Westwood Message–March 31, 2011

Easter Offering to Go to New Church in Menomonee Falls

WCMA, a ministry supported by our Missions Ministry, is partnering on a church plant that will launch this Fall in Menomonee Falls. Jerod Walker will lead the plant.

Our Missions Team is asking the congregation to give to an Easter offering toward the church plant. Offerings designated for this special offering can be given throughout the month of April.

New Small Groups To Begin

Part of our church mission statement says that we exist “to exalt God…by building people to maturity in Christ, connecting people into the body of Christ…” Part of growing to maturity and connecting to others can take place within a small group where you study and fellowship with other believers. In an informal setting such as a home, people can discuss, ask questions, and grow through interaction.

Such experiences are important to our development and growth as Christians. Small groups provide significant experiences toward such growth. Some of you are already in a small group, such as our Tuesday evening Bible study that meets at the church office and our morning women’s groups. We are once again going to begin some new groups, and we would like for you to consider becoming part of one.

In order to facilitate and discuss the formation of new groups, Mike Notaro and Dawn Zimmerman arranged a meeting of interested people. The meeting will be a potluck dinner on April 10 at 5:00 PM at our building. Each family should bring a meal item to pass or dessert to pass. There is a sign-up sheet on the table in the back of our worship center.

Worshipping and Waiting Together Community-wide Prayer Service

Join together with other Christians in the greater Madison area to worship and pray this Friday evening, April 1, at 7:00 PM at High Point Church, 7702 Old Sauk Road, Madison. This is the second of six such events planned for this year in the Madison area.

Sermon Series for April and May

The Experience of a Lifetime

Three experiences have marked Christianity from the very first days of the church: experiencing the cross, the resurrection, and life in the church. If you experience all three, you cannot help but have the experience of a lifetime. We will set out to realize such an experience through our April and May worship services.

First, we will experience the cross as we move toward Easter where the church focuses on the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. Then we will experience first the resurrection and then life in the church as we move from the resurrection toward Pentecost, the beginning of the church through the pouring out of the Holy Spirit fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection.

The small coastal town of Arroyo Grande, California, has recently been disturbed by events surrounding the theft of a cross that weeks later was discovered set aflame outside the bedroom window of a 19-year-old woman of mixed race.

The 11-foot wooden cross was stolen from Saint John's Lutheran Church in Arroyo Grande, California. The cross was later found burning after being erected in a neighbor's large front yard adjacent to the house rented by the woman and her mother. Now authorities are investigating the case as a theft, arson and hate crime.

The cross has created controversy since Jesus first announced to his followers that he would go to Jerusalem to die. In fact, in one of the passages we shall study about the cross, Paul says that the “message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,” and he calls “Christ crucified a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentile.”

The cross was even controversial before Jesus died. Each time during his ministry that he predicted his own death, someone tried to talk him out of it. There must be some other way, they were saying, and they tried to urge Jesus to find it.

Yet God has chosen the cross as the symbol of Christianity and as the cruel means by which his only Son would die. John Stott writes in his book The Cross of Christ that Christians could have chosen any of seven symbols that he names as a suitable pointer to some aspect of Jesus’ ministry. “But instead the chosen symbol came to be a simple cross.”

Why would God choose something so brutal, so terrible, so controversial as the means of his Son’s death and the symbol of his followers? The answer is both simple and complex: a sacrificial death by the perfect Son of God is the only possible path to salvation and eternal life for imperfect, sinful people.

So, we will once again look at the cross during the first three Sundays of April and then we will share in its power during our Good Friday service before turning our attention to the Resurrection. We will find that both provide us with the experience of a lifetime.

Zacchaeus Was a Wee Little Man

When I was growing up, we would often sing this little song about Zacchaeus in Sunday School:

Zacchaeus was a wee little man
And a wee little man was he.
He climbed way up in a sycamore tree,
For the Lord he wanted to see...

The story of Zacchaeus is one of the fun stories that comes out of Jesus’ ministry. The idea of a wee man perched like a bird in a tree (and being found out) is the stuff of humor.

Charles Spurgeon, the famed London preacher, also established a Pastor's College that exists to this day. A famous feature of the college experience was "the question oak," a large tree on Spurgeon's estate where, in good weather, students would gather on Friday afternoons to ask questions of Mr. Spurgeon and then deliver extemporaneous sermons. On one memorable occasion, Spurgeon called on a student to give a message on Zacchaeus. The student rose and said: "Zacchaeus was of little stature, so am I. Zacchaeus was up a tree, so am I. Zacchaeus came down, so will I." And the student sat down as the students, led by Spurgeon, applauded.

