I Like Jesus. I’m Not Sure About Church - Week 1
Ryan Scott Carrell - June 23, 2024
The following is not a transcript. Ryan preaches from a manuscript but adds a lot each week that is not necessarily from the manuscript. We’re providing this manuscript, and the ability to comment and participate in discussion about the sermon topic, as an additional way to interact with the sermon and with others. As you add your voice to the conversation, you help add additional depth.
Many people say church is boring, irrelevant, hypocritical, and judgmental. The Southeast Project is striving to create a different kind of church; one people will call exciting, authentic, life-changing, and impactful. Come join us on Sundays…as we [begin] redefining church.
Those words are from a postcard we sent out almost twelve years ago when our family joined up with some friends to start a new church here. Our goal wasn't to start just another church. There were then, and are now, already a lot of churches. What we felt compelled to do was redefine the word church which had become defined by words like irrelevance, hypocrisy, and judgment. That goal, and church redefined by words like love, family, and community, remain what drives our mission as a family and as a church. Now, as we’ve grown and developed as a church for the past decade we’ve discovered new language that has helped us live this mission out. We say things around here like if it’s not good news for everyone, it’s not good news for anyone. We articulate our mission by focusing on loving God, loving others, and bringing life to our community. And we’ve made it a point that everyone is at a different place in their journey, everyone has something big going on, and it’s more than okay to ask hard questions and not seek easy answers. We’ve become a church known for leaning into the tension and taking scholarship seriously, as we seek to reconcile an ancient faith in a modern world. I don’t say all that to brag about what we’ve done but to say thank you for being a people and place where a vision of creating a different kind of church has been able to flourish. Thank you for being a place where people who didn’t know they could belong, do belong. Thank you for giving our kids, our students, and our young adults, a picture of what the church can be. I don’t ever consider pastoring another church community because I’m home right here and there isn’t another group of people anywhere in the world with whom I’d rather explore the way of Jesus. Yet my experience, and maybe your experience by being a part of this place, is not the experience of many of our neighbors when it comes to church.
In the past decade, due to scandals, appalling political allegiances, and egregious hypocrisy, the idea of church, for many people, is not something they’d even consider. So, on my summer sabbatical, I processed this reality, along with the over decade-plus of ministry I’ve had here. And the conclusion I kept coming back to is that our mission and our vision are more relevant today, right now than the day we started. We have to strive to be a different kind of church. But to keep our eyes focused forward on that we have to look back.
Acts 2:42-47
42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 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, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
A temptation I have as a leader, and for us as a church, is to look back at the last decade and ask how we got here. But we’d miss the point. I’ve made more mistakes than I’d probably like to admit. It’s okay because you can’t succeed if you don’t try. But the times we have done the right things, the things that showed us how beautiful church can be, had nothing to do with great ideas we’ve had. It’s the times our actions lined up with the words we find in this passage. It’s the times the church acted like the church.
We’re going to walk slowly through them over the next few weeks because I want us to be very purposeful about the ancient context and modern implications. I think what we will discover along the way is a way of being that helps us to live out the mission and vision we have that is so relevant today. But I want us to focus today on the final verse of this passage.
Acts 2:47
47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people…the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
Now, if you’ve been around church for very long, or had any positive or negative experience with Christianity, you’ve heard the word saved. And, for some people maybe it’s obvious enough to just skip over and move on, but I can’t help but pause here because it’s how my brain works. I’m wired to be curious and ask questions. If we’re all honest, we’re all a little like that in our own way. Sometimes, we’re too embarrassed to ask because we think we’re supposed to know something that seems like everyone else is clear about. So, let me be the one to break the ice. Let me be the one to ask the question implied in this verse.
What does it mean to be saved?
What does it mean to be saved?
The author of the book of Acts tells us that every day, people became a part of this new community of followers of the way of Jesus. But the author doesn’t say that they became members like some kind of Jesus fan club. Instead, they used a word here, the Greek word σῴζω, that means rescued, or saved. And it’s okay to ask the obvious questions. Who saved them and what/where are they saved from?
These questions are important because we can make all kinds of theological assumptions based on this idea of being saved. And how we understand being saved impacts the way we experience and share the good news. And why this matters is because if we’re not careful, what we can end up sharing with the world isn’t good news at all.
The anti-good news, a twisted theological story, is turn or burn. If you don’t have exactly the right beliefs the eternal torment of hell awaits. The problem with this theology is that the Bible doesn’t line up with this idea at all. When Jesus talked about hell he referred to an actual place, a valley that people thought of as cursed, where even the presence of God couldn’t be found. And, that’s possible.
We all have the ability for our lives to look like a place of suffering—void of the grace, mercy, and love of God. And we’ve all seen this when our lives go down the selfish path of greed, hate, and any -ism you can think of. But there was a better way to live.
Acts 2:42-46
42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 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…
Those beautiful words that describe the early church should inspire all of us to the reality of what’s possible—a way of living that captivated the onlookers in the first century.
Acts 2:47
47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people…the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
The early church didn’t run around telling everyone they were going to hell because they were too busy showing the world a glimpse of heaven. They didn’t need to exclude anyone, because they were too busy including everyone. And, they didn’t need to condemn people to judgment, because they were too busy inviting them into grace. And this came from a belief they had about Jesus.
John 3:16-17
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
This passage also speaks about an actual place—your life in the here and now. The way of Jesus leads us away from the lonely valley of Gehenna and into the loving arms of God, lived out in community, where we discover a life of mercy, grace, and love. That’s the kind of church I want to belong to and the kind of church we continue to strive to be.
