Why Are You Here Today

Notes for a sermon preached at Butler Church in the Faith Community congregation (6/22/2025) and in the Common Ground congregation (8/3/2025).

Good morning, everyone. When I looked at the preaching schedule for this week and saw who was lined to speak at our services this morning, I was thinking this would be a good day to worship with Faith Community. But since you all are here, perhaps it is good that I showed up too. I was asked if I could preach here this morning, but I’m not really a preachery kind of person. I’m more used to teaching where there is discussion. Where there are questions and answers. So, if at any point you have a question or a comment, you can raise your hand.

To start this off, Who is willing to share their answer to the question: Why are you here today? Why are you gathered in this place on this Sunday morning instead of going on a picnic or hanging out at the beach? There is no right or wrong answer. I’ve got a microphone we can use so everyone, including those listening online, can hear. Why are you here today?

(Time for answers)

The reason I ask that question is that it is the first thing that came to mind when I read the passage that I was asked to talk about this morning: Acts 2:42-47.

⁴² And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. ⁴³ And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. ⁴⁴ And all who believed were together and had all things in common. ⁴⁵ And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. ⁴⁶ And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, ⁴⁷ praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Before I begin talking about the content of this passage, I wish to point out that this passage is descriptive, not prescriptive. In other words, it does not make any commands about normative church practice, but it does gives us examples about how things were done in order that we might learn from them.

Another thing is that my thoughts on these few verses are not meant to be an exhaustive exposition of the passage, but just a few gleanings that I chose to speak about. I put the message together—I get to choose.

These few verses are transitional. They serve to summarize the earlier verses in chapter 2, and they set the stage for the events that are going to happen in the rest of the book of Acts.

Earlier in Chapter 2 we read about the Holy Spirit coming down upon the believers on Pentecost Sunday, which we celebrated back in June. Who remembers what Pentecost Sunday was about? Who remembers what the word Pentecost means? Now Pentecost, or the Feast of Weeks, was one of three occasions during the calendar year when all adult Jewish males had to come before God at the place that He chose. The three occasions were Passover; the Feast of the Harvest also known as the feast of weeks or Pentecost; and the Feast of the Ingathering also known as the Feast of Booths. You can read about these in Exodus 23 and 34 and other places. So, there were only three regularly scheduled times of the year when all the Jewish men had to “go to Church,” so to speak. (Scripture does not mention women and children as having to go, but I imagine that many times these were family pilgrimages.) There also might have been other occasions when people had to travel to the tabernacle or temple to fulfill vows or make some other kind of offering during the year

It just so happened that God chose one of these occasions to pour out His Spirit on the believers—a time where Jewish men from all over the known world would have gathered in Jerusalem. As a result of the sermon that Peter preached that day and the work of the Holy Spirit, some 3,000 people came to faith. So now the question is, What’s next? What does this new group of believers do? What is the Church going to look like on a day-to-day basis? Though I should point out that the term church is not used here, that word first appears in Acts a couple of chapters later. Acts 2:42-47 begins to answer that question. I stress the word begins, because the church is a new thing, and the whole of the rest the book of Acts is devoted to this topic.

The first thing that grabbed my attention when I re-read this passage was that these new believers started meeting together. They met in a big group in the temple. They met in people’s homes. Why? Who told them to do this? We don’t see anywhere that God commanded or directed these people to meet together.

I find it interesting that one of the great commandments that is taught in churches is, “Thou shalt go to Church on Sunday.” Yet nowhere in scripture are we told to go to church. In fact, that phrase wouldn’t have made any sense to the believers of the early church, because the church was never a place, it was a people. The Biblical word for church, ekklēsía, refers to people who are called out to assemble together. And why do we need to be told to “go to church”? Here we see the newborn church meeting together without any command to do so.

When I was young, I was very self-centered and did not socialize well with people. I never scored well on “plays well with others.” I took up smoking when I was 14 and started partying not long after that. But when I was 17, I got hoodwinked into attending a Christian youth group. I figured it was only once, so I could put up with it. But then I met a group of people who had been touched by the love of God and that love flowed out of their lives. Even though they had every reason not to welcome someone like me into their midst, they welcomed me. I kept going back, and after a few months, I decided to become a follower of Jesus.

