What Now? What Next? - Relationships Not Real Estate, Part 1

Are you aware that there is a silent killer, a killer that's ruining families, causing fear, multiplying anxiety, causing depression to skyrocket, and suicide to go off the charts? This disease is called isolation. We were never meant to live alone.

But this pandemic has put more people in isolation than ever before. What's the answer? Stay with me. That's today. Welcome to this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. The mission of these daily programs is to intentionally disciple Christians through the Bible teaching of Chip Ingram. I'm Dave Drouy, and this season of separation, distancing, and seclusion has certainly been difficult for all of us. But it's confirmed just how important community is to our well-being.

So how can we get that closeness back? Well, in just a minute, Chip continues his new series, What Now, What Next, by looking at ways Jesus prioritized his relationships and how we can imitate that. Before we begin, if you've been encouraged by this series, would you take a minute after this message and share it with a friend?

You can do that through the Chip Ingram app or by sending them the free MP3s at livingontheedge.org. Now let's join Chip for his talk, Relationships, Not Real Estate. Five years, 10 years, 50, 100 years from now, if the Lord has not returned, people will look back at this year as a life-changing, pivotal change of era, change of epoch, where the rules changed, power changed, life changed, how people communicated changed, business changed, geopolitical power was shifted, technology changed, how people lived, how they responded, and they'll look back and see that Christianity had a fundamental change. I don't know whether it's going to look back fundamentally great, fundamentally different, or fundamentally worse. What I can tell you is, as you have on your notes, the definition of insanity, most of you know, right, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. And so there's a couple questions we need to ask, is what have we been doing in the family, what have we been doing personally, and what have we been doing in the church for the, say, last 30 or 40 years, and then what are the results? And there's a lot of people that, you know, I hear it all the time, I just, can we just get back to normal?

Memo, normal is never returning, period. A survey that came out, America is losing its religion. So all I want to do is pause for a moment and say, let's look back at our lives as followers of Jesus and the impact, at least in our country. America's membership and worship communities has declined drastically. The accelerated trends toward more secular America represent a fundamental change in the national character, one that will have major ramifications for politics and even social cohesion. The United States religious membership first was measured by Gallup in 1937. 73% of people in America went to some worship service with a basic concept of morality. For the next six decades, it stayed over 70%. Between 1998 and 2000, in only two years, the number of people who didn't attend any religious organization grew by 8%.

In the last three years, it's grown by 21%. The percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion is greater now than any time in America's history. By way of detail, whatever their religious practice, Americans are increasingly rejecting the moral concepts found in most major religions. In 2017, Gallup found a significant majority of Americans believe that the practices of divorce, extramarital sex, gay and lesbian relationships are all morally acceptable.

The world has dramatically changed, morality has dramatically changed, the church has dramatically changed, and I say this not as a condemnation because I'm part of the problem, but it was on our watch. It was during our season of life. Jesus said that you are and I am the salt of the earth.

Salt preserves, it purifies, makes a difference. You are, I am the light of the world. The light exposes, it brings life. I would say we'd have to confess that the salt has not been very salty in the last 30 to 40 years, at least in America, and the light has not been very bright. So the question is, what do we have to learn? We've got three observations. Observation number one is isolation is lethal. It's lethal.

It's not hard, it's not difficult, it kills, brings fear, brings anxiety. We desperately need one another. Human beings, not just Christians, we desperately need one another. I don't mean just being aware of one another, I don't mean chit-chat or superficial, we desperately need one another.

Heart to heart, soul to soul. Observation number two about the church. With rare exception, after 30, perhaps 40 years of what I call place-centered ministry. In other words, the church became a place.

Weekend attendance became the most important metric. Programs happening at the church, our kids go to this, we have a meeting for this. Place-centric or emphasized ministry has increased church attendance, has had mega churches multiply around the country in the last 35 years like Walmarts, but it has failed in our ability to develop people and disciples. 8.5 to 9 professing followers of Jesus, whether they say I believe in the Bible or I'm born again or whatever phrase that we use, their lifestyle, their ethics, their families, their morality is much, almost no different from their non-believing counterparts. We've been successful at growing churches, but being a Christian has changed in America too. I go to a meeting down from just 10 years ago of 2.6 times a month to now 1.6 times a month.

