SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the Connect Class series.
SPEAKER_00: You have noticed we're not in tables this weekend.
SPEAKER_00: We we found out last time we did this that was a little bit too long to do four weekends of that.
SPEAKER_00: So we just did two and now we're back to this.
SPEAKER_00: But this is the last weekend.
SPEAKER_00: And what the Connect class is, if you haven't been around, it's really just a series.
SPEAKER_00: We kind of take a break from a normal sermon going through the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: And we take a break and we say, hey, what is the let's review for everybody?
SPEAKER_00: What is the strategy?
SPEAKER_00: What is the mission?
SPEAKER_00: What is the vision?
SPEAKER_00: What are the hows?
SPEAKER_00: What is the culture of what we do here at First?
SPEAKER_00: We just want everyone to be on the same page.
SPEAKER_00: And some of the things we talked about was attending the weekend.
SPEAKER_00: That's a big priority.
SPEAKER_00: If you talk about that weekend one, then we talked about the best you as in community and how we need fellowship.
SPEAKER_00: Last weekend, Pastor Andy talked about the fact that we can't outgive God.
SPEAKER_00: And today I want to talk to you about being someone who just sits versus somebody who is sent.
SPEAKER_00: Sits or sent.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's, and many of you know this, here's the danger.
SPEAKER_00: When you come into church, it's normal to just get comfy.
SPEAKER_00: Just, hey man, okay, I'll try it out.
SPEAKER_00: I'll sit here.
SPEAKER_00: I'll sit here for six months.
SPEAKER_00: I'll sit here for 16 years.
SPEAKER_00: And you've kind of, you may maybe didn't even mean to, but you start to see church as a show.
SPEAKER_00: You start to see it as one more thing that you watch.
SPEAKER_00: And that we could just call that sitting.
SPEAKER_00: But that's really not what Jesus asked us to do.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus sent us.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is, we're gonna see him play the coach for a second.
SPEAKER_00: He is about to wave goodbye to his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: He's been with them now, resurrected in his resurrected form.
SPEAKER_00: He's been with them for 40 days.
SPEAKER_00: He's been teaching them.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, all right, guys, well, time for me to go.
SPEAKER_00: Just so you know, just to remind you, I'm ridiculously in charge.
SPEAKER_00: I'm all the way in charge.
SPEAKER_00: All the authority is mine, and therefore, verse 19 of Matthew 28, therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you, and surely I'm with you always, even to the end of the age.
SPEAKER_00: He wants them to be ready.
SPEAKER_00: He says, guys, here's what I want you to do, but you've got to know there's gonna be some difficult times.
SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be days you don't feel like doing this.
SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be days people don't necessarily like that you're doing this.
SPEAKER_00: And I need you to be ready.
SPEAKER_00: There's gonna be sometimes, disciples, you're gonna be tempted to shrink back.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna recognize, well, here's what Jesus wants us to do.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to go and make disciples of all nations.
SPEAKER_00: But that sounds hard and that sounds inconvenient right now.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we need to remember is number one, when tempted to step back, the church steps up.
SPEAKER_00: When tempted to step back, the church steps up.
SPEAKER_00: That means we have a charge.
SPEAKER_00: Fierce has a charge, but really all churches have a charge.
SPEAKER_00: We have a charge to go into the world and invite people to be relationally restored to God through Jesus Christ, to have their sins forgiven, for them to be filled with the new guidance system of the Holy Spirit and to walk the rest of their days with him.
SPEAKER_00: And our thing we need to remember all the time is the moment that we forget that we're sent, we're going to start to just sit.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to resist it at all costs.
SPEAKER_00: If we don't know that we're sent, it won't be long before we just sit.
SPEAKER_00: The cultures around us, just like in Jesus' day, largely reject Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But even in the midst of that, God asks his people, go into those cultures and invite people to the table.
SPEAKER_00: There are gonna be all kinds of different, there's gonna be different people, but I want all of them around my table.
SPEAKER_00: I want all of them knowing me personally, I want all of them experiencing my forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: What did he ask?
SPEAKER_00: He said, make disciples.
SPEAKER_00: This word disciple is the word mathetace.
SPEAKER_00: It really means relationally connected learner.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't have anything necessarily like it in the world right now that I can think of.
SPEAKER_00: There's things that are similar.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, you could have like a coach and an athlete.
