This Is Not Your Dream Church

Hey everyone, this is Josh from Encounter Church

Henley and thanks so much for tuning into our

podcast. Our prayer is that through this podcast,

you can have an encounter with Jesus that'll

change your life. And now get ready for an inspiring

message from our preaching team. And it seems

like people have one of two experiences when

they do work experience. They say, yeah, you

know what? I'm actually done with school. I want

to do that. That was awesome. Or what I experienced,

which was dear Lord Jesus, I never want to go

near that profession with a 10 -foot pole again.

See, I love writing. I find that I can say what

I really mean with a written word. And I find

a logic and a structure and a beauty. in writing

that I do not find in just speaking. I write

my way into a better life. And I knew this as

a teenager, so I was like, why don't we try and

get paid to write for a living? That would be

amazing. That would be a dream job. And so I

did work experience as a journalist with a local

paper, because journalists get paid to write,

right? But it was a living hell. There was almost

no writing. There was just days of intruding

into people's lives, trying to get a story, interviewing

people in their homes so that we could write

some kind of boring piece about significant birthdays

in the community. And in the end, they just published

a piece I threw together in 15 minutes about

my friend Blake. The ideal that I had, the expectations

that I had, the dreams that I had of coming into

work experience, they were shattered by the reality.

of journalism. We find this in life, don't we?

We go into things with ideals, with what we think

they will be like, and they smash up against

the reality of that thing. See, everyone has

an ideal about marriage and what their marriage

will be like before their marriage. And then

a couple of years in the ideals that we had about

marriage smash up against the reality of your

spouse and your relationship. Everyone thinks

they'll be amazing parents before parenthood,

and then you're ideals of how you will parent.

They smash up against the reality of your children,

of sleep deprivation, and their uncanny ability

to know exactly what buttons to push to annoy

you. But I'm not talking about my kids of course,

they're absolute angels. As Pastor Tex loves

to say, the best parents in the world are people

who don't have kids yet. You know, sometimes

our ideals about what something should be like,

they fall short of what they are actually like

in reality. We're in a two -part series called

City to Beach, which is about the church. And

as a church here in Encounter Henley, we exist

so that every person from city to beach can have

an encounter with Jesus. And so for these next

two weeks, we're going to be looking at passages

from scripture that inform our understanding

of ourselves as a church from city to beach.

And you might want to take notes because I'm

going to be throwing a lot of you today. See,

in our teaching text today, which is Acts 2,

42 to 47, we see the early church in all its

glory. Jesus has ascended and as promised, sent

his spirit at Pentecost. And the church is born

and we see at the beginning the core pillars

of what makes this community new and different.

So this part of Acts 2, it describes the seven

core pillars of the early church and what we

see there. What we see is supernatural power.

There are miraculous signs and wonders done in

the name of Jesus. What we see is a common life

and family. They shared everything they had with

each other. They had a common life. They worshipped

together at the temple each day, worshipped with

a key pillar of their life. And they had an orthodoxy

as well. You see, the early church doesn't devote

itself just to anyone's teachings about Jesus.

It says they devoted themselves to the apostles

teaching about Jesus. They were devoted to an

orthodoxy, to a correct opinion. There was growth

each day. The Lord added to their fellowship

those who were being saved. There was justice.

They sold their possessions and they shared the

money with those who were in need. And what we

see in these seven pillars, behind everything

in this passage, there's this radical devotion

to Jesus. This wasn't easy or comfortable. This

really cost them something to become the church,

cost them their place in the community. So what

we see in this passage is what the church looked

like in its inception. This is the early church.

This is the church. This is what it's supposed

to look like. What we see in Acts 2 is the ideal.

So why does the church in history and today seem

so often to fall short of Acts 2, of that ideal?

Because the church we find in Acts 2 is not often

the full reality of the church today. And I'll

give you three reasons why that is. And there

are probably more. The first is this, that when

you have more people, you have more problems.

