Amen. All right, so we're going to go
ahead and get into our time of Bible study tonight.
And as Austin said, we're normally we would be dismissing
our kids right now, but for tonight, the kids are going to
stay in here with us. So we're going to be a little
bit more brief. We're not going to be getting
super deep and we're not going to be going quite as long
tonight. But with this being the last
Sunday of the year, we're actually going to just spend
some time digging into our churches vision and talking
about what some of our goals are for this coming year.
Talking about like personal goals for us each individually.
So if you've been with us any amount of time, you've hopefully
heard us say that Portland Gospel Church exists to help you
believe, live and share the gospel, right?
I say I hope you've heard heard that before because Tucker just
said it like 5 minutes ago. And we try to be really
intentional that we repeat this as our vision statement.
And that's actually also the reason that we have the word
gospel in the name of our church.
We wanted to be so forefront and at the center of everything that
we do that people know that that's the intention.
That's what we exist for. But with that, it's actually
really important that we define what the word gospel means,
because the actual word just means good news, right?
And so you can be saying good news about a lot of things.
I don't know if you guys, when we've been out on evangelism, a
lot of times I like to ask people with kind of my first
question is, have you ever heard the gospel of the Bible?
And a lot of times I get people most of the time that will say,
Oh yeah, I know what that is. And then they'll go on to say
something like, you know, the Matthew is the gospel.
And that's that's true. I also had someone ask me once,
they said, oh, are you preaching the gospel of the white
Christian nationalism or the gospel of Jesus?
And I said, what? That's a fair question.
And so I told him we were preaching the gospel of Jesus.
And then she went on to define the gospel and gave me a whole
nother definition of the gospel that was totally different.
And so a lot of people mean different things.
And so the reason I say it's important to define this is
because we want to get a biblical definition of what the
word gospel actually says. And we get that primarily.
Or one of the verses we get this from is First Corinthians 15 one
through 4. So Paul tells us, he says,
moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I
preached unto you, and then going on to verse 3, how that
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and
that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day
according to the Scriptures. So this is what the Bible
defines is the gospel of our salvation.
Romans 10/9 says, If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord
Jesus, and shall believe in thy heart that God hath raised him
from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
So we see this is the definition of the gospel and this is what
it does in our life is then when we put our faith in this, this
is how we're saved. So this believe, live, share
vision that we have. Although we came up with those
words in that order, It's not like some gimmick that we've
come up with. This is actually the mandate
that God gives to every church. We see this famously in Matthew
2819 and 20, what we call the Great Commission.
It says, go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy
Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have
commanded you and lo, I am with you always, even into the end of
unto the end of the world. And so maybe that's a little
confusing because those terms are a little bit out of order in
that passage, because it actually starts with going.
That would be the sharing of the gospel and then it comes back to
the teaching people to live the gospel and then teaching them to
then go. But you know, we have to
remember that Jesus was actually talking to the group of the
disciples that he had already trained and equipped.
So he's kind of giving them that last Commission to say, OK, now
you go and do the things I've taught you teach people to
believe and live the gospel for themselves.
So we see this and like I said, every church should exist to
help people come to faith in Christ, to grow in that faith
and maturity and then to share that faith with others.
So most of you guys know that I spent a lot of my adult life as
a firefighter. And so I found some pictures for
you guys I can share. This is the first department I
ever worked at. This is like, I guess 15 years
ago. This is babyface Dave.
I'm like the second one on the left there.
So I worked here, I worked in Saint Mary's when we lived in
South Georgia. I worked on Jekyll Island, I
worked in a few different places.
And then when we decided to move to Cartersville, I started
working for the city of Cartersville.
And I'm kind of on the right side of the screen there, like
4th or 5th from the right. And then this is one of my
favorite pictures, and I think this is the last picture I have
of the kids when they came and visited the fire station.
It's a little cute picture for y'all.
So I bring this up to say that there's a lot of things, having
spent a lot of my life doing that, there's a lot of the
things that I learned in ministry that whether it's on
purpose or not, I relate back to my experience as a firefighter
and things that I learned in that career.
And one of the things that I learned during my time as a
firefighter is that training never really ends.
