Speaker 1: Hey, what up?
Speaker 1: It's Mark Carter.
Speaker 1: I'm the pastor of Fierce Church.
Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm so pumped that you're able to join us today.
Speaker 1: I hope this encourages you, inspires you, strengthens you, gives you hope to keep pressing on, and it's my prayer that this sermon gives you a more expansive view of God's love for you.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the message.
Speaker 1: Today we're talking about how to arrive at our 15-year vision.
Speaker 1: We're not actually going to arrive at the 15-year vision till, probably somewhere in January.
Speaker 1: You'll see how that shakes out.
Speaker 1: But just to give you the heads up, several years ago my wife and I and the kids we were on our way to Wisconsin Dells and we're about an hour into the trip and we got our GPS.
Speaker 1: We're going the way we're supposed to go and then suddenly, like an extra hour appears on the timer.
Speaker 1: Like what just happened?
Speaker 1: Why are we suddenly an hour further away?
Speaker 1: And, as many of you have experienced, sometimes something happens up there on the road, something.
Speaker 1: Just there's a crash or some weird traffic jam and the GPS is telling you ahead of time you can't see it yet.
Speaker 1: You're not there, but your trip's going to take a whole lot longer because there is something kind of going wrong up there Now, back in the day when we didn't have car GPS.
Speaker 1: Man, you're just out of luck, you'd get up there.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: You'd be wondering what's going on, and we all know what this is like, right, like you've been driving in one lane and everything's free and clear and you look over there and like it's two hours of packed up, you know jam and you're like man, those poor suckers, I'd hate to be where they are.
Speaker 1: And yet sometimes we've all been in that jam.
Speaker 1: Here's what Proverbs 22, 3 says the prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.
Speaker 1: Has this ever happened to you?
Speaker 1: Like you didn't pay the bill on time and then there's an extra charge?
Speaker 1: Or like this happens to me sometimes I don't, I don't check the fire alarms quite enough, okay, and so invariably you know it'll beep before you're, you know it'll tell you before it's totally out of juice.
Speaker 1: But invariably for me it always beeps at about 2 am, all right, and so it's like oh my gosh, now I get.
Speaker 1: Now I'm suffering the consequences because I didn't change it earlier.
Speaker 1: Or maybe you have ignored the check engine light on your car.
Speaker 1: You heard a myth that you don't even really have to pay attention to that, it'll be fine.
Speaker 1: Well, it turns out that is a myth and it's not going to be fine a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: Have you ever experienced any of that?
Speaker 1: There's something inside of us all that from time to time we're just like maybe it'll just get better on its own, like maybe we'll just it's kind of magical thinking.
Speaker 1: We're just like I don't really know how, I don't really know how that works, but I'm hoping just the problem will go away.
Speaker 1: And occasionally problems maybe do sometimes go away or we don't know why it went away, but a lot of the time they don't go away and we just stall, weinate and what needed to be fixed did not get fixed.
Speaker 1: So here's how we're going to do this.
Speaker 1: From time to time I'm going to ask a question and y'all are going to talk about it at your tables.
Speaker 1: Now remember the kind of the table etiquette.
Speaker 1: One is you don't want to dominate.
Speaker 1: You've only got six minutes, so nobody like take a half an hour to tell a story.
Speaker 1: Two is you want to actually be a little bit more vulnerable, even if you don't know the folks.
Speaker 1: See, god does something strange among the people of God.
Speaker 1: He often moves within community.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not just the preacher, it's not just the Bible, it's as people are communicating.
Speaker 1: His spirit is present.
Speaker 1: You just want to open yourself up to that idea.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you wouldn't think this is necessarily true, but sometimes we have a problem at this church.
Speaker 1: It's true right now.
Speaker 1: It's been true in the past at different seasons.
Speaker 1: Sometimes things are going so well that we can't keep up.
Speaker 1: That is occasionally the problem here, meaning God is sending us so much to do.
