Reboot: Re_tain 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.

Alright, MetaCurch, how you guys doing?

Yeah.

Oh my.

We can do a little, I mean like a little, but really a lot.

Like we can do a lot better.

Like Holotus, please just show everybody up right now.

MetaCurch, how are we doing?

Okay, okay.

We're so glad that you joined us in Holotus, those of you who are streaming with us online right now, and uh those of you here at the 151.

Man, uh, we are in week three of our reboot series.

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

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch, and here's the purpose of this series.

We didn't want to walk into another new year and simply put down a list of resolutions.

We put it in terms of a reboot.

This is a new perspective that leads us to new power.

This is the belief that we can actually live a very significant story right in the midst of very real suffering, and we are undoubtedly suffering.

We went through an incredible year of pain and frustration, and we have walked in to all kinds of new tensions that have presented themselves right here in 2021.

We're continuing this series, and just so you know where we're gonna end up landing, we've got a little ways to navigate before we get there, but we told you last week that at the end of the message today, we're gonna give a recruitment call for life team leaders.

These are people who step up to facilitate our teams that meet throughout the week.

And one of the great strengths of life teams is it gives a second gathering in the week in a second space.

It's where a small community of people come together to actually apply the truths that we're learning here on the weekend.

And this is such a critical step and a critical part of our strategy.

With all of the difficult parts of your life, with all of the pain in our everyday living, from Sunday to Sunday can seem like an extremely long journey.

We come in on Sunday and we get all spiritually lit up, we get inspired and enlightened, and it is like we have a spiritual bonfire in our souls, and then we go back out into the real world with our very real problems.

And oftentimes, that burning fire on Sunday is a heap of ashes by Tuesday morning.

The world can so quickly extinguish the flame and the excitement, the sense of passion and purpose that is instilled when this movement comes together.

What if it were possible to stay filled up spiritually?

What if you could hang on to that momentum that we experienced during worship without needing a professional band to follow you around?

What if God spoke in and through your life on more days than just on Sunday?

Today's message is so critical if you want to begin experiencing God in the real moments, the frustrations, the triumphs, the successes, the failures, every moment in every corner of your life.

Today's idea is simple.

To reboot, you must retain.

To reboot, you must retain.

Would you pray with me?

Father, even before all that 2020 brought us, life is just hard.

We live in a broken world, and I know the feeling all too well of being ready to conquer the world on Sunday and feeling completely conquered by the world on Monday.

We believe that you have more for us in this life than just Sunday spiritual experiences.

We want to learn how to retain all that you're pouring into us and have it make a real and a substantive difference in every day of our life.

We love you.

And so, God, I ask that we would truly lay down our worries, our thoughts, our ideas, our frustrations, our fears, that we would open our minds and open our hearts, and we would allow you to speak to us however you desire to speak to us today.

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

And everyone who's ready to go say, Amen.

Amen.

To reboot, you must retain a simple definition.

To retain is simply to absorb something and to continue holding it.

To retain is to absorb and to continue to hold on to something.

We retain information and knowledge when we can call it to the forefront of our mind at a moment's notice.

We retain our friendships when people genuinely know that we have their back, we retain wisdom when we can actually see evidence of it in our life.

Retention is a difficult thing, and it gets harder the older we get because the older we get, the more complicated our lives seem to become.

How many of you, when you heard this definition to absorb and to continue to hold, how many of you immediately thought of a sponge?

Right?

Who are my like visual thinkers out there?

Like immediately I see a sponge.

And this is actually a very common analogy we use for someone who thrives at retention.

You say, oh man, they are just soaking this up like a sponge.

If you've had kids, every kid comes to a point somewhere between four and seven years old where they become insatiably curious and they learn at a faster rate than they've ever learned before.

It is both amazing and unbelievably obnoxious.

They won't shut up.

They ask what and how and why questions on every car ride.

They remember everything, all the wonderful lessons you teach them, and the four-letter word you say when you stub your toe.

They are sponges, soaking it all up.

We have a period where our retention is high.

But in general, we struggle with it.

And by the time we are adults, statistics say that we only retain 5% of what we hear in a lecture or, say, a sermon.

Five percent.

We retain about 10% of what we read, about 30% of what is demonstrated to us.

You realize those are the three things that comprise a Sunday service.

I give a lecture, we read scripture, the band demonstrates worship.

At best, you're gonna retain 30%.

No wonder we're burning out by Monday.

We struggle at it.

