Sharing the Gospel  Acts 2:42 - 47

What would you like Faith Church to become, to look like? Many of us have a vision of church that would meet our needs. It might look homey, it might be full to overflowing, it might feel intimate like a family, it might be filled with all kinds of opportunities, it might welcome me without any demands, it might be the place where I encounter God's expectations of me. I would like to suggest a different vision. Rather than trying to make the church become what you and I want it to become, I suggest that we should try to make the church what God wants it to become. And I would guess that God's vision will be vastly different than your personal vision or mine.

When I accepted my first pastoral appointment 34 years ago, religious leaders judged the health and vitality of a church by how large the membership was. Since people willingly went to church in those days, the larger the
membership the larger the attendance at church on Sunday Morning. In fact, it wasn't unusual to fill the pews or for attendance to exceed membership in very small churches. When I served multiple point charges
early in my career, at least one of the churches in each charge had 30 people on the membership role and we consistently had 30 to 35 people in attendance on average. Not unusual in those days.

But then worship patterns changed over the next 15 years from when I began to pastor, and a church could have a large membership but a small worship attendance. The last church I served before coming here
had a membership of over 625 members, but only about 100 people attended worship. The times had changed, so religious leaders began saying that to judge the health and vitality of a church, we needed to look at the
size of the worship attendance.

The vision was to grow the worship attendance, to bring more people into worship and to experience the presence and love of Christ. The membership size would grow as attendance grew. This certainly seemed
more realistic.

But in time some of us began to see some problems with this new vision. The mission statement of the United Methodist Church, like the mission statement of Faith Church, says that our purpose as Christian
churches is to make disciples for Jesus Christ. Some of us began to believe that a healthy church, a vital church, the church that Christ envisioned, would be judged by the number of disciples it created and
encouraged, not the number of people sitting in the pews. A church can have a large attendance, but all people are doing is attending worship.

Nothing else is happening to serve God or to share the gospel. Several years ago, I heard about one of my colleagues who was doing some great things in worship and his church was growing by leaps
and bounds. In fact, he had over 500 people in worship and a membership of less than 600. We marveled at his statistics until one day he realized that while he had over 500 people in worship, hardly anybody
was involved in ministry. His church was having no impact on the community since it wasn't sharing Christ. If the church is called to make disciples for Christ, did he have a healthy and vital church?
If you don't share Christ with the world, are you fulfilling the responsibilities of a Christian Church? Even though he had a full sanctuary on Sunday mornings, maybe he wasn't as successful as he
thought. So he went back to the drawing board to see what discipleship is all about.

Our scripture passage this morning reads as though it mirrors my colleague's church. Great things were happening in the Christian community. Preaching and teaching, miracles and wonders, worship and
fellowship were growing that first Christian community by leaps and bounds. As our scripture says, "...day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved." But our scripture neglects to say
one more thing about the activities of these early Christians.

It neglects to say that they were in ministry sharing their faith. That they were empowered to proclaim God's grace. That they shared God and Christ's salvation with others. That's what those first Christians were
doing and why they were growing day by day. The reason our scripture neglects to say anything about that is because that was the ministry of all Christians in those days. You weren't given a choice. You couldn't
be a Christian without sharing your faith, without ministering to others. There wasn't such a thing as a Christian coming to worship and going home and doing nothing else until next worship day. That's a
modern day way of being a Christian and one that's not really biblical.

Just read the Book of Acts to get a sense of who a Christian is supposed to be in sharing the Gospel. Our task as Christians is to share the salvation of Christ.

And that's what we are about as Faith Church. We are about making disciples who share the Gospel, the Good News of Christ's salvation. Just to show us how many disciples we have in this church, I am tempted to ask everybody who is involved in a ministry and in spiritual growth to stand, but I'm afraid not everybody who should would stand.

You see, many of you are involved in discipleship without knowing that you are. You do what comes naturally as a Christian and don't see anything extraordinary in what you do. That's another quality
worthy of a disciple: humility. I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to prove my point if I asked you to stand. So let me say that as I look over this congregation, and knowing the ministries of the church and you who
are involved in discipleship, I see a congregation composed of mostly disciples who are involved in ministry that shares the Gospel with the world. We can confidently say that we are living the Book of Acts in
the 21st century as we add new disciples week by week.

During the month of September we have been emphasizing our role and function as disciples with the last Sunday of the month devoted to encouraging and enrolling people to explore and participate in
discipleship opportunities. Each year at this time we make available a listing of all of the opportunities in which we may participate.