Hello everyone and Happy New Year's Eve from us here at Trinity Streetsville.
Here at Trinity Church Streetsville we want to share with you sermons that inspire and
encourage you in your faith journey as together we are learning to love Jesus, live like Jesus
and lead others to Jesus.
Today in this special sermon as we bring in the new year we are going to be learning about
Jesus' invitation to follow him in a new way.
And before we begin we'd like to invite you to follow our podcast, check us out on social
media and please visit our website at trinitystreetsville.org.
Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy.
God bless.
A reading from the Gospel of Mark chapter 8 beginning at verse 34.
When he called himself to the crowd, to him along with his disciples and said, whoever
wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
For whomever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for
me and for the Gospel will save it.
This is the word of the Lord.
Well I don't know if you guys remember but back on October 8th I sent you this email
and oh you don't remember it?
Oh you don't remember this email?
Does anybody still check their email anymore these days?
Yeah, well just in case you were wondering this email was actually one of the best emails
I have ever created.
It was, it had great pictures in it, it had great coloring, it had lots of buttons you
could click on and the gist of this email was, well here was the thing, right?
We had been, you know, two years since the pandemic here at Trinity, we had a whole bunch
of new people coming to church and we said you know what it's time to do?
It's time for us to reach out to some of those new folks and talk about membership and talk
about becoming an Anglican and joining the Anglican church and the Anglican community.
So we sent out this email and I was so proud of it, I was so excited.
I couldn't wait, I couldn't wait to hear from all of you, all of you, all of you to hear
about all your, you know, how excited you were to say yes I want to become a member
or yes I want to be an Anglican.
I hit send and I sat there in front of the screen and I just waited and dreamt about
all the responses that were going to come in and I sat there and it took a little while
I kept hitting refresh, refresh, refresh there, there is not much coming, not much coming
and the minutes turned into hours, me sitting in front of that screen, hours dragged on
into the evening.
My wife called, she said, Robert are you coming home for supper?
I said no, I'm doing something very important, I'm waiting for our church to respond to a
very important email and I waited and I waited, I rebooted my computer to see if that was
a problem, I plugged and unplugged the internet to see if that was a problem but you know
what I heard?
You know what you guys said?
Crickets, crickets.
Now that's not true, two of you, God bless you, this is a special place for you in heaven,
you responded to the email very, very, very keenly but most of you, most of you did not
and so what did I do?
Well I just kind of, I sank into a deep state of melancholy and I went out into the night
of Mississauga, walked down the streets, stared up at the sky and I wondered what's my purpose,
what's wrong, why don't people like me, why don't people like Trinity and but amidst all
those existential thoughts about my purpose, another question came to my mind and the question
was what's going on?
Why are people not interested in becoming members of Trinity or becoming Anglicans,
right?
Like this was a real question that I, eventually I got hungry though and I had to go home and
I did eat something and I came in the next day to work and we started talking about this
as a staff, we're like what's all that about and actually we came up with a few theories
as to what was going on.
The first theory was this, was that Anglicans are confusing, that's about the first theory
and think about it, right?
We say all these things like oh you can come and join the church through baptism, if you've
been baptized at another church you don't need to get baptized again to join Trinity,
you're already part of it or maybe you want to be confirmed to have the bishop lay hands
on you and then join the Anglican communion through confirmation, maybe that's something
you want to do, oh have you been confirmed at another church?
That's okay, you can be received by the bishop and if you've been baptized and confirmed
you can be received or maybe you just want to reaffirm your faith, that's another thing
you can do to join, there's you know of course the membership, some churches have created
like things like this is our membership covenant, this is our membership agreement, this is
our statement of faith, sign this and you can belong, who can come to communion?
