Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to a live recording from Westside church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Good morning, everybody. Hey. We're gonna do. We're jumping into a new series of talks. We're gonna take the next three weeks, as we do this time of year, just about every single year. And we're gonna talk about vision. We're gonna talk about the vision that we believe that Jesus has for Westside church. And it's always a funny thing for me to approach as a speaker, because coming into this, I go, okay, we're talking about vision. The overall vision hasn't really changed. We've had the words life, love, Jesus tacked onto the outside of our building and onto our banners and on our website for years and years and years now. And none of that is changing. And so I always feel this need to be, like, creative and introduce you to something new. But that's not really the task today so much. I actually want to reintroduce you to who we are at the very foundations of our church and be reminded of what the expectation is for us as the church, as Westside church. And so we believe that God is always giving us new opportunities, that we're moving into new places. Then that's all beautiful and wonderful. But today, I want to talk to you about this kind of first circle. So Jesus talks about Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and even the uttermost parts of the earth. And we're going to talk about all those things over the next few weeks. And today we're talking about Jerusalem for our purposes, the church that is gathered. Those of you who are leaning into what's happening in here at Westside, we're going to start right there.
So I want to ask you the question. If someone who had never heard of Jesus spent six months around the people of Westside church, what would they conclude Jesus is like out of the context of scripture and any preconceived notions about who Jesus is? If they just spent six months with people from Westside, what would they conclude that Jesus is like?
And I would even hope that this wouldn't come from our sermons only or from our website and not from a statement of faith. But I would hope that this would be derived from how we treat each other, how we handle our disagreements, how we respond to people that are hurting and how we use our money and how we welcome strangers and how we confess our sins and our failures to each other and still find openness and welcoming and forgiveness through those things. What do you think that they would conclude that Jesus is like.
Because I want you to understand that whether we like it or not, we're telling the world something about Jesus every single day and how we care for one another and how we care for our community.
So our life together is making this statement not just about us, but it's a statement about the God that we worship. And so I want to talk about the kind of church that Jesus is inviting, inviting us to continue to become today.
Now, this is an important distinction. I want you to understand that we're not trying to spend necessarily the next three weeks, and especially today, talking about what we're going to accomplish and the goals that we're going to. We're going to set and then try to accomplish those things. I don't really want to talk about how big we want the church to grow. It's great for the church to continue to grow, but that is not the discussion today.
And I don't really want to talk about what programs we're going to offer in order to continue to serve you and our community just yet. That's important as well.
And I don't really want to talk about just all the people that we're going to reach. I want to talk about what the expectation is for those who are in this room, who are leaning in.
Because I think there's more than just a fundamental. There's more than all of these things. And I want to bring it down to a fundamental question. What kind of Jesus, what kind of people is Jesus making us to be?
How is he forming us?
Because if you haven't heard just yet, this church, the church is not an organization, and it's not a building and a set of property off of Shevlin Park Road.
This is about a people that are led by the power of the Holy Spirit and by Jesus.
And in that sense, I believe a good picture of this is that we are called to be a scale model of the Kingdom of God. So I don't know if you've ever had something built and you've gotten blueprints or you've gotten a scale model a little, you know, for some of us who aren't very architecty, you know, I almost think about architects like using legos to build you a small version of the larger version that you're gonna see. They probably use something more efficient than legos. I love the idea, though, of architects just spending a lot of time putting together little cubes that are made of red and yellow and white.
But you'll notice that when you see a scale model. Right? Of course, it's not an entire building. It's not something that you can walk into. It's a glimpse. It's just a glimpse of what this future structure will look like.
And you can see the shape, and you can begin to understand the design, and you can kind of get an idea. Your. Your. Your imagination can get sparked by seeing these scale models, but it's certainly not the full thing. You wouldn't say that the project is complete. And I think that that's actually part of the calling of the church. We are called to bring in and usher in the kingdom of God. But I want to encourage you that we do a poor job of expressing the kingdom of God in all of its fullness on a regular basis. We do a poor job of manufacturing and stamping out heaven on earth on a regular basis, because I believe that ultimately the kingdom of God, no matter how well we do here on earth, will be so much more expansive and beautiful than anything that we can possibly create.
But I do believe that through the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit, we're meant to offer the world a glimpse, a hopeful glimpse of what that kingdom and what Jesus looks like.
