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Well, good morning.
If we've got any of our kids here who want to be dismissed to go back to kids church from Mr.
Mike and Ms.
Donner back in the back and they'd be happy to take you over there.
If not, I want to say good morning to everyone.
If you have your Bibles, and I hope you do, please join me in Acts chapter two.
You're like bo.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
We've been in Genesis for a long time.
Well, we have, and we're not done with Genesis.
We've actually been in Genesis.
We've done 15 different studies since, I believe, March in the book of Genesis.
But we're taking a break.
We will take breaks as we go through Genesis.
We're going to be in it for an extended period of time.
And this is one of those breaks.
For the next four weeks, we're going to talk about discipleship at our church.
Okay?
And so it's kind of twofold.
And it's really a different message series than I typically do.
But this is a message series where we are going to look at God's Word and draw from that the right understanding of what God's Word teaches.
But then also, very specifically, maybe in a deeper way than we typically do.
We're going to take that and then reflect that back, not only for you as individuals of the church, but as our church.
And how does our church reflect this?
And so what you're going to see at the end of this week's message and going forward for the next three weeks, we're going to look at vision pieces for our church of things that we're going to begin to do to adjust, to shift some areas of discipleship so that we can strengthen them and grow them so that you and I can grow in the discipleship process for what God has for us.
All right?
So I want to encourage you as if you've got kids in school.
We're getting back into the grind.
We're getting them places.
We're running around doing different activities.
We're headed back into that process.
All right?
So I want to encourage you to be here on Sundays with us.
Or if you're not kids in that process and you're just around, well, hey, you got no reason not to be here anyways, right?
So we'd love for you to be here as we talk through all this and see what this looks like for our church.
And then what I want to encourage you each and every week is under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
It to determine for what does God have for me and being willing to take that next step of obedience for.
What God has for you and for myself.
As well.
Well, I want to start off with probably an obvious statement, but I hope this makes sense as we go through this.
And the statement is this salvation amazes me.
It amazes me.
Salvation completely blew my mind and still today does.
And here's what I mean.
When I got saved, I had grown up in church, battled 22 years of my life in full blown rebellion from God, overly religiously, understood what needed to happen and take place, but zero application of any of that in my life.
And then when God saved me when I was 22 years old and opened my eyes, it moved beyond my behaviors, which is what I always thought, that this boiled down to be good enough and pointed back to the one and.
Only who was good enough and who was perfect is Jesus.
And so here's what salvation amazes me for.
Salvation amazes me because you and I are saved for eternity.
It is set, it is sealed.
You and I know who we belong to.
We are brought into the family.
It's why I say to these girls and I say to everyone who gets baptized, I baptize you, my sister, or I baptize you my brother, because that's who we are.
We're family.
And it's that way.
It's going to be set for all of eternity.
And it amazes me of the work of God in that that God not only sets that for me, but he seals that for me and he holds that for me.
It amazes me.
But my concern after now 22 years.
Of being in the church, being a.
Part of the church, is that all.
Too often, men and women and teenagers and children, they make a profession of faith for Jesus Christ.
And we celebrate that and we love that.
And we talk about their eternity is set.
And it is.
And then it feels like for so many of us, this waiting game, wait till God calls me home or wait till Jesus returns.
And it's like that.
I can hit the proverbial cruise control of my spiritual walk because on that day, Jesus saved me.
And so what amazes me about salvation is we are saved for eternity, but we are also saved for right now, for this moment, for where we are, for where we are placed, for where we are positioned.
We are saved for eternity, but we are also saved for right now.
And what I mean by that is this that God loves you and I too much to save us and then leave us right where we're at.
The beauty about a relationship with God is he saves us and then we get to walk on this wonderful journey with Him for every day that he gives us breath and life to be transformed more and more into who he wants us to be.
It's why that we celebrate those people at the end of their life that make the decision to follow christ.
That's something good.
That's the work of God.
But it's so for me.
I look back at my son and my daughter who profess Christ at a very young and early age, and what I've watched for them is this progression through elementary school, through middle school, through high school, and God pray through college, and after that on this journey of walking in obedience with Him.