You never really get to the end of it, no matter how long you
spend. Honestly, the day that you think
you can't learn anything else is probably the day you need to
retire. And throughout, throughout the
fire service, there's a lot of different specialties.
Like within those specialties, there's a lot of very job
specific training. And the whole intention of that
training is to bring you to a level of competency that you can
effectively and safely accomplish whatever your mission
is. It's designed to make you very
proficient at a specific type of rescue.
And so that training is accomplished through a
combination of growing in experience and in knowledge.
It's both of those things work together.
A lot of the specialty training is broken up into three levels.
And so as an example, when we're talking about hazardous
materials training, this is one that I trained in a little bit,
so it's a little fresher to me. There's 3 levels of training for
you to be like the most proficient at that job or at
that rescue that you have to go through 3 levels of training and
with those there's different responsibilities.
So pretty much everything starts at what they call awareness, and
that's basically what it sounds like.
Your job is to identify and be aware of specific hazards.
You're not necessarily on the hazmat team.
It's not your job to mitigate or fix the situation, but primarily
it's for you to recognize that there is a situation and for you
to warn by standards and just have a general understanding of
what's going on to keep yourself safe.
So typically that's things like identifying the placards,
knowing that if something has a placard, by definition it
contains a certain amount of that chemical, the numbers on
it, the symbols on it, the color of it.
All of those things work together to let you know what's
going to happen. It lets you know, do you need,
is this a liquid? Is it a gas?
Is it flammable? Is it toxic, corrosive?
Do I need to stay uphill or upwind?
How far away do I need to be? These are just basic awareness
things that you need to know. The next level up of that is
what they call operations. And at that operations level,
you're a lot more a part of the response team.
So the expectation is that you're going to have a hands on
role, primarily defensive, but your job is to help keep things
contained. You'll probably help with
evacuations, team and bystander decontamination, victim rescue,
things like that under the supervision of the technicians.
And then the third and final level of training is what's
called a technician. And at that technician level,
you've basically you're expected to be an expert in hazardous
material response. You're expected to know how to
assess the scope of the incident, select and use
advanced monitoring, detection and testing equipment.
You're expected to select and use the correct personal
protective equipment to keep your team safe.
You have to decide what that is, What is this chemical?
What is it going to do? What do we need to wear to be
safe? And you have to decide that for
the team. You have to decide the
procedures that you're going to use to contain the incident.
And most technicians would be expected to have enough
experience to lead a team of other technicians into what they
call the hot zone where like the actual chemical spill has
occurred. So that's a very long winded
explanation. And my point in saying all that
is that we kind of understand that it's not realistic to go
from being brand new one day to being a team leader in one of
these situations the next day. It requires a lot of very
intentional training, both classroom study and on the job
experience to to reach that level of proficiency.
So in our spiritual lives, it's equally unrealistic to expect
someone to get saved one day and then like be ready to pastor
church the next day. That doesn't just happen by
accident and the Bible actually calls this growth process going
from being unskilled or being a babe to being of full age and
having discernment. Hebrews 513 through 14 says for
everyone that uses milk is unskillful in the word of
righteousness, for he is a babe, but strong meat belongeth to
them that are a full age. Even those who by reason of use
have exercised, have their senses exercised to discern both
good and evil. So we see there's a progression
from being unskilled or being a babe to being a full age.
And it actually tells, it gives us a hint in there that you do
that by reason abuse. There's there's a, we used to
have a saying in the fire service.
There's a difference between seniority and experience.
And it's the same with our Christian walk.
Just because you've been saved for 20 years doesn't actually
mean that you're very grown. You can being, having that much
seniority just means that you've done the bare minimum to not get
fired for 20 years, but it doesn't mean that you are
actually an experienced person that can lead others.
So again, our our spiritual walk is the same way.
So what my goal is for today is that I just want to very simply
lay out the steps that we have as a church that are intended to
help you grow in your faith. And my personal goal is just to
challenge you to identify where you think you're at in that
spiritual growth process. Like of these levels that we're
going to talk about, where do you think you are?
And then to just set a personal goal for 2026, like what is the
next thing that you need to do? Because you can't look at the
end and say, well, that's where I want to be.
You have to say, well, realistically, where am I and
what is the next thing I need to do?
