Love Where You Live - Week 1: August 23, 2026

Good morning.

I'm Nate and I'm the lead pastor here at Connect Church.

I want to welcome you.

And I I love seeing all the name tags out there.

I've got mine on, and uh it's just a great way if we do this once in a while.

If you're new here today, we don't do it every Sunday.

It's just as a reminder to say hi to people that you've been thinking I should have remembered their names.

And when we take the name tags off and you don't remember someone's name in the future, it's okay.

It's okay.

But uh it's a great way to just kind of get connected a little bit.

My wife and I, I think you know, if you've been around for a while, we've picked up the hobby of biking, cycling, uh over the last three or four years.

And this summer we decided to go to Hayes, Kansas and go do a ride uh to that that visits some of the old cathedrals in the neighboring communities.

And we'd planned on this, we worked really hard, prepared ourselves for this.

This is the most miles I had ever ridden at one time, and so we trained for it.

Uh, in fact, when I was working as district superintendent, we would go out into western Kansas in one day.

Uh we took our bikes with us and we rode a little bit of the route to kind of acclimate ourselves to the route.

And it was a very windy day, right?

Surprise, surprise in western Kansas.

And we were we were on the route that came up the lowest point to the highest point.

And this is western Kansas, so you know it's not a big hill, it's a rolling hill, Mike Bauer, and not a big steep hill.

And we but we did this, and there was like a 20 to 25 mile an hour wind that we were going against uphill, and we struggled up that hill, but we flew down it.

So we kind of knew that section.

We come, we're we're anticipating when we go to do this ride, it's gonna be hot, it's gonna be windy.

When we got there, it was cool and no wind, a slight wind out of the east, which is coming back in.

It wasn't enough to affect us going out, but gave us a nice boost coming back.

We were so excited.

We had trained so hard, we were so ready, and we were having such a great ride.

We come to the first sag stop, we're on a new road, it's freshly paved in western Kansas on this like county road.

It was beautiful.

We were talking about as we were riding an incident where my wife had done a similar ride and someone had gotten a flat tire.

Perhaps we shouldn't have brought that up.

Because all of a sudden Jenna says, I think I have a flat tire, and I said, I can confirm that.

So we pulled over to the side of the road, and a number of people that were riding in this, and this wasn't a race, but if you know me, you know, as every person went by, I thought, mmm.

Especially when the e-bikes come by at the end, I'm like, mmm.

People, many people said, Can we stop?

Can we help?

You okay?

We had called the SAG folks to come pick us up.

We're fine.

But then one gentleman stopped.

And he offered to fix our tire.

He had a tube that was the wrong size.

He said, I think I can squeeze this in there.

I want to stay with you, I want to help you.

But about, we said, No, someone's coming to pick us up.

Someone comes and picks up Janet, takes her to the next sag stop.

I go ahead and ride to the next saga.

We get there, it was poorly supported.

There should have been some people there that knew what they were doing, but it was just some volunteers.

They didn't have a tube, they didn't have anything.

They had sent somebody back into Hayes to get a tube, and we're waiting for this person to get by.

And the gentleman who had stopped who offered to help comes over, or my wife actually got him and said, and and and he came over.

And that gentleman, his name was Wayne, we found out later, stayed with us.

Hadn't been for him, that tire would not have got fixed.

He found not only the tube, replaced it, but he found a little piece of sliver that had caused it, that was stuck in the tire.

I can go on and on about what Wayne did that he didn't have to do at all.

But I want to tell you that after that happened, we got back on the road, Janet missed a few miles of the race, we had a great, a great ride.

After that happened, Wayne could have signed me up for a multi-level marketing side hustle that day.

If Wayne would have said, I have an idea for you, I would have at least listened.

Because not only did he say, Can I help, he stopped.

He put his agenda to the side, he offered to help, and he stuck with us through it all.

He did a good work that day.

And I don't know anything about Wayne except what I just told you.

But he did a good work that day.

You know, the idea of good works in the Christian world has fallen on hard times in some circles of the church.

As if there is this idea that good works are wrong.

And it's framed this way: good works don't save you.

We understand that.

The gospel saves us.

But I want to make a case today by looking at the little book of Jude, which I've alluded to in recent sermons several times.

I want to dig into it a little bit today as we introduce this series.

I want to brush off the reputation of good works and center back in on its proper place in the good news of Jesus, because I think it matters.

I think it matters a lot.

All right?

So let's look at the book of Jude.

It's a little book near the end of the Bible.

I've I've referenced it recently several times, and one of the things about it is most of us kind of skip over it because it's a little bit weird, to be honest with you.

