Vision Sunday for 2018

Alright, so we're um you can turn off channel 2 so we don't get any feedback.

This evening so this evening we're gonna do kind of a um uh just a vision for um 2018.

I actually called this vision Sunday, and um about half of our group is out not wanting to breathe the cold or they're sick.

You know that our my whole family's been sick this week.

So um it's recorded on Facebook, and um we'll share this online after the fact.

But just kind of want to lay out.

I mean, we've been very slowly allowing God to kind of shape this new church here in southeast Baltimore.

Um we've had good open doors like we would have never expected.

Last spring, like when we were in my house, we would have never expected to be here.

Um and so it's kind of been just this all right, we'll just take it one step at a time and see see what God does.

So um, but we're ready for the next steps.

And you remember back in July, we were talking about how church planting is like giving birth for a woman who has this pregnancy.

Typically, you get about nine months, and wherever you're at, it's gonna be born.

And so, come this first quarter of 2018, it's gonna get born.

And we don't have all the pieces yet.

You know, we're still praying that God give us our full sound system.

This is kind of our our makeshift sound system that we've thrown together off of the Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist and Guitars, uh Guitar Center.

And um still praying for, although we have um trying to schedule out worship teams, we don't have an in-house worship team yet, just praying that God provides us with um worship.

Um but what if whatever we've got come um January 28th.

We'll be for the first time, we'll be um doing a preview service on Sunday morning, two and a half blocks from here, down the street, down end street, in um what was an old Catholic church.

Um now upstairs is sanctuary yoga, and downstairs is this beautiful second auditorium uh that's owned by a new century school.

We'll be renting it out.

So it's um I I think I've told you guys this some of you maybe didn't hear, but uh the lead church plant or Sin City missionary from the Southern Baptist came up, looked at the space last month with me, and he said, out of the hundred church plants done in DC, and the the 50 that are up here, he says this is one of the best spaces he's seen, just beautiful, and you can't beat the price.

So it seems like God's opened up a great door for us, and uh it's um gonna be aesthetically a lot nicer than a thrift store, and um we'll be able to go right into Sunday morning.

So we'll be meeting once a month, January and February, at the end of March, um we'll be our our official launch, and then we'll from Palm Sunday on, we'll be meeting Sunday morning.

So um back in the back, could you grab um Scott the the bulletins real quickly?

I don't think there's anything new, but I just want you to have some of those dates in your in your hands.

And could you take this from me, uh Minister T?

Go ahead and look at that.

I'll let you uh pass that around.

And if you can figure out what that is, I will give you.

I will give whoever can figure out what that is, I will give them a gift card.

No, it's not an incident.

No.

It's close.

Very close.

Very close.

So really quickly, in next next weekend, January 14th, we have Nick Bastion coming out from Southern California.

Nick's gonna be here um Saturday, Sunday, fly back on Monday.

He's 19 years old.

He's praying about being a ministry intern.

He's he's got some musical ability.

Um so we'll see where he's at.

He'll get to see where we're at.

Sometimes being in the city, or like, I wonder if other people think this city is as cool as I think it is.

But I think it's pretty cool.

I love I love being here, so I hopefully Nick uh Nick loves it.

So Nick's um gonna be with a city um leaning worship next week.

So we'll need to set up for him, get the whole um set up.

Maybe you can back him up on the cajon.

Alright.

So that's next week in the following week, um, the 21st.

I'm still um the worships to be determined for that date, and then January 28th also.

Um worships to be determined, but on January 28th will be a first Sunday at New Century School.

So um that's like all hands-on deck.

All five of our teams need to be present and accounted for.

Everything else on there is basically the same as it has been on the past.

If you're new, we have um we use uh the Slack app to communicate internally as a as a church family.

And so uh we share scripture on there and if updates and then some of our teams um for doing church or organized on there in closed groups.

So if you want to be a part of what's going on at Haven City Church, let us know.

Marvin, like you mentioned, we have the um communication card back in the back.

You can fill that out and we'll add you to um Slack so that you can be a part of the conversation.

It's like group text messaging if you haven't used it before.

Alright, let's turn in our Bibles to Ephesians.

Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

Ephesians chapter 4.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

And if you don't have a Bible, I have a Bible.

