Red Stone Church
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or the movement of grace in someone's life? Measuring things are important. Measuring ministry is very different altogether. So how do we know that we get it right? Or how do we know that we're heading in the right direction? How do we kind of reconcile with life? We've asked a question for two weeks now is like we want you to have purpose. We want your life to count. We want you to look and examine every morsel of your being and say, am I doing the right things with my time and energy and money and giftedness? And we want you to have that kind of examination of your life. And it's hard to find those kinds of answers anywhere. And so that's why we have really circled the great commission to say, if we want to know by and large what our life is all about, we can come back to these simple words, these parting words of Jesus and say, well, maybe those words matter. And if those words matters to the very first disciples, maybe they should also matter to us 2,000 years later. I read some church, we have a very, very simple mission statement. It simply goes like this. We are disciples making disciples of Jesus. I mean, this is it. I mean, if you're looking to be blown away, you're in the wrong place. This is as simple as it goes. But we like it because it has its tentacles into the great commission. But we like it because there are three people that are represented here. So the first two is the people who make up the church. These people that are called disciples, people who have said, I want to follow Jesus with my life. And I want to give him everything. And in a lot of ways, I want to examine my life according to his. And so that's who the disciples are. That's the first people group or people who are following Jesus. The second people group of course are the people that are being made in the image and likeness of Jesus. Because none of us have made it, have we? All of us are on a journey. And so our job is to look at someone, maybe younger in age or younger in spiritual maturity or maybe just in a different life stage. And to say, I have a little something to give to you. Now that's an audacious claim, right? Is that we have something to offer to anyone. But it is our raw ambition to embolden you all, who call Redstone Church, that if you are full and filled of the Holy Spirit, if you are walking in Him, you have something to give to someone else. Do you believe that? We believe it. We want to believe it for you. And we believe that some of your best work and your best money and your best usage of your gifts is to give to someone else, another who. And there's a third people group in our mission statement. Of course, it's the person to work of Jesus. Now we are only here because of Him. We know that He lives perfectly. We know that He died a perfect death and rose to give us a victory. But He also lived with three years worth of ministry so that we could take some of our attitudes and some of our behaviors and mimic Him. We can truly walk in Christ's likeness. And so that's our mission statement. So if you're new here, just know that everything goes back to this statement because it is stemmed from this verse, the Great Commission. We've circled a couple of things for you. These are the actions of the Great Commission. And so you may not know grammar, that's okay. I'm terrible at it as well. It's amazing to me that I write for a living. I mean, it's just terrible at English. But here we go. These are the actions of the Great Commission. You see this idea of going, right? Therefore go. Also make disciples, baptizing, teaching. So you can see just from like me circling some words that this Great Commission is action oriented. It just goes and goes and goes and goes. But there's only one main verb in all of these verbs. And it's that one little phrase to make disciples. So all of the other actions matter, right? But when you get down to the heart of what Christianity is about, when you get down to the heart of what the local church should be about, when you get down to the purpose of your life and mine, it's simply to be a disciple who makes a disciple of Jesus. And so that may sound simple, but here in East Tennessee we may have gotten it a little wrong. Here's what we have said. We've said that the Great Commission is about becoming a disciple of Jesus. And so by becoming a disciple of Jesus, we've said that the one movement that matters the most is that you have to become something. So everything heads your way. It's about your maturity or your growth or your obedience, which is only half of the equation. We call this spiritual obesity, because if one, the only thing that is coming is coming and landing in your lap, you may grow a little plump spiritually. We think it creates, you need both sets of muscles, both becoming mature and then also exercising that into someone else's life. And so how do you measure ministry? What is the cash register at the end of your day or week or life? We would say, who? Who did you invest in? Is there someone on planet Earth that got your attention, that got your prayers, that got your tears, that got your spiritual gifts flowing out of you onto others? Our job is to exercise our faith and to do that really has to come with a great commission energy. So one way you can, to measure ministry, which is a terrible way of doing it in the old days that we'd call it nickels and noses. And the