The Revolution of the Ordinary Man | Ecclesia: The Church Can Change the World - Week 2

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Today's talk comes from Pastor Chris Ball.

Anyhow, we are in um week two of Ecclesia.

And I loved last week.

By the way, if you were part of the grand opening last week, uh, thank you.

I had so much fun telling the story of last Sunday that there was 120 of us here, which is a significant number.

That was there's 120 of uh people in the upper room, too, so that was well played and well planned.

And just some of the stories that came out of Sunday really were touching and touching me personally, and um, and so maybe you experienced some of that as well.

So we mentioned last week that uh that God is building a church, and it may not necessarily be the idea of what a lot of people have church to be in their mind, because and it's not to throw shade or extra critique that's not necessary on anybody, but it's possible that the idea of the church being more of a clubhouse has seeped into our thinking when we think of what is church.

And Jesus' word for it was ecclesia, and so to catch you up, ecclesia was actually originally when Jesus used it a political word that meant the ones who have the authority and the authority to instill the governmental rule of the day in the city.

And so when Jesus carefully chose the word ecclesia, say instead of synagogue or some of the other words he could have used in to say what is the church, he chose this word to make sure he could communicate to the starters of the church and to us today what it actually is.

And what it is is you have the authority to make whatever it looks like in heaven become what it is on earth.

So it's not a pie in the sky pipe dream.

It's actually what's been given to you as the church to be able to do, which is why we can pray for things like cancer and whatever else God seems to highlight.

You know, that that's still our that that's our option as the people of God, the ecclesia of God.

So that's the church God's building.

Today I want to present to us the idea of the ordinary man.

The revolution, to be cute with it, of the ordinary man.

And that's actually a phrase we'll look at here in a second.

Um, but it's best said, I think, the revolution of the ordinary man, when the kingdom of God advances, when ordinary people who have, here's a key, been with Jesus, realize they are the ones Jesus is sending.

When that happens, you have this revolution of a charge of building the kingdom of God like it was meant to be built, I believe.

So here's a quick story to launch us today.

I was 19 years old, fresh being a youth pastor, uh, as a volunteer, and had just taken a group, probably about seven or eight students, to Camp Tejas in Giddings, Texas, if you know the place, and had preached my very first message ever.

Out of the Bible.

First time.

And uh was part of a church in San Marcus that I helped plant.

This would have been in about 2001, and summertime.

The guy I was working for, volunteering for, my pastor, the boss, was a bit of a redneck.

And was working on his gutters at his house, and I guess deemed that a extension ladder wouldn't quite do the job.

So instead, that's where it gets redneck, he pulls his truck around the back side.

Tim, you knew this was coming, didn't you?

And got the longest extension cord he could find, tied it off, threw it over top of the apex of the roof, which was quite steeply pitched, which is why standing on the roof wouldn't do, and somehow put himself on belay.

I wasn't there, I don't know how that worked.

I don't know if he, like traditional through the legs, around the waist, harness around the shoulder, I don't know.

I can't only imagine how he didn't lose a limb or something from blood circulation being cut off.

Anyhow, it didn't go well.

And he ended up falling, and he broke his clavicle.

Collarbone broke, in bringing the Vicodin.

And so I get back from church camp on a Saturday afternoon, inside of 24 hours before the next Sunday morning of our new church, and it was a room probably about like this, maybe a little bigger, maybe been going a little longer.

And he said, I'm gonna need you to preach tomorrow morning.

And I'm like, I just now preached for the first time ever.

What am I gonna say to these people?

And he said, as he's on Viking at the point, uh, I don't know.

Maybe preach the message you just preached.

Just if you can make it more applicable to an adult than a junior high or high school student, then do that.

If you can't, then fine.

And so I show up the next morning, not having slept a wink, with this on my mind.

What does a 19-year-old who doesn't have the experience of a 40, 50, 60, 70, 80-year-old person who's walked a whole lifetime with God have to say to them?

What am I gonna tell them when they have more knowledge and more resume than I've got?

And even doped up on Viking, Viking, my pastor had the word of the Lord for me, and he said, I'm gonna tell you something, and I've never forgotten this, and I'm gonna tell it to you guys.

They may have more knowledge, more experience, but you have something they don't.

And what that is, is you have the anointing of the Lord for this moment, and nobody else has it.

It is so good.

And I have used that for every arena of my life, whenever I have felt insecure about a moment.

Um, I mean, from the most significant to the most least thing that you could imagine, remembering, oh yeah, I may not have all the credentials and this list of accolades to back me up, but what I've got is an invitation from God that this person doesn't seem to have right now, so I'm God's man.

I'm the best God's God.

I'm the one, not only like, I guess you're the best God's God, like you're the one that he's made the moment for.

And so I preached a message and I don't know how it went, it went good enough, I guess.

But it did more.

That the significance of that day was to tell me, you may feel like the ordinary man, but you're extraordinary, because it's the ordinary man that God has put his mark on, his finger on, and put assignment in the heart of.

