Ephesians: New Testament Community

Today we are going to continue in our series through Ephesians, but we're going to be really specific, kind of taking a particular angle.

My goal today is really to give a vision for community in the church.

So we had we talked several weeks ago when we were kind of going through Ephesians chapter four, some aspects of community and unity came up.

And my goal isn't to be repetitive today.

My goal is to give more of a 30,000-foot view on how community in the church is meant to be different than community we experience anywhere else.

And I think this is super important because what tends to happen, I think a lot of times, is we all come into the church with different expectations of what this is going to look like and what it's going to exist for.

Every single one of you walked into church with an expectation of how we were meant to operate, what you were going to get from it, what we were going to offer to you, and how that was, you know, and how that was going to go.

And we have, and because the definition of disappointment is unmet expectations, like you were often disappointed, right?

Because you come in with expectations, it's a human condition.

Everywhere you go, you have an expectation.

And people are either going to meet that expectation or they're going to not meet those expectations and bring a little bit of disappointment.

I think oftentimes people are disappointed by their experience in the local church.

The question that I will kind of want to present to us today is that because we do not understand how community is meant to work in the local church?

And maybe we're bringing, we're bringing unrealistic expectations into the church that are not, that are not meant to be for the church, because church is meant to operate with a different kind, different kind of community and a different kind of purpose.

So today, I'm just going to let you know right off the bat, like it's going to be really heavily aimed at the Christians in the room.

We know that we have friends in the room who are considering Jesus, you know, having questions around Jesus, getting closer to Jesus, and not yet maybe consider themselves followers of Jesus.

First of all, super glad you're here.

We love the fact you're in the room, love the fact you're in our community.

But today, like unashamedly, is like is going to be really pointed towards Christians.

And there's a reason for that because we're going to place some expectation.

Like we're going to put some weight on you.

And we want to make sure that the weight in the room is going on the people who claim to be followers of Jesus and say that they want that weight.

Because following Jesus comes with expectations.

It comes with weight and responsibility.

And so we want to make sure that people in the room who are not yet followers of Jesus aren't the ones carrying or feeling the weight of what it means to follow after Jesus and build this kind of community.

So I'm going to give a high vision for community and discipleship.

And if you don't follow Jesus or you're still considering or investigating Jesus, we just want you to receive the gift and overflow of what we're going to describe and what we're going to pursue as a community.

But we don't necessarily want you to feel the burden of it or carry the weight of it.

But others of you in the room, those of you who do call yourselves followers of Jesus, I'm hoping you do receive a level of burden today.

And I'm hoping it, I'm hoping today really does two things.

One, I hope it stirs up a vision of what could be.

Like as we as we search the scriptures and you see the New Testament kind of community and the kind of impact and the kind of effect that they're able to have on a city or that they're able to have on people and on families and on neighborhoods and on community.

I hope you see that and you go, I want to be a part of that kind of community that makes that kind of impact.

So I hope it stirs something up in you.

Like I hope you're able to see it and go, you know what?

If there is a cost and if there is a requirement to building this kind of community, it's worth it because it produces this kind of impact.

Okay.

And then the second thing is I hope it beg it causes kind of each and every single one of us to beg the question of what role we are meant to play in making this become a reality.

Because if you're a follower of Jesus, you do have a role to play.

Like Jesus doesn't, uh Jesus doesn't save people and then sit them on the sideline.

Like Jesus saves people, fills them with the spirit, and calls them to play a role in what he's doing in the world.

And so if you're here today and you're kind of been maybe standing on the sideline going, man, man, like what do I do?

Or how do I do it?

We're hoping that today feels like one really big invitation for you to get in the game and play a role in what God's doing in the church.

One of the reasons we've been walking through Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus is because the Ephesian church turned out, turned, turned one of the most influential cities in the world literally upside down in a lot of ways.

Like it made such a transformative impact, it literally turned it completely upside down.

The city of Ephesus was a city not unlike ours, a large city at the center of culture and trade, religious culture, as well as social culture and literature and all kinds of different aspects of culture.

They were the kind of the epicenter of it, and they were the source of many other smaller cities and villages that surrounded this large city.

And so Ephesus was the epicenter of a metropolitan region that carried influence throughout the known world, not unlike our city, right?

Like Atlanta is a cultural epicenter that carries influence throughout the entire world.

There is nowhere that I have ever visited where someone says, Where are you from?

And I say Atlanta, that they go, I don't know where that's at.

Can you where what is that?

They always know.

And there's only a handful of cities that you can go pretty much anywhere on the world, name those cities, and everybody kind of knows what you're talking about because they carry that much influence and they're known that much throughout the world.

And so our city is like that.

And you happen to live in this city at this moment in time.

And so I look at this and go, like, man, is this an invitation for us to look at a church like this and go, man, what kind of role could we play in a city like this to see what God has done in the past do again in our moment, in our time?

We we always kind of backtrack through Paul's journey of planting the Ephesian church, which we see in Acts chapter 19, as we look at the Ephesians, a community that turned the world upside down, and we see we see really five quick movements that happen in Acts chapter 19.

Acts 19 · chapter mention Acts 19 · chapter mention

Is first and foremost, we see Paul go there on his third missionary journey.

He enters into the city as a missionary.

He he baptizes a few a few disciples.