It's my prayer for these three ladies.
And we've already seen that in their life, that they just didn't profess Christ as their savior and go, cool, I can roll like this till I die.
It's no, there's more and more and more of what God has for me, and I get to experience that on a daily basis.
So as we talk about discipleship over.
These next four weeks, it's what I.
Want to begin to set in our minds, in our hearts, is just asking this question like, am I good enough with settlement within my being to go, nah, I've checked that box.
Gonna live my life until Jesus comes and then I'm good.
Or maybe a little bit more.
Biblical approach to salvation is man.
Yeah.
Like Jesus is my Lord and savior, and every day of my life is a part of the wonderful journey that he allows me to be on where I die.
To parts of me that are there, I repent and ambroken of my sin, so I can become more like him, so I can be greater used in what he has for me in this.
Life as I wait for the glory of eternity.
Right.
And so as we get to Acts.
Two here in a moment, jesus has been preparing his followers for this of what will happen in Acts Two in.
Matthew 20 818 through 20, a passage.
You'Ve heard hundreds, if not thousands of times.
And Jesus came and said to them.
All authority in heaven and on earth.
Has been given to me.
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 all that I've commanded you.
And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.
There's so much that we can get from this.
We could spend weeks looking at these three powerful verses, but I want to look at just a couple of things.
To kind of set this foundation of.
What we're going to be about and what we're going to call to and what we're going to see in our lives.
Jesus gives some commands here.
The first command that we see that we want to talk about is Jesus says, Go, go.
So we have to acknowledge that within the Christian walk that there is this call to mobilization.
Jesus says that to go and to baptize and that there are going to be disciples that are going to be made amongst all of the nations.
There's a mobilization factor that's there that you and I, as followers of Jesus Christ are not called to simply come and sit, but we are called to go, to leave, to scatter.
Yes, we are called to gather.
We are called to come together, but it is with a unique purpose so that when we're done, we do what we go.
We go.
There's an action and an activity to our faith.
And then within our going, we're called to do something.
It's not that we're just out there living our life.
It's not come here and then go and do what you want to do.
I love the fact that God calls some to be pastors and some to be teachers and some to be stay at home parents and some to be plumbers and some to be doctors and some to work in retail.
I love the fact that God does all of that because we come here and then we go.
And then when we go, what we do is we make disciples.
And this is the process.
We make disciples.
And he says that in our process of making disciples of what we want to see, what we want to experience is just what we saw and what we witnessed today we see baptize them.
Baptize them.
Go and share so that men, women and children come to faith in Christ, right?
We don't baptize you in the hopes that one day you will put your faith in Christ.
We baptize you because you profess that you have placed your faith in Christ.
And so in this part of Discipleship, there's this journey where we recognize that discipleship actually doesn't begin in the church.
Discipleship actually doesn't begin with a bunch of believers just hanging out, but that discipleship actually begins in the marketplace, in the harvest, in the fields where we go, we share, we talk, we invite men and women and children come to faith and we baptize them.
But then we do something.
We don't just high five them on their way out.
We teach them.
We teach them obedience to Christ.
Jesus says, if you love me, you'll obey my commandments.
We teach them to obey Christ.
Now.
This kind of goes a little.
Bit culturally against the church where the church has swayed off mission.
Years ago.
If you look at the history of the church years ago, somewhere around the.
1950S, primarily because I can speak to.
Where we live in the south, but other places too.
What we saw, this was what I like to refer to as like, the Field of Dreams mentality.
Y'all ever seen that movie Field of Dreams?
I love sports movies.
I will confess that movie bores me out of my mind and I just.
Tuned out half of you who love that movie.
All right?
But there's a premise in the movie.
There's a line.
You all know the line.
Everybody knows the line.
Even if you haven't seen the movie, you know the line.
You should know that it came from that movie.
If you build it they will come.
And we took on that mindset with churches.
If we build it they'll come.
If we build bigger buildings, if we provide more programs, if we do more things, then they will come.
And here's what happened.
It worked.
We saw peaks of church growth during a handful of decades where churches got bigger, programs got bigger, budgets got bigger.
But you know what?
Shrunk salvations.
