MetaVision: Where We're Going with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Well, I want to welcome you in.

If you're new with us, my name is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at Meta.

You've joined us on a very special day.

Before we go any further, I just want to ground us in the words of Scripture.

We're going to be in Acts, chapter one.

Acts is this historical record of the beginning of the church.

We're going to start in verse 4.

It says, While Jesus was with them, he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the Father's promise, which he said, you've heard me speak about.

For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized by the Holy Spirit in a few days.

So when they had come together, they asked him, Lord, are you restoring the kingdom to Israel at this time?

And he said, It's not for you to know times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and Samaria, to the ends of the earth.

MetaCurch, welcome to Vision Sunday.

I am so glad that you guys have been on this journey with us.

If this is your first time, uh, this MetaVision series is trying to answer the question of what comes next for our movement here at Meta.

In January, we turned five years old.

God has done so many amazing things over these last five years.

And specifically this year, 2023, a behind the scenes kind of the staff, we have been organizing ourselves towards a vision that will carry us over the next five, 10, 15 years and beyond.

And you guys know this here at Meadow, we understand that you are the church.

You are the movement.

So for this vision to get off the ground and really take flight, for us to be as effective and powerful as possible, this vision has to become your vision.

You have to adopt it and be ready to give your life to it.

I'm so excited to let you know about it today.

And I love big vision.

I thrive on big vision.

I love reading biographies of people who really believe that they could change the world, like our founding fathers who had this vision for the American experiment.

My favorite biography of all time is of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, who really believed that the world could shift if computing became personal.

Great leaders like Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr., people like Elon Musk who really believed that humans could live on Mars someday, these big, audacious, seemingly impossible goals.

About seven years ago, I read a biography of the Wright brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, who, if you don't know, were the first humans to ever take flight.

And something to know about me is I love books.

I love reading them.

I also, it's weird, I love the books themselves, right?

I take care of them, I keep their jackets on them.

It gets cold in the office sometimes, you know?

I have them nice and organized on the bookshelf.

So I got to the page before chapter one, and I did something that was very uncharacteristic for me.

I was so floored by this page.

It meant so much to me.

I actually tore it out of the book.

Yeah.

I committed like murder on this book, right?

I tore the page out and I framed it and kept it on my desk.

And I want to read these first three quotes from up top.

The first one is from Lord Kelvin, who is the president of the Royal Society of London.

This is from 1885.

He said, heavier than air flying machines are impossible.

That's a big word.

The New York Times said a man-carrying airplane will eventually be built, but only if mathematicians and engineers work steadily for the next one to ten million years.

Simon Newcomb, a respected scientific authority in 1903, said man will fly, but the craft will be the size of a matchbook and carry an insect for a passenger.

And then if you look down there at the bottom, we'll make it big for you.

There's one more quote.

It is my belief that flight is possible.

Now, this isn't from someone at the Royal Society of London or a genius at the New York Times or a respected scientist.

This is from Wilbur Wright, a bicycle mechanic.

I believe that human flight is possible.

He said that in the year 1900.

And for the next three years, Wilbur and his brother Orville, they took their bike shop and they turned it into like a dream incubator.

They worked tirelessly with their eyes on a big impossible vision.

On December 17th, 1903, across the barren sands of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright brothers took flight.

And by doing so, they changed human history in a way that a very small handful of people ever have.

The impossible became possible.

And here's what's crazy.

120 years later, we can't imagine a world without being able to step on an airplane and fly across the country in about four or five hours.

As a matter of fact, uh it's so hard for us to imagine a world without that, we completely take what was once seen as fully impossible, now fully for granted.

I once heard a comedian do an entire bit about how we get furious when we can't connect to the Wi-Fi in an airplane.

And he just pointed out you're in a metal tube, 35,000 feet in the air, traveling at thousands of miles an hour, watching Seinfeld reruns on your own personal television, being fed a meal, sitting in a leather chair, you're literally in the middle of a miracle, and you're so frustrated that you can't connect to the Wi-Fi.

It just shows how much we take for granted what just 120 years ago everyone believed was actually impossible.

2,000 years ago, Jesus stood on a hillside and he looked at his followers.

These were nobodies in the eyes of the world.

They were impoverished, undereducated, non-resourced, they were enemies, not just of the Roman Empire, but also of their homeland of Israel.

And he had the audacity to say to these nobodies, I will build my church.

And even the gates of Hades, all the power of hell, will not be able to overpower it.

