Know > Grow > Go
Notes
Transcript
Tension: We want authenticity, but don’t want to be authentic. We want to be known, but don’t want to be transparent.
SLIDE 1 Welcome
Today we’re going to be wrapping up this series on next steps… and while each week we’ve had a few practical steps you can walk away with, we never established a repeatable path. We’ve yet to say here is a path forward - here is a path that once you have walked it, you can use it to guide others… well, lets do that today. We’re going to look at a path, we can consider this path Fayette Communities discipleship path - over time our path may shift and grow - but this gives us a framework to build on. And we’re going to look at three key areas. Know - Grow - Go, and yes, I’m a pastor they have to rhyme. We’re going to be jumping around the Bible a bit today so
But first I want to start with a question… Don’t worry this isn’t a test, you don’t have to turn and share your answer with the person next to you, that’s awkward… but here is the question - growing up who was one of your best friends - who knew you better than anyone else? Pick the first name that comes to mind - it may be a current best friend, it may be a best friend you haven’t seen for 20 years - but think of a best friend. Now try and think - how did that friendship begin?
As kids our friends are typically our parent’s friends kids - or the kids we were in daycare or Sunday school with. Then as we get older they are out classmates or neighbors. As we become adults it gets harder and harder to make friends. Adults begin to feel more and more isolated - UNLESS - we are intentional in knowing others and being known… because friendships don’t happen by accident… for most of us - there is like the one person here whose like - um actually pastor everyone just likes me and wants to be my friend… well you’re lucky and now I’m jealous....
Developing friendships often involves an element of risk. It involves sharing more about ourselves and hoping the other person opens up to us too and that they don’t use what we shared against us. And that authenticity, or lack there of, is a growing problem in the US and many other countries. In a 2021 study from the Survey Center on American Life, they found that most people interviewed, 49%, reported having 1-3 close friends; with 12% saying they had none. 61% of adult Americans polled had 0-3 close friends. We live in a world that is begging, yelling, crying out for authenticity - but we’re not willing to be authentic. Many of us will say we want to be known - but we don’t want to be transparent enough with others to be known. So where does that leave the church?
I’m going to leave you with that tension....
In life we all walk the same journey of physical maturity. We are born, we grow into a toddler, a kid, a teenager, a young adult, an adult, and eventually we all die; that’s the path of life. Spiritually we all walk a similar path, not am mirror match, but similar. Pastor and author Jim Putnam created a wheel to explain our spiritual journey SLIDE 2 . We all start out as spiritually dead - not yet alive in Christ. Physically we’re alive, but spiritually we’re not. When we become a Christian, however, we are, to use Jesus words, born again, we are still at the same age physically - but spiritually we are now an infant. As we learn more about Jesus and how to love, worship, and serve Him. As the Spirit works within us we mature into spiritual children. Then as we grow closer and closer to God and others in and outside of the church, as we embrace the mission of Paul from a few weeks ago, living up to what we are learning, we mature into a spiritual young adult. And as we serve and grow more an more in faith, in life, in holiness as we buy into the mission of God and the kingdom, empowered by the Spirit and we begin to take these truths, these habits, this life and pass it along to others we become a spiritual parent.
Last week I shared about the guy I discipled, Scott, who introduced me to my grandson, Jacob, who later introduced me to my great grandson Bryce SLIDE 3 that was only the first family tree Scott made for me. Scott went on to join the Navigators and launch a ministry at Coe and Kirkwood Colleges in Cedar Rapids where I got to meet another group of men who were discipling men, another chain of generations, Scott is an AMAZING spiritual parent - he has made way more disciples than I have; and he’s not a pastor, he has an MBA with an emphasis on accounting… but he bought into the mission, he is following Jesus, he’s been changed by Jesus and he is on mission with Jesus! But when I first met Scott - he was an infant. He knew very little about the Bible, he grew up going to church on the occasional Sunday - most Christmases and Easters - and then a friend in college told him the truth about Jesus, the cross, the resurrection and God’s desire that we come to know, love, and serve Him and Scott bought in.
