The following is the condensation of a sermon presented at the Sligo Adventist Church in Takoma Park, Maryland. We've left intact some of the elements of oral delivery.--Editors.

HILE THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL WANDERED in the desert, God sent a message through His servant Moses: "Build this tent so I can dwell with my people" (Ex. 25:8, paraphrase).

Unfortunately, the people of Israel didn't see the tabernacle as the awesome presence of God among them, transforming them. Instead the tent became a symbol of pride and specialness-which it was, of course; but they made it so to the exclusion of others. Being "chosen" became more important than knowing the One who did the choosing. Pride and exclusiveness became the values of a holy huddle that shut out the world around them for the sake of spiritual bliss within. Are you hearing what I'm saying, church?

No longer was the mission focused on helping people outside. Instead it became focused on perfecting the people within, a task that according to Scripture made them twice as fit for hell as when they first started. Are you listening, church?

So the tent had to change. The old tent wasn't big enough, because the people had diminished its importance, its value, its significance. No wonder the psalmist shouted and pleaded with them in Psalm 24: "Lift up your heads, O you gates. Lift up your doors, you ancient tents, that the King of glory might come in. Lift up your heads-your tent's too small!" (verses 7-9, paraphrase).

Let's Open Up!
We, as Seventh-day Adventist Christians, are called to be hope and comfort in the midst of heartache and sorrow. We are called to be a people holy and special, loving those whom God has placed here. Called to live as tents-not apartments or condos or houses. Called to be a ministry that is mobile and responsive to God's call, guided by His will, not some earthly landlord, condo committee, or mortgage company. Because, my friends, this world is not our home. Do you hear what I'm saying?

The trouble is, you and I, like Israel of old, have let our tents shrink. They're small. They're too small. They've become comfortable, safe, and secure-just big enough for us, yet small enough so we don't have to worry about the needs of those around us.

So tell me, how big is your tent? If you struggle to relate to your neighbors, let me suggest your tent is too small. If it's hard for you to think that prostitutes, gamblers, and drunks can be in the kingdom of God, your tent is too small. If you can't see past the tattoos, the body piercings, and the hair color to the heart that is crying inside, your tent is too small. If you can't handle the classroom or the neighborhood because it's becoming too White or too Black, your tent is too small. If you have trouble seeing the church working together with other Christians and other community agencies helping the hurting, your tent is too small. If you have trouble seeing the church working with AIDS victims, drug abusers, runaway teens, your tent is too small. If you think the role of the Christian is only to look good, sound good, smell good, and act good, your tent is too small. If you think that good Christian education can be found only in secluded rural areas, your tent is too small.

Lift up your heads! Cast wide your gates, O Christians, for the King of glory wants to come in and stretch your tent. It's too small! Open your hearts and open your minds and see what He's called us to-not to a holy huddle, not to an inward-focused, rule-making, policy-abiding institution. He's called us to live as His tents, to represent Him by living among the people He came to save.

Listen to Paul's prayer for you and me in Ephesians 3: "I pray," says Paul, "that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, 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 all the fullness of God" (verses 17-19, NIV).

Our tents are far too small. Let His grace stretch you. Let Him expand your horizons and see that it's truly His love that compels us to do everything we do. And His love not only compels our actions and behaviors, but it supplies our needs. We can't outgive our God. We can't outlove our God. We can't outserve our God! But some of us, dear friends, are living as if we're hoarding stores for the time of trouble. Are you listening?

My friends, the Christian church-our church-we need to reclaim the mission that Christ has given us, to claim it personally and corporately, realizing that eternal life for thousands may be in the balance of our behavior and our decisions. And God's going to ask, "Where are they?"

We've got to get serious about Jesus' love, what His love really means. Not "love," the feeling, but "love," the verb, the action, the discipleship, the caring, and the reaching out. Instead of fearing our communities and sensing how different we are from "them," we need to speak from love and concern, from compassion and cooperation, from conviction, not from a sense of power or might or right. People don't care how much we know until they know how much we care.

The greatest temptation that Christians face today is that of being separated from their world, sitting back and watching the world that Christ calls us to save. We can be separated by anything, be it indifference or prejudice or judgmentalism or superiority or busyness. Whatever separates us from the world Christ calls us to serve is wrong!

Who Had the Bigger Tent?
Let me tell you a story. The story is set in the Asian theater in World War II and comes from Langdon Gilkey's book Shantung Compound.* Many foreign nationals at that time found themselves immediately incarcerated in prisoner-of-war camps when Japan declared war. Businessmen, bankers, prostitutes, gamblers, drug addicts, telephone operators, people who were drunk, people who were sick, people who were healthy, young, old-all walks of life, all forms of religions, in the POW camp.

What was so interesting was how the different Christian groups behaved in those camps. Soon they had gathered and sorted themselves into separate groups, leaving the unchurched in the middle of the compound. Once the various Protestant groups had identified themselves, they gathered and began to send emissaries to those outsiders, asking them to join them, but with the condition that "if you're going to join us, you've got to be like us. So you've gotta stop smoking, gotta stop drinking, gotta stop gambling, gotta stop doing all these different things before you can join our club." Nobody took 'em up on their offer.

Gilkey was impressed with the contrast, the distinct contrast he saw between that and the behavior of the Catholic clergy-the priests, the nuns-who didn't go and say, "You want to join me? Be like me!" They went out and they helped them hoe their garden, they helped them draw the water, they helped them scrub the latrine, they helped them with whatever they needed help with, and they built a relationship. And great was the number who had fellowship with that community.