In other words, Jesus stood up in his Wilburright moment and said, It is my belief that a worldwide movement of salvation is actually possible.

Jesus called it.

And then he pulled it off.

And although I will try today, there's no way to accurately relay just how impossible even the idea of the Christian movement and the church that we are a part of spreading all the way around the world, how impossible that actually was.

Exponentially more impossible than the Wright brothers getting a plane off the ground 120 years ago.

And yet, the Jesus movement was started and it did move and it did grow.

And just like the world now takes for granted human flight, we now take for granted the movement that was started in impossible situations.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus today, we are trying to put to death the idea of what is impossible.

It's a big task.

I believe it will require us to open our hearts and our minds to what you're capable of doing.

It will require us to speak against the false narratives and the lies of the enemy that circulate across our minds and hearts, convincing us that surely God wouldn't choose you.

And how could you ever be a part?

And you'll never make anything of your life.

We speak against that and we open ourselves up to whatever you have to say to us today, God.

I pray that you would do just that, that you would have your way and that we would trust you.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Um, I'm gonna try and paint a picture of just how impossible the growth and movement of Christianity was.

So if you could kind of use your imagination with me for a moment and imagine that you're a citizen of the Roman Empire in 40 A.D.

This is 10 years after the resurrection of Jesus.

If you lived in the Roman Empire in 40 AD, you may or may not have heard of this new, very strange religious cult.

It was coming out of Jerusalem.

It was like a really distorted sect of Judaism.

And if you had heard of them, you would think this was one of the strangest spiritual movements you've ever heard of.

Several things made it odd.

Number one, just how absolutely tiny Christianity was was very strange.

There were like between 60 and 70 million people living in the Roman Empire in 40 AD, and there were around 1,000 Christians.

That's it.

That's.0016% of the population.

It's less than a rounding error, but that wasn't the strangest part.

Even stranger than that was the behavior of these Christians.

Because as a Roman citizen in the Roman Empire in AD 40, you know how things typically work.

There are power structures, and everyone is fighting to get ahead, no matter what the cost.

And in ancient Rome, humility was not a virtue, it was a vice.

It was seen as a very negative thing to lower yourself in service of others.

Nobody did that.

You tried to cling on to power and climb the social ladder, no matter what you had to do or who you had to step over.

That's the way the world worked, and everyone was okay with it.

If you were a woman, then you were seen as almost worthless in the eyes of everyone else there.

And if you were a man, you held basically all of the power.

And if you chose to get married out of convenience, it meant nothing for your faithfulness.

You could do whatever you want with whoever you wanted, whenever you wanted to.

You loved giving birth to sons, you hated giving birth to daughters.

Slavery was the status quo of the world.

You didn't blink, think twice about it, or feel bad about it.

And in the midst of all that, a thousand Christians show up.

The Christians practice humility every chance they get, lowering themselves, lowering their station, giving away their resources, helping the marginalized.

The Christians see women as equal in the eyes of their God.

The Christians believe slaves have the same dignity as the free people.

The slaves don't see life as a race to the top, they see life as an opportunity to give their lives away in service of others.

In other words, these 1,000 Christians that are 0.0016% of your society are freaking weird, okay?

Not only are they so tiny and so strange, maybe weirdest of all, their leader, like the guy they follow, was killed.

And not just killed, executed.

And not just executed, crucified on a Roman cross.

Not only the most painful way to die, but by far the most humiliating.

At that time and at that place, someone who died on a cross could never be respected or looked at with any level of authority again.

And yet, these Christians, just a thousand of them in the Roman Empire, they worshiped Jesus of Nazareth crucified on a Roman cross, and they claim that he actually came back to life.

They say that after Jesus came back to life, right before he ascended back to heaven to sit on his eternal throne, he gave them very clear marching orders.

And these marching orders were written down and they were being hand copied and spread all throughout the empire.

They went like this go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Go into all of the nations.

This was an impossible assignment.

The followers of Jesus were persecuted, marginalized, bankrupt, disowned.

They had no cultural power.

I mean zero.

They're supposed to go into the other nations, and their home nation hates them.

They don't even have any credibility at home, and now they're going to conquer the rest of the world.

It's hard to even relay how impossible of an assignment this was.

And somehow, 10 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, there are 1,000 believers in Rome.

Now, because they were supposed to reach all people in all places, they had a sales pitch, you know?

Hey, come and join our movement and believe in our Savior and give your life to Him.

It'll be great.

You, all you citizens of Rome, it'll be wonderful.

Men, you know how you have total domination of your house?

