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Before I begin let me encourage you to get out this brochure that is in the bulletin. Today

Im beginning a three week sermon series called Core. For three weeks were going to look at

the core of Gods love for us. Every Sunday were going to look at the story of the woman at the

well in the 4th

chapter of John. This week in the brochure I shared a Bible Study with you about

the story of the women at the well. I encourage you to use it every day. In this brochure youll

find a place to take notes. I believe God might say someth8ng to you today that youll want to

remember. You have a place where we list the prayer requests of our community. I especially

want to note ___. He is a friend of Jennifer Huehns our Adminstrator. He needs a lung

transplant to live. Pray for him this week.

For the past month weve had a number of conversations at Chain of Lakes about

Outreach. For the purpose of this sermon series Im thinking of Outreach and Evangelism as the

same thing. These conversations reminded me of an experience I had with Outreach when I was

a seminary intern.

As a seminary intern my job was to do youth ministry at a Presbyterian church in Long

Island. I was attending seminary in New York City at the time. Every Friday afternoon I would

take the Long Island Railroad to Babylon, New York. I would lead Junior High Youth group on

Friday nights, visit kids on Saturdays, help with worship on Sunday mornings, and then lead

Senior High Youth group on Sunday nights. Then I would take the railroad back to Manhattan.

This church where I served had a strong evangelistic culture. one day we took a group of

youth to an event. At the event the leader did an Altar Call.

How many of us have been to a worship service or an event where an altar call has been

done.

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The church I was serving always encouraged their youth to invite friends to events. At

this event a young man who attended a local high school came. I didnt know him; I had never

met him before. He seemed like a nice guy. During the altar call he came to the front of the

room, kneeled down and gave his life to Jesus Christ.

The following weekend I was talking to the Head of Staff at the church about the event. I

told him about this young man who had come forward during the Altar call. He became very

excited. He looked me in the eye and said, you have some follow-up work to do.

I was interested in following-up with this young man. I didnt have his phone number, so

I wasnt sure how to get in touch with him.

Okay. I had some follow-up work to do. Except I had one problem. And it was a

significant problem. I had no clue what I was supposed to do. I had little training in Evangelism

or Spiritual formation at the time. The pastor didnt give me any training; the church hadnt

given me any training; even my seminary hadnt given me any training. It was as if I had been

thrown into this ocean called evangelism and asked to swim. Except I didnt know how to swim.

When it comes to evangelism I think many people feel what I felt at the time. Were

interested, but were not sure what to do. When were asked to do evangelism this is our

response.

SLIDE

Can any of you relate to this?

If you can relate to this then this sermon series is meant for you. Today Im starting a

three-week sermon series called CORE. Its an evangelism series. The Aim of this series is for

each of us to know at our core that God loves us to such an extent that we are willing to share

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that love with people outside our congregation. The formative story to this series is the woman

at the well. Each week were going to look at this story through the lens of evangelism.

Weve done a lot of evangelism at Chain of Lakes church.

A lot of you passed out doorhangers this week. Thank you! Thats evangelism

A lot of you have invited someone to an event weve done. Thank you! Thats evangelism.

A lot of you have talked about Chain of Lakes church with another person. Thank you! Thatsevangelism.

A lot of you have participated in one of our service ministries at Chain of Lakesa number of

you picked up garbage on the side of the road yesterday. Thats evangelism. Some of us are

mentors or have helped out at Manna Market or Feed My Starving Children, or People ServingPeople. Thank you! Thats evangelism.

Those are all ministries of evangelism. Those ministries are not the core.

At Chain of Lakes we have spent a lot of time talking about strategies and tactics and

advertising and materials and marketing. Im very proud of our marketing efforts. However

strategies and tactics and advertising and materials and marketing are not the core.

At Chain of Lakes weve talked a lot about building the church. That is growing in

numbers of people. There is hardly anything that makes me more excited than when we have a

first time visitor come to worship. As your pastor I promise you Ill do almost anything to have

a consistent stream of first-time visitors come through our doors. I get more excited about

having a first time visitor in worship when we have 30 people here compared to having a 100

people here and no first time visitors. When we have someone come, its the result of a lot of

work. Thats not the core.

At Chain of Lakes weve had a lot of fun events.

This Wednesday were hosting an IceCream Social on our property. Its going to be a

fun event. Weve invited the Tom Ryan, the Mayor of Blaine, to participate in an ice cream

eating contest along with Russ Herbst who is a local city council member. I hope a lot of you

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will participate in this ice cream eating contest. Its pretty simple. Im going to participate

because I figure since Ive done a Triathlon I can do an Ice Cream eating contest. Were going

to see who can eat the highest number of ice cream bars in a minute. Weve invited Spudster the

clown. Were going to have some raffles and FREE ice cream and music. Its going to be a

blast. The purpose of the event is to connect our congregation with people outside of the

congregation, particularly people who live near our property.

This is an evangelism event. This event is not the Core.

Whats the core? As I said at the beginning of this sermon weve had some conversations

the past month about Outreach. Outreach and evangelism are synonyms. I wrote a definition of

Outreach.

SLIDE

Outreach is sharing the love of Jesus Christ with people outside our congregation through our

words, our relationships, our events, and our ministries.

The first six words of this definition are the core. Sharing the love of Jesus Christ.

Thats the core.

Notice what I didnt say.

I didnt say that evangelism is building the church, or getting more people, or making our

budget, our having first-time visitors, or doing successful events. We want all of that to happen.

SLIDE The core is sharing the love of Jesus Christ.

