Created for Community

So today is called Connect Sunday.

It's one of the Sundays every year where we try to make it as likely for you to take a next step and enter into community.

We want to make it as easy and as likely for you to take that next step.

And I'm so excited for what God might do here this morning.

I know some of you are getting nervous when we start talking about community again, but I'm so excited for what God has done because over this last month, we have seen shepherd leaders be trained to step into community.

And those who are helping with our offering, you go ahead and come forward at this time.

We've seen shepherd leaders being trained.

We've seen a new system and a new process, a new form available online to help people get connected.

We've seen eight new community groups launched this month.

So excited about that.

Praise the Lord.

Absolutely.

Praise the Lord.

That is not easy.

That is the opposite of what our flesh wants to do, and we'll talk about that here today.

Over the last month, I've gotten to see what God can do through meaningful community.

And tonight, we have the opportunity to take that step.

Tonight we're doing something brand new, and it's called a night of community.

Every single person is invited.

What we're going to have here in this room, it won't be rows, there'll be circles.

And our open community groups and some of our new community groups will meet right here in this room.

And when you first come through those doors, you'll see people from community groups ready to welcome you and bring you in to invite you to introduce you to shepherd leaders that we have here, people leading community groups.

So it's not speed dating, but there are probably some similarities.

You're going to have some opportunity and some time just to meet some people.

There'll be some handouts that you can get on each of these groups, and they're distinctive, so you can learn more about what they're like.

We'll have some time of testimony.

We'll break for food.

And then the second half of the hour of the time, we're just going to have a normal community group time.

So you can see what that looks like.

Kind of like musical chairs.

Whatever group you end up with there, you get to experience what community looks like.

But I'm so excited for what God might do through that.

And I'm praying that every single person here would take a next step.

Because every single person here was made for meaningful community.

And we just live in such an interesting time.

I mean, we live in a time of hyper connection where we can FaceTime somebody all the way on the other side of the world and connect in seconds.

I mean, we can scroll through hundreds of friends' updates in just a matter of minutes, and yet study after study shows us that we are the loneliest generation in history.

It's been said that loneliness is a subjective feeling of being alone against your will.

A subjective feeling of being alone against your will.

That means that you can be alone and not be lonely, but you can also be surrounded by people and still feel completely alone.

See, we can be surrounded by people but still feel completely alone.

And there are some staggering thoughts, uh stats, rather, from the National Library of Medicine.

I want to read some to you.

And this is from this year, by the way.

61% of adults in the United States feel lonely every single day.

Forty-seven percent of adults report that they don't have any meaningful relationships in their lives.

73% of young adults report chronic loneliness.

And I thought this was interesting.

A recent U.S.

study showed that young adults spending over two hours daily on social media, they were twice as likely to feel lonely.

Two hours socially connected online leads to twice the feeling of being socially disconnected.

I mean, so in a world so hyper-connected, why do so many of us feel relationally empty?

I believe that deep down in the core of how God has designed us to be, every single one of us is designed for meaningful connection.

We were created for meaningful community with one another.

So the question I want to answer this morning is this How do we actually experience meaningful community?

And here's what I've found to be true.

As I study scripture, as I look at the early church and I see what they did, they spent very little time in settings like this.

They did meet at the temple, they did go through the sacrifices, they did spend time like this, but very little of their time collectively was spent in settings like this, sitting in rows.

We can joke because everybody's got their assigned seat in here.

It'd be amazing if we changed the setting of the room, how we might scatter like ants.

Where do we sit?

But everybody's got their assigned seat, but it's not really a picture of rows that we see much in the early church where we're staring at the back of each other's heads.

It's really a picture of circles.

And as great as rows are, and I want you to hear me in this, scripture could not be more clear.

Do not forsake the gathering together.

Corporate worship is so important.

What we call gathering together to corporately worship together is a command from God.

It's so important to how God grows us and how he equips us.

But as great as rows are, as great as Sunday morning is, we need circles.

Circles are where we find true, meaningful connection with one another.

And I love that we gather, I love that we sing, I love that we learn, but there are 59 one-anothers in the New Testament.