Do you know what almost completely died?
Evangelism.
And so the incorrect thought process is this if we build a church we will make disciples.
We make and gather people.
But that doesn't mean that we're making disciples.
The correct thought process is this if we make disciples then we will build the church.
Not a church, the church.
If our focus is not on how can we obtain and get more?
But if our focus is how do we grow and make more disciples, what builds and what grows is the church.
What builds and what grows is the kingdom of God.
If our commitment of what we do is to make disciples.
So now we look at in Acts.
But not quite yet.
In acts two.
We look at acts one.
Jesus is there and he says but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all of Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth.
So this is Jesus is about to ascend.
He's given the mission.
He's died on the cross.
He's laid in the tomb.
He's resurrected.
He's appeared to the disciples, he's appeared to others.
And now all that's been happening and taking place for this great movement of God to happen is going to happen.
But it's not going to happen in the way that so many of the followers of Jesus at the time thought it would happen.
In spite of Jesus telling them over and over and over again what would happen.
Jesus says, well wait a second.
This isn't going to happen with me in my physical body walking around doing all the messages, doing all the healings, doing all the teaching, doing all these things.
It's going to be different.
And Jesus says, you plain, everyday person.
You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.
And then you will be my witnesses here in Jerusalem, there in Judea, cross culturally in Samaria, in those places that you've heard of, in the places that you can't possibly fathom to the ends of the earth you will go and he mobilizes a few and grows the church in the power of the Holy Spirit.
As we get to Acts two in just a moment what we're going to see in Acts chapter two is this miraculous work.
But let's understand as we get into.
This that discipleship is a spiritual work.
Discipleship is a spiritual work.
Discipleship is not just a program.
Discipleship is not just a system of groups.
Discipleship isn't just simply a cup of.
Coffee that you routinely have between you and a peer.
Discipleship isn't just simply a pastor sitting.
Down with someone and explaining the gospel to them.
Discipleship isn't just simply you walking across the street.
You see, Discipleship is all of those things.
But Discipleship is also with that a spiritual work dependent on the work of the Holy Spirit, working and moving.
Because see, here's the truth I can't save anyone and neither can you.
You can't talk someone into salvation and neither can I.
We in our own abilities are not capable of saving anyone.
I can't transform anyone.
I can change a behavior.
I can't transform anyone.
I can't transform a heart.
Here's what I can be.
I can be faithful.
To what God has called me to do and I can be obedient to who God has called me to be.
And what we will find in the process of Discipleship that we're going to look at it is the realization that I can't save anyone.
I can't transform anyone.
That is the work of the Holy Spirit, but even more of the work.
Of the Holy Spirit inside of me.
Is that what the Holy Spirit enables.
Me to do and what the Holy Spirit took this old hard crusty, mean, bitter, rebellious heart and began to mold and shape and knock off the edges and the corners of it and begin to make it moldable into who Christ would want me to be.
Is that in that?
And under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, what I can do is in.
Response to Him I can be faithful and in response to Him I can be obedient.
So Jesus ascends.
And then at the very beginning of.
Acts chapter two, the Holy Spirit comes and falls on all of the believers who were there in Jerusalem and each one, it says in verse six, each one was hearing them speak in his own language.
And so as the Holy Spirit fell on them and filled the believers who were there, they began to speak in languages that they did not know and men and women who were there began to hear the gospel in their own language.
And we see this work and move of God.
And so now jump over and this is where we will be for the next several weeks.
Acts two, verse 42 through 47.
So at the beginning we see people get saved and now we have been introduced to the first church, the fellowship of believers and they've got some things that they do and that's what I want us to look at.
It says starting in verse 42.
And they devoted themselves to the apostles.
Teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers and awe came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.
All who believe were together and had all things in common.
And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need and day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes.
They received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.
And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
So here's what I love about this passage of scripture, okay, this isn't what we don't see here.
We see more than what we've limited this to.
We don't see an individual gathering of people.
There is gathering in here.
We see this.
But this isn't like we're going to take a snapshot and describe what happens from eleven to twelve in Jerusalem on a Sunday morning.
It's not what we see.
