Spiritual Parent Sermon 11-18-12

My sermon Nov. 18th at Rez Church.  You can find the audio here.  Enjoy!

SPIRITUAL PARENTHOOD

Good Morning,

My name is Jonah, if you didn’t know, and I am the youth minister here at Rez Church, as well as the church administrator.  I’ve been in full time ministry since June of the year 2000, and over the years I’ve learned a lot of things.  However, I feel like I’ve learned more about Discipleship in the last three months here than I did in the previous 11 years of actually doing Youth Ministry.  That isn’t to say that I did not disciple youth, but I wish that someone had it explained to me this clearly back then.  Still, here we are.

I am also a student at Nashotah House, along with Nathan.  I’m about halfway through my second of eight modules, and let me tell you, if you ever hear Nathan say that it is a lot of work, he isn’t joking or exaggerating.  It is a LOT of reading, writing and thank goodness no arithmetic!  

One of the things that we do in our classes is, each week, our professor gives us a question to respond to in a mini essay on a bulletin board online.  Once we have posted our response, we also look at our classmates entries, and respond to them as well.  This is one of the hardest parts of the class for me, as my current class is made up of mostly intellectuals.  Many of my classmates have doctorates in other fields and are used to writing long dissertations with eloquent language.  One of my classmates admitted that he has a “propensity for verbosity” - which, besides the fact that I would never really use two out of three words in that phrase, is totally true.  The guy can ramble on.  In fact, many of my classmates suffer from this.  And if any of them find this online and are reading it, I apologize, but dude, seriously... I tend to keep it short and to the point, so, if you were hoping for a 30 minute sermon this morning, you may be disappointed!

Last week, one of my less verbose classmates and I had a discussion about salvation.  We exchanged a few messages, and then he sent me this: 

“People say that they are Christians, yet where is the fruit of the works.  Millions say one thing yet their actions mean another.  In plain text, people say they are Christians, yet do they posses the fruits of the spirit; do their actions speak of the Holy Spirit?  People will give an answer just so others will let them alone.  Is it not interesting to visit a persons house and ask them for their bible for an impromptu study.  The many responses in my experience are, "Its around here someplace," or "I don't know where it is, I seem to have lost it".  Yet, these supposed Christians are steeping in darkness, delusional about what is real and what they "cannot see", just as Nicodemus was when we first encountered him in the Gospel."

That's heavy stuff.  Basically, it sounded to me like he was saying, if you can’t find your bible for an impromptu Bible Study when I pop by for a visit, you aren’t a real Christian.  Of course, he is implying much more than that, and I agree with him somewhat that we have a problem in our churches all over with people who go to church and don’t really know why.  Or people who go to church and it doesn’t make any difference in their lives.  As the bishop said before - the question isn’t “Do you believe in God” - it should be “Are You Following Jesus - Are you being changed by him?  Are you on mission with him?”

So, I sent him a message back that will, coincidentally, go right along with my sermon outline today.  I told him that we can look at people in five different ways:

#1 is the Spiritually Dead.  I know that if you’ve been here the last four weeks, you’ve heard all this, but the best way for me to learn something is to hear it over and over.  In different ways, if possible, so here we go.  The Spiritually Dead.  They have no relationship with God.  They don’t believe in God, or they believe in many gods.  They don’t trust the Bible, and often think they are GOOD PEOPLE, maybe even better than MANY “christians” they know.  
We may have some people like that in our church or have some come to our church, in fact, I hope we do!  A healthy church needs a little bit of each type of person we are talking about.  As we will see, though, to stay healthy, we also wan to to help each of these types by moving them to the next level.

#2 is Infants.  Now, we use a picture of a baby here, and that is me, by the way, as you can see, not much has changed, I was totally cute back then as well... but a Spiritual Infant can be anyone 99 days to 99 years old.  They may have been baptized into the church or BEEN in church since birth, but it has never really taken effect with them.  A Spiritual Infant can also be a new convert to the faith.  They may be very excited about being a Christian now, but they really have no idea HOW to be a Christian.  And many churches are setting them up for failure, because they are much more interested in making a person a Christian than a Disciple.  I grew up in the church and was there every Sunday until I was 18 years old.  At 18 years old, I was a Spiritual Infant.
 
#3 is Children.  Again, spiritual children can be any age.  They are starting to learn the lingo.  They can understand biblical concepts and their habits and priorities start to change.  Often, though, at this stage they are very ME focused.  Whats in this for ME, how does this affect ME?  They often see things as very black and white.  They often like church “just the way it is” and don’t want things to change.  

#4 is Young Adults.  Young adults start to see God as the most important relationship in their lives.  They become more OTHER focused, and want to serve others more.  They may make a lot of mistakes still, but they are on the right track.  They are learning to feed themselves spiritually through prayer and devotional times.

#5 is Parents.  Not adults, but parents.  We refer to them as parents, because one of their priorities is to reproduce.  To pass on what they have learned to people in other stages.

So, how do we recognize Spiritual Parents.  One of the marks of a Spiritual Parent is that they are MATURE.  I’m not talking in their 40s or whatever.  I mean, they are strong in their faith.  They have a consistent and strong prayer life.  They “feed” themselves daily with Scripture and prayer.

Another mark of a Spiritual Parent is that they are INTENTIONAL.  They are looking for people to share with.  People to connect.  To minister and disciple.

