- How can we measure success differently for the next decade? What would it look like not to just bring people into the church, but to send them back out into the world? At Grace, we wanna follow Jesus in our whole lives, where we live, work, learn, and play. The church isn't just here to meet your needs, it's here to train and equip you a need to meet the needs of the world. Join us in September as we think big, start small, and go deep as a missional force in our communities. Well, hi, everyone. When I arrived at Grace back in 1995, I was the youngest dude in the room, we would talk about the future, and I was this young guy full of spitting vinegar ready to charge the next hill, and now I look around, and I'm the oldest in the room, and I've been here for going on 30 years, I've seen a lot of highs and lows, mostly highs over the years, and so many lives have been changed, and new ministries started, buildings built. It's just been a really incredible run, and my plan was to kinda keep it going for another decade or so. Things are going well, the key metrics are generally up into the right. Grace has made a major mark in this community, and so let's just keep doing church the way we've been doing it, then the methods that we've used over the years were tried and true, they were based on a church growth model, a technical name for it would be an attractional assimilation model of church, in other words, attract people to the church throughout reach efforts, and then assimilate them into the body through groups and serve teams, and I just say, let's keep it rolling, and if there are any major changes to be made or shifts in our approach, I'm gonna leave that to the next person in a decade or so when I start thinking about moving on to other things. Well, you may have heard the phrase, if you wanna make God laugh, tell him your plans, and I'll just say God wouldn't release me to that. I continued to be plagued in my heart by the state of the church in our country, and some of the trends I was seeing in our culture, continue to be poked and prodded with the idea that we have one job, and that's to make disciples who make more disciples, and is that actually happening, or does grace need a shift in our approach to re-prioritize that one singular focus? Now, listen, don't get me wrong, grace has produced some of the most kingdom-minded followers of Jesus that I've ever met, and so the question is more about the model. People in the community, in our society, are looking at churches like ours with growing suspicion and more than growing trust these days. And so God convinced me through some wrestling and even tears that I needed to give my next season of ministry to lead us through a significant change in the way we do church, and to position grace for effectiveness, for future generations. And so our elders and our staff leadership, we decided that we're gonna give the next 10 years or so to a new trajectory for grace church, and so we went into a year-long planning process with an amazing group called Clarity House. We met some amazing friends named Dave Rhodes and Shane Stacey, and we've already made a bunch of behind-the-scenes infrastructure kind of changes, and this month we're gonna be revealing to you some of the more forward-facing initiatives that we're building. And we're still in kind of the wet cement phase of this, so there's a lot of things that we still need lots of help with and input for going forward. But by week four of this series, I wanna share what we believe could be the 10-year vision outcome of some of these changes that we're making in the present. We're calling this long-range initiative Awake the Lake. It's a regional vision that will reach far beyond our own walls, but we believe that the time is now for the church to step up like never before. Like if the world has ever needed a strong and healthy church, it's right now. But here's the problem. In increasing number, the world has written off the church. I told you in January about the incredible rise in recent years of the nuns, the nuns, and the ums, the nuns, those who don't self-identify with any religious affiliation or denomination, they check none on the surveys where they're asked to declare their religious affiliation. The nuns are those who are exiting Christianity and who are done with the church. In the last 25 years has been called, in some circles, the great de-chirching. More people have left the church, 40 million, than joined the church through the first great awakening, second great awakening, and all of Billy Graham's crusades combined. And then there are the ums, which is those who are fond of the local church still. They may still be active members in the local church, but whose weekly habits no longer include active participation in church. By and large, the church is being written off in our culture. But here's our big idea today. That God can resurrect what has been written off. We're gonna look at a passage in Ezekiel 37 today to explore this big idea. And so you can turn there in your Bible or your device Ezekiel 37, and as you do, I just wanna outline some of the shifts that we're making at grace. Today's kind of the introductory day, and I'm gonna build, kinda build it out throughout the rest of the month. And as I do at the beginning of every series, I just wanna challenge you to commit to prioritizing church during these next four weeks of this series. If you're new, like you're here at the perfect time, and