Well, again, God bless you. I'm happy to be here this morning, happy to be in Jesus. I know and pray that you are. Again, we're going to turn in our Bibles at first this morning to 1 Peter and chapter 2. We've been going verse by verse through 1 Peter, but we've taken a little break over the last two or three weeks. And we've talked a little bit about who we are as a church. Where we're going as a church, and we're going to continue that this morning and another week or two, and then we'll be back into expounding 1 Peter verse by verse. But I am rooting what I'm saying in 1 Peter. I could root it in any book of the Bible. In fact, we'll be turning to other passages of Scripture, even as we have in previous weeks. But we're talking about who we are, just kind of laying that out publicly. Who is Providence Baptist Church? What are we about? What do we think about this, that, or the other? What are our core values? Those kinds of things. We're looking at the About Us tab, as it were, on the website. Now, I mean that metaphorically, of course, this morning, but also I mean it literally. You can go to our website, pbcsc.org, and you can click on the About Us button and you can find our beliefs. You can find our vision, our mission. You can find our little tagline. You can find our core values. And we're just sort of going through those one by one. We're talking about us, as it were. Now, we've made the point that we can't talk about us unless we talk about God. Right? Our life, our very existence, our raison d'etre, our purpose, everything that we are all about is rooted in Him, rooted in His reality, and particularly as He's revealed Himself to us in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. So He can't talk about us without talking about God. Secondly, we can't talk about us unless we talk about Scripture. Scripture is our authority. It's our sole source of authority. In other words, where do we get our marching orders from? From God, through the Scriptures, through the Word of God. Talked about that last week and then this morning we're going to be talking about community. In other words, we can't talk about us unless we talk about community and let's talk about who we are as the body of Christ. I wish I could be exhaustive and give you a theology of the church and the body of Christ. Not really going to do that this morning. We will do that as we go along, Lord willing, in the months and years to come. And we've done that heretofore. But we're going to try to be real practical answering this question again, who are we? So that's going to sort of dictate some of the things that I touch on this morning, the the practical purpose and my message is a little bit different than the typical message. For those of you visiting, be aware of that. We usually, again, take a passage of scripture, open it up, explain it, apply it. But we're just talking about who we are now. In first Peter, chapter two, listen to what he says beginning in verse one. He's talking about the fact that we've been saved and been saved as the as the gospel was preached to us. And and God used the word of God to open our hearts and our minds to see our need to see Christ as savior. And it's talking about how the word of God endures forever. And so he says, therefore, based on all of that laying aside, he gets real practical here. laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, so that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious, coming to him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious. You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Now, there's a lot in that passage of Scripture, and we have sort of opened that up in the past. We're not going to look at every little phrase this morning, but I want us to consider this issue, at least here in the beginning. Peter tells us that we, verse 5, he tells us that we are being built into a spiritual house. That is, we, the body of Christ, we, the people of God, are being built into a spiritual house and we're being built into a spiritual house to offer up spiritual sacrifices. So there's a word picture going on here, keying off, obviously, the Old Testament animal sacrifices. Well, we're not offering animal sacrifices any longer. We're offering up spiritual sacrifices. Well, what are spiritual sacrifices? Well, sacrifices that are energized by the Holy Spirit. Sacrifices that flow from the reality of who we are in Christ by virtue of our union with Christ, which has been brought about by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit lives within us. So we're offering up as this body, as this spiritual house collectively together, individually, yes, but together we're offering up spiritual sacrifices. What do they entail? Well, they entail all of life. We've talked about that. right over the last several weeks that we do all that we do For the glory of God, we're to offer our bodies as living sacrifices day in and day out, holy and acceptable under the Lord. This is our reasonable service of worship now that we've been graced by the tremendous and matchless mercy and grace of Almighty God. In fact, if you go to Romans, the book of Romans, where we find Paul's admonition to us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, if you go to the book of Romans, You got like 11 chapters of this, this, I don't know, this exposition of grace. All right, Paul talks about how we're born dead in trespasses and sin, but God has saved us by grace. And he talks for 11 chapters about the mercies of God that have been lavished upon us. And he comes to chapter 12, verse 1, it says, therefore. See, based on all this grace that God has lavished upon you off of your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable unto the Lord, this is your reasonable service of worship. In other words, live your life. You know, you want to know how to live your life? Live your life for the glory of God. That's what he's getting at. So we're doing all that we do for the glory of God, but it starts in our hearts, doesn't it? It's not just what we do on the outside, it's what we're thinking about on the inside, what our attitude is, what the condition and the position of our heart is. So we got to deal with our hearts. In fact, that's really the the crux of New Testament discipleship of biblical discipleship. It's not merely going to a class and getting a lot of information. That's not what discipleship is all about. But you need information. That's not really what it's all about. Biblical discipleship is about dealing with your heart. Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks, the Bible says. Out of the overflow of the heart, spring forth the issues of life. So you get your heart right, then your actions get right. That's why I always say, think right, do right. Right? You think right, you'll do right, and then you'll feel right. That's what we're talking about. So it's an issue of the heart. And that's why in verse one of chapter two, Peter says, laying aside all malice. Where does malice come from? It's in the heart, isn't it? He says, laying aside all deceit that's in the heart, laying aside all hypocrisy in the heart, envy in the heart. And then, of course, that flows into actions, evil speaking, lay aside all of these things. That's that's really what he's getting at. Right. What does he say? Lay aside all of these things as newborn babes desire the pure milk of the word. So that you may what so that you may grow so that you may grow if indeed you've tasted the Lord is gracious. Now, the question is, how do we do that? How do we how do we lay aside malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and on and on we could go? Well, obviously, there's there's biblical teaching on putting off those sinful habit patterns, replacing them with godly habit patterns through the renewing of our mind. But we do all of that in the context. We do it individually. Yes. We do it privately every day, yes, but we do it in the context of community. We help one another lay aside malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and evil speaking. We encourage one another with the word. We do these things as part of the spiritual house. That God has made us to be. Does that make sense? We are being built into spiritual house to offer up spiritual sacrifices, part of which is laying aside malice and deceit and envy and evil speaking and all the rest. That's what we're getting at. So we're reading what we're saying. We're reading what we're saying in this issue and in this context of community, as Peter does. When he says we're being built into a spiritual house, a spiritual home. Now, one of the things that we've talked about leading up to some of these practical realities, some of these practical dynamics that we want to get at, is that what we do on Sunday morning is really important. When we come here, we gather as the body, we worship together. We're worshiping before we get here because all of life is worship. But now we worship together, we worship together in doing certain things like singing and praying and biblical teaching and all the rest. So we've talked about the importance of Sunday morning gathering. A couple of reasons for that, we could go on. Quite a while about this, but just a couple of reasons why gathering on Sunday morning is important. One, again, it's an intentional time. It's an intentional dynamic. We intentionally come together as the body to worship God collectively, to worship God as the body. But there's a second reason we come together week in and week out. And this is equally practical, if not more so in a very real sense. We come together and we sit under the word as we gather, as we worship, we sit under the word and that gives us what I call a systematic shaping of our worldview. Now, we certainly get our worldview shaped in private study, we get our worldview shaped in small group, we get our worldview shaped in conversations with other believers. We want to do that. But again, part of the big picture, Part of the challenge that we get in our thinking, part of what God does is over time, as we sit under the systematic exposition of the word of God, our worldview is being transformed. Our minds are being renewed week in and week out. And so this is very important what we do on Sunday morning. At the same time, we've also said it's not necessarily the best place to accomplish certain other things. We do, for example, experience koinonia on Sunday morning, we experience fellowship on Sunday morning. What is that? Well, it's it's gathering in the name of Christ. But practically speaking, it's exhorting one another, it's loving one another, bearing with one another, forgiving one another, admonishing one another, all the one another's that are found in the New Testament. That's biblical fellowship, and we experience some of that. You experience some of that through the pulpit or from the pulpit, rather. We experience some of that in the singing, as Zach said a moment ago. We experience some of that before and after this corporate time together. But obviously, I think that we experience this one anothering dynamic a little bit more effectively in a small group setting. You see, we need to be concerned about Acts 242, what Zach read a moment ago, the apostles doctrine, prayer, breaking of bread, those kinds of things. We need to be concerned about the fellowship as well. And so that's why a number of years ago we went to small groups on Wednesday nights. You might remember some of you who were here, we we had a pretty good Wednesday night dynamic, I think, but we had, I don't know, a small number of folk we'd gather in the fellowship hall downstairs and we'd have a time of prayer and maybe we'd have a Bible study sometimes. Just depends. We tried different things, just as a lot of other churches do. But one of the things that God had laid on our hearts was we wanted more people to pray and we wanted more of the church to be involved in prayer. And we even wanted our prayers to expand beyond the sick list. Certainly want to pray for those who are sick, want to pray for those who are hurting. We're commanded to do that as part of loving one another. But when you come to the Bible, obviously, we have a great many more things to pray about, pray about big things like God's kingdom and world peace, praying about heart issues like, Lord, forgive me. You know, praying for for the ministry of the church on and on we could go. So what we wanted to do was to sort of try to be more biblical, more effective, if those are good words, in our prayer life. And we wanted more people involved as well. And the reality is our attendance in small group tripled at least from the very beginning, and we have been sustaining good numbers in small groups ever since then. So we do indeed have a whole lot more participation than we used to. But when we think about the small group dynamic, and we're trying to be practical here, and we're talking about community, We think about our small group dynamic. Again, we wanted to strengthen our fellowship. We wanted to strengthen our prayer time. We wanted to experience that koinonia. We wanted to experience the one anothering. We wanted to experience greater communion with God, which gives us greater communion with one