Speaker 1: There are so many folks coming in.
Speaker 1: There are so many folks first-time guests here at the church.
Speaker 1: There's so many new kids that as much as we want to help everybody walk with Jesus Christ step by step, it's just overwhelming to us.
Speaker 1: You ever been to a restaurant or you've been to a store and you get in there and you're looking around and it's like man, there's only three people working this thing and there's like 50 people here.
Speaker 1: That is sometimes how it feels and pretty soon you're like we're going somewhere else because they just don't have enough to help us here.
Speaker 1: I wish it weren't true, but that is sometimes what is happening here at Fierce.
Speaker 1: A way to think about it is imagine a vineyard, imagine that there's people put in charge of running the vineyard, and that's kind of like the Fierce staff, and there's fruit growing and it's growing all around, and so we take some and we take it over to the table.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to set it right here, and so we take some and we take it over to the table.
Speaker 1: We're just going to set it right here.
Speaker 1: It's going to dry off.
Speaker 1: We wash it a little bit.
Speaker 1: I got to leave it, though, because I got to go back and get more, and sometimes the going back and getting more and running back and forth we'd like to get this out of here and ship this out of here, but there's so much that it's beginning to go bad.
Speaker 1: Not all of it, but some of it.
Speaker 1: It's fruit that God sent us.
Speaker 1: It's folks that God sent us to help.
Speaker 1: It's people that came to get help, and yet we're unable to manage it all.
Speaker 1: I wish I didn't have to admit it, but it's unsustainable, and it's one of the roadblocks.
Speaker 1: What's the first thing we need to do to grasp a 15-year vision?
Speaker 1: It's recognize the roadblocks.
Speaker 1: Recognize the roadblocks, and what I mean is the roadblocks to the gospel.
Speaker 1: That's really what this church has been put in charge of, as have all churches.
Speaker 1: The gospel is the message that Jesus Christ invites everybody back to relationship with him and he wants to forgive them for all the ways that they have done wrong in the sight of the Lord.
Speaker 1: And he just wants to walk with them, forgive them, do life with them, bless their life wildly.
Speaker 1: The sight of the Lord, and he just wants to walk with them, forgive them, do life with them, bless their life wildly and bring them into heaven.
Speaker 1: And Jesus gives us a great picture in Luke 18.
Speaker 1: There's two characters.
Speaker 1: One is a really religious person.
Speaker 1: They've done all the things right.
Speaker 1: In fact, they go to prayer and they're bragging to God.
Speaker 1: They're like I'm so thankful that I just do everything right and I'm not like those guys and I'm just man, I'm so meticulous with obedience.
Speaker 1: And then Jesus says there's another guy who he's probably known as, like, a sinful person.
Speaker 1: He was doing tax collecting in that time and that was the way they did.
Speaker 1: That was bad.
Speaker 1: And he's probably just, you know, a real scoundrel, real crook.
Speaker 1: He's the crook of the story and yet he's kneeling before God, saying God, have mercy on me, the sinner.
Speaker 1: He's so aware of his own sinfulness, he's so aware of his need for God's mercy and Jesus says it's this one that was right in God's sight, not the one who was boasting.
Speaker 1: That's what we mean with the gospel the message that people can come to Christ absolutely by grace, through faith.
Speaker 1: That's what we're supposed to be doing.
Speaker 1: And yet there's some roadblocks.
Speaker 1: Here's just a few, okay.
Speaker 1: One of them is the discipleship demands.
Speaker 1: That just means people are coming for help, but there's not enough power and ability to help as many people as need help.
Speaker 1: I wish that weren't true, but it is.
Speaker 1: Here's another roadblock.
Speaker 1: It's the obligation overload.
Speaker 1: It's obligation overload.
Speaker 1: I'm going to speak for me, okay.
Speaker 1: This is true for me, it's true for others here at the church, but it might be most visible in my life right now as the lead pastor.
Speaker 1: There's really two things that I've been doing for 15 years.
