Whatever It Takes: Form and Function 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.

MetaCurch, thank you so much for joining us today.

I want to give a special shout out to our Holotus venue.

We are so, so thankful that you guys have been joining us there.

Every person who's going out there is helping us to service distance so that we can spread out evenly across our services and allow as many people as possible to come back to in-person gatherings.

If you're streaming with us today, we want to make sure that you are aware both of our live venues are open at 151 Saloon and at the Holotus 4-H event center.

You can find those times for services on our website or on our app.

We're very excited today to be closing out our Whatever It Takes series.

But before we jump into it, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge that this week we celebrated Veterans Day and honored those who put everything on the line to help keep our country safe and free.

We want you guys to know here at MetaCurch that we honor you and we salute you.

And we're of course talking about doing whatever it takes.

And our military and service members, all of our veterans, are such a great example of what it means to understand that a mission sometimes requires that same kind of attitude, a whatever it takes attitude.

And so we want to thank you and honor you.

And I'd like to pray for you at this point.

Father, we love you, and uh we want to lift up all of our service men and women, everyone who has put themselves in harm's way and signed up to do whatever it takes to keep us safe and to keep us free.

God, as we move into your word today, I pray that you'd give us open hearts and open minds, and as we bring this series to a conclusion, that you would help us to take all these things that you've been teaching us and apply them into our lives.

We love you.

We thank you for this movement that we call the church, and we pray it all in Jesus' name.

Amen.

We are wrapping up our series today.

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

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch, and we've been doing two things in this series.

We've been really drilling into our mission statement that says we do whatever it takes to get people to Jesus.

We've been applying that to different aspects of our life and of our church and community.

And we've also been talking about a very real, practical next step that we believe God has given us to actually live out that mission.

This is the next step of doing whatever it takes as our movement continues to grow, both in numbers and to grow in impact here in our city.

We've been talking about a new permanent space, a home base of operations for MetaCurch, right over on the corner of Fortin and Marbok, an old super Kmart.

We're gonna be leasing about 40,000 square feet on the far right side, and we're raising three million dollars to build it out and furnish it.

It's gonna allow us to not just have a space one day a week, but seven days a week.

It's gonna give us room to reach many more people, four or five, maybe eight times as many people as we can currently reach.

We're gonna have classroom space in order to have spiritual formation classes and help make sure that we're all healthy spiritually, relationally, financially, and emotionally.

We're also gonna have a learning center that is gonna be subleasing from us.

Little Dove Learning Center will have daycare, preschool, after school care.

Really, this building is gonna be another tool, another weapon in our arsenal in this spiritual battle that we are in for the lives and souls of the people around us.

Another step to do whatever it takes.

And as I came to think about how to wrap this series up, I decided I wanted to talk about something that's very important to me on a personal level, that is very important to the leadership of MetaCurch, something we talk about all of the time, and something I believe is very important to God, and He is, after all, the one that we are seeking to serve with this mission and with our movement.

My message today is called form and function.

Form and function.

Now, you probably have heard the very popular saying that form follows function.

Form follows function.

I did some research because I didn't know where this originated, but most people believe that this came from an architect uh a long time ago.

He was the first one to make very clear that form follows function.

This architect was the teacher, boss, and mentor to uh uh Andrew Lloyd Wright, uh very famous, uh well-known person from back in the day.

And it kind of came about right at this advent of the skyscraper.

Really, what they needed was they needed to put a lot of people in the same space who all had room to work but could collaborate together.

This is before the internet, this is before cell phones.

They actually needed to be face to face with one another, they needed to be able to call meetings to organize the hierarchy, but they were trying to put a lot of people in the same buildings and some of the most densely populated areas of the country.

The answer was instead of building something wide, to build something tall, form follows function to kind of simply define the t the terms.

The form is the process.

The form in architecture would be what the building looks like, how many rooms it has, how many stories it is, the different design features, the stairs or elevators, the escalators, all of the decisions that go into it.

It's what you can actually see.

The function is how the building's actually going to be used.

What are the procedures and processes?

What goals is it trying to meet?

The idea was simple: that we don't start with the form and then try to squeeze in the function.

We start with understanding the function and then we build the form around it.

We use this all the time at Medichurch.

In fact, I'm sure at this point, the staff is tired of hearing me say that form follows function.

Everything that we seek to do, we first want to understand the function of it.

