- with Jeff Klein, Pastor of Outreach
sunday-sermon-frontier-acts-16-1-15
Sun, 9/26 9:14PM • 29:59
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
church, paul, jesus, people, god, gospel, circumcised, outreach, timothy, world, caribou coffee, city, alpha, called, kids, elements, holy spirit, life, journey, speak
SPEAKERS
Ann DeGroot, Jeffrey Klein
Jeffrey Klein 00:02
Would you pray with me It's pretty good. So Spirit of God, we know you're here. Because you promised wherever two or three gathering you are going to be present among us. So we're listening this morning spirit, for your voice for your gentle prompt for your instructions. We pray, Lord, we pray spirit that you'll be able to get through us this morning, your name Jesus, we pray all these things. Amen. So as of August, I was married 35 years. And my wife, I don't think when I married my wife, I knew what I was getting myself into. I don't think she knew what she was getting herself into either. You understand, right? I mean, living with me all the time. It's got to be a little painful. But you know, I didn't have any clue. Even last night she was saying to me at one point, can you just like sit down somewhere and just be quiet? It's okay, I understand so so in order to try to understand your brain and dig into our brain I sometimes ask your questions. So two years ago, she started doing this floral design business for weddings primarily. And so the other night she was sitting there working on some designer, I want to say honey, is this just like flew out to you? Or is there you have like some kind of like, I don't know, values or principles or elements that undergird your design work? So she said yeah, yeah, I've elements done rigorous. She said, First, I listened to the client. And I see what that client wants me to, you know, possibly create for their wedding I I made shape it a little bit, but I try to hear what the client wants. And then I give a nod to the venue. Will the flowers fit in the space that we're going to be working in? You know, does it fit with the with the space? Is it work in that space, you want to just design something doesn't fit in the space, then she says, then good design always involves contrast, you know, if you go into a space, it's all modern, you try to bring something really antique in, if you go into a place it's like a barn you try to be something really modern. Wow, okay. Let's he said, I give a nod to the season. If it's the fall, the winter, the spring, the summer, you know, different flowers, equal different seasons. And then I have my great team who can actually implement what I tell them to implement. Whoa. I was like, wow, that's, that's impressive. She's got all these elements. Now. I don't know if you know this, but the Christian life following Jesus has the same kind of elements, values, principles, undergirding it. We just talked about them. And during the welcome, and I'm gonna show you a picture here. The elements of following Jesus are the UP IN and OUT Elements of the Christian life up towards the Lord. So you have your daily devotions, you have your worship time you have your below with the Lord time in towards the community of people that surround us, you follow Jesus together, right? We all follow Jesus together, hopefully, we're walking with other people on this journey, and then outward towards the world. Now, I don't know if you know this, but there's actually internal pressures built within the church to make sure the two of these will always keep going. If we stopped worship Any Given Sunday, and didn't have it, what would happen? You'd be calling Greg or emailing him say, What? What is going on? Are you guys just golfing over there? What are you doing? Like, what was the worship service? What happened? Right? You'd be there'll be interference pressure to keep that going. And so it's gonna go, if we stopped all small group activity and said, we never get anyone together outside of this room to study the Bible and Bible studies. Again, you'll be emailing somebody or calling somebody saying what is happening. But if we stopped outreaching, to the world, who would scream? Who would say anything? I was at a seminar, one pastor raise his hand, and said, it's been 10 years and counting. No one said a word.