another. But one of the other things that we wanted to do was think about outreach a little bit more as well. We want to think about evangelism a little bit more as well. Not high pressure evangelism, not what I call jugular vein evangelism, you know, going up to a complete stranger and grabbing him by the throat and saying, do you know Jesus? That's not what we're about. Not not laying a guilt trip on one another, but thinking about life together in the context of community. and how that might help us to impact the communities round about us, the communities in which God has placed us. That's one of the things that we want to accomplish in going to small groups. And so essentially, there are four dynamics that we're looking at in small group. There are a number of things that we do, but there are four things that we're trying to accomplish in small group. I've mentioned them, but here they are one more time. Fellowship. One anothering, maybe a meal together, that kind of thing. That's number one, fellowship. Number two, prayer. Number three, evangelism. And then, of course, number four, Bible study. Now, one of the things that we've said is we don't want Small Group to be just another Bible study. And what do we mean by that? Do we mean by that that the Bible is not important? Bible study is not important? No, we don't mean that at all. But we do mean that we're using the word of God in different contexts for different purposes. So primarily on Sunday mornings, except for when I break for a series like this, we're expounding God's word verse by verse. Keeping it in context, systematically going through when we have a discipleship class, we're looking at a particular subject, a particular topic. How can we how can we break out the diamond and look at this topic and its multifaceted beauty and how can we live it out? Sunday school, we might be learning a little bit more about theology. Who knows? There are different things that we're trying to accomplish in different contexts. Well, in small group, we don't want it merely to be another Bible study. By that we mean we don't want to just go to small group week in and week out and get more Bible information. Bible information is critical, Bible information is good, it's necessary. But what we want to do in small group is take that Bible information and apply it practically to our hearts. Apply it practically to our lives. And even apply it practically to our life together, are we living out? What God is teaching us, are we living out as individuals and as the body of Christ, the things that God is teaching us, so we're really dealing with issues in our hearts, are we changing? Are we being sanctified? Do we have a head full of knowledge or does that head full of knowledge make it down to our hearts so that the knowledge changes the way we actually think and live and speak? And act, that's what we're getting at. So again, this morning, we're just sort of looking at that, we're looking at community, we're looking at big picture community. We're looking at our small group dynamic, as it were. And we're going to mention one another, though not necessarily talk in great detail about it as we go along for the next few minutes. We're not necessarily going to talk about why small groups are important. We've done that before. But we're going to give an overview, I think, of life together in the context of community and talk a little bit about practical outreach. We're going to talk about those things in the few minutes that we have remaining. Now, I'm going to do that, first of all, by turning over to a passage of scripture that that a few of us looked at several weeks ago, but the majority of us didn't. And so let's go to the book of Acts, chapter 20, because I want all of us to see this, the book of Acts, chapter 20. And we're just going to look at a couple of verses beginning of verse seven. This might seem like an odd text to talk about community. But I hope you'll see where I'm coming from as we sort of walk through this for just a few minutes. But Acts 20 and verse 7, let me just read it. On the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul, ready to depart the next day, spoke to them and continued his message until midnight. There were many lamps in the upper room where they were gathered together, and in a window sat a certain young man named Eutychus. who is sinking into a deep sleep, he was overcome by sleep. And as Paul continued speaking, he fell down from the third story and was taken up dead. That's pretty serious, isn't it? I've never preached anyone into a well, I might have preached someone into a coma, but I don't know that I preached someone into death. But nevertheless. This is what Paul did, and he's an apostle, so I guess he has that kind of authority. But anyway, that's actually not true. That's a joke. Wasn't very funny. So let's move on. Verse 10. But Paul went down, fell on him, embracing him, said, Do not trouble yourselves, for his life is in him. And now we had come up and broken bread and eaten and talked a long while, even until daybreak, he departed. And they brought the young man in alive and they were not a little comforted. Well, I guess so. They were a great deal comforted is the point. Now, again, there are all kinds of things we could say about this, but just in the context of life together, when we gather together, when we come together as the body of Christ and in particular, I'm thinking, sure, Sunday morning, but I'm thinking small group Wednesday night, Sunday night, Tuesday night, whenever you meet life, when we come together. One of the things I see here is a regularly appointed time, right? In verse seven, on the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread. And I think you read that little phrase throughout the book of Acts. So they kind of came together regularly on the first day of the week. And of course, we've talked about Hebrews 10 that says that we ought not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. Right. We come together to stir one another up to love and good works as part of why we come together. We come together to exhort one another and so much the more as we see the day approaching, the day of the Lord. So we understand all of that. But there's this regularly appointed time that we come together. And obviously, I think that's important for the reasons that I've mentioned, because that's what the Bible says. But think about it practically. We get distracted, don't we? We get off track. We get busy. We get wrapped up in life. And so we need to be exhorted. We need to be stirred up to love and good work. We need to be encouraged to do