What does this practically mean?

What are we trying to accomplish even when we set goals at Metachurch?

We don't just say we're gonna set a goal for the quarter.

The quarter is a form, it's a time frame.

We don't start with the time frame and try to fit the goal into it.

We want to understand the function of the goal.

And once we understand the function, we understand how long it will take to accomplish.

We let the function inform the form, not the form, tell us how to squeeze in the function.

There's so many things in life where we start with form.

Forms are easy, forms are comfortable.

There's an old anecdote about a child who's watching his mom prepare a roast, and before she puts the roast in the pan, she cuts off both of the ends.

Cuts off the ends of the roast and puts the roast in the pan, puts it in the oven.

And the child is so confused.

The same mother that is constantly telling him that there are starving children in Africa, just cut off what appears to the child to be the exact kind of meat that's on the rest of the roast and throw it away.

What is the purpose?

And the child asks, Mom, why do we cut off the ends of the roast?

The mom had never even considered it.

She actually started laughing out loud.

She said, I have no idea.

I have no idea.

You know, I just do it because that's what my mom did.

Let's call her.

And so they called the grandma.

Grandma.

Question, kind of weird, out of the blue, but I'm making a roast, and of course, I cut the ends off.

That's what you always did.

Um, but why is that?

Why do we cut the ends off of the roast?

And the grandma thought, she kind of chuckled to herself.

She said, I really don't know.

It's just what I always saw my mom do.

Luckily for them, the great grandmother was still alive.

They called her up, sorry to bother you, kind of random, but preparing a roast here, and you know, I cut the ends off because that's what my mom did, and she said she cuts the ends off because that's what you always did.

And we're just wondering, what's the magic of cutting the ends off of the roast?

Does it help it cook more evenly throughout?

Does it somehow keep all of the flavor and the juices inside?

Is there something wrong with the ends of the roast?

Something that we don't really know about?

I mean, what is the purpose?

And the great grandmother began laughing hysterically.

She couldn't believe that her daughter and her daughter's daughter had been cutting the ends off the roast this whole time just because someone at one point had witnessed her doing it.

She said, I have no idea why you cut the ends off the roast.

I cut them off because it would never fit in the pan.

Generations of people had been wasting a good percentage of their meal.

Not because they didn't have an adequate size form, but because they didn't understand the function.

They were making form decisions because her mom had done it and her mom's mom had done it, and it got passed down and passed down and passed down, and it's just the way that it's always been.

And many of us live in many areas of our life not understanding the real function of our relationships, the real function of our careers, the real function of our habits, the real function of our purpose.

Because it is so easy to just conform to the forms that are presented to us throughout our life.

And is your life and is your future really not worth understanding the function behind it?

So many people are presented with forms the way things should be.

More than half of marriages end in divorce.

Why is that?

Well, there's a lot of reasons.

It's very nuanced.

But what I've noticed throughout my years is that there are many people who are attracted to the form of marriage without ever understanding the function of marriage.

They want the wedding, they want someone who's with them, they no longer want to be alone.

When someone asks, they want to be able to say that they are a mister or a missus, they want to be able to have the picture, the form of what life is supposed to look like, but they don't understand that the function of marriage is hard.

It takes work and fighting.

The function of marriage is you no longer own your own space, own all of your own money, your time is no longer singularly yours.

The two have become one.

It's very difficult.

The ultimate function, the ultimate purpose that God gave for marriage is for two people to come together to push each other closer to God and their God-given purpose.

We don't understand the function, we just want the form.

People want to get married, they don't think about what it's gonna be like to be married.

We prioritize the form, and when the form gets uncomfortable, we fail.

The same thing that can be so true for our lives, choosing form over function, has become true for the church.

The church began as a movement, the most powerful movement the world had ever seen.

It was taking over, it was spreading like wildfire.

If you look at the history and the trajectory of people coming to believe in Jesus, it was all about function.

Your life is hanging between heaven and hell, and someone came to do something about it.

It was function.

A man came, lived a perfect life, died in your place, rose again, defeated death itself, ascended back to heaven, promised us that he's coming back.

We need to do whatever it takes to tell as many people about this as quickly as possible.

The movement that we call church was fueled, it was powerful, it was spanning the globe, it was changing entire empires.

And what happened?

Because now the church is the end of punchlines.

Now the church has lost all of its influence.

