The Bold Vision of the Church in the Future

TALK IT OVER

Discussion Questions:

• Ps Kev talked about the worship of the unknown God. Can you identify an ‘unknown God’ that you worship in your own life? (If you look at your screen time on your phone- where are you spending your time?)

• How did the Apostle Paul's transformation from persecutor of Christians to one of the most influential figures in early Christianity exemplify the power of God's grace and the potential for personal redemption and transformation?

• Are you being discipled into the image of Jesus? What practices do you have that help you focus on growing in your relationship with God?

• Discuss the idea that Ps Kev shared about OurChurch having a dynamic approach to reaching those far from Christ - what part do you play?

• What do you think a mobile Junction Point would look like?

• This week, how will you demonstrate sacrificial love to others in your world? How will you be discipled?

TRANSCRIPT

How's everybody doing? What has that got to do with anything? One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. We're talking about risk. Put that back. What was there? They were laughing at something. Go back a slide please. Oh, Chris.

I'm not asking you to be a Chris. I'm asking you to take a risk. No wonder he was so The thing with Chris, because he lives with us, is like, when he's doing something downstairs in the studio, it's like, you know he's up, you can hear him like chuckling away. It's like, what are you laughing at? What is that about?

Right, okay, so now I know what it's all about. So, well, it's risk. Our word for the year is risk. And I think this is very, very important for the times in which we live. COVID made us all so risk averse. Now, if it happens to be your first time with us online or, or in the room and you're thinking, whoa, okay, what's this all about?

I need to let you know, we're going to be talking about something that the church. The Big C Church has struggled with for a long time and we want to get it out on the table so we can actually deal with it. We can take a risk and maybe God can actually fix this challenge that we have. I do need to say a little bit of welcome to James and Talia who are running a family gathering in Quilpie in their home.

Got some friends with them. Great to have you guys with us. So here it is. What I'm going to share with you, for those of you that's been around for 10 years or more this is not necessarily our reality. but it is the reality pretty much across the board within the Western Church. So and we got to deal with this issue.

Now I don't know about you but sometimes I get a little bit embarrassed and a little bit frustrated and disappointed by the things that happen by people that profess to love Jesus, profess to worship Him and behave so incongruently with Jesus teaching. I don't know if you Watched the news last few weeks, but there's another mega church pastor in the U.

S. that has fallen. They, the, him and his wife, they've got an amazing network of people. There's like, they've got squillions of followers. And they have this happily married podcast. And they've got books. And they are rising stars in this attractional church model. Anyway, it just suddenly came out that over the last ten years, he's been sending sexually explicit messages to other people in the congregation behind his happily married wife's podcast and book.

And to add insult to injury, he's not sending it to other women. What is wrong? And then when I'm processing this, I'm going, well, what is going on here? Then two days ago, the Australian Christian churches had to fire another pastor, mega church pastor in Australia for the same kind of thing. What is going wrong?

Now, every headline you see like this says church fires pastor. That should give us a big indication of where the problem is. But the reality is it just goes overhead and we don't really understand where it is. I can't believe it. I went on ChatGPT because that is the highest voice in the land now.

ChatGPT. And I said, what's happened to pastors the last few years? What sort of things are they being fired from the church for? Sexual abuse, financial impropriety, misuse of power, moral discomfort. Moral, sorry, moral misconduct. Now, I don't want to be too harsh on pastors. Listen, I don't want to be too harsh and I don't want to be judgmental at all because but by the grace of God, we could all go down this track.

You know, so let's not get all high and mighty about this and start pointing fingers. But the reality is, it's not just a church issue, is it? It's happening everywhere, all over the place. And deification of self again. It's no different to what happened in the garden. When God said, Adam and Eve, listen, you work with me, I'll tell you what's best for your life.