But I've been living in this book for a while now, based on a book that my friend Jerome Van Keiken wrote from Oklahoma Wesleyan.

I read that book, and I've just been living in this book a little bit for the last couple of years, actually.

And Jude just takes us a little bit on a journey.

I want to go on that journey with you.

There's no chapters in Jude, so I'll say Jude chapter, I'll say Jude 3, that's the third verse.

If you have your Bibles and want to open it up, you can kind of follow along.

But this stuff's going to be on the screen.

We're going to give a quick overview of this little book, and then I want to make some points about doing good.

Jude 3 says, Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt compelled to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God's holy people.

Now there's a lot of context and a lot of background I could give you on the book of Jude, but that's not as critical this morning as just understanding this train of thought.

Listen to what Jude is saying.

He's saying we have to contend for the faith.

The faith matters.

The good news, the gospel, what Jesus did, who he was, it matters.

And we have to contend for it.

We can't just receive it and kind of let it be.

As the church, Jude is talking to the church.

He's saying, church, contend for this because there will be pressures against it.

And he begins to list those pressures, and he says, those pressures will come because of bad leaders, which is so contend for the faith and be aware of bad leaders.

Jude 4, for certain individuals whose condemnation was written long ago have secretly slipped in among you.

They are ungodly people who pervert the grace of God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus, our only sovereign and Lord.

Jude is saying, church, contend for the faith because you have bad leaders.

You have people who are leading you down a wrong path.

And they're doing it in several ways.

Number one, that this good news, this gospel that you're saved by nothing but the grace of God has turned into a license for immorality.

And Jude has a lot of language for how he describes these people in his book that I'm going to skip over today.

It's kind of the weird part of the book.

But Jude is saying there's folks that are going to deceive you and they're going to allow the gospel to become a license for you to, I'm free in Christ to do whatever I want.

And this leads to all kinds of immorality.

But he also says there's there's another danger, and that is sort of a denial of the divinity of Jesus in this phrase, denying Jesus Christ.

And in the early church, when this idea that Jesus was God and man, and how did that work, and there were all kinds of ideas, and it became sort of popular among leaders to redefine who Jesus was to fit their own understanding, what their minds could comprehend, and they reduced this grand mystery of divine and human in one, and they made it comfortable for their brains.

They denied either the humanity or the divinity of Jesus, they denied the reality of flesh, all these things that were out there.

So there's there's there's immorality and there's bad teaching, and then this last piece denied Jesus our Christ and our only sovereign and Lord.

I think there is a tendency in the very early church that has stuck with us throughout all the way down to this day of misguided understandings of who we should be loyal to at the end of the day.

Whether this is to national nations or to leaders or to kings or to political ideologies, Judas saying, be careful that you never forget who is your king, who is your sovereign Lord.

So these leaders, whether intentional or unintentional, were leading the church towards immorality and towards bad theology and towards a misunderstanding of who our true king and kingdom is.

And that sounds pretty familiar to me down to this day.

And I could have said that in the 300s and the 500s and the 1700s and the 1800s, and I can say it in 2026.

Jude's warning to that church or the early church was be careful, contend for the faith.

Why?

Because there's bad leaders who are leading you into immorality, they're denying the truth of Jesus, and they're misaligning their allegiance to kings, earthly kings, or earthly principalities, or powers, or or ideologies or pleasures.

And Jude doubles down on this idea of discipleship.

He says, Build your life on the gospel.

Look at verse 20.

But you, dear friends, by building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in God's love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.

Jude says, in the midst of all of this, yeah, contend for the faith, but make sure your faith goes deep.

Stand in the marketplace and stand for Jesus, but make sure you're putting roots down in Jesus.

We've come out of this Lectio Divina series.

What a great segue to what we're going to talk about next of digging deep into our walk with Jesus.

Man, if you weren't here last week, you need to get the tape or get the tape.

Cassette tapes on sale at the back of the sanctuary.

Oh my goodness.

Go online.

I think it's there.

You can find it on our webpage and listen to Haley Bogir.

She's talked and just wrapped up this series about the presence of Jesus in our lives.

And by the way, if you have any friends in Kansas City area and Johnson County area, you need to that are looking for a church, this new church plant, the local church that Haley and Shea are planting would be a great option for you.

So Paul said Jude's uh Jude says, dig deep.

Dig deep.

And then he says, and this is where we're gonna send it, those things all matter, right?

So that's all really good stuff, right?

Jude's teaching, hey, contend for the faith, you know, watch out for immoral teachers.

Dig deep in your own journey.

But then he says, and this is what we want to focus on in this series, be merciful to those who doubt.

