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Before I begin let me encourage you to get out this devotion that is in the bulletin. Ive
brought back our devotion this week that includes daily readings. I encourage you to use it this
week. Put it in your Bible. If you need a Bible let me know and Ill get you one. Read the
Scripture, read and reflect on the questions, and then say a prayer. This devotion will help equip
us to share faith and invite people to our Grand Opening on February 8. In this brochure you
have a place to take notes for todays sermon.
Today Im starting a two week sermon series called, Gamechanger. The idea for this
series came from a comment that Dave Nyberg made. He might not even remember that he said
this. But a few months ago as we were sharing our excitement about our move to our new home.
Dave said that this will be a game changer. The game changer was not the Packers failing to
recover on an on-sides kick. Dave was talking about how moving to our new home would be a
game changer for our congregation.
Dave was right. Our move to this facility has been a game changer. Even though weve
hardly publicized our move our worship attendance is up 20 percent; weve had many new
people here. Were making plans for ministries that we never could have imagined before we
came here. Our move to this facility has been a game changer. Yay, God!
As I reflected on Daves comment I wondered what would happen if our faith was a
game changer? Could we envision our individual faith and the faith as a community brining
about such growth. I dont say or mean this as a criticism of our faith. Instead Im envisioning
an irresistible faith that would impact lives and impact the community in a powerful way. We
would experience many types of growth because of our faith? Faith as a game changer.
This series is a combination of vision casting, evangelism and training. Last week at the
Annual Meeting the Steering Committee shared with you that our goal is to have 25 families

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connect to Chain of Lakes this year. We have many motivations for reaching this goal. One
motivation is that our future funding depends on us reaching this goal. If this goal doesnt make
you feel a bit uneasyit should.
I actually believe that we could have 25 new families connect to Chain of Lakes because
of our Grand Opening in two weeks. How about if we have at least that many guests come to
worship that day and then ultimately connect to our community. Can we do it? Of course we
can do it.
The task for each of us is to invite a lot of peopleour friends, our family, and our
neighbors. If youre wondering if you should someone to our Grand Opening? Yes! Invite
them. In particular invite people who are not connected to a churchpeople who will come
back the following Sunday. Well have people who will come to our Grand Opening who are
already connected to a church. Thats great. What were really interested is people who might
connect to God through our congregation. Those are the folks I want to encourage you to invite.
If we have 125 people at the Grand Opening and then have our regular attendance the next
Sunday, then weve missed the mark.
I also know that inviting people to church might not seem easy. One of the aims of this
series is to give you confidence in inviting people who might connect to Chain of Lakes and give
you confidence in sharing faith. The next two weeks were asking you to do your best at doing
evangelism.
Evangelism. Its my experience that when someone says the word Evangelism all sorts
of stereotypes come to our mind.
SLIDE We might think that evangelism is what happenedsat a Billy Graham crusade or a revival
church meeting. I attended the Billy Graham crusade in 1996 when it was in the Metrodome. I

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remember that the Metrodome was packed. When Billy Graham asked people to come forward
as the musicians sang Just as I am, thousands of people came forward.
That is really cool. However none of us are Billy Graham. Because we know that we
might not think we can do evangelism.
SLIDE Or we might think that evangelism is putting John 3:16 on a bulletin board and taking it
to an athletic event. I remember when I was growing up there was a man by the name of Rollen
Stewart who wore funny hair that would get in front of the cameras at sporting events with his
John 3:16 sign. Its wonderful to know John 3:16. Of the 31,103 verses in the Bible it certainly
makes the top ten.
But lets be honest that is a bit strange. Stewarts life took a dangerous turn, and today he
is in jail.
Most of us might not feel comfortable in doing that, so we might not think we can do
evangelism.
SLIDE Or we might think that evangelism is someone shouting into a bullhorn, are you saved,
are you saved.
SLIDD

Or putting some awful signs on our car.

We dont want to do that. Im a pastor, and I dont want to do that. And we might

believe that our culture thinks that this defines evangelism or faith sharing, so we dont do it.
Im here to tell you that there is another way. We can share faith, invite, do evangelism
even though we dont have the gifts of Billy Graham, the weirdness of Rollen Stewart. We can
do evangelism without making others feel uncomfortable.
What is evangelism?

