The Leadership of the Body

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Thank you, Dan. If you would, we are going to be all over the Bible today. No kidding, but you could maybe turn to 1 Timothy 3. We're going to be kind of all over the place. We're going to be talking about a few things today. So hopefully, it'll be cool. A few classics in film have made it as long as The Wizard of Oz. The Wizard of Oz is timeless. I don't care who you are, I've actually never heard anybody say, you know The Wizard of Oz, I hate that movie. I've actually never heard anybody say they don't like The Wizard of Oz. I'm sure it might freak some people out, but I haven't really ever heard that. What makes The Wizard of Oz so timeless, so classic, really is the storyline of Dorothy. Dorothy is such an unlikely hero. She has pigtails, for crying out loud. She's not your quintessential hero. She doesn't belong in a Marvel movie. She's an unlikely hero.

And after this tornado that picks her house up and puts it down in a whole new world, she kind of begins this journey without a lot of direction. She just kind of stumbles forward into so much. And as she does, her journey slowly unfolds. You don't realize everything that the movie is about or all that Dorothy's journey is going to be about at the beginning. You kind of see it unfold almost whenever Dorothy does. Part of that journey for Dorothy is finding other people on a similar journey. So she talks to the Tin Man and the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion. And all three of them are on a journey also. It's not Dorothy's journey, but it's similar. And this is part, I think, of what makes Wizard of Oz so timeless is that this story of being on a journey with other people, it really is indicative of how people live life and particularly the spiritual journey that we are on in following Jesus.

Whenever we follow Jesus on this spiritual journey, it's a lot like Dorothy because we find over time that it's not just our journey. We find over time that we are caught up individually in a larger adventure with a body of believers. that it's a spiritual family that they are with us. The spiritual family is for us. And this spiritual family is on the same journey as us. It looks a little different, but we are all together on this journey trying to do the same thing. And so today, today, my encouragement, as we continue our series, let's keep our sights on the larger adventure. Not just our own journey, right? But the larger adventure that we're all on. Our spiritual journey is important, but it's just tied into other people. The people that are particularly a part of our church body. And if we're going to see Christianity as it is, then we have to look at it through the lens.

We have to see the Bible then, through the lens of what Jesus is planning to do with us together. I'll say that again. We need to see Christianity through the lens, not just of what the Lord has for me. We need to see Christianity through the lens of what Jesus' plans are for us together. We're not solo artists who happen to be in the same room. We are together. What is the adventure that Jesus has us all on? This has been our series on the body. This is why we have been taking so much time, and it's been a while since I've said it, but 2021 is the year of focus. It's the year of focus. In fact, you can see focus in the top left. The reason it's there is to help us remember, this whole year, we are getting down to the bare bones, down to the essentials, to the fundamentals of what it is to follow Jesus, what it is to be a Christian. So we started this year talking about the gospel and how the gospel is foundational.

Then we talked about the passion. And now we are talking about the body. And the body, the church, is just as foundational to our Christian walk as the gospel. It's just as foundational as the passion, right? The body is what Jesus has called us to. He did save us, but he saved us to something. He saved us to a body. And as we've been in our series, we've been able to see Jesus' plan for that body. That includes us committing to one another. It includes us sacrificing for one another. It includes us investing in one another. And it even includes us making space to ask each other the hard questions. This is what it means to be the body. Today, we're gonna look at Jesus' plans for us together in terms of leadership. Leadership, okay? So to get you thinking about leadership a little bit, I wanna ask you just to think about a question, what makes a good leader?

