Vision Sunday - Investing in Others

Transcript

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

To remember a little bit about where we left off, I would like for you to turn to Matthew 9, verse 35. Matthew 9, verse 35. We're going to be going all the way through the first part of 10. So that's just a handful of verses. But we're going to kind of see what is happening. Matthew 9, verse 35 is a good kind of resumption of where we left off. It says, and Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. So Jesus here in these verses, we can see, and a lot of times whenever I'm citing the verses, they're going to be also on the slide up there. I swear they will. They're definitely going to be on that slide up there. They're not on there at all. Okay, great. It's going to be a good Sunday. All right. It's fine. We'll figure that out. So you might want to turn your Bibles if you're used to

looking at the scripture up there. Oh, sorry. It's my fault. I'm going to own that. That is what I get. Okay. So Matthew 9:35, so it says Jesus went through all the the city's villages. So he's teaching, he's proclaiming the gospel, and he's healing of every affliction, every disease and every affliction. So what's happening? Jesus has been teaching the disciples, kind of modeling for them, that you need to encounter me. So we've been talking about this, where people are encountering Jesus, Jesus is challenging them and Jesus is inviting them and as all that is happening, Jesus is taking people as they come and he is being salt and light with them. So some people that are coming to Jesus, man, they just want to see. They just want to walk. They just want to be able to talk. They just want their kid to not be thrown into a fire by a demon. They've got very simple requests.

straightforward, maybe not simple, but very straightforward requests. Other times, and this is a small minority, other times people come to him and they want to follow him. And as we see last week, not all of them do. Some encounter Jesus and they say, I want to follow you, but Jesus says you're not ready. And other people, Jesus literally walks up to him at a tax collector booth and says, follow me, and they do. So Jesus is taking people as they come, but he's Jesus, so he knows. And this is where we've been the last two weeks. And it's important for us to get it straight, because we're talking about our mission as a church. And this is our mission statement so far, is that we want to encounter Jesus as we connect with people, OK? That's important, because whenever we're talking about what we're supposed to do as believers, what we're supposed to do as a church, where we're

supposed to be, you know, just what's kind of our daily thing that we need to have on the front burner? What do we need to be doing every single day, every single time? How do we need to encourage one another? All of that is wrapped up in this statement that we need to encounter Jesus. So whenever I see Trevor, right, if I see Trevor and I go to a wrestling match for Trevor, what's my encouragement to him? What's my hope for him? Well yeah, I want him to win his wrestling match, of course, but also I want him to be encouraged. Yeah, that's good, but what's absolutely essential is that I want Trevor to encounter Jesus in a life-changing way. And I want that encounter that Trevor has with Jesus to make him salt and light in other people's lives. So look, I mean, I'm not saying you can't cheer somebody for their birthday or something. I'm just saying there's things that are important, but then there's things that are absolutely

essential. And that's really what we want to concentrate on as we're talking about what we're going to be like, what we're going to do as a church. And so if we are truly encountering Jesus, we're hearing his challenge and his invitation. We're following him like Levi, the tax collector, and Jesus is going to lead us to connect with other people. We are salt and light like Jesus. But then as we continue in Matthew chapter 9, and we've been going through Matthew 5 and then in Matthew 8 and now we're in Matthew 9, so it's kind of the same story. As we continue in Matthew 9, something happens and it's almost as though Jesus is struck by a thought. So next verse, Matthew 9, 36, it says, when he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Okay, when he saw the crowds, it's a really funny statement because he's been around crowds the whole time.

Matthew 8 is around crowds. Matthew 7 around crowds. Matthew 6 around crowds. Matthew 5 around crowds. The man's been around crowds. Okay. He's been seeking to avoid crowds at different points, but he's always been around them. And when he sees the crowd, the crowd that he's seen the whole time, it's like, and I can't explain it other than just what the Scripture says, says it's like he has a moment of significant compassion toward them. It's as if he is struck by their suffering. When he looks on them and he says they are harassed and helpless. And he sees that he cares. He says they're like sheep without a shepherd.

