Video Transcript: Connection 5 - Church

All right effective communication class, we're looking at the seven connections.  Communication is all about connections connection, one God connection two  marriage, if you're married, connection three is your family. If you have children,  connection four is the support system for those first three connections,  connection, five is what we want to look at. Right? In this session, connection,  five is church. So you can see these connections, circles are getting better,  bigger, and maybe better. So we start with God, then we have our marriage. And we add to that our family and then our small group. And now we're talking about  the church. Basic Communication path for church, it's the same as the other  ones. Okay? You can't have a connection to a whole group of people without  talking without listening, and sort of a repeated pattern. So in church, we have  prayer, we call you know, talking to God prayer. And in the church service, that  prayer is either spoken or sung. Listening is the Bible part often, and that that  can be spoken, it can be the sermon, a lot of different ways that the Bible is  communicated to one another. And the repeatedly part is our weekly service, we have it every week. Doesn't matter if the pastor is sick, or what's going on, the  service must go on. It's such a, it's a strong habit all across the world. Prayer in  church, I want to talk about that. So we have our prayers in church. And my  encouragement is that we that you keep them brief. Sometimes prayers go on,  and on and on. And you have to remember, you have all these different people  coming to church, you have people that know things, and people that don't know the things, you have people that have been in the church all their life, you have  new people, you have people that are older and know a lot of things. And then  you have a two year old or a three year old in church, you have this huge group  of differing people with different needs, and so on. And now they come together,  and you ask them to close their eyes, here, please close your eyes. And then  you launch into a prayer, which doesn't always have an organizational structure,  it's sort of a random thing, well, we'll pray for this, and then we'll pray for that.  And whatever the person decides, and there's no interior logic to carry you  through. What when you tell a story, it's like there's a beginning. And then there's a middle, and then there's in the story carries you forward. And I have to listen to this, in order to understand that. But in the prayer, I could not listen to half of it.  And I wouldn't lose my place because it doesn't follow a logical progression. And so people just tune out. They can't hold you, you ask them to close their eyes.  And now they start thinking about other things. So they're tired and they fall  asleep. Keep the prayer. Brief. Prayer is not the place for announcements. Lord, we want to pray for Sally who just had an operation, and she's in this hospital.  And the visitation hours are from four to five and you have this huge  announcement in the middle of your prayer. Prayer is not announcement time.  On the other hand, you can make announcements, your prayer, a lot of times in  churches, what they do is they make all these announcements, you know, so  and so's in the hospital. So and so this also doesn't have a job. And you have 

this huge list of announcements. And now it's first time and you go through the  same list all over again. Because this time we're praying, announcing prayer,  why not just say, Okay, I'm gonna give you a bunch of announcements. But as I  do so, understand that God is hearing this as our prayer. We don't have to close  our eyes to make this a prayer. We don't have to say now we are praying. This is these are the announcements. And by the way, these are the things we're  actually presenting to God at the same time. I think God can figure it out this  whole thing. Number four, prayer in church as a model for prayer in the home.  So what's the purpose of the prayer in the church? We, we have our individual  prayers, we have our marriage prayers. We have our family prayers. We have  our prayers in a small group. And now we all come together at church. We're  going to repeat all of the prayers. We're going to be here forever. So what do we do? Well, in some sense, prayer is just a representative thing at the church  service. And why not use it as a teaching opportunity? Here we're going to do  the Acts adoration, confession Thanksgiving or the Lord's Prayer or the seven  connection those things I talked about. earlier as part of the tools for prayer, why couldn't we, you know, let's all as a as a church, try the Acts prayer. We're going  to do it every Sunday as a model, but then I want you to take this model and use it in your family. Use it in your marriage, use it in your personal life. So for the  next month, let's do the Acts adoration, confession, thanksgiving supplication.  So the prayer on Sunday becomes a model for the prayers all during the week.  The sermon in church, okay, so this is the word part, this is the listening, we're  listening to what God has to say in his word. Well, that's, for the most part in a  church service, or a big part at least that's the sermon. So the sermon, let's think about the sermon or just talk briefly, I know there's a whole course on how to  write a sermon and all of that. So this is just a little sample of that. Solve a  problem? A lot of sermons are, okay, our text for today is John 3:16. God so  loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Let's parse this thing. Let's talk first  about God, God is the One who created the universe, God, the Father, Son,  Holy Spirit, God so loved what kind of love Well, there's eros love in the Bible,  there's agape love. Let's talk about these two different kinds of love, then let's  talk about the world, you know, on and on and on. And we talk about all the  parts of this verse or this passage. And it's like, why are we talking about these  things? Why am I listening to you? What problem are we trying to solve? What  What journey? Are you taking me on? What What treasure are we looking for?  You know, when you're looking for something, you're energized, you lose your  keys, you can't find your keys where are my keys, I can't find them. I'm looking,  I'm hunting, I'm energized, I gotta find these things. You're looking for a wife.  You're energized. You're talking to people you've never talked to otherwise you  talk to strangers, you, you ask things you wouldn't ask why? Because you're on  a journey. You're trying to figure something out, you're trying to find something. 

