Discover Heartland - Week 4 - Statement of Faith, & Covenant

All right, good evening, everybody.

Good evening.

I played kickball with the kiddos, so I'm a little tired, but we'll get we'll get through it.

Let me pray for us and I'll kind of give you an overthrough.

We got a lot to an overview, excuse me.

We got a lot to cover, so we'll we'll have to move pretty quick.

Um But let me let me pray for us and then we'll we'll jump in.

Father, we're so grateful for who you are.

We're so uh thankful for the gospel.

Um God, just the reality that that every day we we wake up uh a new day and and uh we breathe air and uh God we are refreshed and uh God we're we're still sinners, um, yet we have the hope of the gospel.

So God just pause to thank you for that truth and that reality and thank you for who you are.

Um God, we we worship you even in the way that we uh conduct something like a membership class.

Uh we we do that for the purpose of bringing glory and honor to to you, and we ask that that would be exactly what takes place this evening, tonight, as we uh conclude this this four-part membership uh membership class.

Uh God, we pray uh just a prayer of thankfulness for your church and uh God that you sent Christ to to die for her and we have the privilege of being a part of it and um all the things that that entails as we've seen the last uh few weeks.

So we just ask that you be with our time.

Uh God uh give us um ears to hear, give me words to to speak.

Um God, may we look to your scripture, may we look to the New Testament specifically to see how we should function as a as a church and be not just committed to it, God, but but fight for it uh with all that we are.

We love you.

It's in Jesus' name that we pray.

Amen.

Amen.

Thank you guys.

Uh we're gonna jump in and we like I said, we have a lot to cover in part because we um there's just a lot to it.

It's probably more than I originally realized until I really started trying to dive into what I was gonna say about each thing.

So at the beginning, I just want to say we're covering chapter six through the end, which you guys will see that's 27, that's like 20 21 pages, nearly half the book.

So we're gonna breeze through some of these areas quicker than others.

For instance, the statement of faith will go through a little bit quicker just because we just spent about I can't remember what it was, 15 or 16 weeks teaching through the statement of faith.

So we'll hit it, but we'll hit the high points, it won't be exhaustive, and several of the other things won't be exhaustive, but we'll hit the high points.

And as always, at the end, I doubt there may be time for questions.

I doubt there will be, but at the end of the class in general, if you have questions, always feel free to come to myself or Michael or one of the other elders, and we're happy to answer your questions.

So we're gonna begin with this chapter six, which is the history of Heartland.

And I'm just gonna breeze through that quickly.

Some of you know this far greater than I, as you if you've already read this, I've only been around for about not quite five years, but almost five years.

The church has been around far long, far far longer than that.

Uh, so I don't know all of it.

In fact, most of the information I got I got from many of you.

So, but for those of you who are new, I do want to breeze, breeze through it.

And for those of you who've been here a while, you may not understand know the background of the of the church.

So I want to work through just a few things in relation to the history of Heartland.

It was planted in 2005 in South Haven.

Uh Steve Bennett was the planting or founding pastor.

To my understanding, there was some debate about this amongst different members that have been here for quite some time.

To my understanding, they met in the elementary school, um not South Haven Elementary School, the Soda Central Elementary School.

They met there until 2007, and then in 2007, they moved from the Soda Central Elementary School to what became known as the Hartmart, which was an old Walmart building on State Line Road that was uh retrofitted or whatever the right word is for a church to meet, and they met there for several years.

So that was 2005 they planted, 2007 it moved from the elementary school to the Hartmart up in the north side of the county.

2014 is when uh pastor Steve left to go to First Baptist Moss Bluff and uh assumed pastor it there.

Uh heartland, you guys, for those of you who are here, called Brian Carter to be the next pastor following Steve's departure.

Brian was here, it was during Brian's tenure that the church purchased this land.

From what I saw in our records, the land was purchased in 2016, I believe, and then the church was constructed and completed and moved into in 2019.

So Heartland has existed at this location at 3580 Gitwell Road since 2019.

And the purpose of here, from what I understand, was to be in the center of the county, right?

If you were to draw the county and put a dot right in the middle, we're we're almost right in the center of DeSota County, and that was purposeful in the uh the purchase of this land.

When Brian left in 2021, a guy named Etzel Bone came in and preached, uh, provided pulpit supply in the interim and began to introduce expositional preaching to Heartland, and he did so for several months very faithfully.

Uh God used that season of church life at Heartland.

God used Etzel in a mighty way to provide just some stability, as you guys know, in the life of churches when pastors or staff members, or sometimes multiple, which was the case of Heartland.

Multiple staff members leave for different reasons, whether to go uh Chris Wallace went to plant, we'll get to that here in a little bit later.

Uh, here a little bit later.

The the guy who was over youth went to Bolivia.

He was sent out to Bolivia, and then the lead pastor or or senior pastor left to go to First Baptist Moss Bluff, which was Brian.

You have multiple staff members leave.

That often causes instability within a church, right?

Etzel came in and really helped provide some stability in the interim.

And then I got here in October of 2021, um, which was a total God thing for for our family.

Um, I say by God's grace we we landed here.

Grateful to be here.

And then in 2022, uh is when you the structure of the church began to to shift.

Um we went from like the CEO, or not CEO, senior pastor model of church polity, which we talked about church polity a couple of weeks ago, to the elder-led model, which is what we currently operate under.

Uh so that's when that shift happened.

We voted to make that shift in 2022, and then about six months after, I believe it was August of 2022, we made that shift.

About six months after that, is when we uh voted to affirm our first group of lay elders to accompany Dylan and I as staff elders, and that's how we got to where we are today with a plurality of multiple elders who are charged for caring for your soul.

One of the cool things about Heartland, one of the attractive things to me even before coming here, was it had this history of sending people out and being very intentional to care for other people, to share the gospel with other people.

Uh Heartland Hands, I don't know if you guys knew Heartland Hands birthed out of Heartland Church.

