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Core Values 1: In a healthy church, every generation serves – 6.1.8 Dennis Mullen
Back in 2001, I went to a preacher’s conference where I heard a very gifted speaker named Mike Breaux. I had actually heard Mike before in the early 90s at TCTC. Since then, he had started a new and very fast-growing church in Las Vegas, and at the time I heard him, he was the Sr. Minister at Southland Christian Church in Lexington, KY, one of the first mega-churches I had ever heard of. In the early 2000s, Mike went to the famous Willow Creek Community Church and worked with Bill Hybels, and he just left that ministry this year. At the conference, Mike mentioned (sort of as an aside in one of his talks) the core values of Southland Christian Church, and some of those values stuck in my heart like an arrow:
That impressed me and stuck with me, and I have used his core values in lessons over the years. Then, this winter when our leadership team was trying to make some decisions about direction, I suggested that we come up with our own core values. This turned into a longer exercise than I imagined and filled several meetings (running up against one of my own core values that meetings are to be avoided whenever possible!) but the end results were these 9:
Core values:
Today I want to begin a series that will take us through June (with one break) on our core values. This morning, the message is called In a healthy church, every generation serves, and it is based on the three values which say:
Let me talk for a minute about core values – what they are and what they aren’t. Our core values aren’t the same as having a statement of belief or a creed. If they were, our most central values would be things like: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God; and In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth; and All people in their natural state are separated from God by sin, and need a Savior. Those are the basic bedrock beliefs upon which we stand, but we’re aiming for something different in our core values.
Our core values are the values that clarify who we are, guide us in making decisions, and even set us apart from other churches. If you look through the list, you’ll see a few that should apply to every church, and a few that some churches would adamantly reject. I saw a church sign on the web this week that said: “Soft soap in the pulpit won’t clean sinners in the pew”. I think it means that they prefer fire and brimstone preaching. But we have a value that says: Extending grace to others begins their process of restoration. I think we’re coming at preaching differently than this church with the sign. I’m sure they say they like to tell it like it is. We like to tell it like it can be.
When the elders and ministers talked about our values, we didn’t try to invent new ideas that we thought should be true. Rather, we tried to identify the things that ARE true about MHCC and have been true for a long time. We are committed to reaching young people, for example, and our budgets and decisions over the years reflect that. Prayer HAS played an important part in directing us (as I mentioned last week with the land). The worship service has been a major emphasis here for years. So our values reflect these things.
That said, it’s probably true that some of these core values that aren’t as core as they should be. We’ll get into that as we cover them. Let’s get started with the three values for today:
1. Healthy churches invest fully in young people.
You might easily guess which Scripture I’ll use as the basis for this value – Mark 10:13-16 - 13 People were bringing little children to Jesus to have him touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. 14 When Jesus saw this, he was indignant. He said to them, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. 15 I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." 16 And he took the children in his arms, put his hands on them and blessed them.
In my natural state of mind, I’d tend to agree with the apostles. Children are a distraction from legitimate business, especially the SERIOUS business of bringing in the Kingdom of God. Jesus has some meaty truth for everyone to chew on, so keep the kids at home. Maybe he’ll put on an event for them later. Trouble is, Jesus didn’t see it that way. “The kingdom of God belongs to such as these, he says. In fact, YOU won’t enter the Kingdom yourself unless you enter it like a child.
What did he mean by that? What is it about children that makes them so able to enter and inherit the Kingdom of God? Is it their cuteness? Well I can’t imitate that (and neither can most of you). Their sweetness? Well sometimes kids ARE sweet, so sweet it makes you laugh and cry at the same time. Sometimes, though, they are incredibly mean to each other, and they do things that, if adults did them, we’d get arrested and shunned! What if someone at work called you “toilet face” or shoved you down in the lunch room, or threw a basketball at your head? These are minor incidents in the rough world of kids, but prosecutable offenses in adulthood.
