The Apprentice Funnel | Luke 5:9-11, Acts 4:13

Luke 5:9-11, Acts 4:13  |  Cody Hale

Transcript

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If you have your Bibles, would you go ahead and turn with me this morning to Luke chapter 5? Remain standing as we read God's Word together. We're going to do a one-off from our series in Philippians to talk about the role of serving together as part of our discipleship. It's going to be a different kind of sermon. Typically, I like to be in one text and walk you all the way through. But this morning we're really going to do an exposition of all of Luke and all of Acts, but it won't be long. I promise. It won't be. Don't get too nervous. So we'll start this morning by reading the beginning of the discipleship journey. Discipleship, a major theme in Luke and Acts. It says in chapter 5, verse 1, on one occasion, while the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he was standing by the lake of Genesaret, and he saw two boats by the lake, but the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon's, he asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat. And when he had finished speaking, he said of Simon, Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch. And Simon said, Master, we toiled all night and took nothing, but at your word I will let down the nets. And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking. They singled signaled to their partners and other boats to come and to help them, and they came and filled both the boats so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. For he and all who were with him were astonished at the catch of fish that they had taken. And so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon, and Jesus said to Simon, Do not be afraid. From now on you will be catching men. And when they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed him. Let's pray the Lord together. Heavenly Father, this morning we come and we praise your name that you are building your church, that you are still calling to yourself the redeemed. God, we thank you for Stephen and for Solomon for the testimonies that they've given this morning to your faithfulness. And Lord, we look at our own lives and we praise your name for our own testimonies and the stories that you've given to us. And Lord, help us not to allow our affections to cool for your glory and to forget or to become numb to all that you've done. But Lord, again, draw us to the cross. And as you draw us to the cross, draw us to greater faithfulness in you. God, we offer to you serve one Sunday, not as an event, not as a program, but as an offering of our lives. That Lord, we would be found holy and acceptable to you, and that our worship would be pleasing. We ask these things now in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. I want to start this morning by asking you two questions. Who do you want to be as a disciple of Jesus 10 years from now? And who do you want the orchard church to be 10 years from now? What's interesting is that those questions are probably a lot more related than we might believe at first blush. One of the things that I've really come to appreciate is I love to hear the stories of the early days of the orchard. I love to hear about the St. George days and the Briarcrest days and hearing about how everybody was pitching in, you were setting up chairs and taking care of the kids and just kind of figuring out, kind of building the airplane while you're flying it and doing whatever it took to be able to get it up and off the ground. And I love to hear that because inevitably every single person I talk to says the same thing. Every single one of them. The season where you stepped out by faith collectively is the season in which you grew in your faith most personally. Because the church isn't a service that you attend. The church is someone that you are. So as we look ahead to the next 10 years, one of the responsibilities that I feel is that we need to recapture the pioneering spirit that was at the forefront of the beginning of the orchard church. Y'all, we have some big dreams around here. Some big dreams around here. Like we dream of planning churches all across the Mid-South. Can you imagine being a part of something like that? We dream that the Lord would allow us to go and find struggling churches and be a part of their revitalization. We dream that the Lord would see fit to allow us to be a part of the raising up of a new generation of pastors and a new generation of missionaries and a new generation of disciple makers. We dream, think about what this would look like 10 years from now, that we could adopt in our congregation 50 children. That 50 children right now, without moms, without dads, without knowing where they fit in the world, could fit here. We could hear their baptism testimonies. We dream of like what would it be like if every single morning of the week, every single day of the week, all over Germantown and all over Collierville, there were disciple-making relationships that were taking place, calling people to a deeper and more abiding relationship with Jesus. But here's what we know, y'all. Big vision doesn't just happen. It doesn't just happen because we get excited about it, it doesn't just happen because we want it to. Big vision grows out of small, faithful steps through ordinary people on ordinary Sundays like today. It comes from doing what has to be done today, from setting up chairs to caring for