Journey to Vision ... Conclusion (Pt. 5/5)

That’s the last 4 years here at Westside Hamilton; ups and downs, learning and obeying, laughing and grieving, sometimes at the same time! It’s very much a journey that’s still going on today. But know this, we are going to be a community where God is gonna be God, where church is gonna be church, where Christians are gonna be Christians. We are going to become God’s people, His Royal Priesthood, His Holy Nation. We are going to become his Church. And I hope you’ll join us. Dom is going to invite you guys to more specific things next week, but I really want to invite you to join us on this journey.

I’m going to be straight up though. If you’re looking for a place that has it all figured out, has everything packaged nicely on a silver platter for you to partake, this isn’t the place for you. We just don’t have that. But if you’re looking for a place to discover your God, to find out for yourself this Jesus that your pastor’s been talking about for 15 years, and to have a family to walk that with, this is your spot. Come along for the ride, there might be some motion sickness, but I gurantee you it’s going to be sick.

Journey to Vision ... Christians have to be Christians (Pt. 4/5)

Christ-ians

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“christians”

Every year God brings us deeper into His Kingdom, into His Word, into His will for us as a church. For guys like me, Paul, and Cedric who’ve been here from the beginning pretty much, we’ve had the blessing, and frankly a calling, to have our minds transformed, perspectives redefined in just about everything of God. The things that were drilled into us for decades in Sunday school are beginning to give way to their true meaning revealed by the Holy Spirit.

First year, God compelled us to be freed from bondages that were holding us back from Him (some of us were in some awful relationships). 2nd year, even though we didn’t exactly dedicate ourselves to the right things, he compelled us to give our lives to His Kingdom. 3rd year, His Kingdom began to invade our very reality. Last year He redefined for us what it means to be church.

This year, something that has gripped our hearts more and more, myself definitely, is to teach, to challenge, those gathering with us about what it’s really like to be saved.

I had a summer job one year where I ran a clinical trial for a new chronic muscle pain treatment. 2 hour sessions where this person had to talk to me. So I talked to people about Jesus. And I came to realize one thing: people love God, people want a saviour, they just hate church, what they’ve seen of the church people. And I had to explain to them that there are lots of people in the church who aren’t Christians, how some “christians” who say they’re christian, but aren’t; explain to them the parable of the weeds, and that passage where Jesus says “I don’t know you” to some people who were sure they were getting into heaven. Hypocrisy is like the top thing on their hated list; people who say they’re Christians, but act nothing like the saved believers in scripture.

So what did saved believers look like?

Ephesians 1:13-14

13In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.

Holy spirit is the seal, the proof of our salvation. That having the Holy Spirit in you, in your life, is your sign of being saved. So the next question is, what does that look like?

Acts 2:37-38

37Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Brothers, what shall we do?"

38And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Acts 2, they repented, they were baptized, they received the Holy Spirit, and they lived this way. That's the progression of being saved. Jesus already said that’s what people who believe in Him would do too:

Matthew 13:44-46

The Parable of the Hidden Treasure

 44"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

The Parable of the Pearl of Great Value

 45"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, 46who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

Jesus said that people who’ve found heaven would want to live Acts 2.

You see, God’s Word paints a picture of salvation as our receiving the Holy Spirit, which is supposed to radically change us. Apostle Paul used a word in his letter to Titus that really sums it up. Titus 3:3-6 says that the Holy Spirit regenerates us; that salvation is this metamorphosis of who we are.

In contrast, nowadays when I ask people are you Christian, they reply is usually “Yeah I go to church”. Most people today think they are saved because they prayed a prayer, and someone told them they are saved, and yeah, they go to a service. Living radically for God by the power of the Holy Spirit has become, well, a radical thing. A rarity. And for many “christians” today, living like that has become optional; they don’t really even want to.

And I struggled with this. I read that Acts passage and thought, “well, I say I’m saved, I say I’ve repented, I’ve been baptised, I say I have the Holy Spirit, why doesn’t my life look like that?” Half the time I don’t even want that. And worst of all, why hasn’t it bothered me? What I desire of my life looked almost nothing like the lives of saved believers in the bible. Shouldn’t that have bothered me?

I’m not saying salvation is by works or our own efforts, but the question is if the Holy Spirit was really in me, if the Holy Spirit is really in my life regenerating me as Apostle Paul says, would I be as content with living the way I do? Would I be as content with the priorities that I have?

