Love Where You Live - Week 5: September 20, 2026

All right.

I'm Nay Rubenstein, lead pastor.

I really want to welcome you today.

Welcome those of you that are joining us online.

We're glad that the 20 of you that are here, I saw online right now.

Thanks for being with us.

We're grateful to have you as well.

Last week, I started my sermon by showing you pictures of playland in Salina, Kansas.

Today I want to show you something a little more sophisticated.

All right, this is a picture that I took in Florence, Italy.

It's the Medici Prince's Chapel.

And I found out when I took that picture that it's really frowned upon to lay on the ground in a chapel and take a picture.

I did.

This is a true story.

My wife can verify.

We uh, as we normally are on vacation, we're early.

We were the one of the first ones there, and I laid down on the ground, took this picture of the security card game, but we had a little thing in his ear, so I don't know who he was talking to, but I decided I better obey what he said.

So this is but when you see something like this, whether it's you know any sort of artwork, what do you know?

You know there's an artist, right?

And the work of the artist is powerful and moving, but there's someone who created that.

So there's there's something behind that.

Later on that trip, or actually earlier on that trip, we had the opportunity to go to see in Chamini, France, which is one of my favorite places.

And we saw this the French Alps.

When we went to Chamini, and I took this picture.

And uh the story here is that on the ride up, we met some folks from New Zealand, and we needed to get somewhere else afterwards.

So we got in their car and went with them.

And we're glad we got there looking back.

I don't know, maybe they were terrorists.

I don't know what I don't know what New Zealand's up to these days, but we got in the car with strangers and took it to the next place.

It was wonderful.

But again, when you see something beautiful like this, right, there's an artist.

There's something behind that.

So whether it's the things that we create with our hands or God creates, when we see the beauty of something, there's at least a question of what's behind that.

Who's behind that?

How did that get here?

And as believers, as Christians, many of us understand that the works of creation display the glory of the creator.

That that is probably something that's shared amongst most of us in this room and online, that there is a creator behind this and that there's glory that comes.

And the glory of what we see in nature uh tells us about the glory of the creator, right?

Just like the talent of Pietro Ben Vute, who made that picture earlier, uh, tells us something about his talent.

In Genesis 1.31 says that God saw all that he made, and it was very good, and there was evening and there was morning the third day.

In the beginning, God created everything, and the created nature that God created, the things that God created spoke of his goodness.

Because God himself declared that this is good.

And so when we see nature and we see beautiful things and we and we experience weather and all these powerful things that quite honestly put us in awe in certain things.

Now you've ever been just like a sunset.

Like even as someone said uh one time, when you can explain how an oak tree grows.

Now we can explain how it grows, but can when you can explain how a seed, like when you can make that happen, then you can tell me there is no God.

But just the simple things in nature and the majestic things in nature declare the goodness of God, partly because we see it and partly because God said it's so.

God said, This is good.

This is good.

And the scriptures, particularly the psalmist, but all throughout scriptures, there's this there's this echo of connecting the created things to the Creator.

Psalm 19:1.

Psalms 19:1

Heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Psalm 98, 8.

Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy, let them sing before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth.

He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity.

So there's this idea of a beautiful creation bestows upon us the worship of a beautiful God.

Isaiah 55, 12, the prophet says, You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace.

And here's this phrase the mountains and the hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the fields will clap their hands.

And remember what Jesus says when he comes in on the triumphal entry.

If if if you don't praise me, the rocks will cry out.

And while rocks and trees and rivers implicitly declare God's glory, just like an just like the artwork declares the power of the artist, while the rocks and trees implicitly declare God's glory, humans have been beautifully created to explicitly give God thanks and to recognize his glory and to praise him.

We were created for this.

This is part of what it means to be created in the image of God.

It's not something we decided to do.

We are designed to worship something, to recognize there's a bigger, better, greater thing than us.

And if it's not God, it's going to be something.

We are designed to worship.

And sin has brutally distorted this in the human race.

But even though that's happened, we understand that we function best when we align our lives with God's glory.