Jeffrey Klein 03:48
It's interesting, right? No one out there is going to scream if we don't come out to the world and actually minister to them, love them, bless them, like we're supposed to be. And really, the folks in here, if we really are honest, it's so like, I don't know, there's so much fear and anxiety and insecurity and unkind. I'm not sure what to do that we're perfectly happy to just kind of let someone else do that. True. So the outer part of the triangle always gets kind of pushed aside in the church. It's super easy for us to become internally focused, and internally kind of playing inside baseball the time makes sense. So today, our x story takes us to x 16, which is Paul's second missionary journey. And on this journey, we're going to see that Paul actually has elements principles, dimensions to his outreach. He's not just going through a city willy nilly going, Hey, I'm just doing outreach. I'm just talking about Jesus. He's got some like, a plan, like my wife has a design plan, like the Christian faith is he dimensions up in and out. Paul has these dimensions for outreach that he's following along within this particular story. And acts 16 of him going to Europe for the first time, gives us some of these dimensions. Some of these elements that we can add to maybe imitate, in our own outreach. Okay, so we can learn from Paul, this is why I love heroes, missionaries here with missionaries, they teach you how to be in the mission of God, because they're actually tuned into the ways you do that. So this morning this morning, his message is going to be, let's look at these elements and see if we can learn anything about how we can move in the world as an outreach focus people. First one is this one. Paul practices the Ministry of presence. Remember that? Well, the second missionary journey Paul goes, he starts by going back to all the C's he's been to before. So if you look at the map on the screen, there's gonna be a map up there, maybe no. map on the screen, you can see he starts in Antioch. And he starts going through cities that he always already was at Tarsus derbi illustra, i conium. Another Antioch we've read about some of these stories along the way, he goes back and visits these same Christians that he's already talked to the same people he's talked to, he shows back up in their lives again, it's not just a one off, and then he's gone, never comes back. He keeps showing up in their lives. This is true of all of his missionary journeys, he keeps showing up these people's lives. This is a principle for us. You want to be in the mission of God, keep showing up in the same people's lives over and over again, be in the presence of Jesus in those people's lives. Just go back to the same coffee shop every day, at the same time. Meet the people that are there, go back to the same gym at the same time every day, pay attention, who's there, go to your kids soccer sidelines and pay attention and strike up conversations be the presence of Christ by continuing to show up now, you know, when I first learned this was back in seminary days, and it wasn't at seminary that I learned this it was not in my church internship that I learned this was from my roommate, my similar roommate, he was a young life worker in the local high school. Young Life practices, these principles of mission, because young wives on a mission to high school kids who have not heard the gospel of Jesus. So when he heard that I was working at this church doing youth ministry, I told him my job was to take care of the kids in the church. He was like, What are you kidding me? What about the kids who are out of the church? What about those kids? I said, What am I supposed to give to those kids, he says, Come with me. And he took me to the local high school into the lunch room. At the local local high school, I thought I thought people who think I was a creeper, you know, like walking around the high school lunchroom talking high school kids, but I got used to going to high school lunch room, and hanging out and being present, where kids were present. And somehow, by being there present showing interest in them, they became open to the gospel. I started going to their sports events and their plays in their houses and their stuff, just being present their lives. And it opened their minds and their hearts to the gospel. So you want to have a ministry of outreach. We need to be present in the world as the presence of Christ wherever we find ourselves, going back to the same places over and over again and being the press. The second one is
Jeffrey Klein 08:09
