The Gospel “Sends” - Pastor Greg Addison - Feb. 25, 2024

Ministering to the heart of Western Arkansas's River Valley for over 165 years, welcome to Chapter and First, the Bible teaching ministry of Fort Smith's First Baptist Church.

You'll find sermons and teachings from Pastor Greg, our ministry staff, and guest speakers.

Thank you for listening.

That is absolutely one of my most favorite songs.

You have got to love a line that says, Let the rains come.

Because of Jesus, I'll be dancing in the rain.

Is that awesome?

That's the hope that we have in Jesus.

Give the kids a hand this morning.

They were awesome and our future is bright.

Amen.

Turn with me in your Bibles to Acts chapter 8.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

And today we're going to, I'm going to make a presentation in just a moment, but everything that we do, we always want to make sure that we are anchored in Scripture, that we are pursuing things the way God has designed and guides us to pursue.

And so I'm going to talk today about the sending gospel and how I believe it's time for us to have another motion of being sent.

As you read here in the book of Acts, all throughout the book of Acts, what you see is the gospel is not a come and see proposition.

The gospel is a go and tell process.

It is not a come and see, it is a go and tell.

In fact, at the end of the book of Matthew, in what we refer to as the Great Commission, the Bible says, go into all the world.

Acts chapter 1, as this process of sending begins, Jesus, before he ascended to heaven, is talking to his followers and trying to prepare them.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

And they say, you know, when are you coming back and all of that?

And he says, listen, don't worry about all that.

Stay here, and the Holy Spirit's going to come and give you power, and then I want you to go.

You're going to be witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth.

And so the gospel is a going process.

What we see is in chapter 8, persecution begins to break out.

And the Bible says that what happened is, verse 4, so those who were scattered went on their way preaching the message of good news.

The Bible tells us one of those men is a man named Philip.

He goes to a city in Samaria.

He begins preaching the gospel.

Even though he is run out of town under persecution, he goes and he takes Jesus with him.

And as he goes, he preaches the gospel.

And the Bible says people were getting saved, and there was so much revival going on that the city was filled with joy because of what he's doing, right?

And so then the Bible says, our reading today, beginning in verse 26, an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip.

Get up and what does that next word say?

Go.

Get up and go.

Now here he is in the middle of a revival.

I mean, the whole city is turned on its ear.

It's so exciting.

And God tells him, okay, the gospel is a going process, so go.

Get up and go south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.

This is a desert road.

Okay, now I just gotta tell you, I'd be hard pressed if I'm in the middle of preaching a revival where folks are flocking down the aisle and somebody tells me to go out on the backside of 71 where nobody is.

I'm gonna be really hard pressed to leave people getting saved and go out there.

And yet God sent him, and so Philip went.

So he got up and went, verse 27.

There was an Ethiopian man, a eunuch, and a high official of Candacey, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of her entire treasury.

Is that awesome?

This is a man of incredible influence.

And it says he had come to worship in Jerusalem.

So here's a man of incredible influence who is searching for the answers that only come with Jesus.

He was sitting in his chariot on the way home, reading the prophet Isaiah aloud.

And the Spirit told Philip, see that dude right over there, you go join that chariot.

And the Bible says Philip ran up to it.

He heard him reading the prophet Isaiah, and he said, Do you understand what you're reading?

The man says, How can I unless someone guides me?

So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

Now the scripture passage he was reading was this it's a gospel passage.

It's a prophecy of Jesus.

He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb is silent before it shears, so he does not open his mouth.

In his humiliation, justice was denied him.

Who will describe his generation?

For his life is taken from the earth.

And the eunuch asks Philip, I ask you, who is the prophet saying this is about?

Himself or another person?

And I'm sure that Philip said something like this, I am so glad you asked.

And the Bible says Philip proceeded to tell him the good news about Jesus, beginning from that scripture.

As they were traveling down the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, Look, there's water.

What would keep me from being baptized?

And Philip said, If you believe with all your heart, then you may.

And he replied, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

And there, before he's baptized, he gives his life to Christ, because we know that baptism doesn't save you.

Baptism is a picture of what happened to us when we got saved.

It is a picture of the message of salvation.

As you see a person, they are buried the way Jesus was buried, and then he rose again, and we, as we accept Christ with new resurrected life, come up out of the water.

And so he's explaining all that to him.

They ordered the chariot to stop.

Both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and he baptized him.

When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him any longer.

Philip appeared in a whole nother place, and what does the Bible say he did?

As he was traveling and evangelizing, that's what he was doing.

Because he goes, and he understood to go.

Well, a couple of things I want to see to set up this for us as a church, because I believe this is a passage that will help us as we process the journey.

Philip was in one place, but God sent him to another.

Philip was sent.

The gospel is a sending process.

We are always being sent as God's people.