Scott joined a Bible study I was leading in our dorm, he lived on the same floor as me and so it was convenient - and we started to meet in his room every week, just the two of us, to read the Bible together - and one day I sat down, we were in Acts 8 and before I sat down Scott with a massive smile says - ‘Brian, did I read this right? Did Phillip aparate? Now two things you need to know, in Acts 8:39-40 Phillip tells a traveling Eunuch, an official in the royal Ethiopian court about Jesus and then baptises the man, SLIDE 4 and then it reads,
“39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him any longer but went on his way rejoicing. 40 Philip appeared in Azotus, and he was traveling and preaching the gospel in all the towns until he came to Caesarea.”
The second thing you need to know Scott is a HUGE Harry Potter fan and in those books teleportation is called apperation. So Scott reads this and got super excited - Phillip apparently apparated - he baptized this guy, then the Spirit carried him to Azotus! Now this was the first time Scott read anything other than the four Gospels; which he had only read over Christmas break for the first time a month earlier - everything was new to him and he was loving it! He was an infant, a baby Christian, seeing the Bible with new eyes.
In one of Paul’s letters to the church of Corinth, in 1 Corinthians 3 SLIDE 5 he writes
“1 For my part, brothers and sisters, I was not able to speak to you as spiritual people but as people of the flesh, as babies in Christ. 2 I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, since you were not yet ready for it. In fact, you are still not ready, 3 because you are still worldly. For since there is envy and strife among you, are you not worldly and behaving like mere humans?”
As a spiritual infant Scott, and all of us now or at one time, needed to know and be known. SLIDE 6 Scott needed to be treated like a spiritual infant - he needed milk, simple truth that he could learn, digest, and apply. He wasn’t ready to tackle big, difficult theological issues, he wasn’t ready. He was still worldly, he needed to learn the basics. Scott needed to know the Gospel, the truth of Christ’s life, Christ’s death, Christ’s resurrection - the plan God the father had from the begging to save humans from our sin. Scott needed to know about the Spirit, the helper, Jesus promised, that God sent for us. Scott had to know the truth of scripture, the promises, the commands, the joy found in these pages. But he also had to be known. As Scott wrestled with life decisions, as a new Christian, he had to have an older, wiser, more mature Christian help guide him through decisions. Who should he date, if anyone. What hobbies or interests might he have to give up because they pull him away from God? What habits does he need to learn and adopt to draw him closer to God? He had to be known by a guide who could help him walk those hard paths; and that involved risk - opening up his worries, his struggles, his life to another. And that required me doing the same with him. For him to trust me; I had to trust him. for Scott to confide in me, I had to confide in him. Now, knowing doesn’t end when we grow from spiritual infancy to spiritual childhood, but only through learning will we advance to this next leg of the journey.
As we become a spiritual child our needs shift. We no longer primarily need resources - food, like an infant - but we need connections, we need some challenge, we need to grow. That growth, however, no longer comes primarily through acquiring knowledge but through connecting with God personally, learning to feed ourselves - by reading scripture, by praying, by taking responsibility for our own learning throughout the week in addition to on Sunday morning, connecting to God. SLIDE 7 Joshua 1:8 states
“8 This book of instruction must not depart from your mouth; you are to meditate on it day and night so that you may carefully observe everything written in it. For then you will prosper and succeed in whatever you do.”
Now, we need to be careful as we read this in understanding that the promised success… is in relation to observing everything commanded in scripture - so when I go out to Big Rock and gold a triple boggy I can’t say ‘BUT GOD I had my quiet time this morning, you said I’d be successful...’ that’s not what this verse means - and I don’t think a fifteen minute quiet time qualifies as meditating on scripture day and night… We need to connect to God and we do that through scripture and through prayer through scripture God talks to us and through prayer we respond to Him.
We also need to connect to other Christians in fellowship by way of a Bible study, a life group, a class of some sort, even an intentional lunch. I love how the book of Hebrews states this command SLIDE 8 this is the old school NIV as that’s what I memorized it in back in the day
24 And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, 25 not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
We shouldn’t give up meeting together as some do - but we should be spurring one another one, encouraging one another. We need to be practicing fellowship for our mutual growth, Iron sharpening iron as Proverbs 27 says. We grow through connection with God and others.