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SLIDE

I believe good evangelism is telling a story. You might want to write this down

because this is very important us. Good evangelism is telling a story.

Its telling Gods story and its telling our own story. Good evangelism invites

SLIDE

the other person into these stories. Good evangelism is not sales. So the other person has the
freedom to do what they wantthere is no manipulation or coercion or aggressiveness in the
evangelism Im talking about. If you can tell Gods story and your story and then find
opportunities to tell these stories, then you can do evangelism.
One more point on good evangelism. To do good evangelism we have to be clear about
our own motivations. So we need to have an answer to the why question. Why would we do
evangelism. Why would we share faith? Why would we invite someone to our Grand Opening
on February 8.
I think we can come up with many good responses to the why question. Im just going
to share one.
SLIDE

Why do we do evangelism? We do evangelism because we want to help people.

We want to help people connect with God or go deeper with God. We want people to experience
all the gifts and even benefits of an active relationship with God. We want to help people.
Lets review here.
When we do good evangelism we tell Gods story and our own story. Help people connect to
these stories.
Our motivation for good evangelism is the other person. With all humility we want to help that
person.
We want to help people connect with Gods story. Obviously we want to connect people
to the story of Jesus.

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The story we heard today is a wonderful story about God. Learning to articulate this
story can help us be good evangelists.
The story came from Marks gospel. Many of us have been reading Mark over the past
two weeks. If you got behind, dont worry you can catch up. This story is in the third chapter,
early in Marks gospel. Let me set it up.
Right before the story Jesus and his disciples were criticized for eating heads of grain on
the Sabbath. Though I dont think the followers or disciples of Jesus were trying to be
controversial, this was controversial.
Ever since God gave what we call the ten commandments to Moses the followers of the
law took the 4th commandment seriously. The 4th commandment was this:
SLIDE
Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work.
But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God you shall not do any work
Exodus 20:8-10a
God told the people not to do any work on the Sabbath. This seems clear, right?
It wasnt clearto the people. Leaders of the law wanted to know exactly what it meant
to do work. Is it work to harvest grain on the Sabbath, is it work to fix up your house or your hut
on the Sabbath, is it work to heal someone on the Sabbath, is it work to do a special project on
the Sabbath. It wasnt enough to say dont do work. Some people wanted to know precisely,
what is work?
The religious leaders defined work in a very strict way. So strict that people really
couldnt do a lot on the Sabbath. All sorts of regulations were developed.
Okay that makes sense. The regulations were used as hammer on the people.
One time the disciples were hungry on the Sabbath and they picked heads of grain. But
that was defined as work, so it was defined as breaking the Sabbath. So now satisfying your

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hunger was a sin. So now this has become twisted. People asked Jesus why his followers
committed this sin.
Jesus knew that the law had become twisted. The 4th commandment is a beautiful
commandment where people were asked to remember that God rested on the 7th day of creation.
It was shared so that people could find balance in their own life. You look at our own world
today, and we can see that we are way out of balance. People are way stressed out. If we
followed the 4th commandment there would be a lot less anxiety in the world.
Thats our world. The 4th commandment had been twisted in Jesus day.
Jesus responded with this very moving statement.
SLIDE
The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath; so the Son of Man
is lord even of the Sabbath. Mark 3:27
This is a very important teaching by Jesus. If you want to write something down, I would
encourage you to write Mark 3:27 down. The rules, the law were made to help the people.

The

people didnt exist to fit into a law that the religious establishment had made. The law is
supposed to help. The law wasnt given as a hammer on the peopleinstead it was given to help
people.
We see this tension between laws and people all of the time. A law is established that is
supposed to help the people. But over time the law is used as a hammer on the people.
I think we can take this idea and apply it even further to the church. Think about this
question.
SLIDE
church?

Does the church exist to serve the people or do the people exist to serve the

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How we answer this question will say a lot about the type of faith community we
develop. I think Jesus already answered the question for us. The church exists, we exist to serve
the people.
Back to the story. Jesus went into to a synagogue to worship on the Sabbath. He came
across a man who had a withered hand.
SLIDE

Heres a mosaic that pictures the story.

