Grand Opening with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaChurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life.

God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Well, I want to welcome you to our grand opening.

And those of you who are with us from the jump here at Meta, you may also remember that today is our third anniversary as a movement called MetaCurch.

There's a lot to celebrate today.

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

I'm the lead pastor here.

I'm so, so glad that you have dropped in.

Today we are really going to talk about the vision for what Metachurch is as we walk into another day one, a grand opening of this new space that we worked for years towards getting a permanent location.

And I know there's so many new people, so I'm gonna briefly recap how we got to here.

We were meeting for years at a saloon, the 151 saloon, just down the road on Westover Hills.

And uh man, it worked so well for us for so long.

But eventually, as you can imagine looking around today, we we actually outgrew it, and then a pandemic hit, and we came out of that, and we needed a space uh that could accompany more people and a place, honestly, for those of you who came from the bar, that's a little more sanitary, right?

Like a little bit cleaner restrooms, or maybe like a lot of bit cleaner restrooms.

And so we worked for a long time actually on a different building, and last year, when this space came up for sale, we put an offer in and we were given a 90-day feasibility period, 90 days to come up with the money to actually buy this place.

And on day 90, we were so close, we were only$450,000 behind, right?

So close.

And uh that was it.

We had to terminate our contract.

If we went past the 90 days, we lost$50,000 in earnest money.

And so we sent in and we terminated the contract, and God said, not so fast.

We got a call from the owners of this building, Lucky Draw Bingo, and they wanted to come back to the table and see what we could work out.

I think they were hoping that we had like some reserve of money we weren't wanting to touch, but in all honesty, we were$450,000 away.

We had thrown the entire kitchen sink at this project, and so we sat down after brainstorming and praying and seeking wise counsel, and this was our idea.

And if you're new here, this will give you a good indication of really how things roll at MetaCurch.

We said to the owners of the building, we think you should give us$450,000.

That was our bright idea, but we had an offer to make them.

If you were to give us that money, then we would lease the space back to you to keep running bingo until you could make up your profit.

We shook hands, made a deal, and a few weeks later, we bought the building.

And it's important to tell the story from time to time because it's a reminder that we stayed on our grind, we worked and we prayed, but at the end of the day, we acquired this building in a way that only God can get the glory.

And so we're so thankful for it.

As a staff, we've also become uh kind of known for our aggressive timelines.

Most people take three to six months to transition all of our infrastructure and all of our production and to get in the right rhythm and to get our volunteers trained.

We did it in six weeks.

I mean, we were ready to get out of the bar.

Amen.

So we got over quick.

And what we did since we knew on our first Sunday that we probably wouldn't have our lights programmed, we might not have all of our audio in, we probably weren't gonna have internet, it was a long timeline.

We said we're gonna give ourselves five weeks of a soft open.

A soft open.

Now, this is a common business practice.

Maybe you've seen this.

You see it a lot in the restaurant industry.

Restaurants will open, but they start with a soft open.

Not really open to the entire city, you know.

They invite their people in, their close friends and family, and it gives them an opportunity to really dial in and work out all the bugs before they do a grand opening.

And so we gave ourselves five weeks of a soft open, which leads us to today our grand opening.

Another day one.

Now, to really understand our grand opening, and more importantly, to understand how we move forward as metach, we have to understand the grand opening of the church that happened 2,000 years ago.

We're gonna try to do that today.

If you would first pray with me.

God, we love you and we thank you for loving us.

We're overwhelmed by the fact that we as broken, jacked-up people, people who go against your word all the time, who sin all the time, who are often confused more than we have clarity, who are sometimes in different seasons depressed more than we are joyful.

God, people just struggling to get through this life, and yet you love us and you've called us to a life of adventure and purpose, a life that matters and impacts the world around us.

We thank you as your movement for giving us a tool to use for your purposes like this building.

And God, as we are in our grand opening today, I ask that you would open our eyes to the real grand opening of the church and what it means for us today.