And if you can live your life like that, that's a revolution.

That is a completely different way to approach your life, realizing I got what it takes.

I have what it takes.

I'm not just an ordinary man.

So we read this last week.

We need to look at it again, though, to set us up for where we want to go.

It's Acts 11.

Verse 19, it says, Now those who had been scattered by the persecution that broke out when Stephen was killed, traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, spreading the word only among Jews at the time.

Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began, here it is, the breakthrough moment, to speak to Greeks also.

Why?

Because Jesus' great commandment was to go into all the world, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus.

The Lord's hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.

As we read that just then, did you catch the names of the people who started Antioch?

I didn't either.

And if we read it again, we won't, because they're not in there, their names.

Now maybe Luke leaves them out, who wrote Acts, because he wanted us to get the point that it's not important who started it, because we all are called to be firestarters.

But more likely, he didn't put their names in there because he didn't know.

And he didn't know because it went with such pace.

This great number of people being added to their number moved with multiplication, not just addition.

When multiplication starts happening, it becomes almost impossible to keep up with.

It gets a little out of control.

Can I just say, I hope things around here get a little out of control?

Hope they get a little out of hand.

That would actually be okay.

You're like, well, what if you got a problem?

I guess we try to solve the problem then.

But I don't want no problems at the expense of nice, quaint, clean, little we can keep it all tidied up.

It's like, no, this thing in Antioch, it blew the doors out.

And Luke didn't even know who to say to give credit to that started Antioch.

He knew later who came in, Barnabas, and they got Saul involved and everything.

And let's do some teaching and some equipping so the thing can really go great guns.

But the original start of the church that is now the model of how you do church, what the ecclesia really is to be, we don't even know who started it.

They're no names.

They're ordinary men.

And these are the people who planted the church that becomes the great missionary sending operation in Acts that the rest of the world can take cues from for Jesus' great commission.

That's interesting to me.

Paul, of course, uh, referred to as Saul at this point in the story, later to be Paul, uh, becomes perhaps the most influential missionary in all of Christian history.

But Paul wasn't the beginning of Antioch.

In fact, I don't think Paul has the platform to be able to be influential to write the letters that he wrote to the churches in the New Testament, had he not had a platform to launch from that was laid from ordinary men and women that we don't even know their names.

So if in your mind is this idea that I would call a lie, that you have to somehow be a somebody and have some kind of history or accolades to be able to be a player in the sending part of the story of God, then um it's time for a rethink.

Because you're absolutely qualified.

And we'll look at what what is the qualification to be a part here in just a second, but here's a big idea for you.

The kingdom has always been advanced by ordinary people.

If you look over the course of time, the kingdom has always been you, you're the pick, you're the first round draft selection out of all the people.

It was you.

And it's like that's like the purpose of heaven.

You see it all throughout the story of God's covenant journey with humanity.

Picking the the seemingly down and outs, the no-names, the left outs.

Um I was just thinking about the term revolution of the ordinary man, and thinking, of course, just in our own country's history with the Revolutionary War and how if you uh go to the uh national parks um system and look up who were the soldiers that were actually players in the Revolutionary War, it describes them as um as very ordinary.

It says the the ordinary citizen is actually the term it uses.

Uh farmers, tradesmen, blacksmiths, preachers, teachers, laborers.

So, yes, for instance, a George Washington certainly mattered, but George Washington does not complete the revolution in America without all of the ordinary citizens that said, huh, that sounds like I'm needed for the mission.

Otherwise, the mission's dead before it ever started.

It's just, it's been a thread throughout history.

God using ordinary people to do the extraordinary work of whatever it is that needs to be done.

And a movement explodes when ordinary people say, This is absolutely my responsibility.

Um, and I'll add, it becomes more than duty, but a fulfilling way to spend your life.

When you realize that you're not like somehow doing the kingdom of God a favor, but that actually you are made to be a player, made to be a participant, now all of a sudden you tap into real life destiny and creative purpose for your life, and you say, Man, I thought this was what was really light in my jets, but fulfillment is really found in being a mover in the kingdom, keeping my head aware, my eyes open for where are the opportunities that God is saying, Hey, I'm highlighting that person right there.

Even if it's just a word of encouragement, even if it's they share something dastardly with you, and you say, you know, I actually have hope in my heart that that could be a better situation.

I'm gonna go pray for them.

That would take some boldness.

Well, God's about emboldening the church.

He wants you to be bold, he wants to give you what it uh requires because you've got what it takes.

So um what happened in Antioch was not, you know, hey, pastors go or seminary students go or the who's who of Antioch go.

It was if you've got um a heartbeat uh in your body, then go.

And they took it serious and it was transformational for the area.

It was transformational for the world, actually.

There's still roots of great movements that have happened in the earth that can trace lines all the way back to Antioch.

And so I just wonder, like, what's waiting still?

What's waiting for us?