59 commands to love one another, to forgive one another, to encourage one another, to serve one another, to bear one another's burdens, to love one another.

And there's no way that we could possibly live out those 59 one-anothers in one hour on a Sunday morning.

Circles are where we live out those one another.

At the Orchard Church, we believe that Jesus has clearly defined the mission of the church.

It's in Matthew 28.

It's the Great Commission.

He says, I want you to go and make disciples.

That mission's not optional, it's for every single person who believes in him, although it is scary.

It's not optional, it's not variable.

It's the same for every local church in every generation.

The calling is both simple and comprehensive.

And this is what it is.

If you're wondering what that looks like, we want to lead people to trust and follow Jesus.

We want to lead people to trust and follow Jesus.

It's really that simple.

We want to lead people, it begins with the proclamation of the gospel and telling them exactly who Jesus is and leading them to Jesus.

That's a beginning part potentially of discipleship.

But then it continues with walking alongside one another as we obey all that Jesus has taught.

So that's our aim here at the orchard for everything that we do, whether it's worship on Sunday morning, whether it's the way that we disciple our kids and students, how we organize and how we lead our community groups, it's that.

We want to teach people how to trust and follow Jesus.

And we believe that transformation happens when people encounter the gospel and then they live it out together in relationships.

Real relationships.

So if you're wondering what this community group thing is all about, if you're wondering, should I really go tonight?

Am I just going to be looking for an excuse not to, I want you to hear this is what it is.

All right?

So you're not surprised.

This is what community groups at the orchard is all about.

Community groups at the orchard exist to equip people to build gospel-centered relationships.

That's why they exist.

To equip people to build gospel-centered relationships to encourage deeper spiritual growth and greater engagement in the mission of God.

Here it is.

You can see it.

This is what it's all about.

It's about gospel-centered relationships that help people grow spiritually and greater engagement in God's mission.

So this is how we plan at the orchard to live out the vision that Jesus gave to the church.

Now, of course, there's resources and programming and things that we, I'm sure we'll plan to get to.

As Cody is coming here in just a couple weeks, we'll be talking about discipleship a lot this year.

And there's a lot more resources to come.

But this is what we plan to do here at the orchard, right here in Carville and beyond.

This is Jesus' mission to reach them.

How we're going to do that is to lead people to trust and follow Christ, to follow him faithfully.

So gospel-centered relationships, grow spiritually, greater engagement in his mission.

So I want to unpack that a little bit more here this morning.

When we talk about gospel-centered relationships, here's what I want you to think.

I want you to think spiritual friendship.

Spiritual friendship.

I mean, we absolutely all need spiritual friendship in our lives.

Spiritual friendships are rooted in the gospel, meaning that it creates opportunity for growth and mission.

And we'll kind of unpack that too.

We all need spiritual friends.

Here's a quote that I read just last month.

Your friends determine the quality and the direction of your life.

And I think we all know that to be true, right?

Who we spend time with, who we allow to make up our circle has tremendous impact, not just in the trajectory of our lives, but in the quality of our lives as well.

I mean, look at the five people that you're closest to, and you'll get a snapshot of the direction that you're headed.

And it's not typically just what we do for an hour on Sunday morning that that friendship, spiritual friendship happens.

What does it look like practically?

So I'll tell you this.

When we say, hey, can I come by sometime?

Or if we tell somebody, hey, stop on by anytime, what do we really mean by that?

I tell you what I really mean by that.

I usually mean without thinking, hey, call me first, text me first, we'll schedule it out, put a Google Calendar invite just to remind me because I'm going to forget.

And once you accepted the invite, then I know that you're actually coming.

That's typically what we mean by stop by anytime.

But I'm telling you, spiritual friendship is more like welcoming a friend to experience all of life with you.

Even when there's laundry on the floor, dishes in the sink, and the baby is crying.

Sometimes a friendship is like putting on a glove.

I mean, it just feels so natural.

It's just easy.

But look over the last 10, 15, 20 years of your life, some of the best relationships are the ones that require some real hard work.

Right?

