You are listening to a message from Southwood Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, Alabama.
Our passion is to experience and express grace.
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Good morning, Southwood.
It's good to be with you.
Great to be in the great state of Alabama.
Again, I married an Alabama girl.
Where's Fran?
She's in here somewhere, my wife.
There she is, right down here.
Married a beautiful girl from Birmingham, Alabama.
I met her in Christmastime of 1983.
We both happened to attend a conference that was put on by Campus Crusade for Christ,
CRU it's now known as, and they had a national conference for all college students to come
together the week out of Christmas in 1983.
It was one of the coldest winters in American history.
My diesel car actually froze over while I was there for the week.
But we both attended this conference, 20,000 students.
I was sitting on the end of the row before the beginning of the first talk in this arena,
and this beautiful red-headed girl comes walking down and says,
Hey, my friend and I got lost from our group.
We ran in from the buses.
It's real cold out there.
Can we sit next to y'all?
I said, Absolutely, you can.
I had a good seat that day.
God was kind to me.
Fran sat down next to me.
We listened to Howard Hendricks speak.
We did the little prayer group together afterwards, and I invited her with my friends to go to Wendy's.
Well, Fran was this pretty redhead.
Believe it or not, I had red hair at the time.
I have no hair left, but I had very red hair at the time.
And so we go to Wendy's, the red-headed restaurant.
So there we are, standing in line.
We've been there, known each other for about an hour and a half.
And she says to me, Hey, you know, if we got married, we'd have all red-headed kids.
And we did, and we do.
We have four wonderful red-headed children, three daughters and a son.
Two of those daughters are married.
We have two grandchildren now.
We are so thankful.
It's fun to sort of be in this middle space of life.
That's a euphemism for 55.
You're sort of on the back end of things.
There are great things about growing older.
There are hard things about growing older.
One of those is that you write, can read the same book that you've read just a couple years before.
And it all seems new to you.
Like you don't remember any of the twists or turns or what's going to happen.
I recently was on a plane.
I didn't have anything to reread.
So I looked on my Kindle and I saw The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.
And so I pulled that down again and reread it.
And it all seemed so new to me again.
I just read it before.
But it's kind of like the main character, Rachel, in the book, who has fuzzy memories.
She's trying to call back things.
And so the journey of the book is sort of her remembering true things as they are.
But there's a key sort of figure in the book.
And that is that Rachel rides the train every day from the suburbs into London and back to the suburbs.
And it seems the train will stop going to and from at the same juncture.
There will be a stoppage almost every day at this spot that's sort of at a low area at the bottom of a subdivision.
And she likes to look out the window of the train.
And she'll often see early in the morning with them sipping coffee or in the evening with them out on the porch drinking a glass of wine.
This couple, she's made up names for them.
She calls them Jason and Jess.
Jess, Jason has that look of the man that she would want to be with.
And she just imagines what kind of a loving, amazing husband Jason is.
And Jess is so beautiful and has that kind of figure and sort of manner that you think,
Oh, I would love to be like that.
And they look so happy together.
Oh, Jason and Jess.
Well, as the book unfolds, right, things are not as they seem for Jason and Jess.
What may look like a good marriage from a distance, right, is not at all.
Same can be true with churches, right?
You're coming up on 30 years.
You've had an amazing story here.
You have one of the nicest facilities really in our entire denominational network of the Presbyterian Church in America.
You've had great leaders in the past.
You have great leaders here now.
God has done much through you to promote the gospel going forward in this region.
But what does it really look like now at 30, you know, sort of fully matured?
What does it look like to be a flourishing church?
We won't want to be fooled about that.
What's it really look like to flourish as a gospel community?
It's an important question to ask when you think about what's going on in the broader church across the board in North America right now.
If you think just about evangelical congregations, congregations that promote the gospel of Christ,
that are preaching Christ both to Christians and those yet to become Christians in the hope that they will be converted,
congregations that believe the Bible is the word of God, that Jesus really is fully God and fully man,
that he was born of a virgin, that he suffered under Pontius Pilate, that he died truly, was crucified and buried,
and that he rose again from the dead.
Evangelical churches.
Evangelical churches are suffering in North America.
The bellwether leader for the evangelical movement is the Southern Baptist Church.
The Southern Baptist Church in the last 10 years has lost a million members in North America.
Gone from 16 million to 15 million.
