Ask Pastor Mike Fabarez

Speaker 1

Sunday sermons are important, but have you ever wished you could talk with a pastor outside the pulpit to get some of your questions answered? Well, we'll get a chance to do just that today on Focal Point. I'm your host, Dave Drouy. Glad you're with us today for Focal Point.

If you're a regular listener, you know that each week we have a standing appointment with Pastor Mike Favares. It's a chance to enjoy a more personal conversation with our Bible teacher on topics that we face in daily life. If you'd like to ask a question of Pastor Mike, stay tuned. I'll share our contact information in just a bit.

First, though, let's join executive director Jay Wortin in the pastor's study for this edition of Ask Pastor Mike.

Speaker 2

Well, thanks, Dave. Pastor Mike, I have a question from a listener that I know will get a good response from you. The question is, why should I attend church each week?

Speaker 3

Well, you should attend church because you're supposed to. God has told us to. I mean, it's such a silly thing when you meet people that say, well, I'm a Christian, but I don't go to church. I mean, not only is this an obvious obligation of the Christian life, certainly in scripture, but I think about God spending all this time setting up in the New Testament, the church, how it functions, what it looks like, the varied gifts in the church, leaders in the church. You got ministry leaders or deacons. You got pastors. God doesn't go to all this trouble, create this organization and then say, well, it's an optional thing for you. Clearly, everyone is called to participate in the church.

It's like a guy who, you know, quote unquote converted to be a soccer player and says, well, I just play soccer on my own. It's a team endeavor. We are the body of Christ. The parts must come together to function in the church. You cannot be a detached Christian and think that you're living the Christian life the way God wants you to. You've got to be involved in church.

In radio ministry, this is a particular, you know, liability. We're out there trying to proclaim the Word on the airwaves as an augment and a supplement to someone's growth and involvement in their church. And I guess we should make that clear. This is no substitute for church. I mean, I'm hoping that my preaching and the exposition of God's Word can help augment and fuel your spiritual growth. But you've got to be involved in a church. You've got to find the best one you can find and get involved in it within reasonable driving distance, so you can get involved in it and be a part of it.

Speaker 2

Well, obviously people can get Bible teaching, and we hope good Bible teaching, on the radio and even over the Internet listening.

But what specifically would you tell somebody you need to be in church for? I mean, if they're getting their Bible teaching and they can pray on their own, what else do they need?

Speaker 3

Right. Well, you need more than just this invisible talking head through the Internet or the radio. You need to be engaged in relationships face to face. I mean, I often talk in our church about how you can't just sit with chairs side to side, which is really the experience we have when we listen to a sermon. It's almost like it's just me and the preacher, and I'm hearing it and I'm a passive listener.

We need our chairs face to face, and then we need to get up out of our chairs and start serving in the church. Those aspects can't be done just sitting in front of a computer screen or with earbuds in my ear, listening on my iPhone. You've got to be involved in a church, physically involved in a church.

Now, of course, there is always that small segment of the body that's shut in, and they can't get out, or they're elderly or they're sick and they're just stuck. I get that. But I'm talking about an able-bodied person, and you don't even have to be all that able-bodied. We'll wheel you into church, whatever; we'll go get you. I mean, most churches have van ministries or something. We'll get you to the building.

But you've got to interact personally in the church because there's so much more to it than just hearing the word. It's not just about finding a teacher; it's about finding a team to interact with, relationships to build, and service to be given in the church.

Speaker 2

Is there some kind of accountability that comes along with being in church?

Speaker 3

Yeah, I mean if I'm playing virtual soccer, to go back to my silly illustration here at the beginning and just doing it in the privacy of my own house and maybe I've got some virtual team I'm on on the Internet. There's just no connection to real people that can ever challenge me, encourage me, spur me on to the kind of teamwork that the Christian life is all about.

So of course there's built-in accountability by being known and being a part of a church. And that's why if your church is really big, which there's nothing wrong with really big churches as long as they're biblical, you need to make sure you're involved in some level where people do know your name and your chairs do get face to face.

So some smaller parts, what we call around here a sub-congregational group, where you can connect and identify with people that actually know your life and you know theirs.

Speaker 2

Yes. Because you certainly have some people that will listen to this and say, well, I attend church, but maybe they don't ever do anything else beyond Sunday morning. Speak to that a little bit. I know you just did, but a little bit more.

