My Best Church Life - Week 4 - The CORE - Pastor Mike Novotny
My Best Church Life
Week 4 - The CORE
Pastor Mike Novotny
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to week number four of our sermon series. My best church life,
So there's something you really need to know if you attend a big growing church. If you've ever find yourself in your spiritual life at a church where there are lots of new people and new faces, new souls being saved, when church, attendances, increasing, and the number of available seats is decreasing, when the water bill for the church is high because all of the baptisms and the parking spots in the church thought are few because of all the people coming for the first time. If you're ever blessed, to be part of a church that's experiencing a season of growth, there's something that you really need to know something. You might not see at first glance and something that the worship leader, and the pastors, might not tell you on your first visit.
Fact, if you're taking notes, I love you to grab a pen and write this down. You should know, unfortunately, the growth, even church growth, makes messes.
It's exciting as it is and as much of a blessing as it can be. When something grows, it gets messy,
Who here's married with kids? I'll be here today. Yeah, maybe 20% of you. Is that true that when your family situation grew it made a whole bunch of messes. And when you're single, you're living in your apartment, your home. And, you know, the closet is just how you like it. And the kitchen is just the level of cleanliness that you prefer and everything is in its spot and then you grow. Are you meets Mr. Semi perfect. And you fall in love, and you get married, and he moves in, and I'm not sure if you know this about guys, but we're not famous for being the cleanest people. Kick off the work boots, throw it close all over the place, put the hunting stuff in the garage and your system of how things were supposed to be gets totally messed up, right? The marriage is a blessing, but the growth also makes a mess. But that mess of marriage is very small compared to what happens next to some people whose kid comes around, there's bottles and there's diaper bags and there's one season stuff everywhere, the homework starts coming in more clothes filling the closets. Yeah, your parents want to trade your kids for anything in the world. But man, your situation changes really fast. There's a lot of mess that comes when more people show up.
And what's true for our personal lives is also true for our church life.
When more people come and meet Jesus and get connected to his word it is great as that is and it is great. It makes messes.
And I want to tell you that today because by the blessing and the grace of God, our church has experienced the season of significant growth. Doesn't make us any better than we used to be. Doesn't make us superior to any church in town. But we are seeing more people, more faces on both of our campuses. Our churches just exploded in recent years with people being saved, and baptized and reconnected to the God. They lost connection with. It's amazing that in my 16 years is a pastor. I can honestly say that right now is the most exciting thrilling fulfilling season of ministry that I've ever had.
And, and it's messy.
And all the systems that used to work and the simplicity of what we used to have that all got messed up our church has gotten big But sometimes being big can backfire.
I bet you knew that just because a church is big and there's lots of people on a Sunday does not mean it's big and strong.
Because it says, big numbers doesn't mean that. Behind the scenes, the church is healthy for me, and for you, and for us, if we're not very intentional and very careful, being this big can actually backfire and make our church worse than it was before.
Let me think of it from my point of view or from the pastor's point of view and we can serve a certain number of people. But once that starts to grow big, if there's more people to counsel to walk with through grief, to help with their addictions, to hear their confessions, if there's more weddings and more funerals, if there's more baptisms and more people going through stuff. I mean, it's a blessing to serve lots of people but God doesn't give us extra hours in the day when the church grows. And if we don't figure out a right way to do this, the pastor can start neglecting his physical health, his spiritual health is relational health. The time he has, with his children, sometimes pastors, just want to get away from big churches because it's too much to keep all those the plates spending at the same time. If we're not careful, this can backfire on our churches leaders.
And I can backfire on our most committed members.
You want to church small and people step up with a selfless heart and a willingness to serve. It's an amazing thing, but if a church grows and others have more programs, more services, more ministries, more people to help when you start volunteering and then you end up being volunteered. Have heard that phrase before. It's like, mandatory over time that you don't get paid for what you do because all this stuff is happening. Then the joy that you originally had. And being part of a church's ministry, starts to be replaced by a little bit of bitterness and resentment because it's not freely given because like, it's demanded of you.
And being big can backfire on the members of a church.
Because so much is going on, people start to slip through the cracks. And people who need help with something, they're struggling with or in a relationship. They can't find the help. They need it because just so many people. And so much to manage being big is a blessing. But I think you know that being big can backfire too, we can be big but doesn't mean we're necessarily strong.