We see pieces in here of their gathering together as a whole.
We also see in here them gathering together in homes, in smaller groups together.
But we see more than that.
And what we see in these verses from 42 to 47 is the entire discipleship process of the first church, which is amazing when we think about it, everything that we need to see and understand that they did under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to grow and to multiply disciples.
We see right here.
You can go to seminars, you can follow podcasts, you can read books that try to tell you how to do church.
And every time God's like, hey, pause.
For just a moment, it's right here.
This is what we've got.
And we see this discipleship process.
We see verse 42 and they devoted.
Themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
So verse 42, the use of the word, they were devoted, they devoted themselves.
Here's really what I love about these words, what God establishes for us very quickly here in verse 42 is this word devoted means this, that they were unified and persistent.
They were unified altogether in this.
And they were persistent.
Can I tell you what, the early church probably was busy.
They were probably stressed.
There was probably times where this was inconvenient.
But they were unified and they were persistent.
It says that they were devoted to the apostles teaching.
What were they devoted to?
They were devoted to the instruction.
They didn't get to go down to the Christian bookstore and get a copy of their Bible.
They didn't get to jump online and read a new website.
They didn't get to get on their phone and pull out a new app to walk them through this.
I love all of those things.
I love that every morning while my wife is getting ready to go to school, what I hear her listening to is her Bible.
I love that they didn't have that opportunity.
So what they were, is they were devoted to the apostles teaching.
They were devoted to instruction, teaching them to observe all that I had commanded you what Jesus said.
So the very first thing that we see in this is they learned they.
Learned.
All too often an excuse that we use in church that is just that is an excuse is this.
But I don't know what the Bible says.
Well, we want to teach you, and if we can't, let me rephrase that.
If we aren't, that's on us.
They learned they were devoted to the apostles teaching.
Secondly, they were devoted to the fellowship, sharing in common or shared activity.
What we're going to see from this is a sharing of generosity.
They were a large group of people who would gather together.
We got a long way to go, so we're going to keep rolling through these.
The next thing we see in verse 42 was they were devoted to the breaking of bread.
All right?
So twice in this passage of Scripture, we're going to see breaking of bread.
There's lots of disagreements, so we're going to cover them together.
And I think or separately I think this is the Lord's Supper.
I think that when we see this in verse 42, that they were devoted to this, this was something special for them.
This is something that mattered to them.
And I'm so glad that we do this and we observe this and we don't apologize for it, and sometimes we go long for it, and that's okay, because we're devoted to it, of pausing and acknowledging the work that Christ did through his body and his blood.
And they were devoted and they were.
Devoted to the prayers.
And I think this is interesting.
And I'm a nerd.
It doesn't say they were devoted to praying.
It says that they were devoted to the prayers.
So I think this is twofold.
I do think they were people of.
Prayer in that they were praying.
We see that all through Acts.
But I think what we gather from this and what they see from this we kind of understand is that they were also knowing that they needed to be people of prayer because they knew the war that was in front of them, that they had to battle, and they knew that they could not battle it on their own.
And the only way that they could fight through this was to battle through prayer.
And so they learned how to pray, and Jesus taught how to pray.
And so they learned the prayers.
They learned how to pray.
They learned the scripture.
So when their body and who they were weren't enough to mustered up the words through the power of the Holy Spirit of God and God's word set in them, they knew the prayers and they prayed.
Give verse 43.
And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.
So soul here means all people.
All people.
So what we see in Acts 243 is that this work and that we just saw in verse 42, this work of ministry that is happening here's, what's taking place, it's impacting people not only inside the church, but also outside the church as well.
People outside where they gather, people outside of this group of believers are taking notice.
They're seeing change.
They're seeing that real life is happening under the power of the Holy Spirit right in front of them.
And so then we kind of dive in a little bit more and let's look at verse 44 and 45 to see what this looked like.
It says, and all who believed were together, this unity again and had all things in common.
And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.
So believers were together and had all things in common.
There's a commonality amongst them, right?
You ever go off and spend time.
With your family, family you hadn't seen in a while?
And notice maybe you've moved off from a different part of the country where they are, and you go and you.
