Much ink has been spilled in recent generations over how to grow the Church. A very definitive answer was given on the day of Pentecost. Peter preached the Word of God, the people were cut to the heart, and they asked, "Brothers, what shall we do?" Peter replied, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." Then, in the ESV translation of the Scriptures, Acts 2:41 reads, "So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls." There is such distance in this translation between the words "baptized" and "added," as if, perhaps, something else adds one to the Church. But here's a translation that keeps the word order much better without throwing in so much fluff: "Therefore those who received his word were baptized and were added in that day, about three thousand souls." In the original Greek there is one word between "were baptized" and "were added," the little word "and." The word "and" here shows that in one, singular event two things happened simultaneously: the people were baptized and the people were added to the Church. How do we grow the Church? We don't! Jesus does it, and he does it through Baptism.
My wife gave birth to our second daughter, Tabitha Olivet Richard, on Friday October 18th. She weighed 6 lbs. 5.5 oz. and was 19.5 ins. long. Yesterday, Sunday October 27th, Tabitha Olivet was baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and was added to the Church.
Yesterday we also celebrated the Festival of the Reformation. The sermon nicely reflects the theology and practice of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in regards to Church growth. The text of the sermon is printed below, or you may listen here:
Our Vict'ry Has Been Won.
Grace to you
and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
“God is our refuge and strength, a
very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the
earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the
sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at
its swelling.” Fear not. God is our refuge and strength. Jesus
is true to his word, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell
will not prevail against her.” Fear for the Church has no place in
the Church. But we give it place. We say, “Hello, Fear! Come in,
come in. Let me take your fedora and overcoat. Sit down, stay
awhile. Petrify us for no good reason. Help us forget the comfort
of God’s promises. Sip some tea with us and make us despair about
the future of the Church.”
In a strange sort of way the Church
likes fear. Fear is a powerful motivator. Fear makes people
desperate to do something. At the time of the Reformation the
papacy was trying to raise money to reconstruct St. Peter’s
basilica. To their credit that didn’t jump right to selling
popcorn or candy bars or selling marked up kitchen utensils out of a
catalogue. They came up with a very original fundraiser. You can
picture the planning meeting. “We need money.” “What for?”
“To reconstruct the basilica. The future of the Church depends on
it.” “How much money?” “A billion dollars.” “How are
we going to get a billion dollars?” “We could ask for it.”
“Ask for it? I can’t even get my coworkers to break a five so I
can get a Pepsi from the vending machine. And they’re going to
give us a billion dollars?” “We could ask nicely.”
“Nicely. There’s nothing ‘nice’ about this.”
“I’ve got a better idea. The
peasants are under the impression their dead relatives are stuck in
purgatory, waiting to enter heaven. Right?” “Right.” “They
pray for the souls of their relatives all the time. ‘God, I know
Uncle Bob was a real scoundrel, but please have mercy on his soul.’
These are desperate, fearful people looking for some comfort. Now
granted, we could give them the Gospel. But the Gospel doesn’t
make us any money. So how about we sell tickets out of
purgatory.” “I like it. I’ll talk to our graphic design
team, maybe marketing can come up with a catchy slogan. Oh, and
we’re going to need a real character to sell these things.” And
so John Tetzel went out selling the nicely designed indulgences
saying, “When a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory
springs.” In human terms – sinful, human terms – this was one
of the most successful marketing and fundraising campaigns that ever
happened. The peasants were so afraid that their loved ones were
suffering in purgatory (which doesn’t exist, by the way) that they
starved themselves in order to buy indulgences.
The church growth movement in American
Christianity is eerily similar to this. Church growth happens
because of an inspiring speaker who guilts people into sharing the
faith. It requires a real character, relies on catchy slogans and
sharply designed marketing tools, and it capitalizes on fear.
Certainty of salvation disappears and the “success” of the Church
is placed in human hands. People see dwindling numbers in the pews
and fear prompts them to ask, “What can we do different to bring
people in? How can we change to be more appealing? How can we grow
the Church?” And just as at the time of the Reformation, man
dethrones God and makes himself responsible for the future of the
Church. The worst part of it is, the papacy got the basilica
reconstructed, whereas the church growth movement has ended up
beating its head against the wall as the world only becomes
increasingly pagan.