A world where the last are first and the broken are healed, where sins are confessed and forgiven, where outsiders are welcomed, where enemies become friends, and where power is used to serve rather than to control.
Where people who would otherwise have nothing in common discover that we belong to one another because we belong to Jesus.
The church should be a preview of all the things that Jesus is making new.
And I think this is our vision. And I hope you understand that this is a challenging and difficult one that we will strive for and do imperfectly.
But I mean. But I think this means that our calling is not simply to tell people what the kingdom is like. I think our calling is to actually demonstrate it.
Yesterday, I was driving to my daughter's soccer game on the other side of town, and I threw on the brakes real quick because I was passing Lone Pine Coffee and I wanted a liege waffle.
Now, some of you are familiar with the liege waffle. I'm a big fan. I'm wearing a liege waffle shirt beneath this shirt right now.
Yeah, I'll prove it to you. But I'd rather not, on camera be seen unbuttoning my shirt in front of a large group of people. Okay, so another time.
And I go in to get the liege waffle, and I look at the woman across the counter and go, yes, I'd like a waffle. And she goes, well, we had some of those and she does that lean back to look in the case thing. And I was like, had.
Had.
And it was my fault. It was like, noon on a Saturday. I should have known that they would have been out by then. You know, that feeling of disappointment. I literally stopped just for that. And I ended up with, like, a stinking cookie and a cup of coffee, which were both delightful, but my expectation was somewhere else.
Love those waffles. Another time it happened where I went to a restaurant and I had a friend that was telling me that the steak frites at this restaurant are awesome. You gotta go. You have to go check them out. And we sit down, the waitress begins to talk, and I go, I've heard the steak frites are particularly wonderful here with this specific cut of meat. She goes, oh, my gosh, it's so good. Yes. Okay, we'll take your appetizer order, and then we'll come back. And I'm. You guys. You guys have to understand, I get so excited about food.
I get so, like, I'll spend a whole day just like, oh, what is it gonna be like? And my expectation, people are hyping up these steak frites. And she comes back and she says, I got really bad news. We don't have that cut.
I can offer you these cuts. And then she says, I can offer you salmon.
What?
Salmon? God bless salmon. That was not. That was not what I was here for.
None of fish.
We can get you just the frites. Oh, good. Wonderful.
That's exactly what I was hoping for.
French fries.
And so I'm just. I'm feeling this unbelievable. This incredible food disappointment, right? And then she offers me these other things. I wonder sometimes if the church does a little bit of a version of this. We go out into the world and we go, have you heard of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ? The one who forgave all of our sins, who offers us incredible and unending grace and forgiveness. And then the world comes to us and they go, we. We would like some of this. And we go, oh, we're out of the great grace and forgiveness.
What we can offer you today is angry politicians using the word biblical in ways that don't make any sense at all.
We can offer you cross necklaces.
We can offer you services, great preachers, podcasts.
And the world is like, this sounds disgusting.
I came for the grace and the mercy and the forgiveness. I came for the. For the hug and the meal inside of my deep, unending grief at the loss of a family member. I came to you to experience the thing that you profess that Jesus has offered you and you're out because you're impatient and you're angry and you're set on world domination and winning elections. What is this product?
I don't want your salmon. I want your steak.
I don't want your trinkets. I'd like your Jesus, but I'm not convinced that he really exists how you say that he does. Because I don't see it inside of you.
And I hear the world say that sometimes and I go, darn right. We can do a lot better with this stuff.
It's like the idea of somebody coming to you and telling you how great an orange tastes and then never giving you the orange to taste yourself. You know that you could be an expert on oranges and where they grow and how they grow and what kind of fertilizer to use and when the season is to pluck them. And you know nothing compared to the person that's actually eaten the orange.
You know nothing.
Are we a people that have actually tasted and seen that the Lord is good and then we can deliver that and bring that into the lives of the other people? Are we just the people that want to talk about the great meals that we've had?
What a waste of a church.
May we be a people that offer this. In practicality, I don't find it a huge priority for us to be a really invite driven church. I hope you invite people to church. I hope you're proud to be able to invite them here, and I hope you feel like this is a safe place to invite them to. My concern has never ever been that you invite people to come hear me speak. Why? Because I believe that you have the presence of Jesus with you and you are with them.
Don't bring to hear my crappy jokes and talk about waffles.
Bring them a waffle, bring them a hug, bring them a relationship, bring them a neighbor, bring be Jesus.
And if they come to church, that's great.
