Lathem Postell: Great. Well, good morning again. It's so good to, finally be back here with you. I was here last week, but it's good to finally be here in this place. As I said in the cover letter and and as some of you know, Cammy and I had the opportunity to travel to Brazil for a friend's wedding.
And then, the the week after that, just lined up this way, it wasn't planned. The the convening general conference of the Global Methodist Church took place in Costa Rica and and I had the privilege of being one of the clergy delegates from North Georgia that got to to go and participate in that. And so, a lot of travel in September. It's really, really good to to be home though. It's good to to be back with you.
As you could tell in our bumper video, this month is stewardship month. October is traditionally the time in the month or time in the year where we, as a church, spend a little bit of time talking about stewardship, what it means for us to be good stewards of all that God has given us. This particularly relates to our our finances. Right? The blessings that God has given us, but it extends far beyond that.
It relates to how are we good stewards of our time? How are we good stewards of our talents? How are we good stewards of our resources? Maybe even particularly those resources that aren't financial. What has God given us and how do we use it for the building of his kingdom?
That's the goal year, we're gonna be using you can see it up there. We're gonna use a John Wesley sermon, a great Methodist tradition in us. Right? This this John Wesley sermon called the use of money to guide our journey through stewardship. It's a great sermon over 200 years old, but but it's always fascinating to me when you can go back and read something that's so old, but yet still applies perfectly to the day and age we live in.
And so in this sermon that's gonna be our guide, he kinda gives us three things for us to think about when it comes particularly to our use of money, one of the most important things for us to be good stewards of. And so we're gonna walk through those. The first of them, it's always everybody's favorite, is his guide for us is that we are to gain all that we can. Right? That's usually where people start getting excited and cheering and But what we need to read on.
So he said, yeah, there we go. We gain all we can. We save all we can. Again, we're we're excited about that one. But the third one's the kicker.
It's what brings it all together. We're called to give all that we can. And so we're gonna talk through that throughout this month. Or I'll say we're going to do that, but I'm gonna kind of pivot a little bit this morning. This is stewardship month, but it's also the first opportunity I've had to to preach since getting back from general conference.
And and I've really reflected on my experience there and and what it meant to me and what it's meant in my relationship with Jesus. And and I realized that that I couldn't pass an opportunity to and this is what God laid on my heart, to share just a a few things that I learned in my time in Costa Rica that I think the entire church could learn. Not just our church, but but the church in general. And so, yes, it's stewardship month. We're gonna talk about all of those things.
I want that to be at the the forefront of your mind, but but we're gonna kind of divert a little bit just this morning, and and then we'll get back to that, next week. And so, to talk about what what I learned, this is a scripture that's really been on my heart. So if you're already in Luke, which is in the bulletin, you're not far from it. We're gonna turn to the book of Acts. We're gonna be reading from from Acts chapter 3 verses 1 through 10.
So I I give you a minute if you were in the wrong spot to go ahead and turn there. It should be on the screen behind me as well. I was able to get that to to Woody in time I think for him to get it up there. So, we're gonna read together from acts chapter 3 verses 1 through 10. Hear now this reading from the scriptures, which tell us this.
One day, Peter and John were going up to the temple at the time of prayer at 3 in the afternoon. Now a man who was lame from birth was being carried to temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at them, as did John. Then Peter said, look at us.
So the man gave them his attention, expecting to get something from them. Then Peter said, Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk. Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man's feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk.
Then he went with them into the temple courts, walking and jumping and praising God. When all the people saw him walking and praising God, they recognized him as the man who used to sit begging at the temple gate called Beautiful. And they were filled with wonder and amazement at what had happened to him. Will you pray with me? Loving and gracious God, we give you thanks for this day, this day of worship, and Lord, we give you thanks for the gift of your scriptures.
Use them this morning to speak to our hearts and our minds, that we might be transformed to look like your son, Jesus. For it's in his name that we pray. Transformed to look like Your Son, Jesus. For it's in His name that we pray. Amen.
