Jump Into Community | Connect Class Series 2

You were never meant to follow Jesus alone. 👀

Not quietly.
Not independently.
Not disconnected.

From the very beginning, God designed faith to happen in community.
In this Connect Class experience at Fierce Church, we took things a step further—literally.
🪑 Tables set up across the room
💬 Real conversations happening in real time
🤝 People actually getting to know each other

Because church isn’t just something you sit through…
It’s something you step into.

At Fierce, we use Fierce Pathways to help people:
✨ Engage with Christ
🔥 Be empowered in their faith
📖 Be established in God’s Word
🌍 Be equipped for life outside the church
And none of that happens alone.

✨ In this message you’ll discover:
Why biblical Christianity is built on community
How real growth happens through relationships
What it looks like to walk with people, not just sit near them
How you can take your next step into real connection

🙏 Ask yourself: Am I doing life with people—or just attending?
💬 Comment “I need community” if you’re ready to step in
🔔 Subscribe for more from Fierce Church
👉 Watch more here: https://www.youtube.com/@FierceChurch

You don’t have to do this alone.
And honestly… you’re not supposed to. 🤝✨

Transcript

The Fierce Pathway And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is the Connect class series with the Connect part. If y'all are still coming in, feel free to there's there's other uh chairs over here. But you may remember last week we started this Connect class series, and this is all about what is this church doing? What is this about? What are we trying to pull off here? We talked about the need to keep taking spiritual growth steps. Do you remember this? We said, hey, you just got to keep moving. You made it to a big day that might have been Easter. You made it to here. This is Sunday. But part of growing spiritually is not getting stagnant and keep on moving, keep on taking those next steps. Our steps are so important to us that we built it into the mission statement. Here it is. Many of you have heard it before. The mission of Fierce Church is to develop prevailing followers of Jesus Christ. That means victorious, who walk with him step by step. If you ever wonder what are the steps, the steps are the big fierce pathway out in the hallway here. We wanted to make it super clear so you were never wondering, what do I do? I feel like I'm bored. I feel like I'm spiritually stagnating. All you have to do is take a look at that thing, and probably a next step will be prompted to you. Attend the weekend. You're already in that step. Congratulations. Practice drawing near. Yeah, way to go. Um practice drawing near. That means develop the patterns of spiritual discipline to help you seek and know Jesus. Jump into community. We're gonna talk about that today. Join a serving team, discover your spiritual gifts, practice giving and invite a friend. All of those are not the only steps, but those are the steps that we encourage people to right from the echo, they will help you grow. Now, one of Jesus' favorite terms for the church was a flock of sheep. And a flock of sheep are led by shepherds. So let's talk about the structure of Fierce real fast for everybody. We're just gonna review this. I am the lead pastor, okay? That means I'm largely in charge of leading the other shepherds, but also teaching us God's word uh on the weekends. Then there's Pastor Carla. Let's have a shout-out for Pastor Carla. You know about her. She's the first steps pastor. So she herself and others help people on board. It's like you're getting on the arc here at Fierce. Then there's Pastor Elena, she's the pastor of Next Steps. So right there, dude, it's about let's keep moving, okay? Keep on going, keep on taking steps. That's Pastor Elena's job is to help people do that. Then we've got Pastor Cole. He's the youth pastor. He's helping us. He's helping him and his team help students continue to take their spiritual growth steps through fusion, through fierce teens. Then we got Pastor Brandon. Um, you guys see him? He helps us take our steps into the presence of God each and every weekend. Can I just tell you, dude, um, this church doesn't deserve a worship pastor like Pastor Brandon? Uh we got the best worship pastor in America, and y'all should give him a high five every time you see him. We got Pastor Andy. This dude blows my mind with how theologically accurate he is, with how winsome he is. You ever seen him preach, dude? He's like, boom, he like he takes up the whole space. He's so passionate. Pastor Andy's our care pastor. He helps, especially when there's a little bit of trouble for some folks. Pastor Andy swoops in and helps us keep taking our steps. Then there's the elders. These are the people that I report to. These are my bosses, so to speak. Uh there used to be one more up there a couple years ago. His name was Jake, and he went home to be with the Lord now, so he's no longer with us. But he's proud of each and every one of you, and he's waiting for us to get there. So we miss Jake. But here we've got Martin, Andrew, and Nate. And these are the guys, their job is to really hold my feet to the fire about three things. One is theological accurateness. I have to not preach uh heresy. They gotta make sure of that. I've got to be effective, meaning it actually has to work here. Like it can't be a lame place. Um, and the third