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to be the lead teacher, preacher, visionary and at the same time, the church needs managed all day, every day.
Speaker 1: The right people need to be trained in a portion and put it in place, and then evaluated to make sure they're doing the right things.
Speaker 1: And when they're not doing the right things, someone's got to come around and say you're not doing the right things, let's start to do the right things, and what it becomes like, guys, is it's two races.
Speaker 1: You ever been in two races at the same time?
Speaker 1: You don't get very far, okay, Because you're running 500 feet in this race, and then it's like, oh my gosh, I've got to get over to the other race.
Speaker 1: And so then you run over to this race and you try to run 500 feet, but then as soon as you get here, you're like I've fallen behind in that race, so I've got to come over here.
Speaker 1: That's really what it is in the life of a lead pastor in churches our size.
Speaker 1: It's a constant back and forth.
Speaker 1: They're really very different skill sets and it's you know, I don't mind doing it, I'll do that for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: All I'm saying is it holds us back.
Speaker 1: I'm not able to ever just lead, and people are never able to just manage, and that's one of the reasons why there's fruit that disappears or goes sour.
Speaker 1: A way to think about it is imagine you've got some slices of bread and you've got just enough butter to butter all those slices, and then someone comes along and says here's four more pieces of bread.
Speaker 1: You don't get any more butter, but get butter on that bread?
Speaker 1: There's only so much butter, yo, there's only so much.
Speaker 1: Carter.
Speaker 1: Yo, there's only so much Carter.
Speaker 1: Yo, there's only so much.
Speaker 1: Okay, and he's like Carter.
Speaker 1: Why don't you just empower other people, dadoy?
Speaker 1: I know, you know what that is.
Speaker 1: That's managing.
Speaker 1: That's this race.
Speaker 1: That's what we've been trying to do.
Speaker 1: The problem is, while I do this for a while oh my gosh, people want to hear a message.
Speaker 1: On Sunday morning, I better run over here and have something good and not just spend 20 minutes on it.
Speaker 1: It probably needs to be pretty doggone good, and so that's what it is.
Speaker 1: It's that obligation overload and that's not just me, that's different ones in the church, of course.
Speaker 1: Here's another one.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit close to my heart.
Speaker 1: It's the digital dilemma.
Speaker 1: The digital dilemma.
Speaker 1: Generation Z is about to explode.
Speaker 1: Here's what I mean.
Speaker 1: Generation Z these are people between 12 and 27.
Speaker 1: They were born between 1997 and 2012.
Speaker 1: In 2020, they were 32% of the population.
Speaker 1: Some of you know that I just recently finished, in the past year, a doctoral degree and my primary final project was evaluating how churches can better help Gen Z, and I found out some disturbing things.
Speaker 1: I'd like to share them with you.
Speaker 1: Are you ready?
Speaker 1: Gen Z?
Speaker 1: They're called digital natives.
Speaker 1: They live in a digital world 10.6 hours a day, every day, engaging in digital content.
Speaker 1: Now here's some good news.
Speaker 1: In 2021, a Barton study revealed, 52% of them of US teens are very motivated to come to know Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Like they want to find out more about Jesus.
Speaker 1: They've heard about Jesus.
Speaker 1: They don't necessarily know a lot about Jesus, but they want to know more about Jesus.
Speaker 1: If you include the people that are pseudo-interested, it jumps to 77% are interested in finding out about Jesus.
Speaker 1: Over half of them, though, who even identify with some kind of a religious background do not somebody say do not, do not want to go to church.
Speaker 1: They do not think it is relevant.
Speaker 1: They've learned that it's bad.
Speaker 1: Relevant.
Speaker 1: They've learned that it's bad, and so what we're saying is the very people, the next generation, that we're trying to reach.
Speaker 1: That is 32% of the population.
Speaker 1: They're not going to come here.
Speaker 1: Some of them will, a few of them will, but the strategy has changed and it's changed because they're digital natives.
