State of Metro January 2020

As the other Elders and I prayed and thought through what should be the focus of this members meeting, it quickly became obvious to us that our time together this afternoon should be a time of celebration.

God has done some truly amazing things over the past year, and I want to focus on what those things are so that A. you can be aware of them and B. we can offer the Lord praise and thanksgiving for being so kind and faithful to our church.

This is a discipline that I love to do often because we can get so busy in serving the Lord, that we completely miss the work he is accomplishing through our efforts.

I call this Celebrating the Evidences of God’s Grace. The New Testament speaks again and again of God’s people praising him with thanksgiving for everything he has done.

And when we take the time to reflect on the evidences of God’s Grace in our lives, it gives us the opportunity to be encouraged as well as to give him praise.

In fact, this is something I always encourage our small groups to do at the end of every trimester and I would encourage you to make this a regular practice in your home with your families so that your family can see and celebrate everything God is doing in your lives.

So that said, what are some of the evidences of God’s grace to our church over the past year.

Celebration of God’s Grace Over the Past Year

I’m sure if all of us had the opportunity to share we would be here all night recounting all that God has done in our lives the past year as a church.

But I want to focus on three broad categories for how we have seen God work in our church to glorify his name and further the work of his kingdom.

Mission and Vision

First, God has been truly gracious in helping us to solidify the mission and vision of our church and has even allowed us to take significant steps in fulfilling what he has given us to do.

start taking some steps to ruly moved to start taking steps to accomplish help us accomplish the vision he has given us as a church.

If you weren’t here last year, let me summarize it for you.

A church’s mission is why it exists. It is why God planted the church and allows it to continue doing ministry, and the mission of every church, if it is biblical, seeks to fulfill the Great Commission Jesus gave to all churches which is to make disciples.

Our church exists to equip people to live lives changed by Jesus. We talk all the time about how following Jesus should make a tangible difference in your life, and we are seeing the mission in action in our church.

I know this because all of our ministries are completely aligned with the mission God has given our church. From Sunday Morning services, to Community Groups, to Women’s Ministry, and even Little Metro, everything we do is aimed at effectively making disciples who love and follow Jesus.

And to your credit you have completely bought into the mission as a church. It is such a joy to pastor a congregation that is not content with the status quo but truly wants to see their lives changed by growing in Christ. You are a true gift and an evidence of God’s grace to your pastors I promise you.

A church’s vision on the other hand, is how its mission is going to serve the greater work of God’s kingdom in the world.

Our Vision is To see lives changed through building healthy church’s.

That means it is our hope that God will use our church to equip and train pastors, church planters, and missionaries, and also allow us to play an active role in helping other churches grow to be biblical and healthy.

We mentioned earlier the amazing blessing it has been to give 10% of all our church’s giving to support the Cooperative Program.

If you don’t know, the Cooperative Program is how Southern Baptists pool their resources for the kingdom.

The CP funds seminaries to help keep tuition down, supports national and international missionaries as they work to share the gospel, and even funds relief efforts when natural disasters occur.

And many of you were here just a few years ago when we could not give any money to missions because our church just didn’t have the money. And to go from there to stepping out in faith and committing 10% of every dollar that comes in towards missions no matter what, and seeing that come to fruition by God’s grace; how generous is he to allow us to join in his work across the world.

Not only that, but when we laid out our Vision to see lives changed through building healthy churches, I’ll be honest with you, I had no idea how long it would take for us to move past just sending 10% to the cooperative program.

But God was so faithful to bring along the Tiegreens. I can’t tell you how rare it is to find a missionary who believes what the Bible actually says a church is.

And for God to bring along Joel and Emily, honestly through a chance meeting, so that we could pray for them and support them financially as a church, within just a few months of committing ourselves to the Vision he has given our church, gives me a lot of confidence that God has bigger plans for our role in the Kingdom then we currently see.

Financial Giving of Members/Financial Stewardship of Ministry Leaders

Financial Giving towards Missions

In Summary, God has laid the foundation for who we are as a church in our Mission and Vision and God has been kind to bless us by letting this identity take hold of our body and produce real, spiritual fruit for his kingdom.

