029. Friendship Evangelism

Good morning my wonderful brothers and sisters.  Thank you for giving me the privilege of being able to speak to you this morning.

I am not known for preaching what is called a popular gospel, but, nor was it ever said of Jesus, so I feel I’m in good hands.

Every time I stand up here, I have a special purpose – to challenge each one of us – me included, to follow God’s Word more closely and to encourage all of us to develop a closer relationship with Jesus and our wonderful heavenly Father.  -------

-------  Do you remember the old movie called …

PP     Field of Dreams  -  (the saying was …)

PP  “If you build the field, the players will come.” 

That could also mean “Build a church and the players will come!!”

The church, the car parks, the prayer garden, the pews and the pulpit may bring the people, BUT, they may not stay – why?

BECAUSE there’s another saying :_  

PP   “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”

When potential visitors drive past this church, some of them will not drive in because there’s a barrier in front of them – a black, high, formidable fence.

It’s not the only church in the area with a high fence.  There are others.

Compared to a church with an open front, what sort of message does a high fence outside a church say to you?

A fence often speaks a silent message of its own – It may say, “Keep out – you are not welcome here!”   -------  I’ll give you an example.

I was born into what many people called the Exclusive Brethren church.

That church didn’t always have a high fence.  It had no fence, and it even had an ‘ALL WELCOME’ sign on the front of the building.

Finally, they built a high fence around it, and, removed the ‘ALL WELCOME ‘ sign.      They were certainly being ‘exclusive’.    ------

----   If the gate here is open, and a visitor does make the decision to drive into the church parking lot, …

PP1   Will they be made welcome in the car park?  

PP2   Will they be made welcome in the foyer?  

PP3   Will they be made welcome in the service?  

PP4   Will they be made welcome after the service?  (and finally)

PP5   Will they be made welcome during the week?

Yes, also during the week – by a caring phone call, a visit, a prayer, a loaf of freshly made bread, a Bible text, a meal.

All of those things on the screen will help these visitors decide whether to come back, or, feeling that they were not really welcome, that they may never return, and that they may tell others never to visit also.

PP    Friends, we never get a second chance to make a first impression.   

---------    Today, our message is titled...

PP    FRIENDSHIP EVANGELISM 

Now ‘evangelism’ is a word we often use isn’t it?  

For Christians, it simply means -- sharing the good news about Jesus Christ.

------You’ve probably heard about tele evangelists and big church evangelistic meetings, but today we’re going to talk about what I believe is more like the method of evangelism Jesus and His disciples used – Friendship Evangelism.

On your way in today you were handed some pens and paper.  If you didn’t get one, could you please put your hand up and we’ll get one to you straight away.

Throughout the message today, I’d like to invite you to write down a few ideas of ways that you could personally show friendship to people, and maybe  even invite them to come along to church to hear the good news about Jesus. ---- 

I’m going to suggest that it’s not so much a church building that will attract non-Christians to come.  It’s not the church building that will encourage non-Christians to stay – but it’s the friendship and care that will do it.  -----

-----  You know, many churches today are not growing!  WHY?   Well here’s a clue.  It’s a statement from a book I read ...

PP     “If we would humble ourselves before God – 

and be kind - and courteous - and tender hearted - and pitiful, there would be one hundred conversions to God’s truth 

where now there is only one.”

So we’ll put this up on the screen.

PP    Friendship Evangelism

I have the opportunity to speak to many church leaders from many denominations.  Most of their churches are not growing.  They’re reducing in numbers.

PP    (And)   I believe the key to church growth is Friendship Evangelism.  

They tell me they are already doing that but they’re still not growing.     

-----    I want to ask you a question.  I have this little food bar here.  It’s called a …

PP   

Honey and Peanut Bar

(It has an ingredients list which says)

Honey 69%    (and)

Peanuts 31%.

Is the first thing listed the largest or smallest ingredient?