I listen to someone talk, I sing a couple songs, I try to be a little bit better person, and I live my life primarily focused by the culture, what success is, what makes me happy. And basically a general narcissistic view that life is for me and Jesus is my ticket to a, quote, great marriage, great singleness, upward mobility, and hopefully that all my kids turn out right. And the results have been devastating. What we've learned about American Christianity is that the adversity of the last year has revealed a Christianity that is more consumer than contributor, it's more spectator than servants, and it's more fans than followers. I was with a friend at a major podcast in the last couple weeks, and on it was a Wheaton professor who just kind of did an overview after everyone had talked and futurist and Christian leaders. He said basically the pandemic in America has revealed an American Christianity that has poor theology, shallow faith, and is basically consumer Christianity.

I think it was Max Dupree, he said the first goal of leaders, whether you're the leader in your home, leader in a company, leader with a small group of people, it's to define reality. We've all been in denial for a long time. We've measured the wrong things. It's not how many come to a church gathering, it's what kind of people are leaving the church gathering and are the kind of moms and dads and single people and employers and employees whose first and foremost loyalty is to Jesus, who have a winsome morality, not against the world, and whose lives are dynamic and loving and kind. Are you ready for this?

A lot like Jesus. That was the game plan. And that little game plan was a grain of wheat that fell into the earth and it turned the world upside down. But that changed in America.

And Jesus became a means to the end, a means to make us happy, a means to be fulfilled. It happened gradually. And it's very interesting, Max Dupree said, once you define reality and know where you're at, now you're in a position to make a change. This pandemic has been devastating in many ways, but I think there's one silver lining. It has been the greatest wake-up call that I think we've ever had.

I don't know how you're living, I don't know how you were thinking, but whatever you were and however it was, this is a moment to say, we can't keep doing life the way we did it in the past. That's true for us individually, it's true for families, and I think profoundly it's true for the church. So what must our perspective and practice be moving forward?

Are you ready? I've got a few words for you to fill in. Number one is our focus. Our focus has to be Christ, the very person of Jesus, not causes.

And by causes, I don't mean just the sex trade or foster care or racism, all very important causes. I mean causes like, am I happy and is life all about me? First and foremost, Jesus calls us to himself. The apostle Paul would say, I gave up everything. More than that, I've considered the loss of everything as nothing, as superfluous, as rubbish compared to knowing Christ my Savior. The passion of the early church was that they would know him, enjoy him, worship him, follow him. Jesus can't be a means to anything, he is the end. So our focus is on Christ, Romans 12, 1 and 2. A surrendered heart, a surrendered life is the channel through which God's biggest and best blessings flow.

Second is not just our focus, it's our response. Our response in this era has to be on healing, not hostility. See, when your faith becomes about you and my faith becomes about me, when the church is about our turf and what we do and this is our place, when things change, a lot of Christians got very mad and very hostile. There's a lot of hate, a lot of anxiety, a lot of fear, a lot of blaming and a lot of harsh, harsh words that I don't think Jesus would recognize as these are my followers.

But see, when someone starts to mess with your life, we get mad. Peter would write to an early church under Nero, it's been granted to you for Christ's sake that you could suffer with him. We have this pattern in Christ that you should follow in his steps that although he was reviled, he reviled not.

He didn't trade insult for insult. It doesn't mean that we're passive but there's a way to make a difference in a culture without attacking people and blaming people. The third, it's not just our focus or our response, it's our priority. Every church around America and places all around the world are trying to figure where do we go from here? What do we need to do? And if we're not careful, we'll unconsciously think we need to get everything going that we used to have going, which will by, are you ready for this? Create exactly the same results that we've had. Is that what you want? You want 68 or 70% of our own children say, mom, dad, pastors, staff members, church, you know, I don't know what you all believe but it doesn't look real enough for me, I'm opting out.

These are our own kids. So what needs to change? I'd like to suggest it needs to be about relationships and not real estate.

And when I say real estate, I don't mean it as literal as it sounds. Over time, churches began, and it's here and it's true all around the world, churches began to consciously or unconsciously probably more think that success is wow, we're growing. We used to be in a house, now we need a little building, now we need a bigger building, now we need a building with a gym, we need a building with a climbing wall.

