Sure or Unsure?

We have a little bit different format this morning because of a special presentation that one of our elders, Harold Weaver, is going to make in a few moments. So after my message this morning, Harold will come up and make a special presentation, brief one, I believe, as we're all trying to stay within the allotted time this morning and after his presentation, after our worship service is over, I will come back to make some closing remarks and all of this hopefully done in a reasonable amount of time. We're all aware of the time this morning. One of the things that I've noticed in my life as a Christian is that no matter who you are, there will be times when you feel unsure about your salvation. I always thought that you would always be sure, you know, always it would be a positive thing.

And I found out that no matter who you are, no matter where you are, there comes a time when you're not sure about something. It might be your salvation. It might be the truth of the Bible. It might even be an uncertainty about the kindness of God. You know, theoretically, we know about these things, but where we live sometimes we have certain doubts.

And it doesn't matter if you're a new Christian or if you're an elder in the church or if you're a Sunday school teacher or you're a saint who was baptized 50 years ago, there comes a point in your life as a Christian where you're not sure if you really believe or not. There comes a time where you may not think Christianity is worth the effort or maybe worth the extra effort that you may be called upon to make on its behalf. There may come a time when you question if this way or this way is the right way. And you know, it's different for each of us, different experience for each of us, but one thing remains, that awful feeling of uncertainty. You know what I'm talking about?

That queasy feeling like the earth is moving underneath you. You're just not sure. And have you ever noticed that this particular feeling always comes at the worst possible moment? Either you've succeeded and you're on top of the world and things are going your way at last, and all of a sudden that poison dart of doubt penetrates your heart and spoils the moment. See, I see people nodding their heads as they know what I'm talking about.

You finally think you've arrived, you've got it, and all of a sudden you just, oh, I forgot about this thing here. Or you've experienced an incredible run of trouble and illness and failure in your life. One thing after another, and just when it was time to cash in on all those Bible promises that you've heard about, You're ready to cash in on all those Bible promises. You reach out to God, and he's not there. Your prayers seem to be falling on deaf ears.

It's like, you know, hello? Is somebody up there? Is anybody hearing my prayers these days? Wait a minute, I'm reading the Bible. I'll never forsake you.

I'll never leave you. I'll provide everything that you need, but I'm still sick. I'm still broke. My kid's still in trouble. Where are you, God?

Or maybe you learn something in the Bible that challenges what you've believed all your life, what you've done all of your life, and all of a sudden you may realize that what you believed all your life is is not quite what it should be. You thought this was the way and now all of a sudden you have to go this way. Have you ever had that feeling? What do you do when you're not sure anymore? This morning, I wanna share with you very briefly three things.

Three things to do when you're not sure. Number 1, when you're not sure, realize that you are not alone to feel this way. You're not the only one who's ever felt unsure. Feeling unsure about our faith, feeling unsure about salvation or God's presence and love is a pretty lonely feeling. We think we're the only ones who experience these spiritual potholes, I call them.

But the truth of the matter is that a lot of God's greatest servants were unsure at different times of their lives. For example, Elijah, the great prophet, the Old Testament felt alone and troubled about the effectiveness of his ministry after his confrontation with Jezebel and the prophets of Baal. He was unsure about the value of his preaching and he cried out to God, I'm all alone. I'm the last one left. I'm not sure if I'm doing a good job here.

I'm preaching and preaching and I'm working and working and nothing is happening. I'm not sure this is all worth it. And what about David? As he despaired over the fact that he would ever be king here, David is anointed king at a young age, and yet he spent most of his young life running away from Saul who was trying to kill him. He spent many a night in a dark, dank cave hiding out from the king's army.

And if you read some of the Psalms, you see that David cried out time after time, how long, Lord? How long? How long am I going to be, you know, out in the wilderness? He was unsure about his calling. And you know what?

I'm persuaded that Peter the apostle felt rather unsure of his mission and his Lord as he watched the Romans crucify his Lord, publicly murder him. I think he wasn't so sure anymore about his call to the apostleship. You see brothers and sisters, doubt is part of the faith. Doubting is part of the faith experience. It's not pleasant.