You will now get to see your wives as equals, and all the affairs you're having, you can't have those anymore.

And the slaves, you're gonna have to really think about what you're gonna do there because God sees all people as equal worth, and you're gonna have to actually humble yourself and no more race to the top.

Oh, and by the way, Christianity has become illegal.

So you can come, it'll be really fun.

You'll be persecuted, hunted down, they'll probably imprison you, and maybe they'll put you in the Colosseum and feed you to the lions in front of your friends and family.

The worst sales pitch of all time.

It just seemed impossible.

Who would sign up for this?

Who would want to be a part?

To go against everything you know and everything you believe, to follow after a leader who was crucified on one of your Roman crosses.

And yet, the same power that brought Jesus out of the grave and back to life.

Now, he said, wait.

And in a couple days, the Holy Spirit will come upon you.

You know what we believe is that when you've put your faith in Jesus, that you are given the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And scripture says that the Holy Spirit comes and seals you the rest of your life on this earth, which means you have the power of the living God inside of you.

And so these weren't just a thousand crazy Christians living completely antithetical to the way the rest of the world operated.

These were Holy Spirit-filled individuals who believed in a God who makes the impossible possible.

Amen.

Sixty years later, 100 AD, there are now 7,500 Christians recorded in the Roman Empire.

Hey, sign up for our thing.

Risk your life.

It's illegal, punishable by death.

You'll have to change everything.

You'll have to love people, you'll have to give your stuff away.

Come and join us.

They grew sevenfold with an impossible pitch.

And they were just, just getting started.

50 years after that, in 150 AD, history records there were around 40,000 Christians in the Roman Empire.

50 years after that, by 200 AD, there were over 200,000 Christians in the Roman Empire.

By 250 AD, two million people claimed the name of Christ in the Roman Empire.

By the year 300, there were six million Christians in Rome.

10% of the population.

The more they were persecuted, and the more they were disowned, and the more they were imprisoned, and the more they were killed for their faith, the more and more and more it grew.

By the year 350, history tells us about half of the empire claimed Christianity.

About 33 million people.

Now, people will try to explain this, and it's very interesting when you listen to even secular atheist historians try and comprehend how the movement of Jesus grew.

There are no good answers.

There are even secular atheist historians who will say the growth of the Jesus movement is as close to a historical miracle as we can get.

Some people try to rewrite history because in 312, Constantine, the Emperor of Rome, made Christianity legal.

In fact, it became the national religion.

However, Constantine did not make Christianity legal and then it grew.

He made Christianity legal because it was already growing into the most powerful, unstoppable, effective movement that the world had ever seen.

You know, we look around at Christianity in the West, right here where we're living.

We look at churches today in the West, ineffective, no cultural power, dying by the day, hemorrhaging people.

How did this happen?

We have religious freedom, we have nice buildings, sound systems, we've got all the things, and yet we're going backwards.

How in the middle of a Roman Empire, where it might just cost you your life, did it grow and double and quadruple and go from 0.0016 of the population to about half of the empire?

You see, what Jesus unleashed on this world, this movement that we call church, it was not a political system, it was not another religion to be advanced by force or fear or coercion.

It was a radically new way of living life.

How did this happen?

It happened by people who took seriously the call to live and love like Jesus, who believed in a big, audacious vision and were willing to give their lives for it.

History records some of these interesting things about the Christians.

Like this is pre-medicine, pre-science.

It was pretty frequent that these epidemics, these plagues would sweep across different towns.

And it was just known.

This was part of the Roman culture.

Once a plague came, you left.

And if friends or family were sick, they were on their own.

You know, the first people to skip town when a plague was coming?

It was the first people to find out about it.

The doctors.

The only people you really need there were the first ones to flee.

Because in Rome, you looked out for yourself.

Uniquely, Christians were the only people in society who would intentionally stay behind and take care of those who were sick.

We have a letter from 260 AD.

It says, Most of the Christians in our city showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of others, heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending their every need, helping and comforting them, and with them departed this life.

Along with the infected, they also died serenely happy.

For they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors, and cheerfully accepting their pain.

A church that actually looks and lives and loves like Jesus.

Jesus said, Greater love has no man than this, that he would lay down his life for his friends.

There was a law in Rome.

You couldn't actively kill your children, that was illegal, but you could expose your children to the elements and allow them to die from neglect.

Now, the way this law actually functioned is if you had a baby boy, you were very proud.

Men were worth something.

