23 & Me: How Do I Fit? 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.

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

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

If you're not new with us and you normally come to the 11:30, uh, I am so sorry I had to dip out last week.

Uh I was really under the weather.

I will spare you the details, but it is a good thing I went home when I did, and uh I am back feeling really good and excited to continue in our 23andme series.

In this series, we have been digging into identity.

We live in a culture that's in a constant identity crisis, and we've seen that a lot of what we call identity is really just miscategorized.

It's things like our personality or our temperament.

We call the social roles that we play our personality, our attractions and interest, our careers and different social outlets.

And the core of our identity has to be rooted in something deeper than those things because those things change all the time throughout our life.

And if we're rooting our identity in things that are constantly in flux, then we will always be in and out of an identity crisis.

And so we have really sought to go deeper, and and one of the things that's happening in this series is hopefully every Sunday stands on its own and you can get something out of it.

But to really get the full effect of learning about our identity according to Scripture, it's important to catch all of these weekends.

So if you're new with us, it's really easy to get caught up throughout the week.

All of our past sermons are on YouTube, youtube.com slash metachurch.

And if you're here with us and today speaks to you, I hope that you will stick in with it uh with us.

I want to shout out everyone who is streaming with us from out of town and all over the world.

Um, in this series, to kind of recap where we've been, we have said to know who you are, you have to know several things.

You have to know why you are here.

That's kind of the first question to live a significant life.

To know you who you are, you have to know where you are going in life.

To know who you are, you have to know who you belong to.

And what we saw every week is that to know who we are at the core level, we have to know what God says about us.

And if you look back at the creation narrative where God designed humanity, and in the creation narrative, we get this glimpse into his original intention for us.

We learn a couple of things.

Number one, we learn that as humans, we were made in the image of God.

That means we were made to have dominion.

We were made as royalty, as divine image bearers, and as soon as God creates us, he gives us a mission, he gives us a divine mandate, which means that you have a purpose.

And we say this all the time at MetaCurch.

We believe you were created on purpose.

It matters that you're on planet Earth, and that you were created with purpose, that God has placed something in you that the world needs to experience.

And so we're gonna continue taking the next step today.

And today we're gonna kind of dig deep and open up the hood and try to diagnose a core reason that we struggle so much to understand our identity in our current age.

Today, to know who you are, you have to know how you fit.

To know who you are, you have to know how you fit.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we love you and we're coming to you, just seeking you.

I thank you for Meta Church, a place for all people, all walks of life, all different faith backgrounds.

God, a place where we can come and humble ourselves before you.

And you've said in your word, if we seek you with all of our heart, we will find you.

So I just pray for that, for open hearts and open minds.

We love you.

We thank you for Jesus.

Holy Spirit, we ask that you would guide us.

And we pray it all in Jesus' name.

And if you're ready to learn how you fit, say amen.

Amen.

In 1624, that's almost 400 years ago, in 1624, John Dunn wrote a famous poem called No Man is an Island.

It goes like this in part No man is an island entire of itself.

Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

Again, no man is an island entire of itself.

Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

Now, like all good poetry, there are layers and layers and layers to this that we could evaluate it on.

But in the broadest sense, it stands for an idea that has been held throughout almost all of human history to know who you are and what makes you unique.

You have to understand how you fit into the broader culture and into your broader community because no man is an island.

That was 400 years ago.

Now, my guess is if John Dunn lived today in 2023 and set out to write a similar poem, it would say the exact opposite.

It might be called every man is an island.

Every man is an island, unique entirely to themself.

In our culture today, we prize and value over almost everything else our own individual uniqueness.

Individualism is what rules the day.

Nobody can tell me how to live, nobody can tell me how to do my thing, nobody can tell me what to believe, nobody can tell me what to think.

I am my own person.

Things have changed quite dramatically in the 400 years since John Dunn wrote this.

There's a tension that's been present all throughout human history.

It's the tension between uniqueness and conformity.

We all want to be unique.

We want to do our own thing.

We want to stand out.

We don't want to be a photocopy or a clone of the people around us.