Where are the lines gonna be traced from our efforts to be people who say, I'm gonna participate in this, I'm gonna pray for this, I'm gonna pay for this, I'm gonna uh get out of my shell for this.

Um I hope the cafeteria at Hayes High School turns into uh just a common day, everyday place where people praying, like, hey, what's the test you got next?

Let's just pray the peace of God on your life right now.

And it just is a common thing.

It's not an odd thing, it's a common thing.

Um I heard, can you believe this?

I am gonna get off track if I tell you this, but it might might be worth it.

Just in Wimberley at a cafe this week, there were two guys that were meeting for coffee, and uh before they departed, uh, one of them said, Let me pray for you.

So the guy assumed the position of getting prayed for, and he's they both stood up at the table.

One of them put his hands out like this, the other one put his hands on his hands, almost like that slap game, you know, like, how fast can you pull your hands back?

And he was just praying for him.

And the manager, I guess it was the manager, somebody with authority, comes over and said, Hey, this table has a reservation.

I'm gonna need you guys to leave.

And there was all kinds of tables open at 12 o'clock at noon in the room.

And so it was a classic example uh today of modern day of, hey, we're uncomfortable with that.

Would you please take that out of our building?

And and and so, what's the point?

Uh that persecution still exists in small quantities around here, I guess.

I don't know, but uh that's an adventure.

And I guess what I'm saying is, yeah, if there's some friction to be had necessarily, sign me up.

I'm not looking for a fight.

I don't want to fight.

Um, I actually want an experience with the Lord's peace to come in and do something wonderful.

Um, I guess what I'm saying is that there's a need for the people of God to carry the baton in the world, even where we live today, when we live in it.

And it's not just some archaic thing that we're that we're talking about.

This is still relevant and needed today.

Uh so here is probably a good time to insert Acts 4.13.

Um because we make the point to celebrate the role of the ordinary person.

I don't want us to hear that an ordinary person has just ordinary things on their life.

What you actually see is that ordinary people who say yes to the call actually have an extraordinary impact on their surroundings.

And so it's not just ordinary equals ordinary, it's actually that ordinary equals extraordinary.

So verse 13 of Acts chapter 4, it says, When they saw the courage, we actually prayed for courage this morning, when they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, and here's where we get the phrase, ordinary men, they were astonished, and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.

Acts 4 · chapter mention

It's actually a cognate, and the Greek word I think is something like idio.

It really is, that they use.

It sounds like something, doesn't it?

These onlookers were calling, they were assessing the situation, saying, Are you kidding me?

That power and ability is coming out of them.

They're the village idiot.

They were, and they're boys, they're not even very old.

They're just little punks, hadn't finished school, they didn't gone to rabbi school to talk like that.

How do they know to talk like that?

They were fishing on their dad's boat just like a couple months back ago.

And so this is the word they use.

The ordinary men is probably taming it down.

But that wouldn't have gone good in our message title today.

I call anybody an idiot.

Um that's the qualifier.

It says that they notice the back end of that.

It says they took note that these men had been with Jesus.

So you want to know what the qualifier is for you to have extraordinary impact when you're just an ordinary guy, an ordinary gal?

Be with Jesus.

That's as sophisticated as it gets.

You don't have to go to such and such degree, college, school, YouTube course, whatever.

Do that if you like, if it helps.

But the qualifier to be the man and the woman of God in the moment is simply to be with Jesus.

And this has been the case from long since.

By the way, this wasn't just like new information all of a sudden.

Proximity to God transforms people.

It always does.

And that's why, whenever we come together, we love to worship the Lord together.

Because Psalm 22 gives us a clue, too, that the Lord inhabits the praises of his people.

There is an attractional quality to the worship of the saints coming together, and this is true, by the way, in your own individual life as well, that when you give praise to the Lord and honor, the word actually means to kiss towards heaven, affection poured out to Jesus, that he can't help himself but draw near.

I thought he was always with you.

He is, but there seems to be layers of God's presence.

And when his presence comes near, the proximity closes a little bit, the gap comes down, it's transformation in his presence.

That's why so often miracles happen when the presence of God is experienced in a time of worship.

Because the byproduct of God showing up and being here is transformation.

And so the secret ingredient to the whole thing is being with God.

Just be with Jesus.

You want to be great in the kingdom?

Awesome.

That desire to be great in the kingdom is from God, actually.

And the way you take advantage of it is you just be with Jesus.

You set up a life of I just am with him, Emmanuel, Christ with us, and I can have as much of it as I want.

I can reciprocate it back.

It's not like he's out to vacation, out to lunch somewhere, and you got to catch him when he's around.

Always around, you get to lean in and be with Jesus all you want to, and that's the secret sauce that will cause people to notice and say, something, something, what is it?

He's been with God.

He's been with Jesus.

Maybe there's breakthrough for my life in that.

That's the salt of the earth.

Now I'll say this.

As a believer who's put your faith in Jesus, he's taking up residence in your life.

So it's not just being with Jesus, he's actually in you.

So that's pretty awesome.

Now catch this part.

