 I'm going to read to you from Acts 16 verse 20 to 25 to 30. I'm going to spend a bit of time in this interesting situation that happened for Paul and Silas in a Philippian jail. It says, about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. All at once all, not that language, the prison doors flew open and everyone's chains came loose. The jailer woke up and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword, was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped, but Paul shouted, don't harm yourself, we are all here. The title of this idea, this talk I'm going to do with you today, and by the way, I work very hard on my titles so that when you leave here today, go home, or Tuesday morning this week when someone says to you, did you go to church on Sunday, and you say yes, and they say, was it good, and you say yes, and they say, what did the speaker talk about? You get to stay in, instead of saying, I think he talked about faith, I think she talked about prayer, which is why people think, hmm, I'm glad I wasn't there. You'd be able to say, we had a guy spoke about something called collateral grace, even the word collateral is impressive for you to use this week. Everybody say collateral, and again, beautiful word, but that's the most you've ever said it in your life. You said it twice in a day, woohoo, because this is not a mainstream word at all, and I think when we teach about things, or when we study things that are not part of our mainstream life, it's good for you to hear yourself saying that word to get you on the same page with me in the next 25 minutes, it'll help you do that a wee bit. Collateral grace, collateral, you'll only hear that word used in front of the word damage. Normally collateral is used to describe the damage that happens when in war people get hit by a bomb drop on a missile strike, and they were hit because they were in the vicinity, they weren't intended to be hit, they were not combatants, they were not military people, civilians and so on, and they call what happens to them collateral damage. So collateral is normally associated with bad things, but it itself is a neutral word. Collateral just means a widespread, it means that many people are touched, it means that the circle is large, it means that everyone is included. Collateral is a good word, and it struck me that what happened in this prison cell was a supernatural act of collateral divine intervention, because when God hit this prison with a localized earthquake that was triggered, that was initiated by singing from only one cell, every cell got in on the blessing of the singing in one cell. Everybody's chains came off, not just the guys that were earning it, not just the two believers in there that were praying and singing hymns, the rest were listening. What else do you do in prison at night? Because these were proper prisons by the way. This wasn't carpets and snooker tables and cable TV prison. This was the real deal. So what else would you do? And by the way, Paul and Silas, while they were singing hymns at midnight, their backs must have been ripped open with the beating they received prior to this. So this was proper full-on sacrificial singing and sacrificial praying. And so the prisoners are listening, so God decides to get involved and sends a localized earthquake just to that prison cell, and everybody got in on what these two guys pulled down, if you like, from heaven. Everybody got in on it. What God didn't do is go through the prison system saying, well, I'm going to do something here tonight, but I'm not going to include those guys in cell number 10 because they're drug dealers. I'm not going to include the people in cell number 14 because they're burglars or because they are human traffickers or because they are whatever. God didn't decide, okay, some people in here really shouldn't be loose, so I'm going to keep their prisons closed and I'm going to go through the prison and select who should be involved in chains coming off and doors opening. He didn't do that. It just went wall to wall across all the prison system and it struck me that what God did here could legitimately be called collateral. Everybody was hit in what took place, though not everybody was aware of it or knew where it came from or what happened. No one had ever heard of, no one had ever seen, however hardened these criminals were, however many prisons they'd been in, they'd never seen a prison where chains fell off and doors flew open by some unseen force. This is a supernatural miracle and God included everyone because that I want you to understand is God's nature. It is the nature of love and grace and kindness and mercy and forgiveness to be collateral. And I'm reintroducing you, if that's what I'm doing today, I'm reminding you because our church forgot this about 17 years in to my 30 odd years pastoring, about 17 years in, I think I have language for this now retrospectively. I didn't have at the time because in leadership, one of the greatest frustrations of leadership and of life, I think, is that often the language to explain what happened doesn't come to later. That's the frustrated thing with destiny. Destiny cannot be understood now or looking forward. Destiny only comes clear with hindsight, which is a bummer, really. And I realized looking back that our church got stuck in understanding the nature of grace. I think when you use words a lot like we do in the church and in our Christian life, like love and kindness and grace and mercy and forgiveness and joy and peace, I think we think that we know what those words mean because we use them a lot. But when you understand the nature of a word or the nature of a person, you ever heard someone gossiping to you about someone and you find a way to say to them, I'm sorry, I know they're not here, but I know Sue would never ever say that. And what you're appealing to in defending Sue, who is absent and can't defend herself, is that you know it's not in her nature to have done or said what they're saying she didn't say. I was walking one of my