A Sermon

I never post my sermons here, I guess I just felt like they didn't belong here. Well, I think the one I just preached might belong here for some strange reason. So below is the sermon preached at West Side today.

For the record: Our mission statement is “to be a neighborhood church that works with God to serve our neighborhood, the West Side of Mount Vernon.” The West Side of Mount Vernon is everything West of Sandusky Street to the Kokosing River on the East and South and to Rolls Royce on the North.
I want to start off this morning by reading a verse that has always been very important to me these last seven years I have lived in this neighborhood. It is found in John 1:14 and it says, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Who would like to pray for us this morning?
This verse is very important to me because it is where, in large part, where we get the doctrine of the incarnation. I realize “incarnation” is a big word, but in all reality it’s not all that confusing. To incarnate something is to make something a part of something. Like if you are making brownies from a mix you would incarnate eggs into the mix. So incarnation is a big word for a simple idea.
In the verse I read it talks about how Jesus incarnated Himself into this world. Jesus was the Word and He became flesh and blood and He made His dwelling among us. The word dwelling literally means to pitch a tent. So Jesus literally pitched His tent among us. And that is one of the most beautiful images I know of in the Bible outside of the cross. That Jesus would literally leave Heaven, become a man, and pitch His tent in our neighborhood, in the midst of our lives. So when Jesus came to earth 2000 years ago He incarnated Himself and became the incarnate Word of God. Does everybody understand that concept?
It’s important to understand that concept because that is what we want to be about at West Side Church of the Nazarene. As Jesus incarnated Himself to show the love of God to our world 2000 years ago we truly believe that we are to be about incarnational ministry as well. Our church was started here almost three years ago because that is what we believed in. We believed that we needed to be with people we were trying to reach with the love of Christ. We believed we needed to follow the example of Christ and incarnate ourselves in this neighborhood.
I looked through some of my old files that I have saved on those small disks we used to use at what time and I found some interesting quotes relating to this. The first couple quotes come from informational packets I gave to people and families from other churches who thought they might want to be a part of the team that started this church.
A part of that packet included our Core convictions, one of them said, “Our focus is incarnational, meaning that we identify with and live life among the people of the West Side.”
Another part of that packet included our dreams, one of them said, “We desire to be so involved and such a part of the West Side neighborhood that we would be considered their church, or one of their churches, even by those who do not go to any church.” Another one of our dreams said, “We Desire to have every member of Jubilee involved in ministry that reaches out into the neighborhood. Whether it is an official ministry of the church, or not, is unimportant.” And another selected dream statement of the many we had said, “We dream of a neighborhood transformed in every way by the love of Christ working through His people who are in love with Him.”
In that same packet I included our vision statement which was basically an ideal testimony that we would like to hear about five years down the road into our new church. The testimony I wrote came from an imaginary single parent with two kids. So this is basically how we dreamed we would reach and serve people with the love of Christ.
“My life is completely different than it was a year ago at this time. It all started when me and the boys moved into the West Side this past year and we were just dreading another move. We had hardly any help and it was just a really hard time in my life. But just when we started moving in a couple families from down the street came over and offered to help us move in out of the goodness of their heart. Then when we were done moving in another family from nearby brought dinner for us. What started out as a day that I was dreading turned out to be a wonderful day. That was just the start of a very weird month. I had a couple people stop by a few times to offer to pray for us, I thought it couldn’t hurt, so I let them pray for us. I told the people about my oldest boys reading problem and they got me to a tutoring program in the neighborhood community center. Then I would see all the people that had helped me gather once a week at house nearby, they were definitely weird people.
One day one of the families invited me and the boys over for dinner, so while there I asked them about the group that met together. They told me that they were like a Bible study group, but more. They told me that they studied the Bible together and prayed together, but they were also committed to taking care of each other as well as the neighbors that lived around them. Then that group was also apart of a larger church that met just a few blocks away. A few people who belonged to their church had even started the community center and tutoring program that my son goes to.
They asked me to go to church with them, I said “no”, but within a few weeks I was there. I loved it, the worship was wonderful, the people were all so caring and friendly, and the guy who spoke even kept me somewhat interested in what he had to say. If I wasn’t surprised enough that I liked it, go figure, my boys couldn’t wait to go back the next week. Within a month I gave my life to Jesus Christ and my life hasn’t been the same since.