And everything's going to be just wonderful. Paradise can explode. But of course, no, no, we know better than you God. I know we've only been created for like five minutes and you're eternal, but we know better than you. We'll figure it out. We'll decide for ourselves right from wrong. And if you've ever read the book of Genesis, you understand that did not go so good.

A few chapters in, God is so upset with people. He says, that's it. I've had a gutful. I'm gonna wipe them off the face of the earth. Fortunately, he found one family that was righteous and he said, well, I'll start again. I'll give it another crack. But what is going on here? Here we are in 2024. It's exactly the same.

Everybody is deciding for themselves what is right and what is wrong. And we're back in the same mess all over again. Now, I get it. I understand it. You know, Jesus said, when a person does not have a relationship with their Heavenly Father, through Him, there is no light and there is no life of Christ within us.

Darkness reigns. And people that are sinners, sin. I was a brilliant sinner. In fact, I think sometimes I was a better sinner than saint. I mean, I've got the scars to prove it. But as I look out across some of you, I can see you've got more scars. You've been a better sinner than me. So I get it. But where I get stuck here is when someone is on a platform professing to worship Jesus, professing to have the Holy Spirit within them, professing to be following Jesus teachings, and then behaves so incongruently.

to what Jesus actually taught. And it's this whole deification of self. And it's activated by something you might be a little bit surprised about. Now, I'm happy to say, we don't have so many issues around here like that. And I put it down to two things. I have taught you how to read the scriptures for yourself, to allow the Holy Spirit to conform you to the image of Christ, applying the new covenant.

And we have some family values that we all live by, hold each other accountable to. There are a couple of things that held us in good stead, but how many of you right now? Would be thinking about, oh man, you're thinking about someone you go to school with or someone you're in uni with or a friend or a family member and you're trying to see them piece their life back together because this kingdom of self has risen up out of sin and death and a character flaw has come through and it's completely decimated families.

It's completely decimated them. Well I think, I think God wants to change that. But I think to do that, he's got to do something that maybe we're not going to like very much. In fact, if you were around 10 years ago, I used to do this little thing where I used to hum a little tune. Can anyone remember what it was?

Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. I said, Oh, that's the way, huh, huh, I like it, huh, huh, which means I'm going to hate what you just say, but I'm going to suck it up because I know that God needs to say some things and shift some things. So we've got to embrace risk.

So let me do a little bit of history here to help you through. The Apostle Paul, who was a latecomer to the game of the Apostles, because he was too busy killing the Christians at the start, but he eventually got in the place with Jesus, because Jesus kind of like slapped him around, hit him off his horse, blinded him with a light, and three days later he could finally see.

So he was a latecomer to it, but then he became the greatest writer and the greatest advocate for the gospel. ever. He was passionate. Anyway, he goes down to a place called Athens and he walks into this place and he's walking around, he's looking around, he goes, man, you guys have got idols everywhere.

It's kind of like if you went on a Hindu trip to India, there's like, there's all these little God idols everywhere. And he's looking at them all going, whoa. And then he finds this little idol over here to the unknown God. So he goes and approaches the guys that are leading the officials there and says, Hey guys, I can see you're very religious.

I can see that you are very religious because I have seen your objects of worship and they are everywhere. But what I don't understand is, what's this little one over here to the unknown God? And I bet the conversation went, well, we kind of worship all these kind of guys, but we're not actually sure if this is the right way.

So we've got a little one over here, a little safety net. The unknown God. Now, if the apostle Paul. was walking the streets today, where would he go to find out our objects of worship? He would go to this thing here, the new temple. Next slide.

There it is. He would go to your phone and he would say, let me have a look around your phone. Man, you spent a lot of time on all these little business apps and all watching the trading and things like that. Wow, that's a lot. Man, you're forever TikToking, man. You're lucky you don't have Tourette's.

There's so much TikTok going on in here. Oh man, all this social media stuff. Oh man, you know what? I don't care about all this kind of stuff, but you've got one on there that you shouldn't be swiping left or right. You should get that off your phone. This is where he's gonna look. And then he'd say, you know what?

