[SPEAKER_05]: We gather in every season of life to mock what matters most.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because what truly matters is really done alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: God designed us for communion with Him, with each other, and with His mission.
[SPEAKER_02]: This year's mission month theme says it perfectly, together together.
[SPEAKER_06]: Mission is not a soy task.
[SPEAKER_06]: It's a shared calling.
[SPEAKER_06]: In Acts we see the diverse church.
[SPEAKER_06]: He nighted by one spirit, one mission in one Gospel.
[SPEAKER_03]: The kingdom advances through the gathered church, called by Jesus, sent by Jesus, and working together.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, good morning, everyone, it's so good to be with you this morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope you are having a fantastic morning so far.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why don't you join me in prayer as we open our hearts, ready to hear the word of God?
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Father, for this chance to be together in your presence.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thank you that you are working and moving in and through us.
[SPEAKER_01]: I pray that today would be an encouraging and strengthening morning for us as we think about
[SPEAKER_01]: Your mission, our mission, how we are called to partner together in that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, we do pray for all of our young people down at Sway G that they'll have a powerful encounter with you, especially tonight, which is kind of the big.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, end of the weekend, rally, pray that there be lots of kids who would put their faith in you for the first time Lord Jesus, and we pray that, um, our young people and leaders would be really encouraged and strengthened as they come back in Jesus name.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we are in week two of, our one-camera mission month appeal, as Roger's already mentioned, or should I say, Marlon has already mentioned, um, Carly set out a beautiful vision for us last week.
[SPEAKER_01]: On the work of mission, as we see it expressed through the book of Acts, through the local church, as that's described in the book of Acts, and this morning what I'd like to do is focus in on what Mark mentioned in the video we just watched.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was super encouraging.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to focus in this morning on something that is sometimes called the Great Commission from Matthew 28, which was one of Jesus' last commands to us where he calls on us to join him in his mission to make disciples of all the nations.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's on the screen, let's read it together, although I am sure many of you will know this by heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then Jesus came to them and said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, and surely I am with you always, even to the very end of the age.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now the first thing I want to say about this is that it's not just the Great Mission, it is the Great Commission.
[SPEAKER_01]: The reason we are a people gathered on mission together as our one-care mission appeal this year is titled.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's because we serve a mission or God.
[SPEAKER_01]: We serve a God who is on mission and has been on mission from the very beginning to seek and to save, lost and hurting humanity, to draw all people back into a loving relationship with their creator.
[SPEAKER_01]: So therefore, the mission of Jesus that we're called to here,
[SPEAKER_01]: As we see right from the very beginning of the story in Scripture is a mission that has reconciliation at its heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: God is working to draw people to himself, to reconcile them to himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: God has been seeking after calling out lost people, hurting people, suffering people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right from the very beginning, I mean even at the very moment of the fall, as we, you know, almost as soon as we had rejected him and hidden from him in the Garden of Eden, he was searching for us, calling out to us, where are you?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why have you hidden yourself from me?
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's a God with a mission to bring his lost children home, lost in exile, children home.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that pretty much sums up the entire story line of the Bible in one statement, that God has been working from the beginning to draw his lost children home.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is what the scriptures are all about.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is what has been fulfilled in Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in Christ, we have received this same mission then.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Father has sent the Son,
[SPEAKER_01]: And together with the Father and the Son, the Spirit is sending us in power to be His ambassadors.
[SPEAKER_01]: As Paul calls us to in 2 Corinthians 5, all this is from God, Paul's talking about the mission of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: all of this is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
[SPEAKER_01]: The God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can we also say a massive hallelujah to that?
[SPEAKER_01]: And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us.
[SPEAKER_01]: And He is making His appeal through us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are ambassadors of God, and our message is one of reconciliation, come and be reconciled to the Father.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as Jesus said, He is with us always in this, He will be with us always in this right to the very end, we are not alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: for it is God who is working through us in power to do this ministry.