There's so much that I wish I could share with you about the General Conference, and, slowly over time, maybe I'll be able to do that. There's more than I can do in just a sermon. And in fact, be be on the lookout. We're looking at opportunities as as kind of a church, as a conference to to give some updates on what happened in in, Costa Rica. But but there's particularly three things.
Three small points, pretty simple points, but but three things I learned this week, or that week, that that I want to share with you. And and the first one is this. Simple, again. The first thing I learned in Costa Rica was that the church is not in decline. Now, I want you to marinate on that for a minute.
The church is not in decline. If you were to to Google anything and and you can do this at some point in time, preferably not during the sermon, but go and Google sometime the church in decline, and what you'll find is article after article, and you may be familiar with this, article after article from various publications, many Christian publications, many research groups, things like the Atlantic, Pew Research Center, The Guardian, Gallup News, and what you'll find is headline after headline, storyline after storyline that says the church is in decline. That particularly the church of the 21st century here in the United States is in decline. Decline in influence in in the world. Decline in attendance.
Decline in membership. Decline in giving. And and the list could go on. Right? And that's probably not I'm I'm I hope I'm not giving you earth shattering news.
You you listen to the news. You watch the news. You read the news. You've seen things like this. We we've probably talked about it as a church.
Right? We we mentioned things like this. And and they'll give you if you go and read those articles, there's so many of them. You can go and read, and they'll give you all kinds of various reasons why this is. Most of them kinda point to the the statistical trend here in the United States that there's a growing group of people who identify as religiously unaffiliated.
Every time they do these studies whether it's every 5, 10 years or so. The group of people, the percentage of people that identify as religiously unaffiliated grows every year. But what I stand here today to tell you, after worshiping and and and experiencing what I did in Costa Rica for a week, what I can tell you is that the premise behind all of those articles is wrong. The church is not in decline. The church is not dying, as some might tell you.
What I will tell you is cultural Christianity might be dying. Comfortable Christianity might be in decline. This idea of Christendom, which means that this idea that identifying or publicly identifying as a part of the body of Christ, telling people that that you are a follower of Jesus so that you might receive some sort of external or social benefit. That might be in decline, sure. But the holy Catholic, the universal, Christ Church is not in decline.
Now I've seen it. The church is alive. The church is thriving here, there, and everywhere. And friends, I hope that excites you to no end. I got a chance to to see this in Costa Rica.
What we often had, whether it was in the morning or the evening, we'd have worship together, and we'd have somebody come and and share a word with us. And so one of the days, I can't remember which, we got to hear from, he wasn't elected at the time, but one of our newly elected bishops by the name of, Kimba Evariste from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He came and and shared a word with us, and and he shared with us what it looks like to be a Christian in the Congo. He told beautiful and and heartbreaking stories. He he told us about their struggles, of which there's many.
He told us about pastors who who were fired. Many of the pastors in the Congo worked multiple jobs in order to make end ends meet. And so, he told stories of pastors who were fired from their secular jobs because they had chosen to follow Jesus. He told stories of of members of the church, laity, who who were ostracized from society. Some of them lost their jobs.
Some of them being kicked out of their families or their villages because they had claimed Jesus Christ as Lord. The most powerful story for me of these struggles was of an individual, I didn't share the name, who worked kind of within the the conference leadership. And and you may not know this about church outside the US. It operates a little bit differently than than we do because of some of the the freedoms that we have. For most countries, there's a pretty extensive process to become officially recognized as a church or a denomination.
And in many countries, you cannot meet, you cannot legally operate, you cannot hold a worship service unless you are associated one of these kind of officially recognized groups. And so, as the Global Methodist Church is beginning to form, they began to file the paperwork, began the process of having it become officially recognized by the Congolese government. And so, he told the story of of of the man who had the paperwork, had the briefcase, and was preparing to go to fill it out or or to submit it the next day, who he was at his house, and that evening 20 armed gunmen invaded his house, and this is all true. He told this story. 20 armed gunmen went into his house with the goal of ending his life.
He hid, and thanks to the power of God, they were not able to find him that evening. And the next day, he still got up and went and filed the papers. Stories that that we could barely begin to fathom here in our context. And and the kicker on all this, right, he told all these stories of the ways that they had been persecuted. And what he said was over the past 12 months, they've planted 500 churches in the Congo.
