The Vision of Portland Gospel Church

Amen. All right, so we're going to go

ahead and get into our time of Bible study tonight.

And as Austin said, we're normally we would be dismissing

our kids right now, but for tonight, the kids are going to

stay in here with us. So we're going to be a little

bit more brief. We're not going to be getting

super deep and we're not going to be going quite as long

tonight. But with this being the last

Sunday of the year, we're actually going to just spend

some time digging into our churches vision and talking

about what some of our goals are for this coming year.

Talking about like personal goals for us each individually.

So if you've been with us any amount of time, you've hopefully

heard us say that Portland Gospel Church exists to help you

believe, live and share the gospel, right?

I say I hope you've heard heard that before because Tucker just

said it like 5 minutes ago. And we try to be really

intentional that we repeat this as our vision statement.

And that's actually also the reason that we have the word

gospel in the name of our church.

We wanted to be so forefront and at the center of everything that

we do that people know that that's the intention.

That's what we exist for. But with that, it's actually

really important that we define what the word gospel means,

because the actual word just means good news, right?

And so you can be saying good news about a lot of things.

I don't know if you guys, when we've been out on evangelism, a

lot of times I like to ask people with kind of my first

question is, have you ever heard the gospel of the Bible?

And a lot of times I get people most of the time that will say,

Oh yeah, I know what that is. And then they'll go on to say

something like, you know, the Matthew is the gospel.

And that's that's true. I also had someone ask me once,

they said, oh, are you preaching the gospel of the white

Christian nationalism or the gospel of Jesus?

And I said, what? That's a fair question.

And so I told him we were preaching the gospel of Jesus.

And then she went on to define the gospel and gave me a whole

nother definition of the gospel that was totally different.

And so a lot of people mean different things.

And so the reason I say it's important to define this is

because we want to get a biblical definition of what the

word gospel actually says. And we get that primarily.

Or one of the verses we get this from is First Corinthians 15 one

through 4. So Paul tells us, he says,

moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I

preached unto you, and then going on to verse 3, how that

Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and

that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day

according to the Scriptures. So this is what the Bible

defines is the gospel of our salvation.

Romans 10/9 says, If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord

Jesus, and shall believe in thy heart that God hath raised him

from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

So we see this is the definition of the gospel and this is what

it does in our life is then when we put our faith in this, this

is how we're saved. So this believe, live, share

vision that we have. Although we came up with those

words in that order, It's not like some gimmick that we've

come up with. This is actually the mandate

that God gives to every church. We see this famously in Matthew

2819 and 20, what we call the Great Commission.

It says, go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing

them in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy

Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have

commanded you and lo, I am with you always, even into the end of

unto the end of the world. And so maybe that's a little

confusing because those terms are a little bit out of order in

that passage, because it actually starts with going.

That would be the sharing of the gospel and then it comes back to

the teaching people to live the gospel and then teaching them to

then go. But you know, we have to

remember that Jesus was actually talking to the group of the

disciples that he had already trained and equipped.

So he's kind of giving them that last Commission to say, OK, now

you go and do the things I've taught you teach people to

believe and live the gospel for themselves.

So we see this and like I said, every church should exist to

help people come to faith in Christ, to grow in that faith

and maturity and then to share that faith with others.

So most of you guys know that I spent a lot of my adult life as

a firefighter. And so I found some pictures for

you guys I can share. This is the first department I

ever worked at. This is like, I guess 15 years

ago. This is babyface Dave.

I'm like the second one on the left there.

So I worked here, I worked in Saint Mary's when we lived in

South Georgia. I worked on Jekyll Island, I

worked in a few different places.

And then when we decided to move to Cartersville, I started

working for the city of Cartersville.

And I'm kind of on the right side of the screen there, like

4th or 5th from the right. And then this is one of my

favorite pictures, and I think this is the last picture I have

of the kids when they came and visited the fire station.

It's a little cute picture for y'all.

So I bring this up to say that there's a lot of things, having

spent a lot of my life doing that, there's a lot of the

things that I learned in ministry that whether it's on

purpose or not, I relate back to my experience as a firefighter

and things that I learned in that career.

And one of the things that I learned during my time as a

firefighter is that training never really ends.

