Are you sick of boring church services? Are you tired of listening to sermon after sermon? Are you turned-off by door-to-door evangelism? Have you ever wondered, “What’s the point?” Do you long for something big, important, and significant enough to dedicated your life to — but you can’t seem to find it in church as you know it?
In this message I challenge the modern form of Christianity and ask, “XXXX XX XXXXX?!”
Francis Chan asked, “If I only had this as my guide … if all I had was the Bible … and I was to read this book and then start a church, what would it look like? Would it look like the thing that we’ve built here and all refer to as church? Or would it look radically different?”
That seems like a great question to me … so I decided to talk about it. If you’ve missed the BASIC series, here are all seven sessions:
Part 1: Fear God
Part 2: Follow Jesus
Part 3: The Holy Spirit
Part 4: Fellowship
Part 5: Teaching
Part 6: Prayer
Part 7: Communion
Want to join the conversation? Meet me at Niceville Assembly on Wednesday nights at 6.30 PM.
Click here for more information on the BASIC film series by Francis Chan.
Over the years I’ve completed several personality profiles & they all seem to communicate the same basic picture:
I can be a jerk.
Well, that’s not how they say it. Technically I’m an Extraverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging, Enneagram Type 8 with a 9 Wing, high-D, “Lion” who is Literary-Scientific, oriented toward the Future, and has a strong natural tendency to formulate Strategic Plans.
In other words, I’d be a good Dictator. One assessment told me my trademark saying could be something like,
“I’m really sorry you have to die.”
(The sad part is… typing that made me laugh.)
Yet God called me into ministry.
Weird.
It’d be cool if that calling came with a supernatural personality change that made me more, well, “pastoral.”
But it doesn’t work that way.
God called me “as is — no warranty” and then sent me out.
God likes doing things that way.
He called Moses (who had a speech impediment) to be his spokesman. He called David (who was a military warrior) as a harp-playing, psalmist-king. He called farmers to be prophets, and fishermen to be disciples.
God would give an HR Manager a nervous breakdown.
The apostle Paul noticed this tendency in God and wrote, “Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God” (1 Cor 1:26-29 NLT).
Not only are we denied the opportunity to boast about our success, but we are simultaneously denied any excuse we could use for NOT doing what God has called us to do.
Brilliant!
Has God called you to do something you feel ill-equipped to handle? If so, what? Are you the opposite of the ideal candidate? Perhaps that’s proof that God is calling you out…
Today is the 15,046th day of my life.
So far I’ve:
* Amassed a huge pile of regrets.
* Done more things wrong than right.
* Lost track of more friends than I can count.
* Managed to embarrass myself on a regular basis.
* Made thousands of stupid decisions.
* Said many, many things that made people mad
(or sad, or hurt, or whatever).
* Learned hundreds of lessons “the hard way.”
* Done some stuff I’ll never mention in public
(& am trying to forget in private).
* Felt the pain of loss, failure and disillusionment.
All-in-all, I think things are going great!
The bottom line is God doesn’t give a rip about any of that stuff.
He’s not mad at me.
He’s not disappointed.
He loves me.
A lot.
In fact, He loves everything about me.
Yes, everything … because he sees me through the perfection of Jesus — not the failures of Kraig.
If for no other reason than Jesus, I can tell you with sincerity, things are going great!
“I’m not saying that I have this all together, that I have it made. But I am well on my way, reaching out for Christ, who has so wondrously reached out for me. Friends, don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back” (Philippians 3:12-14 MSG).