children to discipling teenagers, so that we're ready for what God wants to do here in the big picture and in the long term. It's about joining together, all of us, to be the healthiest church that we can be, by being the healthiest Christians that we can be. And that it's from that health that bold vision ultimately grows. That's what today's all about. That's what serve one is all about. That's why there are booths out that have been out in the lobby the last couple of weeks. That's why there's a commitment card there in your chair. It's about taking the small steps toward health now that can lead to big kingdom, even generational impact over the next 10 years. You know, as we saw there in Luke chapter 5, our introduction to the disciples is not exactly the most flattering one, right? Here are these disciples, and Jesus goes out and he says, All right, here's what I want you to do. I want you to go and drop your nets. All of them are like, You gotta be kidding me, dude. Like, we've been cleaning these nets for hours. You want us to go and start over? And so they're skeptical. Then they go out and they like, all right, master, if you say do it, we'll do it. And they drop their nets, and the nets become so filled that they begin to break, they begin to sink their boats, and that skepticism is immediately displaced with cowardice as they all become afraid. But Jesus looks at them and he says, Do not be afraid. From now on, you will be catching men. That is, here is Jesus. And despite their skepticism, and despite their cowardice, he is calling them forward as ordinary people to join him in the proclamation and revealing of the kingdom. So it's stark when you come into the book of Acts and you see this remarkable transformation that's taken place by the time we get to Acts chapter 4. You have these once cowardly disciples, and now they're standing before the Sanhedrin, the very same men that had yelled, crucified at Jesus, and had had him nailed to the cross. And here they hold both Paul and uh Peter and James's fate in their own hands. And these fishermen who were skeptical, these fishermen that were nervous at a large catch of fish, now they stand before the mighty Sanhedrin and they call them murderers and call for them to repent. And the Sanhedrin is astonished because they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and they perceived that they were common, uneducated men. They were astonished. So the question that I want us to ask this morning, as we kind of look and make our way through the Gospel of Luke and into the book of Acts, is what happens between these two verses? What happens between the verse when Jesus meets the disciples and they're nervous and skeptical and afraid, and when they stand before the Sanhedrin, and the Sanhedrin is astonished because they are such bold men to be such ordinary men. Now, of course, we know that in Acts chapter 2 they receive the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit brings about great power and great authority. But do you know what the Holy Spirit does ultimately? He applies to their lives, to their character, and to their hearts the very training that they had received to Jesus. He applies to their nature what Christ had been training in them over the prior three years. You see, the Sanhedrin recognized that they had been with Jesus. That they had been with Jesus. That Jesus had been training them and preparing them for this moment. You see, Jesus didn't just teach people, He trained them. There's a difference, isn't there? He brought them along step by step, gradually over time, increasing their responsibility and increasing their exposure so that when the big moments came and the hard moments came and the scary moments came, they wouldn't, they would be unflappable and be able to face down through the power of the Spirit, applying the training of Jesus to do what God had called them to do. And that's what he's inviting us to. See, what I want us to do here at the orchard is to begin emulating the process of Jesus to prepare disciples to live on mission for him. I want us to begin emulating, just like we would if you're gonna be a teacher or a doctor or any other way of life, a process of apprenticeship where we're gradually increasing exposure and increasing responsibility to help you acclimate to where God has called you to serve in his kingdom for his glory. And maybe this morning you would say, I'm like the disciples. I'm nervous, I'm skeptical, I'm afraid, I'm skittish, I'm cowardly. That's the story of every single follower of Jesus, y'all. That's where we all start. But Jesus is gradually, through his spirit, through his word, drawing and calling us forward. And so we'll learn this through a quick walkthrough of life of Luke and Acts, what I call the apprenticeship funnel. Now I'm gonna draw this a little bit. Y'all, y'all bear with my gray artwork here, all right? That's not a tornado, that is a funnel. All right? I don't care what you say. And the way this starts is you start at the top of the funnel with the invitation of Jesus. And the funnel is leading us to a single location, which is to build the kingdom and to thrive. To build the kingdom, to serve in mission, and to thrive as healthy believers personally and intentionally. So at the beginning, what I want you to see is that what first Jesus starts with in the funnel, what we see with his disciples, is he. I'm sorry, I wrote the wrong thing there. Let me erase that. He invites us