Dr. M. Taylor Bach Hebrews 8:7-13 John 17:13-19

History records that there are many things that have come to drive the churches that we attend. History records that we frequently become complacent and driven by the wrong motives. In fact, as I studied the churches that I've been familiar with in my lifetime, I've discovered that some of them were driven by tradition. As I met with people in these churches, I discovered that they are the ones who always say, “Well, we've never done it like that before.” They are very reluctant to try new things.

Some churches are driven by personality. It may be the personality of a single lay person or a personality of a pastor and if that pastor leaves or lay person dies, the church collapses. Clearly, that is not a good thing. If that lay person or pastor somehow fails or falls, the whole church is greatly disturbed by it. Paul dealt with this in the Corinthian community as people were choosing which person to follow. Were they going to follow Apollos or were they going to follow Paul? He said, “We can't do that. We've only got to follow Jesus Christ. That is the essence of the message.”

Some churches are driven by their finances and you'll find that they frequently have great financial campaigns and members are urged to give and give and give. Every time you come to church, you hear another sermon that punishes the congregation because they are not giving enough. It is all about the money.

Some churches are driven by their programs. They are very excited about their programs they've created. But then they don't realize that in time, programs run their course. Programs have a beginning and they have an end. They hold on to these programs far longer than the programs serve their usefulness.

Some churches are driven by seekers. In these churches, the whole emphasis is, “Let's build our numbers. Let's increase and go out and find people who are interested in the faith. We won't nurture our own members very well because that is not very important but we'll design everything to take care of seekers.”

Some churches are designed and driven by their buildings. They will frequently have building campaigns. They will have campaigns to pay off mortgages and they will be locked in to preserving the facilities at all costs. I served at a church that was that way. The janitor of that church was also a member and he was also on the church council. He never wanted any group to be in the church because they made it dirty. He especially hated the Boy Scouts because Boy Scouts always came in from outside with mud on their feet. He was out to get the Boy Scouts, out to sabotage the scouting program so that the church would kick them out. The building was everything to this man and it was his driving force.

Some churches have their focus on events  every anniversary, every happening, Easter, Christmas, they have great pageantry and great services and things to focus on events. But ultimately, all of these driving forces fall short. Taken as a whole, every one of them has value. But if they become the driving force behind the church, they actually can destroy the church. What should be the one driving force of the church? Jesus Christ, a relationship with Him, loyalty and adherence to His sacred Word, the instructions in the Bible. That is it. That is what should be our driving force here at Pilgrim&over and over and over again. It is what we should always return to.

Recently, I've given sermons on some of these aspects of being good Bible adherers, being those who value and love the sacred Word of God. As I've done my study on this, I keep running across authors who say that we should become an “Acts 2 church”. And I kept saying to myself, what is an Acts 2 church? Finally, I decided to go to the Acts of the Apostles in the Bible and look up what it says about the church. I was surprised to find in Acts 2:42-47 a description that goes something like this& “All these persons were devoted to the apostolic teaching.” So what were they devoted to? They were devoted to reading and studying the Bible. Of course, back at the time Acts was written, the authors of the Bible's New Testament were present with them. So they were hearing first hand apostolic teaching. Now we get this same apostolic teaching through this book itself. The second thing that is listed there as a trait of an Acts 2 church is devotion to the fellowship. So people in the church were highly motivated to support one another, be there for one another. Frequently they shared common property and if a person was in need, they pooled their resources to help that person out. Then it says, “They were devoted to worship” - the breaking of the bread and met in homes because they didn't have buildings at that time. But they had their community groups and that is what they were devoted to. It says, “Every one of them was filled with awe” so they had this special relationship with God. What is awe? Awe is a mixture of respect and fear. Should we fear God? Yes. We can fear God in a sense that we are aware that He is a God of justice and so He holds us responsible for sin. If we are not working to be sinless, we need to fear His potential punishment. On the other hand, if we are in grace and we've repented from our sin, we don't have to fear Him, but we need to have the sense of awe defined by respect. God is so large, He is so great, He is so wonderful, He is just awe-inspiring. That is the kind of thing that the Acts 2 church members had. The believers were united and loyal to Jesus Christ it says. They were of one mind in their worship. Worship was extremely important to them. Then finally it says they gave to the needy. We at Pilgrim are always pushing for giving, say to our Christian World Mission (OCWM) that supports the needy throughout the world and we are looking to support Washington UCC, our sister mission church and all those kinds of things. It is important that we give to the needy. Then it says, “They all had glad hearts.” Is your heart glad? Do you experience just a little sense of joy within you because you are a Christian and because you are yoked together in unity with Christ? They continually praised God and that is what we should do. The Bible says, we should praise God in all circumstances. Even in the worst of circumstances we should praise God. I've preached to you before how there are learnings in every circumstance and we should find what that learning is for me even if it is a bad circumstance. Therefore, give praise to God that He is teaching us lessons as we go through life because that is what they did in the early days of the church. Then lastly, Acts 2 says they added to their numbers daily. So we need to be interested in adding to our numbers daily, too.

