SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Manna Church Stafford Podcast, where we're all about equipping God's people to change their world.
SPEAKER_00: We're thankful you're here, and we're praying that this message encourages you to love God, love others, and love the world more fervently than before.
SPEAKER_00: Now, let's get to it.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're doing good?
SPEAKER_01: Hey, so before we get into the message today, I just want to give you a quick update.
SPEAKER_01: Last week we sent out a missions team, and so there's about 20 people who aren't here with us today because they are in Aguas Calientes, Mexico.
SPEAKER_01: They're doing three services today at the church there.
SPEAKER_01: They've been ministering all week.
SPEAKER_01: I've got some updates.
SPEAKER_01: There are two very special people on the trip, special to me.
SPEAKER_01: My two daughters are on the trip.
SPEAKER_01: Man, we've been talking FaceTime a couple times, and it's been a really exciting event for them.
SPEAKER_01: So I would encourage us just keep praying for them.
SPEAKER_01: They come back tomorrow evening.
SPEAKER_01: And so they've had I can't wait to share some of the testimonies.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there have been salvations, healings, all kinds of really cool stuff.
SPEAKER_01: God's doing his work, he's advancing his kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: And so uh just keep them in your prayers.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, we are going to start kind of a new miniseries today.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm excited about it because it's, I hope it's gonna clarify some things.
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, that's one of the things that I love about God.
SPEAKER_01: I love it about faith is the clarity that it brings because I really dislike nebulous terms.
SPEAKER_01: I dislike being in limbo, and I'm so appreciative when I know where I stand, I know what God expects of me.
SPEAKER_01: I'm glad I've got scripture.
SPEAKER_01: It lets me know where that is.
SPEAKER_01: Like, no matter what I have in life, scripture is gonna tell me what I need to do and how I need to do it.
SPEAKER_01: And so um, when you have clarity, it's easier to know what your next steps are supposed to be.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: And I think every single one of us appreciate that.
SPEAKER_01: Like, especially if you've got, if you've ever had that special somebody that you're interested in, but you're not yet in a relationship with them.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone, right?
SPEAKER_01: Married couples you knew before you actually got married, there was this whole process.
SPEAKER_01: I remember back to a time where I had my eye on this special someone.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't my wife, it was somebody else.
SPEAKER_01: I was much younger.
SPEAKER_01: And um I really liked her.
SPEAKER_01: And so what I did was I wanted some clarity in the relationship.
SPEAKER_01: And so I took a piece of paper and I wrote, Do you want to be my girlfriend?
SPEAKER_01: Yes or no.
SPEAKER_01: And I grabbed my best bro, Alex, and I said, Alex, deliver this to Heather.
SPEAKER_01: And so Alex takes it over to Heather, and Heather looks at it, and I wait with bated breath.
SPEAKER_01: And she checks one of the boxes, and then Heather doesn't deliver it back because you don't do that.
SPEAKER_01: She has Belinda deliver it back.
SPEAKER_01: And so Belinda comes over and gives me the note, and it says, Yes! I'm like, yes.
SPEAKER_01: And the next three hours of second grade, I was Heather's boyfriend.
SPEAKER_01: And after that, I got some more clarity when I got another letter from her that said, I don't want to be your girlfriend anymore.
SPEAKER_01: That was a little bit sad.
SPEAKER_01: But at least I knew where I stood, right?
SPEAKER_01: At least I had some clarity.
SPEAKER_01: It was super clear, and nowadays it's super difficult to know where you stand.
SPEAKER_01: I do not envy young people as you are trying to get into relationships right now at all.
SPEAKER_01: It seems so confusing.
SPEAKER_01: You have so many different ways to connect, so many different apps, and there are way different phases of dating now.
SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, it used to just be like dating, engaged, married.
SPEAKER_01: Now you've got like married, engaged, like pre-engaged, you're kind of engaged, but they haven't engaged yet.
SPEAKER_01: And you've got dating, but you've also got talking before that.
SPEAKER_01: And then there's this whole other culture that is before talking and has no commitments whatsoever that we don't want to get into.
SPEAKER_01: It's nuts.
SPEAKER_01: And it is not clear, right?
SPEAKER_01: And when you're in that phase, what you need to do, guys and gals, let me give you advice here.
SPEAKER_01: You need to sit down with that person.
SPEAKER_01: You don't send them a text, you sit down over dinner, and you have what we call a DTR.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone here know what a DTR is?
SPEAKER_01: You define the relationship.
SPEAKER_01: Can we just do that?
SPEAKER_01: Can we just define the relationship?
SPEAKER_01: Let's have a DTR kind of discussion.
SPEAKER_01: And you ask clarifying questions because there's nothing worse than getting your heart all bound up in this thing, and you make plans for the future, and and and then much, much later, you realize that you had different expectations than this other person did.
