Future Church Brisbane
Join Luke Kennedy and friends at Future Church in Brisbane, Australia.
Talks from our gatherings as well as deeper discussions and Application panels around the practicals of Following Jesus.
Future Church Brisbane
(Catch up) Living Your Faith Out Loud in Today's World
Have you ever felt the weight of sharing your faith in a world that seems increasingly skeptical? Join us as we explore the triumphs and tribulations of early Christians, drawing inspiration from the transformative story of Telemachus, a monk who defied the brutal gladiatorial games with his unwavering faith. We promise you'll gain insights into how the once countercultural beliefs of Christianity have evolved from the 1950s to today, prompting the rise of intellectual Christianity amidst a backdrop of modern skepticism.
Fear can be a formidable barrier to sharing one's faith, often accompanied by the risk of rejection or misunderstanding. By sharing personal anecdotes and the insightful journey of Paul from Acts 16:6-10, we underscore the need for a renewed approach in faith-sharing that is infused with compassion and understanding. This episode isn't just for pastors; it's a call to each of us to engage personally, breaking down the barriers that prevent us from communicating the message of Jesus in a heartfelt and genuine manner.
With the holiday season upon us, we touch on the powerful impact of community engagement through simple acts of inviting friends and family to Christmas events and the upcoming Alpha launch party. Discover how these gatherings can be more than mere celebrations; they can be life-changing opportunities to connect with others and share the hope and love of your faith authentically. By living with integrity and embracing your Christian identity, you can make a real difference in the lives of those around you.
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I want to talk to us about sharing your faith with other people. Over the last few weeks, we have been talking about sharing your faith. This is hopefully going to be somewhat practical and with some application at the end. I would really love our church to become confident in sharing their faith with other people. It's going to be good, so just call this message Sharing or Telling others about Jesus.
Speaker 1:All right, let's have a look at Acts, chapter 1, verse 8. This is going to be the key verse for today. It's a very short verse. It just says you will be my witnesses. This is Jesus speaking. You will be my witnesses telling people about me everywhere. This was Jesus' promise before he ascended into heaven. This is kind of his great sending people out into the world from Jerusalem to share about the good news of Jesus. Last week we spoke about the gospel being about a new king and a new kingdom has arrived and through Jesus' death and resurrection, it was a whole new beginning of how to be human, how to be part of the kingdom of God, and in this kingdom called the kingdom of God would be a place of blessing, a place of wholeness and a place where everyone is included and being made whole by God, so it's a beautiful kingdom. And being made whole by God, so it's a beautiful kingdom.
Speaker 1:So in the early church, though, they had some challenges. In the first century, they had challenges and they were persecuted for sharing their faith with other people. Part of the reason of that was they were really perceived as a threat. Christians were seen as strange, maybe even some kind of cult following, undermining spiritual and social orders. It really was challenging what is normal and things like. They were even accused of cannibalism for taking the Lord's Supper. So there was a lot of things that happened that were against these people who were sharing their faith. We also saw a countercultural lifestyle that these Christians had. They didn't participate in a lot of the things that the Romans were doing that were quite rough, that we would consider now quite rough. The Christians then in the middle of that culture were saying, no, we're not going to do that anymore. They were also accused of saying their allegiance was to Jesus rather than to Caesar, and this was a big problem, because Caesar gained his power from being a god, and these Christians were saying, no, caesar is not God, jesus is God, which really threatened his power. And then they also had exclusive truth claims, meaning they said that Jesus was the way. Jesus was the way. He wasn't just a way of doing things or a nice way, he was the way to real life, to eternal life, to the life of that quality, and they were very confident about the fact that Jesus was so good and his life was the only way to a real life. So there were challenges.