Hard work to get through some of the tough stuff.

So to really work through some of the difficulty or disagreement or a season of trial or struggle, it takes hard work.

And we buy into the lie that the best things are always the easiest things.

That has never been true.

And so it's often the opposite for me, especially in community.

We do the hard work.

Meaningful relationships.

Friendships require sacrifice, they require struggle.

So I have a question for you.

Are you willing to do some hard work?

Not just to check a box or show up at a space once a week, but to do the hard work.

The Apostle Paul, he wrote this to the church in Ephesus.

He said in Ephesians 4.16, From him, Jesus, the whole body is joined together and held together by every supporting ligament as it grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work.

So we are made for each other.

We are made to be connected, just as the body is connected.

And you really can't be connected to the head unless you're connected to the body.

But notice what it says it doesn't just happen automatically.

There's some work that has to be done as each part does its work.

It takes work to actually be connected.

It's not just going to happen by chance.

It's not going to happen by accident.

To be available to the kind of way that I believe that God has called us each to live in.

So what is the work?

Well, the work is really twofold.

We just talked about it.

Just talked about gospel center relationships that do two things, right?

Spiritual growth and greater engagement in God's mission.

The work is to grow spiritually and to engage in the mission.

See what it says.

We are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ, growing to be more like Christ.

That's the second part of discipleship, walking with one another.

And I'm going to work and struggle and do my best and fail at following Christ.

And in repentance and in understanding and learning, I'm going to continue to turn from my way and follow him.

And I'm going to invite you into it too.

As I'm learning to obey, we can learn together.

So it says we grow up into him.

To work is to live it out.

It's to actually do it in spiritual friendship.

This is where the 59 one another that God has given us is to be lived out in circles.

We don't have time to go through all 59 of the one another's here this morning.

So I wanted to just look at one here this morning.

This is one in Hebrews 3.13.

Go ahead and turn with me there.

Hebrews 3.13.

It'll be on the screen as well.

But exhort one another every day, as long as it's called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

This verse is so important because it's showing us how the enemy plans to work.

It says, there is a deception that is happening.

There is a deceitfulness of sin that can harden our hearts, that can turn us away from community, that can isolate us.

There's a deception that's happening, whether it's from the enemy himself, by the world, or by the flesh, you're going to get lied to.

And here's the problem.

We are too easy, it's too easy for us to believe the lie.

If we're not connected to the body, we tend to believe the lie, the deceitfulness that's happened.

So we're getting lied to, and we need to fight those lies with truth, with the truth that God has already given us in his word.

And saying that you were made for community.

You are created for connection.

And when you're disconnected, you're going to be deceived and led astray.

That's that's what it's saying.

There's a danger of isolation right here in this passage.

And it goes back to what we were saying.

You can be surrounded by people and still feel completely alone if you're not truly connected.

I mean, I've experienced this in my own life.

Some of you don't know, but I wear hearing aids.

If I were to take these hearing aids out, I would not be able to hear a thing.

I mean, you could be yelling at me from the back row that there's a fire and be like, I'm just gonna keep preaching.

And I didn't realize this and how it affected me until several years ago.

I mean, my wife and I used to get into arguments pretty frequently.

That should have been a sign at the time, because she would say something from the other room.

I'd be like, What did you say?

And obviously I misheard what she was saying.

But there was something that happened in social settings.

I found myself really not enjoying being in public settings or going to parties or going to events to celebrate or anything else, because as the noise would kick up in the room without my hearing aids, I really couldn't hear.

And I began to feel really alone.

Now I was surrounded by people, but there was something that was happening within me, encouraging depression and all these other things.

I felt isolated because I physically could not connect.

And they're saying there's something that happens to us that we can be surrounded by people and still feel completely alone.

Look at a couple of these stats.

This is for women.

58% of women say they sometimes or always feel that no one knows them well.

And for men, over 50% of men say they have no meaningful friendships.

The study went on to say there's nobody they can call if they have an emergency.

There's nobody they can call to talk through hard things.

And it turns out that loneliness, this isolation against our will, it's terrible for our health.

