CHRISTIAN RELATIONSHIPS
DR. JIM DIXON
ECCLESIASTES 4:9-10
SEPTEMBER 26, 1993
Bob and Lynn Johnson own a home in a nice residential neighborhood in the suburbs of Philadelphia. One Saturday afternoon, Bob and Lynn were looking out their kitchen window and they noticed a large moving van across the street just a couple of houses up the street. They realized that somebody new was moving into the neighborhood.
Now, Bob and Lynn had not been particularly friendly to the neighbors through the years. They’d had very busy lives and pretty much stuck to themselves. They thought they would turn over a new leaf and welcome these new people to the neighborhood. They baked a pie. They went over to the neighbor’s house. They gave them the pie and said, “Welcome to our neighborhood.” The neighbors said, “You know, this is kind of embarrassing but we’re not moving into the neighborhood. We are moving out. We have lived here for eight years!”
Now, that story, allegedly true, is kind of a tragic comment on the growing depersonalization that exists in our world and a lack of relationships. Of course, neighborhoods can continue to exist even with the lack of relationships. Those houses will still be there. People will still live in them. They may take care of their yards and go about their business. But, you see, the church of Christ is different. The church of Jesus Christ cannot exist without relationships. The people of Christ are called into community, called into relationship with one another.
Now, there are hundreds of thousands of churches in this nation, the United States of America. 34% of the churches in America have 50 or less people per Sunday. 51%, a little over half of the churches in the United States of America, have less than 75 people attending each. 99.2% of the churches in America have 800 or less people attending each Sunday. 99.6% of the churches in the United States have less than 1,000 people attending each Sunday.
In the United Methodist Church, the largest Protestant denomination (just a little larger than the Southern Baptist), there are 35,540 churches in America. And yet only 73 of them have 1,000 people or more. Now, those churches that have more than 1,000 people church growth experts call “megachurches.” According to Peter Drucker, megachurches represent the ecclesiastical movement of the 21st century. According to church growth experts, more and more people, as we enter the 21st century, are going to be seeking megachurches. I disagree. I think the megachurch movement is going to die out because, I think, any ministry that is spectator-based has no enduring future.
Now, there will always be some large churches. There have always been some large churches. You can look in the Book of Acts in the Bible—Acts chapter 2, Acts chapter 4, and Acts chapter 6—and you see how the Jerusalem church became very large as it grew from 3,000 to 5,000 to 10,000 and beyond. A very large church. And throughout church history there have been large churches. There always will be, but I believe the megachurch movement will die out. I think that those few large churches that survive will be those large churches that succeed in bringing their membership into vital community, into vital relationships with one another as brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ because the church of Jesus Christ is a community of believers called into relationship.
Our church, Cherry Hills Community Church, has no future unless we succeed in bringing you into vital relationships with each other. I believe that with all my heart and that is why the ministry that Lou has in our midst is so critical. That is why that ministry is so important. That’s why the cell groups that we’re going to be starting here at Cherry Hills Community Church in these upcoming months are so vitally important to the future of our church. It’s not simply important for the future of our church, but it’s also important for each and every one of us individually because we need, as individual Christians, to enter into covenant relationship with some other Christians. We desperately need that. We need that for the sake of our stability, our stability in our Christian walk. The Bible tells us that we really can’t live a stable life in Christ Jesus apart from faithful relationships with other Christians.
Now, there’s a lot of people in the world today who would like to see their name in print, a lot of people who would like to see their words in print. There’s one book that nobody wants to see their name in, one book that nobody wants to see their words in and that’s a book that has just been published by Doubleday. It is called the “776 Stupidest Things Ever Said.” Now, that book has a special section devoted to Dan Quayle and, of course, it does appear that from time to time the former Vice President made a few mistakes. It is true that when he was speaking to a group of astronauts on the occasion of the anniversary of the Apollo XI flight, he began his speech by saying, “My fellow astronauts…” kind of a faux pas to be sure. On another occasion when he was speaking to representatives of the United Negro Colleges, he ended his speech by saying, “It is a tragic waste to lose one’s mind.” I think he was wanting to refer to wasting minds rather than losing them.
But I think we would all agree that we all make mistakes, don’t we? We all say things differently than we wanted to say them. I think it is also true with respect to Dan Quayle that he’s not always been given a fair shake and he’s experienced a great deal of persecution.
In these last few years, I believe he’s been slandered by the press. I know him to have been misquoted by the press and he has been mocked by late night talk show hosts. I think in the midst of the humiliation, it has been hard for him to maintain the stability of his life and walk and yet he shared recently that he has found consistency in his life because every week he has fellowship with some Christian people that he gets together with each week for Bible study. He says they come together, and they pray for each other. He says they come together and they just share what’s going on in their life, what they’re facing in the future, what they’ve just come through in the past. They read God’s word together and they pray for each other.
You know Dan Quayle is not the only person who needs that. Every single Christian on this planet needs that. You need to be coming together on a regular basis with some other Christians who love you and whom you love. You need to be sharing with them what is going on in your life. You need to be studying the Bible together. You need to be praying for one another.