And at the same time, we talked in depth last week about our deep, unrelenting need to belong to other people.

There is a need for conformity.

And of course, you see this, you know, like when you grow up, you start trying to express yourself and be an individual.

And so, you know, when we were growing up, maybe that meant that you you did something different or you got tattoos or you did your hair different, but you just realize you're not really being completely unique, you're being the same kind of unique as like a lot of other people, right?

We want uniqueness, but we want uniqueness in the context of some conformity to a community around us.

And what has happened is for basically all of modern history, and I think it's important that we dig into this historical context, and if this gets boring in the next couple of minutes, I'm gonna bring it back around as best I can, I promise.

I think we have to try to understand that for all of human history, people have tried to manage this tension of being a unique individual, but also being a part of their community.

No man is an island.

And it's only within the last 100 years that we have tilted the scales completely in the direction of being unique and no longer allowing the community to help shape and inform our identity.

A philosopher named Philip Reef outlined in the 60s this change that he saw taking place, how we get from no man is an island, everyone's identity is discovered, shaped, and molded by their community to where we're at today.

Every man is their own island, every man is completely unique.

And what he saw is in modern history these four categories of how humans have assessed their identity.

The first is all the way back in the ancient world, like ancient Greece and ancient Rome, and he called this political man.

Political man finds identity in the activity of the city.

We're out of being primitive cavemen, right?

We've come out of the cave, we've gathered together, we've centralized ourselves, we created a government.

The word politics is from the Greek word polis, P-O-L-I-S, which means city.

And so this is how people found their identity in their community, in the activity and working of their city.

Around the Middle Ages, we shifted from political man to religious man.

Religious man during these hundreds of years finds identity in the activity of the church.

In the Middle Ages, the church now sat as the central institution of almost every society.

Now put a pin in this thought, because we're gonna come back to it later.

But religious activity does not necessarily mean spiritual activity, okay?

The ceremonial rites and religious acts within the church, this is how people in community with their church discovered and shaped their identity.

In the industrial age, we move from religious man to economic man.

Economic man finds identity in the activity of the marketplace.

And so, in the community of people, they go out and they find and shape their identity based on the profit that they can make or the products that they can produce or the way that they can use technology to influence the world.

Now notice, we're all the way through the industrial age and all of modern history.

All people have assessed their identity in community with others, and the only thing that has changed is the target they're aiming for.

Political man was just about the welfare of the city.

The religious man was about the welfare of the church, and the economic man was about the welfare of the bottom line.

Eventually, to bring us to today, the industrial age brought so much affluence and so much convenience and so much technological advancement that we now live in a day where we have taken a shift in how we assess and find our identity that is brand new and novel in all of human history.

We have now moved to psychological man.

Psychological man seeks identity.

Pay attention to this, not from communal institutions, not from working together in the community, in the culture with others.

Psychological man seeks identity rather from personal internal happiness.

Notice, for all of human history, people have looked for how they fit in community with others to shape their identity until now.

We are in a brand new world where humans view their sense of self in a way that no one has before.

We only look internal.

We assess and decide our identity within ourselves, and nobody else gets a say into it.

This is brand new.

It has totally encompassed our world, which means it has infiltrated your life down to the core of who you are, how you view yourself, and how you view the world around you.

And this really matters because we're seeking to line ourselves up to the truths of scriptures that were written 2,000 years ago.

2,000 years ago when people found their identity and how they fit inside of their community.

If we're going to read the pages of ancient scripture and actually adopt it into our life, we're gonna have to seek to see the world the way everyone before us has seen it.

All of human history saw how they fit in a community to determine who they were.

Your great-grandfather thought about who he was and how the world worked completely differently than you do.

We have these standards and norms created by institutions, created by the community around us.

And at some level, what the community aims you toward is something like the truth, something that is beyond the community, something that everyone can organize towards.

We learned this because remember, the series' big idea is that your identity is rooted in the garden.

What do we learn in the garden?

There is truth, there is something transcendent, something to line our lives up to.

When you remove that, you're no longer on a path for the truth.

That's what everyone from modern history was looking for.

Reason and understanding and meaning and truth.