battle day in and day out, don't we? Battle in the kingdom, not physical battle and not being ugly, but spiritual battle. That's what we're talking about. We need help to strategize. We come together because we need to grow in knowledge and in grace. We need help sometimes, don't we? We need to equip one another. so that we can be effective in the different and particular callings that God has placed upon each one of us. We all have a different giftedness. We all have a different calling. We all have a different sphere of influence. And we need to encourage one another and equip one another and spur one another on in those specific contexts. That's why we need to gather regularly. And of course, to keep our focus on Christ and his kingdom and not on the things that this world foists upon us day in and day out. The world says every moment of every day, here's what you need to be thinking about. And ninety nine percent of the time has got nothing to do with the things of God, does it? And so we need to come together a regularly appointed time, but there's something else I see. A relaxing fellowship time. Again, verse 7, they came together on the first day of the week, but they came together to break bread. That's an interesting thing. In fact, if you go to verse 11, when he had come up, Paul, that is, after he had raised Eutychus from the dead, he came up, he broke bread, he ate. So he had a little meal there. I guess he needed to regain his strength, right? And he certainly needed strength because he was going to preach until daybreak. So we probably won't do that, but that this is just sort of a refreshing or a relaxing time. They have a meal together. And I think that's so important now in our small groups, a lot of them will have meals, a lot of them will have dessert. Sometimes we don't. We have a meal and we don't do it every week. And you don't want to overburden people. We do live busy lives. But think about the reality of having a meal with someone. If we can do it once a month or twice a month or something like that, think about it. We're basically putting our fellowship with Christ on display. We're putting our fellowship with one another on display. Remember, the New Testament talks so much about table fellowship and how the barriers between Jew and Gentile are broken down. And so God places a high value on the believers having a meal together because it signifies so many things. Barriers are broken down, too, when we come together, we relax and we talk and we really engage, don't we? Particularly if we've gathered for the express purpose of gathering as the body, now we're going to be more likely to talk about the things of God rather than just random things, though it's OK to talk about random things we enjoy, they're gifts from the Lord. But then maybe we put those things in the context of the kingdom and put those things in the context of thinking rightly about them. There's an exchange of ideas. There's iron sharpening. There's a deepening of the connection that we have with one another. These things are so important, experiencing joy with one another. And so the meal becomes more than sustenance. It becomes something around which life revolves because of what it is. It is an expression of our life together. That's what it is. We feast on Christ. We feast with one another on Christ. And think of it this way. Christ serves us through one another. Did you know the Bible says that in the kingdom, in the consummated kingdom, that we're going to sit down at the feast table of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and He's going to serve us? I can't even fathom it. No, Lord, let me serve you. Well, wait a minute. That's what Peter said, isn't it? Jesus has to serve us because in and of ourselves, we have nothing to offer him. And so think about it, when we have a meal together, we serve one another. Christ serves us in that sense through one another. So we can think along these lines, a relaxing fellowship time. We'll talk more about fellowship in a moment. But look at this, a reflective communion time. When we come together, a reflective communion time, verse seven, I think part of what's going on here, maybe not every time they met, I don't know. But a lot of the time when they met, they came together to break bread. A lot of time that means they just they met together to eat. But a lot of times when they met together to eat, they celebrated the Lord's Supper. And obviously, the significance of the Lord's Supper is manifold, but one of the things that it signifies to us in the context of what we're talking about this morning, It signifies our communion with God, our communion with each other, our communion with one another. So there's this time where we reflect, we come together, we reflect on who Jesus is and we reflect on who we are in Jesus. We reflect on who we are individually and collectively. As the spiritual house. Created, saved, redeemed to offer up spiritual sacrifices. acceptable God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So our relationship, our status as strangers and pilgrims, as kingdom citizens, that kind of thing. So there's this focus on redemption. Life in Christ and this this notion that our fellowship is rooted in Christ. And think about our fellowship. I said we'd say a little bit more about it. Think about our fellowship. Think about our communion. That's where I'm coming from. The communion that we have, the union that we have with Christ with one another. Think about it. We have a shared root, Christ, shared purpose, his glory, shared goal, kingdom advance, kingdom fellowship. It's all wrapped up in that. So our kingdom fellowship is something that's real and experienced and something that drives us even when we have to come apart and do battle on the rest of the days of the week. It's a sanctifying fellowship. We come together. That's where we do life. That's where we engage in the one another's more so than on Sunday morning. We do it on Sunday morning. We do it at the coffee shop. We do it at lunch. But we we certainly engage in the one another in dynamics of the New Testament in small group, don't we? Oh, I can't be exhausted. I can't read every verse. There's too many of them. But be at peace with each other. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Stop passing judgment on one another. Instruct one another. Accept one another. Serve one another. Carry one another's burdens. Be patient, bearing with one another. Be kind and compassionate to one another. Forgive one another. Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Encourage one another. Build each other up. Spur one another on to love and good deeds. Don't slander one another. Don't grumble against one another. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others. On and on we could go. So a relaxing time of fellowship which flows from this regularly appointed time, a reflective communion time which flows from this relaxing fellowship time. And then there is a real teaching time. We do want to root all that we're doing in the word of God. In verse seven, Paul, who is ready to depart the next day, spoke to them. And what did he speak to them about? Well, the word of God, and it says he continued his message until midnight. And of course, in verse 11, he talks some more, even a long while until daybreak. And so our fellowship is rooted in God's word. Christ is revealed in God's word, we get that worldview. shaping from God's Word. We get an understanding of our citizenship and our purpose and our roles and our giftedness from God's Word. There's no change apart from the application of God's Word to our hearts. We talked about all of this in a sense last week. So a real teaching time. But how about this? A realized God time. You say, now what in the world do you mean by that? And why did you term it that way? Because I had to think of another R and had to get the, you know, the syllables right anyway. That's just a preaching thing. Don't even worry about that. We want to realize God. That's what I'm talking about. Be plain, right? We want to realize God. Well, God was certainly. active and real and present in this particular account. I mean, when you think about what's happening here, here's all these folk in this upper room and verse 8 tells us there's a lot of lamps and obviously it's getting hot and Paul's droning on and on and on like preachers do. And so there's this fella named Eutychus, he's sitting in the window, and he just can't help it. He's sinking into a deep sleep. He falls asleep, obviously falls out. He dies. But what happens? Paul goes down and literally, by the power of God, Paul doesn't do it, God does it through him, but he raises this young boy from the dead. Obviously, God's at work here. And so we want to experience, obviously, Maybe not in exactly the same way, because we understand the miracles and the signs that it's essentially in this in this transitional age of the old covenant, the new covenant and all that we talked about that so often when we get bogged down this morning. Authenticating signs, et cetera, apostolic power and all that kind of stuff. But we do want to experience God's reality, God's presence, God's power, God's faithfulness, God's comfort. We want to experience that week in and week out. And we are experiencing. By virtue of who we are in Christ and by virtue of gathering together and by virtue of of experiencing this Spirit Rock Koinonia, the Spirit Rock Fellowship, the Spirit Rock community, by virtue of applying the Word of God to our hearts, we're experiencing the resurrection power of Christ in our lives day in and day out. I mean, if you think about it, injury and death overcome by the resurrection power of Christ in Utica's life, injury and death overcome ultimately In our lives, by the resurrection power of Christ, we've been spiritually raised already. We're growing in Christ day in and day out. These are real dynamics. So we want to experience a manifestation of God's presence. How do we do that? It's not the signs and the wonders, per se. But it is the way that God works in us and through us in different ways in the body, different gifts, different ministries. You look here at Paul, after he had raised his boy from the dead, he comes up and he eats. That's sort of a mundane thing to do, isn't it? He eats, that's real, that's physical. And then he begins to speak. So his focus is not on the signs and the wonders of the miracle healing, his focus is on fellowship in Christ, rooted in the word of God, isn't it? That's his focus. And the people were comforted and we're comforted week in and week out by God's presence, by His power, by His action. As we see our own lives transformed over time, as we see what God is doing in answering prayer, as we see what God is doing in us and through us in ministering at our places of business, in our neighborhoods, in our community involvement, as we hear the testimonies of what God is doing from different people in that small group week in and week out. God is present in and through his people exercising their giftedness in the context of gathering together. And people are comforted. Now, this brings me to talk a little bit more practically. about this issue of community at Providence Baptist Church and what it looks like. These are theological, biblical, exegetical realities, that kind of thing. But what does our gathering time look like? We've alluded to it. What does our fellowship look like? We've alluded to it. You know, as you come to the book of Acts, for example, life together in the book of Acts, it focuses on who we are in Christ as well as Christ himself. There's this dynamic of teaching, there's this dynamic of one another, this life together that we've mentioned. So there's fellowship, there's prayer, there's Bible, there's ministry, there's koinonia, there's one another and giftedness. What about evangelism? See, that's where I wanted to get to in the remaining time that we have. What about evangelism? Well, obviously, we're here to reach others. We exist to glorify God and we glorify God simply means we put him on display wherever we go and whatever context we're in, and so we're by our lives and by our words pointing others to God's reality. We need to think of ourselves as on mission with God, don't we? It's our mission to glorify God, to advance the kingdom, advance the gospel. That's why we've kicked around this little phrase from time to time. It's not something that we've adopted, you know, completely in terms of we use it on every piece of literature, but we've kicked around this little phrase from time to time, missional community. In other words, we want to think in some sense about our small groups as missional communities. We got the community part. Now we're talking about the missional part. Which means you want to impact. Those around us. I read sometime back an article by a fellow named Justin Buzzard, oddly enough, and anyway, what he was talking about is not exactly what we're talking about, but it got me to thinking about applying what he was saying to small groups, to community, to missional living. To impacting our communities. Do you want to see just a series of questions, do you want to see Jesus do something? Are we content with the status quo, just