Ultimately my point isn’t to get into debating the criteria of being saved, I just want to raise some questions. Questions that we’ve been taught never to ask:

“Am I really saved?”

“Where am I with God really?”

Those are some of the most important questions you could ask God in your entire lifetime. Yet I know lots of people who say they’re christian who’ve never asked that question to God; mostly because they don’t know, and that’s really scary. Some just plain don’t want to know, afraid they’ll actually have to surrender if they really faced it.

I hope and pray everyday that those of us who claim to be saved, who claim to be Christians will have heard so, have known so, from God, from the spirit of God that’s supposed to have entered into our lives. That we would face those questions, and pursue hearing from God on our salvation, and not just rely on our pastors, friends, or you telling yourself that you’ve made it. On the last day only God’s affirmation matters. At the gates of heaven what your pastor said, what your friends said, what you say about you isn’t going to mean didly squat.

Right now I want to invite up a dear brother of mine, the first person I ever had the guts to ask “how do you know you’re saved?”. I want him to share with us a bit about his journey in wrestling with salvation:

Chat with Sam

Transcript coming soon.

Some of you have already gone through what Sam went through, and God has shown you and told you how His Spirit has transformed you and made you His child. I’m so happy for you guys; that’s a great moment. Don't keep that to yourself! Share it with someone, everyone.

For some of you what I said rang some alarm bells, perhaps alarms that have been ringing for a while just like Sam, or maybe you’ve just heard these words for the first time and you wonder where you stand with God. I ask you to sit down with God in prayer and simply ask Him, “Where am I with you?”, and continue to pursue God and ask His Spirit into your life if you want to see that the “old has gone the new has come”.

And some of you have already rejected what I said, and are committed to doing nothing about it. For you guys I beg you, I plead with you, if you want to throw out everything that I just said, that’s fine, I don’t mind at all. But please sit down with the Word of God, and read it. Don’t just go back to what you’ve been taught about the bible. Actually sit down, and read what Jesus said. Encounter the words of your God.

This is one of the first topics we want to address here when we meet people, so we ask that you not be offended when we ask how you know you’re saved. We are not trying to condemn or judge people, we just want everyone to be affirmed and convicted about salvation, not by men, but by God.

To me one of 2 things can happen, either you ask and are affirmed by God (great moment), or God says nothing (or worse) and wouldn’t you be glad you asked? Either way it’s a win win situation. That moment of affirmation is the best moment of our lives, when Holy Spirit enters into us and we are convicted of God’s grace and HS begin to transform us to live like we are his children, live like we really believe He is our God.

Journey to Vision ... God has to be God (Pt. 3/5)

Self-Indulging Experiences of God

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Seeing the Gospel Break Into Reality 

When we first brought our attention to the church in Acts, something that really attracted us was how they experienced the reality and the power of God in their lives. They saw God in such powerful ways. So the next historical lesson I want to share about our church is our successes and failures when it comes to the charismatic gifts. Don’t worry about it if you haven’t heard of that word before, but it’s the technical name given to miraculous happenings like speaking in tongues, physical healing, prophecy, etc.

Long story short, we didn’t put much effort into discerning what we were being taught in regards to these things, but we retaught them to others here. People were taught as if these were the things that will make us more mature in Christ. And as our approach to these topics were challenged, faiths were shaken, and our lack of effort in discernment was exposed. It was a very difficult time for our community. For us leaders, it really was the spark that led us to stop just eagerly accepting whatever we were taught, but to spend effort discerning and seeking the voice of God for what we as His people should be like, and to teach this community to do the same.

This was was the pivotal event that really what got our church moving in the direction that I’m sharing about today. And I know talking about this spiritual gifts stuff is scary to some of you, and I as a leader don’t really want to talk about it because we messed up so badly, but I know God has redeemed us from it and we want to bring Him glory by telling you guys what He showed of Himself through it.

I’m gonna invite our dear sister Viv to share a little more about what transpired as we struggled through this stuff:

Chat with Vivian

Ken: What were you first experiences with the tangible presence of the Holy Spirit?

