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In this message from the "Joined" series, Pastor Jon Mitchell explores Ephesians 4 to reveal why we were never designed to follow Jesus alone. Paul paints a clear picture of the church as a body where every unique part is needed to achieve spiritual maturity and stability. True connection defeats the modern epidemic of isolation by moving us from spectators to active contributors in God's family.
Discover how you can find your place in a thriving community through a practical discipleship pathway. Listen to learn how committing to a local spiritual family can transform your life and help raise the next generation of leaders.
Weekly sermons from Grace Monroe Church in Monroe, Georgia. We exist to pursue God’s heart for the restoration of all things. That’s why we’re committed to helping you discover and live out your God-given identity and destiny, to see you grow towards wholeness and freedom, and sent out on passionate mission for the Kingdom of God - because we believe transformed people transform places.
Visit us at our website graceformonroe.com or follow us on social media @graceformonroe
Yeah.
Hand can't say to the eye, I don't need you.
You were made on purpose and with a purpose.
Unique, gifted, irreplaceable, fearfully and wonderfully made.
But here's the thing, you were never designed to work alone.
Ephesians 4:16, Paul paints a picture of the church as a body.
Every part different, every part needed.
Each one giving what only it can give.
Each one receiving what it can't live without.
Independence isn't the goal.
Connection is because the body needs you and you need the body.
We are joined.
We are joined.
I love it.
Well, Grace Monroe, good morning.
Good to be with you today.
My name is John Mitchell.
I'm one of the pastors here if you're new and we are so grateful that you've chosen to be with us today.
We've actually We've been in a series.
We're calling joined talking through what it means to live in a spiritual community of faith with other followers of Jesus.
And what it means to be a local expression of the church, the big sea church, the global church.
And we've been unpacking scriptures that talk about the church and see the church as a family or as a body even as living stones that we are living stones built upon the cornerstone of Jesus Christ together to be built into a house, a spiritual house.
And and we're learning the New Testament vision for what it means to follow Jesus together, to become contributors, not just consumers, and to become participants, not just spectators.
And one of the underlying themes, the biblical themes that we have been unpacking is that the body needs you and And you need the body.
Every part matters.
You matter.
And so we're going to be looking at Ephesians 4 today.
One of the texts that we've we've been coming back to in this series.
So if you don't have a Bible, you're going to need one.
And I just encourage you to throw up your hand.
We've got some people who can bring a Bible to you.
And if you don't have one at home, please keep that as our gift to you.
Well, we're going to be looking at Ephesians 4:11-16 together and I want you to pay a attention as I read this text to the inclusive language that Paul uses here because he's using kind of this this joined together language.
And he says and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may long no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.
Rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is head into Christ from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped.
When each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
Paul is giving us a vision for doing life together.
And you and I were created for connection.
We were created to be joined.
And we were made to follow Jesus, but we were not made to follow Jesus alone.
Every person that might be or or might feel overlooked is carrying something that we all need.
In fact, the mission of grace as a local expression of the body of Christ, of the church, is to pursue God's heart for the restoration of all things.
But this mission that we have cannot be fulfilled by just a few people.
It is a mission that will take all of us joining together and joining to God, working together to advance his kingdom, his will, his rule, his reign here in Monroe in Walton County.
And so this series is moving towards a church-wide invitation to join together, to join together in membership because that's part of how we, the church, get strong enough and unified enough and spiritually mature enough to carry the mission that he's given us.
And as our pastoral team and our elder team have been discussing this for for many many months now.
We realized that without membership, we're missing something.
It's not something that we've emphasized much in our past at all.
And in some ways because of that, we haven't been completely thorough in giving people an opportunity to belong.
And I want to be clear about something because we are going to be calling for membership at the end of this series, but I want to be clear about something regarding membership.
Membership is not about status.
It's about commitment.
Our commitment to each other and our commitment to Christ.
And membership is is not about adherence, it's about empowerment.
Membership is not about hierarchy.
It's about humility.
Membership is not even as much about being known as it is making known.
And it's not about control, it's about connection.
And it's about it's not about authority, it's about accountability.
And so that's what we're moving towards and here's here's the reality of the world that we live in right now.
The world is seeking to separate and to fragment, and to tribalize people, and to isolate people.
And we are intentionally and purposefully working towards connecting and unifying.
And there is this quiet epidemic of loneliness that's taking place, of hopelessness, where isolation is growing even as digital connection is increasing.
