Why Church - Kevin Brechbill

Well, good morning, everyone. Good to see everyone. Way Justin made it sound. I didn't know if anybody was back there, but, uh, yeah, there's more people than I thought, so that's, that's good. Okay, so I have a, uh, message I want to share this morning. It's probably a, it's a, it's what I would say a high-level view, and I'm actually excited about it. And, and why I'm partly why I'm excited about it, because I think everyone here is actually excited about it and to be a part of it. So the title of my, my message is "Why Church?" Now, if you ever read the book by Gary Miller, he says, um, his title of his book is, uh, "Church Matters," right?

Uh, that's actually a better title, but so I had to, I couldn't use that one. Um, so I want to just discuss a little bit. Does church matter and why? Um, so the question I have for you personally is, is church important to you? Should it matter to you? And does it matter to you?

Um, so as we step back and we think about church, I don't know, like, what your understanding of history and, and, and church is, but if you step back and look at church as from a, whatever, a 30,000-view perspective, and you look at church throughout history, it, like, there, there, there is so much devastation in church. Um, the church has been attacked, it's been bombarded, it's been despised, it's hated, and then there's all these terrible things that the church has done inside it. It's, it's, it's persecuted people, it's done all these terrible things.

And till it comes to us, like, like, you see that, you read history, and then it comes down to us, okay? What's our response? What, how are we to relate to your situation, to your situation, to church? Um, how do you relate to it? Is it important? Or, or have you decided it's not really that important? Um, it doesn't really affect me personally.

Have you turned church into, it's just a joke? The world has done that. Most people look at church as the ultimate joke. It doesn't matter. And I would argue the devil's quite happy with that. Like, he wants you to think that church doesn't matter, that it's not that important. Just love God. I mean, you get on all these other things. It's me and God. Like, whatever you decide to, you choose to do, and all your reasons as to why we, you don't think church is important, it's, it's easy to do.

But as I, as I've looked at church, okay, I think there's this temptation to think that the world has done something terrible to the church. But I would like to reverse that, and I'm not too sure that our worst enemies are ourselves.

Like, look at what the church has done to itself. Um, we've ended up, you know, churches fight one another, churches persecute and kill one another. Like, like, the history of the church is, is complicated. I think there's the real church that's, that's threaded throughout that, okay?

And that's what I want to tap into, and I want, I, I, my, my goal is that I take church in your mind and put it to something that matters, okay? That, that it, that it, it leaves this idea.

So at CCF, and I say we have a vision here, and I, I truly, I truly mean that. And one of my goals is I want us to reclaim the power of the church, of our understanding of it, of what it means, and why, like, why, why it matters.

My goal is that everyone can understand what church is, and that it becomes one of your best experiences. But we have to believe in it. Like, you and I both have to believe in it and understand it for that to become a reality and for us not to reject it. I think a lot of Christians actually don't believe or even know how to make church a possibility or a good experience. They want it, they wish for it, maybe, they desire it.

The worst thing that happens in church life is that you have a bad experience in church life, and you don't believe it's possible to regain the power of the church. Like, you don't believe it's possible.

So, um, I have a couple quotes that I want to step back and just, just to get your, your mind thinking about vision, about vision that is lost and what happens, like, what happens to vision versus vision that is lost. So here's a quote.

A young, a person is young, I'm sorry, a person is as young as their vision or as old as their cynicism.

If we lose our vision, it can be very devastating to your spiritual journey.

Often when people lose their vision, we will become very cynical towards the thing that we had a vision about. Okay, we turn against it.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing. And I just want you to think about that.

I've often said over the years that the worst thing you can find is an old man that is cynical. They're depressing. But I've actually changed that. There's something worse than an old man that's cynical. It's a young man that is cynical. Why?

Because he has a life ahead of him, and he's lost his vision. Like, that's why we live. When a young man is cynical, it's a tragedy. It's way more than depressing.

The reason it's tragedy is when a young person or anyone becomes cynical, you actually don't think there's hope in that vision. You've, you've lost it. And so you go from knowing nothing to believing there's no way back.

And in fact, when the subject comes up, you make sure everyone knows how dumb it is. Like, you just round and around and around. It's a, it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a tragedy to see a young person become cynical.