What are the qualities of a good leader? Okay? I could almost guarantee you that for every person in here, that every single one of you would think about a leader differently than the person next to you, even if it's just slightly. All of us have different ideas about leadership, but a lot of common ones, the adjectives, are gonna include, okay, a good leader is committed. A good leader is nurturing. A good leader is focused. A good leader is self-disciplined. A good leader is sacrificial. Much has been written about leadership. We don't lack for books on leadership. You wanna go and find one, I'll recommend 10 to you. You can look on Amazon. Leadership is important and we all kind of know it. In fact, I almost didn't want to call it leadership because we've just been inundated with this word for the past 20 years of the word. But any adjective that you pick to describe what a good leader is,

any quality that you choose, it would all say the same thing about leadership. And it's hard to describe, so I'll give you an example to show you what I mean. I want you to imagine that somebody is the director of a homeless shelter, okay? And we would rightly expect her to embody the values of the shelter by how she leads. Okay? So you get this lady, she's the director of the homeless shelter. You would rightly expect her to embody the values of the shelter. So if she acts, for example, like an elitist snob who can't touch dirty people, it would be disappointing, but it would also be confusing, right? The obvious question that's going to pop up in our mind is, then why are you the director of a homeless shelter if you can't touch dirty people, okay? So it's disappointing, yes, very confusing though also. Leading a homeless shelter is going to require her to illustrate the worth of people in need, the

worth of helping people in need. She's going to need to embody this idea that every person is valuable. And really without that, she has no business leading a homeless shelter. She's no business volunteering at a homeless shelter, much less leading one, right? This makes sense. Leadership embodies the truth of something. Leadership embodies the truth of something. So, So let's take military generals, for example. Military generals are neither soft-spoken nor hesitant, okay? Neither one. War is not kind, and their leadership matches that, okay? Military generals need the kind of leadership to match what they're called to do, their situation. A kindergarten teacher is nurturing and supportive. And what that's going to do, that's going to match the vulnerability of the children that they teach. If you have a kindergarten teacher and she flies off the handle every day,

you're going to have little kindergartners with PTSD going into first grade, okay? They're going to freak out. They don't know how to handle that. They're like, they just started crying and imploding. It's terrible to do that. If you have a kindergarten teacher who is not soft spoken, who is not nurturing, who is not supportive, then it's obvious and they're in the wrong place. They need to do something different with their life. So when it comes to leadership in the church, the kind of leaders that we have should matter.

The kind of leaders that we have should matter. And this is exactly what we see when Jesus talks about leadership whenever we're looking in the New Testament. Because leadership, really, although it has been co-opted by our culture to be described in a lot of different ways, leadership is really Jesus' idea all over the Bible. Leaders abound, Old Testament, New Testament. Jesus even taught his disciples what kind of leaders they should be. Yet, when it comes to leadership within Christianity or leadership in the church in particular, it is a bit of a sticky wicket, as my dad would say. It's a briar patch. It's full of problems. It's not easily untangled. So let me see if I can tangle it well and then untangle it. Okay, so let's try to tangle it well. the first side of the tangle, the first side of the sticky wicket is that Christians are led by the Holy Spirit. Christians are led by the Holy Spirit. This is a fact. When Jesus sends the Holy

Spirit, he says, and this is John 14, he says, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit and that Holy Spirit is going to teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Okay, so everybody has the Holy Spirit. You follow Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit. And so we see this played out in the New Testament where churches are commanded to minister together to one another. In fact, in second Corinthians 3:6, it says that everybody that follows Jesus is a minister of the new covenant. We are supposed to teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, Colossians 3:16. We're supposed to encourage and build one another up, 1 Thessalonians 5:11, the idea that we are commanded to minister, not just minister to this world, but minister to one another, that is based upon the fact that we have the Holy Spirit. Right? I am a paid religious professional.

Okay? I'm a pastor of a church. Okay? That does not mean I have more Holy Spirit than you. Okay? Our deacons don't have more Holy Spirit than people who are not deacons. In the Bible, it is very clear in the New Testament, everybody gets the Spirit in equal measure and that we are all the same on that level. We are all the same. It's also why churches make big decisions together. You see this in the New Testament happen all the time. Churches are choosing their own leaders. In Acts 6, churches are choosing how to spend their money. This is in Romans and in Philippians. You see it all over in the New Testament. And the reason that you see that is because Christians have the Holy Spirit. The idea that a church can come together and that the Holy Spirit can speak to all of us and that we can come together and make a decision together is a testament to the fact that we all have the Spirit in equal measure.