We love you, and we pray these things in Jesus' name.

And if you are ready to get it all the way grand opened, say, Amen.

The church started just uh a few weeks after Jesus' death and then his ascension back to heaven after his resurrection.

And if you don't know the story of Jesus, kind of the Cliff Notes version is that God came down to earth.

He was 100% God and 100% human.

He lived an actual perfect life, the life that you and I could not live.

One of the things that's true about MetaCurch is there's just no perfect people allowed.

And if you came here today and you are an actual perfect person, let me be the first person to tell you, you're not.

Congratulations! You're jacked up just like the rest of us.

Jesus lived a life that we couldn't, which qualified him as the sacrifice to pay the price for all of our sins, all of the wrongs that we have done that separate us from God.

Jesus willingly gave his life for you and for me, and yet death itself could not hold Jesus.

He rose again three days later.

40 days after that, he ascended back to heaven.

But before he left, he took this movement that he had started and he placed it in the hands of broken people just like you and me.

And Jesus was born in a Jewish context.

He was born to Jewish parents, he was raised under the Jewish law, he lived in the area of Israel.

Jesus had operated all of his ministry inside a Jewish context and primarily, almost exclusively to Jewish people, the men and women that he tasked with pushing this movement we call church forward, were all, without exception, Jewish themselves.

And so we have in the New Testament, the Christian scriptures, the book of Acts.

And Acts is the history of the beginning of the church.

And it should be no surprise that the church started in an exclusively Jewish context.

In Acts chapter 2, we have the first official church meeting.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

In Acts 2 14, it says, Peter, one of Jesus' disciples, stood up with the eleven, raised his voice, and proclaimed to them, fellow Jews, and all you residents of Jerusalem, let this be known to you and pay attention to my words.

In verse 22, he continues and says, Fellow Israelites, that's fellow Jews, residents of Jerusalem in Israel, listen to these words.

This Jesus of Nazareth was a man attested to you by God with miracles, wonders, and signs that God did among you through him, just as you yourselves know.

In verse 23, though he was delivered up according to God's determined plan and foreknowledge, you used lawless people to nail him to a cross and to kill him.

But God raised him up, ending the pains of death, because it was not possible for Jesus to be held by death.

And this is the very first preaching of the gospel.

And gospel just means the good news about Jesus.

However, this was not a worldwide proclamation.

This was to a certain people in a certain place, and it was delivered only to one nation.

How do these Jewish people who had just recently actually come together to crucify Jesus respond?

In verse 37, it says, When they heard this, they were pierced to the heart, and they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what should we do?

And Peter replied, Repent and be baptized, each of you in the name of Jesus, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And that is day one of the church.

Acts 2 says that 3,000 people responded to the message of Jesus that day.

3,000 people were baptized and joined this movement of Jesus.

This was the first church service, the first preaching of the gospel.

But it's important to note this was not the grand opening.

This was an exclusive event to an exclusive group of people.

And the movement that Jesus intended to start, he laid out our marching orders one chapter earlier.

In Acts 1, verse 8, Jesus said, But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, that's where Peter was preaching in Acts 2, in Judea, which is a few miles away, in Samaria, which is foreign territory, and if you're wondering if there are any limitations to this movement, if you're wondering if there are any people who are left out of God's plan, Jesus said, and you will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth.

Acts 1:8

This is good news for us because the movement of Jesus started in a remote part of the Middle East, an ocean away from us.

We are the ends of the earth.

The movement has come here, and 2,000 years later, we are sitting here as a product of what was started in a soft open.

The in-group, the exclusive Old Testament chosen people of God, Israel, has now spread all the way to the ends of the earth.

Acts two is the soft open because it is just one group of people.

A little bit of history about Israel.

The nation of Israel was started by their patriarch Abraham.