Scott, you want to hand out Bibles right up there?

Grab those.

What?

A loop, we've got um that's for weaving in a loom.

That's close.

Uh Scott thought it was for incense.

You could definitely burn some incense right in there.

You could try, that's not what it's for.

Nope, not what not for washing clothes.

We will um we will get to this in just a second.

So Ephesians chapter 4, verse 11, jumps right into the middle of Paul talking about Jesus.

Ephesians 4:11

So we're gonna take this and we're gonna glean some truths about the church from Ephesians chapter 4, but the context is about Jesus and how Jesus relates to the church.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

So picking up in verse 11, he says this.

And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, equipping the saints for the work of the ministry to build up the body of Christ until we all reach unity in the faith, and until we all were in the knowledge of God's Son, growing in the knowledge of God's Son, growing to maturity with a stature measured by Christ's fullness.

Then we will no longer be little children, tossed by the waves and blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning, with cleverness in the techniques of deceit, but speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into Him who is the head, Christ.

For him, the whole body fitted and knit together to every supporting ligament, promotes the growth of the body for building up itself in love by the proper working of each individual part.

Lord, as we look at your word and as we talk about 2018, I pray that you would bless us with Holy Spirit unction, vision, that you be the one that directs our steps, Lord, that there would not be human plans, but that there would be your work.

So oftentimes, God, when you worked, you revealed it to your prophets ahead of time.

You love to say, just like in Luke, as we've been studying, you'd love to say, here's what I'm gonna do, and then you do it.

And so, Lord, as we talk about 2018, God, we're trusting that you have purposed for a church to be established, that you're planning to reach new people with the gospel, and you want us to be a part of that.

And so, as we discuss these things, just pray for just your presence to be upon this conversation.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Before we get into Ephesians chapter 4, on Friday, as we were wrapping up the day, we were distributing food.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

Don was one of the guys that was helping me on Friday with the food.

And um, he grabbed his buddy, who lives in the same building, using JR.

And uh, because we had all this kind of it was one of those strange things, we had all this leftover food in here that was like lined up.

In fact, one of the boxes is right out there.

Um, it was so cold it was hard to get people to come and walk and get um the food.

And I didn't have a vehicle to go and drop off, so we were we were trying to figure out what to do.

We found JR, and JR came in, and I was met for the first time.

And he's a young guy in his 30s, white guy whose maintenance doesn't mean all the apartment structures here, and started talking to him and just said, hey, um, JR, you know, do you go to a church around here?

And right away, when you ask that question, you can kind of see people's demeanor, whether they're like the light up or the shutdown.

And JR was one of those guys who shut down.

And it just didn't seem like he's like, no, you know, I don't really go to a church.

And I said, Well, have you gone to church before?

He's like, Yeah, and I said, Well, what was your you know, what's your opposition to church?

Why do you not like it?

He said, Well, to be really honest with you, church was just so boring, you know.

And I told Jr., I said, you know, that's one of the top five complaints about church.

Those five complaints are one, it's either boring.

Two, the people who are there are judgmental and critical of me.

Three, all they care about is getting my money.

Four, is um that they don't really do a good job of caring for my kids.

And fifth, is that they're disconnected from the local community, the needs in the local community.

Right?

They're just kind of like an island under themselves, they've got their own little sub Christian subculture that's going on.

And when I said that, he kind of lit up a bit, like, oh, you're speaking the language.

Like, you know, my issues with church.

And um, so I invited him out.

He's obviously not here.

But um JR is not alone.

In fact, in Southeast Baltimore, if you take the six neighborhoods that are around here, between Fells Point, Upper Fells Point, Butchers Hill, Washington Hill, um, uh Harper East, those neighborhoods, church attendance is about 10% or less.

It's actually maybe like 8 or 9 percent.

So over 90% of the 35,000 people that live in that square mile do not attend church.

Um within one mile of here is about 35,000 people.

Within 30 minutes of here is over a million people.

We have 60, 620,000 people in the city give or take 10,000.

So there's immense need, but church participation is fairly low.

And the number of churches is somewhat low as well.

I don't know if you're familiar with just this neighborhood.

