Technology is expanding so rapidly that it's hard for the common person to keep up. If you really want to be confused, go to Best Buy or Circuit City and tell them you want a High Definition TV. Unless you've studied up, get ready to be blown away by complexity and confusion. Plasma or LCD or DLP? Wall mounted or Table top? Converter box or built-in converter? HD DVD or Blu-ray? 42 inch or 56 inch? And don't forget the Cable Card and QAM digital cable TV tuner. I'm already confused. Our family hasn't ventured into the HD world yet. Eventually we will. It's all overwhelming to me but I'm not worried. I've already told Michael Cathey he's going with me when that time comes. Part of his job description.

There are a couple of companies that come to mind that have excelled in making the complex simple. And because of their success in simplifying, their companies are making billions. Their competitors don't come close. One company is Google. Google is my home page. There are many search engines out in internet land. But Google blows them all away with its speed. Their home page has a simple look. I can get a quick snapshot of everything going on in the world. The page is clean. Not cluttered with a million pieces of information and ads.

The other company is Apple. Anybody ever heard of an iPod or iPhone? Who needs to buy CDs anymore? You can store 20,000 of your favorite songs onto an Apple iPod, a piece of hardware that is about the size of an enlarged credit card. And it's simple enough for anyone to use. When the iPhone came out, people lined up at electronics stores to be among the first owners. Make calls, listen to music, watch videos, surf the internet, send and receive emails, search your address book, plan your calendar—you can do it all with an iPhone.

Today, we begin a new series of messages called "Becoming a Contagious Community." Over the next seven weeks we're going to talk about how God designed life to be lived in community. We're going to talk about our Chapin Baptist vision and how we believe God has called this church to be filled with believers that are so passionate about their faith that they become a contagious force in the community for the kingdom of God. How do we become such a contagious community? Can it really happen?

From Acts 17, let me give you a snapshot of a contagious community. Read verses 1-9. In the few short years after the resurrection, Christianity had been spreading like wildfire. From Jerusalem it began to spread to Judea and Samaria and all the surrounding areas. One contagious Christians would share Jesus with his friends and they would come to Christ. It wasn't long before the movement spread to modern-day Greece through the missionary efforts of the Apostle Paul. In the verses I just read we get a glimpse of the stir Christians were creating in the city of Thessalonica.

A few years ago Anita and I had the opportunity of visiting Thessalonica (Thessaloniki). Today, it is a huge metropolitan area of about a million people. It was a large, significant city in Paul's day. Looking out our hotel window, I tried to imagine what it must have been like in the early days of Christianity. I especially tried to imagine the scene we just read about.

There are a couple of observations I want us to think about from these verses. Notice verse 6—"But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other brothers before the city officials, shouting: ‘These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here….'" The Christians were causing trouble everywhere. I love the King James Version of this verse: "These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also." Don't get caught up in the word hither. Focus on the fact that these believers had turned the world upside down.

These believers were so filled with the power and presence of God that they stirred things up everywhere they went. They had formed a contagious community of believers. It wasn't just Paul. It was all the believers. In Thessalonica, a bunch of the native Grecians, many women, and even some of the Jewish people became Christ-followers.

Here is the other observation I don't want you to miss. Their strategy for spreading Christianity was simple. They just talked about Jesus. Paul took the Scriptures and explained to anyone who would listen that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. Notice in verse 3: "This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ." They lived for Jesus. They talked about Jesus. They had faith in the living Jesus. It was a simple strategy. "Jesus loves you. Jesus died on the cross for you. Jesus came back to life. Jesus wants to come into your heart." With that simple message large numbers came to Christ, experienced life transformation, and began to tell their stories everywhere they went. Let's take these observations and apply them to your life and to Chapin Baptist Church in 2008. Would you say that you are a contagious Christian? Do you share Jesus everywhere you go? What about the small group you are in? Would you call it a contagious group? Is God using your group to go beyond the walls of the church to tell others about Jesus? What about this church? Is it contagious?

A couple of years ago, well-known Baptist leader, researcher, and author Thom Rainer wrote a book called Simple Church. In a nutshell, using extensive research to support his theory, he proved that churches that could be described as contagious, the ones that are experiencing significant growth and impacting their communities are those congregations that have simplified their processes.