I have a friend who heads up missions in the state of Georgia for the Southern Baptist Church.
He told me that the most commonly occurring number for Southern Baptist Churches in Georgia,
the number of baptisms each year now is zero.
It's not the average.
It's just the most commonly occurring number.
That's troubling.
It's troubling if you look at statistics that tell us that 80% of evangelical churches are either plateaued
or declining in terms of attendance, in terms of membership, in terms of missional engagement and community,
in terms of involvement and discipleship.
In the PCA, we have continued a small growth curve across the last five years.
We have grown 1%.
A year this last year that we have figures for, from 16 to 17, we grew only 0.2%.
So our growth curve is slowing down.
What does it mean to be a flourishing church?
It's really important to ask.
I can think of no better place to go than the book of Acts to answer that question.
Acts chapter 13, we meet the church in Antioch,
and we discover the church that is flourishing and how the gospel is flourishing there
and how the gospel flows from the church in Antioch.
Let's read these verses together.
Acts 13, verses 1 through 12.
Hear God's word to you.
Now, there were in the church in Antioch prophets and teachers.
Barnabas, Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene,
Menaon, a lifelong friend of Herod the Tetrarch, and Saul.
While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said,
Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.
Then after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
So being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia,
and from there they sailed to Cyprus.
When they arrived at Salamis, they proclaimed the word of God in the synagogues of the Jews,
and they had John to assist them.
When they had gone through the whole island as far as Paphos,
they came upon a certain magician, a Jewish false prophet named Bar-Jesus.
He was with the proconsul Sergius Paulus, a man of intelligence,
who summoned Barnabas and Saul and sought to hear the word of God.
But Elemas, the magician, for that is the meaning of his name,
opposed them, seeking to turn the proconsul away from the faith.
But Saul, who was also called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit,
looked intently at him and said,
You son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness,
full of all deceit and villainy,
would you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord?
And now behold, the hand of the Lord is upon you,
and you will be blind and unable to see the sun for a time.
Immediately mist and darkness fell upon him,
and he went about seeking people to lead him by the hand.
Then the proconsul believed when he saw what had occurred,
for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Let's pray together.
Father, hear us now.
We're asking you.
We don't want to be confused, as we so often are, Lord,
about what real flourishing is in a marriage,
in a family, in a business,
in an organization, in a community.
Father, especially in a church,
show us the flourishing church from here in Acts.
Show us the church at Antioch and those who went out from them.
Show us the beauty and the flow of the gospel afresh,
that we might flourish collectively here at Southwood,
that we might flourish individually as your people,
in and through and because of the gospel.
Lord Jesus, we pray it all in your name.
Amen.
What does a flourishing church look like?
First, it looks like a generous church.
The flourishing church is a generous church.
If you think about the church at Antioch,
when you read in the earlier chapters of Acts,
how it gets established,
they are started, right,
because persecution drives people out of Jerusalem
in the earliest days of the church after Pentecost.
And people persecuted get scattered,
and they begin to drift around the Mediterranean world.
And some come to Antioch,
and they're preaching to Jewish people
the fullness of what Judaism was,
the hope in Jesus, the true Messiah.
And so Jews who have stayed Jews very culturally,
but also Jews that are called Hellenists,
those that are either from other parts of the world
and have been converted to Judaism,
or Jews that have lived in Greek-speaking kinds of places,
in Roman kinds of places,
and they're called Hellenists.
They're called these people
that are sort of from outside the normal way of Judaism.
All these together are coming and hearing about Jesus,
and a church is formed, and it's beautiful.
And so the church in Jerusalem
sends up one of their leaders, Barnabas,
the man who's called the son of encouragement,
the one who took a piece of property
and sold it all and laid it at the apostles' feet
and just said,
do whatever you will with this.
It's the Lord's to build his kingdom.
Barnabas goes,
and he goes and helps establish the church there.
And as you see the church get going in Antioch,
what's so beautiful is,
after they're formed
and they're first called Christians in that place,
Acts tells us earlier,
that a prophet stands up,
Agabus, you know,
Agabus is like a guest preacher.
You really don't want Agabus to come to your church.
He always says something hard and difficult when he comes.
I promise I won't be Agabus.
But Agabus stands up and says,
there's gonna be a worldwide famine.
You know what the response of the church in Antioch was?
