Scripture: Acts 8:26–40
This morning, Rev. Matt Sturtevant is joined by guest preacher Rev. Cody Knapik in delivering the sermon.
Pastor Matt: This morning, I read the New Testament reading out of the book of Acts. This is a familiar story for many of us, as Pastor Cristina has already mentioned, about Philip’s ministry to the Ethiopian eunuch. And, as you may have guessed listening to some of the music today, this is the Stream from Richard Foster’s book that he names as the Evangelical Stream. And so as we think about what evangelism looks like, I would invite you to to hear this story through that lens, through the lens of sharing the Good News of Jesus with everybody that we meet. And so as you hear these words, [the Ethiopian eunuch] had come to Jerusalem to worship. He was returning home seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah.
Acts 8.26–40
26 Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) 27 So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, the queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship 28 and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. 29 Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” 30 So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” 31 He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. 32 Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:
“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,
and like a lamb silent before its shearer,
so he does not open his mouth.
33 In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.”
34 The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” 35 Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. 36 As they were going along the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” 38 He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. 39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more and went on his way rejoicing. 40 But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.
You know, I could still remember clearly. It was an afternoon class at seminary, there in Louisville Presbyterian, and the sun was kind of coming in the windows from the side. And the professor, who was kind of a living legend—our Baptist history professor—you can imagine at a Presbyterian Seminary, there weren’t a lot of us in the room. We were kind of the minority. But this living legend came to share with us about Baptist history.
And, I’m going to date myself a little bit. He turned out the lights and turned on the overhead projector. And on that overhead projector, he placed a slide, and that slide had a title at the top. You could tell he typed it on a typewriter. On the top it said, “Why Baptists Are Not Evangelicals.” And he had two big columns about what Baptists are historically and what Evangelicals are historically. And his point from a historic perspective is, he would name the Baptist movement as something that was, you know, 400 years old, sort of in the early 1600s with folks like Smyth and Helwys. And the Evangelical movement, as he defined it, was much more recent—began, you know, about 100 years ago with the Scopes Monkey Trial and the fundamentalist–modernist controversy. And so they had different histories.
He named the very specific difference between the way the Baptists have fought tooth and nail for separation of church and state—religious liberty—keeping those two things very separate. On the other hand, a lot of Evangelicals will argue for making sure that the children are led in a prayer in a public school, or the Ten Commandments are placed in a public school, and that is part of that movement. He would say that these are very different. There was a whole column of these things, that said “This is who Baptists have been and this is who Evangelicals have been.” So, that kind of stuck in my mind. And then later in seminary, my seminary church, a Southern Baptist church—Southern Baptist and Cooperative Baptist in Louisville—started reading this book, this big, thick, dense book by Richard Foster called Streams of Living Water. And in this book, I learned a little bit broader definition of what the Evangelical movement has been about.
According to Foster, he defines not just that 100-year history of that kind of contemporary Evangelical movement, he talks about the work of Christians for 2000 years to share the story of Christ. In Foster’s mind, the Stream began with Peter, preaching an evangelistic message on Pentecost. It includes profound historic theologians like Augustine and Aquinas and Martin Luther and John Calvin, and brilliant modern apologists like C.S. Lewis and Billy Graham. All of these are a part of a movement, for 2000 years, that has very specific strengths and an important legacy that it brings to the church. And so at the end of all this, I left seminary saying, “Well, what the heck is an Evangelical then?” with this different kind of definition.
My guess is there are some of you who might have that same question. And some of you probably today hear that word and feel a sense of pride. Maybe you grew up in that Evangelical tradition. Last week, I talked about the Social Justice movement being home for us as American Baptists. But not all of us grew up as American Baptists. A lot of us find different homes in different places. And so there are many of us who might feel more comfortable in a place like the Evangelical tradition. Maybe for you, it became the place where you learned to love the Bible, the place where you learned who Jesus was, where Jesus became real and alive and salvific for you.