[SPEAKER_01]: As Paul says, all this is from God, that's why we have been filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit so we can join God in this call.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess the question that I want to wrestle with a bit with you this morning is, how do we begin to do that?
[SPEAKER_01]: How do we step into this call to be in partnership with the Lord in mission?
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I'm definitely not some kind of expert in this.
[SPEAKER_01]: However, I have been thinking about and trying to do the work of making disciples for over 20 years now in local church ministry.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I have learned a few things along the way that I do hope will be helpful to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, this is going to be part one of two.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm talking about this, I kind of this first invitation to step into mission and ministry this morning, then we've got our mission appeal next week and the week after that I'm going to do part two of this talk.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I won't be answering all your questions, I'm sure, but we're going to try and do our best.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I have learned a few things along the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I started
[SPEAKER_01]: planning a church at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, which is on the far western coast of Canada, for those of you who don't know where Vancouver is, or the left coast as we used to call it, which is true both politically and geographically.
[SPEAKER_01]: And church planting in that extremely secular university context, which was not just in different to Christianity, but generally hostile to it, was definitely a baptism of fire.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, you basically had a reputation for being a church planting graveyard.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's where churches went to die, someone once told me, as we were just getting started.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for that encouraging message.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, we learned very early on that we were going to have to get really good to cycle making.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or we just simply were not going to survive as a church.
[SPEAKER_01]: One practical reason for that was our church was about 80% students.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they'd only be with us for three to four years, sometimes a bit longer, but mostly three to four years before they graduate and they'd move on to other places.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we simply did not have the luxury of time or the longevity of membership.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you do the math, that meant every four years or so, we'd have about an 80% turnover in our church.
[SPEAKER_01]: Imagine if we experienced that here, 80% new people every four years.
[SPEAKER_01]: That meant we had to get really good at recruiting people to Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: and forming people and empowering leaders always simply wouldn't have anyone around to help us lead the church within a couple of years.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a constant pressure.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other reason for this is that we had students coming to us, coming to the university from all over Canada and across the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And many of those students who connected with our church were Christians, of course, and they'd make their church our church their home, while they were with us.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we discovered that even though many of them had grown up in church had gone through a kids' ministry and youth ministry had been raised in Christian homes, they were functionally biblically illiterate and they had almost no idea how to pass on their faith.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, they were generally terrified by the prospect of having to share their faith with another person.
[SPEAKER_01]: They had been raised in churches to use a phrase we've mentioned over the last couple of weeks that had basically trained them to be learned of bystanders of the ministry of Jesus rather than empowered agents in the ministry of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were learned bystanders of the ministry of Jesus because they'd spent their whole lives growing up in churches where they'd watched other people do it rather than being empowered and invited into the ministry of Jesus for themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, we discovered that many of the students who became Christians in our church, who had not grown up in Christian homes, quickly outpaced the kids who had been in terms of biblical understanding and maturity in Christ, and engagement in ministry.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was mostly because they were hungry to learn.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were desperate to grow, for them it wasn't just background information that they'd sort of been embedded in their whole lives, but it was something that they threw themselves into wholeheartedly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they were leaning in, they were motivated to reorient their lives around Christ and this new life that they had found in him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so therefore it wasn't long before most of the people, leading in our church,
[SPEAKER_01]: We're young adults who'd only been Christians for a couple of years and they were running most of our ministries and similarly we discovered that most of those new Christians were often our best evangelists.
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't really need to encourage them to share their faith.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were just doing it in ways that our longer-term believers would not or could not.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, I don't really know why that is, you know, it perhaps it's because new faith is fresh and exciting, but even so, it was our experience that often though, not always, the kids who've been raised in churches simply felt less able and less qualified to step into the ministry of Jesus and live this life of faith for themselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: They just, the phrase that I would hear all the time was, I just don't feel ready.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what we discovered to our great surprise was that under the right conditions, growth in Christ can actually happen at an incredibly rapid pace.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, of course, it's a lifelong journey of faith.
