It’s important to have a winning personality. A man went into a diner and sat down at the counter. The grumpiest-looking waitress he had ever seen came over to take his order.
“Could I have a cup of coffee?” he asked. The waitress went and got the coffee and slammed it down in front of him, sloshing coffee over the sides as she did.
“Anything else?”
“Yes, could I have a slice of apple pie?” She went over, pulled the pie out from under the glass and cut a piece of pie. Again she slammed it down in front of him.
“Anything else?”
“Well, a kind word wouldn’t hurt,” the customer said.
“Alright – don’t eat the pie,” she said.[i]
Have you ever been places like that? Where the kindest word that can be said is ‘don’t eat the pie’? For way too many people, that is their experience of church. Rightly or wrongly, there are very many people who believe that the church and the Christians who form it are about as friendly as that surly waitress.
You may be saying to yourself, “That can’t be right. Churches are supposed to be welcoming places, inviting people through the doors. Our slogan in the United Methodist Church is “Open hearts, open minds, open doors.” We talk about the importance of God’s love and about telling the world the good news. But the world is not hearing the good news.
The Barna research group did some surveys with young people recently and they found some surprising things. Of the twelve most common impressions that non-believing 16- to 29-year-olds have of Christians nine of them are negative. Among the most common things the young people noted were that Christians were judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), old-fashioned and too involved in politics. 76% did say that they think Christians have good values and 55% said that the faith is one they respect, but maybe the most damning thing they said was that “Christianity in today’s society no longer looks like Jesus.” 23% of the non-Christians responding said that. 22% of the born-again Christians said that. To put it bluntly, for many people Christians are failing because they are being “unchristian”!
David Kinnaman, who reviewed the research with Barna, says, “Going into this…project, I assumed that people’s perceptions were generally soft, based on misinformation, and would gradually morph into more traditional views. But then, as we probed why young people had come to such conclusions, I was surprised how much their perceptions were rooted in specific stories and personal interactions with Christians and in churches. When they labeled Christians as judgmental this was not merely spiritual defensiveness. It was frequently the result of truly ‘unChristian’ experiences.”[ii]
Once again, if we go back to the history of the Church, we find that this is not a place we haven’t been before. The church has always been a place filled with “unchristian Christians” struggling to become more like Jesus. But just because that’s so doesn’t mean that we should be happy about it or content with the way things are. We should always be dissatisfied.
We’ve been visiting with the apostle Paul for the last few weeks as he talked with his unchristian Christians in Corinth who had a lot of questions for him as they struggled to be a new congregation of Jesus followers. We talked a few weeks ago about how they dealt with marriage. Last week we talked about how they tried to be a peaceful, mixed community made up of mature and weak members.
We get a hint from these chapters of what life in the Corinthian church must have been like. They were contentious folks. You might not call them old-fashioned, but judgmental and hypocritical…O yeah! They were definitely sorting themselves out by putting some members down and elevating themselves. Everyone thought they knew best and had the most desirable gifts to offer to the community.
It seems like they were even questioning Paul, wondering if he was really behaving like he ought to. In the early verses of chapter 9 in 1 Corinthians Paul is telling them all the reasons he could pull rank on them and all the reasons why he should be able to claim a living off of them due to his position as a minister of the gospel, but after saying all this he says, “I could claim my rights but I’m not doing that. I’m not going to impose any burden on you because I don’t want anything to stand between you and the gospel.”
You see, Paul knew what he could claim. He knew that he could have a wife. He could have a salary or some means of support from his work as a minister. But if anything was going to come between the ability of his audience to hear the good news and that good news, he was not going to let it be an issue. So he chose a life of celibacy and he chose to work to support himself.
He tells the Corinthians all this and then he goes on to challenge them to do something, too. They are caught up in this judgmental boasting game. They brag about their spiritual gifts. They jostle for position in the leadership. They think that because they excel in an area of spiritual leadership that gives them standing over others. But Paul says, “Look at me. I preach the gospel, not because it gives me a right to boast, but because if I don’t everything I am is all for naught. I feel an inner compulsion to preach the good news. Woe is me if I don’t preach. So what is my reward? That I will be free from all my other preoccupations and others will hear the good news.”
Then Paul goes on to talk about all the people he is engaged with and how he orders his life so that the people he is talking to can hear and see Jesus in him. “To the Jews I appear like a Jew. To those who live under the old Mosaic Law, I address them as one who is under the old Mosaic Law. To those who are outside that Law, I talk to them as one outside. To the weak, I am weak. I have become all things to all people so that I might by all means save some.”
I have become all things to all people so that I might by all means save some. We hear that and we hear a warning in our heads. “All things to all people? Isn’t that the problem with politicians? They promise one thing to a group over here and another to a group over there and in the end you wonder if they have any convictions at all.” That’s what we think but that’s not what Paul is saying here. He is not saying that he has no convictions. His life had been turned around by an encounter with Jesus. He had been going one way and now he was very clearly going the other way. He once was lost but now was found. There was no turning back.
