Now What?

SERMON: 2008-08-22--mt2208--now-what SOURCE DURATION: 00:46:14.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: Candidates 0 through 14 are all singing a hymn or chorus (non-sermon material). Candidate 15 is explicit music. Therefore, candidate 14 is the last segment of structured vocal content immediately preceding the final musical transition. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:38:26.600-00:46:12.300 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Well, here we are, first service in new facilities. And who would have thought even a year ago that this building program would go as smoothly as it has gone, or these facilities would look as beautiful, handsome as really it does. And the credit goes to the Lord and to all the people who have worked so hard at bringing this together. We're grateful to Gertzma and their construction crew, we're grateful for the many tradespeople that have worked on this project, many of them far above and beyond their regular call of duty, and of course the many volunteers that have been in and out of this place putting it all together. We haven't added up the latest hours of volunteers, but I bet you we are well over 7,000. I would suspect moving towards 8,000, give yourselves a hand. Well as you may or may not know, this leg of the journey for Maranatha culminating in this building really started 17 years ago in the spring of 1991 when council initiated a series of discussions where we struggled with the question of where is the Lord taking us as a congregation. Those were extensive discussions and out of those discussions came a motion passed by council in June of 1991. It's a motion that comes out in three parts, some of you have seen it before, but it won't hurt for all of us to review it together because as I'll show you in a moment, that motion has had a life changing impact on us as a community. The first part of that motion is that we recognize that God is working in this church, secondly that we seek to identify the direction that he is leading us, and then thirdly that we commit ourselves to follow him in obedience with a measure of grace that he grants to us. Now in some ways that motion reads like motherhood and apple pie, most any church would agree to that kind of motion, but in the context of our faith community, in the context of Maranatha, that motion passed by council back in June of 1991 has had incredibly far reaching consequences because almost everything that we are and have become since that time flows out of that motion. That motion led us to a decision to seek God to grow us together as a larger church. A lot of churches, they reach a certain size, they split and they multiply and it's a very effective way to multiply, but we felt back then as church leadership that what the Lord was calling this community to was to seek to stick together and to grow into a regional church where people from many different walks of life could come to know the Lord and the reality of his presence. That motion also led to the hiring of additional staff and some of you will recall Fred and Dave Botting I think were some of the first additional staff hires that we did. That motion led us about ten years ago now to form a committee to start looking into land purchase and that committee ended up with these twelve acres of land that we have now. Then a number of years ago the fundraising committee was launched. John referred to the celebration back in 2003 on this property and of course now the end result of that is this building as it sits here and each of us as we're gathered in this place. We're in a seventeen year journey and whoever would have thought that council's decision back in June of '91 to follow the Lord wherever he would lead would lead us to this place and to these facilities. I wouldn't have thought of it in a million years, you probably didn't either, but it shows the faithfulness of our God and it shows you what happens when a people collectively humble themselves before the Lord and set their hearts on following him and that of course brings us then to the question what now, what's next, where do we go from here? One of the mistakes that a lot of churches make is they become so focused on a building project that the building becomes almost an end in itself. So much time, so much energy goes into putting up a building and then when they move into the building everybody's tired and exhausted and nobody's asked the question, well now what do we do? Because you see a building doesn't automatically draw new people, a building doesn't automatically rejuvenate a church, a building as we have repeatedly said over the last number of years in this campaign, a building is a means to an end, it is a means to facilitate the work of ministry that God has entrusted to us as a congregation. And so what I want to do this morning is walk us through one more time what it is that collectively we have felt in the past that God has called us to and what it is that he continues to call us to in the future and I want to do that by first of all revisiting our vision statement, a vision statement is a statement that defines in as short a series of words as possible what it is that an organization is about and what its focus is, most people aren't interested in vision statements let me tell you, but a vision statement if adhered to gives you a direction and it enables you to set a course that you can stick with even while the winds of change are blowing because you know by God's grace where you are going and our vision statement reads as follows and perhaps you'll do me the honor this morning of speaking it out loud with me if you're comfortable in doing that, let's say it together, to be a biblically functioning community through which God's redemptive purposes for the world can be realized, a couple of things in that vision statement that are worth pondering for us this morning, the first is that we are a community, now a community is defined as a group of people gathered together with common values, common practices and governed by a particular type of structure and a community stands in sharp contrast then to individuals, as an individual you are on your own, you're free to come and go as you please but when you become part of community you lay aside some of your freedoms for the benefit of belonging to a larger crowd, it's a lot like marriage, before you get married maybe you come and go as you please, life is in your own hands, well as soon