We've had six different church buildings converted into small businesses or apartments, including two in the last year, one just our neighbor, three or four doors down here, and one off of Patterson Park Avenue about a year ago.

And so, where does the church stand today?

And what's um why would somebody move from Southern California to Baltimore to start a new church, right?

Well, there's this immense need.

And Jesus died for those people, right?

This city is made up of thousands of families, many who are living in poverty.

You have working professionals that are climbing the corporate ladder.

That's kind of describes Harbor East, Fell's Point, Proper, Cannon.

You have academicians or those who are in academics.

We've got how many major universities here?

I know 80,000 college students at least.

Um, we've got 80,000 kids in public schools.

Um, Baltimore is becoming a young entrepreneurial tech hub.

It's in the top five for tech startup cities.

We've got moms, dads, grandmas.

Baltimore city is is made up of many um numbers, many classifications.

And yet Jesus 2018 years ago came into the world to save those people, right?

So God sent his son into the world to rescue the people then and Baltimore now from their self-destruction, right?

We had a record high homicide rate last year.

And as my brother Minister Key here pointed out in a sermon he preached a couple years ago, only Jesus can deal with the hearts of murderers, that murderous intent.

And so here we are.

Trust in the Lord that he wants to establish a new church.

The church itself is the gathering of Jesus' people, right?

People that have been saved and rescued by Jesus.

But when Jesus saved us, he didn't just save us unto our own, right?

He didn't just save us individuals, but he gave us this mission mandate.

He didn't just, if he wanted us to just kind of live happily ever after, then why leave us here on earth, right?

So we are a people that are carrying a message.

So when Jesus saves us and takes care of our self-destructive sin issue, he's also commissioned us to be living as missionaries in our everyday lives.

And the church itself is that gathering, right?

So when we gather, when we come together, we view ourselves as a church, what we're doing is with this gathering of this people who are on mission, who are sent as missionaries to their neighbors, to their lost family members, to their co-workers.

So how does a church get equipped to do its mission?

That's where this first text, Ephesians chapter 4, comes in.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

So Jesus says that he gives to the church apostles, pastors, prophets, evangelists, teachers, and it's for the equipping of the saints.

Do you see that in verse 12?

Equipping the saints.

This is equipping the saints.

This literally is the instrument that is used in the Greek for net mending.

That's what the word equipping means.

It means driven oh, and you can mend your fishing net.

This is the tool that you use.

Your spool of fishing netting goes right inside of these loops here.

And as you're mending your net, this is kind of weaving in and out.

When I lived in Kauai, the fishing net would get stuck in the sand.

It would kind of break free, and then it would just litter the sand.

And the problem with it, it would just get buried in the sand.

So you couldn't pull it out, but you get to see it quite a bit.

Fishing net is like this tough, tough material.

And when you'd get a hole in your fishing net, you'd use this to mend it.

So Paul says that Jesus gives to the church these pastors and teachers, these um leaders, that are called to equip the saints so that the saints can do what?

The work of the ministry.

Right.

So this is this kind of lays around my office to help me remember remind me of my job, to mend the nets.

You want to have a mended net, why?

So you can catch the fish, right?

So Jesus has saved us.

He's given us a mission to reach Southeast Baltimore and your neighborhoods where you're at.

He's made us missionaries.

He's brought us together, he's knit our hearts together with this mission.

And then here we are gathering with this idea or with the intent, this commission of let's get our nets mended together.

I'm kind of mend you up so that you can do the work of the ministry.

So as we go into 2018, or we're in it already, I guess, there's two activities, two activities that I want to break this year into.

The first is our gathering, and the second is our scattering.

Our gathering is gonna be our once-a-week gathering that we do on Sundays.

Sorry, I jumped ahead in my nose here.

So I wrote, I wrote down as I was praying about this this week, just with about our gathering, is it's our vision to start a Sunday morning worship service where we collectively gather to express our love for Jesus and grow in our understanding of the gospel.

So on Sunday nights, we've been gathering, right?

And the only next step for our gathering is to go to Sunday mornings, which kind of makes us official.

When you're on Sunday nights, you can kind of get away with a lot.

You can say, hey, we're in the process, we're a church in the making, but going to Sunday mornings is kind of like the next step for us.