one is I've got to be pure. I've got to like have to have a protected marriage. I can't do anything that is disqualifying to me. Um, if I betray those, they can fire me without recourse. They don't even have to ask you. Like they can just do it. That's what the elders are there for. Now, something you should know about fierce, those people, that's that's like who does stuff on the highest level here, but we're super not into celebrityism, just so you know. Okay, so celebrityism means there's people that you're kind of afraid of. You're like, that's the man of God, or that's the woman of God. I mean, no, none of that. The reason we're not is because that tends to spotlight humans and de-spotlight Jesus. And all we want to do is spotlight Jesus, dude. He's the man, he's the one we're here to talk about, he's the only one that's trustworthy, he's the guy. So here's what we're gonna do. Right now, we're gonna break up. You're already in your groups, but we're gonna break the message here for a second, and you're gonna talk in your groups. I'm gonna give you two questions. The first question is always the same. It is, what do you like about that? Super easy, easy question to answer. What do you like about that? Super level one. Level two question is, and you can answer this one if you want. What do you think is helpful about knowing who the spiritual shepherds of the church are? A couple tips as you go here, okay? I'm gonna I'm gonna see you back here in six minutes. What I want you to do is first give everybody a shot to talk. No dominators, right? It's only six minutes, man. Some of your tables have more than six people. So, you know, just like be truthful, be honest, be vulnerable, but go ahead and, you know, like get through it so everybody can talk, all right? But the second one is actually be vulnerable. Actually share what you really think. The point here is for us to connect, and we connect best when we're sharing something a little bit deeper on our hearts that's maybe even a little bit scary. But as soon as you do that, you're gonna find you're feeling more connected to people already. Sound like a deal? Six minutes on the clock, and let's go. How'd it go? Y'all have fun already? You seem like you're you're getting the hang of it. That's awesome. Hey, if we're going to talk about what it is we do, we have to understand what the church in the New Testament does. The ecclesia, the called out ones, the assembly of God. If someone from space were to come to Earth today and they knew nothing about Christianity, and we just handed them a Bible and said, Hey, man, I just figure it out. Figure out what do you see in there? Here's some things they would probably figure out. Number one, biblical Christianity happens together. Biblical Christianity happens together. That's the way it was right from the start. Okay, so Jesus has got his disciples. That becomes 70, that becomes 120. They're in the upper room. Then overnight, Peter preaches a sermon, then it's 3,000, but it's always together. That's why Jesus said it's his new commandment. John 13, 34, Last Supper, he says, New commandment I give you. Love one another as I have loved you. So you must love one another. By this, everyone will know that you're my disciples if you have love for one another. Jesus ties the understanding that we belong to Jesus to our love for one another. Jesus wants us to follow Jesus with other people. It's really important, yo. There is a power in our witness when we're loving one another. He really didn't mean for us to just have a do-it-yourself version of Christianity. That do-it-yourself version would be unfamiliar, unrecognizable to the people of the New Testament. It was always together. I think there's two reasons for it. One is when we just love somebody on our own, and I'm sure there's lots of loving people here. There's lots of loving people watching online. You know this. You've seen when somebody's just kind of loving on their own. You've seen them at work, you've seen them at class, and it's like, wow, they're really loving. Maybe they're just weird. You know? Like this guy's into trucks, you know, that lady's into stamps, this person's into loving people. Maybe they're just strange. They're just strangely loving. But when you see a culture of people all loving one another, it's like that's that's more than just strange, that's attractive. I see the way that they're intentional with one another. I see the way that they take care of one another. That's a harder thing for me to make sense of unless there's something else going on there, something from heaven. Here's another reason, though. When we embrace do-it-yourself alone Christianity, here's what tends to happen. It tends to produce pride because number one, no one's asking us anything about our conclusions. We can get really haughty and think we kind of know everything. But in addition, we begin to trick ourselves into thinking Christianity is about believing the right ideas rather than it's about a commitment to one another to see Jesus formed in one another. One's about a commitment to I have the right thoughts. The other one is I have a commitment to a people. That's why we want to ask here at Fierce that your commitment is not to just Christian thoughts, not to Christian ideas, it's to one another. It's a spiritual family. It's saying, I'm in it for you, not just for me. We can't really be committed to the idea of