Burnt Boats and Big Responsibilities - 1 Corinthians 3:5-7

Introduction

Six years ago, I met with our elders and offered my resignation. There was a lot that went into that moment and not all of it was associated with the church, but much of it was. The church was declining. Giving was down. Morale was low. I’ve never felt more like a failure, and I began to wonder if our church would be better served by someone else more capable. The elders were gracious and encouraging and steadfast. They lifted my arms up when I was too weak to lift them myself.

And, I remember what I prayed after they refused my resignation. “Lord, I’ve seen what I’m capable of, and it’s not very much. It’s broken down the church and burned me out. So, Lord, now I want to see what only you’re capable of.” And, since that time, the Lord’s hand has rested upon Iron City in a way that can’t be described apart from his favor. Our attendance has increased by more than 200 since then. Our fellowship is joyful. Our love for one another is sincere. Many have had either found faith or had their faith renewed. So, I tell people all the time: “The first five years were harder than I would’ve ever believed, but the last almost six years have been better than I could’ve ever imagined.”

God’s Word

(Show second Quarter Graphic) A little over a year ago, I presented to you a plan for the 2nd Quarter, a plan for the second decade of what I pray is a four decade ministry at Iron City. And, if you were here, you’ll remember that we said our prayer was that the second quarter would be a quarter for expansion. Expanded ministry. Expanded influence. Expanded infrastructure. And, we presented three steps toward expansion. Kingdom ambition. Dreaming big dreams about what God would do through us in the Cheaha Valley. Strategic preparation. Accepting the responsibility of maximizing our opportunities for God’s glory. And, radical submission. A willingness to be uncomfortable for God through bold steps aimed at his glory.

That is, you’ll remember, we all committed to a life of boat burning where we went all-in with God and with one another for the building of the Kingdom. And, brothers and sisters, I’m thrilled to report to you what many of you already know, the Lord has answered remarkably. But, this is not a time for us to rest on our laurels, but to double down with more strategic preparation and radical submission.

Our “responsibility.”

1 Corinthians 3:5–7 “What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”

Division had arisen in Corinth depending on who your favorite preacher was. Some preferred Paul. Others preferred Apollos. And so, a silly rivalry had grown, and there was friction. And, Paul’s response is really insightful, I think, for where we are right now. He says, “Apollos and I are just farmhands. We’ve both just been meeting our responsibilities. God is the one that has saved y’all. God is the one that has grown the church. You shouldn’t be divided over your favorite farmhand. You should be united by your love for God.”

One of the keys to living a joyful Christian life is understanding the difference between responsibilities and burdens. And, Paul knows that farmers help us to see the difference. Farmers work really hard. There’s a lot to do. They have to plant the crops. They have to nurture the crops. They have to harvest the crops. But, you know, they can’t grow the crops. They have no control over rain or drought, frost or heat. Only God can do that. Farmers have to work faithfully, and they have to live by faith. They know that God is sovereign, but they also know they better still set their alarm clocks.

And, I love to tell people in counseling that we’re all farmers. We all have responsibilities that we’re accountable to do. We all have burdens that only God can do. And, if you fail to meet your responsibilities, you’ll reap what you’ve sown (or failed to sow). You’ll reap the reward of the fool. But, if you carry God’s burdens like there your responsibility, they’ll crush your soul. There’s a hundred different applications for this in our lives. We have the responsibility to raise our children, discipline them, and teach them. But, saving them and sustaining them is God’s burden. We have the responsibility to go to work every day and to do the best job we can, but providing for us is still God’s burden. Eating healthy and living wisely is our responsibility, but the span of our life is god’s burden.

And, just like it was for Corinth all those years ago, this is a really helpful way for us to think about our growth as a church. We have responsibilities to meet, and God has burdens to bear. “God (has given) the growth.” Now, what we have to ask is: What now is our responsibility as a result? And, the answer must be that we are to keep “planting” and keep “watering.” That is, we are to take the necessary steps to maximize the harvest that God has brought. And yet, we are to do it by faith. That is, we are to seek the best means to reap the best harvest without knowing how everything is going to work out. We make our wisest plans, but RADICALLY SUBMIT them to the Lord unsure of exactly what He’s going to do with them.

