SEP 20 2015 | Creating Communities Based in Devotion and Fellowship

Sea Change Church · "Creating Communities Based in Devotion and Fellowship" · Adam Stadtmiller · September 20, 2015
Acts 2:42-47
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Open your Bibles to Acts chapter 2 verse 42 through 47. I am using the English Standard Version today. You'll see that I've been using a host of different translations and having the ability to to use different translations to see what different scholars thought about what different words mean. You're going to find that there that things are morphing and shifting.

Now I've said this multiple times, but one of the problems that I have is with the new NIV translation that is changing the gender meanings to make things more analogous. But sometimes I think that's good because it says man and it actually the word actually means mankind. I know some of you have heard this with me say this before. And that needs to be changed because women are included when Paul was speaking to mankind or when it says, you know, God created mankind in the book of Genesis.

That that that needs to be changed from God created all men to do this. But there's other times where they've they've taken verses like in Timothy where it says act like men or other places. If you can Google this to research yourself and they've taken it and they've removed it just from the scripture completely because they don't want to offend any women.

Well, the problem was is that Paul was speaking to men. Paul was speaking directly to men. And so one of the reasons I'm not saying that the NIV, the new NIV is not a good translation. I just have issues with that one thing that they are doing in that. I don't know if you saw in the news today that that Disney has now made all their costumes for children.

There's no more male boy and girl costumes anymore. So you can be boy princess. You can be girl princess. Every I don't know if it was in the news. It came up on my feed yesterday. You know, the problem I have with that is in faith is that I believe that the beauty of God is expressed in the genders. I believe that God created genders differently for a reason.

One of the arguments is, well, we always say that men are strong. And so we have to you know, women are strong, too. And I would totally agree. But I notice that there can be different types of strength. And they're both equally as strong. If you've been around women long enough, I think you know that they're strong, right? And so we believe that there is a strength that is inherent to women.

But I believe it's different than the strength of a man. But both are strong and both have their parts and their place. I would say that God expresses himself through the beauty of gender. This is just one of the things that I think that our society is trying to change. Everything is not equal, nor is it supposed to be equal. Everything can have different meanings, different definitions, and still be valid.

Things don't have to be equal to be valid. I'm going to be doing a series soon on human sexuality. That's just one of the things. But back to the understanding of the ESV. I'm using the English Standard Version today because I really appreciate it. I love the NASV. And I'm going to be doing that for a while. Eventually, I'll lock into one. But I'm trying to teach you to be biblical scholars, to use something like BibleHub.com.

When you go and you want to look up a verse, put the verse in and then put the BibleHub. It will show you like 25 different translations. It will even show you Arabic if you want to know it. So you can check all those out. But I want to teach you to serve the ball back to me. Meaning, I'm going to serve it on Sunday morning to you. But I need you on occasion to come back to me and say, Hey, Pastor, this is what I read about that scripture.

Hit it back to me. This has to be a dialogue. The whole idea of that I am a voice that just speaks and then the whole congregation goes and just does it is not the model I want to set. I want to have a dialogue. Now, I don't want everyone to email me tomorrow morning. That's not what I'm saying. But I do want to have a dialogue. So here we are in the ESV, Acts chapter 2, 42 through 47.

A beautiful picture of the devotion of the early church. This is as beautiful as a sea of lavender on the hills of England. And somebody made fun of me the other day for my analogies. I said, Man, they're pretty feminine. I said, Well, man, I'm a writer. I like it. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. Let's first of all put a check by devoted.

And they devoted themselves, unified themselves, to the apostles' teaching. Put a check there. And the fellowship. Put a check there. To the breaking of bread. Put a check there. And the prayers. These are the things that the early church was about. And awe came on every soul. Now look at this. They devoted themselves individually, but as a community.

And the result was everyone got the blessing of the individual decision. You see that? The entire body said, This is what we are about. They devoted themselves individually to that. And then everyone received the blessing. There was no, as you would call it, grapes in the wine. What is wine? Fermented wine. You know, the fragrant wine is crushed grapes.