SPEAKER_01: And there's two completely different commitment levels.
SPEAKER_01: And so this DTR is gonna help you both know what you're looking to get out of the relationship.
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, great.
SPEAKER_01: So what I would like to do this morning and for the next few weeks is I would like for us to have a little bit of a DTR.
SPEAKER_01: Like here.
SPEAKER_01: I'd like for us to get some clarity around how we each relate to the church, the local church.
SPEAKER_01: And how do we fit?
SPEAKER_01: What are the expectations that you have for the church that you should have for the church?
SPEAKER_01: What are the expectations that the church has or should have of you?
SPEAKER_01: And when we discuss this, it's easy for us to kind of um take the conversation a level higher and think about the global church.
SPEAKER_01: Like, what's my relationship to the global body of Christ?
SPEAKER_01: But that's not what we're gonna focus on.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna focus on the local church, the one that's right in front of us.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like yes, there's a global body, um, but that's really more conceptual for most of us.
SPEAKER_01: I want to focus on the right in front of us, the here and now, the ones that we we see day to day, week to week, because that's way more critical for us to understand than how it is we relate to the global church.
SPEAKER_01: Make sense?
SPEAKER_01: So, so for some people, this relationship, it's super duper clear.
SPEAKER_01: It like you don't really need to have a DTR because the the connection is mutual and it's like intuitive.
SPEAKER_01: It's like the girl or the guy that you've known for your entire life, your moms and dads knew each other, you grew up together, they were your first um first kiss, they were your first date to a dance, and when you guys ended up getting married, it was like, yeah, no kidding.
SPEAKER_01: Of course they're gonna get married.
SPEAKER_01: And for some of you, you grew up in church like that.
SPEAKER_01: It's just like, of course I relate to the local church.
SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
SPEAKER_01: Um but for others, the local church is more of a mystery.
SPEAKER_01: And you don't know how to relate to the local church, you don't fully understand them, you find yourself being drawn to it, and you think you might want something more, but you don't know what that means.
SPEAKER_01: You don't know what it would require of you.
SPEAKER_01: And more than that, you've seen other people get into relationships with the local church, and it hasn't gone well for them.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: We know that.
SPEAKER_01: We we see that happen with some people.
SPEAKER_01: They they and what happens is it makes them right off the church as a whole.
SPEAKER_01: So they're like, man, I ain't never getting a relationship again.
SPEAKER_01: I'm never getting married.
SPEAKER_01: This is rough.
SPEAKER_01: Like this whole dating thing, it doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_01: And people think that same way about the church.
SPEAKER_01: So if that's you, on any level, you're like, yeah, I've been in for my whole life and I'm gonna stay in, or you're like, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: This is gonna be a great series for you.
SPEAKER_01: So um, I'm excited.
SPEAKER_01: I'm glad you're here this morning.
SPEAKER_01: So, what I'm gonna do, some of you, this is gonna be a no-brainer, like I said, it's it's gonna be like uh banging down an open door, as my buddy Guillaume said.
SPEAKER_01: For others, this is gonna be a message you're gonna have tons of questions on.
SPEAKER_01: And so, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you some forewarning here.
SPEAKER_01: I got a ton of scriptures we're gonna go for.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna read all of them, I'm just gonna give you the references because if I gave you all of the scriptures, we would be here for like two hours.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: It would be the longest date ever.
SPEAKER_01: You'd be like, I don't want a second date.
SPEAKER_01: So I think I think what's important is for us to disagree on some basic biblical truths at the outset.
SPEAKER_01: So, first off, first off, we should agree that God's intention has always been for us to do our faith life together with others.
SPEAKER_01: In Genesis, when he made Adam, he made every single thing on the earth and he said it was good, and then he made Adam and He said, This is not good.
SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't because Adam was broke, it was because Adam was alone.
SPEAKER_01: And so then God made relationship, he made Eve and had them together, and that was actually good.
SPEAKER_01: God's that was his very next step.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna fast forward all the way to the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, when he refers to what happens when we get this revelation of him, this is in Matthew chapter 16 when Peter, Jesus is like, Who am I?
SPEAKER_01: And Peter goes, Oh, you're the Christ.
SPEAKER_01: You're Jesus, the Son of the living God.
SPEAKER_01: That's who you are.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus goes, Bam, you get it.
SPEAKER_01: And then he explains to them what's gonna happen after people get this.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew 16, 18, he says, On this rock, that revelation, I will build my church.
SPEAKER_01: You can underline it in your Bible if you want.
SPEAKER_01: And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
SPEAKER_01: And that word for church, it's super important.
SPEAKER_01: It's ecclesia, it's just a fancy way of saying an assembly.
SPEAKER_01: It's a called-out assembly, it's it's a it's a grouping.