Speaker 1:There was a famous story of a guy I think I might be pronouncing this right, but his name is Telemachus in the fourth century I don't know if anyone's seen Gladiator the movie here, number 2 has just come out and this is my childhood. So the way that the gladiatorial games ended was there was a Christian monk who had been living in a monastery in monasticism and he had come into the city to share about Jesus and he had seen the games and seen the killing of so many people, the gladiators, and just how violent it was. And the Christians really stood for nonviolence. They were about loving their enemies. They were about forgiving those who persecute you. This was such a different dynamic than the Roman culture. So this man came in and he saw the gladiatorial games and everyone was being killed and many Christians were being killed. Christians were often fed to lions and it was a really rough time. So he jumped into the middle of this Colosseum and went into the middle and shouted out stop in the name of Christ, stop. And it was such a powerful moment and it was such a controversial moment. But the emperor was really challenged by this moment and that day, history tells, was in fact the last day of the gladiatorial games ever. That was the final day because of this man stood up for Jesus in the middle of his culture and said stop in the name of Christ. It was a powerful thing. Thankfully, today we are not going through the name of Christ. It was a powerful thing. Thankfully today we are not going through those kind of stories. We are not getting that kind of challenge in Australia today. Thankfully, we maybe have a few cultural pushbacks. You may get someone write a criticizing comment on your Instagram post, but really that is nothing compared to what most Christians in the world today are going through for sharing about Jesus with others.
Speaker 1:In the 50s in Australia and indeed in the West, we had a God consciousness which came from different areas of morality. There was a sense of God's way is right, but Christians are just super boring, right, maybe that's not for me, but Christians that's a good thing for society, but it's just not really my thing. And we saw many crusades. We saw many people come to Jesus through open-air crusades and Billy Graham and other speakers like that. There was often this come-to-Jesus moment because people already had a God consciousness that they knew that when they heard the gospel it was the right thing.
Speaker 1:And then we got into the 70s and 80s and things really did change. There was some more barriers towards coming towards Christ and the church was definitely seen as boring and irrelevant at those times. Religiosity and legalism really became strong in the church at that time and people started questioning the scientific claims that were made by Christians. People started pushing back scientifically on different claims and it was at that time when we saw the rise of a more intellectual Christianity start to bubble up. We saw books like the Case for Christ and other books like that. That became part of an answer to people's skepticism about claims in science.
Speaker 1:Out of that came the seeker-sensitive movement in the 90s and 2000s, where the world was so entertaining at that time. Right, it was like there was I won't get into the names. There were so many pop icons. At that time the world seemed so fun, so wild and the church just seemed pretty stale. So this Seeker Sensitive Moment was a reaction against that, just to make church very entertaining. Like we're cool guys, trust me, we're cool, christianity is cool, man. Okay, all right, keep going, stay with me. We wanted to be accepted by the world and seen as cool. It was a little bit cringy then and it's still a little bit cringy now.
Speaker 1:Now we are in 2024 and today we are in a vastly different again landscape of what it means to share your faith. There are both today more barriers to Jesus and less barriers to Jesus. People are exploring spirituality more than ever. I speak to people of no Christian background all the time and I see an openness like I have not seen before in Australia to spirituality. The thing is people are not automatically going towards the church or towards Jesus. They're just opening it up to the universe, because the universe generally agrees with everything that I think and it can really support my way of thinking. But we believe in a very personal God who actually wants to come and interact with your life, who has a personhood that you can actually know. That's a very, very different thing People are very open to experiencing God. I believe right now People are very open something real. So the cultural challenges that we're experiencing there's definitely a spiritual opposition to sharing your faith. I don't know if you've ever noticed that Any time the kingdom of God is going forward, there's pushback against that. We believe in that there is God, but there's also an enemy who hates the kingdom of God going forward and it will be opposed, if you've ever shared your faith and felt that that's a real thing.
Speaker 1:We've also seen cultural shifts in post-modernism, meaning objective truth is challenged. It's you know, you, be you. That's the mantra of our generation. We've also seen the change of autonomy over authority, meaning you get to choose whatever's right for your life. We reject authority, especially in Australia. That's kind of our rebellious nature reject authority and I'm going to be the one who decides what is right for me. Also, the rise of experience over evidence, meaning people don't value evidence as much as what is going to work for me. Pretty amazing. And we live in a post-Christendom society. Pretty amazing, and we live in a post-Christendom society.