Uh, so that's one specific local way that the church was very intentional in providing and caring for the needs of those around them.

Uh, there are multiple families when I got here that I began to understand there there were two families actually that had been sent out to serve overseas uh through Heartland and through NYX, right?

We have the church plant in Bismarck.

That was a plant from Heartland where Chris Wallace and his family was sent to Bismarck.

The church provided significant financial support for that family to go and to do that through North American Mission Board, which we'll get to here in a few moments when we talk about SBC and cooperation.

And then now, today, as of 2025, we shared this with you guys in the latter part of 2025.

Heartland doesn't just have a uh church plant, but we have a granddaughter church because Cope City Church, where Chris Wallace is, where Chris Wallace planted, has planted another church in Mandan, Oklahoma, which is called Citizens Church.

So the the beautiful one of the beautiful things for me about Heartland before I ever came here was just this history, this rich history of we are going to be intentional to care for the community and to send out workers into the harvest.

And that is a beautiful thing, and we're grateful for that.

One of the things I wanted to point out in your I believe it's in your book is that population growth thing.

Between 2020 and 2024 in DeSota County, the according to the census data, we can argue the accuracy of this, but not not the point.

But according to the census data, 170,000 107,000 approximately in 2000 made up DeSota County.

2024, which again is a couple years old, it was up to 195,000.

107 jumped all the way to 195 in 24 years.

That's crazy, that's almost a hundred percent increase nearly in 24 years.

I would venture to say by 2026, we probably are near, if not at, 100% increase, which is wild, which I say all that to say we believe in the importance of there being multiple healthy, thriving churches within our community because there are multiple families within our community who do not have church homes.

And the more people that are in our community, the more churches that we need, which is why when we talk about partnerships here, you will hear us talk about people who have planted in DeSota County, who have planted in uh at the Lewisburg Middle School, who have planted in different areas of the county that we support, right?

They're not our competition, they are co-laborers with us for the purpose of the kingdom in the county.

So that's just kind of some history of Heartland and kind of where we are today to give you a picture of where Heartland Church has been and where we are now.

And I want to also speak to cooperation and affiliation.

This is another whole chapter in your book.

Cooperation and affiliation.

Heartland Church, if you didn't know it, we are a cooperating church with the Southern Baptist Convention.

Uh I'll I'll speak to the Southern Baptist Convention in a couple of different ways.

One one specific way I'll speak to it is sometimes people ask me questions, well, like, doesn't Southern Baptists not get everything right?

There's no person that's perfect, there's no church that's perfect, and there's no denomination that's perfect.

So I'll just I'll lay that out there.

But one of the beautiful things about Southern Baptists is the way that they have handled and continue to handle past, present, and even well, I won't say future sins, but past and present mistakes that the convention has made.

They are super intentional to step in with full confession and repentance, uh, specifically around things like slavery, because that's kind of a stain in the past of Southern Baptists.

I would encourage you to go on to SBC.net and read what's called resolutions and read about those resolutions and read what those resolutions say, because in those resolutions, which the resolutions, without getting into the all the weeds of the SBC, the resolutions are things that are used to drive the convention and the entities of the convention.

It's what the convention looks to.

They're decisions made by the messengers, which I'll get to here in a few moments, that really drive the seminaries, they drive the International Mission Board and North American Mission Board.

And what you see in those is there's a lot of humility in those resolutions, specifically around areas where they may have failed in history.

So I'd encourage you to go check those out.

They're absolutely fascinating.

SBC also is a it's a bottom-up organization.

And what I mean by that is that every SBC church is autonomous.

That's why you can go to five SBC churches in DeSota County and have five completely 100% different experiences because every single church is autonomous.

There's no one in Nashville that is telling us as Heartland Church, that's where the executive committee is of the SBC is in Nashville.

There's no one in Nashville telling us what we have to do in the gathering.

We are autonomous.

There's no one in Nashville telling us who our pastor has to be, or who our pastors have to be, or who our worship leader has to be, because we are autonomous.

What happens is every June, messengers from all the cooperating churches, which is about 50,000 of them, gather at the annual meeting.

I'll be going to the annual meeting this year.

I try to go every year.

It's in Orlando this year, it moves around, and we participate in this annual meeting and we vote on different issues like the resolutions that I mentioned a moment ago and other things that really steer the direction of the convention and its entities throughout the year.

The convention is controlled by churches, which varies from other denominations that we might know in our mind and that we might be familiar with, where the churches are controlled by the convention.

What happens in the SBC is the convention is driven and controlled by the churches.

And there's two specific things.

You don't have to understand all the inner workings of the SBC as a congregant or as a church member, but there are two things I want to draw your attention to that I think are important for you to at least have some grasp or understanding of.

The first one is the cooperative program, and the second one is the Baptist Faith and Message, which is what our statement of faith is if you've looked at our beliefs on our website.

I want if you have that booklet, I want you to turn to page 29.

Turn to page 29 with me.

And at the bottom of page 29, what I want to uh draw your attention to is the line that says in 2025 and 2026, the budget for CP was$190 million, and then there's bullet points after that.

So what the cooperative program is, is every church to be in cooperation with the SBC, friendly cooperation, you have to give something to the cooperative program, and you have to affirm the Baptist faith and message.

Hence why I said the two important things for you to know and to understand as a congregate are the cooperative program and the Baptist faith and message.

The cooperative program, where that$190 million goes, or where it comes from, it's the 50,000 cooperating churches who set aside X number of dollars, each church different, each church different percentages, each church different amounts, to go to the cooperative program.

That cooperative program money is then broken up by those categories, as you see on your sheet.

The executive committee and the SBC operating budget.

The executive committee, that's what I referred to earlier, is in Nashville,$12 million, right?

International Mission Board, which you guys have heard me talk about that,$94 million.

North American Mission Board, which is the North America aspect of our missions and sending Hope City Church was supported by North American Mission Board in its planting efforts.

They do everything from uh planter assessment and training to providing funds for church plants in different areas,$42,$43 million.

