THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH: Mosaic Conference 2018 - Erwin McManus

so tonight we're wrapping up our theme the future of if you're a part of mosaic you know that that is our ongoing theme we will always be talking about the future but one of the great privileges we feel we have over these days as in is to introduce our broader tribe to a conversation that we have all the time and so in these few moments that you've entrusted me with that you've allowed me to have in your life i want to talk to you about the future of the church now there are some of you you are not a part of the church you don't go to church you may not even like church and if anything this message is so much more for you because whatever you've experienced from the church or through the church or because of the church is the path of the church it's not the future of the church and the wonderful thing is that whether you love the church or are suspicious of the church or are wounded by the church if you'll step into it you have the opportunity to create what the church should have always been it's interesting to me that that right now there are almost two opposite conversations coming to the same conclusion there are many many people who do not believe in god and have given up on faith and have just a jesus was a great teacher or an inspirational leader but not not who we claim to be and and so there's there are many people outside of faith that would say the church is irrelevant there's no place for the church in the future but ironically there are a lot of people who actually believe in god and believe in jesus and so many who grew up in church would say been the church i've done that and i don't trust it and i don't think there's a place for the church in the future and so strangely enough this is one thing that people who believe in god and don't believe in god agree on that the church is irrelevant that there's no place in the future for the church if anything we need to pull back and disconnect and find a way to live life in a little bit more of a protective isolation because it's dangerous to be around humans there may be no dangerous place in the world than inside of human community and so we're sort of torn because because we know that we're oftentimes not good for each other we're not safe with each other but at the same time we desperately need each other we desperately long for each other and so what are we gonna do because we human beings seem to long for most the thing we know how to do least so why can't we just sort of disconnect ourselves and live our lives in in a spiritual isolation so that we're not responsible for anyone else because the part of the problem with being in a community of being in a tribe of being identified with something that we might call the church is that now you're responsible for someone else's actions now you're responsible for someone else's choices and they might actually taint your reputation of course on the other end you might be the problem you might be the person who connects that community and you've ruined everyone else's reputation and they want to disconnect from you but they don't know how why in the world would god do this if if we could just for a moment suspend belief and believe that that were created by god they were created in this image and likeness they were created for relationship not only to him but to each other and that the the real texture of the miracle that jesus brings to his death and resurrection is not simply to connect us to him but to connect us once again to each other why would god insist on us doing life together may i know it i've heard it me and god we have our own relationship we have our own understanding i do better worshipping god alone in the woods or worshiping god at the beach or just worshiping god in nature you ever felt that you ever thought that what you're really saying it's a nice way of saying i connect better with god as long as there are no humans in my life well no when i see one of you i start losing sight of god but the strange thing is that the scriptures tell us that that humans are the ones that are created in the image of god not trees trees are beautiful i love trees hug a tree the tree will appreciate it but the problem is when you hug a tree you don't get a lot of response but the safe part is there's nothing dangerous in hiding you treated trees is going to stay there the tree will never betray you the tree won't hug you for a moment and then stab you in the next moment it's why it's it's easier to adopt a pet than to choose a human because you know what at least you know your cat is indifferent to you come on the human pretends to not be indifferent it's almost like the human pretends it's a labrador loyal faithful and lovable and then later becomes a wildcat disconnected on its own and slightly dangerous if you get too close it was several years ago i think it was the last time we as a family went to el salvador were able to take kim and aaron and mariah and we went down there and i saw some of my family and and we went up to one of the volcanoes and we had this rent a car and we took it down a road we shouldn't have gone and we burnt out the the four-wheel drive or whatever that is and and on the way back the engine was smoking and the car just died it just gave up its spirit it said i'm done and just dropped off we pull off to the side of the road and we're there in the middle of el salvador in outside of the city center and what is known as the most dangerous street in the entire nation which would make it one of the most dangerous streets in the world we're in the car not sure what to do we don't have anyone we can contact i have an uncle who's with us and and and a truck pulls up in front of us speeding up to us pulls over as if they're they're in a panic and this woman runs out and tells us all to get in the truck and so my uncle runs was was our aunt with us yeah my aunt was with us and she got in the truck and then kim got in the truck and she took mariah with her in the truck then my uncle who's a coward said go go go and they took off and left me and aaron behind i don't remember how old you were you were young maybe 