Made To...Meet Together, Move Together 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.

I'm so glad that you joined us.

Uh, at MetaCurch, we have seven How We Live values that guide us into the most effective movement possible.

We have had these since day one.

God laid them on our hearts.

They've been guardrails for us to help us continue to grow and stay on mission.

Now, if you're new with us, you may not know what our name means.

Meta is a Greek prefix that means change.

So that's why when we write meta church, we always write it as one word.

It literally means change church.

And that means several things for us.

Number one, we want to be a local church that sees changed lives together as we're moving in our community.

We want to see our movement change the world around us.

And we know that to do that effectively, there are parts of the Western church that are broken and that have gone off mission, and we have to be willing to expose those and to change those as well.

Today we are gonna begin this made to series focusing on the foundational principle that started MetaCurch.

This is actually how we describe the purpose of church in the first place.

We believe that you were made to meet together and move together.

Would you pray with me?

God, we love you.

Uh, I thank you for everyone who's here, everyone streaming online.

For the people who've been at MetaCurch a long time, this is a message that is gonna be very familiar, but I pray that the familiarity uh would not lose the passion.

God, we all need reminders of what we're doing here and why the local church matters so greatly.

And for people who have not heard this type of teaching about the church movement, I pray it would be a perspective shift on what the church is and what their role might be in it.

We love you and we thank you for this time.

We pray it all in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Uh several years ago, I read a brief history of some of the largest, most influential Fortune 500 companies.

Uh, this book actually took you back to the Industrial Revolution and looked at this 150-year track starting in about the year 1800, where these companies came along and they created so many innovations so quickly that it changed the way that we experience life on planet Earth in ways that are like unprecedented in all of human history.

For basically all of human history, life was pretty hard.

There were very few conveniences.

Uh, all of a sudden, in this short span, we're driving cars, we have electricity in our homes, all of a sudden our homes are climate controlled.

There's just convenience that abounds, and now we live in all that and we take it for granted, but it's actually pretty new.

And then somewhere around the 1950s to 1970s, all those innovations started really slowing, and you started to get these tensions as these companies grew bigger and bigger and wealthier and wealthier.

And the tension was like a competition between the customer and the shareholders.

The shareholders are this select few, usually of wealthy people who have literally bought shares or bought stocks to help fund the company.

And the more shares that you hold, the more influence that you have, and the more your voice gets heard.

And the way that all this innovation took place is by focusing on the customer, you know, the original purpose, the original mission of each company was to provide goods and services or to improve people's life or to innovate around whatever their space was.

And over time, people became convinced that instead of focusing on the customer and the actual purpose that the company started for, they should really focus on the shareholder, protect the shareholder, make the select few wealthy people as comfortable as possible, let them set the mission, let them rearrange the priorities.

This came to a head in 1976.

A couple of economists they published a paper called Theory of the Firm.

It is one of the most influential things that has ever been published in the business world.

And it went hard arguing that the job of executives is to prioritize the shareholders and stockholders at all costs.

And any CEO who is doing anything differently than that was seen as guilty of mismanagement.

Customer versus shareholder.

In the words of author David Kidder, he described the shift this way: executives became convinced that they answered to and worked for their shareholders.

They answered to and worked for their shareholders.

Executives pledged allegiance to the corporation itself, not to the customers, not to the purpose.

They pledged allegiance to the corporation itself and were expected to act in its best interest.

So, what does this have to do with the church?

Well, it's important to know that when Jesus came to earth 2,000 years ago, he was born in Israel and he grew up in a Jewish culture and he grew up in the religion of Judaism.

That was his experience.

He upheld the law, the 613 rules and regulations that guided all Israelites.

However, the system of Judaism, the religion itself, was broken.

At least in Jesus' estimation, it was broken.

And he came to do something brand new, and we hear that the first time we ever hear the word church, I call this the verse that built metachurch.

Matthew 16, 18, Jesus said, On this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades or the gates of hell will not overpower it.

I will build my church.

The first time the word church is ever used in scripture.