So you could be a marathon runner training to run a marathon and be in great shape, but this is the effect that it has on you.

A person who's experiencing loneliness, it's the same as if you're smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

It's the same effect on our health, this loneliness.

So we are not meant to live in isolation, disconnected from the body.

And if I'm the enemy, I mean, if I were the enemy, one of the greatest strategies to defeat the church and the power of God would be to get you isolated.

To get you off by yourself, to get you into the darkness, to fight you on my own home turf.

I mean, just think about it.

How do you put out a bonfire?

See some of the guys smirking.

That's not what I'm thinking.

How do you put out a bonfire?

You separate the coals, right?

You separate the coals, and as you spread the coals apart, when you take the coals and you put them over here, literally, watch what would happen to it.

You pull this coal out and out of the main fire, and it's not long before the coal goes out, right?

In the same way, when we separate ourselves, when we choose to live in this highly individualized, isolated way, it's not long before it's really difficult for that fire to stay in us.

For the fire of faith, the fire of community to continue.

It's easy for that to run out.

Loneliness is tied to our lack of deep connection.

Loneliness is tied to our lack of deep connection.

And then here's the problem it's so easy to go through the motions on a Sunday morning and only have surface conversations.

Have any of y'all had that conversation in the lobby where it's like, hey, how you doing?

Good?

How are you doing?

Good.

Bonus points if it's how you doing?

Good, just busy.

Has anybody had that conversation?

Anybody have this conversation this morning?

Anybody willing to admit it?

Like it's so easy to go through the motions and just do the surface interactions.

But that's not what God is calling us to.

This lack of deep connection that we have in our lives, it can't really happen on an hour on Sunday morning.

It's meant to happen in circles, but there's work that needs to be done.

So what I'm hoping that you see here this morning is that kind of isolation, that kind of loneliness was never part of God's plan for your life.

It was never part of his dream.

It was never part of his hope for you.

We are all wired for deep, meaningful connection, meaningful relationships with both God and with others.

And I would argue it's not an extrovert, introvert thing.

All of us are hardwired for this.

It's right in Scripture.

God's design for us is to both know and be known.

You are created for connection.

You are created for community.

Here's a quote that I came across last month as well by Eugene Peterson.

It says, There can be no maturity in the spiritual life, no obedience in following Jesus, no wholeness in the Christian life apart from the immersion in and embrace of community.

I am not myself by myself.

I am not myself by myself.

Now, I'm not naive.

Well, I am, but I'm not fully naive to the fact that I know that there's tons of reasons why we don't embrace community.

Here's a few that that come to mind.

The reasons that we isolate.

One is our busyness, right?

For some of us, it's busyness.

It's such honestly, life has become so busy.

The pace in which we run is exhausting.

And our schedules are packed so tight.

And I mean, how could I possibly fit another community group, another group of friends into my life with an already packed schedule?

And if anyone here is like me, you kind of believe the lie.

Well, maybe when my life begins to slow down, or maybe when uh that timing is right, and when will that be?

Maybe 15 years from now, right?

The next season when things aren't quite as crazy, when I'm not quite as busy?

It's never gonna happen without intentional change.

So here's what I need us to see.

Take a moment to think about this here this morning.

What is gonna matter the most to you five years from now?

What are you really gonna care about?

What are you gonna wish that you look back on and invested in?

Where are you gonna wish you spent that time, that energy, that effort?

And your kids?

Absolutely.

You're gonna wish that they had people in their lives that poured into them, that pointed them to the truth, that when they their hearts were hardened in the deceitfulness of sin, when they start listening to nickelback, you're gonna wish that there are people that spoke into their lives, right?

You're gonna wish that they had that.

What's gonna matter to you five years from now?

Your marriage?

You're gonna wish that you had taken that step to start working together, to start connecting as you connect in spiritual friendship.

What are you gonna wish that you had invested in?

Five years from now, what's gonna be the most important thing to you?

Think about it.

Every answer in here might be different.

Think about it.

Maybe your health.

We just heard what happens when chronic loneliness sets in.

We make time for what we cherish.

It takes energy to engage.