to be in the room. To be in the room. In Luke 5, Jesus looks at these fishermen and he says, from now on, you'll be catching men. Matthew frames it up a little bit differently. He remembers Jesus as saying, Follow me, and I will make you into fishers of men. In other words, this is not who you are right now. This is not what you have the capability of doing, but this is who you're going to be, and you're going to be fishers of men because I'm going to do all the making. I'm going to transform you into someone, into something that you're not. And so how do the disciples respond? The disciples put down their nets, they leave behind their jobs and careers, they leave behind everything that's normal and ordinary to them, everything that we would consider to be sensible, and they begin to follow after Jesus. And this teaches us a lot about the invitation of Jesus. The invitation of Jesus into discipleship is not an invitation into a book club. It's not an invitation into a church service. It's not even an invitation into a church program. The invitation of Jesus is to come and to share life with Jesus and sharing life with Jesus to share life with his disciples. It's life on life to be in the room with him as he teaches and as he faces opposition, as he deals with suffering, as he tries to help others. It's watching, in other words, how a man of God applies the truth to his own life in real life and in real term, so that you can see how this truth can also be applied in your life. One of the things that I've learned through the years is that discipleship is a lot more caught than it is taught. I think this is exactly the book of Proverbs is written primarily to young people. And I think this is why the wise man in Proverbs chapter 13, 20, verse 20 says this. He says, Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise. But the companion of fools will suffer harm. That is, we grow mature and wiser, not just by being exposed to the right truth. We grow mature and wiser by being exposed to the right people. That a significant aspect of your life and your maturation as a person and as a believer in Jesus is to decide what kind of person that you want to be, what kind of disciple of Jesus that you want to be, and then surround yourself with people who are those kinds of people, to find yourself in a room with those kinds of people. So one of the main questions of our personal discipleship is how do I find myself in the right rooms with the right people so that Jesus can make me who I am meant to be? How do I push myself out of my bubble and outside of my comfort zone so that I can have my thinking, my values, and my priorities shaped more into the thinking, the values, and the priorities of Jesus? And then as a church, we have a question, we have a responsibility to zoom out and ask from an organizational and institutional standpoint. How is it, if our responsibility as the leaders of the church is to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, how is it that we facilitate and create systems and environments that facilitate this kind of growth, to help the right kinds of people to get in the right rooms with one another so that they can begin to chase after Jesus together? This really characterizes the early stage of Jesus' discipling of these fishermen. But it's important to recognize that Jesus doesn't let them just be in the room with him very long. Eventually, he begins to progress them. As a matter of fact, quite quickly, he begins to correct, to progress them. He moves from just being in the room to having them what I would call test the waters. This might be my favorite stage of this. He recognizes that it's one thing to amenate on Sunday, and it's another thing to live it out when your kids are driving you crazy on Tuesday night. That he understands that when the bullets start flying and you start getting punched in the mouth, as Mike Tyson would say, you lose all of your plans, right? And so he does what a good teacher does. A good teacher doesn't just fill your mind with information, they help you to develop the muscles and the instincts to actually be able to apply it in real life. That's what they do, and parents, you know you do this with your children as you're helping them develop, you allow them to fail in a controlled environment and at a rate that they can actually withstand. That you create environments where they have to live with the consequences of their decisions and live with the hardships of life so that they develop resilience and character, so that they can develop and understand where it is they're coming short. And so they can recognize that they don't have all of the resources that they need for life in and of themselves. It humbles them, doesn't it? Think about how Jesus does this in the Gospel of Luke. In chapter 8, uh, Jesus goes and he sends his disciples and he's with his disciples out on a boat. And Jesus, being the chill guy he is, decides he's gonna go out down beneath deck and he's gonna just take a nap. And so Jesus is down beneath the deck and he's taking a nap, and all of his disciples are up there and a storm comes and the boat begins to rock. And I don't know if Jesus thought it was a noise machine or waterbed or what he had going on, but he doesn't come above board, right? And all of the disciples are up on top deck and they're baling water and they're panicking and they're trying to figure out how they're gonna save the ship. When finally somebody says, Hey, y'all go