Honey and Peanut bar.  Well, it’s the largest of course.  The law says you’ve got to put the biggest ingredient first and the smallest ingredient last.

If you break that law, you could finish up in the courts, or even in jail for dishonest advertising, dishonest labelling.

Well, this is where many churches go wrong.  They think they’re doing ‘Friendship Evangelism’ but they’re actually doing ‘Evangelism Friendship’.

They’ve got it back to front….

PP     10% Friendship   (and)    Evangelism 90% 

So up on the screen here we’ve got ….

PP1     Friendship Evangelism

PP2     (Now,)    10% Friendship    (and)    90% Evangelism 

is not Friendship Evangelism.  It’s Evangelism Friendship, because remember, in honest advertising, the largest ingredient has got to come first hasn’t it?

Maybe we should turn those percentages around the other way and make it …

PP3    90% Friendship   (and)   10% Evangelism

if we’re going to honestly call it Friendship Evangelism. --------

-------   Now I’d like to explain what is meant by ‘Friendship Evangelism’.

In the community there are...

PP4      DYING CHURCHES     (and there are …)     

PP5      GROWING CHURCHES

The dying churches first want you to …

PP 6   BELIEVE    (believe what they believe)

and then second to…

PP7    BEHAVE     (behave the way they want you to behave)

and if you get these two things right, then third, they’ll consider letting you …

PP8    BELONG.

Believe, behave, belong in that order. -------

Now the growing churches do exactly the same three things, but, in a different order.  First they want you to …

PP9    BELONG.  

And it’s funny that Jesus taught that too.  “Come just as you are and I will accept you.”

Instead of putting ‘belong’ last, the growing churches put ‘belong’ first.

It is a bit stressful for some of the church folk though.

-----  Then after we simply accept the new people, warts and all, then comes …

PP10     BELIEVE     

and finally, the person will begin to …

PP11    BEHAVE   (the way Jesus would like them to.)

Have you ever been in a church where they’ve got it back-to-front?  According to the principles of Jesus, it’s called a ‘dying church’.

Dying churches also have members who will offend a newcomer.  The first day you visit the church they’ll either ignore you or offend you.  Friendship is not at the top of their ingredients list.  If you don’t look right, smell right, talk right, think right, or dress right, they’ll ignore you or give you a lecture about what you’re doing wrong.---

“Don’t smoke outside the church.”

“Control your kids.”

“You need to bath more.”

A member of a dying church wouldn’t dream of giving a visitor a hug.  ------

------    Years ago Delphine and I went along to a church.  A lot of the regular members came along in suits and ties.  I wore shorts and JC’s (Jesus Christ shoes) – sandals, and a big beard.  Delphine wore a hippy style dress that you could see through too.

Some well-meaning lady in the church gave her a two piece pink suit that was completely out of fashion and much too big.  -----

The good news was that most of the church folk just helped us to BELONG.

Early in the piece some folk in the church invited us home for a meal, ---  that’s part of friendship evangelism.  And so, we were happy to go.

So we went along.  They had a little fibro house they were building themselves.  It didn’t have any paint on it yet, and inside there were no fibro walls, just the timber framework.  Very simple!

Now for lunch they served up only one thing, just potato scallops.  But we enjoyed their company, and their friendship, and we were having a good time.

Then it came dessert time, and guess what we had for dessert? – Potato scallops!

After lunch, they talked to us about the Bible, and we went on late into the afternoon.  They then asked us if we’d like to stay for tea at night, or dinner or whatever you call it.  And guess what we had for dinner?  You guessed it – Potato scallops!  And for dessert?   Potato scallops!

But you know, a good friendship developed and that’s what hospitality is all about.  It’s not so much about fancy tablecloths and fancy cutlery and fancy plates and glasses and fancy food.  NO! NO! NO! – it’ about Friendship.  That’s what hospitality is all about. 