Spend time with them.
And when you come back home to your family, your wife says, oh, you've.
Been with your dad.
I can tell, right?
Maybe that just happens to me, right?
Why?
Because you've been around the family.
You begin to act like the family.
You begin to look like the family, you begin to talk like the family.
Because who are you?
You're part of the family.
This is the cool thing that's that's here that we see in Scripture.
We see that there is this individuality amongst believers, but we see there's this commonality amongst them as well, and that what exists between them is that they were together and had all things in common.
And then something crazy radical happens because of that family mindset, because of who.
They are, because of the work of.
God and what God was doing.
It says that believers sold possessions and gave proceeds to all who had need.
Whoa.
This idea of voluntary, communal benevolence, you.
See, because in this first century church.
Not only were there were those who had need who got saved, but there were those who got saved and then lost all that they had.
Jesus says, count the cost.
Jesus says, Take up your cross.
And they didn't go, well, that's unfortunate.
Let's pray for him.
They went, that's unfortunate.
Let's pray for him.
Let's sell this.
Let's give to him, because what would you do for your brother?
What would you do for your sister?
That's what they did for one another.
And then verse 46 and day by.
Day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received food with glad and generous hearts.
So two things they attended the temple together, they worshiped together.
Right?
I know a lot of you like.
To sit in the back, and very few of you like to sit on the front row.
We can scan around and tell that, right.
Appreciate Tracy and Amanda sitting beside us today.
Let me tell you the beauty of.
Sitting in the front row.
You mean let you on a little secret.
Y'all know this because y'all sit here, right?
Burris is a pretty consistent with us up here.
We get to hear you.
We hear you sing every Sunday.
When I stand up right there, I like to come up a little bit early before the song's over with because when I stand right there, I get to experience what the band gets to experience.
Except for our drummers that we put in a cage.
Evidently, we get to hear you every week.
It's goosebumps to hear the song of the Lord come from you.
Bible tells us not to forsake the gathering of believers.
Not just when it's convenient, not just when the calendar is clear, not just when we didn't get invited to go to the lake or the beach that day.
They worshipped together and they set this and then they broke bread in homes.
They fellowship together.
It's crazy.
They're friends.
Let me throw you a little challenge real quick.
How many of you don't you don't have to raise your hand.
I just want you to think about this.
How many of you see a face here every week that you've seen for months and you don't know their name?
Here's a challenge I want you to do next week.
Go.
Hey.
My name's Bo.
Don't say it if your name's not Bo.
Pretty sure I'm the only bo here.
Eliminate the awkward.
I've seen you for months and never taken the opportunity to introduce myself to you.
What's your name?
And we begin the fellowship.
You see, it's hard to be family with people that you don't know.
And so what we want to have in this and what we see in this is they broke bread in homes.
They fellowship together.
And so what happens in here is this fellowship starts.
And I want to be honest with you.
I love the crazy of our fellowship together with coffee and cakes and goldfish and things that I don't ever get to eat, right?
I love it.
But what I really love more is when I see those families who fellowshiped here land at San Jose's later, right?
And really love it when we get invited to join them.
And love when I hear the stories that it spills over into Friday night or Tuesday afternoon.
The fellowship of breaking bread, verse 47.
Praising God and having favor with all the people.
And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
Believers.
Praise God.
The believers.
Praise God.
They did what they did together in the totality of worship that all of it was a moment not to go, let me tell you about my church.
None of it was a moment to say, let me tell you about my pastor.
But all of it was a moment to praise God for all that God was doing.
And it says that believers had favor amongst all the people.
Again, reemphasizing the impact, the external impact of what we see.
So we see this internal impact, we see this external impact.
But then this is the part that I'm really excited about.
It says the Lord added those who were being saved.
The eternal impact that this had in the community, it didn't say Peter added to those who were getting saved.
It didn't say John added to those who were getting saved.
It didn't say Mary added to those who were getting saved.
The Bible comes and says the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
And so what we see is this Holy Spirit work happening and taking place in the lives of the believers.
And what we see God doing is transforming and saving lives.
Coworkers, neighbors, husbands, daughters, sons, lives changed for eternity.