grandkids recently and my grandkids all want dogs, but I've advised their parents it's a bad idea because they want a dog and about six months in it's your dog. Okay. I said, if you want the kids to have a dog, make them pick up dog crap for about six months, then say, do you want that for 15 years? That might fix it. Anyway, we have other ways of shock treatment for them, that's one idea, in case you've got a kid wanting a dog in here. And my granddaughter was going to stroke a dog and I wasn't sure whether it would bite or not. So I said to the owner, before I let go of her hand, does your dog bite? And he said to me, it's not in its nature. I thought every dog that ever bit me, the owner told me that by the way. But he appealed to the dog's nature in an instantaneous exchange in seconds before my granddaughter touched the dog. He appealed to its nature. I'm appealing to the nature of grace today. I'm bringing you back to an awareness or I'm giving you a first time awareness that grace is collateral in nature. That the cross of Jesus Christ was not for the church. The cross was for humanity. We've made it about us and we've almost become cross cops and grace cops. And forgiveness cops as if we get to decide who is worthy of being included in passing that on. But love and grace and kindness are not gifts. They are battens that you see in a relay race. If you don't pass on the baton, as you know, everybody is disqualified. But in the church, we found a way for generations now to turn that baton into a gift. And whenever you warehouse love, whenever you warehouse grace, whenever you warehouse mercy and kindness and hang on to it, which is what happened with the story, the parable of the unmerciful servant who himself was forgiven a huge debt, but then put in the debtors prison someone that owed him far less. And he says the master was outraged. If you want to make God mad, all you need to do is not pass on his kindness to you. If you want to see God mad, not a lot of stuff makes God mad, but we're told in that parable, the master was outraged that those who had received kindness did not pass it on to someone else. What I described to you there, by the way, is a generic problem in the church around the world, but we don't know it is because we are loving and gracious and kind to each other. And when you're in a church bubble, like I was for 30 years, when you're in a church bubble, you're in a scenario that becomes like an echo chamber in your life like social media is. Social media tracks everything that you do and it sends you stuff that it knows you're interested in. You don't know how it knows you looked at those sneakers yesterday. Now you just find pop-up adverts because it knows that you looked at something. Now it thinks you want to buy that. So it bombards you with subtle stuff in your timeline, in your social media, in your Amazon search, because you dare to stop and glance at it. So social media becomes an echo chamber. You start looking at what you looked at earlier and now all the voices, all the emphasis around the world about what you show interest in starts to find you. This is what happens in a church world or a political party or a corporate organization or a team. We spend so much time inside that organization that we develop massive blind spots which our church did 17 years in. There's no bad people in this. There's no bad hearts in anything I'm describing to you. It is part and parcel of kinds of organizations like us where we deal in the stuff to do with forgiveness and grace and mercy and second chances and new beginnings because collateral grace by its nature is not careful. Collateral grace is reckless and careless. Otherwise you couldn't call it collateral. Collateral grace, collateral love, collateral kindness does not try to find someone to be kind to. It can't help itself. But when God flings His love and grace towards people you don't approve of, by the way, you are once a person no one approved of. There are people in your minds this morning that you wish was sat in some of these empty seats. There's people that are not here this morning that you wish were here. Perhaps one of the reasons they're not here or one of the reasons you didn't used to be here is because you just weren't comfortable with the idea that a church would welcome you, that you would be acceptable here because it's trendy now around the world to say come as you are. What we really mean though is come as we are because God help you if you come into this church venue or any church venue generally these days and you're not the type of person who already goes to that church. God help if you walk in and you're homosexual or you walk in and you black if the church is mainly white or you walk in and you are homeless or you're down and out or something about you looks like you don't really fit in around here or your behavior is a bit random or you are a naughty person or you are a kind of just come as you are so you do and our church started you know reaching people to whom we said that and then they came and tested and we realized that we meant I wish you wouldn't come as you are I wish you'd come as we are and our we are is this this this and this can you behave yourself next time but they did not and I started reaching the poor in our city in the late 90s because our church was white middle-class people and white middle-class people need Christ like anyone else but they're not the only people in town but to look at our church you'd think they were so I started reaching into the poor parts of our community bringing in people from the worst council estates we call them in our country and I was busing in 500 a week I know and scoundrels of my corporate name for them because that's what they were I said you scoundrels you causing me so much trouble because they were and they were coming and they were dropping the f-bomb everywhere I don't mean faith because that's how they talk they were doing drugs in the car park and smoking cigarettes God forbid in the car park the drama I had over people smoking