There are others who might be in another category, folks who maybe grew up in that tradition but are not proud of it at this moment. Folks who feel like it was filled with painful memories, with painful experiences, even traumatic ones, who say, “I want nothing to do with those people.” And there’s some truth that needs to be heard there as well in terms of some of the limits of what the Evangelical movement can offer. And then there’s this third category—and we just have to kind of say this out loud—some folks will think that Evangelicals are the reason for everything bad in the world, ever. If you listen to the news lately, they’re kind of a straw man. Right? They’re kind of an easy target if there’s anything that that you don’t like about the church, or about Jesus, or about anybody that’s ever said anything from a faith perspective. “Well, it’s the Evangelicals’ fault.” And I would like to maybe back off of that a little bit. It’s probably a little bit too simplistic—a straw man that we can just knock down to say that they’ve done everything wrong, however we’ve experienced them.
And so as we wade through this, I’ve invited Cody to be a part of this conversation. As I said, I’ve grown up kind of adjacent to this Evangelical tradition, but Cody has done the majority of his ministry—for the last 12 years—in different places and contexts, in a culture where this is the predominant tradition. And so it’s kind of a great fit for us to talk about both the strengths and some of the perils—some of the weaknesses—of the movement…how can we celebrate the strengths of the Stream, without falling to its excesses or perils? We’ll do this in point–counterpoint dialogue form, which neither of us have ever done. So buckle up!
Hopefully, we’ll be able to learn through the process a little bit about what Foster says about this movement, and who we are in the church, and how we might learn from folks who are a part, one of the branches, one of the Streams of that church. So Cody, take it away!
Pastor Cody: As Matt and I met for breakfast yesterday going through this, and really trying to be deliberate about how we present this, the very first thing we were worried about was time. Because let’s be frank, you guys deal with one Baptist pastor, and that’s already easy ice. Now you’ve got two today! So hopefully, we won’t keep you guys until 3 o’clock. But if the Spirit guides us, we will go.
I want to read this passage, because it really and truly is the foundation of what started this movement. It’s found in the book of Matthew, chapter 28. Some of you might know it—the Great Commission.
Matthew 28.16–20
16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit 20 and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
One of the strongest parts of the Evangelical movement is the fact that it is extremely rooted in the proclamation of the Good News of the Gospel. It is rooted in that aspect of showing the beauty of Christ. And what Christ really means, not only in a worldly, earthly manner, but also in an inner manner. In fact, “good news,” or “Evangelion,” is the root of the word itself. And as Matt shared, there have been [Evangelical] people throughout all of [church] history. There’s one person in more recent history that all of us know, but we might not know the stats. So much so that Matt and I have been checking through sources like crazy because some of the stats just don’t seem real. They seem like they’re from that really good friend that tells the little story, right, where the horse magically becomes three times bigger every time you you talk to him about it.
So let me tell you some stats about Billy Graham. One of the people who, quite frankly, when you say “Evangelical movement,” especially in modern times, comes up.
This stat is from Samaritan’s Purse [an organization headed by Billy Graham’s son, Franklin Graham]. They put out stats about Billy Graham’s effectiveness within his vocation. And like I said, crazy, crazy stats. 215,000,000 people had gone to one of Billy Graham’s crusades or rallies. He had over 400 of them. He reached a 185 countries. He advised twelve US presidents all the way from Truman up to President Obama. In 2005—and Matt and I still don’t believe it…I’ve combed the world of Google and so many sources—in 2005, research suggested that one in six adults had heard him in person in America. They estimated the number of people who have heard or read something that Billy Graham has said or written is 2.2 billion people. Talk about sharing the Good News!