Years wrinkle the skin, but to lose hope wrinkles the soul.

I actually think there's a lot of truth in this. When, when, when people lose hope, like, it does something inside of us. Like, it, it wrinkles our soul.

You are as young as your faith or as old as your doubt.

You are as young as your hope or as old as your despair.

I would say that faith is hope and vision, and doubt is despair and cynicism.

So

the question is, do you have faith and do you have hope, or do you have doubt or despair about a particular vision? Here's another one. The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.

Now, you may think that's just secular, but if you ever look at the scriptures, the Bible talks a lot about your attitude.

And I was thinking of, uh, the Sunday school lesson this morning. You had a whole group of people that saw and experienced the exact same thing, and you had a group of people that saw and experienced the exact same thing.

And they came out at two different places. One accepted Christ and one rejected Christ. They saw and experienced the exact same thing. And I would argue we're all there. We all see and experience the exact same thing.

How you respond to it, whether you, you lose the vision and become cynical and you turn to despair and doubt, or whether you rekindle that, rebirth that.

I believe that a cynical person is a bitter person. The hope back is to learn to apply forgiveness, to rekindle our hope and vision. It's the way back and to change our, change our, change the way we think.

In Joel 2:28, it says this, "In the last days, God says, 'I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.'" I took liberty to this verse a little bit.

But I want you to think about this. When God, when, when we allow God's Spirit to move among us across all ages, from sons and daughters prophesying to young men seeing vision to old men dreaming dreams, do we recognize the power of this verse?

All ages are seeing the same vision. The sons and daughters are talking, are speaking about it. The young men have visions, and they have the courage and strength to actually fulfill that vision. Old men dream dreams of a coming reality. In fact, I would say, I would argue that the old men dream dreams of seeing the vision, the young men building the vision, and the sons and daughters talking about it. The Spirit of God speaks the same thing, and all the ages respond to it. They're part of the vision.

It's not this thing of my vision versus your vision. It's our vision. It's God's people's vision. And if we, if all the ages are understanding that, and we're all working, hearing the same thing, it's the power of the gospel.

I think it's extremely compelling and rewarding and motivating.

When we think about visions, um, my understanding, the way I look at this is young men have visions. They have visions with real ideas and real plans, and they can execute on them plans.

The sons and daughters speak about it. They, they have conversation about it. I think that's a powerful thing. And the old men never lose hope. They can, they can continue to dream about the next generation and the ongoing, and living that ongoing generation out. And so everyone's a part of it. The old men's dreams do not go unplanned and remain uncompleted. In fact, they're built on. That's why every generation can be a part of it.

So the title of my church, or yeah, my sermon is "Why, Why Church?" And as I'd mentioned before, how that the church has been attacked and bombarded on every side to the point that many people have lost their hope and actually get cynical towards church.

Um, and as I said before, my, my, my, my goal is that the young people, either in our church or anyone that you bump, bump shoulders with, I have a, a dream that the younger generation can capture the vision of the church because they actually have the energy to execute on it. And that's what we need.

Um, and I just think, I, I think it's, I think it's, I think it's beautiful.

So the question is, what would you say that church is? What is church? What's the purpose of church? And I think it's a, I'm, I'm sure you guys have an answer to that, but it is where God's kingdom is seen, experienced, and lived out. It's where we see God working.

And the other thing that, that I, I think is a part of this thing, and this is, um, I actually think it's where the church is, where God's authority structure actually exists. And this is where everyone has a tendency to get weird, right?

You, you bring authority and everyone goes, "Whoop," they, they don't know what to do with it.

And I want to try to communicate something that I find it kind of difficult to do, but it's something that, I don't know, a while back, I've just really realized is you, you, you have, you have people that they want to rebel against authority, right? You have people in the world, you have people in the church, they rebel against authority.

But have you ever realized that authority is everywhere? Like, everywhere we turn, there's authority. There's authority from your parents. There's authority from people that's older than you, your mom and dad. The, I mean, just try going, take going down the road, like, too fast. Like, they, they pop out of everywhere. This authority thing just shows up. Um, you, the, you do things the governments don't like. They show up, they're watching, like, all these things. Like, if we can learn to understand that we, and actually, in order to thrive, we have to understand how to submit to authority. It's under that, that we actually thrive. It's not the other way around. We don't thrive outside of that.