Right. Just this moment of just deep emotional movement. Maybe he's crying, maybe he's not, but he's, he's caring right there in that moment. And I want to stop right here and say there is great value in assessing the state of people around you. There is great value in stopping and acknowledging that there's a lot of people. And I'm not talking about like comparing your life to other people. All you need is social media for that. But what I'm talking about is looking around at the people that you know and seeing people that are in really tough situations and acknowledging them in that situation. So what I want to do is just take a moment to acknowledge the situation that is around us right now. And I want to start big. I want to go nation first, in our nation right now. And I want to talk about young people in particular. In our nation right now, less than half of young people identify as Christian.

I don't know if you knew that. That's a national thing. That's America, the nation. That's the nation we're talking about. Less than half of young people identify as Christian. Okay, eight percent of young people practice Christian habits. This is like prayer, reading your Bible, right? So if you know a young person who's reading their Bible twice a week, you know a very small minority of the population of young people, okay? You know eight percent. If these trends continue by 2050, church attendance is going to be cut in half. Okay, we should acknowledge this. Let's get one more ring in. Let's get a little more local. Let's talk about DFW. There's an organization called Movement DFW. And this is in the Metroplex right now. This is DFW. And they asked local young people, why are you leaving the church? And they answered, the church is irrelevant, unloving, and inauthentic, excuse me.

So to say it's irrelevant, the church is, some of the quotes were that the church is teaching, it's outdated and confusing. The way they do things is confusing. I don't understand why we have to stand up and sit down, and I don't understand why we have to stand out loud. I don't understand all of this. And so it's irrelevant. It lacks a significant connection with their daily life. It's also unloving. So a lot of young people see the church as not reaching out to people that are different than them. And so they just kind of globally put the label of unloving on that. And so they're looking at the media, and they're looking at people around them and they see people that are a minority.

Maybe they're oppressed, maybe they're not, but they are a minority, they are not in the majority. So we're talking about worldview, we're talking about race, we're talking about gender, we're talking about all kinds of things. Where kids today in the metroplex, they see those other people and their understanding, their basic go-to is the church does not care about them because they're different. I'm not saying this is true, I'm saying this is what they actually perceive though. I don't have to sit there and substantiate it, one way or the other. But I can tell you, if it's real in their mind, it's going to affect their behavior. It's going to affect their interaction with you. We should know this. Inauthentic, and this is one that cuts deep for me. Inauthentic, the church, the word that came up over and over again was manipulative. The church is seeking to be manipulative.

And man, yeah, I hate that. I hate being manipulated. I don't think anybody loves being manipulated, but maybe I just hate it in particular. So the church, that's why are you leaving the church? So these are people, these are kids, these are young people that are involved in a church and then leave. Why did you leave? That's the question that we're asking here of these people, irrelevant, unloving, and authentic. Let's move one more level in. Let's move within a three mile radius of this location right here. We have this data, census data, so 2020. And I wanna see if you can guess. It's just fun here, okay? It's fine, it's fine. Okay, there's two more, don't ruin it, okay. So it's 38%, what? Okay, so let's just kinda collect it here. These are percentage of people that are active in a religious community. Okay? So look, when you think of three mile radius of our church, okay?

You're in Burleson and you've got a little sliver of Crowley. You got a little sliver of Joshua. You got a little sliver of cross timbers maybe. Okay? That's what you're dealing with within a three mile. But you got all of Burleson and Enzo. Okay? When you talk to people and say something like, if you would say something in public in Burleson, like, you know, we just need more churches in Burleson. You will get laughed at. Trust me, I know. I've said it and gotten laughed at. Okay? The percentage of people that are active in a religious community of any kind is 38% in Burleson. Did you know there are more churches per capita in Seattle, Washington than there are in Burleson, Texas? Do you know that? That doesn't seem right, does it? We got churches in every corner, right? No, we actually don't. We have a church for every thousand people. Seattle, Washington, a much larger metropolis, has one church for every 838.