What he is saying here is that he does not want to put any roadblock in front of anyone that will keep them from hearing what he has heard. He is going to go into the culture to listen, to see how they view the world, to know their concerns, to be with them where they are and to help them see how Jesus enters that very same world where they live to transform and save them. That’s what it means to have a winning personality.
How powerful is that? How many people need to know that Jesus has entered into THEIR world to bring life? Maybe they’ve lost a child to drug addiction and they’re afraid of what church people might say if they knew – what is it that they need to hear except Jesus is with them and with their child? Maybe you are depressed and distraught and you just don’t know how to get over it and you’re afraid to bring that cloud with you to church because what if church people won’t get it, won’t accept it…what if they tell you to just be happy—what is that you need to hear except Jesus walked through the valley of the shadow, too? Maybe you’ve just lost your last friend and the loneliness seems overwhelming – what is that you need to hear except Jesus felt abandoned and rejected, too? Maybe you feel like there are things you’ve done in your life are so bad and so far from what God wants that you could never be accepted…never be loved – what is that you need to hear except Jesus’ voice saying, “I did not come for the healthy but for the sick”?
While we were in Dallas last week we had dinner with some of the folks I worked with in West Dallas. We got together to remember a friend and colleague, Kathleen Baskin-Ball, who worked with us there and who recently died. But more than that we remembered stories about how we began that work. Most of us had not grown up in that neighborhood. Most of us came from different places, different cultures, different backgrounds. My friend, Juan Prieto, had come from Colombia. Another one from Kansas. Me from Virginia.
When we started we were all lost. We had to give up everything we knew about how to act and behave in order to learn what it meant to live in a place like West Dallas. We had to risk failing and falling, which we did many times. But that’s what it took to bring the gospel to a neighborhood overrun by the problems of broken families, broken lives, and broken promises.
I also got to hear about a lot of amazing new churches last week at the conference I attended. One of them was a small church growing in downtown Seattle called Church of the Apostles. A young, African-American woman named Karen Ward is the pastor, or abbess, of this church and they have taken over an abandoned Lutheran church in a neighborhood of people who are just like the young people I described at the beginning of this sermon – people who are skeptical of church and many of whom suspect that being Christian means being judgmental and harsh.
They do church in a radical way. By that I mean that they go right back to the roots to see how the early church did it. The early church lived in close community, sharing meals and resources. So do they. They also have three community houses where people live together according to a common rule of worship and work. They call themselves “new monastics,” trying to reclaim the ideals of monks and nuns by following the model of Jesus. And they also see themselves as icons for the rest of the community. They know that not everyone can or will become a new monastic, but the people who live in these houses hope that they will live out their Christian lives in such a way that others will know that they, too, are called to live in a relationship.
When the Church of the Apostles talks about what it expects of its members, some of the things sound very familiar to our ears. Members are called to love God and love their neighbors. They are to engage with the community and practice their faith. But they have some things, as well, that sound different. Members there commit to giving invitations and providing welcome. They are supposed to share stories and throw parties. They are called to create art and exchange gifts. And they are to renew culture and steward creation.
All sorts of people find their way to Church of the Apostles for their Saturday night worship. The community works with Karen Ward to plan the worship and they like to build things. Ward says that Home Depot is their worship supply store. Once when they were doing a series on water, they built a river in a wooden chute right through the middle of the sanctuary with running water.
They do these things to reach the people around them who need to hear the gospel and need to hear it in words and images they can understand. Experimental communities like this one are willing to become all things to all people in order that by all means they might save some. If you think about it, it’s exactly what God did – became one of us in order to save us.
So who needs to hear this word? Who needs to know that what the world imagines about Christians is in need of some revision? What sort of community shall we be to help a hurting world? What things do we not have to be so that we can be the light of Christ? Thanks be to God.
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
If I preach the good news, this is not something for me to boast about it, because that compulsion presses on me. Woe is me if I don't preach the good news. If I do this willingly, I will have my reward. If I do it unwillingly, I am simply acting on a commission.
So what is my reward? That in preaching the good news I may offer the gospel free of charge and not be absorbed with my rights in the gospel. Even though I was a free person with respect to all, I made myself a slave so that I could win many people. To the Jews I became like a Jew so that I could win the Jews. To those under the Law I became like one under the Law so that I could win those under the Law. To those outside the Law I became like one outside the Law, (even though I am not outside the Law of God but rather under the law of Christ), so that I could win those outside the Law. To the weak I became weak so that I could win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that I might by all means save some. I do all things through the gospel so that I may share in it.
“Could I have a cup of coffee?” he asked. The waitress went and got the coffee and slammed it down in front of him, sloshing coffee over the sides as she did.
