STAYING ON TRACK

CHANGE IN THE CHURCH



Change has no value in an of itself. There is a Godly kind of change and there is a worldly kind of change. In the world , bad change is designed to distract us from depending on God and the word of his grace – e.g. greed, pride, independence, division.

In the kingdom of God change can only be measured in two ways: internally it must be measured by the quality of my relationship with God intimacy (love for Jesus) and faith (obedience to his Word).
Externally it can only be measured by the increase of the kingdom and glory of Jesus in the world. Another way of saying this would be to look at the evidence for the further fulfillment of his purpose.

Its like flying a plane to a certain destination. The first thing that counts is that you are familiar with all of the operating systems: normal and emergency operations. An aircraft is set up not only to fly normally, but also to keep flying when something goes wrong. (illustration of the guy flying a twin out of Bankstown who lost half of his instruments after take off) The second thing that counts in flying to a destination is navigation. You must be able to use the equipment available to reach a certain set of co-ordinates. Its all pretty easy to fly in normal clear conditions. The question is not whether you can get to a place when everything about the circumstances is in your favour (no cloud, no extreme heat, turbulence and when you are flying down the Hume Highway from Sydney to Canberra. That is no test of whether you are a real pilot. The issue is whether you can do it when there are two or more adverse factors (cloud, featureless terrain etc. no reference points). Its also easy with a GPS these days. I have a mate who was so enamored with what he used to call “real flying” that he did a course and learned to use a sextant and he used to go on journeys to places with just a set of coordinates and only using a sextant and a compass. He contended that it was almost as exact, but it was much more exacting. What you need to know is how to tell whether you are getting closer to your pre-determined destination and what to do if you find yourself off track.

In point of fact, the two operations are part of the one. You need to be able to operate all of the internal normal and emergency systems to be able to fly to a destination and you need to be able to use those systems to find the right track to the pre-determined location.


The same is true for us as sons and daughters of God. We have internal operating systems that need to be maintained in a high level state of serviceability. We need to have a clear understanding of the destination and we need to be able to monitor whether we are on track at any point of the journey. The sobering truth about people who don’t reach their destination in a plane is that 85% crashes and incidents are attributed to human factors and 100% of those are related to failure to fulfill normal or emergency procedures.

One of the exhilarating things about my life serving God, and the life of most of the people I tend to hang out with is that something has happened to our chosen flight plan. We are all heading for things we have never experienced and to places we have never known. To change the analogy, a large part of who I am as a child of God has been because of the people who have given me their shoulders to climb up on, but my destination has only come from one source, and that is the things I have discovered about the heart and purpose of the God of heaven and earth.

Of all the books I have read and been impacted by, nothing has shaped my life like the Spirit of God through the Word of God. The books are like peaches and ice cream at a meal. They top off a really good meal, but the meat and vegetables are the Word of God taking shape in me by the work of the Spirit of God. Other people’s writings have been like a paint job to a vehicle, but the shape has come from the Word that has imparted my Father’s heart and my Father’s intention. (“This is what I am like, and this is what I want to do.”). By the way, there have been people who have tried to mess with the issues of “being” and “doing” by saying that God’s purpose is for you and I to “be” a certain sort of person and in saying that they have subordinated the matter of “doing” to the idea of “being.” This is always going to end up as a mis-truth. There is no such separation. You can’t do unless you be and you can’t be unless you do (Philemon 16 I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.)



My question in all of this has to do with the church in nations like Australia (and specifically in Australia since that is where God has placed me and given me primary responsibility). I have a conviction that keeps getting stronger that says the church is not on track. All the reference data coming up on my instruments tell me that despite the hype we so often hear, the church in this nation hasn’t ever got much closer to the God given co-ordinates (Matthew 24:14; Deut.6:5; Matthew 22:37)

If we are to take example from the churches that Jesus wrote letters to in the book of Revelation (2,3) we can see that what tends to happen in churches is not that everything becomes instantly unserviceable and they crash and burn, but that they lose enough of their internal and external reference sources to get to the point where if they don’t do something about it, they will certainly crash and burn (as they eventually did). The issue wasn’t whether they were doing anything that was good, the issue was that they were off track to the degree that they were not going to make it without pretty radical change. How did they get off track?

TESTS THAT SHOW WHETHER YOU ARE ON TRACK

Ephesus
PROBLEM No passion Lost first love
CAUSE Focused on structure
SOLUTION Repent; start doing the things you used to do before you fell


Smyrna
PROBLEM No self esteem
CAUSE Focused on human status and comfort
SOLUTION Don’t give way to fear; be faithful to the point of death


Pergamum
PROBLEM No righteousness
CAUSE Focus on false teaching
SOLUTION Repent; confront the issue



Thyatira
PROBLEM No accountability
CAUSE Focus on false leaders
SOLUTION Confront and warn the false leader(s) and the people they influence



Sardis
PROBLEM No life
CAUSE Focus on the past
SOLUTION Wake up, strengthen the life you have; finish the tasks you started; go back to first principles



Philadelphia
PROBLEM No courage
CAUSE Focus on human resources
SOLUTION Take up the opportunity; use what you have


Laodicea
PROBLEM No zeal
CAUSE Focus on wealth and property
SOLUTION SRestore fellowship with Jesus and receive what you need from him.


In the case of the churches in Asia Minor at the end of the first century who were experiencing their second generation of believers, the method Jesus used was a prophetic word spoken to John and given to some representative leader (angel) or messenger. I take the simplest possible interpretation of the idea of messenger, to refer to someone from that church who would come to visit him on the island of Patmos and would take the word of Jesus back to the church. I assume that this person would be some kind of leader and that John’s relationship with that person would be a kind of mentoring relationship. This may be putting too much into it, but it is the explanation that makes the most practical sense to me. I am also aware that Jesus said to each of the churches “Hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” That involves two very important principles for a person like me. I think it is essential that we hear the prophetic word to our own church (the one in our city or region) and we need to heed that word and use it to correct our heading or our altitude, and we need to hear what Jesus has said to the other churches because we will have no chance of getting to our destination if all we know about is our own local experience. We need to hear the word to the churches because it will enable us to take warning from the experience of others and it enables us to fellowship and support what Jesus has said to other churches. We can only pray for them and serve according to the measure to which we are aware of what God has said to them.