And it's odd, we are in the age of information.

We have more information, more knowledge right now as human beings than any other humans in all of history.

And what yet we struggle.

Part of the reason is the advancement of technology, it's removed our need for retention.

I don't have to be the sponge, Siri can be the sponge.

I can just ask Alexa.

Part of the reason is we don't see ourselves as being measured on our retention.

The first 18 years of our life, more if you pursue higher education, you're in educational settings.

And one way to think about education is it's the dissemination of information and your education milestones come through measuring your retention.

That's what a test is.

Did you absorb this and actually hold on to it?

We're given tests and quizzes because we learn all this new history, all these new equations, new processes and formulas.

And as we take it all in, the question is did we absorb it?

Did we hold on to it?

I know a lot of people grow up with pretty severe test anxiety.

It's like, man, sweaty palms, sweaty brow, can't sleep the night before, can't eat breakfast that day.

Like tests really just take it out of you.

They really wear you out.

I was never that way.

Number one, I probably didn't care quite enough about school, but number two, there were a lot of things I was really bad at in education, but I was always really good at memorization.

And so if you gave me 10 or 20 minutes before the test to look over all of the materials, then I could not retain them, but memorize them and put them into whatever part of your brain holds things for like 47 minutes.

I could get enough of it right to pass, and then I would just flush all of that out of my brain.

Tests didn't give me anxiety.

I'll tell you what put me in full-on panic though.

A pop quiz.

A pop quiz is perhaps the greatest measurement of your actual retention.

There is no way to fudge your knowledge there.

There is no opportunity for a quick scan and memorization.

With a pop quiz, you either know it or you don't.

Pop quizzes would always sneak up on me.

They always came out of left field.

We are talking today about your spiritual retention.

And we're talking about how it plays out in your real life.

And real life rarely plays out like a standard test.

Life operates much more closely to a pop quiz.

You very rarely have time to prepare for all of the different curveballs that life throws our way.

When you show up to work, you have no idea what mood your boss is gonna be in.

Pop quiz, how are you going to react?

You have no idea how your coworkers are responding to all of the crazy and increasingly frustrating current events going on all around us.

This is how life operates.

It is testing us, it is measuring our retention.

And we often struggle with retention.

Your kid, your little angel baby that you raised, and they would cuddle with you and you'd read stories together, and they thought you were a superhero and you were the coolest mom, you were the coolest dad, oh, you're the most beautiful, you're the most handsome, you're and then all of a sudden, overnight, puberty.

Pop quiz! How do you raise a kid that is significantly different than they were six months ago?

How do we apply wisdom learning?

The world is testing us, and it's testing our retention of all different areas of life, our patience, our self-control, our emotional intelligence.

However, as followers of Christ, the world is also testing us spiritually.

Every time that we walk into one of life's pop quizzes, it's an opportunity for the world outside of Christ to see whether or not the truths that you claim about God actually have any power in your everyday living.

Here's the question that the world around you wants to know because the world around you is suffering, it knows that it's living without hope, it's not able to fill the void of significance, and whether or not it considers that Christ Jesus might be the option is whether or not, when the world tests you, Christ Jesus actually seems to make a difference in you.

And I'm not just talking about the giant pop quizzes in life when you uncover the affair or when you're fired from your job.

It's even the little moments.

It's that moment where you have waited for eight and a half minutes with your blinker on at HEB for the slowest driver in the entire world to back out of that primo parking space.

And right when they get out, some bro, and I'm not being sexist, but it's always a bro, whips into that parking spot.

Pop quiz.

Are you gonna slay your inner demons?

Are you gonna slash his freaking tires?

Where are we going with this?

Every moment of every day is an opportunity to demonstrate to a world without hope the spiritual wisdom that we have retained in our life.

God is speaking in us and through us.

But if we are Sunday-on Christians, then we will never make much of a difference to the world around us.

To reboot, we must retain.

And so, how do we become these spiritual sponges that not only soak up on Sundays all that God has for us, but we hold on to it.

And when life squeezes us, what comes out is not what the world expects, but it is the truths of God being displayed as the power of God in our lives.

One of the great examples of this comes from the Christian scriptures in a letter that was written by a guy named James.

We often call this the book of James, but the book of James is a letter.

And I love this letter, and I love James.

He's such a unique character because James is actually the half-brother of Jesus.

You know the Christmas story that Mary, a virgin, became pregnant and she had her firstborn, but then Mary and Joseph got married and they had other kids.