It's not the favorite part of the faith experience, but I'll tell you something, it's normal. And we see great men and women of God go through it. And this should comfort us with the knowledge that we are not alone. So when we doubt, when we're unsure, we need to realize that everybody goes through this period in their lives. Secondly, when we're not sure, we need to tell God what we are not sure about.

Bring it to God. Bring the doubt that we have to the Lord. You know, doubt is like a disease. It begins with a slight discomfort, a sore spot in the soul. You know, you get in a cold, you get that little sore spot in your throat, and you say, uh-oh, I'm coming down with something.

Right? Well, doubt is a little sore spot in the soul and it ought to tell you that you're coming down with something spiritually. And eventually, it progresses to a partial or total paralysis of our faith and our good works, even destroying our moral standards. That's the disease of doubt. And like a disease, doubt needs to be diagnosed in order to be treated, in order to be healed.

And the way to diagnose and treat our doubts is by expressing what they are and putting them before God. We need to go before God when we're done and say, God, I'm not sure anymore about my salvation. I know I was baptized. I'm just not sure about that sin if I'm really really forgiven. Or I'm not sure about this particular doctrine.

I'm not sure. Is everything in your word exact? Everything. A lot of people are doubting god. I mean, do we really need to be baptized?

Baptized? I mean, all the way down in the is that am I sure about that anymore? I'm not sure, God, that you're gonna provide for all my needs because I see people suffering. Every week we got this prayer list, you know, 20 people long, cancer and amputations and death and disease. God, are you really out there listening to what I'm saying?

I'm not sure anymore. We've gotta express those doubts. You know, Jesus allowed Thomas to express his doubt. Thomas says, hey, I'm not sure anymore. Unless I see, unless I touch, I'm sorry.

I'm not believing. I'm not believing he's alive. And Jesus in his kindness helped him resolve his doubt by saying to him, Thomas, go ahead. Go ahead. Touch.

That'll make you feel better. Go ahead. You see, it's the same with us. Sometimes doubt is the catalyst that forces us to deal with critical issues in our faith that when they are resolved, sees us moving closer and deeper into a relationship with God. How close do you think Thomas was to Jesus after his doubt was finally resolved?

You can't resolve doubt unless you articulate your doubt, Unless this happens, unless we clearly identify what our doubt is, and we allow God to come to comfort us and to teach us and to help us, we cannot grow past that obstacle in our faith. And so when we doubt, let's articulate it. Let's put it into words and put it before God and let Him help us with our doubts. And then finally, when we doubt, keep on going. Keep on keeping on, as a friend of mine used to say.

The problem with doubt, of course, is that it immobilizes us. You know, like a disease, a cold gives us a sore throat and a cough and all that kind of stuff. Doubt as a spiritual disease, the symptoms are immobilization. We we can't move anymore. We doubt, so we stop, or we turn around and we go back, or we turn aside to go a different way.

And when in doubt, we have to fight the impulse to just give up or even worse, to use doubt as a cover for sinfulness of all kinds. You know, Judas if you would say, woah. What what was Judas's problem? He was greedy. No.

No. That wasn't his problem. No. Judas's problem was that he doubted Jesus, and he allowed his doubt to cover his deeper sin of grief. That was the problem.

He doubted, and so he let himself do things that he ought not to have done. And so many of us as Christians, we doubt, and we allow doubt to make us stop coming to church. We allow doubt to give us the freedom to get into bad habits. We we doubt, so we allow doubt to, push us away from the word. Everybody everybody gets that unsure feeling at times.

We have to realize that doubt is that part of the Christian road where we are called to walk by faith and not by sight. We always talk about, oh, we walk by faith, but sometimes we have to walk by faith. And you know that you're walking by faith when you doubt and you are still walking. That's walking by faith. And so when you're not sure, just keep going a little further and God will meet you with reassurance and enlightenment somewhere down the road.

You can be sure of that. Don't doubt that promise. I ask you this morning, how are you feeling? Are you sure like that commercial says, you know, silly commercial? Are you sure or are you unsure?

