January 2
Preacher: Kristin
Special Event: Family Communion
Scripture: John 1:10-18 — He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 15 (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
A New Preaching Series:
It is a new day in the church.
How we respond to the new reality will determine whether we continue to thrive as a congregation or whether we begin to slowly inch our way toward death. A number of futurists, including Eddie Gibbs, professor at Fuller Seminary, believe that sixty percent of Protestant churches in the United States will shut their doors by 2050. 60%!
A massive cultural paradigm shift took place sometime in the last fifty years. Before 1965, there would have been consensus that the United States and Western Civilization, itself, was Christian. The values that shaped our culture came from faith that follows Jesus. Christianity shaping culture began when the Roman Emperor, Constantine, legalized Christianity in 313 AD, and then embraced the faith himself. Under his rule, Christianity rose to become the dominant religion in the Roman Empire, and for his example of a “Christian monarch” Constantine is revered as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Oriental Orthodox Church.
After Constantine, Christianity began to define the West. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the West near the end of the 5th Century, the church took the place of the Roman Empire as the defining reality in Western Europe. The power of the Roman Catholic Church continued to expand for another thousand years, until the Protestant Reformation in the 16th and 17th Centuries. Now, it was both Catholic and Protestant Christianity defining the West. Of course, there were philosophers, politicians and secularists who pushed against the Christian domination of culture but Christianity was such a powerful cultural reality that it could not be ignored.
The influence of Christianity is everywhere in the shaping of our nation. “One nation under God” adorns our currency. The Federal Government has chaplains to shape the spiritual life of the Senate and the House of Representatives. You also have chaplains in the military. During the years I was in Texas, I never attended a high school football game that did not begin with a prayer said over the public address system. When I first began my ministry, the school system would never dream of planning activities on Wednesday evenings, let alone on Sunday morning – Wednesday was “church night.” Do you remember “blue laws?” – those laws that restricted Sunday shopping to help enforce Christian standards, particularly the observance of Sunday as a day of worship and rest?
We would have a long conversation about whether or not the United States was really a Christian nation. The way that we treated the Indians and other ethnic minorities, especially African Americans, infers that our Christianity was not much more than skin deep. The internment of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War again challenges the depth of our commitment to Christian values. Nonetheless, Christianity and the church theoretically still stood at the center of western culture, especially in the United States.
All of that has changed sometime in the last fifty years. If you don’t believe me just stand in line at 6:30 on a Sunday morning in either McDonalds or Starbucks and see all of the families from our church ordering breakfast to take with them to their child’s baseball, soccer, ice hockey or basketball game. Critics no longer engage Christianity; now, they simply ignore us. This new cultural phenomenon has various names – some call it “modernity,” others use “post-Christian age.”
What does the “post-Christian age” look like? You see it where we live. Today in Los Angeles County, 60-80% of the residents have no meaningful connection to a worshipping community. 60-80% — that is somewhere between 6.1 million and 8.1 million of the people in our county who are no longer connected to the church. Rather than being a Christian culture, we have now become one of the largest mission fields in the world. Churches in the developing world now regularly send missionaries to the United States in the same way that a hundred years ago the church in United States sent missionaries to establish the church in their countries.
If we acknowledge and then embrace this massive cultural shift, we have to look at the church differently. The church will no longer grow simply because we have great programs and do things well. While we must continue to strive for that excellence, we can no longer wait for people outside of the church to come to us. Some of our programs will continue to attract people — programs like Ovations, Parent Education and our grief support groups. They continue to draw to the church people who have yet to embrace faith. But now we must go out, engage and challenge the culture around us. We have something profound to share but now we must learn how to do it. We must become missionaries to Los Angeles County.
This is why from now until Palm Sunday, we are going to explore the Book of Acts and see how the first generation of Jesus people engaged the world around them. The Book of Acts describes thirty years that literally changed the world. In those three decades, Christianity got sufficient growth and credibility to become the largest religion the world has ever seen and to change the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
If we choose to engage the world around us in Christ’s name, what can we learn from the Book of Acts? What opposition did they encounter, opposition both from within and without? What was important to the outreach? How did their strategy change as faith expanded throughout the Mediterranean world? What can we learn from this three-decades of Christian engagement with the secular world?