It is not an accident that we talk today in the context of two groups of our church family being sent to spread the gospel.

So this is an opportunity of influence.

This man, historians tell us, church historians tell us, took his faith back to Ethiopia and he became the catalyst for the spread of the gospel in that nation.

And if you go back and read some of that, it's incredible.

But even in Scripture, what we understand is this is a key moment because this is a man of massive influence.

This was an opportunity for the gospel to spread through a person of influence and a person of peace.

And Philip in faith seized the moment.

Here he is in a revival.

God says go, he goes.

He's standing there waiting.

God says, go to that chariot, he goes to that chariot.

He teaches that man the gospel, and then you can imagine the excitement if you've ever led anyone to Christ and you lead them to Christ, and not only that, you find a place, you baptize them, and then God takes them and sends them on.

There's no time for hitting them joy, the joy of that man.

We're going to share the gospel because the gospel is a sending process.

So what today I'd like to do is make a presentation to you.

I'm excited to present to you a plan for us as a church to develop a second campus in a rented facility.

This is not about building yet.

I'll get to that in a moment.

But we start a second campus in the Chaffee area that would make us one church in two locations.

It would be what people refer to sometimes as a multi-site church.

And so that's what we're looking for.

And so here's what happens.

I want to cast a vision to you this morning, and then tonight we'll have a question and answer time.

We've put that on tonight.

So while the information is fresh, the questions are starting, you can come and we can start that conversation.

And that's what we're doing today, is we are beginning a discussion as a church.

This is a planning process that we are bringing you into as a church family.

Today I'm going to give you and present to you a clear, detailed strategy.

Strategy.

Okay?

We do not have specific details yet as to how to implement this.

For example, the first question we get is, well, where's the next location?

Well, we don't know that yet.

Because you need to be in the process with us as we move forward.

But today I want to give you a strategy about how to accomplish this.

It is a journey that we're starting to take together as a church.

But now is the time, I believe, to start this journey.

Another question that happens is in this second campus, what does that mean for this campus?

In a few moments I'll talk to you.

But we believe that we're reaching people here and reaching people out there.

I want to give you a picture that I want you to latch on to in your mind and in your heart, and I want it to become a prayer focus for us.

Picture the first Sunday where we baptize people in both locations on the same Sunday morning.

That's an image right there, right?

I want you to hold on to that.

Now, this presentation I'm going to give you this morning has been covered in prayer and vetted through a lot of groups.

We have gone through the property committee that we have voted on as a church family, that they manage the issues as it's related to the Chaffee property.

We've been through the Finance Committee, we've been through the Personnel Committee, and we've been through the Deacon Body.

And all of those groups have voted to present this to you to bring you into this process of praying for God's wisdom and making these decisions together.

Now, let me paint a picture for you so you get in your mind what we're talking about.

Okay?

So, advertisements, whatever it is, all around town.

A visitor wants to visit First Baptist Church, they go to our website, however, you want to get there, they have two choices.

They can visit First Baptist Downtown or the First Baptist Chaffee property, First Baptist Chaffee Campus.

And so that campus will be in a rented facility that we will work through and look for and all of that.

But when you drive up there, you are entering the campus of First Baptist Church.

We are one church, one DNA, one goal, one mission, one mission strategy, one heart.

We do the same thing.

We're the same church family.

What happens when you get there is you will be invited to a Sunday morning service, right?

Again, it's not a full-blown church campus.

It's not all that.

So there are some limitations to that.

But we want it to be a first class, First Baptist church service.

When we step in there, we want folks to know we're first Baptist.

So what you'll receive when you go there in that day, you'll be greeted just like you're greeted here.

Folks will love on you.

You can drop your kids off and birth through extended session, nursery level, you know, five-year-old or whatever.

And then you'll go into a worship service, and we anticipate with that worship service having a live preacher and live worship, and it's just like coming to a Sunday morning.

Now, how does that work with the live preaching?

Well, we would have a preaching team.

I'm still the pastor, one church, right?

And so what happens is, but we have a team that works to preach.

And so what we would do is write that sermon series together, shape that sermon series together.

Picture in your mind January, when we went through that prayer service together, and we also encouraged people to sign up for the prayer force and all of that.

Both campuses are doing the same thing.

Both campuses are aimed at the same strategy, prayer force.

We're doing a sermon series on prayer.

You'll get the same topic, the same general outline, and of course, every preacher is a little bit different.

So they will unpack some of that differently, and there's freedom for that happen together.

But we're doing live preaching.

Now, I have run multi-site campuses before where I was by video, and there are a lot of churches that do that on video.

I don't have a problem with that.

I don't think that's an issue.

I think we can do that, but I think we prefer live preaching, and we want pastors there to impact folks, to shake their hand and connect with them and be a part of that, because that's what we do here, and that's what we want to do there, right?