If you had a disabled baby boy, or if you had a daughter, more than likely you would take them right outside the city limits, set them on the ground, and walk away.

You didn't kill them, exposure to the elements did.

This happened by the thousands in Rome.

Mostly all baby girls.

When the Christians got to Rome, they learned of the exposure laws.

And what they would do is in the evenings, they would walk the perimeters of cities and find these children no one else wanted and adopt them and raise them.

You see, this radically different way of living life, living life with actual hope, actually displaying the love of Christ.

This is what became like a magnet, drawing people in, even at the risk of their life, actually living it out audaciously.

A document from the early second century, this is less than a hundred years after Jesus' resurrection, says this.

The Christians, they marry, as do all others.

They have children, but they do not commit infanticide.

They invite strangers to their table, but not into their bed.

They obey the prescribed laws and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives.

They love all men and are persecuted by all.

They are unknown and condemned.

They are put to death.

To sum it up, as the soul is in the body, so Christians are in the world.

The soul is dispersed through all the members of the body, and Christians are scattered through all the cities of the world.

This is less than a hundred years after Jesus said, Go into all the world and preach the gospel.

This person records a non Christian, the same way the soul is in every part of the body, Christians are already in every part of the world.

The invisible soul is guarded by the visible body, and Christians are.

Known indeed to be in the world, but their godliness remains invisible.

The impossible made impossible.

This happened because people actually believed in a big, audacious vision that followers of Christ were willing to give their entire lives to.

120 years ago, one of the smartest people on earth said, heavier than air flying machines are impossible.

Humans are not meant to fly.

We are ground creatures.

The sky belongs to the birds.

We belong to the ground.

Wilbur Wright said, I believe human flight is possible.

Now we sit in planes and take for granted that we're sitting in what was once impossible.

The growth and the spread of Christianity, which is evidenced by what we're doing right here, right now.

2,000 years later, we are meeting as a part of the same movement that Jesus said he was going to start and hell itself could not stop.

This part of the world, the disciples of Jesus did not know existed and were here as a part of that same movement.

And now the world and even Christians take this once impossible movement for granted.

It's no longer a big vision to go into the entire world and preach the gospel.

It's no longer something to give our entire lives to.

It is no longer the adventure of a lifetime.

It is no longer the most worthy cause for your time, treasure, and resources.

It is now a service we attend when it's convenient.

It's now a nonprofit that we give to when it's convenient.

And I think more heartbreaking than that is the church has stopped dreaming big dreams and having big vision.

You know, we look, Steve Jobs is allowed to have a big vision, Jeff Bezos is allowed to have a big vision, Elon Musk is allowed to have a big vision, politicians are allowed to have big vision, but as Christians, we've settled for just sitting in seats, writing some checks, and calling it good.

Jesus said, I'm starting a movement.

I believe in a worldwide movement bringing salvation, bringing hope to the hopeless, standing up for the marginalized, flipping the power hierarchy upside down, taking over the Roman Empire, crossing the seas, challenging people's lives, healing people's marriages, bringing purpose to the purposes.

I believe that this can change the actual world.

And y'all know this because you grew up in these churches that are so good at sitting still and pointing at sin.

Oh, how it must grieve God's heart the way all of those sinners out there are behaving.

And sure, man, sin breaks the heart of God.

You know what I also think?

I think equally God's heart is broken by Christians who are living with the power of God inside of us and we quit dreaming dreams and quit having vision.

You know, at Medicur, we're very clear on our mission.

We've done a great job.

We we had to throw some more chairs down in this service.

That's evidence that you get our mission.

Our mission statement is we do whatever it takes to get people to Jesus.

We do whatever it takes.

Now, five years in, we've been doing that.

And God has moved in incredible ways.

And so what's next?

We could rest.

Hey, got a cool building, you know?

We're good, we're growing.

We could rest, or we could live like the apostles.

We could live like the Christians in Rome.

We could live like Jesus.

You see, mission doesn't change, mission never changes.

Jesus gave us the mission.

Vision is how we organize to be most effective and most impactful.

And to take what we have here and get it in front of as many people as possible.

The question is, what is our vision?

And how bold will we be in putting it forward?

Because I can promise you this.

I don't want to end up on the same side of history as Lord Kelvin, as the New York Times, as Simon Newcomb, who all they could see was impossible.

And look, as soon as you get a big vision for your life, people will come out of the woodworks, and it's the people who are too afraid to try to do something significant with their life to point out all of the ways that you are destined to fail, to point out all of the ways that this is impossible, to point out how you don't have enough education and you don't have enough money in the bank and you don't have the right network around you, and you've failed too many times in the past, and it's just not gonna work.