In what we see in scripture, in Jesus' perspective, Jewish leaders had traded impact for control.

They had traded movement for manipulation.

The system was broken, the leaders were corrupt, the temple system was filled with pride, and it was time for something brand new, and that's what Jesus came to unleash.

In other words, the problem going on in Israel is that the Jewish leaders had stopped serving the customer, and they were only prioritizing the shareholders.

The select, elite, wealthy few who get to determine the mission and set the priorities, who are made to feel comfortable and welcome, even at the expense of the people that they're supposed to be reaching.

You remember the quote we just shared about shareholders earlier.

In a real sense, it dawned on me you could take the word executive and substitute religious leader to describe the state of broken religious systems, including many churches today.

It would read like this religious leaders became convinced that they answered to and worked for their shareholders.

Religious leaders pledged allegiance to the religion itself and were expected to act in its best interest.

One of the things that's unique about MetaCurch is that across our congregation, we have so much church hurt.

People who grew up in some kind of a religious environment or some kind of a church environment and were so hurt by that.

And maybe this is one way to frame some of the core issues that existed in your religious upbringing, that there were the shareholders in your church, the people who could write the biggest check or had the most political connections or who were able to get close enough to the leadership, and they were pacified, and they were made happy, and they got to set the agenda and they got to steer the mission.

And by the way, the leaders had to make sure they were happy, and they're never happy, right?

The music is too loud, and there's these young people wearing shorts to church, and there's too many tattoos, and they don't like any of it.

And so you have to change all of it, and the entire church has to divide because you need carpet in the sanctuary, and the carpet has to be a very specific shade of avocado green, and now I'm just venting my PTSD from growing up in church.

And all of a sudden, what was meant to be the hope of the world, I will build my church, and literally nothing can stop it.

The gates of hell can't stop it.

The only thing that can stand in the way of it is if we forget that we are supposed to be a movement that is on mission, not a monument, trying to pacify the wealthy few who sit in our seats.

Customer versus shareholder.

And so Jesus picks his words very carefully.

There were a lot of spiritual words he could have used, there were a lot of political words he could have used.

But here's what Jesus said in the original Greek that the New Testament was written in.

Jesus said, On this rock, I will build my ecclesia.

That is the word that we translate church, ecclesia.

It's a compound Greek word, ek, which is out of, and cleo, which is called.

It means the called out.

It's a word that focuses specifically on people.

Now, religion in all places for all time has largely been about place.

You have a sacred place, you have a sacred sanctuary, you have a sacred mosque, you have a sacred temple.

Jesus could have said in a Jewish context, I will build my synagogue, that's a place.

I will build my temple, that's a place.

He didn't say that.

As a matter of fact, he didn't use a spiritual word at all.

The word ecclesia is a political word.

And that time, an ecclesia was when people were called out of their community for a specific and significant purpose.

They would meet together to get on the same page, and then they would move together in their society to enact whatever political agenda they had been given.

Jesus takes the focus off of place, which has been the status quo for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, and he puts it back on the people.

He uses with this word to make it crystal clear this is going to be something brand new.

This is not religion 2.0, this is not Judaism 2.0, this is something brand new.

Judaism had been living for the shareholders, it was defining its growth and its impact based on the power of a select, elite, wealthy, few, and Jesus came to change all of that, and Jesus did change all of that, and we are evidence of this 2,000 years later on the entire other side of the world that Jesus did change all of that.

But even for those of you who grew up in church and who maybe know the story a little bit, you might be surprised to learn that that change took some time.

And I'm not talking months or years, that change took decades.

And it is surprising because when Jesus left earth, the last thing he gave us was the Great Commission.

We find it in Matthew 28, 9.

Jesus told his followers, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Go, spread out.

This is the new creative mandate.

Fill the earth and multiply, cultivate the gospel.

Go to the ends of the earth, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth.

Go into the world and preach the gospel.

That was the call.

And for almost 20 years, the followers of Jesus didn't leave Jerusalem.

Go into the world.

Spread this message.

This is an ecclesia.

This is the called out people, all people in all places.

So go.