Paul came to Derby and then to list straw were a disciple named Timothy lift, who his mother was a jJewess. And a believer, but his father was a Greek. The brothers at least read I conium spoke well of him. Paul wanted to take him along in the journey. I love this about Paul, when you're going on a mission, you don't go by yourself, you go together, Jesus sent his disciples out to buy to not by themselves. So when you're going on the mission of God into the world, you don't come by yourself. You pick some people up along the way, and you go together, Paul always had a team around him. In this case, it's Silas. It's himself. And now he finds his young men, Timothy, who he wants to show him the ropes of being on mission. And he takes him along, to show him to demonstrate for him to teach him how to be in the mission of God. I love this. It's amazing going together. You know, I can tell you in my ministry life, the times I've been most blessed and most successful, is where I've gotten together with somebody else. My friend, Scott Davis, I met years ago in Holland, Michigan, there is something crazy that happens when we go together to a place to a camp. I'm often the speaker, he's often doing other things. But it's awesome to have a person next to you, who is encouraging you along who you're praying with, who's speaking in your life, courage, when you feel discouraged, who's giving you permission to listen to the Spirit's voice and pursue it and go after it and do the things that spirit telling you to do. Seriously, we only help with this stuff. So when I was Scott Davis, and a camp, God moves in many ways, because we kind of push each other along on the journey. I can tell you, one of the greatest joys of my life is coming here to Elmhurst church, Greg DeMey, working with a great domain. I love it. We're totally different. But he pushes me along. He calls me out. He tells me calm down. He makes me Wait, he kicks me sometimes. Yeah, he's always kicking his foot up. You know, this is how it works, right? This is going together. I have all kinds of teammates here, you know, from Kira, to all these different folks I work with are amazing. We push each other along, we're on the journey together, who are you on the journey together with, you'll never do outreach, you'll never have the courage to go and do outreach. If you don't go with somebody else. And if you know how to do this, who have you picked up? Who is your Timothy, that you're taking with you on the way in order to show them how this works? I remember when Gordon in Chicago Mondale church, he said he never went anywhere without taking young younger person with him, to join him on whatever work he was doing in the community. So he could show them how it works and have them experience it themselves. I love that. That's the second element of being a good missionary. First one, the Ministry of presence. Second one, bring somebody along. Third one's interesting. Acts 16 verse three, again, a strange thing happens. So Paul wants to take Timothy on the journey. So he circumcised him because of the Jews who lived in the area, for they all knew that his father was a great white man. This is right after the Jerusalem Council when Paul was fighting for we should not circumcise Gentiles. This is not something we should do. We should leave them just alone. Let them just follow Jesus make it easy for that. And now once he knew his circumstances, Timothy, what's going on? While there's something going on here? If your father was a Greek, and your mother was a Jew, you were not allowed to be circumcised. If your father was a Greek, you could not be circumcised the Jewish religious said they would not circumcise you, you were an outsider. You were what's called the Hebrew a mum's a moment or is an illegitimate child. So you were a Moser Timothy was a Moser in the Jewish community. He was on the outside, his father was a Greek, his mother was a Jew, he could not get on the inside, he could not be circumcised even if he wanted to be circumcised. He was excluded. So what's the first thing Paul does? Because Paul is all about taking a posture that shows the inclusiveness of the gospel. What does he does he circumcised is Timothy to say to the Jewish people, everybody in Jesus gets to be inside? No one's a monzer. Everyone is included. I love that. I love that circumcised Timothy just to send the message to the Jewish people on that and that way now, you know, think about our church, think about us as people do we do this. Are we people that posture ourselves in such a way that what people know out there, hey, you can be included here. You can be part of this community. We will embrace you let you in. There are churches have bent over backwards to do this. I was speaking in St. Louis years ago, was a middle school event. And it started out in the back. I don't know field behind this church. There was a giant mud pit, they created a giant mud pit I'm talking they had soaked with water, it was just mud. And they told these middle school kids in and me as a speaker, and we had a giant mud fight mud wrestling match in this mud pit for like an hour, we were just covered in mud. And then they said, Okay, we're gonna hose you guys off. And then we're gonna go up to the worship center of the sanctuary. We're gonna, we're gonna have to tell you about the gospel of Jesus. I'm thinking these people crazy. We're a mess. We're gonna destroy the whole sanctuary. We're gonna destroy the seats and everything else. I couldn't believe it. So they take us over to the side they hoses down with the hose, we're soaking wet. Now we're dripping this model over us. We walk through the sanctuary doors, they have covered the whole sanctuary in plastic, every seat, every piece of carpeting, every possible thing covered in plastic. So these kids can sit down and hear about the gospel of Jesus. It was super inspiring. I spoke soaking wet, full of mud to a bunch of money. So can my kids about about the power of Jesus could be in their lives in a worship center covered in plastic, to make sure they felt included in that church? That is awesome.