following Jesus without being committed to following Jesus with one another. Can we hear that? Okay, so some of you, you probably know what a flash mob is. You've seen this before. If you don't know what it is, it's this, it's kind of a strange public interactive theater show choir happening that that goes on, okay? It could be in a mall, it could be like just in a street. What usually happens is somebody starts it. They're just they just start to dance or they just start to sing. And and you would look at them and you'd be like, that's really strange. They're just standing there singing in this public place, or they're just started to dance. But real quick, two or three other people join in the dance and they know the move. So it's like, are we in a movie musical or was this already planned? And it really was already planned. And so it could be 10 people, it could be 40 people. They just all start to do the number, they all start to sing the song. Now that is a flash mob. And it makes sense because you're like, okay, they all know that they're doing it. But if you just see the one girl and she just starts singing, and she's just singing, and it's minute three, you know, she's just still singing on her own. Okay, she might be really brave, but also she might be crazy. Why? Because she can't be a flash mob on her own. And you and I can't just be Christians. You can know Jesus and you you can live holy before him, but you can't really participate in New Testament Christianity unless you're doing it together. Can we hear that, somebody? That's why Paul says to the Ephesians, now you're no longer strangers to God and foreigners to heaven, but you are members of God's very own family, citizens of God's country, and you belong in God's household with every other Christian. Where do Jesus' followers belong? In God's household with every other Christian. And this is where it gets dangerous, folks. This is where I like to encourage people. Hey man, if you find yourself alone, something's going wrong here. Or if you if you just got done with a play downtown, or you just got done with uh an awesome dinner, and you walk outside and you take three turns and you find yourself in this dark alley. I'm hopeful that something in you starts to say, something's wrong here. You need to get out of here pretty quick. Get to other people as fast as you possibly can. Because it's possible nothing will go wrong, but there could be critters, there could be villains behind any one of those garbage cans. You need to get safe, you need to get around other people. Check this out. My sweet flock, my little sheep, your spiritual enemy is trying to get you alone. He's trying to get you alone because when you're alone, you're easy to trick. When you're alone, you're easy to tempt. When you're alone, you're easy to talk into depressing things. Getting alone, there should be a little alarm in your Christian brain for the rest of your life. I am not safe alone. It's okay, like God will be with me. It's not that I can't make it through the day, but if I'm doing life alone, you are being set up. And we've got to pray, God lead me into other people. So I'm back in the safety of your counsel through others. That's why. So at fierce, we're just saying we're gonna commit to doing life together according to God's plan. When we're together, we're strong. When we're apart, when we sidestep togetherness, and we just keep doing it and keep doing it, keep doing it, we're embracing weakness rather than strength. That's why we say, you've heard it before, the best you is in community. What we mean is God's best plan for you and I is that we're around other people that make us better, that hold us accountable, that encourage us, that build us up in the things of God and the word of God. And here's the reality, dude. When the stuff hits the fan, when the poo-poo of life hits the fan, okay, when you're alone, that's really hard, and you might not even be able to pull yourself out of it entirely. When you're with other people, your friends aren't Jesus, but they are often the pipeline Jesus' voice comes through. They're the ones who say, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. Let's talk about what's true here. Let's talk about I know it's down, I know things are hard, but it's going up. Right? God works everything together for your good. They're just people that are gonna surround you and help you not walk in that thing. You say, Carter, but I don't like the church. Okay, I feel you, I feel you. Um let's pretend that you were gonna come visit my house for three or four days. We're gonna have a great time, you know, we're gonna do fun stuff. And you just let me know, by the way, um, I want to hang out with you, but I don't want your wife to be around. I'm gonna be like, oh, is that so? You're about to get hurt. I'm just telling you, you're about to get hurt right now. See, there's no me without my wife. There's no me without my bride. You don't get access to me if you don't want to hang with my bride as well. And Jesus is the same way. You might not like everything about his bride, and he knows what's wrong with her, but he's like, hey, don't diss my bride. She is mine, and I paid a lot of blood for her. She's on the way right now, okay? She's she's moving forward. Give her a give her some time, give her a break. I promise you, I will perfect her. He'll do so because it costs his own blood to do it.