And they were like, oh I don't know if you have seen gas prices lately.

Like we're pretty good here.

We're pretty comfortable here.

You see, for us, go into the whole world.

That might even be an exciting proposition.

Get your passport ready, man, jump on a plane, go somewhere new, see the world.

But we're living in the post-Christian world.

World where barriers have been broken down.

When Jesus was on earth, racism wasn't really even a category, it was just the status quo.

If racism existed, it was like everyone was racist.

You had your in-group, and your in-group was your people, your ethnicity, your society, maybe even smaller down to just your tribe.

Everyone else was out, you stayed with yours, protected yours, resourced yours, and wanted nothing to do with anybody else.

Even the Israelites struggled with this.

The idea of going to the Gentiles, which means non-Jewish people, it was very daunting.

And so at the beginning, like at least the first 10 or 15 years, they they really looked just like Judaism 2.0.

The earliest followers of Jesus, including the leaders of the church, they were primarily of Jewish origin.

They remained dedicated to the Jewish customs, laws, and traditions.

They actively participated in synagogue worship.

They observed the festivals and rituals and they identified themselves as members of the Jewish community.

This is how they lived.

Christianity for the first decade was like this strange radical sect under the umbrella of Judaism at large.

And does that sound like what Jesus called us to start?

Oh, this is that's where you answer.

Is this sound like what Jesus called us to start?

No.

There were a few moments here and there, like when Philip met the Ethiopian eunuch and baptized him, led him to Christ.

But if something didn't break loose, Christianity was simply gonna be Judaism 2.0.

It would live and eventually it would die in Israel.

And it's so interesting what happens in the book of Acts is they get about 10 years, a little less than 10 years, and Jesus, who has ascended back to heaven and is sitting on the throne, the king of all kings, the name above all names, he looks down and eventually it's like he runs out of patience and says, Look, if you won't go to the world, I will bring the world to you.

And that's exactly what happens in Acts chapter 10.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

We open with a Gentile, again, that just means non-Jewish, a man named Cornelius.

He was a military leader, and it says that he treated God's people really well.

And God gave Cornelius a vision, a very encouraging vision.

And at the end of it, he told Cornelius to send people to Joppa, the town where Peter lived, and to find Peter.

Now the next day, Peter also got a vision from heaven.

But while Cornelius had this incredible, encouraging vision, Peter's was so disturbing.

In Acts 10, verse 11, it says, Peter saw heaven opened up, and an object that resembled a large sheet coming down, being lowered by its four corners to the earth, and in it were all the four-footed animals and reptiles of the earth and the birds of the sky.

Acts 10:11

And a voice said to Peter, Get up, Peter, kill, and eat.

Now, at the core of Peter's identity is his origin as an Israelite.

He is a strong, proud Jewish man.

And in Judaism, there are 613 laws that govern every aspect of your life.

And a big section of this law is your dietary restrictions.

And so, literally from infancy, the things on this sheet that Peter is seeing in his vision are forbidden for him to eat.

And I want you to understand how Peter would have felt about this.

Because it wasn't like, you know, if I put, you know, some B on my BLT, I'm gonna be naughty, you know?

That wasn't his concern, is like, I'll be a bad to him.

It was ingrained into him since childhood that this stuff is repugnant.

It is disgusting.

It's not too much of a stretch to say this would be like someone trying to convince us to drink gasoline or eat fertilizer.

It's just absolutely abhorrent to us to even think about.

For him to do this, it would be disgusting, immoral, wretched, and most importantly, it would be impure.

And to eat of this food as an Israelite, it separated you from God, it separated you from your community, it literally made you unclean.

In verse 14, Peter says, No, Lord, I have never eaten anything impure and ritually unclean.

And again, a second time the voice said to him, What God has made clean, do not call impure.

What God has made clean, do not call impure.

And what is God doing to Peter in this moment?

Because it's about far more than just the food, it's about far more than the dietary restrictions.

God is getting down to the core of what is holding Peter back from living out what he has been commissioned to do, to go into all nations.