[SPEAKER_01]: We all know that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in fact, it's not meant to be complicated.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the spirit can do miraculous things in people to bring about transformation and growth in some maturity, where in the local church is actually committed to making it happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: So just like we've seen in our act study, the new disciples like Philip and Stephen in Acts chapter six, who were not among the original apostles.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yet, we're very quickly looking like the original apostles.
[SPEAKER_01]: After only, we think, having known Jesus for a few months, probably less than a year.
[SPEAKER_01]: They move rapidly from being learner bystanders to empowered agents of the ministry of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think, just to try and answer the question of why,
[SPEAKER_01]: As we experienced at UBC, the kids raised in church primarily as learners often felt stuck and unacquipped.
[SPEAKER_01]: The secret I think seems to me is that the early disciples, in Acts 6, like our new believers at UBC, were quickly engaged in mission.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like as soon as those new disciples moved toward taking up responsibility for the mission of the church for themselves, not just watching other people do it,
[SPEAKER_01]: their growth and their empowerment in Christ seem to ramp up exponentially, and although there's a lot of ways to make disciples and to do Christian formation, the most important thing that we learned, I think, is that at some point in the process,
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to stop talking about it and you've actually just got to start doing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got to get on and do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And although it might be clunky and imperfect, and you might really not know what you're doing, something we discovered is much, much better than nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is one of the reasons why I value our one care partnerships so much, they're so important to us because they are a reminder to us all over the world but also here in Australia as well that it is impossible for us to be engaged in the work of mission and disciple-making in all kinds of different ways, like there's no one right way to do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, like the early churches, we see an act that Carly kind of took us through last week.
[SPEAKER_01]: The gospel spread in both word and in deed or through action, through both preaching and social engagement, through care and concern, the early church offered love and welcome to those on the margins, especially the orphans and the widows, those who had nothing, those who were desperate.
[SPEAKER_01]: which is precisely where the decans in Acts 6 begin, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They begin there, but they don't stay there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Very quickly, having engaged themselves, put their hand up to say, yep, I'm going to help serve.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to take on this ministry for myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: Very quickly, the Holy Spirit is empowering them to do all kinds of other things that probably wasn't even on their radar when they first got started.
[SPEAKER_01]: So God can do amazing things, miraculous things with those who are willing, who have the faith to say, here I am Lord, I don't know what I'm doing, but I will follow you and I'll trust you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think we see that same heart reflected in the feeding and education programs that we support in the Philippines wasn't that a great story that we heard from Mark this morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: What a privilege to be part of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to hear that story and be able to say, although we are not, well, some of us have been able to get over to the Philippines to see that work for ourselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: But those ministries and those people, joy and armor who are leading the church there and all the ones that they've impacted are part of our family.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is us over there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Together, we are working in those places and we do this also through our support locally of the Babes project and the prison network supporting women in crisis, or women in prison as they're released and as they're released out of prison into life outside.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our support and our involvement and the stories that we hear from those ministries should stretch us and encourage us
[SPEAKER_01]: to award engagement in the mission of God because that is how the church grows through ordinary people saying, yes, Lord, I will follow you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I have learned over the years, it is not the programs themselves that change people.
[SPEAKER_01]: What changes people?
[SPEAKER_01]: What transforms people is the Spirit of God and the Word of God engaged in community.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Spirit and the Word in community.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what changes lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: The programs are just a context.
[SPEAKER_01]: There are a way to meet certain needs that are important for us to meet, but there are only a vehicle
[SPEAKER_01]: for what truly brings transformation, the spirit of God and the Word of God in community.
[SPEAKER_01]: You get those things in place and God will do amazing things with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this shouldn't surprise us, should it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because the nature of the kingdom, the nature of the kingdom of God is that just a small seed or a little bit of yeast is enough to make miraculous growth occur.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look again, look at what the disciples were able
[SPEAKER_01]: And look at how quickly the deacons are doing the work of apostles once they had been sent to serve and were empowered by the Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the question I want to ask you this morning is what might God want to do through you?
