Expand Your Capacity

Title: Expand Your Capacity

Explain Context of the origin of this message: Time of Prayer and Fasting led to this prophetic message.

Isaiah 54:1–5 NASB95

1 “Shout for joy, O barren one, you who have borne no child; Break forth into joyful shouting and cry aloud, you who have not travailed; For the sons of the desolate one will be more numerous Than the sons of the married woman,” says the Lord. 2 “Enlarge the place of your tent; Stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, spare not; Lengthen your cords And strengthen your pegs. 3 “For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left. And your descendants will possess nations And will resettle the desolate cities. 4 “Fear not, for you will not be put to shame; And do not feel humiliated, for you will not be disgraced; But you will forget the shame of your youth, And the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more. 5 “For your husband is your Maker, Whose name is the Lord of hosts; And your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, Who is called the God of all the earth.

This scripture is written to Israel after they have spent time in exile and God is promising that they will be restored…

In much the same way, the Church as a whole has gone through a season where we have found ourselves in a mission field of our own making…

Rather than see this country led down a Godly path, the Church has become complacent in her duty to love and hostile in defense of dogma…

What it’s led to is a turning away from the local churches, a deconstruction of the Faith, and a growing number of people who would love to meet Jesus, but can’t stand the Church…

Much like Israel in this scripture, the Church has found herself in a foreign place surrounded by foreign ideas, wondering what went wrong…

There’s been an unfortunate trend in the modern Church where discipleship and evangelism have gone by the way side, the love we are supposed to be known by is nowhere to be found, and the result is a barren Church…

The Barren Church

Some Statistics:

68% of all protestant churches have no direct involvement in church planting.

The number of people who claim to be Christian has fallen 15% in the last 14 years. (Over 1% drop per year)

The number of religiously unaffiliated have doubled since 2007.

1 in 6 young adults identify as LGBTQIA+

For the first time in recorded US history, there are more in this country that do not belong to any church than those who do.

Church membership fell from 70% in 2000 to 47% in 2020.

4,500 churches closed their doors in the US in 2019.

Only 3 in 10 unchurched Americans say a Christian has ever shared with them 1-on-1 how to become a Christian.

This is what a barren church looks like…

If there is not a change in the Church, these numbers will continue to fall…

In the midst of the barrenness, in the midst of the circumstances that were brought about by their own failure, God speaks and says, Isaiah 54:1 “1 “Shout for joy, O barren one, you who have borne no child; Break forth into joyful shouting and cry aloud, you who have not travailed; For the sons of the desolate one will be more numerous Than the sons of the married woman,” says the Lord.”

Shout for joy! Shout for Joy you barren one… You who have never multiplied, you who have never shared the Gospel, you who have yet to see your role in reaching the lost…

Break forth into joyful shouting and cry aloud! For the sons of the desolate one…

Those who will be reached now will make up for the time lost… Joel 2:25 “25 “Then I will make up to you for the years That the swarming locust has eaten…

God has been setting us up for something… Now, He’s about to move in a way that will make up for lost time…

I believe there’s about to be a movement in the Church world that will restore the lost ground…

But it will look different than past movements.

New Things Require New Methods…

God tells of Israel’s redemption from Babylon in an earlier chapter…

Isaiah 43:16–19 NASB95

16 Thus says the Lord, Who makes a way through the sea And a path through the mighty waters, 17 Who brings forth the chariot and the horse, The army and the mighty man (They will lie down together and not rise again; They have been quenched and extinguished like a wick): 18 “Do not call to mind the former things, Or ponder things of the past. 19 “Behold, I will do something new, Now it will spring forth; Will you not be aware of it? I will even make a roadway in the wilderness, Rivers in the desert.

The message will always be the same. The content of what we preach will remain the same, but the container may change…

The path may be altered, but the environment is still His presence…

The method is shifting, but the message in unchanged.

1 Corinthians 9:19–22 NASB95

19 For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may win more. 20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law; 21 to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law. 22 To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak; I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some.

In other words, I change my methods to maximize my results…

Paul is saying here he doesn’t approach ministry to the Jews the same way I minister to those without law.

New things require new methods.

Almost two years ago, The evangelist Renee Moore came with a prophetic word that this is the beginning of something powerful God is doing through this Body…

This mission we have been given is a part of a larger whole. I believe the revival at hand is not just in a single church or location as some have been in the past…

The move for this hour is unlike the moves of the past where people would travel from all around to be a part of…

The move for this hour is going to be in churches just like this one, across the nation in small pockets of anointing that grows supernaturally in multiple contexts, using multiple methods, reaching multiple demographics.

The question for our specific context is…

How do we prepare our methods?

The first thing I believe we must do is recognize the hour we are in…

Recognize the Hour…

We live in a time where emotionalism has taken the place of truth and logic…

“Feelings” have become the god of this age…

16 November 2016, Oxford Dictionaries announced its 2016 international Word of the Year: Post-truth

post-truth - adjective

---Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.---

In other words, it doesn't matter if it is true, all that matters is how it makes me feel.