Numbness is becoming the norm.
Comfort is becoming our highest goal.
Distraction is drowning out meaning and purpose.
And here's here's what we believe.
The church, you and I have the answer.
Because the answer was never another program or an event.
The answer is in belonging.
Belonging to Christ and belonging to his family.
And because when we commit our lives to Christ, when we are as the scripture says, when we are born again, what happens?
We are born into a family.
And the scripture actually shows us and tells us that we now have a new name.
We are now known under the name of Christ together.
And what the family of God that the church offers is not uniformity.
What it offers is unity through community.
And that type of unity in a church, it doesn't happen automatically.
It is cultivated intentionally and that's what this series is all about, cultivating.
Cultivating and joining together as a church body.
And it's with this idea of belonging of of being in a family that we have a discipleship pathway here at Grace that centers around community.
It centers around making sure people have a place and belonging and it centers around being joined together.
And so today, my hope for us is that you'll have this renewed vision of what discipleship looks like here at Grace and a clear pathway on how we become rooted, growing, and fruitful disciples, and how we together pursue spiritual maturity here at Grace Monroe, as a family, living in community together.
And And the reality is, there's some truths that we will never know apart from living in community together.
There's some biblical truths, some spiritual truths we will never fully grasp until we are part of a body of Christ.
There's parts of the love of God that you and I will never understand until we're part of a loving community.
That's just how he created the order of things.
And so part of being in a local church is is to commit ourselves together to discipleship.
In fact, a general command for all of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus is to is to make disciples.
That's what we call the great commission which Jesus gives in Matthew 28.
And what does he say?
He said as all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.
Go therefore and what?
Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
What is that?
That's growing in spiritual maturity and behold I am with you always to the end of the age.
So, discipleship, the process of growing in spiritual maturity is rooted in a command of Christ.
So, how do we move people towards spiritual maturity?
When you thought Stop and think about it.
There's all kinds of different maturity that happens.
There's physical maturity that our bodies go through as we age, as we get older, and if we're honest, the older we get, the less fun those changes become, the less fun being mature in our bodies is.
And it's funny cuz my dad was at the last service and this summer, he was at my home with some of our other family and he was just staring at me and I was like, "Dad, what what are you looking at?" He was like, "You really have gotten gray, son." And I was like, yeah, it's those three granddaughters I gave you.
Everyone, I've earned every one of those gray hairs, man.
But there's there's physical maturity and there's emotional maturity, there's intellectual maturity.
But above all of that, there is spiritual maturity.
And part of the role of leaders within the local church that Paul calls out right at the beginning of this passage in verses 11 and 12, part of the role of leaders in the church is to create environment where we together are growing in spiritual maturity and being equipped for the work of ministry.
So that we're all participating, not just spectating.
I got to say, I'm I'm not a great spectator.
I was I was at the Monroe football game on Friday night.
Go Kane's.
Come on man.
That was terrible.
Uh my daughter's been My oldest daughter's been cheering for Monroe for uh four years now.
So she's in her senior year and so I'm at the game and I'm just watching.
Every Friday night I'm out of game.
There's a part of me.
I play I played a little bit of football in in high school.
I wasn't that great, but there's there's a huge part of me every time I'm watching a game on Friday night it's to jump on the field and just lay some kid out, man.
Like I just want to put on some pads and crush someone.
But the sad reality is I'm probably the one that's going to be walking away limping.
Um but but we want to be participants, not just spectators.
So in verses 13 and 14, Paul shows us what spiritual maturity produces.
And I want to read this from the the New Living Translation.
I like how it positions this.
We're told to build up the body of Christ until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's son that we will be mature in the Lord.
Measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ, then we will no longer be immature like children.
We won't be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching.
We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever that they sound like the truth.
And friends, that is happening on steroids today.
So many are trying to present truth with just a little bit of corruption.
Just a a little bit of a lie mixed with some truth and it sounds good and we're and we're going down this path and going down that path when Jesus said, "No, I'm I am the path.
I am the way, the truth, the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me." So, what does Paul show us?
He says, "First we together we attain a unity of faith.
What is the unity of faith?" Well, Paul mentions it in verses 4 through 6 of chapter 4 and it's this incredible Trinitarian passage showing the work of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit that we together we believe and we affirm this that There is one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father.
And we affirm this here, one body, that's the global church of believers with local expression.