At the very beginning of the Bible, Genesis chapter 12, God calls Abraham, and the promise to him is, I will make you a great nation, and through your nation, I will bless all of the nations of the earth.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

It's the same marching orders that Jesus was giving the apostles that this movement is to go all the way to the ends of the earth.

The one nation, Israel, brought forth Jesus, the Savior of the world, to start a movement that would go to all people in all places, but there was a problem.

You see, we like our in-groups, we like the people we are comfortable with.

Acts, the history of the early church, has 28 chapters.

By the end of chapter 9, the movement of Jesus has solely stayed in a Jewish context.

It has not gone outside of their very limited scope.

It has not gone outside of the one nation.

See, there are comfort, there's comfort in people who look like you and think like you.

In the Jewish context, they all came up under a Jewish law.

613 rules and regulations that govern every aspect of your life.

There wasn't a whole lot of unknowns when it was just Jewish people all coming together, but there was a very real danger.

You see, if something didn't break loose, they were in danger of falling short of Jesus' marching orders to take this movement to the ends of the earth.

They were risking Christianity just becoming Judaism 2.0, and all of the other nations, all of the people and all of the other places would be left without hope, living in darkness, struggling their way through life, never experiencing the light of the gospel, the good news that a God loved them enough to give his life for them.

It isn't until Acts chapter 10 that we see this shifting.

Acts 10 · chapter mention

In Acts 10, verse 1, it says there was a man in Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian regiment.

Acts 10:1

He was a devout man and he feared God along with his whole household.

He did many charitable deeds for the Jewish people and always prayed to God.

Now, Cornelius is a non-Jewish man.

This is what the Jewish people would have called a Gentile.

And even though the original promise to Abraham was, I will bless you, to one day bless all other nations, all people in all places, over time they became an in-group that saw all other nations as the other.

People who were to be despised and rejected, people that you self-protect against and you do not associate yourself with.

And so the idea went from our nation being used to spread good news over all of the world to our special little chosen group, sectioning ourselves off and hating all others who aren't with us.

I don't know if you grew up in church or not.

But far too many of our churches are operating today in a soft, open mindset.

And they have taken their marching orders.

And here's the deal: like we talk about the mission of the church, and you do this thing when you plant a church where people come to you and they're like, Let me help you develop your mission and who you're gonna reach and what demographics you're gonna go after, and what programs you're gonna have, and we gotta get it in a really pithy statement, and we gotta work it all out, and we gotta really nail it down so people know what your mission is in your church.

And maybe I'm crazy, but I don't feel like the mission is up to us.

The mission was laid out for us when Jesus said, take the good news of what I have done and spread it out to the ends of the earth.

And so you get church environments where everyone surrounds themselves with the people they are comfortable with.

And I don't know if you know this, but it's very comfortable to be comfortable.

You know, like the people you can just kind of know that you can say whatever your thoughts are about the vaccine because everyone thinks the same thing anyway.

You can say whatever you want about politics because everyone votes the same way anyway, everyone dresses the same, everyone knows all the words to the songs because you sing this sing the same songs every week.

It's comfortable to be comfortable, and so people get these in groups, and the church begins to see itself as the chosen people of God.

We are the saints, and all of them outside of here are the sinners.

We are the found, and all of those are the lost.

And the church has operated that way for a long time, it has an in-group mindset.

And so you'll walk into churches, and they will even tell you in pretty plain terms that the purpose of the church is to build itself up, that the purpose of the church is to take care of itself, that the allocation of the dollars that come into the church should be brought back into the needs of the people who are already in there, not on the needs of reaching people who are existing on the outside.

And you'll even walk into churches who have taken on the mentality that Israel had as God's chosen people in the Old Testament, that not only are they the others, everyone who's not us are the outsiders, but you can actually grow to hate and despise them because they weren't the selected few like you.

They were in a very, very dangerous season when all of a sudden God comes and visits a Gentile named Cornelius.

Verse 3 says, About three in the afternoon, Cornelius distinctly saw in a vision an angel of God who came in and said to him, Cornelius.