And if you read the entire New Testament, you find that even when Peter is in full swing as a leader of the church, he struggles with his bigotry against non-Jews.

It's just something God has to continue working on in his life.

It's not just the food that is unclean to Peter, it's every person that's not an Israelite.

And so he's good.

He's comfortable, he's a leader of the church in Jerusalem, he's around his people, his stomping grounds.

Why do things have to change?

Things have to change because Jesus said, I will build my ecclesia, my movement.

I will be the one calling out, and it will be for all people in all places.

In verse 17, while Peter was deeply perplexed about what the vision might mean, right away, the men who had been sent by Cornelius, having asked directions to his house, stood at the gate and they called out, asking if Simon, who is also named Peter, was lodging there.

And while Peter was thinking about the vision, the spirit told him, Three men are here looking for you.

So get up, go downstairs, and go with them.

I love this.

With no doubt at all.

Peter is perplexed.

Peter's like, I need three years to try and figure out what this vision means, you know?

And sometimes we get this way where we feel God calling us to do something, and we try to hold on the emergency break while he's trying to get us to move forward.

Like God, can I have maybe 16 years to try to process what you might be telling me to do here?

And Jesus is like, just be nice to your wife, you know?

It's like, can I get three days to consider the pros and cons, you know?

And I love it because he's trying to think through this, like God, I see, I see what you're doing, I think.

You got the food, you got the food, and I've gained some weight.

And you're telling me I need to, I'm figuring it out, God.

I'm putting it together.

And before he can even think, they ring the doorbell.

And God says it's time to go.

Right now, with no hesitation, no doubts, Peter's like, Can I get three and a half minutes?

And Jesus is like, Y'all have been sitting still for ten years.

It's time to go into all the nations and preach the gospel.

To his credit, Peter obeys in verse 24.

The following day he entered Caesarea, and Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends.

He's got a huge party of people.

And when Peter entered, Cornelius met him, fell at his feet, and worshiped him.

But Peter lifted him up and said, Stand up, I myself am also a man.

And it just shows Cornelius' ignorance about the things of God.

He doesn't know the Old Testament, he doesn't know you shall have no other gods.

He doesn't know you shouldn't worship human beings.

He doesn't know this because none of the followers of Jesus have done their job and gone and presented the gospel to him.

So Peter stands him up.

And where we end at the end of verse 26 is a picture of Peter standing at the door to the home of Cornelius.

And this moment, it's so interesting.

If you were just in like your daily reading plan, which, you know, I'm sure all of us read our Bible every single day, right?

We should be doing that, we should be reading the Bible.

So if you're in your daily reading plan and you get to Acts 10, oh, it'd be so simple to just fly by verse 27.

And yet, other than the verses that say Jesus walked out of the grave he was buried in, other than those, this might be the verse that most changed the world.

Okay, the vision of the food was a hypothetical.

It was a vision.

He didn't actually have to kill them, he didn't have to, he didn't have to gut them, he didn't have to cook them, he didn't have to eat it, he didn't actually have to do it, it was just a vision.

But the same way you would be ritually unclean, ceremonially impure from eating that food, you would be just as impure and just as unclean for stepping foot into a Gentile house.

For Peter, this is where the rubber meets the road.

This is the one place from infancy he would never ever dare to go.

And this is the difference between the movement moving and the movement staying as Judaism 2.0 and dying someday in Israel.

In verse 27, the verse that changed everything, while talking.

With him, Peter went in.

Peter went in.

Peter crossed the threshold.

Peter took a step.

And a lot of times I hear from Jesus followers and they're frustrated because they don't feel like they're experiencing God.

They don't feel like they hear from the Holy Spirit.

They don't feel like their life is impactful as a part of the church.

They don't really sense this like overwhelming presence in their life.

And I think the church has done a really bad job because we almost present a spirit-led life as like a calculus problem, a trigonometry problem, where if you can learn these, you know, 75 verses, and if you can quote the books of the Bible, and if you can sing the harmonies to the song, and if you have perfect church attendance for six months in a row, like we have this crazy equation for you to finally experience God in your life.

And you know what it actually takes?