Speaker 1:Christians are increasingly viewed as part of society's problem rather than society's solution, and this is the landscape that we're in. We used to be seen as kind of the moral police of society, right, meaning you're a bit boring, but probably a good thing. You know we need someone to be like kind of the moral police around here to make sure we don't go off the rails. That's very much changed, where Christian morality or Christian ethics especially around sexual ethics is seen as a problem or against humans or maybe even causing harm to other people, rather than the beauty of what it means to be a human to other people, rather than the beauty of what it means to be a human. And then there's personal obstacles.
Speaker 1:Have you ever felt fear about sharing your faith? I have. In fact, most of the time when I share my faith with other people, I'm really, really nervous. You might think that's like this comes naturally to me. I always feel nervous sharing my faith because I know there's some level of risk involved in sharing my faith. Maybe that person will reject me. I don't like getting rejected. It's not super fun. I don't know about you, but that's not fun, being rejected. There's also a fear of inadequacy. What if I just don't have the answers for them? When they push back on things in my faith, I don't know what to say. Or maybe there's more of a fear of just a fatigue, a tiredness of the methods that have been used before.
Speaker 1:Before I was a Christian, I used to go to a church every now and then with my parents in Warwick and my high school was across the road from the church. And I remember going to the church and my family was kind of wild and we'd be in there and it was in this interesting time. My family would be rolling around the floor laughing in services and I'm just watching, you know, at the back going, oh my gosh. And then they'd go outside in the car park and have good punch-ons. You know, that was kind of the extremes of my family and I just intuitively, as a 13-year-old, I just knew something's off here, something's not right. This doesn't really make sense with what I hope is real about God. This doesn't seem to make sense. And I remember having this just feeling of like I hope no one from school ever sees me in this place. And I remember walking past the church and my friends would make funny jokes about the church and I would just go quiet because I just didn't want anyone to know that I was being dragged along to that place sometimes and it was embarrassing.
Speaker 1:I remember going to Japan and seeing so many people had never known about Jesus, never even heard about Jesus at all before. And I remember seeing people with these huge signs on Dotonbori Bridge and people these big signs saying believe in Jesus or you're going to hell, and I'm like, oh boy, this is not good. I remember going and talking to one of those guys and just saying has anybody ever believed in Jesus through your soul? He's like no, they're too hard-hearted. And I was like it's not the people, they're really good, they're really nice. It could be you, buddy, it could be what you preach. I remember meeting so many young Japanese and they told me the first thing they heard about Jesus was basically those signs saying you're going to hell. What a terrible witness of the gospel to go into hell. What a terrible witness of the gospel. The good news of Jesus is that he has made a way for you, that all are welcome into the kingdom of God, that he loves you far beyond anything you could ever imagine.
Speaker 1:So when I say share about Jesus, I can understand where there might be some recoil in your life. I don't want to share about Jesus. If that is what we're talking about. I don't want anything to do with that and I understand that Maybe we put it to the side and say that's the pastor's job. He will do a response call at the end and he will share about Jesus and he can pray for them. I'll bring my friend to the pastor and ask him to do it.
Speaker 1:This is not the way that the church is meant to run. You can't delegate Jesus' last priority to somebody else. But how? How are we going to do it? How are we going to share our faith with other people? I think we need three things we need a theology, we need a methodology and we need a practice. So let's have a look at these three things. If we're going to share our faith, we need a renewed way of thinking about sharing your faith, a theology. Theology just means thinking about God. We need a different way of understanding God when it comes to sharing Jesus with other people.
Speaker 1:Let's have a look at Acts, chapter 16, verse 6 to 10. This is an amazing story. When the church is growing, paul, who has become a Christian. After he was the one persecuting Christians, he's now a Christian. He's now a leader in the church and he's now sharing Jesus all over the world he's traveling.
Speaker 1:Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Pergia, butchered it dead, and Galatia Help me out Jared, how do you say that? And Galatia having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia which is now Turkey. When they came from the borders of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them. It was like they had all of these options to go into the world and God was saying no, not there, not yet. That's not the way, that's not the way. And God was saying no, not there, not yet. That's not the way, that's not the way.