One of us does not come forward and say, I have more of the spirit than all of you, so what I say matters more. And if anybody does that, you should kick them out quickly. That is a toxic thing to say and to believe. Okay. In God's eyes, we are all equal. Christians are led personally by the Holy Spirit. If someone, for example, if someone would come to me and say, Drew, I believe the Holy Spirit is leading me to quit my job. My response would be, okay, why don't you talk about that with some people that are wise, that you trust, but I am in no way going to doubt that that brother or sister heard from the Holy Spirit. I don't need to do that. That's not what I get to do, okay? If it accords with Scripture and somebody says, I heard from the Holy Spirit, then I'm going to amen that, full stop. Okay? Now, if somebody says, you know, I heard from the Holy Spirit that I need to run an online

gambling site, then I'm going to say, hey, maybe you didn't hear from the Holy Spirit. Maybe you, you know, that's probably not what you heard. Because it doesn't occur with Scripture, right? But if it accords to Scripture, then I'm just going to amen that brother or sister, full stop. That's it. Now, there is another side. So, the other side of the tangle is that Christians are led by leaders, that there is such a thing as spiritual authority, that in Acts 20 verse 28, it's talking to leaders and it says, pay attention to yourself and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Okay. There's a leadership position, there's two actually, in churches. And one of them is an overseer. Being a part of a church in particular means that you are committing together to accomplish something together. It means that you are submitting yourself to the body in some fashion.

If you say, I'm going to be, you know, Dan Hay says, okay, I'm, I'm committed to this church body. That means that there's going to be some things that happen that he doesn't personally love. I know that's a shock to some of you, but it's true. And that Dana is going to have to figure out, okay, how do I continue walking with this body? And even though I don't love this, or even though I want to see this happen and it's not happening right now, or even though, right, like we're not all going to agree on every little thing, I promise. And so, if we are a church and we are going together in a direction and we don't agree, that's going to take some submission. That's going to take us saying, okay, I don't know everything. I don't know better than everybody. I have my own opinions, but I don't know. I'm just going to say, amen. I don't like it, but I'm going to do it because this is my church.

This is the body that I'm a part of. And that means something. Fellowship means something. In Hebrews 13, it's actually stated a little stronger. It says, Hebrews 1317 says, obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls. Most of us bristle at the thought of obeying a leader. And I'll give you a hint. Because we're American. It can't really help being American, neither can I. We all bristle at this. We are hesitant to give that kind of power to a person or a group of people. We were at 1984. We know what happens, right? There's a reason we have a Second Amendment, okay? We get this. We understand this through and through, okay? And honestly, just to be transparent here, I'm hesitant to use that kind of power. I'm hesitant to invoke that. Yet, there it is, staring us in the face in Hebrews 13, verse 7 and then verse 17. What do we make of it?

How do we deal with that? How do we deal with being led by the Holy Spirit personally, right? And then being a part of a church, submitting to a leader at a church, submitting to one another as a church. Well, typically, how people have handled it, particularly in Merica, is that we have two extremes of leadership, two extreme kind of playouts. It's either hyper personal or it's hyper pretentious. Hyper personal, everybody makes their own decisions. There is no collective nothing. It's a bunch of individuals. We are all free agents. We can all make whatever decisions we want to make. In fact, in some forms of this, you're going to see churches that come together and say, we don't even need leaders. Leaders aren't God's idea, leaders are man's idea. We're not even going to have leaders. All leaders do is just grab for power and gum everything up. You don't have to look far, especially in Baptist life.

So if I have, hey, listen, history's history. Okay, I don't make it up, I just cite it. Where you have a deep cynicism against leadership, any kind of leadership, any kind of power. On the other side, you're gonna have a hyper-pretentious aspect, right? Like this extreme where you have a group of leaders that believe that only leaders can make good decisions. Oh, listen, if you let a bunch of people make that decision, they're going to wrong every time. They're sheep. They're just dumb sheep. Just make the decision for them. How pretentious. And I've heard pastors say that in my presence, not third hand, not second. I mean, I've listened to them say that. They're dumb sheep. We don't need the church family for input. And although many church leaders don't say this, sometimes the attitudes that pervade the church at least imply this. Because the attitude is, hey, you know what?