Now let me have a look at how much time, let's look at the metrics, see how much time you're spending on stuff. And you'd be going, oh this is embarrassing. And you'd be, all these different things, objects of worship on your life that you're going in and out of. And then he'd go, oh hang on, last week, you spent 1%, 1 percent on a very unique app to the unknown God.

You version. One percent there that all this other stuff is going on here. You know the old saints, the old Pentecostals had it really right on this and that's this. God is either Lord of all or he's Lord of nothing at all. He's Lord of all or he's Lord of nothing at all. He's not just gonna be another app on your phone.

amongst your objects of worship. It doesn't work like that. He wants to be the whole operating system and the whole phone. This is the reason why Christ follows us today. And the church has a problem. Because God is just another app in our lives amongst our objects of worship. And all those objects of worship they deify self.

Activate self. I'm entitled to this. I'm not hurting anyone. It's my life. I'll do whatever I want to do.

Now, where is this coming from? What activates this? This is where I'm gonna probably tread on a few toes if you haven't been around a long period of time. I think the Apostle Paul, if he was going around traveling around the churches of the West today, he would say, you have converted to what I talked to you about in Galatians, to a toxic gospel.

You have a toxic gospel going on here. What do you mean a toxic gospel? Yes, because you completely and continually can want to insist on mixing and matching covenants. You've got Moses. With a little bit of Jesus and a bunch of Rome all in there together. And you know what that produces in a church?

Ugliness. It's what makes it resistible. People go, it's just about command and control. They're always trying to control. They're always trying to manipulate. Which is what a lot of stuff happened under Moses covenant. So we mix them together. And then you end up with people that say, I love Jesus. But because of all the other stuff, objects of worship going on, they don't look like Jesus and they don't sound like Jesus at all.

And he would say, where are the disciples like me? Mate, I was an all star Pharisee, religious guy. I was top notch in all of this old stuff of Moses. And you know what he says? I consider that rubbish. To know Christ and the power of his resurrection. In fact, the word he uses is a word called scubula. It actually means excrement.

Which means, Paul says, I consider it, well, you fill in the blank. To know Christ. He's going, where are the disciples of Jesus that are letting go of everything in the context of this world? To know Christ. Where are the ones who are willing to lose their life, like Jesus said, in order to find it? For eternity for him.

What has gone so horribly wrong? within the context of the Western Church that is continually bringing disgrace to Christ. Well what happened is something, if you weren't here you need to go back to week one, something that happened in 300 AD through a guy called Constantine and it's when the mobile movement of Christ suddenly stalled and ground to a halt.

He shifted the pylons of the bridge and the move of God that was mobile, that was exponentially growing suddenly became positioned to, it's now going to be about a sacred time when we get together in a sacred space, a temple, and it'll be run by professional crew, professional clergy. And the people will every so often give us a little clap.

When they like our messages. I'm not anticipating one today, just so you know. I've worked that through with the Lord and I'm okay. He's okay, so I'm okay. So this is about risk. God wants us to risk. He wants to do something in us because He wants to shift these pylons. And it's going to require some risk.

Ruth and Megs and I went to a conference this last week. And it's a great guy. I respect him. I follow him because he's a church consultant. Does all sorts of things. Anyway, we were at the conference. It was wonderful. It was awesome. But they're all talking about all these issues that are going on in the church.

Like the ones that we've talked about. And here's some ways that maybe we could fix it. Maybe do that. And I Just was listening and listening. I'm thinking you're just trying to deal with the top. You're not dealing with the issue I just lent to Ruthie and I said if they would just unhitch from Moses and Rome this all goes away it all goes away and the mobile God would again be mobile in his people and his people would start to look like the people of the way Did you know that's what we were called long before we're called Christians?