And then the six seminaries, there's six of them.

There's about$41 million that go to the seminaries and they're broken up uh differently with each each seminary.

So I want to point that out for a couple of different reasons because that is a really it's a beautiful cooperative effort for the sake of the gospel.

Since 2010, I want you to think about this.

North American Mission Board has planted over 11,000 churches.

11,000 churches in North America because of the efforts of cooperation through the cooperative program.

Additionally, at any given time, the IMB International Mission Board has over 10,000 missionaries serving around the world in some of the most difficult and dark, darkest places to the gospel.

Right?

All of that is made possible by the cooperative program.

So one of the things that SBC does really, really well is it funds and sends missionaries, whether that be North American missionaries, whether that be international missionaries.

The SBC does that really, really, really well.

I would encourage you if you want to know more about the cooperative program, I could I could spend three hours kind of going through the specifics of the cooperative program, the specifics of the SBC, of each entity, how all that works.

You can read more about that at SBC.net as well.

You could also just Google Cooperative Program.

There's a lot of information out there if you're interested to know more about that.

I put some quotes in your book as well that speak to the cooperative program.

Now, the second aspect of the SBC that's important for you to understand as a congregant is the statement of faith, which is our Baptist faith and message.

We're gonna speak to that in specific detail uh later on, but for now, just know the Baptist faith and message is our statement of faith, and uh it's something that we affirm to be in friendly cooperation with the SBC.

We give to the cooperative program.

Again, there's no preset amount, we just have to give something, and we affirm the Baptist faith and message.

Therefore, that's what when we say we're in friendly cooperation with, that's what that means.

So when you hear us say we are in cooperation with the SBC, that's what that means.

We give the cooperative program and affirm the Baptist faith message.

We'll speak to the Baptist faith and message more in a couple of chapters.

But before we move on from SBC and um our cooperation and also our partnerships, I want to speak to the Pillar Network.

We are also associated with the the Pillar Network.

Uh Pillar Network, I have it in here for you, but I'm gonna read it for you.

It's not a denomination, rather, according to its own definition, it's a community of SBC, Southern Baptist churches, and international Baptist churches that are doctrinally aligned, missionally driven, and committed to equipping, planting, and revitalizing churches.

I'm gonna read for you.

There are six pillars of DNA, and then you'll say, Oh, that sounds a lot like us.

All right, let me read for those for you.

Gospel proclamation, right?

We proclaim the gospel of our sovereign Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Hopefully that sounds like every church, but that's sounds like like us.

Biblical authority.

We submit to the Bible as one our final authority in life, faith, and doctrine.

Right?

That is something that's in our statement of faith.

If you remember and you've signed our statement of faith, one of the, I think it's the first bullet point of our state of our church covenant, excuse me.

It's in our church covenant.

One of the first bullet points is I submit to scripture as the final arbitrator of all things, right?

We submit to scripture and biblical authority.

Live exposition, we promote live expository preaching to equip the church.

Again, that's what we're about here at Heartland, elder-led.

We believe in congregationalism, which you guys see that when we uh exercise voting as a church and do other things as a church, but we are elder-led.

Men, uh the elders is reserved for men, as you see there.

Confessionally Baptists, right?

We unite around historic Baptist theology and we're kingdom-minded.

We cooperate to start and strengthen churches all over the world.

So that's what pillar is.

And what the elder what you see at the bottom of that page, and what I printed out for you, all of the elders have also affirmed those documents that are back there and printed for you.

We have affirmed the abstractive principles, right?

I would encourage you to read, read through these.

Again, we don't have time to teach on all these, but we've affirmed the abstractive principles.

We've affirmed the Dander Statement on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, we've affirmed the Chicago statement on biblical inerrancy, and we've affirmed the national statement on biblical sexuality.

Again, so as a church to partner with the Pillar Network, the eld the elders who lead have to affirm those different documents, and that's something that we as elders have affirmed.

And again, I printed these out for you so you would have them in case you're interested in what those were.

I didn't want them just to be some arbitrary documents that are out there, so I wanted you to have a chance to read those if you so uh desire to do so.

So I would encourage you to sift through those if that's something that you want to do.

So now that that's Pillars, that's SBC, that's our denomination.

Pillar is just uh a group that we cooperate with, it's not a denomination.

Uh we are partnering with with the Pillar Network, and then uh here from there, I want us to go to statement of faith.

And again, this is not this is gonna be a breeze through.

As you can see, our statement of praise faith is pretty extensive, so this is gonna be a breeze through our statement of faith.

But what I do want to point you to is if you haven't seen our Heartland Church Word and Mission podcast, we spent, I can't, I think it was 17 weeks and we went through every single aspect of not just our statement of faith, but just different distinctives about Heartland Church.

Many of the distinctives that we just pointed out from Pillar Network, we went through during that.

I would encourage you, if you want to do a deeper dive in our statement of faith, go find that podcast and go listen to those because some of the things that I'll cover in two or three sentences, we covered in two or three weeks on Wednesday night as we work through our statement of faith.

So I would encourage you to go check that out.

But for tonight, we're just gonna hit some of the high notes of the statement of faith scriptures.

We believe it to be d divinely inspired.

Also, let me just say this because I I Treasure our statement of faith and the things within it because they are they are what I believe to be accurate and true.

I don't want you to hear or feel my going through it quickly as me discounting it.

That's not what I'm doing.

So let me just give that statement as I prepare to work through these quickly.

Scripture, we believe it to be divinely inspired, totally true and trustworthy, trustworthy, excuse me.

It's what it says within the context of our statement of faith.

Another way of saying that is it's inerrant and infallible, right?

It's the testimony of Christ.

And we believe for us as believers, as we read it, there's also this divine revelation that takes place as the Spirit helps us see and read the words of Scripture.

So that's what we believe about Scripture.

Uh God essentially we believe in the Trinity, exists in three persons, eternal, right?