So, today, I can’t tell you anything with a lot certainty. That’s God’s burden. I can only tell you that we are trying our dead level best to meet our responsibilities with the growth God has given and the potential growth that we see.

Let’s talk about….

Our “situation.”

(Show charts showing our attendance increase over the last three years.) I mentioned that we’ve grown by more than 200 over the last five years, and that’s with a global pandemic squished in there. But, did you know that we’ve grown by 120 in just the last two years? 2021-2022 we grew by 40 percent. After a slow bounce back from COVID, we exploded in early 2022. But, from 2022-2023, we grew by 15 percent and from 2023-2024, we grew by 20 percent. And, I’m basing these numbers on a year-to-year comparison of the first three months since that’s what we have in 2024. Our average attendance through this point in 2022 was 314, 2023 was 362, and 2024 has been 433. In 2021, we had zero Sundays above 400. In 2022, we had 6, 2023 had 15, and we’ve had 9 out of ten weeks in 2024.

(Show charts showing 65% and 75% marks in comparison with attendance. Show also what 520 would look like.) So, why am I telling you this? If we were to grow by 20 percent over the next year, which is less than our three year average, our attendance would be 520. And, we are literally not capable of absorbing that type of growth. We have nowhere to put them. Further, in the last month, we’ve had two Sundays in the 460’s and essentially every Sunday above 430. In the 460’s, just those in our sanctuary, exceeds 75% of our seating capacity. This used to be the number where you’d stop growing. Today, because of how COVID made everyone space and germ conscious, church experts put the number closer to 65%, which we’re exceeding every, single Sunday. We have people scrambling for seats every, single week, as many of you know.

So, we have to ask ourselves: What is our responsibility here? By doing nothing, we’re essentially telling the Lord that we don’t want to shepherd any more people. It’s to say that we don’t want any more responsibility. After all, why would God send us more people than we can love well? Not to mention, we’re telling visitors that we don’t have a place for them, and we’re telling our people they can’t invite their friends. I recently had a young couple say to me: “We want to invite our friends, but we don’t even know if we’d be able to sit with them, or if we’d end up on opposite sides of the sanctuary.”

I’m convinced that our responsibility is to do everything we can to maximize our opportunity for impact. Here’s…

Our “plan.”

Over the last ten years, there’s probably nothing I’ve said more often than: “God has not called us to comfortable, convenient live, but to bold, uncomfortable faithfulness.” That’s what burning our boats is all about. That’s what our plan is calling for.

(Show bell curves of growth) Aubrey Malphurs says that it’s good to think of growth in bell curves. All growth reaches a point where it plateaus, and after it’s plateaued long enough, it begins to decline. This is essentially the lifecycle of every organization, and certainly is true of churches. Currently, we’re nearing the top of the bell curve. There’s not much higher we can go. So, what would come next is a plateau, and then eventually decline. You’ve seen this. The Malphurs group reports that 80-85% of churches in America are plateauing or declining. So, how do you avoid it? We have to take the responsibility to take bold steps in order to start a new bell curve.

Our plan is for two new steps:

(Show projected org chart.) The first is to promote Joseph Morris from our part-time groups minister to our full-time executive pastor. This shouldn’t be a surprise to you. We talked about this all fall at dinner with the Hales. We included this in the budget that we’ve all approved. The Executive Pastor will essentially be the COO and CFO of our church. He will assist with building better systems to care better for people and to prevent things from falling through the cracks. He will oversee communication, groups, and help us to increase our capacity to care well for our flock.

And, I want you to notice that this has been part of the plan that we proposed a year and a half ago. This has been an intentional process, and you’ll notice we’re really right on schedule with this position, Logan’s, and Brittany’s. It’s important to me that you know we aren’t making this up as we go along. We’re trying to pursue our Kingdom Ambitions with Strategic Preparation. We’re trying to meet our responsibilities.