It's possible to have somebody in you, in your house, and you still ignore them.

We had a family friend when I was a young kid who uh I think he was recently divorced and kind of down on life a bit, and so my folks invited him to live with us for a time.

He frequently ate out on his own and would not eat around our table, even though it was an open table.

He oftentimes would be in recluse in his bedroom that he was staying in, and we wouldn't see him out there, even though he was invited to be in the living room with the family and everything.

He just was not wanting to impose or infringe or take advantage, so you can kind of give him some grace for that.

Years later, I had to be reminded that he even lived in our house.

I forgot.

And my parents were like, Do you remember when RD lived with us?

And I was like, No.

And then they would talk more about it, and I was like, Yes, I forgot all about that.

Why?

Because he wasn't he wasn't showing up in the house.

Right, right or wrong.

He just wasn't a familiar face inside the house, even though that's that was where he lived.

He got his mail there.

If you say, Where do you live?

I live there, the ball's house, right there.

That's where I live.

But I had forgotten years later.

My point is, it's possible that you've invited the Holy Spirit to live in your life through your faith and really don't interact a lot with him.

And it's as if you don't even know he's there.

So when we talk about there being power in being with God, you've got the advantage as a new covenant creation that you have the Holy Spirit, God Himself living in you, but it's still up to you to activate that, to take advantage of it, to interact with it.

But it's just as close as right there.

So here's a second big idea: being with Jesus changes what is possible.

It actually is the threshold moment of it was impossible up to this point.

But when you're with Jesus, you cross over into possibility, the land of possibility.

So back to uh Moses, I guess not back to him, I didn't mention him a minute ago I was going to.

He goes up the mountain and he spends time with God.

Um if you look at his life originally, he was somebody who was in Egypt's camp and kind of christened to be the who he was going to be, but really didn't have any um movement to be a man of God, a deliverer, essentially.

And it's not until he has the backside of his life experience where he's now in.

Jethro's field in the land of Midian, where he now is just with God day in and day out, spending time with God.

Goes up to the mountain, has a burning bush experience.

So finally now he is with the Israelites, and they've already come out of Egypt, and he goes to get the second set of Ten Commandment tablets, because the first one's broke.

And he's up there for 40 days, and when he comes back when he returns, there is, it says, a radiance on his face.

There's an actual glow that's so brilliant of the glory of God on him from the residue of being with God that he has to actually put the veil on his face because it's just too much for the average person to interact with.

A neat side note, you may know this, is that part of New Covenant living is that there is no more need for a veil.

There is no more need for a barrier, uh, a shield.

Um that's evidence of the Holy Spirit living inside you.

So where as Moses couldn't see the face of God and live, because God makes it clear nobody can see God and live, now that very same God is actually inside of you.

So it's like, think what that would do, dude.

Like incinerate you from the inside.

It's like it's not gonna incinerate you.

Why?

Because you're a new creation.

You're not the same creation Moses was, you're a new creation with with new covenant reality in your life.

So anyway, I just couldn't mention all that and not say that, but that's not the direction that I'm necessarily headed.

My point is, we we don't have to manufacture Jesus.

Moses didn't have to manufacture the glory of the Lord being on his body, it was a byproduct of him being with God.

So your life today, you don't have to, I gotta memorize all the phrases.

I gotta pull out all the stops to make sure that the effects of me having been with Jesus are known to the people that I'm trying to love on.

And no, it's just gonna be a byproduct.

It's an outflow.

There's no striving.

It's just an outflow of having been with Jesus.

And what does being with Jesus look like?

Well, it looks probably a little different for everybody as you have your different flow and feel.

Um I personally love to walk.

I love to walk around my neighborhood and sing some songs on this street, and then give some thanks on this street, and maybe do some intercession on this street, and maybe pray in my prayer language on this street.

Like that sounds not very systematic.

Well, it helps.

I can even tell you what the names of the streets are.

But you feel you feel it out and you figure it out.

What works for you to be with Jesus, and then you just you go for it and you develop a taste, and an outflow, an overflow of that is the radiance, the glory of God on your life that opens doors for you to be a discipler of nations and to be a player in the game of moving the kingdom of God forward.

So being with Jesus absolutely changes what is possible.

So, Lori, sorry, I tricked you a minute ago, Isaiah 6.

Verse 4 At the sound of their voices, the doorposts and the thresholds shook, and the temple was filled with smoke.

And then here comes Isaiah's cry, Woe to me, which you might have said as well when smoke enters the room, and you're like, What's happening?

Something's happening.

And he says, I am ruined at the presence of God coming.

For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.

And my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.

So Isaiah is in the presence of God, which is a state of being with God.

It's the Acts 4.13 principle right here.

And God's presence begins to do what God's presence does, which is bring things to the surface.

Whatever needs dealt with, it's coming up because God cares to deal with what needs to be dealt with.

And in Isaiah's heart and his mind, what needs to be dealt with is unworthiness.

Oh, I'm just an ordinary man, God.