10. and we were stuck and night dropped and we were in the most dangerous street in my nation and perhaps on the planet and i had to explain to ernest okay there there's there's a field over here and if something happens i need you to run in the field and i just need you to hide he was why dad i said just just trust me and then all these men would come by with machetes he said dad why are all these men have machetes and weapons i don't consider a machete a weapon it's just a work tool and he said why do they machete says they're coming home from work a lot of men were coming home from work and and and we waited hours until finally that truck came back and came back and got us and me and aaron we joined we jumped into the back of the truck and we were driving down this long road they're flying down and all of a sudden in this pitch black night there are no street lights no artificial lights anywhere it was a beautifully dark night and we're looking up at the stars and all of a sudden there was a firefly i don't know if you ever seen a firefly but if you see one you probably don't even see it one firefly will probably not capture your attention but along with that one firefly there were dozens upon dozens and then hundreds upon hundreds and then there was an ocean of fireflies flying over the truck as we were flying down the road and it was as if we were having this this out of body of experience of the beauty that we were surrounded by and i can tell you being trapped and stuck on the side of the most dangerous streets in the world was completely worth the experience of watching the beauty that we experienced right over us i think it's easy to overlook a firefly but it's impossible when they come like an ocean of light dancing in the darkness it was just a couple of years ago we decided to take i don't know maybe our first family vacation it only took us 30 years but we got there i mean we wanted to go to tulum well we didn't want to go to tulum our kids wanted to go to tulum so we went to tulum and we didn't really know where tulum was we didn't quite make it to tulum but we're somewhere between cancun and tulum and we were and there was ocean there and and there was there was a butterfly it was uh orange i think it was wasn't it orange honey you remember it you don't remember the butterfly do you you remember the no you don't remember the butterfly you remember when there was this massive migration of hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of butterflies that invaded the space we were in and we asked the people who ran the place we're at is does this happen every year and they said this has never happened in our lifetime we have never seen this migration of butterflies flow in and it has never happened since we were there watching these thousands of butterflies just dancing in wonder and beauty they made the daylight so extraordinary it almost took a breath away it is to me fascinating that when you see one of even the most beautiful species of the world you might be so busy or so distracted you might not see it but when they come in community then you see the beauty of the one through the many so in ephesians chapter 3 this is what the scripture says about us is what the scriptures say about the future of the church and why the idea of the church was the idea that jesus was willing to die for beginning of verse 10 it says his intent was that now through the church now when you hear the word church please don't think of a building because we the human experiments are the church his intent was that now through the church the manifold wisdom of god should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in christ jesus our lord in him and through faith in him we may approach god with freedom and confidence i think it's extraordinary that the scriptures are telling us that god has a language that sometimes we overlook yeah i want you to realize that god's in a conversation with you you may not know that you're in a conversation with god but i'm telling you you are in a conversation with god and one of the ways i know that you're in the conversation with god even though you don't know you're in a conversation with god it's because i've been in a conversation with god even when i did not know i was in a conversation with god because sometimes god was talking to me but i was talking to everybody else sometimes god was talking to me and i was just talking to myself sometimes god was talking to me and i was talking at god but i want you to realize that god's not just talking to us in fact in some beautiful way god speaks to all of creation i mean the entire story in the scriptures god says let there be light god begins a conversation with light the light says here ready to roll god speaks to all creation he spoke to the universe and it came into existence and it says here that god is having a conversation it says with the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms in other words god is speaking to eternity but he's not speaking english i know it's hard for some of you to believe see the language that god is using is not our language the language of god is the church he says his intent was that now through the church the manifold wisdom of god should be made known according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in christ jesus our lord in other words it's this description as if there's all like this angelic community going what are you doing god because can you imagine any being looking at us going that's a good idea listening to god talk about us i just love them really you just love them i do i just love them i believe in them you think so oh i have a future and i hope for them really i don't see a lot of future or hope for them take a moment and look at us as a humanity we stand in a moment right now where there's just so much destruction and pain and suffering and confusion one person walks into a building and thousand oaks just a few miles from us and kills a dozen people because of what's burning inside of his soul because there's so much anger and vitro and violence inside of him that that he had to somehow activate it in an act of hate it's unimaginable violence and then before the week