And what happened is over time you can watch it.

You can watch it in church history.

Function, function, what are we here for?

We're giving our life to this, we're sacrificing for this, we're doing whatever it takes.

Somewhere along the way, the church traded function for form.

Church was no longer something that you were and that you did.

Church was somewhere that you went.

It was a building, it was a service, it was a sacrament, it was tradition, it was religion, it was all the little exercises of spiritual-like things without the true spiritual act that God requires of us, which is spreading the good news of his son to as many people as possible.

We gave up a courageous function and we settled for comfortable forms.

And some people have told me through the years, you gotta relax a little bit talking about the church.

You go a little bit too hard on it, you know.

It's like we're all imperfect, and and and you know, you pull back the curtain pretty often and show everyone what's going on.

And aren't you afraid that if you keep going after the organized Western church, that you're kind of like sawing off the same branch that you're sitting on?

And what I want to show you today in Scripture is not how I feel about God's movement trading function for form.

I want to show you how God feels about it.

We're gonna be looking in the Jewish scriptures, what we often call the Old Testament.

We're gonna be looking at the very first book of prophecy.

It's the book of Isaiah.

And Isaiah was a prophet.

God spoke directly through him to Israel.

And in the Old Testament, Israel, they are God's chosen people.

It's God's vehicle that he was using for a specific time and a specific purpose.

And one day, God would use Israel to bring about the Savior of the world who would open the door not just to their one nation, but to all nations being a part of God's grand redemption story.

However, Israel often strayed.

And Isaiah wrote over time, over the time of the reign of several kings, some good, some evil.

He wrote during a time where Israel had been corrupted by the surrounding nations.

They'd begun to worship the gods and the idols, the graven images of the nations that surrounded them.

They came into treaties with evil nations who stood in opposition to God's will for their life.

They were seen as sinful and even evil in the sight of God.

And yet, Israel had been given the law, the Jewish law called the Torah, 613 rules, regulations, commandments that govern every aspect of your life.

And even though they were evil, and even though they were worshiping other gods, and even though they were bowing down to foreign idols, and even though they were combining their own governments with the governments of people who stood in opposition to God's plan, like good Israelites, they still went into the temple, they still made their sacrifices, they still observed their festivals and holidays, they still gave their prayers, they still lived out the forms, although they had abandoned their function.

Isaiah chapter 1 is like the cliff notes to the other 65 chapters of the book of Isaiah.

Isaiah 1 · chapter mention

It gives us a broad overview of what was happening in Israel and exactly how God felt about it.

In Isaiah chapter 1, verse 10, it says, Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom, listen to the instruction of our God, you people of Gomorrah.

Isaiah 1:10

And if you're not familiar with the Old Testament, in Genesis, the very first book of the Bible, there is a story of a city called Sodom and Gomorrah, these sister cities, and they were known as the most evil cities that had ever existed.

This is like the ultimate insult to call Israel Sodom and Gomorrah.

I don't really know what an equivalent would be, but it could be potentially like somebody coming to your church service and saying, everyone here is dressed like this is Vegas, right?

Like we know there's some things going on on the streets of Vegas that we don't necessarily want going on in the middle of our services.

Sodom and Gomorrah is like that this times a million.

To be called Sodom and Gomorrah by the God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with hail, fire, and brimstone should be a serious wake-up call in Isaiah's first chapter.

Verse 11, God says, What are all your sacrifices to me?

asked the Lord.

I have had enough of burnt offerings and rams and the fat of well-fed cattle.

I have no desire for the blood of bulls, lambs, or male goats.

In verse 12, when you come to appear before me, who requires this from you?

This trampling of my quartz?

And this would have been a wake-up call.

It would have been shocking, and it would have been honestly quite confusing to the Jewish people who Isaiah was prophesying to.

I know because it's written down in the law.

I can go to Leviticus and show you exactly where you told us to bring all of these sacrifices.

You said, bring this kind of animal and it's a wave offering, and bring this kind of animal and sacrifice it in this way, and it's a sin offering.

The offerings were how they established their relationship with God.

It's how they made atonement for their sins.

Their sin that separates them from God.

It was the animal sacrifice that brought them back into right relationship and right fellowship with God.

It would have been so confusing.

Like, what do you mean you don't require sacrifices?

You're the only one who requires them.

And God says, no longer.

When you come before me, who requires this from you?