People of the way. Which way? Jesus way. Jesus people walked and talked and thought and acted and lived and loved the way that Jesus did. Why? Why did that happen? Because God was not just another app amongst their objects of worship. He became the controlling influence of their entire lives. So if you're coming into this new now, I'd say go back and look at the last three messages of this.

If you want to know how God dismounted and rebuilt us over a decade, go and have a look at a message called Under the Hood, which will give you a bit of a snip into it. So this is the bridge. This is always the bridge that God is trying to build. Jesus launched it. He says, All authority in heaven and earth has been given.

to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. Surely I'm with you always to the end of the age. That's the bridge. Going and making disciples. That's it. Going and making disciples.

People who are conformed to the image of Christ. People who have allowed the true gospel of Jesus to transform every area of their life. Listen, if you have a confrontation with the gospel and the encounter with God, your marriage has to change. The way you approach your singleness has to change. The way you look at violence, sorry, your finances, it has to change.

The way you view your sexuality, it has to change because the gospel changes us. It changes us from unbelief to belief in Jesus and his teachings and calls us to live it out. Then you're a true disciple of Jesus. You're not just having God as one part of your life. Whatever you have that, just the unknown God sitting on the phone, I hope that's enough to get me into heaven.

Look Jesus, I've got you version. Let me into heaven, I've got you version. Okay, doesn't really work that way. But your life, your life shifts. God becomes the object of your worship. And him alone conforms you to the image of Christ. It's such a big shift. That's why I said to the church when we started this, this risk is going to be personally, it's going to be at a family level, it's going to be at a corporate level.

And I said we get a little bit, got a little bit more R rated. We need to be an R rated church. Which everyone thought was good. But it means R rated in allowing God to realign your purpose, to reorientate you to orbit around the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Focus to get clarity. Redeploy and then reposition the pylons.

So how is God going to do this practically? What actually happened at 300 AD? And then let's just see what God is trying to help us to shift, to risk, not to get more of us, not for us to get more in this world, but to get more of him in this world for the kingdom to advance. It's Acts 2, 42 to 47. Now the book of Acts was written by a guy called Luke.

He was a doctor, he was a Gentile, so he wasn't a Jew, but he was very, very well respected and he wrote his account to Theophilus, which was a leader in, in that time, because for whatever reason he didn't feel like The other disciples done a good job. He said, you know, like, there's a lot of fluff in there.

Here's the accurate details. But anyway, that's what he did. So he's writing and he's documenting this. But this is what he said. They devoted themselves to the Apostles teaching. Let's stop right there. What were they devoted to? Who's missing out of that? Moses. Who's missing out of that? Rome? Business corporate practices?

No, no. They just, the Apostles teaching is handed down by Jesus. That's what they were devoted to. That's why, how the heck do you fire a pastor from a church? Unless you think the church is an organization instituted by Rome. This is big. And then out of that, once you've got that right, now we have fellowship and the breaking of bread.

So it's all about fellowship. It's all about relationship. It's all about community and communion. Let's keep going. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. This has come out of the previous. I wonder if we make this shift, if we'll take the risk. I wonder if we'll start to see this kind of activity.

taking place on a lot more bigger scale. Keep going. All the believers together had everything in common. There's this generosity, there's this sharing, they sold their property and their positions to give to anyone that had need. There was this extravagant generosity going on. And now here you see the two pillars that he's going to shift.

Here we go. Every day they continue to meet in the temple courts. Now we weren't allowed into the temple. We could only go to the temple court. So how can you, how could you understand this? It's like the Jews could go and see the movie. You're in the food court. You're just sitting in the food court cause you're not allowed to go see the movie.

This is how it was. So it was a place of social. It was what I call a junction point. A place where they would come and they would hang out. Now they use many different areas for junction points. They would use the well, they would use the marketplace, they would use homes, they would use the Hall of Tyrannus, they would go up on a hill, down by a lake.