We don't have that many churches here. We aren't that involved in church. Burleson is not some like glob of Christians who decided to live in a place. Okay? This is three mile radius of our church, 38%. All right, let's talk about the reason. Only go one at a time. Which reason, sorry, yeah, yeah, which of these reasons for non-participation. So of the 38%, they're saying, why aren't you participating? There's four reasons here. Religious people are too judgmental, they're too focused on money, they no longer believe, or they don't trust to organize religion. Which one of those is false? Okay, I want you to think about it. Just think about which one of those is not right. Three of them are true. Which one of them is not right and what you kind of get in your head. Okay, all right, I'm gonna tell you the answer. The reason for it is that they no longer, the one that's false is that they no longer believe.

Okay, so then what does that tell us? So the next slide. So that tells us, next slide. There you go. That tells us that the reasons for nonparticipation, The reasons for non-participation are that religious people are too judgmental, that they're too focused on money, and that there's a general distrust for organized religion. And this is among people who generally believe the right things. OK, let's let that sink in. This is three mile radius. This isn't DFW. This isn't our nation. These are our neighbors. Just let us sink in. I want you to feel it. I want you to see it. I want you to be moved with compassion. I want you to understand what people are thinking that you go to work. with that you see at the barbershop, that you see at the grocery store. I want you to understand where they're at because they believe almost exactly what you believe. Maybe they even know it better than you, but what's their problem?

They're religious people, at least this is their impression, right? Religious people are too judgmental, too focused on money, and there's a general mistrust of organized religion in general. And this is not a scare tactic. This is basic awareness. This is knowing what game you're playing. What's funny is that all of this might be really, really enlightening for some of you. I would bet money that this is not very surprising to our teachers in the room. Teachers can get an amen. Teachers know a little bit more about what I'm talking about because they see this every day. They see it all the time. Within a three-mile radius, we have whole households with no spiritual heritage. We have parents not knowing how to help themselves spiritually, much less how to help their kids spiritually. They are bound up, whole families bound up in greed, in addiction, in loneliness, in fear,

in anxiety, in confusion. And that's the majority. That is 60, 64% I can't do math. That's the vast majority, 62% basically. people around you probably know what you believe and believe most of what you believe, but there's endless confusion after that. And we haven't even mentioned, we haven't even talked about technology use rising. We haven't talked about abuse of all different kinds. We haven't talked about trauma afflicted on children and families. We haven't even mentioned any of that, but all that's going on too, by the way. We see it, we see it everywhere. We see it particularly in the schools because schools have a way to just view families and children in particular. And we need to understand. Here's just, let me just help you feel this. The families, particularly the children in our three-mile radius are harassed and helpless. They are like sheep without a shepherd.

Do you hear me? Do you hear what I'm saying? That's a real thing. So let's just take a moment, the same moment that Jesus had in Matthew 9:36. And look, I understand, I understand. You got your own problems, you got your own fears, your own anxieties, your own debt, your own helplessness, I understand. But I don't want you to miss our three-mile moment right here. Jesus had a three-mile moment, let's have one ourselves.

And let's look at what Jesus did after his three-mile moment. What does he do after he's moved to compassion? He does something very peculiar, cuz he's Jesus, of course he does. Matthew 937, then Jesus said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Okay, so Jesus is sharing his concern with his disciples in a very peculiar way. He says the ratio of harvest to workers is low, peculiar.