So we're going to go straight to point #1 in your notes, and
that's believe the gospel. And again, this hopefully I gave
you some blanks, but hopefully you guys can probably guess what
these are, right? This is, we've said this a few
times, right? The first thing we want to help
everyone do is believe the gospel.
And just like the first level of training or growth, it's simply
believing the gospel. Like the awareness level of
training that we defined in the, in the firefighter world.
We just want you to have a personal and basic understanding
of what the gospel is. Again, like I said a minute ago,
just to be able to define it, to know what it means, to know what
it means to you, to be able to just at least in the very basic
sense, understand if someone is telling you something different
than the gospel that you've received.
So within this believe category, we have 4 basic steps to help
you be established in your faith.
The first one is attending church.
So again, we want you to start by just simply attending and
hearing God's Word. Romans 10/14 says how then shall
they call on whom and whom they have not believed?
And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard?
And how shall they hear without a preacher?
Now, a lot of times when we use this verse, we associate it
specifically with evangelism, which is definitely true.
It's talking about taking the gospel to people who have not
heard it. But the basis of what it's
saying, though, is that people can't believe something that
they've never heard. And so we just simply want
everyone to come in to hear the gospel.
And again, if we can meet them on the street, if we just happen
to run into those one out of 1000 person that is ready to
hear the gospel, that's great. But it's much more effective if
people can come and consistently hear the gospel spread over not
just a 3 minute conversation, but multiple weeks in a row to
really understand what the gospel is.
And honestly, it's OK if you don't think you agree.
It's OK if you're still figuring out your faith.
We just want anyone who is open to be able to come and to be
able to hear what the Bible says for itself.
So in your notes, there's a little section that say next
steps and these are just like some actual things, activities
that we have that you can join us for.
So we have Bible studies and as I'm looking around, I think
almost everybody here goes to a Bible study.
So you guys know what those are. We have three different Bible
studies. We have one in the Pearl
District, we have one down at the college campus at PSU, and
then the ladies host one in their home as well.
So we have multiple Bible studies throughout the week.
We have church services every Sunday, we have church
fellowships, and we also have all of these sermons are on
YouTube. So if you're not able to be
here, at least you can go back and you can listen to them.
But as much as technology is great, that's kind of, we'd hope
that's the last resort. Like we want you to be here to
be in fellowship with us. So the next thing we want for
you, if you're still in this belief category, you're figuring
some things out. We want you to be able to read
the Bible. We just want everyone to just
read the Bible for themselves. Luke 44 says, and Jesus answered
him saying it is written that no man shall live by bread alone,
but by every word of God. So again saying most of you guys
are in our Bible studies, you guys know that typically what we
do is we we take a passage and we like to break it down into
what we call columns. And typically that first column
is we call it the God column. And So what we want to do is we
want to take that passage and say, what is this saying about
God? What does it say about God?
What does it say about man? What are commands that we see
and how do we apply those things personally?
And almost always, just about every time we're studying a
passage, something that goes in that God column is that we see
that God speaks, right? He doesn't want to be hidden or
mysterious. God wants to be known.
He wants to communicate with us. And we know that in our time, He
does this through His Word. And so, you know, it doesn't
really do us any good if we're not reading it.
So our next steps for reading the Bible is to follow our
reading plan. So as we are wrapping up the New
Testament this year, you should be finishing Revelations, which
that's a tricky book. That's all right.
Just push through it. And we're going to start in a
new book in the beginning of the year.
I think we're going to do something a little bit
different. I think we're going to be in the
Old Testament for a little while, but we like to read the
Bible together as a church. And that way if you have
questions, maybe you don't fully understand what it's talking
about, maybe it's a little confusing, That's all right.
Just come to church because that's what we're going to be
talking about. Or even if we don't cover your
question, there's going to be somebody that you can talk to.
If you're being discipled, you can talk to your discipler about
it. If not, you can talk to Thomas.
You can talk to one of us other leaders in the church, and we
can help you understand what it's talking about.
At the next thing in this believe category is we want for
you to be saved. We want to make it really clear
that our desire is for every person to know Jesus Christ
because that's what he wants. John 317 says for God send not
his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the
world through him might be saved.