Speaker 1: They live in the online world.
Speaker 1: Let me give you an example of what that means.
Speaker 1: Okay, so for those of you who are my age, or maybe a little longer, I'm a Gen Xer.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're a millennial or you're a boomer.
Speaker 1: You're somewhere in there.
Speaker 1: Here's what's true about you.
Speaker 1: You had a time in your life where there was no internet.
Speaker 1: Okay, that means you look around this room, or you look around the room you're in, wherever you're in, and you might say, oh, this is the real world when I go online.
Speaker 1: It's cool, it's neat, but it's not the real world, it's just a little computer world.
Speaker 1: If you're a digital native, though, if you're a Gen Zer, it is the world.
Speaker 1: Digital is just as much a part of the world as the real world, and because of that psychological change, the church cannot reach people the same way, years going into the future, that they have in the past, and that is a digital dilemma.
Speaker 1: We'll talk more about that, but let me give you one more.
Speaker 1: We've got a diversity deficit in leadership at this church.
Speaker 1: What I mean is and this was nobody's intention this is just the way the people that started the church and came together and did it.
Speaker 1: This is just where they were friends, and this is how it all worked out, and there's been different variations of diversity on stage, but it needs to be on stage, and right now there's not enough diversity.
Speaker 1: There's not enough.
Speaker 1: See, we want, when everybody comes in, there's, plenty of diversity in the room, but we want, when people come in or when they're watching online, we want them to see.
Speaker 1: You know, ethnicity is not everything, but it's not nothing.
Speaker 1: It should be a part of the mix.
Speaker 1: In heaven, every ethnicity, every tribe and tongue is present, and the church should want to mirror that, and the church should want to mirror that.
Speaker 1: And so, whatever we do, whatever the problems are in the next 15 years, one of the things we've got to address is diversity deficit in leadership, because we're up against our limits and we're likely to bump up against our limits year after year if we keep going the same way.
Speaker 1: We need a special season of seeking God's heart and seeking God's aims for this church for the next five, 10, and 15 years.
Speaker 1: And so we're going to go into a five-month process where we're asking everybody to pray and fast and pray so that God will give us very clear direction on the things he wants us to do, and we're going to look at scripture to get a pattern for how to do this, right.
Speaker 1: Okay, so Paul and Barnabas they're not super famous in the New Testament yet, but they've been sent on a little expedition.
Speaker 1: There was a famine that was hitting the Roman empire and so the people of Antioch, the church in Antioch, which was a great big city, third largest city in the Roman empire they send Paul and Barnabas back to provide some relief.
Speaker 1: They want to make an offering to the church in Jerusalem.
Speaker 1: Now, what this is doing is it's bridge building, it's the church in Antioch is saying hey, we know you guys are the original team and so you know we're some Gentiles over here.
Speaker 1: Y'all are Jews.
Speaker 1: We want to come together.
Speaker 1: We just want to say we get it Like you're kind of our spiritual parents on some level.
Speaker 1: We just want to connect with you and take care of you a little bit.
Speaker 1: And it was a great success.
Speaker 1: And then they return.
Speaker 1: Verse 1 of 13 says Now there were in Antioch, in the church that was there, prophets and teachers Barbas, simeon, who was called Niger, lucius of Cyrene and Menean, who had been brought up with Herod, the Tetrarch, and Saul.
Speaker 1: Why it's listing all those people is it's saying hey, man, there's a lot of people in charge here and they're all from different backgrounds.
Speaker 1: Okay, you've got people like Barnabas and Saul.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, you've also got Lucius of Cyrene.
Speaker 1: Okay, he's probably from North Africa.
Speaker 1: You've also got somebody from Herod's household.
Speaker 1: Herod's an enemy.
Speaker 1: What he's saying is there's all kinds of people from all over the place coming together in this metropolis called Antioch and they're talking about the things of God and what verse two.
Speaker 1: And while they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work which I have called them to, the work which I've called them.