We'll see how long they last. Again with the jokes.
And so In Acts chapter 1 it says, In Acts 1:8 it says, as Jesus. By the way, the context of this is that Jesus has died. He's risen again. He spent time with the disciples. And now these are kind of some of the final words of we see in Scripture. He says, you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.
You'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.
Now these are some of Jesus final words to his followers. For his ascension.
He doesn't say notice. I want you to become the most influential people in your community.
He says, you'll be my witnesses.
A witness is someone whose life testifies to something that they've seen and they've experienced.
The word Jesus uses here points us to something larger than like the transferring of information. The church was never meant to just be this transfer of information place where we, we take this ancient text and we present it to people as information. He's describing this community that will bear witness to his life and his death and his resurrection and his kingdom of people that have tasted and seen and now offer up the meal to others.
And so through their words, yes, words are important. We believe in our words are important, especially around here. But even more so, it's through their lives. And then he prom that the Holy Spirit will empower them to do this work.
And I want you to know and be confident in that. The most important thing about our church is not what we can accomplish for Jesus. It's what Jesus wants to accomplish in us. And then through us.
We have to go and do the deep work of being spiritually formed to look more like Jesus. That is the first thing. And that is the job of the Jerusalem circle, of the Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and other most parts of the earth.
And so I hope we steward all these things well. I hope again our services are good. I hope our teachings are sound, I hope our music is beautiful, I hope our programs are robust and I pray that we would steward these things well. But I want to remind you that it's only the real true Jesus in existence in all of these places that can actually change our hearts and the lives of other people.
Your preferences won't do it. I hate to break it to you.
Your traditions and your favorite expressions of church will not change the world around you. It is really truly only Jesus.
Then it goes on. In Acts chapter 2 it says, in verse 42 it says they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.
Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. And all the believers were together and had everything in common.
They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. And every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. You know what preachers love to do? What? With this section of scripture, we Love to jump to the end of it because we love the idea of our churches growing so much, and we like to look at our churches and go see. The goal is to grow.
And I want you to notice that if you read this in context, the growth happens almost just as an accident or a byproduct to everything that happens before that.
Community happens, fellowship happens, teaching happens, the breaking of bread and sharing meals and prayer happens. People are filled with the wonders and signs and moved by the Holy Spirit. There is a depth of work that happens. And then it's just a tag on at the end. And then it says. And then people kept wanting to come and see an experience and be a part of something that is like this.
The goal is to never. Just to see growth in numbers. The goal is always. The goal is always to see what happens inside of our souls. Be a deep and beautiful work with Jesus.
So it's not about the excellence of their gatherings. I don't think we ever hear about the excellence of their gatherings in the early church.
He doesn't talk about their buildings, and we only a little bit hear about their organizational structure.
He describes the way that they live together.
Their devotion to Jesus had transformed their relationships, and their resources were no longer their own.
Now, we always have to be careful in the middle of all this, too, because if you keep reading acts, you'll discover a church of conflict, misunderstanding, hypocrisy, disagreements, and failures. I love those of you who know scripture real well and you've been to church a long time, and a lot of. One phrase that we just like to throw out because we're idiots is we like to say, I just wish the church was like the early church.
And what they mean is, like, I wish that we, you know, we spoke in tongues a little bit more, and I wish that we could have. And there's a lot of really good things. And I go, I think you have an incomplete understanding of how the early church was.
Because you're looking at me and you're saying, if we were like the early church, we wouldn't have all these things. We wouldn't have arguments and disagreements and anger and frustration. I'm going, it's in the Bible.
Misunderstandings, people ruining stuff, people fighting over things, sometimes fighting over really silly things. And so on one hand, that's a little frustrating to me, and mostly I'm deeply relieved because I understand that if even the early church went through these difficulties, that it means that we're not so broken beyond repair because of how we often handle each other. That Jesus can't still use us.
Because ultimately, if we're gathered around the main piece of how all this worked out, we will understand that the early church, and hopefully like Westside Church today, will understand that this is a community where the kingdom of God is becoming more visible every day.
That's the goal.
And just as Jesus welcomes children and touches lepers and shares meals with sinners and crosses social boundaries, we then become a people who do the same. Where we find that Jews and Gentiles are being brought together to eat at the same table, we become a community just like in the early church, where people who've been slaves to others have been set free and all of a sudden they're being called brothers and sisters. It's a place where women participated in the work, in the leadership of the gospel.