SPEAKER_01: And so the importance of this here is Jesus isn't saying, once you get who I am, you will individually be unstoppable.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what he's saying.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, once you get who I am and you group up with other people who get who I am, and you guys are working together, you will be corporately unstoppable.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: There's a distinction there, and it's really, really important.
SPEAKER_01: Then we see what happens is it starts to grow.
SPEAKER_01: In Acts, you get Peter preaching this crazy message, and thousands of people get saved.
SPEAKER_01: And when those thousands of people get saved, they have this really big group of people that are meeting together.
SPEAKER_01: This is what it says.
SPEAKER_01: In Acts chapter 2, verse 42, it says, and they devoted, somebody say devoted.
SPEAKER_01: So there's this commitment there.
SPEAKER_01: They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, I'd underline that.
SPEAKER_01: Um, and to the fellowship, I'd underline that, to the breaking of bread, underline that, and to prayers.
SPEAKER_01: They devoted themselves to those things.
SPEAKER_01: And all came upon every soul.
SPEAKER_01: Many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.
SPEAKER_01: All who believed were together.
SPEAKER_01: They were together, and they had all things in common.
SPEAKER_01: They were selling their possessions and belongings, distributing the proceeds to all.
SPEAKER_01: There's all kinds of cool stuff happening.
SPEAKER_01: They're praising God together.
SPEAKER_01: This is all happening corporately.
SPEAKER_01: It's so cool.
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
SPEAKER_01: I love this.
SPEAKER_01: This is the origin story of the church.
SPEAKER_01: But if you notice, what's not in here, there's not any mention of any kind of formalized welcome for new people.
SPEAKER_01: They don't have tap discs.
SPEAKER_01: They're like, hey, you you just accepted Jesus during Peter's sermon.
SPEAKER_01: Tap the disc in front of you and let us know.
SPEAKER_01: They don't have that.
SPEAKER_01: They don't have uh a newcomer's class where they sign up.
SPEAKER_01: That stuff doesn't come until way, way, way later.
SPEAKER_01: What they do, they accept Jesus and they join up.
SPEAKER_01: And so as this thing's getting kicked off, there are layers of complexity and structure and organization that do start to get baked in.
SPEAKER_01: You see how the church starts to form and they they have some systems.
SPEAKER_01: So it's super organic, but as it grows, they do need to figure out what those systems are.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, they have to define how they relate to one another.
SPEAKER_01: One of the first things you see is that you've got the apostles teaching, and then there is outreach that's happening to widows in the church, and and they're getting stuck dealing with that, which is very, very important.
SPEAKER_01: And so what they say is, hey, it's not good for us to do that.
SPEAKER_01: We need to be doing this.
SPEAKER_01: Let's figure out how to arrange our organization a little bit healthier.
SPEAKER_01: And they appoint men of God, deacons, and again, these aren't like second-rate Christians.
SPEAKER_01: They're performing signs and wonders themselves.
SPEAKER_01: One of them is Stephen, who gets martyred for the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: They appoint these people to take care of some of the administration of the church.
SPEAKER_01: And so they built some structure.
SPEAKER_01: And you see this going on.
SPEAKER_01: As it grew more and more, they start to work through and determine how they figure out who's in and who's not in.
SPEAKER_01: The epistles of Paul help us figure out some of that criteria.
SPEAKER_01: Um we know from history the church works through this structure.
SPEAKER_01: And the issue is pretty big because if somebody was in the church, it meant that they shared a common fate with the church.
SPEAKER_01: And that fate was persecution.
SPEAKER_01: And nobody wants to do that alone.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody wants to do it alone.
SPEAKER_01: And so I could go through church history and how there's this progression of people deciding the ways that they group up and catechisms that they do and all this.
SPEAKER_01: But but what I think would be most helpful for us for a time is if we could just agree that having a group, i.e.
SPEAKER_01: doing it together, not doing it alone, it's always been God's intention for us.
SPEAKER_01: Always.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, if you think about it, think about the things that matter in our faith.
SPEAKER_01: How many of them can you do alone?
SPEAKER_01: There are some of them, okay?
SPEAKER_01: It's not a trick question.
SPEAKER_01: There are some things in your faith that you can do all by yourself.
SPEAKER_01: One of them is prayer, right?
SPEAKER_01: You can do individual prayer all by yourself.
SPEAKER_01: Um, another thing that you can do by yourself is reading the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: You can read the word all by yourself.
SPEAKER_01: You might not understand it very well, but you can read it.
SPEAKER_01: You can fast all alone.
SPEAKER_01: Thank goodness.
SPEAKER_01: Some of y'all fast way more than I do, and I like to eat.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm glad I don't have to fast corporately with you all the time.
SPEAKER_01: Um, isolation and solitude, literally, the definition of that is by yourself.
SPEAKER_01: So there are lots of things you can do by yourself.
