Dr. Michael D. Halsey

THE FINGERPRINTS OF A GREAT CHURCH

Colossians 1: 9-14

INTRODUCTION

When I was a teenager, I fell in love very, very hard. The object of my hot and heavy affection wasn't a living, breathing person, but what had captivated me was a set of, of all things, bongo drums.

I spent most of my waking hours thinking about bongo drums, imagining myself playing bongo drums, and featuring myself as "cool" once I had them in my possession.

At that time, I was making a great living earning $4 every Saturday sacking groceries for Furrs Supermarket on 26th St. in Lubbock for manager Gerald Harris. It would take several weeks of work at that rate to earn the money for those wonderful bongo drums, but I did it. The day came when I, money in hand, went to make the purchase. I went to the store, plunked down all that money, took the coveted bongo drums in my eager hands and went back to the car.

To this day, I can remember what I thought sitting there on the way home: "What have I done? I don't like these things, I don't want these things, and I hate these things." All the way home, I knew that I'd made a mistake, a costly one. What a dumb thing to do. What a stupid thing to do. What a goofy thing to do. Let's add one more word: What an IMMATURE thing to do!

Today, whenever I hear bongo drums in the background of some music (and it's a rarity, as they're not a hot item any more), I kick myself for being so IMMATURE. What is it that enables me to look back and do that kicking? Growing up.

What's your take on what makes a church great?  Ever thought about it?  Let's think about, because, Paul prayed about it.

Pastor Epaphras has come to Paul from the First Church in Colosse with a report that false teachers are holding forth in the town promoting ideas that, if adopted by the believers there, will destroy the church. Paul's under house arrest, so he can't go to the church there, but there are 2 things he can do: write them a polemic and pray. And we've got a copy of his prayer! We see that what he prays for them will make them into a great church. So let's look at it.

Isn't it easy to go to a church committee meeting and just plow through an agenda without ever one time asking, "How does this committee and this agenda fit in with the goal of our becoming a great church?" It's easy to hold a church business meeting and never ask if these items of business are contributing to make County Line Church a great church (as Paul defines it). From the copy of Paul's prayer that we have here, we'd have to say that becoming a great church has to do with my bongo drums. A church becomes great by growing up!

The kind of fingerprints I left on those bongo drums were teenage prints, teething marks. They weren't the fingerprints of an adult. When a church becomes what Paul prays for, it leaves great, mature fingerprints. What are they?

FIRST FINGERPRINT: VERSE 9

A great church is one in which people are filled with the knowledge of God's will. The word "knowledge" is a dagger thrown by Paul at the heart of the false teachers. They were manipulating the crowds by telling them that there was this secret body of knowledge (gnosis). When you throw in with us, we have this esoteric knowledge only for the select few, and through this knowledge, you can get to God. But it's all secret. So Paul takes a verbal dagger from his vocabulary belt and hurls right at the heart of the false teachers and he says "I'm praying that you can have the 'full knowledge' (epignosis) of God's will.

Wouldn't it be great to know that God's will was directing all your actions? Some of the knowing of God's will is easy. Like when Josh McDowell was on TV debating a representative of the Playboy philosophy and the representative came up with the question you just had to know he was going to ask. As the debate got hotter, he asked, "Have you read Playboy Magazine?" You could sense that everybody watching TV was now moving to the edge of their seats. To which McDowell answered, "NO." The representative said, "Well, if you haven't read it, how can you criticize it?" Josh McDowell's answer was, "I haven't read it because certain things aren't permitted."  (I've never read a Mickey Mouse comic book in over 50 years. I've never read a business manual put out by Disney for their employees at Disney World. But you know what? I know what the Disney philosophy is. I don't have to read a Mickey Mouse book to find out.) Josh McDowell hit it right on the head.

 
Certain things are in the will of God. For example it's always in the will of God for me to confess my sins. It's always within the will of God for me to be a thankful person. It's always within the will of God for me to be kind to people. That's easy.

But what's not easy is for me to know, is it God's will for me to go to Georgia and be a pastor or go to Texas and be a pastor. You have to make a decision. Time's up. I never opened my Bible to find a verse that said, "Halsey, high-tail it to Georgia." OK, and then Mary says, "Where's Georgia?" (Just a quick rule of thumb here: if you don't know and you have to make a decision, make the one that you feel pleases Christ the most. You can't go very much wrong that way, can you?)

So a church that is a great one is growing in a full knowledge of God's will The question of "What will most please Christ will permeate its pulpit and its finance committee. The question of what will most please Christ will bleed over into the Sunday School teachers and those who select the music." And you know what happens, the greatest thing, committee meetings cease to be power struggles as people meld together to find out what they can decide and do to please Christ the most. This comes through "spiritual wisdom and understanding" (verse 9). Committee meetings cease to take up the question of "How can we imitate the world and attract the worldly?" That's part of wisdom.

SECOND FINGERPRINT:  VERSE 10b

A great church doesn't privatize Jesus. As I look at a copy of Paul's prayer, I see that it doesn't stop there. County Line Church can become a great church if you and I leave a fingerprint that proves that Jesus isn't privatized, but is in "every way (area)" of our lives. We please Jesus in our careers, in the way we treat people (whether they're  waitresses and single moms or deacons in our church) and the service we give and the prices we charge. We please Jesus in the music we listen to and the church songs we sing. In other words, a great church doesn't privatize Jesus like the world wants us to.