If you want to find reasons to call something impossible, that is the easiest, least courageous thing you can possibly do.

At MetaCurch, we believe in a God who makes the impossible possible.

Can I tell you the secret sauce at MetaCurch?

This is where you say yes, so then I can tell you.

Can I tell you the secret sauce at MetaCurch?

We are smart enough to know that we are dumb enough that we should not be making stuff up on our own.

Our mission comes out of scripture.

Our vision will come out of scripture.

You've already seen it today.

Acts 1, verse 8.

Acts 1:8

Jesus said, But you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you.

If you're a believer in Jesus, that promise is yours already.

And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

This vision can be thought of as four concentric circles, starting with Jerusalem, expanding then to Judea, into foreign territory in Samaria, and eventually to the ends of the earth.

What we're going to do at MetaCurch is we're going to take Acts 1.8, and this has inspired us to a vision guiding us for about the next 15 to 20 years.

And in the same way that this is expressed concentrically in Acts 1.8, we're going to take five years at a time and try to grow our impact concentrically as well.

Jerusalem is where they were already doing ministry.

Jesus was already known.

This is their base of operations.

He says, You will be my disciples in Jerusalem.

They're already there.

They're doing that.

They know the culture.

That's their own backyard.

Here's what happens so often Christians are challenged to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.

And the first thing we think is getting on a jet, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and going to some remote foreign territory.

We need that.

We need overseas missionaries.

But so often we have big visions for the middle of nowhere, the other side of the world, that we neglect our circle of influence that God has put us in right now.

We haven't even done whatever it takes in our own community, and we're ready to fly off to the middle of nowhere.

Jesus said, We're gonna get this right in Jerusalem, and you know what?

That's exactly what happened.

The first several years of the church movement, it was all happening there in Jerusalem.

Our vision over the next five years is to focus on our Jerusalem, which is San Antonio, by opening enough locations to ensure that everyone in San Antonio is 20 minutes or less from visiting a meta church themselves.

Here's the truth the people that you keep inviting, the unchurched, dechurched, anti-church people that you love and know that they'd be filled up here and may even have a chance to encounter God and have their entire life changed, if they live 27 minutes away, they're probably not coming.

We're gonna bring the movement to them.

We actually put a map together.

This is a map that shows you like 20-minute radius from some guesses of where we might end up putting metachurch locations.

What we found is we can do this with four or maybe even three metachurch venues in San Antonio.

We could be within 20 minutes of everyone in this town.

Some of you were here, you remember that in January of 2020, great timing, we opened our Holotus location.

We ran for about nine weeks and COVID shut everything down.

We still hold that lease.

In faith, we never broke it.

In faith, we kept paying it.

Believing we would open it again.

Believing that God has called us to the ends of the earth.

Our goal in the next five years is to have enough metachurch locations that everyone in town is within 20 minutes of a metachurch that they can visit.

And our plan is to start next year by reopening our Holotus location.

The way that we're thinking about this is creating regional hubs.

And so the way we do everything at MetaCurch is we we implement, we test, we evaluate, we go back.

We implement, we test, we evaluate, just to correct and perfect and get things as effective as they can possibly be.

And what we're hoping to build is this San Antonio hub of these different locations, these different venues who love each other and resource each other and have each other's back.

We're developing leadership pipelines, we're developing readily scalable systems and processes to be able to understand how to do this, how to launch venues, how to support other locations.

And once we do that in those five years, once we become experts inside our own city, then it's time to expand.

Judea was a part of Israel.

It was right outside of Jerusalem, but it was different and it did require expansion.

Our 10-year plan is to expand to our Judea by opening metachurch venues strategically in cities all across Texas.

Now, our goal is not to open one meta church in Corpus Christi.

Our goal is to open one that then over time does the same thing we've done in San Antonio.

Opens enough venues where everyone in Corpus is 20 minutes or less from a metachurch and create other regional hubs.

Judea was a part of Israel, like we know Texas, you know?

Now Corpus is different than San Antonio's, different than El Paso, which is way different than Dallas.

Y'all are crazy in Dallas, you know?

I know there's some differences, but it's all Texas.

We start in Jerusalem, we start with where God has already given us, and we expand out to our Judea.

And once we know that, we've proven we can get outside of the city.

And if we can get outside of the city, at that point there's no stopping what we're able to do.