We're not looking for the truth.

You know this because you live in this culture and you hear how we talk.

We're not interested in the truth.

Bro, I'm just trying to live out my truth.

I'm trying to discover my truth.

I'm trying to just do me.

I'm trying to make my life make sense.

For all of human history, we've been wrestling with the idea of rights and responsibilities.

And if you pay attention, most people were focused on their individual responsibility, their responsibility to their family, their responsibility to their community, their responsibility to God.

Psychological man who's only concerned about their own internal happiness, we still talk about rights, we talk about rights nonstop.

We just don't talk about responsibilities anymore.

It's all about what I need, what I can get.

Communities and institutions and family members and education, things that for all of human history have shaped us and convicted us and challenged us and molded us into our truest self.

We now expect all of those things to bend and change and accommodate our internal sense of reality.

If truth is in danger of hurting our emotional fragility, then we change truth.

And so let me put it on the screen for my note takers.

Today, identity is not formed by how we fit into our community.

Today, it is expected that community will form itself to our identity.

Again, today, identity is not formed by how we fit into a community.

It is expected that community will form itself to our identity.

We have to understand this is the world we're living in.

It's shaping how we view ourselves, it's shaping how we view everything around us.

We are no longer just a part of the community using who we are uniquely to build something else around us.

We now see ourselves as the center of the universe.

And everything else must accommodate us.

So, how does this affect us in our real lives?

It affects everything we do, it affects our jobs.

One of the primary things we care about today is job satisfaction.

We talk about this a lot.

We do job satisfaction surveys, and I want you to like your job.

This isn't like some callous, but this is real.

If you asked your great-grandfather to rate his job satisfaction, odds are he would not understand the question.

What are you talking about?

And if he could figure out what question you were asking, he would probably answer through the lens of responsibility.

I'm providing for my family, I'm ensuring my kids have a better life than I had, I'm using my talents to do something productive for the community, responsibility.

What do we mean when we say job satisfaction?

We mean I'm unsatisfied in my job because everything and everyone at my job is not bending to my internal sense of reality.

It's about how we feel on the inside, not what we're giving, but what we are getting.

If we aren't careful, this is how we build our friends.

It's not what can I offer them or how can I surround myself with wise people who can shape me and form me and challenge me and encourage me and help transform me.

No, psychological man picks his friends based on who makes them feel happy on the inside.

And if you challenge my sense of what I believe, if you challenge my truth, my identity that I created on my own, then I distance myself from you.

And think about what we're saying with psychological man who builds their identity in a vacuum internally without anything else.

They don't need the wisdom of the ages, they don't need the wisdom of the community around them, they don't need the loving support of people who are in their corner.

They can do it all on their own.

It's the most arrogant position we can possibly put ourselves in to say, just by looking inside of myself, I'm fully equipped, I'm fully formed, I'm fully knowledgeable, and I'm fully ready to take on life.

And if you don't agree, you're wrong.

This is why there is so much division.

We're looking under the hood, maybe we're getting a little bit uncomfortable.

Trust me, it's gonna get worse.

Like we're trying to get to the root of this.

Is it any wonder that we are in a constant cultural identity crisis when there are eight billion people on the earth, and every one of them gets to determine what truth is?

How can we live together when no one is on the same page because your page isn't determined in community and how it fits together?

It's just determined inside of you.

How can we live together?

How can we work together?

Of course we're dividing.

It's every person for themselves.

This is how the church is being viewed now.

The church isn't something that you have a responsibility to as a member of that church, as a member of the body of Christ.

And if you're new to metachurch, let me give you like a little primer on church.

Church is misunderstood broadly.

It's one of the reasons we started Metachurch because we realize the word in scripture is ekklesia.

It just means the called-out people, which means the church isn't a building, it's not a Sunday service, it's not an organization, it's not a group of pastors.

You are the church.

It is the body of believers.

The people are the church.

We don't approach it as something, what it's been, what it was built for, to form us and transform us.

Transformation implies that you have some changing to do, and transformation usually costs us, and transformation is usually painful, and we don't want transformation because pain internally is a sign for psychological man that things are not going their way.