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are prepared to say, yes Lord, fill me with your spirit, empower me to follow you wherever you are sending me, I offer my life to you.
[SPEAKER_01]: What might God want to do with you?
[SPEAKER_01]: And none of us friends just to kind of dial this down for a moment, none of us ever feel truly qualified or ready.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, when I stepped into this work of church planting at UBC, I had no idea what I was doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did not feel ready.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did not feel qualified.
[SPEAKER_01]: I definitely knew I didn't have enough knowledge or experience to do this and yet we trusted God and God did wonderful things we saw people's lives transform we saw people come to faith in Christ we saw young leaders being raised up and a generation of young people that we were able to connect with who are now serving Jesus all over the place across the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, just as Paul said in one Corinthians one, brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many went for, went for, not many were of noble birth, but God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.
[SPEAKER_01]: God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.
[SPEAKER_01]: God chose the lowly things of the world and the despise things, and the things that are not to nullify the things that are so that no one may boast before him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Friends, that's how the kingdom of God works, lowly and despised people are transformed by the Holy Spirit to become agents of the glory of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what happens.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow, is there anyone with me here this morning?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, after our first year of the church plants experience, we recognize that we needed to figure out what we were gonna do in this space for these things to happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I truly wish I could tell you that it was birthed out of a deep season of prayer and fasting and the Lord speaking to us powerfully out of heaven.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, yes, of course, we were seeking God, but mostly this just emerged out of the fairly unspiritual motivation, but I just didn't want my church to die.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I actually wanted this thing to work.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted to see it succeed, I did want to impact lives, I wanted to see people transformed by Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we said about working out how we were going to make disciples, we developed a framework for that to make him mature and form disciples of Christ, and to help us with that we turned to the Master, and yes, I do mean Jesus, but also the Orthodox Willard.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we drew heavily on Willard's teaching on discipleship in his book The Renovation of the Heart as a way of stepping into his anyone here read Dallas Willard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like I have two people amazing fantastic.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well
[SPEAKER_01]: I've read him, so I'll be able to just summarize the small things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, and what we developed actually is something that I'm still committed to doing today.
[SPEAKER_01]: We do it in this context here at one in the midst of our ally, but we're working on ways of beginning to develop and strengthen this and impart this across our whole church.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll explain more of that in a couple of weeks.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of the elements of what we developed have changed, but the basic framework has not because I think it emerges straight out of what Jesus commands us to do in the Great Commission.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can tell you, this has been the most fruitful work I have done in ministry.
[SPEAKER_01]: by a long stretch, more than any sermon, more than any worship experience, more than any retreat I've been on or camp or any other program.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just doing this year on year with people who are committed to growing in Christ has been the most fruitful and powerful work in ministry that I have ever done.
[SPEAKER_01]: Before I get to that, I just want to talk about what
[SPEAKER_01]: We know this is what we're called, too, but what is this actually asking of us?
[SPEAKER_01]: And what is a disciple anyway?
[SPEAKER_01]: What how do we know if we're disciples?
[SPEAKER_01]: And how can we know if we're making disciples effectively?
[SPEAKER_01]: Unless we can define or describe what one is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now we could spend all year on this question and we'd probably end up more confused at the end.
[SPEAKER_01]: So for the sake of time and just to keep things really simple, I'm going to go to Dallas Willard's definition, which I think is one of the best I've ever come across.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says this, the discipleship is being with another person.
[SPEAKER_01]: under-appropriate conditions in order to become capable of doing what that person does or to become like who and what that person is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Therefore, an apprentice of Jesus, that's what a disciple is, a student or an apprentice, is learning from him, learning from him, how to lead their life as he would lead their life if he were they.
[SPEAKER_01]: You got that?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's learning from him how to, so it's you learning from Jesus, how to lead your life as Jesus would lead your life if Jesus was you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is what Paul means.