You never really get to the end of it, no matter how long you

spend. Honestly, the day that you think

you can't learn anything else is probably the day you need to

retire. And throughout, throughout the

fire service, there's a lot of different specialties.

Like within those specialties, there's a lot of very job

specific training. And the whole intention of that

training is to bring you to a level of competency that you can

effectively and safely accomplish whatever your mission

is. It's designed to make you very

proficient at a specific type of rescue.

And so that training is accomplished through a

combination of growing in experience and in knowledge.

It's both of those things work together.

A lot of the specialty training is broken up into three levels.

And so as an example, when we're talking about hazardous

materials training, this is one that I trained in a little bit,

so it's a little fresher to me. There's 3 levels of training for

you to be like the most proficient at that job or at

that rescue that you have to go through 3 levels of training and

with those there's different responsibilities.

So pretty much everything starts at what they call awareness, and

that's basically what it sounds like.

Your job is to identify and be aware of specific hazards.

You're not necessarily on the hazmat team.

It's not your job to mitigate or fix the situation, but primarily

it's for you to recognize that there is a situation and for you

to warn by standards and just have a general understanding of

what's going on to keep yourself safe.

So typically that's things like identifying the placards,

knowing that if something has a placard, by definition it

contains a certain amount of that chemical, the numbers on

it, the symbols on it, the color of it.

All of those things work together to let you know what's

going to happen. It lets you know, do you need,

is this a liquid? Is it a gas?

Is it flammable? Is it toxic, corrosive?

Do I need to stay uphill or upwind?

How far away do I need to be? These are just basic awareness

things that you need to know. The next level up of that is

what they call operations. And at that operations level,

you're a lot more a part of the response team.

So the expectation is that you're going to have a hands on

role, primarily defensive, but your job is to help keep things

contained. You'll probably help with

evacuations, team and bystander decontamination, victim rescue,

things like that under the supervision of the technicians.

And then the third and final level of training is what's

called a technician. And at that technician level,

you've basically you're expected to be an expert in hazardous

material response. You're expected to know how to

assess the scope of the incident, select and use

advanced monitoring, detection and testing equipment.

You're expected to select and use the correct personal

protective equipment to keep your team safe.

You have to decide what that is, What is this chemical?

What is it going to do? What do we need to wear to be

safe? And you have to decide that for

the team. You have to decide the

procedures that you're going to use to contain the incident.

And most technicians would be expected to have enough

experience to lead a team of other technicians into what they

call the hot zone where like the actual chemical spill has

occurred. So that's a very long winded

explanation. And my point in saying all that

is that we kind of understand that it's not realistic to go

from being brand new one day to being a team leader in one of

these situations the next day. It requires a lot of very

intentional training, both classroom study and on the job

experience to to reach that level of proficiency.

So in our spiritual lives, it's equally unrealistic to expect

someone to get saved one day and then like be ready to pastor

church the next day. That doesn't just happen by

accident and the Bible actually calls this growth process going

from being unskilled or being a babe to being of full age and

having discernment. Hebrews 513 through 14 says for

everyone that uses milk is unskillful in the word of

righteousness, for he is a babe, but strong meat belongeth to

them that are a full age. Even those who by reason of use

have exercised, have their senses exercised to discern both

good and evil. So we see there's a progression

from being unskilled or being a babe to being a full age.

And it actually tells, it gives us a hint in there that you do

that by reason abuse. There's there's a, we used to

have a saying in the fire service.

There's a difference between seniority and experience.

And it's the same with our Christian walk.

Just because you've been saved for 20 years doesn't actually

mean that you're very grown. You can being, having that much

seniority just means that you've done the bare minimum to not get

fired for 20 years, but it doesn't mean that you are

actually an experienced person that can lead others.

So again, our our spiritual walk is the same way.

So what my goal is for today is that I just want to very simply

lay out the steps that we have as a church that are intended to

help you grow in your faith. And my personal goal is just to

challenge you to identify where you think you're at in that

spiritual growth process. Like of these levels that we're

going to talk about, where do you think you are?

And then to just set a personal goal for 2026, like what is the

next thing that you need to do? Because you can't look at the

end and say, well, that's where I want to be.

You have to say, well, realistically, where am I and

what is the next thing I need to do?