Whatever this is, whatever this smoke coming into the room is, whatever I'm witnessing as I'm seeing the king come near, it can't be right, because I'm a nobody.

I'm ordinary.

And he says, My lips, it's a confession of I'm not, I'm not whatever this is.

And God responds to that.

And we read on, then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live, which means hot, by the way, coal.

It's the fire of the Lord, that burns things away that don't need to be there anymore, and gives new radiance and revelation to what does need to be there.

A live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.

Tongs because it's hot.

And with it he touched my mouth and said, See, this has touched your lips, and your guilt is taken away, and your sin is atoned for.

The very thing that Isaiah brought attention to, my lips are unclean, is the area that God put the hot coal onto.

It was God responding in an encounter that brought transformation to Isaiah.

And do you want to know what happens next?

Look at this next verse.

I have to scroll here to see it.

Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send and who will go for us?

And Isaiah said, Here am I, send me.

This is the story of God.

Transformation, or excuse me, an encounter with God leads to transformation from being with Him, which leads to sending the great mission of God, the ecclesia on earth.

It's our role.

And Isaiah is experiencing it right here in this very verse.

It goes from it can't be me to I've been transformed, it's absolutely me.

Where are we going?

Send me.

I'm going now.

And it was from an encounter with God.

It was not, Isaiah, we've got to put you through seminary school, we got to put you through prophet school, we got to get you really ready and equipped.

We got to get you trained up because you're a mess.

It was none of that.

It was an encounter with Jesus.

Being with God transformed him and led to ascending, an apostolic quality that the church is built on.

And he he volunteers because, not because he had the background, but because he had seen the king.

My eyes have seen the king.

I'll never be the same again.

My life is for one thing.

Let's go.

And so back to Acts 4, you see the same pattern.

Peter and John have been with Jesus.

That's the encounter.

They're different because of it.

That's the transformation.

And then people notice.

That's the sending, essentially.

Being around people so that they can notice.

If you've encountered God and been transformed, but you never go, then nobody ever sees.

Nobody ever knows.

So you gotta put yourself out there.

You gotta mix it up.

You gotta find out what's my assignment and what does that look like?

So that people can notice that you've been with Jesus and that their lives can be altered and changed.

Jesus says in John 15, this is a scripture maybe you've heard before, it's the abiding in me.

Script the vine, the branch.

The only way a branch produces any fruit is by being connected to the vine.

You knew that.

It doesn't produce a grape by grunting, uh grape.

It just produces the grape because it stayed connected to the vine.

And so it's an horticultural example, I guess, which is really helpful.

Like the trees out there, they're like, yeah, it's it's gonna be, you know, fruit-bearing season at some point, and the tree didn't do anything but just stand there and be a tree.

And your life has fruit on it as you just simply exist in the presence of God.

So I guess what I'm saying to myself and to you, if you need it, it's just not that hard.

It's not effort, it's not grunting and striving to produce.

It's just simply I've been with Jesus, and people are gonna notice as I'm living my life.

That's the whole go, as you go.

Whatever it is you do, wherever it is you go, let the fruit come forth, not from anything you do, but having been with Jesus.

What a recipe.

It's completely reproducible.

You know, the times Natalie and I, my wife, flourish as a married couple the most, are the times I simply stay connected to her heart.

The times we don't is when we're disconnected, and that's actually the word.

That's the word that we use as connection.

I'm feeling disconnected.

Or I love the connection that's happening right here.

Like that that is the that is the vine and the branch staying connected, and out of that comes bliss, it comes peace, it comes romance, it comes everything good that you want in a relationship from connection, from connectivity.

So that's that's the whole point.

That's the Acts 4.13 quality, that's the whole principle.

That's the revolution of the ordinary man, is realizing my only role is to stay connected to Jesus.

And he's made every possibility for me to do that.

And then the third and final big idea here is that missional churches produce disciples over just members.

I like the word member because it fits with the metaphor that we are a family.

Um, and with family, uh, you have members.

And so the metaphor is the body is like the family, and of course, um you have members to your body.

I got a member here, I got a member here, I got members on my body.

So that's not a bad word.

Membership is good, members are good.

But members can't take the place of that churches produce disciples.

And so a lot of times in our conversation, it's where do you go to church?

Where are you a member of a church at?

And it's all fine and good starting place, but the end goal is not just some kind of membership, it's actually discipleship, that I am part of a member of this, and here's the product of that.

I'm being made into a disciple of Jesus, and I am being a discipler of people as well.

And so that's really the heart of what a missional church is up to.

Not just producing membership and members, but producing disciples who make followers of Jesus.

And I've I said this before, and I'll quickly say it again because I think it's relevant.

This is the very reality that has rejuvenated me for helping lead the local church today.

Just a fresh perspective, I guess, and it's it's personal, but maybe it fits for you, that I see in a new light of what the church can be, and maybe was originally always meant to be, and I'm fired up about it.

And so, but it but it's been fresh to me.

