February 11, 2012 - Church at Worship

Sermon: "The Third Bad Idea: The Structure Is Primary" - Randy Roberts
Part 3 of the sermon series: Seven Ideas That Ruined the Church . . . and Two Others That Didn’t Help Any

Pastoral Welcome: Darold Retzer

Alumni Welcome: Charles Goodacre, SD ’71

Children’s Feature: Shawna Campbell

Meditation:

The church exists by mission, as fire exists by burning. – Emil Brunner

What the church needs today is not more or better machinery, not new organizations, or more novel methods; but people whom the Holy Spirit can use – people of prayer, people mighty in prayer. – E. M. Bounds (adapted)

The church is an organism, not an organization; a movement, not a monument. – Charles Colson

The crisis of the church is not at its deepest level a crisis of authority or a crisis of dogmatic theology. It is a crisis of powerlessness in which our sole recourse is to call on the help and inward power of the Holy Spirit. – James K. Baxter

Scripture Reading Luke 4:16–21, TNIV Frank Godfrey, SD ’621
Howard Sprague, SD ’622

Sermon Notes:

The Seventh-day Adventist Church is a well-organized, highly-structured body of
believers. Beginning at the ground level, there is the individual member who is
a member of a local congregation. Local congregations make up a sisterhood of
churches known as conferences. The Loma Linda University Church is a member of
the Southeastern California Conference. Conferences form Unions. Our conference
is a member of the Pacific Union. Unions form Divisions, of which there are thirteen
around the world. We are part of the North American Division. And the thirteen world
Divisions form the General Conference.

Structure is vital for purposes of organization, effectiveness and order. But there is
within a structured system an inherent danger: that the structure itself will become
primary; that the effort and energy that ought to be given to mission is invested,
instead, in supporting the structure.

Is Adventism in such a position? Has the structure become primary? To such issues
we turn our attention today.

God’s peace.

Randy Roberts
Senior Pastor