One of the things I like to remind us about on a regular basis, if you haven't heard this from me recently, let me remind you again that before you look inside to find truth and understanding of who you are, and before you look around you to allow others to define who you are, look up.

This is why theology is the queen of the sciences.

Now, listen, there's all kinds of things, all kinds of views about when you look.

I'm certainly as a believer in Jesus, I think he is the way, the truth, and the life, and he brings God to us.

I believe that with all my heart.

But we as humans are best designed when we look up and say, what is bigger?

What is out there?

What is different?

What is what caused all this?

Why this beautiful nature?

And I think I think there's ample space for us to sociologically look around us and ask important questions, like, what's going on in culture and why do these things happen?

And that's beautiful.

I think there's psychologically really good reasons to ask, look inside and say, what is broken in me?

And all of that matters, and all those things are good, but I think that we best function when we look up.

And that's kind of what Paul was getting at in Romans 1.20 when he said, For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities, his eternal power, and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Now, if you know Romans 1, he goes on to say, some people we didn't do it right.

But he here's this idea that Paul echoes that I've been saying today, or actually I'm echoing what Paul said, right?

Let's get it right.

That there's this idea that we were designed to see the creation and understand there's a creator.

Or as John Calvin says, there's not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.

Worshiping the Creator.

So how do we give how do we as humans give God glory?

Well, that that's uh that's a whole year's worth of sermons.

But we tend to think of it in settings like this.

And we should.

I mean, we can give glory if you in scripture.

I'm just gonna rattle through some things in scripture that give you permission to give God glory the way he has called you to.

And frankly and honestly, and I will tell you this: this is not, I'm not, is it right to say throwing shade?

Does that make sense to anybody?

I've heard that phrase.

Like, I'm not trying to create shame in anybody else.

I'm just the Lord has been talking to me about me being more expressive of what God's doing inside of me, even in a worship setting.

So if you're in the book of Psalms and out throws, here's some things you can do to give God glory in a setting like this.

You can sing, and I would encourage you to do it.

You can raise your hands, you can clap, you can shout, you can dance, you can bang on drums, you can strum guitars, you can sit in silence, you can bow before him, you can lay prostrate in his presence, and on and on the list goes.

Almost anything you can think to do with your body and your voice and your physical being in a worship setting is uh is in scripture.

And we should.

There's a it's a clear space for that, but I want to tell you that the worship of God is not confined into this space or in any other worship setting, whether it's a large group or a small group or whatever.

It is there, and I don't want to dismiss that at all.

And there's a lot of other ways to worship God.

We can worship God with how we spend our money, all those things.

But here's what I want to say today as we as we are working our way through this: how do we love our neighbors and live in our neighborhoods and love our neighbors, and how do we seek the common good with our neighbors?

We give God glory when we spread his good reputation.

One of the ways that we say to God, glory to you, is when we spread his good reputation.

Right?

When we become the ones who others look at and say, hmm, there must be something to that person's story that makes them like that.

So as we're talking about this seeking of the common good, we want to do that as creatures who give God glory.

We're doing this not to get affirmation or pats on the back or because, as I've talked about before, it's culturally acceptable or whatever.

We are saying we want our light to shine.

We want to give God glory, we want to spread his good reputation.

So I don't know how many of you uh are aware of like the progressive commercials, you know I'm talking about.

We can't help you from becoming your parents.

I gotta tell you, those commercials, the older I get, I'm more and more offended and deeply and deeply and deeply amused.

Two things can be true at the same time.

Have you ever watched those and say, Oh my goodness, they could have written that about me.

Well, there's one, there's one that's out right now with a guy opening shoes.

Have you seen this one?

There's this group of people around, and I what's the guy's name that's trying to help, which uh help these people not become their parents?

And this guy's just opening shoes, and they're like putting it on the internet, and like, why are you doing this?

Are you just opening shoes?

It's hilarious.

And I've so I've been thinking about that, and and kind of what that's getting to is this this idea of an influencer.

Those of you my age, do you I'm do you understand what I'm talking about?