was even over our community goes up in flames and people start losing their homes and their businesses and their futures and i stand this moment and and i i i go god explain this help me make sense of the world we live in and it just really frustrates me when people try to give such simplistic answers to all the pain in the world because i would like to have a long conversation with god about this wouldn't you but what's amazing to me is that what the scriptures are telling us in the middle of all the chaos in the middle of all the pain in the middle of all the tragedy that god is using the church to express his wisdom see together we express god's wisdom see when people try to make sense of god god what are you doing in the world see it's hard when when you're isolated and disconnected even if you're the most awesome person in the world by yourself you do not express fully the language of god because people look at you and go well she's just awesome that's just who haven is she's just incredible she's just kind and she has integrity she's just that's who she is and and so it becomes haven's story and and they might meet you and they go oh well that's that's just who you are that that that's who christina is because that's the way she lives her life she's just a person of integrity she's solid she's responsible and what happens is when we live in isolation even we live at our best everybody goes that's just you see the language of god is when god moves us together and makes us a community he makes us a tribe he makes us the church and suddenly people can look at all of us broken as we are fragmented as we are dysfunctional as we are see we become the miracle that humanity desperately needs we become the story that god is writing in human history and it's the way he explains to eternity this is what i know that you don't know this is what humans can look like says that god through the church reveals his manifold wisdom that the wisdom of god cannot be understood unless people start walking together in community it's when we learn how to forgive each other it's when we learn how to love each other it's when we learn how to pick each other up it's when we learn to make our lives not just about ourselves but make it about each other see it's when we decide that that even if we're one glorious butterfly we cannot compare to an ocean of butterflies traveling together even if you are an extraordinary light you you can't compare as one firefly to an ocean of fireflies lighting up the night because then you become glorious you become undeniable you become irresistible we become extraordinary together i like how i look when i'm with you i like how you look you walk with others it doesn't make you less it doesn't diminish you it doesn't overshadow your beauty and your wonder and your uniqueness and your talents see when you when you walk in community that's when people really begin to see the extraordinary nature of your uniqueness so together we express god's wisdom and that's why the church is so important because people are trying to make sense of life and giving meaningless superficial cliche-ish standardized answers to the deep pain of the human dilemma is not good enough we have to write the story by becoming a people because then when we become we bring hope to the world he goes on in verse 12 it says in him speaking of jesus in him and through faith in him we may approach god with freedom and confidence i love those words freedom and confidence i think every person who's walked on this platform has expressed how afraid they were i don't know if you noticed that's a theme i don't ever want someone up here who doesn't struggle with being a little bit afraid because if you don't think the moment is bigger than you then you think you're way too big i i love the fact that every person as insecure and uncertain and inadequate as they felt they stepped into freedom and confidence and that doesn't happen by accident have you ever noticed that when you cheer people on they get better let me tell you i have spoken in places that's nothing but hard work i have spoken in places that have made me the worst communicator in the world i'm holding them accountable see i i love being in this community because there's so much faith in this room and and i don't want to over spiritualize it there's so much hope in this room there's so much optimism in this room let me tell you what's in the room see even if you don't use language of the scriptures let me tell it's in the room this is a room full of people who are for you and i just hope that as we journey together and people step into our space and move with us and travel with us and journey with us and do life with us they'll they'll feel the wonder of that kind of hope see even if you don't believe in god when people believe in you it feels like it's god because the moment someone says you don't have to be who you are you don't have to stay where you are you don't have to be defined by the worst moments in your life you are more than that see the moment someone speaks into your life and tells you you're not any more broken than we are you didn't have any more struggles or pain there is as much rubble on us as there has ever been on you see we're just here so that maybe you can see enough of us together to realize oh this can be you you can find hope you can find confidence you can find freedom he goes on to say i ask you therefore do not be discouraged wow people 2 000 years ago were discouraged people who knew jesus were discouraged i don't know why but that's encouraging i'm encouraged that people who knew jesus face to face were discouraged i ask you therefore do not be discouraged because of my sufferings for you which are for your glory for this reason i kneel before the father for whom every family in heaven on earth derives its name i pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his spirit and your inner being so that christ may dwell in your hearts through faith there's so much we're going to unwrap here but i i want to get to the next thought it says and i pray that you being rooted and established in love don't let that slip by i pray that you being rooted and established in love may