That is really the strength of this movement, the understanding that everything that goes around comes back to the Good News, comes back to helping people see and understand Christ. To have Christ be at your root, and to really focus on the words that I just read to you in Matthew 28, the Great Commission, to go into all of the world, every nation—185 of them—and proclaim the beauty of Christ, baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
One out of six adults. There is power behind them. Power behind understanding and knowing that the root of everything you do goes to trying to proclaim Christ to everybody that doesn’t know. I mean really and truly, if we think about it, there’s a gift that each and every one of us has, and that is a relationship with Christ. So why would we not want to share that? And that really and truly is at the root of this movement.
Pastor Matt: Yeah, yeah, but!?!? But what happens, Cody, when that Good News doesn’t feel like good news? Right? I remember one more seminary story, I think it was in my first year, when I had somebody, a Presbyterian student, come up to me and say, “Oh, so you’re a Baptist. So you’re one of those Evangelicals, right?” And I wasn’t quite sure how to answer. This was before I had seen the overhead slide in Baptist history, so my response was a tentative yes, I think. That may be the first time I had heard the term, at least with that kind of derision connected to it. And of course, my assumption was that it meant, “Yes, I’m an evangelistic person. I want to share the Good News. I want to share what Jesus has done in my life.” But for that student, and for a lot of other people, there were other things that were attached to that. Too much extra baggage for them.
In fact, Foster talks about this. He says one of the perils of this Stream is that there’s a tendency to fixate on peripheral and non-essential matters. He says all doctrines are important, but not all doctrines are of primary importance. In other words, one of the perils, one of the drawbacks of the movement, is that a lot of times you know what an Evangelical person is against more than you know what they’re for.
And so you see this kind of non-essential stuff getting lifted up in the spotlight to say, well, this person might be anti-LGBTQ folks. Might be anti-women in ministry, might be anti-gun control, might be anti-abortion, might be anti-anything that the Republicans tell them that they should be anti- about. That there’s this political thing that makes this [the Good News] kind of peripheral. All this other stuff becomes the center.
And so folks don’t necessarily hear the Good News. They hear that they’re somehow wrong. And it’s hard to hear Jesus through that. There’s an, “Absolutely, let’s hear that Good News,” but what happens when other stuff gets in the way?
Pastor Cody: The second strength that we would like to share with you today is that the movement has a high view of scripture. The Bible matters. It’s not just a book, it’s the Word of God in written form, just like Jesus was the Word in human form. There’s this huge understanding that they go together. Yes, we know the Good News. We’ve seen the Gospel. We’ve seen the life of Christ. But it is scripture that helps us understand. We just talked about that, right? The Ethiopian’s concern is, “How am I supposed to know what the scriptures say if you’re not going to teach me?” So there’s this understanding and knowing that scripture really walks side by side with it [the Evangelical movement]. That scripture is, in essence, the blueprint that we’re supposed to use to go forward. That scripture truly should be at the base.
Now let me just tell you a little bit about how God works. I called Matt about three weeks ago, and I said “Hey, buddy. Guess what? I’m coming back to Kansas to show off my [new baby] daughter! And it just so happens that this time, I’m going to be able to come to church.” Now, this church has blessed me with so much, to be able to really grow up, to be able to learn scripture, to be able understand Christ. I mean, guys, I was baptized in this baptistery, I was ordained in that spot (maybe on a different tile, I don’t remember if we had these floors back then!) But this has been home.
And you guys did exactly what that scripture tells us to do—to walk alongside, and then let go. And you guys let me go. And the world that I live in now, the world that I have preached in—which is crazy to say, feels like it’s dating me just like Matt and the overhead projector—for twelve years, I’ve preached at three different churches now that hold these traditions extremely close to them.
Some of it is geographical. I’m closer to what we used to call “The Bible Belt.” So the Bible has always been extraordinarily important. It really and truly is the foundation of how people come to the conclusions that they have. It is this understanding that…you know what? This actually works out extraordinarily well. Because Matt, even though he won’t say it, is from Kentucky, from the Belt. And now his little P-wan, Paduwan, whatever you want to call me, is now preaching in that same Belt that he grew up in. This is the world that I know, and the world that he knew. These are the things, that as a cute little Lawrence, Kansas baby, it was a culture shock. But not so much of a culture shock that we want you guys to think that, you know, “this is Red and Blue.” These things co-exist.