If you're sure of your salvation, if you're sure of the Lord, say amen. Amen. Alright. Praise God for the confidence of those that expressed their faith. But if you're unsure of your salvation, if you're sitting here this morning and you're not sure of your standing with God because you have not been baptized or because you have fallen away from God, then as we stand and sing the song of invitation, we encourage you to come forward and make sure that you're saved and heaven bound as we stand and sing our song of invitation.

The status quo, in other words, the budget that you've just seen is to maintain the status quo. Now, sometimes when we say status quo that has a negative ring to it, like as if status quo is bad. We're not saying status quo is bad. It just means to maintain what we have exactly in the way that it is, this is the budget that we need. That's without any changes in our staff or our facilities in order to continue doing things exactly at the rate and at the speed that we're doing them in the way that we're going to do them.

This is the price tag. The reason I've come back up is, I'd like to do 2 things here in the last 5 or 6 minutes that we have left in our time together. First of all, I'd like to put this budget here in our weekly giving into some sort of context to see how we're doing. How do we see what we're doing? You know, are we doing good?

Are we good givers or not? How do you measure that kind of thing? And to see what it is exactly that the elders are asking for us to do. And then secondly, I'd like to share briefly with you the plans for the future. Some of you might say, man, I mean, I don't see no plans for the future here.

Well, that was my job. My job was to come up and tell you about some of the plans for the future and a brief summary of the recommendations that the committees made to the elders. First of all, if you were to review, first of all, our budget, how are we doing? What kind of givers are we? Well, if you were to review the budgets and the giving of different congregations in North America, you would discover something very interesting.

You would discover that the average giving is between $10.20 a person. I mean, if you were to get the bulletins of every church of Christ in North America and sift through them 1 at a time, you would see that if you took the total number of people in attendance and divided that into the offering, it would come out to between $10 $20 per person. I mean that's the way I mean I've gone all over the place, I've gotten bulletins from every place, and it always works out exactly the same way. And I've taken some bulletins here from different places in Canada, in the United States, big and small, just to show you what I mean. For example, there's a church in Verdun, PQ means province of Quebec.

Verdun, Quebec. This church has an average attendance of 42 people per week, small church, mission church, 1st generation Christians. Nobody in this church has a dad or a mom that was raised in the church. They're all brand new Christians, you know, became Christians when they were 15 or 16 years old or 30 or whatever. 42 people in attendance, their average giving is about $400 a week.

That and if you divide that now I've rounded these numbers out here, you know, I didn't mess with the pennies or stuff like that. That comes out to about $9 a person. Now they have adults, they have children, they have babies, they count, that's all 42 of them. But if you divide this amount by 42, it will come up to $9 a head. If you go to another church in Quebec, the Lachine, and I've preached in both of these churches so I know their composition.

In Lachine, Quebec, this church, their average attendance is 76 people, but very different church than the Verdun church. It's made up 60% of black people. And I don't mean just Black people from the United States, I mean Africans, West Indians, people from, you know, just, not just Afro American people, but real Africans from Ghana who have migrated to Montreal and Haitians who have migrated to Montreal and you know, West Indians from Jamaica and Trinidad. So this church is made up primarily of Afro American West Indian people. Some Americans who are living in Montreal who speak English.

Their average attendance is 76, their average giving is $825 a week, that's $11 a week. Totally different church, totally different culture, and yet the giving is the same. Let's go to MacArthur Park. I've preached at MacArthur Park, Texas. Big church, metro church, 875 people in attendance.

You know, San Antonio, Texas military congregation, Hispanic and white, that's the combination. $9,500 is a lot of money but when you divide it, it's $11 a head. $11 a head comes out the same thing. All right, how about the biggest congregation in the brotherhood? Everybody know what the biggest congregation in the brotherhood?

It's the Madison Church of Christ in Madison, Tennessee. Their attendance, 3,200 people every Sunday. They're offering $43,000 every Sunday, but when you divide it, it's $13 a head. $13 a person. It doesn't matter how you chop it up.

It's always the same between 10 and 20. If you go to Southwest Oklahoma City, the Southwest congregation, 450 people in attendance there, $56.60. But when you divide it, $13 a head, same thing. Different numbers, different place, different people comes out to the same. The Edmond congregation.