One step.

Every day, if you're paying attention, every day, God will offer you a threshold.

Maybe two, maybe twenty on tough days.

If you're paying attention, there are people who need to hear your witness of what God is doing in your life.

And it's a threshold because if you take that step, if you tell them you go to church, if you invite them to come out on Sunday, if you take that step, it's now out of your control.

You don't know what they'll think about you, you don't know how they'll receive it, you don't know if they'll shut you down, you don't know if they'll reject you, you don't know if they'll gossip about you, you don't know if it'll change your reputation.

Every day you have a threshold like the way that you have been behaving in your friend group that you know is offensive to God.

Every time you're together, there's a threshold to just say no, to stand your ground, to be loving but firm in your relationships, the way that you parent your kids, the way that you love your spouses, the way you hang with your friends.

There are thresholds presented to you every day of your life.

What would it mean to step across a financial threshold and actually put God first in your finances and fund the movement that you're a part of?

What would it change?

Because on the other side of that threshold is confirmation and affirmation, and the Spirit of God who is waiting for the people of God to be willing to take steps of faith before you're ready, before you know all the verses, before you're all the way cleaned up, taking steps of faith and changing the world around us.

This is incredible.

Peter said to them, Peter, my gosh, poor buddy has no social skills.

He walks in the house, all of Cornelius' friends and family are there.

Here's Peter's speech.

You know it's forbidden for a Jewish man to associate with or visit a foreigner, just absolutely no social skills.

But God has shown me that I must not call any person impure or unclean.

When did God show him that?

Peter, he's often looked at as this idiot, you know.

Peter is the one who said, You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.

And in response, Jesus said, You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.

Peter put it together.

Oh, the blanket of food wasn't about the food, the blanket of food was about my bigotry.

The blanket of food was at the core of me, something that's keeping me from actually just taking a step in obedience.

And as he crossed the threshold into Cornelius' home, he also crossed the threshold into his purpose and power that God had been waiting to release on the world.

Peter begins to preach the good news, who Jesus is and what Jesus has done.

In verse 44, while Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit came down on all of those who heard the message.

And the circumcised believers, that just means the Jewish believers, who had come with Peter, were amazed.

Because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, even on non-Jewish people.

Like historically, we gotta try to understand why they're so blown away by this.

It's been thousands and thousands of years now where Israel has been God's one favorite, special, chosen people.

The Spirit of God doesn't get poured out on non-Jewish people.

The Spirit of God lives in the temple, in the inner, in the Holy of Holies.

And now it's showing up in the home of Cornelius.

In the home of a Gentile.

The Holy Spirit of God is showing up in a place that all of Peter's life he believed was impure.

This changed things.

And the movement began to actually move.

And pretty soon these apostles became missionaries, and they were going out to the ends of their known world, and they would come with the message of Jesus into pagan territory, unclean territory, and they would confess the name of Jesus, and people were believing.

And a lot of the Jewish people had a hard time with this, the Jewish believers in Jesus, because they had been the special ones, and they were trying to figure out how do we graft in these Gentiles into what we're doing.

And a lot of them came to the conclusion look, all that's us, virtually all of us Gentiles.

You can come in, you just have to, for all intents and purposes, become Jewish.

You gotta follow all of the laws, all 613 of them, which doesn't just mean giving up bacon with your breakfast tacos.

It means like you follow our calendar, our traditions, our festivals, you dress our way, you act our way, you raise your kids our way, not to mention for all of the full-grown men, you get circumcised in the ancient world with no anesthesia, our way.

In other words, it was literally the biggest barrier possible, a barrier to entry for people who just wanted to believe in Jesus and try to follow after his teachings.

And this led to Acts 15, an incredibly important moment in the history of the church.

It's called the Jerusalem Council, and it's where all the leaders of the church came together specifically to address the question now that the gospel has gone out, how do we bring the Gentiles in?

And the conclusions they came to are why we are here today and why Metachurch exists.

Paul and Barnabas shared in Acts 15, the whole assembly became silent and listened as Barnabas and Paul described all the signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles.