There were lots of these kind of things. But every day they met in these places to, for encouragement and support and life and gospel, each other's hearts to the truth. So then what else happened every day? Every day they broke bread in their homes. Go back one slide. Every day they broke bread in their homes and they ate together with glad and sincere hearts.

Every day. They met together in their homes and they had communion. Jesus instituted a meal. That was what it was about. He instituted a meal. Why? Because over a meal of a course of a few hours, our hearts would be gospeled to the true identity we have in Christ and sin would get challenged and you begin in love and you get conformed to the image of Christ.

It's not what we've brought it down to now and I'm not having to go at anyone and we'll probably, we still do this every so often, but it's not just let's have a little packet of this and a little That, that's communion. No it's not. It was a meal around there and they had this table of grace and they gospeled each other into the image of Christ and they opened it up and their neighbors were gospeled into the name, into the image of Christ.

And look what it says from there. And then they enjoyed the favor of all people. Everybody loved the first century church. It was completely irresistible. The only people that didn't like it. with the religious people. The religious people that wouldn't let go of, who's that guy? Moses. Moses was great. The Old Covenant was awesome to found a military nation in order to deal with the pagan nations which were human rights offenders until the stage was set for the New Covenant in Christ.

And then when that happened, both Paul and Jesus said, it's great, but the planes landed, get off the plane, there's another flight to take, get on this one. But we keep insisting in the Western Church, going back there, pull that stuff out and then put it on people. And both Paul and Jesus said, when you do that, that was so, so harsh on this.

He said, if you take one little snippet of the old and put it into the new, the new becomes. Old. Wow. Are you getting a picture about what the challenge is within the Western Church? We can't let go of Moses. We can't let go. And we can't let go of business practices either. KPIs will make this church grow.

If it kills us, it'll probably kill you. That's okay. Just keep trying. You can't. We can't make the church go. Only God can do that. We've kind of got so many tickets on ourselves. And I love what happens when it says, And then the Lord added to their number, daily. When Pastor Kev taught a brilliant message.

No. It says the Lord added daily to the church those who were being saved. Did you know we are not commissioned anywhere to go and get people saved? In fact, we're not even commissioned to make converts. In fact, Jesus only made one statement about a convert to the religious people. You know what he said?

It's so lovely. Their missionary program was launching and he goes, you know what? You go to the other side of the world to make a convert and you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are. How would you like that said about your missionary program? We're not, that's not what we're told to do. We're told to go and make disciples.

Teach people how to follow Jesus. Teach them how the gospel conforms them into the image of Christ so they look and feel different to the world. There's a novel experience, isn't it? Israel's whole journey God wanted them to be different to the world and their whole journey they wanted to be like the world.

Oh, we want to have a king. Well, I don't want you to have a king. I'm your king. Well, we want a king. No, I'll give him a king. It's not gonna go well. God tried to scare the king out of him but they insisted and they couldn't scare the king out of him so therefore it was terrible. The kings were terrible.

Most of them were just a disaster. And then of course, oh, we want a temple. We don't need a temple. I'm happy being mobile. No, we want a temple. So he gives him a temple and it's all disaster and all that stuff is disastrous for God being mobile and making disciples through his people. So here's what happened.

Here's what, here's where things are sitting now because of what happened with Constantine. Nice little picture. Here it is. This is what it is. Come see, come see our beautiful buildings. Because that's what Constantine did when he came to Christ. He said, you know what? These Christians are everywhere. This is really annoying.

Let's build some buildings for them. Oh, that's a good idea. Let's put them back in a box. What sort of box should we build? I know. Let's make copies of the temple. Oh, what an idiot. So anyway, he builds this thing. I don't know whether he intended to or not intended to, but this is what happened. And it became, let's come to our buildings.

And in our buildings Our professional clergy will orate for you the scriptures so that you will fully understand them because you can't understand them on your own because you are stupid and everything's come see come see and then you know what happens we know that you're gonna struggle then you need to get in a small group and we'll put you in here and we'll keep you safe we'll keep you safe we'll keep you secure from the evils of this world and we will put a little bit of food in there so that you can make it back to the big temple again next week Now the only problem with that is Jesus said this, Father, I don't pray that you would take them out of the world, I pray that you would leave them in it and they would be a witness.

