God's Mission

Good morning church! It’s so good to be here on this Give to Go Sunday! I am excited to see how God blesses and uses this offering in the coming year.

If you are new here, welcome! We are pumped that you are here! And we don’t expect you to give anything today! In fact, right the opposite. We have a gift for you today! If you will take the card from the back of the seat in front of you, fill it out, and drop it by Next Steps in the lobby on your way out, our folks there will give you a free t shirt today! You can’t beat that, right? We thank you for worshiping with us!

I love playing games with my kids. Elsie Jo and Dan have discovered this game that to them is brand new. The one where you have the playing field of dots on a piece of paper and you take turns connecting two dots together. You know this one? The goal is to make little squares, then you get to put your initial in it.

Dan wanted to play me the other day. He had clearly been playing against a grandparent who let him win, because I was killing it! Just kidding. But we were playing the same game two vastly different ways. Dan was connecting two dots up here, and then down at the bottom. Then it almost seemed like he was starting to get it… Then he would jump somewhere else again. He was all over the place.

I, however, was playing with strategy, right? I don’t ever do three lines of a box, that’s an easy win. I create runs of lines to confuse the opponent into marking one that didn’t look like a 3 sided. If you want to play sometime, bring it on!

But the key difference was STRATEGY.

I think there is a lot the church can learn from this dumb dot game.

I think most of the time as Christians and especially as churches, we are playing without a strategy in missions. We go to this place for a couple years and have some fun, cause they have some good sight seeing up there. And then we go out west for a year or two, but we get bored with that. Then we want to go overseas, cause that’s what real Christians do. And we go to 10 different places over 10 years. And when we look back over 10 years of mission work, what can we show for it? Have we seen boxes filled in? Or have we bounced all over the board?

It seems as the church that we often treat mission opportunities as stamps on our passport or chances to collect spoons for our display case. I don’t want to do missions that way church! I want us to have clarity and direction and purpose behind what we do, amen?

Today, I want to look at a passage that sums up everything we are about as CHristians and as the church, then I want to lay out for you the three legs of this missions stool, alright?

Turn with me to Matthew chapter 28.

In this moment, Jesus has already died. God has raised him from the dead. He has spent time with his disciples, preparing them for what lies ahead for them, and now he has gathered them one last time for his final goodbye. He is going to ascend to heaven right before their eyes!

Matthew records the last words of Jesus this way...

Matthew 28:18–20 CSB

Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

PRAY

Before I share our missions strategy with you, I want to share a couple mission distinctives, if you will.

Missions is part of discipleship

There is a misconception that missions is what super Christians do. Yes, this Great Commission was given to the Apostles that you may view as super Christians, but it is not ONLY super Christians we see carrying out the Great Commission in the book of Acts!

In fact, as Paul is sent out to tell people about Jesus across the known world and see churches planted, he encounters some people who already know! In fact, they have already started meeting together as a church!

Who planted these churches? Who shared the Gospel? It was more than likely people who were saved and baptized at Pentecost in Acts 2 but had to return back home or people who ran for their lives from Jerusalem after the persecution started ramping up!

Either way, these were normal people!

If we are going to do something great here at East in the future, we have got to take on that mentality! You see, missions is not the outcome of your discipleship; missions is necessary FOR your discipleship. If you are waiting til you get mature to go on mission, you won’t ever do it! Because going on mission is part of the way that we become mature!

So, we want to see many of you who have never gone on mission, go this year! This past church year (September 20-August 21), we saw mission efforts that included 488 people. That’s not individuals, but includes people multiple times. But it was great! And we could have done so much more!

Missions is part of discipleship and also,

Missions is joining God at work

This will be key to our strategy! We don’t believe we get to just cherry pick what we want to do for missions as a church! I believe as your pastor that missions is simply about finding what God is already doing, and joining him!

I read this week...

“The One who is always working invites us to join Him in His work”

I love that!

As a church going forward, we want to ask the question, “What does God care about? What missions is he already on record for blessing!?”

So, that’s where our missions strategy comes from. Looking at God’s Word, there are many ways that we see people living out the Great Commission. However, there are at least three that seem to bring glory to God in great ways and God seems to bless in special ways! These are also things that have been proven through church history to continue to be blessed by God!

So let’s find those, and do those, right? Strategic actions in Strategic locations!

The first thing God blesses is...

1. Engaging our Community

7 Years ago, God saw fit in his plan to plant a wild eyed pastor who was living in Owens 25 minutes away in a small, but growing community on the Limestone/Madison county line called Harvest. Only God knew what the last 7+ years would hold.

But here we are. Still meeting. Still worshiping. Still reaching new people!

The faces have changed over the years, the staff has changed, our volunteer leaders look different. With all that change.... Why are we still here?