Let's take up an offering.
Not so we can just make sure
that we're taking care of ourselves and our people.
Let's give it back to the mother church in Jerusalem.
They're gonna have greater needs than we do.
More people are gonna pass through Jerusalem.
There will be greater needs of hospitality.
There may be more persecution
that comes there alongside of this famine.
We need to take our best
and give it back somewhere else.
This is how the church in Antioch functions
from the very beginnings.
This is who their founder was in Barnabas.
This is who they were even as they got started.
But now things get ratcheted up
to a whole nother level.
This is next level big time.
Because what happens is they are worshiping the Lord
as they are praying and as they are fasting.
What does the Holy Spirit say to them?
Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul
for the work I have for them
to take this gospel to the world.
Give me Barnabas.
Give me your church planter.
Give me this guy who is the son of encouragement.
This one is so full, is modeled what generosity is.
I'm gonna take him from you.
And Saul?
You know this guy who is this amazing teacher
and preacher and writer and thinker
and evangelist and apologist and philosopher
and pastor.
I want him too.
What generosity was required of this church?
And they embraced it and welcomed it.
How do you do that?
How do you give in this way?
How do you do like Barnabas did
to take a whole piece of property
and just give it away?
How do you function like the church did in Antioch
from the beginnings and saying,
here we're gonna take up an offering
and we're gonna give it away.
We're not worried about us here.
We're giving it to where the needs are greater.
How can you take in a church
that is thriving and growing
and is the gateway for the gospel
in the whole Mediterranean world,
how can you take not just one leader,
but both of your leaders
and send them away in mission?
How do you do that?
Only when you're in touch
with how God functions through the gospel.
How God gives his best away
for us and his one and only son.
How Jesus gives his position of power
and honor away in the heavens
considering not equality with God
and status with God,
something to be grasped and clutched,
but humbled himself,
taking on human flesh,
remaining God,
but also becoming fully human
like us in every way
except for our sins
so he could humble himself
all the way to the point of death,
even death on a cross
so he could bear the weight of our sins
before a just God
so that we could live and know God
together with him and the Spirit forever.
A God, Father and Son,
who give the Spirit,
the one who's so much a part of them,
the connection of love between them
that's so real and so deep,
he's a person,
to pour out that Holy Spirit
to come live in us,
broken, sinful, weak,
frail people
that the light of the glory of God
should shine through the cracks
of our lives.
That's the generosity of God.
The only way
you can be this kind of people
is when you're in touch
with God's generosity
through the gospel.
Like that,
it's everywhere in the scriptures,
right?
It's just everywhere.
God,
the Psalms we read this morning,
God loves to be kind to us.
He loves to be generous to us.
He loves to welcome us.
The stories of the Bible
are just full of it.
I love the whole,
I'm just reading now
in my Bible reading plan,
the book of Hosea.
It's so lovely.
God tells Hosea the prophet,
go marry a woman
who lives on the street.
Go marry a woman
who's a prostitute.
Go marry a woman
who's a prostitute,
and she's not going to stop
being a prostitute
after she becomes your wife,
but marry her,
love her when she goes away.
Go find her,
and welcome her,
and woo her back,
and bring her back home,
and tell her you love her again.
Because that's how much
I love Israel.
That's how much
I love my people.
Getting in touch with that,
as the church at Antioch did
through worship,
and prayer,
and fasting,
is key to being
this generous kind of people.
So before we move on,
where does God want you
to show his generosity
in fresh ways?
As this church is turning 30,
where are the fresh ways
God wants Southwood
to be radically generous,
to be giving your best away
financially,
your best away
in terms of time
for this community
or the broader world.
Giving yourselves away
in terms of
thinking about
what does Southwood
need to give
Huntsville in the region
that would radically bless,
that would make
this region say,
we thank God
that this church
is in our midst.
And what does God
want each one of you
individually
to do afresh this fall?
Wake me up
when September ends,
Green Day sings, right?
Well, the summer's fully over,
the fall is good.
Where does God
want you to engage
to wake up
and be generous
in fresh ways
such that change
comes a little of your time
to a neighbor
that you know
is so lonely?
engaging someone
who's hurt you badly
and saying to them,
I really do forgive you.
I don't want to hold
the past over your head.
I want to go forward.
I want to show you
the generosity
of love and forgiveness
because that's what
the Father has done
with me and Jesus.