And the three persons are God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Uh man, we believe man to be made in the image of God, all men, all nationalities, all ethnicities, all colors, all languages.

We believe that in the beginning man was in the garden and there was no sin, and then man screwed up, and then there was sin, right?

Because we fell into temptation.

Right?

You can study more, you can do a deep dive on that in the doctrine of man or biblical anthropology, but just for the purpose of tonight, man was created in God's image.

Man sinned.

We still are created in God's image.

Salvation, uh, we believe it to be by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.

One thing I wanted to point out here, and it's something that uh we I think uh probably four, three or four times over the last five or six months, this has just come up in sermon text, and you'll you'll know what I mean if you've listened on Sunday.

If you don't know what I mean, then maybe I'm not uh speaking in a way that you can remember, and I apologize for that.

But uh you you've heard me say that salvation isn't just our justification, right?

It's our right, it's justification, it's sanctification, it's also our regeneration, it's also glorification, right?

All of those things are a part of salvation, and that's something I wanted to speak to just briefly and highlight for you.

I believe the Baptist faith and message even takes each one of those regeneration, justification, sanctification, and glorification, and it gives a sentence or two in scriptures with each one because all of those are part of the salvation process, right?

So we we believe that to be true.

God's purposes of grace.

I'm gonna read for you two different paragraphs that I think are important to grasp and understand from that one.

Election is the gracious purpose of God, according to which he regenerates, justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies sinners.

It is consistent with the free agency of man and comprehends all the means in connection with the end.

It is the glorious display of God's sovereign goodness and is infinitely wise, holy, and unchangeable.

And then also, another one here that's important, all true believers endure to the end.

Those whom God has accepted in Christ and sanctified by his spirit will never fall away from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end.

That's you've heard us use language like perseverance of the saints.

That's what that is referring to.

So that's God's purposes of grace.

The church speaks to two specific things with the church, the local church and the universal church, right?

The local church, uh it defines it as a New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers.

That right there is one of the reasons that I am convictionally Baptist, autonomy within the local church, associated by covenant and faith and fellowship of the gospel, observing the two ordinances of Christ, governed by his laws, the two ordinances, by the way, baptism and Lord's Supper, governed by his laws, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by his word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth.

Then the universal church, the New Testament speaks also of the church as the body of Christ, which includes all the redeemed of all the ages, believers from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

So you have the local church and you have the universal church as part of the church.

You have baptism and the Lord's Supper, the two ordinances of the church.

We've spent a ton of time on these lately, so I'm kind of going through them fairly quickly, but baptism by immersion after conversion.

I didn't mean to rhyme, but I kind of just did, right?

Baptism by immersion after conversion is the summation of our belief of baptism.

And then the Lord's Supper, it's an ordinance of the church, it's something that we we do together, uh something that we participate in with one another.

It's how the many become one.

It's a symbolic act of obedience, memorializing what Christ did, but also anticipating the return of Christ.

That is the Lord's Supper.

The last things, I did want to stop here because you guys have heard me say, so I know some of you had in conversation, the Baptist faith and message does a really good job of standing firm where it needs to stand firm and leaving room where it needs to leave room.

This is one of those examples of leaving room where it needs to leave room.

It leaves room for interpretation where scripture leaves room.

There is no way, I don't care how passionate you are about your end times understanding, there is no way that someone can, with absolute certainty, know exactly the timeline about all the different things that are going to take place.

Some of the guys that I read and listen to that I respect more than anybody, you'll hear them in interviews say, somebody will say, Well, you said this in 1995, and he's like, dude, I've changed my mind five times since then, right?

Scripture leaves room for interpretation there.

And if you read that particular aspect of the Baptist Faith message, I think it does a really good job of making sure it's clear that Jesus comes back and Jesus wins.

The specifics of all that, there's room for interpretation, and we don't have to all be in agreement on when the thousand years happens and when this happens and when this happens.

We just are in agreement on that.

Jesus comes back and Jesus wins, right?

So it leaves room for interpretation.

That's one of the beautiful aspects of the Baptist faith and message, and it's highlighted well with last things.

Evangelism, I just want to hit here, that's every believer's job.

It's every believer's job, not just those who have the gift of evangelism, not just those who are paid by the church, but it's every believer's job to proclaim the good news of the gospel to a lost world.

Stewardship, according to scripture, Christians, believers should contribute, and they should do so cheerfully and regularly and uh proportionally, and all the things that it says there in uh the statement of faith from Scripture.

Peace and war.

I love this.

Uh I haven't read through this aspect of it in quite some time, but I love I love what it has to say here.

I'm going to read it for you.

The true remedy for the war spirit is the gospel of our Lord.

The supreme need of the world is the acceptance of his teachings and all the affairs of men and nations and the practical application of his law of love.

Christian people throughout the world should pray for the reign of the Prince of Peace.

When we think we have the answer, we do, but it's the gospel.

Right?

And I love that about what it says there.

Religious liberty, right?

The church should not uh resort to civil power to carry out its work, right?

We should resort to the means of grace, we should resort to the message of the gospel, and we should pursue that to the end.

The family, I'll spend a little bit longer here just because it's a little bit more of an extensive uh point.

God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society, I believe is the way the Baptist faith and message speaks to it.

And I love that it it speaks to uh it is composed of people related to one another.

It talks about them being related by marriage, right?

You get married and you're related.

It talks about them being related by blood, but it also talks about them being related by adoption, which I love as an adoptive dad, right?

I love that, and it's it's so true, and it's a picture of the gospel.

Speaks to marriage.

Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman and a covenant commitment for a lifetime, right?

Not for a moment, not till it gets difficult, but for a lifetime.

It is God's unique revelation to us, right?

It is it is a gift to us, and it's a picture of Christ and his church.

It's something that we should hold in high esteem because scripture holds it in high esteem.

And I want to I want to speak cautiously here because I do know that there are folks in this room, many of who are divorced.

