Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome

Good Morning!

I’d like to welcome you all to the last gathering of Ephesus Baptist Church in this decade, our last gathering of 2019!

Why have we gathered for the past 10 years, really, I should ask, “Why have we gathered since August 14, 1880?”

Why do we continue to gather today?

We gather to worship and exalt the name of our good and loving Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, our risen King.

Today, provides us another opportunity to fall more in love with Jesus Christ as we seek to follow Him in discipleship.

If you are visiting with us this morning, we want you to who we are here at Ephesus...

We are all one family of faith: “giving our all to love God, love people, proclaim Jesus, and make disciples in our generation.”

That is our mission, our purpose, why we exist as a church.

We have a connect card in the pew in front of you.

I invite you to take one and fill it out!

If you have prayer needs, you can let us know about those as well.

I promise, our prayer team will lift you up soon.

You can place those cards in the offering plate when it comes around.

Church, I want today to be a day of celebration!

Later in the service, I want to provide you an opportunity to look back and rejoice at what God has done in 2019, then I want us to look forward into what God can do in 2020 through us!

Who’s Your One?

Scripture Memory

Opening Scripture Reading

Opening Prayer

Time of Celebration

Allow members a few minutes in the service to celebrate what God has done over the past year.

Introduction

Welcome to the last few days of 2019!

Not only is this the last few days of 2019, it is also the last few days of the second decade of the 21st century.

Our nation has experienced a roller coaster of activity over the last 10 years.

The 2010’s were truly a wild ride!

Because of this roller coaster of activity, people are left with a tremendous amount of uncertainty in what lies ahead in the 2020’s and beyond.

Of course the biggest response to these uncertain times is fear.

When life gets hard, fear checks in!

Many people are digging in, and locking into survivor mode.

They are cutting their costs and crossing their fingers and lying low.

They are stockpiling food, water, and ammunition in anticipation that they will need those supplies to survive the coming apocalypse.

Others are trying to have as much fun as they can while they can, because they too fear the future.

We live in a society with no hope.

Still others, like young Greta Thunberg, a 16 year old environmental activist with Asperger's are living in fear of the world literally dying before with them on it.

Again, life without hope!

The truth is, many of us have low expectations for the New Year.

If we can just get by, that would be fine.

We will be happy to simply survive this year.

Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation” published in the scientific journal Psychological Review, presented what has now become known as “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.”1

Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs consisted of what he believed to be the 5 levels of human needs.

Often portrayed as a pyramid with the largest, most fundamental needs at the bottom and working upward to self-actualization.

From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are:

1. physiological (food, air, water, shelter, clothing, sleep),

2. safety (personal security, employment, resources, health, property),

3. love and belonging (connection, friendship, family, intimacy),

4. esteem (recognition, respect, strength, freedom),

5. self-actualization (becoming the best person one can possibly be).

In other words, the crux of the theory is that individuals’ most basic needs have to be met before they become motivated to grow and achieve higher level needs.

The point Maslow was making was that our most basic level of need has to do with survival: breathing, food, water, sleep and so on.

When you are constantly seeking only to survive, you are at the bottom of the “need chain.”

I would argue that this is where many of us live the majority of our lives.

What goes for individuals applies to institutions, including the church.

That same attitude has crept into many churches over the past several decades.

Churches have gone into survival mode.

What does survival mode look like?

Here are five signs:

1. Success is measured solely by numbers.

Butt’s in the seats.

It’s okay to take tabs of and keep records of attendance, it is even okay to celebrate growing attendance, but when the numbers become the end-all of measuring the health of a congregation, we know we’ve veered off into the wrong kind of thinking, survival mode thinking.

2. Ministry is determined by budget.

Bills in the Budget.

I will be the first to admit that paying our bills is important, but when our ministry involvement is determined by the bottom line, survival mode has set in.

When decisions become more about what is best for the church at hand than about reaching those outside for Christ, survival mode has set in.

And when survival is our key motivation, the church stops advancing the Kingdom of Christ and settles for less than Jesus ever called her to be.

3. Buildings take a priority!

We need nice buildings, but when our buildings become the focus of our ministry resources and identity, we have again slipped into survival mode.

4. Old methods are the methods of choice.

There were many great methods used in the church in decades past, methods like the Training Union, programs, and various visitation models.

Instead of lamenting their loss, our time is better spent in creating alternatives that fit today’s culture without compromising our faith.

Holding to tightly to the past is a symptom of being in survival mode.

We have lost our ambition, creativity, and drive for serving Christ in our world.

5. Rules become more important than relationships.

Jesus is the best model we have.

He did not come to bolster the religious institutions of His day; He came to restore our relationship with God and with others.

By building strong relationships with those he met, especially those in need of what he had to give them; namely, a grace that was unlike anything they had known.

He loved humanity so much because of His relationship with us that He was willing to die for us!

The church that does not follow His example becomes mired in survival mode.

Thankfully, we don’t have to stay in survival mode.

We can move from surviving to thriving!

This is what our first sermon series in 2020, “WE WERE CREATED TO THRIVE,” is going to be about.

We’ll be looking at the acronym THRIVE to get a practical handle on how to move from surviving to thriving at God’s house and your house.

It will be centered upon the teaching of Jesus found in John 10:10.

I want to note two quick observations from this verse.

1. Christ came that humanity may have life!

All of humanity in our natural state are under the sentence of death due to the sin nature infecting our souls.

Apart from the work of Christ, we are all under the penalty of execution and eternal torment in Hell.

As sons of Adam, not one of us,

no matter how religious we are,

no matter how wealthy we are,

no matter how benevolent or good we are,

no matter how smart we are,

not one of us can escape the penalty sin has placed upon us on our own.

The only hope we have is in the promise of Jesus Christ.

He came that we may have life through His act of forgiveness, as His forgiveness, grace, and mercy were on full display at His crucifixion.

Every person among us must face that penalty of endless death, unless we go through Him who came to earth and hung upon the cross of Calvary as our substitute, the perfect Lamb of God, and obtain full remission for all our offences, and receive the verdict of life instead of death.

Jesus Christ came to call us from our graves of sin.

Many have already heard His voice and live.