What have we learned?

I was looking over my notes, my little records of my day-to-day activity, and I realized that on Thursday, July 14th of last year I was given a great opportunity. That day found me in my office participating in a conference call that would change my life, my ministry, and my church. The call was an informational meeting designed to give pastors and church leaders all over the country information on a little thing called 40 Days of Purpose. I was a bit anxious when I dialed in . . . but by the time I hung up I was excited. More than excited, I was enthralled, I was keyed up, energized.
I knew then that there were two paths before me: play it safe, carry on as usual, or take a risk, step out and make a bold decision. It was a decision where I wasn’t sure what the final outcome would be, a decision that would carry me—and carry you—down a new road, a road we’ve never traveled together before.
That decision, as you may have guessed, was whether or not I could commit to leading the church through a all-encompassing spiritual campaign. That decision eventually led us to this point, the final Celebration Sunday of 40 Days of Purpose: A Show of Hands. And as I looked back upon that day of my decision and the planning stages, I realized that it’s a bit like where we are today.
Today we stand upon something great. We have the opportunity to make a great step forward in the ministry God has given us to our community. And no, I can’t tell you what the final outcome will be. This is a road that we’ve never traveled together before. We’ve got a destination in mind, a dream of where we’re going, but frankly I have no idea how we are going to get there. But in the same way that God has been with us through these past forty days, He will continue to be with us as we move ahead. The lessons we learn in the future will be based upon the lessons we have learned here.
So what have we learned in these past forty days? If we’re going to move forward we need to know what our foundation looks like, so what did we learn?
Well, as first things should be first, we can turn all the way back to the beginning of Purpose-Driven Life and read the first words of the first chapter: It’s not about you. It’s not about you! It all begins with God. It ends with God. God’s in the middle. He’s our focus, our hope. There’s nothing we can do before Him and there’s nothing we can do without Him.
We learned that we have purpose in our lives, that God truly does have a plan for us. On that banner right there we read, “For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10 Who’s workmanship are we? God’s. So, those good works that He has prepared for us to do . . . who do they begin with? Christ. Our purpose—our very lives, really—is centered around Jesus Christ. Those “good works” that God has prepared for us can be summed up in His five purposes for us.
When I say the word “worship” I am saying that I was planned for God’s pleasure. Worship begins with Christ. Christ first loves me, and then I love Him back. We gather together to receive His gifts of Word and of Sacrament, because that’s where worship begins, with God working in us. But this is not the only place we worship, we also worship God wherever we go as we love Him, lean on Him, and learn from Him. Our memory verse for that week was Mark 12:30. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” See, worship is centered around this gathering, but it extends into every aspect of our lives. Worship is a lifestyle, not just an event.
When I say “fellowship”, that’s saying I’m formed for what? Right—God’s family. Who’s family? God’s family. There is only one way to get into God’s family, and that’s through Jesus Christ. Fellowship, too, begins with Christ. Do we experience Christian fellowship as we gather together in church? You bet we do! But we’re also speaking of a deliberate kind of fellowship, a fellowship that occurs in small groups. As we gathered together in those small groups we learned more about one another, didn’t we? We grew together and we grew, together.
More than that, though, Romans 12:5 says, “So in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” We have a bond to one another, a responsibility to one another. We each belong to one another. Look at someone near you and say, “I belong to you.” Fellowship is much more than just hanging out, it is truly belonging to one another in and through Christ.
You know what we just did? We just walked through a review of the first three weeks of 40 Days in just a few minutes. Three weeks . . . just like that! This stuff isn’t that hard, it’s actually pretty simple, isn’t it? Just believe upon God and respond by doing what He’s prepared for us to do.
Three weeks . . . who’s got week number four? What was week four? Discipleship. And discipleship means that I was created to become like Christ. Again, not to be Christ, but to become like Christ. Philippians 2:5, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.” Our third purpose is to have a Christ-like attitude towards all that we encounter.
Can you become like Christ all on your own? No, discipleship also begins with Christ. We need Him to live within us, to work within us, in order to become more like Him. Did you discover anything about yourself during these past 40 days that wasn’t particularly Christ-like? Something you wanted to change? I did. And I’ll tell you what; I’ve tried to change those particular behaviors before. But now, with Christ working within me, with Him developing a Christ-like attitude in my mind and in my heart, I’m finding that I now have the strength to turn those parts of my life around. Discipleship begins with Christ.
I was SHAPEd to serve God . . . what purpose does that describe? Ministry. I remember cracking some jokes that Sunday about how much I liked my wife’s shape, but let me tell you this: you each have a beautiful SHAPE. It’s beautiful because God has taken every aspect of your life in Him, your Spiritual gifts, your Heart, your Abilities, your Personality, and your Experiences, God has taken each of those and molded you into a special, one-of-a-kind person that is uniquely qualified to perform the ministry that God has given you. Our memory verse for that week was 1 Peter 4:10: “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others.” No one else can do your ministry, because no one else has your exact SHAPE. Ministry, too, begins with Christ.
What’s the fifth and final purpose God has for us? Evangelism—I was made for a mission. Can you guess who evangelism begins with? Do you know why?
World without pain is hell, parent says
Kids with rare disorder don't know they're hurting themselves
(CNN) -- When you first meet 4-year-old Roberto Salazar, you can't help but notice his unwavering smile and constant laughter. By all accounts, he's a very happy boy.
It is only when he rams his head violently into walls or plays a little too roughly with a schoolmate, all the while smiling, that you are reminded that he suffers from an incredibly rare genetic disorder.
Roberto is one of 17 people in the United States with "congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis," referred to as CIPA by the few people who know about it.
According to specialists, the levels of pain vary. “For some children it's a mild degree such as breaking a leg, they'll get up and walk on the leg. They feel that something is uncomfortable but they keep on moving," she said. "For other children, the pain loss is so severe that they can injure themselves repetitively and actually mutilate themselves because they don't know when to stop.”