And that's why I'm so excited that you're here today because the Bible is going to help us do both. The Bible is such a brilliant book for a billion different reasons, but it is so practical, even when it comes to a situation like this. Because did you know, in both the old testament in the new, the Bible tackles the messiness of the business of church,
Pastor Michael touched on this just a couple weeks ago with Moses and his father-in-law in the big church called the children of Israel. And today, I'm gonna show you an example from the new testament where the church of Jesus grew in a group fast. It was amazing. It was thrilling. And then it became problematic. It got messy. People started to be missed and the church had to think very intentionally and solve a first century problem. So that their church would not just be big numerically, it would be strong spiritually.
So, let me tell you the story of the start of the book of Acts from the New Testament. If you're not familiar, I'm Jesus in the gospel's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. He was born. He lived for us, he died on the cross, to forgive our sins. He conquered death on Easter morning. 40 days later, he returns to heaven. Very next book of the New Testament is called the book of Acts. So, Jesus takes off what happens next.
We're taking notes. Here's what happens. Next. The early church as these Christians were so bold and so generous and so focused on the gospel of Jesus, it exploded with growth. Let me show the numbers. If you're taking notes, when Jesus left, the number of Christians on earth was 120 people.
So surprising to me Jesus. Three years of preaching, but his message was so tough and so tender, only 120 people followed him. But I actually chapter two after the Holy Spirit. Filmed a man named Peter and he preached repentance in the forgiveness of sins. The church jumped from 120 up to 3,120. Imagine 3,000 people baptized in one day. By actually chapter 4, we learned that the number of men in the Christian church had risen to 5,000 people and day after day. After day, more men, more women, more households were being connected to the cross. And the message of salvation Jesus had this little, kind of quaint church faithful to him and just like that it exploded with insane growth.
But then you get to ask chapter 6.
And you find out that in the midst of the thrilling baptisms, and, and people turning from their sins and turning towards the cross, things had gotten a bit dysfunctional, a bit messy. And the church had to have an all hands on decimating to fix the problem.
Let me share with you if you have a Bible in your hands or want to follow along in the screen actually chapter six. Here's what happened.
First one in those days when the number of disciples was increasing, there's the growth. The Hellenistic Jews among them. Complained against the Hebraic Jews. There's the mess. Because their widows are being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.
So, way back in the first century, there weren't life insurance policies. There weren't wasn't a social security system. Unfortunately, the first century women had a much harder time economically, providing for themselves and so widows and orphans, were famous, for being the most vulnerable population groups on earth. Until the church filled with the love of Jesus, they came up with the system, it says the daily distribution of food, that a daily food pantry, that these widows could be served, physically and spiritually in Jesus name. Great.
But then as the number of widows in the church grew from one or two or five to five hundred or seven hundred or eight hundred the system stopped working. I'm the church was spreading, and it was actually getting ethnically complex. So, the Hebraic Jews were the, the Jews who spoke Hebrew and were probably from the area around Jerusalem. The Hellenistic Jews spoke Greek. We had different cultures, different languages, different people. Lots of them serve and unfortunately notice the verb These poor women were overlooked. In the daily distribution of food. No one was trying to ignore them or dismiss them. There was just so much going on in the church that they were being missed. The tummies started rumbling.
Friends started grumbling. Well, this was supposed to be a church that loves people and serves people complaints raised within the church.
So how do they fix it?
Overs, two tells us how
It's so the 12 gathered, all the disciples together, the 12 apostles. This is and they said It would not be right for us to neglect. The ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of the spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them and we will give our attention to prayer. And to the ministry of the word.
Notice four quick things about these verses, they're massively important. First, the apostles knew their limits. The apostles saw the problem, but they realized, you know, we can't spend the same amount of time praying and the same amount of time preaching and somehow, extra hours to serve all these poor widows who are in need. We are followers of Jesus, but we're not Jesus, what? We can't clap our hands and have 30 hours in a day. We can't snap our fingers and feed 5,000 widows in a single day. Jesus could do that. We can't. They knew that they couldn't fix this problem.
Second. Notice that the apostles also realized that they're calling was deeply spiritual and scriptural. They said, you know, won't be right for us to lessen. The time that we spend ministering to people with the Word of God in order to serve food to these precious sisters in the faith. We need to give our attention to prayer and to the ministry of the word, this is our pastoral calling. This is what we have been trained for what we can't stop doing, what we should be doing for the sake of doing something else. Third
Yet, despite that priority the apostles believe that these widows mattered.