In Ecclesiastes, we read that it’s the will of God that when we fall down we have someone to pick us up. That only happens when you enter into vital relationship with some brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ. But stability is not the only reason that God calls us as Christians into community. He also calls us into community that we might have power in our life. Do you want to have power in your life? Do you want to have a powerful ministry for the kingdom of Jesus Christ as you live life day by day? You cannot possibly have the power in your life that God wants you to have unless you are in the midst of vital relationship with some other Christians.
Michele Marciniak is a beautiful young woman who attends the University of Tennessee. She is one of the greatest athletes in the world. Last year, 1992, Michele graduated from high school and the Associated Press named her the Outstanding Woman’s Basketball Player in the country. She was highly sought after by colleges and universities the nation over. She went to the University of Tennessee because they had won an NCAA basketball championship in women’s basketball.
Barb and I were in Tennessee last week. We met her and got a chance to talk to her. She said that in 1992 she accepted Christ. In October of last year, she asked Jesus Christ to be her Lord and Savior. Just about two months ago she went to a junior high school FCA camp as a counselor. She was given a group of girls to minister to. She was very nervous about that. She wanted God to use her in the lives of those young women. She belongs to a huddle group at the University of Tennessee. It is a Fellowship of Christian Athletes Bible Study, a fellowship. She asked them to pray for her as she went to this junior high camp to minister. She asked that they would pray that somehow the Lord might use her in the life of one or two of those junior high school girls.
She had tears in her eyes when she said that at that camp two of the girls she was the counselor of accepted Christ. Two of them invited Jesus to come into their heart. She honestly believes that if it wasn’t for her huddle group, if it wasn’t for that Bible study and their prayers and their faithfulness in prayer, God would not have used her so powerfully in ministry when she was at that camp.
I think what’s true of Michele Marciniak is true of all of us as Christians. We need other Christians praying for us that there might be power in ministry in our lives. Do you seek to enter into ministry? Do you really seek to be used of God for ministry in this world? If you do, you want to have some other men and women praying for you that the Holy Spirit of God might anoint you in what you do. That’s one of the reasons that He’s given us to each other: That we might faithfully pray for each other.
You know, some people view the church of Christ as a community. That is their primary view of the church. It is a community where people come into fellowship. Other people view the church of Christ as a corporation. That is their primary view of the church. They view it as a corporation, an entity that must be governed and run. Of course, the Bible does speak of a certain structure in the church. It speaks of the Presbuteros and the Episkopoi and the Diakanoi, the bishops, the elders, the deacons. There needs to be structure in the church. No question about that. It is a headache to some of us. But certainly, there’s a sense in which the church is a corporation.
Other people view the church of Jesus Christ primarily as a cause. Sometimes the Bible does speak of the church as a cause. When the Bible speaks of the church as a cause, the Bible refers to Christians as soldiers who wear armor, and they are engaged in a great battle. There’s a great war going on and there’s an enemy who has taken captive the souls of many in the church of Christ as sent forth into the world with this great cause that they might rescue the perishing.
I think sometimes for those of us who tend to view the church as a cause, we have very little interest in the church as a community. I meet, Christians like this are really impassioned about the cause of the church. They want to go forth and conquer. They want to cast down strongholds. They want to defeat Satan and all of his forces. They want to lead people to Christ. They want to purify the culture. They view the church as a great cause. They have very little interest in community sometimes. Very little passion for Christian fellowship and really getting together with some other brothers and sisters in Christ.
What God wants us to understand biblically is that the church will have no power to complete or fulfill its cause unless it comes into community. It is only as we come into vital relationships with one another, and we learn to pray for each other and enter into covenant relationships with each other that the power of the Holy Spirit will be released in our lives for the transformation of this world.
If you’ve watched the Broncos this year, you know that they’ve entered in at times to a no-huddle offense. Sometimes it works. Of course, the Buffalo Bills used a no-huddle offense regularly. A no-huddle offense sometimes works in football because, you see, the defense gets confused and sometimes the defense tires out because the offense doesn’t take the time to huddle. Sometimes the offense can get a sense of momentum and just sustain it. The no-huddle offense sometimes works in football. What God wants us to understand is that it does not work in the Christian’s life. A no-huddle offense doesn’t work in the life of the Christian.
One of the primary messages in the Bible is that we’re called to come into community with each other, fellowship with one another. As we begin to develop the cell group ministry in this church, we want to invite you. We want to invite you to take the time to receive the blessing of being part of Christian relationships. You’ll enter into a small group that commits itself to each other and enters into ministry together.
It’s a known fact that when I was growing up I had a drug problem. Every Sunday my mom and dad drug me to church. Now, maybe you had the same problem. Maybe you had the same problem but, you know, today you are adults. You are adults and nobody is dragging you anywhere. You make choices, and you choose to come to church. No one’s going to drag you into a cell group. No one’s going to drag you into a small group fellowship of Christians. No one’s going to make you do it, but we do invite you. We encourage you. We ask you to make this choice for our church’s sake, for your sake as you seek to honor Christ in this world. Let us have a word of prayer before Lou comes back up.