have power see we keep looking for the wrong source of power but the only power that the scriptures ever tell us to aspire to is the power of love it's hard to believe it it's the most powerful force in the world and so we keep turning to other means of power now you may have power here it is listen together with all the lord's holy people i know that's an overstatement holy but he's not calling us holy because we're perfect he's not calling us holy because we're holy he's calling us holy because now in relationship to jesus who died for us god does not see us to our imperfection but he sees us through his perfection i like that i i love that god sees me through the reflection of his son and when we were little boys in el salvador my grandmother she had a temper and she get mad at us and she get a belt and she starts swinging none of this sort of like highly developed we're going to explain to you why we're going to beat you like with my kids i would sit down with them and i would talk to them about what they did wrong that would help them understand what they did then i would help them explain to me what they did and i said what do you think is the proper punishment and my kids go oh this is more painful than anything you could do could you just punish us but my grandma she didn't do that she just assumed we knew what we did and she grabbed that belt and she started swinging at us but we had an uncle named richard he was just a few years older than us but he was old enough he was about 10 years older than us in the moment my grandma started swinging at us richard would just cover us up and he would take the beating and you'd think my grandmother would just pull back but she wouldn't she's like okay you want to take the beating for them here you go bam bam bam i never once said to my uncle don't do it get out of the way save yourself i like nothing let us don't move when he calls us holy he's saying no you're covered by jesus so god's never going to see you through your worst moment god has a very different filter for you he sees you through the best moments you've not even yet lived but but the part i want you to focus on he says together with see why does he have to add together with because he's about to make such an extraordinary promise that he kind of knows us and he knows that we're going to listen to this promise and we're going to want to make it individualistic i can receive the benefit of this promise without people in my life see i think the reason the scriptures really do not work for us is that we filter the bible through a purely egocentric narcissistic self-oriented filter and we think all these promises are about me but they're about we he says together with all of the lord's holy people to grasp here it is this is what happens when we come together to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of the fullness of god see the future of the church is not simply that together we express god's wisdom so the church is how god is writing in human history the story of us with him so when we begin to live the story of us without him and life doesn't make any sense god says i'm writing my story look at the church because i'm going to show you what happens when you come together because together we express god's wisdom but also together we express god's fullness i have so many people over the years who said you know how where do i go to be discipled and where do i go to go deeper i don't know where that phrase came from but it's like i want to go deeper and in fact one time i was a little irritated and someone said where do i go deeper here at mosaic and i just said well what's the evil in your life that you're trying to get rid of as well no it's not that i said you see because most of the time when we want to go deeper what we're actually saying is i want to go someplace where it's just me and god and i don't have to be concerned about anyone else in the world and from that place all we send are our thoughts and prayers he says together with all of the lord's holy people it's then that we begin to grasp see i'm just beginning to grasp what love is it's it's taken me a lifetime when i was young i thought i knew what love was well i thought i knew what love was when i was 10. didn't you or you were 12. you remember those first loves they were so intense so deep i gave him the best years of my life you're 11 you haven't had the best years of your life he said he'd always love you it's so funny the way we talk about love i'm amazed we're not also jaded by the time we're 16. see i i i think it's astonishing that people do not believe in god but they still believe in love really you can't believe in god but you still believe in love let's let's check out the evidence show me anything god has done that you can prove god did to you that was negative but now stop and reflect for a minute let's just let's just write a short list of the people you've loved and have loved you and let's start defining all the wounds in your soul see after all these centuries we should have already given up on love we still write songs about love most musicians can't even find love but they're writing about love in fact would writers have anything to write about if they didn't hate somebody they used to love i'm not just thinking about taylor swift [Applause] or john mayer i'm thinking about shakespeare [Music] i'm thinking about solomon and you want to get jaded about love try it and yet we keep believing in love there's something inside of us that keeps hoping against hope that that what we experienced in the past was not love and the only way you can ever really know is when you find that love and it heals you and he says i pray that you will be rooted and established in love this is this is where we're going to live and that you may have the power of love to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of christ and and here's the curious thing this promise is completely in the context of human community you cannot know the power of love when you're alone see we humans are designed for a relationship it's it's inescapable and whether you choose to disconnect yourself and live in isolation if you choose to never trust people with your