This revolutionary work that God is inviting us into is this one that continues to expose and make more visible the kingdom of God.
And in this, Jesus will remain at the center. So if we're going to become this kind of community, if we are actively becoming this kind of community. And by the way, I don't think this is so far off. I think we've done a ton of work and I think you guys are a church that I'm so proud to be a part of.
And so I don't say all these things. And like, man, we're terrible at this and we gotta really figure things out. I think we are absolutely on the way and we can always continue to shore up some of these holes and gaps a little bit better. But if we're gonna continue to become this kind of community, I wanna be clear again about what holds us together.
Because our unity can't be hinging on uniformity.
It can't depend on our uniformity.
We live in an age in a place that I think people are always just trying to get us into groups. I feel like there's a lot of money to be made by radicalizing people and then getting them into groups. And sometimes those groups are around a very specific politics or theology or it's a generational thing, or there's cultural preferences, there's different perspectives about the world. And we try to get inside of these really small sub, sub groups and then believe that that's the place we're supposed to exist for the rest of our lives because that's the. The safest place.
And increasingly we begin to understand this, right? Like we want to be around people that vote like we do. We want to be around people that see the world like we do. And in and of itself, that's not the worst thing in the world. But the church was never intended to be that.
We're called to be something different.
The church should be one of these places where people who would never naturally choose one another. We learn how to become a family.
Ephesians 2. Paul describes the work of Jesus bringing people together. Kind of like this. He says in verse 19, he says, Consequently, you're no longer foreigners and strangers, but you're fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household.
And so the church isn't this collection of consumers that agree on what kind of religious product they like to consume together.
That's not the idea. We're members of the same household. We're a family. And by the way, even as I say the word family in a church context, it makes my stomach hurt a little bit.
Have you ever been in one of these churches where you're like, we're a family, and eventually you go, mm, we're a cult.
You know, the family. Yeah. Like the mafia is a family. Yeah. Love that. Would love to go to Westside and be part of the family, you weirdo. Like, that's not the idea.
And the word family is loaded. And like I said, I don't know that I want to use it, but after thinking about a lot, I do, because I'm trying to help us understand this connection that we are to have. Look, nobody, Westside doesn't own a single one of you. And if you feel like you want to go somewhere else and dedicate your time to that or there's a different season or whatever, we will encourage you to go. We'll pray you on the way out.
And I will know that it's Evan's fault.
I understand.
That's great. We don't own anybody. But the thing that I want us to lend ourselves to is this, to push back against this. Look, if not everybody makes me feel exactly how I want to feel at every moment in an environment, I'm out. I'm going to ghost everybody. I'm going to disappear, and I'm never coming back. We got to get rid of that thing.
We also need to hold ourselves accountable to not allowing abusive environments to exist so that we can find this in between. Of, like, look, I want to agree to commit to something because I believe that there's growth available for me inside of these tensions without anybody being so over the top or anybody just disappearing. And there's something about being a part of a family that creates that kind of idea.
We can't just leave at a moment's notice because we're connected to these people.
And that's how I hope that we can be here, that you feel connected enough, that you feel committed enough here, that you can walk through difficult things that you don't always understand and spend time with people you don't always understand so that you and they can grow as a result.
That's the church in its best form.
It doesn't mean that every single belief is equally true, and it doesn't mean we avoid hard conversations.
That's not the idea. And it definitely doesn't mean that I'm encouraging you to never have real conviction in your life. That's not the goal. But it does mean that we refuse to let secondary identities become more central than our identity in Christ.
We have to stop worshiping at the feet of secondary identities and believe deeply in our central identity in Christ.
Our first allegiance is that of a Christian and a follower of Christ.
And so in order to do this well, we believe that the Holy Spirit has to be a central piece of this. So again, return to Acts, chapter one, verse eight. It says, you receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.
Now, I want you to notice this power is given to the community.
Okay?
The work of Jesus isn't. Isn't given to a specific person with a specific talent or gift.
Acts, chapter two. Peter explains the coming of the Spirit by quoting the prophet Joel. And he describes it as, God's Spirit will be poured out on all people. Sons and daughters will prophesy. Young and old will receive visions and dreams. Men and women will participate in the work of the Spirit. The Spirit is not restricted to the people that society considers the most important or those who stand on stages and hold microphones.