we're not asking you to commit for the rest of your life, but what if you just started with the next few weeks? I just believe God honors our efforts to put him first. And so get it on your calendar, get it on your schedule, make church a priority, and we'll see you through this whole series. But there are four major shifts that we're making at grace, and I'm just gonna summarize them. But the first is a missional reorientation. Now, don't get me wrong, being a missional church has always been our heartbeat. But our model of doing church hasn't always facilitated that missional heartbeat. And so we're shifting our model from what I said as an attractional assimilation to a missional multiplication model. In broad terms, the assimilation funnel that churches like ours generally use to define success and engagement goes something like this. First, it assumes that people are gonna come to us, that our guests will come into our doors, which is a big assumption these days, and that they'll assimilate then to the life of the church through this funnel, attend, connect, and serve. Now, I hate the word assimilate, but that aside, these things are really important. In fact, grace has done this incredibly well. So many of you are serving in major leadership roles in the church and are connected at different levels, and that should be celebrated and continued, by the way. I think maybe better than any church in the country, we've expanded the imagination for lay leadership within the walls of the church. But built into this funnel is the idea of diminishing returns. In other words, if a hundred people attend, maybe 50 will connect, maybe 25 will serve. But Jesus' great commission that kind of serves as the church's mission says go into all the world and make disciples baptizing them and teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you. And so this model holds what Dave Rhodes calls the functional great commission, which says go and make more worship attenders, baptizing them in the name of small groups and teaching them to serve a couple of times per month. And the difficult question we have to ask is is this Jesus' vision for his church? Is that what Jesus died for? One of the things that motivated our team to change is a renewed commitment to what we're calling this multiplication funnel. See, the model Jesus used didn't have diminishing returns. It had a multiplication impact. Even when he was speaking to large crowds, Jesus would say things like the kingdom is gonna start small like a mustard cedar, like a seed in the ground or like a flicker of light in a lamp stand. But it's gonna soon grow and expand and have great impact. And so his model funnel looked more like this called, trained and sent. And this is what allowed the Jesus movement to go from 12 people to 72 to 120 to 3000. Eventually it infiltrated the whole world with the gospel. Instead of assuming people need to come to us, this model assumes that we're gonna go to them. We're imagining what it will look like for us as a church to help each other kind of define with pristine clarity what it is that you're called to. And then see the church as a training center so that we can send you out into the world to live the mission that Christ has given you. It's a missional reorientation. Here's the second shift. It's changing the scorecard of success, quote unquote, success. So along with most churches, we have measured progress in success by tracking the two easiest things to track, which are attendance and income. With both of these things, we can see growth or decline over time. They provide an easy kind of snapshot of where we're at. This is not a wrong thing to do. But when you look at Jesus approach, he was dead set on training up his disciples. And so we've resented ourselves on this truth that our job is not to grow a remarkable church. Our job is to grow remarkable people. Grace Church is first and foremost a discipleship training center. We are a people development organization. And so we've worked very hard to create what we're calling our dream disciple roles. I'll be talking much more about this in the coming weeks. But the summary is that we have four roles that we would love every believer at Grace to be living out in their real lives. Not just living out, but actually growing and developing in. We believe that these are the kinds of disciples who are gonna reach our region with the hope of Christ. We wanna create training materials and tools and assessments to help us see how we're doing in these areas. But these roles are a compassionate storyteller, savvy follower, intentional friend and embedded influencer. We wanna help the people of Grace to improve on these areas. And this is gonna be our new key scorecard of success going forward. The third shift means changing the finish line for discipleship. So we recognize that we've established some great finish lines for discipleship, but most of them end inside the walls of the church. High capacity volunteer staff and life group leaders and team leaders. And again, these roles are still mission critical to our church going forward. Those of you who serve in them are amazing heroes. But we also realize that we needed an expanded imagination around the expectation of discipleship outside our walls. I'll give you an example. I had a woman come up to me after a service not long ago who said that she felt so guilty because she had to step out of her volunteer role at the church for a time. And