"Focus on 4: Maturity"

In week one we looked at personal spiritual life, at getting in shape spiritually and taking responsibility for our daily spiritual routines. How’s that going? How’s the bible reading? The prayer?

Journaling? A mentor? Well, keep at it.

In week two we looked at generosity, the second big focus for us. We talked about growing more generous hearts and lives and taking action.

In week three it was our future. We laid out a new direction for us to take.

This week, we want to talk about maturity. Answer this question: how do you move into deeper levels of faith and relationship at Lakeview Church when it seems so big. How does that happen? How do we get inside? How does it work?

Today, I’d like to give you a blue print or a picture in words that I believe will make this a whole lot clearer for all of us.
1st Room - Finding Faith on the Front Porch

Think with me on these pictures today. Picture this: you are in your home and a guest comes to your house. Maybe they’ve been invited, maybe not, but their plan is to only stay for a minute or two. You know how that goes. They really just popped in – they’ve just dropped by to see you – not gonna stay long, and so you stay on the porch or in the entrance of the house and you talk there. They’ve even left their shoes on because they’re not staying. But it’s an interesting thing about foyers and entrances; they aren’t designed to really get to know anybody. There’s no place to sit down really and there are closets and coat hangers and shoes in the way and maybe there’s a bit of a tight hallway so communication isn’t easy.

At our house we have stairs at the entry, so to have a conversation in the entrance our family usually has to be up high and the guest down low in order to have room to gather and talk.

In the foyer, there’s always those awkward moments, especially if someone just dropped by and say they’re not gonna stay but then stay anyway for 15 minutes in the entrance. Well if your house is like our house, we would probably offer for them to come into our home 4 or 5 times in those 15 minutes. “Are you sure you can’t stay? Can I get you a coffee? Come and sit down.” And we say that because we realize that the entrance/front porch is only a place to start a conversation and it’s not designed to stay.

And so as a family we want to host people through that entrance and that front porch environment. We want to lead them through to the rest of the house. If you think about it, it’s kinda funny what happens in the entrance to a house. If I’m ever dropping by someone’s house, especially if I haven’t been there, I’ll be in the entrance and as I’m standing and talking - because I can’t stay - what I’m doing is usually looking into the rest of the house anyway. I’m leaning in and trying to see what the kitchen’s like and what that flooring is on the family room floor and how big their television is. I’m interested in going deeper but I don’t.

It’s funny the conversation that does happen in the entrance, especially if your guests are new and they don’t know you well. Usually its kinda surface conversations, a bit awkward perhaps and pretty basic. Normally, if someone’s only in the front porch of your home and they’ve never been there before, you’re not telling them about your deep dark family secrets or your marriage conflict from yesterday or why you all eat supper in your underwear on Tuesday nights.

The front porch/entrance is for discovery, but it’s basic level one discovery. So, in our home, we try to remember that it’s designed with guests in mind, and if we’re good hosts, we guide people through that new environment.

Now where am I going with this? Well here at Lakeview over this next year we are expecting 100’s of new guests to come to our house, this church, and some of you might be guests even this weekend. We’re also expecting 100’s of you who have been here for a while and who call this church your home church to invite 100’s of more guests during the next year to join this church family. All these new people and families and kids coming in will be in the discovery stages of faith and when they enter this church for the first time it will feel like they will be in the front porch the whole time, meaning they might see the whole church, but in their minds they’re just looking around. They’re new and are just discovering their faith and it’s a bit awkward being in the entrance.

So, two things: first, if that’s you today, you’re welcome here. Come, look and see not just a building but come and look and find faith. Be bold in your discovery. Number two, we’ll do our best as a church to guide and host you through that front porch faith discovery season.

Now let me get back to this church. Here at Lakeview we consider our weekend services a foyer faith environment. We try our best to design these weekends so that a guest would feel welcome and so that someone who is just visiting, maybe for the first time, would feel welcome. We try hard to design these weekends with guests in mind right from the parking lot, to the kid’s areas, to the music we choose and the message you hear. We want you to be able to discover faith and church at your pace, not ours, so we’re pretty intentional on our weekends to pick music that will peak your interest and the message is almost always designed with those seeking faith, keeping guests in mind.

Our kids ministry goes out of it’s way to make sure your kids have an incredible time and that they’re in a safe, fun and exciting environment to discover God for themselves.