SPEAKER_00: The coach is the teacher that's teaching the athlete how to do stuff.
SPEAKER_00: But the coach isn't actually with the athlete on the field necessarily, right?
SPEAKER_00: You might have somebody, some master apprenticing someone to, you know, whether it's be a carpenter or be a painter or shape urns, whatever it is, but it's still someone saying, I'm gonna tell you what to do, and you do it.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe one of the best illustrations of disciple that I can think of, disciple meaning being relationally connected to Jesus, is a lot like where we would normally look for good insight.
SPEAKER_00: It's Star Wars.
SPEAKER_00: And it is the relationship of a Jedi Knight to a Padawan.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Why is it different?
SPEAKER_00: Because in this case, just so you don't, if you don't know Star Wars stuff, the taller guy there, that's Qui-Gon, he's the master, he's the one, he's the teacher, but he's with the Padawan, that means the learner.
SPEAKER_00: He's with him going through all the things.
SPEAKER_00: The Padawan is learning the life of the master by being with the master as the master makes certain decisions and rocks out his Jedi skills.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we're asking everybody on earth to do with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the master.
SPEAKER_00: We're not asking you primarily to go to church.
SPEAKER_00: We're not asking you primarily to be a good person.
SPEAKER_00: We're saying primarily you need to get with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He is your new master.
SPEAKER_00: And you need to do everything you do with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And he will teach you slowly.
SPEAKER_00: He'll use church, he'll use preachers, he'll use the Bible, but he will teach you slowly how he rolls, and you'll become a brand new person.
SPEAKER_00: It's still be you, but it's actually more you.
SPEAKER_00: It's the most you because you'll start to reflect and look like and resemble Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You know about this in your family.
SPEAKER_00: When there's a new family member born, they kind of look like everybody else because there's a family resemblance.
SPEAKER_00: As we are born again into the kingdom of God, it's not long before we start to look.
SPEAKER_00: If it's going right, we start to look more and more like Jesus because we're a part of the family of Jesus and Jesus wants us inviting everybody into his family.
SPEAKER_00: Here's another thing you should know about how the Bible talks about the world.
SPEAKER_00: It's true that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son.
SPEAKER_00: But also, in large part, the whole world is trapped.
SPEAKER_00: The whole world is in a prison of sorts where they're blinded to their spiritual need for Jesus Christ, where they're primarily giving themselves to not just sins, but sin, the rebellious impulse to not do what God wants and into self, meaning they want to do what they want to do, not necessarily what God wants them to do.
SPEAKER_00: Even when they know what God wants them to do, they still don't want to do it.
SPEAKER_00: But there's some, there's some like fiercers here.
SPEAKER_00: You've tasted the water of life.
SPEAKER_00: The water of life.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus talked about it like rivers of living water would come out of those who trusted him and were filled with his Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And God wants you and me to be filled with these rivers of living water, so much, so much resembling Jesus, so much it seems like we've that we Padawans have been with our master a lot that they can they can't see because they're spiritually blind, but they can taste it.
SPEAKER_00: And see, the blind will follow anybody who can see.
SPEAKER_00: And if you can see even a little bit, if you've tasted the water of life and now you're beginning to see the good things of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that they don't see anything, but they don't see that.
SPEAKER_00: They don't see the master, they don't see Jesus and how relevant he is to their lives.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I'm trying to say.
SPEAKER_00: As you and I drink and drink and drink God's word and God's people, as we drink it and become more like our master, people can't help but taste it, man.
SPEAKER_00: People can't help but want it because it's ridiculously attractive.
SPEAKER_00: So one of our jobs as a church, help people see how attractive Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the jobs.
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the things that we're supposed to be doing.
SPEAKER_00: We help people see.
SPEAKER_00: How can you do that?
SPEAKER_00: Often, dude, it's just about inviting them along or inviting them in.
SPEAKER_00: I can remember one day I was at like a community small group thing.
SPEAKER_00: There's a bunch of little small groups all together, and a new guy walked in, and I could tell he was like a couple years younger than me, but he was, you know, when you walk into a room and you're like that's that's that was his action.
SPEAKER_00: Like he didn't know what to do, he didn't know where to go.
SPEAKER_00: And I knew that Jesus wanted me to pour some living water in his direction.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know it because he I felt it in my spirit.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know it because I saw it.
