Text: Various

My purpose for this message: To help people understand that a new building is meant to be a tool for ministry, and ministry depends on us.

Delivered: February 14, 2010

 

Forging a Tool for God

Pray.

During Wednesday’s blizzard Betty kept threatening to shovel the driveway.  I said, “We’re going to wait ‘til it’s done snowing and blowing so we don’t have to do it twice.”  Late in the evening we were in downstairs in the family room when Betty cocked her head and said, “I hear someone on our driveway.”  I went to the window and sure enough, our faithful neighbor Mahlon Stoltzfus was nearly finished plowing our drive.

Mahlon has a 4WD Kubota and is a wizard with it.  When it snows he digs out his neighbor’s drive and works his way north until he’s cleared all 11 driveways on our street.  Unless he’s out of town.  He was in Phoenix for last weekend’s snow so when we our shoveling or 18 inches and chatting with a neighbor, we all kept looking longingly down towards Mahlon’s house, “Wish you were here!”

Mahlon’s tractor is a tool.  A tool is a “means to an end.”  When I use a tool I can do more than I could without it, and do it better: with a tractor Mahlon can move a lot more snow and do it more quickly than with his bare hands or a shovel.  With a chainsaw a lumberjack can cut more wood than he can by hand.  With a camera you don’t have to bank on a faulty memory to relive your travels or special events.  With a pocketbook, some women can furnish a small apartment!  Tools are a means to an end, they are not “the end”.

That church building we plan to build, will be a tool; a means to an end.  What end?  God’s glory through ministry. 

 

Let’s look at several tools in the Bible, starting with the ark.  READ Hebrews 11:7.

1. A boat.  Hebrews 11:7

We don’t know how old the world was at this point or how many people there were on the planet.  All we know is that everyone on the planet was a stench in God’s nostrils, was thumbing their nose at God.

Except Noah & his wife, their 3 sons and their wives.  Because they still served God He made arrangements to protect them from His judgment.  He gave Noah instructions to make a boat—specs for size and materials, and 120 years to complete the project.  There are a lot of ways God could have protected them: take them somewhere safe; store them in heaven for a while; make them amphibious.

Instead, God gave Noah a boat to deliver his family and the animals.  The ark, a means to an end.

2. A building (Solomon’s temple).  1 Chronicles 17:1; 22:5-10

2 years ago Betty & I stood at the place where King Herod’s temple once stood, and before that, Solomon’s temple.  It’s quiet, people speak in low tones or whisper no matter what faith.  READ 1 Chronicles 17:1, 22:5-10.  Solomon built a temple as a tool for the worship of God.  The temple housed the ark of the covenant and other articles used in ceremonial worship, and it was where the priests sacrificed the animals people brought both for worship and for sin-atoning. 

Didn’t people worship before it was built?  Yes, they went to the tabernacle.  Did they worship God after the temple was leveled by the Babylonian army in 586 B.C.?  Yes.  In fact in a tunnel beneath the temple mount, each day you will find a collection of Jewish women huddled against a wall praying at the spot they believe is closest to where the Holy of Holies was in the temple. 

So no, it was not essential, but it was very valuable.  A tool, a means to an end.

 

3. An ephod (Aaron’s & Gideon’s).  Exodus 28:6-14; Judges 8:24-27

A tool can be used or misused.  Remember reading about the high priest’s “ephod” when we studied Exodus?  READ Exodus 28:6-14.  As the outer part of the high priest’s uniform, its beauty told the people of the importance God placed on this man, and also spoke of God’s love for beauty.  To God, the jewels on the shoulders inscribed with the tribes’ names represented the covenant He had with His chosen people.  

It was a tool; mainly serving visual purposes.

FIND Judges 8:24-27.  God used Gideon to defeat a vastly superior army and we remember Gideon as a man of faith.  But his story has a pretty ugly chapter to it.  READ.  A tool is neutral; it’s the one who holds it who determines if it will be used for good, or for evil.  And if it will be used.

 

4. How a new and bigger building can be a tool

God’s followers have been using tools for thousands of years: Moses’ staff, Aaron’s rod, the tabernacle, the temple, tracts, books, curriculum, trucks to deliver them, radio broadcasts, computers, tv broadcasts, podcasts, dvds, the internet, cars, busses to bring children to SS, vans for mission trips, bicycles for 3^rd world evangelists, balloons floated into N. Korea with Scriptures printed on them…, and buildings.

Is a church building essential?  No.  Is it valuable?  Yes.  Is a bigger building essential?  No.  Is it valuable?  Yes.  If it’s used as a tool.  Mahlon’s tractor clears snow.  What kind of tool would a new and bigger building be?  Although we don’t know all the answers to that question, we know some. 

 

·       Offer more people the opportunity to be part of a healthy church.  Keystone’s not a perfect church but we’re pretty healthy.  Thankfully there are other healthy churches in the area but we need more.  Until there are, those of us that are healthy have an obligation to receive as many people as possible.  An auditorium for 600 filled twice would offer many more people the chance to worship the Lord with this family of faith, and the chance to be challenged by God’s Word.

·       Offer more children the opportunity to learn about Jesus and His summons to radical discipleship

·       New ministries

o      Special events from concerts to revival conferences to dramatic events

o      Open the doors to the community (as long as there are those who are willing to love and serve the community)

§       Meeting place for local groups from AA to civic groups (in this rural area there’s no place except the schools for a larger group to meet).  I hope this doesn’t panic you as you worry about stains on the carpet or other less than ideal consequences.  Remember, this is a tool and tools are for use, not display.

§       Gymnasium

§       Education for community (Possibly have laptops available)

·       After school tutoring

·       Teaching people to read

·       Financial management

·       Parenting skills

§       Emergency shelter

·       Currently on standby for Paradise Elementary

·       House people in case of area disaster

§       Preschool or childcare

If we use a new building just for our comfort—or worse, our prestige, then it’s a luxury or a monument; something mainly for us, instead of for him.  But if we use it to do ministry, it is a tool for God’s glory and for serving people.

Dan Kimball, one of the young leaders of the Emerging Church movement wrote an article in Leadership Journal last fall entitled I was Wrong about Church Buildings.  Listen to what he said:

If you had asked me eight years ago what I thought about church buildings, I would have said, "Who needs a building? The early church didn't have buildings, and we don't need them either!" But I was wrong.

My anti-building phase was a reaction to having seen so much money spent on church facilities, often for non-essential, luxury items. I was also reacting to a philosophy of ministry that treated church buildings like Disneyland; a place consumers gather for entertainment. But these abuses had caused me to unfairly dismiss the potential blessing of buildings as well.

 

Concl:

I have some carpentry and woodworking tools in my garage: a hammer, a drill, a router, a table saw, a driver—all of which make noise when their used.  But when I walk out into the garage, it’s silent.  There’s not a sound to be heard.  Why?  Because a tool can’t do anything by itself.  It puts holes in wood, rips strips of plywood, puts a decorative edge on a picture frame ONLY IF I PICK IT UP AND USE IT. 

A new building will be a wonderful tool but it cannot love people, serve people, welcome people, befriend people, speak to them about Christ, provide food or clothing for them, pray for them, or mentor them.  That…, requires US; someone has to use the tool.  In addition to the question each of us should ask God, “How much money do you want me to commit to the project,” is the question, “When it’s built, how do you want me to use this tool—and how should I use the one we have now?”