This is not instead of these first three, but as a result of these, as you contend for the faith, as you are aware of bad teaching and immorality in the church, as you are seeing leaders fall all around you, dig deep, but also be merciful to those who doubt, verse 22.

Contend, beware, to grow, and have mercy.

Compassion is amazing.

But mercy goes the extra mile.

There was a lot of people on that bike ride that had compassion on Janet and I as we were stranded on the side of the road and said, Are you okay?

Are you okay?

But Wayne stopped.

Wayne stopped.

And he not only said, Are you okay?

but he said, What can I do?

How can I help?

We're okay.

No.

I got some I got a toe here, I can how can I help?

See, I think, and this is not a full-orbed definition of mercy, all right?

This is not a theologically correct definition of mercy that covers the whole gamut of mercy, but in for our conversation today, can we can we say it this way, that mercifully, proactively pours out undeserved compassion on others?

I think this is what Jude was getting at.

I think Jude was saying, because Christianity has been given such a bad name by bad leaders, let's contend for the faith by growing in our understanding of the gospel and showing mercy to those who have lost trust in God, perhaps because of the actions of bad leaders or broken systems or broken churches.

Do you know anyone like that who's given up on the church or who never gave the church a chance because of what they see, perceive, real or unreal, about what has happened in the church?

I do.

I know a lot of people like that, and I'm related to people like that, and I'm praying, I'm contending for people like that.

And the call that Jude has for us as a church is to contend for the faith by recognizing the brokenness in the church and in ourselves because we're part of the church, growing deep in him and showing mercy.

And see, we don't replace good news with good works.

That's theologi that's theology 101.

We don't replace good news with good works.

You can't earn your way into a vital relationship with Jesus.

But good news that doesn't produce good works is just news.

And it might even be fake news.

Let me say that again.

Good news that doesn't produce good works is just news.

And it might even be fake news.

The question is how?

And there's a lot of ways to approach this idea that you should do good things.

So, what we're gonna talk about over the next four weeks, and by the way, this is a sermon we kind of added because I was going to do through what we call in our sermon planning a standalone sermon.

I'm not actually gonna get into this good neighborhood series today.

I'm just introducing it, just talking about it, just setting the groundwork.

As I had this week on the schedule, we were gonna just plug something else in here.

I said, I want to maybe set the groundwork for this.

And as we go down this next four weeks, this after today, we're gonna we're gonna talk about not just being doing good works, but being good neighbors, and not just being good neighbors, but having deep concern for our neighborhood.

I mean our neighborhood, like the people you live next to in the dorm or in the apartment or in your in your house or wherever.

That like what does it mean to be good neighbors and care about our neighborhood?

So, in this series, this is just sort of a this is a statement that we have on our sermon planning document that just helps frame the series.

In this series, we're going to pursue a simple and ancient path that takes us toward the neighborhoods in which we actually live and neighbors that we are actually called to love.

Walking down this path, we're gonna pursue, we're walking down this path, pursuing the common good, leads to more grounded, integrated way of life, to a kinder and more respectful way of influencing the world, to a more compelling and attractive Christian presence in our nation, to greater use of the gifts that God has given us into more genuine relationships with our non-Christians and our lives.

And so we use the phrase the common good in that statement.

And some of us, the phrase common good is fine.

And some of us, that phrase might have some baggage.

We might wonder, what do we mean by that?

Because other people are using that word perhaps in different ways.

But can we agree in this series?

Can we agree in this series that for Christians the common good can be a place where contending for the faith and showing mercy meet?

Could it be that as we pursue the common good, we have opportunities to contend for the faith and see people who are disturbed by what their perception of the church is, real or imagined?

And could it be that that's the place?

As we pursue the common good collectively with them, that's a place where we can meet people in a different way.

So in this series, that's how we're defining that word.

And I would contend that we are made for this.

Because if you look from scripture from beginning to end, this idea runs to scripture.

I'm going to go through scriptures really quickly this morning and show, obviously, not a comprehensive list.

We'll dig into some more of this as the series goes along, but just Old Testament, New Testament, the way that the scriptures call us to tend to our neighborhood, to care about the place we live, the people that are around us, the place where we find ourselves, regardless of what's going on in ourselves or in our culture.

So let's look at it in Genesis chapter one.

It starts in the origin story.

It seems like we keep coming back to this, doesn't it?

It matters because the origin story matters.

In Genesis chapter one, God said, Let us make mankind in our image and our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals and over all the creatures that move along the ground.

So God created mankind in his own image, and then image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them.

And here's this idea that we've explored in the series at the beginning of this year that God wants us to tend to our neighborhood, to this world, to this space.