Second, Peter 39 says the Lord is not slack concerning his
promise as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering
to us word not willing that any should perish, but that all
should come to repentance. So we're, we're not trying to
trick anybody. We want to be really clear that
the first and primary reason that we want people to come to
church and to read their Bible is because we want them to come
to personal faith in Jesus. This is really the the
culmination of this whole first level of growth is having a
personal understanding of what the gospel is.
Before a Christian can go on to do anything else, this is really
where they have to start. They have to have a personal
conviction of what the gospel is.
So whether you're new to the faith, whether you had you were
in church as a kid and as an adult, you're returning to
figure what out what this means for yourself.
This is just the beginning of everything that we do.
We want everyone to come to faith.
We want all people to attend church to learn and to grow so
they can believe the gospel for themselves.
John 33 says Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I
say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the
Kingdom of God. I letter D in the last of these
believe steps is it we want you to be baptized.
So a baptism is not a part of your salvation.
You don't have to be baptized to be saved.
It is the first step of obedience that we're called to
after being born again. We see this in the Great
Commission that we talked about just a few minutes ago.
And then we also see this is an example in the early Church of
people being baptized after they came to faith.
Matthew 2819 and 20 again says to go ye therefore and teach all
nation nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and
Son of the Holy Ghost. So we would say that that
teaching all nations is sharing the gospel and those that
believe are baptized in the name of the Father and the Son of the
Holy Ghost. Acts 812 gives gives us an
example of that in the early church it says but when they
believed Philip preaching the things concerning the Kingdom of
God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized both
men and women. So we see that after they
believed, then they were baptized.
So that kind of concludes our first few steps in this believe
category of growth. So the next thing is living the
gospel. You said there's the belief, now
we're on to living the gospel. So this kind of second level of
training or growth is learning to live this gospel out in your
daily life. So in our firefighting training
analogy, this would be like that operations level of training.
So after a person has been saved, they believe the gospel
and accepted Christ as their savior, we want to help them
become a faithful disciple of Jesus in an active participant
in ministry. So again, like in our
firefighting scenario, you're not a bystander.
You're not just cording off of me.
Like, yeah, watch out, there's something down there.
You're expected to be involved. So at the operations level, by
the way, these guys in the brown suits, that's like a job that
someone in operations would do. The guy in the green suit just
came out of the what they would call the hot zone.
He's getting decontaminated so he can take that off and refill
his air container because you get a bubble of air and that's
it. So these guys though, their job
under the supervision of technicians is they're going to
set up decontamination. They're going to be a, but
they're an active part of this team.
So that for us in the church, the first step that we have in
that process is being discipled. So we want you to learn to walk
with God from someone else. And the way we do that in our
church is we have a discipleship ministry that the whole
intention is that it pairs you up one-on-one with another
person to study the Bible together.
Ephesians 414 says that we henceforth be no more children
tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of
doctrine by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby
they lie and wait to deceive. It's telling us that we should
grow right. There's a reason that you
shouldn't be like a child your whole life because then you're
just tossed to and fro with whatever people tell you.
It just, it moves you back and forth because you just don't
know what to believe, right? So Ephesians telling us there's
a reason you need to grow and a verse that tells us how to grow
is second Peter 1/5 through 7. And if you're in discipleship,
you should have heard this verse by now, right?
It's kind of core to what we do in discipleship.
It says, and beside this giving all diligence, add to your faith
virtue and to virtue knowledge and to knowledge, temperance,
and to temperance, patience and to patience, godliness, and to
godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness,
charity. So again, hopefully this is a
familiar passage to you, but it's giving us, we call this the
process of spiritual growth. You don't go from the beginning
to the end. It gives us a clear progression
of adding things to your faith. One thing builds upon another.
We see that we're called to add these things and.
So in discipleship, kind of the primary goal that we have in
our, in this personal discipleship ministry is to
establish you in those first two things.
We want you to be established in virtue and in knowledge.
So simply stated, we just want you to learn the the basic
doctrines of God's Word, and then we want you to learn how to
live those truths out in your life.
So after discipleship letter B is become a member.
So we talked about attending church at the beginning, but
becoming a member is more than just attending.
It's really committing to living and serving together as a body.