get Jesus up, go get, we need some help up here, right? And Jesus comes up and he has the strangest response possible, right? He doesn't grab a bucket and start bailing water, he doesn't start giving great captains advice, he doesn't tell them what to do with the mass or the sail or with the paddles. He says, Why are you afraid? Oh, you of little faith. Oh, you of little faith. Where is your faith? He's drawing out of them the recognition they can't make it alone. They can't make it in their own strength, they can't make it by their own wisdom, they can't make it with their own resources, but they have everything that they need with them in the boat so long as they have Jesus. Chapter 9, he takes this a step further. This is my favorite one. Here's Jesus, and he's teaching 20,000 people out on a hot desert day. And he's out there, and the crowds are thronging, and they're there, and the disciples come to Jesus in their panic. And they're like, Jesus, these people are gonna die. Now, I think this is probably a little bit exaggerated. Maybe they were a dramatic bunch. I kind of get that vibe sometimes. And they're like, these people are gonna die out here, they're gonna starve to death, they're gonna, they're gonna bake in the sun. You remember what Jesus says to them? He looks at Andrew and he says, Well, you feed them. Now, I always imagine that he's out there, I would put, and he's like pulling his pockets out. He's like, With what, dude? Like, what do you want me to feed him with? I don't have anything. I I don't have a Big Mac, I don't have a happy meal. Like, what do you want me to go with, right? What's Jesus doing? He's creating an environment that purposely stresses out his disciples. They already, he, Jesus knows they don't have it, what they need to be able to feed this crowd of people. He's allowing them to fail in a controlled environment so that he can use it as a teaching moment to help them recognize that in and of themselves, they will never have the resources that they need. They will not be able to perform their ministry or live their lives or be the disciples they're called to be by trying to live according to what they have on their person. No, it comes from Christ outside of them. Now, sandwiched between these two stories is another story that Jesus sends the 12 out, but this time he sends them out with his authority and with his blessing and with his name. And when they go, they're able to heal the sick and see that when they go, not in their own strength, but in the strength of Jesus, now they're able to do what he has called for them to do. So they learn in their power and strength and wisdom, they can't do anything. They're powerless. But with Christ and through Christ, whatever he puts before them to do, they're able to do. Whatever he calls for them to do, they're able to do. He's allowing them to experience frustration and failure at a rate that won't prove fatal. So I think what we see here, and I want you to test this when you go home for your personal Bible study. Again, I told you that in the gospel of Luke, discipleship is a major theme. So go and read the gospel of Luke and you test this. A teaching strategy of Jesus is begins to emerge. That the teaching strategy of Jesus is to send them, to stress them out, to bring them back, and to teach them about it. Send them, stress them, bring them back and teach them. Send them, stress them, bring them back and teach them. Why is he doing this? Because we need resistance training. That's the only way we begin to develop the muscles that we need and the reflexes that we need and the instincts that we need is to recognize that we don't have it and we haven't developed it. And the way that it's developed is by something pushing back on us, something stressing us out, something drawing us nearer. Let me ask you this morning. Where is the status quo of your faith being challenged right now? Where is the status quo of your faith being challenged right now? And now let's zoom out even more, especially leaders of the church, let's zoom out even more. What environments do we have here at the Orchard Church that challenges the status quo and calls people out of their comfort zone and out of what's easy? Not so that we freak them out, not so that we overwhelm them, so that we create the kinds of environments that allowed for controlled failure that their faith wouldn't be stifled, but ultimately would be invigorated. I remember when I was 17 or 18, my pastor and my youth pastor, they knew that I had expressed a desire for ministry. And so back then we had Sunday night services, and they came to me and they said, All right, we're gonna let you preach on a Sunday night. And they did. And it was awful. I mean, like, I can't even begin to describe to you how awful it was. I was working at Wend Dixie at the time, and I had befriended a retired pastor that came in to the store a lot named Bob, and I'd invited Bob to come and to hear this sermon. And so the next time I saw him at the store, I went and say, Bob, Bob, thank you so much for coming. It meant the world to me. What did you think? This is a direct quote. If I'm lying, I'm dying. Bob said, Cody, do you stutter for effect? And I thought, no, Bob, I'm just that awful all on my own without any help. Thank you. But when I met, when I sat down to meet with my pastor, And my youth pastor to review the Sunday night, much to my surprise, they did not recommend me go and pursue a career as a rodeo clown, right? They