Speaker 1: The Holy Spirit is the great guide in the New Testament.
Speaker 1: If you look at the book of Acts, you can chart this out.
Speaker 1: The book of Acts is kind of the story of the first early church and really it's just a story of the Holy Spirit initiating things or prohibiting things.
Speaker 1: Initiating, prohibiting he's really guiding the entire thing.
Speaker 1: If you just go ahead and read it, he's in charge of assigning stuff and he assigns Paul and Barnabas.
Speaker 1: They've been faithful with a few things.
Speaker 1: They were faithful to go bring some relief to the church in Jerusalem and now God says it's time to do some new things, stuff that I've been laying on your heart this whole time.
Speaker 1: The Holy Spirit is about to tell them.
Speaker 1: Okay, paul, you know I've prophesied to you that you're going to do some kind of important things and in my name you're going to go before the Gentiles and kings and children of Israel.
Speaker 1: It says that in Acts, chapter nine, barnabas is known as the son of encouragement.
Speaker 1: He's got gifts of encouragement.
Speaker 1: He helped Paul, onboard Paul into the church.
Speaker 1: He was kind of seen as an enemy at the time and now the Holy Spirit is saying all right, guys, it's time for you to go.
Speaker 1: Verse three when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.
Speaker 1: This is the first global mission.
Speaker 1: The gospel is going global now and it's because of a time where everybody got together and they sought and prayed and fasted.
Speaker 1: They had a sense of things, but they ran up to the edge of what they knew to do.
Speaker 1: So where did they go?
Speaker 1: They went to God.
Speaker 1: They said God, we've done all we know to do.
Speaker 1: We're wondering what's next and we're asking you.
Speaker 1: And as they fasted and prayed, god showed them that's what we've got to do.
Speaker 1: We're up against our limits and we're going to ask God for a while, for a piece, for a chunk, because it takes a little bit of time to hear from God.
Speaker 1: It takes a little time for people to sense his joy and his leading in certain directions, but we're going to do it.
Speaker 1: First, we're going to recognize the roadblocks and those aren't all the roadblocks we talked about, but there's some of them.
Speaker 1: And then, number two, we're going to audaciously ask for a move of the Spirit.
Speaker 1: We're going to audaciously ask Holy Spirit, you're the same Holy Spirit you always were.
Speaker 1: Reveal your will to us, the same way that you revealed your will to them.
Speaker 1: Now, god isn't obligated to tell everybody all the details of his will and we're not demanding that.
Speaker 1: But we are saying to the degree that we can aim at what you want us aimed at, and prep and not just find ourselves down there stuck in traffic because we didn't plan ahead.
Speaker 1: We just want to know what else would you have us to do, jesus?
Speaker 1: And what's powerful about this is it gets us vision focused.
Speaker 1: We're still faithful with what we're doing, and this is about your real life too, not just your church.
Speaker 1: You're still faithful with what you're doing, but you're also looking into the future and your eyes are on God, not on your stuff and not on you.
Speaker 1: You're just God's little servant.
Speaker 1: You say okay, I know I'm doing this, jesus, but what else?
Speaker 1: What else do you want me to do here?
Speaker 1: What else have you got in terms of aims where you might want to help more and more people come to know and love Jesus Christ and learn to grow up in him and walk with him, step by step?
Speaker 1: So here's some of what the next 15 years could look like.
Speaker 1: We know some things, we have a sense of some things, but we're at the edge of what we know.
Speaker 1: Obviously, we don't know all the tech that's going to be invented.
Speaker 1: We don't know any other pandemics.
Speaker 1: Hopefully there won't be any in the next 15 years.
Speaker 1: But 15 years is a long time, man.
Speaker 1: Like a lot can happen.
Speaker 1: I mean especially the way tech is going now.
Speaker 1: Like a lot can happen.
Speaker 1: Say, why do you pick 15 years, carter?
Speaker 1: Well, honestly, because it's just a good deadline for me.