They anticipate planting another 100 before the year is over. The church is not dying. On top of this, he told another story that just blows my mind. There's a group of people in the Congo that that live in the bush. They they call them the pygmy people.
And so they live in a very tribal way, in a very what we would think of as an ancient way. It's just different than the way we live. Right? And so he told the story of how they've tried for years to to preach the gospel to them, but always received resistance. That they would be harmed if they went into these places.
That they had been told, you better not come, or we will kill you, for lack of a better word. But several months ago, Bishop Evariste told us that the leadership of the GMC in Congo had been approached by elders in the Pygmy Villages. This was all a movement of the spirit. They didn't initiate this. The elders came to them and said, will you help us?
We've heard about you. We want you to come and plant a Global Methodist church in our villages. And so they did. And I think to this day, there's close to 5 or 6 of these churches that have been planted in various villages across the bush of the Congo. People that literally had never heard the name of Jesus, now getting to hear the name of Christ.
I learned that the church is not in decline. And I thought about it from a theological perspective. What God reminded me of is the church is not in decline because the church cannot decline. The church cannot die. The church is the body of Christ, and we know what happened to Christ's body on the 3rd day.
When the when the church remembers that Christ is Lord of her life, it cannot be defeated because the one who is at the head is the one who defeated death. Sure. Church, in our neck of the woods, might look a little different in 10, 20, 30, 50 years from now. We might look a lot like, or at least more like, the churches in the Congo, or Zimbabwe, or other places around the world. But I can assure you that the church is alive, and it is thriving because of the lordship of Jesus.
The second thing that I learned at general conference was a powerful one for me. What God reminded me of is that Pentecost really happened. Think about that for a minute. That may sound weird. Of course it happened.
We celebrate it every year, this idea that that on Pentecost, that story at the beginning of Acts, right, that the Spirit came and descended and rested upon the church. Of course it happened. We celebrate it. We think of it in many ways as the birthday of the church, that time when the church became what it is. But I tell you this because this is what God has revealed to me, that Pentecost is more than that.
Yes, Pentecost really happened, but it wasn't just something that happened 2000 years ago. It's something that continues to happen each and every day. The power of the Holy Spirit is palpable within the body of Christ. Pentecost really happened. It became clear to me in so many ways in Costa Rica, but I want to share the one that was the most clear.
Again, we had several opportunities for worship. It was one of the things that was so refreshing for me as I went was worship was a priority. We did it every chance we got. And so one night, we had an opportunity to worship with those that were delegates to the Global Methodist Church, but also with so many churches that were a part of the Evangelical Methodist Church of Costa Rica. Kind of an independently operating Methodist denomination that's now in relationship with the GMC.
And so we had an opportunity. We went to this 3 1,000 person amphitheater that we packed full, and it was, again, a place for GMC folks and and Costa Ricans to come together and worship, and and to be an image of what it looks like when the church worships together for for those in San Jose. It was beautiful. And and there were people from from Costa Rica that had traveled 6 to 7 hours from the southernmost parts of the country to get to where we were, just to come and worship for 2 hours. It it was incredible.
And because of that, people got there a little bit earlier. We were supposed to start around 7 o'clock at night. People, because of their long travel, had gotten there. So it was 6, 6:15, 6:30, and the place was already full, and buzz was starting. So they kind of pivoted and said, alright.
We're gonna do maybe just 15 minutes of of worship. We didn't have this planned, so the worship team came up on stage and began to just lead us in worship, preparing for the worship that had been planned. And and I wish I could describe for you what that was like. It's in a lot of ways, I feel like Paul, when he's trying to describe being taken up to this 3rd heaven. Right?
It doesn't have the words for it. And and I I would fall short in trying to describe this moment of worship to each of you. But but we began to sing and the worship team did something that that was great. They sang songs that we all knew, tones that we were familiar with. But they'd sing part of it in English, and they'd sing part of it in Spanish.