heart again if you choose to never trust god with your heart do whatever someone says to me i just can't trust god i know it's because i can't trust people when a person says i just cannot trust god with my life it's because people have let them down because god keeps identifying himself with us even when we keep ruining his reputation but together we can grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of christ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge see i i want to i want to love so profound there are no words to express that i want to experience love so deeply that language must be forsaken that you may be filled with the measure of all the fullness of god and yet here's the promise see god wants you to experience him in his fullness he doesn't want you to live with just enough life to survive or make it through the day he wants you to live in the fullness of who he is and while your intimate personal relationship with god is so critical and essential i want you know the fullness of god can only be fully experienced when we travel together when we journey together and we do life together in this community known as the church wow what a rip-off we can only experience god's fullness if we decide to love each other what a bait-and-switch all right we thought all we had to do was love god and jesus says what's the what's the most important commandment jesus to love the lord your god with all your heart soul mind and strength don't you just wish he stopped there but then he goes on he can't even count he said this is the greatest command two jesus was great at philosophy terrible at math i'm going to give you the greatest command love god and love your neighbor as yourself it's almost as if he knew the same place from which we will love god is the same place for which we love people it's almost as if we knew if we actually allow ourselves to be filled with the love of god we cannot hold it it cannot be contained because when you are filled with the love of god it is bigger than you you begin to experience how deep and wide and long and high that love is i remember when i heard this bacterial scientist i'm sorry i know i just go to these strange places but but it's odd because like jerome come here like like human contact we go okay like we touch each other we've connected but if you're a bacterial scientist you know that that we're actually engaged right now because if you deal with percentages we're not mammalian we're bacterial because we actually have more bacteria than we have flesh and blood and so we actually begin interacting our bacteria actually interconnects before we ever touch go home and sleep on that anybody have someone they love that's really far away someone you have to give a call send the text facetime isn't it odd you can actually talk to someone on the other side of the world and you can feel the connection see when you have a conversation with someone you love it doesn't matter if you're in japan and they're in berlin as you're interacting with each other when you see their face when you make eye eye contact through technology because you're not actually talking face to face you're talking phone to phone looking at your phone romantically you're looking at your phone with deep affection you're in love with your phone she's not there she's somewhere else and her image no her essence is being translated into energy inside of her phone traveling invisibly through the atmosphere and then it could have gotten lost somewhere how is that how is it that that she's talking to you and doesn't go to someone else wouldn't it be crazy she goes i love you it comes on your phone and your wife's there i don't know her and yet somehow we have the technology because we're designed for connection all technology in the end is our determination to connect it's our battle against our own disconnection and loneliness and somehow that technology that magic travels across the atmosphere is retranslated into your device and there's contact and i know this because i've talked to kim from around the world and when she says i love you it is as palatable and real as when we're standing next to each other in fact sometimes it feels more real because the distance makes the intimacy more clear he says it's when we travel together that we experience the fullness of god i want you to know something i'm completely aware of this i can experience god in a unique way by myself but the fullness of who god is cannot be self-contained god is just too big to be fully expressed and experienced just in you by yourself but when we walk together and you ever just sat with friends and laughed and something happens you can't even explain it how do you explain it that everyone laughs at the same moment at the same thing and you have the same emotion in that same moment and all sudden you're connected you become one it's more than metaphysical it's a reality and god says i created you like this and imagine what happens when you walk together and you call on me and i step into that moment and my presence becomes the presence that connects all of you together see i i believe in the church and the future of the church because through the church see together we express god's fullness and there are people everywhere trying to find god and i know this this is why i have so many friends who do not believe in god and they walk into mosaic and they experience god and it's not anything i've said i'm just not that good some days i tell kim i think i could just read the back of a sugar package because the moment someone walks into the presence of god and they step into this ocean of fireflies and butterflies they see the beauty and somehow it moves in them i remember the journalists who became a close friend who was writing a story on religion and churches and and she came into my office interviewing me and she was an atheist and as we were talking she said well what's the role of a pastor and i said well really everyone has enough information it's about interpreting all the information we have so that's where i feel like i am i have all this information and i don't know what to do with it and i said well that's what i do i'm really good helping people