Where does God
want you to be
radically generous?
I just want to tell you
one story
before we move on.
Peter mentioned it,
but,
you know,
I not only got to marry
a girl from Alabama,
I got to live in Alabama
for a while,
got to work at Auburn
with RUF,
Reform University Fellowship,
if you don't know it,
our campus ministry
associated with
the Presbyterian Church
in America,
and God blessed
our time there richly.
We were there
in the early 90s.
God really began
to work a true revival
on that campus
during our time.
It was wonderful.
We literally got to work
each year with thousands
of students
talking about
the gospel of Jesus.
It was an amazing season.
But we could never
really raise our full support
as missionaries.
And no matter how many
students you work with,
they don't pay the budget,
right?
And so we kept working
and working
and working with churches
and individuals,
and we couldn't overcome
a huge deficit
that we had
as we began our time there.
And as we were
in the middle of our time,
we still had a $10,000 deficit,
which was about
almost half of a year's
salary at that time.
And we were going to have
to look for other work.
We just couldn't make it work.
And so I'd been
to all kinds of churches
to people,
and we just couldn't
close that gap.
And I get a phone call
one day from a woman
named Lee
in Selma, Alabama.
I'd visited her church
previously.
And I answer her,
and she says,
Paul, this is Miss Lee
over in Selma.
Hey, Miss Lee,
how are you?
Paul, you know,
I work with the women
in the church
for the region,
for the Presbytery,
for the Presbytery
Women's thing,
what we call the Preswick.
Yes, Miss Lee, yes.
We would like you
to come over
to Warrior Preswick
in Camden
this spring
and be our
Showers of Blessing
love speaker.
Yes, Miss Lee.
And we would like you
to bring Fran
and your two pretty
little girls.
Yes, Miss Lee.
And I'm thinking,
they're going to collect
an offering
for the Showers
of Blessing love gift.
And it's not going
to pay for our gas
to drive to Camden
and back.
And we're going to have
two little girls
in the back.
It's going to be
a long day.
Okay.
So I never thought
about that again
until months later
when it was the day to go.
We pretty up
and shine up.
We drive over.
We get there.
And in the Warrior Presbytery
women's meetings,
they actually had
name tags for everybody
in the shape
of bumblebees.
and they sing
a Christian bubble
and be song.
This is true.
It's about 1992,
circa.
Real.
And so we had
the little breakfast together.
I preached the sermon
to them.
They loved all my wife
and little daughters.
And then Miss Lee
stands up and says,
Paul, now it's time
for you to receive
the Showers of Blessing
Love Offering.
And she began
to describe
what they had done.
You know,
Warrior Presbytery
is western Alabama.
Warrior Presbytery
is the region
that covers
the poorest part
of the United States.
Poorer than Appalachia.
A lot of the towns
where these churches were
don't have stoplights.
A lot of these congregations
don't have pastors
because they can't afford
to pay them.
But she described
what the women
in these churches did.
Bank sales
and sewing circles
and got their youth
to do car washes
and special events
to raise money
for the Shepherds
of Blessing
Love Offering
for Auburn RUF.
I know nothing
about this going on
all year long.
And so,
I come to this event
and I stand up
and Miss Lee says,
and here is,
Paul,
our gift
and it's $5,000.
And I started crying.
Every time I tell
this story,
I cry.
And I started weeping.
And she said,
Paul, don't cry.
That's not the surprise.
She said,
when we started
back in 1973
when the PCA was formed
and we formed
the women
in the church movement here,
we wanted to start
an orphanage.
And we put aside
a CD for that.
We realize now,
20 years later,
we're never going to be able
to start an orphanage.
We want to take that money
and give it to you.
And that was $5,000.
And I left Camden,
Alabama
with no deficit,
with people who had been
radically generous
for the mission of God.
And I have never
been the same.
Where does Jesus
want to tell stories
like that
in the next 20 years
through you?
and in the full seasons ahead.
The flourishing church
is a generous church.
Secondly,
think about this.
The flourishing church
is a creative church.
Beautifully and radically creative.
You know,
so much has been written
about the rise
of the creative class
in our time.
A gentleman named
Richard Florida
wrote a book on this
called The Rise
of the Creative Class.
And Florida talks about
how cities like Huntsville
are so working
to get creative peoples
to come live
in their communities
and they're trying
to make that way easy.