Instead, church has become a service to come and critique based on your preferences.

It's become something not that you have a responsibility to to come and be a part of, it's something that has to accommodate around you, around your desires.

You stayed out a little bit too late Saturday, church will have to accommodate.

You have the right not to show up, don't you know?

It has to accommodate to whether or not your team is playing football on that Sunday.

We'll step on toes in Texas.

I'm not afraid.

Instead of something you have a responsibility to do.

And Christians, more and more and more heartbreakingly are approaching scripture as a psychological man.

And when the truths revealed plainly in scripture don't line up to my truth, guess what has to change?

We have to warp and bend and reinterpret and reinterpret scripture until it reaches my ideas, my identity, my truth.

And so we find ourselves floundering without anything stable, no longer looking to how we fit in a community in order to come together, no longer looking to manage the tension between our uniqueness and the need to conform in a community for the betterment of ourselves and the betterment of the world.

And remember, all series long, your identity is rooted in the garden.

And in the garden, we discover that there is actual truth.

God doesn't care about your truth, he cares about the truth.

And when your truth and the truth are at odds, your truth loses every time.

In the garden, we learn that we were created for community.

God saw Adam and said, It is not good for man to be alone.

In the garden, we learn what happens when we take God's standards and norms and usurp them because of our own desires.

We learn what happens when we take God's truth.

And prioritize our truth over it.

We fall into the chaos that we live in today.

And yet, something else we see in the garden is the value of uniqueness.

God created us unique, unique from all the rest of creation by making us in his image and unique one from the next.

Every fingerprint unique, every DNA telling a different story.

God cares about you on an individual level, and he expressed his care for you as an individual.

When he sent Jesus to die for you individually.

When Jesus completed his time on earth, he not only offered eternal life through his life and death and resurrection, he also created the community that you and I are meant to find our identity in.

Nothing else that this world has to offer us can fully manage the tension between fully activating your uniqueness as individuals and our need to assimilate into a broader community for stability and impact.

Nothing can do that except the church, and of course it can, because the same God who created you and instilled your actual true identity inside of you also sent Jesus to create this church and to manage it.

This is the community where who you are as an individual comes together with the community you are called to be a part of to fully activate your purpose and identity, to make your life count to the maximum amount during your time on earth and to make the biggest impact in the world.

Look at what the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth.

He said, For just as the body is one and has many parts, and all of the parts of that body, though many, are one body, so also is Christ.

Look what he says later.

So if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.

If one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it.

Now, look at the tension.

Now, you are the body of Christ.

You've put your faith in Jesus.

Guess what?

Now, like right now, you are the body of Christ.

Conformity, community, and individual members of it.

Uniqueness.

And Paul uses this analogy of the body to help us understand why it matters so much that we find community in the church, that we work together, and he highlights that each one, each individual member matters to show that your uniqueness is valued and your uniqueness is valuable.

And when one member suffers, we've got like 700 something people, you know, at Metachurch.

When one member suffers, everyone suffers.

I don't like think that.

Scripture says that.

When one member is not active in the body, when one member isn't fully engaged, when one member is hurting, when one member isn't living out their purpose, when one member is trapped by sin, when one member is off course, it hurts the whole.

Let me remind you, what we're doing right now, this isn't church.

You are the church.

And the church moves not on Sunday morning, it meets on Sunday morning.

It moves out in the real world.

And when you aren't active and you aren't moving, the whole movement hurts.

One member.

When one member wins, when one member decides to root their identity in the things of Christ, when one member decides to pursue their purpose, when one member loves unconditionally, when one member becomes selfless, when one member starts praying, when one member starts giving, everyone wins together.

It matters.

And he uses the analogy of the body.

And the easiest thing to feel in a room of hundreds of people is like your individual contribution doesn't really matter.

And we know this, there's like a 90-10 principle, right?

And it's especially true in churches where 10% of the people do 90% of the serving, and 10% of the people give 90% of the money, and 10% of the people do 90% of the praying.

And I think it's because that other 90% is just not quite convinced that their contribution actually matters.