as you marry you know that life changes pretty drastically, you've got to bend to each other and that's a pretty significant adjustment but out of that comes the advantages of being together, we're community and not only are we community but we are also a biblically functioning community, now you know as well as I do there are many communities in the world, we talk about a Dutch community or an Italian community or a Greek community, that's a community that is organized on the basis of ethnic interests, we talk about the arts community organized around artistic gifting and interests, we talk about the deaf community organized around the inability to hear physically, well we're none of those communities, there may be sub communities like that in here but that's not what binds us together, what binds us together is that we are a biblically functioning community, and as a biblically functioning community there are two qualities that characterize us above all else, and the first is this that we love the Lord our God, you will recall in Matthew 22, teacher of the law comes to Jesus and he says to Jesus what is the great commandment and what is Jesus' response, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all your mind, one of the other gospels adds with all your strength this is the first and the greatest commandment, you don't become part of this community just because you come to church here, you don't even become part of this community just because you are born to parents who come to church here, no you can only become part of this community by faith in Jesus who reconciles us to God who makes us a child of God who gives us the Holy Spirit and who now ties people together from every tribe, tongue and nation, and a lot of you will testify since coming to Christ you have been closer in some ways to your brothers and sisters in Christ than you have upon occasion with your own family members isn't that true, because in the new creation when people from every tribe, tongue and nation gather around the throne of God they are united in their love for God and I have often said if the greatest of all commandments is that we should love God above all then what is our greatest sin, not just the bad things we do but the fact that we don't love him with all our being, we are a biblically functioning community bound together by love for the Lord God through faith in Jesus and then of course we are bound together by love for our neighbor because in that same Bible passage the Lord Jesus goes on to say the second commandment like the first is this you shall love your neighbor as yourself and as Jesus pointed out to the scribes and the Pharisees your neighbor is anybody that you are connected to or come in contact with who you can have a relationship with and who you can help with the gifts that the Lord God has provided so to love your neighbor and it's funny language in this day and age when love has so many variants and is so easily misunderstood but to love your neighbor means that you want what's best for him even as you want what's best for you we talked about this a number of months ago when we talked about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you you and I we don't like to be gossiped about we don't want to be slandered we don't want to be misunderstood we want to have a fair hearing we want people to care for us to pour themselves into our lives and to treat us with care consideration and significance well your neighbor feels exactly the same way and so to love your neighbor is negatively not to take advantage of them negatively not to use or abuse to love your neighbor is to pour yourself out into them even as God has poured himself out into you and the reason the Lord Jesus ties those two commandments together is because they hang together it is when our hearts are filled with love for God it's when our hearts experience the benefits of God saving power we know his love we know his security we know his stability that's when our hearts overflow and we have the generosity that we need to pour our hearts and lives into other people and to the same degree that we are not rooted and grounded in the Lord God we'll become grumpy and irritable and our capacity for love for others begins to diminish well that's who we are we are a biblically functioning community and beyond that then we not only are a people of God learning to live out as best we can and please don't misunderstand me as saying that we do this perfectly that I do this perfectly or that any of us do this perfectly we're on a journey we've come to Christ we've said I can't do this on my own Jesus you're the only one who can help me do this live in my heart and as he lives in my heart by the power of the Holy Spirit my life begins to change and we begin to grow in our love for God and our love for each other and once that's our reality once that's who we are out of who we are we begin to do things and the things we do according to our vision statement is a community through which God's redemptive purposes for the world can be realized again there's a couple of words in there we need to know the first is the word purpose God has a purpose did you know that God's not aimless God's not sitting around twiddling his heavenly thumbs waiting for things to happen in the world no from the beginning of time he's had a direction and while there are many ways that you can summarize the purposes of God I think the best summary in all of scripture is found in the book of Ephesians I believe it's Ephesians 1 verse 10 where the Bible says that it's God's purpose to reconcile all things to himself through Christ in heaven and on earth God is on a rescue mission you know this story he created the world it was without flawed it was without sin the world plunged into sin and all the chaos the confusion the wars and the rumors of wars the illnesses and the pains and the misunderstandings and the anger and the hostility that happens in the world it's all the result of that and as you've often heard me say God could have washed his hands from all of that and throw it aside but he has chosen instead to use it as a demonstration for the greatness of his love and so when the person of Jesus he entered into that world and he took upon himself our flesh and blood and he undertook an incredible rescue mission the Bible calls it redemption the redemptive purposes of God the word redemption means to buy back and you can think of it this way let's suppose that you spend a lot