We can have fun with the story of Zacchaeus, but we must remember that the story teaches us some important truths. So Jerod Walker will preach this Sunday on Zacchaeus’ encounter with Christ. Jesus’ encounter with him is Jesus' last personal encounter before his arrival in Jerusalem and the events leading to his death.

Significantly, the final line in the Zacchaeus story contains the summary line of the purpose of Jesus' ministry: "For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost" (Luke 19:10). Saving the lost is what Jesus is all about. Saving the lost is also primary in the mission of the church.

When Jesus went to eat dinner at Zacchaeus’ house, there was some muttering about him being the guest of a sinner. There has often since then been muttering in the church about people who become friends of “sinners,” but they are the very people Jesus calls us to. After all, we must always remember that we are all sinners.

It is appropriate that a planter of a new church will preach on this passage for us Sunday, because new churches are all about reaching those who do not yet know Christ, who have not yet found forgiveness of their sins from Christ. Join me in letting the story of Zacchaeus capture you, not just the fun story for children and the story that brings us a cute little song. Let it capture you to the extent that you make a concerted effort to reach out to those in our world who are “sinners” like Zacchaeus.

Westwood Message–March 10, 2011

Be sure to turn your clocks ahead one hour on Saturday night as we resume Daylight Savings Time this coming Sunday, March 13.

Jerod Walker to Preach at Westwood on March 20

If you have followed the announcements we have published about this year’s WCMA church plant (in partnership with other organizations), you may recognize Jerod Walker’s name. He will be the lead planter for the new church, and we have him coming to Westwood on March 20. He will preach that Sunday and discuss plans for the church plant during the adult class in our 11:00 AM class time.

Jerod began working fulltime on the plant on January 1. Prior to that he served as Family Life Minister at Central Christian Church in Beloit. Previous to that he served as senior minister of a church in New Mexico.

Children’s Workers to Meet on March 20

Our children’s workers will hold their next meeting on March 20 at noon. We will order pizza for lunch. We will order pizza for all family members who will be waiting unti the end of the meeting. If you are interested in working with our children or are a parent, you also are welcome to attend.

The main discussion topic for the meeting will be planning and scheduling our special children’s activities for the year.

Potluck Dinner for Small Groups Coming on April 10

Mike Notaro and Dawn Zimmerman are organizing a meeting for anyone interested in being part of a small group. More details will be coming, but if being in a small group is of interest, put April 10 at 5:00 PM on your calendar.

The Question of Authority Prompts an Encounter With Jesus

People today are not comfortable with authority. I experienced it in my teen, college, and young adult years. It was the era of the Viet Nam War, and massive demonstrations took place against the war and the political leaders (authorities) of that time. Hippies were everywhere it seemed and were a very visible indication of cultural rebellion against authority.

Today we see this discomfort with authority all through our culture. As children grow older, they sometimes rebel against the authority of their parents. Employees often dislike rules that have been established in the workplace. Many of the legal conflicts of our day are conflicts over authority. Much of the reaction to the posting of the Ten Commandments in public places is argued on constitutional grounds, but it is really a matter of authority. People do not want to live under the authority of moral guidelines.

This issue with authority is not new to our day. Much of the conflict between Jesus and the Jewish leaders was over authority, and that prompted an interesting encounter with Jesus in Matthew 21:23-27. The people came to Jesus because he taught them as “one who had authority,” so some of the Jewish leaders came to Jesus one day and questioned his authority. They asked, “By what authority do you do these things?”

Jesus asked them a question about whether John the Baptist’s baptism came from heaven or from men. They would not commit themselves to an answer. They reasoned that if they said his authority was from heaven, Jesus would ask them why they did not then believer John. If, on the other hand, they said his authority was from men, they would lose the respect of the people who held that John was a prophet. Jesus, then, would not answer their question about his authority because he knew they did not want to live under the authority of God anyway.

When we reject the authority of God, in our lives, we reject what is best for us. Jesus came to earth and showed us how to live under the authority of God because living by his authority is best for us. We see authority in a negative way and when that authority comes from other people it often is. When it comes from God, though, it gives us the best chance, the only chance, of living holy lives.

