❖ Video
❖ Audio (Message)
First floor: Worship
yourchurch is a three-story house (2/3) (Acts 2:44-47, Ephesians 2:21,22, John 13:34,35, Matthew18:18-20)
Andy Nagahara
Last Sunday, I compared yourchurch to a three-story house, and talked about the first floor that is “worship,” and the first person to be called “You” in yourchurch is God. Today I would like to talk about the second floor. “You” on the 2nd floor is all the people gathered here “other than yourself”
A. Shall we dance?
1. The Beginning of your-church (Acts 2:44-47)
In the summer of 1993, my wife and I were trying to escape from Japan! I will tell you the long story as short as possible. Now, let me start with what I talked about last week, I was convinced that the “spiritual worship” I had discovered in 1985 would be our life’s work, I wanted my family to experience it with me, so the following year I visited that church in the US again with my wife and children, who were still small, and returned to Japan full of joy and hope. However, such worship was never accepted. I didn’t realize that the principle that new wine must be in new wineskins also applies to the way the church works. After eight years of trying to introduce the way we discovered worship, we were exhausted again. Then, thinking that we would live in an environment where the worship we experienced was accepted, we went back to California to look for a job. But in the end, there was no way out of it, and we had no choice but to return to Japan.
So we decided to stop by Hawaii to at least relax a little and return home, and happened to attend a church service where God spoke to me and I realized that He was asking us to start a new church in Japan. After the service, we stopped at a shopping mall where I happened to be approached by another pastor from that church, and I told him what had happened to me that morning. Since then, this church has supported yourchurch’s growth. That is Hope Chapel.
It was Ralph who spoke the message that inspired me to start Your Church, and it was Aaron who approached me at the mall that afternoon. Without this encounter, yourchurch would not exist today.
The characteristic of Hope Chape was that the members were very close to each other, yet it was not closed, and they were interested in “first-timers” like us. It is difficult to balance the closeness of the members with the comfort of non-members and first-time visitors. Yet we know from the Acts of the Apostles that the Church was such a community.
All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he 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. (Acts 2:44-47)
Worship is the most important thing. However, just worshipping is not the “church” that God expects us to be. In the fall of 1993, we set out to become a community worthy of the body of Christ, the <Church>.
2. Why is “each other” essential? (Ephesians 2:21,22)
Do you know the movie called “Shall We Dance?” Originally made in Japan (1996), it was remade in Hollywood (2004) starring Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez. The main character, a middle-aged man, starts taking a ballroom dancing class. At first, he was constantly scolded for stepping on his dance partner’s feet, but finally he began to enter contests.
Your Church began renting this building two and a half years after it started worship services. At first, we only rented the current Fellowship Hall. The guest speaker who came to our church at that time was Steve Fox, who was the bassist of the famous band Godiego, which was known to everyone in Japan in the late 1970s.
He compared the church to a dance class. In church, we practice loving one another, and in the process, we improve by stepping on each other’s toes and getting hurt. Yet people who practice here have the will to forgive even if their feet are stepped on or kicked. Even if I come back crying after a bad experience in a contest outside, everyone here will comfort me. Because we are people who know that God has forgiven us, we are able to prepare ourselves to love the world.
You cannot go up to the 3rd floor without going through the 2nd floor. Loving is not easy. We grow in loving here on the second floor. The Bible expresses it this way.
In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Ephesians 2:21,22)
There are two aspects to faith in Jesus, one aspect being a personal matter in each individual’s heart, and the other aspect being a part of a community and fulfilling its responsibilities. We are not together because our interests are aligned, but we are together to reveal God’s love to the world as persons called and united by God’s purpose. People will know God’s love by knowing that we love one another through His love. No matter how much we explain that God is love with our words, if the relationships within the church are loveless and cold, then no one will believe that God is love. That’s why we say, “I am your church,” as a confession that we will serve you as we serve God and love you as we love God in these relationships.
But the dance class is not a training hall of blood, sweat, and tears, where the sole purpose is to win contests. By being here, we also obtain precious treasures such as security, joy, friendship, comfort and encouragement.
B. To be an open and intimate family
1. Accessible entrances and safe stairs（John 13:34,35)
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” （John 13:34,35)
The desire for new people to join yourchurch is healthy and consistent with Jesus’ desire. But it is not just wanting to increase the number of people attending the first floor, that is, the worship service, but also wanting them to come up to the second floor and become peers, and to go up to the third floor and help God’s work together. For this reason, we need an entrance that is easy to enter and a stairs that people want to go up. A small entrance and steep stairs do not fulfill these wishes.
It is not easy to balance this “openness” and “intimacy”. But it does not mean that you have to give up one or the other. Rather, the church should be able to become an unique community that has both. We can see that from the fact that the owner of this house, Jesus himself, lived such a life on earth. Jesus talked to Mary in a friendly way, and then he jumped into a drinking party of those who were abandoned in the society of that time, enjoying cheap wine and making the event more enjoyable. Out in the square, children cling to Him, and the adults scold them, but Jesus is the one who scolds the adults, not the other way around. He served food to 4,000 and 5,000 people, and he gathered only his closest disciples and held a mini-church.