Just a little aside here.  About ten years ago, Rick Warren wrote a book that I’m betting most of you have heard of, if not read.  It was called “Purpose Driven Life”.  Now, I never actually read his whole book, but I have read a book that his youth minister, Doug Fields, wrote called “Purpose Driven Youth Ministry.”  The idea behind the two books is very much the same.  God has a purpose for our lives, and we find it in the  Great Commandment - “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength and love your neighbor as yourself” and the Great Commission - “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded of you”.

Our youth ministry for the last ten years has operated on those principles.  We exist to REACH young people for Christ, teaching them to FOLLOW him, giving them an  opportunity to SERVE and WORSHIP him, and sending them out to SHARE his love with all who would receive it.  

Our church has a very similar statement, just shorter and more to the point, which I love.  We come together to WORSHIP God, to GROW in Grace, and to REACH others.  

Edgar Finds His Purpose

There is an old Far Side cartoon that I love because, like many Far Side cartoons, its just weird... but it’s also very relevant.  Edgar find his Purpose.  Some people look for their purpose their whole lives.  Spiritual Parents KNOW their purpose, which is to help others move from one Stage to the next.  When I was messaging my classmate, I told him that you can’t expect an Spiritual Infant to be spiritually mature enough yet for impromptu bible studies.  And you can’t bag on them for that.  We shouldn’t expect that of them.  

As Spiritual Parents, our goal is to get them to the NEXT LEVEL of maturity.  We have to recognize that just because someone is a Christian, we are not all at the same level, so the first step for a Spiritual Parent is to Identify the stage that the person they are discipling is in.  We just talked a lot about how to do that.  Once they have identified their stage, then they work on moving them up.  There is no timeline for this, there is no “60 Days To Stage Three!” thing here... it is a relational process.

So, as a Parent, if someone is an Spiritually Dead or an Infant, we SHARE with them.  Share the gospel, share our lives, explain the Word of God to them, show them how to pray.

With Spiritual Children, Parents CONNECT them.  Plug them into a small group, get people around them to nurture them and help them grow in faith.  Teach them to pray on their own, give them a solid biblical foundation to grow on.

I have to tell you a story here.  When I was at Christ Church in Plano, there was a guy there named Bob Kerr.  Bob was in charge of the church’s small group ministry.  He had a passion for connecting people.  When I had just started there, he asked me if I would coach a church co-ed softball team.  I had played softball before, but never coached it.  He said I was perfect for the job.  So, my ego took over and I accepted.  The players we had ended up teaching me a lot about coaching.  Any of them would have been a better coach than me.  But it got me CONNECTED.  Later, Bob invited me to a mens retreat.  I told him I couldn’t afford to go, so he offered to pay my way if I would just run sound for the worship band.  I told him that I had no idea how to run sound.  “weren’t you in a band?” “yeah, but I never ran sound, someone always did that for us!” “you’ll be perfect for it” - So, I went.  There, I met their youth minister, Rick Herlacher, who some of you may know.  He invited me to come play in the youth band, because “they really needed a bass player” - turns out they had a kid named Franco who was ten times the bassist I was.  BUT, I got connected and I’ve been in youth ministry ever since.  Sometimes, all someone needs is an invitation.  We can ask for volunteers all day long, but sometimes all that’s necessary is for the right person to say, “you’d be perfect for it!”

With Spiritual Young Adults, we look for ways to guide them into ministry.  What are their spiritual gifts?  Where can they serve in the church?  Could they help lead a group?    We help them understand ministry and not only WHAT and HOW we do, but WHY we do it, and we give them a chance to go out and DO it.

When a Young Adult gets established and strong in their ministry, a Spiritual Parent will release them to become a Disciple Maker as well.  We explain the Discipleship process, which we’ve just been over, we help them along the way and eventually let them go to become Spiritual Parents also.

There is a biblical model for this found in 2 Timothy 2:2 - Paul, who is a Spiritual Parent to Timothy is telling Timothy how this all works.  “what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also”  Paul is saying, all this stuff I taught you, YOU go find a faithful person to teach it to... so that HE can go and find a faithful person to teach it to also - and so on and so on.

In the end, the only thing my classmate and I really agreed on was this.  Even as a spiritual parent,  you still have room to grow and learn.  You never “arrive”.  The bishop and I can both be Spiritual Parents to our congregation, but that doesn’t mean that I have nothing to learn from HIM, or HE from ME for that matter. 

I don’t think my classmate really got the rest.  His mind seems to be made up that to be called a Christian, you must meet a very high standard and expectation.  Thank goodness that is not the case.  Growing up, I always felt like I had to be THIS good to get to heaven.  There was a measure there.  And I remember thinking, I am NEVER going to be THAT good. So, I gave up.  It wasn’t until someone met me WHERE I WAS and guided me, without me even really realizing it, to the next step and I learned about God Grace and Love that I was able to grow.  So, to conclude this series I ask you - Where are you? What stage are you in?  What do you need to grow into the next stage?  There are Spiritual Parents here who are willing to help you with that.  If you are aren’t in a small group, I highly suggest getting plugged in to one.  Are you serving somewhere in the church?  We need greeters, and I know some of you would be PERFECT for that.  Some of you wouldn’t.  I’m just saying.  Some of you would be much better behind the booth back there.  And we’d love to have you back there.  

Spiritual Parents - I encourage you.  Be like Bob Kerr. Lets share with people, connect them, minister to them and disciple them.  Amazing things would begin and continue to happen here at Resurrection.  And that, my friends would be AWESOME.