Answering Friends and Neighbors

Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25, Psalm 78, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

Good morning!

Turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor, are you ready for Jesus’ return?”

Are you ready?

Are you really ready?

Are you sure you're ready?

My friends, this is the question that we have been building up to. This is the question that is the most important question in your life. “Are you ready” is the only question that makes a difference after your funeral. “Are you ready” is the only question that matters after Jesus Christ returns. “Are you ready” is the only question that determines whether your existence in eternity will be joyful – or filled with sorrow.

And it is the only question that is of lasting significance for your neighbors, your family, and your friends.

Nothing else matters in the long run.

In the long run, it does not matter whether or not you made a hundred thousand dollars a year.

In the long run, it does not matter whether or not you lived in a nice house.

In the long run, it does not matter whether or not your football team made it to the state championships.

In the long run, it does not matter whether or not you lived 15 years or a hundred and five years.

In the long run, it does not matter if you weigh 95 pounds, 125 pounds, 200 pounds or 300 pounds.

In the long run, it does not matter what color your skin is, what clothes you wear, whether or not your candidates won the election, or what someone did to you.

In the long run, all that matters is whether or not you are ready for the return of Jesus Christ in the flesh to this earth. For that determines the remainder of your existence in eternal life.

So I have told my children that there are three futures they need to plan for.

First of all, Christ may return suddenly. Are you ready for the return of Jesus Christ? Let’s go over the checklist.

Are you a baptized, believing Christian who is following the path that Christ showed us?  There are three key points:

First, are you baptized?

Next, do you believe that Jesus Christ was actually God walking and talking on this earth in a very complicated way, and that He was executed as a sacrifice for your personal crimes against God, to pay the complete penalty for those crimes, and do you believe that He came back to life to demonstrate that He was telling the truth when He said, “I and the Father are One”?

Third, are you attempting your very best to follow the path of holy living that He demonstrated for us – yes, you make mistakes, but are you trying to follow that path as a good soldier would try to follow the orders of the General?

If you've done all three, you are ready for the return of Jesus Christ.

The second future that is possible is to assume the world continues onward through your life basically like it has continued. If so, then I tell my children, study hard, learn a technical trade, and make a living – but keep your walk with Christ first and foremost.

The third future is to assume the world falls apart. It seems recently like this is more likely to happen, doesn’t it? If it does, make sure you know how to plant a garden, how to fish, and how to hunt. Know practical, low-tech skills for living. And keep Christ first, for no matter how good our civilization is doing – or how badly it is going – Jesus may return at any minute – or He may call you home in a matter of seconds on the highway, with a heart attack, or some other way. We never know.

But let’s go back to our core question for today: Are you ready for the return of Jesus?

I’m going to assume now that you are ready. You know – we just went over the check list. If you aren’t ready – come by the parsonage to talk or come to one of our small group studies on Sunday evenings at 6, Wednesday mornings at 10, or Wednesday evenings. We’ll talk about what is needed to make sure you’re ready.

But if you are ready – how do we talk to our friends and family about Christ? How do we answer their questions and objections to coming to church? How do we help them come to understand who Jesus is and what He means for their eternal future?

The first thing is to change our own attitude. Many of you have been sitting in those pews for years learning about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and you feel good about your walk with Christ. You feel that you are getting there, that no matter what else you have to worry about in this world, at least you can trust Jesus to always be there. And that’s good. That’s very good. You’ve actually been a disciple for years, learning about what Jesus asks of us, becoming a stronger person, learning how to survive the bad times of life.

But now, it is time for you to share what you know.

Every person who has been attending church for more than about 3 years knows a tremendous amount about Christianity compared to the person who does not attend church. 3 years means about 150 sermons. And so it is time to share what you know with people who do not know. It is time to look outside and find a group of people to teach. It is time to become the leader of a small group.

“But Pastor, I don’t have a small group to lead.”