So that's gonna be our gathering.

And again, it's a Sunday morning worship service where we collectively gather to express our love for Jesus and grow an understanding of the gospel.

Now that reflects our mission statement, which is to be a church in Baltimore City that loves Jesus and preaches the gospel, right?

So the two parts of our mission statement are gonna be expressed through our Sunday gathering.

So then the question becomes as you plan for any pastor, put yourself in the shoes of like, well, what are we gonna be?

When we do Sunday mornings, are we a gathering that's primarily looking to serve people that don't know Jesus yet?

Or are we gonna gather as a group that um is for believers?

Is our corporate worship service for Christians or is it for non-believers?

Now that's an important question.

Because um, if you're looking at your worship service on Sunday mornings to be a time for non-believers, then what you have in mind that is evangelism, right?

How do we reach people with the gospel who are not yet saved and we want to bring them into the kingdom?

So if that's your intent as a church, then you're gonna tailor your church around that intent.

How things look, what kind of music you do, what the preaching sounds like, what the look of the church and the feel is.

It may speak to that.

If your church is church gathering is just uh for Christians, then that would also give some shape to your gathering, right?

It might make it a setting where it wouldn't feel comfortable if you didn't know Jesus yet to come.

Maybe you'd speak in use terms that are theological terms.

Um it might be very clique, right?

There may be different things that it takes on, um, good and bad, based off of the answer to that question.

But I want to just point you to 1 Corinthians 14.

Because Paul talks about the church gathering, and mind you, in 1 Corinthians 14, this is not a text about um public worship directly.

Instead, Paul's talking about tongues and prophecy.

But he gives some very interesting in passing, as he's making his main points, he says some really important stuff about public worship.

So 1 Corinthians 14, look at verse 23.

It says, if therefore the whole church assembles together and all are speaking in other tongues, and people who are outsiders or unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your minds?

But if all are prophesying and some unbelievers or outsiders come in, he is unconvicted by all and is called to account by all.

The secrets of his heart will be revealed, and as a result, he will fall down and will worship God, proclaiming, God is.

Among you.

I don't know what it says in your version, but this is this I'm reading from the CE version, and I love that.

God is really among you.

So as Paul is discipling this church in the exercise of these gifts, or what we sometimes call spiritual gifts, and he's encouraging them towards prophecy.

He talks about a believer's gathering where it's believers that are gathered, but having a mindfulness towards the unbeliever.

So the unbeliever is coming in, right?

And what is the unbeliever encountering?

They're encountering the presence of God.

That God is in their midst.

So I would I would say this.

So we're starting our Sunday mornings.

What is that going to look like?

Are we going to gear it for believers or unbelievers?

We're going to gear it for Jesus, right?

Our Sunday mornings are a time to worship Jesus and pray that He is present and in our midst.

And if that takes on a flavor that serves, because as Paul is writing this to the Corinthians and he's encouraging them on, here's how you should behave as you gather, he uses over and over again the word edification or being built up.

So we're hoping that Christians, as they come together, as we come together as Christians, we're being built up like a house or like that building in Harbor East across from Wells Fargo, where I go every week.

It's getting built up, like layer by layer.

That's what we're praying is happening with Hayden City Church.

But we're also buddy.

Come on.

Come on in.

Yeah, make it hit the door for me.

We're also praying as we gather.

Welcome, welcome.

Matt.

I love those guys.

How you doing, Adrian?

You doing good?

Okay.

Thanks for coming.

Glad to hear.

So as we gather, the non-believer encounters believers loving Jesus, and their testimony is, well, what is it?

At the end of verse 25, God is really among you.

God is really among you.

Could a church ask for anything more than that?

Isn't that exactly what we want?

That testimony, that God is really among you.

So that's the um that's the first aspect here of our idea of gathering.

Now, a couple of things.

Corporate worship of Jesus is so important.

It's all about Him.

So in Ephesians chapter 4, you've got these gifted leaders that are given by Jesus to the church to mend nets so that they're operational nets.

Ephesians 4 · chapter mention

So all the saints, everybody in the church is able to do the work of the ministry, right?

And the church is functioning, it's doing its job, ultimately leading to people being shaped into the image of Jesus, and Jesus is the center, right?