About a month after that I joined the home group that took care of me when I first moved in and let me tell you they have been wonderful. They’ve not only taught me what it means to be a Christian, but they also have been the family to me that I’ve never had. And just last month I’ve started volunteering at the community center that people in the church run, I figured I needed to start giving back. It has been the most wonderful year of my life and I can’t wait for someone new to move in the neighborhood so I can help them move in.”
And then in a letter I wrote to our entire neighborhood introducing our church to the neighborhood written and put on every door about a week before we started I found this paragraph:
“One of the main goals of this church is to be a neighborhood church for the people and community in the West Side neighborhood of Mount Vernon. When we say we want to be a neighborhood church we mean that we want to be a part of this neighborhood in every aspect. Almost everything we do will be focused in and around this neighborhood. Most importantly we want to serve this neighborhood. I realize all of that is easy to say, but my prayer is that we would be able to live up to those goals."
I read all those quotes to make a point. We are here to reach and serve this neighborhood with the love of Christ. We didn’t start this church to be the fourth option for Nazarenes when picking a church to go to on Sunday morning. We didn’t start this church to be the next cool church in town. We started this church to reach and serve this neighborhood with the love of Christ.
And our plan to reach and serve this neighborhood had absolutely nothing to do with ministering from a distance. We wanted to be a part of this neighborhood in every way. To cast our lot with the people who live here. To actually live here and be known by our neighbors and to know our neighbors. To be a visible, tangible, touchable, ever present, representation of the Body of Christ. To be salt and light here in the West End. To be the city on a Hill that cannot be hidden.
To be honest I think we have lost that focus or at least I have. I think I have been more worried about growing a church on Sunday mornings, than a church that lives, breathes, and witnesses here seven days a week. I realized about two weeks ago that I was just content to have a big crowd sitting here on Sunday mornings filling the pews (or chairs?) and filling the offering plates. That would be ok if we thought the way we were going to reach this neighborhood was going to be by a Sunday morning service, but I don’t think we are going to have a chance doing it that way. We thought the only chance we had since before we ever started this church was to incarnate the Body of Christ into this neighborhood.
After Jesus incarnated Himself John tells us that they were able to see His glory and His grace and His truth and also that He was from the father. When we live here together in this neighborhood I wonder if our neighbors will then be able to see God’s glory as His body is present, if they will be able to feel His grace because we freely give it, if they will be able to understand His truth because we live it, and if they will know we belong to the Father because we act like His Children as we live together in His family.
When Mandy and I first toured all the Nazarene Churches recruiting people to come and help us we said we were going to make one of the requirements for membership in our church, whenever we started taking members and we still haven’t, that you either had to live in this neighborhood or be a part of it in a meaningful way at least once a week in addition to Sunday morning. And the emphasis was always supposed to be on moving into the neighborhood and the part about being involved in the neighborhood weekly was added for those people who really couldn’t move here. Those requirements, even though we haven’t taken members yet, has been so watered down by me over the years as I became happy to just have a growing congregation on Sunday mornings. I apologize to you for that. I apologize especially to those who have been coming here for a while now and never heard that we were committed to this way of reaching out and living life together. I apologize for not holding us to the vision I believe God gave us.
But that is who I believed we are called to be as West Side Church of the Nazarene. A church and a people that are incarnated in this neighborhood. And I realize we can all live in this neighborhood and still be as separate and distant as if we all drove forty five minutes to come to church here. We can all be so busy with life that we forget about each other and this neighborhood and just think that Sunday will be good enough. I don’t say that judgingly, because I know I have done that myself. So even if we all move in here we would have to realize that is just the first step.
I realize I am asking a lot when I say things like this because I know how much it can cost us. Nobody grows up dreaming that one day they will be able to live in the West End. We dream of comfort and luxury. But I also know the dreams of the Kingdom of God our so counter every dream this world puts in our head.
I invite you today to consider moving into the West End of Mount Vernon so that together we can reach and serve the people of this neighborhood with the love of Christ.