The rest of you are like, yeah, yeah, I know what an influencer is.

Like, I want to be one when I grow up.

You see, for decades, the advertising industry has focused on a combination of style and rhetoric that marketers use to convince a consumer of the worthiness of their brand or product.

Most of us understand that that's what advertisements do.

This is the best car, this is the best experience, this is where you need to go, right?

So there's all kinds of things that attack our minds and our emotions to try to get us to buy something.

So the pressure or the ideas from somebody speaking to us about what we should do.

And it's worked.

I mean, we live in a consumeristic society, right?

It works, advertising works, but in recent years, there's been a shift away from that sort of outward influence, uh shifting away from advertising towards influencing, where a person uses their social media platform to personally promote a brand or a product.

And this doesn't make sense to my brain.

In the same way that leisure suits did not make sense to my parents' brain.

Right?

I I'm not criticizing this way.

In fact, I'm gonna set it up as a possible way for us to think about how we should live in the world, right?

But hear this: this doesn't make sense to my brain.

Like, why would what somebody wears, why would them just telling me that make an impact?

But the secret to this method of success is perceived authenticity, right?

The consumer isn't asked to trust the influencer as an expert.

We're asked to relate to them as a real person who genuinely, authentically likes the products they're selling.

Now, I know what you're thinking, you're thinking they probably don't, they're just doing that to get money, whatever, but that's the idea, right?

The idea is that this is a person you trust, this is a person that you follow, and this is a person that says this is good.

So their influence is greater than the out exterior sort of messaging of like, you need this car.

So I Googled influencers, because I at least know how to use the Google.

I've heard about AI.

I think it's something out there.

I actually think the Google and AI are sort of cousins or something.

I don't know.

Somebody can help me with this later.

But Ronaldo has the most followers.

He's considered like so there's two levels of this, and some of you can help me afterwards.

There's like, there's like people who are famous for other reasons who have big followings, right?

Like Ronaldo.

He plays soccer, football, right?

I I know who Ronaldo is, I'm a sports fan.

But he has the most followers.

He's a but Mr.

Beast is a the non-celebrity, he's become that.

So Mr.

Beast, and actually, you should Google that's phenomenal, what he has become.

And there's a bunch of other people I hadn't heard of.

Like these are the top influencers.

Well, they haven't influenced me because I have no idea who they are.

All right, enough joking aside.

What if we as Christians, what if we as a church took a different approach to how we spread the gospel?

What if we as Jesus followers worried less about crafting slick, compelling advertisements for our God and instead responded to our culture's hunger for authenticity by bearing witness to the genuine connection that we have with God?

Listen, we're we we live in a consumeristic culture.

Connect church is not gonna stop at social media presence.

We're not gonna have to stop having signs.

We do a little bit of advertising, and we'll continue to do that.

You have to understand the culture, and that still has a place.

But I'm not even talking about the church, I'm talking about the church, right?

You understand what I'm talking about?

Talking about us.

What if we started thinking about ourselves as influencers in both word and deed?

You say, Pastor Nate, that sounds so progressive, so modern.

Actually, I think it sounds like what Jesus said.

When he said Matthew 5.14, you are the light of the world.

A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.

Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.

Instead, they put it on its stand and it gives light to everyone in the house in the same way.

Let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.

It's such a I love Jesus' parables and stories and metaphors.

It's such a simple one.

Why would you light something and put it under a bowl?

First of all, it's gonna go out.

It's just a simple little way of thinking.

And I think Jesus, it'd be interesting if like Jesus like now would he use influencers.

I don't know if he'd use that as a metaphor or not.

But that metaphor that bothers you, go back to Jesus metaphorically being alive.

I said this last week, but I'll say it again.

If I were to title this sermon, which I'm not, but if I were, I think I'd call it the joy of promoting God's brand.

And how we as can attend to the spiritual needs of our neighbors because we have pursued the common good with them.

Instead of trying to you can invite them to church, that's okay.

But instead of like feeling like that's our only way to do this, or giving them a track, or wearing a Christian t-shirt, I'm not against any of that.