There's not enough workers to gather in all this good growth, Jesus is saying. What? I thought this was a crisis. I thought this was, I mean, look, harvesters, Jesus, harvesters are good, but look, these people, they're being harassed, they're being helpless. Don't we need people who are already harvesting to do more? But no, Jesus doubles down. Next verse. So 37 and 38 together, he says, the harvest is plentiful, the labors are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Again, it's a peculiar thing. Jesus doubles down, he says, pray for laborers. Now he could have said, think about it, he could have said the harvest is plentiful, but the time is short. Okay, I mean, that'll get me moving, right? Won't that get you moving? Harvest is plentiful, time is short, let's go. Let's do it, let's grab a scythe, I don't know,

I don't know, but they reaped within those days. Grab a reaper and get up and start doing it, right? But again, he didn't say that. He says the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. He locates the need specifically on workers. And at South Samaritan, we talk a lot about sharing ministry. We talk a lot about making more room for more people to serve. And we do that in a couple of ways, but one in particular is that we limit how often or how much people can serve. So even I don't preach 25% of the time in a given year. Even I, I'm here but I'm not preaching 13 plus Sundays a year.

But the reason that we share ministry, and I really kinda wanna kinda get behind it and say, the reason that we do that is not because we're trying to give everybody a participation trophy. We're not trying to make sure everybody feels included. That's not really, that might be an effect of it, That's not really what we're trying to do. The reason that we're sharing ministry is the same reason that Jesus locates the need on workers and not on time. It's because only people can disciple people. Only people can work the harvest. I want you to think about how Jesus spent his time generally. Jesus is the Son of God and he's coming to earth. And you might think he would spend his time, I don't know, spiritually bringing out like broadcast radio and getting that message as far and wide as possible to as many people as possible, to the whole known earth, right? You might think that that's what Jesus would have done,

but he didn't do that. In fact, in his ministry specifically, he kind of shied away from crowds. He would teach every once in a while, But where did he spend 90% of his time? 12 guys, 12 guys. He invested in a very, very small group of people and he trained those people to connect with people. That's what Jesus did. So I wanna start helping you put it together a little bit. Jesus' compassion then compels him to connect with people by investing in people. His compassion compels him to connect with people, particularly by investing in people. Again, Jesus could have done all of this himself. He did a lot himself personally at first, but he intentionally resists that movement for the crowds to make him some figure that they can all just worship from afar. Jesus says, no, no, no, that's not how it's gonna work. I'm gonna invest in 12 guys.

And he resists all that so that we can, he can share ministry, so that we can share in that ministry. And he says specifically, not that the time is short, but that the workers are few. So pray for workers. Pray for workers. We need more people to connect with people. And so this, this is our full mission statement. I wanna give you the whole thing here. And again, we wanna try to do this every day As a disciple, as a church, we wanna do this every day. We wanna encounter Jesus as we connect with people on their spiritual journey. We wanna encounter Jesus as we connect with people on their spiritual journey. I believe if we are doing that, if we are helping people do that, in fact, I wanna give you a way to think about it, and I have one right here, and a lot of these are out on the table. It's a very simple thing, okay?

I don't even know if you can see it. It's a fridge magnet, okay? It's a really powerful fridge magnets. I hate weak fridge magnets. Those are, gosh, those drive me crazy. You know, you put it on there, it falls, falls. You know, you put like one sheet of paper and it's just, you know, going all the way to the floor. No, no, no, this is strong stuff, okay? We didn't skip out. We got some strong magnets back here. And it's real simple. It's just a magnet. They come in one of four colors. So, you know, if your kitchen has a certain color scheme, You know, we got pink, orange, green, and blue. And all of them just have a really small word on here. It's just invest. Invest. I wanna tell you why.

I wanna tell you why it has the word invest, but to do that, I need to go a little bit into what Jesus was saying, because he doesn't stop with just pray for workers. He didn't stop with, hey, the harvest ratio, you know, the worker to harvest ratio is low. He didn't just say, hey, just pray for workers. Look, look at the next verse. Matthew chapter 10 verse one.