So there's some, he meets, he meets a few people who who who followed and were baptized by John the Baptist, but had not yet heard the gospel and received the Holy Spirit.

Paul preaches the gospel to them.

They are baptized, receive the Holy Spirit.

And then Paul starts a discipleship school out of the hall of Tyrannus.

And he literally creates these discipleship groups who were learning and practicing the core tenets of what it meant to follow Jesus.

And then he he mobilized these communities throughout all of Ephesus and the surrounding communities throughout what was known as Asia Minor at the time.

And he mobilized these communities, and there was quick, consistent multiplication until we read later on in Acts chapter 19 that all of the region had heard the good news of Jesus.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

All the region.

See people encounter Jesus, be reach lost people, encounter Jesus, be saved, receive the Holy Spirit, get into intentional discipleship, multiply and mobilize communities and see them affect change throughout throughout throughout a region.

And that's our goal and that's our vision.

You may look at that and go, dude, we're in a library at a Catholic high school.

When Paul showed up to Ephesus, he found a handful of disciples who had heard about John the Baptist.

We got more people in the room right now than what Paul walked into Ephesus and had to work with.

So the key here is when we look at the pages of Scripture, once again, we've asked this question many times before.

What's going to dictate your expectation for the Christian life?

Your experience or the words and pages of Scripture?

What's going to determine your expectation?

What's going to determine what you believe God can do in and through us?

Is it going to be the words and the pages of Scripture to say that can be us and He can do that again?

Or is it going to be what you've seen other people do and what you've personally been able to experience?

And that's going to be the lid of your faith and expectation.

I'm challenging you to say this.

This is an invitation.

These people were normal people just like you that Paul walked in and shared the good news of Jesus with, and it changed everything.

And we see them go from worshiping literally carved idols that sat on a shelf, encounter the living God, and it completely impacts the economy of the city because people start burning their idols, getting rid of their idols, and the and a community that thrived on silversmiths, creating idols for Artemis, literally collapses because of the impact of the gospel in a community.

And what happened at Ephesus was not unique.

This is not unique.

This movement of Christianity expanded and transformed people in places at an incredible rate and pace.

Jesus was raised from the dead and the and commissioned the church somewhere between AD 30 and AD 33.

And 50 days later at Pentecost, the spirit was poured out when Peter preached the gospel, and 3,000 people birthed the church in Jerusalem.

And according to Rodney Stark, who, by the way, was an atheist non-believer until he started studying church history and became a follower of Jesus as a result of his study throughout church history.

According to Rodney Stark, by AD 100, so 3,000 people birthed the church, AD 33, by AD 100, there were 25,000 Christians.

And by AD 310, there were up to 20 million.

And it forced Constantine to legalize Christianity in the Roman Empire.

And not just legalize it, but it became the religion of the empire.

And that was a political move on his part because the Christians had gained such influence within the city that he had to cave.

And they made this kind of impact within 300 years, from 3,000 to 20 million from 20 million in a matter of a few generations.

So how did they do it?

How did they do it?

That's the question we want to ask today.

Is how did they do that?

Now bear in mind they were mostly, they Christians and Christianity and churches were mostly illegal, had no buildings, had no resources, had few scriptures, no Bible, had no professional leadership, had no secret-sensitive services, youth groups, worship bands, seminaries, commentaries, and they they set a really high bar for what it looked like to actually follow Jesus and be considered a disciple.

And so if we look at that and go, how did they affect so much change in such a short amount of time?

If we can answer that, then we can do it again.

We can do it again.

Because here at Kingdom City Church, we long to be a New Testament church making New Testament disciples who make a New Testament impact.

That's what we want to look at.

We want to be a New Testament kind of church, making a new making New Testament kinds of disciples and making a New Testament kind of impact.

We actually want to look at the pages of Scripture and go, we believe God can do that again.

And we believe He can do it through us.

But this kind of impact requires a certain kind of community, living a certain kind of life together.

The word community has become a trend word both inside the church and outside the church.

We have all kinds of communities for all kinds of things.

I love Facebook.

I don't love it like for the impact it has on like my soul and stuff, but but I love it in just like what you can find there.

You know, you should just go into the search bar and type community and see all the types of communities that happen to be around.

It is a wild life out there.

There are a lot of people who will get together for a lot of things and talk about a lot of stuff.

I mean, it's just a fun thing to go on there and be like, how many types of communities gather in the city of Atlanta and what are they gathering around and about?

And you may think, yeah, run clubs, you know, and those kind of things.

Yeah, those are the ones that might be a little bit more normal, you know, but there's some out there that are pretty wild.

I'm not gonna name them because I was afraid people are gonna be sitting in here and be part of them.

And hey, we all got a little weird, okay?

We all we all have it in us.

But but anyway, like, man, can everybody's searching for community and they surround it with a lot of different things.

But the church, the church uses the word community in all kinds of ways and for all kinds of reasons.

If we if we go to any church in our city or really you know, around the world, they're gonna have some kind of aspect of community.

Whether it's groups or you know, community or tables or whatever it may be, they're gonna have some aspect of community.

The question isn't, isn't, man, is there is there opportunity for community?

There's opportunity for community everywhere.

The question is, is the church, is the church embodying Jesus' vision of community?

Are we, are we doing what sells or are we doing what Jesus calls faithful?