He's the head of the church, he's the object of people's affections.

So our gathering is going to be about Jesus.

It should always be about Jesus.

A couple of things that I wrote down here as I was thinking about our Sundays.

First of all, I want to do our Sunday gatherings with excellence.

If we're going to get together and we're going to worship God, let's do it well.

Now I've grown up in the church.

I'm a third-generation church planter.

And the church knows how to do cheesy really well.

That's part of why I didn't want to meet in here.

This is like classic church.

But sometimes, like some of the churches I grew up in, they looked like this on purpose.

This is more of like this is what we inherited.

It's not my fault, right?

No, but the church can sometimes be really cheesy.

And what I want to say to us, and as we as we break into teams, and as we're, you know, on the assimilation team, and we're doing hospitality, and um as we're we're greeting people, and as we're caring for people, and as we're doing worship, and as we're setting up sound systems and all of that, I want to do it with the best ability that we can do it.

You know, I want to do it well.

I think that um our culture cares about things being done well, it's meaningful.

I think things should look beautiful.

Actually, I wrote down here that it should look good, it should sound good, it runs smoothly, and it tastes great, right?

Even with the um hospitality.

The second thing is uh I want to exhort you, challenge you to make our gathering time a priority that on a weekly basis you would be attending, but you would be here, that you show up.

And um I don't know what that means for you, I know you've got other things going on in your life, but but um in speaking with my other church planting friends in um and around Baltimore, you know, coming two times a week or two times a month to church is pretty regular.

And yet I want to encourage you guys to be to be faithful, to gather and be a part of what's going on.

One of the reasons we've been meeting in here on Sunday nights is to do what we call a kind of assembly a core team.

Not just attenders, but doers.

We talked about this, remember, Marvin, we talked about this back when we were in my living room that we're not looking for just attenders right now in this season of church.

We're looking for doers, right?

Pioneers.

And um, and that's what you guys have been.

You know, you guys have been faithful.

You've been like calling me, like, what can I do this week?

How about?

And I'm like, I don't know.

Like, we're so small, we're so early on, I don't know what you can do.

Learn the guitar, you know.

But um, but but at this stage, this is it's a messy stage in in church planning, but like we're the ones that are not just attending, but we're the ones doing.

So being there faithfully, being there on time, being the ones that are kind of learning and just kind of taking taking control, like helping welcome people in, all of that is um just so so important.

The next thing I wrote down just regarding our Sunday gatherings, is we need to not be a click.

So some of us have been meeting together for a year now, almost more than a year.

I I met Matt and Martin over a year now ago, and some of you like just a year ago now.

And so we've got we've got close friendships, and then you guys have been become friends, and our kind of our church birthed out of my living room, and that was a highly relational time.

We love that.

There's a part of that where we still miss it, right?

But one of the ways that that's handicapped us more recently is that we can become insular and on Sundays not be reaching out to people that are coming in, that are new.

And and so there's a good side of this and a bad side of this.

On one hand, the fact that we can kind of like just want to talk to each other and not meet new people means that we're hungry and starved for fellowship and we don't have enough times to gather.

So that's going to be our our second part of what I'm gonna talk about, scattering in our in our missional community groups.

But for Sunday mornings, as we go into Sunday morning gathering, I need you guys to come into that time with this mindset.

Put your phone away and look for new people.

If there's nobody new, then love one another.

Don't let that phone get out of your pocket unless I think you need to like social media something or take pictures, right?

It doesn't need to be out of, it doesn't need to be out.

Unless you have kids.

Or you're like monitoring something, or you're a doctor, which is kind of what we have to see.

So, you know, I trust them.

The um, so be looking to make connections with new people as they come in.

Prayerfully, we're gonna be um a gathering of more than our normal 12, 15, 18, 17 people.

Hopefully, we grow to 65, 75, maybe 100 people, which would be amazing for for this part of the city, you know.

But that's not gonna happen if if new people walk in and they are not able to make a relational connection.

There's actually a couple of people that have been coming to our church for a few months, and and I'm not gonna give any names, obviously, but they're struggling relationally already.

They want to be committed to our church, but they just don't feel like they have a they're struggling to make that connection.

