What on earth are we doing here?

(The following are some highlights of the message that was preached on June 21, 2020.)

TEXT: Ephesians 4:11-16

11So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

As you know, a lot of fun events and gatherings have been cancelled because of the coronavirus pandemic. But it turns out that my kids are still going to have their school camp this year. So that’s good news.

Of course, they call it a camp, but it’s not really a camp. I mean, they all stay in cabins with soft mattresses and they have a kitchen and running water, toilets and showers. It’s more like a luxury hotel than a camp.

I mean, when I was a kid, things were much tougher. When we had our school camp, we were all put into small groups of 10. There was one teacher and one guide with us, and we were dropped off in the middle of nowhere, up a mountain, or along a river. We were dropped off at point A, and then we had 5 days to make it to point B, where we would be picked up. We had to carry all our food, clothes, tent, water, on our backs.

But it was even tougher than that. Because the guide wouldn’t actually tell us where to go. He had a compass, and a map, and he gave that to one of us, and said, “OK. Off you go.” And he walked at the back of the group, following whoever was at the front.

We would all have a turn at leading the group. But there were some kids who were worse than others, and they always got everybody lost. Do you know what they’d do?

They’d look at the compass, then look at the map, then look up, and say, “Right. We need to go this way.” Then, they’d put their map and compass in their pocket and walk for the next two hours. Of course, when you’re not checking your map and you’re not looking at your compass, you drift this way and that way, and you end up someplace where you don’t want to be.

Now you see, we here at Nagoya Union Church, we’re in a group, journeying together. And if we don’t keep checking what we’re doing, if we don’t keep looking where we’re going, we’ll end up in a place where we are not supposed to be.

This whole coronavirus pandemic has provided a great opportunity for each of us to reflect, and to think, and to examine what it is we’re actually doing with our lives.

Do you know how you can be a wise person? It’s not that difficult. If you want to be a truly wise person, you don’t need a PhD, you don’t need to read a mountain of books, you don’t need to pass any tests. If you want to be a wise person, here is what you do … Proverbs 14.

“The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways.” (14:8)

If you want to be a wise person, think about your ways. The way you live, the way you speak, the way you work, the way you watch TV. You need to be thinking about these things in every aspect of your own life.

Think about what you’re doing with your life. Think carefully. That’s all it takes to be wise.

And one thing that we really need to think carefully about is the way that we do church. So, just like a person hiking in a mountain needs to take his eyes off the mountains and trees for a moment and turn his eyes to his map … As a church, today I want us to turn our eyes to the Lord, and check where we are and what we’re doing.

In other words, I want us to evaluate our church.

So, before we start to talk about how our church is doing, we need to make our evaluation criteria clear. 

1) How should we evaluate a church?

When I was just out of university, I had a very clear set of criteria for a good church. It needed to have a live worship band, with drums and electric guitar and bass, and they needed to play modern rock and pop worship songs.

It needed a pastor that had a pony tail, and who was cool and told lots of funny stories. And there needed to be at least 300 people, with TV screens and loud speakers in the room.

I’ve changed a lot since then.

So, how should we evaluate our church now?

Well, it can all boil down to one essential question. Here it is:

Are we doing what the Lord wants us to do?

It’s that simple.

You know that the Lord has brought us together for a purpose. It wasn’t just random. The Lord builds his church. You might think that you came here by accident … Someone invited you, you saw our Facebook page or our website, you didn't have anything else to do on Sunday afternoon, so you just dropped by here, and then decided to come back.

But it was not an accident. The Lord called you here. The Lord called all of us here, together, to make this church. Because the Lord has something for us to do together, that we can’t do alone.

So, the question again: Are we doing what the Lord wants us to do?

Very often, we fall into the trap of not asking this question. Instead, we evaluate a church based on the standards of the world. The world’s standards are all about size and influence and power. So you see a church that has 5,000 members, it has podcasts and it puts out worship CDs, it has T-shirts with the name of the church on it … And you think, Wow, that must be an awesome church. God must really be blessing that church.

And perhaps it is a good church. But only if they are doing what the Lord has told them to do.

You see, God’s standard of success is very different from the standards of the world. You know the prophet Jeremiah. God called him, and told him to go and speak to his people. But God told Jeremiah that people wouldn’t listen to him, that they would hate him, and they’d want to kill him.

And that’s exactly what happened.

The same thing with Amos. God told Amos to leave his home in Judah and go to Israel and speak the words of the Lord, but no one would listen to him or believe his message.

Even Jesus. When Jesus hung on the cross, there was only a small handful of followers there with him. On the day of Pentecost, there was only about 120 people. So, after three years of doing miracles and preaching and working for the Lord, he only had 120 followers. In the eyes of the world, that is not a successful ministry.

So we must not evaluate churches on size, or numbers, or social impact, or other external criteria. Here is the basic question:

Are we doing what the Lord wants us to do?

To answer this question, a good place to start is the Letter to the Ephesians. We’ve been studying this together for a while now, but this letter is all about being church. And one passage that is particularly helpful is in chapter 4.

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

This passage is jam-packed with amazing truths. But let’s just focus on two very important things. According to this passage, in a healthy and successful church, two things are happening:

1) God is working in you

2) God is working through you

May the Lord continue to shape and mold our church into a place where His Holy Spirit is working within us to make us more like Christ; and where His Holy Spirit is working through us, to shine the love and truth of Christ to those around us.