The church, the Book of Acts and the modernity – this will be our focus for the next thirteen weeks. If you take this series seriously, there will be no sitting back and relaxing. Instead, it is a call to radical involvement. I pray that we will begin to approach faith and church in a new way. I like the way Annie Dillard describes the new way of being. She writes,
“Why do we people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute?”
If you think she’s being tough, just listen to what comes next,
“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning.”
I love this next paragraph,
“It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return” (Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper Perennial, 1988, p. 52).
I’m looking forward the next twelve weeks. If only we would need crash helmets or to have the ushers to lash us to our pews. Spirit of the Living God makes us that kind of church.
January 9
Preacher: Gary Dennis
Special Event: Ordination and Installation of Elders and Deacons
Scripture: Acts 2:1-13 — When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7 Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9 Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11 Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” 12 All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13 But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”
Sermon Theme: This sermon is about the need for our congregation to learn how to go out and engage the world around us in the name of Christ. The future of our congregation depends upon it.
For years I have been tempted to change one of the terms we use in our worship bulletins. In the litanies that we use for worship, we refer to the ordained people on our staff as “pastors.” When we want you to read, we use the term, “ministers.” The intention behind these words is that you are the ministers of the congregation. The ordained folks are supposed to support you, encourage you, train you, and even coach you in how to do the ministry of the church.
Unfortunately, the term, “ministers,” is easily misunderstood to describe what you do here at the church. Over the last eighteen months we have been talking to you about faith and what you do between Sundays. We talk about your ministry in your sphere of influence. We end every worship service by reminding you that you are going out to be Christ’s person among the six to eight million people in this county who do not follow Jesus.
We need a better term. I want instead to use the term, “missionaries,” to describe you, but I’m afraid it will scare you to death. Yet, if this congregation is to survive, if faith is to grow, you must become the representatives of Jesus among those who have yet to believe.
In the sermon, I will also talk about the strategic importance of discovering the power of the Holy Spirit residing with us to empower us to be Christ’s people in the world, his missionaries in the places where we spend our time each week.
Sermon Title: “Missionaries Unite — Even Those Who Never Dreamed of Being a Missionary.”
January 16
Preacher: Gary Dennis
Scripture: Acts 9:1-19a — Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. 3 Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” 5 He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. 6 But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” 7 The men who were traveling with him stood speechless because they heard the voice but saw no one. 8 Saul got up from the ground, and though his eyes were open, he could see nothing; so they led him by the hand and brought him into Damascus. 9 For three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor drank.
10 Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” 11 The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, 12 and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” 13 But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; 14 and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” 15 But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; 16 I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” 17 So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, “Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 18 And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes, and his sight was restored. Then he got up and was baptized, 19 and after taking some food, he regained his strength.
Sermon Theme: They call them BHAGS (pronounced “bee-hags”), Big Hairy Audacious Goals. It is a term coined by authors Jerry Porras and James Collins in their book Built to Last, which examines the qualities of successful visionary companies. They found that one factor that distinguished successful efforts from unsuccessful ones was the use of ambitious, even outrageous, goals to motivate people and focus them toward concrete accomplishments.
You know that you might be onto a BHAGS when someone says something to you like,
“The leaders of this church and you are out of your mind! There is no way that this congregation can do what you are proposing!”
This is not the first time that I’ve heard this accusation but I’m hearing more in the past year.
Now, the protests are about our leadership’s commitment to be more intentional about reaching out to the 60-80% of the people in Los Angeles County who do not have a meaningful relationship with the church. As one supportive person said to me,
“If we thought the Romania ministry or the building program was a BHAG, we saved the most challenging for last.”
I fear my friend is right. What we are proposing now will be the most challenging one, yet our future as a congregation depends upon it.
We want to reach out to those in Los Angeles County who have never found meaning in the church, by doing three things. First, we want to effectively equip you to be the missionaries of this congregation to what has become one of the largest mission fields in the world. I just heard one of you gasp! Second, we want to take seriously the 60-80% who live in the sphere of influence of our congregation, reaching out to them in meaningful ways that will draw them to our church. Finally, we want to begin a hundred new communities of faith in Los Angeles County over the next ten years. I just heard another gasp!