Viv: I think I started to recognize the tangibility of the Holy Spirit when I started seeing my family relationships being reconciled and restored. Specifically, I was angry with my dad for 6 years of my life. He left when I was 12 and I never talked to him since. But that was the first thing God worked on. It was through his Spirit that I was given a chance to forgive my dad before he passed away in that very same year. I mean this is something that God is still working on in the rest of my family, but since knowing God, He had definitely started changing a lot of my perspectives towards my family.

A place where I saw the Holy Spirit working powerfully was in the discipleship groups that I was a part of. I really saw a great deal of transformation and growth not only in myself but my other sisters in the group as well. All of us were experiencing breakthroughs, freedom, chains were being broken, lies were being revealed and gifts were being discovered. I actually received the gift of tongues during DG.

Ken: Before this I don’t think I ever actually heard the details of what happened in the disciple group you were in, tell us a bit more about that.

   

Viv: So, with our discipleship group, we were committed to meeting once a week. It was really hard to find a time for all 5 girls to meet since some of us were working and some of us were schooling, but we found a way and that was 5:30am in this room. It was tough, but I’ve never been so excited to wake up at 4:30am… ever. Each week would be different, but we’d all come prepared to share our deepest secrets, to pray for each other, to encourage each other, to worship together, to rebuke each other when necessary, and to see cool things happen. While all of that was exciting, in the midst of getting caught up in all the cool stuff that we were seeing, I think we forgot that the sole purpose of everything happening is because of Jesus.

So there was one meeting in particular where we were talking about spiritual gifts and the gift of tongues was something that came up. To me, I wanted it. I thought that it would somehow help mature me spiritually so that I could live up to certain spiritual “standards”. So that night, we all made the mistake of blindly receiving it without checking with the Word, without really checking with God. The week after, a sister rebuked us all. Many of us were really hurt and discouraged, some of them had left this church… actually I think all of them left.

Through this experience, I was pretty shaken up but humbled by God’s grace. I can’t deny that even through my selfishness, God was working and is still working. I actually stopped praying in tongues for a while, but it wasn’t until this past year that God has confirmed with me that He has blessed me with this gift.

Ken: In light of us learning from that mess, of your experiences with your family, JnF missions, etc, what has having the Holy Spirit working in and through your life looked like to you?

Viv: For me, having the Holy Spirit work in me and through me…means a transformation of my  character.  In these past 4 years, when I let God do what He does, He shines through, even if I didn’t know and naturally the fruits of the Spirit are produced:  Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Seeing God move during Jane and Finch missions stretched me in so many ways. I was scared going into it. I didn’t know how God was going to use me. Thoughts of being young in my faith made me feel like I was incapable of doing God’s work. But there was this one specific woman that I remember talking to during the missions trip and her name is Elizabeth. God used ME to bless her. She was a beautiful and joyful woman of God. She was born deaf. I was so encouraged by this woman. Her faithfulness was so inspiring; she couldn’t stop praising God despite the misfortunes life has dealt her. Through her, I saw God. Through her, I experienced the fruits of the Spirit. What I saw through this experience was God glorifying Himself. It was never about me and what I can do but everything about who He is and what He can do. 

In hindsight, I confess that we had pursued those giftings, those displays of God’s power, with not much wisdom or humility, and not much purpose other than wanting to see cools things from God. And while wanting to experience God wasn’t in itself a bad thing, we missed the key purpose for God’s manifest presence, we missed the key reason why God would invade our reality.

Acts 4:27-31
27for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. 29And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, 30while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus."

31And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

In the midst of persecution, in the midst of being outcasted, the early believers prayed that God would show up as they continue to proclaim God’s word boldly. They never thought of the gospel as simply an idea that was to be taught to people. They wanted it to be real, and God responded by being real to them right then right there.

That’s how the disciples view Jesus when he was on Earth too; they never thought He was just about spiritual things. Listen to  Matthew talk about Jesus healing people in Matthew 8:16-17:

16That evening they brought to him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word and healed all who were sick. 17 This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: "He took our illnesses and bore our diseases."

The passage refers to Isaiah 53:4-5:

Isaiah 53:4-5
4 Surely he has borne our griefs
   and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
   smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions;
   he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
   and with his stripes we are healed.

Matthew saw the fulfillment of the Isaiah passage when Jesus was physically healing people. The disciples didn’t see Jesus’ arrival as just spiritual healing and deliverance. And the church in Acts continued to view God this way even after Jesus returned to heaven, leaving us the Holy Spirit as His keepsake until He returns.