Right?

Are we doing what people are gonna be attracted to and what's gonna be easy, or are we doing what Jesus said, this is how I want to build my church and this is what I want you to look like?

So today I want to try and erase our minds of the definitions and experiences we've had when it comes to community.

And we want to ask one question and one kind and one question only.

What is Jesus' vision of community in his church?

What kind of community does he desire to see, and what kind of community does he long to build?

And so today we want to rethink community in light of Jesus, the kingdom of God, and in uh through the example of the of the early church.

And so, first, because I'm highly aware of the spirit of our age and the emotions that a topic like this can stir up, I want to make a few disclaimers, okay, as we get ready to discuss community in the New Testament church.

So, first and foremost, what I'm not saying as we talk about community today, what I'm not saying is that the kind of community I'm going to describe is the only kind of community that you should have.

Okay, like we're gonna describe a very intentional missional community as we look at the New Testament pages of scripture and ask what kind of community is the church called to?

Not saying that this is the only kind of community that you need in your life, that your softball team is bad, that your football, that your D ⁇ D group is bad, that your whatever group that you're part of is bad because it's not this kind of community.

This is not the only kind of community.

It's just asking what kind of community is the church specifically called to embody.

So, secondly, we're not what we're not saying is that it's wrong to need help or go through seasons of need or receiving.

So we're gonna talk a lot about our responsibility to build and give and be sacrificial when it comes to when it comes to our role and responsibility and the role that we play in community.

What we're not saying is that if you're here and you're tired, you're burnt out, you're suffering, that that what you need to do is hit the gas pedal harder and there's no excuses.

We understand that all of us go through seasons of transition, brokenness, and need where you just might have a season where you need to receive.

We understand that.

But that needs to be seasons, right?

We need seasons to recover, to receive, to rest.

Jesus constantly tells his disciples after long seasons of ministry, he says, Man, come get away with me and rest for a little while, right?

That's good, that's healthy.

But it was always for the sake of growing healing and being sent back out, not staying in a place of neediness and dependence.

And lastly, what I'm not saying is that mission is more important than love.

And I will be the first to say, if I have an unhealthy tendency, it is this.

Is that is that I can really emphasize mission and under-emphasize the cult to love.

I can genuinely do that.

And I think it some and some of that's, you know, I think the calling of God, and some of that's just my own brokenness in the way that it manifests, is that I a lot of times will suffer as a result of wanting to make a difference and wanting to make an impact.

But what Jesus consistently calls us to is that there's a distinct kind of love that we're meant to embody as a community.

And so what we're not saying is that we need to pursue mission at the expense of love.

When mission becomes more important than love, one of two things happen.

You either become rigid, truth without grace, or you compromise grace without truth.

Right?

When we just make reaching people the big goal, is we either get rigid or we get or we compromise.

But mission is meant to be the overflow of love.

It's meant to be compelled by love.

In 2 Corinthians 5, the Apostle Paul literally, when he's talking about reconciliation and the mission of God, he says it's the love of Christ that compels us.

It's compelled by love.

Mission is the overflow of love.

So, what am I saying?

What I am saying is a few things.

First and foremost, I'm saying that we have been formed by consumer instincts, that it's bled into the church and must be confronted.

Right?

There are consumer instincts that we all have.

It's bled into the church and it needs to be confronted.

Secondly, we have focused on what sells to the masses over what's faithful to Jesus' vision.

And man, I get the temptation of it when we launched this thing.

It was like, here are here are the ten way ten things that you can do to get a big church.

And and then you're looking at those things and you're going, like, man, but some of those I'm like convicted around.

But it goes like, man, if you can just but but then one day you can like you can do it different, you can do a better thing.

No, no, no.

Once you start that thing, you you you're enslaved to that thing.

And so for us, it was like, man, how do we put Jesus' vision at the center and he can build his church however big he wants to build his church?

Third, we often design community around opinion and preference, not mission and calling.

Fourth, many recoil from radical community out of fear, hurt, selfishness, and busyness.

And then lastly, Jesus' vision, example, and call for the church was mission-centric community.

Okay.

So that's what this is what we are saying today.

When Jesus called his disciples, his first call to his disciples, when he called them out of the boats as they're fishing, he says, Man, follow me and I will make you fishers of men, or I will make you fish for people.

He says, Follow me and I will make you fish for people.

And Jesus says, If if you follow me, I'm gonna change you.

And I'm gonna change you for a particular purpose.

And that purpose is to reach lost people and disciple them into the kingdom.

And what resulted in this was a unified people with a common mission and vision who loved each other like family.

Right.

But the essential call, the foundational call, was to follow Jesus, to be changed by Jesus, and to partner with Jesus in his mission.

I saw a video not too long ago of these two older men.

I don't know, sometimes, you know, my my algorithm be giving me like sad videos.

And one of the ones that it gives me is like when when like veterans are reunited, whether it's reunited with families, or for the ones for me, is like when veterans are reunited with one another and they literally haven't seen each other like since war.

And uh one of them, one of the ones that really deeply impacted me was was these two men who were old who were were much older, but they but they happened to serve together in uh in war and they saw each other.

And I mean, I saw these two like like gruff men who obviously had stories to tell and and and scars that were healing and and wounds that they were carrying, but these two men saw each other immediately began weeping and jumped into one another's arms.