figure out what to do with all the information she was what do you think i should do i said i think this article isn't about mosaic i think this article is about you see i think god is searching for you and he has you searching in this generalistic endeavor so you can find him so i think you should just give your life to jesus and that journalist looked at me so incredulously she said who do you think you are to ask me to violate my journalistic integrity and become personally involved in this story said i don't know i was just making a recommendation and and so she just got on her knees and gave her life to jesus and and i was always so curious about that and i asked her how come i know i'm not supposed to say that and so yeah of course it's going to happen i was like why did you do that and she told me later she didn't tell me right away she was i was sitting in my car grabbing my material my my notebook and my pens and and she was like i started to shake she was i hadn't met anyone i had not met you so i knew it wasn't about me so i hadn't even walked into the church i was just getting ready and i started shaking and i thought what's going on and she goes and this is strange because i am an atheist but in the moment i knew i was entering into the presence of god see i love the fact that as individuals we can be explained but together we're an unstoppable force because love becomes thick and real and powerful and just just one last thought in verses 20 and 21 it says now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us to him be the glory or here it is in the church and in christ jesus throughout all generations forever and ever amen i like how he wants to make sure that god's in the future he wants you to know that there's a future for the church because the future of the church is not only the place where together we express god's wisdom and together we experience god's fullness but i want you to see this woman this is so beautiful that together we unleash god's creativity see uh i think so many of us have you ever listened to this this promise now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that has worked within us and you try to apply it with the me but i want you to hear it again see it does not say this now to him who's able to do it measuring more than all i ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within me that's the way we try to live it see i want you know the the probably the primary reason you're not experiencing the immeasurable generosity of god the extraordinary imagination of god if if you're sitting here going why isn't god working in my life the way he's working in other people's lives why isn't god just sort of like pouring himself out in all of his generosity and all this creativity it's because you've been translating it with a me rather than a we see listen again now to him god who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask there has to be a we ask or all we imagine see we live in a city of dreamers but everybody has their own dream and in fact we trample in other people's dreams just to help our dream come true we see our dream as our validation for demeaning everyone else's dream and sometimes we get so frustrated because we think everyone else is responsible to make our dreams come true [Music] but what if what if our greatest dreams the greatest venture into imagination and creativity and beauty were never supposed to be about my ask or my dream but it's supposed to be about our ask and our dream according to his power that is at work within us see i'm convinced that god is immeasurably creative that god is so creative that it would blow our minds if he just had a little conversation with us man i wish if i ever had that question if you could be anyone in human history who would you meet other than jesus because if you believe in jesus you have to throw down jesus you got jesus who's your second jesus third jesus because i believe in jesus so jesus is all five see i never put jesus on my list because i've met jesus so i don't need to put him on my list of people that i'd like to meet [Music] and they usually want you to pick dead people and jesus isn't dead so he doesn't qualify so i always pick davinci because i'm just i want to have lunch with leonardo da vinci jessa's name is awesome i'm so mad they named me irwin i just i could have been leonardo de carona that's my spanish name not leonardo just cardona i could have been leonardo da magnus but it doesn't sound as eloquent i just would love leonardo would you get the for the submarine for the helicopter can i just sort of sit in and watch you paint the mona lisa is it you is it you is it you would it be incredible i just i just i just love to have a hang with leo [Music] be buds and just kind of let me into your process i think it would blow my mind i mean i imagine if you could just if you could just have just some time with picasso wait i just want to hang in your basement with you just but you're sketching out your future ideas is that really a face [Music] how do you see that as a face why does she have two ears and on the same side of her head what would what do you think what do you see or just to hang out with einstein it'd be great to hang out with einstein because i would have the best hair well i guess not really wouldn't it be amazing just just to sit around and talk to einstein not about math because you wouldn't understand just to talk about imagination let's talk about how to remain childlike and curious and open to possibilities how did you perceive e equals m c squared i would just love to have that conversation it would blow my mind and say i i try to have conversations by the way with these people i know it sounds a little insane but i actually in my imagination spend time with these people i just named i try to have interactions with them and understand them and try to imagine what they would say if they were alive in this moment and seeing the world the way it is but you can't do that but you can't have conversations with the most brilliant man who ever lived but the most creative person who ever walked this earth you can have a conversation with someone who makes da vinci pale in comparison