There are a lot of fundamental things that I learned within these walls that are extremely pushed within this movement. And one of those things is the importance of scripture. It’s not just words. It’s not just a book. It is the breath of God. It is the guidance of God. It’s the things that sit as core values through every aspect of [Evangelicals’] lives. It’s not just words, it’s who has said it. It’s who has placed it. It is the understanding and knowing that God the Creator has given us guidance through scripture for us to understand.
It is really and truly a core strength, and it is extremely important in regards to discipleship. “Go and make disciples, teaching them my commands.” How do we do that? We do that through scripture. We do that with understanding and knowing not just the Gospel, but the Old Testament and the New Testament, bringing all of that together to understand, and truly, truly know, so that we can go and share it with those around us.
Pastor Matt: Yeah, but!?! Foster has this other kind of peril, right? Yeah, absolutely. Everything you just said, a hundredfold. But, Foster says, what about folks who take that value of the Bible and turn it into a worship of the Bible? “Bibliolatry,” he calls it. And we’ve talked about this before, haven’t we? The Bible is not the fourth person of the Trinity. This is not what we worship, but how we worship. Right? How we understand who God is. One of the many ways that we understand who God is. There’s an issue that Foster points out, that this way of seeing scripture is as almost a magical book—that if I could use this one verse or one phrase, or one something to cherry pick out of it, then I can use it to tell you what to do, and who to be, and how to live. And it can become this thing where the Bible becomes less a matter of how we all look at God together, but it becomes a way that we fight. It becomes a weapon against one another.
There’s this phrase—I did a study several years ago in a church that was connected to the SBC on a book by an author by the name of Herschel Hobbs. Herschel Hobbs was a Southern Baptist guru, a sage. And he wrote in one of his books about what Baptists believe. Hobbes wrote that the Bible is the most perfect written revelation from God. But—JESUS is the most perfect revelation from God. Jesus is the Living Word. We can call it the Word of God, but Jesus was the Logos, the capital W Word, in ways that are different even than the power of scripture. And so his reminder to us is that what we need to do is look at the Trinitarian God before us, with Jesus as the Logos, the Creator who began it all, and the work of the Spirit.
A couple of weeks ago when I talked about the Charismatic Stream, I talked about there sometimes being folks who get a little anxious when the Holy Spirit gets involved. Because I think in some ways the Holy Spirit seems pretty unpredictable, less domesticate-able. It’s easier to put the Bible in a form to say “Well, this is what it says, and I know what it says, and if it doesn’t say it quite the way I want it to, I’ll find another translation, and that’ll say what I want it to say.” Right? It becomes under our fingertips. But the Holy Spirit, the Spirit, blows where it will. This is not something that we control. And so we use the Bible to see the Spirit, to see the Trinitarian God, to see God, the Logos, the Creator, at work in the world. So yeah, absolutely. I mean you and I know this, we spend a lot of our weeks sifting through, praying through the Bible and how important it is. But, we can’t lift it up as an idol before us.
So, you you’ve gotten the good stuff so far. Can I can I get one? Can I get maybe a couple of good points?
Pastor Cody: Trust me. No one would be happier.
Pastor Matt: Alright. So, yeah. We’ve talked about the strengths of the Good News of Jesus, about the power of the Bible. There’s a third strength that Foster talks about. And this is what we see in this doctrinal work that the Evangelical movement has been all about. Again, this is something that’s been really important for the last 2000 years. He says it this way. He says that the movement has brought a thoughtful commitment to doctrine, sorting through the theological tenants of the faith.