Speaker 1: In 15 years I'll be 61.
Speaker 1: That's a good time for senior pastors to pass it off to somebody else.
Speaker 1: There'll be somebody younger than who is just ready and understands the times more and just you know, I'll still be around, probably unless I'm dead, and if I'm dead I'll be cheering y'all on from the side of Jesus.
Speaker 1: But I picked 15 years, because hopefully that gives me a goal of like.
Speaker 1: Here's all the stuff Fierce and I and the staff and the elders together should try to do in the next 15 years before my turn is done on the merry-go-round.
Speaker 1: But whatever it looks like, here's what it probably should look like, as we're on the edge of what we know it's got to look like as we talked about transition to more specialized leadership.
Speaker 1: All over the church We've been generalists.
Speaker 1: We started 15 years ago some of us as generalists when we planted torch in the movie theater.
Speaker 1: We've got to become specialists, though now there's too much going wrong when it's not properly managed.
Speaker 1: That's not just me, that is other staff as well.
Speaker 1: Do you know we still don't have a full-time children's pastor?
Speaker 1: Do you know that?
Speaker 1: They'll do it because they love Jesus and they'll bleed for him?
Speaker 1: But do you know how hard it is to hold that children's ministry together, sometimes, with volunteers dropping off and on and new kids coming in and trying to manage all this stuff and teach all the right stuff and having no real full-time oversight?
Speaker 1: Dude, it's hard.
Speaker 1: They're just awesome.
Speaker 1: That's what it is.
Speaker 1: They're just awesome.
Speaker 1: That's what it is.
Speaker 1: They're just awesome.
Speaker 1: But they deserve for us to bring that area into full-time management.
Speaker 1: You can clap for them because they're dope.
Speaker 1: Here's what else it's got to look like.
Speaker 1: It's got to look like digital ministry expansion.
Speaker 1: Here's the fundamental shift in thinking that has to happen.
Speaker 1: Our church has to go from thinking locally to thinking globally In one real sense.
Speaker 1: We've got to understand we now instantly have a giant mission field open to us, and I just want to read you some of these stats because they blow my mind.
Speaker 1: Okay, here's where it is.
Speaker 1: 80% of Gen Zers are spending seven hours plus per week listening to podcasts.
Speaker 1: Seven hours per week.
Speaker 1: They're listening to somebody.
Speaker 1: They're open to Jesus, and guess where else they're not.
Speaker 1: They're not here, they're not listening to me or anybody else for an hour here, but they're tuned in seven hours a week elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Here's what else is incredible.
Speaker 1: Did you know?
Speaker 1: 77% of people still read blogs all the time.
Speaker 1: Do you know that YouTube oh my gosh, youtube is the most used app by Gen Z.
Speaker 1: It's used daily, daily, daily, daily, daily by 77% of Gen Z.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 1: It means, dear heart, we've got a captive audience.
Speaker 1: We don't have to go to another country.
Speaker 1: We could and we should, but we've got a whole other country, right on your phone and they're wide open.
Speaker 1: So what do we need to do, guys?
Speaker 1: On some level, we need to become a digital publishing house.
Speaker 1: We need to keep rocking what we're doing here, but we also need to reach through podcasts, through videos, through blogs and whatever tech is coming, because it's coming through whatever we're about to find out about in three years.
Speaker 1: We've got to stay ahead of it, otherwise, why?
Speaker 1: Well, honestly, dude, I mean, not only do we get kind of opted out of our own mission, but we can't survive forever.
Speaker 1: I mean, you guys, you've all seen churches close because, honestly, dude, just frankly, they got too old, like they aged out.
Speaker 1: No one young was coming and on some levels maybe some of them it's because they didn't think ahead and go where the young were.
Speaker 1: They just waited for the young to come and baby dear.
Speaker 1: That does not work, and so we need to quit thinking that Gen Z is indifferent and we need to understand that they're hungry.
