Sermon (March 11) - "Unbinding Your Heart: Catalytic Conversations"

A church used to have this as their web site address: www.transformedlives.com.  It’s a church that is growing and baptizing increasing numbers of adults into the Christian faith.

Their pastor asks for only one report at every meeting. He asks

one question at staff meeting, board meeting, and any other kind of meeting. The question is: tell me one life that has been changed this week because of our ministry.

Remember how you and I have given each other permission to put prayer

above other priorities during this series? At that particular church, their priority is transformed lives. They believe the main message of the gospel is that Jesus Christ changes lives. It's what they are all about.

Jesus certainly changed the life of the woman at the well. She came to the well at the hottest time of day, when no one else would have been there. Many have speculated about why she came at such a lonely time.

Maybe she had a bad reputation for being divorced 5 times. Maybe all of those husbands had died. Maybe it was grief. Maybe it was shame. But something kept her isolated that day. Who knows what? All we know for sure is she was alone that day. She would not have expected to have company at the well at that hour.

But Jesus was there when she got there. And he talked to her. Not just a simple "hello" as he passed by. It was the longest of any of Jesus’ conversations recorded in the gospels.

Jesus started out by making small talk. He merely asked the woman for a

drink of water. But that one request broke down barriers that had existed for centuries. Just a few simple words between a Jewish man and a Samaritan woman violated social and religious rules about interactions between men and women and ethnic groups.

Once the barriers were down, the flood waters of conversation flowed. Jesus and the woman talked. They talked about spiritual thirst. They discussed her marriages. They talked politics and religion.

By the time the conversation ended, Jesus told her he was the Messiah. The woman was so moved by their conversation, she ran off. She went to tell her whole village about Jesus. She even left her water jug! She forgot her original purpose in coming to the well. She left with a new purpose. Jesus changed her life.

This woman once isolated herself from others. Now she went searching for people. She wanted to tell the world about what Jesus had done for her. What had Jesus done for her?  

In other gospel stories, Jesus did some pretty amazing stuff for people. He healed diseases. He gave people sight. He raised the dead.

 All he did here was talk to a woman. He reached out across cultural barriers to have a conversation. In that conversation, both Jesus and the woman revealed something about themselves to each other. In this, somehow, the woman was deeply transformed. "He knows everything about me!" she exclaimed to her neighbors.

A self-proclaimed liberal church held a class on World Religions. Their goal was to study the major religions of the world and compare them to Christianity. Someone in the class had a co-worker who was a Muslim man. She asked if the class would like her co-worker to come when they talked about Islam. Everyone enthusiastically agreed.

They thought it would be very helpful to have a firsthand expression of that faith.  One class member summed up the class' feelings by saying, "Please invite him. Tell him we don't want to convert him, we want to learn from him."

Kamal, the Muslim man, did come to the class. He spoke for a while about his faith. Then class members asked him questions. Soon, he was asking class members questions about faith. They hadn't planned on that! By the time class was over, they had discussed many things.

They talked about traditional Muslim dress. They talked about arranged marriages. They talked about why Christians pray "in Jesus' name." They talked about how Kamal felt when people treated him with suspicion. No one seemed to want the time to end. Then a class member said, "Could we have a prayer together?" They all agreed. The class circled, held hands, and prayed.

When the prayer was finished, Kamal had tears in his eyes. He told the class: "I have never felt God's love this strongly before. I cannot wait to tell my friends about this. We didn't know there were Christians like you."

It was just conversation. But it changed his life. It changed the lives of everyone in that classroom. Just conversation! God's power can make genuine conversation into a life-changing experience.

In the book we're all reading together, Unbinding your Heart, the author's research shows what brings people to church and what makes them stay.

What do you think brings people to church for the first time? Great sermons, good ads, beautiful buildings?

Nope. It's you. Almost 60% of people who join a church came because someone invited them. 60 percent! People come to church because someone asks them to come.

And what makes them come back? What makes them want to come again? Surely it's the pastor's fabulous sermons or the music program or the updated children's wing.

No. It's you. The number one reason people say they return to a church is because they received a warm welcome from the people there. Those others things are important, but they are not the main thing. The main thing is whether or not someone said hello to them, or remembered their children’s names, or went out of their way to get them a bulletin. New people can tell if the congregation actually cares about them.

Do you think this was the miraculous thing Jesus did for the woman at the well? Just conversation? Just caring? Yes, God's power can make genuine conversation into a life-changing experience.

Marta came to church because a couple she knew invited her. She had been cleaning their house for about a year. One day, the couple struck up a conversation with her.

They asked her if she had any family in town. She told them she had moved here to escape an abusive husband. She was raising her two boys on her own. Her own parents had died years ago. On impulse, the couple invited her to their church.

At first, she declined. She said she didn't have the proper clothes. "Oh, come casual!" the couple said, "We do! We’ll meet you at church about 10:30. Then we’ll take you and your boys to lunch afterwards."

They looked for her the following Sunday. Sure enough, she slipped in just after the service started. She had her boys in tow. They joined her on the back row.

The sermon that Sunday was on the woman at the well. Marta sat at attention through the whole service. The couple that had invited her kept her boys busy with crayons and bulletin airplanes. Marta was entranced.

When the sermon was over, she turned to the couple and said, "That story was for me. That woman at the well is me! I have been so alone!" As people greeted Marta warmly after the service, she beamed at the attention. Afterward, she commented to the couple who had invited her, "This is like a family!"

You know someone like Marta. You know people who need Jesus and this church in their lives. You know someone who needs a changed life.

In your bulletin you’ll find an invitation.  It’s an invitation to join us for Sunday worship and Sunday School, as well as several other events coming up in the life of our church.   We could just put this in the newspaper. But that wouldn't be nearly as effective as giving it to you.

All you need to do is pray over it and wait for God to compel you to give it to someone. Just hand it to someone.  Ask, "Would you like to come to my church with me this Sunday? I’ll pick you up and then we can go out for lunch together afterwards."

Yesterday, I invited two people to our church.  I had one of these invitations with me so I handed it to a nice lady who waited on me at a store here in town.  All I said was that I attended First United Methodist Church and to come join us sometime.  I wish you could have seen the look on her face.  She smiled and thanked me for the invitation.

I invited another lady and she said that she would need transportation but I told her that we offered transportation on Sunday mornings.  Who knows what a difference these little conversations and invitations might have?

It's really terrifying for people who don't go to a church to go in those doors with all the weird, holy people. They're scared to death. How would you feel walking into an AA meeting? Ever done that? It's about the same degree of threat.

Your invitation to be with them makes it so much less scary. This invitation and a little conversation is your ticket to changing someone's life.

After Jesus talked with the Samaritan woman, he preached to his disciples. He said to them, "Look around you! People are so ready for the gospel! All you have to do is bring them in."

Look around you. Who are you going to invite to church next

Sunday? Will you go and pick them up? Take them to lunch afterwards? Introduce them to a group of friends?

This week, talk to someone you’ve never talked to before. Or, talk to someone you chat with all the time, but this time, talk about your faith. You could start a conversation that will change someone’s life.

______________________________________________________________________________

Based on the resource, "Unbinding the Gospel: Real Life Evangelism," Chalice Press, 2008