State of the Church

Intro:

Last week we studied and considered how we are to know who is speaking truth about who God is and who is not.

Remember that the reason John wrote this letter was to clarify for the church that those that were preaching that Jesus was not the Son of God were not of God.

They proved by their words and their actions that they did not know God and therefore did not know Jesus.

John gives us an incredible tool in this passage to use as the way to know for certain if a person is speaking the truth about God.

John shows that we can know by how they love others.

Not with worldly, conditional love, but with the unconditional, graceful love that only comes from God.

As we have worked through this book our intent has been to look at what was going on in that church, compare it to the culture we live in, and make application of what it means for the church to Live in Truth.

As we live in truth, it reveals truth to the world around us.

John conveys this idea in chapter 4 that if because God loved us, we then ought to love one another.

As we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is brought to completion in us.

That process reveals to others in our lives that God is real, active, and working through His people to reveal Himself.

Today we are going to quickly conclude this study and talk about the vision that God has given us for this year.

We are also going to look back to last year, review what God has done in and through our body, and how He has prepared us for this year.

1 John 5:1-

1 John 5:1–12 NLT

1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has become a child of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves his children, too. 2 We know we love God’s children if we love God and obey his commandments. 3 Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. 4 For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith. 5 And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God. 6 And Jesus Christ was revealed as God’s Son by his baptism in water and by shedding his blood on the cross—not by water only, but by water and blood. And the Spirit, who is truth, confirms it with his testimony. 7 So we have these three witnesses— 8 the Spirit, the water, and the blood—and all three agree. 9 Since we believe human testimony, surely we can believe the greater testimony that comes from God. And God has testified about his Son. 10 All who believe in the Son of God know in their hearts that this testimony is true. Those who don’t believe this are actually calling God a liar because they don’t believe what God has testified about his Son. 11 And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life.

1 John 5:1–4 NLT

1 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has become a child of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves his children, too. 2 We know we love God’s children if we love God and obey his commandments. 3 Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome. 4 For every child of God defeats this evil world, and we achieve this victory through our faith.

1 John 5:5–12 NLT

5 And who can win this battle against the world? Only those who believe that Jesus is the Son of God. 6 And Jesus Christ was revealed as God’s Son by his baptism in water and by shedding his blood on the cross—not by water only, but by water and blood. And the Spirit, who is truth, confirms it with his testimony. 7 So we have these three witnesses— 8 the Spirit, the water, and the blood—and all three agree. 9 Since we believe human testimony, surely we can believe the greater testimony that comes from God. And God has testified about his Son. 10 All who believe in the Son of God know in their hearts that this testimony is true. Those who don’t believe this are actually calling God a liar because they don’t believe what God has testified about his Son. 11 And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have God’s Son does not have life.

1 john5:

Our call as believers is to testify to the truth that Jesus is the Son of God and He is the way, the truth, and the life.

Over the last year, as we studied Exodus, you have heard me use this word “called” a lot.

My hope is that over this year you have considered and asked God what your “call” is.

By that I mean, what is the role that He has for you in our body and in addition to that, who has he called you to invest in?

Today was we talk about the ministries that God has placed in our care, it is God’s expectation that you, as a member of this body, find your place in the work He is doing.

John closes this letter, like anyone would conclude a letter or presentation by summarizing all that he has communicated.

His closing statements remind them they are to obey what God commands.

We are called to love God and to love one another.

1 John 5:2–3 NLT

2 We know we love God’s children if we love God and obey his commandments. 3 Loving God means keeping his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome.

As we look forward today, it is important that we keep in mind that whatever God calls us too, our obedience, motivated by love, is proof to ourselves and to one another that we belong to God.

This is not a new commandment or idea.

We studied this at length as we went through the ten commandments last year.

Jesus summarized it this way.

Matthew

Matthew 22:36–40 NLT

36 “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” 37 Jesus replied, “ ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

Living as God intends for us, boils down to these two things. To love God and to love one another.

vs. 40 tells us that if we can do these two things, all the law is fulfilled.

If you will remember from our study, the reason that God gave Isreal the law was to reveal Himself to them and to set them apart from all other nations as God’s people.

