Life in Connection 2.0 | Sunday, April 11, 2021

The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. (John 10:10)

For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation... that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross... Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God... in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:14–22)

After a year of disruption, the church returns to its basics: life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus.

Shaken Out of Our Routines

After more than a year of closures and shutdowns, it's safe to say each of us has learned a number of things—about our government, our culture, the media, our local communities, and probably about our families and ourselves as well.

Life can go on cruise control or autopilot. We get into routines and patterns that repeat from week to week. Our lives are rather algorithmic; we live according to a basic conditional, if-this-then-that routine. If Monday morning, then this. If Tuesday afternoon, then that.

It is not until we hit some bump in the road—a health issue, a job loss, a car accident, or COVID—that we find ourselves bounced out of our routine lanes. Suddenly we become dysregulated: emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, or behaviorally out of sync. You will inevitably be triggered, having a reflexive reaction or shock, and then you try to reorient back to something more normal. This is actually called the orienting reflex.

A Population-Wide Triggering Event

Over the last year, everyone you know has been shocked out of their normal routines and has been trying to orient back to something steadier. This happens to individuals on a micro level every single day, but it is rare that entire populations are subjected to the same triggering event at once.

Individuals experience triggering events all the time. Several years ago, one of my very good friends had a bad stomachache over a weekend, and by Monday afternoon his world was utterly turned upside down with a terminal diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Two years ago this month, my youth pastor, Pastor Tony—who still faithfully attends Cross Connection Church—was seriously injured in a mountain bike accident, and everything changed for him and his family instantly.

Large populations are affected together by dysregulating events like terrorist attacks, earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, and floods. The upside of those is that they are generally short-term, and life reorients to a moderate level of normalcy relatively quickly. But what many throughout the world have experienced over the last year has been a sustained event—a sustained bump in the road, very challenging, and through all of it we've been trying to navigate back to some sense of normalcy.

The Toll of Prolonged Stress

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of hearing the words "the new normal"—and even more tired of hearing myself occasionally say them. Directly connected to this dysregulating event of COVID, there have been many other major, life-affecting, culture-altering events: shutdowns and closures connected to COVID, and then unrelated things like the death of George Floyd, the protests and chaos that followed, and the insanity of a chaotic political season.

Have you been able to have a conversation in the last year that hasn't been dominated by these topics? The fact that they come up in nearly every conversation indicates they weigh heavy on our minds—and they wear us out. Stress affects our sleep, our emotions, our kids. We see the effects of this cumulative stress on our entire society. Mental health issues skyrocketed in 2020. I was recently interviewing a licensed clinical social worker who told me her practice has been bombarded. All sorts of negative effects of our society's degraded mental health surfaced in 2020.

An Opportunity to Re-Evaluate

In some respects, I think we miss the boring routine. But another thing I've noticed—in myself and in interacting with others, inside and outside the church—is that many people have come to realize their old normal and old routines may not actually have been the best. They were comfortable, consistent, and routine, but maybe not entirely healthy or sustainable.

Population-affecting, world-altering events like what we've all experienced really do provide an opportunity to re-evaluate what we are doing and how. I've been doing a lot of re-evaluating, and in doing so I've realized I like change about as much as the next guy—which is to say, not very much. But I've also been thinking about how everything we've experienced as a church affects, alters, and changes us as a church.

I had a remarkably routine life until thirteen months ago, one I'd grown comfortable with, and all of that has radically changed. I'll be the first to admit I've internally wrestled with those changes. But the internal wrestling is pointless, because we can't not change in light of everything that has happened. We can't just go back to life as it used to be, because that life no longer really exists. It's like dating someone for a long time, and when they break up with you they say, "I really hope we can stay friends." You just can't. You can't go back to the way things were after these major events.

What Does Church Look Like in a Post-COVID World?

So I've been wrestling with how all of this affects the larger corporate church and our local church. Over the next two or three weeks, I want to share some things I think are important for us as a local church and as members of the larger, big-C church around the world going forward.

First, praise God that we are approaching a post-COVID world—hopefully without masks, much more reopened, where you can go back to movie theaters, concerts, dining inside, and church inside. (Though I hate to break it to you, ten years from now you'll still see people wearing masks, especially in winter.)

Also, praise God that in a lot of ways church still looks the same in a post-COVID world, because at a fundamental level church has remained consistent for two thousand years even as the culture changes around it. But some things will change. What COVID has done is accelerate global, cultural, and church trends, and it has stripped away a lot of unnecessary structures within society and the church. In other words, COVID causes a return to the basics.

The Church Is a Living Body With a Purpose

Did you know the church is not just an organization—though it is one—and not just an institution—though it is one? The church is an entity, a living body, and it has a God-ordained purpose.

What is that purpose? If you ask twenty different pastors, you'll get twenty different answers, but they'll have a lot of overlap. They might say the purpose of the church is to preach the gospel, or discipleship, worship, fellowship, ministry, missions, or social justice (I know that one makes some people uncomfortable).