The trampling of my courts, God doubles down.

Not only are your sacrifices detestable to me, I don't even want you coming in my house.

Verse 13 he says, Stop bringing useless offerings, useless offerings.

What do you mean, useless?

We know exactly what these offerings are for.

This is a part of being an Israelite.

This is a part of you being our God.

This is a part of this relationship.

Useless.

He says, Your incense is detestable to me.

The same incense that they would burn in the temple that in the law it says is a fragrance, a fragrant offering in the nostrils of God.

He says it's detestable.

New moons and Sabbaths and the calling of solemn assembles.

I cannot stand your festivals.

I hate your new moons and prescribed festivals.

They become a burden to me.

I'm tired of putting up with them.

And some of the Israelites are like, they're a burden to us too.

Why are you telling us this now?

We've got all these festivals.

We got to put up all the tenants, we gotta make the meals, we plan our whole entire lives around these things.

Bro, you don't want the festivals?

I'm good with that.

I don't need more festivals.

Introverted anyway.

I don't like being out there around all those people, most of them not wearing deodorant, all squeezed up in there.

Church potluck.

You don't want the church potluck?

I don't want the church potluck.

Fantastic.

We're on the same page, finally, but it's a little bit confusing.

They're like, we didn't create the calendar.

You did.

God, you told us about these festivals.

You told us to keep the Sabbath.

You told us to make the offerings.

You told us to bring the sacrifices.

Like, why are you mad at us?

You planned it.

You're the architect.

It gets worse.

Verse 15 might be.

Surprising to you.

It was surprising to me.

God says, when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will refuse to look at you.

And even if you offer countless prayers, I will not listen.

Your hands, God says, are covered with blood.

Now, what we're reading in Isaiah, we have to have a little bit of context to.

This is in the Old Testament.

It is under an old covenant.

The way that God interacted and reacted to his people, this is BC, before Christ.

There was no one final sacrifice that brought us into relationship, not through the sacrifice of animals, but through the sacrifice of Jesus, the perfect Lamb of God.

The Spirit of God lived in the temple, which is why you had to go to the temple to make things right.

Now, after Jesus, the Spirit of God lives in the life of every believer.

Things are different.

It's not a one-for-one comparison to take the forms of religion in the Old Testament and to bring them into the forms of religion today.

However, there's a very, very important lesson to learn about how God views the worship of his children.

And we don't have these forms.

We're not sacrificing animals.

If you are, we need to call the police.

We're not showing up to temples and thinking that's the only place where the Spirit of God is.

Things are different.

But we've created new forms, all the same.

You see, what Jesus started was pure function.

Pure function.

Jesus went into the temple and turned over all of the tables.

Scripture says that when Jesus died, the veil inside the temple that separated the people from the Spirit of God was torn from top to bottom.

It was a new day.

It was no longer a location-based movement.

It wasn't about sacred places and sacred spaces.

It was now about a movement of people.

And Jesus said before he left earth, you will do what I've done, and you will do even greater things.

And if you think of that in terms of form, it's really hard to see how that could be true.

Because I just can't do the things Jesus did.

Jesus could walk on water.

I don't even know how to swim.

Jesus could take a lunchable and feed 20,000.

I burn stakes.

Like Jesus was perfect.

I am not.

And so if you're thinking about it in terms of form, and it's like I've got to fit into this exact thing that Jesus did.

I've got to heal the blind and raise the dead.

When you're thinking about it in form, it's very confusing.

Jesus was not starting a movement of form, he was starting a movement of function.

And the reason he looked at his disciples and said, You'll do even greater than what I've done, is because he is speaking into the function of a movement that is no longer going to be based around a location or a temple or forms of religion, but that will be functionally the most powerful movement that the world has ever seen.

They will do more because their numbers will be greater.

The same spirit of God that guided Jesus through every second of his life was soon to become available to every person who had put their faith in Jesus.

The movement was spreading.

The message was spreading.

The mission was spreading.

And pretty soon we took a powerful movement where everyone understood the function.

And we started building our forms because forms are comfortable.

And so pretty soon all of the churches started looking just like all of the other churches.

That's what you do.

You photocopy form.

It makes sense to you.

It's comfortable to you.

Everyone had pews roughly the same size, everyone decorated roughly the same way.

Everyone had the same kind of windows.

Everyone sang the same kinds of songs.