Now physically children are still, hopefully, still limited in their freedoms by their parents as well as their abilities by nature SLIDE 9 but as we becomes young adults we long for more. Teens want and will fight for independence. They will seek and pursue a place where they belong where they have some ownership. And spiritually that is the same - so as the church we need to create places for our spiritual young adults, again we’re talking spiritual maturity not age, to fit in. As Spiritual young adults we need to be trained, we still are primarily growing - but we’re now growing through experiences and training. As young adults we need to find places where we can serve and opportunities to give. We have plenty of need for both of those here at Fayette Community. We have need of greeters, Children’s care on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. We have places to serve ready to be filled. We have financial needs that can be accomplished through giving - your bulletins show where we are and where we need to be. But serving and giving are great tools in our hands - ways to say I’m going to serve or I’m going to give sacrificially in a way that forces me to rely on God. And as we serve we are signalling others as well that we’re ready for more.
In Matthew 25 Jesus uses a parable to help us understand this principle. In the parable Jesus talks of a man who is about to leave for a journey. He calls three of his servants forward and gives each some talents, that’s a unit of money. To one he gives 5 talents, for perspective that’s about 82 years worth of wages for a regular field hand of that day… that’s a lot of money. To the second he gave 2 talents, almost 33 years wages, and the third a single talent - that’s still about 16.5 years wages, none of these guys were working with nothing! But the master determined each’s ability and gave them a proper proportion. When the master returned from his journey he settled accounts; the man who had five talents, doubled his money - and now had ten, the man who had 2 talents, also doubled his money, the man who had the single talent had buried it and returned it to the master with no increase. To the first two the master said, SLIDE 10
‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You were faithful over a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Share your master’s joy.’” (Mt 25:21 and 23).
but to the third the master took the talent and called the servant evil and lazy - the n handed it over to the first man, but then Jesus drives the point home in verses 29 and 30. SLIDE 11
29 For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have more than enough. But from the one who does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. 30 And throw this good-for-nothing servant into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
Now - warning this isn’t a health, wealth, and prosperity passage. This is a great promise and warning - God has given us something - and when we use what He has given us well, we will share in our master’s joy. SLIDE 12 As we are spiritual young adults and as we look at those spiritual young adults around us, are we in the church helping them identify and use those things God gave them? Are they using their gifts, their time, their abilities, their resources for the advancement of God’s mission, unlike the man in the parable God’s mission isn’t to make money but to make disciples - are we partaking in that mission, are we training our young adults how to do that so they can mature by serving and giving - through training into spiritual parents, into disciple makers?
Once we have walked this circle of knowing and growing - we are ready to go. After that first week looking at Paul we dove into this topic with the great commission, SLIDE 13 that’s wheat we call Matthew 28:18-20
18 Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
The first command we see in this passage is GO. We are to be going, not waiting. We want to reach Fayette County, Arlington, Clermont, Elgin, Fairbank, Fayette, Hawkeye, Maynard, Oelwein, Randalis, St. Lucas, Stanley, Sumner, Wadena, Waucoma, West Union, Westgate… for Jesus - for God… we need to GO to them. We need to meet them where they are - we need to share the truth of Jesus with them. We need to share our lives with them.
I was on a zoom call this week and one of the guys asked - in a perfect church, what percentage of people on Sunday are curious, but not yet Christians? What percent are young growing Christians - using today terminology we can say children and young adults, and what percentage are the goers, the missionaries to our community, to their families, to their neighbors? Now… this is a bit of a trick question - most pastors, and I’m guessing a lot of you, will run into the same mental block - what you want and what you know the correct answer is - isn’t the same. We want everyone in church to be on fire - passionate - excited - on mission! But… if we’re all on mission… than we’re brining and inviting people into church who aren’t there yet. If we’re on mission we’re opening our lives and our church up to people who are here - they are curious - that’s why they are here - and some of you, I hope are these people - I want people to come to see what we’re about! But I want you to move here… to be born again - to become an infant Christian, growing into a child, a young adult, and someday joining us as a missionary in Fayette county. If we’re on mission we’ll be bringing in these people - infants and children - and guiding them along this pathway to maturity.
So what is your next step? SLIDE 14 Where are you on this path? Are you still looking, spiritually dead needing new life? Are you an infant, this doesn’t mean you are new to church - you could have been in church for 50 years and still be an infant - do you need to know more about God? Or are you a child - you’re learning and you’re ready to grow, to get connected? Or maybe you’re a young adult - ready to serve - ready to give - ready to grow into a disciple maker - ready to be a spiritual parent to one of these. Where are you?
???? Survey ????