The core is sharing the love of Jesus Christ; the core is sharing the love of Jesus Christ;

the core is sharing the love of Jesus Christ.

Say that with me. The core is sharing the love of Jesus Christ.

The core is not us selling something to someone else. The core is not us converting

someone to God. Thats Gods job. Gods job is to convert. Our job is to share.

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We cant share what we dont believe we dhave. The aim of this series is for all of us to

have a 100 percent confidence that God loves us. And that we take security in that love.

The focus is Gods love.

I want to try something. Its a little risky. Im going to take a break from preaching and

ask you to talk to someone else. I realize that some of us might not want to do this. I respect

that. We dont do this very often. I want to encourage you to find another person to talk. It

could be the person sitting next to you or it could be a person sitting across the room. I want to

invite you to have a conversation of three minutes with that person. Id like you to have a

conversation about these two questions.

SLIDEA time when you experienced the love of Jesus Christ

A time when you saw someone else experience the love of Jesus Christ.

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Ive explained the core. Weve talked about our own experiences. Now I want to engage

an important story in the Bible. The story is called the woman at the well.

One day Jesus went to a well. It was known as Jacobs well. Jacob you might remember

was one of the patriarchs of faith. His grandfather was Abraham. This well was an important

place. It was about noon. Jesus was tired out by his journey. He sat down near the well and

rested.

A Samaritan woman came to the well. Jesus and the woman were the only two people at

the well.

All of a sudden there were these differencesJesus was a man and the person who came to the well was a woman. Men had all the power and

women had no power.

Jesus was a Jew and this woman was a Samaritan. Jews and Samaritans had a difficult history.

They had a huge disagreement about the proper place to worship God. This disagreement mightnot mean a lot to us, but it certainly meant a lot to Jesus and this Samaritan woman.

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Jesus was single and as well find out in a bit this woman was married. I think there was some

tension in their interactions with each other because of their marital status.

Jesus told the woman, give me a drink.

The woman was surprised. She understood the differences between Jesus and her.

how is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria.

Jesus responded. His response could be categorized by four words. The word are if you

only knew. If you only knew. If you only knew.

Say those four words with me. If you only knew.

If you only knew how much God loves you.

Heres how the story went:

SLIDE

If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, Give me a drink, you would

have asked him, and he would have given you living water. John 4:10

Theres a term that I want you to write down. Living water. Living water. Living water

carries the rest of the story. Living water wasnt actually a material substance. Jesus went on to

share later in the story that a person couldnt really drink living water.

What is living water? It is something that lives inside of us and bubbles up outside of us.

This living water contains something that we cant get any place else. Jesus came to share this

living water with us and with the world.

This living water, of course, is the love that god has for every person in the universe. If

you only knew.

A little later in the story Jesus said that this living water was like a spring gushing up to

eternal life.

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Whos been to Yellowstone National Park? I went there as a kid. I want to take Hannah

there sometime. Remember the name of the geyser at Yellowstone?

Old Faithful.

SLIDE Old Faithful is a geyser. Heres a picture

According to Wikipedia eruptions can shoot between 3,700 to 8,400 gallons of boiling water to a

height of 106 to 185 feet. It lasts from 1.5 to 5 minutes.

Old Faithful is a metaphor for living water.

Jesus said it like this:

SLIDE

Everyone who drinks of this water [the water from the well] will be thirsty again, but those who

drink of the water that I give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will becomein them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. John 4:13

This living water is our core. It satisfies a thirst inside of us that regular water cannot

satisfy. When we experience this living water we arent the same people.

I dont thinkexperiencing this living water only happens once in our lifetime. As

disciples of Jesus Christ we want to experience this living water all the time.

We come to worship to experience living water. We need to be reminded how deeply

God loves us. When we are worshipping well somehow we are going to be touched. Somehow

through Kristels beautiful music, or seeing someone we havent seen, or getting excited about a

ministry, or sharing Communion, or hearing something in the sermon that resonates with us we

experience living water. We arent the same people.

This young man who I mentioned at the start of my sermon. He experienced living

water. Since weve started this church a lot of us have experienced living water. Our lives arent

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the same. We have purpose and meaning. We know at our core that God loves us. Weve

experienced something we havent experienced in a while.

When we become confident in receiving this gift of living water our lives arent the same.

This week a lot of us have shared doorhangers about our Ice Cream Social on Wednesday

night. The people in our target area need living water. In saying this Im not saying that the

people in our target area are especially needy. On the contrary by the worlds standards these are

very successful people. We did some demographic research and found that the average

household income in our target area is 137,000. Eighty percent of households have gone to

college. These are smart people who have done well financially.

But being smart and doing well financially is not the same as having living water. It

doesnt matter how smart we arewe need to find our security in living water. It doesnt matter

how wealthy we arewe need to find our security in living water. It doesnt matter how busy

we arewe still need living water. Just as the Samartian woman needed living water, the people

in our target area need it too.

Heres the paradox of evangelism. When we get to the Core evangelism is not about the

other person. Evangelism is about us. How deeply we find security in the love of Jesus Christ.

I want to start to close with a question. How secure are we in this living water. On a

scale of 1-10 with 10 being the highest what number would we place in our security.

I want all of us to be a ten.

All sorts of difficult things happen to us outside this sanctuary. The one constant in our

life is the love of Jesus Christ. Jesus shared this love all throughout his ministryand especially

with the woman at the well. Were going to go deeper and deeper and deeper into the core so

that we will share this love with people outside our congregation.