We're paid religious professionals up here. You're down there. All you have to do is attend, be quiet, give your money, serve, and then leave. all you got to do. How pretentious is that? How dismissive is that? It is strictly speaking, I mean, it is a non-acknowledgement. It is a dismissal of the fact that you have the Holy Spirit just as much as I do. That church families all have the Holy Spirit in equal measure if they are following the Lord, just as much as anybody on a stage, as much as anybody receiving a paycheck as much as anybody else. And so we have these, really they're parodies of hyper personal, hyper pretentious. And both sides are toxic. They're both bad. Neither of them reflect the way of Jesus or his plans for us together going in the same direction. They don't reflect all of our journeys coming together. It denies both the collective and the leadership.

And almost, it seems, almost as in anticipation of these two extremes, the Bible tackles both. The Bible, whenever it's talking about churches and leadership, actually gives us a pattern that is supposed to kind of function between churches and their leaders, and that pattern points to Jesus. So quickly, let's find it. And for that, for that we can turn to 1 Timothy 3, where you kind of should maybe be already. And the first side of this pattern is that leaders submit to churches. Let me say that slowly. Leaders submit to churches. What do I mean? Well, Jesus spoke of this kind of leadership with the disciples. I alluded to it earlier. I'll bring it up now, Matthew chapter 20, verses 25 and 26. And Jesus is calling his disciples together. He called them and he said to them, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them and their great ones exercise authority over them.

It shall not be so among you, but whoever would be great among you must be your servant. Jesus is setting up a sharp contrast and saying, listen, in Gentile world, the leaders throw their weight around. The leaders act big and tough and make sure everybody else is kind of under their thumb so that they can get what they want. They can do what they want. Okay. He says, it won't be that way among you. He says, Jesus saying, leaders in my kingdom are servants. And in 1 Timothy 3, 1 through 13, we're not going to read them all, but you see a list of qualifications. First, you see a list of qualifications for elders or overseers. And then in verse 8, I believe, you see a list of qualifications for deacons. Okay. So you see elders or deacons. We call them pastors. We call others pastors at self-realist centers. real ascendant. So you see, you see a list of qualifications for pastors and then deacons. When

you review the list, when you review this list, you will find that no expertise is required. You will find no areas of requirement for theological prowess, no areas of requirement for preaching excellence. Thank the Lord. You will see none of that. What will you see? You will see leaders that submit to the needs of the body. You will see leaders that are required, required to have a heart that is shaped by the way of Jesus. You see leaders that have a heart that is indelibly marked by the Holy Spirit. What do you see? You see, let that leader be hospitable. Let that leader be gentle. Let that leader be self-control. None of those are things that you're going to look for in a CEO. But if you are going to lead, if you're going to be a leader in the church of Jesus Christ, then your heart must be shaped by Jesus Christ. And so with elders or pastors, the question really is,

can this man submit to the needs of the body and lead when it is easier to defer? Can this man do what is needed, what is required when the time comes to put the needs of the body over his own aspirations? Those are the kinds of questions that we place on leaders. Those are the kinds of qualifications that we see in Scripture, not just in 1 Timothy, but in 1 Timothy 3, it's just laid out really well. For deacons, can this person submit to the needs of the body by serving with complete integrity, with unquestioned, unquestioned trust? Can we give this deacon a bag of money and say, please deposit this at the bank and know that it will be done and know that no investment will happen? Can we do it? are the kinds of questions that we are asking of leaders. The kind of leadership that is demonstrated in the New Testament is that of leaders who submit to the needs and the welfare and the care

of the body first. Church leaders want what is good for the body over more than they want their own personal success or their own personal influence. Look, I love this church. I love leading this church. I love being a pastor here. I don't really have intentions of starting a leadership network, writing a bunch of books, and being this national influencer. That's not really the plan. to say that that's terrible, but for me to be able to focus on what the Lord is doing in our church right now, I have to put that stuff aside. I'm not going to plan on writing the book. I want to write a book, actually. That's not a surprise to my wife. That might be a surprise to somebody. But I'm not chasing that. I'm not doing that right now. That's a hope deferred because right now, my attention needs to be exactly right here. I can't put that, I can't put that first, I can't put that in front. I've got to put the welfare of the body first.

