Nothing Fails Like Success
2 Chronicles 26
KMPC, 4 March 2018, am
Preamble – Vision Sunday
We’re taking a break from our series in Luke’s gospel this morning.
Originally we’d planned to have our AGM today and I’d made plans to give a vision sermon. That seems like a worthwhile to do that occasionally – to pause what we’re doing and have a look at where we’ve come from and where we’re going.
Now, we’re not quite ready for our 2018 AGM, but that doesn’t prevent us from going ahead with our thinking about vision today.
Part 1: Nothing Fails Like Success
This morning I want to come at the vision question from a different angle.
I’m not going to talk about any great ideas we have about our future.
I’m not going to talk about how our church could be bigger and better.
I’m going to talk instead about failure.
As we look to the future…if I am to be honest and share a vision of what I see down the road…I’ll have to talk about this issue. This community, with all its recent encouragements and blessing and growthis likely to stagnate and decline. You see, particularly in the church,nothing fails like success.
Assisi but No Francis
What do I mean? Let me share a few examples. If you go to Assisi in Italy today, you’ll find lots of people who are into St. Francis…you’ll find lots of monuments to him…lots of businesses selling St. Francis souvenirs. But there’s one thing you won’t find. You will not find anyone who carries in them the fire that Francis carried. You may find some great people there, but they do not have the character of Francis…they don’t do the kinds of things he did and they don’t have the same effects as he did.
The Failure of Success Throughout History
I’ve chosen Francis but I could have chosen any of a whole list of leaders whom God used in a great way. King David of the Old Testament, the great reformer Martin Luther or, more recently, Billy Graham. Each one of them was used by God during a season of blessing and growth but, in each case, the blessing and growth peters out. Within a couple of generations of David Israel’s monarchy was in disarray. Even while he was still alive, Luther’s Reformation was fragmenting and losing its initial zeal. Billy Graham’s reached many millions with the gospel but the church in America and the West continues to decline.
The Failure of Success Around Belfast
We see it closer to home, don’t we?This reality that nothing fails like success. Once vibrant churches sold off to become Chinese restaurants or carpet warehouses. It nearly happened to this church 15 years ago. Some of our members will remember days when the same churches were packed to the rafters with folks gathered to hear and respond to God’s Word. It’s true you see…nothing fails like success.
All this is very interesting and challenging for me. I’m one of a small handful of Presbyterian ministers of my generation who’s seen a significant renewal or revival happening under his nose. [Let’s face it, there’s plenty of room for a revival to happen under my nose!]
But the success of our community here gives me a new question.
Where’s this all going?
What’s the future for this season of blessing that we’ve known?
I need to be realistic and see that nothing fails like success.
This morning we’re going to delve a little further into this subject and see what God might have to say to us. We’ve already established our first point – nothing fails like success. I’d like to spend the rest of our time answering a couple more questions: (2) Why does success fail?; and (3) What can We Do to Prevent the Failure?
Part 2: Why Does Success Fail?
So then, that second question, why does success fail?
I’m going to say that church failure can be down to the members or down to the leaders and is probably down to a combination of both. I’ll talk first about the part members play in church failure.
Picture the scene. There’s a new work of God breaking out somewhere. A leader or a leadership is preaching God’s Word in the power of God’s Spirit and humbly leading a community to walk in God’s ways…it’s beautiful…people find themselves drawn to that…wanting to be a part of it. It’s like a fire’s been lit and people want to enjoy its heat and light.
But over time, as the church continues to attract more and more people, it soon begins to attract people who don’t understand what was so remarkable back at the beginning…and who, when they do understand it, don’t actually want it. Although they need and they like the light and the warmth that the fire brings they don’t want the fire of the founding leaders for themselves.
The result is that the crowd gets larger and larger with people who are further and further from the fire. Without deliberately doing it or without even realising that it’s happening the crowd ends up extinguishing the fire that initially attracted them to that community. The operation continues…because there’s a crowd there aren’t too many people asking too many questions, but it ends up being like a modern day Assisi, standing on a history long gone and trading in memorabilia. The structures are left but the fire’s gone out.