You know what? You should see our church. We have our own bowling hour. We've got a bookstore.

We've got a coffee shop. There's Christian music now. There's Christian books. We've become a whole subculture with diminishing, diminishing, diminishing impact. And so over time, going to an event, how many people showed up instead of what kind of people were leaving became the metric.

And the church by and large is now viewed by culture as angry, hateful, filled with celebrity pastors, tragic, tragic moral failures among some of our greatest heroes of the faith even in the last year or two. We're in a situation where we need to make a U-turn, and our perspective and our practice about what will move us forward has to change. It can't be just about, well, now we can meet again. Now we can have our meetings. Let's get our kids in little groups. It's got to change to relationship. Why is this so important?

Let me give you an overview of why relationships matter than location, than size. Jesus' example, in Mark chapter 3 verse 13, he prayed all night, and after he prayed all night and he got a word from the Father, he chose 12 that they might be, here's the two words, with him. When Jesus wanted to start a revolutionary movement, he didn't start a publishing house, he didn't start a school, he chose people that would live with him.

They would eat together, they would walk together, they would pray together, they would laugh together, they would work together. And those men changed the world, they and their families. When Jesus was leaving, his last night, if you would look at his very last night, John chapter 13 through 17, what mattered? Where was his focus? What was his priority? Talk about a new epic, turning.

He would die, then he would be raised from the dead, all history would change. What's the last thing do you say to those who are going to take on the baton of revolution to change the world, that there's hope, that there's life, that there's forgiveness? He said, a new commandment that I've given to you, after he, what?

Washed their feet. That you love one another the way I loved you. By this the world will know that you're my disciples, by the beauty of your buildings, by the PR in your programs.

What did he say? By this the world will know that you're my disciples, by how you love one another. Now don't get me wrong, there's a place for the church gathered. There's a time for the teaching and the worship collectively that's very, very important. But the world will see the reality of Christ by radical, other-centered, sacrificial relationships that happen seven days a week.

Not by just another group that has a weekly meeting that everyone gives sort of a tip to their time, instead of it being the core of your life. Jesus' example, Jesus' command, and I think the testimony of the early church. When you look at this tiny group of 12, and then 120, and then we have Pentecost, and yes they had supernatural power, but the Bible says the same power that raised Christ from the dead, it dwells in me, a follower of Jesus. It dwells in you if you know him personally. There's power to overcome temptation, there's power to respond good with evil, there's power to love people you don't like.

There's power to give away time and energy and money that you're so afraid that if you do that you won't have enough for you. That little church, Acts 2, 42 to 46, what? They met together from house to house. They ate meals together. They shared the Lord's Supper. They prayed the prayers that Jesus taught them.

And it says that the Lord added to their number daily. And they had, not a bad reputation, but they had favor. Both inside and outside the church because they were this radical, loving community. They became the community that when the babies were left in the trash heaps, the Christians would go and get them. Because they just didn't think because a man or a Roman father who had the right to say to a kid with a cleft palate or to a girl because he wanted a boy, kill it.

Because they cared about life. And when the three major diseases that in the first 150 years of the church, they're massive pandemics. Historians tell us that the Christians stayed in city and the wealthy and the affluent went to the mountains.

Hundreds of thousands of people in major metropolitan areas, they all died. And the only people that stayed in the cities were Christians who survived or non-Christians who were ministered to by Christians who refused to leave. And in the annals of church history, they're called martyrs. It was their outflow of love and an eternal perspective that said that life is more than about us. The spirit of Christ produces the life of Christ and the love of Christ inside of us and we have to share it.

But we can't do it alone. I would suggest that the historic movements of renewal have all been marked by this renewal, this rediscovery of life together. It was Bonhoeffer, remember? When the organized church went with Hitler because it was convenient, Bonhoeffer started little community life together. It was the Moravians at another time in history. It was Wesley at another time in history.

It was a closed country much like Japan and there was a little small group movement that started in Korea that mushroomed. Spent a lot of time in Korea and now amazing missionaries sent all over the world. But it starts with people committed and doing life together in authentic relationships. When Jesus set out to revolutionize world history, notice the bottom.