We say everybody can come and share in communion but some churches are very clear, you have
to kind of do this first before you can come to communion, this is another way that people
kind of join the church, we even have an annual general meeting that we call the vestry and
at that meeting if you want to be a voting member of the meeting you just have to have
been coming to church for three months, given some money and sang some songs with us on
a Sunday morning, this is so confusing, even as I was sending you guys the email I'm like
what are we inviting people to do here, what is this all about, how are they, and so I
think that's one of my theories is the reason that you, you people, you just hit delete
on that email was because you thought this is just way too confusing, that's my first
theory, my second theory though is not just that Anglicans are confusing but that culture
is changing, right, there is, you know, back in the day things like I'm a Presbyterian
or I'm an Anglican or I'm a Roman Catholic or whatever, those things actually seem to
matter, right, people were proud and they really look forward to joining a denomination
but these days people don't care so much about brand loyalty anymore, right, and they don't
care what brand their church is either, so for example, you remember you used to see
people walking around with shirts that said this, I'd rather drive a Chevy than push a
Ford, and then there'd be other group of people who would rock around with shirts like this,
I'd rather push a Ford than drive a Chevy, it was like I'm a Ford person, that's my
brand, I'm a Chevy person, that's my brand, I'm Coke, well I'm Pepsi, errr, we hate each
other, right, or I'm Microsoft or I'm Apple or I'm AirPods and I'm Beats or whatever,
I'm VHS, I'm Betamax, right, there was like always this like, you know, people were very
proud of their brands, they stuck by their brands and the brands were very very important
but that's just not the same anymore, there's like three studies that I read this past week
and they're saying one study said 57% of Gen Z less loyal to brands now since the pandemic
began mostly that's because of a shift in the economy, second one said that 33% of everyone
else are not loyal to brands anymore, that means we're happy to shop around and get whatever,
wherever, and then the third study says that 77% of Gen Z are now willing to try any brand,
a new brand, what, whatever, now I don't know if you guys have heard of this but I've seen
this in my own house, have you guys ever heard of dupes, you guys know what dupes are, no
we never, so dupes, a dupe is short for duplicate, okay, and a duplicate is a cheaper version
of an expensive brand name product and it's increasingly popular among young shoppers,
right, so they give you the experience of having this luxury product but it's a fake,
it's a knockoff, it's a fake, but people don't care anymore, right, so for example, you can
get dupes in clothing, you can get dupes in accessories, you can get dupes in electronics,
so you could go and spend $250 to get the real AirPods but people don't really care
so much about the brand name these days, as long as it looks the same and as long as it
works they'll spend $30 instead, in fact these days bragging rights go to the person who's
got the best dupes, so if you spent $400 on custom Air Force ones you got fleeced man,
you could have got them for $50 and got deep dupes and nobody would know the difference,
in fact this Christmas we gave my niece a sweater that she asked for for Christmas and my daughter
walked over to me and she said, dad, that sweater is $250 and I said, not even close, not even close,
it was a dupe, it was a fake, right, but the same is true actually when it comes to church loyalty,
people are not loyal to a certain church or a certain denomination anymore and this article says
good for them, so the whole I'm Anglican, I'm not Catholic, I'm Methodist, I'm Brethren,
I'm Presbyterian, it's not so much a thing anymore, those boundaries are all evaporating,
what people are looking for it seems is just some place where they can identify that kind of fits
them, where they have community, they can experience this life giving, so here's a quick question,
how many of you here today, I'm just curious, legitimately curious, grew up in the Anglican
church, just curious, okay, how many of you did not know that you were actually sitting in an
Anglican church this morning? Okay, I'm telling you what happened, how many of you know what this is?
Okay, right, because if you're a die-in-the-wall hardcore Anglican you will know this is the 1959
book of common prayer, right, so there are some, but I'm telling you, even Trinity even took the
word Anglican out of our logo and out of our sign some years ago and I think it's because they said
you know what, people are not coming here for the brand, they're not coming here because I want to
be an Anglican, they're coming here for something else and I want to let you know though because in
case the bishop's listening, yes, I think it is very important that we are part of the Anglican
church, being part of a bigger denomination, I actually, I really do, and I'm honest, I do
appreciate the accountability, the structure, we're not on our own, we're not on our own,
that's great, but for most of us it just doesn't matter and so people say that now we're living in
this different world, it's a post-denominational world, less concerned about those doctrinal
differences and those doctrinal distinctives, what do Anglicans believe about pre-millennialism,
are Anglicans post-trib, are they pre-trib, are they mid-trib, most of you are like what is a
trib, right, exactly, that's my point, the emphasis is now on finding a spirituality,
not a religious label, and these days people can find all that just actually online, you can listen
to a great sermon from Atlanta, wonderful worship music from the UK, and be part of a Bible study
based out of Australia, and you could do that all from the comfort of your own home all at the same
time, so maybe that is why people like you, like you, are not into membership, being Anglicans,
and so on and so forth, because we're just disinterested in brands these days, so then
that doesn't solve my problem though, what do we do then, what do we do, what do we do with all the
new folks here, what does joining a church even mean, who's in, who's out, and does it matter,
ah, well it was at this moment I had a flashback, I had a flashback to like three years ago when I
was sitting in Tyndale University at one of my doctoral courses, and I was listening, trying to
listen to the professor, Morar Murray-Hays, and it was about four o'clock in the afternoon, I was
getting very sleepy, I was kind of staring out the window, and I was kind of getting, and then
Professor Morar Murray-Hays said, I want to talk to you guys about social set theory, and I said,
this is my cue to go to sleep, this is my cue to take a nap, but then at that moment the Holy Spirit
slapped me across the face and said, Rob, do not fall asleep at this moment, because this is actually
going to be really important, and so I stayed awake, and actually it's true, it was really important.