We see this radical, miraculous movement of God and we see God's people engaged in the discipleship process that was there.
Side note.
I'd like to lose some weight.
You might want to join me.
Thank you.
Appreciate that.
Mike.
Here's what I want to do.
I was thinking about this this week.
I want to lose like 50 pounds of fat.
I was hoping someone would say, wow, because you're saying there's no way you have that bow.
And you all failed and encouraged me.
I want to lose about 50 pounds of fat and I would like to.
Gain about 30 pounds of muscle, right?
I want this jacket not to be too tight right here, but to be too tight right here.
You know what I mean?
I want you to think, man, he's getting fired up.
Those arms are going to pop through there.
Not like we hope that button doesn't shoot out, you know what I mean?
But here's the deal.
I'm not going to go to the gym.
I'm not going to stop eating the food that I want to eat.
I don't even really want to take vitamins.
You see, I'd like to lose 50 pounds of fat and gain 30 pounds of muscle.
But the problem is I'm not really willing to do any of the work.
That it takes to make that happen.
Here's the point.
If I were to ask you.
How.
Would you like to see acts 242.
Through 47 level of faith in your church and in your life?
You would say oboe?
Absolutely.
I want to see that.
Then here's the question.
Are you willing to do what it.
Takes to see that happen?
Because all too often, spiritually speaking, we're just like me, I want to lose 50 pounds of fat and gain 30 pounds of muscle and do none of the work that it takes to see it happen.
And I found that's where the church in America is headed, declining at a faster rate than ever before.
Churches being closed down every moment and not just in places like Los Angeles and New York and Chicago and Seattle and Portland but in places that we thought Christianity in places that we arrogantly thought Christianity would never decline to the point to where five years ago and I wish I knew the latest statistic but I don't.
That right here in good old Lexington, South Carolina, the heart of the Bible belt.
33% of people, 33% would say that they're a follower of Jesus.
And let me ask you this question.
How many driveways in your neighborhood were filled as you left to come here this morning?
Are you willing to do the work?
I'm going long, I'm sorry.
What we see here are three discipleship strategies that form this process and these.
Are going to be what we're going.
To talk about for the next three weeks.
Okay, so this is kind of my end.
We'll give my vision piece and we'll head in taking the Lord's supper.
The first one that we see is we see relational discipleship.
We see relational discipleship.
Three strategies in this overall process.
The first strategy relational discipleship and quick definition of this.
Believers come together to grow in personal relationship with one another as they grow.
In their personal relationship with God.
What brought them together in their relationship with Christ, what they shared oftentimes through the truth of God's word, was shared life experience.
And what we see in relational discipleship is this peer to peer discipleship is.
What we'll talk about next week.
The second discipleship strategy that we see in this overall process is theological discipleship.
Theological discipleship where believers come together to grow in their right understanding of the word of God.
They know more about who God is so that their faith is more grounded and proper biblical doctrine.
They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and in two weeks we're going to talk about theological discipleship.
And in the setting of theological discipleship this is more of a teacher to student type of discipleship.
And then lastly what we see of the three strategies which will be week four for us is missional discipleship.
Believers come together in their community and share the truth of Jesus Christ with those who are not yet followers of Christ.
And so what we see in this is believer to unbeliever discipleship.
So we see peer to peer, we see teacher to student, we see believer to unbeliever three different strategies that we draw from and that we see to form the overall process.
And this amazes me that we see this thousands of years later, we're still trying to figure this out.
And we see it amongst a group of people who hadn't been to seminary, who hadn't taken a Bible class, who had never been to VBS, who didn't go to youth camp.
But they were transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit and they committed themselves every single day to growing in their faith.
And what we see is this radical process that happens in their life and their community as they're relationally experiencing discipleship, they're theologically experiencing discipleship and they're missionally going and experiencing that of what we find and what we see.
And so over the next three weeks, we're going to talk about this and we're going to look at our three objectives of what we're working toward and we're going to look at these three strategies individually and share with you what I'm going to do, share with you how we feel.
God is leading us to strengthen and grow our discipleship process here at Willow Ridge Church to model this and that what we see in Acts chapter two.