The problem is, is when someone says, I don't want to be crushed into the fermented wine, into the beautiful blend that is being made with the wine and the fragrance that God is doing in the church. I want to be a grape. I'm going to have my own decisions and have my own way of doing things. They might be doing this, but I'm going to do that. That's called being a grape in the wine.

And so they say, We don't want to have grapes in the wine. This doesn't mean that if there is error in your church, that you don't stand up and try to speak the truth. Where I say, Some people do need to stand up and do that. But you want to be unified. And they were. And they received a blessing because of it. That's why I stood up during the worship and said, When we all worship, in a way, it opens the door wider and wider.

And I feel like if you could imagine a door, and Olin begins to lead in worship, or our worship leader begins to lead, and they crack the door in leadership towards that. But if no one follows where you're leading, you can't lead. It's one of the problems we have in society. And one of the things that I put in an article I wrote recently, is that I said that believers, that the biggest decision, a change in church culture, is that people are no longer following their leaders.

They're no longer following their leaders. They're all making their own decisions based on what they think is right. And on occasion, if something looks interesting to them, they will follow that leadership. In the book of Judges, before one of the most horrific things that you see in the Bible, it says right before that, that it says, in Israel in this time, there were no leaders, there were no judges, and everyone did according to what?

What they thought was right. I want to say we need to have leaders. We need to have leaders that will step up and speak truth, that we can follow, and that we can be devoted to. It's almost politically incorrect to say be devoted to a leader. I mean, it feels funny to me. I'm not going to be devoted to anybody. I'll be devoted to my wife. You know, I'll be devoted to this, or my pursuits, or the things I want.

But I'm not going to be devoted to a leader, because if they mess it up, I'm going to go a different way. The ability to say, I disagree with that, but because for the sake of unity, now I don't disagree in that it is a doctrinal truth, like I spoke about earlier, but I disagree with that, but for the sake of unity, and for the sake of belief of a community, I'm willing to step in line and go with the community.

We have pretty much lost that ability as a church, I think. As I look around in churches, I don't see many people, myself included, often, that are willing to say that I am willing to step in line and to follow and to be devoted to a leader because I believe that God has put them in authority of something. Now, in the Joshua Project, which we have here, it's one of our small groups.

You can pray for the guys. We took six guys up to a cabin to do a men's devotional group this week, and I'm very excited about it. We now have had over 100 men be part of the Joshua Project in the last 10 years. Our goal is for the 1,000th man. That's what we're going for now. And I spoke to Bryce, and I said, Bryce, I want to lead the project this year.

These are my guys. They're at my church. I'm with them more. Maybe you've seen Bryce. Tattoos comes up here on occasion. Great man of God. But I handed the organization over to him. Actually, it wasn't an organization. It was a loose affiliation that he turned into a 501c3 and has taken it to the next level, an ability. I didn't have the ability to do that or the desire to do that.

And so I came and told him that I want to do this. He goes, man, I don't think you have the time to do it well. And I'm like, these are my guys. What are you talking about? I started. I'm thinking this is what's going on in my mind, okay? Dude, I started this. You were in my first project. Don't tell me who has the time. I write for Christianity Today, dude, okay?

Like, figure it out. Who doesn't make mistakes here? Just kidding. He stood his guns. I've been saying one of the things I want in culture at our church is pushback. You know, one of the things I told my staff this week at our staff meeting, I am a, I hear on occasion through the church here on occasion, well, Adam just wants it his way. And so he just wants to have it done his way.

Not true. I do like my way, okay? You don't? You don't like your way? Okay? And I am a strong personality. And when I voice my opinions, they're going to come off sometimes like a bulldozer. But that doesn't mean that if you push back, I won't listen to you. And somebody had told me, I think you need to change the way that you present yourself. And I said, that probably isn't going to happen.

