When the Need is too Big

Verses 13 through 18.

If you don't have your Bible, you may use a pew Bible in front of you.

We would encourage you to do that, and that would be on page 822 of the Pew Bible.

So that's Matthew 16.

And we'll begin reading in verse 13.

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked the disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is?

And they said, Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

He said to them, But who do you say that I am?

Simon Peter replied, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon Bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Here ends the reading of God's word.

Well, this morning we have a uh a privilege and uh uh a blessing to be able to have with us uh Steve Spellman, and Steve and his wife Liz.

Uh they have served as missionaries with Reach Global since 1989.

He's the uh Reach Global regional leader for Brazil and Haiti.

And for over 20 years, they've served in uh the city of Rio de Janeiro, helping to plant churches and mentor leaders in that city.

And uh Steve and Liz currently serve as the as the city team leaders for Reach Global's emerging work in Haiti, where Steve oversees international staff and gives direction to local partnerships of the EFCA, Reach Global.

Um and in Brazil, he develops leads and mentors and coaches church planters throughout the country.

They have three grown daughters.

So would you please welcome uh Steve here today?

Uh it is a pleasure to be here today.

Uh and probably be a little bit bigger pleasure if it was 70 degrees outside.

Um I told the group last night I was here for a banquet for an agricultural group that works in Haiti, and I said, this is my second time in North Dakota.

First time was about five years ago.

I was in North Dakota for six hours and it was 10 below zero.

I came back this time, I'm here for two days, and it's 20 below zero.

We're going the wrong way.

And the problem is either North Dakota or it's me.

And it can't be North Dakota, so my guess is when I leave this afternoon, by tomorrow it'll be 70 degrees and sunny, and all of this will be gone.

Has to be because that's probably the truth.

Anyway, it is really a privilege to be here.

Uh is a joy, truly.

Can you shoot the first slide up there?

That's home.

You know the city?

Rio de Janeiro.

If you look up, I don't know if you've seen this site before, the big hill in the distance there, that's sugarloaf, because it looks like a mound of sugar, and there's a cable car that goes up there.

I've probably been up there more than a hundred times.

Uh the Christ statue there in the foreground.

This kind of looks like Grand Forks in the summer, doesn't it?

Maybe turning it.

No, not so much that way.

Um, for 25 years, we've been missionaries with Reach Global.

Uh, we moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1989.

Uh, have three daughters, all of them were born there, and just love the city.

Love it uh like you can't even imagine.

Uh we're not we're not there anymore, we're in a different city in Brazil, but that was home for us for over 20 years.

Go to the next slide.

And if you were in Rio de Janeiro today, right now, the middle of summer, which there it is, summer, on the beach, you and some of your friends would be together and it would look like this.

Beaches of Rio de Janeiro, somewhere between two and three million people on the beach on a Saturday or Sunday.

And if you can imagine what it's like standing there, imagine driving to get to some of those beaches and how crazy it is.

But believe it or not, I miss that.

Not out, we're not out there almost ever, but uh the city I just love to death.

Next slide.

If I was to try to put into words 20 years of ministry in Rio de Janeiro, how would I describe it?

I thought about that question this week.

And I think I'd say it this way.

I never thought you could love a place or a people or a ministry as much as we did.

Just loved Rio de Janeiro, loved the ministry.

We're involved in church planting and coaching pastors and stuff.

Up in the upper left-hand corner there, you can see that was one of our funnest moments, baptizing three generations.

A son and his mom and grandmother all being baptized on the same day.

Up in the upper right, you've got Holly Weird.

We did an English camp every year.

Uh at times we had over 250, 300 young people out at a camp for a week where an American church would come down and literally, literally create the United States in the middle of Brazil.

And that would mean Captain Crunch for Breakfast, because that's America.

Um, uh Lucky Charms and stuff like that, American barbecue.

We teach them how to play baseball and stuff like that, but always sharing the gospel and uh saw many, many young people come to faith in Christ.