God is showing up, the Holy Spirit is showing up.

We also hear from James, the half-brother of Jesus, a verse that has shaped our methods at Metachurch, maybe more than anything else.

Acts 15, 19.

Therefore, in my judgment, James said, we should not cause difficulties for those among the Gentiles who turn to God.

We will not make it difficult.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter your nationality, it doesn't matter your income level, it doesn't matter your history, it doesn't matter how many people you've heard, how much sinning you've done, how familiar you are with Christianity, how much you know the Bible, if you can sing the songs, it doesn't matter what you wear, it doesn't matter how you show up, it doesn't matter who you bring, you can come and we will not make it difficult.

Strong, strong words, but it was Peter who opened the discussion.

Peter, a proud Jewish man who for the better part of a decade sat on his commissioning to go into all the world.

Peter opened it up in verse 7 and said, After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said, Brothers and sisters, you're aware that in the early days God made a choice among you that by my mouth the Gentiles would hear the gospel message and believe.

This is a direct reference to him crossing the threshold into Cornelius' house.

And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he also did to us.

And you can still hear the surprise.

Like this is the Spirit of God is going outside of Israel.

The Spirit of God is on the move, and we better catch up.

He goes on.

He says, God made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith.

Now then, why are you testing God by putting a yoke on the disciples' neck that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear?

He's calling all of Israel's history and tradition and even their law a yoke, a burden, an unnecessary weight.

And this is what we do in our churches when we prioritize the shareholders, the select elite few who want to change the mission and change the movement and change the priorities and take the focus off of our calling to go into the world and preach the gospel and begin to self-protect for the sake of religion itself.

This is what we do.

We create burdens and wait.

We make it difficult for people to come to Jesus, to accept a call that is completely free, to enter into a salvation where Jesus has already done all of the work for us.

The gate of hell cannot stand in the way of the movement of Jesus.

But if we are not careful, we will take the movement of Jesus.

Instead, try to build our own mission, build our own monuments, and it won't be hell standing in the way.

It will be us.

Peter ends and says, On the contrary, we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus in the same way that they are.

It's no secret that the church in America, the church in the West at large, has lost its influence, has lost its voice in the culture.

It is seen as a joke.

When people are polled and are asked, if you are in trouble or if you are in crisis, where will you go?

It's like almost 90% of people will respond that the church is the last place they show up to.

The hope of the world.

When people are asked to give words that describe the evangelical church, their top two responses are hypocritical and judgmental.

That should grieve our hearts.

That should light a fire inside of us that it's time to do something different.

It's time to be something different.

We cannot just focus on the shareholders.

We must focus on our purpose, on the people we have been placed here to reach.

The problem in the church is it bought the lie of religion that the goal is just to meet together.

If you get in these chairs once or twice, or five or seven times a week, you've done it.

The truth is we are called to meet together only in as much as it empowers us to move together.

I've brought a simple illustration.

I don't often think in pictures, but I about six years ago, seven years ago, God brought a picture to mind of like the simplest way to explain what the church was meant to do.

And so I've brought two examples.

One is of the broken culture of church that exists for the shareholders and really is ineffective and just kind of does church for the sake of doing church.

And that picture of the broken shareholder-based religion, um, I see as more like a vacuum cleaner.

How many of you all thought this was a toolbox?

I know, it's very confusing.

It's a shop vacuum, it's a vacuum cleaner.

And vacuum cleaners, they use air and they use pressure, but their goal is to bring things in and just contain them.

So for the sake of this illustration, the water is gonna represent the world that we've been given to reach.

And this model of church has largely been shown to be incredibly ineffective, especially with our youngest generations.

And so every once in a while, if it has any impact at all in the world, it will just kind of dip in, bring in a little bit, and then its job is largely done because once they get someone in the church, their job is just to keep them in the building.

And they think the church is about place, not the people, and so you go to church Sunday morning and Sunday night, and then you have Tuesday visitation, and you have Wednesday Bible study, and Thursday you have your small group, and then Friday and Saturday you have prayer breakfast in the morning, and then you're back at it Sunday morning and Sunday night, and then Tuesday visitation and then Wednesday night.