And Florida writes
about the different
cross sections
of people
who are creative
types of people,
typically entrepreneurial
business people.
Artists
are creative people.
Millennials typically
are more creative
than others of us.
How do we get
these people groups
to come here
and live in our city
so we can become
a creative place?
You know what?
I've never heard
a cross section
of people
described as creatives
as evangelical Christians.
By Richard Florida
or anybody else.
Maybe that's because
they're oppressing us
or maybe because
we just aren't.
But the church
in Antioch
is radically
and beautifully
creative
right from the very
beginning.
As I said,
they took this offering
up in generosity
and said,
let's give it back
to the mother church.
What we see
Saul doing here
is changing
his name to Paul,
moving out
of a Hebraic name
to a Latin name
to say,
I want to be
all things
to all people.
I want to connect.
The creativity
of even changing
his name
to connect
in mission.
In Antioch,
we learn earlier
than Acts
that Christians
are first named
Christians.
Do you know
why that was?
Because there are
so many different
kinds of people
from this Hellenistic
Jewish spread
of people
coming together
around the gospel
that they couldn't
identify them
by race or place
so they just had
to call them
by their connection
to Jesus Christ
the Messiah.
And so the first
time we're ever
labeled Christians
is there.
The diversity
and the beauty
of that community.
Think about what we know
about the early church
beyond Antioch.
How the church met
in the middle of the night
at like two or three
in the morning
creatively.
Why?
Because there
was less risk
of being attacked,
of being persecuted,
of having the meetings
broken up.
And because
so many people
who were slaves
could come in the
middle of the night
and worship freely.
They had
the only space
available given
to them
was that space
in the middle
of the night
and the church
just says,
let's meet
then.
You see
this church
in Antioch
here
so beautifully
laying out
a mission strategy.
Let's send
people out
in pairs.
Let's send
Barnabas and
Saul
who becomes
Paul.
Let's send
John Mark 2.
Let's even
send 3.
Now,
we're so accustomed
to that,
right,
with missionary
teams going out.
There was no precedent
for this
other than Jesus
sending the disciples
out two by two
on occasion.
Beautiful
creativity
for the life
and mission
of the church.
Where does God
want you,
Southwood,
at 30?
With your roots
in the ground,
firmly planted,
to exercise
creativity
in fresh ways.
What do we know
about being
and doing church?
God wants us
to do
the word
read and preached.
God wants us
to do
the sacraments
and baptism
and communion
regularly
for all of us
to not only
hear the word
but to see
the gospel
lived out
to actually be able
to feel it
and to taste it
and to eat it.
And God wants us
to pray
together
and individually.
Word,
sacrament,
prayer,
those are the things
that are never changing
in the life
of the church.
But out of that basis,
everything else
is blue sky.
Everything else
is creative.
How do you spawn
that creativity?
How do you grow
in that?
How do you say,
what are the fresh ways?
I love what you've
sort of done
even this fall,
right?
You sort of said,
let's change things over.
Let's have worship first
so our communities
of mission
and life together
can discuss
what we've learned
in this sermon
and think about
how to apply that
and carry that forward
out into the week.
I love that creativity.
What are the other
creative steps
God wants you
to take collectively?
Where are the creative places
God wants you
individually
to just live
out the gospel
in fresh ways
in his mission?
Well, the way
you get fueled
for that,
the way you get
energized for that,
the way you're
mused for that,
if you will,
is back to the gospel
itself.
Think about God's
creativity in the gospel
to say,
I will step into
the picture myself.
The world I have created,
the world I am
ruling over,
I will actually
step into it
in human likeness
to bring renewal
and blessing
and salvation
and forgiveness
to it.
That is stunning.
Don't let the nature
of the story,
you having heard it before,
take away how creative
that is.
Think about how Jesus
exercises his ministry
in beautiful ways,
connecting with people,
telling stories
they could understand
and yet backdoored them
with the surprising
wonders of the gospel.
Where does the Lord,
out of that movement
of the gospel
and the creativeness,
want us to go
and be his creative people?
The flourishing church
is a generous church,
the flourishing church
is a creative church.
Lastly,
the flourishing church
is a humble church.
It's a humble church.
As this mission unfolds,
as this generosity
and creativity flow out,
what was required
of the church at Antioch?