That's the kind of energy that people need to pay attention. They're just talking  people want to know, why am I listening to solve a problem, take a journey, look  for treasure, illustrate, and illuminate with stories. Jesus, if you look at what  Jesus did, most of what he did was story after story. Why? Because it was  compelling. People wanted to hear, they listened, they understood and  somehow then it applied to their lives. Allow for a commercial time. I talked  about this earlier. People can only listen so long. And then the the commercial,  they need something to distract them. Because otherwise, you give them a  commercial, they'll take a commercial and they'll start thinking about something  else. And the commercial is a story or, or something humorous. It allows people  to sort of relax and then get back into listening mode. Again, discover textual  insights with the congregation, not in your office. Okay, I learned this the hard  way. I'm in my office. I'm studying for the sermon on Sunday. And I'm  discovering things like I got a problem. What does this text mean? And I'm  looking up stuff in the Old Testament, and I find something. It's like, wow, this  was so cool. And then on Sunday, I just tell them the cool thing. And they're all  going well, I don't know what's cool about that. And I don't get it. I don't get why  you're not excited about this. I was so excited. But the problem is, I gave them  what I found. But I didn't give them the search. So for example, Jesus said  seven words on the cross, one of them very simple, was I thirst. What does this  mean, so I remember, you know, in my office I'm studying, I thirst. What does  this mean, I looked up the word thirst. And I found passages here in the Psalms.  You know, I thirst for the living water. Oh, that seems good. As a deer pants for  water, so my soul thirsts for you. Maybe that's what this is about. And then I kept looking for other things. And I looked up all the things in the passage, and there  was wine vinegar and when Jesus said, I thirst, they lifted up wine vinegar, so I  looked up wine vinegar, or maybe this is a reference to Communion Jesus  blood, and you know, so there's all this stuff, okay. And I kept looking and  looking and looking. And And finally, the word that I looked up because what the  text says It says is they put a sponge on a stalk of hyssop, and then dip the  sponge into the wine vinegar and lifted it up to Jesus when He said, I thirst. So I  looked up the word hyssop. I mean, it's kind of a weird thing. You know, like, the  interesting thing was the wine vinegar is on a sponge. Well, somehow you have  to lift it up to a person on the cross. But so you need a stick. But so what any  stick will do, why is it a specific stick? I mean, if it had been a pine stick with the  text and said, and they, they lifted a pine, they stuck the sponge with a pine  stick, or an oak stick or whatever kind of stick. I mean, who cares? It's a stick.  So why a hyssop stalk? So I looked that up, and there's some interesting  passages that have some hope and promise, then well, doesn't quite work  doesn't quite do anything. And then finally, I went back and far enough into the  Bible that I got to Exodus 12. That's the story of the first Passover. And, and the  angel of death is going to come through and the only way to be saved is to take 