And so the people in the church accepted us and were friendly to us and so we continued to go along.

So I’ll show you that quote again...

PP   “If we would humble ourselves before God 

- and be kind - and courteous - and tender-hearted - and pitiful, there would be one hundred conversions to God’s truth

 where now there is only one.”

-----     A wild looking ‘hippie’ walked into a church, headed towards the front and sat down cross-legged on the floor in the centre aisle.  What happened next?

A church elder got up out of his seat, headed to the centre aisle and down to the front he went. ----  You know what’s going to happen next, don’t you?  😊 Or do you?  ---- 

(Ray go forward ready to shake his hand)

He put his hand out, and said ‘Welcome to the --- Burpengary Church’, (or whatever it was called) and sat down beside him for the rest of the service.  -----

Friends, that is friendship evangelism! ------

PP     Do church members GENUINELY want genuine church growth?  Many don’t because it’s a bit stressful having people in our churches who are a bit different from us.  They may not look right, or dress right, or talk right, or smell right!  ------  

------   When I say genuine church growth, I’m not talking about transferring a church member from one church in a denomination to another church of the same denomination.  That is only a re-allocation of the ‘saints’, in inverted commas! --- and sometimes they’re not saints, and aren’t going to be of any more help to the new church they’ve come to than the one they’ve just left.

When I talk about genuine church growth, I’m especially thinking about the ordinary folk who live in the community around here – many who are waiting to meet Jesus for the first time.  -------

-----   Many church members call themselves Christians but when it comes to their attitude to some visitors, they are not Christians – followers of Christ.  They would be just as happy if the newcomers weren’t there.

PP1    

 WHEN A VISITOR COMES TO THIS CHURCH, HE OR SHE IS ASKING:

PP2    “Will I return to this place? 

PP3     Am I wanted here? 

PP4     Is it a friendship church? 

PP5     Will I be included? 

PP6     Is this place for me? 

PP7     Do I feel comfortable here?

PP8     Are these my kind of people?  

PP9     Do I belong? 

PP10   And you and I friends have only got one shot at answering their questions.

There’s that saying again …

PP11    YOU NEVER GET A SECOND CHANCE TO MAKE A FIRST IMPRESSION.   

There’s another saying that …

PP12    “The first impression is the most important impression”. ---

---  An old friend of ours, Haydn Sargent, who helped me get off the grog years ago, was a Church of Christ pastor in Brisbane.  Before that, he was pastoring down in Sydney.  One of his church members would go out and teach the local toughs how to play football.  Haydn would go to watch the game and help the kids with other life issues.

He invited them to church and they came.  About six young fellas and their girls.  We knew them as bodgies and widgies in those days.  Haydn was preaching, and the kids shelled and ate peanuts all through the sermon, and dumped the shells all over the floor.

Haydn was happy they’d come, but an elder in the church was furious and told Haydn he was going to give them a talking to.

Haydn said, “It might be best not to.  You go home and I’ll fix it up.”  So the elder left and Haydn cleaned up the peanut shells and said nothing.

During the week he met them at football again and thanked them profusely for coming to church.  “We’d love to have you back again on Sunday, he said.

Later in the night he said casually, “When you come, could you bring an old bag or something to throw your peanut shells into – it’ll save me a bit of work later with the cleaning.” -----

-----  They were back.  ------   They shelled and ate peanuts right through the sermon.  When it was over Haydn went to the door to say goodnight to the people as they left.

The elder had gone to inspect the mess they’d left, but there wasn’t any mess.

As the teenagers filed past Haydn on their way home, they said they’d enjoyed the message.  One of them put his hands on his bulging pockets and said, “And we didn’t leave any shells on the floor tonight father.” ----

------   You know, Jesus mixed with the toughs in His day didn’t He?  Jesus touched the leper, and many other unloved people.  -----   But we say, “But I could catch it.” – not likely!  And I can have a bath when I get home, and my washing machine does wash dirty clothes if I give someone a hug.  ----

Why are we happy to give one person a hug and not another?  Because we’re not like Jesus.  Jesus said, “What I do – you do!”  -----

I read once that...