I think Jesus was talking about kids’ helplessness when he said that we all need to become like them, or understand that we ARE like them in relation to God. In the first-century world, little children (and especially the children of the hard-working peasants who seemed to love Jesus) were a pretty large burden. They couldn’t yet work, they weren’t ready for education and their opinions weren’t valued. All they could do was receive their food at the proper time, and then count on Mom and Dad for more. They couldn’t sow or reap or store away in barns. They simply had to depend on the love and providence of their parents. And they do. If any of that sounds familiar, it’s just how Jesus taught us to relate to God, and all of it might fit the definition of “poor in spirit”, as in MT 5:3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Now WE live in a world that constantly judges us on our merit, and we have to earn our own way in it, so we tend to approach the Kingdom of God with that in mind. If we say: “Why shouldn’t God want a great disciple like me?”, we don’t get it. Even if we say: “Why SHOULD God want someone like me?”, we don’t get it. Enter like a child, Jesus says. And to prove that he really meant it, he took those children into his arms and blessed them, welcoming them in the most personal way possible.
So we invest fully in young people because Jesus does. But there are practical reasons too. Sometimes I hear people say that the church is always one generation away from extinction. I get the idea, but I don’t say that, because I know that the church universal is run by Jesus Christ, not us, and so it is impossible for it to be made extinct. It is possible, however, for any local church to die off or at least fade into irrelevance, and we are always a generation or less away from that. So we invest fully in young people because our congregation will die without them. And I think it is fair to say that we invest fully in young people because by investing in them, we invest in their parents and maybe their grandparents too. Adults need the Lord, whether they are 25 or 36 or 55 or whatever. And they need the church too, to sharpen them in their faith and purity. Now they may not KNOW that they need the Lord and the church, but very often they perceive that their children need the Lord and need the church, and so ministering to the younger people opens doors to minister to all ages.
Now, most churches would probably SAY that young people are important, and even in the driest congregation populated by folks from the Greatest Generation, you might hear someone stand up in a business meeting and lament that the kids aren’t coming and that something needs to be done about it. But the purest indicators of what we REALLY value are our checkbook and our date book, and I think that you’ll be convinced of our value of young people if you look at the money in our budgets over the years for staff, programs, youth groups, lock-ins, camps, VBS, road trips, etc. for young people. And as early as 1991, we made some decisions (occasionally painful) to have music that we hoped would appeal to younger generations. And if you ever notice a skateboard ramp in the lower lot, or spray paint art in the Teen Center or a play set near a main entrance, I think it sends the message loud and clear that we value young people and we believe that a healthy church invests fully in young people.
But that isn’t the whole story about MHCC. Occasionally I go to a conference and hear about a new big-time author and speaker who has planted a church entirely for young people – not for children, but for people in their 20s. It’s usually in a big city somewhere, maybe near a college, located in a nightclub or something, and everyone is under 27 and they’re finally discovering the RIGHT way to do church, apart from the stodginess of old folks in their 30s. In fact, I heard one preacher at such a church say that he invited a young guy to come, and the guy came and danced to the music and listened to him talk, and only after about four weeks did he realize that this was a church he was visiting! But even if the message is clear and Scriptural, I think there is something fundamentally weak about a church where everyone is the same age, whether that age is 22 or 72 (which is more common). So the next core value
2. A complete church includes every generation.
I’m going to read you a passage to back that up, but first let me say that this passage provides an EXAMPLE rather than a command. IOW, it illustrates what we gain when the church includes many generations but it really doesn’t say that it HAS to include many generations. Here it is, from Titus 2:1-8.
2:1 You must teach what is in accord
with sound doctrine.
2 Teach the older men to be temperate,
worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in
endurance.
3 Likewise, teach the older women to be
reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine,
but to teach what is good.
4 Then they can train the younger women
to love their husbands and children,
5 to be self-controlled and pure, to be
busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their
husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.
2:6 Similarly, encourage
the young men to be self-controlled.
7 In everything set them
an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness
8 and soundness of speech
that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because
they have nothing bad to say about us.
