June 24, 2007

THE PRESENCE BASED CHURCH[1]

Luke 10:38-42

Luke 10:38-42 NIV

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. [39] She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. [40] But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"

[41] "Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, [42] but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."

“OK, let’s see—there’s Jesus and His twelve disciples, plus Mary and Lazarus—that makes fifteen, plus Mom and Dad and Uncle Josiah and Aunt Rebekah—that’s nineteen, and I make twenty! Whew! Twenty it is. OK, here we go! I better get down to the market for some more food.”

Imagine poor Martha’s panic when she first learned that she was having twenty for dinner that night! This was going to be a lot of work, especially with no Sam’s Club nearby! But Martha was up to it. She was an extremely organized, efficient, industrious woman, who never let a challenge like this get her down. She had organized wedding parties and Bar Mitzvahs for families there in Bethany for years, and she knew just what she would have to do. Even as she hurried to the market, she was planning where people would sit, how she would serve the meal, and even some nice flowers for decorations. And maybe she could get that young man who was learning the lyre to come and play for the guests while they ate. It was going to be wonderful!

But a short time later, Martha’s attitude had darkened considerably. Being one of only two women in the house, she had naturally assumed Mary would help her with the preparations for such a large gathering. But no! Mary was in the other room, just sitting there! She was the only woman in the room, and she was just sitting on the floor listening to Jesus. This had to stop. A meal for twenty people was too big for one woman, even a woman like Martha; so she interrupted Jesus and demanded that He tell Mary to help her.

Imagine her astonishment when He didn’t! In fact, He even praised Mary for her sloth! Well, that wasn’t exactly what He praised her for—He praised her for her choice to be with Him instead of working on the meal. Martha (whose last name was Stewart!) just didn’t get it.

And neither do many Christians and churches today. I know many Christians who base their spiritual identity on all the things they do to serve the Lord, and there are tons of churches (the vast majority, actually) who encourage that mind set.

Barbie and I attended the National Church Prayer Leaders’ Conference two weeks ago in Grand Rapids, and I want to share with you the essence of a message we heard there based on this passage in Luke 10. Dr. Terry Teykl pointed out that while Martha and Mary were certainly real women and this was certainly a true historical event, they are also symbols of two very different types of churches. Let’s look at them, and see if you can tell which we are here at Faith.

I. The Martha Church

A. People-centered Mark 15:15

Martha was focused on serving her guests. She was very conscious of their needs, and was determined to meet them. She had a lot of work to do in order to serve them all well, but she felt it was worth it. The Martha Church puts people very much at the center of everything they do. Some Martha churches say it outright, but all of them feel that their goal is to fill the church with people. The more people they have on Sunday morning, or in their many programs through the week, the better they feel they are doing. After all, people vote with their feet, and if people aren’t coming, it’s a sign that they are not getting their needs met. These churches are really good at programs, and they have a lot of them. There are programs for single parents, for divorce recovery, for addiction recovery, for every age group from toddlers to totterers. They have recreation groups and outreach groups and short-term missions teams and Sunday School and midweek women’s Bible Studies and men’s support groups and you name it. They are very good at identifying the felt needs of the congregation and sometimes of the community, and at developing excellent programs to meet those needs. Just as Martha saw the legitimate needs of her guests and set about meeting them as well as she could, the Martha Church is very efficient at meeting the legitimate needs of people. These are not bad things. It needs to be said loudly and clearly that Jesus and His disciples and the other guests needed to be fed. They did have a real need, and Martha saw that, and was working hard to meet it. That’s a good thing.

As far as it goes. The problem comes when the Martha Church gets so focused on meeting people’s needs that they lose sight of Jesus. The Martha Church can become consumer-based, focused exclusively on meeting the needs of the people who have been trained by their culture to be consummate consumers. (Parenthetically, when those consumers begin to think that their needs can be better met somewhere else, they will change churches without so much as a twinge of conscience. But the Martha Church to which they go next will assure them that they deserve to have their needs met, and they deserve the best.)