And staring at him in awe, he said, What is it, Lord?

And the angel told him, Your prayers and your acts of charity have ascended as a memorial offering before God.

Now send men to Joppa and call for Simon, who is also named Peter, the same Peter who was just preaching back in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Cornelius has this spectacular encounter and is told to go find Peter.

Peter will have something for him.

And so God is going to now prepare Peter in verse 9.

It says, The next day, as they were traveling and nearing the city, Peter went up to pray on the roof at about noon, and he became hungry and he wanted to eat.

But while they were preparing something, he fell into a trance.

And God gives Peter a vision.

And in this vision, he lays out a sheet, and on it, there is like a golden chorale-level buffet of food all up in front of him.

All of the food that he could want.

The only problem was every item of food was non-kosher.

It was actually all of the different forms of food that as a Jewish man, Peter was outlawed from eating.

The belief was that if he were to ingest that food, it would actually defile him spiritually and he would be unclean.

And God said, Peter, take and eat.

And Peter, you know, Peter, he fires right back at God, you know.

I would never, I've lived my whole life from the time that I was birthed into this world.

I have never touched that kind of food.

I will not defile myself.

And God said to Peter, you cannot call unclean what I have called clean.

And a shift is happening.

And it's almost difficult because we don't have these religious laws that we live under.

We don't really have these customs that are so ingrained in us, this deep-seated belief that we could actually defile ourselves.

It's hard to imagine Peter being in a place to consider eating something that has been off limits his entire life, but God is preparing him.

And verse 19, while Peter was still thinking about that vision, the Spirit told him, Three men are here looking for you.

Get up, go downstairs, and go with them with no doubts at all, because I have sent them.

Then Peter went down to the men and said, Here I am, the one you're looking for.

What's the reason you're here?

And so they told him, Cornelius, a centurion, an upright and God-fearing man, who has a good reputation with the whole Jewish nation, was divinely directed by an angel to call you to the house and to hear a message from you.

God speaks to Peter.

He lets him know he is behind all of this, to go down to the men and for the first time in front of Gentiles to preach the gospel.

In verse 24, it says the following day, Peter entered Caesarea.

Cornelius was expecting them and had called together his relatives and close friends.

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

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

And now, in one of the most dramatic moments in all of Scripture, that if you're just reading, just reading through, you might miss.

Peter stands at the threshold of a Gentile home.

To walk into a Gentile house and to associate with someone who was not Jewish would defile Peter and cause him to be spiritually unclean at the same level of eating forbidden food.

Literally, he had grown up his entire life being taught again and again and again that he is never to step foot in a non-Jewish home.

The consequences would be unbearable, the social stigma, the marginalization by the people in his in-group.

And there he is at the threshold, wondering whether he is going to cross over a lifetime of deeply held beliefs, cross over all of his fear, cross over into what is the most uncomfortable setting he could possibly find himself, whether he is going to cross into his calling, or whether he is going to stay in his fear.

And in verse 27, it says, While talking with him, Peter went in.

And he found a large gathering of Gentile people.

And maybe you're reading the Bible some, and we always encourage you to spend time in the written word of God.

And so maybe you've got like a Bible in a year, or a Bible in two years, or maybe you do the verse of the day in the Bible app.

However, you're getting your Bible, like you could get to this verse and just read it like nothing ever happened.

And these are three of the most important words in all of scripture.

For thousands of years, the Jewish people have been God's vehicle for the redemption and rescue of mankind, and now God is broadening his circle to all people in all places.

He's broadening his circle to us, and it all hinges on whether or not Peter will cross the threshold.

He went.

In.

The problem with the modern church is so often we are not going in.

We are not crossing the thresholds that make us uncomfortable.

We're not going out.

We are staying in.

We are circling up and we're talking about the big bad world out there and all of those sinners, and we've got it all together, and we're the spiritual elite.