He did not buy a building, offer classes, or start a school. He created, listen carefully, an authentic community of life-giving relationships that offered, notice all of it. We like the first couple that offered love, support, learning, accountability, and sacrifice to accomplish his mission.

Chip will join us here in studio with his application in just a minute. You've been listening to the first part of his message, Relationships, Not Real Estate, from his series, What Now? What Next? When the world gets turned upside down, it becomes really obvious how much people need Jesus. The anger, the hostility, the division, it's devastating. So the question is, how do we tell people about the peace only Jesus offers? Where do we start? In this brand new teaching from Chip, he challenges us to authentically live out our faith by identifying six biblical mindsets we have to adopt. When you invest time in this series, you'll learn what it means to be a genuine Christian in a world that's crumbling all around us. To listen to this entire series, What Now?

What Next? Making Disciples in a Disrupted World, the Chip Ingram app is a great way to get plugged in. Chip, you know, one of the great blessings of radio or podcasts or even listening on the app is that it's usually a very private experience.

I mean, you can focus on the teaching and have God really speak to you. Well, that's right, Dave, but it's more than just a private experience. For those that listen to the radio, listen to the app, listen online, I wonder if they really recognize all that goes into making that broadcast, that podcast, that app a reality.

What people may not understand is that it's a very expensive proposition to buy airtime, to pay a staff, to do the technology, to upload things on satellites. But you know what? We love to do it. Here's what I would ask. If this ministry, if those broadcasts have been a blessing to you, if they've helped you draw closer to God or have a better marriage or learn how to forgive someone, would you partner with us? Would you give to Living on the Edge this month? And here's the good news. It's a great month to give because thanks to a small group of friends of the ministry, every dollar you give in December, it gets doubled.

Ten goes to 20, 100 goes to 200, 1,000 goes to 2,000. It's phenomenal. It's a group of people that believe in what we're doing. And if we've helped you, would you help us help others? Dave, would you take a minute and tell people how they can get on board today?

Absolutely. If Living on the Edge is making a difference in your life and you'd like to help others receive the same blessing, we'd love to have you join us. To send a gift, just go to livingontheedge.org, tap donate on the app, or give us a call at 888-333-6003.

Again, that's 888-333-6003. And thanks for doing whatever the Lord leads you to do. As we wrap up today's program, on a scale of one to ten, I mean a one being, wow, my relational world is not good at all, a ten is, it's flourishing, it's authentic, it's face to face, I have two or three super close friends, I can be vulnerable, we're doing life together, we support one another. Where is your deep, authentic, relational world with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ?

And I mean beyond your family. I mean the church, the body. See, what I've observed is, you know, we had to do things for a while, it was online church. And what I've observed is we went from online church to, instead of participation, it was like observation.

And then pretty soon, it wasn't online church when it actually met, but I'll kind of watch it when I can get it because it was sort of like online church on demand. And then pretty soon, we're not eating with one another, we're not sharing deeply. And it happened so gradually, it was like I was the, you know, that frog that is in the pot and they gradually heat it up and you don't realize it's impacting you until you're boiled alive. I just realized that little by little by little by little, I didn't have vibrant face to face relationships that spurred me on to real love and to real good works.

And I think it started to develop a new pattern. And it was in the midst of that that I literally just had to break out of it, I just had to say, oh God, help me. I can't live like this. Here's my challenge.

Whatever number you gave yourself, what would be the next step to move that number toward a 10? I don't know what you need to do, but who are people that you are close to or that need you that you say to them, let's talk. How's your walk with Jesus? What's God teaching you? How could I encourage you? Do that today. Get reconnected from the heart.

You'll be glad you did. Well, we're praying for the ministry that continues to happen through Living on the Edge, and we're praying that you'll choose to partner with us financially while we're in our year-end match. Thanks to a handful of very generous friends of the ministry, every gift we receive during December will be doubled dollar for dollar. To send a gift, just go to livingontheedge.org, tap donate on the app, or give us a call at 888-333-6003. That's 888-333-6003. Your generosity is greatly appreciated. Well, that does it for this program. For Chip and the entire team here, this is Dave Drouin saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge. .