of time effort and energy creating a magnificent project maybe a painting or a fancy piece of needlepoint or you know some model some something that you just poured hours of yourself into it and then one day when you weren't looking maybe a day that you weren't home a thief broke into your house and they stole it and they took off with it and you grieved for the loss but then a number of years later you know you're you're like Tineke you're yard sailing and there on somebody's yard sale table lies your painting your needlepoint or your project and it's been through the mill it's scratched the paint has been damaged the thread has been torn the pieces of your model have come off and you're overcome you're overcome with a desire to get this back and to restore it so you buy it you pay the price because that's what redemption means you take it home and painstakingly you've been to clean it up and and you repair the scratches and you fix the threads and you match the colors and you re-glue what there is to be re-glued in your little project and before you know it it has returned not only to its former glory but now you've gone an added step and it's that much more valuable because you not only made it but you've redeemed it see God could have redeemed the world without you and me he could have done it with his angels at least the angels that are still obedient to God which is the majority of them are a lot easier for God to get along with and you and me I mean how many times hasn't the Lord asked you or me to do something pour ourselves out for somebody else and all we can do is think about ourselves and we get our own will and crossed with his will but nevertheless through it all God's purposes for saving the world are entrusted to the church how what an incredible confidence in his own ability and what an incredible responsibility entrusted to the church and it's a rescue mission that goes back all the way to the early chapters of scripture where God reached into history took Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees sent him to the promised land the land where he didn't know where he was going they always think in those moments where you and I don't know where we're going we're in good company because that's always been the walk of faith because it isn't so much a matter of our ability to figure out the future it's a matter of God knowing what the future is and us walking along with him and so the promise to Abraham was that God would not only bless him but make him a blessing so that through Abraham and his offspring the nations of the world could be blessed so who are we we're a biblically functioning community a people to be passionately in love with God and passionately in love with each other and passionately committed to the world a people to whom God can entrust his incredible redemptive purposes he wants to share with us his mission of rescue and even as a parent wants to raise up his child to join with him not because he needs the child but because he wants to share his joy with his child so the father wants to share with you and me the joy of participating with him in the harvest do we understand what God is after because on that great day when people from every tribe tongue and nation gather around the throne of God whatever little part you and I played in reconciling all things in heaven and on earth to God through faith in Jesus folks that is a treasure that you lay up in heaven that nobody's ever going to take away from you I see some of you that have come to faith in this church community through the ministry of the folks here and I know that God is not only going to bless you for all eternity but he's going to bless those who have acted in your life on his behalf so how do we do this how do we serve as agents of God's redemptive purposes well that's where our mission statement comes in and if vision tells us where in Christ God calls us to go then our mission statement tells us the specifics of how God wants us to go there and I got to tell you I was so blessed I don't know where Gerald's right here he led in prayer with the council members and the praise team before the service and Gerald had no idea what I was speaking on this morning but he prayed the mission statement because you see he understands as many of us do what it is that God has called us to what has God called us to first of all he calls us to reach the lost anybody here ever been lost anybody here ever lost a child when our oldest son David was three years old and Michael was still in a stroller we were shopping one day years ago in one of the shopping malls in Edmonton and all of a sudden David was gone no matter where we looked we could not find him and you know you hear all these stories about people abducting kids and our panic grew to a feverish level I think it lasted about half an hour before some security person in the mall had found him after having been appealed to over the PA system and we met up with him at the information center but I will never ever forget the panic of a child being lost and if you've ever been in that situation or ever in a situation where you've been lost yourself then you know the incredible agony of being lost because you don't know where you are you don't know where you're going you don't know how you're going to get out of where you are and you can be in serious danger depending on where you're lost and lost describes the world people who don't know God they're darkened by sin they don't know where they're going their lives might look okay on the outside in fact they may even prosper but if they don't have a relationship with God they're headed towards certain disaster the Bible says short of faith in Jesus people cannot be saved and so what is the mission of the church the mission of the church is to be a shepherd to reach out after the lost and to bring them to salvation now we talk a lot about a new building and people are going to come to a new building and yes perhaps some people will but you know part of being lost is that half the time you don't know that you're lost and even if you do know that you're lost you don't know how to find your way back and so you and I in our relationships and in our friendships and in our connection with other people we need to learn to cultivate a heart for people who are lost and a heart for God to bring those people back you've heard Dave Botting share his story of how many years ago after that initial council commitment to follow the Lord