Speaker 3

Yeah. And there are people that think they're checking the box of being a part of church when they run into the church, sit through a service, and run out to their car and go home. You have got to be involved in relationship. Think of all the one another statements in the New Testament. Every one of those one another statements, and there's several of them. We can't do any of those just by being a passive listener in a service with my chair side by side with someone else. I have to get involved in people's lives to do the things that the Bible tells us to do as Christians.

And for those that are out there saying, well, I attend the universal church, just remember, the universal church has never had a meeting. The universal church has never collected an offering. The universal church has never participated in the Lord's Supper. The universal church has never baptized anyone. I mean, the universal church is just a description of all the people in the body of Christ in this current church age. It is not something I can say, well, I am a part of that. Therefore, I have checked the box of being a part of a church. It is a description of all the people in all the local churches throughout the church age.

So you are not involved in a church just because you meet someone at Starbucks and say, hey, we are bros in Christ. And so we just had our church here today. You haven't. A church is designed by God. It's got the leadership in place that meets the biblical qualifications. They have meetings where biblical things take place, and you need to be in one of those.

And if you've had a bad experience in one, hey, I've had bad experiences with buying shoes. Doesn't mean I go barefoot the rest of my life. I'll go buy some other shoes that are better. And I've got to figure out I can man up here and do what I need to do with a local church even though I had a bad experience in the past. I'm just trying to anticipate excuses because people have them regarding church.

Speaker 2

Sure. They'll come back and say, well, I couldn't get to know anybody. Or I didn't, you know, nobody would say hi to me or anything like that.

Which begs the question, how hard should somebody be working and how hard should the church be working?

Speaker 4

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Well, people need to definitely work at this. You're not going to just go there like it's some kind of day spa and everybody rushes to go help you feel good and spiritually edified. You know, you're going to go there and be a part of the edification process. I even like the way the Bible puts it. You know, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. There's involvement in people's lives. I have to give, I have to serve, I have to sacrifice, I have to work.

So you can't just sit there and think this is some kind of automated car wash. The chain pulls me through and everything's great. I come out the other side. Well, I really didn't like the way it did this, or there was enough bubbles here or whatever. These illustrations are falling apart. But you get what I'm trying to say.

You have to involve yourself in other people's lives, and that is not what people often are doing. They look at their church experience like a restaurant. In other words, I'm going to go there and they're going to come out and wait on me and serve me, and they're going to, you know, fill my water, cut back up. And then when I'm gone and done.

Speaker 4

With that, I'm going to look back.

Speaker 3

And say, what kind of. I don't know, I kind of didn't really like that. The service was slow. Forget all that.

When you go to a family and you're having a family meal, you get up off the couch, you go into the kitchen, you help prepare food. When it's done, you clean up, you put a towel over your shoulder, and.

Speaker 4

You get to work.

Speaker 3

The church body is not like a restaurant. It's like a family kitchen. And that's the way you need to look at this. You can't come in there and just say, "I want to be served by the church." Oh, I give it three stars. Oh, I give that one two and a half stars. That's not what church life is all about. And yet it happens, right? With Yelp and all these other things, people rate their churches like they're restaurants.

I'm sorry, they're not restaurants; you got to get involved. I mean, it's funny, we don't have the Ramirez family, three and a half stars, you know, and Johnson's, you know, two and a half stars. We don't rate families like that. I mean, my kids aren't rating how well they like being a part of my family at home. They may have opinions about it, but this is not a consumer organization. This is an organism filled with people that have roles, and they all need to get involved in work.

Speaker 2

And certainly that getting involved initially is going to be uncomfortable and could be difficult, but we persevere and work towards that.

Speaker 3

Absolutely.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Pastor Mike. It's a challenging conversation, but hopefully it's helpful to some people out there. And we're going to keep this conversation going by listening to a message you gave called church life as it ought to be.

Speaker 4

It's a ubiquitous statement, I assume, among us that our church exists to make disciples. I mean, people I trust have that on the tip of their tongue. I mean, we have a sense of knowing what we're here for. There's a lot of churches, just not that sense of even knowing what their purpose is. They have no measurable goal. And our goal is clear. We're here to make disciples.