So we're going to go straight to point #1 in your notes, and

that's believe the gospel. And again, this hopefully I gave

you some blanks, but hopefully you guys can probably guess what

these are, right? This is, we've said this a few

times, right? The first thing we want to help

everyone do is believe the gospel.

And just like the first level of training or growth, it's simply

believing the gospel. Like the awareness level of

training that we defined in the, in the firefighter world.

We just want you to have a personal and basic understanding

of what the gospel is. Again, like I said a minute ago,

just to be able to define it, to know what it means, to know what

it means to you, to be able to just at least in the very basic

sense, understand if someone is telling you something different

than the gospel that you've received.

So within this believe category, we have 4 basic steps to help

you be established in your faith.

The first one is attending church.

So again, we want you to start by just simply attending and

hearing God's Word. Romans 10/14 says how then shall

they call on whom and whom they have not believed?

And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard?

And how shall they hear without a preacher?

Now, a lot of times when we use this verse, we associate it

specifically with evangelism, which is definitely true.

It's talking about taking the gospel to people who have not

heard it. But the basis of what it's

saying, though, is that people can't believe something that

they've never heard. And so we just simply want

everyone to come in to hear the gospel.

And again, if we can meet them on the street, if we just happen

to run into those one out of 1000 person that is ready to

hear the gospel, that's great. But it's much more effective if

people can come and consistently hear the gospel spread over not

just a 3 minute conversation, but multiple weeks in a row to

really understand what the gospel is.

And honestly, it's OK if you don't think you agree.

It's OK if you're still figuring out your faith.

We just want anyone who is open to be able to come and to be

able to hear what the Bible says for itself.

So in your notes, there's a little section that say next

steps and these are just like some actual things, activities

that we have that you can join us for.

So we have Bible studies and as I'm looking around, I think

almost everybody here goes to a Bible study.

So you guys know what those are. We have three different Bible

studies. We have one in the Pearl

District, we have one down at the college campus at PSU, and

then the ladies host one in their home as well.

So we have multiple Bible studies throughout the week.

We have church services every Sunday, we have church

fellowships, and we also have all of these sermons are on

YouTube. So if you're not able to be

here, at least you can go back and you can listen to them.

But as much as technology is great, that's kind of, we'd hope

that's the last resort. Like we want you to be here to

be in fellowship with us. So the next thing we want for

you, if you're still in this belief category, you're figuring

some things out. We want you to be able to read

the Bible. We just want everyone to just

read the Bible for themselves. Luke 44 says, and Jesus answered

him saying it is written that no man shall live by bread alone,

but by every word of God. So again saying most of you guys

are in our Bible studies, you guys know that typically what we

do is we we take a passage and we like to break it down into

what we call columns. And typically that first column

is we call it the God column. And So what we want to do is we

want to take that passage and say, what is this saying about

God? What does it say about God?

What does it say about man? What are commands that we see

and how do we apply those things personally?

And almost always, just about every time we're studying a

passage, something that goes in that God column is that we see

that God speaks, right? He doesn't want to be hidden or

mysterious. God wants to be known.

He wants to communicate with us. And we know that in our time, He

does this through His Word. And so, you know, it doesn't

really do us any good if we're not reading it.

So our next steps for reading the Bible is to follow our

reading plan. So as we are wrapping up the New

Testament this year, you should be finishing Revelations, which

that's a tricky book. That's all right.

Just push through it. And we're going to start in a

new book in the beginning of the year.

I think we're going to do something a little bit

different. I think we're going to be in the

Old Testament for a little while, but we like to read the

Bible together as a church. And that way if you have

questions, maybe you don't fully understand what it's talking

about, maybe it's a little confusing, That's all right.

Just come to church because that's what we're going to be

talking about. Or even if we don't cover your

question, there's going to be somebody that you can talk to.

If you're being discipled, you can talk to your discipler about

it. If not, you can talk to Thomas.

You can talk to one of us other leaders in the church, and we

can help you understand what it's talking about.

At the next thing in this believe category is we want for

you to be saved. We want to make it really clear

that our desire is for every person to know Jesus Christ

because that's what he wants. John 317 says for God send not

his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the

world through him might be saved.