Every believer is designed to live in community together with
other Christians. And the Bible often references
the church as a body, as a living entity, where we are
members one of another. Romans 12/5 says so.
We, being many, are one body in Christ, and everyone members one
of another. It says it this way in Ephesians
416. From whom the whole body, fitly
joined together, and compacted by that which every joint
supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure
of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of
itself and love. So it's not only that we're
members of the same body, but it's telling us that every
member has a specific role to play to make that church
stronger and to be able to reach the World with the gospel.
The next thing in our progression is to steward well.
We want you to learn to use your time, your talent, and your
treasure for the Lord. So the in these categories,
we're going to break those down a little bit further.
And the first is time. Time is participating and
serving within the body as a whole.
Ephesians 515 through 17 says see then that you walk
circumspectly, not as fools, but is wise redeeming the time
because the days are evil. Wherefore be not unwise, but
understanding what the will of the Lord is.
So within these categories of you know, we're going to break
down time, talent and treasure. Time is maybe the least unique
of the things that we have, but it's actually one of the most
valuable resources that we have. Because I say it's not unique in
the sense that all of us have 24 hours in a day.
So it's not unique that some people have more time than
others per SE. I mean, granted, if you have
some responsibility, if you have kids, if you don't, if you have
work and school and all these things, those are all pulling
your time, but we all actually get the same amount of time,
right? So it's not actually unique that
some people are just gifted with more, more physical time in the
day. But I say it's valuable because
money can come and go. But no matter how much money you
have, you can never go back to yesterday and use that day for
something else. Like when it's gone, it's gone
for everybody. So it's something that the, you
know, the Bible again in Ephesians says to redeem that
time. And especially as we live in
days that we know the days are evil and we know the time is
getting short and there's there's not going to be a chance
to go back and live your life differently later when it's
over, it's done. The next thing that the Bible
tells us that we need to invest in the mission is our talent.
So these are your specific skills, your gifts, your
abilities and your experiences. And I'm going to break this down
into even 2 further things within our talents. 1 is we see
skills. Ephesians 210 says, for we are
his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works,
which God had before ordained, that we should walk in them.
So some of these physical skills can be things like, you know,
learning to play an instrument. That's something that you can do
and enjoy yourself, but it's also a skill that you can use to
serve the Lord like like we did today.
I'm really glad that people Jay and Nathan and Talia, I'm glad
that you guys can can lead us in worship because that's not a
skill that I have. If it was up to me, we would
like play Spotify and sing along with her or something because I
can't play music, I Can't Sing. It would be really dull without
people who have a skill set that they're willing to use for the
Lord, They're willing to put themselves out there to play
music. This is something that that
leads us in worship. So those are skills and and
there's others. That's a really easy example
because we see it every week. But things like, you know, if
you have video, audio, physical labour, bookkeeping, if you know
how to do marketing, build websites, like that's all been
things that have been super valuable that we've dabbled
with. But you know, there's been
people that have that have helped us along the way with
those things. Those are really valuable skill
sets. The other thing in those talents
are gifts. And what we mean by gifts are
spiritual gifts that God gives Christians specifically to serve
in the church and to minister to others.
First Corinthians 12/7 says, but the manifestation of the Spirit
is given to every man to profit with all.
So we would say that every Christian has at least one
spiritual gift that is intended to benefit others.
Romans 12/4 through eight. I know this is like it's a
little bit small. So if you guys can read that it
says for as we have many members and one body and all members
have not the same office. So we being many are one body in
Christ and everyone members one of another.
This goes back to what we were talking about it earlier.
We're all in this together. And verse 6 says having then
gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us,
whether prophecy, let us prophecy according to the
proportion of faith or ministry. Let us wait on our ministering,
Or he that teaches on teaching, or he that exhorteth on
exhortation, or he that giveth, let him do so with simplicity,
he that ruleth with diligence, and he that show with mercy,
with cheerfulness. So if you've been saved, we want
to help you develop your gifts to use for the Lord.
This is something he's giving you again, it's not for you to
glory yourself in and it's not necessarily something that you
use for yourself. It's to profit with all it's to
profit the body of of Christ and to serve a specific purpose that
he's put you in the body for the last category under this
stewardship point is our treasure.