I'm not going to become a gentle flower, even though I use words like lavender over the beautiful hills of England, of the UK, which I just saw a beautiful, you know, well, we won't go into that. I said, what I can do is encourage the culture because we're culture shifting. I can encourage the culture to push back, to say to me, wait a second, let's have a discussion about this.

I said, you know, I was, I gave one example of one of my, my leaders at the staff meeting that I said, hey, I don't think this thing's going to work. And they said, well, I want to do it anyways. I want to try it. And I said, okay, go ahead and do it. I want to see because I want to say that I have put you in charge of leadership in this position. In the end, I have some oversight and occasion.

I'm going to step in and say, no, let's do it a different way. But for the most part, if Kai and Bev are over missions, I want to follow them. I don't have the ability. And it also dilutes me to try to be, run the missions and run everything else. And so Bryce came to me and said, I don't think you should do it. And I'm, I'm upset. I'm sitting at the chair.

We're good friends. I just wanted to get into it. And the Lord said, you get, you pass the authority, you pass the mantle to him. And so he's in charge of that. You need to submit to that. Now he's in my church and one of the ministries in my church under my leadership. And I said to him, I want you to know, I respect you. You're the leader of that. And I take your decision.

I will step back and do what you asked me to do because you're the leader of it. He got back to me the next day. And he said, you know, man, I really appreciate that. He said, the willingness to do that. That's hard for me. I believe we're losing the ability of a church to do that. And so do you understand that there's a balance between unity, speaking truth to people, but also saying, you know what?

I'm willing to get in line and be a part of what God is doing. And maybe the unity of that will release something beyond your disagreement. That we don't become enslaved to our own opinions. Oftentimes we become enslaved to our own opinions. It says, an awe came on every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. It released power that the leaders could do signs, that they could do signs and wonders.

That that unity equipped and empowered their leadership. Do you want empowered leadership? Do you want your leaders to walk in power? As we look at the scripture here, we see that the A plus B that equaled their leaders walking in power, the A plus B was the community saying, we are devoted to these things. I'm trying to simplify our church's vision so that you can share it in a line at Panikin.

Now, Christina, who's here, who works at Panikin, I saw her a moment ago, said, you keep mentioning Starbucks, but not Panikin. So wherever she is, I, there she is in the back. There's your Panikin reference. And, uh, meet her, go in and say hi to her at Panikin. And, uh, it's one of my favorite places. I go there twice at 15 times a day. Don't tell people how often I'm there, please.

And all those who believed were together and had all things in common. Now, I believe that's amazing. They had all things in common. I don't believe that their decision to share all their goods is a, a model for every single church. That is something that they decided to do as a, as a community. But I do love the spirit of it, the spirit of giving and caring and being unified and helping out those that are in the pews besides you.

And they were selling their possessions and their belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as they had need. That's beautiful. And I think we should have that as a, um, a culture in our church. It wouldn't be a law, but I would have it as a culture. And you can see that it is a culture because when we get to Ananias and Sapphira, when, when they, uh, lie about their gift, it was a free will gift.

It wasn't a law that they said, everyone has to do this. They said, you know, you didn't have to do this. And now you've chosen to lie about it for one reason or another. And if you don't know the story, read, read through it. But it was, it was a free will offering. They were committed in the, giving of their security and their possessions to bless the community.

I think that's really important. If a church financially, and I know if you're brand new, you can plug your ears and go, Hey, I'm not listening. I'm not listening. But in all things, especially financially, if a church financially, everyone says, I'm going to give my part. What I've always said is you need to seek the Lord and figure out what your part is.

That might be one shekel. It might be, you know, 2000 shekels. I don't know, but it is your responsibility to seek the Lord and then say, I am going to commit to that. Giving is, and giving in community, I believe opens a blessing of, of financial provision in the same way that we see that in our own individual lives. I've seen that in myself. It's not a prosperity gospel.

I just think God blesses what he says. And verse 46, and day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes. I'm going to start my timer now. Yeah, good idea. Thanks. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking the bread in their homes. I love that, that you see the intimacy of community there. They receive their food with glad and generous hearts.

