Summary 

American Christianity has often reflected the surrounding culture, sometimes beautifully and sometimes tragically What should actually shape Christian ministry? When Jesus sent out the twelve disciples in Mark 6, He provided a clear blueprint for authentic ministry. First, ministry is fundamentally about healing - both spiritual and physical. Jesus gave His disciples authority over unclean spirits because our brokenness often has spiritual roots that require spiritual solutions. Christian ministry must address practical needs like helping with bills or teaching English to immigrants, but it becomes distinctly Christian when it also addresses underlying spiritual realities. Second, ministry involves preaching repentance - calling people to turn from paths leading away from God toward lives lived in relationship with Him. This happens not just in dramatic conversions but in everyday conversations where we lovingly challenge harmful behavior and encourage faithfulness to Jesus. Jesus also showed His disciples how to minister effectively. He sent them out two by two, emphasizing that ministry happens in community rather than as a solo endeavor. He instructed them to take minimal provisions, teaching dependence on God rather than human resources and control. The disciples succeeded because they had spent time soaking in Jesus, watching Him preach and heal. For our ministry to reflect Christ rather than culture, we must constantly immerse ourselves in who Jesus is through His Word, prayer, and fellowship with other believers..

Transcript

Let's pray again. Lord God, thank you for your word. Thank you that you have given it to us and you have used it throughout your world to bring many repentance into faith. Lord, your word goes out with power. It's like a seed that is tossed out.

And Lord, today we pray, looking back on that parable from a few chapters earlier, that we would be fertile soil, we would bear fruit, keep with repentance, God, that we wouldn't be like hard ground, but we would be fertile. That your word would be planted within us and that we would bear the fruit of living with Christ and being indwelt with the Holy Spirit. God bless. Bless your word now as we give our attention to it. In your name we pray.

Amen.

Okay, so I read this sentence this week. American Christianity wears the history of the United States on its congregations. American Christianity wears the history of the United States on its congregations. It's almost like a garment in a way that you can see it when you look. I thought this was just a really interesting statement.

And initially I read that and I wondered, I wonder, what does that mean? What's that look like? And I thought, of course, of the 17th century History of the Puritans and the Congregationalists up in New England. And I thought of the role of the. Particularly the Methodist riders, oftentimes given just a Bible and a horse and sent out west with western expansion.

I thought, my wife is from Louisiana, of the Catholic influence and the Catholic history there in Louisiana, where counties are not counties, they are parishes. I thought of our own commonwealth in Pennsylvania with William and the Quakers and that Quaker influence that then later, of course, they invited over the German Mennonites and then of course the Lutherans and the Presbyterians, the German Reformed. A significant part of our own history. Maybe some of you know this. Do any of you know that the first presbytery, the first Synod and the first Presbyterian General assembly all took place right here in Pennsylvania?

Yeah.

Exciting history right over there in Philadelphia. First Presbytery, 1706. The first General Assembly, 1789.

But there's a truth to this, that American Christianity wears the history of the United States in its congregation. And the reality is that in some ways is very interesting and maybe good, and in some ways is also unbelievably tragic.

We all know, you probably all have heard that the greatest hour segregated hour in the United States is Sunday mornings. Let me tell you about Richard Allen. Richard Allen was born into slavery on Valentine's Day in 1760, February 14th. He was born in what is now Delaware To a property owner, Benjamin Chu. He was still pretty young.

He and his siblings, he actually had five siblings and his mother were then sold to Stokely Sturgis, who worked another plantation. Sturgis got into some financial trouble. So Richard Allen's own mother and three of his siblings were sold to another family. Torn apart family torn apart by slavery. His older brother and sister remained there with the Sturgis family.

And actually they began to attend a Methodist meeting, a meeting of the Methodist Society that was specifically targeting, in a way, caring for, specifically trying to share the good news with slaves. And he gave his life to following Jesus. He gave his life to following Jesus when he was 17 years old. And what he did is he began evangelizing other slaves, telling them about the good news of Jesus. Well, after the Revolutionary War, which was almost exactly right around that time when he became a Christian, there were a number of Methodist preachers.