The Tiegreens

Joy and Fellowship of the Membership

Our Fellowship

I hinted at this earlier, but I truly cannot express to you how much your pastors love getting to serve you.

You are such a wonderful, God honoring congregation that loves God’s Word and wants to glorify him that you are the evidence of God’s blessing to us.

And a big reason for that is that there is a real joy, unity and fellowship in the life of our body.

How gracious is God that he has poured the love of Christ into our hearts as a congregation and we truly love each other.

It feels like every Sunday we are having to kick people out just so our deacons can lock up and go home which is a good thing because it speaks to how we love each other as brothers and sister in Christ.

Even among the elders, I can’t express to you how rare the unity and fellowship we have with one another as your leaders. And this is an evidence of God’s grace not only to us, but also to you as a congregation because the church can only grow in health if its leaders are unified and all pulling the same direction.

Another evidence of God’s grace is how hard you labor for God’s Kingdom.

You are such a serving and hard working church. It feels like anytime we are looking for someone to step up and help in some way, there are more than enough people raising their hand to volunteer.

Elder unity

Also a huge evidence of God’s grace to us that you might not realize is how loud you sing in worship. When we sing praises to the Lord we give it all we got and that is all because God has been so kind to allow us to grow in our love for him.

adding/process

One of the more tangible ways we see the evidences of God’s grace in our fellowship is just the number of members we have been adding over the past year.

Last January when we announced me as the Lead Pastor we added 2 new members. Since then in July we added 10 and tonight we added 16 new members.

serving Joy and Fellowship of the Membership

That is a total of 28 people in just one year which is about 25% growth. God is allowing us to grow as a church because all of us have committed to being a biblical church together. In fact, our active membership is 101 Adults with 62 children for a total of 163 people. That is amazing.

We have even had 2 Baptisms in the last year which I believe is more than the last couple years combined.

We have been faithful in little and not God is entrusting us with more people to be faithful with.

Not only that, but we have also completed our new membership process that allows someone to become a member at any point of the year without having to wait for us to host a class.

Finally, the last evidence of God’s grace in regards to our fellowship is our overall church health.

I have been a member of this church since 2013 and I can tell you that this is truly the healthiest our church as ever been.

We are stable financially. We are seeing lives being changed what feels like each and every week. Through our Being the Church series we have a solid foundation for what it means to be a true, biblical church and by God’s grace we are seeing that happen in our body.

Overall church health

Our Leadership

And finally the third category I want to focus on to see evidences of God’s grace in our church is the leaders God has given our church to oversee all our ministries.

As I said earlier all our ministries are completely aligned with our mission, and I believe they are effectively accomplishing what God has given us to do.

And that is in large part due to your leaders being committed to faithfully using their gifts to love and disciple you.

Emma has completely revamped our women’s ministry and she has created something that is designed to deepen our women’s fellowship with one another and their love for Christ.

Rachel has turned Little Metro into a well oiled machine that not only teaches our children the gospel, but also has created a ministry that isn’t a chore but is actually a joy to serve in.

All of your Community Group leaders have grown leaps and bounds over the past year. Every single one of them has completed our Growth Groups training and after this Wednesday they will also have completed our Shepherding in Community Training so that our groups aren’t just awkward bible studies but real vehicles for Christian growth and discipleship.

Then you have Robert and Megan who stepped up to lead our student ministry and you have no idea how much of a blessing they are to our church. They truly love our kids and they really want to see them discipled to have a real faith in Christ of their own.

I could go on but those are the 4 major areas of ministry in our church, so here is what I want to do to close out this time together.

I want to publically thank all the leaders in this church who make this church go. Without them, I promise you, very little ministry would actually be done in this church.

So here is what I want to do to close out this time together. I want to publically thank all the leaders in this church who make this church go. Without them, I promise you, very little ministry would actually be done in this church. So what I want to do is to publically thank them and then we are going to have all of them come up so that we can pray that God would bless their ministry this next year.

So we are going to take a second to publically thank them and then we are going to have all of them come up so that we can pray that God would bless their ministry this next year.

First we will start with the deacons.

Seth Stamps makes Sundays possible. He is the Lead Deacon and he is always willing to do whatever is needed to serve you.