You ever walk into Whole Foods or Ralph's and Trader Joe's and just thank the Lord? We had a Russian missionary come to Point Loma Nazarene in 1989 after the wall fell. We took her to Costco and she wept. Wept. Never forgot it. I go in there, I thought, look how beautiful they make it. Wow. Wow. Organic beet juice. Wow. Watermelon cubes. I don't even need watermelon cubes.

They're amazing. I'll eat it. Thankfulness. Are we a thankful community? What's the culture of our church? You can feel it, but do you know what it is? What are we trying to build? That's what we're talking about today. Creating a culture. Making culture shifts in the church. That's what my job is. I want you to know what my job is. My job is to create a culture change in this church, not to change things.

To create culture change. Because culture is more important than the things you change. I'll explain that in a moment. And they had, with food, they had glad and generous hearts. A generous church. Mmm. Praising God and having favor with all the people. Favor. What would it look like if you had favor? God gave me the word. Now to Zachariah, when I came to the church.

I'll repeat it again. You will lead this church with a rod of unity and favor. And we're beginning to see that. And the Lord added to, Oh, I love, I love what happens. Because what do we see here? Evangelism, evangelism, evangelism. People coming to know Christ. Why? Because individual people made a decision to be devoted to the same things together. They were devoted, obviously, to the doctrinal truth that they would die for.

But there was also things beyond that, not beyond, underneath and alongside that doctrinal truth that they said, We do this together. It's not a cult. It's just, we're deciding this is what we do. And this is the type of community that I want to be a part of. I want to be a part of a generous community. I want to be a part of a thankful community. I want to be a part of a worshiping community.

That we, as a group, do that. And so it's my job to instill into this congregation a cultural shift that touches everything that we do. That if there's not a seat, someone gets up and lets you into their seat. It just becomes a culture. You can do everything right and do it with a wrong, with a bad culture, and it's going to be dysfunctional. You're going to have a trail of bodies behind you.

I know many ministries that meet all of their target goals and do it in a way that leaves a trail of bodies behind. There's a huge body count behind it. But if you were to look at their numbers, in regard to their numbers and the things they're trying to accomplish, did they accomplish their goals? They did it. But the culture underneath, and some of you have been in churches or church organizations, where behind the scenes, if you get behind the doors of those organizations, you would see a trail of bodies and wounded people from the way in which it's happening.

I say, that's why I think culture is more important than what you do. I want to say, we are creating a culture of worship. I know a lot of leaders, they get into a church, and they immediately can diagnose what needs to be changed, or how things need to be changed. And so they look at something like the preaching, or they look at something like the children's ministry, or they look at the worship, and they think, okay, I'm just going to change my worship leader, or I'm going to change my children's, or I'm going to change accounting, or whatever the thing is.

If I change that, what do you say? Changing something doesn't change the culture. You can change something, you're just singing different songs, but it doesn't mean that people are worshiping. Now, I've been in communities before, where you have the best, most talented music leaders, that you, I mean, they would be on the voice. I mean, they would just, you know, everyone would turn their chair to get them onto the voice.

It's amazing. And people stand in the pews like this and watch them. You see, it's not about that. It's about creating a culture, whereas, like today, where you said, today, we are going to worship. What would it be like if every single person comes every single week and says, I am going to worship, whether I like the song, whether I don't like the song.

I am, whether how I feel, or how good I feel, or, or my lack of good feelings, that I am going to worship the Lord. Imagine walking into that community. We see that the church was committed to these things. And they praised God in one favor, and the Lord added to their number, day by day, it was a daily thing, every single day, those who were being saved.

Awesome. Awesome. Look at the quote down where it says, the church grew powerful through the individual commitment and devotion of its members. It's below the first part. It says, I wrote this because I was thinking about how a river, I was listening to a country song, and it talked about a mighty river. And I thought, you know, a mighty river is created by individual raindrops.