The, I don't even know how to say it. We're not designed. Humanity is not designed to thrive outside of that. In fact, I think God made it that you actually perish outside of it in the world or the church.

So learning, learning what, what authority is and learning what, learning what submission is, like, it, it's, it takes a while. Like, it takes a journey. Um, but if we can understand that, I think it's one of the keys to success, um, in, in understanding church. So just a couple, another couple thoughts is, and so what is church not? Like, I don't know, you hear people starting churches and it's like, what is church not?

Well, I actually don't think church is just a family. It's way more than that. I don't think church is evangelism. You see people chasing evangelism, and that's the gospel, and they, they, they chase everything. They're going to evangelize the world, but they actually don't have much of a church to bring people back to.

God designed families to be inside church, inside churches, just like he designed families to be inside nations.

I think God instituted the family in creation. Like, it's the, like, it's one of the structures of society, okay? It's the fabrics of society. But he established the church, another nation, his kingdom, another nation through his kingdom message.

So the, the question I have then is, what are the things that we need to focus on in church? Are there correct things? Are there wrong things? Like, what are they? What does that look like?

I don't think we can grow church without people. Isn't that a basic understanding? You can't grow a family without people. You can't grow a church without people. You can't grow a business without people. You can't grow a nation without people. You need people.

So thinking about leading a church, and as we grow here, um, one of our ideas is eventually to start, to start another church. So as you brothers think about starting a church, you're the, uh, the men with the young vision, okay? Uh, the young men with vision.

This is how these things work. This is who, who, who is responsible, who will be responsible. So my question is, what are the things that you need to think about for us to start another church, to lead a church? I actually think it's really easy to think about the wrong things. I think it's easy to get distracted. And I actually think it's a lot of leaders get distracted, um, and they end up chasing and doing things that actually don't build church. And I don't know, the only way I knew how to, like, explain this thing is we all know parents that have children, right?

You see good parents and you see not so good parents. It's always intriguing to me, what did they focus on to make a, make children turn out good versus the one that didn't turn out good? Like, how do you get ahold of those things? What makes that? Church is very similar. You can focus on the wrong thing, and you can have a church, and you can have authority, and you can do all that stuff, but you don't produce what you want.

And I would argue it goes back to leadership.

For me personally, one of the things that I have tried to develop is learning to stay focused on the things that matter, the things that build. And what's interesting about this is it's not, I don't know how to say this, it's not the details. People will come to you and they'll want you to focus on the details.

Leaders can't focus on the details. They have to focus on the things that build and unite. Everyone else will take care of the details. Do you understand what I'm trying to say? Like, like you don't have the time, capacity, or space to do it. Your job is to unite and bring people together and to build on something.

The things that distract leaders are gossip. And I would even argue that evangelism can distract leaders. And this is why I, I, I'll, I'll, I'll come back to that. But, but leaders can get dialed in on evangelism and lose their people, okay? You can focus on the wrong thing. It's a part of the picture, but it's not the focus.

You need to understand that. I've come up with six things that I think are important for leaders to focus in on to understand what, what you need to focus on, uh, to make church healthy.

There's another thing that I, I see leaders, leaders do sometimes, and it's easy to do. You want to focus on everything. Like, you, you want to get your fingers in everything. You can't do that. It, you, you'll actually, I actually think it's a sure way to lose.

I actually think parents do that with children sometimes, especially when they get older in their teens. You try to micromanage them and you haven't, and you end up losing them because you try to micromanage them. You have to teach them how to think and why. Then when they're in situations, they'll have to work it out. If they make bad choices, they make bad choices. But if they make good choices, it's probably because you had something to do with teaching them how to think well and to respond well. It's difficult.

So when we think about leading a church, you have to know what you're leading. You have to know that you're leading a church, right?

I think there's a good way to lead, to think about it, and there's a bad way. And I would like to believe that if we have the reasonably the correct things, that church is very sustainable in every generation with every age. And so it's something that God has designed to continue to, to, to grow and to build on.