Like there was one man literally like legs wrapped around this guy, like like just crying on his shoulder.

And and I was looking at that and I was going, that's a love and an affection and and a brotherhood that can only be birthed out, that can only be birthed out of shared mission, that can only be birthed out of shared pain, that can only be birthed out of shared experience.

And you look at that and you go, man, those are two people that were brought together, did not know each other, came from two totally different backgrounds, were brought together, put on the same uniform, put under the same banner, and said, now you're gonna have each other's back going into battle for the sake of a mission and a purpose together.

And this is a very similar thing to what Jesus does is that Jesus saves you, put, gives you a new name, gives you a new identity, gives you a new calling, brings you together with other people who share that name, share that calling, share that vision, and then he calls you to a purpose together, and you learn to love and fight with and for one another as you do that together.

That's what he does.

And so it was through their calling to Jesus and his mission that they found one another and became family.

And this is this is a statement I wrote.

I'm convinced of it.

You may have problems with it.

And when you one day you'll maybe you can hold this and you can say something different than what I'm about to say.

But I'm gonna say this one, and I hope you I hope you connect with it and it stirs something.

Is I'm truly convinced that if you could put community at the center, you will rarely, I almost put never, but I'm instead I put rarely, so it didn't hit as hard.

You'll rarely get mission.

But I'm convinced that if you put mission at the center, you'll always get community.

If you put community at the center, you rarely get mission.

And there may be things that you look and you're like, no, no, no, I was I was a part of a community in a small group and we made you know we made an impact, or I'm absolutely convinced that if you put community at the center, if you put relationship, friendship at the center, you'll rarely get mission.

But I'm absolutely convinced that if you put mission at the center, you'll get the deepest friendships and relationships you ever had.

I'm convinced of that.

I'm convinced.

Because that's my personal experience.

And once again, once again, all I can we can go back through all the disclaimers again, but I just want you to know like this isn't the only kind of community.

I'm not saying that none of your friendships that don't have mission are are bad friendships and don't have deep care and kinship.

That's not what I'm saying.

I'm just saying that, man, if we put mission at the center as a community, we will get deep relationships.

But if we compromise on that and we put our preference at the center, we will not make the impact that we long to make.

What the church did in Ephesus does not happen if they put if they put relationship in the center.

It does happen when relationship flows out of a united mission and vision.

So our vision is to see everyone who is part of our church and claims to follow Jesus pursue, belong to, and invest in a radically faithful community that practices the core tenets of compelling missional discipleship.

So, why do we need community?

What time is it?

Why do we need community?

I do look, okay?

I know you might not believe me.

I do look.

Why do we need community?

I think there's I think there's a few core things.

First and foremost, let's talk about why we need community.

Is is is the nature of God.

The nature of God.

Like for whatever reason, when we talk about specifically community in the church, okay, we all we all have this innate human need and desire because you're created in the image of God to need community, but specifically in the church, because there's a lot of people who believe that you can follow Jesus and not have community, that you can be an isolated individual who watches things, listens to things, or or whatever, and has zero Christian community.

The New Testament doesn't think that, the New Testament doesn't teach that, Jesus didn't practice that, but there are people who believe that.

And so the question we have is like, why?

Why is community so essential?

Well, first and foremost, the foundation is the nature of God Himself.

The reason there's no such thing as an unchurched Christian in the New Testament is because that the call to community is deeply theological and rooted in who God is.

If you notice, Jesus, he's he Jesus is not an isolated person.

He's always walking in the context of community.

The first thing that he did when he when he received his calling from the Lord, the Spirit leads him to the to the wilderness.

He's tempted by the enemy, and then he comes back, launches into his ministry, the first thing he does is call people.

After his resurrection, the first thing he does is go to people and then commission the church.

Jesus was our, as our example, is deeply communal, and it's because the Godhead in and of itself is a community.

We are created in the image of God, who in himself is a community of self-giving love.

In Genesis, when man is created in the image of God, what is he?

God says, let us, let us, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, make man in our image, in our image.

See, Baxter Kruger says this, he says the doctrine of the Trinity means that relationship, that fellowship, that togetherness and sharing, that self-giving and other-centeredness are not afterthoughts with God, but the deepest truth about the being of God.

The Father is not consumed with himself.

And the Son is not riddled with narcissism.

He loves his father and the Spirit.

And the Spirit is not preoccupied with Himself and His own glory.

The Spirit loves the Father and the Son, giving, not taking, other-centeredness, not self-centeredness, sharing, not hoarding are what fire the rockets of God and lie at the very center of God's existence as Father, Son, and Spirit.

And you're made in the image of that God.

And the church is operating in submission and following that God.

And so, of course, we're going to be called to embody this as a community because our foundation, our theological roots, our living example in Christ and also God Himself are a community of love.

Secondly, the design of humanity.

Once again, like I just said, you are created in the image of that God.

Created in the image of God.

Let us make man in our image.

And the first thing, the first thing that he does, it creates man a companion because he says he identifies a problem.

Everything that God created and did throughout the entirety of the creation narrative in Genesis, God speaks, creates, and identifies it as good over and over and over and over and over again.

Creates man, very good.

And then he identifies one thing that was not good.

What was that thing?