It wouldnt surprise me if this man had a withered hand for his entire life. He might have tried
to get it cured, but he had never had it cured.
Remember in Jesus day people worked with their hands. So this man was at a severe
financial disadvantage because he had a withered hand.
Jesus knew right away what he wanted to do for the man. He wanted to heal him. Jesus
had compassion for the man. However the leaders of religion were looking at Jesus to see if
Jesus would heal the man on the Sabbath. Their motivation was quite different. They were ore
interested in following a regulation, then helping this man. They were waiting to pounce on
Jesus for healing the man. This is what happens when laws become twisted.
Jesus asked the man to come forward.
He asked this question.
SLIDE
3:4

Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath to save life or to kill? Mark

We know how Jesus would have answered this question.

Jesus looked at the people in the synagogue hoping that they would answer the question
in the obvious way it should have been answered. But they didnt.
Jesus was angry. He was grieved. He was so sorry that the leaders ideology prevented
them from wanting to see the man healed.

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Jesus healed him.

If you ever wanted to tell someone about Jesus. Tell people to read this story. When I
read this storyand Ive read it hundreds of timesI want to raise my hands and say, Yay,
God! Thank you, Jesus for standing up for what is right. Thank you Jesus for healing the man
even when what you did put you at great personal cost. Thank you for having the courage to
confront the religious systems of the day that were harming people. Thank you for going out of
your way to help someone who needed help.
I think that most peopleno matter what their belief about Godwill be touched by this
story. I think its very cool what Jesus did in this story. I think that most peopleeven if they
dont believe in Godwill think its pretty cool what Jesus did.
I think most people in our culture no matter their belief system are interested in Jesus.
A while ago Dan Kimball wrote a book called They like Jesus and not the church. The title
shares the message. People outside of the church like or even love Jesus. How can you not?
When we read stories like this one how can we not grow in our respect and even devotion for
Jesus.
Good evangelism is helping people connect to these stories. We have to know the stories
and be able to articulate them ourselves. Many of you can already do this. If I had a hour to do
some training with you on faith sharing I would teach you on how to articulate for yourself some
of these stories about Jesus. I would teach you how to share your own love for Jesus. You can
do this too. As youre reading Mark keep asking yourself what can I learn about God. Thats
one of the questions I taught you to take with you when you read these stories.
We just looked at six verses, and we learned a lot about the heart of Jesus.

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The title of this series is game changer. I think that people are looking for a congregation
where people have this love for Jesus. A church where people are always looking to help people.
A church where faith is not used a hammer as a tool for judgment. Instead faith is something
that brings people togetherconservatives and liberals; republicans and democrats; men and
women; old and young; straight and gay. Were always trying to help people.
Good evangelism is telling Gods story. Its also telling our own faith story. In your
bulletin is this half sheet (insert) called Faith sharing. This insert is not a sales job. Its an
opportunity for you to be able to articulate your own story.
When we do a Disciples at Chain of Lakes eventthis is what many would call a new
members class, we take a half hour for people to share their story. We split up into groups of
two and the two share their responses with the other person. What is so cool is how easy it is.
The responses just flow out of people.
What is so cool is this faith sharing or story telling is no ones response are right or
wrong. The story is personal because it is each persons.
I have two challenges for each of you. The first is I want to encourage you to share with
someone today before you leave this building a response to one of these questions. The second
challenge is to share with someone this week a response to one of these questions.
One more point. For the next two weeks we are encouraging you to invite people to
church. We are going to do everything we can to encourage you to bring a large number of your
neighbors or friends or family to worship on February 8.
Why would you do that? We have a goal. Goals are important. Dont do it because of a
goal. People arent going to come here because of our goals. We have a budget to raise.

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Budgets are important. Dont invite someone because of a budget. We have a new facility to
show off. Its a terrific facility. Jesus never built a facility. He did fine.
Invite someone because you want to help them. You want to help people grow in their
faith life, in their relationship life, to experience healing. You want to help people discover who
they aretheir inspirational intersection. You want to help people connect to Jesuswho
healed a man of his withered hand. Its a story were still talking about today.