Right? Didn't dismiss this situation because it was physical and nutritional they didn't say I'm the apostle Peter you want me to you want to serve a PB&J to ethyl. I'm preaching the gospel. You didn't say that the apostles actually took this. So seriously did you catch it? They gathered all the disciples together and they came up with the solution to the problem, they wanted people to be loved, not just spiritually. But like Jesus did spiritually first but definitely physically seconds. Which is why fourth of all, they came up with the solution. The two seven men, they said, Good Christian men, full of the spirit full of wisdom. Let's turn this responsibility over to them. They're not going to spend their days preaching, but they do have an important role in the early church. We'll turn this responsibility over to them so that we can keep our attention on prayer. And the ministry of the Word.
There's a brilliant solution. And thankfully the church loved it. Verse 5, this proposal the text says please the whole group they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit. Also fill up Timon and Nicholas from Antioch, a convert to Judaism. They presented these men to the apostles who prayed and laid their hands on them. This might be my favorite verse, because I love love, love, love how Luke in this chapter lists every one of their names. I'm quick church quiz how many of you know the names Peter, James and John the apostles insights and I It must be mostly or it hands on how many of you before today. Remember the names Nickaner and Timon. Now, this isn't Timon from Timon and Pumbaa from the Lion King. So that's just yeah. Actually love this. The names are written. These weren't the preaching about? These weren't like the pastors standing up front and yet and yeah it's in the story of the early church of their names and their work mattered.
The book doesn't say that a bunch of guys, you know, took care of that stuff. So we could get back to preaching the gospel name by name by name by name by name my name by name listed.
I'm terribly a big day in the Novotny household. This year, my wife and I came up with this big challenge for our kids. Our daughters are 15 and 13 to read the entire Bible with mom and dad. So we started in the beginning and yesterday we finished the old testament, Malachi chapter 4, takes nine months in a daily bible, reading to get through. So my poor daughters survive, Leviticus, they made it through, Chronicles, it was not easy. There's so happy to hear the name of Jesus in the New Testament. What I remember most about their journeys is sometimes as they're reading in the Old Testament. There'd be these long lists of names have ever read these in the Bible. Yeah you can't pronounce old Jewish Hebrew names. It's so tempting just to skip the pages or skin the names and the girls would ask me dad. Why is this in here? You got a gun inspires his word. There's only so many pages. Why? Why does he put all these names in here?
And I think the answer is the same reason these names are in here.
Because to our God in heaven, it's not just Moses and David, and Isaiah and Peter and Paul and Mary who matter,
It's the people who served in their community who served their family. Jesus once said, if you just give a cup of cold water to a little kid, in my name and there's reward for you in heaven.
You have to preach a sermon, you don't have to lead worship, you don't have to travel to Africa, to spread the gospel, like your name, and your effort, your service matters, so much to God that when he inspired his word, he made sure. He made sure that the names that mattered to few others would be recorded because they mattered to him.
What a beautiful lesson from the early church that the ministry of the word and prayer matters, but the ministry of the whole church, even the names that we forget matter to our heavenly father too. So, look how the the text ends for seven. It's a so the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith.
The widow's got fed.
Word of God spread. The apostles stayed focused on the gospel, calling people to repentance and the forgiveness of sins and there was a system and a structure that all these needs of this big growing church were met as people stepped up to serve.
So if I to summarize these seven verses, what's the the key takeaway? If one? Write this not I think the key to being not just a big church but a great big church. A big and strong church is this that a great big church is filled with next level leaders.
A strong church doesn't need a billion pastors. We don't be fighting for the microphone, it would probably get ugly. What would a great big church needs is people stepping up in their own way, serving in ways that are visible and invisible on stage, and behind the scenes, that's what keeps the church family strong. That's what allows the kingdom of God to grow.
I kind of pictured like this.
Imagine if this big green Lego square has all the different ways that you could serve your neighbor and serve your church. This might be given someone a ride, it doesn't have a reliable transportation or making meals for someone who just lost a loved one. This might be serving in 922 moms to help moms who are brand new to motherhood and, and trying to figure it out. This might be our addiction ministry to help people with Christian recovery. This might be ushers or greeters or are doing sound or working in cork. It's all these different ways that we have for people to serve. Let's imagine that these LEGOs represent you.