He says, and he called to him his 12 disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every disease and every affliction. Jesus, in his moment right here, his moment of compassion that compels him to invest in other people, what does he do? He says, pray for more workers, and then what else does he do? He commissions specific workers. He calls them by name if you read Matthew 10. very specific people to connect with people. He personally commissioned them to invest. And so today, I would like to get very specific with you. All right, about 2023. And about the serious case that I laid out for even our three-mile radius. Our vision for this year. And don't, you know, like, it's not a vision like I, you know, went up on Mount Sinai and got a vision and came down. and came down. It's not vision here, the way I talk about it, the way we will continue to talk about

it. It's simply a future that we are shooting for. It's a preferred future. It's a goal. It's out there, right? We're trying to do this. This is what we would like to accomplish in 2023. Okay. So one year vision. We want to train 80 adults to invest deeply in the children of our church and our community. We want to train 80 adults to invest deeply in the children of our church and our community. We're gonna be handing things out to you just as the year goes on, right? And when we do just like it could be a little sets of paper, it could be a kid's picture. What I want you to do is I want you to have this on your fridge and I want you to have this word invest and I want you to stick that paper in here and it's really, I mean, you know, you can get a lot in there. I'm just saying that's like a half ream at least of paper. Okay, you can get a ton in there and it's a strong clip. When you do though, I want

you to remember that this is our vision. We want to train 80 adults. There's probably a few questions that arise, so let me answer them. What are we going to train them in? If we're going to train 80 adults, what are we training them in? How are we training them? Well, we're just training them to imitate Jesus, right? If man, if If I could convince you of one thing about discipleship, it would be this, that all that is, all discipleship is, okay? It's not necessarily a program, it's not some checklist that you make sure that people believe like certain things in a certain way. No, no, no, no, no. For you to invest in another person, you have to speak God's word to them, praying that the Holy Spirit would use that on their journey.

That's it. You would speak God's word to them, praying that the Holy Spirit would use that on their journey. When I'm talking about making disciples, when I'm talking about investing in people, that's exactly what I mean. And yeah, sometimes that's gonna mean sharing your story. Sometimes it's gonna mean a longer conversation. Sometimes it's gonna mean a shorter one. But it's never gonna be less than this, that you're speaking God's truth, God's word to somebody in prayerful hope that the Holy Spirit would use that on their journey. And if we're gonna make disciples just like Jesus did, we really have to get over the fact that we have to pretend to be somebody else. You're not gonna be somebody else. I hate to break it to you, but you're you, all right? For some of you, that's better news than others, right? I'm me, that's not exactly great news, but it is sobering.

And what we need to do is we just need to understand where we are, who we are, and to let compassion, let Jesus' compassion compel us. Our hearts need to burn for other people that are harassed, that are helpless, that are like sheep without a shepherd, because they're out there, man. They're the majority. You don't have to look that hard. The majority of the people that you work with, harassed and helpless. The majority of the people that you go to school with. The majority of the people that live on your street. So we need to do that. We need to train them in imitating Jesus. How? How are we gonna do this? How are we gonna train them? We got five different ways and then one assist. I'm not gonna belabor all of this, because we're gonna be talking about it a lot during the year. But we're gonna train people a lot of different ways. Some of that's just gonna be straight up,

training for infant, you know, preschool, grade school, student ministries, okay? Listen, we already do great work on a Sunday morning. Let's just train the people that are already there, you're already volunteering to use that time, right? Also, we're gonna begin in February. We're gonna begin student ministry life groups on Wednesday nights, and that's gonna be exciting.