You may not like authority, but God’s authority is one you can trust, one that will benefit your life. Determine to let God rule your life.

RECLAIMING YOUNG ADULTS WHO DROP OUT OF CHURCH

I have been in leadership ministry all of my adult life, and all that time we have been discussing how to get young adults engaged in the church, so that they stay in the church. Some young adults would leave the church until they married and/or had children, and then would come back. Others stayed away. We have discussed how to help these individuals maintain their faith, but have never reconciled the issue. Perhaps we never will reconcile the problem, however some recent reading has refocused the issue for me.

In last November’s Christianity Today, Drew Dyck had an article titled “The Leavers.” In his opening paragraph, he describes the problem like this: " Some striking mile markers appear on the road through young adulthood: leaving for college, getting the first job and apartment, starting a career, getting married—and, for many people today, walking away from the Christian faith.”

Here are just some basic statistics that frame the issue. First, consider those who drop out of church. Thom S. Rainer and Sam S. Rainer III in their book Essential Church? state that a study of 18- to 30-year-old adults in America reveals that 70% of young adults between the ages of 18 and 22 drop out of the church. Second, there are the “Nones,” those who claim no religion. Dyke cites findings released in 2009 from the American Religious Identification Survey showing that the Nones comprise 22% of 18- to 29-year-olds, up from 11% in 1990. Seventy-three percent of Nones came from religious homes; 66% were described by the study as “de-converts.”

While there is some truth to the claim that young adults will end up coming back to the church, Dyck claims that the crisis of people leaving the faith has taken on new gravity because young adults today are dropping out at a pace that is “five to six times the historic rate.” There is also what he calls a “tectonic shift” that has occurred in the broader culture. Today’s young adults have been raised in a pluralistic, post-Christian world that leaves those who grew up in the church with a weakened faith.

Essential Church? discuss the top ten reasons that their research shows as to why church dropouts stopped attending church. They include the following: “simply wanted a break from church,” “church members seemed judgmental or hypocritical,” “moved to college and stopped attending church,” “work responsibilities prevented me from attending,” and “didn’t feel connected to the people in my church.”

The Rainer’s conclude that “Churchgoing students drop out of the church because it is not essential to their lives.” They frame the issue positively by asking, “Why do one-third of churchgoing young adult Americans stay in the church?” Their answer emerged from several years of research. “Young adults are likely to stay in the church if they see church as essential to their lives.” This conclusion grows out of their conviction and research showing that “most churches in America are doing little to become essential to the lives of their members.” This is especially true of young adults who see the church today as one option among many for their lives.

So, how do churches become essential to the lives of people? The Rainer’s suggest that the essential church has four major components that I can only summarize here:

(1) The essential church simplifies. This idea is discussed in Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger’s book Simple Church where they define a simple church as “a congregation designed around a straightforward and strategic process that moves people through the stages of spiritual growth.” In other words, the church should be built around helping people grow spiritually.

(2) The essential church deepens people’s knowledge of God’s Word. Many churches are “dumbing down” biblical teaching in order to make the church “more attractive.” The Rainer’s research shows that the church instead needs to hold to firm biblical teaching.

(3) The essential church as high expectations of its members and attendees. Low expectations result in low commitment. The Rainer’s state, “The high-expectation church expects much and, thus, receives much from its members. As a result, the church exodus is minimized.”

(4) The essential church helps its members multiply spiritually. Believers need to be engaged by the church in evangelism, missions, ministry, and church planting.

This would be a good topic for your church to explore. Finding ways to attract and retain young adults by making the church essential to their lives will also make the church essential to people of all ages. That, after all, is what we should be seeking to accomplish anyway.

WHERE DO YOU FIT IN THE MISSION OF WESTWOOD CHRISTIAN CHURCH?

In their book Simple Church, Thom S. Rainer and Eric Geiger define a simple church as “a congregation designed around a straightforward and strategic process that moves people through the stages of spiritual growth.” They go on to suggest that the simple church has four major components:

• Clarity — Our mission statement provides this clarity, describing what we are about as a congregation. Remember the four key words of our mission statement and find your place in that mission: winning, building, connecting, sending.
• Movement — By living out Christ’s mission, we should be moving to become the people God wants to make us into.
• Alignment — We should align everything we do in life and in the church with Christ’s purpose, and be united around that purpose.
• Focus — We are called to abandon everything that falls outside of Christ’s purpose.

Let’s continue working to carry out the mission that God has given us.