So when you read the rest of the New Testament,

what you realize is that so much of what's written

is actually to correct pastoral theological issues

in an early church. And we see this in the early

Church of Acts. As the church grows, the problems

grow, because the church is made up of people,

and sometimes people suck. Even though we're

redeemed people, even though we've been brought

into the kingdom of God from the kingdom of darkness,

even though we are people who are being made

to be like Christ, into the image of Christ,

even though we have been made new creations,

we struggle, don't we? We struggle. Christians

struggle. You and I, we struggle to live into

the life that God has made available to us. We

are what Michael Broughton calls, susceptible

saints. We are both set apart in Christ. We are

on our way. And we are also susceptible. We're

susceptible to outright stupidity, to sin, to

perpetuating evil. Part of the reason the church

doesn't look like it looks in Acts 2 is it's

bigger, it's global. But it's still to this day,

it's filled with susceptible saints and it always

will be. More people, more problems. The second

reason why the church doesn't always look like

the Aksu ideal today is that it's being wide

-ended. It's been eroded within by the ideological

frameworks we absorb from the culture that we

swim in. See, naturalism wide -ends the supernatural.

Naturalism is the pervasive cultural idea that

all that exists is what we can see, touch, and

cognitively understand by the laws of nature.

And this wide -ends the spiritual power available

to us as the Church through the Holy Spirit.

If Peter is wide -anted by naturalism, if Peter,

you know, agrees with naturalism, he doesn't

get out of the boat and walk on the water with

Jesus because he knows how the laws of nature

work. He can't walk on water. He would have missed

that moment. Naturalism wide -ants the supernatural.

And then our culture hyper -individualism wide

-ants the consents of common life and family.

See hyperindividualism, that idea that my life

is my own and should be totally autonomous and

that we have no obligation to family group or

culture, which is pervasive in our culture. It

warrants this sense of a shared common life of

the church as a family. So the church becomes

somewhere we go on Sunday, not an extension of

our family each and every day of the week. Want

to know how much you're being white handed by

individualism? Well, ask yourself this. Do you

see people outside of church on a Sunday or quote

unquote church sanctioned events? Do the people

of this church eat at your table? Do you eat

at theirs? Do they make themselves a cup of tea

without you having to wait for you to offer them?

Does someone from the church have a key to your

house? It might seem extreme, but If the answer

is no, like individualism is why ending the sense

of family and common life that we should have

and should exist within our church. Performance,

why ants worship? See, when worship becomes about

technical performance, about platforms, about

crowds, about the amount of plays a song we've

written gets on Spotify, it why ants the heart

of worship, which is towards the one who should

be worshipped and not the worshippers. We see

that ideology why ants orthodoxy You know that

when being devoted to the Apostles teachings

about the life teachings death and resurrection

of Jesus Which is our orthodoxy is being widened

by? Ideology is when what's taught becomes less

about discerning what God might be saying through

the scriptures and more about espousing some

philosophy philosophical or political ideas through

the teachings of Jesus. We know that self -preservation

warrants growth when people make decisions to

protect what is and cater to those that remain

rather than stepping out in risk for the sake

of those who are far from God. We know that justice

is being wide -ended by selfishness when people

choose not to face the reality of the need of

a community or a person or a moment. and seek

to need that made out of a sense of self preservation

and selfishness and we know when a radical devotion

to Jesus being wide -ended by occasional therapeutic

devotion to Jesus because it looks like devotion

to Jesus when it's easy when it's comfortable

when it makes me feel better about myself when

it suits me and when it doesn't disagree with

me or ask anything of me at all it's just about

occasionally making me feel better about myself.

There's all these ways that the culture that

we swim in and the ideas that permeate that,

why aren't the ideal and the calling that we

have as church? That's the second reason why

we fall short of the X2 ideal. The third is this,

that at times we hold our ideals those dreams,

those opinions, those preferences for what the

church should be, we hold them over our little

local church filled with susceptible saints and

demand that our dreams be realized. And this

is where I want to focus today. People will always

cause problems. And white ending is so insidious,

you may not even realize it's there. But what

we do when the reality of the church doesn't

meet our idealized version of it, that we have

some control over. In that, our response is our

responsibility. In our lives and in the church,

the gap between the things as we think they should

be and things as they actually are, it creates

this disillusionment, creates this disillusionment

gap, this gap between the things that we think

they should be and how they actually are. You

know, people become disillusioned when they're

marriage, when it's not what they thought it

would be. People become disillusioned when they're

parenting, when they realize that, you know,

they can't live their life the way they lived

without kids before. People become delusion,

disillusioned with their careers when they realize

that they hardly do what they thought they were

doing and the money's not good enough to make

up for it. People become disillusioned with church

when they have these ideas about what church

should be and then it inevitably falls short

of them. Our ideals, they smash up against reality

and it creates disillusionment and people leave.