And there in the bottom you've got um again one of the churches we worked with.

Go to the next slide.

We're back at the beach.

It's nice.

I have to say it, man.

I will be back there next week.

So today we don't live in Rio anymore.

Um we live about 800 miles south.

Next picture.

You see a theme here.

We're back near the beach, uh little city of Florianopolis.

Has anybody heard of that name before?

Florianopolis.

I imagine not because it's only 1,300,000 people.

It's just a little tiny town in Brazil.

And what we do now, instead of working just in Rio de Janeiro, where we were helping to plant churches and work with a few pastors, we now work both regionally and nationally up uh coaching and mentoring uh church planters, pastors, and partnerships and other stuff like that.

What happened though between Rio de Janeiro and Florianopolis?

We took about a year and a half where we came back to the States.

Uh the day we arrived was January 12th, 2010.

We came back to the States for what was supposed to be about 18 months, just kind of schooling, training, development in this area of church planting multiplication.

Again, we arrived on January 12, 2010.

Does that date ring a bell to anybody in the room?

One person?

January 12th, 2010.

The day we arrived in the United States, next slide, was the day of the Haiti earthquake.

4.53 in the afternoon, 7.0 earthquake hit.

And it was interesting because I was kind of out of it.

We had flown all night.

We had just left everything we had in Brazil.

We were coming to the States for a year and a half.

We were going to set up an apartment.

We arrived on the day of the earthquake.

We didn't even hear about it until the next day.

And then six days later, I was sitting in my apartment.

Um, my wife was actually at the grocery store.

You remember, our youngest daughter was still with us.

She was at school, and I was putting together a desk Monday after the earthquake, and I did a phone call.

And it's from our regional director, and he was in Haiti.

He says, Steve, and I go, Hey Brian, how are you doing?

I'm putting in together the desk here.

Stop talking, Steve.

I need to talk to you.

I'm in Haiti.

Oh, wow, what are you doing?

Well, we came here with our crisis response division.

And he said, Steve, I need you to come to Haiti.

I said, Whoa, I'm putting together a desk.

My wife's at the grocery store.

My daughter just started college.

We're trying, Steve, I need you in Haiti.

Well, Brian, I don't speak Creole.

You know, we're just, Steve, I need you in Haiti.

And when your boss says that with that tone, you kind of follow and do what he tells you to do.

So I said, okay, next week, Monday to Wednesday, I'm supposed to be at a conference in Chicago.

So I think on Thursday, he goes, Steve, you're not understanding me.

I need you in Haiti in 36 hours.

And I said, Brian, there's no flights going there.

I know.

What you need to do, you need to get to Fort Pierce, Florida.

You need to go to a hangar of MFI International, Missionary Flights International, and talk to Trudy and see if she can get you on a plane.

I said, How do I?

I don't care how you get there, you need to get there.

And by the way, I just put$15,000 into your bank account, pull it out in cash, bring that on you, and there's a pallet of medical equipment waiting for you at the hangar, at the MFI hangar with Trudy in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Yes, sir.

And so I found my way to Fort Pierce, Florida, and I go into the hangar and I find Trudy, miraculously.

I say, Trudy, my name is Steve Spellman.

I'm with Reach Global, and I'm evidently supposed to, you know, go to Haiti in the next couple days on a plane.

And she looks around and she goes, I've never heard of you or Reach Global, and there's like a hundred people here waiting and trying to do the same thing.

Because it was the only hangar and the only place that was getting flights into Haiti at the time.

All the commercial lines were down, but they were a missionary group and they had access to the airports.

And so there were CNN crews there, there were Fox New crews, there were all kinds of people there.

And I was one of hundreds of people trying to get to Haiti a week after the earthquake.

So Trudy says, I think I've got an opening a week from tomorrow.

And I said, Well, I'm supposed to get there tomorrow.

There's something.

Stand over there and wait, and I'll get back to you.

So I go stand in the back of the room and I'm going, This is just what am I doing?