Oh, we know the Edmond congregation. Oh, we're in Edmond where rich people live. Right? 885 people, $13,700 a week. What's their average contribution?

$15 a head. $15 a head? How about Del City? You're curious? Now I'm not I'm not revealing secrets.

This is always in their bulletin. I didn't I didn't get anything that wasn't in somebody's bulletin to, you know, kinda, you know, do something that is not polite, let's put it that way. This is all in their bulletin, I'm just publishing it. Del City, are you ready? How about Del City?

580 people, average $9,300 a week, $16 a person, that's their average. So you you know, you say, man, Madison Church, $43,000, but when you work it out to head per head, the Dell City people are a lot more generous than the Madison Church people. Good folks in Oklahoma. Moore, Oklahoma, the Moore congregation, 363 people, $59100 a person. Excuse me.

50 that'd be nice. $59100 a person. I'd go there. I just send my contribution here. $59100, $16 a person.

How about, you'd be surprised, you know the highest one that I saw? You'd be surprised. Look at this. Ridgecrest, Midwest City, 280 people, $53,130. That's their average, $19 a person.

And they out give that the the megachurch in in Madison, they out give the megachurch in San Antonio, that military church, high you know, high-tech church, a little rich crest. Okay. Now, you wanna know how we do? This is how this is how we figure out how we do. We compare ourselves not to ourselves.

We compare ourselves to our brethren. Here we are. That's us. That's us. Okay.

Now these here, we took out of the bulletin. There's a little difference between the budget and that, but you kick it up 10 attendance wise, it comes out to the same way about $10.50, something like that. Now these figures put the request of the elders into perspective. We're going from being, you know, around here and don't forget, I didn't mention that in Verdun, these people, half of them are on welfare. We're going from down here and the elders are saying, well, why don't you get to be a maybe a $12 a unit church?

We're a $10 a unit church, let's become a $12 a unit. We're not asking for 19 or 20. That'd be unreasonable. That'd be a stretch. Now there's a stretch.

But to go from being a $10 church to $11 or $12 church, that's not too much of a stretch. We're well within the average and yet we're still at the lower end of the scale. Now there's a couple of reasons I ask myself, why are we there? Why aren't we up here? Couple of reasons, maybe.

First of all, maybe we're not trained in giving. Maybe we're not mature in this area of faith. Statistics show that giving is supposed to grow with maturity and there's no reason why a church that has been here so long should be at this level. We've been here a lot how many years? 60?

50? 60 years? Something like that. It's not like this church up here, they've been here 6 years. They're just learning about Christ.

They come in into the church. They don't know the difference between the old testament, the new testament. They don't know. They don't know about giving. We know about giving.

We know about it. We know the theory. That may be one reason. Another reason is is maybe we're just poor. Maybe we're just poor, but churches that are poor give just as much.

And it seems to me that churches in Moore and Ridgecrest you know, I've been to Moore. I am not that impressed with Moore. I've driven around Midwest City. I mean, I don't see no $500,000 homes in Midwest City. I mean, it kind of look pretty much the same as what we've got around here.

There's a third reason and I think this is the reason that we're down here in this level of giving. I think we're not growing in this area because we haven't been challenged to give. Because one thing I've only been here on a little over a year and a half now, but one thing I've seen, every time the elders have come before the church and said, we've got a good work here, we've got Bibles to Russia or we've got, you know, whatever, brown bag Christmas. Right? This church gives and gives mightily and generously and overflowingly.

I kinda think we just haven't been really challenged. We haven't been put to the test yet. And so the elders want to change this idea, and that's why they organize these committees to recommend to them improvements and requirements for this church in order to grow numerically, of course, and spiritually. And so the following, the last overhead that I have here before we dismiss, gives us a summary of these recommendations that these committees made to the elders and the elders have kind of put them into one report and what I've done is I've summarized them into 3 main things. Here are the main recommendations.

Many months of meetings went into this. Some of you were part of that. Then the elders, I don't know how many times they met over these things, poured over them, poured over them, put them into one report, which they have, And now I've reduced these to 3 main recommendations. Here they are. Number 1, a new education building, a new education building built out there that will have classrooms, a complex that will include and facilitate and accommodate 400 people, that will have a fellowship area and a recreation area, a complex that will house at least 5 large classrooms and one area that can seat 200 people for dinner, along with a kitchen and serving facility.