SPEAKER_01: You can even become a believer by yourself if there's some supernatural means.
SPEAKER_01: We see it happen all over the Muslim world with some of our ministry partners, that we get testimonies all the time.
SPEAKER_01: But I don't think that you can actually become a mature disciple by yourself.
SPEAKER_01: If you look at Paul, when he accepted Jesus, he even needed Barnabas to kind of walk him through this and teach him what it looked like.
SPEAKER_01: So many of the disciplines that shape personal communion with God, those things can be done alone.
SPEAKER_01: But the ones that shape Christ-like character, they require interaction with other people.
SPEAKER_01: And so it's like I played baseball when I was growing up, and you could be a really good pitcher all by yourself.
SPEAKER_01: I would just be in the backyard, I'd be throwing, throwing balls at the pitch back my dad got for me.
SPEAKER_01: And I could turn into a pretty decent pitcher.
SPEAKER_01: I'm never gonna strike anybody out, though, unless I'm a part of a team, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01: So you can know Christ personally without a local church, but you cannot obey everything that Christ commands without the local church.
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm gonna give you a list of some of the things.
SPEAKER_01: This isn't exhaustive, these are just some of the things that you and I can't do without a local body of believers.
SPEAKER_01: Again, not talking about the global body, I'm talking about the local body of believers.
SPEAKER_01: Not an exhaustive list.
SPEAKER_01: So, number one, using your spiritual gifts.
SPEAKER_01: Can't use your spiritual gifts without a body of believers.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Peter 4 10, it talks about how you're supposed to use your gifts to serve other people in the body for the common good.
SPEAKER_01: You see that in Romans 12, you see it in 1 Corinthians 12, it's there.
SPEAKER_01: Confession of sin.
SPEAKER_01: You can't confess sin to other believers like James tells us to do.
SPEAKER_01: This is Jesus' brother.
SPEAKER_01: He probably knew how to do this because he probably always had to tell people how much shorter he fell than his brother Jesus, right?
SPEAKER_01: You can't do that if you don't have another person to confess to.
SPEAKER_01: You can't have corporate worship.
SPEAKER_01: We see that modeled in 1 Corinthians chapter 14.
SPEAKER_01: How when each of you comes together, there should be a psalm, a hymn, a spiritual song, you should have a revelation, a testimony, all these things.
SPEAKER_01: Can't do that by yourself.
SPEAKER_01: Can't fellowship by ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: We can't have communion in the way that it was designed by ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Communion was a meal.
SPEAKER_01: Communion isn't just a sacrament we take where we have some juice and we have some bread.
SPEAKER_01: It was a meal.
SPEAKER_01: It's the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus did it, he was with his bros.
SPEAKER_01: And then when the church did it, when there's correction on it, it's talking about when you come together and do communion, you guys aren't doing it right.
SPEAKER_01: And so Paul kind of fixes that.
SPEAKER_01: Here's one accountability.
SPEAKER_01: But that definitely can't be done without other people.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew 18 talks about how we'll do it.
SPEAKER_01: We'll talk about that here in just a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: But 1 Corinthians 5 says, when people are doing something that is wrong, when you're trying to give them some accountability and they're not accepting it, that they have to be removed from among you.
SPEAKER_01: Who or what are they supposed to be removed from if you're not even a part of something?
SPEAKER_01: That doesn't even make sense, right?
SPEAKER_01: Again, I'm kind of banging down an open door, but but but walk with me here.
SPEAKER_01: Evangelism, what do you evangelize people into?
SPEAKER_01: It's like accept Jesus, great, I'll see you later.
SPEAKER_01: That's why I love what we're doing in Mexico because there's a local church we're partnering with.
SPEAKER_01: We go out, we teach people to accept Jesus, we we we teach them what the gospel is, we pray for them, and then we say, here's a body of believers you should belong to.
SPEAKER_01: They're not gonna commute from Aguas Calientes to Stafford, Virginia to be a part of our fellowship, right?
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't work.
SPEAKER_01: Generosity, we we do that towards other people.
SPEAKER_01: And then just I'm just gonna give you one big blanket.
SPEAKER_01: There's a bunch of one another statements that you see all over the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: You can't love one another, forgive one another, encourage one another, admonish one another, bear with one another, honor one another, teach one another, comfort one another, pray for one another, spur one another on, submit to one another, welcome one another, build one another up.
SPEAKER_01: Those are all things from the Word.
SPEAKER_01: You can look every single one of them up.
SPEAKER_01: You can't do any of those if you don't have a body of believers that you're committed to.
SPEAKER_01: So I hope that we can at least agree that all those together kinds of things they should be happening with healthy developing believers.
SPEAKER_01: And the connection that a lot of people make, it's an erroneous connection that they make is they're like, yeah, Pastor Jake, yeah, I'm a part of the global body of believers.
