Acts 11 - Collaborative

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0:13 Good morning again. It's great to be here this morning. Again, my name is Russ Peterson. I'm the pastor up at Holy Cross in Lake Mary. I've been there about a year and a half. Maybe a lot of people hear my accent. I'm from the Midwest, grew up in Minnesota, spent time in Milwaukee and Wisconsin and then Kansas City before coming here. It's great to be here in Florida. It's great to be here with all of you here this morning as well. If you've been with us for the last several weeks, you know that we're in a seven week long sermon

0:44 series where we're talking about our network values and we really like crystallize these or solidified them back in January or we started that process as a network. We didn't so much say, hey, what could our network values be? It was more that we looked back at what have we valued over the history of our various sites and our network and we started to put them down on paper. It's been enjoyable to preach through those things. There are seven weeks on them but there's only four values. As you know, the first couple of weeks we're

1:18 kind of building up to talking about the values where we just looked at what it means to be church, to be network to one another and we looked at the body of Christ's imagery in 1 Corinthians 12 and then the imagery of the church as a vineyard that God is cultivating, oh, you beautiful picture. That was the second week and then last week we jumped into the values, Ben preached on adventurous and he's preaching at my location this morning on the same topic and last week I preached on collaboration or collaborative and that's what we're going

1:48 to dig into here this morning as well. Maybe Ben shared this with you last week, if not, there are these network newspapers that you can pick up over by the door and it has our vision statement on it as a network and so I'm going to read that to you again. It says, the central Florida Cross network is a church cultivated by God, that's the language of Isaiah 5, to collaborate with disciples and loving their neighbor wherever that may take us.

2:18 And one of the things I love to do as a pastor, I think this is probably true of a lot of pastors is I geek out on words and I love to look at the etymologies of words and I have to admit that this is a word that I've used fairly often but I've never really slowed down to look at the etymology on it and it comes from a Latin word, it has many English words, collaborate and that can be broken down even further into coal or co as in like co-opt which means together and labor air which means to work or to exert or to labor and so not

2:52 surprising it means to work together but kind of fascinating to look at the usage of the words and furthermore when you look at the usage it didn't really become popular until the 19th century and also as you look at the usage of words you can see how the nuance of it changes over time. I think of the word as being a pretty positive word today but in our like nation's history there have been times where the word collaborative or collaboration has taken on a negative connotation as if like you're working treacherously or traitorously

3:24 with the enemy, to collaborate with the enemy. If you've got a negative image of that word or connotation connected to it I just encourage you to let go of that this morning and to try and approach it with fresh eyes or fresh ears. Now when I think of the word collaborative in my own life one memory in particular comes to mind, it comes from my first church, I served my first church from 2003 to 2013 in the Milwaukee area and in about year eight

3:54 of being there I was blessed with through a series of staffing changes somehow I received the corner office like I got the Primo corner office and it was like really nice. I mean big windows all over the place more space than I needed and I was just like wow this is a gift but it coincided with some other things that I want to share with you. It coincided with a shift in my own responsibilities for about the first five years I was there I oversaw

4:25 the small group ministry and it was a fairly large church it was about 8,000 members so we had about 125 groups that I had to manage and a full-time job just trying to plug people in and to almost like a matchmaker at times and to raise up leaders and all of that and as time went on other responsibilities came underneath me as well I didn't have direct responsibility for like children's ministry or youth but those people reported to me but in your about your age about the same time I got this office I moved over almost exclusively

4:57 to high school ministry and it happened because again in a church of 8,000 and I don't say that to impress you I like I know many of you have been at large churches and bigger is not necessarily better but it has its own unique problems and benefits as well but in the church of 8,000 we were only getting about 30 kids to come to our youth group which is just not a good percentage and on top that we were hearing like the constant complaint that there wasn't enough pastoral involvement and so we decided like this try it this go

5:28 all in and so we went all in with my time and we went all in with like finances and facilities we renovated our old sanctuary space put a lot of money into that and then we went all in with other staffing as well I had two and a half other people that worked with me in high school ministry Bob Emily and Zach Bob and Emily were full time and so they had office space but here's the problem this is where I'm going with it their office space was on the other end of the building they were like in the cubicles and I'm over here in this