As they obeyed God’s laws, they would be visibly different.

The way they approached God, one another, and outsiders made them radically different all other people groups.

Our focus in Exodus was to Join God in setting people free.

The way we set people free is by revealing to them the truth about God.

How do we do that? By loving God and loving one another.

That is the point that John is making in his letter.

If we love God, His love abides in us, and His love, in it’s fulness, is revealed to the world around us.

How did TGP West Join God to set People Free in 2019 and what is He calling us too in 2020?

Today I’ve asked Glen, Brittany, and Bethany to share about their particular ministries to give us a brief summary of what God has done and where He is leading for 2020.

Church Planting and Revitalization

Started TGP Network

Mission

Another Child Foundation

LOCAL

Transitioned to Planter not Pastor

Revitalization work with three local churches

Church Plant beginning in Coushatta, LA

USA

Possible Church Plants in Griffin, Georgia

Encouraging continued work in Silt, CO and Limestone, TN

OVERSEAS

Honduras

2019

Hired and Trained Dario

Got 10 pastors committed to the Network

Dario has ordained another pastor

2020

Dario will continue to be our Network Representative

Connecting ACF with Honduras

Medical Mission Trip

God established Dario as the TGP Network Coordinator for Honduras.

Support two more workers

Romania

2019

Vision Trip

Summer Camp Mission Trip

Hired and Trained Elian Chiciudean

Supporting two other workers:

Lucian Marginean – Youth ministry at Point of Hope

Sephan – Pastor in the Roma community around Point of Hope

2020

Pastor Training in Honduras.

ACF Mission Trip – Local churches

Continue to support team as they plant churches

Train pastors in the TGP Distinctives

Church Revitalization

SUPPORT RESOURCES:

The Abiding Cycle translated into Spanish.

Abiding Cycle in English and Romanian

Devotionals and Podcasts for Abiding Cycle

+/- 10 TGP house churches established in villages across Honduras.

Podcasts of “A Communty That Blesses” and “Jesus is Enough”

God called us to invest in Romania through partnering with One Child Foundation.

Book for Orientation of Mission Pastors and our church

Beginnings of establishing a Network Coordinator in Romania.

Spiritual leadership at One Child Foundation.

Curriculum writing for Orphanage and School that is funded and operated by OCF.

Pastor training in Romania.

Church Reconciliation at FBC Eunice.

McKeithen Neighborhood Ministry

Youth Ministry - Bethany

Children’s Ministry - Brittany

Life Groups

Life Groups

This is an area in which I have felt lacking.

Because of the nature of my life, I am not able to come to each of the life groups on a regular basis.

However, it has been awesome to have LG leaders that have ownership of their groups.

This year we did a life group training day where we were able to help those leaders to see their groups as small churches.

Not that they would operate autonomously from the church, but that those groups would feel the same weight of responsibility for their people as they would for a church.

Because of the nature of my life, I am not able to come to each of the life groups on a regular basis.

However, it has been awesome to have LG leaders that have ownership of their groups.

I have been praying about how to better support our LG’s and their leaders and God said I need help.

God has called David Miller to be a resource for our LG leaders.

We will have a meeting soon to roll that out, but as a LG leader myself, I’m really excited about this.

David has years of experience, but more importantly a call from God to help us all to grow in our understanding of living in community.

Professions of Faith and Baptisms

Elders and Pastor

We have taken on three “elders in training” to mentor them and as the Lord leads we will bring them before the church for affirmation.

Jacob Crump

Russ Meek

David Miller

The Elders have done an excellent job of supporting me and taking care of many of the things that Glen handled when he was pastor.

Because I am bi-vocational, I don’t have the time available to do the things that a “traditional” pastor would do.

It is our intent that pastors of future TGP churches will also be bi-vocational and so I’ve been the ginnie pig.

I also want to thank the church as well for your affirmation of my call as your pastor and walking with me as we figure this out.

One of the things that has become clear after a year of pastoring in this way is that I need share some of the teaching time in order to make time for my family.

As I have prayed about that, God led me to ask David Miller and Russ Meek to assist me from time to time.