kind of going to church or do you want to see Jesus do something? I mean, I think we all want to see him do so and we see it in one another and we see it in our ministries. But but I want to see Jesus do something in my neighbor's lives, too. That's part of what I'm getting at. Do we want to really engage the world and the culture and the community for the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ? Do we really want to want to see his kingdom advance? Do we really want to give our time and our money and our energy and our talents? To seeing this, this kingdom advance. Do we want to spend our time in kingdom oriented living? That kind of thing. Do we want our faith to grow? Do we want God to really change our hearts? Do we want God to really change our lives? Do we want to see our city at peace with God? Do we want to see America at peace with God? Certainly not. I know that's big. It's not utopian, but it's big. Don't watch God move and empower, I'm not talking about signs and wonders, but in change lives. Do you want to bank our lives on the statement Jesus made, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. I think what we're talking about when I ask those questions is having a missional mindset, not high pressure, not guilt oriented, something that just flows from who we are, something that's organic. That's what I mean by organic. It flows from who we are in Christ and the gifts that he's given us and the callings that he's given us and the opportunities that he's given us. Think about something that don't answer this out loud. If a church puts on its sign out front, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, but I just want us to think for a minute. If a church puts on its sign out front contemporary worship service. Or even traditional worship service. Are they trying to reach lost people? And I ask that because I think in the minds of many, That's exactly what they're trying to do. They're trying to reach lost people. And so they'll advertise more than traditional, they'll advertise contemporary worship service. But the phrase contemporary worship service, there could be an exception, but as a rule, that's not going to bring lost people into worship. They don't care about worship. They're lost. So really what you're doing is when you put a sign out front like that, you're competing for market share. You want all the people who are already in church who like contemporary to come to your church. And if you say traditional worship on your sign, you want all the people who are already in church who are tired of contemporary who want to go back to traditional, you want all them to come to your church now as a side issue. I want people who are already saved. If God wants them at Providence Baptist Church, I want them to come and join so that they can help us glorify God together, so they can help us advance the kingdom together, so that we together, with the diversity of the giftedness that God has given us and the diversity of the giftedness that God has placed here, we can advance the kingdom. And I want people, if they're sitting under unbiblical preaching, they're in an unbiblical church or whatever, they're already saved. Yes, I want them to come here. So I'm not saying we don't want people who are already saved to come here. We certainly do. But our focus is not necessarily that in terms of being missional. Our focus is reaching real lost people. That's what I'm saying. So. A lot of where we've been going for you know, the last several years is flowing from this mindset, whether we've explained it well or not. And it's interesting, you know, we've been going this way and talking to these things and we go this way through our study of the scriptures and through Maybe books that we've read and thought processes that have been brought before us and conversations. I mean, this is the way God works. It's interesting to see some of these things in print now too. Ed Stetzer has a book in which he lists some ways that a lot of churches are shifting their thinking and their focus. Just let me hit some of these quickly. He says churches are moving from programs to processes. Now, next week, we're going to talk more about that. We're going to talk about what it means to be non-programmatic. And by that, I don't mean that we can never have a program either. I'm not saying a program is evil, but I'm talking about a mindset. We don't want to just have programs in place. We want to have a process of reaching people and discipling people. What does that look like? But we want to move from program to process, we want to move from demographic to discernment, not that we're ever here wrapped up in demographics, but it's not about targeting this group or that group. We want to discern where God is moving, what God is saying, what God is doing. We want to be incarnational. We want to be diverse in our gift mix. We want to be diverse in our ministry focus. We want to have as many ministries as we have people. You can't do that if you're programmatic. You have to understand that God has gifted each one of us differently. And we're here to equip one another to do the particular ministries that God has given each one of us to do. Yes, in here, but probably more out there. And if we have a program we expect everybody to plug into, then Then we're missing out on this rich diversity and a greater impact. More about that next week. That's part of what we're getting at. We want to move from professional to passionate, from seeding to sending. From decisions to disciples, which we've tried to do and talk about for years, obviously. We want to live as missionaries right here in our own culture. So what we want is community with a missional mindset. You take a small group, for example, and you've got a small group leader, want that small group leader to, in a sense, involve himself in pastoral care of the people in the small group, in discipleship. We want him to know the people in the small group, want each other, want another in the small group to know each other, to be involved in one another's lives. We want that leader to obviously lead in prayer and to talk about community and to talk about mission and to oversee these kinds of things. There's a pastoral dynamic going on there. We want people in the small group who are being trained, as it were, as future small group leaders. Because we want to multiply the small group. We want we want these people in training, apprentices, interns, whatever you want to call them. They've got to demonstrate a calling to shepherd people. They've got to have character, godly, biblical character. They've got to have