Because a different church definitely won't have

any problems or they get bitter or they begin

to, you know, maybe unintentionally undermine

the fabric of the community. And this is what

happens in careers and marriages and families

when facing disillusionment if we don't deal

with it properly. Now let me be clear. I'm not

talking about situations in family life or the

church where genuine abuse occurs. I'm talking

about situations where not dealing with our disillusionment

ultimately sabotages the thing that needs not

to be sabotaged. It just doesn't need to be.

And so what do we do with this disillusionment?

How do we... work it through in a healthier way.

But do we throw out our vision in Acts 2 of what

the church should be? No, we should not do that.

You see, the Acts 2 pillars are what makes the

church the church. Power, family, worship, orthodoxy,

growth, justice, and undergirding it all is a

radical devotion to Jesus. Throw that out, and

what you have is a social club, not a church.

That's what makes the church a church. Do we

accept a sub -part and why an entered church?

Do we just go, well, you know, it's going to

be how it's going to be and accept that? No,

we don't. We got to deal with it. We don't throw

out our ideals. We walk towards them. So there's

three things that we need to do with our disillusionment

gap. We got to face it. That's number one. Dietrich

Bonhoeffer says this in his must -read book on

Christian community. It's called Life Together.

Says this only fellowship only that fellowship

which faces such disillusionment with all its

unhappy and ugly aspects Begins to be what it

should be in God's sight Begins to grasp in faith

the promise that is given to it the sooner the

shock of disillusionment comes to an individual

and to a community the better for both a community

which cannot bear and and Cannot survive such

a crisis which insists upon keeping its illusion

when it should be shattered permanently loses

at the moment the promise of Christian community.

Sooner or later it will collapse. Every, every

human wish dream that is injected into the Christian

community is a hindrance to genuine community

and must be banished if genuine community is

to survive. He who loves his dream of a community

more than the Christian community itself becomes

a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal

intentions may be ever so honest and earnest

and sacrificial. Here's the lead. If you love

your idea of a thing more than the thing itself,

you will ultimately sabotage and destroy that

thing. If you love your idea of what your career

will be like, more than the reality of your job

actually is, you will sabotage your career. If

you love your idea of what your marriage will

be like, more than the reality of who your spouse

is, you will destroy your marriage in the end.

You simply cannot truly love someone or something

you're trying to make fit into your idealized

dreams or version of. If you love your dreams

for your kids' lives more than you love your

kid, if you keep imposing on them your dream

of them becoming some professional curler or

something, you will destroy your relationship

with your kid. Because you can't truly love someone

as they actually are when what you actually love

is your idea of them. So until you face the reality

of your career, the reality of your spouse, the

reality of who your kid actually is, and you

face your disillusionment and you let go of your

idealized wish dream for them, that you are free

to love them as they actually are. And friends,

it is the same with the church. If we, if you

keep trying to make encounter Henry fit your

dreams for it, you'll never love it for what

it is. You'll struggle to genuinely love the

people who call this place home. If you love

your idea of this church more than the people

who make up this church, you will, with the best

of intentions, undermine it, sabotage it, and

whine in it. Because it's not meeting your needs.

It's not what you thought it would be. You're

not being fed, which is the worst Christian needs

of all time. It's a huge yuck. Like we're grown

-ups. Can we just feed ourselves, please? You

know, it's like... We don't sing enough old songs,

or we don't sing enough new songs, or we don't

preach the Bible enough, or we preach the Bible

too much, or we're too community -focused, or

we're not community -focused enough, or there's

too much space for the Spirit, or there's not

enough space for the Spirit. You know, all of

us, if we all imply and pour our wish dreams

on the Church, and we all demand that the Church

meets our dreams, we will, with the best of intentions,

undermine it and sabotage it. Because if you

love your idea of this church more than the people

who make up this church You'll sabotage it Because

you're demanding that your idealized version

of this church be brought into being You know,

we have to face our ideals and face the disillusionment

we experience because of them We have to face

the reality of our church. Our church is not

perfect we fall short of acts to where almost

a year old and And we haven't nailed it. We will

disappoint you. And as we grow, God willing,

so will our problems. And we have our fair share

of susceptible saints, of which I am the first.