Actually this happened really throughout the Eastern seaboard, but here in the mid Atlantic that were going throughout and preaching the good news of Jesus, but also preaching emancipation and encouraging landowners to free their slaves. So Sturgis actually offered all of his slaves the ability to purchase their freedom. And so Richard Allen did that. He actually worked extra hours and gained his freedom. Here's a pretty remarkable thing.

A few years later, Richard Allen was actually. He passed the exams and he was. So he qualified. And then he was admitted to be a preacher there in and around Baltimore, within the Methodist Church, the Methodist Episcopal Church, which was the early Methodist Church, Methodism, coming out of the Anglican Church in England, particularly this movement in Oxford with the Wesley brothers. Here's the thing, even though he was licensed, he was qualified to preach, he was not allowed to vote in their meetings.

Why? Because he was black. So a couple years later he moved to Philadelphia where he took up preaching role at St. George's Methodist Episcopal Church there. He moved there in part because of this conflict over race. Now he comes and he starts to have all these people come and listen to him.

And the black congregation under his preaching was growing and growing. But the vestry of that church said, you cannot actually worship with us. You have it's dominantly white congregation. You have to worship at the earliest time and be done before all the other folk come.

So after this discrimination and after this segregation continued, he actually gathered a friend, Absalom Jones, and they began the Free African Society in 1787. About this, 1787 in Philadelphia. There's also a very important event that happened in Philadelphia in that same year, which was the Constitutional Convention right Who are the leaders there? George Washington, James Madison, Freedom. And yet in the church, reflecting the history of our country, there is this great segregation and this great divide that takes place.

So in that very same year, the African Free Society happened. And then later on, that moved into what that developed out of Richard Allen's leadership into the African Methodist Episcopal Church. And some of you know that the AME continues to be one of the great historic and most influential black denominations in our country. Now, I share this with you because it shows in some ways that there is something that is very lovely going on and something also deeply tragic in how we wear sort of the world that we live in, how the church itself sort of puts on a sort of garment, and it's reflecting the world that it's sort of soaking in. So, of course, the question is, what are you soaking in?

Right? What kind of world are you putting on?

American Christianity wears the history of the United States on our congregations. And at times that is beautiful, and at times it's very, very ugly.

People have truly given their lives to following Jesus and planting churches and evangelizing and loving their neighbors.

And people in the church have pushed each other out, have said, our union has primarily to do with our skin rather than our baptism and our union with Christ. Our union primarily has to do with our political identity than our Christian identity. I mean, think of Richard Allen's story. In some ways, it's so remarkable and so lovely. A preacher going to the slaves and him giving his life to following Jesus and evangelizing and telling other people, and then working hard enough that he could get his freedom, and then going and working and becoming a preacher.

And then there's so much loveliness in it, and there's, of course, so much sadness in it also.

Think of it. It's full of beauty and tragedy. But I think it forces us to ask sort of, what is shaping our church? What's shaping ministry?

Who or what is shaping the church? And what is it to look like? I mean, think if you were to just ask, like, I don't know, what are the prominent names in Christianity? I mean, a lot of people might say things like Joel Osteen, Steven Furtick, Andy Stanley, maybe Mark Driscoll in a bygone era or depending upon where you live. But what does that say?

Is it just. It's a reflection of a celebrity culture, which is the culture that we live in. Celebrity culture. We wear, in a way, the world that we soak in.

When many people think of the church, many think of Christianity. They might think Primarily of a voting bloc. How do you get all those people to vote in a certain way?

I mean, you very likely could largely at least guess how somebody votes by the church they attend, which does sort of beg the question, are they more united around that or around person work of Jesus? Anyway, we are back in Mark after last week's snow break and we have this little passage and Jesus is sending out the 12, right? That's how it begins. He's sending out the 12. In fact, it's pretty interesting if you look back a few chapters to chapter three, when he calls them, when he calls the twelve apostles to himself, says, and he went up on the mountain and called to them those whom he desired, and they came to him, and he appointed 12 whom he named apostles.