6:00 like primo lush office and it was really hard to collaborate with them I mean I have to walk over all the way to them or they have to walk over to me or we have to pick up the phone or email and it wasn't ideal for collaborating with one another and so I started to you know think and dream of what what could I do differently what could we do differently it was also kind of during the same time frame where collaborative workspaces were becoming popular and so I decided to invite Bob and Emily into my office with me to bring their desks in and I have to say there were a lot of naysayers to this I mean and probably rightly so people

6:34 knew my personality they're like there's no way Russ is going to pull this off he needs his space too much but I was motivated to make it happen because I wanted to collaborate more with them and it was not easy we had to work through a lot of situations we had to come up with some ground rules and communication for not just interrupting each other all the time but I think it was well worth it we really started to collaborate well with one another and spilled out into other areas of ministry as well but it pales in comparison to the collaborative nature of our triune god

7:10 when I think of the Trinity even though I can't fully wrap my mind around three persons one god I think of a god who is collaborative I think of god who doesn't need ground rules you know to be collaborative it's just part of who he is that he works fully in sync with himself with one another father son and holy spirit I mean I hear it in the words of the famous verse in Genesis is that one or two chapter one or two where he says let us make man in our image or let's make people in

7:44 our image let's do do this I think he probably said something similar when god decided to send a savior into this world we're not privy to that conversation but I think of it in the same terms that at some point god said to himself hey let's do this that send a savior to this world and even though Jesus is the one who's was charged with giving up the corner office in heaven and coming to this earth I think god was collaborative in that process that the father was involved the spirit

8:20 was involved they were fully in lockstep and in sync with one another there was no division in what they were trying to do and to accomplish and of course they collaborated with the primary goal of bringing salvation to us of Jesus coming to this earth and giving up his life suffering dying rising again so that we could be freed and forgiven from sin and from death and from the power of Satan but I think he also had like secondary purposes to his mission and one of those is he set the

8:51 standard for what collaborative ministry and life looks like and you see that throughout Jesus is ministry don't you I mean Jesus didn't do ministry as a lone ranger just by himself even though it would have been a lot easier for him I mean he invited a mess into his ministry by inviting these guys and gals to do ministry with him but you see it's around his ministry that he sends out the 12 on one occasion and the 72 on another occasion and again his core group

9:22 was the 12 but he collaborated with a lot of others I mean I look at the women in his group and they for the most part we believe were like the ones financing the deal that they were the ones that he leaned on financially speaking and then I think we see his collaborative spirit especially at the great commission as he's going back to heaven he says I'm returning to the father but I'm not going to leave you alone I'm going to continue to collaborate with you surely I will be with you always to the end of the age but he says to them if they haven't heard it before he says to them

9:58 go there for and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of this collaborative god father son and holy spirit and teach them to obey everything I've commanded you and then again surely I will be with you always to the end of the age why did he do that I mean it's strange because he could have done it so much easier if you know what it looks like to collaborate with other people sometimes it's easier and better sometimes it's just a lot messier I mean we probably all have trauma going back to like middle school where you do a group project and

10:30 some people wouldn't ship in on it and it would be just a train wreck so there are moments like that but there are moments where it's just beautiful at the same time and Jesus stepped into it knowing that it could be a train wreck at times but he knew the ultimate outcome that it would be beautiful because he would be in the midst of it it was messier it was not simpler but I think he finds joy in inviting us into that process and I think he also knows that we need that collaborative ministry because it's how he's designed us it's how he's designed the world

11:05 think of the passage from Ecclesiastes chapter 4 let me find it here verses 9 through 10 2 are better than 1 because they have a good reward for their toil for if they fall one will lift up his fellow but woe to him who is alone when he falls and he has not another to lift him up it's talking about community and of course in community we've got support if we fall down if we go through a tough moment but it's also talking about that synergistic effect that comes from collaboration that when two people or more work together it's that old adage that the what it

11:42 has to go the whole is the greater than the sum of the parts right that one plus one doesn't always equal to can be a lot more than that when it's done the right way but it doesn't come easy I mean collaboration doesn't happen without some conflict and without some tension in fact when I was looking up the etymologies that's what one of the sources it really stressed that that conflict and tension it's embedded into the word to collaborate I mean to work together to toil