I said, why, what's going on? She said, well, she's taking care of her aging parents in a nursing home on Sundays. But she's actually started a small group there with the people to help them have access to church. And I thought, here's she's feeling guilty about stepping out of our volunteer role. And I thought shame on us for not figuring out how to count that. That kind of discipleship is just as important as anything that we're doing inside these walls. But we haven't had the imagination to count it. In fact, we believe that one of our key initiatives going forward is to help every person at Grace to discover your God-given calling. How has God wired you? And how has God positioned you to make more disciples? There are gifts that only you have. There are people that only you can reach. There are assignments that only you can complete. And part of our job as a church is to help you figure that out. The quote that so shook me recently was that if you don't discover who God called you to be, you'll settle for what people pay you to be. So how can Grace Church be a resource for you where you live and work and learn and play? And finally, the fourth shift is creating an all play everyday mission statement. We want the mission of our church to be challenging but accessible. We certainly don't want it to feel like it's something that our staff and leaders will do while everyone else just kind of cheers us on. And so Grace's new mission statement is this. Following Jesus as we live out God's story every day, everywhere, the story language that we're using here came from a deep dive that we did into our local predicament here in the Erie area. We spent a lot of time and discussion around what are the key issues that the Erie region is facing and then what kind of disciples do we need to produce to address those issues? And we came up with issues like, the Erie is fractured and then it's change resistant and it's insecure, ironically so. And we summarize these predicaments as just broken narratives that our community is filled with broken narratives. It's also true of our whole society, confusion around identity and purpose. And they're leading people to a lesser story. And so we determined that this new missional reorientation in a new era of our history requires some new language. Did you know that during the 40 days after the resurrection Jesus started, I'm sorry, he stated that the great commission in five different ways to five different audiences, there's a value in changing up language from time to time. And so we're saying our all play everyday mission is, if we have any shot at redeeming these broken narratives, it's that the people of Grace would follow Jesus as we live out God's story every day, everywhere. Which means when you're at the store, when you're at the gym, when you're at work, when you're with your family, that you're not just living out your story, you're living out God's story. And you're following Jesus as he leads and guides you to be the light of his kingdom. Which means you begin to see through God's eyes and then feel with God's heart and then speak as God's spokesman. As the statement says, every day, everywhere. So those are four of our major shifts that we're making. And I'm gonna, again, talk in more detail as we go through the series. But we're trying to reach a culture that's largely written off the church. And so we come to Ezekiel 37 and we come back to our big idea which says that God can resurrect what has been written off. The children of Israel were in a world of hurt, they were lost, they were hopeless, they were helpless, they were in exile in Babylon, far away from home, far away from loved ones, many of them separated from their families. Exile would be like living your worst day over and over and over again for 70 years. The people of God were a shell of their former selves. All their dreams seemed evaporated. It had come about as a result of their disobedience. God said, "Everything I'm giving you is a gift, "your land, your identity, your freedom. "I gave it all to you. "But if you turn away from me, you'll lose everything." And they did turn away from him and they did lose everything. And so they were in exile in Babylon. And Ezekiel was a prophet. And he had a prophesied about all of these things before they actually happened. And yet no one believed him until they happened. And so Ezekiel speaks these words in chapter 37 to a people with no identity and no hope for their future. Miracles for them no longer seemed like a possibility. And so in the midst of this situation, Ezekiel says that he was carried off by the Spirit of God to a valley. And he had a vision from God. Ezekiel 37 one says, "The hand of the Lord was upon me "and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord. "And he set me down in the middle of a valley. "It was full of bones. "And he led me around among them. "And behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley. "And behold, they were very dry." So I want to frame this passage today as the path of hope when you feel written off. The first thing I want you to see is that the path forward starts with a realistic picture of what is. In this vision, Ezekiel witnessed a valley and the floor of the valley is covered with bones. Once the sight of a great battle. In fact, down in verse 11, we get some context about what these bones are all about. And verse 11, he says, "These bones are the whole house "of Israel. "Behold, they say