“Anything else?”
“Yes, could I have a slice of apple pie?” She went over, pulled the pie out from under the glass and cut a piece of pie. Again she slammed it down in front of him.
“Anything else?”
“Well, a kind word wouldn’t hurt,” the customer said.
“Alright – don’t eat the pie,” she said.[i]
Have you ever been places like that? Where the kindest word that can be said is ‘don’t eat the pie’? For way too many people, that is their experience of church. Rightly or wrongly, there are very many people who believe that the church and the Christians who form it are about as friendly as that surly waitress.
You may be saying to yourself, “That can’t be right. Churches are supposed to be welcoming places, inviting people through the doors. Our slogan in the United Methodist Church is “Open hearts, open minds, open doors.” We talk about the importance of God’s love and about telling the world the good news. But the world is not hearing the good news.
The Barna research group did some surveys with young people recently and they found some surprising things. Of the twelve most common impressions that non-believing 16- to 29-year-olds have of Christians nine of them are negative. Among the most common things the young people noted were that Christians were judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), old-fashioned and too involved in politics. 76% did say that they think Christians have good values and 55% said that the faith is one they respect, but maybe the most damning thing they said was that “Christianity in today’s society no longer looks like Jesus.” 23% of the non-Christians responding said that. 22% of the born-again Christians said that. To put it bluntly, for many people Christians are failing because they are being “unchristian”!
David Kinnaman, who reviewed the research with Barna, says, “Going into this…project, I assumed that people’s perceptions were generally soft, based on misinformation, and would gradually morph into more traditional views. But then, as we probed why young people had come to such conclusions, I was surprised how much their perceptions were rooted in specific stories and personal interactions with Christians and in churches. When they labeled Christians as judgmental this was not merely spiritual defensiveness. It was frequently the result of truly ‘unChristian’ experiences.”[ii]
Once again, if we go back to the history of the Church, we find that this is not a place we haven’t been before. The church has always been a place filled with “unchristian Christians” struggling to become more like Jesus. But just because that’s so doesn’t mean that we should be happy about it or content with the way things are. We should always be dissatisfied.
We’ve been visiting with the apostle Paul for the last few weeks as he talked with his unchristian Christians in Corinth who had a lot of questions for him as they struggled to be a new congregation of Jesus followers. We talked a few weeks ago about how they dealt with marriage. Last week we talked about how they tried to be a peaceful, mixed community made up of mature and weak members.
We get a hint from these chapters of what life in the Corinthian church must have been like. They were contentious folks. You might not call them old-fashioned, but judgmental and hypocritical…O yeah! They were definitely sorting themselves out by putting some members down and elevating themselves. Everyone thought they knew best and had the most desirable gifts to offer to the community.
It seems like they were even questioning Paul, wondering if he was really behaving like he ought to. In the early verses of chapter 9 in 1 Corinthians Paul is telling them all the reasons he could pull rank on them and all the reasons why he should be able to claim a living off of them due to his position as a minister of the gospel, but after saying all this he says, “I could claim my rights but I’m not doing that. I’m not going to impose any burden on you because I don’t want anything to stand between you and the gospel.”
You see, Paul knew what he could claim. He knew that he could have a wife. He could have a salary or some means of support from his work as a minister. But if anything was going to come between the ability of his audience to hear the good news and that good news, he was not going to let it be an issue. So he chose a life of celibacy and he chose to work to support himself.
He tells the Corinthians all this and then he goes on to challenge them to do something, too. They are caught up in this judgmental boasting game. They brag about their spiritual gifts. They jostle for position in the leadership. They think that because they excel in an area of spiritual leadership that gives them standing over others. But Paul says, “Look at me. I preach the gospel, not because it gives me a right to boast, but because if I don’t everything I am is all for naught. I feel an inner compulsion to preach the good news. Woe is me if I don’t preach. So what is my reward? That I will be free from all my other preoccupations and others will hear the good news.”
Then Paul goes on to talk about all the people he is engaged with and how he orders his life so that the people he is talking to can hear and see Jesus in him. “To the Jews I appear like a Jew. To those who live under the old Mosaic Law, I address them as one who is under the old Mosaic Law. To those who are outside that Law, I talk to them as one outside. To the weak, I am weak. I have become all things to all people so that I might by all means save some.”
I have become all things to all people so that I might by all means save some. We hear that and we hear a warning in our heads. “All things to all people? Isn’t that the problem with politicians? They promise one thing to a group over here and another to a group over there and in the end you wonder if they have any convictions at all.” That’s what we think but that’s not what Paul is saying here. He is not saying that he has no convictions. His life had been turned around by an encounter with Jesus. He had been going one way and now he was very clearly going the other way. He once was lost but now was found. There was no turning back.