SPEAKER_00: There was no there was no audible voice.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, that guy is a guy that Jesus wants to taste the river river of living water.
SPEAKER_00: And so all I did, I just looked at him, caught his eyes, like, come here, man.
SPEAKER_00: And he came over and he sat down with us.
SPEAKER_00: He became a really good friend.
SPEAKER_00: But it was just because there was, it took just a little bit, I mean, I'm I'm embarrassed to admit it, it took a little bit of courage just to do that.
SPEAKER_00: To just be like, hey man, come over here.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: What if he's a psychopath?
SPEAKER_00: What if he comes up and just, you know, I don't know, punches me in the face.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, but I'm gonna trust God.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, let's, in case He can drink this living water, let's try to get it to him.
SPEAKER_00: If we don't know that we're sent, we're just gonna sit after a while.
SPEAKER_00: And we're not supposed to sit.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so one thing we learned was that when tempted to step back, the church needs to step up.
SPEAKER_00: Here's something else.
SPEAKER_00: The church is always making room for one more.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the danger with Christians, and I love Christians, I are a Christian, but here's the danger with us.
SPEAKER_00: We will sometimes try to take church, because we think church is ours instead of Jesus's, and we'll try to make it such as we like it.
SPEAKER_00: We try to make it kind of like a Christian cruise ship.
SPEAKER_00: We want all the amenities that we want, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So we want we want the water slide and we want, you know, the buffet.
SPEAKER_00: We want all church to be about us.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we're we're on like this mother ship, right?
SPEAKER_00: But we're waiting to get off of earth.
SPEAKER_00: We're in the church, so we might as well make it about us.
SPEAKER_00: But that's a problem, baby.
SPEAKER_00: It ain't about us, it's about the people that we're trying to reach.
SPEAKER_00: You some of you have heard me tell this story before, but I just want to put it in perspective.
SPEAKER_00: There were days when my kids were very young, my wife and I would take all five kids, we'd take them to the mall.
SPEAKER_00: And we'd walk around and look at Christmas things or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: We didn't have a ton of money, so it's just like let's just go to the mall and walk around.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this didn't happen, but if it would have happened, if we would have one day left the mall and got home and turned around and found out there's only four kids with us, we wouldn't have said, Well, we lost one, but we still got these good four.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: We would we'd be out of our minds.
SPEAKER_00: We'd be like, I love you four, but we have to find the fifth one.
SPEAKER_00: We have to go find the other one that somehow we lost.
SPEAKER_00: God loves all of us.
SPEAKER_00: God loves you, and he loves for you to love his church and for you to enjoy it.
SPEAKER_00: But he's primarily thinking about the ones that are still lost.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, I gave you all a home so you could have a home base to go get the lost.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the only thing the church does, but it's a primary thing that the church does.
SPEAKER_00: We see this, we see an example of like how we're supposed to do this in Luke chapter 5.
SPEAKER_00: So I want you to imagine this.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, he packs places out.
SPEAKER_00: So he's in a house and he's packed it out.
SPEAKER_00: There's people everywhere.
SPEAKER_00: And so these group of folks, they come in it, they come toward it and they're looking through the windows, and they can see, dude, there's a there's no way we're getting in there.
SPEAKER_00: We bought our brought our paralyzed friend to try to get him healed by Jesus, but we can't get in there.
SPEAKER_00: So they get an idea.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go up on the roof.
SPEAKER_00: I can see one little spot right in front of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: There's people everywhere around it, but there's one little spot.
SPEAKER_00: Let's do this.
SPEAKER_00: Let's break through the roof and lower our guy down right in front of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's a little radical, but it looks like there's room for one more.
SPEAKER_00: There's room for one more.
SPEAKER_00: So that's what they do.
SPEAKER_00: They do whatever it takes.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine what it's like to bust open a roof?
SPEAKER_00: Like, that's probably pretty hard.
SPEAKER_00: And then you've got some kind of pulley system that you're lowering this guy right in front of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty heroic to do that.
SPEAKER_00: But they understood there's always room for one more.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's that's a core idea for us.
SPEAKER_00: There's always room for one more.
SPEAKER_00: We love it that everybody's here, but we also want to get as many more people here as possible.
SPEAKER_00: There's always room for one more.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what we've got the Fierce Code.