came and they said, buddy, that took a lot of guts, you know? Like that took a lot of guts. And we see potential. Now, now you talk, you sit try to say too much, you talk too fast, the baggy t-shirt, not a great call, right? But we see potential. So here's what we're gonna do is we're gonna schedule another Sunday night, and you're gonna preach again. Except this time we're gonna work with you on how to develop a sermon and on how to deliver a sermon. And I left that conversation, and y'all, honestly, honestly, I had failed. I had failed. But I left that conversation having failed and not feeling like a failure. And so my faith wasn't stifled, it was invigorated, and I was called forward. This is what we're working more and more to have as part of the orchard church. You have to have environments where your faith is tested, where you fail, where you get a little bit stressed, where you have to come through in the clutch. Because it's when the boat is rocking and the wind is blowing and the rain is pouring. That's when you learn the resources that you actually have in the person of Christ and in the fullness of the Holy Spirit. See, once you've been in the room and you've tested the waters, now it's time for you to begin to learn the ropes. Now, as we're talking about this, I want to remind you this is a funnel. It's not a staircase, right? And that's on purpose. On a staircase, you kind of know where you stand, don't you? You know you're on this step or that step. You can kind of see and notice your progress or maybe even your regression. But a funnel is more fluid, it's more dynamic, it's more subtle than that. A lot of the times you don't even know that you're moving toward your goal until you look back in retrospect. You don't even know how much the Lord is working in your life and changing your faith and transforming your nature until you look back five years later or 10 years later, you're like, wow, you know, like I feel pretty awful a lot of the time. I feel like I'm a basket case, but man, look how far the Lord has brought me, right? In Luke chapter 10, Jesus sends out 72 of his disciples and he sends them out two by two. When he sends them out, he tells them two things. He says, first of all, the harvest is plentiful. The harvest is plentiful. But though the harvest is plentiful, the fields are filled with wolves. It says quite literally that Jesus sent them out as lambs among the wolves. And so they went out and they faced opposition. And they faced hardship and they endured suffering. And you know what it says? It says they came back thrilled to death. It actually says that when they returned, they returned with joy, and they returned with joy because now they were able to command the demons and had never had the authority or the ability to do anything like that before. They're learning the word ropes. What's Jesus doing there? Jesus is giving them a foretaste of the model of ministry that they will experience. He's giving them a foretaste of what it's going to feel like when he ascends to the right hand of the Father and they are there to now go and establish the church and the kingdom going forward. He wants them to know how ministry is done and why ministry is worth it. He's going to send them out as sheep among the wolves to go and to build his church, and they will suffer. Every one of them will suffer. They will all die as martyrs of the faith. But though they suffer, the Lord Himself will supply them in their suffering and sustain them through their suffering so that their suffering actually becomes a means, not an obstacle to the advancement of the ministry that he's called them to. And they will ultimately find greater joy in their suffering than the emperor could possibly find in the opulence of his greatest palace. That Jesus is here and he's teaching them both the how and the why of ministry. He's setting their expectations and establishing for them the model. We need that, don't we? We need that. I'm so thankful that I had that opportunity. When I was 21, I got to go and serve under a pastor by the name of Rick Reeves. We called him Brother Rick. All right. Now, Brother Rick was in Calhoun County, Alabama, the most prominent pastor in town. And it was considered a great honor. And it was a great honor to be able to go and to serve with him. And so when I got called there and I was 21 years old, y'all, I thought I had arrived, man. I thought I had arrived. I'm thinking, like, we're going to be talking on conference circuits, we're going to be preaching to huge crowds of people, we're going to have great influence. And you know what he called me to do? Every single Friday morning at 4 a.m. I had to wake up and go visit hospitals for eight or nine hours. Driving from Aniston to Birmingham to Gazden and sometimes to Atlanta to go and visit with people that I didn't even know. He let me preach a lot of funerals. All the time, preaching funerals. Not exactly the conference circuit that I had in mind, right? But what was he doing? He was shaping me, wasn't he? He was shaping something in my heart that the ministry is not about the stage. The ministry is about the people. The ministry is about sitting with someone on the worst day of their life and weeping with them and grieving with them and praying with them and walking with them like Jesus through the valley of the shadow of death. He was teaching me the ropes. He was forming in me both the way and the heart of ministry. We need environments