SPEAKER_01: And I'll do that along with them.
SPEAKER_01: The truth is that sounds great in theory, but it doesn't actually work in practice.
SPEAKER_01: There is no way that you're gonna corporately worship with 2.5 billion Christians all over the world.
SPEAKER_01: You're just not gonna do it.
SPEAKER_01: Um, you don't use your spiritual gifts for them unless you have some sort of ministry that I'm not aware of, which praise God, if you do, that's super cool.
SPEAKER_01: Uh you don't confess your sins to other people all over the world.
SPEAKER_01: Like I don't just go to some random church and, like, hey, I need to confess my sins, but it's a command in James that I'm supposed to do it.
SPEAKER_01: I'm definitely not accountable to people in the global church, right?
SPEAKER_01: I don't fellowship with them, I don't take communion with them.
SPEAKER_01: There's no global gathering that that's that I can be a part of that's gonna account for how each one of these disciplines are supposed to be expressed.
SPEAKER_01: So the only reasonable conclusion is that this has to be done as a part of a local body of believers, a flock that meets together.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, that's the way Jesus and the apostles describe the church, is as a flock.
SPEAKER_01: Acts 20, verse 28.
SPEAKER_01: Paul, he's about to uh to be taken away, and so what he does is he encourages the elders that are there at Ephesus, at a specific group of believers.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.
SPEAKER_01: So there are flocks and there are shepherds.
SPEAKER_01: Shepherds are responsible for the care, for the feeding, and for the protection.
SPEAKER_01: And so um, I'm just gonna do an aside here.
SPEAKER_01: It might sound kind of self-serving, me talking about commitment to and connection with the local church.
SPEAKER_01: Um because because I have the role of the chief shepherd here.
SPEAKER_01: Uh Frankly, it would actually be way easier for me if nobody identified as a part of the local body.
SPEAKER_01: I could just get up here every week and give a 35-minute TED talk, be like, peace out, deal with all those problems on your own.
SPEAKER_01: I don't have to worry about it.
SPEAKER_01: I did my job.
SPEAKER_01: But that's not the way that it works.
SPEAKER_01: See, there's a responsibility that comes along with us being committed to one another.
SPEAKER_01: And I love the the word there that he says, pay careful attention into all the flock in which the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't say of which you are over serious.
SPEAKER_01: He says, in which.
SPEAKER_01: So there's like this mutual submission that shepherds are also a part of this flock.
SPEAKER_01: Like we're doing this together, guys.
SPEAKER_01: All of us.
SPEAKER_01: And so, 1 Peter 5, this is so good.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Peter 5, verse 2, he says, Shepherd the flock, this is another letter to another body.
SPEAKER_01: Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you, not for shameful gain, but eagerly, not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.
SPEAKER_01: If I was underlining someone, something I'd underlined, among you.
SPEAKER_01: And then in verse 3, he repeats the language.
SPEAKER_01: He says, in your charge.
SPEAKER_01: He's talking about this group.
SPEAKER_01: So there are sheep of God that are from other flocks that I don't worry about, and you shouldn't worry about them either.
SPEAKER_01: As my wife says, not my circus, not my monkeys.
SPEAKER_01: It's totally fine that there are other flocks, and we should cheer them on.
SPEAKER_01: There's a particular call, though, for sheep and shepherds to have a flock.
SPEAKER_01: And then there are responsibilities that each of those roles have to each other.
SPEAKER_01: And one of the dangers of not noticing this is that as a shepherd, you can start worrying about what other pastors or other shepherds are not doing, and then get involved in all their business.
SPEAKER_01: Or you start worrying what they are doing, and then you think that you have to do it as well.
SPEAKER_01: Hebrews tells us that overseers are going to be held accountable for how they lead.
SPEAKER_01: I actually don't think God is going to hold me accountable, and you probably would agree with this for what the Methodist or the Lutheran church down the street is doing, right?
SPEAKER_01: So that verse doesn't apply to those other flocks, it applies to us here.
SPEAKER_01: And similarly, there are a ton of sheep who never commit to any flock.
SPEAKER_01: And as a result, what happens is they just kind of float around and they never get the blessing of expressing their faith as a part of a body.
SPEAKER_01: So, so hopefully I've helped you guys understand that.
SPEAKER_01: We agree, I hope.
SPEAKER_01: So, how do we determine though, like systematically, what mechanism is there for us to determine who is among us?
SPEAKER_01: How do we identify that you're part of us and then we're committed to you, and all of us are kind of doing this Christian life together?
SPEAKER_01: And the clearest and the most simple way is one that lots of other churches in America do, and what manna churches actually across the military highway, which we're a part of, there are multiple uh city sites, microsites, and multi-sites, is we allow people to self-identify as members of our fellowship.