My friend Elwood McQuaid writes that more and more the world system demands that we privatize Jesus. "Keep him in your narrow circle on Sunday, OK, but don't let Him loose outside," they say. Not "say," "order." A U. S. District Judge in Texas has ruled that any student mentioning the name of Jesus in a graduation prayer will be sentenced to 6 months in jail. (Elwood McQuaid in "Israel My Glory," April/May 2000, pg. 9).

When the Southern Baptists announced their plan to bring the gospel to Jews, Hindus and Mormons in America, they were denounced as high up as the White House and through the President's Press Secretary, Joe Lockhart, were called "intolerant" and "perpetuators of religious hatred." ("Israel My Glory" pg. 9) The New Testament is on a collision course with the idea of marginalizing Jesus to a few hymns sung by Christianettes on Sunday morning.

Get more specific. This copy of Paul's prayer does just that because it answers exactly how a great church pleases Jesus in every way in verses 10-12:

1.  When I was in elementary school, my day had two high points. The first was recess where we got to play baseball and the second was our morning break when we could put our work down and eat a snack we brought from home.

This was usually a piece of fruit and I most always brought an apple. There's something about a piece of fruit. An apple is refreshing, and it's pretty, and it has zero fat and it really activates the taste buds. There's a lot to be said for fruit. A great church produces fruit. (verse 10). But that's a word we throw all over the pews but don't bother to get specific because everybody just knows what fruit is. Or do we? Look at it. Galatians 5:22-23 says that spiritual fruit is character produced by the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. (Love, joy, peace, kindness, patience, goodness, etc.) Paul says that evangelism is fruit. (Are we a great church here on this score?) And encouraging a believer in a spiritual ministry is fruit (Romans 1:11-13) Are we a great church? He says a holy life style is fruit (Romans 15:25-28). Are we a great church? Hebrews says that praising God is fruit.

2.  When I graduated in Dallas three of my children flew in for the occasion. We had the best time. We went places and did things and we laughed and we laughed and we talked and talked. When one of them was about two years old, I was walking down the hallway of our rented little house and found him lying sound asleep on the floor completely stark raving naked. Then there was another child of mine there, who, when he was about two years old, had a peculiar habit. Whenever he got upset about something, when he felt he'd been offended by me or some kid, he would close his eyes up real tight, clench his fists, go rigid, and fall straight backwards and lie on the ground with his eyes shut. This was a protest of some type, but none of the kids could figure out what it was all about and went right on with what they were doing. (He kept this up until one day he pulled that stunt and fell backwards onto the concrete at church one Sunday and that cured it.) I sat there enjoying each of them immensely in Dallas and thinking to myself, "You know, that one son of mine is sitting here and he has all his clothes on. In fact he's a computer genius now and will be going over to Japan this summer on a combination vacation and mission work trip. Then the other child who was falling over all the time, not once did I see him go rigid and all backwards and hit his head. In fact, he just left yesterday to spend the summer doing evangelistic work for Campus Crusade in Italy. What happened to these goofy kids? They grew up. And a friend of ours was there enjoying her son as well as ours and she told us privately something I'll never forget about that afternoon-she said, "That's the pay-off, that's the pay-off for parenting." She's right. (Now lest you think I'm the perfect parent just say that to me and I'll laugh right in your face and tell you that you should read the book I'm writing, "Everything I Did All Wrong." It's not finished yet because it's a multi-volume set. But that's it. A great church grows up. They're not teething all over the pews like the Corinthian church, whom Paul called "babies," fighting, brawling, and wanting MY WAY.

THIRD FINGERPRINT:  VERSE 11

A great church is strong in the sense that the believers stay faithful when the pressure is on and things are going hard for them. They have set backs, life's surprises but they don't quit being loyal to Christ. They don't burn out or quit. They finish.

FOURTH FINGERPRINT: VERSE 12-14

A great church spends time being thankful. They do this because they realize what God has done for them.

1.  When God saved you, do you know what He did for you? He set it up so that you can receive rewards in heaven for what you do for Him. Your salvation pre- qualifies you for great reward in heaven, depending on what you do for Him in

this life. That reward is called your "inheritance." (verse 12) His salvation that He's already given makes you eligible to qualify.

2.  Another thing. I hate to tell you this because it's so gross, but did you know that in London there were these businessmen who used to make a lot of money  selling nightingales. The birds were valued because they sang at night. So the businessmen captured the birds, took hot needles, and inserted them in the birds' eyes. Blinded, they sang and sang in their blackness. The businessmen had blinded and enslaved them. So too the Bible pictures all of us as being born into the slave market of sin and blinded. Yet Christ came and purchased us out of that market. That's the Greek word "redemption" in verse 13.

3.  When He saved us, God did something else for us. He brought us into the kingdom of His Son. This is a Greek word that meant to "take a captive people and move them to a new locality." Ancient kings often did this. This is how Daniel

wound up in Babylon. God has transferred us from the kingdom of Satan to the kingdom of His Son, Jesus.

CONCLUSION

Let me invite you to consider God's doing this for you if you haven't already done it. I want to invite you to believe in Jesus as being the one who died for you and rose from the dead; the one who died paying for your sins, the one whose death was the purchase price to buy your blinded self out of the market of the slaves to sin. Will you do that today?

For those of you who have already done that, will you, in the power of the Holy Spirit be a part of making County Line Church a great church? When you attend a committee meeting, when you function in whatever office you have, will you ask how you can please Jesus when you speak up, when you teach your class, when you put an item on the agenda? When you head to work, will you ask God to help you please Jesus that day?

What makes a great church? A church that's leaving its bongo drums behind and a church that's growing up!

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