So I, I, um, I made a diagram to try to give you a picture of what I think the six essentials are for church.

And the first one is what I would say are core. Every church has to have a core.

Our church here for sure has developed this idea of what is the faith once delivered. And we have conversation about it. We try to teach one another what is the faith once delivered.

And in a sense, this is, this is the message of the gospel. It's, it, it's what's delivered to us. It's a kingdom. It's a lifestyle. It's who we are. A part of this, what makes this so critical, and this is where I think our sons and daughters prophesy, they talk about it day and night. It's, it's how we think. It's how God thinks.

We talk about how God thinks. Where does God want us to walk? Like, this is how we are personally transformed in our mind, thinking about the faith once delivered. What did God deliver to us?

And I think the result of, of, of this gospel, the faith once delivered, and it's something I think you, you can watch in, in leaders, in your own life, in your everything about it. What does it produce? And there's something very interesting that God's kingdom produces leaders that are different than leaders in the world. And it's very different. And this is what they look like. I think the first one is they're known by their gentleness.

They're known by their kindness, their compassion. They're generous.

They don't judge quickly. Yet they're very strong. They're courageous.

They're very, um, my brain just froze. Uh, easily to be accessible. Like, you can, you can access them very easily. They're predictable. Do you ever, do you ever be around a leader that's unpredictable? Like, it's like, I don't know, trying to follow a squirrel.

They're actually, I think when we have the right, the right core of our faith, we're very attractive people. Now, the world might not like you, but they're attracted to you.

I think Christians should be one of the most attractive people on planet Earth. And if you're not, well, you got yourself to blame.

I think the world will envy you if we live right. And we don't chase the things that they chase. In fact, that's one of the reasons, one of the things in the scripture it says, that's why they don't like us. We don't chase the things they chase.

Like, yeah, what's that mean? Okay.

So when we talk about the faith that's once delivered, one of the things I often think about is what is your, what is our message among ourselves? What are the stories that we tell each other? The story that we talk about, the story that you tell your friends, the story of who we are, I think it's actually what becomes our identity in so many levels. What do we talk about? You can't fake that. Like, if all you talk about is the world, its values, materialism, like it, it, it comes out. You can't hide it, right?

So the question is, what are we talking about? What are we telling one another? The second one is, um, oh, I'm sorry.

Skip the point. Another, uh, phrase that we, you know, that we use here and everyone's familiar with it, the faith once delivered, is the historic faith. And I do think it's important that we understand this because I do think it's something that we have to communicate. We have to be telling one another about it because we'll be bombarded.

It was a faith that was once delivered. And this idea of once is, is that it's whole, it's complete. It's not a continuation of something that's continuing to be revealed. And I think it's something that we need to know and understand. So that's why we strive to go back and understand what is the historic faith? What is the faith once delivered?

Um, you know, it's really like a delegation of a king or a president or something. He wants to send a delegation of a message to, to another country. Well, when that other country receives it, it's the message, right?

That's the faith once delivered. Now we need to understand what that is. And it's a lifetime of, of learning that. So it's the core of church. This is why I started with this because I think it's the core.

The second one that I have is what I call empowering leadership. And it's this idea, if there isn't leadership in church, the faith won't go forward. It won't get communicated. It won't, there are so many levels. But leadership is this idea, the leadership that empowers others.

And the scripture talks about two different kinds of authority, one that lords and one that serves, one that empowers others. Leadership, you have to learn to know how to add value to others, how to support them. I think the other thing that I personally believe that true leaders will duplicate more leaders than themselves.

If we're not, if we don't know how to duplicate more leaders, we are really limiting our ability. Like, how can we grow? How can we grow church? What's going to attract people? The whole point is that everyone has a seat at the table. Everyone is a part of this vision and that it doesn't get lost. It gets, um, it, it, it grows way beyond ourselves.

I think leadership is supportive of others. It duplicates and adds to and empowers.

I actually think it's very important to recognize that every church recognizes, and some people don't like this, but church rises and falls on leadership, just like families, just like nations. Church rises and falls on leadership. And I, I find that a little intimidating.