A Word to the Congregation
Folks, we all need to take this reality to heart. Are we letting the fire die by not contributing to it?
A lot of people love that there was prayer going on here for years before the renewal started…for those who love that, tell me this, have you taken over the mantel from that generation for prayer warriors?
Perhaps you enjoy some of the innovation and creativity you see in this place from time to time. What creative innovation are you bringing?
We’re all moved by the sacrificial service we see from those who work among our children and older people. Don’t just be moved…join in…step forward and serve.
You might even enjoy the preaching here – it was one of things that drew you to our fire. Don’t sit back basking in the heat of another person’s love for Scripture. Get up and get at it – get God’s Word into your life and into your heart.
Folks, I’m going to guess that with a lot of successful churches that fail the people have seen themselves mostly as spectators. “The guys at the front are great,” they say, “I let them get on with it…our church is in good hands.” Before long the guys at the front are gone and the fire goes out because nobody else actually cares for it or carries it.
Can I tell you a secret…I don’t want you to be impressed with me…I don’t want you looking up to me…I’d love it if more and more of you were outrunning me in your love for God and your life with him, looking over your shoulder and calling back “Come on Christoph, let’s go, keep up…!”
The people in a community can be responsible for the failure of it’s success… if they fail to take on the godly vision at the heart of the community. But the leaders of a community can be responsible for it’s failure too.
The Failure of Uzziah’s Success
Let’s look for a moment to the Bible passage we’ve just read in 2 Chronicles 26. Uzziah is a ministry success. We’re told in verse 4 that he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.
Each of the succeeding paragraph spells out an area where God works through him and blesses him. In verses 6-9 we read how God gave him military success.
In verse 9-10 we read how God used him to develop construction and agriculture throughout the kingdom.
In verses 11-15 we read of his defence spending – he’s shoring up Judah for years to come.
It’s all going so well…he’s an unqualified success…but, we’re reading this story waiting for thing to turn bad because we’ve recognised that nothing fails like success. Look at verse 16. But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to the LORD his God, and entered the temple of the LORD to burn incense on the alter of incense. We read about why that was wrong and the consequences of his actions a moment ago.
This is tragic – the failure’s all the more tragic after the initial success. Uzziah had become strong through his devotion to the Lord. For much of his life he focused on knowing God in a close relationship. We’ve already said that He did right in the sight of the Lord… Look at verses 4-5. We’re told there that he sought God during the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of the LORD.As long as he sought the LORD, God gave him success.
He started so well and he knew so much success while he was seeking God. But the very works that God allowed to achieve and the very success he accomplished distracted him from his original vision and refocused him on himself and what he was doing. His pride led to his downfall. He began working for God’s glory but ended up working for his own.
A Word to Our Leaders
This passage shows us how the leaders of a community can be responsible for the failure of its success…This is something that I need to reflect up…and our elders and members of committee…our leaders in charge of our large and growing ministries…
In and essay that’s inspired this sermon Dallas Willard sees a patter to how leaders allow their success to fail:
- Intense devotion to God by the individual or group brings substantial outward success.
- Outward success brings a sense of accomplishment and a sense of responsibility for what has been achieved —and for further achievement.
- For onlookers the outward success is the whole thing (they don’t really notice what’s at the heart of it).
- The sense of accomplishment and responsibility reorient vision away from God to what 'we' are doing and are to do
What started as “devotion to God” ends up with a movement “away from God.”
Turns out that leaders, as well as members, are responsible for the failure of success in a congregation. We’re all in this together…
Part 3 – Can the Failure Be Avoided?
For a vision talk this is mighty depressing, isn’t it? We’ve talked about the reality of failing vision. We’ve talked a little about how it comes about. It all begs the question…Does it have to be this way? Can the failure of success be avoided?
Early Church and Christian History
The answer is yes, it can be avoided, but not many people or churches manage to avoid it.
Some churches and communities have long postponed the failure of their success. The early Christians hold the record…for two or three centuries the vision of Jesus Christ as Lord burned brightly in their hearts. The tremendous successes of the early Jesus movement was very slow to pick up passive spectators and egocentric leaders. They kept the treasure of Jesus as the centre of their attention and devotion in their lives.