Anyways, you just need to know that Lakeview church knows what it feels like to be a guest and we know how hard it is to come in those doors for the first time, and we know how awkward first steps with God can be. We get that. I can say that with confidence because most of us are pretty new in our faith as well. Most of us have come to this church and to know Jesus in the past 5 or 10 years and so we get how tough those initial first steps are and we want to do whatever we can to help you find faith. So, hear our heart today as a church. If what you’re looking for is a real and authentic faith walk then we would love to help you begin that and these weekends are a great place for that to develop. We’d love to help guide you and lead you to your faith.

Now, here’s the deal; the next step. After you’ve been here a while you’ll probably have a sense that there is just some thing more needed for you to develop life within this community. Because really, if you stay in the entrance and if all you ever see is the front porch environment, you’ re probably not going to meet too many people in any kinda depth level. And so if you find yourself looking for community and relationship at a different level then we’ve got to go to a different room in the house.
II Finding Friends in the Living Room

See, when people visit your home or mine and they get past the entrance, usually we take them to the family room or the living room where there are big couches and soft chairs and a coffee table for coffee or at our house, it’s usually for nachos.

But whatever, whether it’s nachos or coffee, the living room is just a better environment for interacting and for getting to know one another than the entrance. Because, we move from being on a quest of discovery in the front porch to becoming friends in the living room.

And so if that’s you, and you’ve been here for a while and are looking for some thing more than the weekend service to connect, something a little more intimate than 100’s of people at a time, then maybe the living room is for you.

Now, in our church, if I’m gonna be honest, we’re kinda remodelling the living room with hopes that it will soon be a space that can help provide an environment for many of you to move from being a guest to becoming a friend. We’re remodelling and renovating our living room physically, but also as an organization.

At Lakeview, our living room environments are where we like to create spaces and places where people can get out of this big crowd and let you begin to relationally connect with people of the same age and stage of life: that’s the living room. In a moment, we’ll hear from Jacqueline Kroeker. She is in charge of renovating the living room at our church. Her whole job is about helping all of us find deeper levels of relationship and friendship and connecting points at this church. Jacqueline Kroeker is gonna lead us to the living room. More on this in a moment.

One more room and we’re done.

III Becoming Family in the Kitchen

In the family and home I grew up in, I had three brothers and a mom and dad. We lived on a farm in a house that was quite small for the number of people and growing boys in it. On the farm, our kitchen was also the dining room. The kitchen/dining room was also the best space for our family to gather together, and it was really the only place big enough. Because of who my mom was, the best place to gather was always around food, and so our supper table became our family spot - right there in the kitchen with 6 of us around the table - is where we worked out life and talked about the challenges of life. Finances or health or relationships, and where we laughed at the crazy parts of life. The kitchen table is where we prayed as a family and where we learned about faith, and it’s where we shed some tears growing up as well.

See folks, by the time you get to the kitchen table you’re not a guest standing on the porch and your not just becoming a friend in the living room, you’re family by the time you get in the kitchen and that’s where you kinda let it all hang out.

But guess what? Too many people in the kitchen never works. 100’s don’t fit there. Here’s what I mean.

Folks, let me cut to the chase on this one. At our church, this kitchen table picture is really the goal of community. And at this church, real community happens best in the context of something called small groups.

Small groups are regular gatherings of 6 or 8 or 10 or 12 people, usually not more than 12, and they don’t change much. Those same 12 people gather together every week or two and their only goal is to share life together. They share life and faith and family and they share relationships that go deeper than most people think is possible. As a church, small groups are where we have seen incredible life change happen over the years. Small group’s are awesome environments to develop faith and family and to find deep level relationships in the church. If you’ve been at Lakeview for a while then you’ve heard me say this before. We may be a church with a 1000 or more people attending or connected to it, but really we’re a big church made up of lots of little churches with 10 people in them - small groups. The ultimate goal of our church is not to see 1000’s come on the weekend. That’s great, but it’s not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal and the ultimate final destination at Lakeview church is for everyone to be in a small group - to be family sitting around the kitchen table sharing life.

Folks, just so I’m clear, let me wrap this up. We want to host and guide you through the front porch/entrance. We want to help you discover your faith in your own time, but we don’t want you to stay there.

We want you to see the living room and find some friends there but the ultimate goal is to have you become a deeper part of our community – an integral part of this family. And that just happens best in the kitchen.