Now this this topic gets really tricky, right?
It gets kind of sticky because we don't, we don't want to make
people feel uncomfortable talking about their money.
And I think that's probably because deep down we know that
money is probably what most people value more than anything
else. Like that might be a deal
breaker. If we say, hey, you should be
investing your money in God's mission, they, they might just
walk away. That might be too much, right?
But the, the reality is that God doesn't talk about money because
he needs your money, right? Matthew 621 says For where your
treasure is, there will your heart be also.
God doesn't need your money, He just wants you to love him more
than your money. He wants you to be so invested
in the things that he cares about that you will happily give
up the things that you care about to serve him with it. 2nd
Corinthians 97 says every man according as he purposes
purposes in his heart. So let him give, not grudgingly
or of necessity, for God loveth A cheerful giver.
So we want you to use the the skills you have, the gifts that
God has given you and the possessions that he's entrusted
to you. We want you to learn to use
those things to steward them for God's mission.
And the last thing that we have in this living category is study
the Bible. So earlier we talked about
reading the Bible like it's a beginning step, right?
That's that's a beginning step in someone's faith.
But what we're talking about here is learning to truly study
God's Word. It goes a whole lot deeper than
just reading it as John, as Jesus says in John 831, He says
if you continue in my word, then are you just my disciples?
Indeed, that's also important to know.
When he says continue in my word, this isn't to earn your
salvation. He's not saying if you continue
in my word, you'll be saved. He's saying if you continue in
my word, those are my disciples. Second Timothy 215 says to study
to show thyself approved unto God a Workman that need is not
be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth.
This is one of so Lori and I let Awana's back at Oakland Heights
and Lauren served in there with us.
So this is like the the main theme verse for Awana's is study
to show thyself approved. And again, this is not talking
about approved as in you need to earn your salvation.
It's saying approved as in you are doing the the diligence you
are diligent, you are studying to understand what God wants
from you. You're studying his word.
We have to study to have a firm grasp on doctrine.
It tells us right there in that verse to rightly divide the word
of truth. So by implication that tells us
that there is a wrong way to divide God's word.
There's a wrong way to apply it to your life and understand it.
And in fact, like this whole chunk of verses in Second
Timothy is warning US against bad doctrine.
And verse 17, Paul is name dropping some guys.
He's letting everybody know that their doctrine is wrong, and he
says that concerning the truth, they have heard a good English
word there, that they have erred.
Specifically, it tells us what they were doing.
It says that they were reading future prophecy and teaching it
as something that had already passed.
That would be an incorrect division of Scripture.
And Paul's calling them out to the church.
He's saying watch out for those guys.
They're they're wrong. So for us, it's really important
to learn how to properly study the Bible so that we have a firm
grasp on doctrine before we can teach that to anybody else.
So this brings it, that concludes our living category.
And then the last of our believe live share is sharing the
gospel. So within our, again, our fire
department analogy, this would be like the technician level of
training. So it's not just about learning
to be a part of the team, but this level of growth is about
learning to perform the work of the ministry on your own and
being able to lead others in it. So if you want to be on the the
Michelin man SWAT team, you got to put in the work, you got to
study. You were expected to have a lot
of understanding, a lot of knowledge, a lot of on the year,
on the job experience, a lot of years of training to where
you're fully equipped to be safe for yourself and also to lead
others. So this starts our expectations
will start with letter A in your notes, which is winning souls.
So kind of in a a full circle moment, the share and believe
live share is leading others back to the beginning to believe
the gospel for themselves. We want you to be a soul winner
and participate in outreach. Proverbs 11/30 says the fruit of
the righteous is a tree of life and he that winneth souls is
wise. We want you to be wise.
John 15-8 says, herein is my father glorified that ye bear
much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples.
And again, bearing fruit is not how you prove your salvation.
It's how you prove that you're truly a disciple.
If you're truly a disciple of Jesus, then you're going to make
time to share the gospel. And again, we if you've been
around for a minute, we know we invite everybody to come with us
on evangelism. The different, the difference
here is that we're at first, we just want you to come.
We want you to participate. We can hand out Flyers, but at
the point of being a soul winner, the expectation is you
can go out there by yourself. We can send you to a corner with
a team. We can send you with another
group of people and whatever questions may come up.