It's like, man, maybe I'm in the body of Christ, but I'm like the last digit of the pinky finger, you know?

I'm the eyelid, bro.

Like I'm barely doing anything.

I was reminded recently, I watched a documentary on Shaquille O'Neal, and you know, Shaq was the most dominant player in NBA history, I think.

Now he's not the GOAT, you guys know that.

That's MJ, right?

But Shaq, seven foot one, 340 pounds, averaged almost 40 points per game in the NBA finals one time.

The most dominant basketball player who's ever walked the earth.

Do y'all remember the early 2000s when the Spurs knew how to win some games?

Y'all remember back then?

And we had these epic battles with the Lakers.

Shaq and Kobe.

I wonder if you remember that during Shaq's prime, he had an injury that kept sidelining him.

I mean, it would take him out for weeks and weeks at a time.

Do you remember what that was?

It wasn't a hamstring, that's a big muscle.

On Shaq, the hamstring's about this big.

It wasn't his 24-inch biceps, it wasn't a neck problem.

Do you remember what kept sidelining Shaq 71340?

It was his toe.

And you're like, I can't sing like Celeste.

I don't really have these skills.

I'm new to this.

I don't even know the Bible.

I've never really even prayed much.

I just got baptized in November.

Man, I I am jacked up.

I'm still dealing with my addictions.

I don't even really know.

I'm not sure that God even loves me.

Like, man, I'm like a big toe.

Let me tell you something.

Lose a big toe and try to walk around.

Lose a big toe and try to be productive.

Like your part matters.

If anyone, you're just the ligament.

But if you stop moving, the body hurts.

Everyone playing their part.

Everyone playing their part.

And we think it doesn't matter, but it does.

It matters deeply.

And it's about your identity.

In the book of Hebrews, chapter 10, the people that the author is writing to are suffering, man.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

They are under persecution.

I mean, they've lost their jobs, they've lost their homes, they've lost their lands, they've been disowned by their families, they've been in prison.

Christians are dying.

This is what he says.

And let us consider one another in order to provoke love and good works.

Not neglecting to gather together, as some are in the habit of doing.

These people weren't skipping out on Sunday service because the game was on, because it was sprinkling that morning.

And what's the encouragement?

You can't miss it.

Well, I have the right to miss it.

Sure.

But as a part of the body, you have a responsibility to be active, to be in it.

Remember what we saw last week?

That your identity is rooted in Christ.

This is what I believe.

That being rooted in Christ is synonymous.

It's the same thing as your identity being rooted in the garden.

In Christ, there is salvation.

In Christ there is perfection.

In Christ, you're a son and daughter of God.

In Christ, your sins are completely covered.

In Christ, you are set free.

Your identity is found in Christ.

And Paul said, now, now that you are in Christ, now you are the body of Christ.

That is an identity statement.

Your contribution matters here.

Every single person playing their part, hammering out their role.

Let me say it simply.

If you are a believer in Jesus, participating in the church is a part of your identity.

If you are a believer in Jesus, participating in the church is a part of your identity.

And if you've struggled not knowing who you are and struggling with your identity, and you're a believer in Jesus, part of the reason might be that you haven't activated an essential part of who you are as the body of Christ.

You're a part of the body, and if you're not moving, the body is hurting.

And it's tough because the church just keeps losing steam, it just keeps losing power.

And what even when I say that, the church keeps.

It's like, what does that mean?

It means us.

If we don't get active, the world doesn't get the hope of Jesus.

For centuries on centuries, people paid for this movement with the price of their lives.

It's their identity.

You're in Christ, you're in the body.

And if you're in the body, you have to move.

You have to get active.

And if not us, if not us, meta church, a church who has stripped it down to the bare necessities, anyone can come, be loved, be long, even if they don't believe, anyone can come, find a welcoming, loving environment right here among us, if not us.

If it's not us, who it actually moves together and brings the hope of Jesus to people and brings light into a world of darkness and stands up for people who don't know what comes after this life.

If not us, then who?

It's like the church just keeps waiting.

And I don't know what we're waiting on.