The second thing objective that we're going to have is we're going to share with you how you can engage in that.
It's great for us to talk about how we're going to do it as your staff and as your leadership, but we're going to invite you to join us in this process at our church.
We got a graphic that we've worked on.
It's really simple mass.
We go and throw that up on the screen.
And this is what we're going to talk about over the next three weeks.
That what we would like to see from you in your life and in my life.
This is for me too.
This is how God wants to grow me, change me, make me more usable for the kingdom, is to find how we can be that fully engaged discipleship where we're experiencing relational discipleship in our lives, where we're experiencing theological discipleship in our lives.
And we're experiencing missional discipleship in our lives.
And we want to invite you to.
Join us with this in the hopes that we'll be fully engaged in what God wants us to do.
But then I want to share with you also in order to make this happen.
And you see this that's right here, and I think there's one on each.
Aisle and we've got more in the back.
And we're going to get more into.
These details later, but it is definitely there on Sunday, September the 10th, we're going to make a schedule change in our church in order so that we can put this process into effect for us.
And so this morning as we close, before we go in the Lord's supper.
I do want to take some time and go through this schedule change and explain what will be happening.
So this starts on Sunday, September the 10th.
All right, say that back to me because I mess up dates all the time.
When September the 10th.
All right, we're going to put it all over Facebook.
It's going to be all over email.
It's going to be all over everything that you could have.
Or maybe if you don't want to, we'll give you like text messages at 04:00 A.m.
Reminding you about this.
All right, so Sunday, September the 10th.
Here's what we're going to have starting.
At 09:00 A.m., from nine to 950.
And we're going to get into the details each week of what this looks like.
But from nine to 950, every Sunday morning we're going to provide discipleship, discipleship for kids, discipleship for students, discipleship for adults.
Every single Sunday morning, all right?
Our kids are going to be, and when I say our kids, I mean fifth grade and under are going to be in their large group discipleship during that 50 minutes time period that they're going to be together.
Our youth are going to continue doing what they've already been doing.
Upstairs in the attic is what we've given them, right?
That's where they're at.
They're up there loving every minute of it.
They've done a lot of work up there.
It's really cool, it's really fun.
It's a nice place to be, right?
So they're up there having their discipleship.
And then what we're going to have for all of us, let's say you're not serving in kids ministry, you're not serving in student ministry, you're not a kid, you're not a student.
What happens for you?
All right, so what we're going to be providing for you during that time is relational discipleship classes and theological discipleship classes.
And that's what these are about.
And that's where you can see these in read descriptions and in the weeks leading up, we'll help you where you can connect with these, where we can grow and be disciples.
Now you're probably asking yourself this question, especially if you grew up going to a Southern Baptist church like I did.
Oh, we've got Sunday school.
Now how many of you thought that.
You don't want to raise your hand?
Yeah, you did.
No, here's how this is different, all right?
Yes, it is observing a traditional Sunday school hour.
But if you grew up in Sunday.
School, here's how this is different of what we are doing.
Sunday school, you were typically placed, right?
You were placed in this class because.
You were a young married couple.
You were placed in this class because.
You were an older couple.
You were placed in this class because.
You were a widow or a widower.
You were placed in this class because.
You were college and career, whatever career means in this world, right?
You were placed in these things and.
You were told this is where you.
Go and this is what you do.
What we're going to provide every often.
And make these things available is opportunities for you to make the decision of.
Where you are in your walk with the Lord.
Where do you feel like God wants you to be?
And then you can go and you.
Can go and you can be a.
Part of a class.
You can be a part of a relational class.
You can be a part of a theological class for six, seven, eight weeks.
You can learn more about the Lord and grow in your relationship with him, and then you can move to the next one that you would desire to do.
So that's what we're going to provide from nine to 950.
Here's what this doesn't mean.
I want you to hear me with this.
We are not doing away with any.
Of our small groups.
We love our small groups.
I love every Thursday at 1145, me.
And a group of men get together and dive through God's Word together as a small group.
I love that.
I don't want to give that up for anything.
And we're not giving that up.
And we're going to look to continue.