Apostle means sent one so that they might be with him and might send them out to preach and to have authority to cast out demons. So we know from the get go that this is the intent of this group of people that he's gathered together to him to be in sense his ministry for the world. That's from the get go. Jesus calls these guys to himself for the sake of sending them out. But here he's actually doing it.

Here the ministry is happening. The apostles are the sent ones, and here's the ministry happening. And so this morning I want to sort of address two things that I think this text sort of invites us to reflect on. The first is, it's like, what is ministry about? I mean, what is the church supposed to be about?

That's part of it. And then the other is, how is ministry supposed to be done? If we can kind of look and say, oh, we're influenced by, you know, sort of the history and the place and the setting that we're set in, well, what are we supposed to be about and what is it supposed to look like? So what's ministry about? Well, you just heard from chapter three, verse 14, that he calls these guys to himself, these apostles, these sent ones, that he might send them out to preach.

It said that he might do that and that they might have authority to cast out demons to preach and heal. And in our passage, I think pretty interestingly, these two things that he calls them to himself to then do are done.

They're in fact, I think the main things that are taking place. So look with me down at verse seven, verse seven, it says, and he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. Now what we know so far in Jesus ministry is that he has this authority. He has authority. In fact, what we had just seen in the previous chapter, right, are these three different narratives of Jesus displaying his authority and people going, whoa, that guy's got authority.

You remember the wind and the waves story about Jesus disciples in the boat. And you probably remember Jairus daughter whom he heals and he raises from the dead and the woman with the bleeding, all of that. And then right in between those stories, there's this man who is said to be a demoniac. He has a demon and he's living among the tombs. And he was out of his mind.

In fact, we kind of have a sense that he was out of his mind in such a way that he was hurting himself since he would take stones and cut himself, but also in a way he was hurting others. One of the texts says that people tried to bind him and they couldn't. Why would they do that? But that he was actually harming those around him.

All this to say is that in the most immediate context of this story right here, what we have is Jesus having authority to cast out demons, of course, over the wind and the waves and over somebody who has a discharge of blood, a hemorrhage, and also over this child, this 12 year old who dies.

So he has the authority to heal. And now he's saying, you do it. But part of what I want to say is that ministry has to do with this act of healing. Ministry is for the life of the world, for the good and for the blessing of others. And ministry is about, in some ways we could say from that text, ministry is about healing from our own self destructive ways and community destructive ways.

Okay? And this is, this is, this passage is also saying that the need for healing is always connected to a spiritual reality, which I don't mean actually. This is important to say when I say that healing is always a spiritual thing, that they're supposed to cast out demons Here in this passage, that does not mean it's non physical spiritual and non physical. Don't really. That's not an antithesis in the Bible, okay?

The demon had all kinds of physical effects on the man. And that man, because of that spiritual reality had all kinds of physical effects on the community that he lived in. But that man couldn't be healed of the things that were destructive to himself or the things that were destructive to the community unless the spiritual reality healed. So the spiritual problem was the root problem. Okay?

So Jesus doesn't just tell his disciples to go out work for the healing of the world, which in itself you'd say is a good thing. But he says, go out and cast demons out, right? Work for the healing of the world that is connected at its root to a spiritual problem. So, you know, we're going to have our congregational meeting after the service. And one of the things I want to encourage you to do is to get involved in life of the church.

And one of the ways you get involved in life of the church is through ministry teams here at our church. So is our benevolence team doing ministry? Well, yes, Right. I mean, as they care for those who can't pay their electrical bills, maybe when it's freezing outside, they're working for the healing of the world. But that the Christian ministry per se, unless it's also saying, let me tell you about a spiritual reality, right, that there is something that is going on within our hearts that is actually hurting ourselves and our communities, that for Christian ministry to be Christian ministry, it is for the healing of the world, but it is healing at a spiritual level also.

Our English language classes, are they doing the work of ministry? Yes, and amen. By helping others learn English, they're addressing a very practical and very real need that people have as they've come from other countries, they're settling in our city, and. And they are wondering, how do I do life? But that physical need goes hand in hand with a spiritual need.

Let me say this. If you are interested in caring for immigrants in our community, get involved in our English language classes. It's a very practical and very helpful way to do that.