We will fall short of your ideals or expectations

or hopes for this church in some way. And if

you had problems in churches before, you'll probably

find similar or different problems here. Just

in case anyone was under any illusions to the

contrary, we will disappoint you. This is not

your dream church. Your dream church does not

exist. And so now that we have got over this

truly shocking reality, we are free to love and

encounter Henley as it actually is. So that's

the first thing we have to do. We have to face

our disillusionment so we can love our church.

And this is the second point. Paul gives the

best analogy for what a church is in reality.

It's like a body. We've got to love our body.

It comes from 1 Corinthians 12. What is a body?

Well, it's unity and diversity. Many parts, but

they're united. They're one. And every part is

different. The foot is not the same as an ear.

And all its parts actually need to be different

in order for the body to work together. The body

carries both strength and weakness. There are

strong parts of the body and there are weak parts

of the body and the strong parts of the body

are there to protect and support the weak parts.

The body is so interconnected that if one part

is hurting, the whole body is hurting. And a

body is led by the head, by the brain. The brain

tells the lungs to breathe and muscles to contract

so they can walk and we don't even think about

it. The brain just does it, just leads. See a

body is imperfect and unique and sometimes frustrating

when it doesn't do what you want it to do. And

if Paul's right, and I think he is, the church

is not just a body, but the body of Christ. When

we're led by the church, when Jesus is our functional

leader, then our difference is actually our strength.

We can't and shouldn't actually try to make everyone

the same as us. An ear does not exist on its

own, which means, how do you be a Christian outside

of Christian community? How do you be an ear?

outside of the body. An ear can't sustain itself.

It can't be alive outside of a body. So I can't

see theologically or logically how a Christian

can be a Christian outside of Christian community.

And you know, the stronger and the healthier,

the more mature of us, we're there to protect

and support those who are young and growing and

hurting. You know, if you're a wiser and older

and more mature person in our church, your job

here isn't to be served like Jesus, but like

Jesus. to serve those who need love guidance

support and the occasional kick up the pants

because if we have one body made up of different

parts if one of us is celebrating all of us have

a reason to celebrate and if one of us is hurting

we all are hurting as well a body is what the

church looks like in reality it's diverse it's

flawed sometimes weak sometimes strong doesn't

always do what you want it to do that's because

it's a living organism And sometimes things break

down or fail and you don't know why. If we can

face our disillusionment gap and not be surprised

or even expect the church to be like our own

bodies, which are achy and annoying at times,

then we can be free to love the body of Christ

as it actually is in this place, to love each

other more than our ideas of each other or what

we think we can do for each other. Look, I've

had body image. Issues since the age of 12 like

I know how hard it can be to love a body But

learning to love my body had far more to do with

accepting what my body wasn't Rather than being

depressed about what my body should be See, I'm

very tall I stand out I carry all my weight in

my torso and I I'm 31 now I just don't have the

metabolism to handle the food that I was eating

when I was 16 playing basketball six days a week

like I'm I can't eat like that anymore and I've

crossed that line where my body is actually now

slowly dying. You know, this is the reality of

my body. I will never look like Brad Pitt in

Fight Club. That would require an ungodly amount

of starvation, dehydration and time away from

my family. But get this, it would also require

Brad Pitt's body. It's his body. He has his body

and I have mine and facing that reality that

I am not Brad Pitt. And accepting that I may

not love everything about my body, but it is

the only body I'll ever have, and it was given

to me as a gift from God, that has helped me

to begin to love my body. And in a similar way,

facing the reality that you'll never find your

dream church, and accepting that you may not

love everything about this church, will help

us to begin to love this body of Christ here

in this place. And this is the third thing we

do with our disillusionment. Because once we've

faced it, we can begin to love it. And now what?

Well, as the body of Christ in this place, together

in our differences, our different skills and

gifts, our different passions and callings, together

we run towards the city of God. So your body

running requires all the parts to work together.

Even the parts that may seem to us to be unnecessary

to the action. Have you ever tried to run without

moving your arms at all? You look very silly

and it's very inefficient to run. All the parts

of the body work together. They need to work

together. And as a church, we need to run together.