It's written about in the Gospels.

And while Jesus was growing in popularity and thousands and thousands were following him, and many were believing in who he was, the gospels show us that not only did his siblings not believe, but they mocked him.

James did not believe in Jesus.

And before you judge him, think about your own sibling.

I think she's coming to a service today.

I'm really excited about it.

I love my sister a whole, whole lot.

But I promise you this it would take more than a couple miracles for me to worship her as my Lord and Savior.

It's not happening.

She could walk on water five times.

I'm not buying it.

Something changed for James.

And it changed at the cross.

It changed when James watched his brother die and then hung out with him on the other side of death.

Not only did he accept that Jesus was who he said he was, that he was the Son of God, the Savior, the Messiah, but James went all in.

He actually became the leader of the church in Jerusalem.

And this church had it going on, man.

I mean, we read about him in Acts chapter 2, and if you were poor, that they were using their time, and instead of just being mad at the world and angry and begging and being bitter, they would take care of the widows and the orphans, and the wealthy people made sure that nobody went without.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Everyone shared what they had, they had a common purpose, a common vision, common belief.

They were a powerful church.

And as often happened in the first century, soon that church came under severe persecution.

They were in danger of their very lives.

The persecution was so intense that they had to actually disperse into the surrounding area.

And all of a sudden, while they were dispersed, this amazing spiritual energy and synergy that they all had when they were all gathering together and it was all good, this Sunday spirituality dried up very quickly.

You see, the people who were wealthy, who were giving away so freely, were now suffering.

The world had thrown them quite the pop quiz.

They didn't know how long this was gonna last.

They didn't know how long they'd have to be in hiding.

It's like, sure, I would I would love to give some money away, but man, what if this lasts for years?

I gotta hold it back.

Those who were poor and impoverished went from being a part of a community that allowed them to thrive to being homeless and hungry, and those who had once given so generously were now jealously holding all that they had back.

The world squeezed them.

And what the world found is that what they seemed to have absorbed had surely run dry.

They had not held on to it.

To reboot, we must retain.

And here's what I see: I see James laying out three ideas that if we can apply to our life, will allow us this spiritual retention to dramatically change our lives and even to see the reboot that we're so desperately looking for.

Now, I don't often preach three steps.

So those of you who take notes, get out your pens and papers.

And for those of you who do not take notes, let me give you one free truth today.

What you hear, you retain 5% of.

But in a lecture, when you write down notes, it increases to around 70%.

James chapter 1 verse 19 says, My dear brothers and sisters, understand this.

James 1:19

Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.

Quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.

In other words, the first step to retention is to do the exact opposite of what everyone and everything in our culture encourages us to do.

Think about the platforms that we communicate on.

Social media actively encourages you to be quick to speak, to refuse to listen to opposing voices.

And oftentimes the measurement of how well your post does is in direct proportion to how much outrage it creates.

We are encouraged to get angry.

We are encouraged to be divisive.

We are encouraged to comment on whatever is happening and whoever it is happening to as quickly as possible.

If you're slow, you might miss the trend.

You miss the trend, your hashtag doesn't matter all that much.

Hashtag doesn't matter all that much, you won't get any followers.

You don't get any followers, the world says you don't really matter.

Everything is encouraging us to do the direct contradiction to what James is stating.

Quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to get angry.

Even our mainstream media thrives on delivering anger and outrage because that is what brings eyeballs to the television, and eyeballs to the television is what sells ads.

Our culture is living in defiance of this biblical truth.

That means we have an uphill battle, but it matters.

Verse 20 says, for human anger does not accomplish God's righteousness, God's plan and God's path for your life, the significant life He's created you for, it will not be found on the path of anger.

This could not be clearer.

The first step is so obvious, yet it is so difficult for us.

Part of it is because we have to acknowledge that the first bottleneck to being able to retain what God has for us is not our idiot boss, and it's not our loveless spouse, and it's not our hopeless situations, it's not anything around us, it is us.

Here's our first idea.

Retention requires attention.

Retention requires attention.

We cannot retain what we are not aware of.

James said, be quick to listen.

His instructions actually follow each other.

If you're quick to listen, you will automatically be slow to speak.

If you're quick to listen and slow to speak, you will be slow to get angry.

Have you ever seen a Facebook post that really ticked you off?

Of course you have.

Like, don't lie.

Let's at least be honest.

Of course you have.

But you are not one tenth as mad.

I did this yesterday.