It's not that you know everything, but you are
confident enough and understanding of the gospel and
how to lead someone else to come to faith that we can just trust
you to to do that on your own or lead a whole nother team of
people to do that. You're kind of the the leader in
that group. So again, there's a place for
everyone. We want everyone to come, come
to our reach days, come to our evangelism.
But if you're a soul winner, then you know how to do this on
your own. You don't need to be LED into
it. Next in that progression is we
want you to make disciples. It's time for you to invest your
growth into someone else. So everyone that has been
discipled now has an investment to make in another person.
And that's going to be a combination of the things that
you were taught along with the things that you have learned as
you have grown and matured in your own faith.
You're going to you're going to bring those things together and
you're going to reproduce the maturity that's in you and
someone else. Second Timothy 22, this is one
of our key verses for our discipleship ministry.
It says in the things that thou has heard of me among many
witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be
able to teach others also. So there's there's a biblical
command to not just hoard up the things that we learned for
ourselves. We're instructed to commit these
things to faithful people who can then teach others.
So if you were kind of in that process of being discipled, you
need to know that one of the qualifications for that is for
you to be faithful. You can't be invested in if
you're not even faithful to attend and to read your Bible on
your own. That's not a faithful person.
So we expect people to be faithful so that we can invest
in them, so that they can invest in others.
Letter C in your notes is teaching the Bible.
So we want you to be a soul winner.
We want you to have a grasp on the gospel.
We want you to be able to make disciples.
We want you to be able to reproduce maturity in others.
And we also want you to be able to teach the Bible at some
point. Every believer should be willing
to teach God's word and the best in people, not just one-on-one.
But in a broader sense, we see that the church may only have
one pastor. Sometimes as churches grow, they
have assistant pastors and that's good.
We see that in in the Bible. But in Acts 13, one, we see a
multitude of teachers. It says now there were in the
church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers as
Barnabas and Simeon that was called Niger and Lucius of
Cyrene and Manaean, which had been brought up with hair, the
tetrarch and Saul. So what we noticed there is that
there is a plurality of teachers in this church in Antioch.
So like for today, I'm not a pastor, but while Thomas is
gone, I get the opportunity. This is a place for me to grow
to be able to to teach tonight. So we would hope that a church
has more than one teacher. Otherwise every time someone
gets sick or they're out of town, we're just going to have
to cancel church. But we see this it's not just
for practicality though. We see this is a biblical
example that God wants the church to reproduce teachers of
of his word. And the last point in your notes
is reaching the world. So we want you to be prepared to
be called to ministry. Acts 13, two through three says
as they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said,
separate me, Barnabas and Saul for the work, where unto I have
called them. And when they had fasted and
prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.
So it's very possible that God may call you to go into lead
ministry in some other part of the country or some other part
of the world. It's not every Christian is not
called to go. But if we're doing our job as a
church and we are preparing people to be fully mature, fully
equipped, fully willing ministry leaders, it's very likely that
he's going to call some of us at some point to be separated for a
new work. We saw that in that passage.
It's important to note that it wasn't just the church's idea.
It wasn't just to accomplish their vision statement.
It says the Holy Ghost said separate me, Barnabas and Saul
for the work whereunto I have called them.
So we see that there's both a combination of a calling from
God, but there is a sending from the church And we're, we know
that we cannot send or lay hands on people who are not equipped.
First Timothy 522 says lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be
partaker of other men's sins. Keep thyself pure.
And we know through context this laying hands.
It's not talking about fighting with somebody.
It's not saying put your hands on them.
It's saying when it says lay hands, it's talking about
ordaining men to ministry. It's saying to lay your hands on
them. We saw that again in Acts 13
that says that they lay their hands on them and they send them
away. There is a ordination process
that we see as a church that we see examples of in Acts where
they laid their hands on men who had been trained, who had been
equipped and they sent them to do other, other ministry.
But, and Paul, Paul is telling Timothy to not do that.
Suddenly you have to make sure that people are equipped and
prepared to the ministry that you're sending them to do.
So in conclusion, like I said at the beginning of our sermon
time, I hope is that tonight's a night of self evaluation.