Speaker 1:And then, during the night verse 9, during the night, paul had a vision of a man from Macedonia standing and begging him come over to Macedonia and help us. Paul had seen the vision and he got ready at once to leave for Macedonia. What a response, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. So Paul's vision of this Macedonian man begging for help reveals that these Macedonians were actually really prosperous, like famously prosperous. They were like educators in the Roman Empire. They were like elite people in the Roman Empire. They were like elite people in the Roman Empire. But something Paul's seen there was this although people can be very successful, underneath the surface they can be very empty and very broken. That's a reality, right? People can be very good on their face but underneath have a lot of emptiness in their heart. And Paul sees this and his response is let's go and share Jesus with these people.
Speaker 1:Just as these Macedonians cry for help, I believe also today, in Brisbane today, there are people crying for help. In fact, I heard one theologian say life without Jesus is one long cry help. I believe that's true. I think it was CS Lewis who said at the doorway of every brothel, every man who enters a brothel is searching for God. That's so true. We try to fill our lives with so many things with only something that God can fill. We have to have a conviction about that that Jesus is the answer for the world. Jesus is the answer. I believe that. I'm convinced of that. I know that is true in my own life.
Speaker 1:Do you believe that Jesus is the answer for people's brokenness and emptiness in Brisbane today? Do you believe that? Because if you don't at the first sign of pushback, you'll quit. But if you know that Jesus is the answer, there's a willingness to overcome the awkwardness and uncomfortableness, and even the risk, of sharing Jesus with someone who needs him. There's a willingness to do that. Can you hear the cries of the city? Can you hear it? Or have we blocked it out with our lifestyle, just blocked it out with life? Can you open your ears for a moment to hear the cries of the city?
Speaker 1:I believe that Christians in the first century their lives were so distinct caring for the poor, their sexual integrity, their nonviolence they were so compelling as a community they were challenged, but also so compelling the way they loved people was so compelling that people could not help but want to know about Jesus. My prayer today is that our church would hear the cries of the city, would hear the cries of the people around us, and would have a heart that is moved to share wholeness with people around us, even if you are not perfect. So we need a new theology. Secondly, we need a way, we need a methodology. We need a way to share Jesus that is not cringy, and I think the best way is to genuinely build relationships with people. Genuinely build relationships with people.
Speaker 1:I was talking to a guy this week. He was in the studio and somehow I found out he's a Christian and he said to me I don't have a single non-Christian friend. I started sharing with him about sharing his faith and he said I don't have a single non-Christian friend. And I said let me introduce you to someone, so you should meet this guy. He's great. And he said to me.
Speaker 1:He walked away saying you know, I'm so challenged. I've been living in a bubble. I really need to start meeting people who need to know Jesus, and I think that's so true. It's so easy for us to get caught up in a bubble. It's so easy to get caught up with people. We're just great people around us. We've got our crew.
Speaker 1:Find your people. You won't really hear that much in the church. Find your people. You want to find people that are different than you so that you can actually share something with them. That's going to be helpful. That would be great. That's what we need in the church. The to be helpful. That would be great. That's what we need in the church. The diversity of the church is so. People are so different than you, but we all come together. That is the microcosm of the kingdom of God, which should be an example to the world. That's Jesus lived. He didn't come and just give people a book to read or a set of rules. Jesus came in person. He came sitting with tax collectors and sinners and prostitutes. You could maybe swap out some of those people and put in the people that you don't like today. Put those names in. That's the people that Jesus went to. He went and sat with and I hope maybe for some of us here today you will be the first Christian that your friends have met, maybe the first Christian that your friends have liked if they've met maybe a judgy one or someone who's caused actually a backward step.
Speaker 1:And then we have to converse with people, share authentically about your life. I'm just convinced that I am a Christian. It's who I am. It just comes out of my life because that's who I am. I am not ashamed of who I am. The whole world is preaching be yourself, don't be ashamed. Yet Christians are scared to be themselves. I am a Christian. That's who I am. I am not ashamed of that. I don't act one way in public and a different way in private. No, I'm just the same person all the time. And I think that's confidence we need to have Be humbly confident about knowing Jesus in our lives, live with integrity. That's what it means to live with integrity. I'm a Christian in my workplace, I'm a Christian with my friends. I don't have separate lives, and then I think the biggest key is we can be present for people when they're going through their challenges. We can be present.