It's work.

It takes energy to engage in community, to show up, to be known.

It takes intention, it takes space.

Maybe one of the reasons that you isolate is fear.

Maybe for you it's fear.

Fear that the not really like fear like the group's gonna poison you or something, but like fear of being vulnerable, right?

Fear of opening yourself up.

What happens if you get rejected?

What happens if they don't accept you?

What happens if they find out?

The fear maybe of of being hurt.

Talk about that in a second.

Fear of going deeper.

Maybe that vulnerability it naturally creates a fear in us of what might happen.

So it's so easy to do this surface level thing.

But here's the problem.

If you don't know me, you might know my gifts and you might know my talents, but if you don't know my pain, you don't know me.

Right?

If you don't know what I need, you don't know me.

How can we live the one another's out in life?

How can we carry each other's burdens if you don't know what my burden is?

Right?

So this fear, it keeps us from walking through that door of freedom.

It's a paradox.

And Jesus is saying, I've kicked open the door.

I'm inviting you into freedom right now.

How we are fully known is to take a step.

And maybe you need to take that step while you're afraid.

But look at how Jesus did community.

The last thing we see here, one of the reasons that we isolate is pain.

And we see that in the way that Jesus did community.

He didn't let the pain scare him away.

I mean, God himself in the flesh, he didn't need anything, and yet there he was in the garden with Peter, James, and John, inviting him into the most intimate moments of his life.

And he's saying, Can't you just pray with me one hour?

I need your fellowship.

I need your friendship.

I need your prayers.

God himself doesn't need anything, and yet he's living in community.

How much more do I need people to complete his purpose for my life?

We talk about the favorite miracles of Jesus.

I mean, honestly, one of my favorite miracles of Jesus is having 12 close friends in his 30s.

I mean, it just seems remarkable.

It seems impossible, right?

But Jesus did that.

He intentionally poured into 12 men.

He lived his entire life with them.

Everything was on display.

And after three years, there were still a lot of gaps.

They still didn't get it.

But here's what I want us to see: God has created this place for us of healing, and it's called community.

If you've experienced pain in the past, here's the crazy thing about community.

This is the place that God has created for us to step into to truly experience healing.

But as we know, and if you've experienced this, the place of healing can also be the place where you could get wounded the deepest.

And if that has happened to you, I just want to say I'm sorry.

If that's happened to you, if you experienced a wounding from someone who claims Christ in the context of a safe community, I want to tell you, I'm sorry, that is not supposed to happen.

We are all fallen, broken people who can hurt each other.

But here's what I'm asking you to do: trust that this is the place that God has created that healing actually takes place.

Trust.

Have courage to take that step back into it.

Because look at what happened to Jesus as he poured into the twelve, his own inner circle betrayed him.

Peter denied him, and Judas is the one who turned him over.

And what did Jesus do?

The betrayal of the one did not overshadow the beauty of the eleven.

Look at what Jesus did through that broken community.

Eleven men who were faithful to the call of Jesus, who lived out the gospel, are the reason that we're sitting here in this room this morning.

This is God's plan for the world.

And He's inviting us all into it.

The betrayal of the one didn't overshadow the beauty of the eleven.

We're created for community.

And the reason we're sitting here today is because of that.

1 Peter 4 8 speaks to that.

Here's the danger of isolation.

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.

This is kind of a confusing verse because it kind of seems like the love is going to cancel out some sins, and loving each other this way is just a formula, and that's not really what it means.

It doesn't mean that the acts of love for each other can earn God's forgiveness.

Peter's not meaning to imply that we can pay off our sins through some kind of good works.

I mean, that would be contradictory to Peter in the entire New Testament.

So that's not what he's saying.

What he's saying is our sins are paid for by Christ's death on the cross, and forgiveness for sin only comes through trusting him.

But here's rather the idea that when we love each other the way that Jesus has loved us, it covers the multitudes of sins in our imperfection.

It covers up the way that we are not yet sinless.

It covers up the way that we are not yet perfect.

It covers up the way that we fail each other all the time.