It doesn't matter if Hell is real, I don't like how it makes me feel.

It doesn't matter if sin is wrong, all that matters is how it feels.

2 Timothy 4:3–4 NASB95

3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, 4 and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths.

But now is the time of a poeple that is looking for something real, something authentic, something that is not manufactured or produced…

Because of the amount of video content being consumed and the amount of fake news being circulated, there is a generation of youth and young adults that have an incredible sense for authenticity…

They can pick out in a moment if you’re being fake or manipulative, and they will turn you off in a second.

The church in the west has become a hotbed for emotionalism, regarding the emotional experience as sacred, and caused the authentic anointing to be put by the way side…

There was a focus put on the production so that at just the right time, with smoke in the air, and the lights turned just right, the band could play just the right note, while the preacher is making that emotional appeal and hopefully help the Holy Ghost....

He’s a big God! He doesn’t need help, He just needs a place…

I believe God has moved in spite of all the theatrics, not because of it…

This generation is one that is looking for something authentic, something real.

We must recognize the hour… We must know those who we are trying to reach…

We must expand our capacity…

Enlarge the place of your tent...

Isaiah 54:2 NASB95

2 “Enlarge the place of your tent; Stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, spare not; Lengthen your cords And strengthen your pegs.

For the past two years, we have been preparing for exactly this kind of expansion.

All this remodel is because we are enlarging the place of our tent.... Expanding our capacity… Preparing for when they are brought in…

The truth is, if we don’t prepare the place of our tent, we will stunt our growth…

Shark in tank illustration

By bringing this place up to date, making the updates to the nursery, the youth building, the fellowship hall, the children’s church… We are preparing this facility for the growth we are about to see.

By going through the Acts 2 journey, we are preparing our systems and thought processes for expansion…

We don’t want to be reactive, but proactive.. I’m planning on growth. We are preparing for increase…

Enlarge the place of your tent!

If you know it is coming, prepare for it. The only reason you don’t prepare for it is because you don’t really believe it is coming.

I believe God is setting things in place because He has already been working behind the scenes, softening hearts, putting people in the right places for the right times, preparing a harvest for the workers!

Here’s the thing about harvest: It doesn’t ripen in the house.

The harvest ripens in the field and we must go into the field to reap the harvest.

That’s why we must make community key…

Make Community Key...

I believe this move God is beginning right now will not be show and content based, but relational and communal.

Our fellowship hall is of the upmost importance because as much as I love the services, and as necessary as this is, relationships are built in there, not in here.

Relational evangelism is the missing link that the church universal has been so poor at in her recent history.

We have had a time where the pattern was “come and see” but that method is shifting right now to a “go and tell” because the harvest is out there, not in here.

“Go and tell” was the original mandate from Jesus.

It has been asked, “If your church disappeared tomorrow, would the community miss you?”

Would anyone notice?

Friday’s funeral service opportunity

Easter Egg hunt opportunity

Thanksgiving feed opportunity

Angel tree for Christmas

But beyond these services to the community, we have the opportunity every day to bring light to a dark world individually..

It’s more than just showing up to serve, it’s about building relationships in our circle of influence…

We must make community key.

Another thing we must do in this season of vision and expansion is: we must…

Prepare with Excellence

God is calling us out of mundane and mediocre to a life of excellence in service to Him.

Colossians 3:17 NASB95

17 Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.

Does it bring Him glory?

We should be the hardest workers, the best at our job, the most dedicated to what we put our hand to, because it’s all for HIS GLORY!

We need to do everything with excellence…

Small habits have big outcomes.

We live in a world of good enough and half jobs. Imagine when someone looks at us and wonders why we are different.

This entire Acts 2 journey we have been on is getting us ready to dive into systems of excellence and intentionality.

Recognize the hour…

Prepare the place…

Prepare our systems…

Tell those getting baptized to get ready

GO GET THEM…

This is a very important step!

Explain analysis paralysis

It is not enough to plan and plan and plan, but never jump on the opportunity in front of us.

Now is the time when we begin implementing the thoughts and ideas that we have been developing all this time..

The next few weeks will be an unfolding of some of the plans God has been downloading in the hearts of the leadership through some vision casting.

Tonight, we will have our Meet’N’Eat and while we are eating, we will do two things:

#1, we will take a look at our annual calendar so you can see some of the exciting things coming up.

#2, I will open the floor for some Q&A and Casia and I are going to share a little about our journey in ministry over the last 10 years.

So bring a dish to share and we will eat and have a good time.

For me, I cannot think of a better way to start off this new season than with a celebration of salvation through baptisms.

While they get ready, mention deacon nominations and membership applications. Due Feb. 11th.