The complexities of our world have found their way into many churches to the point that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Complex churches have tons of activities going on every day that have very little to do with the vision of the church. In complex churches ministries compete with each other for time, attention, and dollars. Complex churches expect members to engage on multiple levels to the point that they often burn out or bail out.

Simple churches do away with all the fluff and focus only on those things that are true to the vision. They simplify their schedules. They simplify the processes that help reach the vision. They take the Google and Apple approach of moving away from the complex and focus on the simple. More accurately, they take the simple approach of the early church and say, "This is how we're going to do church."

For more than six months our staff has spent countless hours talking about how we can re-cast the vision of helping people connect with God and become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. We've prayed, studied the Bible, read books, discussed various strategies, and dreamed. The journey over the last six months has been exciting. And we believe God has given us a plan, a plan that will help us build a contagious community. And one of the driving values of this plan is to focus on simplifying, going back to the book of Acts and seeing how the early church operated. Over the next seven weeks we're going to talk about this vision and how it applies to every Chapin Baptist member.

You've heard me talk a lot about attendance plateaus and growth barriers. I believe God wants every member to breakthrough his/her own spiritual plateau and to move forward in his/her journey with Christ. When that happens, guess what? The church breaks through its barriers. It becomes a contagious community that grows and reaches others and sees Jesus transform lives and builds bridges of ministry and witness to the community.

How is this going to happen? The process is very simple. But, remember, it's all about Jesus. It's all about preaching about Jesus, teaching about Jesus, focusing on Jesus, growing to be like Jesus, and telling the good news about Jesus. We believe God has led us to focus on three simple strategies that will help every member become a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ and in turn build Chapin Baptist into a contagious community. Do you remember the three E's?

The first E is encounter. We want to focus on creating an environment whereby every person coming to one of our services will be able to encounter Jesus. When people encounter Jesus, they become contagious. The second E is engage. We want people to engage in a small group experience that will equip them to become like Jesus. The third E is express. We want to equip every believer here to express his/her faith by telling others about Jesus and serving others in the name of Jesus. If we can do these three things well, we will build a contagious community.

I want you to hear the story of one of our members who has experienced life transformation through this church. Holly Lee is a junior at Chapin High. Her faith is contagious. [Holly's faith story.] Holly is a great example of living out the simple process of the three E's. Some people you can see worship and know that they are encountering Christ. Holly is one of those. She has been engaged in a small group experience that is giving her the tools to become a self-feeder in the Word. And she expresses her faith in many ways. She teaches in the children's ministry. She's all the time doing ministry projects with the student ministry. Imagine the impact if every member did the same. Could we become like the church described in Acts 17, the kind that turned the world upside down? It can happen. And I'm excited about what I believe we're going to see God do in the coming months.

A teacher introduced a game called The Balloon Stomp to her fourth grade class. A balloon was tied to every child's ankle, and the object of the game was to pop everybody else's balloon while protecting your own. The last person with an intact balloon would win the game.

The nine-year-olds entered into the spirit of things vigorously. When the battle was over in a matter of seconds, only one balloon was still inflated. Its owner was the most disliked kid in the room. A second class came later that day and was asked to play the same game—only this time the class was filled with developmentally disabled children. The Balloon Stomp game proceeded quite differently. The only idea they grasped was that the balloons were supposed to be popped. But instead of fighting each other off, the children got the idea that they were supposed to help one another pop balloons. So they developed a co-op approach.

One little girl knelt down and held her balloon carefully in place—like the holder for a field goal kicker—while a little boy stomped it flat and then knelt down and held his balloon still for her to stomp. On and on it went, all the children helping one another in the great stomp. When the very last balloon was popped, everybody cheered—and everybody won.

To me, that's the way the church should operate. Spiritually speaking, we all are a bunch of developmentally disabled children. We want the church of Jesus Christ to win. I'm not interested in Chapin Baptist outdoing Chapin Methodist, Chapin Presbyterian, or Mt. Horeb Lutheran. I wish every church in Chapin would run 2,000 every Sunday. I just want every one of us to work together as a contagious team of sinners saved by God's grace to reach our community for Jesus Christ. I just want us to work together as a contagious team of sinners working together to help one another become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. If we do that, we all win. And Jesus Christ is magnified.