Then we have Heath Stamps. Right now Heath is heading up our security team

Seth Stamps, Heath Stamps, Jake Rice, Chris Martin, and Robert Steed are such godly examples of men who just love the church.

They are so dependable and faithful and without them, very little would ministry would actually happen here.

Seth basically runs all our sound and with the help of John Roller is basically revamping all the sound and lights for Sunday services.

There are also some people who I’d like to point out who, through their service, make the church go.

There are also some people who I’d like to point out who, through their service, make the Metro go.

Micah Martin leads our Event team so anytime you go to any Metro Event her team made it happen.

Hannah Rice takes care of so much administrative work that is a huge help to me so I can focus on leading the church.

Kelsey Rice designs all our graphics and sermon series and she does such an amazing job and making us look like we know what we are doing.

Jessica, my wife, runs all our communications and also puts up with all my brainstorming for the church.

Tracie Hency serves as our volunteer coordinator organizing all of our serve teams so that we can actually have services on Sunday.

I’d also like to publically thank John Roller. John served us as an elder for several years during some really hard seasons until he eventually rolled off, but not he is still involved helping Seth run sound and even trying to redo our entire sound system with a much needed update.

I mentioned Emma, Rachel, Robert and Megan who are all doing an amazing job leading our churches some of our churches most discipleship focused ministries.

There is also all our Community Group leaders and CoLeaders who lead the charge in helping our church to apply and live out the gospel.

MSM

So if I mentioned you, please make your way up here so we can pray for you and ask God to bless our ministry as a church this coming year.

First, Emma has done such an incredible job revamping our women’s ministry. She has created something that is designed to deepen our women’s fellowship with one another and their love for Christ.

Also, all of

Prayer for Ministry Leaders

Looking Ahead to 2020

All that leaves for this afternoon is looking ahead to this coming year. What does God have in store for our church in 2020.

I think this is pretty simple.

This past year has been a lot of hard work for all of us. We transitioned to a new lead pastor. Embraced a new vision for our church, and laid the foundation for what a church actually is biblically.

Maybe it will help if I lay out the progression we’ve been working towards explicitly.

Last January we started the Sermon Series called The meaning of the Parables.

The main goal of that sermon series was to see what Jesus actually says it means to be one of his disciples. What it means to follow him.

Then we studied Nehemiah and our focus on that series was Joining God in his Work.

The Big Idea being that our lives are bigger than just us and God is accomplishing something amazing for his glory in our world, and he invites each and everyone of us to be a part of that.

That led into Being the Church.

If we were going to join God in his work, then we needed to know exactly what that work was.

Jesus gave us this work in the Great Commission telling us to go and make disciples. From here the apostles went and planted churches that planted churches that planted churches because they knew they best way to make disciples was through Christ’s church.

So we spent those 11 weeks looking at what it truly means to be a church, and by God’s grace we are trying to build our body after God’s Word.

And now that we’ve laid the foundation for what God has called us to be, it is time to refocus all our attention on Christ and grow in him.

We started this with our Christmas series where we looked at how Christ serves us in his offices of prophet, priest and king, and now we are studying the book of Hebrews which is all about the Supremacy of Christ.

Here we started refocusing on who Christ is and what he has done on our behalf.

We have done the hard work this past year learning what it means to be a church. This year, it is time to actually be that. To be God’s holy people who treasure Christ and worship him above everything else.

As I’ve thought and prayed about our church, one passage kept coming to mind.

Which ties directly into what we are studying now as a church in the Book of Hebrews where we

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

This is what I want for us this year. To focus on Christ and him alone, and treasure him.

To set our minds on the things above so that we grow in Christ.

My hope is that as we celebrate all Christ is by studying the book of Hebrews, that we would grow to love him more and make him our life.

That’s exactly what Paul says in verse When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

And how are we going to do this this next year? By growing in all the things we have worked so hard for.

All the groundwork has been laid. There is nothing left to be done to be a biblical, healthy church. We are growing in those things that the Bible says a church is. We definitely aren’t perfect, but we are growing.

And how we are going to grow to treasure Christ more is by engaging in our life together as the body of Christ.

All that is left now is to be the church, and to treasure Christ above all else.

Let’s Pray