Of course you do. You just haven't realized it. In the ordinary course of your life, you regularly talk to a couple of dozen people. Some of them are family members. Some of them are your neighbors. Some of them are people you work with or go to school with. Some of them are people at the stores you shop at or where you get your oil changed. Some of them are other parents in your kid’s sports teams or dance class, or ….you get the idea.

Imagine that they are your small group. They are your special ministry group. They are a group of people sent to you by God so that you could help some of them join you in Heaven one day. They are your responsibility – and your joy. God has given them to you as your mission field. There are few enough Christians in the world, each of us can and should lead a small group of people toward the Lord.

If you are leading a small group, let’s look at what you should be doing:

Your job is to be their chaplain. A chaplain prays with people, a chaplain prays for people, and a chaplain points people toward God. Your goal is to listen SO WELL to them and become such a bringer of peace and joy that whenever trouble comes, they will call you up and say, “Pray for me.” Or “Pray for my daughter.”

As a chaplain, consider what God story you will tell each week. The best God stories are the stories about what God did for you recently and what you learned from it. You can also tell people what you learned from my sermons, if anything. You can tell them how someone else stood up and praised God for their miraculous surgery and recovery. You can tell them how someone you know held it altogether through their faith in Jesus. But be ready with a God story every week to tell you friends, neighbors, and family. Be the bringer of Good News to your small group. Let the evening news bring them the bad news. You bring them the Good News.

Let me tell you how it works. Long before my wife became a professional pastor, she took a job at Taco Bell. Very quickly, she saw that she was surrounded by a host of teenagers and twenty-somethings, most of whom never, ever went to church. The language was atrocious in the kitchen. Girls gave each other advice on how to get abortions, and then cut each other to pieces with their gossip. Anyone with the least bit of strangeness was picked on by the others. It was not the ideal place to work. But my wife decided to look at the place as her own personal mission field, and she decided that she would be the “Pastor of Taco Bell”.

She was immediately effective. Her first night, she was put on the window taking the money. A man drove up just as a blast of profanity erupted from the kitchen behind her. She said to the man, “Just a moment”, closed the window, turned around, and then, as only the mother of five kids can do, she said, “Knock off the profanity – the customers can hear you.” She turned around, and said to the man, “And here’s your change. “He was grinning from ear to ear.

When she overhead a group of girls giving the abortion advice to a newly pregnant girl, she pulled her over. “You don’t need to have an abortion. I know people who can help you and let you see an ultrasound of your baby.” Today, she gets to see pictures of that little boy walking and playing around.

When they were picking on one particular guy, she pulled over the ring leaders and read them the riot act. She became the only friend another guy had, a guy who was terribly depressed.

In short, she found the world at that Taco Bell was a mess – and as a person of faith, she worked to change things.

And the language quickly improved, there became a few more smiles in the kitchen, and God was glorified. But after about 6 weeks, my wife had to quit to have surgery, so she couldn’t continue there. But while she was there, she made a difference.

You, too, can find a small group of people to become their chaplain, their pastor, their small group leader.

Now that you’re beginning to get the idea of a group of people that you minister to, as your “ministry circuit”, let’s talk about how you answer common questions.

The most common feedback that I hear is that “My friend won’t go to church.”

Of course not. In general, people who don’t believe don’t go to church. Why should they? Let’s look at this from their point of view:

- There is a better breakfast at Hardee’s.

- They already have friends that meet them at a bar – and the bar serves beer.

- The school system provides babysitting for many more hours a day than our Pioneer Clubs do.

- There is better entertainment at the American Mountain Theater or on television.

- There is better coffee at Starbucks.

- The seats are more comfortable at the mall movie theatre.

- The food is better at Oliverios – and they serve wine.

- They can give to the United Way through paycheck deductions.

- The music is better on iTunes.

- The band is bigger at Mountaineer Field – and they serve beer!

- They can stop by the Clarksburg Mission if they really want to help the poor.

- Honestly, what do we have to offer?

What we have to offer is connection with the supernatural God that created the Universe. That’s all – but that’s all we really need to offer. For through that connection we receive love, forgiveness, purpose, life, hope, and joy.