Now this is a small congregation, and
fear tries to make himself a welcome guest. Are we ever going to get
into our space? Are we going to be self-sustaining by the time our
district funding runs out? Will this kid who looks like he’s
fifteen be able to get this congregation on its feet? How will we
increase our numbers? Will St. Silas succeed or will this fizzle out
and become nothing more than a painful memory? All of these fearful
questions lead us away from God and his promises and point us at
ourselves. And so you see who’s really behind them. Anything that
turns you away from the Word of God and makes you rely on yourself is
of the devil. When you ask these questions you don’t have God’s
words on your lips, but the devil’s words. Asking these
questions not only robs you of all hope and comfort but causes you to
commit idolatry and worship another god.
Into this fray of fear God speaks Psalm
46:10, “Be still and know that I am God.” “Be still” is a
very soothing phrase. It’s soft spoken and gentle. But in the
midst of this cacophany of blasphemous questions we don’t need a
God who says, “Umm... excuse me. Quiet please. Uh... I’m God.
Is anyone listening?” I want you to fully grasp these words so
they aren’t lost on us. And so I’ve prepared a special
translation for you of the first word in Psalm 46:10 so you can hear
the full force of the original Hebrew. Pay close attention. It goes
like this: “STOP!” It’s not soft spoken or soothing or gentle.
It is Almighty God telling you to get over yourself. You are not
God. The success of the Church is not in your hands. It is in God’s
hands. This word may be loud and it may be forceful – but it is
extremely comforting.
Back sometime in the 1520’s, while
the Reformation was going on and it was anyone’s guess whether the
reformers would live or be burned at the stake, Martin Luther wrote a
hymn based on Psalm 46. The second stanza goes like this: “With
might of ours can naught be done, soon were our loss effected; but
for us fights the valiant One, whom God himself elected. Ask ye, Who
is this? Jesus Christ it is, of Sabaoth Lord, and there’s none
other God; he holds the field forever.” While all the evidence
seemed to show that the Reformation would fail and the Gospel would
be crushed, while Luther wondered if he would be alive tomorrow, he
clung to Psalm 46.
Remember the refrain we spoke in verses
7 and 11 of the psalm, “The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of
Jacob is our fortress.” There is immense comfort in digesting this
refrain bit by bit. First we have “the Lord of hosts.” The
Hebrew word for hosts is “Sabaoth,” the word we sang in the hymn,
which makes about as much sense to us as the word “hosts.” The
words “Sabaoth” and “hosts” both mean “armies.” The Lord
of armies is with us. This is why there’s such a military flare in
the hymn “A Mighty Fortress.” Our God is the Lord of armies.
Now the Church can be very comforted picturing Jesus as the Good
Shepherd smiling tenderly with a sheep on his shoulders, or the
gentle Rabbi holding children in his arms. These are very scriptural
images and have been used to comfort the Church. But here’s
another scriptural image: Jesus wearing a helmet and breastplate
running the devil through with a sword. The Lord of armies is not a
namby-pamby God who lets the devil run roughshod over his Church. He
is the most brilliant military strategist, the strongest warrior. We
sang of the devil in our hymn, “on earth is not his equal,” but
then we sang in the very next stanza of Christ, “he holds the field
forever.”
So “the Lord of hosts.” What about
him? “The Lord of hosts is with us.” The phrase “with
us” is incredibly significant for the life of the Church. It’s
one of the names for Jesus: “they shall call his name Immanuel,
which means God with us.” That’s the phrase here in
Hebrew: “The Lord of hosts is immanu,” the Lord of hosts is with
us. The Lord of hosts didn’t stay locked away in the war room
planning the next attack, calling the shots from afar, communicating
with walkie talkies so he didn’t have to be in the heat of the
battle. No, the Lord of hosts is with us. Our God is Immanuel. He
became man, came into the devil’s kingdom, declared war on Satan,
and fought to the death.