Let’s look first at a passage of Scripture. Let’s see how the early church was living out the Great Commission...

Acts 2:46–47 CSB

Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. Every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

Notice that? They were “enjoying the favor of all the people.” That is clearly speaking of those outside the church. As you see the story of this early church, we see that it is through simple, loving engagement that they gained this favor!

And what was the outcome from God’s perspective? “Every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.” That’s so good!

So, Why is East still here? Why have we survived a difficult pastor transition during a national Covid craziness?

I believe it’s because God wants us here. God wants us here today for the same reason he wanted us 7 years ago! To engage our community!

Our community looks very different than it did back then. We now really sit between several growing communities. Subdivisions are sprouting up all over on the Limestone County side and the Madison side. And more are going up in the future.

Now more than ever, we have got to tighten our circle of influence. We have got to start doing more things HERE in Harvest and down the road in the Creekside community. This has got to become our homebase for missional engagement!

This is going to be intentional fun days in neighborhoods with blowups and ice cream. It’s going to be off site worship gatherings to engage the unchurched. It’s going to be door hangers, flyers, porch visits. Alan, our north campus pastor said something really cool about their community that I would like to say over ours… We’ve got to make it hard for people to go to hell around here! We have got to start meeting them where they are instead of waiting til they come to us!

I don’t yet know what all this entails… but it’s going to be fun to watch it happen! AMEN?

Focusing in on this area. It’s a changing area. Homes are everywhere. We have got to start strategic outreaches to get into those subdivisions for the sake of the Gospel!

Do you commit to engage our community with us to see the glory of God in us, our neighbors and the nations? (WE DO!)

2. Planting New Churches

Paul is well-known in the Bible as a church planter. But he didn’t receive a special calling to do that. He was simply fulfilling the great commission in the best way he knew how! Notice what he and his team do here...

Acts 14:21–23 CSB

After they had preached the gospel in that town and made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, to Iconium, and to Antioch, strengthening the disciples by encouraging them to continue in the faith and by telling them, “It is necessary to go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” When they had appointed elders for them in every church and prayed with fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.

Paul’s team would preach the Gospel and see God change lives, then he would cycle back through and help establish them as a local church by appointing elders. That’s one of the ways the New Testament speaks of church leaders.

If you lead a coworker to Christ tomorrow, I would hope that you would encourage them to find a church home. That is what every new believer around the world needs to do.

The problem is that some times, there is not a church for them to attend. If they are in an unreached people group, there may LITERALLY not be a church that gathers near them. But for others, especially here in the US, it is not that there is no church PERIOD, but that there is no church that is actively engaging people like them. In both of those situations, we believe it is the desire of God to see thriving churches in those communities that will be there for people like them! And so, we want to join God on his mission there!

One of the ways we are praying currently is for a church plant we can partner with that is just getting off the ground. This will give us a chance to provide much needed man labor in helping them with a big outreach event or something similar when they are short on volunteers. It will also hopefully teach us more about this church planting process so we can more effectively do it in the future with others or from our own body!

East is getting to the age where we are losing our “church plant” name. We were planted over 7 years ago now. We are becoming more established in our community, but I don’t want us to ever forget the fun, community focus that have helped us survive and thrive through the years. Being around church plants will help remind us of that!

And we will need that reminder because we plan to plant more campuses of Lindsay Lane in the future. We have been meeting and discussing the future a lot lately. And I have some answers that I am excited to get to share with you this morning!

If you don’t know, we have a North Campus in Elkmont. They just celebrated their 2nd birthday. And God is doing exactly what we thought he would do there! Our North Campus is exploding. We have known for years that Elkmont needed a good church that was doing simple things well, and they’ve got it now!

They were planted as a campus with the help of a couple church planting entities kicking in some funds. The intention was that North would get to a sustainable level and would in a few years, roll off, rebrand and become its own church.

We are excited to say that North is almost to a point where we can start talking timelines. They are what we consider a LAUNCH campus. But we are still looking years into the future. But it’s exciting to see what God had put before our church leadership coming to fruition!

Now, I know very few of us have been around long enough to know this first hand, but we at East were not planted that way. There was never any intention of us rolling off, rebranding, and becoming our own church. And we feel more confident than ever, that this is the path we need to continue on! We will remain what we plan to call a LOCAL CAMPUS.

Andy John, the teaching pastor at the Main Campus is who we consider our LEAD PASTOR. He is your pastor’s pastor. He believes God will multiply Lindsay Lane into more campuses in the coming years, in strategic locations in Limestone County.

The reason this is so exciting to me is that we are going to help lead that charge. These future campuses will not be plants out of our main campus in Athens. These campuses will Started through a partnership together. I don’t know if East will remain a Local Campus forever, but Andy John and I have great confidence that because of our culture and simple strategies here, east will be a great resource to help start these new campuses!