Maybe we're just waiting for Jesus to come back.

Like it'll be fine.

We'll just wait it out.

We'll run the clock out, and then we'll all go be like, you know, angels or whatever people think happens in heaven.

It's like, no, right now you are preparing to do the work of the kingdom for when you get to the kingdom.

Jesus is watching and waiting.

And I'm telling you, as soon as there is a movement who decides they are not okay with just having another religious activity, that they are going to activate themselves, even at cost to themselves, to get the church moving.

He is going to bless that movement.

He's going to grow that movement.

He's going to expand that movement.

He's going to ignite within that movement gifts and talents that you cannot believe.

He's going to bring peace to the people's lives inside of that movement.

He's going to bring an excitement amongst you that you haven't felt.

The things that God can do through a group of people who are ready to say, Here I am, send me.

I'm ready to get moving.

I don't care if I'm the arm, the hand, the eyelid, the hamstring, I am ready to get active.

God will do things that we cannot even imagine.

And so let me get rid of your excuses.

1 Corinthians 12, let's go back.

For just as the body is one and has many parts, and all the parts of that body, though many, are one, so also is Christ.

If the foot should say, because I'm not a hand, I don't belong to the body, it is not for that reason any less a part of the body.

And if the ear should say, because I'm not an eye, I don't belong to the body.

It is not for that reason any less a part of the body.

If you are in Christ, if you've believed in Jesus, then you can excuse yourself out of participation in his body, but Jesus says you're still in the body.

You're just stagnant.

You don't come for a bunch of Sundays in a row, you don't serve, you don't give, you don't do any of that.

It doesn't mean you're not a part of the body, it means you are a member of the body who is inactive.

And when one member hurts, everybody hurts.

Yeah, you got rights, but in the kingdom, you have responsibilities.

In verse 17, if the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be?

And if the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?

But as it is, God has arranged each one of the parts just as He wanted.

The bottom line is the church needs you.

Every single one of you.

You've got all of the excuses of why you aren't qualified, and God does not call the qualified.

God qualifies those who are called and get moving.

You know that saying?

God doesn't call the qualified, he qualifies the called.

Not just the called, the called who do something with their calling, who start taking steps, who join a team, who start investing, who start praying, who get active, who make it a priority to build up the body.

God wants every part of you.

And here's the tension.

It's conforming, conforming to the movement, conforming to community.

But God values your uniqueness.

And here's what the church uniquely offers you.

There's no other religion that offers you this.

Every other religion is gonna get you to whitewash your history, put on your good religious mask, pretend you've never done any wrong, and judge anyone who you see as less than you.

And the call to Jesus is come all.

Come with your gifts and come with your talents, come with your hearts, come with your dreams, and come with your brokenness, come with your story, come with the skeletons in your closet.

God doesn't want to just use the highlight reel of your life.

He wants to use every single part of what makes you you, of what makes you unique, and he sees every part of you, and he sees your heart that was destroyed by the divorce, and you don't know who you are anymore, but God does.

And he sees the addiction that you just can't seem to quit, and he knows that your chance of getting that right and giving it to God will happen in a community around you.

He sees every part of you.

And Paul said in scripture, when I am weak in my weakness, in my shortcomings, that is when God is revealed to be strong to the world.

And I know a lot of religion seeks to just conform.

We want you to look the same way and vote the same way and talk the same way and dress the same way.

And not only that, we we want you to section yourself off.

We don't want you hanging out with anyone outside of our group.

And the only time you're ever gonna see someone who doesn't come to this church is every once in a while when we go bother them by knocking on their door.

I'm not trying to call anybody out right now, but the reason that those people have to knock on your door to get you into their church is because they're never, ever going to meet you in your regular rhythm of life.

God has made you unique and he has positioned you uniquely, and it matters that you're alive, and it matters that you have your role at your job and your role in your family, that you work out at the gym that you work out at, that you're in the friend group at school with the other moms and the other dads of kids their age.

It matters everywhere you're at in life because everywhere you go, the church is there.

Everywhere you go, the body of Christ has the opportunity to get activated among the people of our world.