Now, that sounds good, but we must remember one key thing: When we admit that God exists and that Jesus is our Lord, we must deny that we are God and that we are sovereign, independent, and fully capable of handling everything the Universe throws at us. Listen to that again…. And that denial is very difficult for many people.

The biggest barrier to people coming to church, you see, is that they aren’t Christians. When my wife and I first came to visit Quiet Dell, we saw Jesus standing in front of the church door – the old church door has a life-sized stature of Jesus blocking the old entrance. That is exactly what many non-Christians face – they must be familiar with Jesus before they can enter the church. And we keep trying to bring non-Christians to church. That won’t work…

The church used to be a place where non-Christians became Christians. And it still is, for children and some adults. But for most adults, they must become interested in meeting Jesus before they will be comfortable in church. They must become partially Christian before they are interested in coming to church. And that is our task – helping them understand something about Jesus before they come to church.

In fact, we each need to help those non-Christians become Christians – and then it will be easy to bring them to church. They will want to find a church – and if you led them to Christ, this church is the obvious choice.

So we have to help them make the journey.

The first question to ask them is “Do you believe in God?” And some will answer "Yes", and some will answer "No."

If "No", I suggest the following approach…

Ask your friend or family member what they DO believe in. Let them talk. They may talk about how the Universe does not need a God – or more likely, they will talk about their conception of God, for there are very few real atheists. But let’s assume that they give you a view of a Universe that does not need God. Answer them this way.

“If there is no God, then there is no intelligence behind the Universe and things just happen, right? I’d like you to think about Beauty. I can look at a rainbow or a waterfall and see that it is beautiful. Yet, what is the purpose of Beauty in a world without a God? If God does not exist, then all things must have a purpose that leads us towards survival of the fittest. The Beauty of a man or woman might help them have more kids, but seeing the Beauty of a waterfall or a rainbow…how does that help us survive? And furthermore, a coral reef is a very dangerous place for people, yet we see that it is beautiful – how does this aid our survival? A Universe with a Creator God explains Beauty easily – our Creator loves Beauty. But a Universe without a Creator God cannot explain the Beauty of a waterfall or a rainbow or a coral reef …or a sunset."

"Another thought – how is it that you think? In a world without God, there is no soul. That means that what you and I talk about as our “minds” is nothing more than a bunch of chemicals bouncing around together. Yet, if you are honest, you KNOW that you are something more than just a glob of chemicals. There is something about THIS glob of chemicals that is YOU – just as there is something about the glob of chemicals in my brain that is ME. Explain how you think, for a world without God must explain self-awareness of a glob of chemicals."

Let them go and stew around with those ideas for a bit. Don't pressure them. Just let them think about those issues for a while.

Now, it is actually more likely that you will get someone who believes in God, and sort of understands the Christ part, but doesn’t go to church for other reasons. Let’s look at some of them:

1) “I don’t know anybody there.” “Sure you do, you know me. I’ll pick you up.” The real issue is that the person is going into a situation where they feel they will be the focus of everyone’s attention, and that’s scary. Be blunt with them and ask them if that is the issue. Re-assure them that you’ll be sitting with them the whole time.

2) “I don’t have a car.” Pick them up and take them to church.

3) “My kids will mis-behave.” – “We have one rule here about kids – let kids be kids and enjoy church. “ They probably were smacked when they were young over their behavior in church and felt their parent’s embarrassment, and they don’t want to be embarrassed by the fact that their four-year-old is acting like a four-year-old. Re-assure them of our love for kids.

4) “I don’t have good enough clothes.” Tell them of our range – from dirty blue jeans to suits, from sweatpants to dresses. Remember – they are really saying, “Am I good enough for church?” Re-assure them that they are.

5) “There are too many hypocrites in that church – I don’t like the people in that church.” You know, when I was pastoring another church, I discovered my cousin lived a few hundred yards from the church. I stopped by and invited him to come to church. He would not come because he had gone to the church when he was 14 and he knew what the people were like in that church. At the time of our conversation, he was 50 years old. Most of the people who attended when he was a teenager were now buried out back of the church.