Looking back at Acts 4, for the original church miraculous signs and wonders isn’t just about strengthening themselves or blessing the church as it’s so often taught as. The Acts church prayed to show the world that God is as real as we claim Him to be, as we know him to be.

Now we’re definitely not going to claim we know everything when it comes to these charismatic gifts. We’re still discovering that stuff all the time, as we encounter the Word, and as we proclaim it boldly, and trusting in faith that God will teach us as keep our eyes on Him. But we will not write off these miraculous things as too far fetched or too dangerous to pursue because we want God to be real, we want him to be more than just an idea in our heads, more than a philosophy we bought into. We want to see the gospel break into reality.

Which leads us to the last thing I want to talk about today, just how real is God to you? Just how much do you believe, do you know, that Jesus is your God and saviour?

Journey to Vision ... Church has to be Church (Pt. 2/5)

Biblical Community

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Corporate Institution

One of the biggest lessons we’ve learnt over the last 3 years, and probably one of things most people will notice about our church (whether you’ve been churched for a while or not) is how simple this community is: we don’t have a 10 person band that needs to practice for 4 hours before a gathering, we don’t have 17 bible studies of increasing levels of complexity. Sometimes the sound isn’t good or the video doesn’t play, and you’ll notice we don’t really seem to mind.

Goodness gracious the geeky guy who would normally be running the sound board is up here talking to you! But yet many of you would describe this place as family.

This is no accident, it’s not because we’re lazy that we choose to be church this way. It came from us learning the hard way how viewing church as an corporate institution - a schedule of well-planned, polished, and “excellent” events and strategies – how viewing church that way actually distracts us, even straight up keeps us, from truly encountering God, from truly being His Body.

I’d like to invite someone up here right now. I know it’s a title which he doesn’t particular like used lol, but as the director of Hamilton campus, someone who was put in charge of “building” this church, I’d like to invite Paul up here to share how God has reshaped our thinking about being church here at Westside Hamilton:

Chat with Paul

Ken: What were some of the things going through your head as you first took on being the director of Hamilton? What did you think church or running/building a church was back then?

Paul: The shoes were too big to fill, but my ego made me take it up. If you know me, you’ll know that I have stupidly high expectations on myself. And the way I was led and taught by my own leaders, and even as a youth, is that a leader or a pastor is one that KNOWS what he’s doing. And I am one that THINKS he knows what he’s doing. In short, I knew I would fall short of my own expectations, as well as others’, but I wanted to think that I could do it, so I took it. I wanted to make everyone’s worship experience as powerful and dramatic as possible. I wanted to see people grow. To me, running a church was SOLELY to create an atmosphere of worship to everyone who comes in, whether you are mature in your faith, or just started in it, or you were forced to come by a friend.

Ken: What were some of the things the God spoke to you, or things that you saw in this church, that made you reconsider those initial plans? What made you reconsider what church was?

Paul: Well, before God spoke, God allowed me to try. So i tried it... I gave it my all to make sure the atmosphere was compatible to as many people as possible. What ended up happening was that people started to get burned out, only select few grew because we as the leaders could only mentor so many people, and worse of all, no true disciples were being made because all of our efforts/energies were spent on creating quality services. And the more burnt out our leadership became, the more evident it became that something was off in our priorities. No real disciples were being made other than those who served, and even they weren’t finding Christ. There was an incorrect correlation between serving and discipleship. If there was any hunger for the Lord, we automatically plugged them into some sort of service ministry, like worship team or ushering.

At the same time, we kept reading about the Acts church, and how it wasn’t created, but it was a natural reaction to the movement of the Holy Spirit. I couldn’t reconcile that idea of church with what we saw at Westside.

Ken: In light of that redefinition, what do you feel are some of the practical shifts in focus necessary to respond to our new convictions?

Paul: So what did we do? we cut out a lot of ... extras. Whatever we can so that our focus and energy may be concentrated on prayer, the Word, and making disciples. Anything that required justification of its direct relation to the above were cut, simply because we didn’t have the energy. And what happened was this: 1st - a lot of people just felt free to be family. Intimacy grew. 2nd - a lot of people who don’t usually go to church, or believe in this faith, came... and stayed! It wasn’t (hopefully) because of our well planned, flawless, good sounding worship sets or sermons... they (I believe) really found people who cared... and, in our case, people who actually had energy to SHOW that we cared.