Jeffrey Klein 14:13
What are we willing to do, to our physical space, to our bodies to the way we dress, to let people know you can be included in this place? Because Jesus includes everybody. No one is excluded everyone's part of the community if you find Jesus, you're in. Now there's a fourth element that comes up with a story at the end of X 15. When Paul first suggests this missionary journey, he says this to Barnabas. I think after some time posted to Barnabas, let's go back and visit each city where we previously preach the word of the ward to see how the new believers are doing. So we traveled throughout Syria and solicitous, strengthened churches there. So Paul makes a plan. He says, We're On this missionary journey, we're going to go back to these churches were to do this, which is a good thing. And this we're going to do, then they get through visiting all these churches and the verse picks up the story next 16 we get this. When they came to the border misia they tried to enter bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. So they pass by misia and went down to show as Now, let's get the map back up again. Missy avicennia are further into Asia. See Asia there, he wants to Paul wants to go that way. He's got a plan. He's gonna go further to Asia Minor and preach the gospel because he's having a lot of success there. But the spirit Jesus says, You're not going there. Right? Let's keep reading. What happens. During the night, Paul, the vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him come over to Macedonia, and hope us after Paul and seeing the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. I love this. The Holy Spirit changes Paul's plans on the mission. The Holy Spirit sends Paul to where God wants him to go, the Holy Spirit sends Paul the word God is already at work ahead of him, preparing the soil for people to receive Jesus. If we can only get this seriously, we always plow ahead, right? I mean, I'm the worst at this. I plow ahead. Because I've got a lot of force, I can just plow ahead. But I feel the ask the Holy Spirit, hey, Holy Spirit. Where do you want us to go? What do you wants to be about what he wants to do? I just plow? What if What if God wants to give us instructions to his spirit about where we're supposed to engage? how we're supposed to listen? What is the Spirit of Jesus has already prepared the soil over here. And if we just went there, we find this amazing thing. It kind of reminds me when Jesus tells disciples, don't put your net in this side of the boat, put your net over here. So you put the net over there, and they catch all kinds of fish. Sometimes the church of Jesus our nets on the wrong side of the boat, because we have asked the Holy Spirit, where are you doing this? Maybe Jesus, they put you over there. It's amazing. It's a whole bunch of fish over there waiting to be caught in the mat. So taking our directions from the Holy Spirit is key. There's one last one. It's fine in these next verse. That's part of the story. When Paul arrives on the shores of Europe by the way, US Europeans are sitting here because the Holy Spirit directed Paul, to go to Macedonia. We know Jesus because Paul, listen to the Holy Spirit. If you're European, and descent, you can think the Holy Spirit that you're sitting here. And you know, Jesus, right, I can think always spread. So Paul goes to this city and fellow pi. And the first thing he finds there is that there's no, because you can turn that off for a minute, there's no synagogue, in the city of Philippi. So his strategy up to this point has been to go to the city, find the city God, which is the low hanging fruit, people that have read the Hebrew Scriptures, people that have read the Bible, people that have little familiarity with what this is all about, and talk to them first. But it fell apart. There's no synagogue. This particular city is actually a Roman soldier retirement community. Lots of disposable income super rich. It's a place where Alexander the Great launched his conquest of Asia Minor from there's tons of Alexander the Great statues over Philip II. So this is a leading city of the of this area, lots of money, lots of people, lots of focus on the Greek religions. So what do you do? How do you walk into a city like this? Where there's absolutely no way to start nowhere to go. So it kind of sounds like today doesn't? Well, we'll pull that. on the Sabbath. We went outside the city gate to the river where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. One of these listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer of purple cloth in the city of Taya Tyra, who is a worshipper of God, the Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message. Now what this is called, Whittier is a person of peace.