So we need to be um loving when we're gathering together, especially, and just just making sure that needs are met, reaching out.

How can I pray for you?

How can I be a part of your life?

Um, a few other things in regards to gathering.

One, invite others to attend face-to-face or or through social media.

Um, I come from a background of using social media, putting things up on the internet.

I've tried to make a nice website for our church, I try to put up, you know, the meetup things with Marvin and Jeff and Kayla's help, the Facebook events.

So take those things and share them out.

Those are me just making it a little bit tinier, easier for you to do it in a non face-to-face way where you may feel shy.

But but don't be shy.

Invite your friends.

Because we're gonna do it well.

Hopefully, you don't have anything to be ashamed of.

Seek to serve.

Seek to serve, and and we're we talk about just serving a different facet of the church.

Pray for our gatherings, right?

There's no church that's gonna have non-believers show up to their church, and those non-believers are gonna go, wow, God is in their midst.

There's no way that's gonna happen without us being people to pray and ask God to be in our midst.

And then when we worship, and as God blesses us, so next week Nick's gonna be here, right?

Hopefully, Nick, maybe he's watching on Facebook right now.

I don't know.

But Nick, hopefully you're a good worship believer.

And when he's here, let's stand up.

Any worship leader.

Let's stand up, let's sing loud, and let's worship Jesus, right?

We sing because we celebrate the victory that Jesus accomplished.

So we're a singing people.

That's a that's a I heard that in a sermon a couple weeks ago from my friend Pastor Jimmy Caldwell.

We sing because we are a victorious people.

And so as we have these different guests, uh in a couple weeks we'll have the Holy Host will be here again.

And then um one time I'm gonna, I think in once in March, I've got a guy named Yvonne coming into lead worship.

And he's like 60, got a great testimony, healed of prostate cancer and plays the keyboard.

I think he grew up.

I think his family grew up in Perkins.

Uh now he's kind of in the DC suburbs, but just a sweet, sweet man.

And um, so when they're here, when they're here, let's sing loud.

Alright?

So that's our gathering.

Once a week gathering.

Now, let's talk about scattering.

Right?

So we gather once a week.

So we're not going to be a church that lives in isolation.

Right?

It's not our intent to be a church that hunkers down and is waiting for the storm to pass.

There are some churches that have that mentality of like, let's just hide out.

The world is so bad.

It's going to hell in a handbasket.

So we don't want to be a church that lives in isolation.

We don't have a building where you can hide in.

Um, you can't hide here.

Don't come hide here.

This is the everybody who needs ministry in here, right?

Come hang out with me, but don't come hide in here.

But but we may never get a building.

If we get a building, it's not a place to hide.

We do not want to be a church that lives in isolation.

So we scatter.

We're not a church that's trying to create our own subculture or our own entertainment.

We're not trying to be a Christian Disneyland asking for people to spend all their time at our facility or at our events and to kind of get their Christian entertainment in with us.

No, we're looking to scatter out across the city into our little worlds as missionaries.

And so, with those two things of what we're not, we will make decisions based on that on a building down the road.

Being able to rent something just once a week is great.

Because these churches that own buildings, those buildings sit empty for most of the week.

Unless you have a school or you have some other way to transform it into something that serves the community.

Buildings can be like a weight around the neck of a church getting in the way of its mission.

So again, we want to scatter around the city.

And there's three things we'll do in our scattering.

The first is um personally pursuing a relationship with God on a daily basis.

The second is being missionaries in our everyday lives, and the third is meeting in our missional communities throughout the week.

So let's let's touch on that first, those three.

First is having a relationship.

So when we leave here, we're not like done being Christians, right?

We're not don't clock out, but we continue on in our relationship with God.

And having a relationship with God means this that we're spending time with him, that we're communicating with him, right?

So he communicates to us through his word, and then we're communicating back to him based on what his word says.

And that's how he speaks to us.

And then it's in Romans chapter 1, it says we go from faith to faith.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

We're living in a living out our walk with God, moving from faith to faith.

So maintaining a relationship, that's your job.

I'm commissioning you with that, right?

So look, if if on a daily basis you're not um yet in habit or have the discipline of cultivating your relationship with God, let me know.

I'd love to help you with that.

Because that is that's fundamental to everything else is having a daily relationship with God.