And about 10 minutes later, she says, Come over here.

Another plane just became available.

Come here tomorrow.

Be here at six in the morning.

Sometime between six in the morning and six at night, we think we can get you to Haiti.

Okay, thanks, Trudy.

So I came the next day, go to the next slide, and I show up at the airport, and I see the pallet of medical stuff, and I've got the money on me and everything else, and I'm standing there with again hundreds of other people, and I look out, and this isn't the exact plane, but this was the kind of plane that they were flying into Haiti.

It's an old DC-3 prop plane, and you can see the wires there in the plane that flew.

They said, yeah, the duct tape is holding together some of the seats inside of it.

And they were so weighed down that they had to stop in the Bahamas on the way to Haiti.

It's only 800 miles, but they couldn't make it all the way to Haiti without stopping in the middle.

So what they did is that literally, I'm just standing in the corner of the hangar, feeling totally out of my league, and they would just go down the list.

Jones, Smith, uh, Johnson, you're on the next plane, go.

And literally, you would run out to the plane, get on as fast as you could, because they were just running planes back and forth all day long.

So this was the main plane that was going back and forth, but at that time, different groups had donated their planes.

I don't know if you remember that.

Hendrick Racing and Joe Gibbs racing had donated their planes.

So almost everybody's flying into Haiti on an old DC three, and then he reads off the list uh Johnson, Smith, Spelman, you're on the next plane, get out there.

Here's the plane I flew into Haiti on.

Brand new Gulf Stream floor for corporate jet inside leather seats, eight seats.

I that's how I flew into Haiti.

A private steward waiting on us, the eight of us on the plane.

And it was so comical because he's on there and they were all involved in what was trying to happen.

And he said, Okay, in the back of the plane, there's nuts and pretzels and coke and everything else.

Please fill your pockets, stuff everything you can, and take it, because I mean it's just gonna go to the corporate vice president.

We'd rather have you take it into Haiti with you.

So I arrived in Haiti and it was kind of comical.

So we land in this thing and I get off, and my area director who would want me to come, he said, when he saw it pull up, he goes, I am so sick of these, you know, fancy people flying in and they're corporate jets to try to take over from what we're trying to do.

And I walk off the plane and he just started laughing at me.

So within minutes of walking off that plane, here's what I walked into.

Uh these photos, uh, a couple of them were taken by me, a couple by friends.

Uh, this is what it looked like those first couple weeks.

It was just unbelievable in the disaster and everything else.

Next slide.

Two million people homeless.

Uh Haiti has nine million people that live on the island.

Uh, city of Port-au-Prince is about three million, so two million people homeless.

And they were homeless for a long time, and they wanted to be.

Because the least safe place to be in Haiti was under a roof after the earthquake.

So two million people for weeks literally uh sleeping in squares and under tents and stuff like that.

Uh, next slide.

85% of the buildings damaged in Port-au-Prince.

That means 280,000 buildings were damaged at the time.

Next slide.

This building, actually, that's our vehicle right down here.

I can't even point at it, and one of our team members in it.

You see any problem structurally with that building?

How do you think they took it down?

Because we're talking Haiti.

A couple guys went up to the top story with a hammer and chisel.

It began to bring it down, and it took them a few months, but they brought it down from the top down.

Two guys with a hammer and chisel.

That's how they brought it down.

Next slide.

This is what the beautiful National Cathedral looked like before.

Next slide.

This is what it looked like afterward.

Presidential Palace.

Next slide.

Look like this.

Take a note of what you see there.

There's kind of a basement floor and then two floors and then the dome.

So two and a half floors plus the dome after the earthquake.

What they said was a pancake effect because all of the roofs were just concrete, so it just came like this.

So instead of two and a half floors and a dome, you've got one and a half floors.

An entire floor just fell down like that.

Next slide.

The impression I had was it's just too big.

I mean, I'd never walked into a situation of that magnitude, and just the unbelievable, the death and the smells and the destruction, and it was just it's too big.