And this brings us to the final phrase
of the refrain: “The God of Jacob is our fortress.” The word
translated as “fortress” literally means a lifted up place or a
place set on high, because fortresses were built on hilltops. It’s
much harder to attack a place when you have to come at it from below.
The upper ground has the advantage for defending the fortress and
attacking the enemy. Now in our psalm we confessed together, “the
God of Jacob is our fortress.” So either God is made out of stones
and has turrets and catapults or we have to look at this differently.
The Lord of armies came to wage a war. Immanuel came to be with us,
to fight on our behalf. And he made himself our fortress as
he waged that war.
Frankly it didn’t look like much.
His weapon was a cross. His armor was completely lacking. But he
dragged his weapon to the upper ground, Mount Golgotha, the place of
the skull. He made himself the lifted up place as he was hanged on
the cross. He made himself the place set on high as he was suspended
between heaven and earth. He made himself your fortress. He fought
the war while his disciples fled. He defeated the devil with no help
from anyone. He established his Church when his success seemed
completely impossible to human eyes. That is the paradox of the
cross, the paradox of our fortress. He doesn’t look like much, but
it was in that very moment of not looking like much that he
accomplished the most significant event in all of history: the
salvation of mankind. At the cross God’s voice bellowed to you,
“STOP! You can do nothing. But watch as I do everything.” The
cross set the tone for the life of the Church: Jesus is God. He will
build and preserve his Church without any help from you. You simply
take refuge in him and watch with delight as the devil is defeated.
In Psalm 46 we hear about the raging
waters of the devil and the world that roar and foam and swell. But
then in verse four we get our own water, “There is a river whose
streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most
High.” The devil’s raging water is no match for Christ’s
water. Just like the cross, it doesn’t look like much. I mean,
look at it, sitting there in the baptismal font. It doesn’t look
like enough water to take a bath, let alone save people from the
devil’s kingdom and transfer them to the kingdom of Christ. But
today you saw what God’s water can do.
Earlier this morning Tabitha Olivet
Richard was bound in the devil’s kingdom, a slave of
unrighteousness. But then Jesus baptized her in the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and he saved her from
all that. Have you ever wondered what it looks like when Jesus saves
someone? It looks like the event that happened at that font. And it
is a beautiful picture of the Church. Tabitha did nothing to
cooperate in her salvation, she did nothing to grow the Church, she
did nothing to help Christ. Jesus did it all. He died for her, he
baptized her, and he added her to his Church. However many saints
there were at 10:30 this morning, you can add one to that number.
And that plus one has nothing to do with us.
So let’s revisit some of our fearful
questions, shall we? Are we ever going to get into our space? Has
Christ been limited by this space? He has continually added to this
congregation during the span of our time here, and this morning in
this space he flat out saved someone. Are we going to be
self-sustaining by the time our district funding runs out? Christ
has taken care of us up to this point more than we would have asked
or imagined. He has kept us faithful to his Word, and from that
faithfulness he has blessed us immensely. If the devil hasn’t been
able to run us out of town yet I doubt an inanimate thing like money
will be able to. Will this kid who looks like he’s fifteen be able
to get this congregation on its feet? No. He won’t. Because it’s
not about having a great human leader or a real character. It’s
about Christ. He has given you an undershepherd so that you can hear
the voice of your Good Shepherd. It’s his voice that matters, and
you have been hearing it consistently. How will we increase our
numbers? I hope the answer is obvious by now. We won’t. Jesus
will. We will simply be faithful to his Word, and be still and know
that he is God. Will St. Silas succeed or will this fizzle out and
become nothing more than a painful memory? St. Silas has already
succeeded. “He’s by our side upon the plain with his good gifts
and Spirit. And take they our chairs, storefront, carpet squares,
though these all be gone, our vict’ry has been won; the kingdom
ours remaineth.” Amen.
The peace of God, which surpasses all
understanding, guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen.
In Christ
Pastor Andrew Richard
St. Silas Lutheran Church
www.stsilaslutheran.org
www.facebook.com/stsilaslutheran
stsilaslutheran@gmail.com
