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Good morning!
It is good to see all of you this morning!
Today will be the last day of our mini-series on the distinctives of TGP West.
So far, we have covered our Mission, Motivation, Message, and Methods.
Today we will cover our last two, which are Ministry and Multiplication.
As I said last week, all of these distinctives are cumulative.
That simply means that they build upon one another.
If we leave out any or try and cherry-pick which ones we like, it is to the detriment of all of them.
Last week in Methods, we covered the role, call, and responsibility of the elders, deacons, and church members.
That covered who was called by God to handle certain aspects of church life.
The elder's primary responsibility is to oversee the whole church and, in particular, the spiritual aspects of it.
The deacons are servant leaders in the church.
The church members, of whom the elders and deacons are part of, are called to care for one another.
All of this is motivated by the grace we have received from God and experience daily.
Since we now know what we do (Mission), what we communicate (Message), why we do it (Motivation), and who does it (Methods), we are going to talk about how we know what we are supposed to do (Ministry and Multiplication).
Ministry
Before we talk about the ministry that we do, let’s talk about what ministry is.
If you look up ministry in the context of the church, it is going to say the act of ministering to someone.
That’s annoying.
If you then look up ministering, it says:
attend to the needs of (someone)
provide (something necessary or helpful)
To put it simply, Ministry is meeting needs.
Last week we talked about caring for one another, the church body, but that is not all we are called to do.
We believe God is leading us to be a church that ministers outside the four walls.
This means we are going to be intentionally prayerful about the needs that we see in our communities and beyond.
We do this in a number of ways.
In our communities.
They include the one where God has geographically located both our church building, your homes, your places of work, etc.
In the state and around the world through giving a percentage of our tithes and offerings to the Cooperative Program of the SBC.
The Gathering Place Network.
Financially by giving a percentage of our tithes and offerings to support the work of the network.
Church Planting by physically planting churches.
Networking/Mentoring others who are called to plant churches.
Central Louisiana Interfaith.
Building relationships with other pastors and community leaders so that we can work together for the good of Cenla.
Utility bill relief
Community Lighthouse project
John Initiative - Feeding breakfast to the homeless every day.
Free School vaccinations - at PDC’s backpack giveaway.
All of this work is important, but the most vital aspect of any ministry we do is why we are doing them.
It’s not about just seeing all the needs and trying to meet them all.
It’s about asking God which ones you are to address.
All ministries are grass-roots ministries conceived by God, given to the membership, confirmed by the elders, and empowered through the body.
If God calls you to a particular ministry (fulfilling a need), talk to the elders about it and let us pray with you, the church will then empower you to fulfill that need.
The whole point of this goes back to our commitment to each person knowing God by experience.
In most churches, you are assigned a “ministry” task.
Nominating Committee.
Rather than doing it because you see God doing it, you are doing it because you feel pressured.
That is not the kind of experience we are after.
Our motivation should always be grace, and if it isn’t, we need to stop.
There are many things that other churches do that we do not.
This is okay.
Our goal is not to be like every other church.
Our goal is to know God and do the things He wants us to do.
In every ministry that we currently do or participate in, it is because we are following God’s leading.
Not because we have it “figured out” or are better, but simply because God has called us to operate in this way.
This is how Jesus did ministry, and it is how we are going to do ministry.
Let me give you an example.
Talk about the pool of Bethseda and why the man was there.
waiting for the moving of the water, 4 because an angel would go down into the pool from time to time and stir up the water.
Then the first one who got in after the water was stirred up recovered from whatever ailment he had.
So, here, under the colonnades, many who were suffering from various illnesses would gather and wait for the water to be stirred.
Here comes Jesus and chooses one of the many and heals him.
Jesus didn’t heal everyone at the pool.
We don’t know why he didn’t heal everyone, but what we do know is that He followed the direction of the Holy Spirit.
We know this because he says it later after he is questioned about healing on the Sabbath and giving the man instructions to carry his mat.
The same should be true of us.
Rather than doing all the things, we need to only do what the Father is showing us to do.
As we do life around all these various communities that God has placed us in, we are going to see far more needs than we could ever hope to help with.
If we run around trying to do it all, at least two things will happen.
you will exhaust yourself and be of no real use anywhere.
You will miss what God wants you to do because you are too busy or tired to hear Him.
If Jesus did only what the Father is doing, that is what we should be doing as well.
I will say that this requires that we are listening, not just saying we are listening.
Multiplication
We believe God is leading us to be a church that multiplies.
We have already talked about our Mission, leading people to know God.
This is something different.
This is our call to plant churches.
To be effective in carrying out this distinctive, all of our leaders and members need to help to create a missional culture.
This missional culture is exactly what we have been talking about for the last two weeks.
Caring for one another and for those outside our church walls.
I have had many lunches over the last year with Pastors from several different denominations.
When I talk about the work that we do here, I always get a question along the lines of, “how do you get your people to do all that?”
You know what I tell them?
I don’t get my people to do anything.
God does it.
The only way this works is if every member has their own experiences with God, hears His call, and obeys what He says.
We are a sending church, and it is in our DNA to plant new churches.
This means when we outgrow our current facilities, we will be asking God to call some of our members to a new work.
I think it is worth saying that we weren’t always like this.
We didn’t always operate this way or have this expectation or experience.
After we reorganized as the Gathering Place around 2010, we were in a sweet spot.
God had moved us to a very small church, all our bills were paid off, and we were enjoying the coziness of being altogether.
The problem was that we were growing like crazy.
We weren’t growing because we were marketing ourselves well.
We were growing because all of us were having these incredible one-on-one experiences with God, and it was spreading like wildfire.
Our church was bursting at the seams.
We had kids coming out of our ears and not enough seats in the sanctuary.
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