at the orchard church that cultivate this type of discovery. We need environments where people can get a real heart for real ministry that is like the real Jesus. We need environments that shape our hearts more into the shape of Jesus' heart. And that's what we're seeing unveiling as we track the method of Jesus' discipleship throughout the Gospel of Luke. So in Luke, we see them. He invites them to be in the room, and then he helped to help test the water and then teach them the ropes. And then we have the sequel to the book of Luke. We have Luke's work in the act in the book of Acts. And in Acts, what we begin to see in chapters one and two is that we're called now to get in the game. To get in the game. I think we can think of Luke's gospel as kind of like the boot camp. And I think when we come into Acts, we think of that more like the battlefield. It's where our training begins to be implemented. It's where our boots begin to really hit the ground. And so in Acts chapter 1 and 2, think about what Jesus does. He gives us the mission to go and be his witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. And then he gives us the power in Acts chapter 2. He gives us the Holy Spirit who will equip and empower us to carry the mission forward and to be able to be who ordinarily we wouldn't be able to be. And so what we begin to see is that the goal of the funnel or the goal of Jesus' process of discipleship is for you to discover how it is that you've been crafted and to what it is that you've been drafted. How it is that you've been crafted and to what it is that you've been drafted. It's to learn your place in his mission. It's to figure out how and where you can make a significant contribution to what Jesus is doing among his people in this generation, at this time, at this place. Most of the Christians I know are sitting around and they're waiting to discover their gifts. Like they're not unfaithful people, they're not people that don't want to obey Jesus. They are people that love Jesus and want to follow Jesus and want to honor Jesus and want to glorify Jesus. And so their thought is I'm gonna hang out here on the pew so long as until the Lord kind of reveals to me what gifts He's actually given to me and what He wants me to do. And so I'm just gonna come and I'm gonna hang out. But hey, you watch out, man. When I finally figure out what my gifts are and I finally figure out what I've been actually gifted to do, you watch out, man. I'm gonna blow y'all's doors off. I'm gonna give Jesus everything that I've got. But the question becomes is how do you actually discover those gifts? How do you actually discover those gifts? Well, you don't learn those gifts by taking a test. I've never left a spiritual gifts survey inspired, have you? I've never done that. Because the truth is, is we don't know how to answer those questions. We are being equipped by the Spirit of God in ways that we could least suspect, and we'll never know it unless we actually get out of the pew, out of the row, out of the chair, and into the game. That it's in the game, on the mission, and being in the game and on the mission, the Lord begins to do works through you you didn't think you could do. He begins to call you to be a part of things that you would have been too afraid to be a part of before. Remember where our disciples started? They like, Jesus, I'm not dropping those notes. All right, I'll drop the nets. Jesus, I'm not, we're terrible. Follow me, I'll make you into a fisher of men. I'm gonna make you into something that you're not already. I'm gonna make you into something and someone new. Y'all, I didn't think I could preach, and I pretty well proved it in my first sermon. Moses didn't think he could either. If you would have told this cowardly fisherman named Peter that he was gonna be the rock upon whom Jesus would build his church, that would have freaked him out. There's 0% chance he's signing up for that. But these things were discovered over time by walking with Jesus in real life through ordinary steps of faithfulness, gradually growing and progressing, being sent out, stressed out, brought and taught. Sent out, stressed out, brought in, and taught. And what I've discovered is there are stories like this all over our church. I had our staff, I said, I want you to send me a testimony, just a brief testimony of how you got your start in ministry. I wish I had time to read all of them. I'll just read you a few of them. James Allison, who did the baptism this morning, he didn't start out to be a preacher. He started out as our staff video editor. That's an interesting route, isn't it? Leah Williams started because her oldest graduated and she didn't know what she was going to do with her empty nester years, but she was determined she wasn't gonna waste it. Michelle Burns, who's leading in our kids' ministry right now, she started as a camp counselor in college. Ethan Spark started in the midst of tragedy to help the student minister here just to be able to make it in the wake of James Mosley's devastating stroke. John Blanton, our new family pastor, he started as a senior in high school when I asked him if he could just stand on stage while I played music videos for the teenagers. We can keep going. We can keep going. This is the same story that we see in Jesus' disciples. None of them expect the route to go the way that it goes. None of them expect to be a part of what they're ultimately a part of. But this is how God does