Speaker 1:I remember sitting with my friend in year 12, and I'd become a Christian recently and all my friends started finding out I was a Christian. I was sharing with them and they would make jokes at me. They would sing songs about me which I thought were pretty funny, to be honest Like Australians are pretty funny and I was playing on the rugby team and they would sing songs about me in the locker room. They were pretty funny songs, but I just would laugh along with that. It was fine. It was interesting, though. People would really make fun of me, lean on me when we were in big groups together, but then, as soon as we got alone, they would start saying can you pray for me? I'm going through a hard time. What do you think? Amazing, amazing.
Speaker 1:I remember sitting with year 12, one of my friends, chris. He'd been in and out of juvenile detention, he was going through a rough time and he sat next to me. He was one of the lead cheerleaders of making fun of me about being a new Christian. He sat next to me and he said Luke, don't tell anyone this, but I'm really afraid of dying. Could you pray for me when I die? And I said, no, I'm not going to pray for you to die. I'll pray for you right now if you want. So we sat and I said no, I'm not going to pray for you to die, I'll pray for you right now if you want. We sat and prayed on the lunch table at school. He's trying to make sure no one's watching. We're praying together.
Speaker 1:That year, about 100 of my friends came to my youth ministry because we just started sharing about Jesus and I just said I'm not going to apologize for that. I'm going to start sharing my life with other people and what Jesus has done in my life. And so many people wanted that much more than I ever thought would want it. They wanted it deep in their soul, even as 16, 17, 18 year olds. We're very honest Sometimes friendship is not enough to get it over the line. You need support, you need help. It's a team sport. That's why we have the church and I want to encourage you.
Speaker 1:The third thing is you've got to leverage church, leverage this place. Everyone who comes here tells me the same thing over and over this place is so welcoming. Everyone says that. Why is that? The reason is because Izumi and I, from the very beginning, demanded that it would be and we were just going to die on that hill. This is not going to be a cliquey church. This will be a welcoming church. We will make sure all our team people understand what it means to welcome, because we know what it's like to not be welcome at church. We know what it's like to not know Jesus and walk in the doors of a place that's not friendly and it's not good, it's not fun, it's not nice. Christians should be the most welcoming people that we have in Brisbane. The church should be the most welcoming place in Brisbane and I believe that we're getting there to that place. We're learning how to love people who are different than us. That is a great thing, even for people who speak different languages, different cultures. We're learning how to love people in the church. It is a good thing. We're on a journey there, but use the church.
Speaker 1:We've been running Alpha for, I guess about a year or so in the church, really from the beginning. Yeah, two years. We will be two years old as a church in February, so we're getting there and we've been running Alpha. It's been a really wonderful journey. We've baptized a bunch of people through Alpha. We've been running it as a small group. In February next year we are going to really take that from the peripheral and put it right in the center of church and we are going to do Alpha at scale, which really means that we're going to do a very large Alpha here on a Sunday night as another service.
Speaker 1:I was really thinking through this a lot, that we don't really need another service to help all of these new people coming to church. It's not really a service that's going to help them make decisions of topologies and really help them on their initial steps. It's really they need more discussion than that. They need a hundred questions answered. They need so much more interaction to help. So instead of adding another service, we're going to add an at-scale alpha here on a Sunday night at the end of February. That will launch. It will go for about 10 weeks and that will be the beginning of something.
Speaker 1:We have so many people in our community who don't know Jesus, who are on that journey of faith, and we're going to create a space for them to learn about Jesus and to receive Jesus. Start following Jesus with a whole bunch of people who are just like that. My wife Izumi became a Christian through Alpha in university. Someone invited her along. She was in a small group and she thought everyone would be like her. There was only a couple of mostly it was Christians. She felt a little out of it, but she kept on coming back. By the end of that she made a decision to follow Jesus. She got baptized and then a few weeks later I met her in Japan. That's kind of the beginning of our love story, where she just fell in love. No, she won't be happy. I said that that was the beginning of her story. That is going to be the beginning of so many people's story in this church as we lean into creating that.