This summer, we're gonna have a six-week course on investing in your kids. This is training for parents, grandparents, guardians. I think we got a slide with actually this information on there. There we go. Number three, training for VBS Rec Week Small Group Leaders. That's gonna be June 12th through 16th. As we're training those small group leaders in particular, we do a lot of training on how to connect with those kids, how to ask good questions, how to just love them in their moment. Number four, in the late summer, we're gonna have a family retreat that's gonna focus on training families. Nothing is better than an experience away. It's really great, and so this is for families of all kinds. I'd love for you to just come out. You're gonna be hearing a lot more about it later. Lastly, we wanna talk about training for mentors. So some people are just not able to serve

on a consistent basis. They're not able to serve on a Sunday morning connect group. They're not able to serve as a student ministry life group leader. They're not able to serve as a VBS small group leader. there's just a couple of limitations they have. But what we still wanna do is we wanna set aside lunches to encounter mentoring among our church. There's nothing, look, if you're just busy, right, and you know you are and that's fine with me, here's my encouragement to you. Mentor one kid, pray for one kid in our church that's not yours, okay? Pray for one kid and kind of adopt that kid in your mind and heart. Be praying for them, talk to them, want good things for them, right, and work toward, go to their games, be interested in what they're doing, mentor that kid. It doesn't mean you have to become a surrogate parent. It just means that you have to build rapport, build trust. So five different ways. Plus, the assist, the assist is

the family Bible reading plan. So it's still relatively early in the year. It's only the 15th of January. You still have time to catch up. But we have five family Bible reading plans that are, they're blue sheets and they're out there on the start table. If you want to start doing that my family is doing it, we're okay. I think we're going to get caught up like today. And so we're doing okay, but it's just a good thing. You just read it together. Our family, we read it out loud. Somebody just takes a turn reading it out loud. And then we just talk about it, whatever works. I don't deliver another sermon on it. I promise I don't. My kids would not sit through that. I would have a rebellion on my hands. They don't do that, but just just you can just talk about it. So we want to train them in imitating Jesus, we want to train them through these different ways, and

truly let me just tell you our hope for this year and for these trainings is that we would see a spiritual flourishing of the next generation within a three-mile radius. Look man, we're not we're not talking about like influencing all of DFW. That's great. I mean, if the Lord wants us to do that, awesome. I'm along for the ride. That's fine. Right now, let's just be struck by a moment of compassion in the three mile radius. Let's think about ways that we can invest in those kids, in the future,

because we are behind the eight ball. And I'm a firm believer in this. When you are behind the eight ball, when you try to find cheap ways out, it always backfires. It always puts you further in the hole. I don't want to do cheap attempts at manipulating people into following Jesus. Right? I don't want to just have some like some, you know, just some open, you know, like, oh, I'm a Christian. I'm a Christian. Okay, look, look, we're going to count all these people as Christians. That's great. Okay, no. What we're going to do is we're going to invest deeply, a few children at a time, a few families at a time, and let's start where we already are, and let's invest together. Our vision again, our vision, is to train 80 adults to invest deeply in the lives of the children of our church and our community. This instruction, it requires us to encounter Jesus. This training, it banks on the fact that we're praying,

that we're reading our Bible, that we're encouraging one another as we see the day approaching. I want to do just during our time of invitation or just a time response, just praying in your seat right where you're at. What I want to encourage you toward is to consider a way that you can invest. And it could be investing in somebody that is maybe in your life already or maybe the Lord's been kind of convicting you like the Lord wants you to kind of pull them closer But whatever that is, I want you to consider how the Lord is convicting you to invest. We're going to have programs to train 80 people, guys. We are. We're going to do that. But what we can't do, what we can never manufacture, is a heart that is burdened for a three-mile radius. That's really what we want to see in our church. So as we stand and sing here in a second, after we pray, as we stand and sing, I just want you to sing

with those people in mind. Sing to the Lord and ask Him what He wants you to do concerning those people. Let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for this moment. Thank you for the way that you are continuing to grow and shape us, the way that you, just the way that you reach out, that you prick our hearts. I pray that this year, as we look at how you connect with people, how you're salt and light, as we continue to encounter you, I pray that you would give us that encounter, just help us to encounter you even as we see. At your name we pray, amen. Let's stand.