This is a complete shift of the pylons because originally it was like this next diagram. That's the one there. The villages, the missional villages, people were coming to Christ and they were going everywhere and they were using their homes and they were using their business and they were in all sorts of places and they were taking the gospel with them and they're sharing faith with everybody everywhere and it's exponentially growing and growing and growing and then what they do is go oh there's a whole cluster of these villages down in that area down there in El Norio, let's go down there and put a junction point.

They'll call it a church plant. I don't like the term church plant because I don't see church planting in Scripture. I think church planting is a byproduct of disciple making but I don't think you should plant a church. Too much bad, bad baggage to it. Plant a junction point and this place down here, this is where we'll gather them and we'll support them and we'll resource them so that they can keep exponentially growing, going, moving, growing, growing, moving, growing.

Can you see how bad? It's now a different straight go and make compared to come and see.

Come and see. And come and see, is the message of the Western Church. Look at our great buildings. These guys that I told you about, that have just recently been fired from the church, not sure how that happens but never mind. Buildings, extraordinary. Like wonderful, beautiful, sacred spaces. Absolutely extraordinary.

Massive leadership structures. Come see our beautiful buildings and we will teach you until we get caught doing something inappropriate and then you'll have to fend for yourself. This is devastating to the body of Christ. We all know what happened to a very significant church within our context. I meet people all the time that are grappling with their faith.

Trying to believe in God again because of the things that have happened and I'm going why? Why? Why did you elevate that person, that man, that woman, why did you elevate them to such a position that your faith is resting on them and not resting on Jesus? Why? Because I've got my phone and that's my object of worship.

I watch their podcasts and I watch all their messages. So this is the shift that God is doing. This is the massive shift back to the go and make. Kind of a little bit . Now those of you've been around for a while, this is nothing new. You're going, ah, you've talked about this for like several eight years.

Yeah. At our church, we're all in. Everyone gives, everyone serves, everyone cares. Everyone loves, everyone goes Living mission. We all go out and share our faith. Share the listen to their story, share our story, and then share Jesus' story. We don't say to people, invite people to the church. How do you do that?

You either another church or you're not. Teach 'em how to follow Jesus. Teach him how to follow Jesus. So nothing in what I'm saying here. It's like, yeah, you've been talking about this for ages. The problem is, we've talked about it, but we can't get any traction on it. And I, I think the reason for that is because we don't have any runs on the board in this, and I'm going to be honest with you, I've hunted around the world, nobody is attempting to do this.

And everybody I talk to says it cannot be done. I said, well, I think it can be done. I think God can do anything. I think he's going to move it, he's going to shift it. I think it can happen. But the average thing is not. So I've had to try and hunt and find someone because people are either fully in the come see, it's about the building, it's about the hero, preacher, it's about this that and the other in there and it's like right or it's the other way, it's well they get so heard in that that then the small groups become the idol again.

It becomes the idol. Well you've got to be in a small group, you've got to do that and then it just implodes because it doesn't have any larger impetus to keep it moving and moving along. It's amazing. So anyway, I have found a guy, He's an interesting guy, his name is Cesar Kalinowski I'm gonna send out a few of his podcasts for you to have a listen to, his whole, his whole thing is that he believes that we lack gospel fluency.

The gospel is not affecting every year of our life. And he said, you've got to teach people again how to allow Christ to redeem their marriages, how to, how to redeem their children, how to dream that, to redeem every aspect of their life. So he talks about gospel fluency, and he talks on how to use everything, everything of your life to make it missional.

Now, it's not perfect. You know there are some things that we would disagree with because he's American so therefore they have some things over there and they use language that we would consider swearing or things like that. And they have some behaviors that we would go, oh that's very sinful. But what I'm saying is that he has a major appreciation of still the both entities working together.