Samaria was foreign territory.

Not only that, Samaria was a rivalry with Israel.

Our 15-year vision is to start a meta church in every state that borders Texas.

See, Samaria was a rival to Israel, right?

Like we got a red rival rivalry, you know, for you UT fans.

We got an LSU A M rivalry, right?

So we're we're gonna go and remind them how Texas is better at football and bless them in the name of Jesus, right?

That's how we're gonna show up.

Every state that touches.

Here's at five years, we've learned how to create a regional hub.

In years five through ten, we've learned how to expand outside of our city.

In years ten through fifteen, we've learned how to go into new cultures.

Which means from then on, 20 plus years, we find out what it means for Metachurch to go to the ends of the earth.

We learn humbly.

We learn, we correct, we evaluate.

We keep moving.

And you know where we're at right now?

All of it seems impossible.

I know better than anyone.

We don't have the money even to open one new spot next year.

There's a movement of us here.

Six, seven, eight hundred of us that call this place home right now.

There were a thousand people in Rome risking their lives.

A few years later, seven thousand.

A few years later, forty thousand, two hundred thousand, two million, six million, thirty million.

The only thing that could really stop us is if number one, we don't actually buy in, we think this is the vision for someone else, or if we settle.

For church as we've known it.

If church to you is attending every once in a while, going to class every once in a while, giving a gift every once in a while, then that will be who we are.

If you believe that Jesus' commands were actually for us, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, all nations, to the end of the earth.

Let me summarize.

I've hit you with a lot, so let me summarize.

If we look at Texas, right, we're starting in San Antonio.

Over the next five years, our vision is to start enough metachurch locations where everyone in San Antonio is within 20 minutes of a metachurch that they can visit for themselves.

Then, from year five to 10, our goal is to start metachurch locations strategically in cities all across Texas and eventually build those into regional hubs as well.

After that, our plan is to go into officially foreign territory and get a meta church location in every state that touches Texas.

And when we have proved that we can get outside of our city and outside of our state, then we will ask the question: what does it look like to go to the ends of the earth metachurch?

Are you with me?

We balance these two things, our commission and our calling.

Jesus commissioned us to audaciously have faith.

You know what Jesus said?

Someone that has faith in the amount of the world's smallest seed can move a mountain.

800 of us.

What can we do if we just have the tiniest bit of faith that God could really do something with our life, really do something with this movement?

And at the same time, we lay plans, we organize, we stay on our grind, we work as hard as we can, and we leave the results up to Jesus.

Everything in context, remember, you hear me say that all the time.

Scripture has to be understood in its context.

Let's go back one verse, Acts 1:7.

Acts 1:7

He said to them, it's not for you to know the times or the periods.

The Father is set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.

And if you've believed in Jesus, you have that power inside of you, whether you know it or not.

And you will, that's a promise, be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

In five years, if we have one location, we've given all that we have to give, we've shown up, we've built our leadership, we've organized effectively, we have done everything we can, we will thank God for it and continue to do whatever it takes.

If in years one through five a door opens in Austin, Texas, and we walk through it, I don't want to hear it.

No, no, no, year one to five, we're just staying in San Antonio, remember?

No, no, no.

We're going with whatever God gives us.

We lay our plans, we work as hard as we can, God brings the provision, God opens the door, we walk through it.

Here's my guess: if anything, on our five, 10, 15-year plan, if anything, we might be selling God short on what he's going to be able to do through this movement.

In Isaiah 55, God says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways.

This is the Lord's declaration.

For as heaven is higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than yours, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

I submit this vision to you.

You are the church, you are the movement.

With a great deal of humility.

Trusting that if we organize to be the most effective movement that we can be, if we really try to do whatever it takes to get people to Jesus, that in our lifetimes we will see things we can't imagine.

That we will all get to be a part of what God is doing.

We will stand in awe of what He's allowed us to be a part of.

Would you pray with me?

Jesus, we love you.

We thank you.

I uh just for vision.

We do not want to be stagnant.

We're not okay with the status quo.

We're not okay with just believing the lie that church is something that you just sit in a chair and listen to something every once in a while.

I pray, even now, we'd begin to buy in all the way in.

You'd begin to unlock new purpose and new gifting and new vision, even in our lives as individuals, that you'd help us find our role, that you would help us to go over these next years to stay focused, keep our hand to the plow and our eyes on the horizon, and trust that what you have for us is something great.

Something maybe even impossible.

We love you.

We pray these things in your name, Jesus.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

And I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.