You are not one tenth as mad in that moment as you will be after you comment on it.

When you comment on it and they comment back, the anger will grow.

Be slow.

Slow to speak.

Slow to get angry.

It starts with being quick to listen.

You must pay attention.

Everyone grew up with that kid in their class who just simply never paid attention.

They talked the entire time that the teacher talked.

I've got an elementary school right here who is nodding his head.

Yep, I know that guy.

I know that girl.

They they take pass notes.

My problem was I'd fall asleep in class, guilty.

I'll just fall asleep.

You can't retain something that you sleep through.

And teachers are so good.

Y'all are so good.

Listen, if you can't remember that kid in your class, you were that kid.

And here's what teachers do: they're very patient and they wait.

They wait until that kid makes eye contact with them.

Big mistake, because once they have one second of your eye contact, they call on you, knowing there is a 0% chance you know the answer.

You gotta play that game where you just search the ceiling.

Like you might be able to come up with something.

It is so elementary, but we cannot retain what we have not given our attention to.

Retention requires attention.

It's often said we're given two ears and one mouth, and yet we talk twice as much as we listen.

And maybe you're wondering why you come Sunday after Sunday, but you don't see the effects of Sunday being played out every day in your life.

See, you can even give partial attention.

Some people pay just enough attention to feel conviction from God, and yet what we want to do more than receive the conviction is debate with God about that conviction.

Anybody besides me like to have a conversation about their convictions sometime?

Like, God, come on.

I don't gossip that much.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, besides, if I don't tell everybody what she's doing, then she's never gonna learn the lesson when everyone gets mad at her.

I gossip for good, you know, like I'm helping.

It's like, who am I really hurting here?

I get it's in your book or whatever, but who am I hurting?

Some things are so pervasive in our culture that we just can't even believe we should be under conviction for them.

You want me to quit sleeping around?

Like, you know, everyone is doing it.

At some point, we have to move past this adolescent excuse everyone else is doing it.

Sometimes the most outwardly spiritual and religious people fail the world's test at the most epic rates.

They have all the trappings of retention, but they have none of it on the inside where it actually matters.

A common problem for people who grew up in church is they've heard so many messages that they get the idea, they get the challenge, they get the conviction, but they automatically assume that whatever lesson God is speaking to them is for somebody else.

I am so glad that my wife was in this service today.

She really needed to hear that.

I'm so glad my kids are listening to this.

You walk out and you go, I know who I'm sending this message to.

They're really struggling in this department.

And you are so concerned with how other people are retaining the inspiration and information of God in their life that you have stopped retaining it yourself.

Retention requires attention.

Attention requires humility.

We cannot retain what we are not aware of.

Quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to get angry.

If we could understand this first idea, every single one of you would have a major impact over time in the world around you.

James continues in verse 21.

He says, Therefore, ridding yourselves of all moral filth and evil that is so prevalent, humbly receive the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

Now, this letter was written a long time ago, and James originally wrote it in Greek.

And the Greek words that he used for ridding yourself, ridding yourself of the filth and the evil, these were the same words used for taking off a dirty, grimy garment, for removing off of yourself soiled clothing.

Rid yourself.

And notice, he says, that these patterns of the world, these habits that we fall into, these ideologies and ways of thinking and living, he says, they are so prevalent.

They are what you would call the modus operandi, the normal operating procedure for the world.

These are the paths that are laid out for us.

Rid yourself.

Do whatever it takes to get yourself out of these thin-stained, soiled garments.

Our second idea is that retention requires intervention.

Step one is we have to give God our attention.

And when we humbly submit to ourselves to what God might actually be speaking to us, he's going to begin to expose in your life that some of the paths that you're walking that seem so obvious because the world has laid them out in that way are actually going against his prescribed purpose for your life.

Another way to think about this is that often the first step to learning what is right is to unlearn what is wrong.

If you grew up playing sports, chances are you developed your first set of skills outside of a structured environment.

Like if you were a football player, you probably started out throwing the ball in the yard.

If you were a basketball player, you probably started hooping at the playground.

And at some point, you got in a structured environment with a coach.

And that coach had to teach you the fundamental movements of that sport.

Paxton, my youngest son, is a basketball player, and I grew up playing and I love the sport, and so I wanted to be his coach for his youngest years.

I knew that before he could learn the correct way to play, he first had to unlearn all the habits he picked up in the front yard.

This is a natural part of growth.

Along the way, we learn how to speak and how to communicate.