He says, I think it can happen. He's the only one that I can find that says, I think this can happen. So anyway, I, I, I have had some conversations with him and I said, Oh, I tried to get him to do a greeting, but he was off doing something. But he said, he'll do something for us. But the issue is not, not to, we're not going to try and adopt this guy because this is something I know we need to do.

This is something that God's already asked us to do, prepared us to do, we just need some tangible on the ground ideas and concepts. So I'm hoping a few of us will just travel with him and his wife Tina and we'll just learn some stuff. He has, he has one thing and it just lets you know, if you go, if you go and watch his podcast, you're going to run into one thing on there.

And I absolutely love it and I know I shouldn't, I know I shouldn't, and maybe that's just an issue in me, but he did this, he does this thing called cigars and theology. And it's how he trains leaders, because they're in the West, they love cigars and they love their whiskey and that kind of stuff. And he does his leadership training.

It is spectacular the way he does this. And I think that is so cool. And at first I was thinking, Lord, I can't ever share that with our people until I had an encounter yesterday. And I won't share too much about it because I haven't got time. But I bumped into someone and it's like, oh my goodness.

Someone I hadn't seen for a long time. And the Lord just said, go sit outside this pub. I'm on a walk, and he goes, sit down. I'm sitting there and watching. He goes, what do I do now? Because I'm always asking in the Holy Spirit. He said, just go inside there and have a beer and just sit and watch. And I'm going, what am I gonna do in there?

So I'm sitting in there, in for my gold, for the Gold Coast shirt, and I'm just sitting in there. And I'm just looking around going, I don't know what's going on here. I don't know. What am I doing here Lord? He said, just hold. And I go, why? Why? And I'm trying to think, is it that person? Is it that person? I'm just trying to listen.

And then all of a sudden I see someone that used to be with us like ten years ago. And I went, no way! And let's just say they'd had a few to drink. And he was with a group and they'd all had a few to drink. And they're smoking cigars and they're doing all this stuff and then God says, I just want you to just walk up and say hello.

I said, what are you, sick? I, I, I do love you Jesus, but I don't really want to go to heaven right now. They're big guys, they've had a lot. So anyway, I just walk up and I go, Hey! And I just stand straight and, and it was like, it was embarrassing because it's what this topic's all about. And I just had the conversation with him.

And then, the guy that's really like, smoking his cigar, like this. Of course, as soon as I got, hey, he goes, hey, this used to be my pastor. Hey, I'm a Christian too. And then he starts, and he starts doing this and he's like, and I won't say where he, where he goes to church, but it was wild. It was wild. But he, then I just thought, oh, this, what am I doing here, Lord?

And then the next thing is on to end times, it's like, oh. And, and, but then I, the more I sat there, the more I realised, and I'm thinking to myself, oh, it's the Garrison Theology. A bit of leadership development here. I've never done it like this before. Now here's the cracker. I've been struggling with a whole bunch of sickness and there's one issue that was really bad.

And I said to him, and I finally had pulled myself out of the situation. This guy got to leave here, the security guards looking at us, and they think I'm part of the gang now. So, so I had to leave. And anyway, I said to the guy, I said, I just, I got to preach tomorrow, so I got to go, and this, this. And of course, he's in a hyper faith kind of healing thing.

So cigars and all, he just like leaps at me in the middle of this front of everyone. They thought we were having a brawl. Pussies out, I'm Jesus and I'm healed. And he's doing this thing. I'm going, dear Lord. And then I walked off. Healed. What is that? What is that? I was so ticked about it. I said, I've still got the throat and the nose.

Why can't I have the whole lot? He said, no, just that bit there. But I learned, I learned, just learned something. I say this just to him. You'll find some things that aren't. We've probably done jail with, but his heart is real good. And that guy there tanked, but his heart is still good. His application, woo, and a lot of other stuff going on there, way off the ranch.