And so um, hopefully it doesn't have to be like didn't have to pull me out of the ditch all the time, but I do hope it stays fresh all the time.

Um so it's ditching this idea that the pastor or the super spiritual believers or the long-term saints do the spiritual things while the rest of people watch or listen or stay inspired or something.

But ditching that, in fact, Ephesians 4, 11, and 12, probably the passage we've used more than anything else we've used so far since February, is so Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, and the teachers the what we call the five-fold ministry.

You've heard that phrase before.

Why did he give them?

Why did Jesus give those to the church?

To equip his people for works of service.

You could use the word ministry, so that the body of Christ may be built up.

Built up what for what?

For being like even better members?

No, built up to be the ministers.

So let gone be the days, if I could speak candidly, of somebody saying, Pastor, could you come and pray for my friend?

I'm not against that.

I love to pray for friends.

And I hope that I continue to be invited into circles, or any pastor gets invited into circles.

But if that comes at the expense of you have something that I don't have because of your position or title or history or experience, let those days be gone, because the whole point of leadership in the church anyway is to build up, equip all of us so that now the thing can go like mad.

It can cover the earth.

It's what Malachi 13.

That the glory of the knowledge, which is an intimate understanding of who God is, not just head knowledge, but like heart knowledge of the Lord, cover the earth like the waters cover the sea.

That is the mission of God.

One super spiritual saint trying to do all the work of the ministry in your little arenas that God's put you in ain't gonna cover the earth like the water covers the sea.

Have you seen the waters covering the sea?

It's amazing.

It's huge, it's deep.

We haven't even discovered it all.

It's so big.

It's gonna take everybody, is the point.

So, yes, I'm cheerleading us.

Yes, I'm trying to fire us up.

Um, but it's it's really out of a revelation, I feel like, that God's shown me in a fresh way.

So the role of the church is as much about equipping the ordinary man, the ordinary woman, so he and she can do the work of the ministry.

That's at the at the top level purpose is equip and send, as we're being a family on mission.

I know that this kind of talk a lot of times can rattle people in their boots a little bit.

It's like you are talking a whole lot about movement and advancing the kingdom and sending us out of here.

Where are you sending me to?

Just sending you to wherever it is you go, actually.

But don't want that to be at the expense of not being a connected together family who enjoy each other.

You're like, well, that sounds like a tension.

Welcome to the kingdom of God.

There's some tension in the kingdom of God.

There's some mystery in the kingdom of God.

Absolutely there is.

But this is what I want to spend my life figuring out.

What is the good flow of being a connected family and being people that are sending constantly, and what does that look like?

And how does that overlap and how does that overlay?

So we'll never stop being together.

By the way, let me say this too.

If the if the if the necessity is to be with God, to be with Jesus, so that you can be effective as an ordinary person, it's not a message to be a Lone Ranger Christian.

It's not a message to say, well, if all I need is to be with God, then punch you guys out of here, and I'll go live in the hills and go be with God and somehow go be effective in whatever city I find myself in.

The fullness of God is found in his body.

So you actually can't get the fullness of being with God without being with his church, without being a part of the family, without being a part of the body.

That's why this is absolutely at the core, a family who, yes, is on mission, can't be interchanged.

So all of us invited to the mission of God, and the way that's accomplished is by being a part of the family.

So just wanted to clear the air that we're not saying somehow the family gets discombobulated as all of us are going and sending and moving.

It is a family that is the launch pad for the sending.

And even in a return, it's cyclical, right?

It's it's it's it's always coming in, it's going out, it's sharing testimony and successes and grieving together.

Anyway, that was the last series.

Um, yeah, I've got a couple examples here.

I may hit fast forward.

Um, I don't know, the Chinese house church movement is an incredible example of what we're talking about here.

Um, ordinary people who suffered some persecution, um, and it everything getting kind of decentralized to where it wasn't like pastor central, but it was like, hey, we ain't got no pastor, so you're the pastor, and I'm the pastor, and she's the pastor, and we're gonna develop in pastoral gifting, and and the whole thing kind of went underground, and that decentralization actually led to a major, major movement and spread that's still going on today.

There's one story of a Chinese 19-year-old girl named Lu, last name starts with an X, who grew up in a non-Christian family, drops out of school, went to work as a farmer in China, came to Christ at the age of 19, and soon became just a lay evangelist everywhere she went, just got fired up to talk to people about Jesus, and uh was musical.

And she started writing songs for the Chinese church.

And to this day, they call it the Canaan Hymns.

And there's over 2,200 songs, and she's become like the voice, the soundtrack of the Chinese underground church movement.

All from it was actually birthed out of a prayer meeting of her just being with God and the giftings that he deposited from like Psalm 139, fearfully and wonderfully made, that all of us have in us, started to be unearthed and come to the surface as she just spent time with God.

Um quite amazing.

Uh John Wesley with the Methodist Church, I was kind of doing a deep dive into the origins there and how they did these um gatherings they called class meetings of 12 to 15 people.

