So, Where Are We Going?
Where Are We Going? • Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 33:52
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· 21 viewsIn this summary message, we take a look at all we have learned over the last several months about where God has called us to go as a church.
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I don’t know about you, but it feels like September was a lifetime ago.
Thirteen weeks ago, we began asking ourselves a critical question: Where are we going as a church?
There are a lot of ways to answer that question, but we have focused on six main purposes for the church that describe where we believe God is calling us to go.
This morning, I want to bring us back to the passage we looked at when we began, so go ahead and open your Bibles to Ephesians 4.
We are going to remind ourselves of where we said we were heading, and then we are going to take a few minutes to remind ourselves about what we saw from God’s Word about each of the six purposes we identified. At the end, we are going to talk a little bit about where we go from here.
First, let’s dive into the passage we started all this off with. Dive in with me to Eph 4:11-16.
This passage is jam packed with truth, but we focused on summarizing it with this statement:
We believe God has called us to be an equipped body of believers, united around Jesus, striving to live like him and lead others to do the same.
Let’s briefly unpack that idea.
As we talked about when we covered Ministry and Service, we recognize that God uniquely gifts people in the body to serve him, the church, and the world.
It is my role as a pastor not to do all the work of the ministry but rather to help you do the work of the ministry God has called and equipped you to do.
God gives each of us unique gifts, backgrounds, experiences, and personalities that give us opportunities to serve him just like they do you.
Our role as a church, then, is to help you grow in your ability to honor God by doing what he has called you to do.
As we do what we have been called to do, though, there is one central person we unite around.
We don’t unite around me as the pastor or someone else as a leader or popular member.
This church strives to be united around Jesus.
We may have little in common with the way we were raised or what we do for a living or what activities we enjoy.
However, those of us who have been saved by God have this in common: We acknowledged that every person on earth has fallen short of who God made us to be and what he called us to do, which is what the Bible calls sin. More than that, we have recognized that “every person” means me, and it means you.
We have all been convicted of our sin, recognized we can’t save ourselves from the punishment we deserve, and surrendered to Jesus as the one who paid the penalty for my sin and yours.
If you have never done that, or if you are still trying to figure out what Christianity is all about, this is the central idea: You and I are sinners, we can’t save ourselves. Yet God loves us so much that he would come to earth and take on flesh, which we celebrate at Christmas. That baby, Jesus, would grow up and show God’s power on earth, ultimately dying on a cross and rising from the dead to pay for my sins and yours.
That’s what this is all about. We can disagree on a lot of different aspects, but as a church, we want to be united around Jesus.
He is the only one who matters when it is all said and done. We want to partner together to live like Jesus and lead others to do the same.
That’s what Paul is talking about in verse 13 - “Growing into a maturity with a stature measured by Christ’s fullness.”
He restates this idea in verses 15-16...
Our goal is that as a church, every single individual connected to this church body would be growing to live like Jesus and leading others to do the same.
We want to be mature followers of Christ, growing to live more like Jesus.
So, what does actually look like? How should a maturing disciple of Jesus actually live, and what should a church look like if it is going to help those individual disciples grow together?
That’s what the rest of this series has been about.
We have articulated this in terms of these six primary purposes:
<<Six Purposes Slide>>
While we could argue about things that may or may not be covered by these purposes, if we as a individuals and as a church grow in these areas, we will be doing incredibly well in our desire to live like Jesus and lead others to do the same.
Let’s briefly recap each of these, and then we will talk about where we go from here.
We began with Worship, which is one of the foundational purposes God has given for our lives and his church.
We looked Isaiah 6 where we read about Isaiah seeing into heaven and catching a glimpse of who God is.
We used that passage to remind ourselves that worship is seeing God as he is—glorious, holy, majestic—and then seeing who we are—sinful, limited, and in need of him.
As we see that gap between God and us, worship leads us to respond with repentance, or broken hearts that turn from sin to turn to follow Christ. We also respond in obedience that is willing to go wherever and do whatever God calls.
We followed that up with practical suggestions on worshiping God by yourself, at work, and with your family.
As we grow worship, we grow in our understanding of our dependence on God.
That leads us to grow in the second purpose, which is Prayer.
To understand that better, we looked at Jesus’s teaching on prayer in Luke 11.
In that message, we remembered that talking to God in prayer is like we talk to each other, but it is also something more than that.
We saw that Jesus taught his disciples a model to use for prayer. It isn’t about using those exact words; rather, we are praying about the same kinds of things Jesus taught us to pray.
We should pray big, bold prayers because we serve a big, powerful God.
We also should pray with confidence, knowing that God hears and answers the prayers of his people. Those answers may not always be what we want them to be, but he does answer prayer.
By the way, our discussion of prayer has led to an increase in people participating in our Wednesday prayer meetings and others seeking additional opportunities to pray together.
The first two purposes we discussed were focused largely upward, if you will. They were primarily about how we as individuals and a church relate to God.
With the next few purposes, we shifted our focus to living out our relationship with God in our relationship with other people.
We began with what is our weakest area as a church: Evangelism
For this purpose, we saw what Evangelism can look like as we saw Phillip’s encounter with a man from Ethiopia.
If you remember, our discussion about evangelism was that we needed to be willing to be weird.
We need to be willing to go to places we wouldn’t normally go and have conversations about Jesus that we might not normally have. When we do, we see God do the impossible.
To put that into practice, we looked at how to share your story as well as how to share the gospel.
I don’t know if you have had any opportunities, but God gave me an opportunity to share the gospel with someone the other day at a gas station. I actually shared some of my story with this individual, and I was glad I had it ready!