Jeffrey Klein 19:12
Someone that God's already been at work in your community, tilling the soil and making them ready to hear the gospel. When he was already a worshipper of God, and Paul is sent to her by the river, and there he brings the gospel to Lydian to the people that are listening there. Now I love this. We picture these people I don't want a picture of these people in the in the in the New Testament, Lydia, a purple cloth dealer. Okay, purple cloth is like high end, fashion. Back in these days. Lydia is like dealing in high end fashion. She's like the I don't know Neiman Marcus of the ancient world, right? And she's probably got lots of models who are friends. So I'm picturing Paul going this would be a great missions trip, don't you think? heading to Philip II were all the models made up by the river praying and you get to witness dawn. What do they even bring you to that one? Right? Alright, so Well, that's pretty cool, right? It's amazing. And she's the person of peace that God sends Paul to who's ready to listen to the message of the gospel. And it says, I love that phrase, the Lord moved her heart to respond to what Paul was saying. So if you ever think you're gonna move someone's heart with your brilliant, whatever presentation, forget it. It's always the Lord who moves people's hearts to respond to the gospel. We just have to be faithful to show up. Look for those persons a piece and step in. You know, when I was planting my church in wheaton, I went to the same Caribou Coffee Shop every morning from seven to 10. To write my sermons. I had no office, there was no building. So I'd have a quest to work. So I decided to adopt this coffee shop and just go there. Pretty quickly. I realized the mayor of this coffee shop coffee shop was a guy named Mike. Mike held held court there every every morning and had a whole group of guys around his table every morning. So I leaned into Mike 30 to get to know Mike, it turned out that Mike was a person of peace. That Mike was a Catholic guy who kind of went to church was sort of interested in this stuff. He wasn't quite sure where he stood. So I started hanging out with Mike at his table, the mayor of Caribou Coffee, and started to talk to Mike about what I was doing. Eventually, Mike and all those guys and I were reading the Bible in Caribou Coffee, around the table. Mike wrote me a check for $5,000 to fund my church plant, even though he had no intentions of going through it. It was unbelievable. Just by showing up at the same place, and listening and being aware of what God was up to and doing. Finding that personal peace. Now you might be sitting here this morning listening thinking, Oh, my goodness client, this is like, Whoa, this is you're like, Come at me with a firehose of outreach. What can I possibly do? Wait, we have a strategy at this church of how to corporately get involved in this. We're trying to help you get on the journey of outreach. You know how we do this? Well, alpha. Greg already mentioned alpha. You know why there's an alpha starting in an auto shop down the road and in stone Park.
Jeffrey Klein 22:16
The owner of that auto shop, his name is Tim, Tim and I have gotten to know each other. I love Tim, Tim is a friend now. I go hang out there. I keep showing up at Tim's auto shop. I go there for lunch. I bring my cars there. I send other people's cars there. I just keep going out. So we were having lunch couple weeks ago I say what have you guys you guys want to do? Like an alpha thing together? That'd be awesome. Okay, how about lunch time? Next one, you know Wednesday the 29th we'll start Okay, awesome. So me and these guys the whole auto mechanic shop we're gonna do do alpha. I love that. You're the same capability. We have a we have another alpha starting email. A point is I'm Alpha Team. She's at a six of her neighbors to come to her house. They've all said yes. So when her house starting next week, there's gonna be alpha going. There's 20 women's I have for Tuesday morning alpha here at church. There's someone else another Alpha team member who's in here night with me, but he's gonna he's got four guys who can make it nice. You just start winning this house. Alpha doesn't have to happen in this building. It's better if it happens out there. But it's gonna require some of you to think I could do this. God's put people my wife that I could bring to a class a course like this and walk them through it. To help them wrestle with their questions about faith. You could do Okay, so that's the first thing. The second thing we got going on around here, your resource center. We've already talked about this a little or the old it's next to the funeral home over there on Meyers road. It's ministering to kids in a community Brandywine. Parents all work, they've come from all over the world. They don't speak English really well. So their kids come home with their homework. They can't necessarily figure out how to do the homework, help the kids do the homework. So this is after school tutoring ministry, right that we get to be involved in several of us are involved in this ministry, going after school and tutoring kids, it's an hour and a half after school. We also have this amazing God time going on. Where we get to these kids elect to be part of a garden, they only have Christian education. So they want to come to God time. I want you to hear from one of our own, and degroot her experience of God time.