Quite frankly, this is indeed the biggest thing that I’ve ever tried to lead; yet if we achieve half of what we are attempting, it will be the most meaningful thing that I have ever been involved in. Once again, we must confess that this is so big that if it does happen only God can do it.
In the rest of the sermon, I will focus on how God addressed the BHAG of the first century, spreading the good news of Jesus throughout the Mediterranean World and doing it in just thirty years.
Sermon Title: BHAGS and the La Cañada Presbyterian Church – An Introduction to the Book of Acts
January 23
Preacher: Gary Dennis
Scripture: Acts 9:19b-30 — For several days he was with the disciples in Damascus, 20 and immediately he began to proclaim Jesus in the synagogues, saying, “He is the Son of God.” 21 All who heard him were amazed and said, “Is not this the man who made havoc in Jerusalem among those who invoked this name? And has he not come here for the purpose of bringing them bound before the chief priests?” 22 Saul became increasingly more powerful and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Messiah.
23 After some time had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him, 24 but their plot became known to Saul. They were watching the gates day and night so that they might kill him; 25 but his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket.
26 When he had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples; and they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. 27 But Barnabas took him, brought him to the apostles, and described for them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had spoken boldly in the name of Jesus. 28 So he went in and out among them in Jerusalem, speaking boldly in the name of the Lord. 29 He spoke and argued with the Hellenists; but they were attempting to kill him. 30 When the believers learned of it, they brought him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus.
Sermon Theme: Challenges are an important part of following Jesus as our Savior and Lord. Here’s the lesson of this story. Just because you do well, just because your intentions are good, it doesn’t mean it is going to be easy. Doing well and accomplishing good often requires a huge toughness on our part, as we face any number of challenges.
There was once a man called F.K. Maltby, and he used to say that Jesus promised his disciples three things:
“They would be absurdly happy, completely fearless and in constant trouble.”
I still haven’t figured out the “absurdly happy,” but I’m beginning to understand more and more about the “fearless” and “in constant trouble” part. While I hate to admit it, the triplets are even teaching me about the “happy” part. I don’t know about “absurdly” but I am learning more and more about happiness from a part of my life where I never would have dreamed of happiness in the past.
Sermon Title: “If It Was Easy, Everyone Would be Doing It”
January 30
Preacher: Peter Hintzoglou
Scripture: Acts 10:1-23a — In Caesarea there was a man named Cornelius, a centurion of the Italian Cohort, as it was called. 2 He was a devout man who feared God with all his household; he gave alms generously to the people and prayed constantly to God. 3 One afternoon at about three o’clock he had a vision in which he clearly saw an angel of God coming in and saying to him, “Cornelius.” 4 He stared at him in terror and said, “What is it, Lord?” He answered, “Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. 5 Now send men to Joppa for a certain Simon who is called Peter; 6 he is lodging with Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the seaside.” 7 When the angel who spoke to him had left, he called two of his slaves and a devout soldier from the ranks of those who served him, 8 and after telling them everything, he sent them to Joppa.
9 About noon the next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. 10 He became hungry and wanted something to eat; and while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance. 11 He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. 12 In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air. 13 Then he heard a voice saying, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” 14 But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” 15 The voice said to him again, a second time, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” 16 This happened three times, and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven.
17 Now while Peter was greatly puzzled about what to make of the vision that he had seen, suddenly the men sent by Cornelius appeared. They were asking for Simon’s house and were standing by the gate. 18 They called out to ask whether Simon, who was called Peter, was staying there. 19 While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Look, three men are searching for you. 20 Now get up, go down, and go with them without hesitation; for I have sent them.” 21 So Peter went down to the men and said, “I am the one you are looking for; what is the reason for your coming?” 22 They answered, “Cornelius, a centurion, an upright and God-fearing man, who is well spoken of by the whole Jewish nation, was directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house and to hear what you have to say.” 23 So Peter invited them in and gave them lodging.