And it was just little training times where the people got equipped with what it means to be um pastoral or apostolic or evangelistic or uh whatever your kingdom calling is, and how that was the origin point of the Methodist Church and how it grew so fast so well was that it wasn't John Wesley or one person doing all the work.

It was, hey, you catch the fire, you feel confident, you're equipped, and people are like, this is what I was made for.

It's quite prolific.

Um there are some things that take more qualification in this life.

I was thinking about like, um, because I'm a nerd with science, if uh if NASA were to call me, and I hope they do, and they invite me to go into outer space, I would have to disappoint them because I have not gone through the two-year cycle and don't have an ex GPA or all of this knowledge and all this experience, and would probably throw up in G's of what past one, um, and so I wouldn't be a good fit.

There are some things that take high-level qualifications to do, but the mission of God is not one of them.

He sends everybody, no matter the ordinary status of the person.

And that helps me a lot, and I think it helps you.

Um so if you're still sitting here saying, Chris, I'm just not that guy, I'm not a Bible expert, I'm not enough, uh, I've only been following Jesus for six months.

Um, if somebody asked me to pray for them, I'd probably just turn and run and then have to clean that mess up.

Like, I just got too much baggage, that's just not me.

Um, I'd love to help in another way, but I don't necessarily want to be a discipler of somebody.

I just want to remind you, um, if that is your story, good.

That's the qualification that actually attracts God.

So every reason you come up with that you think is a reason that you shouldn't be a player is actually you building your case of why you should be.

And then here comes the voice of sweet, gentle Holy Spirit saying, just be with me, and you are the most qualified to do it.

Antioch absolutely trained people.

Uh, Barnabas and Saul spent a whole year teaching and training, it says the believers and the movement developed processes for leaders and church planners, but the difference was the training wasn't the permission.

The training was the equipping and the bettering of the mission, but the mission existed long before the training even happened.

Just after the people that you can't ask, because their names aren't written that started the Antioch Church.

And that's really kingdom leadership.

Um you know, I'll say the revolution of the ordinary man or ordinary man doesn't mean that we don't need leadership, we do, but a good picture of Barnabas and uh Saul at the time was that the mark of greatness was not to build their own name, the mark of greatness was to release people.

So today, if you want to say what is a great leader, and this is true, I would say, um, and Jason, you can probably attest to this, in the marketplace, is the best leaders are the ones, and Brad, you say this all the time about floors becoming ceilings and ceilings becoming floors, and an interchange there of, hey, what was my limit is now where you start from.

Any great leader is constantly looking for the person they can develop and bring along and then slingshot way past wherever that it is they've been.

So you want to define what does great leadership look like?

It's not how many followers I can get, it's how many people can I send.

Like that stark distinction.

And by the way, we're all leaders.

Every last one of us.

You want to know what the mark of greatness is in your life?

Who can you bring along in the kingdom and send out and shoot out?

I mean, as a father, and a lot of you guys are, your greatest mark in this life will be the trajectory that your kids go on in this life.

And a lot of that hinges on the legacy that you set them up for, the equipping and the training, the modeling, the role modeling, the backing, all of that.

Um cannot dismiss it.

And that's the mark of a great dad.

Not like, hey, I have all these people that look to me anyway.

So you get the point, and that's an important point.

All right, last scripture here, Acts 13, verse 2.

Acts 13:2

While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.

So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off.

It seems so matter of fact, they're being with God together.

The Holy Spirit highlights two major players in the church who are doing all the training and equipping, by the way.

And the Holy Spirit says, send them out.

Send them on.

Like, can you imagine how tempting it would be to say, well, then who's gonna do the training and equipping?

Well, God, you're gonna mess this whole thing up.

We had something good going here.

You're gonna send them out?

Why send them out?

Can't we send them out?

No, why?

Well, they're not the best yet.

They may be the best, but they're not the best yet.

Well, who are we sending out?

The best.

Why are we gonna send the best out?

Because that's the mission of God.

What it does is it puts some people who get the kingdom in a new place, so that place can get the kingdom, and it creates space for the new people to become not only just place fillers, but actually stand on top of what Barnabas and Saul did and become even better.

And then you know what's gonna happen next?

The cyclical process.

They're getting shot out, sent out.

Now it doesn't mean that they have to go on a missionary journey somewhere.

It may just mean, hey, my season of life has turned from summer, all the doing, to fall, where I'm giving things away.

So I'm gonna step aside, focus on giving more away than doing, and clear the way for the next person to step into their summer season of blooms in full shot.

And this is the cycle and the process why the seasons work the way they do.

I think it's got Way of telling us this is how I want the mission of God to work too.

You see kind of this flow, this this movement in people.

And I think about our own story, and this is absolutely no toot of the horn of me and Natalie, but the truth is, over the last five years, we were major players at Sozo San Marcus.

Natalie's the worship leader.

That's where she's at today, by the way, to illustrate my point.

