❖ Video
❖ Audio (Message)
First floor: Worship
yourchurch is a three-story house (1/3) (Romans 12:1, Luke 10:38-42)
Andy Nagahara
This year marks the 30th anniversary of yourchurch. While many things have changed on the surface, the core values we have about our church have not changed at all. That is reflected in yourchurch Covenant. It is also reflected in the form of worship services and activities.
Ten years ago, during our 20th anniversary, several leaders spoke at the service about the core values of yourchurch. As I know many of you were not around 10 years ago, so I’m going to talk about the core values of yourchurch for the next three messages, starting today.
A. yourchurch is a three-story house
1. There is no house without a first floor
Now imagine yourchurch as a three-story house. It is natural for a one-story house to have no second or third floor, but there is no two-story house without a first floor. Also, there is no three-story house without a first and second floor. The 3rd floor is supported by the 2nd floor and the 1st floor, and the 2nd floor is supported by the 1st floor, which in turn supports the 3rd floor.
So, for yourchurch, what is the first floor that supports the second and third floors? It’s worship. And today I’m going to talk about this first floor.
2. yourchurch covenant
Membership in yourchurch is quite different from that of a typical Japanese church. Those who wish to become members of Your Church make three commitments at the beginning of each year. They are the promises to God and the people of the church, and declarations to the world.
The first promise is “I love God.” The second is “Love each other” and the third is “Love the world”. As you may have noticed, this commitment reflects the priority of three things that are at the heart of yourchurch’s values.
In fact, the core of Your Church’s values is also reflected in the name of the church. The name “yourchurch” is short, but people who hear it often say, “What?” and then they often ask us back its name. But it was by no means a name given for the strategic reason of hooking people’s memory in that way. When we say, “We are yourchurch,” we mean, “We exist for you.” And in Covenant terms, it means “I love you.” People’s thoughts tend to be self-centered, as if everything should exist for themselves. But God has taught us through the Bible that this thought is the root of unhappiness and sin.
But is such “love” possible for us? It is Jesus, whose resurrection we celebrated last week, who has paved the way to make this great difficulty of “loving” possible. Jesus taught us that we cannot love because we have turned our backs on God. And he was crucified, died, was buried, and was resurrected so that we may realize this and be reunited with God.
According to the Covenant of yourchurch and its three-story structure, the first you is “God”. We cannot love one another without loving God. And how can we love the people of the world if those of us who know God do not love each other?
So this morning I would like to talk about what is most important to those who follow Jesus.
B. First floor: Worship
Rediscovering Worship （Romans 12:1)
Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God–this is your spiritual act of worship.
Let me talk a little bit about translation here. While most English translations of the Bible refer to spiritual worship, the Japanese translation we use says “reasonable worship,” which may seem very different. But the original Greek is a word that can be translated either way. For us today, there is a prejudice that spirituality and rationality are incompatible, but in fact, being spiritual is rational.
Now the Epistle to the Romans, which begins with this verse, is also depicted in the three-story structure of the church we have seen today. I don’t have time to read the whole thing today, but feel free to read and check it out for yourself this week.
Paul began his writing by exhorting us to worship God wholeheartedly. Paul says that worship is “giving oneself as a living sacrifice to God.” In other words, there we confess to God, “I am yours. I love you.” Then God will gladly accept our confession and tell us that he loves us.
I believed in Jesus in 1976, but until the summer of 1985, I thought worship was only a ritual for believers that had to be observed on Sunday mornings. I believed in Jesus, but I didn’t see Him as the One who was closer and more present than anyone else, but thought of Him only as a conceptual God. uring that time, I decided to become a pastor, and that’s how I stayed even after I graduated from seminary and actually became a pastor. The church I belonged to at the time was very busy on Sundays, with meetings almost every week after worship service, and even though it was the Sabbath, it was the most tiring day of the week. We wanted to attract as many people as possible, so we tried everything we could think of. Because I thought it was the pastor’s job to increase the number of people attending church.
However, few new people came, and most of the people who came once stopped coming. I was exhausted.
So in the summer of 1985, I joined a tour to visit some of the “cool and prosperous” churches in the United States to get some tips. However, the reality of the “cool” church and my own church was so different that I almost felt hopeless rather than gaining anything.
The last church I visited was not a “cool” church by my standards. They did not have their own building and rented a high school gymnasium to hold services, which was one of the smallest churches in the United States for its size.
But as soon as I entered the venue, I felt that something was going to happen here, and I got goosebumps. Please let me say that I myself am not a so-called spiritual person, and therefore, I am rather uncomfortable with people who seem to be “super-spiritual”. So, in spite of this, I was surprised myself that I felt that way.
Nothing had started there yet, and after a while, when one of the women who wrote the song we still sing today began to sing quietly with a single guitar without any introduction, the atmosphere in the hall, where we had been chatting and laughing, changed completely. We sang many simple songs to God together. It seemed that God was speaking to each person there. Each one expressed their love for God in their own way. People standing up and raising their hands to sing, people kneeling, people shedding tears, I was convinced that this was the “spiritual and reasonable worship” that Paul wrote about.
It was an intimate two-way communication with God. And I realized that my responsibility as a pastor was not to increase the number of attendees, but to provide this kind of “spiritual and reasonable worship”. I found a prototype of yourchurch’s worship today.
2. Nothing begins without a close relationship with God (Luke 10:38-42)
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”（Luke 10:38-42)
This episode gives us an insight into the relationship between worship and service. The mistake Martha fell into is the one that we, the church, tend to make. The church I used to be in had many services to do. Decorating flowers for worship, cleaning the venue, playing the organ in worship, teaching in church school, cooking lunch after the service, and so on, were the sort of things Martha cared about. And there were times when people who came to worship for a long period of time but didn’t do Martha-like things were criticized. On the other hand, some people asked why they were not allowed to perform important services.
But when we read this story, it’s clear what Jesus wants us to do. Worship as a time to be intimate with Jesus is more important than anything else. If we want to serve Jesus, it is essential that we approach Him and listen carefully. The first thing we should do is come before the Lord and worship Him, not like Martha, who thought she was doing it for Jesus’ sake, and was admonished by Jesus for condemning those who did not do so.
You can come before Jesus anytime, anywhere. That’s why we don’t think of Sunday worship as the only worship service. It can be done alone, with one or two people, with family or with friends. And worship is the first service we should do. That is why worship is also called service. But this service is not a one-way street either. It is a two-way service, a service to us in which we serve through singing and at the same time God speaks to us.
I believe that for us to remain yourchurch, “worship” must continue to be a core value among our core values. The summer of 1985 was the starting point for yourchurch services. However, it was eight years later that yourchurch as a church was born. Next week, I will talk about the trial and error during that time and the concept of yourchurch’s “second floor” that inspired me to start yourchurch.
(Prayer) Thank you, God, for calling us as worshipers and using us as those who say to you, to each other, and to people, “We are your church.” Thank you for giving us the unchanging core of values for 30 years. Please guide us so that we can continue to value worship above all else.
Please speak to each one of us as we offer you our heartfelt worship.
Thankfully, hopefully, we pray in the name of Jesus Christ.
Summary
Worship is at the core of our core values. God wants us to “worship” as the first priority in our lives. Anyone who believes in God wants to make use of themselves and work for God. That is a very sacred desire. However, if we do not have “worship” at the center of our lives, we cannot do good work. By continuing to observe the intimate time with God called “worship” regularly, we can get to know God better and know ourselves better. Only then will it be possible to love one another and love people.
For Discussion
1. Why does yourchurch make worship a priority?
2. What kind of worship is reasonable worship?