12:14 together work is work work involves stress and when we're in high stress situations are we typically at our best moments a lot of times we're not I mean a lot of times in our high stress moments like the worst in us comes out and we start to turn against the people that we should be working with we start pulling against them rather than pulling together with them so I think it happens because of high stress situations but it happens for other reasons too one of them is just a short

12:45 simple answer of sin that we're still sinners saved by grace but we still struggle with sin within us and sometimes we do the things that we know we shouldn't do and we don't do the things that we want to do as St. Paul says we have sin working within us sometimes we do collaborate in a traitorous way with the enemy with Satan rather than working together with those that we love with our family members and friends and co-workers so we have sin working within us but I think another reason that collaboration involves conflict and tension is that we're just

13:18 wired differently we all have different gifts and abilities and personalities and while that can be a beautiful thing it also can sometimes annoy us I mean how many of you have worked with somebody before or whether it's in like the work world or in school where you've just been annoyed by somebody else's personality if you don't raise your hand I think you're lying so we all have times where we even tell ourselves I shouldn't be annoyed by this person but they just they grate on me for

13:51 whatever reason the only way around that the only way to collaborate with people who are never going to annoy us or grate on us is to collaborate with people who are just like us but that's uniformity that's not unity and that's not the way that God designed us or the world right he designed it to be like the body of Christ many different parts but working together and so I think collaboration also doesn't happen without empowering differences I know Ben touched on this a little bit last week

14:22 that you think of our our church sites within our network like we're all a little bit different from one another and it's good when I think of the word differentiation I think of healthy families my mom is a marriage and family therapist and so over the years I've heard the word differentiation a lot of times and in the healthiest of families of course the kids are very different from each other they can't come from the same common DNA as mom and dad but it arranges itself

14:52 in their own DNA different from their siblings they might have some similarities to their siblings but in a healthy family the kids are going to be very different in personality and in giftines but the parents still find a way to empower those differences and to rally them together for the sake of unity and collaboration and I think that's how God has designed the church within the church within each of our sites hopefully we collaborate with one another despite our differences but then across our network I think it's one of the beautiful things about our network in fact it's one of the

15:25 reasons I took the call to Holy Cross is I've heard about multi-site in a lot of different places in fact my first church we tried multi-site but most of the time it's very cookie cutter you know it's like a franchise every site has to look exactly the same and when I heard about the central floor across network it's like this looks like a healthy family where there's some unity there's some things in common that we're especially starting to focus on now through our values but there's this beauty in allowing differences and empowering those differences

15:59 now I've talked a lot about what collaboration is or isn't and involves but I want all that is build up to digging into the scripture now and so I want to look at an example within the early church of collaboration at work and you know sometimes when we talk about the early church we generalize it as if there was one church but there are a lot of different churches in the early church St. Paul planted churches all over Asia Minor and Greece and for the sake of time we're not going to look at all of those but I want to look at two churches in particular the church

16:31 in Jerusalem and the church in Antioch so this first talk about the church in Jerusalem the church in Jerusalem it shouldn't surprise us but it was in its demographics it had a high percentage of Jews most commentators believe that it was about 70 or 85% Jewish by birth and then about 10% proselyte that's like technical language for somebody who wasn't born as you but they had converted to Judaism and now they were converting

17:04 to Christianity so about 10% proselytes and then less than 5% Gentile in the Jerusalem church and then on top of that they still had a very strong focus on the temple life the temple wasn't destroyed until 70 AD so even though they believed in Jesus as Lord and Savior they still were really leaning into temple life and to trying to fulfill different traditions in the temple as a tested two by sorry I'm making something pop I probably enunciate words too strongly at times but as it

17:38 tests to do by a couple of different passages one of them is that famous acts two passages that you're probably familiar with it's after Pentecost it talks about how all the believers were together they had everything in common and I want to especially focus in on verse 46 chapter 2 verse 46 it says and day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes they received their food with glad and generous hearts like every day they're still meeting in the temple and on top of that again they were still very focused on traditions in the temple