[SPEAKER_01]: In Romans 13, for example, clothe yourselves or put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: Put on Christ, learn to become like him, and so live your life as he would lead it, if he was you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now what that means is that we're not trying to become a first century Jewish rabbi,
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Know what we're trying to do is learn how to live as Christ would in our time and place.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the midst of our ordinary lived experience, in our homes, in our workplaces, among our friends, without challenges, without difficulties, with our obstacles, those are the contexts in which we are trying to learn how to live like Jesus would if he was us.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Willard says that the church needs to have two core elements, two essential dynamics at work in order for people to enter into this way of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: The first one is that you need a community characterized by the empowering presence of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the second thing is that you need a community that intentionally and deliberately trains people in the way of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: to Willard called it a school of life that involves both teaching and modeling or mentoring for people to live their lives as Jesus would.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now those two are essential if you want to form disciples but there is an order to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: You simply cannot do the second effectively if you don't have the first.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, and you can't get to the first by just doing the second.
[SPEAKER_01]: You cannot teach your way, or even model your way into the presence and power of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: but you also cannot teach people how to follow Jesus effectively.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you don't have the empowering presence of God at the heart of it all, and this is what I think Jesus means in the great commission by the command to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whenever the Bible uses the phrase in the name,
[SPEAKER_01]: The name means almost always the reality of the thing named, and to be baptized into something into the name of something means to be surrounded by immersed into and filled with the reality of that which is named, which in this case is the dynamic presence and life of the Trinity, Father Son and Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Jesus doesn't just mean get people into the water.
[SPEAKER_01]: Although he does mean that, that's an important act of initiation into the life of faith, but actually before and after that experience of water baptism is meant to be an ongoing experience of being baptized into the presence of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: He means, and the verb is in the present active continuous baptizing, not just be baptised, past tense, past experience, but baptizing continually on going, being immersed, continually on going, present tense,
[SPEAKER_01]: into the name, into the reality of the presence and power of the life of the Trinity.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is friends, the heart of the church.
[SPEAKER_01]: If we don't have that, we don't have anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: If we don't have that, we cannot be effective at making disciples.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the reality of life in the kingdom of God, lived in the name of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why Jesus says, whenever you pray for anything in my name, I will answer you, it's because whenever you're asking Jesus to name himself, what you're really saying is Jesus be really in my life and he will always answer that prayer.
[SPEAKER_01]: He will always say yes and amen.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's why the temple was replaced at the moment of Christ's death.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's why Jesus ascended as Jesus himself taught so that we could become as our Pentecostal birthright, and we just had Pentecost Sunday a couple of Sundays ago, we could become as our Pentecostal birthright, both bodies and a body unified, baptised and filled with the empowering presence of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: As Paul says in Ephesians 2, 22, the church is not a building made with human hands, but a dwelling in which God lives by his spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what the church is, a dwelling of people, a community gathered together.
[SPEAKER_01]: to be filled with an empowered by the Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: The communal aspect of this, like together together, as we've been talking through this one carapel, is essential for our discipleship to work, to be the church following Jesus means to be a people learning how to go deeper together into the reality of the Spirit's work, which Paul makes very clear and Ephesians four, for example, is the basis of all our unity and all our ministry.
[SPEAKER_01]: can contain or express all of the gifts and ministries of the Spirit, therefore we need the whole body.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need everyone engaged in this in order to live into all the churches called to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how we experience fullness of life in Christ and that Paul says in Ephesians 4 is how we all grow up into maturity.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when we've only got some of people in the church engaged
[SPEAKER_01]: We're being kind of hamstrung, we're trying to work with one arm tied behind our back and we can't fully grow into the maturity that is meant to be ours in Christ and let's be all pursuing this together.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think we talk about this enough, or pursue this enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look, I know we have spoken about the work of the spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot over the last four weeks during our Acts series, several weeks, yet for many Christians, and many churches, the tragedy is that the work of the spirit is kind of like background noise.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just taken for granted.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, oh yeah, I know the spirit was poured out of Penny Cost a couple of thousand years ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: And well, you know, that was that, but that is not that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can I just say, as Peter said on the day of Pentecost, when the Spirit was poured out, this is that, which was promised by the prophet Joel, which means that to be the people of God, we are people of the presence.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are people of the Spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a tragedy when we neglect this, because we'll only grow and we'll only have confidence to do what we're called to and to lean into maturity and to be all that Christ intends for us unless we're walking in the Spirit, immersed in the Spirit, going deeper, ever deeper together into the life of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is how we live the Christian life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And neglecting this is what Paul calls quenching or grieving the Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dean Orton says in his book Deeper that the Father ordained salvation, the Son accomplishes salvation, and the Spirit applies salvation.