If you were one of the very few people who had that disease, you would live a life in which you were literally killing yourself bit by bit . . . but you wouldn’t know it. You wouldn’t know it. You’d need someone who was there, who saw what you were going through, you’d need a doctor, a physician, to heal your sickness. It wouldn’t make a difference whether or not you knew what you were doing to yourself, you’d still be dead without someone to diagnose your illness and come up with a cure.
That’s why evangelism begins with Christ. Because the simple fact of the matter is that you and I were killing ourselves by violating God’s rules and laws, we were heaping guilt upon ourselves at every single turn, and we didn’t even realize it! And while we were still dead in our sins, God chose to make us alive in Christ. He forgave us all our sins, He looked at the rulebook and decided to re-write it, He looked at our record book and threw it away. And He did it before we could ever ask Him for it, before we even knew we needed it. Evangelism is simply telling others about Christ, but we can’t tell until we first realize what we’ve been given ourselves.

Well, there you go. There’s five big things we’ve learned. God’s five purposes for our lives and our church. We’ve learned about them, and what’s more . . . we learned we can do them. We’ve learned that we can work together to do something significant. This campaign, this 40 Days of Purpose, this wasn’t just something where we got together for an hour or so on Sunday and maybe for a bit of time during the week; we had something like forty or more people working together in team ministry to pull off all the different events, we had over 84 people meeting in weekly small groups. Twelve of those—that’s one out of seven—were people from outside the church that you invited. And we had eight team leaders working selflessly behind the scenes to bring value and benefit to others. We worked together, and together in Christ we did something really, really great. God did something great here!
So now what? What’s next for you? Now that you’ve learned your purposes, will you ever be content to letting things go back to the way they were before? I think that would be pretty hard to do. You just don’t learn the things we’ve learned and back away from them. You don’t just retreat from living what you’ve learned. We’ve not only learned about the five purposes, we’ve been doing them. So continue to live what you’ve learned! Don’t stop thinking about the five purposes, don’t stop thinking of ways you can implement them into your lives! You can continue to have a purpose-driven life, a life that fulfills it’s God-given purpose. Continue to live what you’ve learned.
And what about for us as a church? Rick Warren wrote another book, you may have heard of it, called The Purpose-Driven Church. It does for churches what Purpose-Driven Life did for you. And in Purpose-Driven Church Pastor Warren lists 10 ways for a church to be purpose driven.

Assimilate new members on purpose.
Program around your purposes.
Educate your people on purpose.
Start small groups on purpose.
Add staff on purpose.
Structure on purpose.
Preach on purpose.
Budget on purpose.
Calendar on purpose.
Evaluate on purpose.


What does this mean for Our Saviour as we complete 40 Days of Purpose: A Show of Hands? It means that we will press on on purpose. We’ll keep implementing what God has called us to do; we’ll keep implementing these five purposes into the way we do church, the way we think about church, the way we approach new ministries. It means that what we do, we do on purpose. Not haphazardly, not randomly, but each thought, each event, each plan is done purposefully and in service of the greater cause.
The five purposes aren’t just for you, they’re not just for me . . . they’re for us, as well. As we worship, as we fellowship, as we become better disciples, as we enter into ministry, and as we reach out into our community and to the ends of the earth with the saving news of a God who loves us, we’ll continue to live out what we’ve learned. We’ll continue to do it on purpose, and we’ll continue to give all the glory to Jesus Christ, because it all begins with Him. To Him be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever . . . Amen.