And you kind of have this feeling of what can I do?

I mean, what can we do?

There's nothing that any of us could do.

Next slide.

And so probably it's like what really needs to happen is the people that need to step up, this has to be something for the UN, for governments, for anything else.

Again, 85% of the buildings is damaged, 285,000 victims, two million homeless.

The world came to Haiti, and the UN and the Clinton Foundation and everybody else promised we're gonna build back better.

The world's gonna come to Haiti and we're gonna take over.

You can count on us.

Next slide.

Over$14 billion was pledged to rebuild Haiti.

There you see foodstuffs on the Red Cross, Red Cross, and the Red Crescent.

Next slide.

And so then what you have is you have MINISTER, which is the UN group in Haiti, and you've got the UN presence for 20 years.

And we had a plan to rebuild Haiti 30 years ago, and there's over 10,000 NGOs.

NGO is short for non-government organization, includes the UN, the Red Cross, CARE, UNICEF, US, all these groups that are in Haiti.

Imagine that little part of an island.

There's 10,000 groups working there.

If you're trying to figure out the size, imagine a place about the size of South Carolina.

Imagine 10,000 groups in South Carolina trying to build and change South Carolina.

More mission dollars spent per capita in Haiti, anywhere else in the world, more NGOs per capita than anywhere in the world, political and economic plans and strategies and embargoes and all kinds of stuff.

The world has gone to Haiti.

The world has tried to take over Haiti over the last 20 years because of the enormity of the problems.

And yet two years ago, so two years after the earthquake, it says at the bottom Haiti was ranked as the poorest country in the world.

Something's not working with all of the money and efforts in the world coming to Haiti, and it was still the poorest country in the world.

Next slide.

Beyond that, um, you can go to the next slide as well.

Beyond that, there's some things that are just wrong.

What this is, is this I think this is my first full day in the country after flying in, and we had drove uh driven out and uh we were at a dump, a dump outside of Port-au-Prince where 120 people lived.

And this is a UN truck that pulled up to feed people at a dump, this 120 people who live there.

And all they literally were doing is they were taking boxes of food and they were throwing it on the ground, and there you see people trying to climb onto the truck to get more food.

This is how they were feeding them at the time.

And what to make matters worse, we saw what they were throwing down, and they were boxes of food, but what they were, they were boxes of cans of corn.

Not self-opening cans, and nobody had can openers, they were just throwing boxes of cans of corn at people living in a dump.

Again, it's just what it does to your mind.

Next picture.

At that dump, uh, we met this lady who had given birth to her child two months before in the dump outside of Haiti and who had lived through the earthquake.

Next slide.

This is one of the hardest uh images I had in moments.

Um what you see behind those three people, there's an orphanage.

It was the orphanage that lost more kids than any other one in Haiti.

That's still a partner of ours to this day.

140 kids lived in that orphanage, and 60 died on that day, again when the building just pancaked down on top.

Next slide.

It's it's just too big.

And when I was there, you know, I've had years overseas and stuff, it just the call is too big, the needs are too big, the cost is too big, the mess is too big, the problems are too big, and who am I, who are we, to be able to do anything about it.

And then switching all the way just away from Haiti for a second, next slide.

Take a different country totally, Pakistan.

It says 97% unreached.

That's not 97% not uh aren't Christians.

They're unreached.

They don't even have a church or a missionary that they have access to.

So there's places in the world where again less than 1% evangelical, and there's parts of that country where they've never heard the name of Jesus in a true Christian message.

Next slide.

It's too big.

The needs and the mess and the problems and the enormity and all these kind of things, and we've sent the UN on them, and Bill Clinton and his foundation have tried to do it.

Beyond that, you've got wars and terrorism, injustice, poverty, corruption, human trafficking, spiritual apathy, hopelessness.

It's just too big.

And a lot of times I think what we tend to do is in light of all of that, we do nothing.

What can I do?

Who am I?

