YGT: The Perfect Church

Today, at Mt. Level Baptist Church's Youth Church, I gave a sermonette about the perfect church.  Below are excerpts from the message...

42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Imagine this…
You get to church and a greeter meets you in the parking lot to park your car
You ride on a segway to the church’s door
When you get there, there’s a DJ in the church lobby,
You’re carried to your seat like royalty,
When you’re seated, the ushers come and take your order –
And you place your 20 oz. non-alcoholic beverage in the cup holder in your chair.
The offering is raised by Carolina Panthers cheerleaders,
The Roots do praise and worship,
The choir stand is full of the contestants from Sunday’s Best,
The sermon is powerful, short, and uses pyrotechnics,
Altar call is done through FaceTime,
Kevin Hart comes in afterward to promote his upcoming DVD,
The person you’re crushing on passes you their number during benediction,
And when you leave, everyone gets a pony.


From our perspective, this seems like the perfect church, but not to God. Why don’t we have cotton candy in worship? Why isn’t there a kiss cam in the sanctuary? And where’s my pony?

…..

What should we be doing here? - Let’s look at Acts 2.  The scripture for today gives us a glimpse into what we should expect to see in the church today:


· Teaching
· Fellowshipping
· Eating
· Praying
· Performing signs
· Distributing possessions
· Being glad
· Being sincere
· Praising God
· Adding believers



The church gets a lot of these right... But I believe there’s at least one area we're still coming up short.  In verse 45, we see that everyone who had need was given to. What we can miss is that in order for someone to know what your need is, you have to tell them (or they have to know your situation.)  For this to happen, you have to be honest. In verse 46, we see they broke bread together with sincere hearts.


One of the biggest things preventing us from being a more perfect church is we can’t talk real in church. We can’t be truthful. To be honest, church can be one of the fakest places in the world to be.


In the perfect church I could share my needs and my lack. The perfect church is a place where we can be perfectly honest.  It should be -


A place where the poor can sit on the first pew,

where the lost are found.

Where the spirit of God is present

and God is praised.
Where there is fellowship, prayer,

and sound teaching.
Where people are saved, healed,

open and honest.


There might not be any ponies (unicorns or Pegasus either), but that would be perfect.

Some of the teens said they'd want a unicorn or Pegasus when they left church.
You know what they say, give em a pony...