One spirit, the Holy Spirit who lives in all followers of Jesus and there that there is no junior Holy Spirit, that the same Holy Spirit can be in my 7-year-old or my 9-year-old as much as it can be in a 90-year-old that we together, want to be empowered and live under the influence and the giftings of the Holy Spirit.
There is one hope, the shared promise of eternal life.
There is one Lord, Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one.
And there is one faith, the core belief that brings salvation, that Jesus lived and died and rose again, and he did so to save us from sin and death, and he did so to all offer us eternal life rooted in a restored relationship with God.
There is one baptism.
The public spiritual entry or initiation into Christ's family, not as a requirement for salvation, but as an act of repentance and obedience after salvation.
And there is one God and Father, creator and sustainer of all of life who has revealed himself throughout human history and has revealed himself in the form of Jesus Christ.
We affirm these truths.
That is the unity of faith that we are all moving towards.
And and what's so interesting here is that Paul is not advocating for organizational unity.
He's not even advocating for liturgical unity.
He's advocating for spiritual So I don't want you to confuse structure with substance.
God isn't after the unity of our program, he's after the unity of our faith.
And the way we organize and the way we structure things in our church or provide discipleship here at Grace, it might be different, a little different than the church down the road and you know what, that's okay.
But the common denominator in the most important unifier.
It's not faith in the structure.
It's not faith in how we do things.
It's faith in Christ and Christ alone.
That's what keeps us unified.
And that's why we can work.
We can We can cross denominational lines and we can cross all kind of lines that try to divide us and we can work together with other churches.
Why?
Not because we have the same structure or we do things the same way, but because we have one faith rooted in the Messiah in Jesus the Christ.
Amen.
And secondly, Paul shows us that spiritual maturity comes as we grow in increasing knowledge and awareness of Jesus.
Measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.
You see, when the gifts are working and and the saints are being equipped, maturity increases and intimacy with Christ deepens.
Friends, we are not here to just provide a lot of information about Jesus.
We want to provide an environment where we are growing in intimacy with Jesus, in obedience to Jesus.
And as the years go by, listen to me, as the years go by, it's not enough to simply grow old in Jesus.
We are called to grow up in Jesus.
Individually and corporately as a body.
We We ought to be more spiritually mature today than we were a year ago, and we should be more spiritually mature next year than we were right now.
That's the goal.
It's a maturing relationship with Jesus that has has moved beyond the doorway of salvation and into intimacy with him where we abide and where we commune with him and we walk in obedience to him.
And ultimately, ultimately, we look more like him.
That's spiritual maturity.
And thirdly, Paul shows us that spiritual maturity produces spiritual stability.
Spiritual maturity produces spiritual stability.
Paul says that we should no longer be immature children and he goes on to say tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching.
We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever that they sound like the truth.
Hear me when I say this.
Those who never mature become targets of deception.
Those who never mature become targets of deception.
Never rooting themselves in a local church, never rooting themselves in the word of God.
That phrase that Paul uses tossed and and blown about.
It's the idea of a stormy seas of of the wind blowing on a on a on the on the water and the waves churning and following every every new wave and every new fat and every new idea that blows through.
Friends, that does not lead to spiritual maturity.
It leads to spiritual volatility.
And God doesn't want us being tossed around.
God wants us being rooted, growing and fruitful together.
So, how does all of that play itself out here at Gracemont Road?
How does that happen practically here?
And what type of disciples do we want to produce here in this church.
How do we gauge whether or not we're growing more spiritually mature here at Grace?
Well, if you were with us back in January, we actually did a four-part series we called fruitful, exploring what it means to become a fruitful follower of Jesus in our context right here.
And during that series, we actually unpacked four characteristics we see both biblically and practically that we want every follower of Jesus who calls grace Monroe home to a spouse.
And not only adults, we we believe these four characteristics are applicable to every stage of life, every group, from kids to youth, to adults.
And so we've now taught these four characteristics across the entirety of our church in an appropriate way from grace kids to middle school to high school.
These four characteristics have been taught.
And that includes becoming a responsive learner.
Includes becoming a wounded healer and a growing leader and an intentional neighbor.
And so, how do we become a responsive learner?
Well, we we we become a responsive learner by learning to listen deeply to to God.
And live obediently for God.
Actively engaging with Jesus, the living word through his spirit, through scripture, and through regular spiritual rhythms.
And we respond in worship and obedience.
In fact, Jesus said in Matthew 7, "Therefore, everyone who what?
hears these words of mine and what?