[SPEAKER_01]: In other words, there is no Christian life without the Spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Christian life is purely theoretical if there's no operation of the Spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything that we experience of God is the working of the Spirit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's true at our conversion, of course, as the Spirit opens our eyes through our sin and our need of grace.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's also true about ongoing growth in Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: Otherwise, like everything in the Christian life would just remain purely abstract, like it would be theory, it would be teaching, but we would not know how to then take that teaching and actually do something with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But as we experienced in Vancouver and in many other places, and in all kinds of ways here at one, it is the spirit who turns doctrine or teaching into power to live as Christ did.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the spirit who takes us from observation of the ministry of Jesus to agency in the ministry of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the need for this to be an ongoing baptismal dynamic in the life of the church is essential.
[SPEAKER_01]: If we hope to be effective at making disciples and I hope that we're praying and longing that we would be effective at making disciples.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I really hope we are all praying for this and leaning into this and that you are praying for this whole church that we are growing in our capacity to make disciples.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how we enter into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We pray for it and we make space for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We ask the Holy Spirit to fill us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We learn to depend on the promise of the Spirit as Jesus teaches in Luke 11 that how much more will the Father give the Spirit to those who ask Him.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I hope that you are praying for the Spirit to fill us and empower us in new ways and to help us grow into all that Jesus intends to do for us because without that we've got nothing but with that we can do the impossible.
[SPEAKER_01]: A with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: The second dynamic, as just to go back and I'm going to explain this more in a couple of weeks' time.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the second dynamic is the church needs to be a school of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: A community that is intentionally and deliberately training and equipping people.
[SPEAKER_01]: to live their kingdom calling, their kingdom vocation in the world, not just to be good Christians on Sundays, not just in terms of your private spiritual devotion and practices, but how do you take that into your workplace?
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you take that into your family?
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you take that into your friendships?
[SPEAKER_01]: How do you take that into your key decision-making?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like around how you're going to use your money?
[SPEAKER_01]: What you're going to do with your time?
[SPEAKER_01]: Or how are you going to, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: offer your education, your experience to the Lord in service.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are the sorts of things we need to be wrestling with together as a church, which is hard to just do 30 minutes sermon or have a long day preach for our most Sundays on a Sunday, and it's hard to do that in your small groups too, often because small groups, well, wonderful.
[SPEAKER_01]: They tend to focus more on community and care and don't often, in my experience, become places of of empowerment, in the sense of like helping people grow into their calling in Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to make sure we're creating contexts where that can actually happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now we're doing that a little bit in our ally, that's one of the reasons why we wanted to start the ally here at one so that we could do that work with our young adults.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're wanting to do that kids in youth ministry, in our young adult ministry.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'd love to see that happening in our small groups.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're in the process at the moment.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll talk about this more in a couple of weeks of developing.
[SPEAKER_01]: a program that will take people through the basic foundations of the Christian faith over a year and hopefully empower them to step more into their kingdom calling.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like this is what we're trying to do as a church.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is what we're trying to press into.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love how Willard describes the purpose of the church in his book.
[SPEAKER_01]: The renovation of the heart, he says the church, is a community of students or disciples, gathered in Jesus' name.
[SPEAKER_01]: That means in his presence in power with the singular purpose of learning to live more deeply into God's kingdom, or more accurately learning how to be the sort of people.