Speaker 1: We need to quit trying to just get everybody to come and we need to go.
Speaker 1: We need to be not building centric, but digital space, global centric.
Speaker 1: We need to not worry so much about physical presence.
Speaker 1: We still want it.
Speaker 1: We're still going to rock our church life.
Speaker 1: It's going to get better and better and better, but it's got to include all the folks that are out there, that God says I put them right here for you.
Speaker 1: They're right here.
Speaker 1: What are you going to do with it?
Speaker 1: What you going to do?
Speaker 1: Do that A couple more.
Speaker 1: Whatever it looks like, it's got to look like diverse leadership development.
Speaker 1: It's got to grow in diversity and, honestly, it's got to grow in development.
Speaker 1: Guys, we've got to have an internship program.
Speaker 1: That's happening.
Speaker 1: We've got to.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, we probably need to develop a leadership school where people will come from other parts of the country to learn how to do church, and maybe digital church here.
Speaker 1: You know what else we got to do.
Speaker 1: We got to interact better with the populations around us.
Speaker 1: There's no reason we shouldn't have some kind of a Spanish translation going on right now of sermons and podcasts.
Speaker 1: There's no reason why not.
Speaker 1: There's no reason we can't help additional churches start Hispanic speaking or Spanish speaking churches.
Speaker 1: We've done it before already.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know that we need to do more of it again and again and again.
Speaker 1: What's holding us back?
Speaker 1: We need to plant more churches and, honestly.
Speaker 1: We've done it a couple of times.
Speaker 1: Now we need to do it with more people.
Speaker 1: We need to help more and more people.
Speaker 1: That's stuff that we can do and it's within reach.
Speaker 1: All we have to do, my friends, oh, we got to get it right, cause we're not just right, cause we can think of it, but we can go to God.
Speaker 1: We can take the next several months, right up until January, and say God, here we are, send us All right, so fun stuff, cool stuff, but what do we do?
Speaker 1: It's right there in God's word.
Speaker 1: And while they were ministering to the Lord and fasting, while they were ministering to the Lord, while they were doing all the things they would normally do, while they were teaching and encouraging and building up, while they're doing all that, being faithful with what God had given them, and then fasting, the Holy Spirit said set apart for me, barnabas and Saul, I want to keep doing all we're doing and I want to set apart five months for the rest of this year to pray and fast as a church together.
Speaker 1: This isn't just so like the elders and I could have just said here's what we're going to do, guys, but I really believe God wants to speak through the entire body.
Speaker 1: So in January we're going to send out a survey and you're going to get to say everything that God laid on your heart, everything you think is weighty.
Speaker 1: Not all of that will be for the whole church, some of it will be for you, but we're going to take all that into consideration as we see where's the wind blowing.
Speaker 1: When you fast, dude, you're telling God you're serious.
Speaker 1: When you fast and listen and wait and keep your eyes on Jesus, you're telling the Lord you're serious.
Speaker 1: And I really believe this isn't just for our church.
Speaker 1: I think this is going to blow some stuff up in people's lives.
Speaker 1: I think there's going to be a great move of God just in you.
Speaker 1: It'd be worth it just for you.
Speaker 1: What about fasting?
Speaker 1: Because people are afraid of that.
Speaker 1: Well, that's why you get to do it on whatever level you're at.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 1: So for some of you, maybe you can't fast real food, but maybe you could fast TV for a day.
Speaker 1: You could fast your coffee or whatever that you love so much.
Speaker 1: Whatever makes you go, I love you.
Speaker 1: Whatever that is, fast that I'm not talking about one of your kids, but one of the items that you think is so awesome.
Speaker 1: You can also keep that little prayer tent that's for you to take home.
Speaker 1: Put that on wherever you eat and every time you eat, pray one of those prayers, or all of them, again and again.
Speaker 1: What we're doing is we're saying, jesus, we're not going to let go of you.