He put Adam and Eve in a garden, said, take care of it.

Their story rolls along, the people of Israel come along, they their nation falls, it rises and falls, they go into exile.

It's a lot of stuff I left out, but just understand that God called the people out of Egypt, developed them into a nation, they sinned, they failed, they worshiped idols, they were like the leader, they had leaders like Jude talked about immorality, a lack of worshiping God correctly, all of that.

And God sent them into exile.

And then when they went into exile, some of the prophets were saying, Hey, don't worry about it.

We're gonna be coming back soon.

God sent us away, but he, you know, it's just a little slap on the wrist.

He's gonna send us back soon.

Or it's not gonna happen at all.

But Jeremiah, one of those who was a prophet during the time of this exile, writes these powerful letters to the people in Babylon where they were taken.

The place of evil, the place where there was no respect for Yahweh in that space.

Listen to what Jeremiah says.

So he writes a letter to them, to these people that are in captivity, and he entrusted it to Shaphan and to Gemaih the son of Halakia, whom Zedekiah, king of Judah, sent to King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon.

And here's what the letter said.

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

Build houses and settle down, plant gardens and eat what they produce.

Marry and have sons and daughters, find wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, so that they may have sons and daughters.

Increase in number there, do not decrease.

Hear this now.

Also seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile.

Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.

I'll end the reading there.

He's saying, when you're in exile, when you're far away, when life is not as it should be, when you're in an evil empire.

Seek the good of that place.

Isn't that crazy?

Don't get off in a little holy huddle.

Don't long for coming back to Israel.

That'll come when it comes.

Seek the good, be a good neighbor, make better neighborhoods.

Because if it prospers, you too will prosper.

The Apostle Peter, now in the New Testament, Jesus is risen from the dead.

He saw good works not as a replacement of the good news, but as a natural expression of it.

Listen, we did a series on 1 Peter last fall, spring.

But in your hearts, revere Christ as Lord.

Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

But do this with gentleness and respect.

It almost like Jude, right?

Be merciful to those who doubt.

Keep a clear conscience so that those who speak maliciously against you are good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.

For it is it it is better if it's God's will to suffer for doing good than for doing evil.

Peter's saying, Listen, church.

Newly formed church, trying to figure out what it means to be Christ's followers collectively.

Here's what I want you to do: live in such a way in your neighborhoods.

Not separate from them, not pulling away from them, not throwing bombs at them, not contending for the faith in a way that pushes you away from your neighbors, but live in such a way that when they come against you, they will lose their weapons because they will say, Yeah, but they're a good person.

That's a good person.

That's a good neighbor.

Those who speak maliciously against your good behavior may be ashamed of their slander.

It's like someone will say, Yeah, hey, don't pick on, don't pick on her, don't pick on him.

That's a good person right there.

This is the this was the practice of the early church.

We'll we'll get into this a little bit in this series.

The early church was known not for what it was against, not for its statements against Emperor Nero, but for what they did when others left babies on the side of the road, their form of abortion, and they picked them up and raised him because those babies were left to die.

They were known for how they came into the hard places of disease and people were dying.

And then it was the Christians who brought in those folks and brought healing to them.

And over and over again, the early church showed this kind of a lifestyle of caring about not only their neighbor, but their neighborhood.

So, what if seeking the common good for our n of our neighborhoods, not just our neighbors, but our neighborhoods, is not just a set of random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty, or dead-end attempts to transform our culture through merely human efforts, but actually the most viable way for good works to open up the good the door for good news conversations.

Or as Jude reminded us, what if being merciful to the doubting might be the critical piece in contending for the gospel, and maybe even more so when faith leaders are at their worst?

Okay, I must be honest with you, a little bit of a confession.

I wouldn't have signed up for a multi-level marketing side hustle with Wayne from Hayes.

But I would like to be his friend.

I'd love to have time to go out with coffee.

I'd love to know more about that man.

And I would be open to hearing his story because he showed mercy.

I am not criticizing those who showed compassion.

Are you okay?

How can we help?

I'm not criticizing them at all.

But in that moment, what spoke to me was mercy.

So we're going to introduce this sermon series today.

There's a couple questions I want to ask.

I want to tell a short story, and then I want to set some goals for this series.

All right?

Here's the questions.

What if those of us that have been changed by the good news would intentionally seek the common good of our neighbors and our neighborhoods?

That's a question we're going to explore.

How might our Babylon be a better place for everyone if we pursue the common good of our neighborhoods?

What good things might a good God do through a people who are being transformed by good news?

I wonder.

And what kind of questions and conversations might pop up because we are intentional about working towards better neighborhoods?