Part of what I'm suggesting is that ministry is about the healing of the broken world. But that broken world that has all these physical effects in the world, right, Divorces, estrangement from loved ones, you know, all kinds of things that happen that harm our world, they have at their root this spiritual reality that needs to be healed and is only healed in Christ.

So that's partly, I think, what's going on here. Ministry is healing, but it is healing that says there is a spiritual root problem that needs to be addressed along with the physical reality, the physical healing. But beyond this, in our passage, I think one of the main things that it's saying is that ministry is preaching. Now, I don't want to say necessarily this preaching, like what I'm doing right now, I'm standing up in front of, you know, not all you're supposed to do this, but it is proclaiming and it is encouraging and it is actually calling back to life with God. So Jesus sends them out and he gives them authority over Unclean spirits.

But when he instructs them, right, he talks about his disciples being in a place that will not receive them. So if you look down, actually verse 12 and 13, no, 11, and if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, right? So he says actually the thing that they're not doing when they're not receiving you is they're not listening. The assumption is that you part of ministry is you are talking and you're talking in a way that they are either receiving or not receiving you. Now if we keep going, actually it says more specifically verse 12.

So they went out and proclaimed that people should.

Which is why I say ministry is preaching. Because what does Jesus do? He preaches repentance. And as people are proclaiming with their words, turn, turn. So what is ministry about?

Ministry is about healing, but ministry is also about preaching and proclaiming repentance. Ministry is about sharing the good news that the way that you are going in life can actually turn around. That the path you're going down that is isolated and solitary and self seeking, that is going away from God, can actually be turned upon, come back to life as it's meant to be with God.

Change can happen in Jesus.

To repent was to turn around or is to turn around. So I didn't tell her that I was going to share this. Kathy and I were talking earlier this week and she shared with me of a local counselor friend of theirs, Jake Thiessen. And maybe some of you know him, he's written a little book called A Tiny Shift. And there's this great encouragement that Kathy shared with me.

And it's just a simple question. And yet the simple question feels so significant. And it's a question for married folk, but maybe it could be a good question for friends or siblings. And the question at the end of the day was this, have I hurt you today?

And all of you married folk know, oh, that sounds like such a short, simple question to ask. But we know it's not because what does it invite us to do? Invites us to repent. That's not an easy thing because to repent is to say I'm sorry and to turn right, say I don't want to do that, I'm going to turn change my ways. It's a question that invites repentance.

The disciples proclaimed that people should repent, find that there is a new way of doing life, there's a different way of doing life, and change is possible in Jesus. Ministry is about calling people back to God, ministry is calling people away from focus on self, what we can grab, what we can take. The tree looks beautiful and delightful, right? The fruit of the tree, it brought death. And God says, where are you?

Come back to me.

Ministry is calling people back to God.

The Old Testament scholar Christopher Wright actually included one quote from him in our meditation quotes this morning. But he's written pretty extensively on the idea that the Bible is not just a book that has missionary texts in it. Like I mentioned, Psalm 67 is one of the great missionary psalms. Or you think of the great missionary text of Matthew 28 and the great Commission, right when Jesus sends out the disciples there at the end of Matthew. Or you think of the whole book of Acts.

A lot of people think of that as one of the great missionary texts. Or maybe think of Revelation chapter 7, where every tongue and tribe and nation is there falling down before the Lamb who was slain.

But instead, what Chris Wright says is the Bible isn't just a book that has missionary texts, but the Bible is itself a missionary text. That the whole point of the Bible is the revelation of God, who is calling people back to himself, the creator God, that is saying, I'm going to come and get you and I'm going to call you back to myself. But the whole point of it is a repentance. Come back, turn from your ways, turn from your sin, and find new life in Jesus. Ministry is about healing, but ministry is also about repentance.

This is why, very truly, ministry really does happen in the context. In the context when we can hear God's call, often through another's voice, to repentance, and we can act and we can change. So what I want to suggest to you is that actually ministry often does happen in this kind of setting, right? When you hear God's call to come and worship, and you're like, okay, I'm going to come. And when we hear God's call to repent, you're like, I'm going to repent.