The benefit of having many generations together in the church family is evident. Boys learn to be men by watching godly men and seeing how they live. Girls learn to be women from godly women in various walks of life. Young adult Christians learn what it means to be parents and eventually grandparents by knowing and learning from Christians who are raising teenagers or discipling their grandkids. We learn what it means to resist temptation and walk with Christ in the real world by hearing the stories and prayer needs of people who work in banks or who teach or who run machines or who are now retired.
Now you might say that Paul is merely telling Titus how to teach the people he happens to HAVE rather than telling him to have all ages in his church, and I agree. In fact, the next verse, the one that comes right after I stopped reading, says that he should 9 Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, and I’m not about to suggest that every church should have slaves in it to be complete. But the value of having Christian people of a variety of generations together in the congregation is undeniable.
For the past two years or so, I’ve been teaching and helping with the K-5 group on Wednesday nights. Quite a few parents have expressed appreciation, saying something like: “It’s great that our kids get to know the preacher and see him as a regular guy”. (Of course, familiarity breeds contempt, but that’s another sermon!) I appreciate those comments and it is good for the kids to know me, but what was REALLY valuable to me when I was a kid was when I went to Sunday School or VBS and it was staffed by farmers and grandmothers and the guy who worked at the Chevy dealership and a school bus driver in his 40s and my own dad on occasion. My home church was and is a small church and it has struggled to keep young people coming, but there was a window of time in my youth when our youth groups and kids groups were strong AND it required adults of all ages to jump in and volunteer. THAT’S what church should be. If we are the family of God (a good Scriptural term), then like a family, we need all generations represented.
What does this mean? I don’t think it means that, if we hire a Children’s director, we have to balance that by hiring a director for the elderly (that’s my job, anyway!) It doesn’t mean that for every teen lock-in, we offer a riverboat cruise for the over 50 set. No, the needs of young people and the opportunities we have with them tend to call for a higher level of investment. What it does mean is that the older we get and the more we mature in the faith, the more we need to allow for the things that appeal to younger people but not to our taste. It also means that we must measure success in terms of seeing our young people become an active part of the larger church. It means, older people, that we need your help in Sunday School and VBS and on trips to the zoo. And young people, it means that we all remember that, no matter how it is in your world or family, in God’s family we all need to learn to give respect and honor to our older members, to love them and serve them as beloved grandparents and parents in the faith. A complete church includes every generation.
I have almost covered by last point…
3. Everyone in the body of Christ has a vital job to do.
1 Corinthians 12:12-15 makes
this pretty clear.
12 The body is a unit, though it is made
up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it
is with Christ.
13 For we were all baptized by one
Spirit into one body--whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free--and we were all
given the one Spirit to drink.
14 Now the body is not made up of one
part but of many.
15 If the foot should say, "Because I am
not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to
be part of the body. And so on.
Active service, often in the work of our local congregation, sometimes in another ministry, is an essential part of being a Christ-follower. The church is HIS creation, his body, and we who claim his Lordship are the part of his body, so the only question remains: Are we helping the body do its work or, by inaction, slowing it down?
Everyone who has reached the point in life where they have claimed Christ as Savior and Lord has a ministry to do. What’s yours? If you can’t answer that, something vital to your life and joy is missing. Maybe you’re in your 90s and your strength for service is gone, so God has in mind for you to be a prayer warrior and someone who intentionally gives love, encouragement and wisdom to the rest of us. Maybe you’re 12 and you know you’re not ready to teach or sing, so you can be the hands of God by mowing some older person’s yard or maybe just by sitting with them and being good company, and praying for them. Maybe you’re 17 or 25 or 52 and you haven’t found your ministry, or you’ve lost it for a few years. It could be a real blessing for you and someone else for you to volunteer to help with VBS this summer, not just to do a job but to be a welcoming presence for some kids who might be blessed by you in ways we can’t trace.
So, these are three core values that fit together:
Prayer
Invitation
Morrison
Hill Christian Church
P.O. Box 59 - 1008 E.
Race St.
Kingston, TN 37763 (865) 376-5205