The church is the body of Christ. So we should be able to do it. If the church, which is such an attractive body of Jesus, is not very appealing to people, we should consider what is hiding the appeal of Jesus. The pastors of Hope Chapel, Ralph Moore and Aaron Suzuki, had much to teach us about this. It is the culture and traditions of that church that obscure the appeal of Jesus. Some church people think, this is the right order to conduct the worship service, the musical instrument should be the organ and the singing should be good old hymns. And, business casual attire is appropriate.
Also, churches are full of special terms that ordinary people do not use. It may be comfortable for those who have been in church for some time and enjoyed it, but what about those who are new to it?
Let me give you just one example. “Let’s all ‘praise’!” It translates to “Let’s sing.” I think it’s common knowledge in churches other than yourchurch. But we don’t use the word “praise” in this way. First of all, “praising or praising God” is not the same as “singing.” And in the context I am talking about, “Let’s sing” is much more open.
Not a single one of the church’s cultural traditions that I just mentioned was in the time of Jesus. Rather, they are the things that the church has taken in as something new. Many of the hymns have religious and devotional words over the secular melodies of the time. Perhaps the traditionalists of that day must have said, “Such a piece of music is not appropriate for worship.” We must honestly admit that it is we, not God, who want our culture and traditions to be preserved. Yet it is not the spirit of yourchurch, it is the spirit of our church.
Jesus wants to invite people of any culture or tradition just as they are, but if we love our own culture and traditions instead of Him, we are hiding Him. Cultures and traditions such as music and dress codes are not even part of the good news or the gospel that Jesus wanted to convey.
Rather than creating a secret club called Ourchurch that is hampered by these cultural traditions, we wanted to be able to tell newcomers of all backgrounds, “This is a community we have for you.” And to remember this purpose, we changed the name of our church from Lighthouse Chapel to yourchurch, back in 1997.
2. Mini-Church （Matthew18:18-２０）
“I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. “Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.”（Matthew18:18-２０）
Now, even if there is an entrance that is easy to access, it is meaningless if there is no “reasonable worship” as I talked about last Sunday. Likewise, even if there is an attractive staircase that makes you want to go up, if there are no trustworthy relationships centered on Jesus on the second floor, those who have come up will be disappointed.
That is why we have mini-churches. (mini-churches exist to prevent this from happening.) Mini-church is the dance school that functions on the second floor of yourchurch. I consider the mini-church to be the most precious of the many things Hope Chapel has brought to us. Worship is a place where we offer ourselves to God. The purpose is not to meet someone who is not God. We must look for other opportunities to love and serve one another. Minichurch is a small group of like-minded friends who meet on weekdays. In a relaxed setting, mini-church provides the healing, comfort, encouragement, and advice we need by sharing our experiences and praying for each other. We also discuss the messages received at the worship service and share ideas for applying them to our daily lives. It is the group that naturally learns to love and serve each other more concretely while getting to know each other well. If a mini-church starts volunteering outside the church, it is also doing the work of the third floor of yourchurch. If we worship in a mini-church, we can also fulfill the function of the first floor.
But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way; it is enough to fulfill the role of the second floor. Mini-church can be done at someone’s house, at Starbucks, at a family restaurant, at a McDonald’s, or even at a food court in a shopping mall.
The coronavirus has taken away many opportunities for us to spend time in the same place, but on the other hand, through this difficulty, we have created an environment where anyone can easily meet face-to-face on the Internet. It would of course be nice if we could get together somewhere, but we can also do it through a monitor. There are also fewer restrictions on location and time. You can join wherever you are going in the world. Even if you’re on the train at that time, it doesn’t matter if you’re just listening. If any of you would like to start a mini-church, please let me know and I will be happy to help.
Today I talked about the second floor of yourchurch’s three-story house parable. Next week will be the last one, and I will talk about the third floor. I have shared about the past and the present until now, next week I would like to talk about the present and the future, how we love the world and people.
(Prayer) Dear God, thank you for inviting us to be your worshippers. And thank you for joining us as your body, serving each other’s needs, and making us bearers of your work. Please let us love one another in the same way that you have been patient, merciful, forgiving, and accepting. May your love and wisdom help us to grow to be as open and intimate as you are. Hopefully and thankfully we pray in the name of Jesus Christ.
Summary
Jesus clearly puts “loving one another” as the second priority. But that intimacy, as Jesus demonstrated through His own earthly walk, is not something that makes us closed off, but rather makes us open. To live in the likeness of Jesus, it is important to follow the words of Jesus, not the culture or traditions, and to enjoy the “practice of loving” and not to neglect it.
For Discussion
1. In what sense is a church like a dance class?
2. What else can we do to keep our openness and intimacy besides mini-church?