And so that's kind of the picture of that.

And then we would uh have the same DNA, the same belief system, the same process.

We're inviting them to small group Sunday school classes like I preached on last week.

We're starting to do that.

And then we're also going to invite them, at least initially, to come back here on Wednesday nights.

You're a family that visited and you have young kids, come be in our wana program because it's excellent.

If you have students, come be in our student ministry because it's excellent.

And you want to be here and we want you here.

And then as we grow, we begin to flesh those things out.

But as it starts, that's what that looks like and the picture of that.

We also believe that there are distinct advantages in our downtown campus as well.

And so I don't think this hurts in any way, shape, or form, but it helps us as we grow.

It adds to Wednesday nights, other things.

Plus, we are doing things here to reach people, and we believe there are distinct advantages to this campus and this place.

For example, our proximity and access to Oklahoma is really excellent right here.

And this is a strategic spot, and we have a lot of families coming from Oklahoma.

We have visitors from Oklahoma.

In fact, our nursery, we have an incredible uh slate of workers in our nursery and preschool and children's ministry that are our Oklahoma families.

And we want to continue to build on that and continue to grow on that.

We have an incredible proximity to Darby and our students there.

We love and the connections that we are making there.

We are down the street from UAFS and we are down the street from Northside High School.

And so we have incredible opportunities here, but we have opportunities there as well.

Now let me walk you through the process and then I want to get into some more details.

Today we're beginning this discussion.

What we're going to do is ask all of us as a church family to vote on this strategy.

So not bringing you staff guys, we don't have a building yet, we don't have all that.

I'm going to give you an estimated budget in a minute.

But in two weeks, on March the 10th, we're going to ask you on a Sunday morning to vote on the strategy.

Because here's what happens.

As we begin to try to vet some of this, there are just limits that we have that we can't go any further because we need you to be a part of this.

So let me give an example.

Every time I go to the egg, I get a lot of pastoral visiting.

Every breakfast meeting I go there because there's always a bunch of people there from First Baptist.

So what happens if we hire a real estate agent and we go find a spot out there and he's a developer and he's your friend and y'all show up at the egg together, and he goes, Hey, I just met with your pastor.

You guys are renting one of my facilities.

I'm so excited.

And you're like, I have no idea what you're talking about.

And what has our crazy pastor done?

Right?

So you can't do it that way.

You've got to get involved in the process.

And so we want to bring you in.

So what'll happen is this I'm presenting today.

We'll meet tonight.

Start the question and answer.

Next Sunday morning.

We have people fanning out in your Sunday school classes to answer questions.

We want you to be in a setting where you're comfortable and you can ask together.

We can discuss this together.

You have two weeks to call, find, set a meeting time, come see us.

We want everybody to be in this.

And so we've set out two weeks, that meeting on March the 10th, and we'd like to vote on the strategy at that point.

And so then we would begin free to be able to implement that as we move forward.

So why are we doing this?

Well, this is about reaching people.

This is about the advance of the gospel.

I want to show you a map.

We've been doing research on this Chaffee area, and what you see is a map there.

And uh and the red circle, it's hard to see, but you can see a lot of it.

The red circle there is a five-minute drive from our property.

We just use that as a focal point.

You could have used any property point out there.

We just used that.

The green is a 10-minute drive.

Within a 10-minute drive of our property, there are over 14,000 people that already live there.

That does not include the hundreds and hundreds of residential center, residential homes that are being built right now, apartment complexes and homes.

It is hundreds and hundreds.

And that doesn't even begin to describe the hundreds and hundreds more that are on the books.

And so in that area, it is a massive population center for our community.

It is also the place that is becoming the catalyst for the growth of the River Valley and of the Fort Smith area.

In a sense, this is the Ethiopian eunuch spot, a place of influence and an opportunity for us to step in there.

And it is all about the gospel and expanding our ability to reach our community and to impact families with the gospel and the message that Jesus saves.

That's what this is about.

And that's what we're trying to do.

Now, when you look at this evangelism process, I think that it is going to challenge us in three areas.

If you will, it's going to tug on our triangles as church members and as a church in three areas: prayer, finances and stewardship, ministry and serving.

Okay?

So let's go back and look at prayer.

You think about that triangle.

We've been talking about that, working on expanding that.

Let's talk about prayer first.

Because anything that we do has to be involved in being prayed over.

It has to be fueled by God.

It has to be led by God.

In this story, Philip, it is Philip, you go.

Philip talked to that deal.

He pulls them out of it when it's over, and the man gets saved, and he goes, Philip, we're going over here.

We have got to be in prayer.

We are dependent on God.

People don't come to First Baptist because we're first Baptist.

They're not going to get saved because we're First Baptist.

People are not going to go to that campus because it has First Baptist on the sign.