But as kids, all kids develop these words that they just say wrong.

Compound words, complicated words.

And I'll be honest, it's kind of adorable.

They think when you call 911, you get an ambulance, right?

It's like that's wrong, but it's really cute.

I don't know how every kid in the world thinks that noodles and red sauce is Pasquetti.

They all get that wrong.

Let me tell you something.

At four years old, adorable.

At 40 years old, all of my fellow fans of the office can remember when Andy Bernard had to get chastised, no more baby talk in the office.

Why?

Because at 40, it's weird, it's unnatural, it's uncomfortable.

In order for our kids to learn how to speak correctly, at some point we have to step in.

We have to intervene.

No, baby, it's not, it's not Paschetti.

You have to unlearn this so that we can learn what is correct.

So many of the ways that go against God's pattern for our life seem like the most obvious ways to live life.

They're so prevalent.

It's what everyone's doing, it's just the way that things work.

There's a pattern in this series.

If you've been here for all three weeks, you've seen that every week we have stopped at some point and said, This is hard.

It is hard to revise the hard parts of your story, to expose yourself in all of your broken nature.

It is hard to respond correctly to what God is doing in your life.

Maybe that's discouraging.

I hope it's not.

The simple truth is if a rebooted life, a light that rises above all the suffering of the world, if a rebooted life were simple, if it were easy to accomplish, if the path towards it were all of the most obvious empty promises the world throws at us, we would all be doing it.

It takes work.

Intervention is work.

It is recognizing that we have worst ways, toxic behaviors, broken patterns, unhealthy habits, and being willing to do some unlearning of what we've always assumed was right.

You will think that you've been living in a three-piece suit, and God will reveal that you are sitting in sin-soiled garments.

It's time.

It is time to rid ourselves of those things.

It is time to recognize the broken patterns of the world for what they actually are.

When we begin to see the things that we have learned of the world, when we can see a path to unlearn, we can begin to learn the ways of God.

Retention requires our attention.

And once God has our attention, we must be willing to intervene into those areas of our life.

And once we have begun the process of unlearning, we can take the last step, our last idea for what it really means to begin to retain what God has for us.

Our last idea is this retention requires intention.

Retention requires intention.

It requires a life of intentional action on your part to actually see the truths of God come out as the power of God in your life.

James nails down his point.

This is the last verse we'll look at today.

Verse 22, he says, but be doers of the word and not hearers only.

Be intentional.

Be doers of these truths that you've paid attention to, the correct paths, which highlight the paths that need intervention.

Be doers of the word and not hearers only.

And if you are hearers and not doers, you are deceiving yourself.

And so let's keep it real.

This verse right here gets to the very core of why people no longer care about the church.

The church has lost its influence, it has lost its cultural significance, it is no longer seen as the hospital, the place to run when life has you down and your soul is in critical condition.

As a matter of fact, most people see the church as the last place they would ever be caught dead when they are suffering.

James' instructions could not be clearer.

And yet they have been soundly ignored for centuries in the Western world.

We ran a grand experiment to see whether or not a bunch of people dressed in fancy clothes could come sit in pews Sunday after Sunday, listen to the truths of God, do nothing about it in their life, and change the world.

And that experiment failed, and it failed hard.

The doers of the word and not hearers only.

Retention requires intention.

And meta church, you have to understand that we are fooled, and we are fools if we think that just because we gather on Sundays, we've made any real difference to the people around us who are hurting.

The truths of God are the foundation for our lives to live.

That is why we must pay attention to all that God is saying and doing in our lives.

We all fall into worst ways and broken patterns.

That's why we must be willing to intervene.

But if we're only attending here and we're only working on ourselves, then we will continue again and again and again to fail the world's tests as they try to measure in us what difference Jesus makes for us.

To reboot, we must learn how to retain.

Retention requires attention.

We cannot learn if we are not paying attention to what God has for us.

Retention requires intervention.

We must see our negative patterns and trade them for godly ones.

And retention requires intention.

We must be intentional about applying the truths of God into our lives as the power of God, as we have been tasked to build the kingdom of God.

We cannot have a higher purpose, we cannot have a grander vision for our life.

Will we retain all that God has for us?

Will it make a real difference in our life?

Or will we be another generation who sits in the seat and feels good about our religious experience?

Humans are bad at retaining.

We just are.

We struggle with it.

It's difficult for us.

And so big deal because to reboot, you must retain.

Here's the bad news.

I've said it before.