(Show graphic) The second is to move to two services. Starting with easter, we will experiment with having two Sunday morning worship services and two Sunday morning group times. There will be two, identical services at 9 and 10:30, and there will be groups meeting during each service. Some of the groups will be assigned during the early slot and some the later, and those details are to come.

These times allow us to double both our worship and our group space without adding significant time to the responsibility of our volunteers. We won’t have to provide more childcare or require our worship team/greeters/security to be here any earlier. It still doesn’t fix our long bathroom lines or crowded nurseries, but it’s a step toward an expanded facility that will enable those things. Quite simply, by having more space to reach more people, we can expedite the process of building a larger facility that better suits our needs.

So, let’s talk about…

Our “why.”

This is really important to me because, frankly, this has been a grieving process for me. I LOVE preaching to my whole church at one time. I LOVE having the young and old, quiet and loud all together at one time as a display of gospel unity. But, John Piper helped me as I’ve thought about our responsibilities during this time. Discussing his church in multiple services and campuses, he notes that this is what the early church did in Acts 2 when the Temple was too small to house them all. And then he asks: “Is the sense of community that you feel when you’re all together the supreme value that you hold? Or, is your supreme value to reach more, teach more so that more can see the supremacy of Christ?” You see, Iron City, it’s right and good for us to all want to be together. My goodness, I do. But, as I have prayed and our staff has prayed and our elders have prayed, we have come to the conclusion that our supreme value is to expand our capacity to reach and teach more.

Moments like these are often once-in-a-generation, and my prayer is that we would steward it well. Is this about space? Not really. Is this about chairs? Nope. This is about a recognition that the Cheaha Valley is filled with families who are hurting and without a church family to share the Good News with them. And, what we’ve seen is that our message of gracious hope founded upon the authority of the Bible resonates with them. And, since God won’t send us more than we’re equipped to love well, let’s slide our chips to the middle of the table and go all in.

(Show Pic of Blagburn family) Many of you have gotten to know the Blagburn family. The Lord relocated them to Calhoun County during a time when they were struggling with church hurt. They were bruised and discouraged and nervous to jump into a new church. And, the Lord brought them to Iron City where they’ve been nurtured with the gospel, found close friends, and today they’re faithfully serving our teenagers and throughout our church family. Listen, I could bring so many of your families up here. There’s story after story like this of what God has done. Don’t you sense the responsibility that we have to do it again? Their family and your family are not the only ones. We’ve got to multiply this movement of what God is doing.

So, let me tell you…

Our “need.”

I don’t know that this will work. That’s God’s burden. But, I do know that this won’t work without you. We need you to take this bold step with us. We need you to “plant.” We need you to “water.” If we’re all going to take a bold step together, that means that we must each take a bold step ourselves. And, with your massive response on Signing Day, I feel confident that you are up for the challenge.

Full disclosure: This is going to create discomfort in our church family. There’s going to be moments of frustration. I’m telling you that I know that’s coming. This is going to take more manpower and more commitment from each of us. Anything great always does. We’re going to be learning on the fly and troubleshooting on the fly. But, I’m going to ask you to keep your boats burnt. Relight them; don’t rebuild them. When you’re tempted to be frustrated, picture the families in your neighborhood that need hope. Picture the bullied children that need a safe place. Picture the lonely mother that needs community. Picture the overworked dad at his wit’s end. And, let’s press on together.

Hernan Cortes instructed his men to burn their boats so that they wouldn’t be distracted from their pursuit of glory and gold. I don’t think that’s a good enough reason. I’m calling on you to burn your boats and go all in with us for a prize that’s weightier than gold. Let’s go after the Kingdom together for the eternal prize that has been stored up for us in Christ Jesus. I have prayed to the Lord and offered him my life in this cause. Our staff and elders have done the same. We need you to join us.

Close with a time of prayer for our church family.