And the goal is to keep you in and keep you insulated and keep you away from the big, bad world with all of the bad influences that might bring you back into what you were doing.

And I think we can agree, much like a vacuum cleaner.

This version of church just sucks.

It's a vacuum joke.

All right.

The picture I got six or seven years ago uh was that the church is supposed to operate like a leaf blower.

Very similar, it operates off of pressure and air.

But it's very different in the outcome.

Because its purpose is not to contain, its purpose is actually to empower.

A leaf blower takes stagnant, still air, brings it through a very simple process.

And out the other side, it becomes exponentially more impactful.

And I think this is like us a lot of times.

We get stuck and stagnant.

And we need something, something to come into, something to be a part of, something to meet together so we can move together.

Our job is not to get you in and keep you in and hold you tight.

Our job is to get you in and allow God to do a work in your life.

And we are broken, jacked-up people, but we are filled with power and purpose, and God is ready to unleash us in ways that are unimaginable to the world around us.

And you take something that actually operates like the church is supposed to operate, and it comes into contact with the world, and it's guaranteed to have some kind of impact, some kind of explosive impact in the world.

The world will never be the same if it actually meets the true movement of Jesus.

And look, we can meet together and feel good about ourselves, and we can continue growing like we've been growing.

You get more and more people in the seats, but if we are not moving together, we're missing the point entirely.

We are not the temple, we're not the synagogue, we're not called to be religion 2.0, Judaism 2.0.

We are called to be the church, to meet together so that we can move together.

And you, as an individual, God created you to move.

And I believe that if you're paying attention, every day God is gonna put a threshold in front of you.

And it's gonna take courage, it's gonna take faith.

Every day you can take a step.

Some days you might take two or three.

And over time, if you will be faithful to continue walking across the thresholds of your life, you are going to look back six weeks from now or six months from now, six years from now, and be beyond blown away by what God has done in your life.

Every week in this series, we've put together a video of some someone from your movement here, your faith community at MetaCurch, who's really doing this, who has taken up the call to not just meet, but to actually move.

And for some of you, you're gonna serve outside the walls of MetaCurch in ways that we never know, but God knows, and we love that.

And for some of you, you're gonna find a part of your purpose jumping on one of our teams.

And when you serve at MetaCurch, you don't serve to serve the organization itself.

You serve to enhance our capacity to move together and reach the world around us.

And you can do that just like DJ and Nicole.

Hi, my name is Nicole.

My husband is DJ, and we serve at Meta.

A friend of ours recommended MetaChurch, and we tried it out, and we just fell in love.

We fell in love with the people, the message.

What tugged at our heart was seeing how everybody was so involved.

And it was like a huge community of people just wanting to, you know, propel the movement forwards.

In my growth going through walking in life with Christ, it kind of dawned on me one day if you want something from the church, you gotta put into it.

It was an interest, you know, when people talk and come into church and they have more questions about what that was that happened, you know.

I mean, it can be amazing or it can be a little thing like, oh, I have a question about this, like what happened?

That's what I wanted to do.

That drew me in.

Talking to people, being with people, and I like talking to people.

So yeah, that Connect Group was for me.

I knew one of my passions has always been storytelling and creating.

And I knew instantly I'm I have some background in video editing and some motion graphics.

So immediately I went to production and I said, here's my skill set, how can I help?

And since then, I mean I've been helping the church in whatever capacity I can edit their videos and assist production in whatever way I can.

We really love coming to Meta.

We love serving here.

Meta is what you see, is what you get.

It's very raw and exposed and transparent, and honestly, that's one of the best attributes to a church that I was looking for.

That is our charge?

Uh not from me.

Not from us.

That is our charge from Jesus.

You created me.

And I feel like God is carrying you.

Let me pray for you.

Jesus, we love you.

We love you because you first love us.

And we move because you first move.

We love you, and we thank you for loving us, and I pray for courage and tact and coldness in every one of our lives as we move this week.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

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.

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