Acts on them is like a wise man who built his house on the rock." This contrast what Paul was talking about in Ephesians 4, being blown around.
We want a house that's rooted on the rock of Christ.
And that's why we want to become responsive learners.
And we want to become growing leaders.
And we become growing leaders by becoming who we were made to be for the sake of others.
We want to be disciples who confidently step into our God-given giftings and identity and calling to multiply, transformation and to empower others to do the same.
Paul said in Ephesians 2, "For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance as our way of life." Now, I want you to just pause there for a minute.
Just ingest that truth right there.
You were created for good works.
Before you were ever even born, God had an assignment for you.
God had a gifting for you and he wants to fulfill his kingdom desires through your life.
Not the person sitting next to you through you.
That ought to get more than one amen in the room right now.
We are all called to grow as leaders and and you might think, "Well, I'm not a leader." You are automatically a leader if you are discipling someone and we're all called to disciple others.
Because when you are discipling others, you are leading them towards the person of Christ.
And so we all want to become growing leaders.
And we want to become wounded healers, letting our scars tell his story and letting his scars redeem our story.
Each of us is called to fully surrender our story to God's ongoing healing.
We're called to take risk to let him use that restoration he's done in us to help restore others.
Paul said in Romans 5, we rejoice in our sufferings.
Knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who he has given us.
And we want to become intentional neighbors.
We want to do this by practicing and displaying a love that crosses the street.
By opening up our hearts and our hands and our homes to those who are maybe close to us but far from God.
We want to meet real needs and we want to share real hope.
Jesus tells us in Matthew 22, what what are the two greatest commands?
Love God, love others.
It's real simple.
Love God, love others.
In 1 Timothy 6, it says that we are to do good, to be rich in good works.
I love that.
Friends, I may never be rich in in anything else.
I may never have have a lot of money in my bank account, but I can be rich in good works and so can you.
And there's people that are waiting on those good works.
It's good for us to regularly come back to what it means to be a fruitful disciple.
To ask ourselves, am I displaying these characteristics in my life?
Ask ourselves, what kind of follower of Jesus am I becoming?
Am I becoming who God intends me to be so that I can do do what God intends for me to do.
So, how do we get there?
How do we grow in these four characteristics?
Because we don't want to just measure discipleship and spiritual maturity based on who shows up on Sundays.
That's not our goal.
In fact, this is just the 30,000 foot view of what we do here at Grace.
We want to go much deeper than that.
There's a much deeper aspect of discipleship than just showing up two times a month to listen to the sermon and have some worship for an hour and a half.
In fact, you know, I I I use that two times a month.
It's actually less than that on average.
The average follower of Jesus only shows up for church less than twice a month.
It's actually like 1.8 times a month.
And that will never get us to the spiritual maturity that we desire to see happen here at Grace Monroe.
And And so, part of the culture we want to create here at Grace is a culture that moves people to give their next yes to Jesus and a culture that moves people from simply consuming spiritual milk to consuming spiritual meat.
And friends, this takes time.
It takes An intentional discipleship pathway, a discipleship process and it means that we all need to believe that there's there's this ongoing invitation from God to go deeper.
This ongoing invitation from God to grow spiritually mature.
Not spiritually perfect, but spiritually perceptive.
So we have a discipleship pathway here at Grace and you should have received this card when you came in and and this is where it gets really, really practical in this series.
Because it it this pathway is where we become rooted, growing, and fruitful.
These are like three seasons or stages of discipleship that we believe are important here at Grace to cultivating spiritually mature disciples of Jesus.
And it starts with being rooted, this first season, being rooted.
This is where worship and devotion begin to take place.
It's where we have what we call start with grace.
This is a a regular gathering that we have and we invite new people who are exploring being part of grace.
We invite them to start with grace so that they can kick the tires a little bit.
They can get to know our pastors, they can get to know our elders and discover if this is the place where you you believe that maybe you belong or that you can grow at.
Again, every church is a little different.
A little different in its structure, its liturgy, the way that it fulfills the great commission.
And so we you start with grace just to give you that opportunity to to say, yeah, this is this is where we belong or maybe not in this season.
And then we have baptism in this season of rooted.
Baptism is a spiritual act.
It It is a public declaration.
Baptism's like putting on a wedding ring to publicly declare your union with Christ.
Baptisms where we acknowledge that the old life is done with.