And I was overseeing community groups and volunteers and visitor assimilation and stuff that helps churches go forward.

And you know what the leadership at Sozo San Marcus said?

Let's send Chris and Natalie out of here.

Well, isn't that gonna put a gaping hole in what's going on in San Marcus?

Yes, it is.

Well, then we're gonna have to find the next person who actually can stand now on anything that they've built and become better at it, which they are gonna be better at it, by the way.

Dustin West is gonna be much better at what I was doing as he starts to do it, I promise you.

And whoever comes in behind Natalie to lead worship is gonna stand on whatever it is she's built, and it's Sozo San Marcus is gonna be better for having sent Chris and Natalie out to Sozo Kyle.

And there's gonna come a day when some of us potentially are gonna be sent out to the next assignment and it's gonna be noticed around here.

It's gonna be a bit of a setback feeling.

Man, they were culture builders.

When they were here, the atmosphere felt different.

It was amazing having them in the mix.

But now God's reassigning them to their, and it's just gonna clear the way for the next round of incredible saints to fill in the gaps and to and to be the people of God.

And we're not talking like two or three holes.

We're talking about everybody, everybody getting to rise up and live out their uh potential in a way that like you hadn't seen nothing yet.

Or your moms and dads, if they're still alive or like, could not be prouder of little Johnny, who's now 34 years old and killing it in life with building the kingdom of God.

Like, this is this is the kinetic energy I feel like we have as a church, what's waiting for us.

So, yes, there's movement, and yes, there's sending.

And I believe this is the church's greatest strength.

Melody, why don't you jump up?

And I want to uh kind of have our final moment here this morning by issuing you a bit of a challenge.

Um, they say great care or great leadership is knowing when to give great care or when to give great challenge.

And so hopefully you've been cared for today, but now I'm gonna challenge you.

I want to challenge you to ask the Holy Spirit if he hasn't already, and it may be that he has already, and wonderful, don't try to hear something different than what he's already said.

But who is just one person in your sphere of influence, even you introverts, though that's gonna look different, and that's wonderful that it looks different, that you can be intentional with in doing what the Antioch Church did so well, which was being missional.

And we spent some time the last couple of weeks talking about what are some tools to build disciples with, things like hospitality and generosity, um, the family unit coming together, inviting somebody into your life to have a coffee date with, to read the book of John with, to read Wild at Heart with.

What can you do to make a step forward in being sent?

And people are always the vision.

And so ask the Lord to highlight who in my life right now is primed and positioned for me to be intentional with.

So why don't you close your eyes?

And the way you get things in life is you ask for them.

That's a kingdom principle, by the way.

And so just ask the Lord, would you show me who you're highlighting to me?

Maybe it's one person, that's all the challenge bars raised to right now.

Or maybe it's maybe it's more, maybe it's a a group.

Yeah, prayer prayer teams, why don't you guys come up too and you can kind of get in place?

Because I want to invite anybody who wants prayer today to have that.

Yeah, Holy Spirit, we're we're really not interested in necessarily building Sozokyle church.

What we're interested in is Sozokile building Jesus up big inside of people.

And we believe that that doesn't just automatically happen.

That the whole point, Jesus, of you saying go and make, and go and tell, it's the Romans 10 principle.

How can anyone know how good God is if no one goes and tells them?

And so I just bless this family that I am so enjoying these days, by the way, to hear from you on a simple assignment of who they can be intentional with.

And I pray that as that's revealed and ascending action is taken, God, that you would fill up this room with testimony.

We ask for stories.

And Lord, we pray for real difference being made.

That phrases like regional transformation would not just sound really kingdom of God like or important, but that we would say we just can't think of another way to define and describe what we're experiencing in this area.

And pray that an outflow of that, Lord, would look like even like hospitals not being as full, like some of the tangible, measurable things, because the kingdom of God is just being built in such a way around here that it's touching everything.

It's just leaving no stone unturned.

So I bless you, Sozokile, with ears to hear the voice of the Lord and eyes to notice the opportunities, to be missional, and to step into the world of disciple making, to not let it feel or sound archaic to you, but to have fresh fire for it, that it would be as unique to you as you are to this world.

It doesn't have to look like a certain pattern that it's looked like before.

So, Lord, open up the the the doors of creativity to partner with you with this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

If you would like prayer for anything, and I've always said that I think the altar time in a church gathering is one of the most um, well, one of my most favorite parts of gathering together.

And so even if life is great and grand for you, and you would like somebody just to lay a hand on you and bless you with more great and grandness, then that would be completely appropriate.

Um if you are here and you're not sure where you stand in God's heart, uh, you can know that today, and I'll tell you where you stand.

I'll give you the tip is that you stand in a really good place, no matter who you are, where you are.

And sometimes getting somebody to pray with you and seal a decision that you want to make or have faith be reignited in your heart, that's a wonderful way to do that.

So why don't you stand?

Um, Melody, you're gonna close us in a song.

We'll uh we'll sing.

If you've got kiddos, you're welcome.

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