Again, a few moments ago I said there is a danger in saying everything that we’re against. But also, we have to see some ways that this movement has said, “This is not who we are. We will set our identity against some of these things that the church isn’t going to be about.” A few historic examples: He uses the early church movement, the first couple, 300, 400, 500 years of the church, where they were sifting through these doctrines to figure out, “Well, who are we going to be?” And they rejected a lot. They rejected what we now call church heresies because this is not the way we wanted to be.
So the church rejected the idea of Docetism, the belief that Jesus only appeared to be human. It rejected Arianism, the idea that Jesus was created by the Father, not eternally present with the Father. Foster points to a bunch of scholars, Athanasius, Basil the Great, Ignatius of Antioch. These are folks who shared these kind of hard arguments to say, “This is what we’re going to not be” so that we could be this other thing. We could be Trinitarian in our belief.
Here’s another one. The church rejected the idea of Manicheism, the idea that good and evil are two equal things. That there’s a lightness and a darkness in the world, and they are completely equal. But that’s not what the church has said. Folks like Augustine of Hippo said, “No, really, when we talk about evil, we’re just talking about the absence of good. God is eternal, God is good. And when we talk about things that are not good, it’s just because the goodness is not there, not because there’s an equal force that’s just as strong as God. God is more powerful than anything in the Creation.
And then we’ve also talked about this idea of Pelagianism, right? That somehow we can earn God’s favor, that we can earn God’s grace. That the things we do earn our salvation. Again, Augustine helped to point out that God’s grace is primary. God’s grace—that’s what matters. So all of this stuff is what the church has decided, “We’re not going to be those things so that we could be this other thing.” So there is value in being doctrinal, in being thoughtful about what it is that we are, and who we are, and what our identity is.
Pastor Cody: But Matt…!?! Foster also says that one of the perils of this Stream is a tendency towards a sectarian mentality. A drive for purity leads to a narrow legalism, which leads to a cultic mentality—”My way or the highway.”
Let’s be honest. So much in the church today is a little bit more like Subway [the restaurant]. You get go, you get to pick your toppings. You get to pick what matters to you, and you tell everybody around you. There is a level of importance of understanding and knowing your core values and being able to understand that we are called to live a life different than the world that is around us. I mean, that is based on scripture.
But this idea that it is “my way or the highway” has taken a toll that is extraordinarily scary for one big main reason. It is “My way or the highway,” not “His way.” We focus so much on what we understand, and what we want, and how we feel, that quite frankly, the love and grace that so many wonderful theologians before Matt and I, that have come before us, fought for, turns really and truly into, “Well, if you don’t agree with me, then step your way out. I don’t have room in my life for those who don’t understand what I understand.” And it has shifted away from understanding core values that we have within our own life and how we should focus on it, to really and truly, “I’m not going to be bilked or pushed out of it.”
[Pastor Cody hears his baby daughter fussing in the sanctuary.] This is a really good sign that my daughter is going to hate church history just as much as I do! [Laughter from Matt and the congregation]
But there is this extraordinarily scary aspect, where grace and love and compassion that Christ shows us in the Gospel and commands his followers to live by, all gets bypassed by “my way or the highway” mentality. Really, truly, cult-like mentality. We are horrible at it—all churches, every church. There was this poll that came out when I was going through seminary that everyone loved to point to that said the most segregated time period in the week is Sundays from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. Because we love to find other people that like the same things that we do. We love to find churches that don’t push us. We are not capable of being in a room and saying, “Even though you don’t agree with that, that’s fine. I still love you, I still cherish you.” No, we’ve shifted. The Church has shifted.
One of the things that they warned us new seminarians about (even though I really feel like I’m getting out of the area of being able to say I’m “new”), they always constantly talk about “What is the church going to look like next?” Because we’ve shifted, at least here in America, to this mentality that it is “my way or the highway.” And if I don’t feel comfortable if I go and visit your church and you say something that I don’t agree with, well, guess what? I’ve got another 1000 I can go and find. I will keep searching and find the place that matches “my way,” other than the way that God has called me to live. And it’s a very scary slope.
