Tag: Growing the church

All Together Now

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Growing churches often encounter growing pains. That’s only natural, but unless we know how to successfully navigate them, they can prove to be real impediments to seeing that growing momentum continue. God is doing a work right now at this church, and we are seeing and experiencing growth in many exciting ways. With that in mind, we are having a conversation about potential growing pains for us as church and how to navigate them well. Last time we talked about the essential nature of worship and how it can provide a strong foundation for sustainable growth. This week we are talking about how God designed the church to work. Let’s dive in together.

All Together Now

I am not a car guy. Never have been. I really don’t have any level of mechanic skills at all. Well, that’s not totally fair. I can do a few things. I can start the car. I have that one down pretty well. I know how to check the oil. I know how to change an air filter. A tire too. Noah and I worked together with a couple of YouTube videos to install a backup camera on his car. But when it comes to the engine and its operation I’ve got nothing. Not a single thing. I mean, I know the basic theory of what’s happening, but when it comes to what the various parts are, how they work, and what to do when they don’t, I might as well be looking at a jet engine. 

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Looking Out

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In the world of church life, this is the one Sunday that often gets forgotten about. It’s like a throwaway Sunday. I know of some churches that don’t even meet this week. Sitting between Christmas and New Year’s, most people are ready to just lie low, resting from the year past and preparing for the one that lies ahead. Yet rather than wasting such a time like this, it seems like a wiser play to redeem it. So, let’s look back and look forward at the same time; reflecting with gratitude on what has been, while anticipating with joyfulness what still lies ahead. Let’s talk about how we can be the kind of church God has made us to be.

Looking Out

So, I’m going to run out on a limb and be honest with you about something this morning. I went back and forth on this because of how it would be received, but decided that transparency is the best option. Before your minds race too far ahead of me with a list of all the things I could follow that opener with, I’ll just tell you: The idea for this message came to me in a dream. If you had a copy of the message and already read ahead, you were spared a bit of suspense there. I’m honestly not sure what it means that the idea came to me in a dream. I’m not sure how much weight to put on that. I am certain that it doesn’t mean anything significant about me. I normally have sermon subjects and passages planned out months ahead of time. But I had recently shifted some things around, and had been praying through what the message for this morning was going to be. For some reason, God seems to have chosen this way to communicate it. Prayerfully I’m getting it right. Again, I don’t know why. I don’t honestly remember any of the rest of the dream. I just remember the one idea that gave birth to what we’re going to be talking about today. I am pretty sure it is from God’s Spirit, though, because I hadn’t been thinking in this direction at all before, and the message is consistent with the Scriptures as we are going to see. All of that is to say this: I think what we are going to talk about this morning together is something God wanted to set before us as we wrap up this year and get ready for the new one arriving on Wednesday. 

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Giving It Our All

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God created the church to be the place where His presence dwells on earth so that people who don’t know Him can experience Him and come to be in a relationship with Him. Nothing short of that is our goal. But this isn’t a goal to which we can give merely a half-hearted effort. It requires entirely more of us than that. As we wrap up our series, Building the Kingdom, today, we’re talking about Paul’s passion to see the Gospel advance, what that means for us generally, and what that means very specifically for this church. Let’s see what Paul has to say and what we need to do.

Giving It Our All

I still remember watching the original Mission Impossible movie with Tom Cruise as superspy, Ethan Hunt, when I was growing up. It hit theaters the summer before I started eighth grade. I remember its being terrifically fun. The plot mostly kept you guessing until the very end. The twists and turns left you never quite sure who was playing for which side. I remember over the next several years watching the second and third installments in the series, but neither one in theaters. And they were just okay. They were fun, but never quite up to the focused, spy-thriller par of the original. After that, I fairly well lost interest. Life got busy. Marvel’s MCU got up and running. Streaming services were still in their infancy. And, I wasn’t willing to spend money to buy the subsequent entries on DVD. They looked pretty fun, but seeing them just wasn’t on the agenda. 

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Growing Requires Growth

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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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