Many of you will remember when Jan and I first came to Pilgrim Church eight years ago; I got people together in small groups so I could listen to you and hear what your concerns were. One of the things that I did was I trotted out purpose statements that I had found on the internet from churches all over the United States. I asked the small groups if they would pick out the purpose statement that they thought best fit Pilgrim Church. That was a fascinating experience. I really expected that the groups would pick out something other than what they picked out, but essentially everyone picked out this purpose statement&

“It shall be the purpose of this Church to establish and maintain in this community a Christian congregation for the public worship of Almighty God (that was an Act 2 thing), to maintain the Sacraments of the Christian Church (that would be an Acts 2 worshiping experience), to promote the spiritual welfare and strengthen the Christian life of its members (that is an Acts 2 discipleship experience) and all people who look to Jesus Christ as their Lord (so we do outreach and add to our numbers), to cultivate the Spirit of Christian fellowship among all people (so we play together and enjoy each other's company), and to strive for the fulfillment of the Kingdom of God throughout the world (again  outreach, getting beyond ourselves, helping the needy, being in ministry).”

I don't know if you remember this or not but the thing that fascinated me was that though many of you had never read this purpose statement before, you picked out the purpose statement that the original founders of this church had written. You picked out your own. So built into the very DNA of our congregation is the essence of an Acts 2 church. That really excited me at that time and it still excites me. These small groups all chose the purpose statement that the founders of Pilgrim Church had written in the first place without anybody realizing or knowing it. It was just amazing. There are many things that we can talk about in this world. This world needs Acts 2 churches tremendously.

Schopenhauer was a German philosopher that I studied years ago. He had a view of the world that was extremely negative but I think in some sense, it may very well capture how people feel about the world today and maybe especially in the United States. It's kind of a clever thought that he had. He said, “I see all the people in the world as if they are porcupines. They exist in a cold climate so they want warmth. They seek warmth by coming together. But as they come together, their spurs injure one another. Because they are hurt and injured, most people in the world just go out into the cold alone - in isolation - and then end up shriveling up and dying in the cold.” Whew! What a negative view of life. Right? Membership in the church brings about absolutely the opposite of that view.

As I thought about Schopenhauer, I thought of another example where we experience this in our lives, this isolation and separation from people. When you get on an elevator with strangers, what is that like for you? Here you are in an enclosed box with a lot of people. Everybody is uncomfortable because we're violating each other's space in that elevator. We stand there and look up and read - weight capacity 2000 pounds. There are 15 floors. “I hope it doesn't take very long to get to my floor,” I think. “There is somebody in the back of this elevator that looks like he could be a murderer or robber.” So you can run little fantasies. Maybe you don't do that but I've done that on occasion when I got on an elevator with a spooky looking character in the back. And I have often thought, “This is just like the world without the church.” If we look at the church and what the church accomplishes, in an Acts 2 church, we know it brings people together. It reminds me of my former brother-in-law. Whenever he got on an elevator, he would wait to be the last one on and then he would face everybody on the elevator and would say, “Let me tell you why I called this meeting!” Everybody would laugh and it would break the tension. Everybody would start talking to each other and would develop camaraderie in the elevator ride from the top to the bottom. I even tried that a couple of times when I had an office over on the east side of Cincinnati. Of course, people thought I was nuts but it was kind of fun to do it. The church then is the place where there is closeness. In the church, there is relationship, relationship with Jesus Christ and relationship with each other.