They're going to come because God is fueling an evangelism movement and bringing people to us because we are faithful to follow Him, depend on Him, and to share Jesus.

Now, we have already started this well.

I can't tell you how blessed I am, the response to the prayer force.

And we have already begun praying for evangelism, covering things in evangelism in that prayer.

This morning, I'm wearing my gunner bracelet because we are on duty, and I saw gunner bracelets all over the church this morning.

Man, we have mission teams out and they are being prayed for, and so we are on duty.

And so we are beginning to really grow into that, and now this will just continue to galvanize the focus of our prayers in praying for people to be saved.

This will enhance, but it will challenge us to pray and to grow more in our prayer for evangelism.

The second area it will stretch our triangles is in the area of stewardship.

Now, let me give you just a little bit of an estimated budget for this.

What we've looked at, the best we're able to estimate at this point is a budget of$550,000.

Now that's made up of a couple of components.

There's uh uh$200,000 or so in there.

That's for equipment.

It's things like microphones, you know, screens, baby beds, chairs, all kinds of stuff like that, which leaves you about a$350 operating budget.

We would propose two new staff people that are dedicated first to that campus, but they would have plenty of responsibilities and add to everything we're doing here.

Of course, you need another worship person because as talented as Jacob is, he cannot be in the same spot at the same time.

Two different spots at the same time.

And so we've got to help.

We've got to expand.

And then the live preaching I've talked about just a minute ago.

Now our staff is fully involved and they are fully engaged in this process.

And we all know that reaching more people is going to stretch us further and engage us in a whole lot more activity as staff.

But our guys are already doing that.

They're already stretching out.

And then the rest of that 350 is stuff like rent, utilities, advertising, coffee, because you cannot have a Baptist church without coffee.

Can I have an amen?

So, you know, so we're in that.

So you got all those operating things.

Now here's the next thing about it.

The timing of that, this doesn't all go out the door at once.

Like we're not going to go buy microphones and screens and all that kind of stuff until we have a spot.

So it takes time for all that to happen, right?

So it unfolds over time so it does not create a lot of financial pressure and any kind of short-term situation.

And so it's easy for us to do that.

Now, how where's that gonna come from?

Let me say this as well.

We're excited about our renovation projects going on here at the church.

We're anticipating our classes that will be in those new classrooms will be in on the morning of March the 10th.

That's awesome.

It's a great day.

And so we're excited about that.

And the other things are progressing very well.

This project is substantially less expensive than the renovation that's going on around the campus.

So it's really not even something that we haven't already done, right?

And so we can work our way through that.

So there are two ways that we're gonna begin the financial nest egg that would work us in this process.

So the first one is our faith forward offering in April.

As we start our faith forward offering in April after Easter, you know, we do this every year.

And the second component of that is the sale of our mission house over towards the center of the city.

Let me talk about the mission house for just a moment.

It's been a great blessing, it's been a great ministry, and it has it has been donated, maintained, paid for, renovated, everything else by great people in our church who have a heart for missions and a heart for evangelism.

As time has progressed, the house is old now, and the nature of that ministry has changed, and it's not quite the same type of ministry as it used to be.

Now it's been a great ministry through the years.

It has had a great heart behind it, and so as we are processing what to do with that as life shifts and changes, what we always want to do is keep things in the lane of the heart of our folks.

And since that has been about missions, it's been about evangelism and the advance of the gospel, we felt like this is a very appropriate place to take that stewardship and invest it directly in something that is evangelism and advancing the gospel.

We also have the Curtis House, what people refer to as the Curtis House, here adjacent to our campus.

And as we've begun catching up on renovations and maintenance and all of that, it is being used and can be used, and we're continuing to upgrade it so we still have access to a house we could use from emissionaries or whatever, with it adjacent to our campus, which also makes it very effective to use.

And then our Faith Forward offering, beginning in April, we would uh apply that directly into this project.

That's what our Faith Forward offering is for.

As we've talked about before, we operate the church on tithes and offerings.

We have certain missions offerings that we teach each year that relate to our partners in missions.

And then Faith Forward is about helping us advance, and it has that capital offering component to it, right?

And so what you have is the opportunity for us to build on that and move forward.

And we think those things together are going to be there or almost there in terms of managing this project.

But again, a lot of that relies with all of us as a church family.

Are we all participating?

Are we all in and a part of that?

And as we know, stewardship, biblical stewardship is a spiritual matter.

I'm not a fundraiser, I'm a gospel preacher, and I'm a Christian who is attached to the advance of the gospel just like you are.

And so, but stewardship is an important spiritual issue.

Jesus talked about money and how it was a temperature or thermometer of our spiritual temperature more than he talked about heaven.

Because of what it indicates and what it reveals to us.

The things that are most precious to us are the things that we make the highest priority.