Ann DeGroot 24:18
If you have felt like I have felt for many, many years. I hear continually that we as Christians called to serve and volunteer and give our time. And I would always think that's perfectly understandable. And I want to do that I just didn't really know what to do. And then, about two years ago, two or three years ago, right in my neighborhood park, I noticed children in the parking lot and playing outdoors, obviously, an organized event going on and I didn't even know what it was. I didn't reach out to find out what it was. So that was a little seed planted in my mind thinking what's going on there. So it started from there, I thought, wow, God couldn't have dropped something in my lap more perfectly right in my backyard with children that basically are my neighbors. So it started with about a year and a half ago, doing God time, which involved once a week on Thursdays, basically using the same curriculum that our church uses here for children's worship. And then we have the kids there. Join us during that God time, and just building relationships, sharing the gospel, playing games outside and spreading the love of Jesus
Jeffrey Klein 25:46
Ann is talking about her her experience. I love what she she opens up she's, you know, the pastor's of your choice and things like, get involved, get out there and outreach. And she's like I said, Listen, I don't know what to do. And then she said, then I found out that this ministry is right in my backyard, these kids run around, I see him. And so I leaned in. And now she's leading God time, and she's tutoring and she's had a huge blessing ever wife by just going there every week. And being part of this. Maybe you've heard of this Jubilee furniture, too. We have to fund that ministry. With the funding, we can either go and ask people to write checks, which we probably will do. Or we can have a resale shop on Roosevelt road that sells us quality us furniture. We're hoping to open this shop in November. We have to get it ready. So next Saturday morning, you want to get involved in the mission of God. Eight o'clock in the morning, from eight to noon, we'll be at the at the store in Roseville road Jubilee furniture, to cleaning up tariffs and stuff, moving some furniture around, do some landscaping. Whoever wants to get involved. Just get in touch with me. We will get you on the list to get there. We need some volunteers to get this off the ground. Okay. Hey, this week, I met with Keith Draper from World relief. I know if you've been watching the news, you know, there's Afghan refugees coming to this area. I believe there's over 200 arriving in the month of September, October. There's more arriving in January. I don't know if this compels you at all. I said with Keith. He said yeah, we were trying to get families out some family was hiding with seven kids in a garbage dumpster, next to the airport. They couldn't get to the plane. We don't know what happened to them. Many of these families are Muslim family, summer Christian families. He said to me, You know what? What do you think the openness of these Muslim families will be when their own religion has kicked them out of the country, essentially. And Christians, embrace them and bring them in and talk about Jesus with them. I said they'd be probably pretty open. So there's a lot of ways for us to engage in this. tons of ways to get involved. It could be as simple as going to the warehouse on a week and clean up the warehouse or we can get them some supplies. We can write a check that's easy. Or maybe in January, we can adopt a family and walk alongside them. Do you know what it's like to come to a country that you don't speak the language, or maybe these Afghanis might because they've been with American soldiers for so long. You don't have a clue how to get a job. Normally transportation, you don't know what's going on, you know, the lay of the land. Do important is F some people walk alongside you and show you how it works. super important. And maybe you've heard of fifth Sunday serve. October 31. Halloween, we're doing a fifth Sunday serve. We'll be coming out with the option soon. Hopefully, it's a great way to taste to service get on the outreach bandwagon, get a sense of like what God might be doing, right? how we might want to call you into this. So there's a lot of ways, a lot of strategies to get us all going together on this journey. Here's my hope this morning, that you'll go home, you'll sit quietly, and you'll ask the Holy Spirit to bring to mind some people, some names, some folks you're with every week that God might have for you to actually engage with. As the Holy Spirit for those names. He'll give them to you. He'll direct your steps. And then who knows? Who knows what could happen. I can tell you this is the most rewarding thing in the world. The most rewarding thing in Christianity, to watch someone come to know Jesus for the first time. You can't beat it. It's amazing. Let's pray. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you for your word. And thank you for Paul's example that we can follow. Thank you for these simple steps, elements, dimensions, values we can grab on to to help us become people on the mission of God in the world. Lord, your spirit, send your spirits each one of us this week, so that we can hear what you have us to do. In your name we pray.