The Martha Church is a lot like Pilate when he had asked the crowd if they wanted him to release Jesus to them. The people screamed that they wanted Barabbas released, and Jesus crucified. Mark 15:15, “Wanting to satisfy the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas to them. He had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.” If the people are central, and they are in a consumer-based church, this is where you end up: wanting to satisfy the crowd. And that may lead you to do some really bad things.

II. The Mary Church

A. Jesus is central Ps 16:2; 73:25

Mary, on the other hand, was focused on being with Jesus. Whether she saw the needs of the guests who were gathering or not, she felt that being with Jesus, sitting at His feet and listening to His words, was more important for her right then. The Mary Church puts Jesus at the center of everything they do. Now most churches say they do this, but if you look at their programs, at the way they advertise themselves in the community, at the kinds of announcements they make on Sunday morning (and how many announcements they make), you definitely get the impression that they are really more centered on meeting the needs of people than they are on getting into the presence of Jesus.

Rather than trying to fill the church with people, the Mary Church is trying to fill the people with the manifest presence of Christ. The Mary Church realizes that the good (meeting people’s legitimate needs) can become the enemy of the best, namely the presence of God. The psalmist said, Psalm 16:2, “I said to the Lord, ‘You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing.’” and Psalm 73:25, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.” Bible study is good; learning to share your faith is good; church history and sound doctrine are good; but Jesus is better. Beating addictions is good; becoming a better parent is good; getting your finances in order is good; but Jesus is better. “Apart from You, I have no good thing.”

The Martha Church wants to know what the people want; the Mary Church wants to know what Jesus wants. They play to an audience of One, not a hundred, or a thousand. What Jesus wants takes precedence over what the people want. This, of course, puts a tremendous burden on the leadership of the church to listen more to the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit than to the clamoring complaints of the people. It’s hard to hear God tell you to go one direction when the crowd is yelling for you to go a different direction, but that is the determined desire of the Mary Church.

I. The Martha Church

B. Weekend worship service

Martha’s focus was on the large group that was coming to her house that day. She was not thinking much about the next day, or the day after that. In much the same way, the Martha Church is focused on the weekend worship service or services. Because these churches are focused so well on the needs of people, they tend to offer multiple service times so as to fit into the schedules of people who may be working on Sunday morning. Martha Churches tend to see the worship services as the main event of the week, a time when the whole church body (or at least segments of it) are gathered in one place. There is tremendous power in corporate worship, and any church that fails to recognize this and build on it is missing out on a lot of what God intends for His people.

II. The Mary Church

B. Lifestyle focus on God Ps 42:1,2; Ps 73:28; Mark 6:31

The Mary Church is not putting on a show or a performance in their corporate times together; they are seeking God’s presence. Anything that distracts people from getting to God is ruthlessly cut from the service. But the Mary church is equally concerned about what goes on in their people’s lives and hearts all through the week. They are so hungry for God that they can’t wait a whole week to get close to Him. These are people who resonate with David when he said, Psalm 42:1-2, “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. [2] My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” And Psalm 73:28, “But as for me, it is good to be near God.” It is so good that they want to spend time with Him all through the week. These people hear Jesus calling to them, Mark 6:31, "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest," and they frequently do just that. They take time off, they get off the treadmill, out of the rat race, they retreat from the world in order to regroup in the presence of God. They develop a lifestyle of worship, of soaking frequently in the unconditional love and grace of Jesus.

Then when they come to the corporate worship times, they are primed, so to speak, to jump right into God’s presence. They don’t have to take the first fifteen minutes to get warmed up before they begin to sense that God is here, but can start enjoying Him even before the first song. They get up on Sunday morning anticipating with great joy the time they are going to spend in His presence; they refuse to let the minor irritations and frustrations of getting the family out the door rob them of their joy; they walk into the sanctuary, knowing this is a holy place, because the holy God is here. (By the way, they make sure they are in the sanctuary before the stated worship time of 9:00 or 10:30, not ten minutes into the singing.) They may greet their friends, but they are bent on meeting with Jesus, because they have spent all week getting ready for this in their private times with Him.