reason they did that is they would measure nickels. I mean, how much money's in the bank or noses? How many people were sitting in chairs like this on a Sunday morning? If those are our only two criteria, we've robbed the world because it doesn't take a lot of energy to, quote, attract a crowd. We just need one big donor to write one big check to have that thing fulfilled. In fact, the better way of measuring ministry is to say are our people burdened, convicted by the great commission? So much so that that is their purpose in life. So there's not a rank of these three actions underneath of disciple making this going and baptizing and teaching because we know that's kind of how we do this. There's no ranking, they're all about even, but there is an order. And so this is a trick question. Do you know the order of these three kind of actions of making a disciple of going, baptizing, and teaching? Don't answer, you might get it wrong. We would actually say the order is teaching to obey before you go. And so maybe one reason we're not going is because we haven't stopped and slowed down to be able to be taught why to go. And so today, that's what we're going to do. We're going to spend the rest of our time just looking at this way to exercise our faith, to be able to see how we can make our life count by simply to go. So that's the first word of the great commission to go. That's easy. We've been doing it from day one. As soon as we took our first step, our little mom or dad or grandpa would be like, look at them, go. And so that's just what we've done. That's how we do it. That's how my grandmother said it. I don't know about yours, but just our movement is part of it. The great commission, this first 19 and part of 20, it's amazing. But it could be somewhat self-serving if we only see it outside of its context. The reason we started in 16 and all the way to 20 is for you to understand that this great commission is bracketed by the person and work of Jesus Christ alone. All authority has been given to you. And I will never leave you. I will always be with you. Because you need to know the teaching of going is that the character of God is that he's gone. And he did it first. Like this is what he's done with his life. And so it was Jesus Christ who left a heavenly home, to come somewhere else, to show up in another place first. And so the character of God is a missionary, God, because that's what he does. He sins. And we obey in that sinning, and we go together. And we've seen all throughout the Bible narrative, the biblical narrative, is that people have been obeying this command over and over and over. It's easy to go back to Genesis 12 and the call of Abraham. And what do you say? I want you to leave your home, and I want you to go to a place that you don't know. This is what it means to go. It's to know that you're not alone. But the character of God is the character of a missionary, one that goes on behalf of us. And so when we go, and when we're heralds of this good news, when we say something out loud about who God is, we just know that as an herald historically, what he or she does is simply declare the victory. He doesn't secure the victory. See the difference? And so what we do is we simply just say, by the way, this is where victory has found. And so we do it over and over and over again. And so before you go, the teaching is that the character of God is truly, he's a missionary, God. The second teaching that you need to know about this great commission is that all of these verbs and nouns, they're plural, meaning that we get to do this together. We actually call our mission strategy on mission together because of that. Actually, I said that wrong. There are single nouns in the great commission. It belongs to Jesus. Everything else is plural. Do you see the significance? Because we don't have to be the heroes of the story anymore. That belongs to God, but we also, we don't have to be alone anymore. We can look literally to the people to our left and right. We can look at our family group. We can look at our community group. We can look at our church or even what's happening in our area and we can accomplish this together. And so at Redstone Church, right? We have a missions team. We got Zach Brown here on the front row, being obedient and awesome, right? Zach Brown is our deacon of missions because we actually have these things called platforms in which we want to share with the world. So we used to have a table on our logo. That's on the very, very bottom. And you've got four platforms in the middle and then you've got a thing that looks like the world on top. All of that matters. But where I want you to point all of your attention is in the arrows. Notice that we're at flows. Sure, it may start here with you. It may start with our church, but it will always flow out until it is able to get all the way to the world because we have a burden that we should love our neighbors and we should love the nations and we need to love everything in between. And so we want our people to exercise their faith in a big, big way. And so Redstone Church, our job is to be obedient in this going, right? And this is hard for us. It's hard for us because we are by nature, sedentary people. We don't like the arrows. We like to kind of sit or we like to wait. Or if we're not sedentary, sometimes we become too insular. Meaning we kind of take a step back and we don't step in. And so this idea that God precedes