Speaker 1:So I want to ask you guys, ask us as a church. It's not a peripheral thing to what we're doing here, like a side hustle, it really is central to who we are as a church. Is we really do care for lost people? We really do care about creating space for people to fall in Jesus, to find wholeness in Him, and I'm inviting you to come and be a part of that, to come and help that journey, to go on a journey of faith with people. It might be nervous. It's really nervous because you're like I don't know if I know everything. You don't have to know everything, but it's the most exciting journey to go on a journey of faith with people, but it's the most exciting journey of faith with people. Alpha is a safe, non-judgmental space where people do explore faith, ask questions, encounter Jesus. It really combines community hospitality I mean, we will do hospitality really really well and thankfully, as this venue develops and different partnerships we have.
Speaker 1:You know, we've been given ovens and fridges and we've been given a lot of stuff which was basically what we had hoped we would have so that we could run amazing alphas here. We have just been given a bunch of that stuff Out of the blue. It was almost. We have just been given a bunch of that stuff out of the blue. It was almost like we had a vision and then God came through. For that, isn't God good? Pretty incredible. So thank God for that. So here's my practical application.
Speaker 1:As we finish, could we hear the cries of the people around us. I know it's a little bit challenging to hear people's cries. It's a challenge, maybe it's as you walk through your neighborhood. Rather than just having headphones on and blocking out the world, maybe you could open your heart and your eyes and your ears to the struggle of people around you. We could be a friend. Be a friend, engage in authentic, loving relationships with non-Christians, living your daily life with integrity the same person as you are today.
Speaker 1:And then, thirdly, I think if we could do one thing, if you're going to invite people to one thing we've got Christmas coming up. Christmas will be a great invite, easy invite. We're going to have so many good things for Christmas here. It's going to be amazing. If you could invite, though, one person to one thing in this next year. Our Alpha launch party that we will do here at the end of February will be an amazing party. It will be an easy invite. Your friend will love it, even if they don't come to Alpha after that, even if they don't join Alpha, they will love the party. It will be a great time. It will be the easiest low-bar invite that you have in this next year to bring a friend into a space where they can potentially at the very least, they're going to make some friends, but at the very best, jesus will change their life forever and I'm excited for that. So I'd encourage you to think about someone in your life who you could invite to an Alpha launch party at the end of February.
Speaker 1:You're going to hear me talk about this a lot, as in that time leading up, but I just want to see that now as we start talking about sharing our faith leading up, but I just want to see that now as we start talking about sharing our faith, christmas time I think it's 65% of people would come to church if they were invited to Christmas. That's a lot. Invite them, invite someone to Christmas. It's going to be great fun. Yeah, carols Kids are going to do a Christmas play. It'll just be funny and fun. We'll laugh together, but really it's about being together, hearing the Christmas story, lots of hospitality, and we're going to have a great time On Christmas Day.
Speaker 1:In the evening here, we're going to do a big dinner, especially for anyone here who is like you don't have family in Australia. We want you to have a big dinner, especially for anyone here who is you don't have family in Australia. We want you to have an amazing Christmas, okay, so we're going to put on a big dinner here. It'll be free and we just want to yeah, bless people who are going to be here for Christmas, especially those who don't have family. Especially if you're an international person and you have not really experienced Christmas before, this will be an amazing Christmas experience for you, okay, so we really want you to come. It's going to be great. Okay, that's it.
Speaker 1:Let me pray for us. God, thank you that you care for our city so much, much more than we do. But I pray, god, that some of your heart today for this city, for the people around us, for the people in our neighborhood, even in our workplace people I sit next to at work or even in my family give me a heart for those people. Help me to hear the cries of their life. Pray to help us to overcome our shyness, our awkwardness, our fear. Help us to live with integrity, being the same people, being humbly confident about you. And I pray, god, that you would just go before us by your spirit. Work in people's lives and help us join in the conversation that you are already having. Help us to join in sharing our lives with the people that you are already willing to yourself.