Additionally, our church has been able to financially support others serving in the kingdom in big ways. We gave over $11,000 to the Hill Church in Roanoke for the ministry God is doing through them, we gave over 50 shoeboxes through Operation Christmas Child who will use them to take the gospel to the world.
Beyond that, we are currently receiving contributions for the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering that goes to support over 3,500 missionaries serving Jesus around the globe.
While evangelism pointed our focus outward toward those who don’t know Jesus, our next purpose turned our attention to how we serve the Lord and his people by using our gifts in ministry and service.
This is another weak area where we are seeking to grow as a church.
That took us to 1 Corinthians 12, where we learned that God has given us different abilities and they are all needed if the church is going to function in a healthy way.
We spent the following week looking at how God has equipped us specifically using the gifts in Romans 12:4-8.
As a result of that message, we have seen at least a few individuals stepping into new roles and I believe there are others praying about new opportunities as well.
Ministering and serving the Lord and each other led us into talking about Fellowship.
We looked at Hebrews 10:24-25 to see that fellowship is about more than just hanging out.
As we fellowship, we take time to think about each other—specifically how we can encourage each other to love Jesus and live like him.
That consideration leads us to gather more, taking time to encourage each other to grow in Christ-likeness.
Sometimes that encouragement may look like hard conversations. Other times, it will mean being in someone’s corner, encouraging them to stay in the fight and keep walking with Jesus.
The following week, we took time to put this into practice as we got into groups, met people we didn’t know, and prayed for each other.
I got more feedback from that Sunday than any we have had in recent years, but all the feedback that made it to me at least was positive. Several of those newer to our church family said they had a couple people they now knew that they hadn’t met previously.
Our ladies enjoyed a night of fellowship the other night as 37 women gathered for the Sock Exchange. Over a dozen men have gathered throughout the week to go through Stepping Up together while many of our ladies have gotten together weekly to study the Scriptures that go along with the Chosen series.
I got to fellowship with a group of men yesterday as we helped a church family move, and I have been blessed by at least one person who has been reaching out weekly to encourage me via text.
Finally, we looked last week at the issue of Discipleship and Disciplemaking.
We saved this for last because it is the purpose that encapsulates much of what we have already discussed.
As an individual, discipleship is the process of growing to live like Jesus.
As a church, discipleship or disciplemaking is the intentional process where we help you in that individual process of growing.
We turned to 2 Peter 1 to get a glimpse of what it looks like to grow in discipleship.
We saw that discipleship starts with Jesus. He has given us everything we need, and the process of discipleship is the process of growing to understand and live out what Jesus has already worked in us.
Along the way, there are specific attributes we should grow in like faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, brotherly affection, and love.
I challenged you to think about which of those areas you most needed to grow in, and I hope you were able to see God help you in that this past week.
Looking back over it all, that is a tremendous amount to cover in a very short time.
As we said, these purposes cover the vast majority of what we believe God has called us to do.
It is okay if you feel overwhelmed or have a hard time remembering it all.
Our goal in walking through this was to establish a common understanding with each other about what the purpose is for the church.
We all have different backgrounds and different church experiences, so we needed to take time to lay a foundation of what we believe together that the Bible teaches us about our goal as a church.
This series simply scratches the surface of each of these areas, but it hopefully gives us a base to build on.
That brings us to the question of what’s next.
I would like to give you four thoughts about where we go from here.
1) Thank God for what he has done.
1) Thank God for what he has done.
I mentioned that we have seen God work in each of these areas over the past twelve weeks.
I am one who can easily get caught on lookin at what’s next and looking at negatives, so it has been helpful for me to look at what God has done through this series.
Maybe you need to take some time this afternoon and ask God to help you see what he has been doing in your life through what he has been teaching us.
Thank God for the way he is working in you and in his church.
2) Avoid autopilot.
2) Avoid autopilot.
This series has centered around the metaphor of letting your brain go on autopilot when you are driving somewhere.
Don’t do that with what God is teaching us through this series.
It would be easy to put this away and say, “Well, that was nice, or weird,” or however you feel about this series and move on.
We aren’t going to move on past this…this is what we are called to become as a church.
Sure, for the next few weeks, we will be looking at the birth of Jesus. Why do we do that, though?
Because we want to know God better so we can worship him more accurately. We want to pray to a God who took on flesh and knows our weaknesses. We want to tell people about him, and we want to serve him like he served us. We want to encourage each other to focus on Jesus and living like he calls us to live, and we want to grow to be more mature disciples.
While the messages may not specifically list out these principles, that’s what we are going to talk about.
Don’t fall back into the rut of just going to church and just doing your thing.
3) Keep growing.
3) Keep growing.
This is the positive way to state the last point. Keep growing in whatever areas God has shown you that you need to grow.
Are there action steps you commited to take that you forgot about? What if you took the next three months to focus on one of these purposes? What difference would that make in your walk with Jesus?
Keep growing to live like him and lead others to do the same until we are all mature—which we won’t be until Jesus returns.
For some of you, it isn’t a matter of “Keep growing,” it is about starting to grow. You have never really come into a relationship with Jesus, so you need to start there. Recognize that you haven’t been living life the way he has called you to, ask his forgiveness, and trust him to save you. When call out to him for salvation, he saves you, gives you new life, and you can start this journey with him.
4) Keep praying.
4) Keep praying.
This also goes back to our church-wide assessment that showed we weren’t doing the best in several of these purposes.
Would you pray for God to guide his church to get stronger, especially with the others-focused areas like Evangelism that we are weak in?
Would you pray for God to help us see what he wants us to do, specifically in Evangelism, Ministry, and Discipleship?
Would you pray for God to prepare your heart for whatever changes you and the church will need to make to grow in those areas?
So, where are we going?
We are striving to become a church that lives like Jesus and leads others to do the same.
Come along for the ride.