Oh, you got it up there. Nice job, Ellen. Well done. You got the quote on there. A mighty river is devoid of its power, if not for the unification and purpose of individual raindrops. You get that? Think of, during flood season, we might have some on Monday night, I hear, they're going to be raining again. A mighty river is devoid of all of its power, if not for individual raindrops, with a single purpose to flow downstream.

Let's say you're a raindrop. I'm a raindrop. I'm just a raindrop. Without the rest of you with me, what can we accomplish as a church? My job is to set a vision that you can understand, and then for us to get in line with that vision, and to go after it together. Will your feelings get hurt along the way? Yes, because the biggest problem with church is people.

Got it? Get it? And the best thing about church is what? People. You are not going to be able, be able, able, able, to be in a church without sustaining some wounds. We are just hoping that they are not, that you are, that it's merely a flesh wound, is what we're hoping. It's just merely a flesh wound, but not a mortal wound. That was a little Monty Python there.

I don't know if anybody caught that. Creating a culture of health, creating a culture of safety. I would rather have us meet none of our goals and do it in a Christ-honoring culture than meet all of our goals and have a dysfunctional culture that injures people along the way. My staff is more important than what they can accomplish for the church.

Now, I want people to be in their right position. I don't want people to be where they're not supposed to be. But my staff is more important to me. What God is doing in the individual heart of each of my staff members is more important to me than what they accomplish for me. Because I know that the reason that God brought me into ministry is because He loves me.

Because He cares for me. And He's got me here because He's like, Man, at that church, I'm going to shape you. I'm going to love you. I'm going to grow you. I'm going to stretch you. It's not all about me. But it's all about me to God. Does that make sense? Because He loves me so much. The reason I'm your pastor is not so I can preach and change this community.

That's all trickle down. The reason I'm your pastor is because I'm God's son. God loves me. I'm His child. And He loves me. And He wants me to be here for a purpose. And so, the same thing with you. That you are here because God wants to bless you, but He also wants you to be part of a greater movement. Can this little church be a mighty torrent that changes all of La Jolla, that changes our community, that changes Bird Rock, that changes UTC, that changes, and La Jolla Village needs some change, okay, especially, like I said, the parking, that makes a change, that we can make a global change.

Can that be far-reaching? What can we actually accomplish as a people if we get committed to something? And do you want to be part of a movement? Do you want to be a part of a movement of God that is unique to this community? Now, part of this community, we have to look back at our history and see who we have been and honor the history of who we've been.

We've been a praying church. I believe we're still a praying church and the things that we are devoted to. We see that, if you go to the first point, the church in Jerusalem was a church in transition. I'll just move through this in a couple seconds. But basically, the floodgates have stayed open, had opened up to the Gentiles. You know, it wasn't a kosher church anymore.

It was all these Jews and then all of a sudden the Holy Spirit comes and it's okay, let that Italian guy in. You know? Hey, you know, there's an Anglo-Saxon dude that wants to be a part that's, you know, down from Northern Europe and we're going to get this whole community. How do you do that? I want to say, if the Jews and pagans at the time who had freshly converted pagans can come together and worship and fellowship together, we can figure out our differences.

I do not believe that any doctrinal differences we have, and by doctrine I mean whether you believe in tongues, whether you don't believe in tongues, all these different things. I'm not talking about the virgin birth and those important ones. But all these other doctrinal differences are so minute compared to what they did. Do you realize this just wasn't a bunch of Jews.

God had added to their number every single day. And people of all languages had said, remember we read, had come and all of a sudden they had heard through the tongues their own languages. They didn't even speak the language, okay? And they became part of that church. And that church was in transition. How do you unify a church in transition? Because everyone was committed to something greater than the purpose that was set before them.

They were committed to unity of the Spirit through Jesus Christ. Because Jesus was the most important thing. And so, what I want to do is when I look Bryce in the eye, or I look at my kitchen team in the eye who does roast and toast, and they say, I think we should do it this way. And I say, well, I think we should do it this way. But in the end, I'm going to let you make the decision.

