What now?
I Corinthians 9.19-23
Dr. Matthew M. Fry

As we continue to experience The Word of the Lord together, Let us Pray. Guide us, O God, by your Word and Spirit, that in your light we may see light. Send out your light and your truth, O God, and let them lead us. Amen.

Hear now The Word of the Lord as it comes to us in I Corinthians. Listen to God’s word for you today. I Corinthians 9.19-23.

For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, so that I might by any means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.

The Word of the Lord…Thanks be to God.

Including today, 5 of the past 6 sermons have been on the theme of why people don’t come to church in today’s day and age. Chris and I have gone back and forth on why it is that on the way to church this morning, you passed house after house after house of people who had no intention of going to any place of worship today, didn’t go yesterday to a Mosque, didn’t go Friday night to Temple, and never go to any place of worship or spiritual community of organized religion. The estimates range anywhere from 70 to 85% of people don’t go to any place of worship, not on Christmas or Easter, not on Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah, not during Ramadan, not at all. So, 7 out of the 10 households you passed this morning were already at their destination for the morning.

That number always seems so high, but then when I think about the traffic that I encounter throughout the week, and then contrast the traffic from this and every Sunday morning, well, how much easier is your drive here on Sunday than it is any other day? Bout 70% easier, 70% less traffic. Makes some sense, huh.

We’ve talked about Post-Modernism, why I don’t think people come to church, why Chris thinks people don’t come to church. Now we are talking about what we can do about that. Because a generation of people who are spiritual soloists and who don’t come to church because they think it has nothing to offer is not only missing out on spiritual community, but is also in danger of such isolationism that it scares me to raise my children in such a society. For me, the talk about why we should care that so few people come to church is pointless. If you don’t care, or if I have to convince you to care, then we have already lost.

Last week, Chris gave some thoughts on what we can do to reverse this trend. And I think it is important to leave people space. This is my current working term for agreeing to disagree, which is a term that has been used so much as to have lost meaning. Leaving space for people is the way to have convictions, but within those convictions to be able to allow other people to have different convictions. And the church needs to learn how to do that better, how to say yes and no, and as Chris said, how to listen and learn from others. When evangelism becomes synonymous with being more right than other people, then the church has lost its way, lost its authority, and lost the ability to grow. We need to learn to listen to groups, and to individual people.

Here is what I want to add. Here’s my offering as to what we can do about it. During this series we’ve talked about things including the fact that some of what is needed is some good PR work. People presume the church to be this judgmental, negative group of people who have a political agenda and will critically view anyone who disagrees with them. People presume the church to be a place where women are kept in a place, whatever that means. But none of that is the norm in so many churches, Norcross Presbyterian included. The image that the universal Church has is not the reality we experience.

There’s also another problem. As folks begin to get more and more involved in church, as you and I grow older and older and consequently more and more comfortable with our lives and with the people that are already in them, what usually happens for folks is that they know more and more church going Christians, more and more people who attend their church, and fewer and fewer people who don’t go to their church, and fewer and fewer people who don’t go to any church. The longer you go to church as a Christian, the fewer and fewer non-church going Christians you know. Which makes the issue of PR such a problem. How are we going to get word of mouth out there when most of us, self included, know fewer and fewer non church going Christians?

So, here is my suggestion. Go out and preach on the street, at Starbucks, at your regular restaurant, and at your workplace. Okay, maybe not a street preacher. But you could preach with your actions. Be nice to people. Be positive and friendly and neighborly. There is a huge need that is out there for this kind of thing. There are advertisements on television which incorporate this. For Insurance none the less. They show one person going out of their way to be nice to another person and a third person notices. Then the third person goes out of their way to do something nice for another person and yet another person notices. And it goes on and on. People are dying for community out there. For someone to be nice and to acknowledge that we all share a planet.

Because we live in the post-modern world that has been so influenced by isolationism, people are starting to move away from that toward community. People are more receptive than in recent memory to becoming acquaintances and then friends. What if you began, not in a forced manner but in a comfortable way to befriend the person who works at the Starbucks where you get your coffee? That person who is there 80% of the times that you are. What if you asked them their name and then started by simply saying hello to them by name when you saw them? Do you know how far just that would go? Just the simple act of calling each other by name is a prophetic action in this fragmented and isolated world in which we live. But it could go further. You could find out what their interests are; maybe you share a love for music or sports or history. And if it continues on, that person will eventually find out that you attend church. And then they will realize you are not some selfish, self righteous, hyper critical, overly negative, controlling person. And the misrepresentations that they have about all Christians will be called into question. That is some wonderful PR.

The church is not going to put an advertisement on television or create a billboard that would say, “Try us out, we’re not the idiotic meanies you think we are.” Well, maybe it will, who knows. But it wouldn’t do any good. The people out there need to see, touch and smell for themselves that Christians are good people. Trust me, I know it is scary. But it is nothing short of living out the call of Jesus, who went and met people, got to know them, and lived in their presence what it meant to live in God’s reality.

Get to know people. Make friends with non-Christians. Then, wait at least a year before you go into detail about God or the church. Just make friends. Not with an agenda other than living out your Christian call.

May God give us the strength. Amen.