The second thing is that that last phrase in our mission statement, living as missionaries in our everyday lives.

And the way that we've um uh made that concrete for us as a church is on the back of your bulletin.

It's the five by five where we're just praying and asking God to help us identify the five people he's already probably put in our life that don't yet know him, that we can do five things for.

That's oftentimes what it looks like to live as a missionary in our everyday lives.

There's other things that that God can lay on your heart.

But living like a missionary in your everyday life means that you are taking time to think about the relationships that are there.

And you're doing those five things, praying for those people daily, touching face with them once a week, surprising them with kindness, or blessing them once a month, inviting them into special events, and then looking for opportunities to share the gospel with them as share the gospel with them as they open up their life to you, right?

And then the final thing is missional community groups.

So I've talked about how we can be clickish, you know, especially when we did our did our dinners on the first uh first Sunday night.

We love hanging out together, which is a great mark for a church.

So we need more times to hang out together than are not at the time when new people are coming in.

And so, and we're intending to spend more time together in relationship than just once a week.

In fact, Acts over and over again in Acts, it talks about how the church met from house to house.

And so we're gonna begin doing missional community groups based on geographic regions.

I'm hoping to start one kind of out in Beth and Kayla and Scott's area and Catonsville.

Maybe we'll meet in the Panera Bread once a week on um an evening out of the week.

And then I also, there's a few people that are downtown, um, right in the heart of downtown.

Um Chrissa and Daniel and Christine.

Um, you know, I probably will try to help them get just some kind of group started.

Um, and then we have my house over here.

Um we've got kind of side, southeast Baltimore, properly, and I'd like to have like a concentration of missional groups kind of around here.

Perkins, love to have something in Perkins.

So again, a missional community group is just a there's a shared meal typically.

Uh it's informal.

There's there's getting getting to know one another, praying for one another, talking through some of the points from uh the text that we're looking at on Sundays, praying for one another, uh being willing to hear each other's needs, you know, sickness comes up, uh, financial issues come up.

We want to deal with those things in a commissional community group level before it rises to a church level.

Um all of those things are a part of what we'll be doing in our missional community group.

So there's really, you know, being a part of Haven City Church consists of three things, right?

Loving God, being a part of Sunday gatherings, and be a part of your missional community group.

Um as those get started.

And and and we'll be rolling those out throughout the year as God provides.

So be paying for those three things, participate in those three things.

That's kind of what what it looks like to do church with us.

I'm gonna send it, I'm gonna put it up on Slack, a link to a video by a man named Jeff Vandersel.

He was the pastor of Soma Church, and then he's pastoring a new church now.

They did a lot to just kind of um teach on what a missional community group looks like.

It's a 14-minute long video, it's too long for me to play here, and I couldn't figure out the technical side of getting the TV here and playing it.

So I'll share it on Slack.

Watch that video so you can see.

I think you're gonna see these missional community groups, just the vision for it, and you'll be excited about it and be praying.

I want to do that in my area.

Also, just so you know, missional community groups are a much safer environment that you can invite your neighbors, you're five by five, the people you're praying for.

It's a safer thing to invite people to than to invite them to church.

So um you may start a you literally you may have a vision for starting a missional community group, and everybody there may not know Jesus yet, which is fine.

You can do a group that's just like, let's get to know Jesus, we're gonna pray together, and um and see what God does.

Um I've I've seen that work a number of times.

So scattered.

So we're scattered across Baltimore City, loving Jesus, right?

Living like missionaries in our everyday lives, and then committed to one another in our um community groups, our missional community groups.

So the next steps between now and the end of March, we're gonna have um kind of a crazy schedule, right?

So the next two weeks we'll be here, and the 28th we're at New Century School on a first Sunday morning, then we're here.

Or actually, no, after that we're canceling Sunday nights for Super Bowl Sunday saying, plan a Super Bowl party, be a missionary to your neighbors, go to the one you're invited to and be a missionary there, right?

It's a great cultural open door to um share the gospel.

Then we're back here for two weeks, and then go back over to New Century School.

So on our website, both more church.com, we have our schedule printed out there now or laid out there.

Um I put it in the bulletin, but it's also now on the church button on our website.

