drift

(from Matt Chandler's sermon, titled "Guiding and Confronting the Message": http://fm.thevillagechurch.net/sermons)

As I was listening to this on my commute to work, I was like...dang. yeah. I think I even let out a "omg, so true" acknowledging head nod, as people around me looked at me like I was crazy.

Anyways, take a read please :)

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You have a possibility for theological and missiological drift. If you’ll follow God planting churches in the New Testament, all the letters that you have in the New Testament are written to churches that were founded by the Holy Spirit saving and doing miraculous and powerful things. And yet all of the letters in the New Testament are Paul or someone correcting their drift. Probably the clearest case you can see is Ephesus that is founded by Apollos and Paul in Acts 19-20 spectacularly. The Spirit of God moves in such a powerful way that whole socioeconomic climate of the city of Ephesus shifts and people who were making their money from selling idols could no longer make money, and so they led a riot against the Way taking root in the city. How’s that for a beginning? Do you know how we started? Lakeland Baptist Church thought it would be a cool idea to plant a church out here with the heathens among Highland Village. Do you know how Ephesus started? Paul’s handkerchief and apron were healing people, and so many people were getting saved that there was no profit in sin.

That’s a booming beginning.

Now Paul tell them in the next verse, “I have to go and ferocious wolves are going to come in and try to kill the sheep.” Do you know what we see happening? The Ephesians controversy starts. Go read the book of Ephesians. Go read 1 and 2 Timothy, because Timothy was an elder in Ephesus. And go read 1, 2 and 3 John, because John was also an elder in Ephesus. I love our staff. They are ferocious men and women of God who love Him and serve Him and are not pretending to be anything but who they are. And they are trusting in the grace of God to make them more and more of who God would have them to be. Now with all of that said, our staff compared to the staff at Ephesus is JV. Because if you’ve got an elder in your church that wrote some of the Bible, I just don’t know how you compete with that in this day and age. “Well I can preach well.” “Preach what well?” “What you said.” I mean, this is a lights out church. So you go read through those and you’ll begin to see the disintegration of the gospel taking root in Ephesus. In fact, I’ll just read you 1 Timothy 4:7. It says, “Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness.” And if we pushed it on into Revelation 2, Jesus tells the church at Ephesus, “You do this well, you do this well and you do this well. But this is have against you. You have lost your first love. Repent and do the things you did at first.” What happened? They drifted. Now what did they do at first? The only thing we see them doing at all in Acts 19 is confessing to one another their sins and acknowledging their need for Jesus Christ. So somehow in the sixty years between Acts 19-20 and Revelation 2, this community of faith that was gritty and raw who were coming together and confessing their sins and worshiping God’s grace ended up doing witchcraft.

Their prayer requests were not, “My aunt Sally’s knee got blown out when she was playing indoor soccer and we need to pray for her tonight.” I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with aunt Sally’s knee; I’m saying when this community of faith came together, they were extremely honest with exactly where they were. And grace doesn’t work where you’re lying about where you really are. The prettier a church becomes, the more I don’t tend to trust it. If I walk into a community of faith where I’m teaching and everybody is pretty and nobody struggles and there are not issues, then I think we’ve got drift. Because the church has always been a rag-tag, battered group of humanity that God is glorified because He uses such people. And we see theological/missiological drift.

You see it in today’s culture where more and more churches have become about themselves and the comfort of their people. They have completely lost out to the mission of God, so that Christianity has become some sort of self-betterment place. They say, “Do these things to feel better about yourself” instead of, “This is the mission of God. Let’s join Him in what He’s doing.”