we were attending that Willow Creek conference and how how God stirred his heart and caused him to deeply repent of not having a heart that really loved the lost so our mission is to have a heart for lost people and to reach out to them with the good news of the Lord Jesus mission statement goes on to say then to restore the broken brokenness happens in a world alienated from God brokenness happens when I don't hear God I don't know how to follow God and so I make decisions that compound each other and before I know it I'm broken in spirit and in body and in mind my relationships get torn apart my health disintegrates and the weight of a world that is filled with sin begins to weigh me down and part of the mission of the church is to reach into the hearts and lives of people with the good news of the Lord Jesus you will never understand me and you'll never understand the ministry that I believe God is entrusted to me unless you know that my life's verse in terms of ministry are these words of Jesus in Luke chapter 4 verses 18 and 19 the spirit of the Lord is upon me so Jesus because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor he has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and a recovery of sight for the blind to release the oppressed to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor the year the Lord's favor you might recall as the year of Jubilee back in the Old Testament when when slaves were set free when land was returned and property was given back a foretaste of God's promise in Christ to make all things near and while only in the age to come will that healing be fully complete we know through the Holy Spirit there's a lot more that God wants to do in our hearts and lives even today and we have good news to proclaim you know we have people in this congregation that have been everywhere under the sun trying to find answers to life's issues and they didn't find them until they came to Jesus and Jesus began to change their hearts beyond that we're called to equip the saints that is to say we are to empower God's people for works of service one of Valerie's favorite verses Ephesians 2 we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for what good works that God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them from the very beginning of the foundation of the earth God has for you and me a plan and a purpose sin derails sin destroys sin leads us astray God saves us God restores us why so that we can be equipped in our capacity once again to love God and to love our neighbor and what glory it is to God when lives in that way are transformed and hearts begin to shine for his glorious kingdom purposes and then of course the end product to release the workers it's like growing up your kids you have your children you walk them through their aches and their pains and you educate and you train and to teach and as you've often heard me say just by the time they get to be of some use to you they pack up and leave home and they go give all their energy to another woman or to another man that's the challenge of parenting it's also the mission of the church it's to release people so that they can find in Christ their own calling and their own ministry that's who we are that's what we're called to do and that's why collectively we have committed ourselves to the sacrifice of building this building and what I want to do is I try to wrap this all up this morning is show you how the architecture of this building the way that it's designed flows directly out of that vision and mission statement that were formulated by council and approved I believe by the congregation so many years ago so here's the floor plan in case you don't know where you are you're on there somewhere as you take a look at that allow me to take just a few moments and point out a couple of things that are significant in terms of the architecture of the building you will notice that we have three significant areas of worship this of course is the main auditorium where you find yourself today this is the chapel which is still somewhat under construction and this is the youth hall three different venues three different sizes this place will seat about a thousand we have eight hundred chairs set up here today we can fit a thousand in but then you're a lot closer together which is much warmer fellowship but we thought we'd spare you that for today the chapel will hold about 250 and John says he thinks he can squeeze 120 or 140 kids in that youth hall I think that's an inflated figure but then I've heard of 25 kids crowding into a Volkswagen bug so anything is possible at that age but I mentioned this because these are worship centers first of all places where we gather like this places where we pray because my father's house is a house of prayer places where we read scripture places where we encourage instruct and help each other to know God better why because we're first of all God's people and we first of all value our relationship with God and though we may drift in and out of that and have our struggles and our difficulties it's loving God that we're committed to and if we love God then we want to know him we want to serve him and we want to do his will isn't that true so worship is at the center of who we are because God's people have always been a worshipping people knowing that life is too big life is too complicated to do it on our own we need God's help and we need it all the time now beyond that beyond that we have significant areas of fellowship if you've been through the foyer magnificent foyer I think do you think it's a nice foyer I think it's a gorgeous foyer people who design buildings tell us that your foyer needs to be large enough so that everybody you can see here can stand out there now I don't know if we want to try that someday but it's a large gathering area because we want to be able to do relationships and then of course we have this whole what we call large group activity area that particular drawing is set up with tables 25 tables eight people that's 200 people we could easily expand that out into the foyer a little bit to 250 people for sit-down dinners we can also do that in here it's a lot of work but we could take chairs out that's why you have tiers we could take chairs out put tables in and have a huge banqueting facility probably one of the largest in the community and there's reasons for that so we'll talk about very briefly so we have a large group activity area where we can congregate