We've died to the old life that was dominated by the flesh.
And we are now in our new life that that that old flesh will no longer rule over us, but the spirit will rule over us.
And we now have new life in Christ.
And I want you to hear me say this.
We don't baptize people into Grace Monroe.
We don't baptize people into a denomination.
We baptize people into the body of Christ.
And maybe this is your next yes.
Maybe you've never been baptized and we wouldn't invite you to be baptized here at Grace.
In fact, next Sunday we're actually going to have some baptisms.
We already have a few registered to be part of that.
The water's going to be warm next Sunday, both services.
Um so if you believe your next yes to Jesus is to publicly declare that you have made him Lord of your life, then I want you to to stop by our new to Grace booth out in the lobby.
Someone can help you find the the baptism form.
You can fill that out on your own and then one of us us on our pastoral team will get in touch with you.
We would love for you to take that as your next step and next yes with Jesus.
And then we also have membership.
This is new and this is where this series is headed.
A call to be joined together as a body of believers placed together in this season of life to grow together, to care for one another and to advance Christ's kingdom together under his power, under his leading and under his Lordship.
This is also in this season of being rooted where you can begin your journey on what we call our growth track.
Our growth track is a series of classes.
We have four classes on the growth track.
They're curriculum-based, they are discussion-driven, and they are core discipleship classes that are offered here at Grace.
And there's so core to discipleship here at Grace that that our hope is everyone who who considers Grace Monroe their home church goes through the growth track.
And each class is between 7 and 10 weeks They're are hosted here on this campus in the fall and spring semesters.
They're all about to kick back off September 6th and and we believe it's important for everyone to go through this growth track.
And the first growth track class that starts in this season of being rooted is actually called rooted.
And if you don't know where else to start, we encourage you start with that class.
Start with rooted.
This actually helps us and all of these classes tie back to the four characteristics of discipleship that we we hope everyone will spouse here in grace.
And so this class ties into becoming a responsive learner because we unpack seven spiritual rhythms that are applicable to our life now in Christ.
And so we're going to actually offer two rooted classes this semester.
One will be on Sundays, one will be on Tuesday evenings.
There is child care.
And so I encourage you if you don't know where else to start, start there in the rooted class.
And And then we move into a season of growing.
This is where real community and fellowship and care begin to happen as we begin to make time and space for one another, grow together in spiritual maturity.
There's some growth track classes here in this season of becoming growing and and then there's some groups.
Groups are the life blood of Gracemont Row.
Groups are where we experience gospel-centered communities.
And no matter what age you are, no matter what stage of life you're in, or what your spiritual background is, there is a community, there's a group here at Grace that's ready to welcome you.
Wherever you are on your spiritual journey, I I I want to invite you to experience the power of doing life together, of being in a group of people who are in pursuit of Jesus.
In fact, I I I want to just say this, without getting involved in a group, your connection here at Grace is going going to be fairly limited.
Your connection to this body is going to be pretty limited if you don't get into a group at some point.
This is where life happens.
There's all kind of groups.
There's groups for young people, young adults, 18 to 24-ish, there's groups for young women, there's group for older women, there's groups for men, there's there's groups for families and that we have high school groups for high schoolers and middle school groups.
And so there's all kinds of ways and groups to plug into.
And so we have our grace group groups which are a community of people that intentionally and primarily gather in homes around our region for life on life discipleship and the focus of each group may vary a little bit but all grace groups are rooted in three core practices up in and out up love God in love each other out live missionally and so they're rooted in that because in Acts you see that the church gathered in the temple but they also gathered house to house.
And that's the fulfillment of that through our grace groups and we believe that our living rooms can be a place of genuine spiritual formation and genuine spiritual care.
We fully believe that and and we believe that that one of the most sacred places in the life of this church can be someone's living room.
And so that's where you can plug into grace groups.
We also have care groups.
Care groups are a community of people that are intentionally and primarily gathering together in home in in uh this campus here.
They gather throughout the year.
They don't necessarily gather in a fall semester or a spring semester, but throughout the year.
And these are based on situational needs, support for one another.
Maybe it's grief, a grief care group or a divorced care group or a care group for those who are adoptive families or fostering families.
And so this is where situational care can take place, practical care within in the larger church community.
And then there's a couple of growth track classes in this season of growing.
We have a class called Hearing God.
This is a class that helps us become wounded healers.
As we learn to discern the voice of God and and learn to allow him to apply his healing to our life.