SPEAKER_01: We allow them to say, Yeah, I'm a part of this.
SPEAKER_01: And so, thus far, when it comes to manna church and how we've done things, this really wasn't necessary.
SPEAKER_01: You know, we were kind of doing the whole evolutionary progression the same way that the the church in Acts was doing.
SPEAKER_01: Um, identifying members was simple.
SPEAKER_01: They're just the people that showed up.
SPEAKER_01: Pretty easy, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's not that hard.
SPEAKER_01: But but as the church grows, it's really helpful for us to adjust and start to adopt some new systems and assist as we as we advance the gospel together.
SPEAKER_01: So, what we're gonna do is we're we're we're gonna start implementing membership here.
SPEAKER_01: Really like a fellowship covenant, a fellowship commitment, really.
SPEAKER_01: And so um for this week and for the next two weeks, we're gonna give you a chance to do something at the end of service and just self-identify that you're a member here.
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like I'm writing you a little note and saying, hey, we like you.
SPEAKER_01: Do you like us?
SPEAKER_01: Check yes or no.
SPEAKER_01: Just let us know where you're at.
SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
SPEAKER_01: Um and so we're gonna talk about what it means because it's important for you to understand, and I think I should start by clarifying what it doesn't mean, okay?
SPEAKER_01: Because this is really, really important.
SPEAKER_01: Um, the first thing that this doesn't mean is we are not saying, if you're saying no, I'm not a part of the of the fellowship here, we're not saying you're not a believer.
SPEAKER_01: All right?
SPEAKER_01: That's really, really important.
SPEAKER_01: Um, I've said it before, we're not in a gang, we're not a cult, we are a family, though.
SPEAKER_01: So it's okay to identify if we're a part of the family or not, but we're not a gang.
SPEAKER_01: All right?
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't mean you're not a believer if you're not a member here.
SPEAKER_01: We're not even saying that we are better than all the other churches out there.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what we're saying.
SPEAKER_01: Um we're not saying that you can't attend or you can't serve if you haven't committed uh that this is your fellowship.
SPEAKER_01: Like you can date people before you get engaged.
SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
SPEAKER_01: All right?
SPEAKER_01: That's that's totally fine to do.
SPEAKER_01: We are not saying that we are altogether different from every other flock.
SPEAKER_01: What we are saying is we are distinct.
SPEAKER_01: So again, we're we're not necessarily saying there's a difference, we're saying there's a distinction.
SPEAKER_01: So you and I can have the exact same model of car, right?
SPEAKER_01: But they're distinct cars.
SPEAKER_01: There's no difference between the cars, there's just a distinction.
SPEAKER_01: Your car is not my car, and my car is not your car.
SPEAKER_01: And so what we're saying is there, we're just we're just trying to help make a distinction.
SPEAKER_01: Um, both cars can be super awesome.
SPEAKER_01: That's great.
SPEAKER_01: So membership also doesn't mean uniformity.
SPEAKER_01: So we're not looking to have a bunch of cookie cutter Christians who look and think identically there's enough space in the nature and the expression of the Spirit of God that we can have a diversity of giftings and a diversity of passions without being exactly uniform.
SPEAKER_01: We do want unity, though.
SPEAKER_01: And so if I could, if I could describe this for you, if I could put kind of a definition up, I would say this membership at its best is how we are saying these are the people with whom I intend to live out the commands of Jesus, and these are the leaders under whose care I will willingly place myself.
SPEAKER_01: That's what each of you get to decide.
SPEAKER_01: It's not under compulsion, nobody's domineering it.
SPEAKER_01: We're just giving you the opportunity to opt in and say that's what you want to do.
SPEAKER_01: And so as you're thinking about this, there's some questions that you might want to ask.
SPEAKER_01: And I want I want to help you with this.
SPEAKER_01: Um you you really need to you really need to figure out is there compatibility?
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: When you're dating somebody, that's what you want to know.
SPEAKER_01: Before you go deeper into the relationship with them, you want to know, are we actually compatible?
SPEAKER_01: And it's the same way when it comes to a body of believers.
SPEAKER_01: There's some questions you need to ask, some more important than others.
SPEAKER_01: The first one, the most important one, is this do we share the same values?
SPEAKER_01: When you're dating somebody, you've got to know if you share the same values before you can go further with them.
SPEAKER_01: And so for us, what we're gonna share with you at the end of service is our statement of faith.
SPEAKER_01: And you can look at that and you can determine if it bears witness to what the Spirit of God is actually saying, if it's true to the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Alright?
SPEAKER_01: Um, another thing you should ask yourself is do we enjoy the same things?
SPEAKER_01: I I may have somebody that we have the exact same values, we're just probably not going to be in the same flock because they enjoy different things than I enjoy.
SPEAKER_01: I like going out in the mountains, I like hiking, I like mountain biking, I like playing pickleball and sports and everything.
