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Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, NC

David Wright

Myths About Seeking The Lost

I mean you go to the gym and there's that person on the treadmill that's like sprinting and they've been doing it for 30 minutes.

Not to mention that weight that you never thought was touched, but then here they are curling it or whatever the thing.

Or how about for you young people on the field or in the basketball court, you thought you were a pretty good player and then somebody comes up and just really does some moves that you didn't even know where those came from, it's intimidating.

Right, isn't there always somebody better than you?

You come in and you thought you had a nice dish, but then there's some salad that's just like a work of art or something, and you're like, that's intimidating.

I just have this little, let's just cover it up.

I don't want people to know what I brought.

Maybe it's a job that you have to do that's intimidating or a project that's overwhelming.

I know when we have elders meeting, I oftentimes will pull up with my Toyota 4Runner, four-wheel drive is my truck until Bryce Wilkie pulls up.

And he's too kind he's never said it but I think the same thing every time.

I remember the first time I met Elizabeth.

Does intimidation ever impact the church?

Does it ever impact the Seventh-day Adventist church?

And you might be saying, well what do you mean?

There's been a trend for some time to build your church for the unchurched, meaning those people out there.

That we need to do everything that we can to be what they want us to be.

We have to be friendly enough, our building has to be just right and all these things, But there's other pressures too.

You're honestly not going to attract people to your local church using those methods, right?

You have to have the music that is supercharged.

You have to have the praise teams that are almost professional.

You need to have strobe lights, smoke machines.

You have to have, and you know, the list goes on.

I've heard of churches that are out in the lobby.

They're serving coffee and donuts, you know, and the list goes on of things that churches are doing.

And so it can be rather intimidating sometimes.

You're just doing that kind of church over there?

Have you ever thought that maybe or felt that way?

Sometimes, I remember 1 church I pastored, the outside looked so bad, it looked like it was condemned, and people were just embarrassed to invite people to their church, because the reaction was like, oh, you actually have services in there, until we redid the front, and it wasn't quite so intimidating They would invite people in.

I've heard of churches that just to get numbers have video games for the youth on Wednesday nights.

Are we really helping these young people in some way?

To be honest, I'm concerned, and maybe you are too, of some of the methods that are being used under this idea of church growth, reaching the unchurched.

And maybe it will help them for a time because it's novel even though most of those things aren't very novel anymore, but is that really going to bring people to the gospel, to Christ?

Another thing that you hear is that churches are too doctrinally heavy.

If we're going to attract the unchurched, we need to have lighter messages, happier messages, always cheerful messages.

You know, love and grace, and next week it will be about grace and love.

And the week after that, we'll do a few messages on grace and some more on love, and That's how we will attract the unchurched.

What Jesus said right before his ascension.

And we don't see any coffee and donuts here, but let's read it.

And Jesus came and spake unto them saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.

Jesus is saying to his disciples, the power of the Holy Spirit that transforms lives, This power has been given to me.

All authority is given to me, thus in the power of the Holy Spirit.

It says, go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." There is teaching to take place before baptism, right?

Your version might say make disciples and how do you make disciples?

There's an element of teaching that are both fine translations and then it says further, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you, and lo, I am with you always even to the end of the age.'" Teach them, Jesus says.

And you really can't separate doctrine from Jesus and Jesus from doctrine.

Doctrines are simply principles of divine truth that Jesus has revealed to us through his words written down for us in scripture.

That's the doctrine of Christ, his divinity.

Jesus has a lot to say about the second coming of Christ.

That's the doctrine of the soon return of Christ.

Jesus has a lot about the Sabbath, a lot about the resurrection, a lot about marriage and other doctrines.

It's something Jesus wants us to know, to understand, and also to pass along, to teach.

Some might define it this way, doctrines are the Holy Spirit's divinely inspired truths that give substance to faith and give substance to religion.

What does it mean to say we accept Jesus?

Is this some mystical, ethereal Christ that simply says, go love everybody?

Certainly love is important in the Christian faith.

Certainly relationships are important, but doctrines give structure to the Christian faith.

Doctrines are the teachings of Christ and how Christians are to live and what Christians are to believe, how we relate to 1 another and life's circumstances.

But some still are hammering that we need to get away from doctrine, we're gonna turn secular people off, they say, therefore we need some kind of entertainment model, you know the world is really good at entertainment these days.

I don't know what I could do up here to entertain in such a way that would compete with the world.

You know, you can put strobe lights and smoke machines.

I could talk while I'm being back and forth on cables and whatever else, still not competing, right?

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Myths About Seeking The Lost

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