If Clinton and the UN initiative can't do anything, if the governments can't do anything, if we put$14 billion into it and it didn't help at all, who am I?

It's just too big and I can't do anything.

And allow me to quote from a modern American philosopher as he goes deeper into the problem before us.

An American philosopher wrote the following next slide.

We are heading for a dead end, a numbing of the soul, a complete atrophy of the spiritual being.

The reporter then asked this man, so what do you think should happen?

Hey man, I don't have those answers yet.

The emphasis now is on success and personal gain.

And I'm sitting in it, and I'm telling you, that's not it.

I'm the guy who's got everything.

I know.

But I'm telling you, once you have everything, then you're just left with yourself.

Did you hear that?

Once you have, once you get everything, then you're just left with yourself.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.

It doesn't help you sleep any better.

You don't wake up any better because of it.

Now, no one's going to want to hear that.

I understand it.

And I'm sorry that I've got to be the one to say it.

Any guesses who this American philosopher is who said he has everything, he's arrived.

I'm the one who's got everything, and when you have everything, you're just left with yourself.

The name of this philosopher is Brad Pitt.

Almost just as good.

So wait a minute.

Brad Pitt, I mean, he's got he had Jennifer Aniston and now Angeline Jolene, he's got everything, and he's famous, and he, wherever he goes, he's got money, and people with no problems still note the problem before them.

In search of a solution, uh, let me start in kind of a strange place.

I'm gonna start with an atheist.

I mentioned this person last night.

So there's an atheist, uh, he was a researcher, and he went to Africa for a few years to study NGOs, mission organizations, the church, um, government, to try to find out who was doing what in the aid field.

And here's what this atheist wrote at the end of a study of what he saw in Africa.

As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God.

It's a nice place to start if you're an atheist.

Now, a confirmed atheist, I've become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa.

Sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects, and international aid efforts, these alone, again, they're not bad in what they're doing.

These alone, though, will not do.

Education and training alone will not do.

In Africa, Christianity changes people's hearts.

It brings spiritual transformation, the rebirth is real, and a change is good.

Interesting, isn't it?

A man who he doesn't want Jesus, but he sees that Jesus, that Jesus has been brought to Africa, but is making a change that NGOs and money and all the other stuff isn't doing.

One more, this is a rabbi from uh London.

After the London riots of 2011, he wrote the following Aid divorced from the context of faith fails to deal with humanity's most basic problem.

Aid divorced from the context of faith fails to deal with the most basic problem.

Much can be much much can and must be done by governments, but they cannot of themselves change lives.

Governments can't make marriages, governments, NGOs can't turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens.

That needs another kind of change agent.

It needs religion, not as doctrine, but as a shaper of behavior, a tutor in morality, an ongoing seminar in self-restraint and pursuit of the common good.

And I can tell you from experience, um, and don't take offense at this, the UN isn't the solution.

I was there in Haiti seeing what the UN did in those first months, and they did some good, but the UN that is supposed to live for things like what happened in Haiti, they're not the solution.

Um, Brad Pitt has let us know that money is not the solution.

Brad Pitt is not the solution.

New government programs.

Aren't the solution?

Jesus Himself said that there was only one solution.

And before talking about the solution, let me just open up one more bit of this problem.

1 John 5.19 says, We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

Have you stopped to think about that verse?

The whole world is under the control of the evil one.

Yes, we have Jesus, and Jesus is doing incredible things, and Jesus is ultimately in control, but during this time, the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

John 10, 10, Jesus also says that Satan seeks to steal and kill and destroy.

So you've got Satan who is in control of this world, and he is using his control and his power to steal, kill, and destroy.

Not just steal things, that's part of it, but he wants to steal dignity.

He wants to steal worth.

He wants to steal life.

He wants to steal families.

He wants to kill our dreams.

He wants to kill our hopes.

He wants to kill the faith that we have.

He wants to destroy families.

He wants to destroy communities.

He wants to destroy nations.

Satan is has control of the world.

