What Drives Your Church?

What Drives First Baptist Church?
Exodus 6: 1 – 9; Matthew 28: 18 – 20.


I. Introduction

Thank you to everyone who participated in our Town Hall Meetings over the past two Sunday nights. If you were not able to attend, let me share with you what happened.

We had about 150 people present each night—in spite of the cold and rainy weather both nights. We began each meeting with a presentation from our Long Range Planning Committee.

Their first presentation reviewed statistics from the most recent ten year history of First Baptist Church. Over the past ten years, our church has received an average of 28 new members per year by transfer from other churches and 13 new members per year by baptism. That is an average of 41 new members every year. However, during the same ten-year period of time we have lost an average of 20 members to death every year and an average of 29 members to transfer to another church. That is an average of 49 members lost each year. (Do the math in your head…41 new members gained minus 49 members lost…We are experiencing a slow decline.)

The second presentation from the Long Range Planning Committee offered some information the committee discovered by reading a book, Reaching People Under 40 While Keeping People Over 60: Being Church for All Generations (Edward H. Hammett and James R. Pearce: Chalice Press, 2007).

This truly describes what we want for our church. We want to be a multi-generational church, consisting of senior adults, median adults, young adults, youth and children. However, we have a problem… These different generations have different characteristics. The differences are obvious when you look at the way the generations dress or listen to their styles of music. Yet, there are other differences which are less noticeable—like the ways the generations learn and communicate.

I think I can illustrate the differences in communication. There was a day when most people communicated by sitting down to write a letter. People would sit down with pen and paper to compose a letter; seal it in an envelope; go to the Post Office to buy a stamp; and mail the letter. Then, they would wait four or five days to receive a reply. Then, people began to use telephones. I can remember having a rotary phone in our kitchen when I was a child. If someone was talking on the phone, other people calling us would hear a “busy signal.” Then, my family got a “push button” phone with call waiting—if I planned it right, I could talk to two people at the same time. As an adult, I got my first cell phone. It was shaped like a brick, with a rubber antenna sticking out the top. Now, I have a cell phone that I carry with me most of the time…But, I rarely use it to talk…I send and receive text messages and email…I even use it to check facebook!

Over the years, communication have changed from letter writing to phone calls to emails to text messaging. None of these forms of communication is the right way or even the wrong way to communicate. They are simply different. AND, they are merely the FORM of communication…The form of communication does not change the message. The same message can be delivered in many different forms.

So, how can we become a church for all generations? The letter writers, the phone talkers, the emailers, the text messagers, the facebookers, and whatever comes next?

After meeting with the Long Range Planning Committee for over a year… After holding two Town Hall Meetings to receive input from the church body… After compiling every written and spoken comment… I have the answer! The answer is… I don’t know.

But, I think I have a good idea of how to find out.

Over the next couple of weeks, the Long Range Planning Committee will compile all the responses and suggestions from the church. We will begin to organize the suggestions into categories. For example, some of the suggestions dealt with Sunday morning worship, the condition of our buildings, the youth ministry and children’s ministry of our church.

Once we have a list of categories, we are going to ask you to join us in 40 days of prayer. Moses spent 40 days with God on the top of Mount Sinai. Jesus spent 40 days fasting in the desert. And, Rick Warren wrote a book about 40 days… If 40 days is good enough for Moses, Jesus and Rick Warren, then it’s good enough for us.

In the meantime, we need to ask ourselves, “What drives First Baptist Church?”
I ask this question this morning, because I have an answer in mind that I hope will become the driving force behind all we do in the future…


Read Exodus 6: 1 – 9.
1 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country."
2 God also said to Moses, "I am the LORD.
3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them.
4 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens.
5 Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.
6 "Therefore, say to the Israelites: 'I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.
7 I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.
8 And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD.'"
9 Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and cruel bondage.(NIV)


Exodus 6 is one of two stories in the book of Exodus about the “Call of Moses”…

God’s first call to Moses happened at the burning bush in Exodus 3. Moses was working as a shepherd in the desert. Since sheep eat grass, being a shepherd in the desert is very difficult work. He had to lead his flock of sheep all over the desert looking for water. Where there is water, there is grass. Then, when the grass is gone, he had to lead his sheep to find more water and grass. One day, Moses saw a burning bush. While the bush was burning, it was not consumed by the fire.