When you look at the way that Jesus loved, said in John 13, when he took a towel and he put it around his waist and he bent down and started scrubbing the feet of his twelve disciples, even his betrayer, he said, I've given you an example.

He literally says, Now I want you to go and do the same thing.

Love them the same way.

When we love this way, it's impossible to hold on to an offense.

I'm not saying invite danger into your lives with unsaved people.

I'm saying it's impossible to hold on to an offense.

I'm saying it's impossible not to forgive and truly let go of the burden and the and unlock the jail cell of unforgiveness.

So when we love this way, it has to include forgiveness.

It has to include overlooking past hurts, and it has to include building each other up when we fall.

It's difficult for sin and resentment to flourish in a true gospel community.

We have to choose to forgive and offense by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Just look at the links Jesus went in order to be a relationship with us.

He stepped down from eternity and entered into humanity.

I mean, for you, for me.

He didn't consider power and prestige, something to hold on to, something to grasp, something to seize violently or cling to.

Because of our sin, we needed him to go even further.

And he did.

And he humbled himself.

He emptied himself, and he was obedient all the way to death, even death on a cross, for us.

So that nothing would stand in the way between us and him.

So why is there something standing in the way between you and someone he died for?

It's been paid for.

We cannot hold on to offense and love the way that Jesus loves.

And this is really good news.

I mean, the only reason I can think of to put others' interests above my own is because Jesus put my interest above his own.

That's the example we are to follow.

It's not simply for community's sake or friendship's sake, as good as those things are, it's about becoming more like Jesus in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our workplaces.

We are not designed for isolation to do this life alone.

We are commanded to be the love of Christ to others.

So how do we break this cycle?

I feel like so many of us uh in the deception of busyness and groundhogs day, we're kind of just stuck, living the same cycle over and over again.

We might want to make a change, we might understand, hey, community sounds great.

I'd love more friends to actually help me along this journey.

I don't know what I'm doing.

That sounds wonderful.

But then every day the alarm clock goes off when we wake up right back in the same spot.

So, how do we break the cycle?

Well, let's look at Hebrews 3 13 again.

As we look at this verse, it's talking about we exhort one another every day, as long as it's called today.

So it's like, hey, don't run out of time.

As long as it's still today, you have time to do this.

It's actually what I'm calling you to do.

There's an urgency to it.

I want you to exhort one another.

So, what does that word mean?

Exhort.

It means to encourage one another.

It's a word that we often uh forget or overlook in its power and its meaning.

It means that I want you to pour courage into someone so that they can fight, so that they can stand, so that they can take a step.

I want you to pour courage into someone so that they can meaningfully take a step back into a place that's potentially hurt them.

So, how do we break the cycle?

We have to have courage to be honest.

So it's courage to be honest with ourselves, and courage to be honest with one another.

So the courage for you to be honest, the enemy wants to keep you hiding in the dark.

He wants to keep you on his home turf.

But here's what happens: when you bring it from the darkness into the light, sin loses its power.

When you take it out of the darkness into the light, there's nothing holding you back anymore.

And maybe that's having a conversation with someone that sounds like this this week.

Hey, here's what I'm afraid of.

Here's what I'm really struggling with.

What does it look like to be honest in your life?

Here's what I need to seek row in my life.

When those walls start coming down, bridges start being built.

Connection happens.

And the thing that it brings, when we're starting, when we're honest with ourselves and honest with one another, it brings accountability.

And accountability can kind of have a scary word in certain Christian contexts, or at least the things that we've heard before.

But I'm telling you, accountability is a beautiful thing.

We all have blind spots.

I have flaws that I don't even see.

And I need people to tell me, hey, you're about to step on a landmine.

And what a true biblical accountability is so much different than the harshness of saying you screwed up again.

You're never gonna get it right.

That's not accountability.

True biblical accountability is saying, hey, you said that you wanted to be a better father.

How's that going?

Hey, I saw you doing this again, but remember you told me you're working on your marriage.

What's going on with that?

Being accountable is holding somebody to what they said that they were trying to do.

Being accountable is keeping you from living a lie.