unknown 14:43

That's right.

Togetherness As Safety Against Isolation

Spending Time Together Break The Rhythm

Breakouts On Distance From God’s People

God Things Take Time Oak Friends

Final Breakout Perseverance Through Others

Hope In Grief Waiting Together For Jesus

Share The Message And Find More Content

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Now I know, guys, I'm not I'm not trying to pretend there's not real church hurt and not real church pain. We had an entire series last year called Church Pain. I know that that's real, and we need help sometimes to walk through that stuff, but I just want you to consider not everybody is the person who hurts you. And really, most of the time, most of the time, your healing is with the people of God. Okay, right? So if you had a really horrible marriage and it was just it was the worst disaster, you might say, I'm never marrying again. And that that might be okay. That's that's fine. But it might be you'd be even more healed if you had a phenomenal spouse that just showed you here's everything that was wrong before. You in other words, we've got to see the right so we can understand what was wrong with the wrong. Are we hearing that? So God meant us to do life together, even though it is afraid, it's scary sometimes. Let's go to our breakout. What did you like about that? And number two, how do you think remaining distant from the people of God could oppose God's purpose in your life? Six minutes. Here we go. Guys, I'm really proud of the way you guys are digging, especially you introverts. I know this is not easy, but way to go. Hey, here's what we said: biblical Christianity happens together, and then number two, biblical disciples spend their time together. They spend it together. Sometimes spending time is harder than spending money. Here's what the first church did. Not only were they empowered by the Holy Spirit when the Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost, not only were they empowered to be God's witnesses, but verse 46, and daily devoting themselves with one accord in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart. It's not that they didn't have a ton to do, just like us. They still had to work, they still had kids, but they decided uh it's not that I have less to do, but I'm going to prioritize more being with the people of God. They said, I've got to be able to break my rhythms up. You've got rhythms, right? Your days, your weeks are kind of the same-ish, right? Like Mondays are probably pretty similar to most Mondays. Wednesdays are similar to most Wednesdays. And you go throughout your route and you say hi to those people and those people. But for the sake of the people of God, sometimes we've got to break the pattern. We've got to break the rhythm. That's what we're doing right now, is we're breaking the rhythm. We're saying, hey, you're not gonna like become bosom buddies for the rest of your lives necessarily, but let's just go to some tables and plant some seeds and maybe something will grow by breaking the rhythm. We've got to be willing. I'm gonna break up what I would normally want to do so I can spend time with them. I don't want to necessarily take this call, but I'm going to, it's inconvenient, but I'm going to for the sake of my commitment to the body of Christ. One thing that you can do that sometimes you might not want to do. After church, there's a lobby experience. Someone will stand up here and they'll be like, hey man, go down to the gym and go down to the cafe. And that would, that's a little linger move. You're just like, okay, I'm going to go out there. I'm going to pray God directs my steps. And maybe some relationships will form. Maybe I can sow some seeds into somebody's life. That's a real level one. You might go to level two and go to fierce men. If you're a dude, we just talked about porn yesterday, and we're going to be talking about it for a while. So in two weeks from now, we're going to, or May 3rd, whatever that is, we're going to talk about it again. And it's going to be dudes, it's super easy, barely an inconvenience. You just show up. You don't have to do anything. But there we go. We dive right in and relationships are formed. It might be that you want to hang with the mamas and minnies. Okay. So these are for moms that have these young kids. And I remember what it was like. We had five, man. And my wife sometimes she's like, what is going on here? I need some other adult company. And so maybe that's you. And you want to go to mamas and minnies and bring them along. And who knows? You're in this hard life stage, but who knows who God might connect with you. It might be that you want to go to a small group. These happen during the week. And what this is is folks gather at homes and they just talk about here, we're going through the Bible in a year. It's not that you have to do really good at that. You can just, you know, just show up and not have read perfectly, but we're going to explore, not just explore, we're going to explore together. It might be that that's a real good reason to send your kids to fusion and to fierce teens because it's not just what they're going to learn, it's the relationships that are going to be formed. This summer, we're doing summer suppers. