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2 Corinthians 5:11-21 - "Avoiding Spiritual AMD"

Dan Bigg MPC 18^th April 2004.

A few weeks ago a group of us college students went to Stanthorpe for a week of practical training. It's called Ministry week. One of the things we did as part of our practical training was a bit of door knocking. While I was door knocking I met a man called Douglas. Douglas was in a wheel chair, living in this little town-house all on his own. He just wanted to talk and talk so I let him. You know the thing that upset him the most was that he had a big problem with his eye sight. He could see well enough. The problem was he couldn't focus in on objects. When he tried to look directly at something he couldn't see it. He couldn't read because he couldn't focus. But his side vision was fine. He could see all around whatever it was that he wanted to look at. But when he wanted to focus on a particular object he just couldn't see it.

Douglas sadly, suffers from a medical condition known as AMD which stands for Aged-Related Macular Degeneration. I looked it up and found out AMD affects you slowly. At the start, the change in your vision goes unnoticed, because AMD usually begins in one eye. But later, as the second eye is affected, your vision becomes dimmer. And doing things like hitting tennis balls gets difficult. When you're reading, parts of the words disappear. And when it's really bad even big objects become very blurry or disappear.

If you've got advanced AMD yourself, you'll know you can't read or watch TV, or drive the car. But the interesting thing is your side vision isn't affected. The article I read said, "This vision will remain but it's only really useful for moving about in your own environment."

You know, I reckon there's a real danger of Christian churches suffering from what we could call spiritual AMD. Like Douglas, churches run the risk of losing their ability to focus on what's central; and have only side vision. And what's side vision good for? Only for moving about in our own environment. That's the danger. A church with side vision moves comfortably around in its own environment but loses sight of what church is really all about. Our goal, our purpose and focus.

Now unfortunately AMD isn't treatable. But spiritual AMD is. As a church, it's possible to regain clear sight and good focus. It's a matter of seeing what we're meant to focus on. And doing it.

We're looking at two of our Core Commitments today. And both of them are designed to help us to clearly see what our goals are as a church, and how we're to go about reaching them. The first one says, "We are committed to engaging people outside the church with the person and claims of Jesus." That's our goal, to connect with people in our community and introduce them to Jesus. And our second Core Commitment aims at describing how we're to go about it. It reads, "We are committed to church activity which is welcoming and understandable to newcomers." We want every one, whether churched or unchurched, whether they've been going to church before, or never been to church in their lives, we want them, to feel at home with us when they come in here. Our job as Christians is to make God's rescue plan clear and understandable to every one in a friendly and normal environment.

There's a great passage in Paul's second letter to the Corinthians which deals with this whole area. It's 2 Cor. ch. 5 vs11-21. Paul spells it out for us. He tells us, who we are, what our purpose is and how we are to go about it.

So if you've got your Bibles open have a look at 2 Cor. ch 5 verse 20. Paul's absolutely clear, "We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us."

What are we? We're Christ's ambassadors. That's our job, like Tom Schieffer, the US ambassador to Australia. And through us, God makes his appeal to our community.

Ambassadors really do just two things. They get a message from their ruler; and they give the message to the ones they're told to go and give it to. You're not functioning as an ambassador if you don't go to those you're sent to. And you're not functioning as an ambassador if you don't give them the message you were told to give them.

We are ambassadors of King Jesus. Is that how you see yourself? Are we as a church faithfully delivering the message of Jesus to our community? The people God has sent us to. In other words, we're working towards being a church that is committed to engaging people outside the church with the person and claims of Jesus.

Or has spiritual AMD somehow affected our sight?

God sees us as ambassadors. Like it or not it's what we're supposed to be on about. Spreading the message of Jesus to people outside the church. "Church", as someone put it, "is the one organisation that exists for it's non members".

Verses 18 and 19 make this all too clear. Our purpose, our ministry, is to share a message. A message geared at patching up a wrecked friendship. Paul says in V18,

All this is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: and what's the message? that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

We're to be ambassadors with a message of reconciliation, for our community.

If I somehow get out of sorts with any one of you then reconciliation needs to take place for the closeness to be repaired. We won't be friends again until what ever split us apart is dealt with. That's pretty straight forward. But when we're talking about people and God, what's split us apart is sin. Sin, in short, means rebellion against God. The old car bumper sticker says it all, "If God seems far away, guess who moved?" We've walked away from God. Done our own thing. Everyone of us. And yet God stands waiting. Ready for reconciliation, "God was reconciling the world to himself... and gave us the ministry of reconciliation."

God's fixed the problem of our sin, using Jesus. Our sin isn't buried or excused or pushed under the carpet. It's dealt with. We're not in trouble with God any more because Jesus put his hand up and took the blame for us. The only reason we haven't got a black mark against our name is because Jesus placed our black mark against his name and took the rap for us. So nothing stands in the way between us and God. All that's required is for us to change our mind accordingly. and turn back to god. That's our message. The message we're to spread to every one in this community. It's a great message.

I remember a few months ago listening to the radio. They rang a guy up and were trying to convince him he'd just won the two hundred thousand dollars. The poor guy just couldn't believe it. He kept on saying, " no way, you're kidding". But they just kept convincing him it was true. The guy hadn't earned it, and he didn't deserve it any more than anyone else who entered the competition. But he got it. It was his. It just took him a while to believe them and accept the truth.