How the people who call this their church home?
Because there's so many of you there's these Lego's too, and then there's these ones and then there's these ones, there's where big church with a lot of people. Now, there's a different, a bunch of different ways that we can combine this number of people on that little platform.
Sadly, what too often happens in a Christian church? Is that it a small number of people get connected with generous selfless service like the old 8020 row. I've heard that before. You're 20% of the people end up doing 80% of the work. You know, we can stack people on top of each other. We can be a big church that gathers on Sunday. That only has a few people volunteering, but if we're a big church, that's organized like that, you know, kind of church. It is.
How wobbly wants? I'm tempted. Not to touch this before. This illustration goes totally wrong. I would never flip it over. Everything would come crashing down and falling apart of if a church has this big Sunday. Gatherings, but few people selflessly serving, it's weak and it's wobbly and it's just one or two people, leave the whole thing falls apart.
But what if we could take the same number of people? And structure it in a different way. What if we could take more and more people and get them personally connected to a way to serve their neighbor, and their church, in Jesus's name. What would happen if it wouldn't be, just 20%, but 30%, 40% of people volunteering. Then what would happen to that church? Same number of people.
But stronger. And then what would happen if we could maybe break the mold and be a leading church in this community, where everyone who is able is stepping up to serve their neighbor and to serve their church out of gratefulness for the gospel. If all of us could be connected like that, same number of people worshiping on Sunday.
It's not just big, it's strong. In fact.
Say, click right with me.
It's really strong.
And if one person has a heart attack, if one person moves out of our community, everything doesn't come crashing down real fast because it was never built on the backs of one or two people. It's a church community serving with their gifts. In Jesus name to bless the greater good. This, what happens in the book of Acts, it was wobbly. The apostles couldn't handle the burden of serving so many people, but when more and more stepped up to serve the church, stop just being big and it became big and strong.
Essentially, what the apostle Paul teaches us in Ephesians chapter 4,
Of today's text says this.
So Christ to himself, gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors, and the teachers, these high level leaders, why? To equip his people for works of service. Why? So that the body of Christ may be built up.
Or God calls people into full-time ministry, not just to serve the masses but hopefully to equip mature solid driven people for works of service, because here's the ultimate goal that the whole body, every one of you here, today would be built up in your faith.
The fact is no matter who stands in the stage, they're limited and not just their time, but their ability to help you. But if it's not just one or two, if it's all of us with our experiences and gifts serving where God has wired us staying in our lane, then this church becomes big in the best way. A big that doesn't backfire but it blesses so many people in the name of Jesus.
All right. So practically, what does this mean for you? Don't leave you today with three blanks. Three. Next steps. So clicking notes, right? This down, first of all, I really need you to be aware.
One of the difficult parts of all being a big church is that it always seems like there is plenty of people who are serving
That many really don't need you.
Imagine if we are a church of 10 people, I'll be the 11th person. Here's our church. If we had some church events and I say, hey, who can help? And Diego raises his hand. And he's the only one reason his hand. We all kind of know who that's not gonna work. But if we're not a church of 11 people, if for a church of 1100, people or 3,100 people like 92 ministries is, well then if 10% of the people volunteer, we have hundreds of people volunteering. And if you see hundreds of people wearing you first t-shirts, you just assume why I guess they're doing okay.
But the same ratio has the same effect. It's like Diego would burn out if it was just him. So also, 300 people can burnouts if it's just them, it's to be really careful at a church like ours thinking. I'm sure it's fine often, it's not every year. We need new people to serve the many new people who are calling this their church home. Now, I want to be really clear. It's not a sin. If you don't sign up and serve, Right? You can serve your neighbor in other ways. You don't have to be like a church volunteer to follow the will of God sometimes. Just life is so wild. Then crazy spending more time here on this campus would rob you a time. You really need to be a good daughter or son or mother or father or neighbor so no shame if you don't sign up today. But I would say this just be where of the assumption that is fine without you. Likely, that's not true. For everyone to be healthy and everyone to be served for the body of Christ to be built up, is very likely that we need you. If you're able to serve. Beware number two is not going to shock you. Sign up.