Here's what I learned that day when I nearly fell asleep, that there are actually a number of ways
of understanding things like membership, and who's included and who's not included. The first model
of social set theory is what you might call a bounded set, a bounded set, so don't fall asleep
right now, some of you guys are falling asleep because this looks like totally boring, but Holy
Spirit slapped you across the face and keep you awake this morning, okay. A bounded set model says,
you know you're part of a group because you have clearly crossed some kind of boundary or some kind
of rule that tells you you are part of the group, so a church might say, you are in because you're
baptized, you are in because you're confirmed, or you are in because you've taken our membership
class and you've signed our doctrine of faith statement or whatever, right, you've got these
specific beliefs, these specific doctrines, the practices, you are in. If you align, if you align
with the group and you cross the line, then you're included, and if you don't align, then you are
excluded. Now churches that operate this way really value the idea that you must conform to the norm,
and as a result, often churches that operate on a bounded set are not very diverse, they don't have
a lot of inclusion of outsiders. Maybe actually some of you have been part of churches like this
before or other organizations where it's very clear who is in and who is out and what you had to do
to get in and out, but Professor Morar Murray Hayes said at about 4 30, there is another way to
understand who's in and who's out in membership, and another set theory is what they call the
centered set, a centered set. Now in this model, there is no hard line about who's in and who's
out. Instead, what matters is the orientation, the orientation and the direction of movement
of the various members of the group, right, so what it does is it says, are you pointed toward
the center point? Okay, are you moving in the direction of the center point? Then you're part
of the group, not because you crossed any line, there's no line to cross, but because you're
oriented and you're moving in that direction, and so Professor Morar Murray Hayes got me thinking,
how did Jesus understand membership? I mean, when Jesus created a community around himself, did he
do it in a bounded set way? There's very clear lines about who's in and who's out, or did he do
it in a centered set way that people could be part of the group, even if they were all over the place
and in different places and different distances from the middle? I think it's very safe to say
that for Jesus, he followed the center set approach. Jesus emphasized a central focus,
and for Jesus, that central focus was usually the kingdom of God. He said, align yourself
with the kingdom of God, move in the direction of the kingdom of God, move in this direction of
love, move in the direction of forgiveness, move in the direction of peace, move in the direction
of faith, and that makes you part of Jesus's family, right, not some external boundary or rule,
but because you've turned, and now you were moving in his direction. That's why Jesus was able to
welcome sinners and outcasts and those marginalized by the society, because he didn't rigidly exclude
individuals based on their status or their background or their past. Rather, he invited all
to transform your orientation, to transform the direction of your movement. So face a new direction,
Jesus would say, move in a new direction. Jesus would invite, follow a new way. This model is
beautiful because it actually assumes that everybody is somewhere in relation to Jesus.
Now, I want to get this straight. Jesus also did speak about repentance, and he talked about faith,
and he talked about obedience, right? There were times when Jesus did talk about these things,
and that is important, but what mattered most was not your proximity to the middle,
your proximity to Jesus. What mattered most was your orientation and your direction.
After all, and we know this, you've probably even seen this in churches. You can have people
who are very close to the center, but are actually, if you look at their life and what they're doing,
they're actually moving and pointed in a very different direction. And on the other hand, you
can have people who are far away from the center, but actually they are pointed toward Jesus and
moving in his direction. So, so, so what does all this mean? This has got me thinking. What does this
mean for our church? What does this mean for our church? Well, what is a centered set church look
like? A centered set church knows that conformity to a set of beliefs or behaviors is less important
than whether a person is moving towards Jesus. A centered set church, a Jesus centered church,
is more concerned about your heart, the direction of your affection, rather than your external
behavior or location. Because center set churches realize that discipleship is a process.