As we've studied that multiple times in Matthew 28, what we do is we take the participles grammatically in Christ's Great Commission, and we see the parts of that main verb, to make disciples. From that, we start to draw those very clear targets, the essential components of what it means to make disciples. We've tried to make that pithy and memorable with words like reaching, teaching, and training. So we're a church that's all about reaching people for Christ, teaching people to be like Christ, to obey Christ, and training people to serve Christ. And that's the purpose.

If we're going to really be effective at reaching, teaching, and training, there are three other words that should be kind of our personal checklist to make sure that we are a functioning part of this church: attending, connecting, and serving. If our church is purposed to reach, teach, and train, we need to understand that our involvement in the church must require a commitment to attending the church, to connecting to people in the church, and to serving the people of the church.

Now, let me start with the first one. You and I, if we're going to be a part of a church that is effective in reaching its generation—reaching, teaching, and training—then we need to commit to church attendance. Now, there are a lot of places in the Bible I could go to show you that's God's expectation. But let me take you to one that you probably wouldn't look to. If you're going to think about the obligation that you have before God to attend your church, let me turn you to Ephesians, chapter 4.

As odd as this passage may seem on the surface to get to the place of church attendance, there may be an approach or a new way to look at this that you never have before that may be helpful. We need to make the commitment to faithfully attend church. Ephesians 4. Look at verse number 8. Therefore, it says, now Paul is quoting here in Ephesians 4, Psalm 68, verse 18. To be specific, when he says this: "When he ascended on high, he led a host of captives," he's redeemed people, "and he gave gifts to men."

Now he's going to take that passage from the Psalms and apply it now to Christ. You see in the ESV, as in most translations, verses 9 and 10 are in parentheses. Parenthetically, he's going to take the first part of that verse in Psalm 68:18 and say, talking about ascending and leading a host captive, he now takes off, parenthetically, for a minute to talk about the descent of Christ, perhaps the incarnation, and then furthermore, the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Christ.

Now, that's a bit of an aside because he's going to get to the main point that he's developing in chapter four, which is the last line, the last five words in English in verse 18 of Psalm 68, found in verse 8, which is "he gave gifts to men." He picks it up in verse 11. Let's read there. What did he give to his redeemed people, his captive people? He gave the apostles, he gave the prophets, he gave the evangelists, and he gave the shepherds and teachers. That's how it reads.

So I got four different categories. That's the foundation of the Church of Jesus Christ. The apostles who came with apostolic authority, the ability to do miraculous signs. They came with the authority of Christ and founded the movement, the apostles. Then the prophets came along who were endowed with the supernatural ability to speak revelatory information. They were able to teach New Testament truths without a New Testament in their hands. They were the prophets, the apostles, and prophets. You established the church. You fed the early church without a Bible.

Then you had the evangelists, who, much like the apostles, came and founded churches with a Bible in hand, not just leading people to Christ, although it was a big part of that; they established churches. They were the church planters or the evangelists. And then you had the people that fed them. Just like the prophets, you had the pastor-teachers. It was hard, I suppose, for Paul to choose which word to use. He didn't just want to use the word pastor, and he didn't just want to use the word teacher. He used them both because the role is a leader in the church who's guiding kind of administratively with spiritual insight to the concerns and the harms of a Christian, and to teach them and feed them.

So you got the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastor-teachers. The apostles and prophets are foundational gifts. We don't have those being given to the church anymore. We have now the church planters, the evangelists, and the pastor-teachers. In the context of what we've been talking about briefly, the purpose of the church is to do the work or the ministry of reaching, teaching, and training. The pastor, here, the pastor-teacher, is given to every church to have that ability to equip them, prepare them, motivate them, spur them on, and get them going to do the work of ministry, which results in the building up of the body of Christ.

Now, okay, that's a great explanation, but verse 11, remember that started with "he gave them." He gave some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers. As awkward as this sounds, the whole point of this started with Psalm 68:18, which is, "he gave gifts to men." And the gifts in this text are people in particular for an established church or an established Christian. It's "he gave them a pastor-teacher." Your pastor-teacher is Christ's gift to you.