And then there's a growth track class called Handcrafted, helping us become growing leaders, understanding our identity, our calling, our giftings, and how that plays plays out in the local church and how that plays out in everyday life.
And then we added a new growth track class a last semester called how to study the Bible.
And this class helps us become responsive learners, learning to apply God's truth to everyday life.
And then we move into a season we call fruitful.
And this is where mission and service begin to take place.
Serving the body, disciplining others, intentionally living on mission together.
It might be where you take a leadership of of a grace group or a care group and and you begin to disciple other people.
Discipleship is such a huge part of what we we do here.
In fact, Paul's charged to Timothy in 2nd Timothy 2:2, it it paints this picture of discipleship multiplication.
Disciples who make disciples, who make disciples, who make disciples.
And he tells Timothy, "And the things you have heard from me say in the presence of many witnesses and trust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others." This is This kind of outlines this four generational model of multiplication.
Paul to Timothy, Timothy to reliable people, reliable people to others and that functions as a kind of a practical definition of multiplication.
And we should all be doing this on some level, but you may be ready to move into a season where you're doing it within the context of the discipleship pathway here at Grace and we would love that.
And then in this season of fruitful, they're serving, using your gifts to glorify Christ, serving in some way.
Uh maybe you have a a gift of hospitality hospitality of service and you want to join our hospitality team and and help make this a welcoming environment for those who might be coming here for the first time.
Maybe you have gifts with children and and you can just help love and teach and train kids.
I I learned this summer that is not my gift.
Uh I I Emily was desperate for volunteers and so uh in our kids' ministry and so I said, "You know what?
I'm going to I'll do the large group gathering where we teach all of the kindergarten through fifth graders, I'll do that.
Man, I got to tell you something, it is so much easier to stand up on this stage and teach y'all than it is to teach those kids over there.
That is not my lane.
Uh somebody else can take their own vehicle into that lane.
But but we need people.
So if that's your lane, jump in and begin to lead and serve in our kids' ministry.
And in this season, we also grow in spiritual maturity in our giving.
Because as we grow in spiritual maturity, giving becomes a joy, not a compulsion.
Trusting God with our financial resources is a sign of spiritual maturity.
It's an indication of of where our priorities lie.
And each time we willingly give, not out of compulsion, but out of desire, we loosen our grip on the kingdoms of this earth and we tighten our grip onto the kingdom of God.
When we give willingly, we also are showing our love to God and our obedience to God.
And so it's it's in this growth of spiritual maturity where we learn to give in a fruitful way.
And then in this season of fruitfulness, we practice missional living.
This is where we intentionally become good neighbors.
We become those intentional neighbors where we open our hands, our heart and our homes to other people.
And as we grow in spiritual maturity through the process of discipleship.
We move beyond what can God do for me to what can God do through me.
You see, that's what an intentional neighbor does.
What can God do through me?
What can God do through me in my school?
What can God do through me in my workplace?
What can God do through me in Monroe, in Social Circle, in Walnut Grove, in Covington, in this in Loganville, in this county?
What can God do through me?
Anywhere and everywhere he's given me influence.
That's fruitful, missional living.
Now, obviously, this doesn't have to be a straight line path.
But this pathway gives us tracks to run on here at Grace.
It's the engine of discipleship here and it's moving people towards spiritual maturity and towards discipleship multiplication.
And I want you to know something that as pastors and elders of this church, we will do every everything that we can do to foster an environment of spiritual maturity.
Where we are developing disciples and followers of Jesus who are rooted and growing and fruitful.
But what we won't do, what we won't do is lower the bar on the radical sacrifice and the radical demands and call to action that comes with the choice to follow Jesus.
We will not lower that bar.
And what we want won't do is compromise on the unity of our faith.
We will not compromise on truth.
When everything else is is seeking to make truth relative, when everything else is is trying to put a little bit of culture, a little bit of lies into truth, to make it a little bit more palatable, I'm telling you right now, this is where we will not compromise.
Because we are called to move this body of believers known as Grace Monroe towards a unity of And I want you to know that we take just as seriously the opportunity to disciple the next generation as we do the opportunity to disciple adults.
We want the next generation moving towards spiritual maturity because listen to me, God has a pension for using young people.
God has a desire for using young people for his great purposes.
And that means that we have an intentional, thoughtful, biblically sound process for for developing and growing spiritually mature babies through high schoolers here.