Those are awful statistics, and it is no wonder that we run out of our spiritual fuel so quickly as we walk back into the world.

However, there is good news.

As humans, we retain around 50% of what we discuss in a group setting, and over ninety percent of what we seek to immediately apply in our lives.

This is the power of life teams.

Our life team strategy is very simple.

It is to gather people during the week as a pit stop between Sundays.

What we do is very simple.

I know a lot of small group strategies in the church are centered around information.

And information is fine.

Get that information, discuss it as a group, you will retain some of it.

Our idea was different.

We have enough information in our world.

We have enough information that we discuss together on Sundays to carry us through our week.

Our model is not information-centered, it is application-centered.

It's very simple.

You get in a community of people who have your back, you have alliance, a place where you can take off all of the masks that we use to hide the hurting parts of our life.

You can be authentic in that place, a place where we come together and we simply review what we talked about that Sunday.

This is giving God our attention.

This is increasing our retention by discussing it and dissecting it.

We review.

We have people around us holding us accountable.

Accountability is the first step to true intervention.

And then we just apply.

We ask a very simple question every week in life teams.

What is the one way?

The one way that you will apply these truths in your life this week.

90% retention of what you actually apply.

And I promise you that myself and the others who meet in life teams, they mess up their application all of the time.

They don't get it right every time, maybe not even most times.

And still, it builds retention.

God uses all of us, our success and our failure, as long as we are moving forward and moving towards application, not just being hearers, but being doers of the word.

We review, we apply it to our lives, and never forget the power of prayer we pray together.

We ask for God's strength as we seek to live out our purpose and to make a difference in the world around us.

Our strategy is simple, and oftentimes power is found in simplicity.

We don't need more information.

We don't need smarter Christians.

We need Christians who are smart enough to actually apply God's truth in their life.

You want the world to see that following Jesus makes a difference.

Retention requires our attention, it requires our intervention, and it requires intentional decisions to put yourself in environments of application.

And so that is the message.

Those are the three ideas that will allow you to retain your spiritual fire that is set week after week.

Now is the recruitment.

You see, what we want to offer is an opportunity for you to not only become a spiritual sponge yourself, but to lead others in the pursuit of that as well.

Life teams are a critical, critical part of our vision and our strategy at MetaCurch.

2020 threw us drastically off course, and now we are rebuilding from the ground up.

We need people who are willing to step up and facilitate a group of people during the week.

It can be at your home or a second space.

We still have some during this time who are meeting over Zoom, if that is how people are more comfortable.

Here's what we're asking.

We are asking for you to consider it.

We're gonna have a come and see meeting.

By signing up for this, you are not on the hook for anything.

Maybe you have a million questions about how it all works.

I don't blame you.

Maybe you question whether or not you are the right person to lead it.

This is your opportunity to come, to get all of the information, to ask all of your questions, and to decide at that meeting whether or not this is the right time for you to step in to a position that is so instrumental in making meta church and movement that actually moves.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we love you.

We thank you for loving us.

We desire to be spiritual sponges, to soak up all that you have for us, I pray, God, that we would give you our attention, that we would grow in our awareness of you.

God, as you point out the detrimental paths that we are on, that we would do what we need, to intervene, to unlearn what has seemed obvious to us in this world, so that we can learn what you're calling us to, and God, that we would be intentional.

God, I pray you would stir the hearts of some to step up and lead.

And God, as we rebuild these life teams, that countless others would join a team, would begin that process of applying your truths.

God, if we can do that, we can change the world around us.

We believe it.

Because of who you are, because of your son.

We pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So a couple of things while we're on the topic.

If you are interested at all, at all in signing up to be a life team leader, uh, Tony is gonna be right over here in our connect area.

It's the booth with the red tablecloth.

You can sign up there.

For those of you streaming with us, you can email him at tony.marquez at metachurch.tv.

Tony.marquez at metachurch.tv.

A couple of other things before you guys go.

Y'all make sure you're following us on social media.

Make sure you're following our very simple growth strategy.

Invite and invest.

Have the courage to invite someone to come with you or stream with you and invest in what God is doing here.

You can give any time online at metachurch.tv.

We need people to step up and make funding this movement a priority.

Listen, if you need someone to pray with or to talk to, our prayer team is also right on the back wall of the cafe.

If you need prayer or you want to give a praise report, you can always email us at info at metachurch.tv.

I love you guys.

I want to thank you for being here, for streaming with us, and we hope to see you here next week.

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.