About twenty-five years ago, Pastor Rick Warren wrote The Purpose Driven Church, offering a good summation many pastors embrace. He says the church exists to grow warmer through fellowship, deeper through discipleship, stronger through worship, broader through ministry, and larger through evangelism. Those five things—fellowship, discipleship, worship, ministry, and evangelism—are good and important. You could make a solid biblical case that each is a purpose for which God called His church into being.

Purpose, Mission, and Vision

From those purposes, every church establishes its mission and vision. Organizations and institutions have mission statements, vision statements, and value statements, and a purpose for which they exist. The church has a God-ordained purpose given expressly in Scripture—fellowship, discipleship, worship, ministry, evangelism. And it has a mission as well.

The mission of the church is to fulfill that God-ordained purpose. A church's vision is how it and its leadership envisions itself fulfilling that mission. At Cross Connection Church we have said for many years that our vision, mission, and purpose are summed up this way: Cross Connection Church exists to live life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus. We want to experience, express, and extend life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus.

Life Is Found in Jesus

We believe that true and abundant life is found ultimately through Jesus. He taught in John 10:10, "The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. But I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly." A few chapters later He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), and in John 11 He reveals He is the resurrection and the life. The Gospel of John opens by telling us that in Jesus was life, and that life is the light of men.

For some of you this is review—you've heard it dozens of times. But important things need to be restated. Look both ways before you cross the street. Brush your teeth morning and night. Chew with your mouth closed. Don't hit your sister. Important things need to be reiterated. So Garrett says it every week in our announcements, and I say it frequently in messages. Our name reaffirms it; our website is LifeInConnection.com; we use the hashtag #LifeInConnection. If Cross Connection is your church, we want you to know—not just intellectually but experientially—that life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus is our mission, vision, and purpose.

Living It Out Daily

What does it mean to have life through Jesus? What does it look like to live that life in connection with God—to actually come in contact with the God of the universe and have transcendent encounters with Him in daily life? How do we live this life in connection in fellowship with one another, fulfilling the "one anothers" of Scripture and truly being the body of Christ? And what is our responsibility in bringing this good news to those who are in the world and don't yet know it—those you live next door to, work with, go to school with, whose kids play soccer with yours?

All of this matters especially because you and I were created to live life in connection with God and one another. That was how God originally made us, and we'll look at that next week briefly in Genesis. You and I do not fully live until we have this life through Jesus—the abundant life of John 10:10. And this abundant life is not only for this world; it extends into eternity, culminating and climaxing there. This life in connection fulfills the purpose for which you and the church were made.

On Campus, Online, and in Homes

As we return to basic rhythms of church and social life, my hope is that we can more fully experience these things—discovering what it looks like to actually connect with God and building new routines of connection with one another. Whether gathering corporately at the church, in small groups in homes, on service teams in the community, on mission trips, or in this new rhythm of connecting online.

I've shared several times that Cross Connection Church is now focused on developing life in connection on campus, online, and in homes. That's really a return to the basics. The church two thousand years ago gathered corporately wherever it could—in public spaces and homes, before there were buildings. And they used the technology of their day to share the Scriptures at a distance. They didn't have YouTube, the internet, podcasts, or social media. Their technology was letters carried by letter carriers. Paul wrote letters to the churches to encourage, strengthen, and teach them at a distance—and thank God he did, because we have those letters to read and study today. The technology of our day is things like YouTube and podcasts.

I am praying about and working toward this life in connection on campus, online, and in homes, and I hope you'll help us make it more of a reality—because if you are part of Cross Connection Church, then you are part of extending this life in connection with God, one another, and the world. This is where we are headed.

The Foundation in Ephesians

As I close, I want to read a portion of Scripture that has been a key passage every time I talk about this life in connection. In Ephesians 2, beginning at verse 14:

For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.

This is life in connection with God, with one another, and with the world—through Jesus, through the cross. He brings them together in one body through the cross.

After a long parenthetical break in Ephesians 3, Paul returns to his thought in Ephesians 4: "I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all."

Life in connection with God, one another, and the world through Jesus. This is what you and I, and our church, were made for.

Closing Prayer

Father God, I pray that You would continue to unite us together as one body, as we have one hope, baptized into one church, and You are our Father, above all and through all and in us all. We pray that You would work in and through us, Your church, joining us together in a powerful way, and that we would learn more fully, experientially, what it is to be in connection with You—through prayer, through study in the Scriptures, through worship together, and through serving together.

Teach us what it is to connect with You, but also to connect with one another, to live out the one anothers of Scripture—to love one another, pray for one another, bless one another, and care for one another. And help us to extend that to this world, that we would go into all the world, especially the world right here in North San Diego County, and share the good news of Your grace, the good news that brings us near and reconciles us who were once at war with You. Help us to share that good news of reconciliation with the people we live next door to, family members, friends, coworkers, and neighbors who don't know You. Help us to be a light, sharing the glory of Your grace and truth.

So God, help us to learn in this new season what it is to live life in connection with You and with one another, and to extend that to the world—this life through Your Son, Jesus Christ. However You want to use us, Lord, whether on campus, in homes, or online, help us to do that. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.