our bones are dried up "and our hope is lost and we are indeed cut off." And so just imagine yourself in the scene. You're in this valley with not dead bodies, not skeletons, just bones everywhere. And not just bones, but dry bones. Which means these bones have been dead for a long, long time. These aren't fresh remains. This is like CSI found them and is being very careful that they don't disintegrate when they touch them. Long gone. It's a picture of how Israel is seeing themselves in this moment. Even though they were technically still a nation, it was only a matter of time. Their identity was dead. And more than that, their hope was long dead. Oh, they had rich memories of the past. They remembered Abraham's promise of a great nation that somehow the salvation of the whole world was coming through them. But those were the glory days. And so this phrase in verse 11 where it says that we are indeed cut off. This is the language of a covenant curse. It's a formal curse language. Because when God brought them together at Sinai, he said, "If you obey my covenant, "if you obey my laws, I'll bless you." But if you disobey, you're gonna be cut off. And so they felt cut off from God, cut off from their home, cut off from their heritage, cut off from the miraculous acts of the past, cut off from their privilege and power, cut off from their identity and the rights that come with that, cut off from the way things used to be. And I ask you today, have you ever felt cut off from God? Like I hear it all the time from people. God just doesn't love me anymore. God has forgotten me. I'm just a waste of a life. This whole that I've created for myself is too deep for God to ever get me out. God could never love me. He could never forgive me. Some of you feel cut off from the love and the redemption of God. The children of Israel thought that they were as good as dead because they were in exile. And we can relate because we're a part of a bigger exile that's going on. It's part of this grand story that you and I find ourselves in. All the way back in Genesis in the Garden of Eden, we're told that when Adam and Eve sinned, as a result that the human race was put in a kind of exile from the garden, an exile from the tree of life, an exile from the goodness that God had in mind for humanity. In other words, the Bible says we were not meant for sin. We were not meant for death. Both are unnatural to us. We're not meant to have a wedge between us and God. And so we're exiles from our true home, our true identity, our true purpose. We weren't meant to be under the curse of sin. We weren't meant to die. And so the whole human race finds ourselves in exile. I mentioned earlier about our local predicament here in Erie, the broken narratives that are all around us, the fracturing, the resistance to progress, the insecurity. We talked about the rise of the nuns and the nuns. And we look around and we see a nation adrift. People fighting for their political side like it's an act of worship to the party. People terribly confuse around issues of identity. Professionals confused about their life's purpose and how to make an impact on this world. All the while, the church seems to be losing ground. People are being discipled more by scrolling their feeds than they are by the gospel of Jesus. The church's methodologies are starting to work against us instead of for us. And it feels like dry bones. And just like the dry bones in the valley remind Ezekiel of his brutal present reality. And he had to acknowledge it. We too must take an honest searching inventory of our present state. Embrace a realistic picture of what is. You must too. Facts are your friends. Take an honest assessment of where there are dead bones rattling around in your own life. This is the starting place of renewal. This is the beginning of resurrection. Because we're only in verse two. The story doesn't end here. So God asks Ezekiel this probing question in verse three. He says, "Son of man, can these bones live?" We wonder that sometimes, don't we? This question is all about vision. God is saying, "What do you see? "Only the present circumstances "or do you see the possibility of a future? "Do you see a miracle? "Will you see of people who are lost, "caused or written offered? "Do you see a people with a hope for the future?" Look what Ezekiel says. He says, "And I answer, oh Lord God, you know." And I'm not sure if this was a profound statement of faith in God's sovereignty or just a cop out. It's like, you know God. But the conversation doesn't end there because God's question to him was more like an invitation. God is inviting him to speak to the dry bones. He invites him to speak to the current predicament, to speak to the sad picture of what is, to speak to the divisiveness, to speak to the resistance to change, to speak to the insecurity, words of prophecy and vision, words of hope over the whole valley, words are powerful. In fact, Abraham Herschel in his commentary on Genesis 1 and 2, when he's talking about the creation narrative, he says, "Words create worlds." Jesus is described in John's gospel as the word made flesh. Moses, when he was painting a picture of the Promised Land, he borrowed the language of Israel's past to help them envision their future. He said this Promised Land is a good and plentiful land. He's borrowing this description of the Garden of Eden. Words are powerful. In sports, you've probably heard of this thing called a home field advantage or