And God wants to use you, He wants to use every single part of you.

And this is hard.

We are psychological men, and the call to believe in Jesus really speaks to us because it's free.

And we like free.

We don't have to do any work.

It's the one actual free thing in the whole universe.

Psychological man likes that, you know?

All I have to do is trust in Jesus.

Jesus did all of the work, it's no discomfort for me.

And I get the guarantee of eternity after I die.

That's the call to believe in Jesus.

The call to follow Jesus will cost you.

It will get you out of your comfort zone.

It will force change and transformation, it will mold you.

It will be uncomfortable.

We don't like that.

And we're seeing it.

And the church in the West is speaking with its feet.

Man, I told y'all, you know, from stage already.

In the pandemic, I mean, I was beyond convinced that people who had sat at home for a year, locked in their house, every single thing they put their hope in had failed them.

I was so convinced that once things opened up, people would be beating down the doors of their churches.

It's like when everything else has failed them, surely they will lift their eyes to something higher.

Finally, and man, were we positioned as meta-freaking church, a place where anybody can come.

I was like, it is about to be on.

Man, we're I we bought this building.

I was like, I don't know, man.

I don't know that it's big enough.

I was not just wrong, I was dead wrong.

We came out to about 25% attendance in 2021.

Since then, our volunteerism is down, volunteer attrition is up.

This is your movement.

I'm not mad.

I'm gonna hit you with facts.

We got this building in 2022.

In 2022, we doubled in attendance.

Praise God.

We doubled in attendance, and that is good.

I was trying to talk fast enough for you didn't collapse, so this next part doesn't sting so bad.

We doubled in attendance, and our offerings were down 4% year over year.

I'm not mad.

I get it, man.

Recession, I see it, I feel it in my own house.

We have a problem of people who are spiritual spectators.

And as long as we confuse being a part of the body with coming and attending a Sunday service, the church, the movement of Jesus, the hope of the world on the earth will be muted and powerless and fading over time.

And as soon as people pick up the call, it's like join the team.

You matter.

Join the team.

You gotta get in community.

And this right here, this is Sunday service.

This isn't community.

Community doesn't happen hundreds of people at a time, it happens on our life teams, where people get in small circles of 10.

We have room on life teams for you to get active.

And we need more people to lead life teams, to open their homes or open a second space, to bring people together and apply the truths that we talk about on Sunday.

We have volunteer teams.

And look, I'm I'm I'm unhappy with how we've talked about volunteering.

Because it's like, man, if you volunteer, you're gonna get so much out of this.

That's speaking to psychological man.

If you volunteer, you're gonna put so much into this.

That's speaking to the core of our call.

You have gifts and talents and you matter in this movement.

We will be capped in how much we can grow if we do not get active.

Most of all in Medikids, y'all know this Medikids is not childcare, it is spiritual development of the youngest members of our movement.

And it's wildly understaffed by volunteers.

And it's not just that you get active, it's how you get active.

Don't get active in the same viewpoint that we've all had in all of our culture, psychological man.

We want it to accommodate to us.

Look, I will volunteer, I don't want to see a baby, I can only do the 11:30, I'll get here at 1141.

You can put me on every sixth Sunday.

It's like that's helpful, kind of.

The call to being the body is open-handed.

It's I don't even really know my gifts yet, but put me in.

Plug me in somewhere.

Get me on a team, put me around people.

You want to know people and be known here in your church, you gotta get on a team.

You gotta start investing your time and resources and energy.

You have to get active.

On your way in, you were given a puzzle piece.

Everybody signed it, plugged it in into the puzzle.

And people who know me really well know this.

Um I'm like a 92-year-old man in like a much hyper younger body, right?

And I didn't really help myself during the pandemic when I got really into jigsaw puzzles, like really into jigsaw puzzles.

Like we didn't eat dinner at the table for six months because that's where my puzzles lived, you know?

And I started small, like 100 piece, 200 piece.

I don't want to brag, that was kind of too easy.

500 piece.

And I love it, man.

If you haven't ever done a big, like 500, 1,000 piece jigsaw, when you hit that last puzzle piece in, it's a really good feeling, man.