us with his character but also that he really wants us to go together, just know these arrows are for all of us. Not a guy wearing a microphone or people who are on staff or people who are named Deacon. If you're filled of the Holy Spirit, it's our job to mimic this missionary call on your life. It's beautiful and it's good and it's one of the greatest adventures you'll ever go on. And so we've tried to outline, okay, so we're a star. Where do we start? We've just tried to outline this thing for you. So go all the way from the left to right. You see this kind of message bubble, right? This is called witnessing. And that comes from Acts 1-8. We spent the last six months in the book of Acts and Jesus says to his disciples, "And you are going to be my witnesses to the ends of the earth." That's just what you're gonna do. You're gonna talk and just gonna blah, blah, blah, over and over and over. This is what you do. You have good news that you herald. That's what you do. And so everyone, again, filled with the Holy Spirit, we get to, we get the privilege of being a herald, being ambassador, be a spokesperson, be a conduit of the good news that the victory has already been won in Christ Jesus. That our sins have been forgiven forever and always. We get to do that well. In the old days, we used to have this thing called big table, right? And so here's a picture of big table and everybody gasped, right? Yes, that is Chris Gill himself. Chris Gill and Christy look how baby face that are. And there as the profile of that is Courtney Savayas. Yes, that was in the dark ages, y'all, when we put filters on all of our pictures. And so this is what we call big table because this is how we started our church. We told everyone that you had literal neighbors and this is what you should do with your life. You should just look and pray and see if there's one person in your life that is far from Jesus or far from community and just invite them to a party. I mean, that was the strategy. And so we would just eat and we would fellowship. We would have a really, really good time. And so this witnessing bubble, right, is it can be scary. This idea of what should I do? I don't know what to say. Well, you just simply listen, right? You pray and just see if the Lord has a name on your heart and you just find a way to step into their lives in a real way. The second little platform there is this handshake, is this idea that we have ministry partners. And so some of you fumble over your words and so maybe you need a platform to help out. And so what we've done is we've identified very evangelistic missions in our community that are doing some of the infrastructure work for us that we can come alongside and be able to engage in a real way. And so that's what we're called regional or missional partners. So let's just say you have three hours a month to volunteer somewhere and you're like, I just don't know what to do with that kind of time. Well, you can come and we're like, well, these are the ones that we would endorse. These are people that we would, we've checked out and we would really send people. And so a cop A women's ministry is one of our ministry partners that were wonderful and good. Rise up ministries here in Johnson City is amazing. Dora Vergorge, we support them every single month, not just with money, but with other things. We have people on staff, they're at a river. The well college ministry. So they're about to ramp up the semester. They're right in the middle of a building program, all of these things, but we can come alongside. These are the ministry partners here locally that you can put your feet right in your hands and your mouth into to be able to say, I want to do that. And so we're to be a spokesman. We're to go and speak as witnesses. Sometimes we want to come and partner alongside these ministry partners. The third one is this idea of multiplication of churches. If you've been around Redstone Church, you know that we love to plant churches and then plant some more churches. And we really, really have a heart for Appalachia. And so four years ago, we started church in Elizabethan. It's going great. And another one, if the Lord's willing, in January of 2025 will be started in Hampton. And so this idea of multiplication of not just people, right? Not just community groups, but every once in a while. The movement of the spirit is that those people groups actually start to congeal together and start to minister to a unique people group. And it's beautiful and good. Our church gets behind church planting for a various number of reasons. One is because we were sent out so we know what it feels like. But we saw ourselves grow in faith. We saw ourselves mature in ways that we've never grown in our life because, I mean, the buck stopped literally with all of us and was splendid and wonderful and good. We throw a lot of money at an organization called X-29. We throw even more money at a place called planting Appalachian churches. I mean, so this is, if you want to know where your money goes as far as tithes and offerings, these are the places that they go. But we also want it to get your heart and maybe just maybe God is calling you to some of these platforms. And then lastly, is this idea that there are some that have gone out from us as missionaries. True missionaries that we defined as someone who has intentionally crossed a linguistic, a religious or a geopolitical cultural boundary for the sake