What’s pretty cool was that the fluff came back! When I say fluff, I mean absolute no disrespect to those things... we cut out newcomers ministry, ushering, special song during offering, harvest, even sound equipment sometimes. Some of these came back NATURALLY, with the people who serve in them having attained the right heart, that is, that we do all things for one purpose: to love God and love others, and to build others up.

Basically, I want to have people come in on saturdays and leave hungering for more, and then encouraging them to BE what we experienced on those days, everyday, wherever they go.

Throughout the NT, the church was always described first and foremost as a community, a community that held deep relationships with one another and with God; a community that represented what Jesus said were the 2 greatest commandments. The bible is full of descriptions of how believers should treat one another:

Carry one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2)
Bear with one another (Colossians 3:13)
Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.  (Ephesians 5:19-20)
Have mercy and compassion for one another (Zechariah 7:9)
Love one another (23 passages)

But somewhere along the way, in our attempt to “build our church”, we’ve created this system where there are a few leaders who fed hundreds of spiritual consumers, who are coming just cause they’re taught to go to these church-y events. And nowadays whether a church is good or not is mainly judged on whether the leaders could drum up engaging events and programs, and do them with “excellence”; whether there’s good music, whether there’s good teaching, whether there’s child care, whether there are good products offered that will help me grow. All the while these leaders are so consumed with planning and logistics that they can’t do or teach or demonstrate the one thing that really matters in a community, loving each other (written specifically in 23 passages).

The church in Acts, the original church, paints such a picture of love.

Acts 2:42-47
42And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

It was a picture where everyone gave their lives to God’s kingdom wholeheartedly; no one was there just to take, everyone gave however they could. The church was “a royal prisethood, holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9), these souls who were knitted together for the name of Jesus.

I’m not saying this community should be a free-for-all and everyone does whatever the heck they feel like with no regard for being organized. You do see that we try to start on time, you do see that we prepared music, you do see that we have snacks, you do see that we have teaching.

The praise team does practice, but when Paul doesn’t mind singing off key on stage, it’s because he wants to be free to worship and he’s encouraging you guys in that, so that those of you who are annoyed by it may be freed by his humility, and those of you who don’t think you can sing could feel free to praise God. ‘cause if the dude up on stage could be off key at the top of his lungs, then certainly you can praise with whatever voice you’ve got.

When someone greets you at the door, it’s not just because we wanted to make you feel welcomed and smile for you for 20 weekends a year, it’s because we hope and pray that eventually you’d get it that this is family and you'd start greeting people, you'd start to make people feel welcomed into this family.

When the Fernandez’s so graciously provide snacks for our gathering, it’s not just cause they want you to sit and eat yummy snacks, they’re modeling for us a way to give to this community, and we hope you’d do the same in your own way too.

Ultimately us leaders, those of us at the forefront of this community, we’re not here to give you a nice, comfortable, well-received time every service, that’s not our purpose, that’s not the reason we have this every Saturday. That’s not the reason we have anything.

Jesus didn’t say we’re to be known by our excellent music, or our eloquent teaching, or our flawless logistics, He said in John 13:34-35

34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

We gather to love our God, we gather to love one another, and we gather to see to it that we live for those 2 things. As Paul said, we gather so that we could help each other be disciples of Jesus Christ. That’s why we gather.

“Believers don’t come to church. Believers become church.”

That’s what we’re committed to living out here.

Journey to Vision ... Introduction (Pt. 1/5)

The past 2 weeks at Westside Hamilton we’ve talked about Jesus, what He did for us, how that changes us, and how that defines what church is. Today I want to talk about Westside Hamilton itself, our church. I want to share with you how we got to where we are, what we went through these past 4 years, and the things that God has convicted us of, the things that this community stands for.

And I guess most people would call what I’m sharing today the vision of Westside Hamilton. But I just want to make it really really clear that we didn’t make this stuff up. We didn’t just sit down together and come up with a vision for this community. Actually, I wished we did that. But we had some pretty hard knocks and the stuff I’m sharing isn’t just theory. It’s is real to us.

Now I can’t go through the all the topics in detail today. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to get into some of these topics more as we sit and chat with you or other chances up here on stage. But I’m hoping that what I share today will give you some idea why this community is the way it is.