But what if we just said we're gonna come alongside and pursue the common good?

And then as opportunities arise, we're gonna be sensitive to how do we attend to our neighbors' uh spiritual needs.

Promoting God's brand.

And what I want to say is that this act of service is a testimony of God's glory.

Right?

So I'm tying that so so really today, because you've already we've already kind of talked about this idea of promoting God's brand in some ways, but what I want, what I want to, the piece we really want to add in today is that this is an act of worship.

This is a way of declaring our Creator's goodness.

Maybe without even saying anything, but being authentic in deep authentic relationships.

If we go back to the Christians in Asia Minor in 60 AD, and I talked about persecution last week, in Asia Minor in 60 AD, that persecution was localized and kind of happening when Peter wrote his books.

Now it wasn't at the level of like that I talked about last week yet, but there was clearly persecution going on.

And if if you lived in that time frame, it would have made sense for you and I to maybe pull back, to isolate, to self-protect, or or even become combative towards our neighbors.

But instead, the early Christians gave God glory in both clear word and inspiring deed.

It's tempting to grow quiet and lose the word part, right?

It's tempting for us to not express the joy that is within.

Or it's also tempting to withdraw and become selfish, losing the deed part.

Like saying, well, you know, I'm gonna find people that are like me.

I'm gonna isolate and become just hang out with Christians.

Everything I do is gonna be in a Christian context.

That's easy to do too.

But as we go through what Peter wrote to this group of Christians in 60 AD that were in this moment of persecution, and as we've been saying in a series, we wouldn't, I wouldn't define uh the church in America at all at a level of persecution, but we are no longer, we we've talked about it, we're on the margins.

We're out of season.

And I think there's words here for us in 1 Peter, look at 1 Peter chapter 2, verses 11 through 12.

1 Peter 2:11–12

Peter writes, Dear friends, I urge you as foreigners and exiles, yeah, out of season, to abstain from sinful desires which wage war against your soul.

Live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

Do you see how Peter ties those two ideas together?

Promoting God's brand as a way to give God glory.

This is a way to worship.

And when we do, there's this there's this piece of connectivity to our neighbor.

Now, if you read 1 Peter, there's some challenging and cultural differences in that section that can make us uncomfortable about slaves and women and those kinds of things.

And actually, Pastor John preached a great sermon on this section uh in our series in 1 Peter.

I'd encourage you to go back and listen to it.

But the idea, the thread that runs through all of that, no, regardless of your life situation, regardless of what's going on in your life, Peter says, live such good lives among those who do not know Christ, that they may see your good deeds and glorify God.

And then, but listen, so that's the that's the doing part.

But if you go to 1 Peter 3:15, he's speaking to the same group of people in the same cultural context, and he says, Be in your hearts, but in your hearts, revere Christ as Lord.

1 Peter 3:15

Here it is, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.

We see the combination of words and deeds.

And words shared with gentleness and respect, and deeds boldly aligning with people that are broken, seeking the common good.

Peter would encourage us that as we as our lights shine, that we be ready to share our story and the reason for our story.

I would encourage you.

It just is a simple little like way to bridge that next step.

Like come up in your mind with a 30-second story about what Christ means to you.

And don't just go knock on your neighbor's door and just say it and run.

But have that in your mind.

What is it that Christ means to me?

Now don't get so myopic about it that that's the only way you think God will give you chances.

It can be as simple as saying, Can I pray for you?

It can be as simple as observing what's going on in someone's life and just saying, I I you know, or whatever that looks like.

And I the the reason I don't want to give you 12 examples is because I don't know what it's gonna look like when you're doing the good deeds in the common good.

I don't know what that moment's gonna be for you.

But it will come.

I was thinking of this this morning, and we want that direct line, don't we?

We want that direct line that I said this and this person became a Christian.

Life doesn't work that way, friends.

Life just does not work that way.

Jesus said, Plant seeds.

Plant seeds.

Some of it's gonna get eaten, some of it's not gonna grow.

You keep planting seeds.