But I I want to say, according to Scripture, a concession to divorce without biblical grounds, biblical grounds could be abuse, abandonment, adultery, is considered a concession to sin.

Now, it's heavy.

And it it should be heavy.

We should have a high view of marriage because scripture calls us to that.

But I also want to say, if you have taken the path of divorce, as with other sins, God's grace abounds in your life.

God's grace abounds in your life.

I have c I've had conversations with many of you, and you have expressed sorrow over your past sins, and at the same time been able to proclaim a joyful hope because of God's grace.

If you have been divorced without biblical grounds five years or ten years or fifteen years or twenty years or forty years, my prayer for you is that you have done your business with the Lord and that you are living in the joyful grace that He has bestowed upon your life.

Right?

As with other sins, if you have truly repented, rest in God's grace.

So that's marriage.

I wish I could spend more time on all of those, but we don't have time because we're already halfway through and I still have a lot of pages left to cover.

Now I want to work through the church covenant.

We're gonna spend probably more time here than on anything else.

And I am going against my personality and I'm not doing notes.

I have some scribble that I've written on the church covenant.

I hope you were able to grab one of these on your way in.

Does everybody have one of these?

Everybody have one?

Okay.

If anybody doesn't have one, if just raise your hand and Tom or Ashley, would you guys mind taking one to everybody?

Okay, cool.

Thank you guys.

So I'm gonna read the top uh part of it for you, and then I'm gonna work through each bullet point systematically.

As those who have experienced the grace of life changed by the gospel of Jesus Christ, we have the opportunity to reflect the character of Christ through the pursuit of certain attitudes and actions and the rejection of others.

The scriptures refer to this reality as living by the Spirit.

The requirements of this membership covenant are in no way intended as an addition to the biblical obligations of a believer.

Rather, this document functions primarily as an accessible yet not non-exhaustive explanation of what uh the scriptures teach about the obedience that faith produces.

And it says, I covenant.

So if you join Heartland, and we'll get to this in a few moments, this is one of the things that you are required to do upon joining is signing this membership covenant and agreeing to these things.

The first one, this is one I pointed out a few moments ago, to submit to the authority of Scripture as the final arbitrator on all issues.

Kind of an example of this is any point that you come to in your life and you're like, man, what do I do here?

Whether that's conflict, whether that's relational conflict, uh, maybe it's marriage conflict, maybe it's a, maybe it's even a I'm trying to think of other examples, um, how you treat other people within the context of the local church, how you treat uh non-believers, how you treat believers, how you serve within the church, how you give within the church, how you worship within the church, how you handle any and all things.

The question that you should be asking yourselves when you come to different moments in those areas, really all areas, is what does God's word say about this?

Submitting to scripture as a final arbitrator of all things means that if you come up to a situation and you say, Man, it would be the easiest thing for me to do is this, and that's really what I want to do, but I recognize that God's word says I need to do the opposite of that.

Submitting to Scripture as the final arbitrator of all things means I'm going to do this, even though it's much more difficult and it's going to take a lot more time.

I'm submitting to God's word as the final arbitrator of all things.

Right?

So when we when you sign and agree to that, that is something that you are covenanting with one another to do, and also covenanting with one another to keep each other accountable in that area.

And I want you guys to keep me accountable on that, and that's one of the things that we as elders want to keep you guys accountable to as well.

Um, so submitting to the scriptures is the final arbitrator of all things.

Second one, to pursue the Lord Jesus Christ through regular Bible reading, prayer, fellowship, and the practice of spiritual disciplines.

Right?

One of the beautiful things about the New Testament, and it seems like this has hit time and time again over the last several weeks, both in 1 Corinthians and with other things that we have talked about, is all the one another passages in Scripture.

We are a covenanted body of believers.

We're in this effort to pursue Christ-likeness together.

So when we we covenant to pursue the Lord Jesus Christ through through those things, we are covenanting that individually and we're covenanting that alongside of our brothers and and sisters, which means that we should be intentional in our own life to be carrying out the spiritual disciplines that we see in God's word, doing everything that we can to do so.

And we should also be intentional if we know a brother or sister who is struggling to be able to carry those out, to come alongside them and help them do the same.

And that's what it means to pursue the Lord Jesus Christ through those things regularly.

This doesn't mean that if you miss a day, you're gonna get smacked on the hand, right?

God's grace abounds, right?

That we're not in the business of doing that type of silly uh upkeep, right?

But that is something we should we should be asking each other that.

I I hope there are brothers or sisters in your life that are saying, hey, how much have you been in the Lord in the Word this week?

How much are you are you in prayer on a regular basis?

And if they say no, they're asking you questions like, well, what can I do to help you increase that?

What can I do to help you?

Maybe you're reading the Bible three days a week.

How can I help you read it five days a week or seven days a week?

What can I do as your brother to help you in that effort?

But that's something we should be doing on a regular basis.

Third one, to follow the command and example of Jesus by participating in the ordinance prescribed to his church, right?

One of these is by being baptized after my conversion, right?

That's something that we believe is you are baptized post-conversion.

The second one is by regularly remembering and celebrating the person and work of Christ through communion, through the Lord's Supper.

That's what we do every week.

And there's intentionality and reason why we do it every week.

If you didn't have a chance to read the email that Michael sent the week that we made that shift, I would highly encourage you to do that.

But I do want to point, I've had multiple conversations with people, with you guys, who have come to me and said, Thank you.

I want the whole congregation to be able to hear this.

Thank you for doing this every week because it really helps me keep my sin before me.

Right?

It's helped the Lord, the Spirit has revealed some sins in my life because every week I'm I am intentionally approaching the table in a worthy manner as we honor Christ, and my sins are ever before me, and it's helped me, and even in my effort to kill sin.

So there is fruit from that, and it's a beautiful thing.

The next one to regularly participate in the life of Harlan Church by attending weekly worship, weekly services, engaging in discipleship, and serving those within and outside the church.