where we can fellowship the same thing in the youth hall they have this whole cafe thing there the other thing that's really interesting about the way that it's structured not only do we have these three major areas of meeting places but each of those is surrounded by a series of classrooms the chapel is surrounded by classrooms the youth hall is surrounded by classrooms the kids of course have their own dedicated space over here that's based on a philosophy of ministry that we've discovered works really well for us in the past that is to say large group activity area for meetings like this and then breakout groups where we can more closely connect with the things that we are sharing and learning and teaching because just being spoken to alone will never make us disciples we need to interact we need to engage we need to pray for one another we need to help one another I really want to encourage you to do that you don't have to be a preacher you don't have to be a staff member you don't have to be an elder all you have to do is be a child of God take somebody by the hand nor do you have to be in grade 12 to help somebody in grade one all you have to do is be in grade two and if everybody takes somebody by the hand then the body of Christ can grow up for the glory of God and then of course the building has been geared for outreach in fact we are already receiving a variety of invitations from community groups that want to gather here for conventions and for meetings and so far we're sort of putting those on hold until we sit down and and we've got a number of staff people working on nailing down the specifics of who do you're into and and what are the terms and and what are the conditions obviously from a church perspective that can be a little dicey so we're looking into all the ramifications of that but we're geared for outreach and one of the the most laborious discussion that the steering committee had when it was trying to put the shell of this building together long after the floor plan was approved was the question of what do we want this auditorium to look like for a long time we were stuck on wanting it to look like a church and we couldn't get anywhere and I'll never forget the day when Jim Heininga who is the project manager of this building for Gertzmas broke through the confusion and said to us it seems to me that what you're struggling with is do you want the building to look like a church or do you want it to look like a worship center and I won't go into all the details in terms of the difference but what you see here now is the fruit of that decision we will never be ashamed of Jesus that's why we put the cross right out front for the whole world to see but we want our worship space to be a worship space where people feel comfortable that isn't too churchy but a place where people can enter in and discover that Jesus is here and that he will change and he will transform their lives that's also why the windows in the foyer are as big as they are you don't want to build a fortress with people wondering what is happening behind those walls we want people to be able to see in and discover that you and I though we bear the name of Jesus we're not some strange aliens from outer space who are engaged in all kinds of mysterious rituals that the rest of the world cannot understand now we're ordinary people with ordinary fears and ordinary concerns and ordinary bodies and ordinary minds and ordinary lives and ordinary families but what sets us apart is that we've been redeemed by the blood of the lamb that's who we are that's how the building is designed we're designed for outreach we as soon as Kojiko figures out their cable problems we'll be connected to the outside world we'll have state-of-the-art streaming of worship services so that anybody anywhere in the world can tune in on a Sunday morning and see you sitting in your pew you can wave to them as a matter of fact a lot of you know Marguerite Borger she's been visiting out of the Netherlands for a number of months now she's been watching us online when I was on vacation visiting my sister they only have a dial-up connection but when Ben was preaching I listened to his whole sermon on dial-up fine sermon it was Ben good job so how did we get here God has been incredibly faithful who would have thought back in 1991 that this would be the result of that and so now as we start a new leg on the journey together we'll have to regroup and we'll have to recommit ourselves to the Lord and say okay Lord even as you have led us in the past we trust that you will faithfully [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:38:26.600; remove through 00:46:14.000] continue to lead us in the future. Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with thee. Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with thee. Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with thee. Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with thee. Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with thee. Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness, morning by morning new mercies I see, all I have been and thy hand hath provided, great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me. Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with thee. Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with thee. Pardon for sin and a beast that endureth, thy own dear presence to cheer and to guide. Strength for today and pride for tomorrow, blessings all mine with ten thousand beside. Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness, morning by morning new mercies I see, all I have been and thy hand hath provided, great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me. For all that you've done, I will give you my blessing, for all that you've done, I will thank you for all that you're going to do, for all that you've promised and all that you are is all that has carried me through, Jesus I thank you, and I thank you, thank you, Lord, thank you, thank you, Lord. Thank you for loving and setting me free, thank you for giving your life just for me, Jesus I thank you, Jesus I thank you, gratefully thank you, thank you, thank you for loving and setting me free, thank you for giving your life just for me, how I thank you, gratefully thank you, gratefully thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. (gentle [CUT] music) [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:46:14.000; resume after this marked segment]