When you have the courage to be honest with yourselves and honest with somebody else, to be filled with courage from someone else, it means that I receive you in the middle of your struggle.

I choose this version of you that doesn't have all the answers, that doesn't have it all figured out, just like Jesus chose me.

How do we break this cycle?

Honesty.

It starts with honesty.

Part of how God grows us is sharpening one another and accountability.

All right, so I'm gonna transition to this last phase.

This will be interesting to see how this works.

Part two, as we wrap up, is greater engagement in the mission of God, greater participation in God's mission.

I mean, we talked about it.

This is the Great Commission, this is what he's called us all to.

One of the main reasons God puts us in community is because he wants to work through you to reach a broken and hurting world.

So I want to look at 2 Timothy 2, chapter 2, as we wrap up.

Here's verse 1.

Then you, my child, so this is this is Timothy, or sorry, it's Paul writing to Timothy.

This is Paul's last letter.

He's about to be killed.

This is his parting word to his disciple that he's poured into for years in Timothy.

He's saying, Then you, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus.

He's saying, I want you to grow.

I want you to grow.

Here's verse 2.

And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will also be able to teach others also.

So Paul's farewell letter, his farewell words were this Hey, everything that you've heard from me in the presence of all these witnesses, Timothy, I want you to go find men that you can entrust this to, that they're also going to take it to other men.

This is four generations on display.

And I want us to have a vision here at the orchard for what would it look like if we were obedient to God's call through community, inviting others into our lives, taking a step of courage, of boldness, into connection, into healing, into more joy and more peace.

All right, so imagine this.

If I were to pour into five people, Rick, can you come up here for a second?

Uh just come up right to the front.

Taylor, can you come up here for a second?

Don, do you mind coming up here for a second?

Stephen, come up here a second.

Philip, come up here for a second.

All right, so we got five people right here.

This is what this looks like, four generations, okay?

So if I'm gonna pour into five people, so imagine this is my community group, okay?

Didn't have time to pull all of you know several dozens of you from my actual community group.

I want each of you to go and find five people now.

So any five people, and I want you to bring them up to the front.

So they're just gonna point and we're all gonna come up to the front.

And I want us to look at this.

This is a visual illustration of what can happen if we put this into practice.

All right, now as your people are coming up here, I want everybody who just got selected, I want you to go find five people as well.

And we're gonna start to make this a little bit of a circle in the middle, okay?

And as you're selected, I want each of you to go and five five people as well.

Okay, it's okay.

It's okay to do this in church.

All right, and then those last five of you who were connected, we're gonna start making a circle here.

We're gonna start making it like a circle right here.

Those last five that were selected, I want you to go find five people.

Each of you find five people.

I want all of us to start forming a circle around this middle part right here, just like this, okay?

Those of you who are in this middle aisle want me to come all the way back around, we're gonna connect right here.

Those of you in this aisle over here, we're gonna connect all the way back over here.

Alright, so everybody look out in this room.

Everyone should have been selected by now.

Can you all grab them as well?

The math works out.

If you choose five and they choose five, and every single one of them chooses five, and they choose five in four generations, there is nobody left behind.

In four generations, there is nobody in these seats that is left behind in terms of community, in terms of missional engagement, in terms of God's mission.

What would it look like if we were to take a step, if we were to carry each other's burdens, if we were to work together, to help each other, to love each other, to bring each other closer to Jesus?

It would look like a circle.

What would it look like if we grew closer to Him?

And I want to be crystal clear.

I pray that every single person would show up here tonight and take a step into community.

I want every single person to have meaningful engagement in your lives in a community group.

It's what you were designed for to experience this beautiful, messy, real relationship of community.

As great as rows are, we need circles.

We need circles.

It is a greater engagement into the mission of God.

We had the courage to be honest with one another.

And here's what happens: when we do this, lost people get found.

Found people start to grow.

Lonely people find families, hurting people find healing, and bored people they find their purpose, and cities find hope.

If we could be faithful to this call, to take a step of boldness, to take a step of courage, to connect with one another, I'm telling you, I believe that kind of community that could change your life.

That kind of community, that could change the world.