And so the question is, for every church always, for every Christian always, is are we tithing and giving offerings and are we doing that as an act for the Lord?

Let me read to you a blog that I read this week because I thought it really fit in with how an evangelism project like this, yes, it has money attached to it, but it has a deeper sense of our passion and calling to go, just as Philip responded.

This is a blog that a lot of pastors read, and this particular one was about how to talk about money in your church, how often to talk about money, and what the role of that is in church.

And here's what it says in a conversation with a wise pastor about giving moments, this is what the pastor says.

It's not a time when you're trying to get money out of people's pockets, it's a time when you're trying to get the idols out of their hearts.

That sums up what our priorities and goals should be when it comes to giving.

We should be more grieved about the spiritual condition of our givers as it relates to money and possessions than we are concerned about meeting the budget.

And so what that means is when we're stretching our triangle, we are figuring out how that relates into our faith journey to advance the gospel.

Here's what he says: giving is a spiritual journey, and everyone in your church body is at various stages of this journey, and that's very true.

When you talk about money in church regularly and in the right way, your people will start to understand that the giving moment is not about getting money out of their pockets, it's about reverence, honor, faithfulness, and gratitude to God.

Giving has the power to transform the giver, to remove those idols from our hearts, because it is not merely a transactional act.

In other words, you're not just telling your app to make a payment or writing a check.

It is an intimate act of trust and a tangible act of obedience to the Lord.

And as we step out in ministry, as we find ways to either through a missions offering or through a strategy just like this, move forward into expanding the gospel in our church, that's why this is a growing opportunity for us as a church.

Now, let me share with you just a little bit about where we are, because a lot of times people don't necessarily figure out all those things where we are.

We are a growing church, praise the Lord.

I mean, it it is really, we are growing, Sunday school is growing, worship is growing, our on-campus numbers have really grown as we've reached more families with kids and all of that.

And in a growing church, it kind of looks like this.

You have visitors that check you out, and if you're visiting today, we are glad you're visiting on a day like this because we want you to see that we are a visionary church, and we want you to see how we come together to do things and how we process things.

As people visit, they get involved and they join.

And then as they grow, they become a committed core part of the church family, right?

And we have all of those groups in our church, and they're all growing.

Praise the Lord.

It's wonderful.

So let me work backwards.

Our core committed family in our church is incredible.

And you're incredible in every area of life.

Prayer force is a great example of that.

You also are an incredible biblical stewardship body.

Our church has a strong heritage of biblical stewardship, of giving sacrificially, of building ministries and all of that.

Our church started building this television ministry in the 1950s.

They stepped out and did this.

I mean, it's incredible through the years the number of buildings that have been on this property and all of the number of things that they've done to give, and that is true today.

And so we have a great core of givers who are deeply committed, sacrificially giving.

You can't even talk about things like this unless you have a healthy body.

And so I want to say thank you to our church family.

You guys are incredible in your faithfulness and your love for the Lord and your love for the church.

Over the last 15 months, we have been on a constant growth curve financially as a church.

Last year, our giving and our operating budget was up between 2.5% and 3%, depending on how you do the math.

And on top of that, you gave a very sacrificial faith forward offering.

Our designated giving of things like scholarships for camps and children's ministry and all kinds of stuff.

That's growing.

It's incredible to see what you do as you understand what that pastor said.

This is not a transactional act, but this is an act of worship and thank you for the Lord.

Now in our church, we also have a very large number of people, what I would call involved.

That means you have a pattern of attendance.

Many folks, that pattern is growing.

We have people who are moving from worship, just attending worship services to trying out Sunday school classes.

In that involved group, we have a number of people who are starting to give.

They have a pattern of giving, but they're not at that teaching Sunday school and ministry or tithing level as a committed core is.

And this is an opportunity for involved people to move forward.

It's an opportunity for visitors to join the church, become a part of that.

Now we're blessed.

Many of our new members are giving and have jumped right in, just like they've jumped into worship services, they've jumped into Sunday school, they're serving around the church, they have also jumped in and giving, and it's awesome because that's that growth process.

Let me kind of explain to you how that works itself out.

Core involved and then new people coming in.

We have a growing number of people who give online that's reached up to about 20% or a little more than 20%, which means between 75 and 80% of our people give when you attend, which is awesome.

That's why we got boxes up here and boxes in the hall and all that.

It's great.

A lot of people find giving online.

Janet and I give online.

A lot of people love to come and do it at church.

It's an act of worship.

Fantastic.

It's all great.

Here's what happens: we're on a 15-month trajectory of growing in the level of our giving.

We get to January and we have two weather Sundays.

So what happens is our attending our attendance drops in one of those Sundays by half, and then drops the next one, and then there's a trajectory where we come back in February, and now we're back to where we've been, right?