So they'd they'd sing a verse in English, and they'd sing a verse in Spanish. And so we were we were singing this song, and we were singing holy, holy, holy. And it was incredible. I began to look around, and what God showed me was this is a Pentecost moment, that the Spirit is still at work in the church. We were singing, holy, holy, holy, except we weren't singing the words I knew so well.
We were singing, santo, santo, santo. I realized that many of us in the room, perhaps the majority of us, didn't speak Spanish. Another large portion did. But then I looked, and we had folks from Africa that that spoke English, or or or French, or Swahili. We had folks from from the Philippines.
Some that spoke English. Some that that different. And what I saw was a group of 3,000 people all singing the same song with the same heart, committed to Jesus Christ. And the thing is, we all understood exactly what we were singing. Most of us didn't speak the language, but we knew what we were doing.
It was a Pentecost moment. The Spirit is still at work in the church. The Spirit is as alive and moving in our lives today as the Spirit was 2000 years ago. And I think one thing we, as the American church, can learn from our brothers and sisters across the world is that we need to lean on the Spirit a lot more than we do. We can easily forget the role of the Spirit in our lives.
We forget it. Think about our theology of prayer. Right? How often do we leave the Spirit out of it? A proper theology of prayer is that we pray to God in the name of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
We'll leave that third part off quite a bit. But friends, Pentecost happened. The power of the Holy Spirit is real. And if we intend to live a life pursuing God, doing everything we can to grow closer to him and grow closer to his Son, Jesus Christ, then we cannot forget what the Spirit is doing in our lives. Because the same spirit that hovered over the waters of the deep in Genesis, the same spirit that raised Christ Jesus from the dead in the gospels, is the same spirit that rests on the church today.
Pentecost happened, and it's still happening. Have you felt it? Have you looked for the spirit in your life? The last thing that I I wanted to share with you, the last thing God has helped me see throughout this experience is that we need to give more Jesus. Simple.
We need to give more Jesus. We need to unashamedly, unabashedly tell people more about Jesus. We cannot do it enough. We need to learn to realize that without Jesus, there is no church. If we aren't giving people Christ, we have nothing to offer.
Started in Costa Rica and continues. It has laid the book of acts on my heart. And I love this passage of scripture that I've started to to read in a new way, since my trip. It's the story of Peter and John, who are going to the temple to pray. Something they they've probably done countless times before.
And as they're going, the story tells us about this man who's been taken to beg out in front of of the gate called Beautiful. It happens every day. Right? He was born without the ability to walk. And so every day, his friends or family, they come and they they drop him off there.
And it's kinda his task to to beg for money to find ways to to feed himself and to sustain himself. And so it tells us that Peter and John are coming to the temple, and they they see this man. They they kinda make eye contact, and they call out to him. He he's done this before, so he thinks, okay, now it's the time. They've made eye contact.
They've called out to me. They're gonna give me a few bucks. They're gonna give me a few quarters and and maybe I'll be able to buy dinner tonight. But instead, something else happens. They they call out on the man and they say, I don't have silver or gold.
Silver and gold, we don't have for you. But what we do have, we give. Implying, look, we don't have silver and gold, but we have something better. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk. And miraculously, he does.
So as I've thought about this scripture, I kept thinking, well what was different this time? Right? He goes every day to the temple. Peter and John, even if they didn't go every day, they went frequently to the temple. They would have crossed over with this guy so many times.
What was different this time? Why did they finally speak up? Why did they finally call out to him? Because they actually had something to offer this time. They didn't have silver or gold, which they knew wouldn't save him.
Which, as an aside, right, it's stewardship month. There's probably a sermon there. I don't have time to go down that path. I wish I did. Silver and gold not being able to save us.
But I'll come back to where God wants us to be. But they realized, look, we don't have silver or gold, and that can't save you. But they did have something that would. They knew that Jesus could save the man and that Jesus would save the man. The thing that was different this time was Jesus.
Well, I ask you, what do you have to offer the world? What I would submit to you, and this may be harsh, is that the only thing of value you have to offer is Christ. I hope you don't hear that in a harsh way. I just mean it to be true. What the world needs is Jesus, and everything else at the end of the day is worthless.