a home court advantage. Do you know why it's an advantage? Do you know why a home team wins more in sports than a way team wins? It's because the majority of the crowd is blessing you with their words instead of cursing you. Words have an impact and so Ezekiel begins to speak to the valley, that which was written off to prophesy the word of the Lord. And here's the second part of the path to hope. The path forward maintains a resolute faith in what God can do. I want you to look at verse four. It says, "Then God said to me, 'Prophesy over these bones and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, behold, I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath into you. And you shall live and you shall know that I am the Lord. And so I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied there was a sound and behold a rattling. And the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked and behold, there was sinews on them and flesh had come upon them and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. And then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath, prophesy son of man and say to the breath. Thus says the Lord, come from the forewinds, O breath and breathe on these slain that they may live and so I prophesied as he commanded me. And the breath came into them and they lived and they stood on their feet and exceedingly great army. Therefore prophesy and say to them, Thus says the Lord God, behold I will open your graves and raise you up from your graves, all my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel and you shall know that I am the Lord when I open your graves and I raise you up from your graves, all my people." This is an incredible passage. And we just see in Ezekiel's vision, we begin to see these bodies being put back together. The muscles and the joints and the ligaments and the skin and the flesh. And at that point they're still just physical bodies but there's this one word that's used over and over again 10 times in these 14 verses by far the most repeated word which often gives us clues into the interpretation of a text. It's a rare word actually in the original language. You know what the word is? The word is breath, breathe. Why did God give, what did he give to the Israelites? He gave his own breath. He gave his own spirit. And again, imagine the scene. There's a rattling in the graveyard and all of a sudden God's breath is blowing through the valley and what was once a graveyard has now been transformed into a vast living army standing on their feet. And when the original audience heard this, they would have heard it as re-genesis. They would have heard it as a throwback to the creation account in Genesis 1. The dust is being re-animated. They're picturing God kneeling next to a lump of clay and breathing life into his nostrils. God breathes and dead things come back to life. It's a promise of the return from exile. God's showing his people that his dream is not over yet. This is God saying through Ezekiel right now it feels like you're dead as a nation. But I'm gonna bring you back. I'm gonna give you back your hope. And so to them it was a look back at this re-genesis and God fulfilling his promise. But for us, because of where we stand in history, this passage doesn't just point us to Genesis in creation. It points us to Jesus. John 20 tells us of another scene where it looked like death had won the day. The disciples were gathered together in the upper room on Sunday night, three days after they watched Jesus die on the cross. And they had lost all hope. And right there he appeared physically in the room. You remember the scene? You remember what he did? He said, "As the Father sent me so I'm sending you." And then remember what he did? He breathed on them. And he said, "Receive the Holy Spirit." What's that about? It's about Ezekiel. Everything seems dead. Hope seems lost. And Jesus Christ says, "I'm leading the ultimate return from exile. I'm solving your greatest problem. I'm granting to you the escape from death itself. Do you believe me?" Because if you believe in me, I will breathe my Holy Spirit into you. And you will have life. And someday you too will be raised from the dead just like I have been. This is where we place our resolute faith in what God can do. It's because of what Jesus has already done. That same life-giving reanimating spirit that was breathed into a valley of dry bones until they rattled around and came back to life. And that same spirit that was breathed into a room full of disciples whose dream for the future had died and brought them back to the life of hope and courage and boldness of faith. That same spirit has been breathed into you and into me as well. And it's available to bring everything that's dead back to life. This hope gives us the unwavering confidence that God wins. And so this passage points us to this truth. That there was an even greater return from exile coming. That there's even a greater escape from death that needs to happen and it did happen. Jesus made a way for anything dead or dying to be resurrected. Business guru Jim Collins wrote a best-selling book called Good to Great, some of you've probably read it. And he looked at some companies that displayed unusual excellence and they identified the characteristics in those companies and what they had in common and tried to draw some conclusions. Well, he illustrates one of these things in an interview with Admiral Jim Stockdale. Admiral