And that is hard to do. It's a consistent battle because it's not just writing books that I aspire to. But those things have to be on the back burner because the Lord has called me to lead. The other side of this pattern, so leaders submit to the needs of churches. The other side of this pattern is that churches need leaders. Churches need leaders. Virtually anywhere you look in the New Testament, leadership is assumed. It is there. Philippians 1-1, It is a letter addressed to the church with the pastors and the deacons. Titus 1 says, hey, go around in every church and appoint pastors in every town. It's basic. It's one of the first things that you should do. 1 Corinthians 9, we looked at it last week where those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel. Back to 1 Timothy 3, we see this list of qualifications is because churches need leaders.

They don't just need any leaders, they need the right leaders. They need leaders with hearts that are shaped by the gospel, right? Churches need these kind of leaders. And in part, this is practical. This is really practical to say, and it has been said, to say that churches split over the color of the carpet. Raise your hand if you've ever heard anybody say that, Please. Yeah, a few of you. That church is split over the color of the carpet. Well, let me just say, saying that church is split over the color of the carpet is like saying that people get divorced over money. Neither of which are true. Marriages don't end because of money. Marriages end because of how money is spent. Marriages end because priorities are different. They don't end because of money. It's not like they started making money and now they have problems. If they had different priorities all along, money has given them the occasion to disagree.

Churches don't split over carpet colors. Churches split over how those colors were chosen. Churches split over who picked them and who didn't. That's what churches split over, not carpet colors. By the way, ironically, I had a meeting with the interior designer this week. And she picked the carpet colors, okay? She did, God bless her. She's trained to do it. She went to school for it.

I went to school for Bible, so don't let me pick the church, the carpet color. Churches need leaders because honestly, not every decision is worth a vote. It's just not. Having an agreed upon leadership structure sets good and right expectations for how decisions are going to be made. Which decisions belong to pastors, which decisions belong to the body, right? And so instead of principles, I'm going to describe how our church, South Berliss and Baptist Church, makes decisions. I want to lift the hood on our own church just to be super practical. At South Burleson, church members, deacons, and pastors all listen to the Holy Spirit. That's our first rule of order. Church members, deacons, and pastors all listen to the Holy Spirit. I'll take each one, church members. Church members listen to the Holy Spirit. members minister. They make disciples who make disciples. They share ministry and

serve in their gifting. Church members elect and follow good leaders, and sometimes just leaders. Church members approve of how leaders spend that money. Church members receive full transparency in how their leaders are acting. That's That's what church members do. That's how they run. That's what they do at South Burleson. At South Burleson, deacons, they listen to the Holy Spirit. Deacons facilitate that ministry. Logistically, they facilitate it by serving and leading by example. Our deacons are lead servants. So our deacons are over specific service teams. Okay. Deacons also work as shock absorbers. So we talked about this whenever we did the Deacon Induction in July, where deacons are servants and shock absorbers. So shock absorbers, it means that they are a sounding board for pastors, right? So they provide honest feedback. So when I say something like, hey, guys,

thinking about ripping out all the pews, okay? Let me know what you think, okay? And then I just listen, okay? I just listen and I get all kinds of feedback, okay? And that's good, that's really, really good. Because I don't wanna be in isolation making decisions. I don't want that. I wanna be able to set course and make decisions. I'll get to pastures in a second. I wanna be able to do those things. But Deakins help with good intel and better questions questions than I can think on my own. Then even if there were three or four of me, then we could think of on our own. Those deacons are going to be boots on the ground. They're going to know what people are going through. They're going to be connected in a way to specific people in situations that a group of pastors or one pastor cannot. Deacons are shock absorbers. So they're shock absorbers from pastors to congregation, they're also shackles over from congregation to pastors.