In later Christian history we find clear examples of communities passing on the Christ fire from one generation to the next. The Quakers, the Moravian Brethren and the Methodists, to name a few well known examples. So it can be done. But how…how can we avoid the failure of success?
Discern the Vision and Grow It
The answer is simple in concept, but obviously it is not easy in execution.
It’s especially difficult to pass on the vision from one generation to the next and the next.
Again Dallas Willard says that “there are things any person can do —and must do —to receive and sustain the inner spiritual fire that keeps mission and ministry in its proper place, preventing them from becoming the limiting vision that obsesses us and eventually strangles us.”
- Acknowledge the Inevitability of the Loss of Vision
That’s what we’re doing here today – with this anti-vision, Vision Sunday. We’re not being paranoid -just honest. Our success will fail…is failing…unless we remain open to the LORD.
- Identify, understand and adhere to the founding vision
This isn’t easy. The people whom God has used to make Kirkpatrick what it is today won’t even know themselves, in many cases, what moved them to do what they’ve done and what’s made them the people that they are.
But we need to try. We need to be honest, thorough, and explicit about what the vision was —and what it must now be. We’re every-day, whole-life, disciples of Jesus Christ who are making more every-day, whole-life disciples of Jesus Christ.
If you’re not leading out of that or growing in that vision and asking how you can contribute to it then you’re killing our community.
As I said earlier, we don’t want fans of the Kirkpatrick vision or its founders – we want contributors people who’ll take the vision further and live it better – people who’ll outrun me and those who lead with me…people who’ll do way more for God’s glory in the future than we’ve managed in the present. That’s the founding vision restated for today.
- Live in the central content of the vision.
What’s the central content of my vision for Kirkpatrick?
Easy…Christ, my life.
A community of people who can say that at the centreeverything is love for God…love for Jesus.
Back to the Desert
As I was working on this sermon this week, particularly as I was thinking about what the central content of our vision is, I found myself drawn back to our series of studies in Deuteronomy from the autumn time. That part of God’s Word is still working on me – glad to be reading it in March in Book by Book.
When we hit chapter 6 I preached a sermon entitled Choose Love. We were thinking about what it means to Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Towards the end of the sermon I shared an extended quotation, coincidentally also from Dallas Willard, in which he points out some characteristics – marks you can see in the life of a person who’s learning to love God with heart, and soul, and strength. It could serve as a useful measure of the spiritual temperature of our congregation…how many God-lovers is God forming in our midst?
I’d love to share that with you again…the God-lovers…
- Whenever they are found to be in the wrong they will never defend it…neither to themselves nor to others, much less to God. They are thankful to be found out…They know what it is to be justified by grace alone. This reality has penetrated every pore of their being and they rest there in their human relationships as well as their relationship to God.
- A second mark of the God lovers – they do not feel that they’re missing out by not sinning. They’re not disappointed. They don’t feel deprived. They don’t regard sin as something desirable…they know that sin is slop. Why stick your head, your body, your soul into that?!
- A third mark of the God lovers – they’re mainly governed by the pull of good. Their energy isn’t invested in not doing what is wrong but rather in doing what is good. Whatever desires they might have for what God has forbidden are regarded as ridiculous, not as something to be taken seriously. The good is the only thing worth considering.
- A final mark of the God lovers – life in God’s will and God’s ways becomes easy and joyful for them. Their walk with Christ…is a burden only as wings are to a bird or engines are to an aeroplane?
Isn’t that just wonderful…
this is the life of the God lovers…
if we could only enter into that vision more fully and continue to live out of it then the God-given success of this community would never fail.
Conclusion
So, nothing fails like success…that seems to be especially the case for churches.
It’s likely that one day this building, or any other building we might erect to replace it, will end up as a Chinese restaurant or carpet warehouse. But it doesn’t have to…
It could become a community that grows God lovers – more and more of them. Rather than people gathering round a fire for heat and light it could become of community full of people on fire, people ready to take the fire that’s in them to other places and start new fires there…
That’s what God wants…that’s his purpose or vision for us…the question is…do we want to be a part of it…do we want to live in the vision of God…over to you