Pastor Matt: Yeah. Thank you. Some good points. Helpful distinctions there, Cody. A final point, a final strength. You may push back a little, we’ll see. One of the things I think makes Evangelicals incredibly important to the work of the Church has been…the missionary zeal. The calling to go.
Cody read just a few minutes ago about the Great Commission to go. Philip heard that. He went out to the wilderness road—he went. This was not a place he knew. This was not a person he knew how to talk to well, but he went. That missionary strength, that missionary power, that is a value of the movement.
And we could say, “Where would we be without Evangelicals,” right? We might still be a small enclave that didn’t share with anybody if we didn’t have the Peters who stood up and preached on Pentecost, or the Philips who went out and talked to the Ethiopians.
Or the Judsons! So I talked last week about how in the Social Justice movement, we named a whole room after Roger Williams. But we have two named rooms in this church. The second one is right here, the room where the 838 [worship service] meets, kind of an overflow room—it’s the Judson Room.
Now, some of you may know exactly who the Judsons are. Others of you may have no idea. But Ann and Adoniram Judson were missionaries. They were the ones who said, “We want to go into this new land and talk to them about Jesus.” They went to Burma. Actually, they weren’t Baptist when they got on the boat! They started sailing toward Burma, and they started reading the Bible, and they realized, “Wait a minute, I think we’re Baptist!” And, you know, you could imagine that caused a little consternation with the people who sent them, who were not Baptist. But they got all that figured out. And eventually they discerned that yeah, because of this calling, this is what this looks like for us to present the Gospel. And they did. In incredibly, powerfully, moving ways. In fact, a lot of times, if you see folks now, immigrants who come from Burma to the United States, as soon as their toes hit the shore, they say, “Where are the American Baptists? Because we know that they are love. They tell us about Jesus. They tell us about who Jesus is.” And so a lot of times it is the American Baptists who create space for those immigrant communities.
In fact, Bethel [Neighborhood Center] in Kansas City has many Burmese folks who are there because the Judsons said, “We want to go. We want to leave the comfort of this place because the story of Jesus is that important.”
Pastor Cody: But Matt!?! Richard Foster also talks about one of the weaknesses [of the movement] being a tendency to present a too-limited view of salvation. Either a simplicity that suggests that the only thing that matters is getting into heaven and/or an individualism that neglects the social responsibility and the prophetic insight.
We talked about “My way or the highway.” Well, some of that flows in. Yes, our job is to go into the world and help people see Jesus…but as long as it’s my way and my understanding. One of the great, great, struggles that this movement presents that Richard Foster talks about, and another theologian named Brian McLaren talks about, is the fact that it also creates this environment where people start getting so focused on heaven that they forget about what Jesus had called us to do here.
Brian McLaren talks about it being a race, with everyone in three or four groups. Everyone’s on the starting line. Everyone’s super excited to start this race that God has called them to, and as soon as the metaphorical gun goes off, a good chunk of them just sit down and are thankful. “Well, I’m on the race. Isn’t that it?” The second group might run a little bit and then they also sit down, and they celebrate the fact that they’re a part of the race. “We’re a part of this group, this group that Jesus has called.” The third group is focused on finishing the race and doing all of the things that quite frankly being a disciple is. And then I added a fourth group—the onlookers. The ones that like to point at the race, the ones who maybe finished the race at some point in time, and they try and encourage others, right? “Oh, man. This would be a great race for you. You’d really appreciate what it looks like on the other side.” And yet, they turn out to never have been runners in the first place.
These are the things that can happen with too limited a view on salvation. Because we get into this aspect of reading scripture and having this foundation and going, “You know what? Jesus calls us to share the Good News, to share that Christ is with us always, and that when we die we’ll be with him forever.” We get so focused on looking at the “forever” that we also forget many other places in the Gospel. Many other times when Jesus himself specifically calls out the actions of his followers and says, “If you’re going to be my follower, you must die and pick up your cross every day. If you’re really my follower, you’re going to follow my commandments through love.” But they’re not going to be burdensome. Not that they’re going to be fun, but they’re not going to be burdensome because you’re going to know and understand the value of why you’re doing it. We aren’t just a group of people who are focused on heaven, we are going to be the hands and feet of God.