cigarettes and I'm like okay this tells me how how much of a reality check our church needs that I would get so many letters and conversations about people smoking in the car park smoking in the building and I thought hmm I don't think smoking would kill our church as quick as that gossip would kill our church but no one says anything about the gossip but we go nuts about the smoking I thought hmm I think this is telling me something these people you know these when people come in non-religious non-church people come into our churches God uses them like religious sniffer dogs do you think you have nothing to declare nothing here for the doctor to sit down next to and they park up in our churches and smell religion everywhere when we think we're immune to it and what happens is when people come that need grace that are outside of our circle of relationship that are beyond our social grouping or beyond the kind of people we think we feel comfortable with when grace is thrown in their direction often Christians can get a bit offended by it because God is inclusive of people that you are hesitant to include and when God includes them he's letting you know I couldn't care less who you think is worthy this is what happened in the early church because in the early church people called Judaizers went around the Gentile churches teaching in the Gentile churches you can't be a proper believer until you do some Jewish stuff you've got to get circumcised you've got to keep certain rituals you've got to observe certain special feats and days when you do that stuff you're really a bona fide one of us because we don't have to do any of that because we're Jews already and they were laying on these layers of expectation they were creating hoops to jump through because they felt they had some kind of inside track with God by being Jews and if you get in as easy as we got in then it makes us feel less special and every church in the world I think has its own version of what I just described where we think we're the grace cops we think we get to decide who isn't who isn't worthy of having grace and love and kindness flung in their direction and God's grace by definition is collateral if you warehouse it and keep it it starts to smell and goes off and some churches stink and they're good people and they love God but there's something about it that feels off it feels like an inward looking club for overfed under exercise Christians that sing that sing every week about doing stuff they have no intention of doing and we sing about reaching the world and we preach about reaching the world you shalt amen but really it's armchair amenning you know everything everything in this room that happens today you all know don't you it's not real nothing in here is real this is all a flight simulator this is virtual reality this only counts when we leave this building all of us and we start giving away we start passing on the love the kindness the grace the inclusion the joy the happiness the friendship inside this room every church I go to thinks they're friendly because they are to each other if you tell someone in here this morning great to see you they'll say to you great to see you too if you say to someone in here I love you I'm praying for you they'll say to you thank you I love you too I'm praying for you too if you kind to someone in here they'll be kind to you back and that's what happens we think that because that happens that we're in a great relationship with each other but all that love and kindness is trapped inside this echo chamber where we are reciprocating the love to each other and what God wants us to understand is that His grace is not based on reciprocation His love is not based on being loved back that the Bible says before you were even born Jesus died for you so you can hardly say he waited till he knew he'd get a good return he died on the cross knowing that thousands that he'd healed and blessed and delivered and done kindness to would stand around the cross shouting crucify him I'm sure he saw people's faces that he only prayed for and helped and set free last week and they're at the foot of the cross shouting crucify him but he did it knowing that they would do that and he doesn't know that you and I will do that and I'm introducing you today again reminding you that grace is not careful I want you to leave this room today and stop being careful stop being careful stop being picky and choosy with who you think is lovable with who you think is worthy of inclusion I think the idea today is not to go out and evangelize and by the way evangelism I'm not sure about that word I think it's the more harm than good has that idea and certainly in the modern western evolving church with the emerging generation because I think Christians and non-Christians both have one big thing in common we both hate evangelism we don't like it because we feel clumsy and we feel awkward and artificial and the un-church don't like it for the same reason so we should be able to do a new idea you know in 21st century western world the new idea is perhaps we should move away from evangelism and just work on being kind or be nice be nice to people because if you're not nice to people but you evangelize them which can sometimes feel like grievous bodily harm like assault I mean I'm amazed I survived evangelism so are some of you that you survived evangelism shed of a medal because it was like you didn't count it was just like you're not going to notch on my Bible to evangelize you is the that's the environment I grew up in everybody's just everybody just needs to get saved get saved so we didn't have relationships outside the church we didn't build we didn't build relationships and connection we didn't enjoy humans we didn't enjoy people and what I've done in my church for 17 years is I've been busy speaking to Christians when I should have been speaking to humans because we are good Christians that turned out to be bad humans because I'm brought in all these poor that needed us to be just decent humans let alone good Christians or