As I have prayed about how to make this kind of ministry replicate-able God has made it clear that I and future pastors will need help

I guess I’ll let Glen have a few turns as well. lol

We haven’t worked out the schedule yet, but I would like to see them do an every other month kind of rotation.

Deacons

Upon God’s prompting, we appointed our first class of Deacons.

Just like with our Elders, we studied scripture to define their biblical role in the body, and asked for the body to prayerfully consider if they were called to that ministry.

As a body we affirmed the call of Mike and Debi Upshaw, Wes and Melinda Draper, Craig Austin, and Michelle Palmer.

It has been awesome to work with these men and women who are passionate about following God’s direction in their lives.

I’ve been around plenty of church leaders that were doing for self promotion and these guys are not that.

It has been such a blessing to minister together with them.

They have been whipping this place into shape and have done an excellent job of making sure that everything is ready for services each week.

You may not even be aware of all of the things that these guys do behind the scenes to keep this place going, but without them, ministry here would not be the same.

As we move forward with the ministry in this neighborhood and utilize this building in that process, I’m really excited for the opportunities that they will have to be a part of those ministries.

Making this building available to this neighborhood is one of the ways we love them and without our Deacons, we would not be able to do that.

It’s all the big and little things that they do that enable us to love our neighbors well.

Study of Ecclesiastes

As I have prayed these last few months about where God would have us go in our next study, He has made it abundantly clear that we are to study Ecclesiastes.

I have made mention of this a few times and I know that a few of you have told me that you read ahead. Which is awesome.

In case you didn’t know, Russ happens to be quite learned in this book.

Starting next week he will be doing an overview of the book and sharing how this book has helped him personally as he studied it.

This will be really helpful because at first glance, for me at least, the book appears to be a mess. It feels like it jumps all over the place and has a negative tone.

As we study it together we will see that this is far from the truth.

It

Gods purpose in us studying it is to teach us to make sense of the injustice that we experience in our world.

New believers seeing the sin in the lives of loved ones for the first time.

How we help them make sense of that.

As the church, how do we make sense of injustice in our own lives and how do we help others cope with it as well?

God is wanting to make a shift in our perspective as we grow closer to Him.

This is what happens in the lives of believers.

As we begin to know God better, our perspective on what is important changes.

Our desire to know God and to follow His commandments is going to require that we let God change our perspective about how we live life.

Many of you are very aware that when we live life in obedience to God, it doesn’t always turn out the way we think it should.

We all make the assumption that if we are obeying God, then the things that we do will be successful and feel good.

That is often not the case.

This study is going to help us figure out how to wrap our heads around that, live through it, and also help others make sense of this messed up world we live in.

I cannot wait for us to dig into this book!

2019 was an incredibly hard, good, productive, confusing, joyful, tearful, crazy year.

Most importantly, we got to go through all of that with a group of people that love the Lord and want to follow Him.

I’m excited about the growth that is coming this year and the joy we are going to experience as we grow together.

As we close out today I thought it would be really good for us partake in the Lord’s supper together.

I wanted to start this year of ministry off by taking a moment to reflect on what Christ has done for us.

His love for us is our motivation for ministry and today would not be complete without that time of reflection.

We also have a few people that were just baptized and this will be their first communion as baptized believers.

Please make your way down to the front row.

Asher

Zoe

Craig

Luke 22:14–20 ESV

14 And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him. 15 And he said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” 17 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, “Take this, and divide it among yourselves. 18 For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” 19 And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 20 And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.

Luke 22:14-

Speak directly to the newbies about the following.

Remind them of the passover meal and why the disciples were eating as a celebration and remembrance.

Jesus tells us to eat this meal to profess what we believe, that He is the son of God, His body was broken, and His blood was poured out, for the forgiveness of our sins.

Just like the blood of the lambs protected Isreal during the last plague.

We do this to profess, but also to remember and contemplate what Jesus has done for us.

Prior to Jesus’s death, we had to make the sacrifice in order to be forgiven of our sins.

God sent Jesus to make the sacrifice for us.

It is because of what Jesus has done that we are forgiven.

There is nothing we could ever do to earn that forgiveness.

It was a costly gift that was given to all men.

You have accepted that gift by giving your life to Him.

In a moment we are all going to come and take the cup and bread and together we will eat and drink.