God spoke to Moses from the bush and told him that God had a plan for Moses’ life. God wanted Moses to go to Egypt and lead God’s people out of slavery. You would think that Moses would be excited to know God had a plan for his life. But he wasn’t. He argued with God and gave him three excuses for why Moses was not the right man for the job. God won the argument. God has a way of doing that… So, Moses went to Egypt.

In Egypt, things didn’t go as smoothly as Moses had hoped. First, Moses talked to Pharaoh, the King of Egypt. He told him that God had sent Moses to let God’s people go. But, Pharaoh hardened his heart and refused to let God’s people go.

Then, Moses spoke to the Hebrew people. They didn’t listen to Moses either. They turned a deaf ear to Moses, because Moses was actually making their lives more difficult. When Pharaoh hardened his heart, he increased the workload for the Hebrew slaves. Their lives were more difficult after Moses came around… They didn’t want to listen to anything Moses had to say.

So, God came to Moses a second time in Exodus 6 to reinforce God’s calling and purpose for Moses’ life. Exodus 6 is like God is saying, “I know things haven’t worked out exactly the way you had planned. I know that the work is harder than you expected. BUT… I have called you to these people, to this place and for this purpose.”

Perhaps that is God’s word to each of us this morning as well. Things have not turned out exactly the way we wanted them to. The work of the church is more difficult than we ever imagined. But, God has called us to this people, to this place and for this purpose.”

If you look up the word “Drive” in the dictionary, you will find a definition that says something like, “to guide, control or direct.” For example, when you drive your car, you guide, control and direct your car home from church. When you drive a nail, you guide, control and direct that nail into a board. And when you drive a golf ball, you HOPE to guide, control and direct the ball straight down the middle of the fairway.

A couple of years ago, I read a book that has been highly influential on my understanding of the church…The Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren (Zondervan, 1995)…Warren is the pastor of Saddleback Church in Mission Viejo, CA…The largest and the fastest growing Baptist church in history…Now don’t let that bother you…I do not intend for FBC to become anything like Saddleback…That is the mistake many pastors have made in the past 5 – 10 years…Many ego-centered pastors—thinking God has called them to pastor the largest and fastest growing church—have tried to take what works in Orange County, CA and transplant it to East Texas only to be solely disappointed…Don’t worry…I don’t plan to build an outdoor baptistery on the front steps of the church…I don’t plan to wear a Hawaiian shirt to preach in on Sunday mornings…But I do want to become familiar with and to introduce you to some of the universal & biblical concepts I have learned from Warren’s book…

On page 37 of The Purpose Driven Church, Rick Warren acknowledges that our church (First Baptist Church, Lufkin, Texas) was one of the first churches to believe in his vision to plant a new church in California. We sponsored him financially for the first five years, and we sent mission teams for several summers to help them get started.

The book also shares Warren’s extensive research and personal experience at Saddleback…Warren’s research involved the careful study of several churches in America that demonstrated phenomenal growth…This study led him to make a very interesting discovery…Every single church he studied had one thing in common…Each church operated out of a clear sense that God had called them to fulfill a specific purpose…In other words, they were Purpose Driven churches…

Then, Warren followed up this research by studying other churches…Some that were barely growing…Some that were plateaued…Others that were dying…And Warren made another discovery…Every church is driven by something…Not necessarily driven by purpose…But driven by something…

Don’t you think the same thing happens in churches today? Not in our church, of course, but perhaps another church…

What keeps us from being Purpose Driven? … Let me offer a few suggestions…


II. The Past?

Some churches are not Purpose Driven because they are driven by their Past…By Tradition… “We’ve never done it that way before.”

Their only goal is to perpetuate the past…The way things used to be...And the way things have always been…

Methodist minister, Richard J. Fairchild tells a story of one of his early pastorates…Every year the church had a Turkey Supper around Thanksgiving…One year a major church dispute broke out over the Turkey Supper…The dispute was so bad that one long time membership family actually left the church…Why? Because the wife of a new family in town convinced the rest of the women that it would be more efficient to place the pies on the counter top beside the sink instead of the counter top beside the refrigerator…The woman who left the church commented, “It’s just not the right way to do it. We’ve never done it that way before, and I am not about to do it that way now. Those new people are going to ruin this church. They aren’t even from around here.”