SPEAKER_01: And if they just like to read books and that's all they do, it's like, you're a great person, but we probably just have different values.
SPEAKER_01: And there are different churches that have different emphasis on different things.
SPEAKER_01: And so we're very clear about what our emphasis is here at Manna Church.
SPEAKER_01: We do three things: love God, love each other, love the world.
SPEAKER_01: We do inspiring worship experiences, we do life-giving small groups, and we do world-changing outreach.
SPEAKER_01: Those three things.
SPEAKER_01: If it's one of those three, we're in.
SPEAKER_01: If it's not, we're not in.
SPEAKER_01: And if you got something else that you're like, man, I'm super passionate about this, if it can live under there, this is probably gonna be a great church for you.
SPEAKER_01: If it can't, that's okay.
SPEAKER_01: There's another flock that's probably gonna be a great place for you.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that God would have that.
SPEAKER_01: You gotta figure out what are the deal breakers in a relationship.
SPEAKER_01: You know?
SPEAKER_01: Like I could go all kinds of directions with this, but I won't.
SPEAKER_01: Um here's an example.
SPEAKER_01: If you go to a church and it's like they do a two and a half, three-hour service, or they do services on Friday, or they do services in the evening, and you're like, I just can't do that.
SPEAKER_01: That may be a deal breaker for you.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that they're a bad church, it just means that they do something different.
SPEAKER_01: There are people who have actually disfellowshipped, and I use that word, it's probably too strong of a word, they've just decided that Manna Stafford is not their church because we don't do communion every single week.
SPEAKER_01: That's a really important value to them, and that's a deal breaker.
SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna do communion every Sunday, probably.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
SPEAKER_01: That's a deal breaker for them.
SPEAKER_01: Not a huge deal.
SPEAKER_01: Another question this is important when you're in a relationship, how do you handle conflict?
SPEAKER_01: Because guess what?
SPEAKER_01: There's gonna be conflict.
SPEAKER_01: When you get people together, there's gonna be conflict.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, that's probably the primary reason why people don't do this is because they've experienced conflict in the past, so therefore they don't want to do this anymore.
SPEAKER_01: They're like, I'm done.
SPEAKER_01: So do you know that Jesus actually expected there would be conflict in the church?
SPEAKER_01: He sort of preloaded this idea.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew 18, I mentioned it before.
SPEAKER_01: He talks about if you have a problem with your brother, go to them.
SPEAKER_01: If they don't listen, grab another brother and go to them.
SPEAKER_01: And then verse 17, he says, if he refuses to listen even to the two brothers, tell it to the church.
SPEAKER_01: The assembly.
SPEAKER_01: He assumes there's gonna be assembly, and he assumes there's gonna be conflict, and there's a way that you deal with it.
SPEAKER_01: You want to know how we handle conflict?
SPEAKER_01: Like this.
SPEAKER_01: We talk to people, we don't talk about people.
SPEAKER_01: That's just what we do.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: So so those are some things that you should know before you get involved in a church.
SPEAKER_01: And so, if you're gonna commit to this, I think it's also important to ask where are the boundaries?
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: Where are the boundaries of the relationship?
SPEAKER_01: So, what what I would love for you guys to do is humor me for a moment here, and everybody take out your phones if you can.
SPEAKER_01: I can see most of you.
SPEAKER_01: Take out your phones and do me a favor, uh, husbands and wives, both of you, this individual thing, and just tap the seat back that's near you that has the disc, and there's gonna be a fellowship commitment form.
SPEAKER_01: And and don't fill it out now.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna get to it, but I want to kind of explain some of the fine print, right?
SPEAKER_01: The the terms and conditions that nobody really reads, and you just say, Yeah, I read it, and you skip on, okay?
SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna say it, it's gonna be on the internet, it's forever.
SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah.
SPEAKER_01: So, so there are some things that that we all are gonna commit to, and then there are some things that you personally will be committing to if you say, like, I want to be a part of this fellowship.
SPEAKER_01: So, what are the things that you're committing to us?
SPEAKER_01: What are the things that you're saying when you say, I want to be a part of this fellowship here?
SPEAKER_01: I'd like I'd like to be a member at Manna Church in Stafford.
SPEAKER_01: Number one, it's really simple.
SPEAKER_01: It's to honor Jesus' commands.
SPEAKER_01: If you're here, you probably want to do that.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you're not ready to do that just yet.
SPEAKER_01: And you're here just kind of exploring.
SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
SPEAKER_01: And what we're not saying is we're not saying you have to be perfect, we're saying you have to pursue Jesus' commands.
SPEAKER_01: All right, that's what we're saying.
SPEAKER_01: Uh the second thing is we're gonna submit to sound teaching.
SPEAKER_01: If you want to be a part of this fellowship, you're gonna submit to sound teaching.