Not good for him to be alone.

He's alone.

He's isolated.

That's not good.

That's the one thing that God in the creation narrative creates and says, that's not good.

It's not good for him to be alone.

And so he creates a companion fit for him.

And they begin to operate in the design of humanity as a partnership and people in community.

I hear people all the time say, All I need is Jesus.

Or people say, Well, we don't need the church.

All you need is Jesus.

Not according to Jesus.

Not according to Jesus.

Jesus does not tell call his disciples and say, hey guys, all you need is me.

I'm going to have isolated relationships with each and every single one of you.

I don't need you to really know each other because all you need is me.

Jesus never gives us that example or calling.

He consistently calls people to himself, but then bonds them together and sends them together.

And so we may say, man, all we need, Jesus is going, no, no, I've actually created you to need relationships and community.

I've created you to long for that and need that.

I've followed Jesus for quite for quite a while.

When when whenever I would be in seasons of isolation, I never got better.

I never got healthier.

And I could read all the books in the world.

I could listen to all the sermons in the world.

I could attend all the events in the world.

If I was not walking in covenant community with other people who loved me, cared for me, and challenged me and spoke the word of God over me, I suffered as a result of that.

And so I imagine for some of you, you're going, like, man, I'm like in the Bible lap and stuff, and I like to attend this thing on Sundays, but something is just this Jesus stuff ain't working.

It's because you're missing an essential aspect of all of this, which is deep community and relationship.

It's not good for you to be alone.

The the next thing was is the need of the moment.

Like, why is it essential for the church to be a compelling community?

Because there's a need in the moment that we're in.

You know, we live in a secular culture that is defined as post-Christian.

So we have there there's no there's no data that could that could talk about the kind of the kind of decline that we've seen when it comes to following Jesus in the West, specifically in America.

We've never seen this much decline ever happen.

And so they don't have research for what it would look like for us to come back because we've never been here before.

And we officially qualify as a post-Christian culture.

Used to be Christian, no longer defined, no longer aligned with with Christian values, or and and really it's like, it's like, man, that's old, that's kind of old stuff.

And we hear, we see shadows of it or hear, hear it reverberate kind of throughout history, but ultimately we're a post-Christian society.

And there's this awful thing that secularism does to us is secularism puts self at the center and rejects or resists anyone or anything that would ever object to ourself at the center.

Right?

That's what this is what secularism does.

It puts self at the center, it takes God out of the center, puts self in the center, and then builds everything around self at the center.

And what this does is it destroys any opportunity for true, for true community.

So it creates a culture of isolated, lonely people who push away anyone or anything that would ever tell them they're wrong or push them to grow.

So ultimately, what people end up getting isn't community, they get support groups, right?

So they get other people who are consistently telling them, like, you're good enough, keep going exactly how you are, and they're watching you suffer and get worse.

And they don't love you enough to say that that's not okay.

Because we've created this entire version where, no, I go at the center and I just need you to affirm everything, everything that I do and everything that I am.

And so we begin to resist community that pushes us, and we begin to step into communities that support where we are, not where we need to be and who we need to become.

And what we're doing as a society, we preached on this a few weeks ago.

There's an Atlantic artal that talks about, that talks about that talks about chosen isolation.

That as a culture, isolation used to be something that we suffered from.

Now we're choosing it.

We're choosing it.

And instead of finding ways to resolve our loneliness, we're finding ways and creating ways to just cope with it instead of resolving it.

I think there's, I think I may have a graphic, but there was one I saw the other day about the relationship with AI over the past couple years.

We don't have that.

That's okay.

But in in the year 2025 and the year 2026, they they listed out the top 20 uses of AI in our culture.

You want to know what the top one was for both years?

Therapy and companionship.

Both 2025 and 2026, the top use of AI is for therapy and companionship.

It's not workout routines, it's not how to optimize or make our lives more efficient, it's not to, it's not someone to, it's not to make our work a little bit better.

It's I need a friend.

And and so we're choosing to isolate and we're creating technologies and different things to help us cope with our isolation and loneliness, to make it at least a little bit more endure endurable for us.

Instead of incarnational, we need an intimate community where we push and we grow and we challenge and we invite.

And then lastly, is the calling of the church.

The calling of the church that we're called as the church.

The church in and of itself is a community.

That's what we are.

When Paul writes to, when you look at all the New Testament, just about every single letter in the New Testament is written to the church at, right?

To the community, to the set apart, to the set apart saints of Jesus in this in this local context and place.

Like, man, I'm writing to you, this community of believers.

The church at Ephesus was a community of believers that gathered and multiplied in different in different local churches.

And that's who Paul's writing to.

He's like, He's like, man, take this letter to all the churches in Ephesus, to all the communities of believers that are gathered throughout Ephesus and form them with this letter.

And we see this all throughout the New Testament, because the calling of the church is one of community.

There's 59 one-anothers that we see in our Bible.

There's over 100 in the original Greek in the New Testament, 59 one-another, 100 in the original Greek.

None of those can be fulfilled in isolation.

They're commands from the Lord.

And we cannot, we cannot obey those commands in the context of isolation.

To love one another, to care for one another, to bear, to bear one another's burdens, to challenge one another, to stir one another up to love and good works, to call one another.