He seeks to steal and kill and destroy.

And then 1 Peter 5.8 goes on to say that your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

He has control.

His desire is to steal, kill, and destroy, and he is looking for those people he can do that to.

And I think one of our biggest problems today is that we are trying to deal with problems on this level with human answers.

Ultimately, there are spiritual problems that only God can solve.

Aid, divorced from the context of faith, fails to deal with humanity's most basic problems.

We have an enemy.

So the solution, now that I've depressed all of you, the solution.

Jesus does give us a solution, points us to a solution, and it's his solution.

Next verse or next slide.

And we read this this morning.

On this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

The gates of hell will not prevail against it.

What is it?

The church.

Sometimes there's confusion.

Well, you've got the rock and you've got church.

They're both the articles there.

Sometimes the Catholic Church has gone more toward the rock, but he says, I will build my church, and the gates of hell cannot, will not stand against the church.

The solution that God has given is not another aid group, it's not an NGO, it's not a program, it is the church.

And the church is God's only solution, his only plan for knocking down and defeating the very gates of hell.

What I want to do is just flush this out a little bit with you with several verses from the book of Acts, just kind of playing out what the church did in the book of Acts.

Jesus was here, instituted the church.

The church, again, meaning not a building, but it's the gathering of believers who are truly committed and have given their lives to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, coming together and working as one for his cause.

So that's my definition of the church.

So the church, then after Jesus left, I just want to point out a few of the things that the church did in the book of Acts.

So, next slide, we're gonna go fast.

In Antioch, a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord, and news of this reached the ears of the church in Jerusalem.

And what did they do?

They sent Paul and Barnabas.

So the church taking its role of sending people to help out in another place.

Next verse.

In the church in Antioch, there were prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon, Lucius, Manion, and Saul, while they, while the church was worshiping and fasting, the Holy Spirit said.

So the church is gathered together, doing what?

It's worshiping and it's fasting.

And while the church is doing that, the Holy Spirit spoke to who?

To the church.

So the church is gathered together, the church is sent now, the church was come together and is worshiping and fasting.

The Holy Spirit speaks to the church.

And what did the Holy Spirit say to the church?

Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.

Once again, the church, having heard from the Holy Spirit, sending people out.

Next.

So after the church had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands upon them.

And sometimes we think, okay, that's nice to place the hands upon it.

But in New Testament, in biblical theology, there is a conveying of, there's an anointing, there's a conveying of spiritual authority coming from the church on to Barnabas and Saul when they went out into missions.

Next verse.

And then they sent them off.

So once again they're sending.

Next verse.

From Ataliah, Paul and Barnabas sailed back to the church in Antioch, where they had been committed to the grace of God for the work they had completed.

So they had been anointed, they'd been sent, they'd been committed to the work.

They came back to the church.

Next verse.

On arriving there, they gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them, how God had opened the doors.

So again, they had gone as envoys from the church and came back to the church to tell the church what the church had done through them through the authority.

Next verse.

So Paul and Barnabas were appointed to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders, and the church again sent them on their way.

Next verse.

When the apostles and elders and the whole church, with then the apostles and elders and the whole church, decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas.

Again, the church doing its work of coming together and making decisions and reaching out.

Next.

With them, the apostles, elders, and the whole church, they sent the following letter.

There had been a conflict situation as the church came together, the church made a decision, and the church sent a letter with Paul and Barnabas to deal with the situation.

Next.

So what it is, it's interesting.

It doesn't seem like much, but there's little stuff and there's big stuff.

It's sending, it's encouraging, it's fasting, it's praying, it's anointing, it's conveying authority, it's deciding.

And somehow, some way in that stuff that may not seem like much, when it's empowered by Christ, the very gates of hell will not stand against it.

The church is to call, the church is to set apart, the church is to anoint, the church is to receive, the church is to encourage, the church is to give spiritual covering, the church is to provide spiritual authority, the church is to support, the church is to send, the church is to break down walls.

Next verse.