As awkward as that sounds, he says he's God's gift to the world. No, no, no, listen, I'm not God's gift to the world, but I am Christ's gift to you, as imperfect as I am and every other pastor and every other human being that is a gift from God to someone imperfect. I get that. But I am, as your pastor-teacher, and the team of pastor-teachers we have, they are gifts from God, Christ in particular in this text, to the church.

This is not an arrogant statement. This is a statement just to recognize that your relationship with your pastor and your church is not just like, "Oh, yeah, I go there for a while and I like that church for their music, and I go there sometimes, and that church has great programs, and I go there and that has a great Bible study." You don't float around just like you didn't when you were growing up. You didn't just trade houses all the time. And hopefully, you're not trading spouses like, you know, like the world and trading them in when the thrill is gone.

You are committed to this relationship every week when your chairs are side by side, being fed by your pastor. It needs to be a priority.

Speaker 3

Got to make it a priority in your life.

Speaker 4

Number two, there's a problem with just stopping there. You can sit here every Sunday, you can soak in the sermons, you can be growing, you can be getting equipped. But if you're not at another level of commitment to take the chairs, as we say, from side to side to face to face, then there's a problem. Let's put it this way, to be very specific, you need to commit to a small group, a small group of Christians within your church sitting under the same pastor, in the same place in the same assembly. But you are sitting with those people and you are connecting with them. Attend and connect. Connecting with other Christians.

Now why do I say this? Turn with me, if you would, to Hebrews, chapter 10, verse 24. Hebrews 10:24. And let us consider how to stir up. Now highlight this one another. This is the pastor. Actually, if you study the book of Hebrews, it is actually a homily. It is a sermon. He's preaching to the people. He says to the congregation, you should encourage one another. You should stir up one another. You should motivate one another. You should do things that keep each other accountable for love, loving God, loving people, and good deeds. Saying no to sin and yes to righteousness. You need to be interacting with one another.

Then comes the line that's so familiar, verse 25, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some. Now if you just pull that out of context, you'd think we're talking about weekend service. When Peter is standing up on the Temple Mount, preaching to all the disciples in the first century. Not it, keep reading. But encouraging one another. And all the more as you see the day drawing near. The Bible here is telling you not to neglect meeting together in some kind of context where you are stirring each other up to love and good deeds and encouraging each other up in the faith. That needs to happen.

And let me say this, it is non-optional for you to be in a small group. You must be in a place where you go from chairs side to side, chairs face to face. Because here's what cannot happen. You cannot stir one another up to love and good deeds. You cannot encourage one another with your chairs side by side. When I'm here, you're silent, you're listening. You're taking in the word of God. You're not doing this verse. And this verse says, man, some neglect this. Now this is a preacher preaching to his people. They're clearly not neglecting hearing the word. What they're neglecting is meeting together outside of that preaching event.

And if you are neglecting meeting together with other Christians outside that preaching event, then you're lacking your Christian life. There's a void, there's a problem. So we must commit to a small group. Home fellowship groups are the program, the primary, central program, where your chairs go face to face and you begin to connect. You do more than attend. There are other programs, though, that do the same thing. In other words, if you're in women's Bible study and that small group, you're doing exactly what this text is talking about. You're face to face, you're knowing others, you're being known. You're stirring one another up, keeping each other accountable for love and good deeds. You're doing it in men's Bible study, same way, whatever it might be. You're in a small group. That's great. It's something that we do and it should be done at some point in.

Speaker 3

My connection with the church.

Speaker 4

Lastly, you need to be having some kind of service. I put it this way: you need to commit to a ministry post. You need to have an identity in terms of service in the church that you're doing something. Now, again, you can see this as some crass ploy to fill up our volunteer needs list. And that's not it. It's really not. We need all the converted people in our church that really know what it is to have a real relationship with God. You need to be in a small group, and you need to have a ministry post.

I know some of you say, "I'm too busy to do all those three things: to come to church every weekend and to be in a small group," which really only takes a couple of hours as well. But I can't add a ministry on top of that. If you're too busy to serve, okay, you're too busy. Oh, you're demanding all of my life? I'm not. I'm just getting you ready for the Bema seat of Christ. I'm getting you ready for that moment because one day you'll stand before Him in His glory and say, "Well, my kid was in soccer, and he was an all-star in that. We had all these things going on, and I was on the Homeowners Association. I had a lot going on: the Toastmasters and Kiwanis Club. I had no time to serve at the church. When my pastor, that hyperactive guy, told me to serve, I just said I couldn't do it."