SPEAKER_00: For those of you who don't know, the Fierce Code is like our cultural way of doing things.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how they do it over there, but this is how we do it here.
SPEAKER_00: How we do it here is we will severely inconvenience ourselves to help people find their way back to God.
SPEAKER_00: We will severely, we want a little, we'll do it severely.
SPEAKER_00: You might sometimes be like, this is a little severe, Carter.
SPEAKER_00: I know.
SPEAKER_00: It's severe.
SPEAKER_00: It's severely inconveniencing.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because there's still one kid back at the mall, dude, and we gotta get them.
SPEAKER_00: And so one of the things that we've found that works, we've tried a lot of things, but one of the things that we found that works, and some of you, this is even how you got here.
SPEAKER_00: We throw big parties we call big days.
SPEAKER_00: And really what that is, it's a kid-centric place right after church for parents that take their kids.
SPEAKER_00: They've never been to Fierce before, but they like their kids and they like their kids having fun and probably getting free stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And so we throw these big parties called big days.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes you saw this, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Like the Easter egg hunt that we had recently, Christmas Palooza, that's one.
SPEAKER_00: Boo Bash, that's one.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason we're doing that, it's not because we like all those things.
SPEAKER_00: They're fine, they're good.
SPEAKER_00: But we're doing that to try to get people that haven't been here to come here and be like, oh, okay, these guys aren't so crazy.
SPEAKER_00: They're all right.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't seen any set squirrels sacrificed yet.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, well, maybe, you know, I'm not quite ready to go to church yet, but when I'm in tension, maybe I'll think of these guys and I'll come and approach the table.
SPEAKER_00: Now, for that to be true, we gotta do some stuff, guys.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to make sense to the world around us.
SPEAKER_00: I remember one of the church first churches I came into as a brand new believer, and it was just, dude, it was old.
SPEAKER_00: It looked like a museum.
SPEAKER_00: And and part of me was like, I guess if I'm gonna follow Jesus, I gotta live in buildings that are like museums.
SPEAKER_00: Like it just looked, uh, I'll do it, but I don't necessarily want to do it.
SPEAKER_00: And then I walked into another place that, dude, it looked great.
SPEAKER_00: Like it looked like people like to be here.
SPEAKER_00: This is this is great.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's friendly.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing like old that I don't understand sitting around here.
SPEAKER_00: It's because that church had decided we're gonna be familiar to people so that people feel like it's a familiar place to come.
SPEAKER_00: Let me put some meat on it, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So the apostle Paul has this problem.
SPEAKER_00: He's a Jew, and dude, he's a super Jew, okay?
SPEAKER_00: He just is.
SPEAKER_00: He even says so in Philippians chapter three.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, Look, man, I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews.
SPEAKER_00: I was born of the right line.
SPEAKER_00: I do all the stuff right, but all that's a loss for me compared to knowing Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things he does when he knows Christ is he goes to reach people far from God.
SPEAKER_00: So he's a Gentile, he's a Jew trying to reach Gentiles, that's non-Jews, people that are pagans, people that do all kinds of other stuff.
SPEAKER_00: He says, What I do is I drop any Jewish thing that is gonna freak them out or turn them off.
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't mean I won't obey the law of Christ in my heart and love other people as he's loved me, but I'm not going to make them do a bunch of Jewish things for them to talk to me.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, I'm just gonna find them where they are.
SPEAKER_00: This is 1 Corinthians 9, 21, for him to instruct us to those outside the law.
SPEAKER_00: I become as one outside the law, not being outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside the law.
SPEAKER_00: That he might what?
SPEAKER_00: That he might win those outside the law.
SPEAKER_00: To the weak, I become weak, that I might win the weak.
SPEAKER_00: I have become, now check it out.
SPEAKER_00: Some of y'all need to, you need to hear this, man, because you're having an argument in your head.
SPEAKER_00: I become all things to all people that by all means I might save some.
SPEAKER_00: Dude, he's given his sent mission to the church.
SPEAKER_00: He says, dude, you gotta do whatever you gotta do to try to get people nearer to God.
SPEAKER_00: So, dude, why do we have boobesh?
SPEAKER_00: We don't care about ghosts, we don't care about trick-or-treat bags, okay?
SPEAKER_00: But some mom likes trick-or-treat bags and she likes her little princess eating Reese's pieces.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's why we do it.