competence. And that may take time, but that's what we're looking for. That's what we're after. And obviously, again, they'll go out, Lord willing, and start new small groups. Now, I want to talk about a couple of different kinds of small groups as we try to wrap this up in the next few minutes. The first dynamic that I want us to think about in starting small groups, because I'm talking about multiplication rather than addition, I'm talking about seeing the ministry spread. I call this the sphere of influence approach. And what I'm talking about is you yourself or you and another believer or you and three or four other believers, you may want to start a small group that that just meets at your work. And and it's just a couple of folks who want to start a Bible study. You may want to start what we call an affinity group. You're going to get together with people who like something that you like. You know, maybe you like to talk about biochemistry. Maybe you like to talk about bicycling or cycling, whatever they call it. Maybe you're a triathlete. Maybe you're in a reading club, whatever. The goal is to develop relationships, and the goal ultimately is either By God's grace, as people are saved, because a lot of these folk are not going to be saved, but the goal is by God's grace, as people are saved, either that affinity group, let's just call it that, that that sphere of influence group, you know, you're in a group and you got some friends that are willing to come and talk about whatever. But the goal ultimately is for them to be saved. And maybe that group turns into what we call a small group as part of the church. But they're mainly relationship building groups, they're mainly outreach groups. But you want to see them transformed into small groups or or people filtering from those groups into small groups that are already in the church. That would be another way. So that's the sphere of influence approach, the second approach, and this is more or less what we're thinking about in terms of our small groups that we already have. We'll call it the neighborhood approach. That's not something I came up with, but we'll call it that. Obviously, we want to as a group of believers and a small group, we want to make some inroads into the particular neighborhood in which we find ourselves, if at all possible. We want to sort of be involved somehow, some way in that neighborhood or community. Folk get to see us, folk get to know us. Then maybe we invite them to this or that, and then maybe they become saved. Maybe they become part of the church. That's kind of the big picture idea. And what would be great is if you had a neighborhood of, I don't know, 500 homes, let's just say, and you had a small group in one home, and as you kind of develop relationships and you get to know folk, you had to start another small group. But maybe someone's willing to host it in their home three streets over. Maybe you end up with four or five small groups in one neighborhood. But then you expand out of that and you have four or five more small groups in the surrounding area and then four or five more small groups in the surrounding area. That's kind of I mean, God's the one who's in charge of growth. I'm not laying a guilt trip on us. I'm not saying it has to look like this. This is just something that that if we're intentional about being missional in our small groups, that's people ask me, what's what's kind of the vision of the church at Providence? And the vision has been, well, we're going to gather to worship. We're going to scatter to live our lives, advance the kingdom. And it's still essentially that. But if you want a vision for for expansion, if you want some intentionality built in and not just the random You know, people that you meet, the vision is building relationships. So what I'm doing here is just talking about how many different ways we can build relationships. You build relationships at work. You build relationships by inviting people over. You build relationships in your communities. You build relationships by being involved. What we're talking about mainly is building relationships. And as you build relationships and they get to know who you are, Jesus comes out. So don't feel this is high pressure. A lot of words, but it's still about building relationships and what I'm trying to get at here. Think about your small group. Being in a neighborhood. Three things, think about three things quickly. There could be participation in that neighborhood, in that community. You say, what do you mean? Well, find something going on in the neighborhood and join in. I'm not talking about just finding something to join in six miles away or something that's citywide. I'm talking about something where you're going to rub shoulders with people in the neighborhood. And if you join in another event in the neighborhood and you join another event in the neighborhood over time, they get to see you and know who you are. It's just the first step of building relationships. Now, let me say this. Every single person in the small group may or may not be involved in that. And that might not sound Right to some, you say, what do you mean? Because again, we're not laying down a law here and everybody has a different gift. And everybody has a different calling. And some people are going to participate in those neighborhood events, but others are going to pray for you as you participate in those neighborhood events. Others are going to encourage you. Others are going to want to hear the report. You see, and the small group works together. You want community impact from the community, but you're still thinking about yourselves as different parts of the body. And so not everyone's a hand, not everyone's an arm, not everyone's a head or feet. Right. So out of the diversity, even within that small group, there is unity. And impact. So join in, build relationships, the second thing you might think about is serving the community. We're trying to lavish the gifts of Jesus on the community. I mean, things like crisis pregnancy centers do that. We kind of get that. That's a group of Christians who've come together to lavish the gifts of Jesus on others. Now, one of the things that happens in Greenville every summer, and you might know things like this in your context, but I know that there's a swim league and I know that every Friday morning, every swim team in Greenville kind of, they come together at their respective pools and they have donuts and hand out ribbons because the meet is on Thursday night and you get ribbons from the preceding night. Maybe you want to take doughnuts to the to the swim team