some of the blood of a sacrificial lamb. And to paint it on the sides and the  doorframes of the house. The text says, with stalk of hyssop. He was painted  with the stalk of hyssop. The blood is lifted up and the angel of death passed  over. And now here, Jesus says, I thirst in the stalk of hyssop is painted with the  wine vinegar, which represents his blood and lifted up to the one dying on the  cross and bleeding for us. Okay, now, if I had just come to my congregation and  said, Alright, we're looking at this, he said, I thirst It's a stalk of hyssop. That's  from Exodus 12. See, it had been sort of interesting. But it wouldn't be as  interesting as it was for me, because I went to the search process. So what I did when I preached on this is I said, I don't know what this means. Let's try to figure it out. So I took them on the journey that I had in my office. Well, let's look up  this word. Let's look up, I thirst. And we'll go here. Oh, that's interesting. That's,  well, that's, and then I took them through it took them. And finally we got the  answer. Let's look at this. I took them on that journey. They have no idea of this  journey is going anywhere. One person afterwards said, I didn't know if you had  an answer, and you didn't. Do you see, I'm taking them along on this journey? I  they're gonna discover the answer, just like I did. And that's what's fun. That's  what's encouraging. All right, the number one communication complaint in most  churches is ready for this. I don't know what's going on. I can't tell you how  many times I've heard people in my church say this. I don't know what's going  on. communication issues in a typical Church. The Bulletin, okay, we have a  bulletin, we put print stuff in there. But people don't read it. I don't know what's  going on in the church, why you don't read what's going on this church? The  announcements, every Sunday, Wow, we got this going on. We're gonna have a  potluck. We're gonna do this. Again, people don't listen. Or they weren't in  church this week. And so they miss it. The Leadership Council or the board, you  know, they, they discuss things, they do things, but they have no constituency to  tell the next week, you I meet with my counsel, my leadership team, once a  month, we talk about things. And now a month goes by and then we meet again, but in that month, they don't have a group of people that they're talking to. So  we decide something, how are people going to know that committees,  committees meet, they do things, they decide things? But again, how are people going to know the educational groups? Same thing. I'm gonna give you some  other options, leadership teams structure. I was telling you that I meet with my  leaders. And then a month later, we meet again, but they haven't officially met  with anyone, right. So what we started was a leadership team. These are the  people that are heads of the small groups, the educational groups, the  committees, if you're leading anything in our church, you are on this team. So  we meet together, we talk about things, we decide things together. And then  during the next month, see they're meeting with a group of people. And they can share these things with that group of people and that group of people can like it  or dislike it. And then the next month we meet and so how did it go? Well, my 

people hated that idea. Well, why did they dislike that idea? They have a  different idea. See, you actually get the information out to the people and then  and then the information gets back from the people through the leaders who are  actually meeting with people and talking to people. video updates. You know, my associate, and I started doing that. We sit down, we have things we want to  discuss things that are coming up. And we just make a little video, I just we just  take out our phones, you know, I have a phone and I just do a selfie. I turn the  phone on. And I say, Hey, how you doing Pathway and my associate says, hey  order. So what's new and we go over things. Or we talk about it. And what's  weird is people watch this. So watch it, we're kind of humorous, and people will  watch this more than if we were live. Short video updates in a service instead of  standing up giving all kinds of things make a little video of it. People pay  attention. The most destructive communication issue in a church. You know  what it is? Gossip, gossip, gossip, gossip, talking negatively about someone  who is not present. How gossip goes, a person gets hurt by someone's words or actions. You say something you do something on hurt. What do I do? Number  two, I tell someone who's sympathetic. I don't go to you. I go to someone who's  going to sympathize with me. Do you know what he said to me? Do you know  what he did? Really? He said that? That must really hurt. Yes, it does see it and  I feel better. Because I've gone to somebody who's sympathetic to my plight.  That person now goes and tell someone else. And that person goes and tell  someone else. And as it goes around, the story gets bigger and bigger. The  story grows worse with each retelling. Finally, the story gets to the person who  hurt me. And they're outraged with what they hear. That's not what happened.  How to kill gossip in a church. This is the most important thing in a church. I'm  telling you. Step one, Matthew 18:15. If another believer sins against you go  privately and point out the offense. If the other person listens and confesses it  you have won that person back when someone hurts someone that someone  has to go to the person who said it who did it and talk to them personally. You  cannot go to someone else. Now, you can say that, but people won't do it. You  hurt me, I'm hurt. I'm not thinking straight. I'm just hurt. I meet my wife, I meet  someone else. I can't help but tell it. You punch me in hurts. And I I'm just gonna do it. Whether it's right or wrong, I will do it and people will. So the way to stop  this gossip thing is not here. Because hurt people will seek out comfort  somewhere. Step two, Matthew 18:16. If you are unsuccessful, take one or two  others with you and go back again. So that everything you say may be  confirmed by two or three witnesses. All right. That's what you're supposed to  do. But that's not what happens. So what happens, I get hurt, and I can't help  but go to someone else. Okay, I'm just gonna do that hurt. People are just gonna do that. We can't stop that. Okay, but where can we stop the problem? Okay, I  get hurt. And I go to someone else. And I say, you know, so and so said this, or  did this to me and it hurt me now. I'm hurt. I can't help but do it. But the person 