But this also leads us to another one of those stats! Now I shared at the very beginning that 2.2 billion people had heard Billy Graham. 215,000,000 people had seen Billy Graham in person. Billy Graham, in one of his final interviews said, “You know, I think 25% of those people that actually came up were really Christian.” Well, this might make Billy Graham a little bit sad, but they did a study. And they found out that actually out of that 215,000,000, an estimated six percent stayed in the church. Six percent.
Now, in any other way of measuring, six percent is horrible, right? If I was six percent of a good husband, I’m doing a really bad job. If I was six percent of a good pastor, I would probably be at a lot of churches because I wouldn’t be able to stay at one. Six percent is a horrible, horrible stat, but at the same time, we are told to make sure that we don’t lose the overall zeal of it. Six percent of 215,000,000 is still a lot of people. 15,000,000 is the number that I got. I’m not that great at math, so you guys may correct me if it’s more than that. But 15,000,000 is still the populace of the five biggest cities in America. Six percent is still six percent.
One of the things that I see so very often, and one of the things I fight as a pastor who lives in this area—it’s rooted in so many things, and not even from a political perspective, because I could preach for another month on the political aspects of this movement here in America; it’s just the fact of the understanding of where the heart of the disciple is—so much focus is on, “Do I have this right for me?” which is so opposite of what Christ calls us to. Christ tells us so many times that it’s not about what you do for yourself, but what you do for others. There’s this very delicate balance that has to be taken, or else we miss some of the greatest things that this movement has to offer. Because quite frankly, the weaknesses are easier to pick up.
If you would have asked me 12 years ago if I would ever defend the Evangelical movement for what I knew it to be, I would have said, “No way, Jose.” But I’ve seen the beauties of it. Really and truly, from a foundational aspect. There are glorious things from it. What Christian is going to say that the Bible is not important, or that it’s not our job to share this most beautiful prize that we have—a relationship with Christ—with absolutely everyone? Those things are core values, and they’re awesome, they’re great. And even understanding and knowing who we are, Jesus talks about them. “Make sure that you are not of the world, but in the world.” A calling that we are supposed to be a reflection of God’s light and love in this world. That people should see us, and the very first thing that they should say is, “Man, that person knows God.” But the reality of it is that the loud naysayers really and truly pull the movement.
A few weeks ago, some of our “close relatives,” let’s just say, who hold on to a more of an Evangelical group, were about to have a vote on whether or not they were going to acknowledge God’s grace and God’s calling inside of women. Well, that vote went to their conference, and 61% of the votes said, “Absolutely not.” Which meant that as the denomination, they couldn’t say that it passed. They have to have two-thirds, because us Baptists, we’ve got crazy rules! But it didn’t stop the message from being heard. It was a clear distinction that said, “If you’re a woman and you have felt the calling of God, if you have the Spirit in you, get out. Because it’s my highway, and you’re not allowed.”
That same conference, two weeks later, after making this huge vote, decided to back a megachurch male pastor who was finally shown to the world as having sexual relations with minors. And they’re backing him. He is still good, he is still great, because he follows the “highway.” New world Church has shifted. It’s no longer about what God calls us to. It’s no longer about the ethics that God calls us to. It is just making sure that what we say is being done.
Matt mentioned earlier that in Louisiana, the Ten Commandments are going to be back in the school. Wonderful. Beautiful. So then the same group that voted for that also denied giving free lunches to poor children in their own school districts. And for a reason why, this is what they said: “Because we believe that all families should be self-sufficient.” Show me where in scripture Jesus says, “Hey, don’t worry, you don’t have to feed those that are hungry because they need to be self-sufficient.”