It's a process moving from where you are to where you are headed. And center set churches
realize that people come to Jesus from all sorts of different places and all sorts of different
directions. And this has really got me thinking now about some of those Bible verses that I knew
off by heart, but now I seem to understand them in a whole different way. Like when that thief on
the cross says to Jesus, says, Hey, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. And Jesus says,
today you will be with me in paradise. Well, how is that possible? This thief, this brigand,
how is he promised to be in Jesus's a paradisical kingdom when he didn't get baptized and he didn't
take the membership class? Why? Because what happened in that moment was his heart reoriented
toward Jesus. And that was all that was mattered. And now he belonged or once a Roman centurion,
which is like a Roman soldier, right? Who was the enemy came to Jesus because his servant was sick
and he wanted Jesus to heal the servant. And Jesus was so impressed with his faith that he says,
I've never seen anybody in all Israel with faith like this. Well, how could that be? He didn't have
the right religion. He didn't have the right background or pedigree, but now he belonged. Why?
Because he had oriented his life toward this Jesus. Jesus was now at the center.
And it's true that there were some disciples who were definitely very close to the middle,
very close to Jesus. And there was the 12 and then even within the 12, there was the three,
Peter, James and John were said to be even closer to Jesus, but that didn't necessarily mean
anything because Judas was also one of the ones who was very close to the center. Yet he was clearly
pointing and moving in a different direction. In fact, Jesus had lots of people around him. He had
the three, he had the 12, he had crowds were told women followed him all over the place that he was
always mixing with different communities of people. There was this constant intersection of people
coming and going and coming nearer to the center and going further from the center. So I think in
short, all this boils down for me is this, okay? Jesus invitation was not to convert to a new
religion or join a new denomination, but to follow him in a new way of life.
Jesus walks along the seashore. He says, come follow me. And so what do Simon and Andrew do?
They point their hearts in a new direction. They move their feet one step even in that direction.
And now they are included, right? Another time he saw this man called Levi. He is a tax collector.
He's far from God. People detest tax collectors. Come follow me. Jesus says, and he followed him.
His heart has been oriented. He has begun a journey and now he is included. Or how about our reading
today? Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up the cross and follow me.
Whenever the cross, just like in that picture, becomes the center point of your life and you're
oriented or pointed toward that cross, then you're included. It doesn't matter what you do.
It doesn't matter whether you're near or far. You're included and salvation has come because of the
direction and orientation of your life. So belonging to the Jesus movement was not about
crossing a milestone or taking a course or signing an agreement. It was about walking in a certain,
this is an important word, way. Word ways important. Listen, when Paul was hunting down
Christians to persecute them, he didn't call them Christians. He said they were followers of the way.
People who were moving in a certain way, in a certain Jesusy direction. When Christians caused a riot,
an ethicist, they weren't called Christians. They were called the way because there was this thing
that set them apart and that was the direction and trajectory of their lives. Akilah and Priscilla
described Jesus as the way of God. In Hebrews 10, the writer called Jesus a new and living way.
And Paul, or Peter rather, refers to Christianity as the way of truth. So again, I want to say this
again and pay attention. Jesus' invitation was not to convert to a new religion or join a new
denomination, but it was to follow him in a new way of life. So that got me thinking about how we
do things here at Trinity and especially when it comes to membership and being an Anglican and all
that stuff. And I haven't got this quite right, but I want to end by just sharing, I think here's
where we're going to go from here when it comes to all that stuff. Instead of a bounded set here at
Trinity, what if we acted as a Jesus centered set? Instead of talking about doctrines and
distinctives, what if we instead talked about desire and direction? Instead of encouraging
people to become members, what if we encouraged and helped people become followers? And instead
of pushing people across some line, what if we just pointed them in the direction of Jesus and
then gave them a little nudge maybe as well? Well, today I want to introduce kind of this new approach
that we are going to get rid of the membership language and we're going to talk about the way
of Jesus at Trinity. Are we still Anglican? Yes. Is the bishop still coming on February 11th? Yes,
please be here. Are we still going to do things like baptism and confirmation? Yes, but we are
changing our approach. For those of you who are new to Trinity, whether it's you've been here a
month or you've been here two years, we don't want to invite you to become members. And we aren't
going to force you to become Anglicans. Instead, we want to invite you to do three things. We want
to invite you to follow the way, to practice the way and live the way. So following the way of
Jesus, just like Jesus invited people to follow him, we want to invite you to follow him. And just
like Jesus offered people a way of life, we want to invite you to follow the way of Jesus with us
here at Trinity streets. But whether you are really close to Jesus or whether you're really far, and
this is a brand new idea, you are invited to follow. Whether you're a church person or not a
church person, you're invited to follow. And for us here at Trinity, we've already kind of figured
out what following Jesus looks like. For us, it means loving Jesus, spending time with Jesus,
maybe developing a relationship with him. That's how we follow. It means learning from Jesus,
which is about studying the scriptures, maybe on our own, but maybe also in groups. It's about
living like Jesus. It's about modeling our spiritual life after Jesus own spiritual life.