Just takes a little while, that lag to catch up.

Well, if folks aren't here, and 80% of our folks give when they attend, and the attendance drops, the giving drops.

And generally the giving is not made up as people start to come back.

So what happens is we're working through this process, we're planning through this, we're in growth mode, we've been in growth mode for 15 months.

We have snow, and in January, we gave less than January last year.

So we go backwards.

Okay.

You we can't function that way.

Now I'm grateful for our finance committees and our personnel committees.

They do a great job leading us through this, and they also do a great job of faith when you have months like this and they grit their teeth and they say, we're gonna keep going, and we're gonna believe God is good, and we're gonna look at all that.

But let me tell you what, it's it that you it's hard to move forward.

It's hard to press an accelerator, it's hard to step into vision, it's hard to pick up something that's even less than something we've already done, but if we are up and down on whether it rains or snows or not, that is a matter of spiritual growth for us as a church.

And so when we push into an evangelism effort like this, what happens is it pulls us forward, it stretches our triangles, and we grow spiritually in that part.

We step in and are more committed.

We elevate what we're doing because we see the impact and the call of that area.

As Philip saw that moment and went and stepped into it, it really calls us to do that as a church.

There's more than enough money, there's more than enough people, there's more than enough to do all of this.

But what it does is it pulls us into a deeper commitment level to advance the gospel.

And so that's how we need to do that.

Now, the other piece of this, as we go out there and we reach people out there, what we would do is we'd like to keep all the tithes and everything out there and begin to develop that and let that grow and that congregation add to all that, which then takes that 350 number and it drops it even lower as that happens.

Got it?

Now let's talk about the third area we're gonna get stretched in ministry.

Well, Pastor, how are we gonna do that?

Who's gonna go and all of that?

Well, we're gonna talk about ministry, but it stretches us ministry-wise.

So the same discussion that we just had with people who are involved in visiting and joining, and then the involved number of folks, and they're growing in what they're doing, and they're looking for opportunities, and they're working through that spiritual journey about tithing, it'll play it, it plays itself out in serving the same way.

We have an incredible core of people who are serving and doing incredible work, and we just need more people.

You can't reach more people without more people growing and getting in ministry and getting involved.

Next week, I'm going to preach a sermon on spiritual gifts, which, if you're not familiar with that term, what happens when you got saved is the Holy Spirit came and lived inside of you.

And he brought all of who God is and all of who Jesus is into your life, and he helps, that's how Jesus comes out of our lives as we grow.

It's the work of the Holy Spirit.

One of the things he does when he comes into us is he activates an ability that is not your natural ability, talent, focus, or whatever, and he births that and activates that in your life, and he has scattered those all around the church family, so everybody has a different one, which means he has given you a place in the body that the body needs, and he's made us need each other.

He's provided things in somebody else's life that they add to who we are.

And that's how church works.

And so we want to help you find that gift.

So I'm going to preach on that next week.

We'll have some follow-ups when we do that.

And so, what this will do is create an opportunity for us as a church family to have new opportunities.

We are anticipating approximately 50 or 60 people to volunteer to go to be the core congregation in the Chaffee campus.

Now, I can't have 250 of you go, or there's not a seat for the visitors.

And we're still doing things here, so we got ministry going on right here, right?

And so what'll happen is we'll do this by praying and asking and getting you to pray and ask, Lord, do you want us to go?

What do you want us to do in this?

As we get through the end of our faith forward offering, I'll have some organizational meetings where you can just come and find out what that looks like.

And basically, you'll just go do church like you do it here.

You'll be a greeter, keep babies, you know, love on preschoolers, singing the praise team, whatever it is.

Somebody's got to make the coffee.

Can I have an amen?

So, you know, we got to do all that stuff.

And so that's what we'll do.

And so we'll talk our way through that.

What does that look like?

Well, it looks like some people will, God will lead them to go.

There'll be certain spots we may have some holes.

And so I'll go to somebody and we'll say, Would you pray about joining that team, being a Sunday school teacher, or whatever?

We'll have somebody that'll get excited and they'll sign up to go and I'll say, Look, I need you here.

Would you pray about staying?

And it's so there's a combination of folks that are excited and moving into that and the needs that we balance on both campuses.

And so we'll work our way through that together as a church family, which again is why we need to get here with you.

Now, let me just talk to us for a minute because I know another question is going to be what is our relation, what is the relationship of this project with the Chaffee property?

First of all, we are not driven by building things.

We are driven by the Great Commission.

Everything we need to do needs about seeing people saved.

This is about looking at our community, the growth patterns of our community, the places of influence, where people are, and the opportunity to bring the gospel directly to folks in the area where they live and where they work.

Now, our eyes as leaders are cast in the Chaffee area for a couple of reasons.