I. The Martha Church

C. Crisis-motivated prayer

Martha was moved to talk to Jesus when she had a problem. The work was too much for her, and she needed Jesus to change her sister. Have you ever asked Jesus to change somebody to make your life easier? So have I! But this is the way of the Martha Church: they pray when there is a crisis, a problem that is too big for them. When they can handle it themselves with their excellent planning and organizing and people skills, they tend not to pray. The Martha Church is characterized by this true story: an elder was assigned to go around to all the adult Sunday School classes and tell them that the leadership had decided to call a special prayer meeting for the following Saturday morning, and to encourage them all to come. In response, one of the charter members of the church, a godly man who certainly prayed, asked, “Why? Is there a problem?” In his mind, if there was a problem, he would be there, but if there was not a crisis, he saw no need to rearrange his Saturday schedule to pray.

II. The Mary Church

C. Christ-motivated prayer

The Mary Church, on the other hand, is motivated to pray simply by the powerful attraction of the presence of Christ. If there is an opportunity to spend time in His presence, they’ll be there; they don’t need any more reason than that. These are people who seek God’s face before they seek His hand. They love Him for Himself, not just for what He can do for them. They desire His presence more than His presents.

Now this attitude may not be intuitively obvious to you, but think about it: if you had a chance to talk for fifteen minutes with the Governor, or the Secretary of State, or even the President, wouldn’t you be interested in doing that? Maybe you would have a piece of your mind you’d like to share with them, or perhaps you would have a question or two you’d like to ask them. Or maybe you are someone who would prefer to talk with Barry Bonds or another famous athlete, or Julia Roberts or your favorite entertainer. But most of us would jump at the chance to talk with someone that important and influential. Believe it or not, Jesus is even more important and more influential than any of those folks! And we can talk with Him at any moment of the day—no publicist, no agent to get past; no waiting for the thousands of others who are ahead of us in line. He’s available all the time.

What does it take to motivate you to pray? Is it a crisis, or is it just the presence of Christ?

I. The Martha Church

D. Better buffet growth

Martha was a great cook, no question about it. You know how the police always find the best diners, and you’ll find their cars parked outside them during their breaks? Why do you think Jesus decided to stay at Martha (Stewart’s) house? She had the best kosher kitchen in Judea, and everybody knew it.

Martha Churches, because they are so good at meeting people’s needs, are often growing churches. Essentially, what they do is, they put on the best Christian buffet in town, and people are drawn to good food. Many of these churches specialize in menus that will appeal to unchurched folks in the community, so many of them come to the buffet. And since nothing succeeds like success, when the sheep in other churches see so many people grazing at Martha’s Buffet, many of them decide to wander over to see what’s for dinner. Sure enough, it’s great, and many of them stay for the steady supply of good eats. It’s hard to say, sometimes, how much of the growth of a Martha Church is from lost sheep, or from straying sheep who just decide to try a different pasture.

II. The Mary Church

D. Worship evangelism growth 1 Cor 14:25

Mary was in love with Jesus. She wasn’t consciously trying to attract anyone else to Him—she didn’t even invite Martha to come sit with her; she just loved to be in His presence. But the chances are good that her love and devotion to Him were attractive to others.

The Mary Church is focused on worship, on drawing near to God, on experiencing Him as He inhabits the praises of His people. They do not go out of their way to appeal to unchurched people, because they are the church, the “called-out-ones”, the people of God, and as such, they are in love with Jesus. When they come together, they just want to let out all the stops in their passionate pursuit of Him. They seek the manifest presence of the living God.