And Peter's reminder here makes sense given that we are living, we now are living when the gospel is out of season.

When deeds might speak louder than words.

But words bring meaning to our deeds.

But here's the problem only 27% of non-Christians give people of faith credit for the majority of good works in our country.

While 72% of Christians give ourselves credit for the majority of good works.

Exactly opposite.

Isn't that interesting?

So what's a play here?

Well, one of two things.

Or a little bit of both.

Either we aren't doing as many good works as we think we are, or we're so isolated in our work that our neighbors don't even see it.

And I think that's why Jesus said when he left this earth, you're gonna need some help doing this.

You're gonna need a lot of help.

There's no strategy here, friend.

There's no strategy.

I'm not leaving you with strategy, but I want to remind you when Jesus left this earth, he said, wait for the Holy Spirit.

And then in Acts 1, 8, what did he say?

When the Holy Spirit comes, you will receive power.

And you'll be my witnesses.

The word there is martyr in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

And when we talk about this verse, we often talk about the strategy of Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.

Actually, that's a good conversation to have.

We care about our Jerusalem, our Samaria, and the ends of the earth.

We're pretty structured around trying to reach all those groups, but there's something more Jesus was saying here.

He was saying, it's going to take the spirit for your light to shine.

And it's going to take the spirit for you to have the courage and the wisdom to know when to use your words.

And they're just and you know they know how to talk.

And they're use your words.

Use your words.

We need a spirit.

We need the spirit to be this kind of a presence in a world that perhaps has marginalized the church, a world that perhaps doesn't see the church, a world that perhaps is angry at the church, whatever.

Neighbors you're seeking the common good with who already have you have two and a half strikes against you.

Because you're a Christian.

You need a spirit to help you find that common ground and do, and you need the spirit to know when to speak.

I guess what I'm saying this morning is that joining together with our neighbors in the shared work of pursuing the common good is a way to do good works that might open the door for good words.

It seems to me that we don't need new commercials or better rhetoric or shinier, more attractive advertisements.

We just might need a more positive, hopeful presence in our neighborhoods.

And this hopeful posture would give God the glory, and we may even see a return to the credibility we once enjoyed.

At the very least, we have the opportunity to share good words.

You see, this kind of sacrifice and love and graciousness are surprising things in our broken world.

When we live this way, it differentiates us.

And I'm not saying live this way just so you can be different.

I'm just saying living this way differentiates us and perhaps opens up doors.

And so I want to share something with you that if you were at the welcome party last week, if you've been to any welcome party, if you've come to any church service here over a period of time, you've seen this before.

But I want to share with you our vision so very, very briefly this morning.

It comes in the form of a Venn diagram.

We believe that as we worship Christ and grow disciples and serve our world, that's what we are, that everything rotates around that.

I'm not going to get into the weeds of that vision, but I want you to notice something in that vision.

I want you to notice that worship and serving are connected.

We also think discipleship matters.

That's why we have growth groups and all kinds of avenues and ways for you to say, we think this is not, we worship for a while, we grow for a while, we serve for a while.

We believe that these things all work together as we seek to impact others, as we seek to be influencers for the gospel.

So I have a vision, and as I'm sharing this vision, I'm going to ask Erica to come up.

Don't mind her coming up, but let listen to my heart as I share this vision.

I have a vision I've had for a long time, and the number changes, and the number doesn't matter.

But I have a vision of 800 missionaries being sent from Connect Church.

And when you hear that, you think we're talking about global partner missionaries, and I am hoping that call comes to some of you.

You think I'm talking about pastors, and I'm praying that God calls some of you into that role as pastors.

But here's what I want you to hear, Connect Church.

We are all on mission.

We are all on mission.

That is the major part of our serve strategy.

I'm going to tell you just in a moment, we're going to share about a more specific way that we can help you get on mission.

But we want you to all view yourselves on mission to help you do that.

We have some community partnerships.

I'm going to let Erica talk about that for a moment.

Hi, Nate.

Hey.

Hello, everybody.

Yeah, so one of the things I really respect and love about Connect Church is this community partner model that we have.