The church is God's idea, the church is God's plan, the church is God's instrument, the church carries God's blessing, the church is God's envoy, the church is God's people.

And when the church, as the church, doing the work of the church, with the Holy Spirit's power in the church, lives out its calling as the church, the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

It referring specifically to the church.

And what's interesting is there is no plan B.

That's God's plan.

In the midst of all the problems we talked about and all the issues, that is God's one and only plan.

He came and saved the world, but then left behind the church, his church, his body of believers, to deal with the big problems, the big needs, the big challenge of this world.

That's his solution and his only solution.

And yet, when we look around the world at the church, and even here locally, we may not seem like much.

We don't have the money of the UN or the power of a government or the clout of a president.

But again, let me hearken back to the words of an atheist.

NGOs and government projects and international aid efforts alone will not do.

Education and training alone will not do.

In Africa, Christianity changes people's hearts.

Next slide.

So what?

I have a pastor friend down in Nebraska, and he ends every single sermon.

He's kind of a cool guy, ends every single sermon by saying, okay, so what?

It's like that's nice.

It's a little, you know, theology on the church and ecclesiology, and that's really nice.

And maybe I've proved the point, maybe I haven't in your mind, but so what?

What difference does it mean for me, for you, today or tomorrow?

Let me just start by first posing two questions.

First of all, do you believe it?

Do you believe what Jesus said in Matthew 16?

The gates of hell will not stand against the church, both universal and local?

Do you believe that the church, the body of believers, those saved by faith coming together is God's only solution for the big and audacious problems of this world?

Yes or no?

Do you believe that the church is God's solution for the world?

If your response is no, I'm not sure, it's okay.

My challenge to you is the following Take your Bible and maybe the newspaper this week, or go on the internet because nobody uses a newspaper anymore, and hold those up this week and tell me and try to figure out what is the solution.

Our world's pretty messed up.

It needs solutions.

If it's not the church, okay, so I would challenge you this week to take some to take some time and figure out so what is the solution?

When Brad Pitt, atheists, New York Times reporters are saying NGOs aren't the solution, when$14 billion spent in four years in Haiti wasn't the solution, what is it?

So if the answer is no, please try to find it out for your own sake.

If your answer is yes, then there's a logical corollary.

If the church is the solution, are you invested in the solution?

Are you invested in the church?

Are you involved?

Are you giving?

Are you growing?

Are you an active part of, I'm not gonna say the church, are you an active part of the solution?

Because, again, the corollary is there's a huge problem.

Jesus has said the solution is the church.

Are you involved in the solution?

So the first is just a simple what-if question.

Uh, is it true or not that the church is the solution?

If so, yes or no for you.

Second question goes to the church.

And again, this is my first time here, so I could get in trouble for this, but oh well.

Um, is this church faith-free providing God-driven solutions for the needs here and around the world?

Uh let's be honest, the history of the church is replete with a lot of evils and bad stuff.

You know, last couple weeks, we uh weeks we've heard people on the media pointing fingers at the church, all the stuff the church did wrong during the Inquisition and other stuff like that.

Okay, fine, we get it.

But today we're looking at today's situation, today's problem, and today's solutions.

What is this local church?

And what are you in this local church doing to provide solutions if the church is the solution for the problems?

And now a kind of a comment for millennials, youngers, because a lot of them feel like they don't need the church, because we've gotten this idea that we can have God, we can serve church, we can please God and worship God apart from the church.

After all, we don't really need the church.

The church is too flawed, the church is too traditional, the church is too stodgy, the church is too whatever.

And yet the church is the very instrument, the only instrument that God has chosen to reach this world, and what Haiti, what Brazil, what the world needs is the powerful, spirit-filled, generous, sending, encouraging, giving, caring, disciple-making church.

We believe in that church.

We believe that the church is the solution that God has.

There's a story of uh up in the Northeast on a very particular rocky part of the coastline where there were a lot of boat accidents, a lot of people drowned up there.

