get a building
where we could have church services.
The focus was on the events, and I call that today kind of event-focused Christianity.
It's all about the event.
We come and we have a gathering, and we hear a speaker or we listen to this special talented
worship leader or singer or something.
Or we go to a conference and we hear multiple speakers, and oh, isn't it wonderful.
Well, it is wonderful, as long as it lends itself to accomplishing the goal that ... what
Jesus wants to see happen.
He wants to see disciples being made, disciples.
Those are people who are progressively becoming more like Jesus because they're progressively
becoming more obedient to his commandments.
And so we ought to judge everything in light of that test.
Is this helping to make disciples?
And I confess that in my church that I pastored, I really didn't have that as my goal.
I wanted to help people know how to have more blessing from God, which again, nothing really
wrong with that except if we're not tying it in with obeying the commandments of Jesus
Christ.
Because that's where all the blessing is, and the blessing isn't necessarily measured
in material things, because the most valuable things are spiritual things and eternal things.
And Jesus repeatedly sends us the message and so does the apostle Paul and all the rest
of New Testament writers that our life is but a vapor, and we don't want to be wasting
our time focused on temporal things, we want to be focused on eternal things and obedience
to Jesus is an eternal thing.
We can lay up treasure in heaven by being obedient to Jesus, all right?
I pastored that first church for, I guess, about three, three and a half years, and our
congregation grew to about 300 people.
But I didn't know what I eventually stumbled upon.
My church journey continued by taking some time away from pastoring and doing some itinerant
teaching and traveling and ministering overseas, and then going back to pastoring for a couple
of years, and then going back to itinerant teaching for a while, and then going back
to pastoring for a third time.
In all three of those cases, I was focused on church services, and measuring my success
by how many people were attending.
Now I was a frustrated pastor at times, as are most pastors, most honest pastors, most
Christian pastors, because it didn't seem that in every case the people of my churches
were super hungry for God.
Many times, going to church was just kind of a ritualistic thing.
We do it.
We don't want it to last too long, because it kind of cramps into our list of activities
that we have scheduled for Sundays, and there could be a football game coming on after church.
We need to hurry up and get home for that.
That becomes a little bit discouraging, and you begin to question and wonder, "What is
really the point of all this?
Are we just putting on a show here so that people feel good and they're entertained and
they get a good feeling when they spend some time in singing songs because the musicians
and the singers are so talented, and a little bit of a kind of a rock concert feeling?
Is that really what it's all about?"
And I really began to have questions about the whole church thing.
What's the point?
I was gradually beginning to realize that we should be making disciples.
In fact, in the third church that I pastored, I definitely had an epiphany of sorts.
I was reading in Revelation, Jesus' message to the seven churches, and I noticed that
some of those churches were really off-base and they were blind to how far off-base they
were.
So I'm going to give you the very short version here.
I began to pray and ask the Lord, "What do you think of my church?"
And He directed me then to Matthew chapter 25, verses 31 through 46, the future judgment
of the sheep and the goats, and asked me the question, by the Holy Spirit, "Hey, Pastor
David, you want to know what I think about your church?
Well, let me ask you a question.
If everybody in your church today died and stood at this judgment of the sheep and the
goats, and they were judged by this criteria: I was hungry and you fed me; I was thirsty,
you gave me a drink; I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick or in prison and you visited
me; I was a stranger, and you invited me in, if everyone in your church died, and they
were judged by that criteria, how many would be sheep, and how many would be goats?
And in answering that question, you will have a better idea of what I think about your ministry
and your church."
Of course, that was a killer, an absolute killer for me.
I went from thinking I was this wonderful man of God, to realizing that I was failing
miserably in the eyes of my Lord, and I needed to repent.
So, repent I did, and I confessed my sin to my congregation, and I told them, "I have
not been a man of God.
I have not been making disciples.
I have not been what I'm expected to be by the One who's the Head of the Church, Jesus
Christ.
So, I ask you to forgive me, and I've repented, and you're going to see a different person
in this pulpit from here on in."
So, my sermons changed.
In fact, I think the very next Sunday, I preached about the sheep and the goats and I asked
everybody in my congregation that was there that day the same question the Holy Spirit
asked me, "If you died sitting right here in this church right now, and you went to
this judgment and you were judged by this criteria, would you be a sheep or would you
be a goat?"
And I said, "Don't answer it out loud, but if the answer that you're giving right now
in your mind is, 'I would be a goat,' you're a goat.
And that means you'd go to hell, and that means you're going to hell.
And I know that some of you are thinking, 'Well, I go this church, you know?
And I prayed a little prayer to receive Jesus, and I give money, and I listen to Christian
music.'"
And I said, "Well, okay, but this is what Jesus said."
And that's what I began to focus on.
I tried to begin to actually make disciples because that's what Jesus said to do.
All right.
Well, I'm out of time for today's Little Lesson.
I'm going to pick it up here on our next Little Lesson.
I hope to see you then.
Don't miss it.