Like there's so many one another's throughout to gather with one another that we see all throughout the New Testament, and none of those can be obeyed or fulfilled or accomplished in isolation.

The letter of Ephesians is this idea of a new humanity, the people of Jesus being a new humanity, not of the world, but in the world, affecting more people in more places with them with the good news of Jesus as a community.

So what keeps us what keeps us from this kind of community?

I'll rush through these.

I don't want to, but I will.

First and foremost, self-isolation, selfish isolation keeps us from this kind of community.

We just talked about that.

That that ultimately we we are a people, a lot of a lot of you move to Atlanta for a job, and you're and you're here because you have a job because you have a job to do, and that's what you're pursuing, that's what you're focused on.

And then you build the rest of your life around that centerpiece.

And so, and so for most of us, the church becomes a chaplain service as we pursue our own personal dreams.

And they're there to pray for us and support us as we pursue our own personal success.

And so rather than the church being at the center and the mission of Jesus being at the center and our discipleship being at the center, our personal success is at the center, and we we prioritize the value of the church based on how they can help us get there.

And what we end up doing is we isolate ourselves increasingly more to help us focus on our own our own personal dreams and successes rather than actually building out our lives based on God's invitation and calling for us to be a community on mission together.

You know, it's it's funny because it's very normal for people to for people to leave churches in order to go find another job in another place.

Very normal, right?

We hear people, we've commissioned multiple people here who got job opportunities in other places.

And I'm never, I'm never going to speak ill of your job or your career.

God made you to work, your job is a good thing.

It's beautiful.

But what you what we don't have you ever heard anyone say, yeah, I got this job that's willing to pay me significantly more than what I have, but I said no because my community is just that important to me here.

Because what I'm experiencing as I follow Jesus in the context of this community, like$25,000 has nothing on that.

And you go, that's crazy.

And yet, and yet, when Pentecost happens in Jerusalem and 3,000 people come to faith in Jesus, history tells us that many of them did not go back to where they came from.

They didn't go back to their jobs, they didn't go back to their prior responsibilities.

Why?

Because they had experienced something and were now a part of something that they knew they could not experience somewhere else.

And they reoriented their life around their new calling as a follower of Jesus.

I've sat across from people who who will who have literally moved for their job or their career and literally go, I think I made a horrible mistake.

And they're going, I my faith is suffering, my community, I I don't have it anymore.

And I just don't know that this is worth what I lost.

And it's like, man, that stinks.

And so it's just like, it's it's not saying, hey, now you need to say no to every job that you ever get that's gonna take you to another city.

That's a cult.

We're not that, okay.

What we are saying, what we are saying is I wonder what it would, what, what, what effect it could have on us if we started going, man, what if I place my relationship with Jesus at the center and the impact of community at the center, and started to reconsider or reorient my life around that.

And how would I make decisions differently?

Second, crushing expectations.

This is what keeps us from experiencing the kind of community that God wants to give us, crushing expectations.

I I mentioned this a little bit earlier.

We bring our own expectations and place them, and oftentimes the church does this too, is we take our expectations and we place them on people who are not aware of them and have not agreed to them.

And so, like for many of us, we step into, we step into church and and then and then we put these expectations on people that you that you need to be giving me this, and they're not aware of the expectations that we've placed on them.

And so, and so I think a lot of times people suffer as the you know as a result of crushing expectations that we place on on community.

And this is why when we talk about looking back at the pages of scripture to go, what what is what is the church meant to embody and pursue together?

And let's make that, let's make that the non-negotiable rather than trying to fulfill every single expectation possible.

This is why we have different kinds of communities and we have core groups here at Kingdom City.

Like tonight, or after this, it's not gonna be tonight, I promise.

After the gathering, you're gonna be able to go into the courtyard and you're gonna see our different communities.

And and there's there's one that's that's called an alpha community, and this is for people who are either considering Jesus or are new to Jesus.

And you're and you're going, like, man, I'm just curious about the claims of Jesus.

And this is gonna be a temporary kind of community that you can be part of for like 10 weeks.

And what you're gonna do is break bread, have conversation around the table around the claims of Jesus.

And you're gonna go, man, like what does it look like to create a safe space where people can just ask questions as they consider Jesus together?

And if you're a new believer, this is gonna be a great place for you to like to like look at the claims of Jesus and what it means to actually follow him and lay kind of a foundation.

Alpha literally means beginning.

And so it's for people who are either about to begin, that's that's a prophetic word for some of you, about to begin a relationship with Jesus, or those of you who have just started a relationship with Jesus.

We've got our Kingdom City communities, which are we call universe merging spaces spaces.

This is where we want to see followers of Jesus and people who don't follow Jesus find community around the table together.

Sam Chan, who who teaches a lot about evangelism, he's a doctor in Australia.

And he says that that what's needed is more universe merging spaces because most Christians aren't friends with non-cr non-Christians and most non-Christians aren't friends with Christians.

And so he says you need a space where they can begin to meet one another, create friendship together, grow in respect for one another, and and non-Christians could be can begin to get curious about the life of Jesus together.

And this is what you see, like in Acts chapter 2, 42 through 47, is people who follow Jesus together coming into community and the Lord adding to their number daily those who are being saved.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Why?

Because they're seeing a kind of community operate together.

And so, and so we create these kinds of communities.