At that point, all I wanted to do was be around these Jesus people. I wanted to be in that culture where God’s love was so evident, and I wanted to grow in my newfound faith. No one had to tell me that as a believer I had to fellowship regularly with God’s people—it was what I wanted to do. Every opportunity I had, whether it be a Bible Study or an activity night, if I was free, I was traveling to this next town over to be with these people.

But we’ll come back to this.

Another question I have for you today is this: of the following two things, which do you think better represents what the church should be like: a school or a family. Who thinks a school represents the church better? Who thinks family represents the church better?

Most people consider that the church should look more like a family than a school, but when we gather, we are often sitting in rows, looking up front at the teacher, much like a classroom. Though back in my day the teacher would have a wooden pointy stick to point at the blackboard, and which would also serve as a veiled threat against potential mischief makers. Now all I have is this little clicker thing—doesn’t do much for crowd control. Anyway, I don’t think this is what Jesus had in mind when He said He would build His church.

Many people refer to their church as a family. Why is church often viewed as a family? When we moved to Fresno, we eventually joined Butler Church. It is the first Mennonite church we have been a part of. Now maybe many of you don’t know about the history of the Mennonite Brethren church, we certainly didn’t when we started coming here.

I did not grow up around or anywhere near Mennonite communities. I had heard of Mennonites, but really knew nothing about them. I first encountered some Mennonites when I was in training for a short term mission in Ontario. There were a couple of Mennonite women there, one had the last name Dyck, which I thought was odd, because it was spelled with a “y”. The other had one of the most unusual last names I had ever heard: Warkentin. Unusual, I thought, until I visited her in her hometown of Abbotsford and looked in the phone book and saw column after column of Warkentins in the fine print. I looked up Dyck with a y, too. Same thing.

Shortly after joining Butler Church, we were hosting a small group at our home. There were some couples there who had a long Mennonite Heritage. The first night we introduced ourselves to each other. Anyone want to guess what game they played? That’s right, they played the Mennonite Name Game. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this game, it is when two or more Mennonites get together and try to figure out if they are related and how, or if they have any historic family connections and where those happened. This was something new to us. It turns out that some of the people there had common connections in a place called Corn, Oklahoma. Corn. Is that really a place? I thought they were playing games with us newbies to the Mennonite World. But it turns out Corn does really exist—turns out about 500 people call it home and it has a Baptist Church and an MB Church. It was in Corn, Oklahoma back in 1951, where the first tornado was captured on video in the US. Anybody here have family connections that go back to Corn?

While we do not have a Mennonite heritage, my oldest brother is really into genealogy stuff. If he meets someone with whom he will have more than just a passing relationship, he will try to figure out how they are related. He even knows his relationship to his wife—she is his 10th cousin twice removed—whatever that means. I think the fact that she is his wife is more important. And they’ve been together over 50 years and he hasn’t removed her yet.

Why do people care about such things? I think it is because we are longing for connection with others. We want a sense of belonging. We want to feel part of something bigger than ourselves. And if you’re keeping track, that is my first point—healthy families are characterized by a sense of belonging.

When I became a believer, it was like I was an orphan who was adopted into his forever family. I had this connection with other believers, not by the blood that flows through our veins but by the blood of Jesus that flowed down from the cross. And this forever family has been very important to us, especially as we have lived most of our lives far from our siblings and parents. And so, we have been welcomed into homes all around the world because we are part of the family of God.

Perhaps this was one of the things that was going on in this passage in Acts. We have a bunch of people who are far from their homes—far from their families—and now they have found a new family in the assembly of believers in Jerusalem.

If we have grown up in church culture, we can take this sense of family for granted. After all, we belong to a local church, which is part of a regional conference of churches, which is part of a national group of Mennonite churches, which is part of a global family of churches. And if we are ethnic Mennonite, we may also share a last name with many people in those churches.

But in minority-Christian cultures, that sense of belonging is not as well entrenched. If you are one of only a handful of believers in a province, you can feel quite lonely. This was the case in Thailand.

Family Camp

Each year in Thailand, the Mennonite Brethren churches get together for family camp. When we think of family camp in North America, we think of a camp that families attend together as opposed to something like a youth camp or a men’s camp. But the meaning in Thailand is a bit broader. It is a time when a family of believers get together. This is a very significant time for them. The believers are encouraged to see that there are many other people in Thailand who love Jesus. And they are also excited to hear about how there are many such people all around the world. They are not alone. They belong to a big family.

Healthy families are characterized by Belonging, and this was an important characteristic of the early church, but we often don’t think about it, or we take it for granted.