hell broke loose in our church the letters I got from people in our church these people are ruining our church ooh our our church was interesting language to me like they own the church like they go to decide who shouldn't shouldn't come into the church as long as they don't ruin our country club was what I was hearing and I thought we've got a problem 17 years in I think we have a problem it's they're not bad people they love God all of that was not an issue but I think we got stuck I think we got blindsided by our own bubble experience where all of our lives and conversations and socializing and music that we wear and events that we go to and company that we keep and people in our phone directory they're all bubble people and we're all good inside the bubble but God wants you this week to tell someone you love them who you know full well will not say it to you thank you or I love you back that's grace it's collateral so this week I want you to go out experiment today start today I wrote a book some years ago called 15 revolution to try and get this into the culture of churches around the world because I worked on it for years in our church 15 revolution the idea of the book is give 15 minutes a day to help someone be kind to someone include someone compliment someone notice someone 15 if you think that's easy you should try it if you if you think it's easy to choose deliberately to be inconvenienced by getting involved in someone else's life by engaging them as a person if you lift your chin this week and realize that then at the end of that wrist serving your coffee where you go for your coffee every day is a person and you don't know their name you never asked them about their life never asked them how they are if you go to the garage and fill it with petrol once a week and the guy at the gas station or the girl at the gas station who hate their life who feel stuck in their life and you don't know their name and you've never lingered and had a kind word oh I don't mean you haven't invited them to church but they can see you coming a mile off they don't want to invite to church they want to know do you see me am I invisible to you what happened to that and we need an epidemic of kindness across the planet you all know that just as humans and your kindness shouldn't have an agenda attached to it because they can spot that a mile off too if you will go out this week and just notice people be kind to people is I think the nature of collateral grace if you will go out this week and stop being careful stop praying for a divine appointment that's killed us a divine appointment that you want to have an encounter with someone that results in someone coming to Christ it's way too intense it doesn't suit most of you anyway so most of you won't do that this week even though you shout amen to it what does suit you you're all over qualified to notice someone's shoes seriously I was in Singapore a while back and I was having breakfast and the guy in the restaurant came and I said to him I like your shoes where to get them from it began to tell me that he bought them in Italy when he was cabin crew for BA years ago before he went back to live in Singapore and got a job there in the hospitality industry in hotels and he was heading up the concierge floor and he was a nice guy his name was Jose and I said I love your shoes that's how we started he said you're obviously English what are you doing here I told him my story said I'm preaching at a church here at the weekend and I said I'd love you to come if you're free I'm in town he said well you know I'm a Muslim I said not a very good one he said I drink beer and I eat bacon I said well Jose let me tell you I'm a Christian but I'm not a very good one because I drink gin and tonics I like a cigar now and then and I eat bacon I said me and you'll be fine and I said there's lots of us like you I said you'll be fine with us a lot I said we're all flawed as well though you won't be able to spot it you know often because he put it good if butter wouldn't melt that would be as often but you know 30 years in pasturing you know all is not as it appears so I said you'll be fine anyway I went the next morning for breakfast and he met me at the door Mr. Scanlon I've got you the best table in the house over looking the city but on the 65th flower it was I didn't ask him to do that I didn't ask him to meet me at the door remember my name or do anything special for me I didn't ask for that I wouldn't ask for that I'm not a diva these celebrity pastor divas I couldn't get away with a diva with my grandkids or my wife so I'm like okay cool thanks so much he said listen my shift tomorrow is complicated but if I do come to church I'll be at the first service I said great I'll look out for you now I didn't tell him there'd be 10,000 people there and I won't tell him that so I get up to speak and I tell the church the story I just told you I said to you say how you're here today and if you know the instant sense of pressure I felt the unspoken pressure in the room of can we just get on with it please like one person are you kidding me you're making us all sit here to say hello to one person is what I felt the vibe was the clock was ticking like it is now time was going and it seemed to be a disproportionate bad use of my time to include one person and I just hung on and I couldn't see anybody move and I'm trying to see you know under the lights and I was just going to quit and then I saw a silhouette right at the top of the rake's heating and it was Jose I said you're here this morning welcome I forgot to tell you there's 10,000 people waiting to welcome you you got the welcome of his life he was like a celebrity um when I met him the next day before I left town I said I'm sorry I didn't tell you yesterday he said I had such a great time he said I met so many lovely people who also he said come to this church who are part of the staff of the hotel but I didn't know came to this church and so on and so on my point is all of that started by me noticing his shoes because I