It is Christ honoring. Do you get that? Christ smiles when we do that. When we put our own desires, our own needs aside, especially in marriage, especially in friendships, especially with your children, some of the things we argue and fight about, we just, you know, we have such a high body count about things that don't matter. It's the disunity of the church.

I want a unified church, and I want to see it like they saw it. The path of the first church was forward by what they were devoted to. Let's look at the first one, the apostles' teaching. By apostles, we have to understand that there is some discussion about what this means. Now, apostles in the scripture speaks of the actual disciples who walked with Jesus.

They were the apostles, and it was really important to know who the apostles were because they were writing new doctrine. They were figuring out how to be a church in transition, to be a Jewish church that had sacrifices, they had grown up in synagogue, many of them had, well, all of them, all the men that were there had memorized the Torah, that was part of it.

You had to be able to memorize it as a kid in synagogue school back in the day, and it was referring to those men, and they were important because this New Testament was being played out in praxis. And there was all these challenges to what we believe. Do you have to be circumcised is one of the arguments that Paul speaks about in the churches. You'll see all these letters to the churches.

This role of apostleship was so important, and they had to know who were the leaders and who they were going to follow, and most of the New Testament is this discussion. It is a church in transition. It is a movement in transition. It is multiple churches in transition. It is missionary, and as all this they're trying to contain and make this happen, the church is blowing up with all types of new believers coming in from all over the world, pagans, people that have lived all and had idol worship and temple prostitution, and imagine trying to, well, it's like herding cats.

Imagine trying to pull all of that together, and every day, well, here's a new guy. The Lord added it. It says every single day. Here's 12 more people, and they come from different places, and they have a lot of questions. They're going crazy, but they stayed central, and so the idea of the apostleship was so important. Now, many people, they, you know, it speaks of a gift of apostleship, and so today, there are, if you look at spiritual gifts, there's a gift of apostleship.

What does it mean today? This is for a different discussion, but is apostleship available to those who did not actually walk with Christ? A lot of churches, they, you know, apostleship is an idea of a high-end leader. I have a friend that tells me, he says, you're an apostle. Now, I understand if I am, it's with a little A, because I understand the authority of the apostles, and this is how I see it, that there was a big A apostle, you know, with a capital A, and this would be the guys who were writing doctrine, but I also believe today that there is a high-end leadership that is able to make decisions over large areas of territory, and that God has anointed them as apostles.

So I do believe in apostolic leadership, but please don't try to pull out, I'm Paul the apostle, you know, level card with me, because I'm going to have to take that card and throw it on the ground and step on it. God will give you authority, but we are not the original apostles. Does that make sense? As we get into spiritual gifts, I'll talk more about apostle, but this is the apostles that they were devoted to.

Now, they were devoted to these men who walked with Jesus, but I think it sets a model that we want to be devoted to others as well. Who are you devoted to? Think about the things you're devoted. What are you devoted to? And let me ask this. Are you devoted to the right things? Knowing what to be devoted to and what not to be devoted to is one of the best paths that we have for moving forward in Christ honoring and Christ following.

Are you devoted to your church? Are you devoted to your community? Are you devoted to the different places in the spiritual geography of your life? I will say at Panikin that I am devoted there. I go there on purpose because I want to be a light for Christ in that coffee house. I also like the coffee and I like the people. I will say at Trader Joe's, I've moved Trader Joe's now.

We're meeting new people. We intentionally go there. I intentionally try to know the names. I show up with a smile. I try to make a difference. I am devoted to it and if I know there's an issue and someone needs help, we want to be devoted to bless those people. We want to be devoted and community transformation which is one of the things that we're going to do as a church is going to be who are you devoted to in your community?

Now I know David is in Bird Rock. I know he has a friend that owns a restaurant that he's taking me to. He has a devoted relationship in that restaurant. Who are you devoted to? I know I'm devoted to my girls' soccer team. We lost 7-0 yesterday. It was rough. I mean the other coach. Come on dude, back it off. It's 5-0. You know what I mean? Just keep bringing it.