Sharing

Growing up, my family lived around the corner from my mother’s brother and his family. My dad and my uncle had been friends since before they each got married. They went in together on buying an extension ladder. Most of the time, a section of the ladder was at each of our houses. But if the need arose, we would walk down the street to borrow the other half—though it took a lot of effort to carry those heavy, wooden, twelve foot ladders down the street. And how many times do I remember going to see my aunt to borrow some item needed for cooking, or fetching such a thing from our cupboard when one of my cousins came asking for it.

Families share resources.

This connection between families and sharing resources affected our ministry in Thailand a great deal. In Thailand one’s family and one’s village (which would include a lot of extended family) provide for their socio-economic security. If you run into problems, these are the people that will help you out. You look out for your own family. One of the things that kept people from coming to faith in Thailand was that they might get kicked out of their families if they became believers and they did not want to give up the security that it represented.

It is not surprising, then, that often we would see the most rapid church growth among those lacking in familial connections—those who don’t have a well-established socio-economic support system.

If the church is going to grow in Thailand, it needs to make up for the security people may lose from their earthly family.

This sharing of resources should also be true of God’s family. We read in Acts 2:44 that the newborn church had all things in common. The expression in common comes from the Greek koinos, which is the root of the word for fellowship in verse 42, Koinonia. Koinonia is typically translated as fellowship, but, as John Stott writes:

Thus koinōnia is a Trinitarian experience; it is our common share in God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But secondly, koinōnia also expresses what we share out together, what we give as well as what we receive. Koinōnia is the word Paul used for the collection he was organizing among the Greek churches (Romans 15:26; 2 Corinthians 8:4; 9:13), and koinonikos is the Greek word for ‘generous’.

Koinonia is about sharing—sharing lives and sharing resources. People sold belongings to help others. People shared their lives over food at the dinner table. This sharing would have contributed to the family-like atmosphere that made this group seem so inviting. Being family means using one’s resources to care for others in our family.

Just like the new believers wanted to spend time together, we don’t see anywhere that they were commanded to do this. It seemed to come natural to them that sharing resources was something they should do.

In Christian circles, we will often say that “our” possessions are actually God’s. But how well do we live that out? In Thailand, we had two vehicles—a pickup and a small car. On many occasions, God would have us lend one of them out for extended periods. After all, they were God’s cars, and our willingness to do this opened up opportunities to share the gospel, because people saw that we treated them like family.

But it wasn’t always so easy let go of ownership. One time we had a group visiting from Laos for a few days. They asked to borrow my guitar, so I let them. When they returned it, I noticed it had suffered quite a bit of abuse in those few days. I remember being upset because they had damaged “my” guitar.

Do people see Butler Church as a place where their physical and emotional needs can be met? How loosely do we hold “our” possessions. Are there people around us who lack meaningful family relationships that can help provide for their needs?

Because Healthy families share.

Growing

Another characteristic of healthy families that we see in this passage is that they grow. Family members and families grow in two ways. They grow in maturity, and they grow by multiplying.

The family is to be a place of learning. Most of what we learn is not taught in school, but is taught in the home. New believers are spiritual infants, as Peter writes: Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation. (1 Peter 2:2, ESV) Part of the task of our church family is to help us grow from newborn babes to functional adults. But how does that happen? One way we learn is through actual instruction. We are even taught in scripture to do this.

Psalm 78:5-7
  ⁵ He established a testimony in Jacob
    and appointed a law in Israel,
  which he commanded our fathers
    to teach to their children,
  ⁶ that the next generation might know them,
    the children yet unborn,
    and arise and tell them to their children,
  ⁷ so that they should set their hope in God
    and not forget the works of God,
    but keep his commandments;

But most of what we are taught, we learn by example. When I saw my dad brush his hair, I wanted a brush so I could do the same thing. I learned how to remove stubborn bolts when he showed me the trick to loosen spark plugs without breaking them. I learned how to treat all people with respect when we welcomed people of different colors and cultures into our home. We weren’t just told what to do, we were shown how to do it.

Suppose a father tells his son that he should not go out and get drunk. But every Friday after work, the dad goes out with his buddies and comes home drunk. What two things is this father teaching his son? Some might say he is teaching him both that he shouldn’t get drunk and that it is okay to get drunk. But what he is really teaching is that it is okay to get drunk and that his words carry little weight. We teach mostly by example, and our words should reinforce that example.