Second, Peter 39 says the Lord is not slack concerning his

promise as some men count slackness, but is long-suffering

to us word not willing that any should perish, but that all

should come to repentance. So we're, we're not trying to

trick anybody. We want to be really clear that

the first and primary reason that we want people to come to

church and to read their Bible is because we want them to come

to personal faith in Jesus. This is really the the

culmination of this whole first level of growth is having a

personal understanding of what the gospel is.

Before a Christian can go on to do anything else, this is really

where they have to start. They have to have a personal

conviction of what the gospel is.

So whether you're new to the faith, whether you had you were

in church as a kid and as an adult, you're returning to

figure what out what this means for yourself.

This is just the beginning of everything that we do.

We want everyone to come to faith.

We want all people to attend church to learn and to grow so

they can believe the gospel for themselves.

John 33 says Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I

say unto thee, except a man be born again, he cannot see the

Kingdom of God. I letter D in the last of these

believe steps is it we want you to be baptized.

So a baptism is not a part of your salvation.

You don't have to be baptized to be saved.

It is the first step of obedience that we're called to

after being born again. We see this in the Great

Commission that we talked about just a few minutes ago.

And then we also see this is an example in the early Church of

people being baptized after they came to faith.

Matthew 2819 and 20 again says to go ye therefore and teach all

nation nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and

Son of the Holy Ghost. So we would say that that

teaching all nations is sharing the gospel and those that

believe are baptized in the name of the Father and the Son of the

Holy Ghost. Acts 812 gives gives us an

example of that in the early church it says but when they

believed Philip preaching the things concerning the Kingdom of

God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized both

men and women. So we see that after they

believed, then they were baptized.

So that kind of concludes our first few steps in this believe

category of growth. So the next thing is living the

gospel. You said there's the belief, now

we're on to living the gospel. So this kind of second level of

training or growth is learning to live this gospel out in your

daily life. So in our firefighting training

analogy, this would be like that operations level of training.

So after a person has been saved, they believe the gospel

and accepted Christ as their savior, we want to help them

become a faithful disciple of Jesus in an active participant

in ministry. So again, like in our

firefighting scenario, you're not a bystander.

You're not just cording off of me.

Like, yeah, watch out, there's something down there.

You're expected to be involved. So at the operations level, by

the way, these guys in the brown suits, that's like a job that

someone in operations would do. The guy in the green suit just

came out of the what they would call the hot zone.

He's getting decontaminated so he can take that off and refill

his air container because you get a bubble of air and that's

it. So these guys though, their job

under the supervision of technicians is they're going to

set up decontamination. They're going to be a, but

they're an active part of this team.

So that for us in the church, the first step that we have in

that process is being discipled. So we want you to learn to walk

with God from someone else. And the way we do that in our

church is we have a discipleship ministry that the whole

intention is that it pairs you up one-on-one with another

person to study the Bible together.

Ephesians 414 says that we henceforth be no more children

tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of

doctrine by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby

they lie and wait to deceive. It's telling us that we should

grow right. There's a reason that you

shouldn't be like a child your whole life because then you're

just tossed to and fro with whatever people tell you.

It just, it moves you back and forth because you just don't

know what to believe, right? So Ephesians telling us there's

a reason you need to grow and a verse that tells us how to grow

is second Peter 1/5 through 7. And if you're in discipleship,

you should have heard this verse by now, right?

It's kind of core to what we do in discipleship.

It says, and beside this giving all diligence, add to your faith

virtue and to virtue knowledge and to knowledge, temperance,

and to temperance, patience and to patience, godliness, and to

godliness, brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness,

charity. So again, hopefully this is a

familiar passage to you, but it's giving us, we call this the

process of spiritual growth. You don't go from the beginning

to the end. It gives us a clear progression

of adding things to your faith. One thing builds upon another.

We see that we're called to add these things and.

So in discipleship, kind of the primary goal that we have in

our, in this personal discipleship ministry is to

establish you in those first two things.

We want you to be established in virtue and in knowledge.

So simply stated, we just want you to learn the the basic

doctrines of God's Word, and then we want you to learn how to

live those truths out in your life.

So after discipleship letter B is become a member.

So we talked about attending church at the beginning, but

becoming a member is more than just attending.