And it was known as being this thing, and over the years, you know, hundreds of years ago, many people had died.

And there was a group that came together and they decided to do something about it.

So they bought a little boat and they were trained swimmers and they made it a point of finding out a way to communicate with boats that were in trouble.

And so, whenever a boat had trouble, they would let the people on shore know, and this group would come out there at launch point, was the name of the place.

At launch point, they would row out there and they would try to save these people.

And over the course of two or three years, they saved over 12 different people at launch point.

And it was really kind of cool because they became known in the city, and there was an article in the local paper, and a massive donation of money came in to help out this group of guys and gals at launch point that were helping out.

Well, what happened was is that they were able to use the money and buy a bigger boat, and they actually put up a building there at launch point to help them be warm when they were coming in after the storm.

So now they had a building at launch point and they had a better boat, and now what happened was their membership began to grow because they were well known.

Well, at the building now, every Friday afternoon and Friday evening, they told stories about the people who were saved at launch point.

And they had meetings where they came together and they began to have meals to come together, and then the problem was they had so many people who wanted to come in, they had to make some membership rules.

So they made some membership rules for launch point, and then because they had membership rules, they had to come up with bylaws and they had a board of directors and they came up with a budget, and you know where the story is going.

The way the story goes is 50 years past, and now you've got the Launch Point Country Club.

They've got a beautiful building, and it's on the long north shore.

That boat, it's still there.

It's in the 17th Fairway in the middle of the pond in the middle is a decoration point.

They haven't saved anyone in 20 years, but membership's up.

They got a great budget this year, and there's even extension going in on the clubhouse in the next couple years.

Launch point has never been so fashionable, more popular, more in.

But that's not what it was created to be.

My point there is not to point at the church, on the contrary.

My point is to point the finger back at the issue.

Because each church, each locale, each generation has to ask the question: are we launch point, that group of people risking their lives to be out there in the water saving people?

Or are we launch point at the fashionable country club?

And it doesn't matter what it was 100 years ago, it doesn't even matter what's happening on the other side of the world.

Are we as this launch point church all about risking lives or the other side?

Is your church, is your locale, is your generation being launch point the country club or launch point the mission?

And before before we point our fingers at the institution, yep, I yeah, that's the church, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let me turn it around.

Have you personally, have I personally, am I giving my efforts and my vision and my passion, am I risking my life for launch point to save lives?

Or am I using my efforts and vision and passion sometimes for launch point at the country club?

Or worse, I don't even know what's going on at launch point, don't really care, and I'm just here once in a while.

Let me close with uh two questions.

And I'd ask you either write these down or think about them, and then maybe at lunch today or at some time uh talk about them uh around the table.

First question.

If I could give my opinion, I would say that the church is fill in the blank.

You if I could give my opinion, I would say that the church is how would you finish that sentence?

Maybe it's okay, I'm convinced it's it's the solution.

Or maybe I'd say, no, the church is irrelevant, or the church is whatever.

But if I could give my opinion, I would say that the church is fill in the blank.

And the second question, now that we've judged the church, we're gonna let the church judge us.

If the church could give its opinion, the church would say that I am what?

It's easy to point fingers at the church and all the things the church should do, but again, the church is us.

And if the church is the solution, the question is if the leadership of this church or wherever local church you you uh congregate at, if the church could give its opinion, the church would say that I am.

I'm involved, I'm out there saving lives, I'm inconsistent, I don't know.

A couple interesting questions to just ask around the table.

What would you say the church is, and what would the church say about you?

Last slide.

Sometimes I'd like to ask God why he allows poverty, suffering, and justice when he could do something about it, but I'm afraid he would ask me and his church the same question.

Lord, I thank you for the church.

I thank you for the solution.

I thank you for Jesus who gave his very life for this church, and I pray that you would call us again to give our lives for this church and for the universal church.

Not as a building, not as a program, not as members, but because the world so desperately needs solutions and the one you have given.

In the name of Jesus, amen.