I'm talking to they're not hurt. They have to be the ones that stop the gossip.  They have to be the ones that say hold it. Hold it, hold. Hold it. Matthew 18.  Have you gone back and talk to this person? Well, no, I haven't. Well, then don't  tell me about it until you go do that. Yeah, but he will listen. Well, that's what step two is all about? Matthew 18:16. If you're unsuccessful, take one or two others  with you and go back again. All right. So you have to go back to that person. I'm  sorry. But that's what Matthew 18 says. And it doesn't matter if he listens or he  doesn't listen, if he doesn't listen, you go back to him and talk to him. If he  doesn't listen, come back to me. And then we both will go. That's the way it has  to be. Step three. If the person still refuses to listen, take your case to the  church. So I bring a person, we talked about it, it doesn't work. Okay, now we  got to get the pastor involved or a small group leader or one of the leaders  involved, and we have to try to solve this step four Matthew 18:17b then if he or  she won't accept the church's decision treat that person as a pagan or a corrupt  tax collector. What does that mean? Does that mean we don't care about them?  No. What did Jesus do with tax collectors? He cared about them. Okay, we still  love them, we still care for them. Alright, my point with this, this is the number  one communication destroyer of a church. When I had my church, and there  was 100 people and it went down to under 50 people, this is what was killing it.  Gossip, people taking what someone said negatively about someone else  whose not there and passing it on. And so I hammered. I mean, absolutely  hammered Matthew 18. Matthew 18, Matthew 18, Matthew 18. I'm not going to  listen to the gossip if you come and start telling something negative about  someone else, right away stop. So don't tell me about it. Because if you tell me,  I have this negative thought about this person, and what can I do with it? I can't  go talk to them. I can't share it with anyone else. I don't know if it's true. And  there's nothing I can do to figure it out whether it is or not. So don't tell me.  That's what Matthew 18 is all about. You must, you must take the courage and  go talk to them, they offended you. You must talk to them. If they don't listen,  come back. Talk to me. We'll both go over there and see if we can't figure this  out. And you know what, once Matthew 18 took hold, people actually started  doing this. And everything changed. Communication in the church. The church is supposed to be that place that supports the support groups, the friends, the  families that are trying to do things together, that supports the family walk with  God, the marriage walk with God and the personal walk with God. But it can't do it. If they're talking negatively be behind each other's backs. We have to be the  one body of Christ. But when it works, it's an incredible spot to be with people  who have been praying all week, who've been reading their Bible all week, in  their marriages, the personal walks, the family walks, the kids, everyone seeing  all these things happening all week long then when we get together. See, it's the sum total of all the walking with God that everyone has been doing all week  long, becomes this epiphany of praise to God, rather than the surrogate law. For

a lot of people the church service is the only walk with God they have is the only time they look at the Bible. The only time they pray is the only time they sing  praises to God. And so the church becomes the walk. You know, it's the walk  with God that I have in lieu of not having a walk, a personal walk in a marriage  and a family walk. Let's let the church service be the sum total of all our walks.