And when you start prioritizing forms over function, you begin to look to your forms to see whether or not you are successful.

And the only way to be successful with forms is to create more and more and more.

And so pretty soon, this movement that was expanding, and it was for everyone, and everyone who believed in Jesus was a part of it.

And if you were a part of it, you had the power of the Spirit of God in front of you.

And if you had the power of the Spirit of God inside of you, then you could do whatever it takes and you could make a difference and live a significant, purposeful life.

But all of a sudden, we created a form.

It was called membership.

And if you went through the right process and you fit the right mold, then you could get your membership card.

And in a lot of churches, if you move and you go to another town and you want to go to a new church, your old church has to transfer your membership.

Make sure we have all the forms in order.

If our forms are right, then surely we're winning.

We have forms for our personal life.

If I can just get this job and drive this car, and if I can be married by this age, and if I can retire by this age, and if I can have this many kids, and if my kids go to college, we have all the forms, we have all the forms, and do we ever stop to ask what is the function?

Is God calling me to this?

Am I gonna step into this career because it's my parents' expectation?

Or because God has called me into it, because I can make a difference there, because I can use my gifting there, I can use my talents there.

What is the function?

And a lot of people say that we did our mission statement wrong.

Because we say we do.

We do whatever it takes.

And the way they say you make a mission statement is you say we are.

We are a community of believers who like to get together and sing together and eat together and pray together.

That's who we are.

Or metachurch is.

You know they don't actually care about it.

They're just walking through the motions.

They're almost impossible to fire because they check all the boxes, they do the right things, they do it without any heart.

You can't really find a reason, but you know that their relationship to the cause of the organization isn't there.

For parents, if your kid has ever had or ever ends up with a teacher who you know doesn't actually care about the function of education, they're just walking through the forms.

They'll give a test because they have to give a test, and they'll give the assignments because they have to give the assignments.

They don't care about your kid, they don't care about your kid's future, they don't care about them reaching their potential, they don't care that they have an opportunity to mold these young lives.

They don't understand the function of education.

They're just walking through the forms.

And you're irate.

They're missing it, they're missing the whole thing.

And most of us at MetaCurch walked away from church at some point.

Because we saw all the forms of religion.

They checked all the right boxes, but there was no function.

The people who most desperately needed the message that the church has were always left outside the doors of that very church.

And so maybe you're starting to understand.

Form, function.

Hopefully, I'm doing a decent job of explaining it.

Form and function, form and function.

And God wrote the law that says give your sacrifices, burn your incense, go to the festivals, give your prayers, come to the temple.

He wrote those laws, and now he says, I don't want to see you in here.

Do not come in my house, do not kill one more animal in my name.

I don't want to see you at the festivals, I don't want to hear your prayers, I don't want to see your face.

And there's one more example of form and function that I think we'll understand whether you've been through it or not.

I think we'll understand it on an intuitive level, and I think it is actually the greatest illustration of what is happening between Israel and God.

Marriage has certain forms.

And great marriages are where people are trying.

They're really trying.

No one's perfect.

Man, I I have a fantastic marriage, not perfect.

I'm there, not perfect, but there's forms.

A lot of them traditional, you know?

Bring home flowers, surprise them with flowers.

It's a very traditional form.

It's just something you can do.

It's an expectation met.

All the hallmark ideas, you know, lay out a blanket, have a picnic, spend time together, be intimate together.

All the forms, all the things that you do.

And they're good things.

And a lot of marriages would make it if people would just try.

Just try.

The more you understand the function of your marriage, the more those things don't feel like burdens, they feel like blessings.

It's a blessing to get to do those things for your spouse.

It's a blessing to get to pour into them, it's a blessing to surprise them and support them in ways that they weren't anticipating.

Just try.

But what about a marriage where one person is actively unfaithful?

And you know they're cheating, and they know you know they're cheating, and they're not stopping.

They just need some time to figure it out.

They're trying to decide what decision to make, trying to decide who to go with.

And it's almost like a spouse that's cheating, and you know they're cheating, and they know that you know they're cheating, and they show up with flowers.

And they have no intention of stopping at this point, but they're gonna bring you the flowers.

Gosh, they're trying.

Can you imagine your homegirl saying, I know it's a hard situation, but he's trying.

You would say some words about those flowers that I can't say into this microphone right now.

You know how pissed off you'd be about getting those flowers?