of the gospel. And some of you have said, "Sign me up." And you've gone and you're doing that. There are some in here that are really wrestling with that call right now who are asking the Lord the hard questions, am I next? Is it on me and my family to go out from here, to leave us east Tennessee, to leave America and to cross a linguistic or geopolitical boundary for the soul sake of the gospel. And so, Vision 360 has said, "Yes." Next is international, I said, "Yes." Emily Card has said, "Yes." There are others who are contemplating a yes that we will be able to partnership. The reason we give you the graphic is sometimes you get lost in the words. So just know that little old redstone church, here in little old East Tennessee, as we've looked at the Great Commission and how we are to obey it, we've said can we mobilize our people to these types of things. Because we want our people to experience the go. We want you to at some point look backwards and tell people where you've gone or I went there. And the way you start that, this kind of this adventure of going, it's just to look straight down at your feet and say, "Where am I right now?" Acts chapter 17 is a beautiful little passage. And it says that God, the God of the universe, the sovereign Lord over all things says look to you and your family and says, "I have charted out the boundary lines of your life." Meaning right where you are, God has strategically placed you there. And the reason he's done that is for you to engage this call of going to someone. Neighbors, nations, hopefully everywhere in between. And so the vision for this one part of your life, of being obedient to the great commission, is this word where? Where have I gone? Where do I want to go? Where's God placed me now? Where have I gone? Where do I want to go? What's God putting on my heart? Where's God placed me now? That's the cash register of your life right now. That's how you know how to truly reconcile this portion of the great commission. When we started our church, we called it the tale of two tables, like teas, the tale of two tables. And that's because we started this thing called big table. Some of you've heard of this term already, but just indulge me. I'll just go ahead and do it. And so we'd gathered, right? We'd gathered for every Friday, we would have this meal, and we'd have people in our homes, and we would laugh, and we'd pray, and we'd get to know one another, and the spread would be amazing. There would be laughter, and then sometimes there would be prayer, and sometimes there would be cornhole. I mean, it was just, it was wonderful. And so then the kitchen needed a living room, living room needed a whole house. It just started to grow. And so when I say we did this every Friday night, like this was on Fridays, and you're like, where would you be? You're not watching football at the high school. And we were eating together. It was wonderful, it was good. And someone's like, what is this thing called? And I still remember Alison Blackburn. If you know anything about Alison, she was born in Texas, everything's big in Texas. That's just kind of how they operate down there? No judgment. It's just, you know, it's a big state. She was like, well, what if we just call it big table? All right, huh, that's good. It may get bigger. And so every time we would gather at big table, right, we would just be curious, because we were already gonna show up. It was already on our calendar. Like you couldn't like dynamite us out of showing up to these things. They were that contagious and good. But when we would show up, it would be a place of curiosity. Because we know or we were head faith that those little people, right, had spent the last six days just looking out at the world very differently and would say, I wonder who needs to come on Friday? And we just throw out an invitation. Like, hey, we're getting, we're having dinner with a bunch of friends on Friday. And we just continue to do that, you know, for almost a year. But it was called a tale of two tables because that's just one piece of the puzzle. That's the job of community is just to continue to gather and gather and gather again. The tale of two tables is that it wasn't just big table that mattered to us. It was also the Lord's table that mattered. Because we would gather not just for fellowship, but around some tables, we would gather in remembrance of Jesus and what he has done for us. And we would all be blown away by a sacrifice for us. And the vision that we had is a wonder and how glorious would it be at somebody in our city who's far from Jesus, far from community? What if they started at one table and ended up at the other? After being a stranger, actually doing the fellowship meal together, we were all placing our faith in Jesus saying, this is where we're going. Can we imagine sharing a table, the Lord's table with someone who didn't even know about the first table just one year ago? We said, that's measurable. We can look back over a year and say, who's far from Jesus a year ago? Who was estranged from the faith family, the church a year ago? Who is now coming together to identify their life, their family with King Jesus alone? The arrows matter because we can become insular, right? That's just, that's what happens when we get really, really comfortable. And a true confession of us and our church is, COVID almost killed us. And because of that kind of one experience, we as a people