The same thing happened to Moses…It wasn’t about pies, it was about Manna…A group within the church began to complain about the Manna…We used to eat so much better than this…We had all the meat we could stand…We were better off in Egypt!

The church driven by the past sees any kind of change as negative…It’s just not right!…
Maintaining the Status Quo is the most important thing…Everything else, including God’s will, is secondary to “remaining stable.”


III. Personality?

Some churches are not Purpose Driven because they are driven by Personality…Either an authoritarian Pastor, a powerful layperson, or an influential family controls everything the church does…

This church doesn’t say, “We’ve never done it that way before.”…This church says, “What does the leader want to do?” …Or, “What does the Tom Sawyer Family want to do?”

My observation about Personality Driven churches…They are only one funeral away from failure…If the pastor leaves or the key layperson dies there is no one to carry on the work of the church…The church would simply wander around aimlessly until a new leader can be found…

Moses faced the same kind of distraction…In Exodus 32, Moses had been on Mt. Sinai for 40 days…The people were unhappy with the way things were going, so they asked Aaron to be the new leader…I am sure they thought that a new personality would provide a new vision, a new driving force in the church…


IV. Programs?

Some churches are not Purpose Driven because they are driven by Programs…Focus is placed on maintaining and continuing the same programs that have been in place for generations…

There are 2 mistakes in this situation…(1) Program driven churches have made a compromise…People are no longer the most important priority of the church…Positions are the most important…No one wants to take the job, but we have to find someone to fill the position, or we won’t have anything for the children to do on Wednesday nights…(2) Program driven churches cannot let go of dead or dying ideas…Folks, if a program needs to be propped up, we need to let it go…If a program of the church is already on life-support, we ought to go on and pull the plug and let it die!

Or as a friend of mine says…When the horse dies, GET OFF!…Can you think of any dead horses that we need to quit riding?!

Moses faced the same problem in his church…In Exodus 32, when the people made Aaron their leader, they created an idol (a golden calf) that the people worshipped…They also credited that idol with rescuing them from Egyptian slavery…

Program driven churches have done the same thing…They worship an idol, or a pantheon of false gods.


V. Purpose?

Some churches are Purpose Driven because they recognize their God given purpose and mission…

In the business world, there is a lot of talk about mission statements and the importance of organizing business practices to reflect the vision and values of the mission statement. Eventually, churches adopted this same practice. We have a mission statement as a church. One of our former pastors organized a committee of members to write our mission statement. But, we also have a mission statement that was not written by a former pastor or a committee of church members. It was spoken by Jesus himself.

Matthew 28: 18 – 20…
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.""(NIV)

This is our purpose as a church…to Make Disciples.

If we want to be a Purpose Driven Church, then we have to be willing to do two things…(1) To look at everything we do through the lens of what the NT describes as our purpose—Great Commission: to go throughout the world God has given us and MAKE DISCIPLES, that includes evangelizing the lost and nurturing young believers…(2) We need a Plan! How are we supposed to accomplish our God-Given purpose? I believe that our Purpose is the same in 2011 as it was in 1883! But our Plan HAS to change. We do not live in the same world as the first members of this church lived in 1883…And we shouldn’t live in the same church either!

The starting point for every ministry and activity of this church ought to be the simple question… Why do we exist?


VI. Conclusion

William Barclay once said…There are two important days in every person’s life, the day you were born, and the day you discover why… For Christians, this is the day we were born and the day we discovered that God wants us to be his disciples.

I think the same can be said for churches…There are two important days in the life of a church, the day we were founded, and the day we discover why…

Why were we founded? What is our purpose? What is the driving force behind all we do and say?

It reminds me of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland…Alice met the cat on the road and asked, “Which road should I take?” The cat replied, “That all depends on where you are going.” Alice said, “I don’t know.” The cat, “Then it doesn’t matter which road.”