Now, you tell me: Who had the bigger tent? Who truly tabernacled among them, and who stood afar with a bullhorn and said, "Sinner, you're in trouble! If you want to be saved, you'd better be like me!"

Doesn't work. It's never worked. Why don't we learn? You and I are Christ's hands, His eyes, His voice, His heart to the people of this community. We are called to tabernacle among each other, and then to be involved in improving the quality of life of our neighborhoods.

Let's be honest. Most of us prefer the fringes, though, don't we? I mean, you go to a party. Where do you stand? Center stage with a microphone? No. We all hang to the walls. Most of us, as Christians, hang on the fringes of our communities. Afraid to take the plunge, we don't get involved. Is it because we're afraid? Is it because we think we're too good? I don't know. But I'll tell you, He knows. And He wants to deal with you and your heart about it. Because until you come face to face with what's keeping you on the outside looking in, instead of where you belong, on the inside and changing it-until you come face to face with that, as a disciple you're not fully functioning. You can't be a disciple and sit in the bleachers.

God Wanted to Stretch Me
I used to hang around the edges of the community, having joined a thoroughly Christian denomination at the age of 25. I'm delighted to be an Adventist, because as I looked at all the different churches (and I looked at a lot), I found the Seventh-day Adventist Church to be the closest embodiment of practical Christianity and scriptural integrity. I hung around the fringes, though. I became a new pastor just two years after becoming a new member. So here I am, not sure how to live as a new member or a new pastor, and I was both. So I played it safe. I stayed with the flock. Staying separate was easy. It was safe. It was fulfilling. But it became empty when I realized that my tent was too small. That God wanted to stretch me and to have me do a greater work.

So God stretched me. I joined the Greater Dayton Junior Chamber of Commerce, the Dayton Jaycees-300 of the nicest beer-drinking, cigar-smoking guys you'll ever want to meet. Once a month we'd go to a restaurant, a big restaurant, and we'd have a speaker come who'd talk to us about different aspects of life. These are guys just trying to make it, trying to better their life for their family and their homes. We'd have accountants come and help people with their ledgers. We'd have people come to do strategic planning. We'd talk about personal problems and give encouragement. I was the only minister in the group.

Pretty soon I ended up praying-they figured I could do that well, so they had me say grace before each meal. They had me give a couple talks when speakers didn't show up. Pretty soon my phone started to ring. "Hey, Peter, my wife and I are having a baby. Would you come over and pray?" "Hey, Peter, my mom's really sick. Could you pray?" They created an office of chaplain to the Greater Dayton Jaycees, and I got to fill that office.

But I well remember asking, What in the world is a Seventh-day Adventist pastor doing in a group like this? What would the members think? And then I thought the most important question: What would Jesus think?

I know what my wife, Kathy, thought. When I came home each night smelling like a chimney, she was livid. One night when I came home, it was a cold winter night, and I was in the garage. She opens the garage door, looks at me, and says, "Take your clothes off."

I said, "In the garage?"

She said, "Take 'em off and hang 'em up. They're not coming in the house!" So month after month my clothes hung in the garage, airing out until they were safe.

One night the meeting had closed, and there was a guy kind of hanging around; he wanted to talk. So I sat down at a table with him, and he said, "Peter, why do you do what you do?" I told him that it really was neat for me to be connected with the guys because I felt it was important for everybody to know they were valued; for them to know that somebody cared enough to listen to the story of their life; to let them know they had gifts; to let them know there was hope when things felt hopeless. I liked to do that because Jesus had done that for me. And he said, "Thanks for reminding me."

I said, "Reminding you?"

He said, "Yeah, I used to be a Seventh-day Adventist."

As he took a drag on his cigar and a sip from his beer, he told me about his life in church. How he used to fight against God and against the Sabbath because he saw God as a God of "do's and don'ts" and not a God of potential and power and glory and grace. How he used to struggle, and how he just walked out of the church because the church didn't have any room for him. But he said, "You know, I miss it. Those silly little songs we sang in Sabbath school, those memory verses, they're still up here, and I miss it. How can I get back?"

I want you to know today, as I realized then, that that conversation would never have happened if God hadn't stretched my tent.

They're Waiting
How many people out there are waiting for you to join a Junior Chamber of Commerce, a Rotary Club, or a sewing club? How many people out there are waiting for you to sit down and let them know they're loved? Some people are waiting an awfully long time. Some people are waiting so long, they're giving up.

They drive by this church and they wonder, What do they do in there? They drive by the college: What goes on there? What do they believe? I don't see them in the parades, I don't see them helping at community services, I don't see them involved. Who are they? God, let it never be questioned about who we are as a congregation or a community, for it's His grace and His glory that you and I advertise every day in how we live and how we love. And if people are wondering what kind of message they're getting, our tents are way too small.

Friends, I think of the opportunities for us to be involved with our communities: Working with housing needs, working with schools, helping families cope with the many challenges, helping many people learn to speak English. They have practical, fundamental needs that each one of you is capable of meeting.

How big is your tent? There are all kinds of opportunities to touch a life for Christ. There are so many ways for you and me to stretch our tents, and to be the blessing that God calls us to be.

O God, help us to lift up our gates, to throw open the doors, to expand our vision and stretch our tents, to renew our commitment to Your mission, to the people of our community! Amen.

* Langdon B. Gilkey, Shantung Compound (New York: Harper & Row, 1966).

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Peter Bath is the senior pastor of the Sligo Seventh-day Adventist Church in Takoma Park, Maryland.