First of all, our eyes should be cast to the Chaffee area because it is the place that is a driving force in the growth of our city.

The volume of people who moved out there, the medical school, the businesses that are out there, all of that stuff is happening in that area.

I live near that area, and it's at least a 25-minute drive for me to church here.

And if I make it in less than 25 minutes, somebody comes up and asks me about my orange car, and I must have sped here because my car is orange, right?

But we've got to understand that's where that is.

We also need to understand that God began turning our eyes and hearts as a church family to the Chaffee area more than a decade ago when he led that group of the church to buy that 60 acres out there that is dead center in the heart of that area.

That was a prayed-over decision by the church family.

And so God began casting our eyes out there, casting our heart out there as a church family.

And so we have been looking and watching and we see, and even now, I don't know, as visionary as folks would have been, they didn't know things about F-35s and all kinds of other stuff and what that was eventually going to look like.

It is incredible what's happening.

And that piece of property is the envy of every developer who wants to develop anything in Fort Smith.

And it is the envy of churches all over who keep calling us asking us if they can buy that property.

And so our minds and hearts have been in that area as a church family for a long time.

Now, while that property is part of what is helping us focus on that area, this is about reaching people.

Because the gospel is sent.

Philip left a place of revival to go to a person and a place of influence under God's direction so he could see the gospel expand.

Now is the time because people are moving in now.

Businesses are expanding now.

Manufacturing plants are adding shifts now.

Apartments and homes are being built now.

The growth is exploding now.

And we're called to reach people now.

Now, as we do this, as we pray through this process, as we turn our focus to that, as we seek the Lord to ask and to step into that deal, I believe it's going to impact our evangelism here as well.

We have incredible opportunities, and I just want to give you a couple of things because I know time's going to get short and I don't want to wear you out, but I want to give you just a couple of things so you understand.

Our ministry strategies, our evangelism strategies are all the things that we do in this process.

And so this galvanizes us evangelistics.

So I spoke a minute ago about Oklahoma.

Let me tell you again, we have great families who are coming from Oklahoma.

And we have great opportunities, and there are people to reach, and as the city grows, it's going to continue to spill over.

I'm familiar with that because I am from Memphis, and Memphis has spilled over into Mississippi, and Memphis has spilled over into Arkansas.

I mean, it's all over.

When you're on a border, you don't draw a line, and we love our families in Oklahoma, and it's incredible the impacting families that we have.

And so we have opportunities to reach people there that we've only begun to explore.

But what we're going to do as we get through the Faith Forward process, I'm going to have a meeting and we're going to do a series of these where we divide our congregation into geography.

And so let me give you this as an example.

I'm going to ask all of our Oklahoma families to come for a potluck here at our fellowship hall.

And we're going to sit down and we're going to pray together, and I'm going to start to ask, how can we reach more people?

What are avenues that you have?

What are things that we can press into?

What do you need from us?

How do we move into that?

What are things in the community that we can be a part of?

And we're going to step into that evangelism strategy and move into that.

It's time for us to begin to do those things now.

Pastor Dave, who works with our 60 plus, but also with our communication, is already strategizing social media advertising campaigns designed and focused solely at Oklahoma.

We're looking at traditional advertising opportunities.

So that's just an example of the strategies that we are using to grow and to impact evangelistically what we're doing.

We also want to have a meeting with people who live in the Chaffee area and begin to do the same thing.

But we're going to move in and reach and engage in those opportunities.

And every time we have this strategy, it creates that for us.

Let me give you another opportunity.

We're doing things at the medical school.

Pastor Jared and a number of his folks are out there regularly, just like they are at UAFS regularly.

They're creating opportunities out there for us.

We're working on how to get into peak innovation.

And if you have some connections out there, find Pastor Jared.

We want to get in there and help with that too.

Let me give you one example of what that means.

As you know, we've partnered with our BCM here at UAFS.

And so Pastor Jared and Philip Slaughter, who is our BCM director, and we are blessed in Arkansas to have him as our BCM guy.

And so we have a great partnership there.

They are working and reaching out into the business students and the business department at UAFS.

We have incredible business people in our church.

And we are trying to offer your skills and talents to mentor, to do special events, to connect with business students, to serve the business school, to create opportunities for us to reach in and impact business students on the campus at UAFS.

If you are a business person that wants a bite at that apple, then you need to find Pastor Jared and get your name on the list.

If you have connections or ways to help us do that and help us serve, tell us how to get there and let's get there together.

This week on Thursday on the Triangle Podcast, we'll drop an interview with Pastor Jared, Pastor Jake and Brad, those guys from our student ministry, and we talked and broke down a lot more of these evangelism strategies.

And I think you'll find an interesting, and I hope you'll get excited about it.

We're also looking for opportunities to do family type ministries.

We've begun some research into flag football from upward and those types of organizations.