So when there's decisions that there's questioned about, if there's confusion, if there's frustration, right, you can, that deacon's going to listen to what's going on and help you understand maybe what those next steps are going to be, or clear up some confusion if there's some honest questions. This is what deacons do. Pastors, pastors at South Burleson Baptist, I realize we only have one right now. So I realize I could make this in the singular. However, our intention is not just to have one pastor. Okay. Our intention is to have a group of pastors. Pastors listen to the Holy Spirit. Pastors lead ministry by casting vision and setting course. Pastors, like I said before, they seek the good of the body first over their own ambition, over their, sometimes over even their own welfare. They seek the good of the body first. They make decisions on behalf of the church in transparency through all those

things that I just said. At no point should this pastor or any pastor or any group of pastors make unilateral decisions without it going through Deacon's body. It's full transparency. Now I'll I'll qualify that. There's gonna be some decisions that are, they're not enough to bring up for a vote, okay? If we need to buy a new lawnmower, we're buying a new lawnmower, okay? We're just not gonna vote on that, it's okay. It doesn't mean, you know, like the power's slipping away, it just means we're trying to negotiate, leaders are trying to negotiate what's good enough, what's important enough to bring to the body's attention, and what is not. I don't want to bore you with details, and I really want you to be in the know on what's going on. Okay? In my time here at South Brillison, I have tried, like mad, to do everything in transparency. I've had numerous conversations with all of you talking about the future of our church.

Those conversations have not always been sunshine and rainbows. However, I hope that you understand that the heart behind it is for transparency. Practically, with our church, practically, we know who is making which decisions that matters. We assure with this system that nobody's making decisions alone. And we all, all stay focused on making disciples that make disciples, on planting gospel seeds, on sharing ministry. We focus on what is important. But in order to do that, we need good leadership. Good leadership doesn't make any of those things happen. Good leadership clears the path for those things to happen. And yet there's another reason that's beyond the practical, to have good leadership or just even to structure it this way within our church is that good leadership demonstrates the heart of Jesus. And this is this pattern that I'm talking about, that Jesus created churches

and their leaders to cooperate together in mutual submission. This is why I talked about it this way, where I said, leaders need to submit to the needs of the church, and the churches need leaders. They need to mutually submit to one another in cooperation. And it's actually the exact same way that families work with husbands and wives, the exact same way. You read Ephesians 5:21, it says, it says, submit to one another therefore, out of reverence for Christ. And then it talks about how the husband submits to the wife. Then it talks about how the wife submits to the husband. But the first, the more defining role there It's for both sides to submit to one another, to the needs of one another out of reverence for Christ. And that is why you see that reference in 1 Timothy 3, where it says, if an overseer can't manage his own household well, how can he manage the church of God?

That's why that's there, it's because churches and families work the same way. And just like a family, if we do not have this mutual submission, then our church will break down. We will have power struggles that will rip this church apart. We have had power struggles that have ripped this church apart. That's not theory, that's history, particular history. Our church will lose its way, our church will lose its identity if we do not have mutual submission, if we don't have clear expectations, if we don't have good leadership. Good leadership's boring until a big decision comes. that it's really necessary. If we aren't doing the work, well, let me just paint it, let me just paint it better. When a church has good leadership, when the leaders and the body are in mutual submission to one another, then our church can get on the yellow brick road. Our church can go forward in the direction

of making disciples who make disciples. Our church can go forward in the direction of sharing ministry. We can do that with clear expectations. We know who we answer to. We know who's in charge of what. We're not waiting on any kind of bureaucracy to make a small decision about one little thing. We are empowering people to do what needs to be done. And we are going down the yellow brick road. And we aren't off to see the wizard. We're off to worship the Lord. We're off to be His church, His hands and feet, and to do that in a way that is unencumbered, in a way that is clear, in a way that is helpful, and moreover, in a way that points to Jesus as we mutually submit to one another. If you are interested in making a decision to follow the Lord this morning, I have been just about as real as possible as what it is to be a part of a church. When you follow the Lord, becoming a part of a spiritual family goes right along with