Our job as Christians is a bit like that. As ambassadors of Jesus our job is to convince our non Christian friends of the good news, that they can live forever as friends of God again, that they can have everlasting happiness, and that it's all theirs for free. They don't have to earn it and they don't deserve it. But it's theirs for the taking. This is our message. It's what we're to be committed to. We're to be committed to engaging people outside the church with the person and claims of Jesus as ambassadors. Sounds simple enough, but for some reason we find it really difficult. For some reason churches can get caught up doing things that keep the in- crowd comfortable and over time we can even forget about those out there. It's all too easy to lose our God given focus and end up with only side vision. Side vision, which means we're fine in our own environment but blind to the needs of anyone outside. The ones God sends us to with the saving message of Jesus.

If we're serious about about engaging people outside the church with the person and claims of Jesus. Then we need to think pretty carefully about just how we're going to go about it. We've got to get down to the nuts and bolts and figure out the best way to reach our aim. Paul shares just how far he was prepared to go in spreading the good news with outsiders. In v13 he says,

If we are out of our mind, it is for the sake of God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For Christ's love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

Basically Paul's saying he's so sure of what Jesus did for him that he's prepared to do what many people consider crazy things. It doesn't bother him if people think he's mad, if people think he's out of his mind. It doesn't bother him cause he's doing it for God's sake.

But on the other hand he wants the Corinthians to take on board what he's doing. He wants them to be on side. He wants them to know why he does the crazy sacrificial things he does. He wants them to understand what he's doing. to agree with it. and start doing the same sort of things.

And for us here at Mitchelton, the same reasoning applies. We need to think through everything we do and match it against what God wants us to do as ambassadors. So we have to think through just how we can best spread that message to our community. Our Core commitment sums it up well, "We are committed to church activity which is welcoming and understandable to newcomers." I remember working hard to get a totally unchurched butcher mate of mine along to church one time. He finally came but he was like a fish out of water. He had no idea when to stand up or sit down, the songs and music were completely foreign to him. It made me realise how important it is to be committed to church activity which is welcoming and understandable to newcomers. But it's a scary commitment. It means we really need to know our community, and work out the very best way to share Jesus with them. It means we need to be constantly assessing everything we do and see if there isn't a better way we could do it. It means our services must cater for newcomers rather than just for members.

I read an article by Rick Warren recently. He the pastor of Saddleback Church in California, and the author of the book, 'the purpose driven church'. This is what he said about his church,

We had to start thinking differently. we focused on making unbelievers feel comfortable by singing songs they could embrace, by voicing prayers that helped them relate, and by preaching messages they could understand. We made christianity available, at an introductory level, to any Sunday service visitors.

I reckon he must have read our core commitments, because that's exactly what we want to be on about here. We want to be committed to church activity which is welcoming and understandable to newcomers. That doesn't mean we throw out the gospel. The gospel is our message. What it means is we keep on repackaging our gospel message in the way most likely to impact our community.

The thee's and thine's belong in the 19th century, leave them there. Even when we pray, let's pray in clear, current, everyday language that's understandable, and avoid all the religious lingo that only a few of the in-crowd people understand.

The same thing goes for the songs we choose to sing. If we want to be serious about doing what God has called us to do. Then the words of our songs must be words that can be understood, and say what the Bible's saying... But songs and music can be a real issue for churches. Have a listen to this letter a Pastor received from a member when he tried to introduce a new song. The member wrote,

I am no scholar, but I feel I know appropriate church music when I hear it. Last Sunday's hymn, if you can call it that, sounded like a sentimental love ballad one might expect to hear crooned in a saloon. If you persist in exposing us to such rubbish in God's house, don't be surprised if many of the faithful look for a new place of worship. The hymns we grew up with are all we need.

Now this is the surprising bit, the letter was written in 1865, and was criticising the hymn, 'Just as I am.' See how blind we can get. Jesus gave up his life to save us. Yet we can get to the point where we aren't even willing to give up anything to make God's message clearer for the people of our community.

The words of our songs, and the music and instruments we use, have got to be familiar to our local community if we really want to reach them. I talked to a guy here last Sunday, he's not a church goer, but he loved the music here. If the music isn't odd the message has more chance of getting through.

As a church I think we're doing really well in a lot of these areas. We are committed to engaging people outside the church with the person and claims of Jesus. And we are committed to church activity which is welcoming and understandable to newcomers. But we have to keep it up. We have to stay on our toes. We need to keep on encouraging each other to be mission minded. We need to take the job God has given us seriously. And our job is to make clear to everyone God's rescue plan. Have a listen to this modern day parable. It really highlights the danger churches can fall into. The danger of losing our vision, our ability to focus on our goal and purpose. The danger of being reduced to side vision, useful only in our own safe and familiar surroundings. It goes like this.

On a dangerous sea coast, where shipwrecks often happen, there was once a crude little lifesaving station. The lifesaving station was just a hut, and there was only one boat. But the few devoted lifesavers, with no thought for themselves, went out day and night, tirelessly searching for the lost. Many lives were saved by the little station. It became famous.

Over time the membership of the lifesaving club grew. The building and furniture were upgraded. The lifesaving station became a popular meeting place. A club. Less and less members were interested in the lifesaving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do the work. About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick. They were dripping salt water all over the Persian rugs, and the beautiful new club was in chaos. At the next meeting, there was a split in the Club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club's lifesaving mission, because it was unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Those who insisted lifesaving was the club's primary purpose were voted down. They were told that if they wanted to continue to save lives, they could begin their own lifesaving station further on down the coast.

They did. But as the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had happened in the old one. It evolved into a club, so another lifesaving station started up further down the coast. History continued to repeat itself. If you visit that sea coast today, you will find a number of exclusive clubs along the shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown.