Jeff Calloway

Several weeks ago someone turned in a connect card at Bridge Church on which was written “Define Christian.” I thought about those simple words and decided I needed to address this, as apparently was important enough for someone to ask. We had just finished a series titled ‘We Apologize For” that was our way of letting people know that we as followers of Jesus needed to repent of some stupid things we had been and done in the past. So I want to give this my best shot with a longer than normal post.

The definition of who is a Christian varies from religion to religion, group to group. I want to try to find out today what a Christian looks like, acts like and lives like.

The term Christian – Christianos – was given to the followers of Christ. These followers in the New Testament always referred to themselves as disciples and saints. Not until the second century did they accept the title Christian as an honor. It had been given by the residents of Antioch in contempt of their religious beliefs. Greeks worshipped mythical gods and goddesses. The term Christian – Christianos (Greek) – It meant: a follower of Christ – a slave. Pual wrote in Acts 11:25-26, “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.”

Does being a Christian mean that you are a conservative Republican? A Christians doesn’t talk about purity, they live purity. A Christian doesn’t talk about forgiveness, but lives forgiveness to friend and foe. A Christian doesn’t talk about love, but they live love to those who least deserve it. A Christian doesn’t talk about humility, but lives humility that people have never seen.

What makes a Christian a Christian? As I was growing up in church we always referred to someone who is a Christian as someone who is someone who is saved. But the term Christian can only be found in the Bible 3 times. The term “believer” is used 80 times. The word “saint” is found 60 times. The word “disciple” is found 30 times. But the word Christian is only found 3 times. However the three times that this word is found can tell us a lot about a real Christian is.
Well today I want to deal with this word Christian. The subject of this message is “What is a Christian?” Lets find out today exactly what a Christian is

Christians are believers.

What they believe is God and His word. Hebrews 11:6 puts it this way “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” There is no debate with a Christian as to if there is a God! There simply is too much evidence to a christian that God is real anyway. Romans 1:20 “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,”

As Christians we believe that God created man to be like Him. But man turned his back on God and in doing so death was brought into the world because God is the beginning of life! He did not make man to be destroyed in death! He made him to live eternal in fellowship with Himself! From the beginning in the book of Genesis we know this! What we believe is that whosoever believes in what Jesus has done and accepts Him as Lord and Savior will be saved from the wrath of and eternal separation from God according to John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

These are the things a Christian believes. We believe it because deep down we KNOW it is true. God has caused us to know it by the conviction that we feel in our hearts. That belief is what causes us to turn to Jesus and make Him Lord of our lives. Like I said earlier, you can believe but if you don’t follow up on what you believe then it is in vain!

Christians are followers.

We follow Jesus as He commanded in Mark 8:34-35 “When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.” We lay our lives down. We consider Jesus to be worth more than what we may want here on earth. To follow Jesus is to have a personal relationship with Him! It isn’t just a Sunday thing! Everywhere we go Jesus is there. We take Him with us! Going to church because Jesus is there isn’t following Jesus! Jesus is at the church, but you should have Jesus at your house, in your car, everyplace you are!

Don’t go to church thinking you are following Jesus and just leave Him at church! Following Him means to spend time with Him and learn of Him. You have to do this even on Monday and Friday night! Following Him means you are His and He is yours! Christians follow Jesus.

A Christian is a disciple.

The word disciple means one who is disciplined. We don’t stop at learning more about Jesus…but we learn to be LIKE Jesus! John 13:35 esv, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” Listen, people watch every move you make Christian. They want to see if you are a Christian. They judge your life based from your fruits. If you don’t show love and kindness then you are judged by the world, and by God too really, as not being a Christian. The problem is we are NOT perfect! But being perfect is not what being disciplined means! It means only that we try to be better today than we were yesterday. We try to be as God wants. It doesn’t mean we will always succeed in our efforts though.

If you want to know what a Christian is, it is someone who believes Jesus dies for them and has decided to follow Him by having a personal relationship with Him by learning of Him and spending time with Him. Then a Christian is someone who disciplines themselves by trying to be more like Jesus whom they know personally. They are not perfect but they press on to be more like Jesus. They follow the perfect one. That’s what a Christian is.

Are you a Christian?

Good morning Bridge Church,

As you know, many of you who attend Bridge Church have decided to become members of this great work that God is doing in Perry.  Through this process it has been awesome to hear your stories as we have interviewed many of you for membership and how God has worked in your life. I was looking through my journal from last year and came up on the entry for November 19, 2006 which was our first preview service at Manchester.  I wanted to share that entry with you.

November 19, 2006

Woke up with anticipation. Our first preview service is today. We have been able to get all of the equipment we ned to do the preview service. We are in need of more workers for our services. Lord, send some people who can help us out. I pray that people will be at our preview service who will sign up to help. Lord, I don’t know who will be at our preview, but you do. I don’t know how many will be there, but you do. I don’t know what to say, but you do. May I be wise. May I be open to the leading of your Spirit. I know that you have a plan and I am thankful to be a part of your plan and vision.
All of this is in God’s hands. I am relying on him. This is his church and we are his workmanship, which he created to do good works.

(later in the day I wrote)
Things went well for our preview service. Some technical glitches with sound, but otherwise set up and tear down went beautiful. We had 33 people for our service. I thank you Lord for those who came to be part of our service and I pray they will share with people what you are doing. This area is hard. Building a church will take longer than I had anticipated, but God will lead us and we trust in his power not ours .

By the way, there were 157 at our service yesterday (11/18/2007).

Jeff

Legalism revolves around trying to please or impress others by following man-made rules rather than God’s principles. It centers around strict conformity to the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law, which is to follow God. It is contrary to the dynamic of grace. It is opposite of everything that Jesus was and said.

Experience God’s Grace

Grace is so often misunderstood, and so often missed. Grace is something that should be found in churches, yet oddly enough, has seemed to disappear from the very place it should be lived out.
“Charis” is the Greek verb for the word we get grace, which means, “I rejoice, I am glad.” For many that is not the picture they have in their mind when they think of the church.

There are many, many definitions of grace. Grace is like a multi-faceted diamond. It has many different sides and shapes. No one definition could adequately describe it. Let me read a couple of definitions, though.

•        Grace is God’s love in action.
•        Grace is when God gives me what I need, not what I deserve.
•        Grace is anything that I desperately need that I don’t deserve, that I could never repay but God gives it to me anyway.
•        Grace is the face that God puts on when He looks at my failures, my faults, and my mistakes.

Many people confuse grace with mercy and they’re two different things. Mercy is when God doesn’t give you what you deserve. That’s mercy! Have you ever done anything wrong and gotten away with it? Yes. You’ve gotten off scott-free on a lot of things that you deserve justice for, that you deserve punishment for. When God doesn’t give you what you deserve that’s called mercy.

I don’t know how to say it any clearer than this. There is nothing that you will ever do, that you could ever possibly do that will make God love you more than He does right now. You can’t make God love you more. He already does. And there is nothing you could ever do that will ever make God love you any less than He does right now. Why? Because His love is not based on your performance. It’s based on His promise of grace. Not on your merit but on His mercy. Not on your goodness but on His grace.

If you ever grasp this, it will change your life. You will not be running from God all the time worrying about what He thinks. Instead you’ll run to Him every time you fall. You don’t run to somebody who wants to scold you. You run to somebody who wants to hug you and help you and change you. If you ever get it, it will change your life.

The Bible says in Isaiah 30:18 “The Lord longs to be gracious to you.” He’s waiting for you to accept His gift. He enjoys being gracious. He is not mad at you. He’s not sitting there ready to scold you. He’s saying, “Come home!” Some of you have held off because you’re afraid of being rejected. Maybe you were rejected by your parents. Maybe you were rejected by a boyfriend or a girlfriend and that hurt really bad. Or by a brother or sister or by kids on the playground. Some of you have been rejected by a former husband or wife who walked out on you and said very hurtful things that you can still think of today.

But there is one person who will never reject you and His name is Jesus Christ. He’s saying, “Come home.” You’ve been secretly overwhelmed by that shame in your life. You can get rid of it today. You can walk out of here with a clear conscious. The more you understand the grace of God, the more you fall in love with God, the more you want to draw closer to Jesus. Because it’s almost impossible to not love somebody who loves you that much.

Worldview is a thought system that we have developed for explaining the world around us and explaining our experiences in it. We can possibly believe in spiritual warfare theologically, but that doesn’t necessarily require us to implement it practically. We develop a set of categories where we place the data or information of experiences to give them meaning. If a person’s worldview is wrong or incorrect, then their understanding is incorrect also. The system of worldview is foundation to interpreting the data we experience in life. So if we interpret incorrectly this data then our worldview is also going to be incorrect. In other words, if we do not believe in God, the Bible, Jesus Christ, Satan and demons then the data we receive will not be relevant and pertinent to us and will be misinterpreted. We believe according to our worldview. Our worldview is not what we verbalize but what we live and believe in our hearts.

My worldview has been enlightened spiritually from just having a worldview to now having a biblical worldview. I see ministry not so much as a calling per se, but as a divine appointment and a special privilege. What at one time I thought wrong I now see as biblically correct. I speak of such things as spiritual warfare, mentoring, counseling, conflict management and many other areas. I view our world now not as a place we live, but as a place God has put me to minister. Everything I do, every ministry function I perform, every person I talk to, I see as an opportunity from God.

I have been able to study over the past years what other worldviews hold, such as an animistic worldview. An animistic worldview believes that everything in the world, whether it is animal, vegetable, or mineral shares the same kind of spiritual power. This power is neither good or bad, it is simply neutral. Animism also believes in spirit beings that are involved in all aspects of life on the earth. They are associated with objects and people both alive and dead. These spirits may be either good or evil. Through this view individuals cannot conceive of a purely scientific view of the world. They believe that the physical and spiritual are so intertwined that they become inseparable.

For a follower of Christ it is imperative that we have a correct biblical worldview. It is of utmost importance that children and teenagers be taught what is a worldview and how a biblical worldview will give them strength to overcome many stumbling blocks in our life. Many adults and teenagers their worldview is Christian because they believe in God and set Him up as creator. Therefore they are Christian. They assume God is in heaven on His throne and scientific laws, which have no spiritual components whatsoever, are running the world. I believe America is becoming a God-less nation as each year passes and I credit that to Christians of the past as well as today for not having a biblical worldview.

How many of you have done this to your kids, “Apologize to your brother/sister right now!” A forced apology is not an apology at all, is it? You can tell when an apology is not real and it does no good. Hypocrisy means pretending to be what one is not. In that sense, a hypocrite is a person who pretends to be someone he or she is not. The hypocrite is play acting his or her way through life, living behind a mask, never facing reality. Hypocrisy has been described alongside lack of sincerity. So, it not so much sometimes what you do, it can be what you don’t do.

Today, as best as I know how, I believe I owe you an apology. I believe the church owes you an apology.

Many of us have been hurt by other Christians and/or churches. We have lived/talked/walked in a way that is not consistent with what we preach. We have been hypocrites. Not all Christians or all churches are hypocritical, far from it I believe. But, nonetheless we have pretended to be something that we are not.

I take responsibility for this pain. I have been a Christian most all of my life and I have pastored churches that have been hypocritical. I truly am sorry. I regret that thousands, no, millions have been turned off to church, but more sadly, have been turned off to Jesus by our actions and lives. I want to ask you to forgive me and forgive us for the hurt you have. I want you to forgive us for not living what we preach. I am a hypocrite.

I can’t promise you that other churches or other Christians won’t continue this stupid lifestyle, but I do promise you this: That we at Bridge Church will do our best to live out what we preach and if we don’t you have my permission to call us on it.

On October 15, 2006, fourteen people who made up the launch team for Bridge Church gathered in our basement to hold the first worship service of this new church. Exactly one year later on October 14, 2007, Bridge Church had 149 people attend our regular worship service! Although we didn’t launch until January 21st, that band of ”merry men and merry women” began to pray and worship together and set the DNA for this church. Since that time nearly 50 people have made the life changing decision to become believers/followers of Christ and 22 have been baptized!

As I reflect on the past 365+ days, I can’t help but see God’s hand of favor, grace and love on our launch team and Bridge Church. This past year has not been without it’s struggles: losses of loved ones, criticism, personal family issues, and financial and logistical concerns. Yet God has been faithful and true. I know our enemy, the ancient fallen Lucifer is lurking, waiting for the opportunity to strike. I like to take the offensive position with the enemy, not the defensive. I am not afraid to take him on head on – I serve a risen King who is the victor!

What lies ahead, I do not know. I do know the one who does know and in him I will trust.

Remember the movie, The Sixth Sense. That was one of the better scary movies I had seen in awhile. The main line that stands out in the whole movie is when the little boy tells a psychologist, “I see dead people.”

I see dead people, and I’m not joking about that one. I really do. Everywhere I go, I see them. When I go to the coffee shop, high school football games, when I drive down the street. I go into churches, and I see dead people. Did you know that you can be dead while you live? Alive on the outside, but very, very dead on the inside. I see dead people, and so do you.

People are dead in their doubts, dead in their discouragement and dead in their separation from God through sin. I serve a King who specializes in resurrecting what is dead. He can bring life to a dry soul, life to a dying marriage, to men and women who have no hope.

Your vision you once had to make a difference, and you are just stuck, let Him bring it back to life. Your hope to lead someone to Christ, you used to have it and now you don’t. Let Him bring it back to life. Your faith, your passion, let Him bring it back to life. He specializes in bringing dead things back to life.

Well, I have to say, I am probably going to get phone calls and emails over this one. Today Bridge Church has two billboards going up in the area that say “We Apologize For…” with the web address, www.weapologizefor.com. Here is what this is all about:
I grew up in a church that was good at sharing what it was against. I didn’t really understand all this church stuff when I was a kid or teenager, but knew the church fostered an “us against them” mentality. The “them” were those people who were the pagans, and of course the “us” were the good church going people who didn’t dance, drink, curse, smoke etc… As I got into ministry I carried that mentality with me. Why? That is what I was taught. I was taught that we had to win these pagans to Christ, and if we did it would manifest itself in a bunch of outward signs.  They would get their hair cut, wear Dockers, carry a big ol’ KJV and Amen the preacher. What a load of manure!