Can you imagine
what it would have been like
the first Sunday
after Paul and Barnabas left?
Can you imagine
Peter and the whole staff
being leaving
and sent out on mission
in fresh ways
and you're going to meet
the next Sunday
and you go,
well, now what?
Who are we?
How do we do this?
We are suddenly
not the same church
with the same sets
of gifts and blessings
that we were
even a week ago.
What do we do?
God, you have laid us low.
Imagine the humility
that was required
of Barnabas.
He goes out.
He's been this key leader
in Jerusalem.
He's been the planter
and leader in Antioch
and the Holy Spirit
has moved and directed
for he and Saul
to go out on mission.
He was the one
who brought Saul
to Antioch with him.
He was the one
who stood up for Saul
back in Jerusalem
with the leaders there.
To tell them
you can trust him.
When nobody else
wanted to trust Saul,
Barnabas does.
Barnabas trains him.
Barnabas gives him
every platform
Saul has had
for ministry
to this point
and yet as they get started
in this missionary journey,
right here
within the first few verses,
Saul begins to lead.
Saul begins to become
the one through whom
God preaches his message.
Saul is the one
through whom
miracles are performed.
Soon you're not going
to hear very much
about Barnabas at all.
Where did the first
missionary journey
take them?
Where was their first stop?
Cyprus.
Cyprus is Barnabas'
home island.
All of this
has been required
of him
back in his hometown.
Humility.
Saul,
you can really
bind up the humility
required for Saul
in the name change.
How many Pauls
are here beside me?
I'm sure a handful.
I'm painfully aware
of the etymology
of Paul.
Do you know
what Paul means?
little.
Would that was more
true of my body.
Little,
tiny,
small.
Paul is going
to take a whole
journey forward
in his ministry
growing down
into that name.
Suffering.
Taking beatings
one lash
less than that
which would kill
a person.
Beatings with
the whip,
beatings with rods,
being stoned
and left for dead
multiple times.
Near drownings
in rivers
and near drownings
at sea
after shipwreck.
Fevers
and diseases
and difficulties.
This thorn
in the flesh
that he lives with
all the way through
which some believe
is either
an ongoing
fever problem,
terrible problems
with his eyes,
perhaps some kind
significant physical
deformation
in his body.
But then
Paul says
writing about
all this,
it's all these
things,
yeah,
that are hard
but it's my
daily concerns
for the churches
that really make it
hard,
that really break me.
Paul was going
to spend a lifetime
growing down
into that name.
How do you do that?
As a church
collectively,
how do we do that
as individual Christians
like Barnabas
and Saul?
The only way
you do that
is by contemplating
the gospel.
And what you realize
when you contemplate
the gospel
and when you worship
and pray
and fast
the way they were
doing in Antioch
is,
you realize
two deep truths
is,
number one,
this is the Jesus way.
This is God's way.
God's glory
is in his humility.
Jesus says
throughout the whole
gospel of John,
my time has not yet come,
my time has not yet come
to be fully known
and glorified.
And suddenly he says
in John 12,
now is the time,
the hour has come
and the Son of Man
will be glorified
and the Father
who sent him
will be glorified
as he is crucified
and lifted up
from the earth.
God's ultimate glory
is in his humility.
And the other point
as you focus
on the gospel
is
that if this is
the Jesus way
then it's going to be
the way of his followers
that there is
no other way
the gospel
can go forward
except we humble ourselves,
except we give our lives away
as Paul did,
except we are willing
to take the back seat,
the second chair,
to even go off stage left
the way Barnabas did,
the gospel can't go forward
with that kind of humility
flowing through us.
The gospel demands it.
To carry our crosses
and follow Jesus
means we are humble people.
Where does God want
to humble you afresh?
For you to embrace humility
afresh,
to give up your power,
to give up your position
afresh,
to just go love
in his name,
to give up status,
to give up the right
to hold a grudge,
to give up the right
of playing the victim card
and humble yourself
and serve in Jesus' name.
This is the hardest part
of flourishing,
but the creativity
and the generosity
can't flow
except through the channel
of our humility.
I want to leave you
with a story
of where I've seen this
played out in my life.
My wife grew up
in Birmingham.
Her family were charter members
of Briarwood Church.
She remembers
when Briarwood Church
came into the Presbyterian
Church in America.
She was there
for that meeting.
She has great memories.