We take it also serious.
We're We're not simply trying to entertain kids and youth.
We want We want to be intentional about disciplining in them.
And so, for that reason, I've asked Pastor Emily to come up here and share a little bit with us about our discipleship pathway for kids and for youth.
Emily oversees our children's ministry here at Grace and she also heads up our next gen team.
And so, I want her just to share a little bit about that pathway.
Can you just give it up for Emily right now?
Well, I don't feel like I have anything to add to that.
Um but yes, uh NextGen Ministry is uh very close to my heart.
I've been uh in full-time ministry in NextGen for 10 years now.
And so and please tell me, I look too young to be in ministry pretend you please tell me after service how long young I look I really need that.
No, I'm just kidding.
Um this is a life blood of our church.
We talk about the nations, the neighborhoods, and the next generation.
And this infiltrating everything that we do.
Um, we believe that the full trajectory of a family and generations to come can be changed because one child or student comes to faith.
Because if one child or student comes to know Jesus, that whole family can change.
So, I think a lot of times when we think about specifically children's ministry, but also students, we think about child care.
How can we distract the kids and get them entertained for an hour and a half so that parents can come come in here and get to know Jesus.
And that is so against the heart of God.
How can we disciple these children?
How can we support truth and pour life into them and the the knowledge of who Jesus is so that they can go into their community, their schools, their teams, their home school co-op, their families and become disciples of Jesus and they can change the the whole place around them.
In fact, we don't pour into next gen just because we want to see men grow change, we want to see the world changed.
And these kids are what is going to do it.
And so, for us, it's not a thing we do, it's the thing we do.
And research shows that anywhere between 60 and 80% of people leave the church after they have complete high school.
And in that, 40 to 50% of those people left because they didn't have adults pouring into them and speaking life into them.
And so, research does show that if five adults are pouring into a child, they are statistically like I don't know how many more times likely, but very very likely to stay into the church.
It's intergenerational ministry and it's also adults pouring into kids and students.
And in fact for me, the things that I remember, the things that have pushed me forward is the life and prophetic words that adults have spoken over me since I was a child.
Some words were spoken over me were wounding and I've had to work through that, but there is life that was spoken into me as a child when I was rambunctious and uh speaking back sometimes and some disrespectful words that was spoken into me of you're going to be a leader one day or you're going to make a difference.
And those were the things that propelled me and pushed me into ministry and where I am today.
And so for us pouring into kids, this is something we want to be in the life of that of our church.
And in fact, how many of you have ever been here on baby dedication Sunday?
How many we have the kids?
In that service, when we pull babies in front of the church, we stand as a congregation and make a promise to those parents to walk alongside of them with their children while they're raising them to partner together to raise them in in the church and knowing who Jesus is.
We do believe it is a parent's job to disciple their children.
But if you are a parent, you know you cannot do that alone.
You need a community around you.
And for me, this is personal.
My three children are upstairs right now and they're being poured into.
And I just I I want to speak to we we this is not this is a very important thing in this day and time because our children are going to learn identity from somewhere.
Our students are going to learn who they are.
Maybe from the internet, from other kids, from like AI as you were talking talking about earlier.
We have kids who think that they are the problem with their family.
We have children who are walking through broken homes and feel like it's their fault.
We have students who are walking through severe mental health struggles with self-harm.
And that shouldn't make you sad.
It should make you angry.
And it should make you want to be in these kids' lives and speak truth and life into them.
Because it is our job as the church to raise up disciple this next generation.
And so I want to go back, Katie, if you'll go back to that slide.
In this, while this is all of what we do for adults, I want to speak to this.
We we also do this for kids.
Enrooted, in this triangle right here, we have kids' life.
We have student Wednesdays.
We have Grace 6 or 6 7 8, we have um Grace Kids.
Yeah, that's the one I should probably know about the best.
We have Grace Kids upstairs.
We are pouring in two kids and we want to see them grow and giving them the biblical foundation Right now, uh, in elementary and preschool and middle school on Sunday mornings, we do the gospel project, which is taking us through the Bible in chronological order.
If a child starts that at two years old in our program, by the time they are in high school, they will have gone through the Bible four times.
Amen.
That is changing, like that is biblical literacy and and we are very biblically illiterate right now.
We're seeing in my generation and younger generations.
We're teaching the Bible.
We believe being rooted is first and then growing.
We Baptism, this is where next Sunday we have a family Sunday.