I remember asking one of the parents in our church of they could help teach. This person said they couldn’t teach because they weren’t a teacher. But if you are a parent, you are a teacher, though you may not be a very good one.

In these verses in Acts 2, we see the believers spending time together. I’m sure the believers did more than just share a meal when they met in people’s homes—this is when they could talk about what’s going on in their own lives and how they can live more like Jesus. And new believers could see how the Christians actually lived their lives on a day-to-day basis. The new believers could see if the behavior of the disciples matched up with what they were teaching in public.

As a church family, how intentional are we about raising healthy children? Do we just hope that by attending church on Sundays it will be enough for them to mature as Christians? Or do we take time to meet with new believers and mentor them. Does our behavior correspond to the things we say when we gather on Sunday?

Still another way families grow is in numbers. People have children, who have children.

In the same way, the church should grow numerically. The challenge for us is how do we continue to grow as a healthy family? How do we adopt new family members in the midst of a community that looks and speaks less and less like we do?


We read in Acts 2:47:
praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

We see in this verse that it was the Lord who added to their number each day. But it is not like the church did not have a role. One role they played was through their teaching. But another important role was to behave in such a way as to have favor with all the people.

Often, in our church outreach programs, we focus on getting people in the door—getting people in the door of the church building as if we can somehow trap them into becoming part of our family. But the picture I see here is not inviting someone into a building but rather inviting them to the table. Inviting them to be part of the family.

There may be some reluctance when we invite people to meet our family. I think of the young men and women who invite their significant other to meet the family for the first time. It can be a scary thing. If you meet your possible future son-in-law carrying a shotgun, you probably won’t see him again.

The picture I see here in the book of Acts is like going to a restaurant and seeing that table that you would like to be a part of. Did you ever see something like that? Maybe it’s the joyous laughter that catches your attention. Perhaps it is a person talking while the other person actively listening. Or maybe it is just the interesting conversation taking place. You can see, feel, and hear the love that the people at the table have for each other. It is something that makes you want to get up from your own table and go join theirs.

Church Family Gathering

This method of evangelism means being at the table that other people want to be a part of, and then inviting them to join you. Are we this kind of family? Do people know we are disciples of Jesus because of the love we have for each other as we read in John 13:34-35? Does our light shine before people, so that they see our good works? (Matthew 5:16) And if we invite new family members to our table, are there any changes we need to make so that they feel at home? Or do we just say that you’re welcome here as long as you conform? Is the love that our family members share for each other evident to those on the outside and make people feel like this is a family they want to be a part of?

Closing

To summarize, the church is a growing family where everyone feels like they belong and that is characterized, in part, by a sharing of lives and resources.

I want to end by going back to my original question. Why am I here? First, let me state a couple reasons that are not why I’m here.

I’m not here because Butler Church is a perfect church. In fact, I think it is a very dysfunctional church. There is a saying that goes every family has at least one strange, oddball character, and that if you can’t figure out who it is in your family, it is probably you. Well in my family, that person is me, but I’m okay with that. So I know Butler Church is dysfunctional because I’m a member here.

I’m also not here because this is such an awesome building, as nice as it is (we are about the same age, after all). But I find it odd that all the doorways point inward instead of outward—it does not make it seem like an inviting place.

No, the reason I’m here because Butler Church is my family—a family that welcomed us when we first moved to Fresno over 20 years ago, and has become part of our forever family.

I’d like to close today by having us gather together in a circle and join hands. We’re going to sing a song that was written about 60 years ago by a fellow who was a Catholic priest at the time. In those days, there was a lot of civil unrest due to race relations—not so much unlike the present. Reverend Scholtes saw that the church needed to be that family where everyone was welcomed and loved, regardless of their background, race, color, social status or whatever. The song is called “We Are One in the Spirit”, many of you older folks will probably know it. At the end we will sing a benediction.


We are one in the Spirit
Peter Scholtes 1966

We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord.
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord.
And we pray that all unity may one day be restored,
And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love,
Yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

We will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand.
We will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand.
And together we’ll spread the news that God is in our land,
And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love,
Yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

We will work with each other, We will work side by side.
We will work with each other, We will work side by side.
And we'll guard each man's dignity And save each man's pride.
And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love,
Yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

All praise to the Father, from whom all things come,
And all praise to Christ Jesus, His only Son,
And all praise to the Spirit, who makes us one:
And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love,
Yes they’ll know we are Christians by our love.