What he is saying here is that he does not want to put any roadblock in front of anyone that will keep them from hearing what he has heard. He is going to go into the culture to listen, to see how they view the world, to know their concerns, to be with them where they are and to help them see how Jesus enters that very same world where they live to transform and save them. That’s what it means to have a winning personality.
How powerful is that? How many people need to know that Jesus has entered into THEIR world to bring life? Maybe they’ve lost a child to drug addiction and they’re afraid of what church people might say if they knew – what is it that they need to hear except Jesus is with them and with their child? Maybe you are depressed and distraught and you just don’t know how to get over it and you’re afraid to bring that cloud with you to church because what if church people won’t get it, won’t accept it…what if they tell you to just be happy—what is that you need to hear except Jesus walked through the valley of the shadow, too? Maybe you’ve just lost your last friend and the loneliness seems overwhelming – what is that you need to hear except Jesus felt abandoned and rejected, too? Maybe you feel like there are things you’ve done in your life are so bad and so far from what God wants that you could never be accepted…never be loved – what is that you need to hear except Jesus’ voice saying, “I did not come for the healthy but for the sick”?
While we were in Dallas last week we had dinner with some of the folks I worked with in West Dallas. We got together to remember a friend and colleague, Kathleen Baskin-Ball, who worked with us there and who recently died. But more than that we remembered stories about how we began that work. Most of us had not grown up in that neighborhood. Most of us came from different places, different cultures, different backgrounds. My friend, Juan Prieto, had come from Colombia. Another one from Kansas. Me from Virginia.
When we started we were all lost. We had to give up everything we knew about how to act and behave in order to learn what it meant to live in a place like West Dallas. We had to risk failing and falling, which we did many times. But that’s what it took to bring the gospel to a neighborhood overrun by the problems of broken families, broken lives, and broken promises.
I also got to hear about a lot of amazing new churches last week at the conference I attended. One of them was a small church growing in downtown Seattle called Church of the Apostles. A young, African-American woman named Karen Ward is the pastor, or abbess, of this church and they have taken over an abandoned Lutheran church in a neighborhood of people who are just like the young people I described at the beginning of this sermon – people who are skeptical of church and many of whom suspect that being Christian means being judgmental and harsh.
They do church in a radical way. By that I mean that they go right back to the roots to see how the early church did it. The early church lived in close community, sharing meals and resources. So do they. They also have three community houses where people live together according to a common rule of worship and work. They call themselves “new monastics,” trying to reclaim the ideals of monks and nuns by following the model of Jesus. And they also see themselves as icons for the rest of the community. They know that not everyone can or will become a new monastic, but the people who live in these houses hope that they will live out their Christian lives in such a way that others will know that they, too, are called to live in a relationship.
When the Church of the Apostles talks about what it expects of its members, some of the things sound very familiar to our ears. Members are called to love God and love their neighbors. They are to engage with the community and practice their faith. But they have some things, as well, that sound different. Members there commit to giving invitations and providing welcome. They are supposed to share stories and throw parties. They are called to create art and exchange gifts. And they are to renew culture and steward creation.
All sorts of people find their way to Church of the Apostles for their Saturday night worship. The community works with Karen Ward to plan the worship and they like to build things. Ward says that Home Depot is their worship supply store. Once when they were doing a series on water, they built a river in a wooden chute right through the middle of the sanctuary with running water.
They do these things to reach the people around them who need to hear the gospel and need to hear it in words and images they can understand. Experimental communities like this one are willing to become all things to all people in order that by all means they might save some. If you think about it, it’s exactly what God did – became one of us in order to save us.
So who needs to hear this word? Who needs to know that what the world imagines about Christians is in need of some revision? What sort of community shall we be to help a hurting world? What things do we not have to be so that we can be the light of Christ? Thanks be to God.
1 Corinthians 9:16-23
If I preach the good news, this is not something for me to boast about it, because that compulsion presses on me. Woe is me if I don't preach the good news. If I do this willingly, I will have my reward. If I do it unwillingly, I am simply acting on a commission.
So what is my reward? That in preaching the good news I may offer the gospel free of charge and not be absorbed with my rights in the gospel. Even though I was a free person with respect to all, I made myself a slave so that I could win many people. To the Jews I became like a Jew so that I could win the Jews. To those under the Law I became like one under the Law so that I could win those under the Law. To those outside the Law I became like one outside the Law, (even though I am not outside the Law of God but rather under the law of Christ), so that I could win those outside the Law. To the weak I became weak so that I could win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that I might by all means save some. I do all things through the gospel so that I may share in it.
[i] Adapted from Nigel Griffiths, http://living.scotsman.com/features/Top-jokes-to-cheer-you.4808592.jp.
[ii] “A New Generation Expresses its Skepticism and Frustration with Christianity,” Barna Research Group, Sept. 24, 2007, http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdate&BarnaUpdateID=280.
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