PP   “Christ’s methods alone will give true success in reaching the people.  The Saviour mingled with people as one who desired their good.  He showed His sympathy for them, ministered to their needs, and won their confidence.  Then he invited them, ‘follow Me’.”

------   I spoke to the pastor of another Community Church some time ago.  I asked him why his church attendance had slumped to half. He explained that some of the members decided to help out at a local drug rehabilitation centre and a number of the ex druggies came to church and they were made welcome.  Some of the church folk didn’t like them coming so the ‘holy club’ members left and went elsewhere.

I asked the pastor if he was going to continue to encourage the ex druggies to come to church.  He said, “I certainly am!” ----

----  Have you ever wanted to touch a little girl’s golden hair?  Of course!  Did you do it?  Yes!  It’s OK to touch a little girl’s hair isn’t it?

Some while ago, in that same church, a lonely, uncared-for, drug rehab person reached forward carefully in church and touched the hair of a little girl on the seat in front of him. ----   The pastor said that some church people didn’t like that.   ----

We all need to ask ourselves, “Are we ready to run a Jesus kind of church? or not?

That Community Church is beginning to grow again.  Ordinary Christians and non-Christians are warming to the work his church is doing and they’re willing to put their shoulder to the wheel and take the risk.  ------

------    When I was eighteen, I was fairly heavy into alcohol – had been for five years before that and I was in trouble with the grog.  From age thirteen, one of my jobs in the family, was to make the home brew beer.  And we all drank quite a bit of it.

I finished up walking into a church in Annerley, Brisbane.  It was the Church of Christ, and the pastor was Haydn Sargent who I mentioned before about the peanuts. -  Haydn Sargent and his wonderful wife Norma.

Haydn felt there was a need to care for young people.  He had insisted in those days that drugs were a problem in Brisbane, and the Minister for Health at the time, a fella called Tooth, said, “No, there’s no such problem.”

Well Haydn gave some of his church’s young people money, and they went to Fortitude Valley in Brisbane, and these young people came back with drugs that they’d bought on the streets.

Haydn proved that there was a problem with drugs in Brisbane at that time.  That was over fifty years ago.  And he decided he wanted to do something about it and so he talked to his church folk.

At the back of the church they had a room, room 4.  It was more used for storage and so forth – it was a spare room.  All the rooms down behind the church were numbered one, two, three, four, five, six and so forth.  And so he took room 4 and got businesses to sponsor carpet for the floor, stereo gear, a set-up for coffee and some bean bags and other furniture.

Well, young people would come at night to the church, to Room 4. -  druggies, people like me who were into alcohol and so forth and we would spend time there.  Some musos who played music, most of whom were also into drugs.  I remember one fella with his guitar, he’d store his marijuana inside the guitar.

So it was there that I quit the grog as Haydn would drop in and young people from the church would drop in to help folk who were just not the perfect people.  People who didn’t look right, smell right, dress right, and talk right and so forth.  ------

-----   Well, if it hadn’t been for Haydn and his wonderful wife Norma and those young people at the church, I reckon that today I would either be in the gutter, or six feet under.

Well, the older church people from that church found that they weren’t so keen after all to have druggies coming down to Room  4 at the back.  They weren’t so keen about bare footed druggies coming into church to listen to the message that Haydn was presenting there, or standing outside the church smoking.

Most of the church people weren’t so keen about that after a while, and so Haydn was as good as sacked.  He was kind of pushed out a bit and he finally went away from doing church pastoral work and got into radio and TV talkback programmes where he could continue helping people, and he was very good at it. ------

-----   Well, I read a short article titled, “If I were the devil…”  And here are a few snippets from that article...