it. He, over time, by getting you out of the row and into the game, he begins to show you to what you've been drafted and how you've been crafted. And then eventually he may even call you to shepherd the flock. So a shepherd throughout the scripture is a metaphor for a leader. And I'm using it here in a general sense, not necessarily an eldering sense. But what we see in Acts chapter four, chapters four through six is this little group of 120 disciples has now multiplied so that there's thousands of them, and they find themselves now leading quite a complex organization. And so they have to start troubleshooting and brainstorming and figuring things out. And so what you see is that they're, again, being sent out, stressed out, and taught. They're being equipped and empowering for others. That what we see, I think, especially in chapter six, when we see uh the disciples calling out the first deacons, we see that they see their they understand their role as being to help other people go down and through the same funnel that Jesus had taken them through. And this is what I want to turn loose here at the Orchard Church. This is the kind of disciple making, not book club, not church program, but us invigorated through living real life and facing real problems and doing real ministry together. That's why we're asking all of you to sign a commitment card this morning. Because what we've basically realized is that we've told you essentially that you can either teach or change diapers, or we really don't have many places here for you to serve. As a matter of fact, what we've discovered is that if you're thinking of this in terms of a funnel, we've basically been telling most people, you've got to start on like level four, or we really don't have a spot for you. We just want you to teach. And you're like, Well, I don't know how to teach. I'm terrified of teaching. Like that freaks me out. And so our team, because we want to facilitate this kind of growth, we want to create these kinds of environment, they've gone back to the drawing board. And what we've done is we've focused primarily on these first three tiers so that we can find areas of service in our church that are lower commitment, lower preparation, low intimidation that just begin to challenge subtly the status quo of your faith to invite you to take a new step forward. Not asking you to be a teacher right out of the gate, not asking you to be a leader right out of the gate, just asking you just to come and to be in the room, to test the waters, to learn the ropes. Let me give you an example of what this could look like. Uh, I'm gonna use the kids' ministry especially as an example because we especially need help in the kids' ministry. All right, so the first place you can start in the kids' ministry, you're like, I'm kind of terrified of children. Well, you don't have to start with the children, all right? Don't have to start with the children. I don't know how to teach, you don't have to start with teaching, all right? Here, here this John came up with this idea. He and his team that we're gonna start with what we call the smile squad. All right. Maybe you don't know how to deal with children, maybe you don't know how to teach the Bible, but do you know how to smile? You're qualified, man. If you're safe and you can smile, you're in. That's the deal, right? Okay, so basically it's a one-time a month commitment. You don't have to be there the whole service, it's just pre-service. You're just sitting at the at the desk, making sure that people see a pleasant face when they come up.

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That's so easy, right? Like, you can do this. Super cool, right? Like, and you get the joy of being a part of what God is doing here at the Orchard Church, all right? So you're thinking, okay, well, I've done that for a bit. I actually think I got a little more in the tank, you know? Like I can do a little bit more. Well, maybe now you'd be a host, right? So you were in the room, you saw, man, John, D, Michelle, Kate, they're awesome. I smile squat. Now we can time to test the water. So you're like, I've got to know the kids a little bit, I've gotten to know the families a little bit. I can level up. I can level up, right? So a host, again, that's two times a month, right? So it's a little more committed. You still don't have to be there the whole service. And your job is when a new family visits the orchard, you help them fill out the information on the iPads as they're checking in their child, and then you help that kid walk from the desk to their classroom because it's a pretty nervy thing for you know, you're eight years old and you're going to meet a whole bunch of people that you don't know. You're going there, and your job is to make them laugh before they get to their room so they're put at ease, right? Like you can do that. You can do that. You don't have to teach anything, you don't have to prepare anything during the week. You just have to be on time, be a friendly person, and a loving and love these children and families. All right. So you're like, okay, I'm there, I'm enjoying that, I'm getting, I'm getting to know the kids, I'm kind of seeing what's going on. I'm not quite as freaked out as I was. Well, now, what if you leveled up again and you began being a member of our helping hands team? All right? You're not teaching anything. This is a little more commitment. This is again, this is twice a month, but you're gonna be