A Look Ahead – The Nexus

Last week we started a two-part look ahead at what God is planning in the year ahead of us as a church. What we talked about then was the fact that if we want more people to be able to experience these plans with us, that’s going to take our invitation. This week, we shift the focus back to ourselves just a bit to look at what we have to be doing if that invitation is going to be worth making. In short, we have to be growing. Today, let’s talk about why this matters so much. But first, let’s do a bit of celebrating of what God has done in the last year.

Growing Requires Growth

We’ll get to our message this morning in just a bit, but can we take just a second here at the beginning of our time and make an important observation? It has been a good year in the life of First Baptist Oakboro. God has been faithful, and we have experienced His kingdom’s growing in our midst. That’s a bit of an abstract idea, though. I mean, it’s one thing to just say something like that. Anybody can say something like that about any organization at any time. The Titanic was proclaimed unsinkable right up to the moment that she hit that iceberg. So, let me pour a bit of concrete on that idea for us this morning. My hope and prayer is that in hearing all of this, you are left more excited about our future than you were when you walked in those doors a little while ago.

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Happy New Year! As we get started on this brand-new adventure, we are going to spend a couple of weeks taking a look at what God has been doing in our midst and how we can experience more of that together. Part of experiencing more of that means honestly addressing the cultural situation we are facing. If we are going to grow God’s work in this culture, there is something specific we will need to commit ourselves to doing. Let’s talk about that today.

A Timely Invitation

The culture around us is changing. That’s a pretty bland start for a sermon, so let me explain what I mean. I mean, the culture around us is changing. Clearer now? In a sense, that’s always true no matter when or where we live. Culture is not a static thing. It is constantly moving and morphing and mutating from one thing to another. It ebbs and flows like the tides. Because of this, if you look at it in just the right light, it always appears we are on the precipice of a great shift even if in reality, we are sitting squarely in the middle of a movement. Of course, you can’t see that until long after the fact, so that’s not a terribly helpful observation in a given moment.

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