18:13 in fact there's a story later on in the book of Acts Acts 21 when when St. Paul's returning from his third missionary journey he's going back to Jerusalem this is leading up to the time frame where he's going to be arrested and taken into custody and then shipped off to Rome for trial and as he gets back to Jerusalem the Jerusalem Church receives him but they also tell him that like words gotten around that he is against the Mosaic law and against circumcision and the Jerusalem Church isn't too happy about it and so listen to part of Acts chapter 21 if you're following

18:47 along with me you can turn to Acts 21 I'm going to start in about verse 20 here and they said to him to Paul you see brother how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have believed they're all zealous for the law and they've been told about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses telling them not to circumcise their children or walk according to our customs what then is to be done they will certainly hear that you have come do therefore what we tell you we have four men who are under a vow take these

19:22 men and purify yourself along with them and pay their expenses so that they may shave their heads thus all will know that there's nothing in what they've been told about you but that you yourself also live in observance of the law now there were other occasions where Paul probably would like bristle at this advice to just go along with the ritual or the tradition but here he actually does it and I think it ties in with the DNA of the Jerusalem church that he knew that they believed in Jesus he knew like the makeup of the church that they still were like leaning into

19:56 temple life and so he goes along with it even though there are other cases where he probably wouldn't go along with it so that's the Jerusalem church but let's talk about the Antioch church now which was very different the Antioch church grew out of a time of persecution about one to two years after the death and the resurrection of Jesus the church in Jerusalem was scattered partially and temporarily was that permanently scattered there were still some that stayed in Jerusalem but a lot of people went elsewhere and some of them went up north to Antioch and we hear

20:30 about that in Acts 11 you can if you're following a long-term to Acts 11 verse 19 Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch speaking the word to no one except Jews but this is the key verse but there were some of them men of Cyprus and Cyrene who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists which were the Greeks also preaching the Lord Jesus and the hand of the Lord was with them

21:02 in a great number who believed turn to the Lord and because of this because they went and they focused almost primarily on the Hellenists and the Greeks as you can imagine the composition or the demographics of the Antioch church were almost the opposite of the Jerusalem church most competitors believe that the Antioch church probably had about 70 percent that were Greeks or Hellenists and probably about 20 percent that were Jews by birth and about 10 percent that were proselyte so a

21:33 very different makeup but furthermore you can imagine they don't they don't have the temple around so they're not attending the temple daily as part of their their faith walk and furthermore they were very multicultural and eclectic we hear about that in Acts chapter 13 specifically in their leadership team. Acts 13 verses 1 through 3 it says now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers Barnabas, Simeon who is called Niger, Niger is Latin for dark complexion

22:09 Lucius of Cyrene, Cyrene was north Africa where modern day Libya is, Manan a lifelong friend of Herod the Tetra and Saul so we're given this detail about like the multicultural very eclectic nature of the leadership team here in the Antioch church. Two churches very different from one another now on the surface you might think that they don't have much in common that they probably don't cross paths with each other they don't want to work with one another but there's strong evidence that there is a strong collaboration between these two churches so first of all let's

22:44 look at how the Jerusalem church helps out the Antioch church it happens in Acts chapter 11 again verse 22 and following the report of this let me just pause here it's talking about the growth of the church at Antioch the report of this growth came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem and they sent Barnabas I'm going to move this down just a little bit and they sent Barnabas to Antioch when he came and saw the grace of God he was glad and he exhorted

23:18 them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose for he was a good man full of the Holy Spirit and of faith and a great many people were added to the Lord so Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul and when he had found him he brought him to Antioch for a whole year they met with the church and taught a great many people and in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians but I think it first starts out with the church in Jerusalem like being a little bit alarmed you

23:49 know they hear about the church in Antioch growing that somebody that sends somebody up there to go check it out to make sure that everything's kosher they send Barnabas up there but notice what Barnabas does he doesn't just get a report and bring it back and say yeah they're doing things by the book what does he do? What's that? He engages with them he encourages them he exhorts them like he stays put for a while he collaborates with them he does one other really cool detail I don't know if you caught it

24:22 who does he go and get? Yeah he goes and grabs this guy Paul who's already started to build a reputation and brings him back to Antioch rather than being like territorial and bringing him back to Jerusalem and saying we want him for the Jerusalem church he brings them to Antioch and like throws fuel on the fire of what's happening in Antioch and like strongly collaborates with them there I mean it's really I think a cool picture it's a small detail but it's a cool picture of what's happening and then in the same section