Like how well we do will determine our success, the success of the next generation. Um, I actually can't think about that too much. Uh, it can keep me up at night.

So I go back to this thing. What is the story that you tell one another about leadership? Do you trash leadership? Or do you recognize what good leadership is? A lot of churches, and I would argue kingdom movement churches have taken leadership and they said they've had bad experiences and they've kicked it out the door.

And they, they, they, they, they have this weird relationship with, with leadership. It's like they have it, they may be ordained, maybe not. It's really strange to communicate. It's like this thing that exists, but they don't, they always talk negative about it. How you talk about leadership will actually help you and your family, between your spouses, between how you relate to other people. It's everything. I think it's what helps make you as a father, a mother, a child, all that.

Is it something you embrace or you flee from? Do you respect leadership or do you despise it? And you know, you can't fake that. People think they're faking it. It, it comes out. Like, don't think you're hiding it.

Another thing that I've seen happen in leaders is they say we need leadership until they're put in leadership, and then they won't make anyone else leaders. It's a dead giveaway about yourself, not about them, but about yourself.

My third one is discipleship.

I think discipleship is extremely critical in, in developing a church. And this is why I think the most important thing that discipleship should teach us is what it teaches you about yourself.

And the second thing that I see happening, people that actually do well in discipleship or in church life, discipleship does something. It teaches you how much you actually resist what others are saying.

I think that's one of the keys to discipleship. People don't realize how much they, they resist others. And it's always funny to me, uh, people come and they say, yeah, yeah, yeah, they, they, they heard you, they listened to you. And you look at their eyes and they're, and you're saying something and it's going like, it's not connecting.

And they talk and you can tell they didn't listen to you, but they'll tell everyone they listened.

Like learning to know what you don't know, it's a long way of saying it's humility.

And I think it's, it's those two things, what, what discipleship teaches you about yourself and realizing how resistant. Because once you break through those two concepts, that's when you see someone grow. Always says it takes two years. But it, it's be, it, you have to change and, and learn to actually listen and learn from someone. What, what happens is people come in and they think they know everything and they don't. Once you realize that, you realize you're a third and you thought you were a 10, then you can, you, you can grow.

And, and the Bible talks about that's actually called maturity.

Nobody can do this discipleship for you. You can watch others, you can look at others, but nobody can do the hard work. And this is where I would argue a lot of people lose out. I'm going to say 90% of people lose out right here because they're not willing to do the hard work on themselves.

And this is why we actually have, or I say this, um, our church is easy, is hard to get in and easy to leave. It's because that's the two things we're looking for. Are you willing to grow?

And you know, there's all the words for it. Can you lead yourself? If you can't lead yourself, you can't lead others. Like it's that simple.

So this is the, this is the third thing.

And I'll say that later. The fourth one is preferring our brother. So we have discipleship that is focused on you, how you respond. That's the first thing that has to start and take place. The second thing is now inside church life. How do you, how do you relate to one another? And, and the leaders have to be a part of this thing, this conversation.

How you talk about your brothers and sisters is everything to the strength of a church. It's everything.

Whether you prefer your brother, it represents your devotion, bonding, the ability to commit to one another, the ability to be loyal.

Preferring our brothers and sisters is how you think about your brothers and sisters. It's that simple. The modern way would call it attitude.

The spiritual way in the scriptures, it's this thing of, are we, do you have humility or do you have arrogance towards each other? And the arrogance is you're beneath me. You don't know as well as I do. Preferring your brother, you recognize their gifts and strengths, and that's what you talk about. I'll say something else. You can't be a leader if you can't handle people that are much better, smarter, and ahead of you. You cannot be a leader.

Um, you will limit your church right there. And so preferring our brother, it's, it's like there's so much happens in this context. It's what unifies the body. I think it's the love that, that, that the scriptures talk about. It's the glue that holds us together. It's, it's everything.

I think most leaders don't want to focus on these things. They want to chase something big and exciting. It's why we struggle to build church, because we need leaders that focus on things that build. I think it's, I don't know how to communicate that.

The fifth one is the family unit and development in our families. Without families, we're not going to have a church, okay? But we need to have healthy families.