SPEAKER_00: We're like, hey, we we got this, we can give you this.
SPEAKER_00: And if it makes us friends and it makes you trust me, and that makes you come on a weekend or watch online, and that makes you hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, well, dude, it was worth the Reese's pieces.
SPEAKER_00: It was, and it's not wrong and it's not ungodly.
SPEAKER_00: It's all things by all means to reach all people that I might save some.
SPEAKER_00: Now, here's what's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_00: The people we try to reach sometimes, you're you're gonna be like, I don't know, man.
SPEAKER_00: Something in you for some of us, something's gonna rise up in you, and you're saying, them too, though?
SPEAKER_00: Like, I don't know if we want those kinds of people here at this church.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying you'll say it, but you might think it.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so first, here's what you do when you hear that little thing in your heart.
SPEAKER_00: First, you say, Satan, the Lord rebuke you in Jesus' name, I cast you into hell where you belong.
SPEAKER_00: But secondly, you remember one of the fierce codes here is acceptance is where the conversation begins.
SPEAKER_00: Acceptance is where the conversation begins.
SPEAKER_00: That means I don't need to be like you for me to like you.
SPEAKER_00: I don't need you to be like me for me to love you.
SPEAKER_00: Every church I've ever been in, as far as I know, everyone said that they valued diversity.
SPEAKER_00: They all said, Yeah, we want all kinds of people, man.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, we do.
SPEAKER_00: And my question and challenge to Fierce Church always is do you want enough, do you want it enough to sit at tables with people, to sit across from people that look different than you, that act different than you, that came from somewhere different than you, that talk differently than you, that have a lot of things different than you, but really under your skin, you got all the same meat, and the same savior died to save all of you.
SPEAKER_00: Do you want it bad enough for things to be uncomfortable sometimes?
SPEAKER_00: Do you want it bad enough that I'm not gonna sit with my friends?
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go sit over here to be around people that are different than me so that I might be an extension of God's love to them.
SPEAKER_00: Because why?
SPEAKER_00: Because they're the family of God or the family of God God's trying to create.
SPEAKER_00: I need it's good and right for me to be around my family as long as I can remember that acceptance is where this conversation begins.
SPEAKER_00: And that means sometimes, dude, they might have a lifestyle that you're like, I don't know about this.
SPEAKER_00: Clue phone, you don't need to know about it.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you don't need to know.
SPEAKER_00: Who asked you anyway?
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Like, you don't need to know.
SPEAKER_00: Did everybody need to know who you were before you knew Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Did they need to know your stuff?
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't Jesus have power to transform people's lives?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe just leave the sanctifying to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Let's leave it in his hands and let's us draw near to all people at all times so that by all means we might save some.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, somebody.
SPEAKER_00: Y'all doing good with the amens.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, guys.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, man.
SPEAKER_00: I accept you as the conversation begins, but I'm just asking.
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that we do because of this is we we give people opportunities to come to Christ, to make that trans, to make that personal decision in their life.
SPEAKER_00: And you've seen us, we ask people to raise their hands, or or maybe we'll do something else, but we we give people the opportunity.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, here's here's the whole deal.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus likes you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus wants to forgive you, and Jesus can forgive you if you'll trust him with your life and your sin and your heart and your destiny.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the whole deal.
SPEAKER_00: And that kind of like begins the whole new phase.
SPEAKER_00: And we do that, but I gotta let you know, that's not just me that's a part of that.
SPEAKER_00: That's just not people on stage or other people that are a part of that.
SPEAKER_00: That's everybody's job.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's supposed to be a part of that happening.
SPEAKER_00: That's why we work really hard to make weekends an enjoyable experience.
SPEAKER_00: But we need people to be able to do that.
SPEAKER_00: We need people to accept the call in places like Romans chapter 12, where God just commands, I'm just commanding you to serve.
SPEAKER_00: I'm commanding you to discover and find your spiritual gifts to build up the body of Christ so more people can, by all means, some be found.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's what I want to do over the next couple weeks.
SPEAKER_00: I want to put in your hands or put in your phone or whatever, a little, it's a little survey tool.
SPEAKER_00: It's not really a survey, it's more of a, it's more of an assessment that's gonna help you discover some of your spiritual gifts.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna help you see some of your personality profile, and then it's gonna recommend some of the roles that might make sense here at Fierce for you based on who you are.