The Spirit is poured out on the whole people of God. And that has enormous implications for how we understand who we are to be. As Westside Church, we believe that a healthy church should not be dependent on one person's talent and ability or gifting.
Paul describes the church in First Corinthians 12 as a body with many parts, right?
The eye cannot say to the hand, I don't need you, and the head cannot say to the feet, I don't need you. And perhaps most importantly, the parts of the body that appear weaker are indispensable.
I wonder how often we believe that, that even the parts of our body that we would look at and they would look less consequential and they would. They would look dispensable, of course, are indispensable.
And so again, the church is not intended to be an audience gathered around a few people. It's a spirit filled body in which every person has something to contribute.
Now, in the end, I hope it looks, I hope, I hope this is the crux of how we can be for each other in this community.
I think if we're going to be a scale model of the kingdom, we have to be a people where we can be incredibly honest about our brokenness.
Anybody love hiding in here?
I love hiding.
I told the men at our men's conference this last weekend. Like I had all these ideas when I was a young immature man of like. And then someday there'll be this room in my house that'll be mine. It's like a trophy room, right? Like a man cave.
And after I had kids, I discovered that the greatest room in the whole house is the bathroom.
You know, if there's snacks in there, I can be under siege for a long time. Got running water, you know, I discovered it's the one place where I can be by myself behind a locked door. And people on the outside don't ask too many questions.
Dad, you've been in there for a long time. I know.
Any other questions that you want to follow up with right now or.
Oh, I just. There's this thing, this idea like when the house, the house gets loudest, you can just go, escape. Right. And I think sometimes that's, that's just how we are in life. That when the grief becomes so great, that our brokenness becomes so great that the difficulty of the things that we're walking through, instead of saying, okay, I would like help with these five things because life is become a little too much. We actually pull away faster and we get quieter in the middle of the chaos. And then all of a sudden, the best thing that we can do is attend church. And we can hold on to our brokenness. We can smile and we can shake people's hands without ever actually asking for help, without actually praying for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and without understanding, wisdom. But here's the truth, is that every person in this room, we all have areas of our life that we need the healing power of Jesus and his presence to come in and infiltrate every single one of us.
For some of those, for some of us, they're really visible or they're, they're, they're clear societally that something is wrong. Right? But other things are deeply hidden and unresolved. Grief exists and anger and shame and addiction and loneliness and bitterness, fear. Marriages are tough relationships that have been fractured patterns of behavior that you just don't know how to change. And I have to say, if the church is a place where we feel the greatest need to bury all of those things because we don't want to be shamed by anybody, then the church should crash and it should burn and cease to exist.
But if the church is so clearly understood as a hospital for those things where we don't exclude people and shame people into some potential behavior modification, but we bring in people to allow them, just as they are, to come into me with the grace and the mercy of the forgiveness, then all of a sudden, we're sharing that great meal of Jesus together instead of just describing it.
And so Jerusalem, this place, this circle, the people in this room, I hope you understand that this is a place that's intended for your healing and your connection and not for your shame and for your guilt.
I hope we learn how to answer the question, how are you doing?
In a real, authentic way.
I hope in this place we can say something like, I'm wrestling with doubt. And I hope you can find patience and thoughtful people here.
I hope this is a place where somebody can say, I'm trapped in a pattern that I can't break. And you can find compassion and prayer and practical help.
I hope that we can be a healthy community that knows how to hold grace and truth together. Amen.
So as we prepare to close, I want to encourage you as we go, to take communion together. If you'd like those elements brought to you, you can go ahead and raise your hand right now. One of the ushers will bring those around.
As I do. I just wanna. I just wanna remind you, and I hope you're up for this, that this is. This is hard work.
It's incredibly inconvenient to me in community with other people. Oh, my gosh, you guys. People are gonna text you.
Are you one of those people like me where you. You gather all these texts that you haven't responded to, and then in a moment, you find some time and. And you respond to everybody and you're like, oh, I did it. And then they text you again.
It's like we're having a conversation or something.
It's inconvenient. People will be in your space.
It takes time, and it requires vulnerability.
It's going to mean showing up when someone's hurting.
But, you guys, I just. I have to tell you, I just don't think there's a shortcut to a healthy church. I just don't.
I don't. I don't care how good the preaching is and how good the music is and how cool the lighting is and whatever. I just don't think it works. There's no shortcut outside of the time and the vulnerability and the kindness and the grace that it takes.
May we be such a people.