group, right? We were encouraged to take a step back and we did and maybe we retreated too far back. It's our job to look at the world with great hope and understanding that the Holy Spirit has you on mission together and to not be insular, but to truly see the world changed through the person and work of Jesus. So cash registers matter, right? How to zero out a quick, what's it called? Whatever the spreadsheet is called. It's important to do that. What is it? An Excel spreadsheet, whatever it was. It's important to do that, right? But one more picture, at the end of the day, at the end of the quarter, at the end of the year, right? All that's important to reconcile. But there's one more day I want you to think about, your funeral. So I was in Georgia, I grew up there, and I was in Bowden, Georgia, at a little Baptist church. And we were watching my great aunt Jean, and she passed away and was being buried that day. And I was just in the crowd and have any speaking parts or anything. And that's when a granddaughter stood up and talking about my aunt Jean, who was amazing, truly amazing. And she said, "My aunt Jean lived a great commission life." And she just said it. And she didn't mean to be profound. She was just telling the truth about her grandmother that she watched live her whole life. And it just kind of rattled off her heart and into thin air thinking it would drop. But it didn't. I held onto that one little phrase to live a life, a great commission life, so that what will be said of her might be said of me, that might be said of us. What if you, I mean, she was just a regular old woman from Georgia, right? She maybe never had any kind of prominent place or even authority or a title. And yet, that's how her granddaughter described her, is that she took this command very seriously. And so at the end of her life, this is her characteristics, is this is what she gave her life to. That's the vision I want for our lives together, that we would be on mission together. Amen. Let me pray for us. Lord, we pray, Lord, on how we count and what we count and forgive us for counting the wrong stuff. It's a Lord we pray, Lord, that we would in a real way, that we would understand where we are going. It's a Lord of pray now as we approach this table, that we know that you have welcomed us and allowed us to sit at your table. Lord, help us to glorify you in this moment. Then we ask this in your name, amen. There is something about a table that's amazing. Usually it's circular in that you're all facing in, it's usually not double decked in that everybody has kind of equal seating. There's also words that talk about this moment, like fellowship or communion. All of these words that mean same are unity, meaning we're all here together. This table, the table of remembrance and what Jesus has done for us, He gave us that position. He not just invited us to a table. He then started branding us with words like you are right with me. You are welcomed here. I love you. I will call you brother and sister, friend. And so that's what the table of remembrance does, that through the person and work of Christ Jesus. When He took a piece of bread and He broke it and said, "This is my body given for you." He gave it in order for you to gain everything. He lost it all in order for you to gain fellowship with Him and one another, just like that. And the way that we can be in His presence for all eternity is for all of our sins to be forgiven. Not just for them to be ignored, right? But totally forgiven, wiped away as white as snow. And He says, "How is that gonna happen?" And He took a glass of wine and He poured it. And He says, "This is my blood poured out for you." And He says, "This is the reason "for the forgiveness of sins." What looks red and will stain this shirt if I poured it on me, this is what will make you whiteness snow. Do you believe it? Not what you will do for your own purity, but what Jesus has done on your behalf, do you believe that He is that powerful? And then He shares this table with His disciples. And He says, "You're now my brothers." He says, "I want you to come, "and I want you to look at what I've done for you "and just be blown away that you're even here." And so we did it all so that we could have it all. We would encourage you to stand your feet. If you find yourself walking with Jesus, if you love Jesus, you're a disciple of Jesus, we want you to partake of this table, because this is a table that is open and good and beautiful. If you're struggling with not knowing where you belong, that's okay, that's all right. Just know that God wants you to join in one day by placing your faith in Him. There's a lot of us in the room. It's great to have you all. It's gonna take a while to get through. Through the lines, that's fine. Where we got time. So we don't want you to be passive. So what we've done is we've thrown a communion hymn up on the screen. So as you're waiting, we would encourage you just to enjoy this song and sing it as you'll wait for these elements. So we're gonna be serving, so again, a couple of lines going and we'll just get it through. (gentle music) ♪ With the glory of the Lord ♪ ♪ Forever be our joy ♪ ♪ May redemption be the theme of our song ♪ ♪ For by grace you have been saved ♪ ♪ And by grace we shall proclaim ♪ ♪ To the corners of the earth ♪ ♪ The Christ has come ♪ ♪ Mother nations be glad ♪ ♪ Let the people rejoice ♪ ♪ For salvation belongs to our God ♪ [MUSIC PLAYING]