and introduce yourself and build relationships. It's just an idea. That's the way to serve. Maybe there's an eyesore in your community and you can fix it. These are just suggestions to get us thinking. Hospitality. So there's joining in, there's serving and then there's being hospitable, having a cookout. Right. Maybe having a night, maybe you're at a point in your life where you can go out to eat once a week or once a month and you invite people to come that, you know, you're just having dinner. But what are you doing? You're building relationships. Obviously, in different contexts, we'll talk about 100 different ways to build relationships and just being suggestive this morning. What we're talking about is the intentional ordering of your life. And the intentional ordering of the small groups life around context or opportunities for engagement, whether it's regularly scheduled opportunities for engagement or intentional efforts at participation or service or hospitality. Simple things that you can do as an individual. Just get to know the people in your neighborhood, take a walk in your neighborhood, develop a hobby and rub shoulders with non-Christians. One of the things we'll talk about, we talk about organic ministry. There's nothing wrong with having a church basketball league, but why have a church basketball league if you can join the basketball league at the YMCA and rub shoulders with lost people? See, that's being intentional. I'm going to join the Y, going to join the basketball, love basketball, but I'm going to meet people and I'm going to be able to talk to them about the Lord Jesus Christ. Obviously, you can talk to your co-workers, you can volunteer, you can do all kinds of things. That's being intentional and that's being intentional out of the individual gifts and opportunities you have. But as we come together as a small group and we talk about those things and share life together and encourage one another and stir up one another, love and good works and equip one another, then that's community. That's life together. That's being on mission together, that's building one another up. That's experiencing fellowship and prayer. Rooted in the word of God and we're motivated to impact our spheres of influence. We're working as one. I'm going to close with a quote. One of the ways that. That we're trying to influence a few people Tuesday nights in the summer, we do a Bible study with people that we know in the swim community, young people, high school and college. And right now, we're. We're going through a book that Francis Chan wrote called Crazy Love. It's about the love of God for his people, and it's about our love for God, which seems crazy in the eyes of the world. That's what it's called. And God's kind of crazy to love us because we're sinners, we're not being sacrilegious, but that's kind of the thought behind the title. Here's what Francis Chan said at one point in the book, and I quoted this On a Wednesday night, actually on a Sunday night, but I just want to quote it again. I want to think about it. Here's what he said. I quickly found that the American church is a difficult place to fit in if you want to live out New Testament Christianity. Now, you got to let that land on, let me say it one more time, I quickly found that the American church is a difficult place to fit in. If you want to live out New Testament Christianity. He goes on, the goals of American Christianity are often a nice marriage, children who don't swear and good church attendance. Taking the words of Christ literally and seriously is rarely considered. That's for the radicals who are unbalanced and who go overboard. Most of us want a balanced life we can control that is safe and that does not involve suffering. And he's not developing a theology of suffering. He's not saying we need to go out and look to suffer. But what he is saying is this, that the Christian life isn't merely about A nice marriage, children who don't swear, good church attendance. Obviously, there's the benefit of a healthy marriage if you're applying biblical principles. Obviously, we want to biblically train our children and obviously, we want to not forsake the assuming of ourselves together, but sometimes we can put this veneer We've got a marriage that looks good, kids that look good, church attendance that looks good, but there's no real heart and there's no real being sold out for Jesus. Are we really challenging our thinking? Are we really challenging our worldview? Are we really challenging our hearts? Are we really seeking to live it out every day? Are we really trying to be separate from the world, yet influence the world? Are we just floating along with our culture? We've added church to it? Or do we really Take Jesus seriously. Do we see the problems in the American church and how they are so prevalent by virtue of being influenced by the world and willing to say, no, this is what the American church has become because of the influence of the world? Are we really willing to do some heart surgery? Are we willing to examine everything we do, whether it be a youth ministry, whether it be a children's ministry, whether it be Sunday morning worship, whether it be pew sitting, whether it be small groups, whether it be evangelism, outreach, whatever? I mean, are we willing to examine everything in the light of Scripture and say, you know what, I don't want to just be conformist, I don't want to just be traditional, I don't want to just go along to get along. I really want to live out what we see coming from the pages of the of the New Testament, which is our authority. And that's all we're trying to do. As we go forward together, it doesn't happen overnight, it happens over time and God sanctifies us and challenges us and shows us over time. But that's part of where we're going and what we're trying to say in these series of messages. As best we can, we're trying to live out New Testament Christianity. We don't want to just fit in and we don't want to be contrarian either. But we want to live out New Testament Christianity. So Father is part of that. Help us. To be totally committed to you and your glory in all things, helps to be totally committed to your word as our sole source of authority and helps to be totally committed to biblical community, even if we haven't been exhausted this morning. Help us to be committed to doing life together, admonishing one another, stirring one another up toward love and good deeds. Again, so that Your kingdom might be advanced, and Your name might be praised, and we might be filled with purpose and meaning and joy. Thank You, Lord. In Jesus' name, Amen.