24:54 of scripture literally the next set of verses we see how Antioch kind of returns the favor and they help out Jerusalem now in those days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch and one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world this took place in the days of Claudius so the disciples determined every one according to his ability to send relief to the brothers living in Judea and they did so sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul Antioch hears about this famine that's

25:28 going to take place and they send support financial support and otherwise to the church in Jerusalem there's this reciprocal relationship going on imagine though if these two churches didn't collaborate I mean I think they both would have existed still and probably done okay but they wouldn't have been as strong certainly the church in Antioch wouldn't have been blessed by the strong leadership of Paul and Barnabas and two knows what would have happened to the church in Jerusalem through this time of

25:59 famine probably was struggled a little bit more through it and imagine even worse not only if they just lived in isolation from each other imagine it worse yet if they had a competitive spirit between them I mean I could imagine that I could imagine the church in Jerusalem having this attitude you all up there in Antioch have benefited from our misfortune you know we were persecuted and you've received some some of our people we want them back now have you ever seen that at a church or between churches I mean it's the common thing that happens is that too often

26:34 in the church today we have this competitive spirit where we're like working against each other rather than understanding that if a person or a church is lifting up the name of Jesus they're not our enemy they're our ally and their people in churches that we probably should start to collaborate with or at least have that attitude towards but again it takes hard work it doesn't come easy and it didn't for the church at Antioch or Jerusalem there's one last thing I want to look at and it goes back to the point that collaboration involves communication and ground

27:10 rules just like Bob and Emily and I had to come up with some ground rules for the office space where we weren't like constantly interrupting each other I think we see that taking place between Antioch and Jerusalem it occurs in a lengthy story in x15 I'm going to summarize part of it for you x15 starts off with a problem in Antioch and the problem is that some Jews up there had been telling the church that they need to have all of the Gentile believers circumcised and so they're arguing about it up there but they decide to go down to Jerusalem and to get the input of the

27:45 Jerusalem church and collaborate together on it and to communicate and so they bring the problem down to Jerusalem and that's where I'm going to pick up in x15 it says in verse 6 the apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter and after there had been much debate Peter stands up and he says a few words to them he talks for a little while then all the assembly fell silent and they listened as Paul and Barnabas speak for a little while again you can read this

28:16 on your own and after they finish speaking finally James replies he says brothers listen to me Simeon or Peter has related how God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for his name therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turned to God but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols and from sexual immorality and from what has been strangled and from blood the key thing I want to I tried to emphasize it is that they gathered together there was much debate but they didn't just talk at each other says the assembly

28:52 fell silent they listened to each other and they're not just listening to each other I think they're listening to the spirit speaking in the midst of them as well and then they finally come to like some kind of ground rules of how they're going to operate together it's a strange set of rules you know avoiding what's been strangled and polluted by idols but they all agreed on it that's the main point and as we collaborate within our churches and between our churches I think it involves just a lot of hard work and communication at times where we come to the conclusion of some

29:26 operating procedures and ground rules but here's the good news is that the same spirit who governed that whole process back then is the same spirit who's alive in our midst today we can't work collaboratively without the spirit's involvement in it it's not just people collaborating but it's the spirit of God collaborating in the midst of broken sinful people and that's what we have to look forward to is we have the spirit blending us together

29:57 gluing us together despite our differences for the glory of God and for the uplifting of Jesus's name let's pray about that for Jesus we thank you for the work that you accomplished for us in coming to this earth and giving up your life dying and rising again we thank you for the good news that not only do we have heaven to look forward to but your kingdom has come in our lives here and now we we have abundant

30:30 life in the here and now even though we struggle with the broken of this life and Lord furthermore we thank you for the invitation and to do in ministry along with you and the Father and the spirit and with other believers where it still involves brokenness and messiness at times it still involves conflict intention but we have your word of encouragement and promise that you're in the midst of all of it and you can take our weaknesses you can take our mistakes even when

31:04 we're trying to collaborate with one another you can take it all and you can work it together for the good of those who love you and for your glory and for the reaching of more lives but we pray that you would accomplish this in our midst in Jesus name amen