This gets into the disciples' path that we hit a couple weeks ago, so I'm not gonna spend a ton of time here, but if you are a covenanted body, uh covenanted member of the body of Christ, you should be attending the gathering.

You should be attending the gathering because you are a follower of Jesus and you see the importance of the gathering.

As I said Sunday, the glory of Christ is palpable in the gathering of God's people.

There is a reason that we we gather to bring Him glory and to encourage one another and all those things.

So we should be doing those things regularly.

Steward God's uh steward the resources God has given me, including time, talents, spiritual gifts, and finances.

This includes regular financial giving, service, and participation in the community that is sacrificial, cheerful, and voluntary.

I've used language before, like we give and we serve because God first gave and first served us.

Right?

We are giving out of an expression of adoration and we are doing so selflessly, and we are doing so not just, I think so many times we talk about giving and we only think about financial resources.

That's part of the reason why in our purpose impact way, when you outline the way, when it looks at this disciples' path and you see discipleship and sending, part of the reason that we say selfless living there and not just giving is because it's more than finances that we're called to give.

We're called to give of our time, we're called to give of our finances, we're called to serve the body of Christ and called to serve those outside the body as well.

The next one, by God's grace, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to walk in holiness in all areas of life as an act of worship to Jesus Christ.

These next three are a little uh kind of more in your face.

To walk in holiness in all areas of life as an act of worship to Jesus Christ.

This doesn't mean that we're going to be perfect, but it does mean that we're gonna seek to kill sin, right?

As John, I think it's John Owen that said, be killing sin or sin will be killing you.

That's that's a posture that you as a believer should be doing anyways, but that's something that we want all we want everyone to covenant together to do is to actively kill sin as you pursue holiness.

And one of the things I think we need to update in in this statement of faith, both with this point and with the point to do the following when I sin is part of walking in holiness, and it involves confessing sin to God and fellow believers.

It involves uh repenting and seeking help, right?

To put sin to death, as we see outlined later on.

But it also involves moving out of shame and into grace on the back end of sin.

So I want I want to point that out.

Part of uh pursuing and walking in in holiness is living in his grace after you sin and repent of said sin.

We are called to not be uh those who who walk around in shame.

We have been given freedom from shame, and we need to be walking around in God's grace.

So I'd encourage you with that one as well.

Believers should strive to put certain attitudes and actions to death while stirring and stimulating love and good deeds through the spirit.

This is a little more in your face.

This is things like the need to be right.

This is things like pride.

This is things like in a conflict situation refusing to consider the other side.

This is things like in a conflict situation refusing to sit consider the counsel of a third party, a brother or sister who is speaking to both of you.

This is refusing to uh receive the counsel of the elders who will give an account before the God of creation for your soul.

Those are the attitudes that we are called to put to death that that are all in essence rooted in pride.

And we know from from scripture, and if you've been alive for any amount of time, you know from life that pride destroys, right?

Pride absolutely destroys, and it will, if a if a local congregation allows it to, it will also destroy a local church.

It will disrupt unity, it'll ruin gospel witness, it will discourage brothers and sisters, it destroys, but we know from scripture that love builds up.

So the attitudes that we are called to put to death are the ones that destroy gospel witness.

The attitudes that we are called to give life to is the ones that build up.

So we should be putting pride to death and building up the love of Christ as we communicate that and share that with others and the way we treat them.

The next one to refrain from such activities that Scripture would deem foolish.

I don't have an exhaustive list to go through here, but if Scripture, this kind of goes in hand in hand with the authority of Scripture as a final arbitrator.

If Scripture specifically speaks to something being foolish, you probably shouldn't do it, right?

Now, there are also a lot uh also understand there's a lot of of areas that are are gray areas, and we'll get to that in the next point.

And I love how the next point follows this, but the ones that are black and white, you should you shouldn't do it.

And you should put those things to death and seek to put those things to death.

Like what I said earlier with John Owen, be killing sin, or it'll be killing The next one goes hand in hand with this one.

This is an important one.

And I wish I had time to dive into some specific topics with here.

And I'm going to keep my try my best to keep my mouth shut about specific topics because I don't want to open a can of worms that I don't have time to fully close before we leave, but to take seriously the responsibility of Christian freedom, especially actions or situations that could present a stumbling block to another.

Right?

So we're called to put activities to death that Scripture would deem foolish.

And then it also speaks to take seriously the responsibility of Christian freedom.

And this is what I was talking about with the some of some of the things are gray.

And again, I'm not going to bring up a gray area topic because I don't want to open a can of worms, but some topics are gray.

There may be some specific things that some people in this room would say, I think scripture gives me freedom to participate in this.

And other people in this room would say, I don't think scripture gives me freedom to participate in this.

Do you understand that both sides of that, if not careful, can uh unfortunately present a stumbling block to the other?

If we get caught up in pride and demand that we are right or demand that we are right, we can cause division and we can ultimately uh cause issues that that would uh be a stumbling block for the other person.

And that's not good, right?

That's not good.

So when we are called to take seriously the responsibility of Christian freedom, we have to be very careful.

If if I believe I have a right to do this, but I know my dear brother struggles with the same thing, I'm gonna be very, very, very careful with that.

Very careful with that.

Why?

Because I don't want to be a stumbling block to my brother.

I don't want to be a stumbling block to my sister.

And the same is true, the inverse as well.

Like if I am so hard-nosed on this issue, and my my brother isn't, I can come across as legalistic and demeaning towards that other brother.

I've even seen with certain issues, um, I've even seen the other person receive this person's communication as discounting that person's salvation.

That's not good either.

That's a stumbling block the other way.

We have to be careful with our Christian freedom as it relates to different issues and actions and situations.

And at the end of the day, scripture calls us to build one another up.

And we need to do things that build one another up and not tear one another down.

Now, I wish I had time to hit all those issues, and I don't, but if you want to talk more about that, I'm happy to talk with you more.

To do the following when I sin, confess my sin to God and to fellow believers, right?