I think it's very, I think it's nice to not have to reinvent the wheel every time we want to do something for someone.

And um it's we just partner with organizations that already exist in our community and say, what are they doing and how can we help?

And I, you know, something you said, Nisar, when you said we give God glory when we spread his good reputation.

And I just I feel like that's the heart of our community partner program.

I just, I really, I really love it.

Um, September is the month specifically that we like to highlight New York Elementary.

Yeah.

And um it is one of our six community partners.

You can see our list up there.

But um can you tell me a little bit about our history, our partnership with with New York Elementary?

Yeah, I'd love to.

So um a couple years ago, I had a conversation with a group of pastors that were asking the question, how can we get in the schools?

And their idea was, and I'm not I'm not throwing shade again, but I am just making statements, I guess.

Their idea was, how can we take our program into the school?

And I just piped up because I've been around here a while and they're not going to kick me out at this point.

And I said, listen, here's how you do it.

You ask them what they need.

You don't go in with a program.

And so one of the beautiful things about our community partnership with New York Elementary School is a number of years ago we had someone who was a part of our church who was um in on staff at New York.

And this is long before we had this sort of whole full-fledged idea of community partnerships, and we just asked them what they needed.

And they said they needed reading bodies.

And so uh for a number of years, every Friday, I would go to New York Elementary School and I would read with my reading bodies.

Um my first reading buddy's name was Cosmo.

He was everything you think of when I say his name.

It was a blast, it was unbelievable.

Actually, Cosmo ended up uh being a part of uh, anyway, I there's another interaction with him later.

And then I had Finn, a couple of others.

One little boy drove me a picture, or his mom drew me a picture of us.

She they took a picture and they drew me a little picture of us reading.

And you know, I'd love to tell you that because of that they became Christians.

I don't know, but it was just that just being present, right?

It was just being, it was seeking common good together.

And I want to say, and I'll turn it back over to Erica, but I want to say our purpose with serving with these community partners is not to replace or become your missionary post.

You're all somewhere already, but perhaps this would be an easy next step for you to participate with some of our uh community partners.

So yeah, I I liked how you mentioned you're like, I'm not giving you strategy.

Like you don't know what those opportunities are.

Like I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna give you a step-by-step um directions because you know, God works in mysterious ways.

But one of the I just want to share like a little story.

When my kids were little, you know, you got to kind of prepare them for the world instead of trying to protect them from every environment.

And I would say, like, okay, if you're out or you find yourself in a situation where, you know, mom and dad aren't around or you need some help, I said, look for the moms.

Like, find another mom and go ask them and they will help you.

They will know what to do.

And so this is not really a strategy, but maybe a first step.

I think, you know, we have all these community partners.

It's a great tangible way to get involved, but you also have these experiences in your neighborhood.

You know people, and I would say, look for the helpers.

Like, find the people in your community who are already doing the work.

And sometimes it can feel very intimidating to be like, okay, well, I have this idea, I'm gonna do this thing.

So just find the people who are already doing the work and be curious and ask them, can I come with you?

What do you need?

How can I be helpful?

And that is just a really great way to just to start this process of being in this, you know, being with your neighborhood and um making it a better place.

And um, oh yeah, you you wrote you one of the verses was you're the light of the world, and it just feels so exactly true to this conversation.

So we are highlighting um New York Elementary this month.

I'm gonna be out at the table in the lobby if you guys have any questions.

We have a supply list if you want to help out in other ways.

Um, but it's just it's just very exciting to be part of this.

Cool.

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for the created order that you gave us.

Thank you that when we see nature, we realize there's a creator.

Thank you for the glory that nature uh declares.

Help us, Lord, to choose to declare your glory by the way we live our lives in a broken world.

And as you give us opportunities, help us to give a reason for the hope that we have in you and be bold and compassionate as we share about you with people that we are seeking the common good with.

Lord, may you be glorified in all of it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So next week we're gonna ask the question what's possible if more and more Christians were to follow the example of the early church and become zealous for the common good?

Join us next week, but for now, stand and worship with us.