This is why we need to be so very careful. In a small town, people have a long memory. People long remember people who were harsh to them when they were young. Furthermore, most people hold us to a very high standard, much higher than we hold ourselves and others. It is very upsetting to someone who heard sermons against this or that sin – a sin which they have taken on in their lives – and see people in the church who once joined them in their sin. I know one woman who was once a member of a youth group. The members of the youth group were great kids on Sundays and Wednesdays, and on Friday evenings could be found smoking pot and drinking beer behind the bleachers at the ball games. She will not attend church today because of those “hypocrites”.

Our answer to the person that accuses us of being hypocrites is that, “yes, we are. Aren’t you, too?” with the biggest smile on your face that you put up. Emphasize that Jesus said we all sin – and that this church believes that it takes years for most people to stop sinning, but we are each working on our own sins..

The key to speaking to people is always to have spent time, enough time, with them that they understand you care about them. You are not to be their parents – they already have a set of parents. Your job is to be the wise aunt or wise uncle that gives advice without judgment. You are to be the friend who is so trusted that you can say to your friend, “You really shouldn’t wear that outfit, it makes you look fat.”-- and they love you for that! You are to be the man who says to the younger man, “I need to talk to you. I see something you are doing, and I almost lost my marriage over it. Here’s what I see and you can take it or leave it.”

The key is to reach that point with people where they trust you to be truthful with them, to always love them, to give them sound advice based upon hard experience. When you reach that point, you will have the right to say, “I’ve been watching you for a few months now, and I think your life is coming unglued. Let me tell you how I stay glued together,” and tell them what Christ means to you in your life.

We get all worried about having the right answers. The right answers come when we trust that God will give the right answers, when we pray for the right answers, and when we care enough for our loved ones to try to learn all we can about leading people to Christ.

In sports, we understand that that the key to becoming a good basketball player is to practice shooting baskets – hundreds of them a day. The key to becoming a good baseball player is to practice throwing and catching and hitting the baseball every day. In football, the key is lifting weights to become strong, and in throwing and catching the football every day.

Our equivalent, the key to becoming a good Gospel spreader – dare I say, an evangelist? – is to practice. Our practice involves reading the Bible and coming to Bible studies. Our practice involves praying for the people that you care about. Our practice involves talking and thinking about why those people might hold the attitudes that they do, and learning how to answer those attitudes.

I will be holding an evangelism training workshop next Saturday morning Nov 15 from 10 until noon. Everyone is invited to attend. It will be two solid hours of ideas on how to speak with someone you already know about Christianity. The workshop is not going to teach you to go door to door inviting people to church. There will be plenty of time for questions and answers. Be sure to write down some questions between now and then.

But still, to win a baseball game, there is one critical thing that has to happen. Nine people must show up on your side. They must each take their turns at bat. You cannot get on base without standing in the batter’s box. You can’t win a basketball game without shooting the basketball. You can’t win a football game unless your team has the ball.

Perhaps the most important key to evangelism is that you actually talk to people about God. They must know that you care deeply about their faith condition. And that, more than anything else, is far more important than any tricks of argument or debate.

You may be thinking, “Pastor, I’m ready for Jesus – why do I have to worry about other people?”

At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus directly commanded us to go to all people, teaching they all that He has commanded, and baptizing these people. If you are following Jesus, this command applies to you. Part of what Jesus asks of every Christian is that we spread the Gospel. And so, if we are truly ready for Jesus, we should be doing all we can do to spread the Good News that Jesus Christ loves all people, that He sacrificed Himself to pay for our sins, and that God raised Jesus from the dead as an endorsement of all that Jesus said and did. And one of the things that Jesus said was that if we follow Him, we will receive eternal life.

Follow Jesus – be ready for Jesus – tell your friends and neighbors and family about Jesus.

So turn to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor, are you ready for Jesus’ return?”

And turn back to your neighbor and say, “Neighbor, I am ready and working to bring a dozen other people with me!”