And you have every piece so unique that comes together in their uniqueness to make the whole.

Two times in a row, one was a 500-piece, one was a thousand-piece puzzle.

Two times in a row, I went to finish a puzzle, I got to the very end.

Two times in a row, I was missing one freaking puzzle piece.

My theory is my cat stole it.

She got really jealous how much time I was spending puzzling.

I don't know.

They were both landscapes, you know, they were beautiful, like they were big, man, they were almost the size of my table.

They were awesome.

But when I looked at those puzzles, it's like all I could see was the one missing piece.

And I think that when you're not active in the body, I think God sees you.

And you know, God is not the God that maybe you grew up with who's just always pissed off at you and wanting to strike you down.

God is a God who loves you so much, who wants so desperately for you to live the life of purpose and meaning and power that He created you to live.

And when your peace is missing, when you're not plugged in, when you're not figuring out how you fit, I believe it breaks his heart.

And I know you got a lot of excuses of why your puzzle piece doesn't matter.

But let me just tell you why your excuses are null and void.

Because you were brought into the body, your puzzle piece became a part of the picture at the cost of the blood of Jesus Christ.

That's the value that God believes that you bring to this movement.

And so, what's our call?

We saw how man has navigated throughout history.

We had political man, religious man, economic man, psychological man, and maybe you're thinking the call is to go back to religious man.

But remember, you can do religious acts.

That or not, spiritual acts.

I believe God is calling us beyond just the mere religious aesthetic.

I believe it's time for the rise of spiritual men.

Spiritual men and women who root their identity in the garden, in what God says about you, who live out that identity in Christ, and who play their role as a key part of the movement of Jesus.

Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus and described how the church should function.

He said this, and he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.

And what's our job?

Verse 12 to equip the saints.

That's you, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, to equip the saints to build up the body of Christ.

Until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God's Son, growing into maturity with a stature measured by Christ's fullness.

Growing into maturity.

You know what that means?

It means that just by looking internally into your own truth, you cannot reach full maturity.

You know what equipping the saints says?

It says you're not yet fully equipped.

And there's a promise.

Then, these are identity statements.

Then we will no longer be little children.

Tossed by the waves, blown around by every wind of teaching, by human cunning, with cleverness and the techniques of deceit, blown about into identity crisis after identity crisis.

But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head.

That's Christ.

From him, the whole body, that's us, fitted and knit together by every supporting ligament, every single unique member of the body promotes the growth of the body for building itself up in love by the proper working.

Here's your uniqueness of each individual part.

Here's why MetaCurch exists.

It exists to take everyday unique people, flawed and finite and jacked up as we are, and put them in a position to live out their purpose and identity as a part of the movement of Jesus, the body of Christ.

And I am asking you to join the team.

I'm asking you to get active, to not sit on the sidelines, to not just attend.

It takes all of us.

Maybe what you need is to get into community.

In the blue tent outside, you can find out about our life teams.

You can find one that fits your schedule.

Maybe God's calling you to step up and lead one of those life teams.

I'm asking you to invest in what God is doing here.

And you're like, look, bro, I am barely hanging in here, right?

If I gave what I can give, it would be embarrassing for all of us.

Let me tell you something.

No matter how small your sacrifice is, your sacrifice in the hands of God, used in the body of Christ, can do immeasurably more than you could ever, ever imagine.

Maybe it's time for you to start serving on one of our volunteer teams where you can know people and be known by a community.

You can go to the connect area right after service and get connected onto a team using your gifts.

If you don't know your gifts, pick a team.

We will help you find your fit as you get moving.

You are not meant to navigate life alone.

Establish your identity alone.

Pursue your purpose alone.

To know who you are, you have to know how that you fit.

And if you are pursuing Christ, I promise you that you fit at Meta Church.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we love you.

And I do pray just that.

That we would get active, that we would be the body, that we would not just meet together, but move together.

And that by doing so, we would find our fit, that we would quit just looking internally, and instead we would lift our eyes to you.

Help us, God, establish who we are as the body of Christ.

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.