And Christ said, "Oh, you're right, I understand." No, He will not understand. As a matter of fact, you will be in trouble with God. In Luke 12, when Christ talks about service, He often ties it to eschatology. You need to be thinking about the return of Christ. I love the line in the second parable: "Blessed is he whom the master finds so doing." The context is serving. Blessed is the servant—the noun is there—whom the master finds doing so when he returns.

Here's all I want to say: you don't want to be saying, "Well, I was between ministries when Christ came back." Get busy; have a post. "Well, I don't have a lot of time for stuff." It can be as simple as getting here a little early and being a part of our ushering team. Not that demanding. It can be being part of our fix-it ministry. Now think about that. I mean, most guys in the room, I would hope, know how to patch drywall, right? If you do that for your own house, you know how to fix things around your house.

We have a team of volunteers that get together under Chris's leadership and under Rick's oversight. They begin to look at this church as their home. They start saying, "Okay, we got things to fix." They get together, and there's some organization and systematizing to the task list, but they get their hands involved in doing things. It's not a 40-hour-a-week job; as a matter of fact, it's only a few hours a month. That's the kind of ministry where at least you'd have your hat on and say, "I know what my ministry post is here."

But you need to find a ministry post. It doesn't have to take up the whole of your life, but that's what it means to attend, to connect, and to serve. Now, I don't have time for the passage, and I should have, but I wrote it down for you: 1 Peter 4, if you want the verses, verses 7 through 11. It simply starts with an eschatological urgency: "The end of all things is at hand." Then it says that we have a gift from God, some kind of endowment. This time it's not a person; it's some kind of ability, some kind of aptitude to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. If it's some speaking thing, do it like you're speaking the oracles of God. If it's serving, do it with the strength that God supplies so that God...

Speaker 3

Can be glorified in Christ.

Speaker 4

That is our mentality. We've got to have a ministry post. We've got to be serving.

All right, let me pray for you real quick. God, I hope that in the short time we've had, there's been enough tie to scriptural truth. This is not man's idea. This is your design.

For every healthy Christian, I pray today we leave with a challenge not from Mike, but from the spirit of God to know that we need to be committed to attending regularly. We need to be committed to knowing people, and we need to be committed to some ministry post where I put my hand for the good of the.

Speaker 3

Church, to work in the church.

Speaker 4

So, God, I pray that for your.

Speaker 3

Glory I pray in Jesus name. Amen.

Speaker 1

Amen. Church life as it ought to be. That's the title of today's message here on Focal Pointe. It's the conclusion of a conversation with Pastor Mike about church participation. Now, to hear the complete, unedited sermon, go online to Focal Point Radio.

Today it's popular to rate establishments on consumer apps like Yelp, but Pastor Mike says that just as we don't rate our own families, so we don't rate churches; we are the church. He talked about how vital it is to be part of an active community of believers, building relationships for a healthy walk with God. How are you doing with that? Are you feeling connected?

Well, I want to invite you to connect with Focal Point today, and we're committed to complementing your local church involvement by bringing you the encouragement of God's Word every day. As a Focal Point listener, you're part of a very special community that values the forthright teaching of God's Word.

If you've never connected with us before, we want to know you're there. So when you contact us for the very first time, we'll welcome you with a book written by Mike Febarres called *Praying for Sunday*. It presents a unique view of participating in God's community by preparing your heart for worship, elevating your Sundays to a whole new level. *Praying for Sunday* is yours free, without obligation, just for connecting with us today. Call 883-205-885 or find it online at focalpointradio.org.

Thanks for remembering that it's the faithful giving of listeners like you that makes this program possible. In appreciation for your financial gift this month, we're going to send you a special book called *The Art of Neighboring*. It's filled with guidance on building genuine relationships, and it's yours when you send a generous gift to focalpointradio.org or by calling us at 888-320-5885. You can also write to Focal Point, Post Office Box 2850, Laguna Hills, CA 92654.

I'm Dave Droue inviting you back when Pastor Mike Febaros concludes his series *Encouraged*. That's Monday on Focal Point. Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.

Speaker 4

Sam.