Stockdale had been the highest-ranking naval prisoner, the prisoner of war at the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War. And during his time and captivity in Vietnam, he persevered amid incredible torture under which many of the other prisoners had died. And after his release, Stockdale was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Collins asked Admiral Stockdale in his interview how he'd made it through such a devastating circumstance. Stockdale said part of what allowed him to survive was that he never gave up believing that in the end, he and his friends would prevail. And not only prevail, but that this would be the defining moment of his life. Collins then asked the follow-up question, who didn't survive? And so Stockdale gave this surprising answer. He said, you know who didn't survive? The optimists. And Collins said, what do you mean? The optimist didn't survive. I thought you just said that the way you survived was by having this deep belief and that in the end, we would win. And Stockdale replied, I did, but don't ever confuse a deep belief that you will win with naive optimism. The optimists at the Hennai Hilton thought that they would be out by Christmas and then Christmas would come and go with no release. And then they thought, well, we're gonna be out by Easter and then Easter would come and go with no release. And eventually the optimists gave up into spare. They died of a broken heart. Stockdale concluded this way. He said, you have to be able to look at the brutal facts while having a deep belief that in the end, you will win. Collins called this truth the Stockdale Paradox. He saw it in all these great companies and great leaders. We also see it as a marker of our faith in Jesus. Is your faith built on naive optimism? Or is it built on a deep belief that what God can do and what God has already done is your salvation? So you see the path of hope when you feel written off, it starts with a realistic picture of what is. It maintains a resolute faith in what God can do. And here's the third. The path forward involves finding yourself in God's story. Look at verse 14. God says, And I will put my spirit within you and you shall live. And I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I am the Lord, that I have spoken, that I will do it declares the Lord. So what we see here that these three basic things that we receive from God, for those living in exile, they include his spirit, life itself and our place. Do you see that? He says, I'll put my spirit in you and you shall live and I will place you in the land. Do you know how hopeful this was for the children of God? You know how hopeful this is to us. We owe everything to him. Everything, which means that you will struggle to ever find your individual identity or purpose until you locate your story in the larger story that God is writing. There are a lot of lesser stories floating around out there that people adopt, like the fear story. A lot of people live their life like they basically say, I'm screwed up and the world screwed up and we're on a sinking ship. There's also a kind of a therapeutic story that people live that says I'm screwed up right now, but I'm good on the inside and I just need to find myself and it'll all work out. There's also a pleasure story that a lot of people live that just says, I need to have all the fun I can and avoid all the bad stuff I can because this is all there is. But the story of God is a more beautiful story. It says you were created, that you were handcrafted as part of God's beautiful dream, but that beauty was marred and stained by sin and praise God, Jesus rescued us from that sin and not only gave us a reclaimed identity as a child of God, he gave us a mission. He gave us a purpose to join God in this work toward the restoration of all things as God recreates his original dream where all that was broken will be restored for all eternity. You see, when you find your story in that story, all of a sudden the two things that everyone is looking for become clear, your identity is settled and you can find your life's purpose. If you're in one of our physical locations today in just a moment, we're gonna walk you through a very simple tool that we've created to help you remember the five key movements of this story that I just shared with you. And so we said, God's given us three things, his spirit, life itself, and the place that he has for us. And in this section of scripture, he concludes with these three more things. These are the three things we must know, that he is the Lord, that he has spoken and that he will do it. Now, we can obviously draw personal application from a text like this and we should. I pray that as we've been going along that you've started a conversation with God asking things like, what has been written off in your life that God needs to resurrect? But I also wanna remind you today, Grace Church, that although this world has written off the church, we stand resolutely in the hope of resurrection. Now, I wanna be clear, Grace Church isn't dead or dying, we're not dry bones, we are alive and well, but we are also a people in exile, longing for redemption. And so I just wanna ask you this week, if you don't already pray for our church, would you pray for this month? Would you pray for this season of change we're in? Would you pray that God would reveal himself in a very special way as we walk through this missional reorientation together? I love you guys.