It's really committing to living and serving together as a body.

Every believer is designed to live in community together with

other Christians. And the Bible often references

the church as a body, as a living entity, where we are

members one of another. Romans 12/5 says so.

We, being many, are one body in Christ, and everyone members one

of another. It says it this way in Ephesians

416. From whom the whole body, fitly

joined together, and compacted by that which every joint

supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure

of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of

itself and love. So it's not only that we're

members of the same body, but it's telling us that every

member has a specific role to play to make that church

stronger and to be able to reach the World with the gospel.

The next thing in our progression is to steward well.

We want you to learn to use your time, your talent, and your

treasure for the Lord. So the in these categories,

we're going to break those down a little bit further.

And the first is time. Time is participating and

serving within the body as a whole.

Ephesians 515 through 17 says see then that you walk

circumspectly, not as fools, but is wise redeeming the time

because the days are evil. Wherefore be not unwise, but

understanding what the will of the Lord is.

So within these categories of you know, we're going to break

down time, talent and treasure. Time is maybe the least unique

of the things that we have, but it's actually one of the most

valuable resources that we have. Because I say it's not unique in

the sense that all of us have 24 hours in a day.

So it's not unique that some people have more time than

others per SE. I mean, granted, if you have

some responsibility, if you have kids, if you don't, if you have

work and school and all these things, those are all pulling

your time, but we all actually get the same amount of time,

right? So it's not actually unique that

some people are just gifted with more, more physical time in the

day. But I say it's valuable because

money can come and go. But no matter how much money you

have, you can never go back to yesterday and use that day for

something else. Like when it's gone, it's gone

for everybody. So it's something that the, you

know, the Bible again in Ephesians says to redeem that

time. And especially as we live in

days that we know the days are evil and we know the time is

getting short and there's there's not going to be a chance

to go back and live your life differently later when it's

over, it's done. The next thing that the Bible

tells us that we need to invest in the mission is our talent.

So these are your specific skills, your gifts, your

abilities and your experiences. And I'm going to break this down

into even 2 further things within our talents. 1 is we see

skills. Ephesians 210 says, for we are

his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works,

which God had before ordained, that we should walk in them.

So some of these physical skills can be things like, you know,

learning to play an instrument. That's something that you can do

and enjoy yourself, but it's also a skill that you can use to

serve the Lord like like we did today.

I'm really glad that people Jay and Nathan and Talia, I'm glad

that you guys can can lead us in worship because that's not a

skill that I have. If it was up to me, we would

like play Spotify and sing along with her or something because I

can't play music, I Can't Sing. It would be really dull without

people who have a skill set that they're willing to use for the

Lord, They're willing to put themselves out there to play

music. This is something that that

leads us in worship. So those are skills and and

there's others. That's a really easy example

because we see it every week. But things like, you know, if

you have video, audio, physical labour, bookkeeping, if you know

how to do marketing, build websites, like that's all been

things that have been super valuable that we've dabbled

with. But you know, there's been

people that have that have helped us along the way with

those things. Those are really valuable skill

sets. The other thing in those talents

are gifts. And what we mean by gifts are

spiritual gifts that God gives Christians specifically to serve

in the church and to minister to others.

First Corinthians 12/7 says, but the manifestation of the Spirit

is given to every man to profit with all.

So we would say that every Christian has at least one

spiritual gift that is intended to benefit others.

Romans 12/4 through eight. I know this is like it's a

little bit small. So if you guys can read that it

says for as we have many members and one body and all members

have not the same office. So we being many are one body in

Christ and everyone members one of another.

This goes back to what we were talking about it earlier.

We're all in this together. And verse 6 says having then

gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us,

whether prophecy, let us prophecy according to the

proportion of faith or ministry. Let us wait on our ministering,

Or he that teaches on teaching, or he that exhorteth on

exhortation, or he that giveth, let him do so with simplicity,

he that ruleth with diligence, and he that show with mercy,

with cheerfulness. So if you've been saved, we want

to help you develop your gifts to use for the Lord.

This is something he's giving you again, it's not for you to

glory yourself in and it's not necessarily something that you

use for yourself. It's to profit with all it's to

profit the body of of Christ and to serve a specific purpose that

he's put you in the body for the last category under this

stewardship point is our treasure.