SPEAKER_00: You're not signing up for anything to do it.
SPEAKER_00: You're really just finding out, hey, is it can I can I shape this?
SPEAKER_00: Can I narrow the focus here so that I'm in on the things that I'm probably kind of good at?
SPEAKER_00: Would you do me a favor?
SPEAKER_00: Um, let's uh Ellie, can you put up the step up to serve slide?
SPEAKER_00: There you go.
SPEAKER_00: If you will grab that QR code with your phone, you'll go to a website and it takes five minutes to fill this out, guys.
SPEAKER_00: Would you just do that?
SPEAKER_00: If you're planning on doing it later and you can do it now, just do it right now.
SPEAKER_00: Just do it right now.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't know how to do it, ask one of the young people next to you how to do it and they'll help you do it.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we want to invite people, but to invite them well and to make it familiar, we need them to be greeted by friendly people.
SPEAKER_00: And you might be gifted with you might have gifts of friendliness.
SPEAKER_00: You might have gifts with kids where dude, the truth is you can't be with them all week, but you can be with them for 70 minutes and still not pull your hair out.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've got teaching gifts.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're just, dude, hey, Jesus made you good looking.
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you just use it, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Why don't you come and at least be a greeter so that people like, hey, good looking people go to this church.
SPEAKER_00: I'll go.
SPEAKER_00: Why not?
SPEAKER_00: Why not do it?
SPEAKER_00: But I want to encourage you, there's a lot of others, there's production and all kinds of stuff.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to pressure you, but I am saying, we can't do this without you, dude.
SPEAKER_00: We need to make the thing look good, okay?
SPEAKER_00: You guys, some of you know the story, but you know, when Kenzie and I first got together, she would tell me about these this supper club that she went to with her family.
SPEAKER_00: Now, they'd been going to the supper club for generations, okay?
SPEAKER_00: So when she would go, she'd have mom and dad and grandma and grandpa and all kinds of other relatives there, and they'd get this food, and she's bragging about this place to me.
SPEAKER_00: She's like, Oh, the food's so good, and it's just the greatest place on earth.
SPEAKER_00: And so the first time I walk in, I'm like, oh, I've thought this is gonna be amazing.
SPEAKER_00: And and you know, you look Around it's like this it's a little bit nasty around here.
SPEAKER_00: And and and so you're like, Well, maybe maybe the food's worth it, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes you go to like a dive, but the food's really good.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm waiting on let's let's see what you got.
SPEAKER_00: And they bring out this dry, nasty chicken.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, baby, what is going on here?
SPEAKER_00: And what was happening?
SPEAKER_00: She when every time she walks in that restaurant, she experiences the entire history that she's had with that, and so that kind of like overcomes a whole lot of otherwise not so great stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Christian friends, we've got to watch out.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to watch out that the church is always preparing for those to come.
SPEAKER_00: That's number three.
SPEAKER_00: Always preparing for those to come.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's what Christians do they they see God do something at one point in their life and they sanctify it and they say, That thing is God's.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so here's what happened.
SPEAKER_00: You're in the youth group, and you're you you have a moment with God and you break down and you cry and your tears are going into the carpet.
SPEAKER_00: And so now, forever after, that's anointed carpet right there.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, that's but God did stuff on that carpet.
SPEAKER_00: Or there's a special piano.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, but you don't know what God did with that piano.
SPEAKER_00: And so your heart gets all tangled up in it.
SPEAKER_00: But the problem is, other people come in and they look at the carpet and they're like, that's nasty.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go to a church where there's not nasty carpet.
SPEAKER_00: Because I want to feel something familiar.
SPEAKER_00: I want to feel like this was maybe, even if they don't think about it, this was made for me.
SPEAKER_00: This was made with me in mind.
SPEAKER_00: So that means we've got to work hard to prepare for those that are coming after us.
SPEAKER_00: What that means in general is we have to work hard to keep updating environments.
SPEAKER_00: We need to keep trying to make this place look great.
SPEAKER_00: We need to keep our tech going as fast as we can to keep up with the rest of the world so that people feel like, oh, this makes sense to me.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to do it.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's the here's the code about it.
SPEAKER_00: Current solutions for current problems.