That's a big goal for today. Customer Michael mentioned when you leave today, I'm not on the team. Have done an instantly, good job of making it super clear and super easy for you to learn more about ways that you can sign up. And we have big kind of key areas of ministry that we kind of notice. We have a good need right now, in this present moment, if you stop by the service fair, you're not committing yourself to like a five-year contract of volunteering. You're not committing to anything, you're just learning more information about what kind of person might fit. Well, in this role to find you, the right fits that you can have fulfilling service here at our church. I hope and I pray that you sign up.
But finally, And maybe most importantly, thank you.
Yeah, our church has grown. And yes, there are some messes we need to deal with, but when I step back I just have to say thank you for all of you who already have
That's a bit too personal, but This is. The perfect place to be a pastor.
Earliest, I don't pastors who are burning out and I'm not
We have a great lead pastor and a pastor Tim. Tim might I know you're gonna be here today. I'd literally wrote it down, so I'm not making this up right now. Pastor Tim does not just preach. I think what I respect most about that man, is that he loves his family?
Like one person I know in this community who dates his wife more than I date him and his pastor Tim and Holly I see the relationship he has with his children as they've grown up and now his grandchildren and it's something I want to emulate. He's just set the standard of balance and faithful service but not idolizing our work, he's a great example and then after him, there's you.
Because some of you are here last year, we had a service much like this were the big next step was much like this, would you step up and serve our leadership team at set a goal that in, in 52 weeks in a year, we wanted to get a hundred and fifty new people serving at 922 ministries. Like if we're gonna be big and strong, we need 150 people. So we made this big pitch to you last year. We're like yes, sign up syrup. And you know what happened? At that service fair on one Sunday,
We added 150 people, which is so insane. Y'all were like, well, Really 52 weeks through. Let's, let's just do this today. And you did and over the course of the past 12 months, we've added 2006 to people who are serving in some capacity. And, and I see it with my own eyes, I see new people handing out bulletins, it's not that you know, same old people bearing, the burden of a growing church. New people playing music, new people serving coffee, new people, stepping up to serve it is made this such a good balance place where you don't feel like you're burning out, I hope and I pray, but it's a conserve in the way that your best equipped to serve. Thank you for doing that. Not every church has that not every Christian responds that way, but you have I think the last verse of this text, you know, after they came up with all these people serving the word of God's spread and the number of disciples increased Last year with a pivotal moment, in the history of our church, where you responded to that call to action and because you did, we've been able to serve so many people in Jesus name.
Being able to launch up a mom's ministry, serving over 100 moms. We have a Christian recovery program. We have a school that's bursting with families, hearing the gospel every single day. We're able to serve people who don't have a home to live in and millionaires looking to find something that's better than their millions. You really allowed us to minister this community in a profound and impactful way. And that could not have happened. If it was just pastors standing in front of people it took you and you did it. And we're so grateful for it.
So brothers and sisters if I can be bold but let's do it again.
Let's stop by. Let's serve. What let's do what God has wired us to do that. The person next to you, whatever they need, spiritually eternal, physical nutritional financial educational, relational. Their needs would be met and this would become a place where people could discover their best church life.
Yeah, being big can create a mess. Don't people step up and serve. We clean up that mess and we make this church. Not just big, but big and strong.
That's right. Oh god, I'm so grateful for your love.
I'm just a note today that you are the kind of God who served us Jesus. You came into this world. The Bible says not to be served but to serve and to give your life as a ransom for many We believe and know that our most important needs, forgiveness, salvation, a spot in heaven. They're all ours because you are the God who gives and you're the Savior served.
And then, we thought I'm so grateful for this church. We're far from perfect. How we got stuff? We need to work on problems. We need to solve but this is really a good place to hear the gospel and to be personally loved I'm praying as our life groups launch that people would do life together in community because of the leaders in the facilitators were serving, so generously. And I'm praying God big things for the next season of life. You haven't promised if this church is going to grow, or it's going to shrink. If Saint Peter and the core will see more faces or fewer. Bugatti, if you choose in your mercy, to give us more people to serve that we want to serve them. Well, We want to teach them the gospel want to meet their physical needs, want to give them rides to church and help them pay their bills. We want to help them through their addictions. We want to restore their marriages and walk with them. Through the valley of the shadow of death. There are enough people here. God, that we can do that. The 3,000 members of the church can make a significant impact on this entire community and that only hope in happens, God, when we step up and serve, so fill us with wisdom, fill us with your spirits, God made this be another pivotal moment. In the history of our church, that people could be loved and rooted in Jesus. It's in his name that we pray and all God's people said, amen.