[SPEAKER_01]: who live deeply into God's kingdom.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what he means by saying the sort of people who live deeply in God's kingdom is that this isn't just about learning information.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is about experiencing a change of heart, a renovation of the heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: Of having our desires,
[SPEAKER_01]: And then eventually our behavior reshaped around kingdom priorities rather than self-priorities.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are three things that need to take place in order for that kind of discipleship to happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these come straight out of the Great Commission.
[SPEAKER_01]: Being with Jesus through the Holy Spirit in the context of the church, that's be baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, learning about Jesus through studying Scripture, teach them all that I've commanded you, and doing what Jesus did through observation and practice.
[SPEAKER_01]: So teach them how to obey all that I have commanded you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those three elements have to be involved if we want to make disciples effectively.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things I love about the Alpha Course,
[SPEAKER_01]: And just to connect this to evangelism for a minute, but I'll speak about that next morning a couple of weeks time, and I've got like one minute left, so here we go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just to connect this to alpha for a minute, basically what you're doing when you run the alpha course is you're doing those three things, just with non-Christians, with pre-Christians.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're effectively inviting pre-Christians into the experience of discipleship.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's as they are with other believers, and they learn about Jesus, and they experience the presence of the Holy Spirit on the Spirit weekend.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they see it lived plausibly in the lives of the Christian leaders and others who are part of the course with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Suddenly, like skepticism begins to fall away and gives rise to faith, because they're actually just...
[SPEAKER_01]: doing or experiencing discipleship like we all should be and that's actually shaping them to water life of faith and growth in Christ and eventually at some point often on the Holy Spirit weekend when they do encounter the presence of God and they say, oh my gosh, this is real, then they say, okay, yeah, I mean, I want to follow Jesus and the beauty and the genius and the simplicity of the offer course is that it's simply just doing discipleship like we all
[SPEAKER_01]: And the great thing is then what you're doing when they become a Christian is that they've already kind of learned what discipleship is and they're able to keep growing and keep stepping into all the Christ has for them.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's being with Jesus through the presence of the Holy Spirit in the community of the church, studying scripture and learning about Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then learning how to do what Jesus did by observing others and giving it a go, having a shot at it, you know, stepping in by faith, even if it's clunky and weird.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the great thing is I just want to finish with this.
[SPEAKER_01]: that all of this, all of that presupposes and depends on this transformation of the heart, of mind, of behavior, all of that cannot be achieved by works of the law, by trying really hard, by whitenuckling it, by grinning a teeth and working for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It happens
[SPEAKER_01]: As a work and inner work of the transforming life and power of the Spirit of God, that's what he does.
[SPEAKER_01]: He takes away our old, stony, cold, dead hearts and he gives us hearts that are alive and soft to God and reconciled to Him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so all of this depends on the work of the Spirit in the midst of the church.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in that sense, all our teaching and all
[SPEAKER_01]: to the work that God is doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like God is the lead actor, yeah, and we are just the supporting cast.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's doing the work, and we're just there to, you know, hold the palm friends or whatever, you know, sing the songs.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this isn't just theoretical, I'm gonna finish with this, because we all know people who have gone to church,
[SPEAKER_01]: All their lives have listened to hundreds of no thousands of sermons.
[SPEAKER_01]: It may be been in a small group for years and years.
[SPEAKER_01]: It may be consumed in Christian content online.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for all that,
[SPEAKER_01]: have never really been shown or instructed or helped to follow Jesus in the ordinary daily lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not been modeled to them.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've not really entered into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've not really therefore experienced any real deep transformation of their hearts, and they certainly don't know how to pass on their faith to someone else.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is a tragedy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like that is devastating.
[SPEAKER_01]: If after years and years of being in a local church, you don't yet feel ready.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I'm sure this grave it breaks the heart of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we as a church need to really step into this with all our hearts.
[SPEAKER_01]: And again, I love this mission month and being able to focus on our mission partners because they challenge us, they stretch us, they encourage us.
[SPEAKER_01]: in all kinds of ways, they're doing this kind of work in all places, all other places around the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in often very difficult contexts, like I loved last week, Kyle was talking about the Bible Colleges and Indonesia that we support doing work among Muslim communities, that must be hard and difficult work.