Sometimes children capture this even better than we grown-ups do. One of our church members gave me a story last week of a child. This child was a child who had cerebral palsy and was extremely handicapped. On this particular day, the child was outside with his father walking through a park and noticed a group of children playing baseball. Cerebral palsy children are normal mentally but their bodies just don't work. The child said to his father, “Do you suppose they would let me play baseball with them? I just would love to play.” So the father went up to the coach of one of the teams and said, “Would you allow my son to play with you?” The coach said, “Well, you know what? We are down by six runs. It is the sixth inning right now. How would it be if we are still down in the 9th inning, we will put your son in and we will let him play?” The father was ecstatic; the son was ecstatic. The coach gave him a t-shirt with the team's logo on it. He felt like he was a part of the team. Sure enough, they got to the ninth inning. By that time, that team had scored three more runs. The bases were loaded. There were two outs. What would they do? Would they put this cerebral palsy child in and lose the game or would they put one of the better players in and win the game? The coach chose to put the cerebral palsy child in. The pitcher on the opposing team got it immediately. What he did was take a couple of steps forward off of the pitching mound so he could lob the ball underhanded to this child, taking the risk that the boy might actually hit the ball and knock in the winning runs. Of course, it would have to be a grand slam, not very likely! The cerebral palsy child swung and awkwardly missed. So the pitcher took two more steps in and the boy swung. This time he made contact with the ball and it dribbled right out to the pitcher. The pitcher picked up the ball and could have easily made an out at first base, but instead he threw the ball way over the head of the first baseman. The first baseman had to run to get it and everybody in the stands started yelling to Shay (Shay was the name of the child with cerebral palsy), “Shay, run to first! Run to first! Run to first!” So Shay ran to first. In the meantime, the first baseman was out there hunting for the ball. The crowd yelled, “Go to second! Go to second! Go to second!” The first baseman got the ball and he could have easily thrown Shay out at second, but instead, he threw it over the second baseman into the outfield. Everybody yelled, “Shay, Go to third! Go to third!” So Shay went to third and the ball still wasn't found. One of the outfielders finally got it and threw it over the head of the third baseman almost into the stands but still in play. The third baseman could have gotten it and thrown him out at home. In the meantime, three runs had scored because the bases were loaded. And Shay was the winning run. Everybody in the stands kept yelling, “Shay, go home! Go home!” In his awkward cerebral palsy way, he ran towards home and he scored the winning run. These children had captured in a sense the essence of the church. The children who were willing to lose the game to allow a handicapped defective person to play showed great generosity. The children who were in the field who were winning the game actually threw the game so that this child would have his moment of glory and his moment of success  the only time in his whole life that he may ever have this moment of feel-good fame, so to speak. That is how we should conduct church. We should conduct church with a wonderful willingness to support one another, this wonderful willingness to see each other's weaknesses, each other's handicaps, each other's faults, each other's flaws and be able to support one another. We should be able to learn from children who get it sometimes. But how did these children get it? These children got it from the parents who taught them. These children also got it from their churches. We need to be an Acts 2 church that emphasizes worship and praise and glad hearts and joy and celebration. We need to be an Acts 2 church that studies the teaching of the apostles and creates real disciples. We need to be an Acts 2 church that is involved in fellowship, we need to be an Acts 2 church that goes out and brings other people in and we need to be an Acts 2 church that is involved in ministry, giving to the needy, serving one another and reaching out beyond our walls. We need to be an Acts 2 church. Oh yes. That is who we are.