These are the things that we're going to explore in this series.

And here's the goal.

Hopefully, in this series, there are three goals.

Hopefully, in this series, we will all learn to be better neighbors as an expression of the good news in us.

That's the main thing.

I hope when we come out of this, all of us can say, I feel a deeper connection or a deeper purpose or a deeper reason for me to engage in my neighborhood in a different way, to seek the good of my city, starting with the good of my neighborhood.

Yesterday, Janet and I drove to Oklahoma City and back to attend the funeral of Melanie Cauldron.

Mike and Melanie were a couple that lived in Bartlesville, Oklahoma when we were in college.

My wife Janet came to college in January of 1982.

I'll never forget the day I laid eyes on her for the first time.

And she didn't lay eyes on me for a while, but we'll get to that later.

Through a series of events, Janet was not going to be able to return the next year to Bartlesville to attend school because I'm some financial pressures.

But in that spring semester when she was a student, Oklahoma Wesleyan in 1982, she saw a little advertisement, someone needing daycare.

So she ripped it off, took the little number, and called Mike and Melanie Cauldron because she needed extra money.

She worked for them that semester, and then the next semester, when she wasn't going to be able to come back, she shared that with Mike and Melanie.

And Mike and Melanie said, Move in with us for free.

You can live here.

And Janet assumed that, well, then I'll watch their kids and that'll be part of the deal.

No, if you watch the kids, we'll pay you.

And by the way, Mike had a little independent oil company, and Mike said, I really need someone to do some bookkeeping for me on the side.

I'll pay you for that.

They took her skiing to ski with their family, watched the kids for a few hours and ski the rest of the day.

First time she'd ever been on an airplane when they flew her out there.

They became dear mentors to my wife and to me.

When Melanie found out that we were engaged, she pulled Janet aside and said, listen, finish college before you marry that man, because you'll never finish college if you don't.

She was wrong about that.

But her heart for Janet was so deep.

And we went down and heard the stories of Melanie Cauldron.

It was the best eulogy I've ever heard in my life.

I'm not kidding.

By her daughter.

We went to meet Mike afterwards and Amy and Katie, the children that Janet watched, who are now 40, 45 years old.

And I heard a neighbor come up to Mike.

They were before us in the and Mike said, Hello, neighbor.

And they embraced.

And I gotta believe, though I was not a part of Melanie Cauldron's neighborhood, that she was pursuing the common good because it was everywhere in her life.

Story after story of person after person that she advocated for, saw that no one else saw, stopped on the side of the road and didn't say as she passed by, can I help you, but stopped and was a great neighbor.

So our hope as we go through this series is that you and I will have a deeper compassion to be good neighbors.

The second hope is that some of us will make some intentional decisions to form some neighborhood cohorts to lean into this work.

There's actual material.

Like, what would it look like for some of us who live in neighborhoods to come together and put together some resources and say, how can we seek the betterment of our neighborhood?

That will be maybe not something all of us do.

Like all of us, the call is to show mercy to those who doubt.

But for some of us, the second goal would maybe some of us would be inclined to take that a next step.

We'll talk more about that.

And the third goal, and the one that I just want to mention briefly before I pray and we go into worship, is that Connect Church, we're asking the question how does Connect Church be better neighbors?

Like here, like this building, this neighborhood.

How do we seek the common good of our neighborhood as we contend for the faith and have mercy on those who doubt?

What if we started thinking about instead of doing something for our neighborhood, could we do something with our neighborhood?

We have proper.

We have a building.

We have a neighborhood block party where a neighborhood association meets in our building on occasion.

We have financial resources and financial relationships with the generosity that you all are so wonderfully providing.

We have existing community partnerships and relationships, uh, you know, both me as a lead pastor, having been here for so long, and all of us.

That like, how could our long-term relational capital in the community, the reputation that God has helped us to establish in this place, how could that be leveraged for our neighbors?

How could we use the people resources that we have and the business-minded people in this space?

Like, I'm not here to lay out any plans or say anything.

I alluded to this at our 90th birthday, but we're just asking the question, how can we be better neighbors?

So the goals of this series are that we would be better neighbors, we would think differently about those who are continuing for or who are doubting, that perhaps some of us would collaborate in being specifically burdened for our neighborhoods, and then how can Connect Church be better neighbors?

Let's pray.

Lord, this series is exciting to me.

I'm excited to see how good news translates into good works that make a difference in people who are doubting.

Help us to contend for the faith as we grow deeper with you.

As those who are doubting because of bad leaders struggle, may we come alongside them in new and powerful ways.

Give us a heart, O Lord, for our neighborhoods.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.