Now this this topic gets really tricky, right?

It gets kind of sticky because we don't, we don't want to make

people feel uncomfortable talking about their money.

And I think that's probably because deep down we know that

money is probably what most people value more than anything

else. Like that might be a deal

breaker. If we say, hey, you should be

investing your money in God's mission, they, they might just

walk away. That might be too much, right?

But the, the reality is that God doesn't talk about money because

he needs your money, right? Matthew 621 says For where your

treasure is, there will your heart be also.

God doesn't need your money, He just wants you to love him more

than your money. He wants you to be so invested

in the things that he cares about that you will happily give

up the things that you care about to serve him with it. 2nd

Corinthians 97 says every man according as he purposes

purposes in his heart. So let him give, not grudgingly

or of necessity, for God loveth A cheerful giver.

So we want you to use the the skills you have, the gifts that

God has given you and the possessions that he's entrusted

to you. We want you to learn to use

those things to steward them for God's mission.

And the last thing that we have in this living category is study

the Bible. So earlier we talked about

reading the Bible like it's a beginning step, right?

That's that's a beginning step in someone's faith.

But what we're talking about here is learning to truly study

God's Word. It goes a whole lot deeper than

just reading it as John, as Jesus says in John 831, He says

if you continue in my word, then are you just my disciples?

Indeed, that's also important to know.

When he says continue in my word, this isn't to earn your

salvation. He's not saying if you continue

in my word, you'll be saved. He's saying if you continue in

my word, those are my disciples. Second Timothy 215 says to study

to show thyself approved unto God a Workman that need is not

be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth.

This is one of so Lori and I let Awana's back at Oakland Heights

and Lauren served in there with us.

So this is like the the main theme verse for Awana's is study

to show thyself approved. And again, this is not talking

about approved as in you need to earn your salvation.

It's saying approved as in you are doing the the diligence you

are diligent, you are studying to understand what God wants

from you. You're studying his word.

We have to study to have a firm grasp on doctrine.

It tells us right there in that verse to rightly divide the word

of truth. So by implication that tells us

that there is a wrong way to divide God's word.

There's a wrong way to apply it to your life and understand it.

And in fact, like this whole chunk of verses in Second

Timothy is warning US against bad doctrine.

And verse 17, Paul is name dropping some guys.

He's letting everybody know that their doctrine is wrong, and he

says that concerning the truth, they have heard a good English

word there, that they have erred.

Specifically, it tells us what they were doing.

It says that they were reading future prophecy and teaching it

as something that had already passed.

That would be an incorrect division of Scripture.

And Paul's calling them out to the church.

He's saying watch out for those guys.

They're they're wrong. So for us, it's really important

to learn how to properly study the Bible so that we have a firm

grasp on doctrine before we can teach that to anybody else.

So this brings it, that concludes our living category.

And then the last of our believe live share is sharing the

gospel. So within our, again, our fire

department analogy, this would be like the technician level of

training. So it's not just about learning

to be a part of the team, but this level of growth is about

learning to perform the work of the ministry on your own and

being able to lead others in it. So if you want to be on the the

Michelin man SWAT team, you got to put in the work, you got to

study. You were expected to have a lot

of understanding, a lot of knowledge, a lot of on the year,

on the job experience, a lot of years of training to where

you're fully equipped to be safe for yourself and also to lead

others. So this starts our expectations

will start with letter A in your notes, which is winning souls.

So kind of in a a full circle moment, the share and believe

live share is leading others back to the beginning to believe

the gospel for themselves. We want you to be a soul winner

and participate in outreach. Proverbs 11/30 says the fruit of

the righteous is a tree of life and he that winneth souls is

wise. We want you to be wise.

John 15-8 says, herein is my father glorified that ye bear

much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples.

And again, bearing fruit is not how you prove your salvation.

It's how you prove that you're truly a disciple.

If you're truly a disciple of Jesus, then you're going to make

time to share the gospel. And again, we if you've been

around for a minute, we know we invite everybody to come with us

on evangelism. The different, the difference

here is that we're at first, we just want you to come.

We want you to participate. We can hand out Flyers, but at

the point of being a soul winner, the expectation is you

can go out there by yourself. We can send you to a corner with

a team. We can send you with another

group of people and whatever questions may come up.