One of the huge problems in America is the fact that we have stopped listening for what God has called upon us. We’re more comfortable trying to figure out how we can serve God…while being comfortable. And let me tell you, the answer is not there. I tell my people , “If you’re comfortable with where you’re at, you’re not doing the right thing.” Being Christian is not easy, but it is fruitful.
To understand and know that all of the turmoil, all of the stress, all of the frustration that we’re going through is for a good reason, is what helps us wake up every day. Kimberly [Matt’s wife] knows this. My wife knows this. Anybody that has ever supported a pastor, a spouse that has ever supported a pastor—a female pastor, a male pastor, whoever it be—knows the struggles that go with speaking up for the right values, the values that God has placed. It is hard. But it was never promised by God to be easy.
Think about the Ethiopian. What would have happened if Philip said no? Or imagine that maybe an angel says to you, “Hey, you see that random car over there? Go sit in it and talk with the driver.” I know that if an angel told me to do that right now, I’d be like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.” Especially in the part of the world we live in. I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable getting in an Illinois car, because you never know what you’re gonna find. But that’s what is happening. God is calling us to get out of our comfort zone and walk into an area that truly is his. An area that helps us understand that salvation is beautiful and it is something we should strive for. But it is not the end answer.
Heaven is not the goal. Bringing the kingdom of God here is the goal. I mean, every single one of you just prayed it. We ask God for it every single Sunday in the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” We are the ones who have to do that. But we have to make sure that our actions truly follow through. We have to make sure that we’re not living this life that tells people, “You have to understand scripture, you have to understand God, the way that I understand it,” but in a way that they may truly see the truth that comes from Christ.
There is beauty in the foundation of this movement. There is not beauty in the way that it is executed. Matt has been “pushing” you down these Streams. And hopefully by the end of this, you can see how each Stream has beauty, while each Stream also is a little ugly. Because we as humans are extremely bad at following the rules.
One of my favorite things that we just did—we’re talking about the Old Testament. We’re talking about this Year of Jubilee that God extends to Israel and says, “After seven years, you’re going to have a year of Jubilee, which means you’re going to give all of the land back to its owners. All people who are servants will be done. Everything will be happy and good. You guys will be able to reap the benefits of what you’ve been doing for the last seven years while letting the earth rest.” And Israel goes, “No. No, we don’t actually like that. That doesn’t sound right.”
In fact, they never actually make it through an eight-year period. They’re constantly going through this rotation. And they see and continue this rotation throughout the entire Old Testament.
I challenge you to think about this right now: Are we very different from the Israelites? How many times do we read all the good things in scripture, and we ignore the harder stuff? How often do we get excited about our worship on Sunday, but we leave it here on Sunday? How often do we become Christians for one, two, and for some of you crazy people maybe three days, while on the other four days, we keep living the life that we want to live. In the words of Christ, every day, you must decide to die and pick up your cross.
I am not a runner. I do not enjoy races. But man, oh man, the path that we have been given by God is such a beautiful race. But we cannot be so focused on the finish line that we forget all the beauties of the race itself. We cannot be so focused on heaven that we forget that we’re called to be true beacons of Christ’s love and light into this world. That through us, everybody will be able to say they’re a Christian and not frown about it.
I wish I could sit here and tell you that Matt and I have all the answers. We don’t. I will tell you one thing. That the One that we worship, the One that we call our Lord, the One that we call our Savior, really and truly is beautiful. Sufficient. All-powerful. Glorious and righteous.
We’ve been given everything we need to succeed. But we have to make sure that we push ourselves aside and truly follow him. Show that love, show that compassion. Let people know that there is hope here on earth, and it is the Church, the followers of Christ. And that is a tough and hard task, but it is one that God has equipped each and every one of us for. “Go and make disciples, showing them love and compassion, and teaching them my way, and baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” And my absolute favorite part of it: “And I will be with you forever.”
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