SPEAKER_00: We throw away old sofas, we throw away old carpet, we kill sacred cows.
SPEAKER_00: Even if you're a vegetarian, honey, I'm sorry, you like it.
SPEAKER_00: You take the carpet, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Take it home, lay it down, and you can do whatever you want with it.
SPEAKER_00: But for us, we need it to make sense to our guests.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a th here's a thing to ask about it.
SPEAKER_00: Does this make sense to my friend I've been trying to reach for Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: See, I've got people that there have been churches I wouldn't bring them to, not because I don't want them to know Jesus, because I'm like because it will, it will just it'll not make sense to them.
SPEAKER_00: They'll be like, why do you go here?
SPEAKER_00: Like, this is weird.
SPEAKER_00: You have to sit here for like an hour?
SPEAKER_00: What is this?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to diss any other church.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just saying I want you to be able to take your friends either online or here so that there's fewer and fewer road bumps, speed bumps in between them and Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Are we gonna do it perfect?
SPEAKER_00: No, we're not gonna do it perfect, but we gotta do all we can do.
SPEAKER_00: We gotta try.
SPEAKER_00: We can't just sit here because we're sent.
SPEAKER_00: So is it attractive?
SPEAKER_00: Is it attractively familiar?
SPEAKER_00: And just so you know where we're going, we've got to do this online too, even if that doesn't make sense to you.
SPEAKER_00: So two years ago, I got my doctoral degree and it was really in ministry leadership.
SPEAKER_00: And I had a senior like Capstone Project that was all it wasn't senior project, it was just capstone project.
SPEAKER_00: And it was all about reaching digital natives or Generation Z and how different that is from all ministry and generations that have come before it.
SPEAKER_00: In that, let me just share some of the things I found out we found out for you.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you know this.
SPEAKER_00: Generation Z spends 70%, 77% of their time watching videos online.
SPEAKER_00: That blows my mind.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even, I can't grasp that totally.
SPEAKER_00: But that's what the data says.
SPEAKER_00: They spend three-fourths.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, sorry, three-fourths of the entire population of Gen Z spends seven hours per week listening to podcasts.
SPEAKER_00: I can kind of get that because you know they're you can listen at work, you can listen to the car.
SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of places you can just have something in your ear listening to podcasts.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what I realized doggone, those people ain't coming here.
SPEAKER_00: There's awesome people that come here.
SPEAKER_00: But how many people there are to reach?
SPEAKER_00: Like most of them are not coming here.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what's awesome.
SPEAKER_00: They're actually into Jesus more than any generation before them.
SPEAKER_00: Like they're they're they're yeah, we're interested in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Tell us about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Just don't make us come to a church before you start.
SPEAKER_00: If I gotta go to a church, I just put a major impediment in front of them.
SPEAKER_00: And so what do we want to do?
SPEAKER_00: We've got to find ways increasingly to reach people online because that's where they are.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I will promise you, I will disciple people into telling them, hey, eventually, if you're gonna keep walking with Christ, you have to find a community that's going to teach you, Jedi Knight and Padawan, really more relationally how to do this.
SPEAKER_00: But I don't need you to do that first.
SPEAKER_00: I just need you exposed to God's word and God's message.
SPEAKER_00: That's why, even if you don't necessarily relate to it, we still have to do it.
SPEAKER_00: There's an email that I send out a couple times a month called the Pulse with Pastor C or something like that.
SPEAKER_00: Um always at the bottom of those, there's things that we've made or found that if you share it with somebody, it might help them.
SPEAKER_00: So if you open that email, there's just little shareable videos that are usually pretty short.
SPEAKER_00: That's a way that you can help.
SPEAKER_00: Even if you don't care about tech, probably you can probably learn how to just click a link and share it somewhere.
SPEAKER_00: That puts us in the online world and helps people.
SPEAKER_00: You don't know how long that'll last, you don't know where that will go, but that's a way that we can prepare for those to come.
SPEAKER_00: So, what I'm asking you to do today, would today I'm asking you to go to that survey, fill that out if you haven't already.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe subscribe to The Pulse if you don't get that already, or look for it in your inbox, maybe it's already there, and find those videos and maybe share them.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm also asking you, because we're at the end of the Connect Class series, I'm asking some of us to go all in and make this your church.
SPEAKER_00: At fierce, we call that ownership.