And you hear God's call words and you say, oh, I'm forgiven. And that. That's really God doing ministry in you. And it's in this setting where you hear preaching and you know, it's in the setting when we hear God saying the Lord bless you as you go. And you're like, okay, I'm going to go.

But also it often happens. And you know, this happens. Ministry often happens when you're having like coffee with somebody and there's an honest conversation that's taking place. And maybe it's. Maybe it's an encouragement.

Keep Keep following Jesus. You are doing something good. Walk in his way. Or maybe it's actually when you. When your friend says, hey, the tone that you have with your wife is actually deeply harmful, and it's not for healing.

And you can change and you can repent and you can find new life in Jesus. And ministry happens in that context, right? So often ministry, this is what happens in the Gospel. So often ministry happens around a dinner table where people are talking about life and they're saying, oh, my, let me. Let me encourage you to repent.

Let me encourage you to follow the Lord. That's so often. Ministry is happening. Ministry is happening in community groups and ministry teams and Bible studies as you gather together and you proclaim a new life, a repentant life in Christ.

What I'm suggesting to you is that ministry is healing and preaching. But here's another thing that I think is really lovely about this passage is that it doesn't just talk to us about what ministry is, but it also talks to us about how is ministry done. There's a few things in this passage, okay, about how ministry is done. The first thing that is actually really significant here is that ministry is done in community.

So there is no Christian life lived in isolation, and there is no Christian ministry that is done all alone.

If you notice this passage, it begins like this. And he called the 12 to him and began to send them out two by two. Interestingly, how that two by two is written is actually sort of unique. Like we. There's not other instances of that sort of phrase in ancient Greek texts.

It's just duo, duo tutu. And people think that maybe it was written like that because it's emphasizing it. It's wanting you to go, wait, that's not how you say it. Wait, I need to pay attention to that. It's two by two.

You cannot do ministry alone. Ministry is just not something you do in isolation. And of course, this is the pattern of the Bible. God calls a community to himself. He creates a community, male and female, right?

He creates them together. He calls a who family to himself. And he says, you're going to multiply, and through you, all the nations are going to be blessed. But then when you come to the New Testament itself, Jesus do, from the very beginning of his ministry, he calls other people to himself. Or if you look at the book, particularly the book of Luke, but also you can find this actually very little bit in the beginning of Mark, John the Baptist and Jesus, ministry go hand in hand even before he calls the disciples.

It's like somebody else is right there ministering with him. And if you go into the Book of Acts, of course, you find the same thing with Paul and Silas and Paul and Timothy. Or actually in Acts 18, what do we hear? Paul was in Corinth and Silas and Timothy came to him. You think of Barnabas.

Ministry is always done with others. It's always done in community.

Again, I'm just going to say that one of the best ways you can actually grow and do the work of ministry is just join a community, a ministry team. Just say, I don't even know what I should do. Put me on something and I'll find someplace to just put you and we'll see if it works or not. But you do it with other people. Okay?

The other thing that I think we see really clearly in this passage is that. So ministry is done in community, but ministry has always done in dependence on God. Okay, so verse eight, he charged them, charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff. No bread, no bag, no money in their belts, but to wear sandals and not put on two.

Now, we know from other passages that the disciples had bread here and there. We know from other passages the disciples had had a money bag. We know that it's not that those things are in and of themselves bad, but what he's saying is if you're going to do ministry, you've got to learn dependence. You have to learn dependence on me and these other things. You're tempted to find that if you can take them along, maybe you can rely on them, and not on my own provision for you teaching them that ministry demands dependence on him.

Just like you cannot do ministry alone, you cannot do Christian ministry outside of dependence on God.

Which is to say that Christian ministry demands giving up control. And maybe, maybe that is why so often so many pastors fail at Christian ministry, because pastors love control. I'm speaking from experience.

It also means, as Jesus says in a way, that sometimes ministry will go well, humanly speaking, and sometimes it won't. Sometimes people will welcome the message of repentance, and sometimes people will not. The image that we have here is shaking the dust off your feet. And that image actually came from a Jewish practice that we know from other writings around the time of when the Jews would wander outside for various reasons, outside of the promised land that they lived in, and they would come back and they didn't want any sort of any bit of the gentile world coming into their world. And so even the dirt would just kind of be brushed off, get rid of it all.