They're meant to be larger.

So, like people walk in and they go, Why are there 25 people in my community?

It's like, because they're meant to be larger spaces.

And so we want to see our communities grow and become extended families where relationships can be built.

And then we have core groups, which are meant to be four to six people, no less than three, no more than eight, but key to be like four to six people who are followers of Jesus.

This is high challenge, high accountability, reading the word together, discipling one another relationally, praying for one another, encouraging each other, trying to keep each other faithful to Jesus.

And so I say that because we want to create those distinct spaces.

Why?

Because it protects our expectation.

To go like, man, what kind of expectation should I place here?

This kind of expectation.

What kind of expectation should I place on a community?

Not a whole lot.

High invitation, low accountability.

We just want to see people encountering Jesus and sharing a meal together and building relationships.

What kind of expectation should I put on a core group?

High expectation, high accountability.

And so we want to create spaces where we can bring safe expectation for people.

Because we want to have realistic and healthy expectations, even challenging expectations, but not crushing expectations.

And then the last, the, the third thing is we're growing increasingly preference-driven, right?

We put our preferences at the center.

You know, we're deformed into thinking that organizations exist to meet our preferences, right?

We we we put the customer as always right at the center.

And we think if we push hard enough, complain enough, or get frustrated enough, something will bend or change in order to meet our preferences.

But that's not the way we approach the church, right?

Because the church doesn't exist to please customers.

The church exists to please Christ.

And so we do what he's called to do for the sake, for the for his sake and for the sake of his mission.

John Tyson once said that you can tell a person's loyalty and maturity by how they respond when they don't get what they want.

And the key for all of us is to, is, is as followers of Jesus, Jesus is gonna tell us no sometimes.

And we need community around us that are gonna lead us to submit to Jesus when he tells us no.

Right?

So we need other communities that's gonna be like, yeah, Jesus is gonna tell you no and that, but it's because he wants to lead you to greater life.

And I'm here to encourage you and stir you up and hold you accountable as you pursue that because it's better.

And then lastly, transience keeps us from it, right?

Just I think a lot of people don't step into community because they know Atlanta's temporary.

Say you go, like, man, I'm I'm a student.

I'm here for I'm here for just a little bit.

I can't commit to a church, I can't commit to a community because I'm not gonna be here forever.

I don't know where I'm gonna be six months from now.

Some of you are like, yeah, I got here for a job, but I'm looking for another one, I'm hoping to get out of here.

Others of you are like, yeah, I'm I'm paying$3,000 in rent.

I'm hoping to buy a house somewhere far away in the suburbs with a yard and a backyard that's that's lower price than that.

And so I'm not gonna commit.

I'm not gonna buy in.

And just go, man, wherever you are, root deeply and invest deeply.

Wherever you are.

I don't know how how long God has has you here, but what he's not gonna call you to be is unfaithful in a temporary season so that you can be faithful in a more permanent one.

He's never gonna he's never gonna call you to be unfaithful for for a for a temporal amount of time.

He wants you to be faithful now.

And then guess what?

That faithful is gonna be yet more faithfulness when you do end up wherever he's gonna take you.

Alright.

So to close.

I'm scared.

Okay.

So, what is a New Testament kind of community?

A New Testament community is this it's a community of disciples formed around the person and mission of Jesus, who are radically committed to Jesus, each other, and advancing God's kingdom in the world.

A community of disciples formed around the person and mission of Jesus who are radically committed to Jesus, each other, and advancing God's kingdom in the world.

This is what we want to see us become more and more.

It gets really hard when when when you put people in a context of communion, we all have different things at the center.

And what and what the church at Ephesus did, what the New Testament church did is they all got together and then they placed the same thing at the center.

And and I want to remind you that when we look at when we look at the book, like there are some people here who have been following Jesus for a minute, there are some there are some people in the book of Ephesus who were literally worshiping Artemis yesterday.

And someone invited them to share a meal at community, they heard the good news of Jesus and they said, I want that, and they submitted to Jesus, and they still believe all kinds of crazy stuff.

They don't yet know anything.

All they know is that some is that God in the person of Jesus has stepped into human history.

He loves me, he wants to save me, he's willing to forgive me, he's willing to give me life.

And I want that.

They don't they don't they don't even know to like is do you believe that the that the scriptures are the inerrant word of God without error?

It's like, no, I don't I don't know.

I don't I don't even know what the word what the scriptures are.

Do you believe in the triune God?

Do you believe in Father, Son, Holy Spirit?

I don't know.

I just heard about Jesus five minutes ago.

And so as a community of people who are who are now brought together, we have all kinds of different stories.

We're bringing in all kinds of different things.

And yet what we're trying to do is placing the same thing at the center to go, look, we believe that Jesus is God, He is good, He loves us, He's got a good plan for us, and our our goal and responsibility is to help one another submit to Him, follow Him, and believe Him for the rest of our days and increasingly be conformed to His image as we follow Him together.

So we're trying to do is put Jesus at the center.

So as we as we respond together, we're gonna we're not gonna respond in worship, we're gonna respond in prayer and then also in the courtyard as we pers as we look at communities.

But one of the one of the things that we want to encourage you to evaluate is we want you to evaluate your expectations, we want you to evaluate your commitment.

Evaluate your expectations and evaluate your commitment.