Our gym is not set up now to be able to do that after the renovations in basketball season.

But I hear some people think we play football in Arkansas.

Certainly at the high school level we do, amen.

And so we're trying to figure out where and how to create that.

So that's just an idea about some of those things that we're doing.

So when you ask that question, what are we doing here?

What's the impact on this campus?

Those kinds of things.

We want you to understand that's all going on, whatever happens on March the 10th.

But I believe that gives us an opportunity and it galvanizes a greater passion for us as a church to step into that.

Church family, I believe the time is now.

We are growing.

We are strengthening spiritually.

I talked about all of those levels from core to involve to visitors, and every one of those is growing.

Our prayer ministry is growing.

Our missions are growing.

Our testimony and influence in the community is constantly growing through the schools and all of those things.

Spiritually, we are growing.

We are on the increase in baptisms.

We are nowhere near where we need to be, but praise the Lord, we have people sharing the gospel.

We have people bringing people to church.

We are seeing boys and girls and students and adults saved, and we have more evangelistic efforts going on than in a long time.

Spiritual growth always stretches our faith.

Growing closer to the Lord always stretches our triangles.

It challenges our identity, it forces us to grow in our relationship, and it calls us to greater ministry.

The question for us is not who we are right now, but who God is calling us to be as a church.

And so, church family, I want you to know I love you.

I want you to know I have the greatest confidence in you.

I know you guys are going to do this journey prayerfully, joyfully, incredibly well.

And I want you to know the incredible trust level that I have and the excitement I have to bring this to all of us so we can take this journey together.

I want to close the service today with a time of prayer for our church family.

Now, listen, we've shared the gospel, and you saw a man get saved, and you've heard us sing about the gospel.

And today, if you want to be saved, listen, we always invite people to come to Christ.

And I'm inviting you right now, I'll be standing right out there.

Pastor Dave will be right here at the front.

You find one of us, and it will be our greatest joy to pray with you and help you know how to be saved, just like Philip did with the Ethiopian eunuch.

But on a day like today, this is a time for us as a church family, I think, to have a time of prayer.

And so we're going to close the service this morning with a time of prayer.

So I'd like for you to bow your heads.

And just where you are, I'm going to give you a couple of prompts, and then I'm going to pray for us, and then we'll have closing announcements.

Right now, I want you to just pray for God's wisdom and guidance for us as a church.

Just pray for that.

Next, I want you to pray for God to speak to you and prepare you for your journey.

Some of you, man, we're conservative and it's scary.

Some of you are wide-eyed visionaries and you're ready to go already.

And some of you are trying to sort through it.

Some of you, God's going to call you to come join the church.

Some of them, he's going to call you to step up what you're doing.

That involved a core thing, maybe spoke to you.

I want you to just pray for a moment and commit yourself to God's journey for you in this process.

Now, our calling and path is for people to be saved.

So right now, this can stir our evangelism heart, whether we do that or not.

Right now, I just want us to collectively pray.

We want to see more people saved through the ministries of our church.

I want you to just pray for that right now.

And now I just want you to pray for families in the Chaffee area.

Of those 14,000 plus that already live there, our population research tells us this.

More than half of them attend church less than two times a year.

And if you think of how 14,000 people, you think of the city of Greenwood, and you think of how many churches are in Greenwood, there are not that many churches even remotely close to that in the Chaffee area.

With all of those people, all those people moving in, and less than twice a year they're attending church.

I want us to pray for the gospel to move in that area of our city.

Lord, we love you and we are so grateful that you allow us as your children to be a part of the advance of the gospel.

Just like Philip, you used him and he responded, Lord, use us.

Use us in the places where we're planted, in the offices, in the schools, in the neighborhoods, in the families where you've planted us.

Lord, we do pray for more people to be saved through our ministry because we know that Jesus saves and that you love our city and our community so much that Jesus died on the cross and rose again, conquering death and sin to offer salvation.

And we know that you have planted this church here with a history and a heritage of evangelism.

And Lord, make us faithful to that and draw us into that, and we pray for more people to be saved.

And as a part of that, we now ask for your guidance, for your provision, for your help, and casting our eyes to the Chaffee area and asking, how do we go lead people to Christ?

How do we see them saved?

How do we see boys and girls, students, and families come to faith in Jesus Christ?

Lord, I thank you for our church family.

I thank you for our fellowship.

I thank you for our love and unity.

I thank you for our desire to follow you, and I pray now that you will guide us in this process and lead us as you led Philip to those choices of faith and those places of influence where we can see the gospel advanced.

We thank you for the gift of salvation that comes through Jesus our Lord.

In his name we pray, and everybody said.org and let us pray for you and help you in any way we can.

Thank you for listening to Chapter and First, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Fort Smith First Baptist Church.