Those girls are like 38 years old. What do they put in the milk? There was four girls this much taller than any girl. My daughter was unbelievable. They're grown women calling the league. I was teaching Lucy how to play defense. I said, you need to attack. Use your body. And we were watching English Premier League and they're like elbowing. So it was amazing.

She's getting really aggressive. And she runs into this giant girl and falls down. She comes back over to me and she goes, Dad, that girl's a brick. Love it. What are you devoted to? They were devoted to the apostles' teaching. Apostolic leadership was crucial as new doctrine was being practiced and defined. It was a church willing to trust and follow its leaders.

I hope you trust me. I hope you do. If you don't trust your leadership, go somewhere where you can. That's all there is to it. It doesn't mean I'm not going to make mistakes. It doesn't mean that I'm not going to, you know, I'm human. The problem with pastors is that they're human. That's the problem. People. That's the problem with your pastors. But do you trust the leadership?

One of our values is accountability and transparency and I'm working on that. Being transparent in our elder meetings. Being transparent with our decision making. Being transparent in our finance. That you can come in and know where every single penny goes. We're doing an audit right now. We had a professional outside company come in to do a self-induced audit on all the money that you give because we want to have authenticity and transparency.

I don't understand churches that don't want to have transparency because all you do is create tons of problems for yourself. Rumor, people upset. The more transparent you are, the less people look. Have you ever noticed that? I have invited people to come in and look at the finances. You're free to do it. It's part of our constitution. You can check it out if you want.

No one's taking me up on it yet. You need to all show up tomorrow morning. But I'm just saying authenticity and transparency gives people a sense of like, okay, if I'm concerned about something, I know I can check it out. It's important. It makes leadership so much easier. And so to have that and be part of our culture because we are culture shifting. They trusted them.

I trust my elders. I trust my leaders. You will not have a leader on this staff who I do not trust. I don't care how good they are. If I can't trust you to make godly right decisions and that you're a safe person, you won't be on my staff long. You won't be in a leadership position at this church long because the culture of safety and not wounding people, letting them come to church and be at rest.

And when we do make a mistake and when we do give someone a flesh wound, that we come and we say, hey, can I help you bandage that? You know, sometimes we need to help people bandage the wounds that we create by asking forgiveness. I try not to say I'm sorry. I try to say, will you forgive me? It's a big difference. I tell my children the same thing. Or I'll tell my kids, I'll apologize to my children.

They'll say, it's no problem. I'll say, no, no, no. I need you to receive my forgiveness and grant me forgiveness. There's a difference between saying I'm sorry, no problem and saying I ask forgiveness, look me in the eye and say I forgive you. You see, that's a culture that I want to create in this church, a culture of trust, culture of accountability. They were committed to fellowship, a church committed to each other.

committed beyond just gathering for church. I love that. They were committed beyond just gathering to church. Let's say, I don't want to lead a church where we're just committed to showing up on Sunday three times a week, three times a month, two times, whatever it is. Let's say you got to be here every single week, okay, and I don't take attendance. But where it's just like, hey, I go to that church.

What does that mean? What does it mean you go to a church? Now, if you've got other interests and you just need to come here and heal and sit and breathe and you've just killed yourself at another church and you're burned out, you please come and let this be a hospital bed for you. Come and sit. Come and rest. Come be infused. Or if you're in ministry somewhere else, like I know that Joe, you know, he's in ministry.

He just kills himself in Mexico with orphans constantly. He's running, you know, Unity for Community Group, all these things, you know, doing missions. I just, you know, I would love him just to come and sit. Or maybe he's got more energy. Maybe he doesn't want to just come and sit. I think he doesn't. I think he wants to do some other stuff. But if you're that person and you just need, please come, rest and be.

But at some point, I pray that you would, that God would speak to you about being devoted to this community. And that's what I want to invite you to is devotion to this community. Devotion to each other. Devotion to its leadership. And doesn't that sound politically incorrect? Me asking you to be devoted to our leadership? It sounds politically incorrect to me, but I think it's biblical.