So at the bottom of the second page of your study guide,
there's a section for you to fill out.
And this is not for you to turn into anyone.
It's it's not for you to turn into me or Thomas.
My intention is that this is just for you.
And so since it's just for you, what I want you to do is to
circle where you think you're at tonight in this growth process.
If you think you're in this belief stage, that's totally
fine. We're not trying to shame
anyone. We don't want anyone to think
that we think less of them because of where they are in
their growth because this is where everyone has to start.
But if you're not 100% sure that you would go to heaven if you
died tonight, then you're still in that belief category.
You still got to figure out your faith.
You need to decide if you believe that, that the gospel is
true. Like Tucker said, everyone has
to come to a place of personal conviction to say what I'm
hearing, what I have. Again, how can they believe
something they've not heard? What I've heard, what I've read
in the Bible. I either believe that this is
true or I don't. So if you, if you have been
saved, then maybe you're in the live category.
If you're sure that you're saved, then your next step is to
grow in your faith. It's to be grounded in doctrine
and to serve in ministry as a part of the body.
Maybe you're at the share category and maybe you think
that God may be calling you to ministry.
And if so, that's great. We, we want to help equip you
for whatever God call, whatever call God has on your life.
And that's going to be different for everybody.
We know his will starts with God wants everyone to be saved.
But after that there's there's a lot of pass and a lot of things
that God has called people to do.
We want you to figure out what that is.
And then we want to help equip you for it.
After you've identified what stage you think you're in, you
can just circle that. Whether you're in the the
believe live or share, you can circle where you think you are
in there. And after you've identified
that, there's a spot that says, my next step is So what I want
for you to do. And again, this is just for you
is just to write down what you think your next step is for
2026. So if you're, if you're saved,
but you've never been baptized, well, then I can tell you
baptism is your next step. Maybe you're for sure that
you're saved, you've been baptized.
Well, then the next thing is for you to grow, you need to get
plugged in. You need to be a faithful
member. You need to come and you need
to, to study God's word, You need to be disciple.
So again, this is this is not something to turn in, but my
hope is you can put this in your Bible and throughout the year
you can be remembered. Put a stake in the ground and
say, what is it that I said? As much as I hate New Year's
resolutions, this is I think a worthy thing to do is to say,
what is your resolution for your faith this coming year?
Where do you want to be? How do you want to be different
in 2026 than you were in 2025? If we know God's called us all
to grow and to change, what is the thing that he's showing you
you need to do? Do you again, do you need to be
discipled? You can talk to me or you can
wait until next week and you can talk to just write it down and
talk to Thomas and say you know that.
I know I'm saved. I'm not doubting my salvation,
but now I don't want to be tossed to and fro.
I want to understand. I want to understand what the
Bible teaches. That's your next step.
So in conclusion, I want to pray for us.
I'm going to give you just a minute to maybe write down in
your notes there you can circle where you're at, put down what
your next step of growth is, but I'm going to pray for us.
And then if Jay and Nathan, if you guys are ready, you can give
us another minute or so and you guys can come up and conclude
this with the last song. And then Lauren's going to give
us some announcements. So let me pray first to close.
God, I thank you for this evening.
I thank you for the opportunity you've given me to, to share
your word tonight. The things that I learned by
studying and the time it takes to study through your word, the
things that it, it grows in me. I'm thankful for that
opportunity. I, I pray for Thomas and for his
family as they're traveling, as they're doing what you've called
them to do and they're able to be mission focused.
We pray that you'll bless them, keep them safe as they're
traveling. But God, I pray for us that
you'll identify for each one of us what it is that you want.
Not, not what I say, not the steps that I'm telling people
they need to take, but they can see in your word that these are
the steps that you want them to take.
And I pray that you'll just give us all the clarity individually
to know what it is that you're calling us to grow in over this
next year. And that not only will we know
what it is, but then we'll have the commitment to follow through
with that, That we'll put into action the things that you teach
us and that we will have a desire and a willingness to grow
in our faith. Now, I thank you for everyone
that's here tonight. I thank you for the opportunity
we've had to be together and fellowship.
And I pray that you'll take us home safely.
Each to our own homes. Amen.