[SPEAKER_01]: And hearing that, I felt so challenged and stretched and thought, wow, if those disciples there were very few resources willing to do that kind of work in those difficult circumstances, then, you know, what am I complaining about?
[SPEAKER_01]: What am I complaining about?
[SPEAKER_01]: Lord, help me, and I just love that we get to hear these stories, stories like we heard from Mark, and what I hope that this month will do in you is inspire you and challenge you to take a step forward for yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: We obviously want to raise money for our mission partners, but we also want out of this to just encourage the church to step forward together in the work that Christ wants us to do here and around the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we, I don't, you probably don't know this right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I get to hear some of these stories, but just lately in our youth ministry, we have had so many young people who have been filled with the spirit and they are on fire for God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just want to tell you one story, there's one young person in our church or a couple young people in our church who got so inspired recently, they went off to a conference on the Gold Coast and they got so inspired by what they saw and heard that when they came back they decided to start an alpha course in their school and they had a hundred kids go to that alpha course on the first week.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amazing, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They just had a dream, they had a prayer, and God has already been doing amazing things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just, I love that, because I think, well, you know, they didn't need much, they just needed some faith and the power of the Spirit and look what God is doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he can do that in all of us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are going to come to the communion table now.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what I want to do as we come to communion is just connect this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the communion moment is the moment where we remember, like these are the symbols, the elements, the emblems, of God's missional heart to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like when we take communion, we celebrate the death of Christ, remember what He's done to rescue and reconcile us to the Father.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so as we come to Kimming in this morning, maybe you feel a bit stuck, maybe you feel a bit like a learner bystander, and you want to move out of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I encourage you to use this moment, take this moment as a time to just be with the Lord and remember his incredible love for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for the call that he has on your life, his love for others, and just pray a simple prayer, Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to step into this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to follow you in whatever it is you have for me, help me to trust you to do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: As Bilbo Baggins said, when he left his home to go on a great journey, the dangerous thing stepping outside your front door, but one foot on the road and you never know where it might take you.
[SPEAKER_01]: As we come to the table, I encourage you to be praying about these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why do you join me in prayer?
[SPEAKER_01]: Heavenly Father, we give you thanks for the redemption of the world that has come to us through your son Jesus Christ and for these precious gifts of his own body and blood.
[SPEAKER_01]: We do not come to this table Lord trusting in our own righteousness, but only in your great and tender mercies.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you love all that you have made, and it is your nature, always to have mercy on those who ask of you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we take a moment to quietly examine ourselves, examine our hearts, to confess our sin, and to be reminded of our need of your grace.
[SPEAKER_01]: So why don't just take a moment quietly as you prepare your hearts just to do that.
[UNKNOWN]: Thank you for watching.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what we thank you as one John tells us, you are faithful and just, that when we confess our sins, you forgive us and you cleanse us all and righteousness.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thank you for your tender mercies here this morning, calling all of us ever deeper into the life of Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: So friends, on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took bread, and after he gave thanks, he broke it, and he gave it to his disciples, saying, take and eat.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is my body, which is given for you, do this in remembrance of me.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the same way after supper, he took the cup.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when he'd given thanks, he gave it to them saying, drink of this, all of you, this is my blood of the new covenant which has shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
[SPEAKER_01]: As Paul said, as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes again.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, Father, we thank you that through these gifts, we are made partakers of the precious body and blood of your son, that he may live in us and we in him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now and forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our friends at Table is ready.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's open to all those who are disciples of Jesus come forward to receive the Elements as the helpers direct you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also, just going to ask if there are any members of the prayer team, maybe if they could just gather on the sides of the room, and if anyone would like prayer in this context of communion, you're able to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you're not a follower of Jesus and you would like to become one, please talk to myself, or any of the other leaders you've seen involved today, or you're welcome to come forward to one of the prayer team and they would love to pray with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: But let's come and celebrate communion together.