It's, I don't even know how to put a value on. Having healthy families is like everything. But maybe more importantly is to have healthy individuals so that we can have healthy families, so that we can have a church that, that is unified.

And I think we could probably preach whole sermons in each one of these. The last one is evangelism. And so I want to talk about church growth between the family unit and evangelism, because there's two ways to grow church. There's two ways that people are added to the church. It's through inside us having, obviously we have families and we have children. That's one way of doing it. It's a good way of doing it. It's a right way of doing it.

The other way is through evangelism. And so if church life is happening and we're building all these building blocks of church, we care about evangelism, but we care about the right things. We don't just have one message that Jesus paid it all. We have all that to take to the, to communicate. And we tell people, come and see, this is the kingdom of God. The church is where the kingdom of God is seen. You come and see it. But it's, we, we know when people come here that it takes all the work of all you guys sacrificing to make this work.

I actually think, so you, you have, we have churches, I think, that don't know how to, they're scared of evangelism, don't know, they don't have this weird thing with evangelism, and they say we don't do evangelism. Then you have people that say, that's all we do is evangelism.

I think it's unhealthy on both sides. I think we have to do both. We have to focus on family. That's how we grow. We have to focus on evangelism. We have new blood coming in, new gifts, new talents, and it keeps it healthy. I think it's one of the ways to keep it healthy, but I don't think we can pick and choose.

It's also why I think evangelism, we should not reduce it down to children's ministries and feeding the poor.

The Bible talks about those kinds of ministries as a part of ministries, like to the, to humanity. But those kinds of ministries will not particularly produce church growth. You're not going to get it from those kinds of, from children's ministry or from feeding the poor.

Seldom will church growth come from that. We actually have to be mature enough, and this is why I think all these other things have to take place to actually go into the middle class, the average person, the brilliant, whatever, I don't, it doesn't matter, and be able to influence the average person. That's who we can build church with.

And I think it's important to understand that. Like what kind of ministries do we have? We can have children's ministry, it's fine. But if that's all your ministry is, you're never going to build a church out of it. If all your ministry is feeding the poor, especially in America, if you go to Honduras, it's even, it's something different, but in America, chances of building a church out of that is almost zero.

I'll give it 1%.

So I actually think our, some of our problem is, is that if we have healthy churches, we have healthy individuals preferring one another, we actually have something to attract people to, to, to, to the church. So we have external growth through evangelism, internal growth through our families.

And out of that, I personally think that's what makes a church healthy. I think it's a lot of work.

So my final thought is when empowering leadership, I think the responsibility of leadership is that I have a red mark around every one of them. We leaders are responsible that each one of them is being led well. You have to make sure you know how to lead. You have to lead in preferring our brother, lead in discipleship, lead in evangelism.

Like, and it takes everyone to make that work. But like, I actually think it's the difference between a church that fails or a church that succeeds. I don't think the leader will get that much glory. I really don't. Because it's like, it's kind of like this.

I don't know. Um, when you're raising a young, when like, I remember Jalena and I, our family was young and you're in the thick of diapers and sickness. I don't know what else to say. Like you're just happy to get home alive after church, you know? Um, like all you can see is the work, you know what I'm saying?

The reward happens 20 years later just for all you young, young families. It truly is rewarding. It's like Jalena and I said, we didn't know raising a family was that hard. We like, it takes a lot of work. It's all you, you know, guys getting married, you think it's exciting. Hey, get ready, man. Get your sleeves up because you're going to have to buckle in. But it's worth it, okay?

I actually agree with, uh, John C. Maxwell. He says when you're young and people look at your life and everyone thinks you're terrible, he says you're not as bad as people think you are. But when you get older and you see the reward coming in and the multiplication of all that, you're not as good as people think you are. And I think it's actually a good metric to remember.

It's, but you have to have a vision. And church life is a little bit like family. You have to have a vision for it and understand what you're up against. The world wants to destroy us. They, they, they want to destroy us, but it happens so much from inside us. And that's why I think these building blocks are so critical. I'm not saying it's the only building blocks. I'm not saying there isn't more, but I think these are critical ones that at least we have tried to work on here. And I want each of you to capture that. Take these and build on them. If I'm missing something, I, I want to know about it.