This means that we will be praying INTENTLY for God to call up pastors for these plants and that God would help us secure facilities for them as well. It also means that we will be contributing financially to this in some way. We still don’t know what that looks like, but some of this missions giving may very well go to help a new campus start in a strategic location! But it may also mean that some of you will go. Right now our footprint goes out 30+ minutes in four different directions. If we are planting closer to your home, we may approach you about praying to be apart of it!

Don’t let your mind start wandering ok? We don’t yet know where God would have us plant! Don’t try to read my mind. It’s blank.......

But we believe this is a cool deal, amen?

Do you commit to help us plant campuses and churches to see the glory of God in us our neighbors and the nations? (WE DO!)

The last thing is this...

3. Reaching the Unreached

For a group to be considered “unreached” 2% or less of their population claim to be Christian. We have got to find ways to engage those people groups! If it’s not going to happen overseas right now, let’s travel just a few hours and reach them!

Revelation 7:9–12 CSB

After this I looked, and there was a vast multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language, which no one could number, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: Salvation belongs to our God, who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb! All the angels stood around the throne, and along with the elders and the four living creatures they fell facedown before the throne and worshiped God, saying, Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and strength be to our God forever and ever. Amen.

God is pulling back the curtain for John in Revelation to show him a lot of things. If you have read Revelation, you know that there is a ton of imagery. A seven headed beast doesn’t have to actually be a seven-headed beast. It could be someone or something LIKE a seven-headed beast.

You may be a literalist when it comes to Revelation, and that’s fine. You may be right, but what I do know is that in this passage, we see a really cool moment. A huge group of people have gathered around the throne of God and before Christ and are glorifying his name, worshiping together!

Now, if that’s literal. Which I lean to on this one. Then that is exactly what is going to happen, right? But even if it’s imagery, what is it conveying about God? What is it trying to show of God’s character?

It must be that he cares about the nations!

Now, let me speak frank to you. Everyone in this room that cares about missions probably leans one of two ways...

“We need to be focused right here. We have neighbors that don’t know Jesus!” I say, amen! Let’s Go.

Others of you will say, “We have got to be focused on the nations! People are dying without even HEARING the name of Jesus!” I say AMEN! Let’s Go.

It’s not either or for me. But I will say this… We cannot be OK with that last thing I said. There are BILLIONS with a B people living around the world right now, having never heard the name of Jesus. Guys, we cannot be OK with this! Man rejects God by his very nature, but I want them to know that Christ laid down his life for them! And if they remain in rejection, that is still heartbreaking, but I will say it is more heart-breaking if they never hear.

We will begin to prayerfully consider what we can do to see a people move out of the unreached category.

These people need prayer, they need to hear, they need Bible translations in their own language. There are tons of needs. But we can’t do everything for all of them. But we can do something for some of them, amen? By God’s grace we will.

And right now, travel is more difficult than usual. So, we are currently looking at many of the groups of people who are moving from these unreached areas and coming here as refugees.

No matter what you feel about refugees politically, that ends where the Gospel matters, amen? We are prayerfully considering engaging with organizations who minister in these large populations of unreached muslims. We would be able to be right there among them and minister with the Gospel while also learning about how to do it overseas if God allows us to in the future.

Church, we must work alongside others to reach the unreached.

So… Let me ask you!

Do you commit to help us reach the unreached to see the glory of God in us, our neighbors, and the nations? (WE DO!)

I don’t know what 2022 will have in store for us as a church. But what I do know is that this time next year, we could be looking back on one of our most fruitful years of missions. If we will rally around these ways of fulfilling the Great Commission that God has already said bring him glory, then it could happen, baby!

I want to ask you to pray during this response time. Pray for the offering we are collecting today! I pray that you are prepared to give this morning and that together, we will lay an offering at the Lord’s feet today that is honoring to him!

I also ask that you pray for wisdom as we are still nailing down partners locally, regionally and globally. We are taking these decisions seriously.

And lastly, I ask that you pray and commit to God now to join him on his mission here at East. In whatever way it looks, however it plays out, commit to take part with us?! It will be a good year!

This song of response is an opportunity for you to talk to God in these ways, or to respond by talking with us about a NEXT STEP you need to make now! I will be down front to talk with you about any decision you need to make, we will also have decision counselors by the back door if you would like to sit down and talk with someone about what God is speaking to you.

The reason we are doing all of this is because Jesus died on the cross for us! We would love to share how you can find hope, peace, and love where you are lacking it by trusting in Jesus as your savior! Come talk to me during this last song.

Let’s respond how we need to here.

PRAY