This complex will also have a reception area, offices, work rooms, meeting rooms and storage facilities. This new facility should also be able to provide, not in itself, but in order to serve it, a parking for a 400 plus member congregation. The plan is to sell the present annex, you know, where our offices is that add on, to empty that out and sell that and move the offices and all that reception area to the new complex. This is not what the elders dreamed up, this is what the congregation said to the elders, what we need for growth here is we need an education facility where 300 or 400 people can come to Sunday school and not be jammed into these tiny little closet rooms. That's what we need if we wanna grow.

If we wanna maintain the status quo, $32100 we'll maintain the status quo and that's what we'll do. If we wanna grow to 3, 4,500 people, then we need some equipment to do that growing in and especially the education people said, we need a facility that will accommodate a larger Sunday school and our Sunday school is growing. Number 2, establish 2 worship services. Now, the big problem a lot of times that people do is they say, well, we want to grow, let's build us a big auditorium. Well, when you build a big auditorium, you've got also build an educational facility.

That's a lot of money and that's a lot of work. And so the recommendation was instead of building a big auditorium, provide an education facility because the Sunday school is what drives your attendance. Sunday school is what helps the church grow. People are taught, people meet, they interact. The auditorium where we meet can be doubled up simply by doubling up worship service.

We can sit comfortably 300 to 350 people here. We had 2 worship services. We could comfortably sit 700 people and with our education facility and our existing classrooms, we could also accommodate 500 to 600 people for Sunday school without any problems. These hours are 9, 10, 11, you know, they're arbitrary, it could be 8:15, whatever, 8:30, but this is the idea, to have 2 worship services and then finally to renovate this auditorium, New seating, not actually change the benches, but a more modern and bright auditorium, new carpets, pew colors, better lighting, redecorate. We already have and paid for a new sound system and it's paid for and now finally it's working real well.

We got our last piece of equipment, Friday, something that takes away all the, you know, the ringing and pinging sound and I think we finally got all the bugs out. These are the 3 main. Now there's a lot of sub detail here and and and other committees, the elders are not gonna form another working committee who will study these proposals and come up with a price tag and a plan and a design. What will it look like and where will the bathrooms be and all that kind of stuff. And when that committee is finished with its report, the elders will come back before the congregation and present to you the plans and how much it'll cost and how are we gonna finance this?

Are we gonna do it with bonds? Are we gonna do it with a building fund? Whatever. Now, This is the challenge here. The budget is not the challenge.

The budget is just maintaining the status quo. There is no challenge there. This is the challenge right here. Here is something that is not just maintaining the status quo, it's something that will contribute to our growth. Here is a plan that will not produce our growth.

The gospel is what produces our growth. You know, we say preaching is what brings people into the church, but it's love that keeps people in the church. The new family that placed membership here this morning, that family will stay and grow with us if we love them, if we integrate them into our lives, and they allow us to be integrated into their lives. That's how we grow. Okay?

It's not the building that's don't get me wrong. Buildings don't make churches grow. Buildings only accommodate the growth that's already taking plan. Here is a plan that will accommodate the growth that we expect and that we are experiencing. I want to commend the members of the committees for their hard work because they gave up Saturday mornings and Friday nights and all kinds of time to work on this plan.

I also commend our elders in having the courage to step forward and presenting us with something that will help us press on to maturity. You know what? This is gonna hurt. You want financial pain? No pain, no gain.

This is it folks, but it's gonna be exciting. It's gonna be exciting. I want us to ask God to bless us. I want all of you to pray for this plan and pray especially for those men and women who will be selected to serve on the action committee, so to speak, who will be putting together this plan into a kind of an action stage, and within a month or 2, be coming back to you. And this is not for, like, 1999 or something like that.

This is for 1995. Harold keeps telling me, man, I wanna see, you know, I wanna see digging this summer. I wanna see some digging. I want dirt this summer. So we're we're on the fast track to get this thing to get this thing done.

And so I pray that God bless our elders that they will have the wisdom to see us through this particular particular project.