To add more people to small groups.
We're going to look to continue to add more small groups.
What we want to do during this is build on the wonderful relational discipleship.
Foundation that small groups have provided for us and give other people opportunities to do this on a day and a time and a space where we're already coming here anyways.
We will meet with these classes from nine to 950.
Parents, I need you to hear this, okay?
This is why we're ending at 950.
At 950, we need our parents to.
Come and get our kids and bring them over for what we're about to talk about next.
And here's the reason why it's strategic.
We need this time period that we.
Have in between discipleship and worship to transition our rooms.
I wish we were a church that had 150 rooms where we could give everybody their own space and do that.
But you all know that's not how we are.
Everything here is multipurpose.
Everything is shared.
Everything is moved around.
So we need time to transition this room from where these adults met to now.
A room where a bunch of second.
Graders are going to get together and hang out and learn about Jesus.
And I think that's awesome.
So we need opportunities to reset our rooms, but we also need opportunities to.
Transition our kids, ministry volunteers to move in the team that meets at nine to the team that's going to meet later.
Okay?
So that's why we're going to end at 950.
But at 950, we're all going to gather in here.
One big, loud, messy, rambunctious church family, right?
Just like Thanksgiving at your grandma's house.
Stuff gets spilled.
People are getting yelled at, right?
And from 950 to 1015, we'll have fellowship right here in this place.
Kids, youth, adults.
Wonderful place to go up and say.
Hey, my name's Bo, but, you know, not Bo, right?
Nice to meet you.
And then here's the other change from.
950 to 1015, we'll have fellowship.
We're going to keep that time together.
And from 1015 to starting a little bit later to 1130, we're going to have worship just as we've been doing with just that minor change of just starting it about 15 minutes later.
So this is why we want you.
To make sure that you're here over these next three weeks because over these.
Next three weeks, we want to dig.
A little bit deeper about what it means to be engaged in relational discipleship.
Not because we've thought up this strategy.
But because we see it from Scripture.
And what God wants you to do.
And how God wants you to be.
A part of that so you can grow in your relationship to Him.
We want you to be here so that you can be a part of our lesson.
We're talking about theological discipleship.
I had somebody tell me bo that word theological is scary.
All right?
We want to take the teeth of that word away and we want to inform and educate how wonderful it is.
And while we live in a church.
Society where theology has been cast out to the detriment of the gospel and.
Why it's important to know what we.
Believe, why we believe it, and who it's for.
Because that's really all theology is what.
We believe, why we believe it and who it's for.
So come back for that.
And then on August 27, we're going to look at missional discipleship.
And what I love about that day is everyone in here everyone in here.
Has a handful of people that you're close with that you know does not know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
And you want to share Jesus with them.
And you don't know when, you don't know where, you don't know how, and you're petrified.
And what we want to do is to take away some of that anxiety and say, we hurt for your lost friends just as you do.
And we want to come alongside you so that we can learn about missional discipleship and all that God has for us.
I'm excited.
I can't wait to see what God's been part of.
This has been a long time coming and a long journey for us and we want to invite you to be a part of that.
I so desperately want to see the work of God that we see in Acts be the work of God.
Not just that we see in our church that self seeking, but to be the word of the work of God that we see in your home and in your work and in your neighborhood and in our town and in our state and in our country.
In all over this world.
33% of people who live in Lexington County would say that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior.
That's a problem.
Would you pray with me?
God?
We come to you this morning, Lord, thanking you and praising you for who you are, Lord, and for what you've done, Lord, as we prepare our hearts to take the Lord's Supper together, lord, may you speak to us, revealing to us, Lord, who we are and where we need to repent.
Lord, may we check our hearts for unrepentant sin.
May we come before you confessing it, Lord.
May we check our relationship with other believers and evaluate our preparedness and who we need to forgive.
Lord, may we forgive them and where we need to seek forgiveness.
Lord, may we seek it all for your name and for your glory.
It's in Jesus name we pray.
Amen.
Thanks again for listening, and be sure to check back next week for another episode.
In the meantime, you can visit us@willowridgechurch.org or by searching for Willow Ridge Church on on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.