So just stay posted for that.

And then um I need you guys to begin to work in the teams that you've been assigned to.

So we have a worship and sound team with no worship per leader yet, but we do have sound, right?

We have a system and hopefully a new system on its way.

Um that team needs to be kind of discussing what's going on.

We have a assimilation and welcome team.

We have a children's ministry team, we have hospitality, which represents food and facility, and then we have what's called the Baltimore Bulwark, which other churches call a diaconal fund.

The Baltimore Bulwark is basically our pool of resources that we are used that God's entrusted to us to care for vulnerable people.

The word bulwark means a shield or protection.

So we started a fund called the Baltimore Bulwark, and it consists of financial resources, food, the compassion center, and my time.

And then we have a team that basically manages and kind of oversees and stewards how those resources are used for our church first, and then secondarily through people connected to our church.

So this is important for you guys to understand.

Because of a vision of starting a church that is socioeconomically diverse, meaning that we have people that are poor and people that are wealthy, that means that we are creating an environment that is challenging, where there's great need.

And so it's it's fairly common now for people to come in here on a Wednesday or a Friday and they're asking for stuff.

And then there have been there have been cases on um Sunday nights where somebody's Come in and they've uh asked for help because they need help in their life.

And um and that can right away put you as an individual into an uncomfortable position because if you you kind of are like, Yeah, I want to give and I'm here at church, and so I feel like I have to, because that's like what would Jesus do?

But then it puts you into this weird place, right?

And it can make your your relationship with that person uncomfortable.

And then it and then also our church can kind of be viewed as a um in an unhealthy way.

And so we've set up the Baltimore Bulwark as a resource so that as needs arise and you're here at our gathering, and people say, Hey, I have a need, you could go great.

We have a we have a program called the Baltimore Bulwark.

We can't help everybody, but we're happy to listen through and um see how we can help you.

And there's a form, one-page form that's real simple.

There's a team that evaluates it.

Um, and so like even with counseling appointments and what I spend, I have like an allotted amount of time I give, and but I'm able to say, rather than being the bad guy and having to say no or yes every opportunity, I'm able to turn this stuff over to a team who's able to look at it and go, yeah, we've got the resources or we don't have the resources.

So that is very, very valuable to me.

And it's gonna protect our church down the road, and it's hopefully gonna allow us to be good stewards over what God provides to us.

So be if you don't know what team you're on yet, because some of you aren't on a team yet, but you want to be on a team, you need to let me know.

Um because we need to ramp up, so we're ready for the 28th.

And so that's pretty much everything I have written down.

So, so from Easter on, we'll be meeting Sunday mornings, and then we're gonna be rolling out our missional community groups.

I could have said that, that would have been the whole message.

That's the that's the vision for 2018.

That's what it looks like.

But would you would you pray for those things as all of the pieces I'm trying to bring you in so you under kind of understand what this looks like as it rolls out?

Um I mentioned this last week.

Some of you weren't here last week.

We have a ministry intern too that besides Nick, we have a guy named Derek who's moving here from Hawaii to be a missionary, yeah, crazy on, uh, with us in Baltimore City.

Um I discipled him when he was 14 after his dad died.

When I was in Bible college, I ended up in Hawaii, and it was just a couple months after his dad died, and I have known him for the last 15 years, 17 years.

Um But he's gonna be a ministry intern, he's gonna work for me, he's gonna work in here, um, he's gonna live in um Fedil, I think.

And um you guys are gonna love him.

He'll help he he knows some stuff about sound, so he can help us with some sound system stuff.

But he's a sweet guy.

Uh he preaches out for to their homeless outreach, you know, so he's gonna fit really well into here.

I think so.

But pray for Derek.

Uh we're excited to have him out here.

And I'm hoping to add three or four more interns by the year as well.

Love having ministry interns that can come and just spend time with us.

So um, what else?

I want to close out by just praying together.

Um so if we could break into three groups to pray.

Maybe you guys here, you guys just turn around right there and pray, and then the back row, just pray together.

Just pray for the next few minutes for these things.

Let's pray just that that there's more churches than Baltimore or Haven City Church.

Um, so if you just pray for the church as a whole, ask ask the Lord just to touch Baltimore City.