who makes picasso look like an amateur who makes einstein appear as if he's simply a novice see god wants to have a conversation with you but the conversations of god are so big that no one mind can contain what god is imagining for all of us [Music] god is dreaming about you but whenever he dreams about you it's always in the context of us because he wants us to learn how to walk together how to believe in each other how to love each other how to pick each other up you see it's more important for god that you learn how to forgive than how to make money it is more important for god that you learn how to give hope than it is to buy another car see it's it's more important to god that we learn how to be human again how to connect to each other and and the only way guy can do that because see one butterfly it just doesn't make the impact one firefly it just doesn't make the impact one one human who's been changed by god it's a beautiful thing but but it's hard to translate it's like dotting an eye but you never put the eye you never write the word you just dot the eye see when you try to do this alone when you decide it's just you and god you're just nodding an eye but you're not writing the sentence you're putting the period at the end of the sentence but no one knows what the statement is no one knows what the declaration is you're putting the question mark there but no one knows what the question is when you live your life alone you disconnect to the story from the story god is writing and telling so that all humanity can know there's hope for you so i'm overwhelmed by the creativity we've experienced together by the beauty that we've stepped into have there been moments i've just stood back and i i could have never imagined this because when when we're in community together we become something more than the total of the parts [Music] so yeah maybe i'm outdated see i don't think i'm actually antiquated i don't think i'm living in the past i think i'm actually living in the future see i i think that a part of the confusion is that the people who don't believe in the church they're living in the past all they know is the history of the church they don't seem to be aware of the future of the church but i'm telling you the future of the church is beautiful the future of the church is creative can you feel it i'm telling you i see just just pieces of it because i can only get a piece of it i see it i see the church as the epicenter of human creativity i see the church as the epicenter of beauty and wonder i see the church as known around the world by compassion and love i see the church as a place where everyone knows that they matter [Music] see a part of the problem is when the church is known for judgment and condemnation and the church is known as as a community of people who are arrogant and judgmental and self-righteous they're not demonstrating the wisdom of god they're making a fool of god because how can we be that when 2 000 years ago jesus stepped into human history when god took on flesh and blood when god walked among us and when he allowed himself to be crucified on a cross when he was buried and then he rose from the dead how in the world could we ever be the people known for judgment and condemnation when god died on the cross so that we would know forgiveness and freedom [Applause] [Music] it's time that the church stops lying about god start telling the truth god loves the people that we didn't want him to love he accepts people that we don't want to accept here here's the problem you see god is for every human being but religion has such a great mechanism from which we can exclude those that we do not love that we can cut out the people we don't want and we've we've tainted jesus's reputation i think the future of the church is that finally maybe just finally we're going to look like jesus we're going to be beautiful compassionate creative we're going to be curious and filled with wonder we're gonna be like an ocean of butterflies bringing color and elegance and beauty to the world around us we're gonna be an endless universe of fireflies flying over those who are lost and alone not simply lighting the way to hope but bringing beauty and astonishment to everyone along the way you know why i want us to be i want us to be unexplainable i want us to be so beautiful that people are compelled i i want us to move in such wonder as humans that we become an expression of humanity that everyone in the world wants to step into see i want people to ask us how did you become so compassionate how did you become so generous how did you learn how to forgive how in the world did you learn how how to trust how to have so much hope how did you learn to find the resilience to overcome every failure how did you know that tomorrow would be better than today and see what i want us to say is not i'm awesome so what i want you to say is oh you don't understand i didn't do it alone every time i fell there people just picked me up and said we'll walk for you until you can walk again [Applause] [Music] and if you're here and um and you don't yet believe in jesus and you're not sure about god i just want you to know you don't have to agree with us to be with us you do not have to believe to belong you don't have to cross this line of faith so that we will love you and before you because see our unfortunate position is we just love you the way you are and we just want you to know life and know that you matter i know there's a god who sees you who thinks that you have infinite value and when everyone else maybe overlooked you he never took his eyes off of you he always thought you were astonishing he always knew that you were that you were the future of the church because when one person finds grace when one person finds forgiveness when one person finds healing when one person finds hope it changes everything

Channel: Mosaic

Views: 1,979

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: MOSAIC, MOSAIC Los Angeles, Erwin McManus, Erwin Raphael McManus, Los Angeles Church, YouTube Church, Church, Jesus, Worship, Mosaic MSC, Mosaic, MSC

Id: LprRbEZuaqw

Length: 54min 1sec (3241 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 11 2021