And maybe if they're not such idiots, they'll show up at some point and you know we'll let them join the church, but it's gonna be kind of hard, you know.

They're gonna have to change a lot of things before they can get their membership card.

Like we've got it all planned out on how to make you feel judged and marginalized until you conform to what we think holy looks like.

Peter went in.

And I'm telling you, whether they're saying it or not, the world is desperate for a movement of people who actually live like they've got hope, who actually wrestle with the biggest questions in life, who have a purpose that is bigger than themselves, who are a part of a movement that has impacted the world across the centuries and will continue to do so in the future.

They are desperate for it, but they aren't going to come into your church service anymore.

The church has lost the right to just demand and expect that people will show up.

We have sectioned ourselves off as the holy chosen people for far too long.

If we're gonna reach the world, we gotta go in.

We gotta get uncomfortable, we gotta find the thresholds in our life, and we have to be willing to step across them.

Peter said to them once he got in, you know, I mean, he's tripping out.

He can't believe he's in here.

You know, it's forbidden for a Jewish man to associate with or visit a foreigner, but God has shown me that I must not call any person impure or unclean.

And it's beginning to connect the sheet with the food and the vision, and now he's in the home of a Gentile, and Peter is breaking every single social norm that he has ever known.

He begins to share the gospel with this Gentile household.

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

And the circumcised believers, those are the Jews who had come with Peter, were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been pulled out on the Gentiles.

And so they asked, Can anyone withhold water, prevent baptism?

When we see these people have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.

Like, we're the Gentiles.

We are here on the other side of the world 2,000 years later, because the movement that Peter started when he crossed the threshold then crossed the world.

It was a small step for Peter, but a giant leap for the movement of Jesus.

And as you might imagine, many of the Jewish Christians were not at all comfortable with this.

It's like if they're also the chosen people, then what's special about us?

And so they came to a conclusion.

They said, look, these Gentiles can join up, they can believe in Jesus, but they gotta basically become Jews as well.

Which means those 613 rules and regulations, they're gonna have to start following them just like us.

Problem number one.

All Jewish babies were circumcised while they were still kids.

So all of the adult men, Gentile men who wanted to come in the church, it's like that's fine, bro.

Membership policy 101, snip snip, here we go.

All get on the same page.

Church attendance dropped by a hundred percent.

Problem two, gotta eat kosher food.

No more, uh, no more bacon barbacoa tacos, no more.

Any men who were left are heading for the door.

And so, you know what they did?

And I really, I really think this is critical.

In Acts chapter 15, the leaders of the church got together.

Acts 15 · chapter mention

The apostles.

They came together to make a decision about how to incorporate the Gentiles into the church.

And you may not know this because it was 2,000 years ago, but this was the moment that the people who Jesus trusted to start the church decided on your membership policy.

And so they get together and Peter goes first.

Peter says in Acts 7, uh Acts 15, 7, after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, Brothers and sisters, you are 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.

What is he talking about?

He's talking about the day that he crossed the threshold into Cornelius' home.

In verse 8, and God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he also did to us.

No distinction.

Next, Paul and Barnabas shared, verse 12, the whole assembly became silent.

And listen to Barnabas and Paul describe all the signs and wonders God had done through them to the Gentiles.

And Paul is easily the smartest, the most accomplished of all of the disciples, and he has Peter's back.

Listen, we are seeing things, God is affirming he is moving as we are moving the gospel out of our little circle.

Finally, it was James' turn.

Now, James wasn't one of the original 12 disciples, and that's because James was the half-brother of Jesus.

James was the son of Mary and Joseph.

And when Jesus started his ministry at 30 years old and started walking around talking about, I am, and me and the father are the same, and I know everything the father does, and people were believing in Jesus.

James was like, I'm out.

And he saw the miracles, but it's his brother.

I'll tell you right now, my sister could walk on water tomorrow.

I'm not buying that she's the savior of the world, okay?

It wasn't until James watched his brother die.