PP1    “If I were the devil I’d get church members fighting with each other.  Any old topic would do – worship style, theology, dress standards. 

PP2   I’d cause them to spend all of their energy on church politics rather than church growth.”

The article went on to say,…

PP3     “If I were the devil I’d convince the church members that there was only one way to worship.  I’d make them think that any other form of worship, or order of service, or style, was of the devil.  

PP4    I’d have them focus on anything rather than on Christ and Friendship.”

------    Some church folk say that they belong to a fundamentalist church.  I didn’t know what that meant so I looked it up ….

PP     Fundamentalism – an extreme ego-centric ‘I am right and everyone else is wrong, in everything!’ attitude.   

I’ll say that again -  ‘Fundamentalism – an extreme ego-centric ‘I am right and everyone else is wrong, in everything!’ attitude.’ ----  

------   So as we look at the three B ‘s we put up earlier on the screen for the dead or dying church, Fundamentalism is like saying, you’ve got to believe the way I want you to believe, and behave the way I want you to behave, otherwise I won’t let you belong.    And of course they are the hallmarks of a dead or dying church.

-----    Well, let’s look at some ways to help our church to be a genuinely alive and GROWING CHURCH, by first looking at the opposites.

People were asked “How can we work for Satan (work for the devil) and put people off ever coming to church again?”

Listen to their answers.  Friends, I think I’ve been guilty of doing most of them. Here they are...   

PP    

Ignore people, criticise them, 

be a hypocrite, have a long face, 

be half dead because of lack of following good diet and exercise, have conflict of opinion, 

be no different from any other church, 

stick hard to our man-made traditions, 

be deluded into believing we are the ‘perfect’ church, 

be lifeless, loveless, 

Christless and legalistic.

-----   Not a bad list.  And churches all over the country are dying.  The remaining members say, “People move away from the area!”  Well, it’s an interesting statement but rarely true.  Most populations grow, bringing more people into an area than ever left it.  Church leaders and members never like to think that a reduction in church membership could be their fault.

Many churches have lost their God-given vision.  What does the Bible say in the book of Proverbs ch 29 v 18 ? ...

PP1    Proverbs 29:18   “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”  

I’ve got another quote like it …

PP2     “Where there is no vision, the people change parish.”

We need to show that we have a big vision, and people who have left other churches, and people from the community, will come to help in this church.  The community will get caught up in our vision and will come to help and enjoy being at the Burpengary Church.

If we have a big vision to grow the church and help people from the community to meet Jesus, how do we know the idea is from God?  

Answer...

PP     If an idea is from God, it will often be too big to do by ourselves.

Most of us spend our lives trying to avoid ideas that are so big that it takes God to complete them.

We are of little faith.

If it doesn’t appear to be impossible, then it’s probably not God’s idea.  ------

-------  I think I’ve said enough today. ------

-------    After listening to the message today, has God’s Spirit shown you some friendship ideas that you feel you could put into practice in your family or in the community? ---  Something you feel you could do to help other people to maybe come along to church, or come closer to Jesus and a life of peace and happiness?

Remember in the church bulletin last week, and this week, we asked you to please bring along some food so we could have lunch together and discuss some of your Friendship Evangelism ideas that could be put into practice in the local community here?

I do hope that you have written down one or two idea’s during the sermon today.

If you didn’t bring some lunch but would like to stay, then I think we’ll have plenty.  

As we put the ideas into practice through the coming weeks and months, may God richly bless each of us here today, and the people in our community, now and eternally.  ------

Now I don’t often have a hymn for us to sing at the end of my messages but today I’d like us all to stand and sing a very down to earth negro spiritual that the children love, and we should love too.  

 ‘This Little Light of Mine, I’m Gonna Let It Shine!’.  

Let’s see if we can sing it with great enthusiasm!

PP    

Friends, if you have been blessed and challenged by this message, 

       then please take time now to send it on to your friends. 

                               Thank you. 

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