She went to Briarwood School
growing up.
And Fran is,
if you get to know her
even a little bit today,
the kindest,
most generous person
I've really ever been around.
I'm not just saying that.
I mean,
if I've learned anything
about love and generosity,
I've learned it through her
toward others.
But she would tell you
that's not the way.
Paul's not seeing it all right,
number one.
But number two,
that's certainly not the way
I've always been.
And growing up,
she at Briarwood School,
the beautiful little
Christian school
with a group of girls
was sort of
in the mean girls pack.
If you've ever seen that movie
with Lindsay Lohan,
she was one of the mean girls,
like the Rachel McAdams character
who were making life
miserable for others
that don't fit
their model and grid.
And she had a couple of friends
and they sort of ruled
that little Christian school.
Well,
a new friend came to town
somewhere at the end
of elementary school,
early in middle school,
and Fran decided,
I want to make
Tammy's life miserable.
I don't like her.
And so I'm going to make it
hard on her
and I'm going to
ignore her.
I'm going to be mean.
I'm going to orchestrate
so that Tammy's life
is kind of bad.
Well, Tammy's mom
kind of watched this play out.
Her name's Beth.
And Beth decided,
you know,
if you've ever been
in that space,
I've been in that space
as a parent.
You ever been in that space
as a parent?
What do you want to do
to the child
that's making your child's
life miserable, right?
You want to strangle them, right?
If your child's ever been
bullied at school,
like you want to strangle
the child.
Better,
you would love to strangle
the parents of the child
who's bullying your child, right?
Beth did not take
that approach.
Beth began to try
to find out about Fran
and her situation
to discover
that her mom
had significant illnesses
she was battling
that incapacitated her,
that Fran's dad
was a doctor,
a beautiful Christian man,
but often absent,
chief of staff
at a major Birmingham hospital,
and that Fran's siblings
were older
and sort of gone,
and that Fran
really didn't have anybody.
And so Beth decided,
I'm going to,
instead of hating
the daughter,
the girl who's making
my daughter's life miserable,
I'm going to love her.
I'm going to humble myself.
I'm going to try
to be creative.
I'm going to try
to be generous
and just give to her.
She found out Fran
didn't ever have lunches,
so she brought
an extra lunch
for her
as well as for her daughter
and stuck it in her locker.
She worked
so that Tammy and Fran
could do things together
and after school activities
sort of behind the scenes.
She then worked
in realizing
Fran didn't really have
a place to eat supper
at night
and invited her over
for dinner often.
Invited Fran
on family vacations.
Fran and Tammy,
instead of being
these enemies,
become best friends.
they still are
to this day.
And Fran would say
what she learned
about loving
in Jesus' name,
she learned
from reflecting
on best love
to her
when she utterly
did not deserve it.
Where does God
want to write
beautiful,
fresh stories
like best story
in Fran,
like Fran's story
in teaching me?
Where does God
want to play
that forward
through you?
One thing's for sure,
if the church
in Antioch
didn't function
this way
with this generosity,
this creativity,
this humility,
if Barnabas and Saul
didn't embrace it
and embody it,
the gospel
wouldn't have gotten
to us today.
This is how
the gospel
broke out
from the Mediterranean
world.
This is how
the gospel
began to come
to Gentiles.
This is the story
of the Gentile mission
breaking out
in fullness.
Sergius Paulus,
another Paul
who Paul connects
with,
and there'll be
many,
many others.
Where does God
want to make
a new outbreak
of the gospel?
Through you,
collectively
and individually
as the flourishing
people
of his gospel.
Let's pray together.
Father,
we thank you
for this time.
We praise you
for your goodness
and mercy
to us
through Jesus.
Help us,
Lord,
to just catch
the gospel afresh
so that we might
see the generosity
there,
the creativity
there,
the humility
there,
Lord,
and so that
we might live
it out.
Thank you
for Southwood.
Thank you
for the ways
that's marked
her across
her 30 years,
but I pray
that like the
church at Antioch,
there would be
a ratcheting
up of this,
just like we saw
a ratcheting
up of that
in the book
of Acts,
that there would
be a ratcheting
up of that
here,
and that change
would come
to Huntsville
in the world
because of it.
Please,
Lord,
do this good work,
we pray.
In Jesus' name,
amen.
Amen.
For more information,
visit us online
at southwood.org.