there during the service, and it's a little more preparation. You're gonna help with the crafts, you're gonna help with the crowd control, then you're gonna have somebody else that's gonna be in the room there that's actually gonna teach the lesson. Well, you're there and you're like, hey, this isn't quite as crazy as I thought it was. This isn't quite as scary as I thought it thought it was. They're not quite as terrifying as I thought they were. Look, teenagers, children scare me more than anybody else in the in the church, like as far as I can work with teenagers, I can work, I get it, like it's scary. It's scary, right? But you get and you become acclimated over time. You're like, this is doable. Like, I can totally do this. Well, now you can level up again, but not right out of the gate, but eventually, and you begin to lead a small group and you begin to teach. Now, if we would have asked you at the beginning, it would have terrified you. But because over time you've gotten in the water, you've tested, you've tested the water, you've learned the ropes, now you feel equipped. It feels like a natural progression. And maybe eventually you would even be a trainer in the group. Or maybe eventually the Lord would have you to join a church staff and begin leading on an even greater level. You don't know that yet. I was talking with my uh the staff I served with at my previous church, and I had uh a lady on there by the name of Brittany, and Britney was our preschool minister, and she was just a total rock star. Like the Lord had just done such a great work in her life, and everybody's family, I mean, all of us were just reaping the benefits of the ministry that the Lord uh had given to Britney. But Brittany, I asked her, I said, Brittany, five years ago when you visited our church for the very first time, if I would have asked you that morning if you would come and serve as our preschool minister, what would you say? She said, I probably would have cussed at you. She's like, zero percent chance, zero percent chance. I said, Well, Brittany, walk me on the journey that you kind of went on. She said, Well, I came, we were new to town, we just wanted to get to know people. She's got, again, she's just an incandescent person. She wants to be around people. And so she said, so we started attending the church, and then after attending, we got invited to be a part of a community group. And so we went, we were part of a community group, and then they had uh a little uh a little son named Jack, and he was going to nursery, and so some of the folks in her community group asked her if she would serve in nursery. She's like, Well, yeah, you know, I'll I'll pitch in, I'll do my part. And so she goes and she begins to serve in the nursery. Well, she immediately becomes one of those people in the nursery that just makes all the mamas feel better about leaving their little ones in the nursery, right? We kind of recognize that, and the church is growing, and so we restructure so that our nursery is gonna have four lead teams with four leaders, our team leads over that. And so we're like, Brittany, like it just seems like a natural fit that you'd be one of our team leads. She jumped on the opportunity and she's recruiting people and organizing people and administering that through the week. Well, then our church continued to grow, and the Lord did a great work, and we were ready to hire a preschool minister. And so by the time it was time for us to hire a preschool minister, four years had gone by, four or five years had gone by, and there was no question who any of us wanted. We knew who it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be Britney. And we went and asked her, and she didn't hesitate. She's like, Yeah, like I feel like the Lord's been preparing me for this for a long time. Y'all, you don't know what God's going to do, and you don't know how God's going to do it, but you probably won't find it just sitting there. It's getting in the game. And look, I'm gonna acknowledge on the front end there's some trial and error in this. You may get into a place of service and you may hate it. This is not a Supreme Court Court justice appointment. This is not a lifetime deal, all right? We're asking you for a one-time, one-year commitment. You get into that ministry, and that is not the right fit for you. Next year we'll change you to a completely different side of the church, all right? We'll do something entirely new. And the Lord is gonna just proliferate the number of opportunities that I believe that we're gonna have to serve over the years, and those are just gonna increase. But you gotta start somewhere, and you gotta start at the lowest hanging fruit. And so, what we're calling for you to do this morning, what we're calling for you to do this morning is just to take a step. Let's think back to those questions that we started with this morning. Who do you want to be as a disciple of Jesus 10 years from now? Who do you want to be as a disciple of Jesus 10 years from now? Who do you want the orchard church to be 10 years from now? Well, the way that's gonna, we're gonna get there, the way you're gonna get there, the way our church is gonna get there, is if you just take a step today. And if we begin today taking a series of ordinary, painful, maybe sometimes stressful steps together, then I am convinced that the best years of your faith are in front of you, and the best years of our church are in front of us. Let me break that.