That's not because we want to break.
That's because we think it's really important that your children come and sit in a worship service with you and learn how to worship God and learn what it looks like to be in a Sunday environment because so many kids when they have an environment only for them, when they turn 18, they have no idea how to sit in a room like this.
And let me just speak to a parent for a second.
When your child watches you worship, they learn how to worship.
When your child watches your heart be softened, they cannot they are changed by that.
My children know how to sit down and read their Bible and spend time with Jesus not because I tell them but because I show them.
And now my kids will come out on Saturday mornings when I'm sitting and journaling and they'll get their kids' Bibles They can't read them, but they want to be like me.
We are the parents who are teaching them what this looks like to walk in faith, not just telling but showing and modeling.
We also have encounter, we have those worship nights where you can come together and pray as a family.
If you want to see change in your marriage and in your children, you should be praying into it.
This is our ground to take over.
These are our families and it is our job and our responsibility not to pour into our own family, but especially those of you in the church that have kids, that have grown up and gone out and they have been sent out.
We need you pouring into us.
We need you pouring into these children.
Because I get stuck in my day-to-day life of carpool and lunches and I can lose sight.
And I need a Robin Terry to look at me and say, "Emily, love your husband and love these children." And this is what that means.
I need a Jill Green showing up at my door, bringing me food when my kid has a stomach bug and saying, "This is a season.
Stay faithful in it.
We need you.
And then lastly, sorry, I'm going off.
Mission and service, the coolest thing about NextGen is that NextGen is serving NextGen currently.
So, high school are serving middle schoolers.
Um, they are leading groups.
We have middle schoolers in our preschool room right now teaching kids the Bible.
My kindergarten son is on stage leading worship for other kids.
I'm like, he is not qualified to do that, but he is doing it.
We are leading our years.
And here's what I'll say is the next generation is hungry to lead and they need people to lead them too.
And so I actually want to correct what you said earlier.
That absolutely was your lame teaching, but it's uncomfortable.
And I'm going to tell you, some of us are called to be uncomfortable and to engage in the next generation.
Some of us are called to go in and hold babies and pray over them because the parents need those prayers, but that child, the prayers that you pray over that child, they matter.
And Next generation is hard because sometimes when we sow seeds, we'll never see the fruit of it.
But we're called in obedience to sow those seeds.
And so I want to challenge us as a church, let's not just say this matters, let's make it matter.
So, I think that's all I have.
I could go on a little longer.
You can You can see why she's giving leadership to our next gen.
Stand with me, church.
We believe that spiritual maturity, discipleship is important across all generations, from the youngest to the oldest.
We want to create a body that is joined together, moving together, advancing the kingdom of Christ together for this season in this place.
I mean, think about it, that we are gathered for this moment in history at this place in this time for a reason, for a purpose.
God has put us here for this season.
To grow together and to advance together.
I imagine if families in this church got a hold of this this characteristics, this this desire of being an intentional neighbor, and we had 347 intentional families strategically placed in all 347 neighborhoods of Walton County to be intentional neighbors.
What could happen?
Imagine a a a child, a middle school, or a high school who's gotten a hold of this idea of being a growing leader and intentionally sits with people in their school, in all 29 of the private and public schools of Walton County to share with them about how God is working in their life and inviting them into that same relationship.
And it is our call to model this.
Because so much of this is is caught, not taught.
And I got to tell you, my dad was at the last service.
And I'm grateful.
I'm grateful that I got to watch parents who have pursued God their whole life, who have pursued the heart of Jesus, no matter how hard it got.
In the moments of having to give forgiveness to people who deeply wounded us, to the moments of having to repent for things, I'm so thankful that my parents modeled spiritual maturity and continue you to do so.
And that's our call.
To lean into it together as a body known as Grace Monroe.
To model it, not just for our sake, not just to pursue it for our sake, for for the sake of those behind us.
Friends, I fully believe this church can affect not a generation, but generations.
If we will be a body committed to joining together for the advancement of Christ's kingdom.
Father, thank you.
Thank you for your truth and your word.
Thank you for your call on all of us to grow in spiritual maturity.
That there's this call on all of us that there is more of you to be had.
Thank you that you call us to not only be discipled but to disciple others.
Lord, I pray that each one of us would hear hear from you a very clear next step, a next yes to Jesus in these moments as we worship and as we take communion together.
Speak to us about each of our next yeses to Jesus.
Amen.
Let's worship.