To be clear, when you are, when you experience salvation, you're saved from all past, present, future sins.

To be crystal clear.

However, there's an act of humility and submission to the Lord that we need to be in, a posture that we need to be in at all times as believers, and that's why that's important.

Also, repent and seek help to put my sin to death, right?

There's a reason that we've been given one another by God, right?

We need one another in this uh war that we're in against sin that will not end until we are in glory, right?

We need one another.

So we need to repent and seek help to put sin to death, both from the Lord and also from our brothers and sisters.

And I would add to this, and in our bylaw revision, we probably will add to this, to live in God's grace.

Like once you do those things, get out of shame.

The devil wants you to be living in shame.

Shame leads to darkness, darkness leads to more sin.

Get out of shame and live in God's grace.

Now, the next one got two more.

To submit to the pastors and other leaders of the church and diligently strive for the unity of peace within the church.

This is kind of awkward on for me to talk about.

Uh, I think Michael had this a few weeks ago in the end of 1 Corinthians 16.

God has ordained the office of elder for the good of us, right?

He's an ordained deacons to serve the body for the good of us, right?

We submit to uh the pastors for a reason because it's God's design, right?

And what we're gonna do, and I I think this point should be connected to that first one, because anytime that you come to me with anything or there's any kind of situation, I don't care how hard it is, the thing that I and the rest of the elders are gonna do, we're gonna say, How shall we respond according to God's word?

And we're gonna do everything we can to respond according to God's word.

So, really, what you're doing when you do that, when you submit to the elders or the pastors, is you are submitting to God's word, because that's where we're gonna point you to.

And what we know if we all live in submission to God's word, it will in turn protect the unity and peace within the church, right?

So ultimately we submit to the pastors and other leisures of the church for the purpose of God's glory, and ultimately it protects the unity and peace within the church.

And sometimes, the reality of this, I've been pastoring too long here and in other places.

Sometimes those uh situations where you're being called to submit, they're not fun conversations for the pastors either, right?

They're not, oh yes, I get to have a difficult conversation with someone.

I don't, I don't, I'm not a person that like runs from conflict.

I don't mind conflict, but it still sucks, right?

Just being honest.

It still isn't fun sometimes.

Maybe I shouldn't have used that word.

I'm I apologize.

I don't think there are any young ears in here, but go ahead and apologize before I get emails.

Uh, then the last one to do the following shall I leave the church for a righteous reason, to notify the appropriate staff meeting member and to seek another church with which I carry out my biblical responsibilities as a believer.

And we have nine minutes left, so I'm gonna breeze through something that we have in this booklet.

And let me flip to I can't remember what page it's in.

It's towards the end.

There are six questions that we've outlined for you to help.

Oh, here it is.

Yeah, it's on page 44.

It's on page 44.

Leaving a church in a biblically appropriate way.

From the outset of membership, we we leaving a church is never fun, even if it's for for good reasons, right?

It's it's not it's not fun.

It can be difficult.

There's a biblically appropriate way to do.

So whether it's a um hard situation or whether it's just you moved or you're being sent out, it's it's not fun, but there's some healthy questions that you can ask yourself to kind of evaluate.

And we want to encourage you and ask you to coven it as you uh consider membership from the outset of membership that if you decide to consider leaving, the Lord uh stirs in you to consider leaving, to ask yourself these six questions.

The first one, have you spent adequate time in prayer?

The number of times individuals leave churches without ever praying and seeking the Lord's direction and counsel is mind-numbing.

Believers should be in prayer prior to joining a church, and they should be in prayer also prior to leaving a church.

The second one, have you spent adequate time seeking the counsel of the elders at Heartland?

The elders at Heartland take seriously the responsibility to present you mature in Christ.

Again, we will never beg you to stay, but we will seek to provide you with biblical counsel.

The third one, is it an issue?

This is a hard one, is it an issue of earthly preferences, felt needs, or entertainment desires?

Another way to frame this question is this Are you chasing after what you want in a church or what God wants in a church?

Church health is not measured by a man's preferences, numbers, or entertainment value.

Its health is measured by its obedience to the commands of Christ for his church, as we see laid out in the New Testament.

The fourth one, am I leaving because of a sin issue I am unwilling to address?

Are you actively being confronted by a brother or sister or the church and desiring to flee so there will be no confrontation?

The fifth one, am I in conflict with another member of Heartland?

One of the most heartbreaking realities about the church is that conflict does happen.

There is beauty when conflict is resolved according to Scripture.

However, there is disunity, not just in a relationship or a congregation, but get this, I want you to hear this, but the kingdom, when believers flee from resolving conflict because of pride, arrogance, or an unwillingness to walk through the difficult task of biblical conflict resolution.

Oftentimes we think out of sight, out of mind, the kingdom hurts.

Not just the you, not just the other person, not just that local church you're leaving, but the kingdom hurts if conflict isn't pursued according to scripture.

Conflict resolution isn't pursued according to scripture.

The sixth one, is it an issue of doctrine?

As discussed previously, one of the beauties of the SBC and our statement of faith is that it stands firm where scripture stands firm and leaves room where scripture leaves room.

Leaving because of a different view on end times is a second or even a third level issue.

We can all have different eschatological views and still joyfully covenant with one another.

And again, I'm not I did that was just an example.

We're not saying that people are leaving because of end times.

That's just an example.

However, differing views on the Trinity is not a first-level issue.

If someone denies the doctrine of the Trinity, they would have a difficult time covenanting themselves to the church at Heartland.

When considering leaving a church over a doctrine issue, the question must be asked: is it an issue that should divide, or is it a secondary or a tertiary matter?

Right?

And leaving a congregation, even for biblically and faithful appropriate reasons, it should always be done in a way that limits this unity and does not create any unnecessary division.

Now, with that, I've got five minutes.

I've breeze through those probably too quickly, but I've got five minutes, and I want to walk you through if you join or if you already are a member at Heartland, what you have committed to or are you going to commit to if you decide to join?

