Kadesh Disappointment
On Sunday, we covered one of the most important stories in the book of Numbers. It’s also one of the most disappointing stories in the Bible.
The people of Israel march from Sinai to the desert south of the promised land, to a region called Kadesh-Barnea. There, God gives them a command to spy out the land. Moses sends 12 guys to spy out the land, and they take 40 days to do it.
When they come back, they all acknowledge how great and fertile the land is and how wonderful it would be to live there, but 10 of the spies focus on the fact that super tall and strong people already live in the land, and only 2 of the spies recognize that God is stronger than any of the people who live in the land.
Only 2 spies remember or even care that God is with them!
The result of the story is that the 10 spies convince all the people of Israel to reject the promised land and try to go back to Egypt, and God responds by declaring that he will prevent them from entering the promised land until all people from that generation die in the wilderness (except the 2 optimistic spies)!
Even for people who regularly see the presence of God in their midst (cloud by day and pillar of fire at night), the wilderness can change your perspective, make you doubt God’s plan, make you doubt his goodness, and make you forget about the promised land.
In light of that, I wanted to challenge us to be like the two visionary spies who saw all the same things that others saw but who also saw that God was with them.
If we are to be like them, we will need to have a clear handle on what our Wilderness is and what our Promised Land is.
Our Wilderness
The past 12 months in the life of LCC have been difficult in many ways. I first began to worry when I noticed our attendance growth curve leveling off over a year ago. After doing some analysis, we concluded that a major factor was the crowding in Kidopolis. We simply were not able to provide a high-quality Kidopolis program in our Braddock Drive facility for the number of kids we were getting. Those pressures caused the leadership to worry a bit, some volunteers to burn out, and some attendees to look for other churches.
We concluded that it was time to find a new meeting location, but every turn was met with the major problem that any space larger than our Braddock Drive space would cost way too much to buy, remodel, or rent.
We took on our first ever fundraising campaign. It was a great process for us to go through all the focus groups, to study what the Bible says about giving generously to special projects, but at the same time, it also caused worry when the pledge numbers came in lower than we had originally hoped or expected.
Then, we found this building. It was a miraculous combination of numbers that worked out just so perfectly that we would be able to afford to buy the building, remodel it perfectly for us, and still likely save money compared to our monthly rent! However, even though all the numbers seemed to add up, there was still the concern of what kind of toll it would take on the church to move next door to a strip club. Under those pressures, we spent basically every Saturday in the summer calling people to come to the building and pray for discernment and wisdom.
Then, when we finally made the purchase and began construction, it quickly became apparent that our contractors had severely underestimated the total cost of our remodeling project. We took on more of the responsibility ourselves and quickly burned out volunteers.
Then, in January, we had two staff members resign surprisingly the week before our annual Vision Dinner, the highlight of our church membership year.
Finally, whether because of their departure or because of our relocation, a number of other people stepped away from our fellowship.
Of course, I’m personally optimistic, but these realities have taken their toll on me and on our fellowship.
This is one of the most exciting times in the history of our church, and we believe firmly that God is leading us, but if we are honest, it is also a bit of a wilderness time for us. Especially for the people who have been around a while and are dealing with the sadness of seeing good friends leave our fellowship, this is a wilderness time indeed.
Which leads us to the next question.
What is our promised land?
The obvious answer you might want to give is that our promised land is this building. I can hear people say, “God has finally brought us to a place of permanent residence.”
However, I don’t want you to think that way. You see neither this building nor any building was ever the vision God gave me or my wife, or any of our initial launch team. Neither this building nor any building was ever the vision God gave to his Son when Jesus said, “I will build my church.” That “building” project of Jesus has nothing to do with buildings. The building isn’t the church. WE ARE THE CHURCH!
Therefore, please don’t ever think about 2301 Concord as our Promised Land.
You want to know what our promised land is?
It is this entire county!
Remember that our purpose is to help people discover life in Christ, but that phrase doesn’t say it all. We dream of being a group of people who help other people in this part of the world know how much Jesus loves them. In fact, we want to somehow give every resident of this county a tangible expression of the love of Jesus.
That’s our promised land… That’s the vision God gave us way back at the beginning of this church… We are called to help people discover life in Christ by showing them how much God loves them, and we want to do that for every single resident of this county! Of course, we don’t have the resources to do all that right now, so we start small. We start as people who are going to love each other well, love our neighbors well, and provide the invitation to take a step closer to Jesus. We don’t enter our promised land by fighting against people but by offering a winsome spirit of love and compassion to everyone we can but especially those closest to us.
Will you help us take our promised land by simply doing three things:
- See the good that God is doing in our fellowship, and enthusiastically get involved with your prayers, your time, your talent, and your resources.
- Grow to be a good representative of Jesus in your daily life including loving people well telling them the reasons for your love.
- Invite people to take a step closer to God by taking a step into our family.
The Lord is With Us
So I want you to know something I believe wholeheartedly. I’m convinced that God is with us. I’m convinced that so long as our passion and our focus is on helping people get connected to Jesus, God will honor that. I’m convinced that he wants the people of Lafayette and Tippecanoe County to come to know his Son, and so I’m convinced that as we continue to pursue that, he will continue to be right there with us.
In other words, no matter if you see this time in our church as a time of wilderness or a time of great excitement, I ask you to see it as a time of simplifying focus: We need to be all about loving people well to draw them close to Jesus and to help them discover the life that is only available through him.
No matter how difficult the task looks, no matter how much opposition we might face, I’m going to say it just like Caleb, “If the Lord is pleased with us, he will lead us into that land… Do not rebel… do not be afraid… the Lord is with us.”