SPEAKER_00: We don't call it membership because while members have privileges, owners have the privileges, but they also have the responsibilities.
SPEAKER_00: Owners say, this is on me.
SPEAKER_00: It's not like a property thing.
SPEAKER_00: It is a, I'm taking responsibility and I'm personally taking it.
SPEAKER_00: What are you taking responsibility for?
SPEAKER_00: If you if you want to join or become an owner of church, of Fierce, what you're taking responsibility for is you're going to attend, you're going to serve, you're going to give, and you're going to love the people here, even when it's hard.
SPEAKER_00: That's all it takes.
SPEAKER_00: That's all it is.
SPEAKER_00: There's there's nobody coming to your door.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not like checking your, you know, your giving or anything like that.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not checking if you're serving.
SPEAKER_00: It's not like that.
SPEAKER_00: It's between you and Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's just you saying, Jesus, I feel like you've called me here, you've planted me here.
SPEAKER_00: I want to just demonstrate and say, I am here, not forever necessarily, just for right now, in this season.
SPEAKER_00: What that does for myself and the elders, honestly, dude, it tells us who we're responsible for.
SPEAKER_00: Like there's a lot of people that come in here week after week, and some many of them aren't really gonna stay here.
SPEAKER_00: But those who become owners, that tells us, Carter, elders, this is on you, man.
SPEAKER_00: You better take care of these folks.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it helps us do.
SPEAKER_00: If you're down with the vision, the vision of this church, that means this is where we're going.
SPEAKER_00: Over the next 15 years, we believe God is calling us to join him in building a church marked by affectionate, Christ-centered, high-challenge preaching, a culture of audacious prayer and fasting, a relentless commitment to reaching people in new ways, both in person and through digital mission.
SPEAKER_00: We will invest deeply in the next generation, raise up a diverse and scalable leadership pipeline, and pioneer bold, creative pathways that invite more people to the feast of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's we took a year to try to figure out what God was asking us to do, and that's what we figured out.
SPEAKER_00: If that excites you, if that's something you want to do too, become an owner today.
SPEAKER_00: If you're already an owner, recommit.
SPEAKER_00: And here's here's a way to do it.
SPEAKER_00: There's a little card, it's on your seat.
SPEAKER_00: You should be able to uh grab that QR code, you can do the online version.
SPEAKER_00: But if you get this, you just fill it out.
SPEAKER_00: There's a little box and a banner down the hall.
SPEAKER_00: You go out the door to the left, you drop this in the box, and then you you can sign a big sign that just says, We're all in.
SPEAKER_00: We're all in on this.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna hang this banner.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a sign, it's a banner.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna hang it up in the hallway.
SPEAKER_00: But if you sign your name, you're just saying, hey man, I'm part of this family, I'm part of this team, I'm in, I'm doing it.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to just sit.
SPEAKER_00: I know that I'm sent.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, you can go here for years and never do that, and that's just fine and dandy.
SPEAKER_00: But for those who feel the pull, they got to say, you need to do stuff here.
SPEAKER_00: I would challenge you.
SPEAKER_00: Now's the time.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: God, thank you for a great series.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for all the stuff that you showed us.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the people that you introduced us to.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the things that you laid on our hearts and the things you challenged us with, maybe some of the thinking that you pushed back against.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we know our time is short.
SPEAKER_00: We know that there's still time, though.
SPEAKER_00: There's still time to do what you've asked us to do.
SPEAKER_00: We're still breathing.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're asking you to take this church and this generation, the ones that are here now, help us to not just sit but walk in the fact that we're sent.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, help us to make room for one more and one more and one more and one more.
SPEAKER_00: God, and help us prepare because there's people that come after us.
SPEAKER_00: Help us prepare for those to come.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: All right, folks, that's all the time we have, but thank you so much for listening to this sermon.
SPEAKER_00: If you got a lot out of this, feel free to share this with somebody who might need it.
SPEAKER_00: Also, there's a ton more content on our website, on our YouTube channel, on our Instagram channel, on our TikTok channel.
SPEAKER_00: Feel free to check all that kind of a thing out.
SPEAKER_00: Also, if you're interested in leadership type stuff, go ahead and check out another podcast or any other blogs or videos or anything over at BibleLeadership.com.
SPEAKER_00: And whatever else you do, make sure that you believe God for something big today.