We cannot control everything as people.

Oh, Yuri.

What's up?

Um we cannot control a lot of things, right?

There's a lot of things that are outside your control.

Two things that you can't control are your expectations and your commitment.

Um I'm an Alabama fan, roll tide for all those things.

I felt that.

It was great.

Really supported.

Um but I was listening, I was listening to this talk by Nick Saban the other day.

And he said, he said, look, man, the reality of success is it costs what it costs.

It costs what it costs.

And and I was, I was, I was thinking about that and I was going, I was going, man, like the reality of this kind of community is it costs what it costs.

Like it's just the reality.

Like what it means to be a New Testament kind of community, to be a New Testament disciples, to make a New Testament kind of impact, is it costs what it costs?

And the question for us is going, do we want that?

Do we want to be those kind of disciples?

Do we want to be that kind of community?

Do we want to make that kind of impact?

Then it costs what it costs.

The question is, are we gonna commit?

Are we gonna commit as a people or are we gonna commit as disciples of Jesus?

Um, you know, Jesus' strategy for this, you know, when we look at the gospels, is is really simple, man.

Is he he finds a few.

He finds a few, he speaks, he's he speaks the good news of he speaks the good news into their heart, he makes them burn, and then he lets them loose.

I mean, there's a lot of us, I think your relationship with the church has been you attend this church, you go through some kind of system and process, you attend, you sit in these categories, and what we want you to know is that we're inviting you to pursue and encounter the living God, to burn with passion, and to live on mission, to color outside the lines, to go do whatever it takes to reach more people and to make an impact in our city.

And so, man, maybe you're here and you're going, like, man, honestly, I the reality is I don't I don't want to make space for this.

Like, my life is crowded, and I don't Want to make space for it.

Man, our our desire is to just simply open up your heart and ask the Lord to go like, Lord, do I have idols in my life?

Do I have misplaced priorities?

Is there something in my life that may be missing?

Man, the reality is that some of you have a lot of responsibilities, and God may be calling you in a season of like, hey, there's just you're not gonna be able to pursue this in the way that you long to.

But I think for most of us, we tend to make really, we tend to make excuses.

And that I think the calling and the invitation of God is to go, man, I want you to be this kind of person, make this kind of impact, and be part of this kind of community.

And it's gonna cost.

And he's calling you to count the cost and jump in and be part of it.

Some of you just need to jump into a community to play a role, to make, to, to meet friends, to encounter people, to love people, to exercise your gifts in the context of community.

Others of you, it's time for you to be discipled and you're shy and you don't want to start a core group and go ask people to follow Jesus and hold each other accountable and confess sin and do those things together, but you need to, and there's a great invitation for you to do that.

And then others of you, I just think it's an invitation for you to have a fresh, a fresh mindset of consecration and surrender today.

To go, Lord, I've got a lot of different priorities.

I'm worried about finances, I'm worried about, I'm I'm worried about my job, I'm worried about this, I'm worried about that, and I'm not worried about you, and I'm not worried about what you're calling me to.

And you just go, Lord, I want to put you back at the center.

I want to consecrate myself to you, to the calling that you've placed in my life.

I want to put, I want to go all in and recommit to who you are and what you're doing.

And then some of you in the room, you've been considering Jesus for a while, and you haven't jumped in, you haven't, you haven't surrendered to him.

And man, like our invitation for you is to go like these people right here turned a city upside down.

And they had all kinds of broken stories, they had all kinds of regrets, all kinds of shame, all kinds of things that they had lived through and done.

And there's a there's a temptation for you to believe that God can't save you, redeem you, or use you in what he's doing.

And what God does is he puts a new name, gives you a new story, gives you a new purpose, gives you a new spirit within you.

And he uses you in ways that you only dreamed of or imagined.

And my encouragement to you is don't wait.

You go, man, I'll do it when I'm 40, I'll do it later, I'll do it whatever.

No, do it right now, the way God could use your life.

So, our team's gonna be here to pray.

I'm gonna pray for us to close.

Invitation is for you to come to them, ask for prayer in whatever way that you feel like the spirit is stirring.

Uh, we're gonna have community representatives out here.

We just encourage you to meet some people, um, to potentially step into a community, hear about what God's doing there, figure out which one may work best for you.

If you're here and there's not one that works for you and you're like, I want to start one, come see me.

Let's do some stuff.

Um, let's make it work.

Let's reach some people, let's start them in new communities or wherever.

Um, but I'm gonna pray for us.

Jesus, we um we long to be these kind of people.

We long to be this kind of community.

We long to make this kind of impact.

Lord, we have people in this room right now who are asking themselves, can Jesus really save me?

Does Jesus really want me?

And the answer is a resounding yes.

Some people in this room that are going, could Jesus really use me?

Could Jesus really redeem my story and use it for good?

And your answer is a resounding yes.

There's people in this room who are asking, if people really knew me, would they really love me?

And the answer is a resounding yes.

Could they really experience grace?

Yes.

Could they really experience love?

Yes.

Even if they don't believe or understand or know all the things yet, could they experience radical welcome?

Yes.

Jesus, we don't want to be simply another Christian organization that does some events.

We want to be New Testament disciples, living in New Testament community, making New Testament impact.

God, would you do that work in us?

In Jesus' name.

Amen.