It's not that you know everything, but you are

confident enough and understanding of the gospel and

how to lead someone else to come to faith that we can just trust

you to to do that on your own or lead a whole nother team of

people to do that. You're kind of the the leader in

that group. So again, there's a place for

everyone. We want everyone to come, come

to our reach days, come to our evangelism.

But if you're a soul winner, then you know how to do this on

your own. You don't need to be LED into

it. Next in that progression is we

want you to make disciples. It's time for you to invest your

growth into someone else. So everyone that has been

discipled now has an investment to make in another person.

And that's going to be a combination of the things that

you were taught along with the things that you have learned as

you have grown and matured in your own faith.

You're going to you're going to bring those things together and

you're going to reproduce the maturity that's in you and

someone else. Second Timothy 22, this is one

of our key verses for our discipleship ministry.

It says in the things that thou has heard of me among many

witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be

able to teach others also. So there's there's a biblical

command to not just hoard up the things that we learned for

ourselves. We're instructed to commit these

things to faithful people who can then teach others.

So if you were kind of in that process of being discipled, you

need to know that one of the qualifications for that is for

you to be faithful. You can't be invested in if

you're not even faithful to attend and to read your Bible on

your own. That's not a faithful person.

So we expect people to be faithful so that we can invest

in them, so that they can invest in others.

Letter C in your notes is teaching the Bible.

So we want you to be a soul winner.

We want you to have a grasp on the gospel.

We want you to be able to make disciples.

We want you to be able to reproduce maturity in others.

And we also want you to be able to teach the Bible at some

point. Every believer should be willing

to teach God's word and the best in people, not just one-on-one.

But in a broader sense, we see that the church may only have

one pastor. Sometimes as churches grow, they

have assistant pastors and that's good.

We see that in in the Bible. But in Acts 13, one, we see a

multitude of teachers. It says now there were in the

church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers as

Barnabas and Simeon that was called Niger and Lucius of

Cyrene and Manaean, which had been brought up with hair, the

tetrarch and Saul. So what we noticed there is that

there is a plurality of teachers in this church in Antioch.

So like for today, I'm not a pastor, but while Thomas is

gone, I get the opportunity. This is a place for me to grow

to be able to to teach tonight. So we would hope that a church

has more than one teacher. Otherwise every time someone

gets sick or they're out of town, we're just going to have

to cancel church. But we see this it's not just

for practicality though. We see this is a biblical

example that God wants the church to reproduce teachers of

of his word. And the last point in your notes

is reaching the world. So we want you to be prepared to

be called to ministry. Acts 13, two through three says

as they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Ghost said,

separate me, Barnabas and Saul for the work, where unto I have

called them. And when they had fasted and

prayed and laid their hands on them, they sent them away.

So it's very possible that God may call you to go into lead

ministry in some other part of the country or some other part

of the world. It's not every Christian is not

called to go. But if we're doing our job as a

church and we are preparing people to be fully mature, fully

equipped, fully willing ministry leaders, it's very likely that

he's going to call some of us at some point to be separated for a

new work. We saw that in that passage.

It's important to note that it wasn't just the church's idea.

It wasn't just to accomplish their vision statement.

It says the Holy Ghost said separate me, Barnabas and Saul

for the work whereunto I have called them.

So we see that there's both a combination of a calling from

God, but there is a sending from the church And we're, we know

that we cannot send or lay hands on people who are not equipped.

First Timothy 522 says lay hands suddenly on no man, neither be

partaker of other men's sins. Keep thyself pure.

And we know through context this laying hands.

It's not talking about fighting with somebody.

It's not saying put your hands on them.

It's saying when it says lay hands, it's talking about

ordaining men to ministry. It's saying to lay your hands on

them. We saw that again in Acts 13

that says that they lay their hands on them and they send them

away. There is a ordination process

that we see as a church that we see examples of in Acts where

they laid their hands on men who had been trained, who had been

equipped and they sent them to do other, other ministry.

But, and Paul, Paul is telling Timothy to not do that.

Suddenly you have to make sure that people are equipped and

prepared to the ministry that you're sending them to do.