And what Jesus is doing is he's sending his disciples out into Galilee, which was the Christian community, the Jewish community, and saying, you know what? There's going to be times where even they will not receive you. And you've got to understand that they're unbelievers. Brush it off. Which is to say sometimes ministry, you're not going to have the success that you want.

Right. We start, man, since I've been here, we've started a few things, and then we've said, you know what? Let's stop doing that. That didn't seem to work too well. What's next?

Lord, anyway, let me, in a way, wrap this up for us.

We've seen at least some of what ministry is, some of how ministry is done.

One thing that's really neat in this passage is that you get this sense. It's very short, but you get the sense that there's a real success that these disciples have.

Maybe, you know, elsewhere in Luke, they come back and they say, wow, it worked. Jesus, we really did cast that demon, your name. But here it says, and they cast out many demons painted with oil, by the way. Nobody is quite sure what the oil is there. So I didn't get into that with the how.

There's a lot of different fairly compelling takes. Many who were sick and healed them. King Herod heard of it, for his name become known.

They obviously have this degree of success in what they are called to do, this ministry that they're called to. So how. Right, like how. I mean, how is this. I mean, I suggested at the beginning of this sermon that it's significantly true that American Christianity wears the history of the United States on its congregations.

That we kind of resemble, in a way, often. For there's some beauty in this and there's some very bad stuff in this. We resemble this world that we live in.

What I want to suggest to you is that ministry will resemble what you are soaking in. And what have the disciples been soaking in?

I mean, Jesus called them to himself in chapter three, and it said in chapter three, he did that so that he could send them out and they could cast out demons and they could preach repentance. They said that in chapter three. Why didn't he do it in chapter three?

I want to suggest to you because they needed to soak in him. Right. And what do we find when we look actually in that gap between chapter three and chapter six? What's chapter four? Preaching.

It actually begins with preaching repentance. Well, and there's parables and Stuff. But I mean, think of the purpose of parables 4, 12, so that they may indeed see, but not perceive and may indeed hear but not understand, lest they should turn and be forgiven. He's actually saying turn. Even the style of preaching is for repentance and for a revelation of whether or not he needs to brush the dirt off his foot or not.

Are they hearing? Are they turning to him? Chapter four is all about Jesus preaching. What's chapter five about? Jesus healing, right?

So the success that they have. And let me suggest to you this. The only way that we will not just resemble the world that we live in is if you are soaking in who Jesus is and what he has done and the words he has said. That's the only way, the way for Christian ministry to be done and to have some level of true effect in the world is for us, the church, to be soaking in Jesus, to put on Christ, to be Jesus. The reality of what we wear.

Because otherwise we will just resemble whatever is around us.

Friends, we confess every week when we confess the creed that we believe in the one holy, catholic and apostolic church. We believe that the church is the community of the sent ones. The community of the sent ones. That. That's what apostle means.

May we wear as we are sent Christ, and may he be known. May his healing be known. May repentance and faith and the real reality changed life be known.

And may we do that together, always depending and resting on him. Amen. Let me pray, Lord God, I pray, Lord, that we would soak in you, that we would hear that this text is for us because we are the apostolic ones, we are the sent ones. God, would we see the beauty in a call from you to heal the world, to address the needs of our neighbors with compassionate love and to not divorce that from their spiritual need. God, would we find that proclaiming repentance to one another in our families and in our.

In our friendships, sitting around coffee, sitting in a community group, God, in all these different ways, Lord, attending worship, God, would we find that there is life in these.

God, we eagerly do it together, holding hands together and holding fast to you. God, would you please, Lord, this coming year see fit to bless us as we seek to be faithful to you, God, as we are sent by you into the highways and byways, the alleys, the inner states, wherever you would call us, Lord, would we be faithful to you and would you please bless us? How we think of the success that you gave to these apostles long ago, Lord, as we are clinging to you, as we are putting you on. As we are following in your ways, you also bless us in our ministry here at Second City. We pray in your name.

Amen.

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