Right? If we're not telling people about Jesus, we're wasting our time. A church that's truly alive, a church that's truly driven by the Holy Spirit is a church that consistently and constantly focuses on our mission, which is to point people to the cross. It should be the mission of the church, and by extension, as members of the body of Christ, it be it should be your mission in life. Not just when you come here on Sundays, but in every aspect of your life.
Think about it. What would it look like if you shifted your vision of of your existence in the world? What if when you left this place, your vision, your mission became, how can I tell somebody today about Jesus? What if when you got to your desk tomorrow, you thought, how has God placed me in this moment in time, so that I might tell somebody I encounter today about the life giving power of the gospel? Sure, I'm I'm a software engineer, or or sure, I'm a teacher, or sure, I'm I'm whatever I am.
You fill in the blank there. But but what if you saw that? And this is where it ties into stewardship. Right? What if you saw that as an opportunity not to benefit yourself?
Right? Sure. Go to your job. Get paid. You gotta eat.
Right? But what if that wasn't your primary reason for going to work? What if your primary reason was that this was a place that you could tell others about Jesus? The the week in Costa Rica has convinced me more than ever that the world doesn't need us to be our best. That that's in contrast.
That's the the gospel of Jesus Christ says, we don't need to be our best, but the gospel of the world says we do. Right? The world will consistently try and tell us, Look, you need to be the best version of yourself. You need to grow and to be the best version of yourself. What if I told you that's not what the world needs?
The world doesn't need you to be your best, because your best is gonna fall short. The world doesn't need us as a church, Sam Jones, to be our best. If We want to extend it further, right? The world doesn't need the Global Methodist Church to be our best. What the world needs is for us to be vessels to give them Jesus, the one who is the best.
I told you earlier not to take this harshly because here's the truth. As great as anything is, as great as our church might be, as great as we might be, these walls will eventually fall down. You will eventually cease to live, at least on this side of glory. The walls will fall. Our lives will end, but the hope of Christ will always persist.
The world needs Jesus. The world needs Jesus. So I offer you these three things. God has laid them on my heart and I hope you will hold them close to yours. You can see them there.
Right? The church isn't declining. I would tell you that the church is alive. It might be shifting. It might be looking different in 20 years than it did 20 years ago, but I can tell you that the church is alive because Christ is at her head.
Pentecost happened, folks. And there's good news in that. Pentecost happened, which means it's still happening today. The same spirit that we read about in Acts, right? When you read that, you get so excited about what God's doing.
That same spirit is at work in our church. Have you felt it in your life? And then lastly, we need to give people more Jesus. Anything else is just superfluous. Right?
Anything else can can be good, It's not great. God doesn't need you to be the best. He needs you to show them Jesus. Three things, 3 things that when I think about it, I'm excited. Because it means God's not done with us yet.
I'm so thankful, and I hope you are, that God allows us to be a part of what he's doing in the world. That he allows us to be a part of his mission to save the world. Our question is, are we ready to get to work? Let's pray. Loving and gracious God, Lord, we are so thankful.
Now, as we always are, we're so thankful for who you are and what you've done. That you are King of Kings and Lord of Lords. That you are the savior of the world and the savior of our hearts. Help us God in those moments where we forget our place, where we put ourselves at the center. Where Lord, we take the wisdom of the world and we say, if I could just be a little bit better, if I could put on my best face, then I'll be able to do something for those around me.
Lord, I ask that you break us down. Break us down as a church. Break us down as individuals to remind us that we are vessels of yours. That we are jars of clay made by the potter. May everything we do, everything we say, point people to you.
Lord, we know that your church is thriving, that you are moving in the world, that you are bringing people to come to to know you as Jesus Christ. Lord, help us to be a part of that. Help us to get out of our own way when we're in the way. Lord, help us to to do what we can to be a part of your mission and kingdom work. And God, may the spirit of God rest in our lives.
Renew us, revitalize us, each of us as individuals, and us as your church. Send us forth Let's proclaim the good news of God's goodness. For it is in His name, in the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ, our savior, that we pray by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.