So in conclusion, like I said at the beginning of our sermon

time, I hope is that tonight's a night of self evaluation.

So at the bottom of the second page of your study guide,

there's a section for you to fill out.

And this is not for you to turn into anyone.

It's it's not for you to turn into me or Thomas.

My intention is that this is just for you.

And so since it's just for you, what I want you to do is to

circle where you think you're at tonight in this growth process.

If you think you're in this belief stage, that's totally

fine. We're not trying to shame

anyone. We don't want anyone to think

that we think less of them because of where they are in

their growth because this is where everyone has to start.

But if you're not 100% sure that you would go to heaven if you

died tonight, then you're still in that belief category.

You still got to figure out your faith.

You need to decide if you believe that, that the gospel is

true. Like Tucker said, everyone has

to come to a place of personal conviction to say what I'm

hearing, what I have. Again, how can they believe

something they've not heard? What I've heard, what I've read

in the Bible. I either believe that this is

true or I don't. So if you, if you have been

saved, then maybe you're in the live category.

If you're sure that you're saved, then your next step is to

grow in your faith. It's to be grounded in doctrine

and to serve in ministry as a part of the body.

Maybe you're at the share category and maybe you think

that God may be calling you to ministry.

And if so, that's great. We, we want to help equip you

for whatever God call, whatever call God has on your life.

And that's going to be different for everybody.

We know his will starts with God wants everyone to be saved.

But after that there's there's a lot of pass and a lot of things

that God has called people to do.

We want you to figure out what that is.

And then we want to help equip you for it.

After you've identified what stage you think you're in, you

can just circle that. Whether you're in the the

believe live or share, you can circle where you think you are

in there. And after you've identified

that, there's a spot that says, my next step is So what I want

for you to do. And again, this is just for you

is just to write down what you think your next step is for

2026. So if you're, if you're saved,

but you've never been baptized, well, then I can tell you

baptism is your next step. Maybe you're for sure that

you're saved, you've been baptized.

Well, then the next thing is for you to grow, you need to get

plugged in. You need to be a faithful

member. You need to come and you need

to, to study God's word, You need to be disciple.

So again, this is this is not something to turn in, but my

hope is you can put this in your Bible and throughout the year

you can be remembered. Put a stake in the ground and

say, what is it that I said? As much as I hate New Year's

resolutions, this is I think a worthy thing to do is to say,

what is your resolution for your faith this coming year?

Where do you want to be? How do you want to be different

in 2026 than you were in 2025? If we know God's called us all

to grow and to change, what is the thing that he's showing you

you need to do? Do you again, do you need to be

discipled? You can talk to me or you can

wait until next week and you can talk to just write it down and

talk to Thomas and say you know that.

I know I'm saved. I'm not doubting my salvation,

but now I don't want to be tossed to and fro.

I want to understand. I want to understand what the

Bible teaches. That's your next step.

So in conclusion, I want to pray for us.

I'm going to give you just a minute to maybe write down in

your notes there you can circle where you're at, put down what

your next step of growth is, but I'm going to pray for us.

And then if Jay and Nathan, if you guys are ready, you can give

us another minute or so and you guys can come up and conclude

this with the last song. And then Lauren's going to give

us some announcements. So let me pray first to close.

God, I thank you for this evening.

I thank you for the opportunity you've given me to, to share

your word tonight. The things that I learned by

studying and the time it takes to study through your word, the

things that it, it grows in me. I'm thankful for that

opportunity. I, I pray for Thomas and for his

family as they're traveling, as they're doing what you've called

them to do and they're able to be mission focused.

We pray that you'll bless them, keep them safe as they're

traveling. But God, I pray for us that

you'll identify for each one of us what it is that you want.

Not, not what I say, not the steps that I'm telling people

they need to take, but they can see in your word that these are

the steps that you want them to take.

And I pray that you'll just give us all the clarity individually

to know what it is that you're calling us to grow in over this

next year. And that not only will we know

what it is, but then we'll have the commitment to follow through

with that, That we'll put into action the things that you teach

us and that we will have a desire and a willingness to grow

in our faith. Now, I thank you for everyone

that's here tonight. I thank you for the opportunity

we've had to be together and fellowship.

And I pray that you'll take us home safely.

Each to our own homes. Amen.