it. Church is not optional. is how you work this thing out. It's how you obey the Lord. I have people that come to me sometimes, or that used to, they would come to me and they would say, hey, I want to follow Jesus, but I'm not sure I want to be baptized. I want to follow Jesus, but I'm kind of scared to get up in front of people, or I'm kind of freaked out by water. I don't know if I want to do this. Okay. I want to follow Jesus, but I'm not sure I want to be baptized. Here's the irony. The first thing Jesus did whenever he began his ministry was to be baptized. Very first thing. So it's no small irony to be for somebody to say, I want to follow Jesus, but I don't want to do the very first thing he asks me to do. Okay. No small irony.

And I help them understand that I've said, look, baptism doesn't save you. However, it is the first thing Jesus is asking you to do and following him. And it's not 1A, but it's definitely 1B. When you follow Jesus becoming a part of a church, it's part and parcel with it. I'm not saying you're going to hell if you're not a part of a church. I'm saying that, man, Jesus established the church. He got baptized, then he made disciples. Those disciples banded together, church. Being a part of a church is being a Christian. You want to talk to me about being a Christian but not being a part of a church? I don't know what kind of Christianity you're talking about. It's not here. It just isn't. And I'm not trying to rail on people who... I'm just trying to help people understand. We live in a very individualistic society, and it is very odd for me to say these things,

but it is no less true that we belong to a collective. We belong to a fellowship of believers. So if you're interested in making the decision to follow Jesus, then please understand, being a part of a spiritual family comes right along with it. It's part and parcel. There's no Lone Ranger Christians. And if you're interested in becoming a member of our church, again, I have been explicitly clear. You know exactly what I'm talking about today. It is not like, oh, I wonder what joining a church means. You know exactly what it means now. But I will say this, that as we continue to move forward, as a church, as we continue to grow,

it will only, our work to maintain our body, our work to love one another, will only get harder. The more people come, the harder it will be. The easier it will be to not know somebody's name. The easier it will be to just kind of float in and float out and, Oh, we've got people, we're doing fine. Everything's cool. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. What the Lord has in store for us is not to have a full sanctuary.

What the Lord has in store for us is to plant churches, to give ministry away, to continue his kingdom. It doesn't stop at the full sanctuary. It doesn't stop with everybody feeling good about where we're at. No, no, no, no, no. It goes much beyond that. In fact, it goes beyond any of our lifetimes. We're just playing a part, man. So play your part. Do what you need to do to be a part of this church, whatever that is. We have a life group sign up. We have ministry team sign up right there in the start table. Out those doors to your left, my right. The other way around. My left, your right.

But also, if you wanna join our church, man, this is what it's about. We're on a mission. We're going together and we'd love for you to come. I'm gonna call Dan and Sadie up for our time of invitation. Daniel, we're just gonna sing through that last song again. So whatever you gotta do. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pray for us And then we'll have our time of invitation. Jesus, thank you so much for your body. Thank you for saving us,

not just so that we could be free. Saving us not just so that we could live a blessed life, but saving us so that we could take that life in submission to you and submit it to one another in a body. Submitted as leaders, submitted to leaders. Help us to see what it is in our collective that you are calling us to be, that you are calling us to be. And I turn it in that we pray.

How great the pain of serene loss! The Father turned His face away, As wounds which Martha chose in one, Bring many sons to glory. Behold the man upon the cross, My sins upon his shoulders, ashamed I hear my mocking voice, all out among the scoffers. It was my sin that held him there Until it was accomplished His dying breath has brought the light I know that it is finished, being No gifts, no power, no wisdom But I will boast in Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection. Why should I gain from His reward? I cannot give an answer. But this I know with all my heart His wounds have paid my ransom But this I know with all my heart His wounds have paid my ransom