Sermon Tone Analysis

Is Church meant to be a Carnival Cruise or an Aircraft Carrier?

Some believe it to be the cruise liner.

Can this church improve my religious quality of life?

Does it have good family ministry facilities?

Does the pastor preach funny, time-conscious messages that meet my felt needs?

Do I like the music?”

These are Carnival Cruise questions.

If their church ever ceases to cater to their preferences . . .

well, there are plenty of other cruise ships in the harbor.

In fact, often they get involved with three or four of them at once.

After all, the music is great on Cruise Liner A, and the kids enjoy the youth program at Cruise Liner B, and we do most of our fellowship and Bible study with friends at Cruise Liner C, and we occasionally listen to the podcast of the angry young pastor down the road who tells the funny stories.

Greear, J.D.. Gaining By Losing (Exponential Series) (p.

27).

Zondervan.

Kindle Edition.

Does this sound like a cruise liner?

What you win them with, you will keep them with.

Other Christians believe their church is more like a battleship.

The church is made for mission, and its success should be seen in how loudly and dramatically it fights the mission.

This is certainly better than the “cruise liner”; however, it implies that it is the church institution that does most of the fighting.

The role of church members is to pay the pastors to find the targets and fire the guns each week as they gather to watch.

They see the programs, services, and ministries of the church as the primary instruments of mission.

Does this sound like a battleship?

Greear, J.D.. Gaining By Losing (Exponential Series) (p.

28).

Zondervan.

Kindle Edition.

Remember our Coach vs. Star Player conversation from Discipleshift.

The church should be more like an aircraft carrier.

Aircraft carriers equip planes to carry the battle elsewhere.

Greear, J.D.. Gaining By Losing (Exponential Series) (p.

28).

Zondervan.

Kindle Edition.

Root bound

An Aircraft Carrier cannot be root bound.

When you are on an aircraft carrier, he said, the goal is to keep the battle as far away from you as possible.

You load up the planes to carry the battle to the enemy.

Greear, J.D.. Gaining By Losing (Exponential Series) (p.

28).

Zondervan.

Kindle Edition.

Churches that want to “prevail against the gates of hell” must learn to see themselves like aircraft carriers, not like battleships and certainly not like cruise liners.

One iceberg sunk the titanic and ended the voyage.

One well targeted round can sink a battleship.

No single threat can destroy the onslaught of the Aircraft Carrier.

Why?

Because not all the planes are on board.

Stick of dynamite

Churches that want to penetrate their world with the gospel think less about the Sunday morning bang and more about equipping their members to blast a hole in the mountain of lostness.

-Greear, J.D.. Gaining By Losing (Exponential Series) (p.

29).

Zondervan.

Kindle Edition.

Greear, J.D.. Gaining By Losing (Exponential Series) (p.

29).

Zondervan.

Kindle Edition.

Why the Future Belongs to Churches That Send

1. Increasingly, in a “post-Christian” society, unbelievers will simply not make their way into our churches, no matter how “attractive” we make them.

For years, the Western church has enjoyed a common Christian language with the culture through which we could communicate the gospel.

Working with a Jehovah’s Witness

Steve Timmis cites a recent study in Great Britain in which 70 percent of Brits declare that they have no intention of ever attending a church service for any reason.

Not at Easter.

Not for marriages.

Not for funerals or Christmas Eve services.

For more than two-thirds of the people in Great Britain, nothing will carry them naturally into a church.

In light of this, Steve comments:

That means new styles of worship will not reach them.

Fresh expressions of church will not reach them.

Alpha and Christianity Explored courses will not reach them.

Great first impressions will not reach them.

Churches meeting in pubs will not reach them. . . .

The vast majority of un-churched and de-churched people would not turn to the church, even if faced with difficult personal circumstances or in the event of national tragedies.

It is not a question of “improving the product” of church meetings and evangelistic events.

It means reaching people apart from meetings and events.

We need to load up the planes not the pews.

Greear, J.D.. Gaining By Losing (Exponential Series) (pp.

30-31).

Zondervan.

Kindle Edition.

This means that if we don’t equip our people to carry the gospel outside of our meetings, our events, our gatherings and programs, we are going to lose all audience with them.

Greear, J.D.. Gaining By Losing (Exponential Series) (p.

31).

Zondervan.

Kindle Edition.

2. Multiplication beats out addition, every time.

Perhaps you can remember this math conundrum from middle school:

If you have a choice between receiving $10,000 a day for 30 days, or getting $0.01 doubled each day, which would you choose?

Almost every middle school student chooses “$10,000 a day” — because . . .

think about what you could buy by the end of the week!

$70,000 is enough to buy ten PS4s gaming stations with accompanying widescreen TVs . . .

and enough left over for a used BMW!

And in thirty days, you’d have $300,000!

But your math teacher probably pointed out to you that choosing $10,000 a day instead of $0.01 doubled daily would leave about 10 million dollars on the table.

Doubling your penny daily, however, would net you $10,737,418.23 in thirty days!

In four months you’d have $13,292,279,957,849,158,729,038,070,602,803,364, compared to only $1.2 million if you had taken on the $10,000 a day.

Multiplication always beats addition.

One Boat can launch an attack one at a time, but one Aircraft Carrier can launch multiple attacks.

Many churches still pursue success via the “$10,000 a day” model.

Tell aspiring megachurch pastor Bob that you have a program by which he can add 1,000 people a month to his church for ten years straight, and he will likely faint with joy.

Before the first year is done, he will be invited to speak at conferences all over the nation, and Christian magazines will have his face splashed across their front covers.

Leaders would line up around the block to buy his books and have him sign their Bibles.

Yet if Pastor Bob trains up just one person each year to lead another to Christ, who in turn trains another person who leads another person, and they each do that for thirty years, by year 30 they will have won nearly a billion more people than he would have by adding 1,000 people every month.

But here’s the rub: Netting $10,000 a day feels much more gratifying — at least at first — than getting $0.01 doubled during that first week.

If you choose the doubled $0.01 route, after a week you would only have about $2, whereas your friend who chose $10,000 would be bouncing about town with $70,000 in his pocket.

He’d be placing a down payment on a new beach house, and you’d still be living in your parents’ basement.

In the same way, focusing on attendance growth — adding 1,000 people a year — feels much more gratifying to church leaders.