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's really just, hey man, we're all going to get together and have dinner. Half of us are strangers. But because we're breaking bread together, we might know each other a little bit better by the end. And it's a little more fun, a little bit more easy. It's not easy for me. I know it's not easy for some of you. Guys, I know I look like I can just get up here and talk, but I'm I'm still pretty much an introvert, dude. Like, after this, I want to go home and I want to cave and I don't talk to nobody. Like I get what that is like. Okay, I got that same thing. But for the sake of the body, for the sake of the kingdom of Jesus, can we stretch ourselves sometimes to be there for others? Let me give a gentle and loving encouragement to our friends online. I love that you are here. I love that you get to do this with us. It's a privilege. And I want you to be able to fellowship as much as you possibly can online. But I also want to challenge you wherever you are, begin to pray that God would bring people, human, physical people, because there's stuff that it's not just stuff we learn. It's I learn it from being with somebody. I learn how that goes. I get sharpened because I'm with them and they say one thing. It's like, oh my gosh, that unlocks a whole new level for me. So I want to encourage you, it's great that you're there. Just don't stop there. Keep going, keep finding physical expressions of the body of Christ because we all need them. And I know it takes a long time, but here's the next fierce code: God things take time. God things take time, dude. God is building for eternity. He's not just building for right here. God is building with the end in mind. And it takes a long time. Sometimes friends don't come that fast. Okay, so a petunia takes God one year to make, but one year it's over. It's done. Now I've got petunia friends. I've had petunia friends, you've had petunia friends. These are like flash in the pan, hey, great time, we'll see you the next time. Like you don't even necessarily see them again in your life. Those are petunia friends. But when God wants to build an oak, dude, he takes 60 years. But sometimes those oaks can last two to four hundred years. I've even heard of a few that have gone a couple thousand years because God's building with the end in mind. Now, I like petunia friends, and sometimes oak friends are hard because they challenge you and you go through seasons that are difficult. But dude, oak friends are the best friends to have. Oak friends, dude, they're strong. Oak friends will get you through some hurricanes, dude. You can live and be better with some oak friends. So I just want to ask the question which kind of friends do you want? Well, if you want oak friends, just know it's gonna take time. It takes time to build oak friends. It takes time of putting yourself around, having things that are inconvenient. But God things take time. Let's go to our breakouts. Here we go. What'd you like about that? Two more questions you could answer. I mentioned several ways, fiercers, that's us, spend time together. What sounds the most interesting to you? Or what are some less effective ways people try to show love compared to spending time together? You got six minutes and go to the one, welcome back. Hey, you know what's tough? It's tough investing in friends and relationships and then losing them. Here's number three Biblical disciples wait together. See, the the people in Paul's time, the Thessalonicans, they were a little bit worried because they're like, okay, well, Jesus rose from the dead right away, but I've got friends that are already trusted Christ, but they died and they're not back. What's going on? Is something going wrong? Did I miss it? Did I miss the resurrection? What's happening here? And Paul says, No, no, no, you've got to understand. It works a little bit differently. And he starts to tell them about all the way almost to the end. Here's what's going to happen. He says, For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the believers who have died, that was all their friends that are already gone home to be with the Lord, will rise from their graves. Then together with them, we who are still alive and remain on earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever. So encourage each other with these words. They'll rise from their graves. That doesn't mean it's like the walking dead. That means there's going to come in an instant. If you're already in heaven, you're going to come back with Jesus to earth, ready to conquer, ready to take back over, ready to kick out the enemy, ready to kick out all sin, ready to kick out all rebellion. And your body that was still wherever it was in the grave, whether it was at the bottom of the sea, whether it was in a cave somewhere, whether it was burned up and seems like there's nothing left, the Lord is, you're going to have a your whole body's going to come back. Only this time it's going to be a resurrected form. It's going to be like Jesus' body. It's going to be perfect. In fact, we don't even totally understand all the ways it's going to be perfect, but it's going to be incorruptible. It's going to be sinless. It's going to be diseaseless. It's going to be perfect. It's going to be a little bit like there's an old Frosty the snowman from like the 60s or whatever. And Frosty dies in the greenhouse and he's a little puddle, and Karen's crying over him. And then Santa walks in. He's like, Don't worry, Karen. He's made of Christmas snow. And then he opens up the door and like Frosty comes back to life and he's just all perfect. That's how it's going to be. Even if your body is like that little puddle, Jesus is going to open the door. All he has to do is think. It doesn't even eat Christmas snow. He's just going to open the door and shoot, whatever he says happens in your body will be perfected and sinless. And your spirit will be reunited to your body. And we will be with the Lord, and we will be together. Did you hear what he said? Then together with them, whoever's there, if you're still here, you'll be together with them. And we'll be caught up, we'll be snatched away. We'll be with the Lord forever and we'll be together forever. And you know, that's why we can have hope. Because even when you've lost somebody, even when somebody was taken from you seemingly prematurely, even when that happened, here's what it really is. If there were a Christ follower, if there were a brother and sister in Christ, this is only an intermission. This is not the end. This is a pause, and you will be together with them. So it matters what you invest here because it's all going to keep paying off. It lasts for the next bazillion years. Your relationships will still be there and they will still be powerful, and they'll just pick up right where we left off. And that's why it's so important that we're together right now. Because what are we supposed to be doing? We're supposed to be reminding one another. Hey, just so you know, we ain't staying here. Just so you know, don't plant everything here. Don't get used to this place. Don't put all your treasure here because we're not staying here. We're going there. This place is going away. Hey, I just want to remind you, don't get too comfy here because everything you want is there, and that's where we're going. And he says, encourage one another with this. Don't get stuck, man. Don't get stuck in this worldly thinking. Hey, hey, come on. We're all walking home together. Let's go to heaven together. That's what we're doing. Dude, do you see? We're just waiting around right now. We are just waiting around in the airport, waiting for the doggone plane to arrive, and we're gonna get going. Are we hearing this? That's why we're together to remind one another, it is not about this place. I know it's hard. I know it feels like almost hopeless sometimes, but don't you give up. Come on, you get up and let's keep walking toward Jesus in Jesus' name because yo, our salvation is nigh, our savior is almost here. It's almost time now to live like it counts, and let's go. That is why we encourage one another and we say, We're not staying here. We're almost done. That's why you need the body of Christ. That's why ain't nobody else gonna tell you that. That's why you need the body of Christ. One more breakout. What do you like about that? And can you share a story of a time when the faith of someone else helped you persevere and have renewed hope in a tough situation? Here we go. Six minutes and all the folks, that's all the time we have, but thank you so much for listening to this sermon. If you got a lot out of this, feel free to share this with somebody who might need it. Also, there's a ton more content on our website, on our YouTube channel, on our Instagram channel, on our TikTok channel. Feel free to check all that kind of a thing out. 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. And whatever else you do, make sure that you believe God for something big today.