But even though their focus is not on attracting unchurched people, unbelievers are attracted to this. They discover that this is not one of those “institutional churches” that everyone loves to hate; this is not a boring, going-through-the-religious-motions kind of experience. This is reality; this is alive; it crackles with the high-voltage presence of the living God. When unbelievers come into this worship service, they do not so much comment on the quality of the music, or the preaching; they don’t say how friendly everyone was; they don’t notice the great décor or the new carpet. 1 Cor. 14:25 says a person who comes in to a worship service where God is really at work “will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, ‘God is really among you!’” The Mary church is content to bring people into the presence of God, and let Him draw them to the Savior.

I. The Martha Church

E. Image-conscious

The Martha Church is very conscious of how they look. Their leadership meetings have a lot of discussions about marketing, and branding, and how they are perceived in the community. Remember, Martha’s last name is Stewart! They pay attention to every little detail of their appearance, from the sign out front to the parking lot, to the ushers and greeters, to the signage in the building directing people where to go, to the color schemes of the décor, to how clean the rest rooms are, etc. As a result, they look great!

II. The Mary Church

E. God-conscious Exodus 33:15-16

The Mary Church is aware of these things, and does not ignore them, but their main focus is on God. They don’t think about themselves all that much, which is the mark of true humility. They want the presence of God, rather than the externals, to distinguish them from others. They say with Moses, Exodus 33:15-16, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. [16] How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” This church knows that it doesn’t really matter what they look like, that God has met His people when they were gathered in the catacombs beneath Rome, or in the forests of Siberia, or in slave camps in the South, or in slums of Calcutta. Man looks on the outward appearance, and is often drawn to new, and large buildings, to slick advertising, to a “hip” culture, but God looks on the heart, and promises that even though He is high and lofty, He dwells with those who are humble and contrite in heart. The Mary Church is more conscious of the presence of God than of any of these outward matters.

I. The Martha Church

F. Personality-driven leadership

Finally, the Martha Church is often characterized by personality-driven leadership. The leaders of these churches know what they want, and they are going to get it. They are typically strong leaders, who have a vision of what the church should be, and they impose their personality and vision on the church. The danger is, if they do not stay close to Jesus, they can become demanding, like Martha was with Jesus, insisting that things go their way. The church is driven by the personalities and gifts of the senior leaders.

II. The Mary Church

F. Presence-drawn leadership

The Mary church is characterized by leadership that is simply drawn to the presence of God. They are not milk-toasts, but neither are they insistent and demanding. Rather, they are in awe of God, and desire only to do what He directs them to do. They are like moths, constantly circling the light, drawn in by the irresistible presence of the Holy One, and their every decision is based on how to get themselves and their church closer to the Light.

Obviously, this is a caricature of the Martha Church, and there are no pure Mary Churches around, but I think it is fair to say that most churches lean in one direction or the other. Which way do you think our church leans? I know which way I want us to lean! I want more of the manifest presence of God. I am grateful for what we have, but I want more. Much more! I want Faith Church to be characterized in our minds, and in the minds of everyone who hears about us, by a passionate pursuit of the manifest presence of God.

The Puritans made a distinction between different ways God is present. They said first, there is omnipresence. God is everywhere all the time. He fills heaven and earth. There is nowhere we can go that He is not. Secondly, there is the cultivated presence of God. We can cultivate our awareness of Him through corporate worship, private devotions, corporate prayer, reading His words to us in Scripture, and in communion. We here at FEC do all of those things, and we can do them better—i.e., more intentionally, doing them with the conscious awareness that we are seeking God through these things, not just going through the motions. And finally, there is the Manifest Presence, when God sovereignly shows up and makes us aware of His presence. We want to be a Mary Church, doing everything we can to cultivate the presence of God in everything we do. And praying all the while for God to show up in power!

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[1] Based on a talk by Terry Teykl, which was drawn from The Presence Based Church (Muncie, IN: Prayer Point Press, 2003), chapters 1 and 9.