And what are we running towards? What the church

is and what the church will be. Peter Lighthauer

says this about the church. The church isn't

an invisible entity, a supernatural addition

on top of natural human societies. The church

is a transformed human society. Instead of thinking

vertically, We should think horizontally, which

means thinking the Church is the future city

of God that is entered into the present. The

city that we build will be perfected in a new

heavens and a new earth. See, when we say or

pray, may God's Kingdom come in Henley as it

is in heaven, this isn't just a cool saying.

The Church is in Acts and today the Kingdom of

God come into the world. It's the future city

of God we see in Revelation 21 come into handling

in the present. And that's what we're running

towards is the body of Christ. That's what we're

trying to build with. Christ is our head. Not

a social club, not a religious organization,

but a transformed society. The future city of

God come from the future into Henley Beach and

Grange in the present. And you know what that

means? It means it all matters. It means power

matters, family matters, worship matters, orthodoxy

matters, growth matters, justice matters, and

a radical devotion to Jesus matters. What we

build as a church here in this place eternally

matters. Don't be deceived, my friends. God will

perfect it in the new heavens and the new earth.

So what we do in this life really matters. And

what we do together as part of the body in this

Christ in this place really matters. And that

means each of us, every single one of us, you

have, you have a vital part to play in building

a transformed society here in the West of Adelaide.

You just do. Every part of the body is vital

and necessary. You may not feel like you have

that much to offer, but we actually need you.

We need you to be all in on Jesus. We need you

to be all in on building the body of Christ here

in this place. So what do we do? How do we actually

do this running together towards the city of

God? I think we do what the body of Christ actually

did. What happened to the body of Christ? Well,

for the sake of the world, Jesus willingly gave

up his body to be broken, to be hung on a cross,

tortured and humiliated. So that one day we,

you and I, we could see that future city of God

with our own eyes. Jesus did this with and in

His body for you and for me. He did this for

you and He did this for you in not some kind

of idealized wishful version of you. He didn't

do it for a rose -colored version of you. He

didn't do it thinking that you are this really

great person who does all the right things and

so you're good enough for Him to die for. He

did this knowing the reality of your life for

you knowing the reality of without the cross

and the resurrection You and I we would be dead

in our sin We would never be reconciled with

God never to see the city of God come you see

God saw the reality of our station of our place

of our position of our plight of Our circumstance

and for the joy that was set before him. He went

to the cross to die for you and for me Can you

see that How God shows us in the cross that that

he actually loves us as we actually are He knows

he's not me under any illusions that we are better

than we Think we are he's not under any illusions

and yet he loves us anyway Is Jesus in his body

he went to the cross in surrender and he was

made a Spectacle by the powers of the world and

died So that we could come into relationship

with God again not in some idealized wish dream,

but actually in reality And really that's our

job as the church to be the body of Christ in

love and care for each other to run towards the

city of God But also to live as the body of Christ

lived to to sacrifice and surrender to God To

be made a spectacle of and to die So those who

are stumbling around in the dark can find the

light of Christ and join the future of city the

future city of God. We as the body of Christ

in this place need to imitate the body of Christ,

the actual body of Christ. That's our job. To

let our idealized dreams for this church die,

instead, in love for each other in the world,

surrender to the will of God, let our lives be

a spectacle, a public display to the world that

Jesus is King and God is to be glorified and

to die to our way, die to our dreams, die to

our preferences, die to our comfort. So those

who are far from God can discover the good news

of Jesus You see when we make something what

we want it to be rather than love it as it actually

is we make it about us We try to fashion our

career our marriage our kids our church or whatever

in our own image. We make it about us And that

is the deepest and darkest way the church has

been undermined over the last two thousand years

You see friends the church does not exist for

itself. The body does not exist for its own body.

Doesn't exist to build its own brand, its own

platform, its nation or literal empire. The church

exists to spend itself for the life of the world.

To die with Christ so that the world can live.

Come back to Bonhoeffer. He has this great line.

I just can't get it out of my head because it's

so true. He says the church is only the church

when it exists for others. Friends, this is not

your dream church, but we are the body of Christ

together in this place and we exist to die together

with Christ out of love so that every person

from city to beach could have an encounter with

Jesus. Thanks so much for tuning into this week's

message. If you've felt challenged or need prayer,

we'd love to hear from you on Instagram at encounterhenley.

Or if you're interested in how you can support

this ministry, please go to our website encounteradelaide

.com .au. Thanks again for listening. God bless

you.