You come home, she's cheating, but she's laid out a picnic, bottle of wine.

I just thought we could spend some time together.

Were you done cheating?

Uh no, not yet.

I just you're trying, you're trying.

You're walking through the forms, you're trying, but you're cheating.

No one would ever accept that.

No one would ever accept that.

And it would be better, it would actually be better if they quit trying.

Until you fix this, until you become faithful, until I have all of you, until you actually understand the function of this marriage.

You can keep your flowers, you can keep your picnic, you can keep your intimacy.

I don't want any of it, I don't want to see you, I don't want you in this house.

Israel was trying, but they were cheating, and they were coming in and they were giving their sacrifices to the real God, and they were walking out and they were bending their knee to false gods, and they were laying down and spreading out their hands and giving their prayers to the real God, and they were walking out and giving their time to idols.

And scripture says that God is a jealous God, and He's not interested in sharing your worship with anybody or anything else.

It's not that the forms of religion were a bad thing, it's that they had the form without understanding any of the function, and God said, You can keep it.

You don't understand the sacrifices, the incense, the holidays, the festivals, the prayers, the praise, the temple visits.

These were supposed to be an outpour because of your relationship with God.

They were not supposed to be a replacement for your relationship with God.

And what do we learn?

We learn something that we see all throughout the pages of scripture that it's never really about the form.

It's never really about how many prayers that you say or how many scriptures you memorize or how loud you sing the songs.

The forms follow the function.

The forms are good things.

But God isn't interested in religion for the sake of religion, and he's not interested in a movement of people who are content to just come and check the boxes to stay comfortable.

He is looking for a courageous movement of people who are willing to prioritize what he's put us on earth to do above anything and everything else.

God begins to give them the answer.

In verse 16, wash yourselves, cleanse yourselves, remove your evil deeds from my sight.

Stop doing evil.

He points at the function of their heart.

I like the forms, but until you get the function right, until you wash up, cleanse yourself, come back to what you know is right, rid yourself of idols, focus only on the one true God.

Stop doing evil.

He calls out their broken function and points them back to their true one, to their true purpose.

In verse 17, learn to do what is good.

Pursue justice.

He's gonna give us three examples.

Correct the oppressor.

In other words, aid the oppressed.

Defend the rights of the fatherless, the orphans, and plead the widow's cause.

James, the half-brother of Jesus, said that true and undefiled religion is this to help the orphans and the widows in their distress.

Over and over and over again, we see the very God who instituted the laws for Israel to give the sacrifices, saying, I don't want a sacrifice, I want your heart.

I'm not looking for the forms, I am looking for the function.

God wants all of us.

And you have to understand that for those who don't yet know God, the number one function is to do whatever it takes to get them to the hope that we have in Jesus.

But for those who are God's children, learn to do what is good.

Pursue justice, correct the oppressor, defend the rights of the orphans, plead for the widow's cause.

This whole series, we've been talking about what looks like a new form.

By definition, we're moving to a new space.

The space is a form.

The construction drawings, they're they're forms.

It's what it is.

The question is, are we filtering our decision through the lens of a new form and then trying to squeeze our function inside of it?

Or are we looking at our function and allowing that to determine what kind of forms we need to best execute on it?

God has been so good.

In the last year, he opened up a door to Helotus.

And we didn't need to be multi-site.

That's not the function.

It's not the function.

It's a strategy, it's a form, it's not the function.

The function is to reach however many people we can reach with the good news of Jesus.

It was an opportunity for form to follow function, to expand this movement and take more ground.

And now here we are, raising three million dollars so that we can take our function and get closer to meeting our potential.

And there aren't many larger modern successful churches that are moving into that area.

As a matter of fact, um, churches are moving into almost every area except where we're going.

2015 Southwest 410, San Antonio, Texas, area code 78227.

Why is that?

Why are churches so nervous to get close to 78227?

I did some research.

I did some work.

We want to better understand where God is moving us to because the more we understand the area, the more we can clarify our function, the more we can clarify our function, the more we can take this building and make the form follow that function.

The average median household income in zip code 78227 is half, half of the national average.

People on average are making half of the national average, median household income.

In the United States, there are 14.7 percentage percent of the people who are living below the poverty line.

Our new home, our new zip code, there are over 22% of people living below the poverty line.

It's a 150% increase on the national average.

And God says, learn to do what is good.