While here in northeast Ohio, God showed me how screwed up my thinking had been. I actually started ti encounter and engage these so called “pagans.”  As I listened to them, they had amazing things to say!  What they told me, spoke volumes about the church and the people who attend it.  About half of the people I spoke to had grown up in church and decided not to attend in adulthood.  An equal amount had never been to church, yet held opinions about those who do.  These new friends shared that church didn’t make a difference in their lives (irrelevant), that the people who did were hypocritical, and that they felt judged when attending or even associating with church folks.  They really didn’t like the rules that churches had (News Flash:  Church people don’t like them either!).

All of that rambling to get to the point. I am going to be giving a public apology for the church being irrelevant, for being judgmental, for being hypocritical, and for being legalistic. In the last week, I’m going to share about the fantastic Good News that church folks have often kept to themselves.  This is not an indictment on any specific church or churches in the area. This series was born out of my childhood experiences mingling with my adulthood conversations with people who have not heard nor seen the true gospel.  I believe this really needs to be done, and since no one else has stepped up to do it, I will. Each Sunday for five weeks beginning on October 21st, I will be offering an apology. I am sure there will be some people in churches who won’t like what we are doing.

Maybe they will need to apologize.

Some of you may remember(if you are over 40) the television commercial that Wendy’s Hamburgers ran in the 70’s with two little old ladies looking at a hamburger bun with a speck of meat on it and one of the ladies passionately asks, “Where’s the Beef?” Obviously, the commercial was a slam to Wendy’s competitors. Wendy’s straightforward, in your face commercial brought fame and fortune to their corporation.

Here we are in 2007 and the question begs, “Where’s the Church?” There are far too many churches out there that have the idea that they need to get everyone in the congregation to a spiritually mature level before they can begin to reach out in the community. That is a bunch of crud, baloney, lies, and those are the nice terms. I love these brothers and sisters, but I have decided not to expend any more effort towards them as I have a vision and mission to raise up doers of the word and not hearers. To do and not hear, needs to be the war cry of churches in America.

I am becoming more and more aware that God is opening more and more doors for me to build relationships with those that are not yet believers (lifted that term from my friend Steve Sjogren). Those not yet believers I am encountering will someday become believers. I believe that because Jesus promised it! He promised it would be so in John 14:12-14. As I am getting older, (I still consider myself young at 45), I am relying more and more on the promises of God, not the knowledge of man. For far too long we have relied on the knowledge of man, denominations, and ourselves which have failed over and over again.

The church is alive in America. I don’t necessarily believe it is well or healthy, but it is alive and she does have a strong heartbeat. Here in northeast Ohio the veil of spiritual darkness is being lifted as God is on the move in our area. We are seeing new churches planted and a movement of God in the hearts of men who want overtake this area for the Savior.

Today at Bridge Church I am speaking on a discipline that has been lost in the church today… fasting. The church in general has gotten into the habit of not practicing on a regular basis the disciplines of communion and fasting. Over the years I did not make fasting a priority in my spiritual life as I should. Only up until several years ago did I take fasting seriously and begin to see God’s power in my life.

I started out doing one day fasts, then three days, then seven days and earlier this year a twenty one day fast in the process of launching Bridge Church. I used to think that fasting was for the weirded out Christian who was on the verge of insanity. It wasn’t until I started to study scripture and read a book by Ronnie Floyd titled The Power of Prayer and Fasting, that I began to be convicted that fasting needed to be part of my spiritual life. When I fasted I saw God move in ways I had not experienced before. God didn’t show up and stand before me physically, but God did show up and met the need I was fasting for. In the case of Bridge Church, it was that God would use Bridge Church to reach a community and that we would be faithful to the call he had placed on the church.

Today I challenged Bridge Church to pick a day this week and fast. I asked them to identify a need they might have in their life such as breakthrough, clarity, or courage. When we have a spiritual hunger we should fast and when we fast I believe that we will have a spiritual. I hope that makes sense. God asks us to fast from food because food is something we have to have, a necessity. People who say we can fast from the internet, tv, music etc… miss the boat on this. Those things are not necessities and we can live without them. We cannot live without food and we cannot live as believers without God’s presence.

Fasting is all about God’s presence, not God’s presents. Many people fast for money, things etc… Wrong motive! Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things(needs) will be added unto you – Matthew 6:33.

Try a God centered fast this week. You might be surprised what God will do, when you live this spiritual discipline.