And three days later hung out with him.

That James went all in.

He not only believed, but he became one of the leaders of the church, and James is actually running the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15.

He brings it to a close by saying this, therefore, in my judgment, we should not cause difficulties for those among the Gentiles who turn to God.

In other words, we will not make it difficult for anyone to come to Jesus.

James goes on and is like, you guys know this.

Y'all pretend like we can keep all 613 laws.

We can't do it, and we're Jewish.

These folks have no chance.

We will not make it difficult.

That one verse.

If that was the one verse that every Christian church would be led by, we would capture the hearts and minds of our city and our state, our country, and our world the same way the movement of Jesus captured the hearts of the world its first time around.

Instead, we live in a world where in our religious pride, we as the chosen ones, instead of making bridges for all people to make their way into this movement, we put up barriers and we have our dress codes and our membership policies, we have unreal expectations, and in our mind, we will make it difficult because it is our job to protect the glory of God.

And at MetaCurch, we remind ourselves all the time our God does not need our protection.

He is doing just fine without us.

What he needs is a movement of people who are willing and ready to cross the thresholds in their life.

And we all have a threshold.

We all have the things that make us comfortable, and on the other side of that threshold are the things that make us uncomfortable.

We all have a threshold.

And if we are going to maximize our potential, it's not gonna happen in this room.

It's going to happen in our lives.

We like Peter, we've got to go in.

We have to cross the thresholds in our life.

That there's an easy one, and I hate to pick on it, but it's so obvious.

Man, y'all are good people.

You see someone stranded on the road, you're probably gonna stop.

You have a friend in need, you're gonna step up.

You have a neighbor who's sick, you'll make them a meal.

But boy, if someone votes the wrong way of you on Facebook, you will let them have it.

It's a threshold and it's becoming a major one in our society.

It's like, yeah, I love everybody, I'll serve anyone, I'll do anything.

Unless they vote the wrong way.

And I'm telling you right now that if Jesus could cross the threshold between heaven and earth to come down and rescue those of us who sin against him every single day, surely we can lay our pride aside and cross the thresholds in our own life to serve those that make us uncomfortable.

We all have a threshold, and maybe you're kind of a baby believer.

You know, you you just recently put your faith in Jesus, and and your threshold is your perception of a lack of experience or knowledge, and it's like, I'd love to talk to them.

I know they don't know Jesus, but what if they hit me with a hard question, you know?

What if they what if they ask about a Bible verse I haven't read yet?

And so you just stay out, you stay where you're comfortable.

And God is looking for people who will courageously cross the threshold, who will be willing to look at someone that you care about in the eye and say, bro, honestly, I don't know the answer to that question, but I hope that you will come with me on Sunday and we can find it out together.

People who are just real and authentic and who have a passion for reaching people, and our city is filled with people who are living without hope.

This is our grand opening, and it will reflect the grand opening of the church.

We will be a movement who doesn't stay in, we will go in.

And today, as you're leaving here, after you pick the kids up or stop by connect, sign up for a who we are event, when you're heading out our front doors, today I want you to be intentional.

Every door has a threshold.

And as you walk out of our service and back into the rhythms of your life, as you cross that threshold, I want you to say to yourself, I'm the kind of person who crosses the threshold.

And my prayer is that will be the first of many that you will cross this week.

Would you pray with me?

We thank you, Jesus, for your movement.

We thank you for including us in it.

God, we believe that Metachurch is meant to push this movement forward into our city and beyond.

But it is going to require all of us as the movement, all of us as the church, to go out into the real rhythms of our life, to get uncomfortable, and to be your hands and feet.

I pray that we would have the courage of Peter.

Peter, who is an incredibly broken person, Peter who messed up all of the time, but yet Peter was willing to cross the threshold, and I pray that we would be too.

We love you.

We look forward to how you're gonna move us and grow us and use us to do incredible things.

We pray all these things in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, 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.