And it's about leading others to Jesus, which means sharing the love of God with others in your
everyday life. So if you're here and if you're new, if you're from another church and you're used to
things like membership classes, instead, we just want to invite you. Let's follow the way of Jesus
together by loving him, learning from him, living like him and leading others to him. Or
or like I said, maybe you've got no church background and you just want to turn your heart
in this direction. Then we want you to follow with us too. There's no dividing line. It's my hope that
actually every few months we're going to be inviting people up onto this platform, onto the stage and
welcoming them, not into membership, welcoming them, not into Anglicanism, but welcoming people
who have said, yes, I want to orient my life in the way of Jesus and follow him with you here at
Trinity. So I want to share just a couple of dates with you, a couple of dates with you.
In the last two years, if you're new, we want to invite you to discover more about how to follow
Jesus. We're going to have a little class we're going to run on February 7th at 7 p.m. where you
can discover more about the way of Jesus, loving Jesus, learning from him, living like him and
leading others to him. And then on February 18th, we're going to have our very first, hopefully the
first of many, many celebrations where we welcome those who are joining the way of Jesus with us
here at Trinity. And especially because it's the first time we're doing it, we want to invite those
again who are new to Trinity in the last couple years. You can register for both these events on
our event page. And I want to say you don't need to attend the discovery workshop in order to
participate in the celebration on February 18th. But we would like you to register for the 18th for
sure. And I would recommend coming out on the 7th if you can to learn more and talk more about
following the way of Jesus here at Trinity. That's the first thing. The second thing I wanted to say
is that we're also going to be kicking off in 2024. The first of our classes that we're going to be
calling practicing the way of Jesus. Just so you know, a spiritual practice is some kind of exercise,
a spiritual exercise that forms our thoughts and our actions in the way of Jesus. Some examples of
spiritual practices, things like Sabbath and prayer and reading scripture and fasting and solitude
and all that kind of stuff. We want to throughout the years ahead really drill down deep onto some
of these practices because we want to live like Jesus. And Jesus did these kind of things. So on
that note, we're going to be holding our first four week course on our first practice happening
this lent. It's going to be beginning on February 21st and running to March 13th. And it's going to
be a beautiful four week course on the topic of Sabbath in our era of chronic exhaustion and
emotional unhealth and spiritual stagnation. Few things are more necessary than a recovery of this
ancient practice of Sabbath. So you can also register for that on our events page. You're going
to hear more about that in the weeks ahead. And finally, I'm not going to say too much about this
now, but coming in the spring and the summer of 2024, we are going to create an intentional
community here at Trinity where people who feel called to live this way of Jesus with the support
of others, with two or three others who can pray with you and encourage you. There's going to be
this exciting partnership that we're going to be talking about in the weeks ahead. I won't say more
about it now, but we're, if you put them all together, what do you got? We're going to talk
about following the way of Jesus, practicing the way of Jesus and living the way of Jesus.
It's all a new way of doing things for a new year at Trinity. So I'm going to take a chance this week.
I'm going to send out a new email and I'm going to invite you in 2024, especially those of you who
are here new in the last two years to follow the way with us, practice the way with us and to live
the way of Jesus with us here at Trinity, whoever you are, wherever you are, you're invited and you're
included as we orient our lives around this amazing Jesus and we move in his direction.
Thanks be to God. Amen. Thank you so much for joining us today and we hope that whether you
are far or near to Jesus, that you find yourself encouraged to orient and direct yourself toward
Jesus to be the center of your life. Happy New Year's everyone and we'll see you in 2024.
Today's sermon was taken from the December 31st, 2023 sermon at Trinity Church Streetsville in
Mississauga, Ontario.