I think it's biblical. And I want to be the kind of man and the kind of leader that you say, I want to follow where that man's leading. We need to find people that we can trust and follow and believe. And please, push back if you need to. I'll take push back because I want to hear it. The breaking of bread. We're going to be doing that afterwards. Hey, every so often, go over, be a part of that small group.

The breaking of bread. We're going to eat together. We're going to fellowship. Something special happens over food. That's why God made it so we eat three times a day. That's why he has a last supper. That's why he calls himself the bread of life. He has instilled something into gathering to eat. Fast food is one of the biggest curses of our society. You ever been to Italy?

Sit and have a meal? It takes three hours, you know, but I love it. I love to sit. What's your meal times like? What's your meal times like with your family? You know, is it always, you know, burgers? We move on. We want to be a community church and create a culture of that and then finally, you'll see his prayer. A community that was founded upon prayer and fueled by communal prayer.

I say this, this is a pillar of our church. I want us to create a culture of prayer where we pray together. We meet each other for prayer. When we see each other out on the streets, hey, can I pray for you? I was, Chris Lacey, he's not here today. I think he's riding motorcycles. In a race. He's one of our media guys. And the day Carrie was in England and I, she didn't bring her driver's license.

So her and Lily are going on the trip that we've planned for three years for her to drive to England together as a mom and daughter. It's the rite of passage trip. Every one of our children at the age of 13 gets to choose wherever they want to go with one parent in the world and we start planning for that three weeks in advance. And just like the Jewish rites of passage, it's a time to take a parent.

I didn't get chosen. I was very upset. As you'll notice, I ended up going anyways. I met them two weeks later. And as she was there, Carrie forgot her driver's license and we couldn't rent a car. Now this ruined the trip because if you can't rent a car and you're staying in these remote places in England, there's no way to get there. And so I went to the DMV.

I'm trying to figure it out. Can we get one shipped? And I pull in and Chris Lacey pulls in right next to me. Our sound guy. I've never been to that DMV. And then he pulls in right next to me. I tell him what's happened. He goes, let's pray. And we stood in the parking lot of AAA and we prayed. And we had been in England for the Olympics. My brother lives there is why we go there so often because we're really committed.

We're devoted to going there and being with my brother because I never see him and I want to see my brother. So we always go to England. Well, I don't have any car payments either but I'm devoted to my relationship with my brother. Why am I explaining why I go to England? So we go there and he prays for me and they're devoted. And I got to say, we remember that we had gone four years ago and I called that company and that company said, oh, we still have your wife on record right after that.

And she was able to rent a car and they were able to go on their trip. Prayer. You know, Lily left her blue bear in Scotland. You know how hard it is for a 13-year-old girl to lose the little blue bear that she had had her whole life? And I put it on praying for your elephant because like I said, we believe in praying for big things. Yeah, I'm praying for the refugees in Europe right now.

Of course I am. But I'm also praying that my daughter finds her blue bear that she had for 13 years. I posted it on our social media site and like 26 people said they would pray for it. We got it yesterday in the mail. A guy in Scotland found it and sent it back to us. Does God care about blue bear? Yes. And he cares about you and he cares about us. We want to be a praying church.

I'm going to ask the worship band to come forward. This was a call to unity. This message is a call to creating the kind of church that you want to be at. To being a part of it. Also creating it, being your own part of that fragrant wine that God is making at this church and saying, you know what? I'm going to be devoted beyond just showing up to church.

I want to invest and that's the word. I had that word this week and it's a word I want to say. Invest in this church. I don't know what it looks like. Bill's been making coffee for us. Whatever it is, be a part of it and invest. Lord Jesus, we thank you God for what you're doing in this community. And we pray Lord that you would unify us through the bonds of the spirit of peace.

For unity is infused with peace and don't we want peace? Don't we want peace? So Lord, we love you and we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.