The member commitments can be summarized.

I listed four things in this booklet, but it can be summarized four things.

You're regularly attending the gathering.

Again, this is expressed in other areas, but we wanted to make a point to say that.

How important the gathering is of God's people.

We don't want you to join and then never show up again.

And that's that has nothing to do with the seat not being filled.

That has everything to do with your soul, right?

Regular attendance of the gathering is important.

The church covenant, you'll be required to sign and commit to and covenant yourselves to this body of believers and sign that covenant that we just walked through.

The disciples' path that we walked through a few weeks ago, you'll be agreeing to participate in discipleship.

You'll be agreeing to live out God's grace.

You'll be agreeing agreeing to participate in prayer and pursue prayer and selfless living and sending, which means you are agreeing to share the gospel and acknowledging that it's all believers' responsibility to share the gospel and sound teaching.

Right?

We're committed to sound teaching and ask you to commit to the same, to sound doctrine.

And then the last one is what we just walked through to leave in a biblically appropriate way if the Lord so leads.

I think I've shared examples like this before.

It hasn't happened here as often, but the church I went to before, there was a Kroger that everybody went to, and I can't tell you how many times I would see someone that I loved and I would love to have a conversation with them.

But I was on staff, I was a pastor on staff, and they left the church and they saw me, and they didn't know I saw them, but it was like one of these, like I'm out, right?

Leave in a biblically appropriate way.

If I see you after you leave, I want to see you and embrace you and maybe even sit down and have a cup of coffee with you if you have the time to do so, right?

We're in this together, we're not in opposition to one another, we're on the same team, right?

So leave appropriately.

That's something we ask you to commit to.

Next steps.

You'll see a step-by-step guide in the book as well for during uh what to do next.

It's on page 47 and 48.

Um, and to some people, I understand that this man, you have a 50-page, and it's gonna be longer after this.

I have some things I want to add.

You have a 50-page membership book that you ask people who are joining your church to do.

You you want us to sit through four weeks of a class.

Isn't that over, Kil?

But what uh one of the things that's been my prayer since we started working towards this is that we all would gain a greater understanding for how serious church membership is in God's Word.

How serious church membership is.

And we want to do everything we can for you to be aware of that prior to joining.

And a healthy and thriving church membership process protects the church, right?

It protects the church, it safeguards you as individual believers, and most importantly, it equips us all to pursue the glory of Christ.

And I just want to confess for you over the last five years, I'll say myself and I'll include the other elders in this as well.

We we have not done a good job of overseeing the church membership process.

I've I have failed you in that.

So I want to confess that to you.

But we are committed to right in that ship, right?

And this is one of the ways that we are doing that.

And as you see in that step-by-step process, there's multiple steps.

You've already done the first one.

This class was the first one.

Step two, if you're not a member, would be to schedule a membership interview with one of the elders.

And I I'm gonna ask my wife, can you go?

I printed a sheet.

It should be on the printer that has name, email, phone, and a place for people to write their name.

Do you mind grabbing that for me?

You can do that two ways.

You can schedule that one of two ways.

One with that sheet that my wife's about to bring in from the printer, and the other one is you can email, you can just write this down, elders at heartlandchurch.cc, and that goes to all of the elders.

That goes to me, it goes to all the staff elders, it goes to all the lay elders.

Email that.

We'll glad to set that up with you.

Um, and we would love to do that.

And and you it I think it explains in the book what that that interview would be.

It a lot of it is getting to know one another and also hearing your gray story, right?

Hearing about how the Lord brought you to faith and hearing about your your background and and one to affirm your profession of faith, but two to understand how we can care for you and and love on you as a member at Heartland if you continue on in the process.

And then after that, the elders will affirm uh your membership and you will be a member.

Some of the specifics of that may change after this next bylaw um revision, but that's where we are now, according to our our bylaws and and where we are.

So um I finished right on time.

My wife is gonna bring that in here.

Uh, she's gonna uh ask you if you don't mind when I get done.

You can put one on that table right there, and then she can bring one up here.

So there'll be two different sheets.

So you can write your name and email and phone number, we'll contact you, or if you'd prefer to contact us, just email elders at heartlandchurch.cc, and we're glad to set that up.

And this is kind of a sweet thing.

I realized my little girl was playing tic-tac-toe on my notes, so I turned to the last thing to get ready to pray, and there's a bunch of scribbles of tic-tac-toe.

Um, the beautiful one of the beautiful things of the church to me is our Wednesday night when the kids are playing and we're eating and we're sharing meals and we're hearing how the week's going and we're being the body of Christ with one another.

Let me pray for you and we'll be we'll be done.

Father, we're so grateful for who you are.

Uh, God, we're grateful for your gospel.

Uh, God, thankful uh just for for truth, thankful that um you have pointed us to truth, that you have given us truth.

God, uh can't help but just think over and over again how thankful I am that that scripture is the final authority.

Uh God, I don't I don't know where I would be.

I don't know where where our church would be if we didn't have your word to submit to in all things and at all times.

God, we would be floundering.

So God, thank you for giving it to us, and thank you for the reality that it's authoritative and it's inerrant and it's profitable for teaching and rebuking.

And God, that is a uh so often overlooked by us as a expression of your grace upon us, but it is, so we're grateful for that.

In the same way, church membership often, too, as well, is overlooked as a as an expression of your grace upon us.

So, God, I pray that we would be a church that takes church membership seriously, and God, that we would do so not just for the sake of doing something and having something to do on a Wednesday night or uh having a class to teach or writing uh a booklet, God, but for the the sake of pursuing the glory of Christ as a covenanted body of believers.

God, pursuing the glory of Christ and and proclaiming the name of Christ to those who have never heard it.

May we never lose sight of the fact that your church is your plan to get the gospel to the nations, and we get to be a part of that plan.

It's not that we have to be a part of that plan, we have the privilege of being a part of that plan, and we're thankful for that.

We love you.

It's in Jesus' name.

Amen.