like shoes I want I wasn't faking interest in his shoes to find some false connection I like cars too and so if I ever see somewhere in the nice car especially Tesla's I'll say oh I love those cars tell me how long have you had it tell me something unique about this car that I don't know I heard about this cars is it true and I get into conversation all guys and some girls love that stuff but it's a point of connection and I don't I don't my idea isn't I'm going to do five minutes on the car then I'm going to shove a christian literature in your hand I mean that's just weird not not it's dodgy it's dodgy and it's weird I'm going to stop it just just go this week and just just just you know someone I was in I was in a corporate event in Texas about a month ago and this this CEO said to me I have problems with people I think I have a just a loyalty issue in my team of my top staff he said I have a loyalty issue he said how do you in what I've done over my years and building staff and be part of teams and building teams he said how do you develop loyalty in your team and I said to him you do it by asking someone how's your mom end of it was such a disappointing answer to him because it's not corporate at all is it it's just human you develop loyalty you build loyalty when you're shown interest in people's lives remember that two weeks ago that staff member told you her mom was sick and how worried she was remember she told you that then two weeks later go by Jenny's desk and say Jenny how is your mom and remember her mom's name how is Rita doing how is Sheila doing remember how is your mom I'm concerned about because that's then where you get loyalty from because they feel a sense of appreciation they feel respected they feel seen rather than they feel that they are just a means to an end they're just here to help you sell more stuff get more customers get your profit margin up but they don't feel the count as a person that's all you're all over qualified to notice someone's nice hair today but say it to someone who has never had it said to them this is why I'm teaching around the world in the church a message called left overs where Jesus had 12 baskets left over from the feet of the 5000 because when he starts feeding the 5000 he always had those in mind that were not there he deliberately overdid it because there's always people that are not there that were included in his heart whilst those that were there were present but those that weren't there are on his mind so he went he did more than enough on purpose knowing that others that are not here will also be included in what those got that were here and often in the church with some minded on those that are here and those that are not here are in our virtual reality song singing and preaching until I start bringing them in and then you were forced to have them here and my point in that is that sometimes I think that we are in massive overkill in how indulgent we become on the love and the grace and the kindness and the energy and the love inside our churches I was in a church recently that may be concerned about this when people put in the hand up in the room that needed prayer one of those churches where they did that you had your prayer request today and they were very serious things that were mentioned here with cancers and so on our youngest granddaughter she's four now has been battling cancer for three years she was diagnosed with cancer when she was one and going through that battling of cancer in the last three years has made me aware of how high maintenance drama queens Christians are I was in the service a while back and they said lay hands on somebody next to you who's got their hand up for prayer so there's a lady behind me with a hand up but when I turned around six people had their hands on her so I said to her excuse me I said what is it that you need prayer for today she had too thick too thick and I'm like this is overkill six hands laid on you for freaking too thick keep your hand down till you have a real problem go home taking aspirin or whatever and you'll be fine you don't need six people laying hands on you because when we do that regularly that's what I mean but we get so comfortable when we get so it's it's overkill and some of you you know you know your biggest challenge you know our biggest problem often in the church this was our church you are over loved you have way too much love you don't need it all some of you will get a dozen texts this week telling you how loved you are from someone that sends you them every week listen to me you don't need 10 of them you don't need 10 of them someone else needs them who have not been told in a long time that they're loved but he said we soak up all the love and we soak up all the incoming all the laying on of hands all the support and we gorge ourselves on it while we sing about a world going to hell this was our church and I'm reminding you this week to leave this room and when you get the first text telling you before you go to bed tonight how loved you are go back and say thank you that will last me till Thursday and between now and Thursday pass it on tell someone else that you loved notice someone ask someone how's their mum find out someone's name remember someone told you something about what they're going through in their life or in their work or in their health start there and then commit to that becoming a whole new way of life for you I promise you you will never ever have a problem with people responding to invites to this church if they like you if they like you and they appreciate you you'll never have a problem filling this building because you're basing on just being a lovely person rather than an evangelizing Christian with an agenda go out this week and be careless and be clumsy and be reckless with your grace and your love you watch the different kind of week you have it will bless them it will help them but more importantly you will have a different week if you will go out and be reckless this week with all this great stuff happening in this room today