Pursue justice, that's a function.

Aid the oppressed, that's a function.

Those who are downtrodden and dismayed, those who are living on the margins of society, those who are barely making it, those who feel like they are forgotten by everyone and everything, every institution.

Defend the rights of the orphans and plead the widow's cause.

Nationally, about one in every four child is born into an unmarried situation.

Most of those we know are single mothers.

25% of kids are born to parents who are unmarried.

High percentage of that, the dads are never around.

In the last 12 months, there have been 1,110 children born in our new zip code.

652 of those were born to single mothers.

The national average is 25%.

The percentage here is closer to 70.

Nationally, less than 5% of kids drop.

Out of high school.

Where God is calling us is one of the highest in the nation.

28% of kids never graduate.

28% of kids.

Almost six times, even in our city of San Antonio, you are 68% more likely to drop out of high school if you live in 78227 than if you live anywhere else.

And I'm preaching to the choir because some of you live there.

I'm not telling you anything new.

And most churches see this.

And household income is too low, and crime is too high, and problems are too plentiful.

And you would think if we understood the function of doing whatever it takes to get people to Jesus, that we would be flocking to this area.

And yet, somewhere along the line, we sacrificed function for form.

And it's hard to build a comfortable form on a side of town that can't fund your comfort.

Form must follow function because God has given us too much purpose, too much potential, too many gifts, too much talent, too much passion to do anything else.

And when you understand function, you see statistics like this, and they don't scare you away because you might not be in a form that you're comfortable with, but it makes you run towards it because you know that you have the one thing, the one hope that can change these statistics for the better.

When you see opposition through Jesus, you see opportunity.

And where the world sees pain, you see unlimited potential.

And the world looks at a man on a cross and sees suffering, and we look at our Savior and see significance.

We have work to do.

And as Metachurch, we must keep talking about it.

We must keep having the conversation because we cannot trade function for form.

The temptation will always be there because form is just so comfortable.

But we are not called to be comfortable.

We are called to be courageous.

Our city needs the hope that we have in Jesus.

And Jesus has given us to our city.

Paul calls us ambassadors of God, calling out to a broken world, be reconciled to Jesus.

As God moves us into our future, we will continue looking and searching for new places to start new metachurches, to get the gospel further and further and to take more and more ground in the spiritual battle that we are a part of.

But we will not look through the lens of form.

We will not seek where we can be the most comfortable.

We will stick to our function.

We will do whatever it takes to get people to Jesus.

And if we can be a function-driven, passionate, powerful movement, we will see things in our lifetime that we can only imagine.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we love you.

And as we come to wrap up this series, I ask that these truths would just be melded into our hearts.

God, I just believe in Jesus' name that in five years we will see different numbers on this area code.

We will see changes.

We will see crime decrease.

We will see your resources, your provision.

God, we're not making this move to make a name.

We're making this move to make a difference.

Not because of who we are, but because of who lives inside of us.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Now, as you guys know, we are asking everyone who's a part of Meta to come alongside of us, to help us push this function forward, to help us expand this movement.

We're raising$3 million, and here's how we're getting at it.

We're asking everyone who is a part of this movement to make a three-year financial commitment.

That is above and beyond your normal giving.

Some people can give$100, maybe$200 a month to this, and that's beautiful because we've said all along if 400 people give$200 a month for three years, that's$2.8 million.

We only need$3 million.

We crossed the halfway mark a couple of weeks ago.

God has been so, so good to us.

If you haven't yet made your pledge, be sure you go to metachurch.tv slash whatever it takes.

On the landing page, there's a big red button that says make your pledge.

When you click that on the first page, you're gonna put the full amount of your pledge.

This is the total of what you're gonna give over three years.

If you're giving 200 bucks a month on that first page, you're gonna put$7,200.

On the following pages, it will help you set up your gift to fulfill that.

Now, as always, we need you also to give operationally your normal offering that you give to help fund this movement.

You can do that online at metachurch.tv or by downloading the MetaCurch app.

You guys be sure that you're following us on social media.

And if you've been waiting for us to open back up, great news.

We are open at our Holotus venue.

We have 9.45 and 11.30 at 151.

We have 9.45, 11.30, and 115.

You can find out all that information on the website.

Thank you guys for being a part of this Whatever It Takes series.

We love you guys.

Continue to be safe and continue to be the movement.

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.