Speaker 1: We're knocking and asking show us what you want us to do in these and every other area that he brings to mind.
Speaker 1: Keep some kind of a journal page that is about just things that he shows you as you're fasting.
Speaker 1: Now I hope that you're also praying for revival, dude.
Speaker 1: Here's what you got to do, because I don't want you to just pray for our church.
Speaker 1: Pray for you.
Speaker 1: Pray that your heart will be so doggone on fire.
Speaker 1: Fasting makes you fiery, dude.
Speaker 1: If you'll ask for it, you'll be more on fire than you've ever been in your whole doggone life.
Speaker 1: You'll be like oh my gosh, jesus is moving in a way that I've never seen before.
Speaker 1: You can do that with those prayer tents.
Speaker 1: Some of you are familiar.
Speaker 1: We have a feed on the Echo app, so if you Google that, you can find that.
Speaker 1: It's probably on the hub, too, fiercechurch slash hub, which is our online app.
Speaker 1: That's not an app in the app store.
Speaker 1: It's just a web app.
Speaker 1: Either way, it has a lot of prayers.
Speaker 1: Those prayers and also many others that you can pray.
Speaker 1: However you do it, in January we're going to survey everybody and everyone's going to get a chance to weigh in and then we're going to talk about here's what, bubbled to the top, that we feel like God wants us to do.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 1: Here's some things to expect.
Speaker 1: One, as you go into this it's more helpful to pray and not fast than to fast and not pray, okay, so, whatever that looks like for you, like, fasting is great, but sometimes people just oh, I forgot to eat.
Speaker 1: That was fasting, that didn't do anything, just so you know.
Speaker 1: Like that didn't help us.
Speaker 1: Okay, if you're like I'm just going to fast and then I'll just hope it goes better, do me.
Speaker 1: If you're like I'm just going to fast and then I'll just hope it goes better, do me a favor.
Speaker 1: The prayer is where the power is.
Speaker 1: The fasting is just rocket boosters on the power, okay, so expect that you're going to experience a little bit of antagonism.
Speaker 1: Okay, you have some spiritual forces that aren't necessarily liking that you're going to do this, but the Lord will protect you.
Speaker 1: You're going to be fine.
Speaker 1: They're just going to try to depress you or get you discouraged.
Speaker 1: You just say shut your face, devil, I'm doing this but you want to be looking for.
Speaker 1: As you pray, through these different priorities, which are the ones that make your heart flutter, that make you go, I get extra joy.
Speaker 1: Even if I try to suppress joy, it comes back when I think about this thing in prayer.
Speaker 1: Where are the things that you're like?
Speaker 1: You just get a deadness.
Speaker 1: You're like that, ain't it?
Speaker 1: You just get a deadness.
Speaker 1: You're like that, ain't it?
Speaker 1: No, I don't feel like God is asking us to do this, so I'm just going to make note of that, whatever those things are, and then just asking the Lord God, what do you want us to prioritize and what do you want us to prune?
Speaker 1: Maybe there's just things we need to stop doing, and the Lord might lay some of that on your heart.
Speaker 1: Your interaction with this guys this is the church we're trying to do acts right now.
Speaker 1: This is us.
Speaker 1: You're really important to this process.
Speaker 1: You won't do it perfectly in your eyes, but you'll do it great for us and for Jesus.
Speaker 1: Hey, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1: If you don't have a home church and you're looking for a Bible preaching community that has its heart set on passionately knowing Jesus and being his witness in our generation, check out FierceChurch.
Speaker 1: We'd love for you to join us, either digitally or in person.
Speaker 1: Also, if you're looking for leadership development-related content, don't forget to check out the Fierce Leadership Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts from.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to those of you who give generously to support this ministry.
Speaker 1: It's because of you that this is possible.
Speaker 1: You can click on the link in the description to Thank you.
Speaker 1: Jesus loves you so much and we love you.
Speaker 1: I hope someday we get to meet in person.
Speaker 1: Thanks again for listening.