SPEAKER_01: Sound being underlined and important.
SPEAKER_01: All right, and that's outlined in our statement of faith.
SPEAKER_01: It's not everything that we teach on, but it's it's it's the biggies.
SPEAKER_01: Um the other thing is you're gonna commit to be present.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: I I I know you guys are gonna miss Sunday.
SPEAKER_01: I I know sometimes they're gonna there are gonna be Sundays that pop up.
SPEAKER_01: You're on vacation, you got something crazy going on.
SPEAKER_01: We just want you to be present enough that when you miss, you are missed.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: We just want to be, we just want to miss you if you're not here.
SPEAKER_01: You know, Jesus, it's funny, Jesus never had to wonder if John was gonna show up to the outreach they were doing.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: He never had to wonder, like, hey, where's Peter?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, uh Peter's out for the week, right?
SPEAKER_01: His guys were there, they were present with him, and so we want you to be present.
SPEAKER_01: Um, the other one would be to prioritize the fellowship's needs.
SPEAKER_01: We want to consider others as more significant than ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: We want to honor others, and so that's one of the things that we're gonna be committing to is we're gonna care about other people's needs in the body.
SPEAKER_01: I know every single one of us have needs, and because every single one of us have needs, we need to be thinking about that.
SPEAKER_01: That's a pretty short list, but there's a lot of stuff to unpack there.
SPEAKER_01: So let's think about the other side.
SPEAKER_01: Like, what do you get out of this?
SPEAKER_01: What are the things that we as a as a team of leaders, me as a the chief shepherd, and and our church, we're committing to you.
SPEAKER_01: If you decide this is where I'm gonna fellowship, first one, we're gonna give you an opportunity to the best of our ability to walk out all of the one-another of scripture.
SPEAKER_01: We wanna let you apply the scripture to your life.
SPEAKER_01: And we want to find opportunities to do that, to to pray, to worship, to evangelize, to, to, to meet in small groups, all those things.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna commit, and this is a biggie, y'all.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna commit to being responsible for you.
SPEAKER_01: One of the questions I I've asked myself as we were chewing on like whether we do this or not, is I'm reading Hebrews 13, and it says leaders are gonna have to give an account before God to the people that are a part of their fellowship.
SPEAKER_01: If I look at our database of active members, and this has been scrubbed multiple times, we have 1,345 names in there.
SPEAKER_01: I wonder, am I accountable?
SPEAKER_01: Are we accountable to God for 1,345 people?
SPEAKER_01: Probably not, right?
SPEAKER_01: So this is just kind of allowing us to understand the scope of work that we're responsible for here because we do want to take responsibility for you.
SPEAKER_01: We want to love you and shepherd you and care for you in the best ways possible.
SPEAKER_01: Another thing, you know, like we're we're gonna be with you.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna do life together as a as a church body, as a family.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna pray for you.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna set an example for you, and we're gonna be accountable when we fall short of that example to be to be corrected.
SPEAKER_01: That's really, really important.
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's one of the things that is missing a lot of times in churches.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna stay true to our mission.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't know what our mission is, go through growth track.
SPEAKER_01: First step, next step, leader step.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna understand what our mission here at Manna Church is.
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna equip you.
SPEAKER_01: That means we're gonna give you training and we're gonna give you opportunities to walk out that training.
SPEAKER_01: That goes back to the first thing.
SPEAKER_01: And then this is super important too, because a lot of people they equip folks, and then leaders get threatened by the capacity of other people in the body.
SPEAKER_01: Man, I want to see you go far in the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I hope you surpass any of the ministries that we do here in Stafford.
SPEAKER_01: If God's got a call on your life to have some crazy, amazing, powerful ministry, I want to see that happen.
SPEAKER_01: Like, I want you to be successful.
SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna commit to equipping you and then releasing you when you're ready.
SPEAKER_01: We want to help you get ready.
SPEAKER_01: We're not gonna do it before you're ready because that would be wrong, right?
SPEAKER_01: I'm not giving my 11-year-old keys to the car yet.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna wait until I've given him some training, and then I'm gonna be like, man, I'm so excited for you to get behind the wheel and you to do this yourself.
SPEAKER_01: We want that for you.
SPEAKER_01: And then the last thing is to challenge you when necessary.
SPEAKER_01: And always, always, always have your best interest at heart.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to the Mana Church Stafford Podcast.
SPEAKER_00: If you would like to connect with us, you can find us on the web at manastafford.church or download the Mana Church app to listen to our new episodes as they become available.
SPEAKER_00: Make sure to subscribe to our podcast.
SPEAKER_00: We would also love to meet you in person.
SPEAKER_00: If you are local, our services take place each Sunday at 10 a.m.
SPEAKER_00: We pray you have an amazing week, and we'll see you next time.