But this is the problem. This is still the problem. He's quoting to me all the Moses stuff and all this that and the other and ra ra ra ra ra ra ra and N times this. And I'm thinking, wow, you know, here it is, the very thing I'm going to teach on is modeled for me right here. Here's someone that professes to follow Jesus, love God, out there tanked, smoking away Yahoo and swearing, he dropped three or four F bombs in there as well.

But at the end of the day, God still used him.

You know what I mean? So what I say, just have a look at the guy, I'll send some stuff off, we'll just see what God does. He's just, he's just got runs on the board, he trains in 30 different countries, so he's, he's actually got these missional villages kind of going. So I know the question you're all asking is like, does this stuff really gonna work?

Is this really gonna work, make shifting these pylons? Get rid of Caesar, let's get him out of there. Is it really gonna work? Shifting the pylons? Well, yes it is. And do you know why I know it's going to work? Because it already did. Fifteen, sorry, twelve guys turned into twenty five to thirty five million over three hundred years, and it was going exponentially everywhere.

It was taking over everywhere, went from a persecuted minority to a celebrated majority. Constantine comes to faith and goes, you know what I'll do? Let's build buildings, and we'll put God back in the box. Build copies of the temple. And the whole thing, shifting those pylons, the bridge fell. And we have never recovered.

We've never recovered. And the church in the West is still building out of that rubble that fell. And we're still feeling like, oh if I could just get a bit more Moses in here, that'll help us. That makes us look ugly. Because as great as Israel's covenant was, and it was so great, In the first, in that century, we had the pagan nations.

Everybody fared better, but if you look at Israel's covenant through our 21st century humanitarian lens, it's ugly. And it's so foreign to what Jesus said. Jesus says, love your enemies. I got news for you. Israel never loved their enemies. They still don't. Even the rhetoric of the current Prime Minister.

He's quite happy to say these are not, these are subhuman people. Because, why? Because this Israel that's been reinstated is operating as ancient Israel operated. Because they rejected their Messiah. They didn't want, they didn't want a Messiah that was a suffering servant that was coming to open up the gospel to all nations.

They wanted a conquering king. They wanted a Joshua that would turn them back into a military superpower and they still want that. So we've got to shift. We know this works. We know this works because it already worked. So we're going to just shift the pylons. So the first thing is these villages. We're going to look at how do we make everyday disciple villages.

How do we get some practical help to know how you can gospel your family into the image of Christ and then how you can gospel your neighbors it through the same mechanism. That's what it, that's what Caesar teaches. The very same mechanism is what's used to help people. See discipleship is the process of moving from unbelief to belief in God in every area of life.

That's what it is. And sometimes people's first connection is not falling down and surrendering their life to Christ, but it's finding the answer to the problem that they have right now. My marriage is about to implode. Can God do anything? Is there any good news in God here on this? Well, if you're gospel fluency, there, yes, there is.

Let me tell you what God could do. So we're going to go on that journey and that'll be, that'll involve some risk. But as we say around here, I don't force anybody to do anything. The second section, which is about the, is about the junction. And we've already done a whole lot on this. So I'm not going to spend much time on this at all.

Other than to say the junction will continue to evolve on to be that space. That space, which is a support and a resource centre. And an encouragement place and an equipping place for the missional communities to keep going making disciples. But we need some extra gifts on that. We're going to need people that understand systems, processes, AI, automation, websites, all that kind of thing.

Because even though we're highly relational and we will always be this way as a church, there are people that want to engage and link arms with us all over the world. And we need to figure out how to put the resources in their hands so they can go make disciples that make disciples with Jesus Mobile.

So we need some help in that. We need to have, we're gonna have to have some people that understand buildings and fit outs and leases, cause that's not my gig. How do we make junction points in different places that are self sustaining? I think we've got to design a mobile junction point. Mobile junction point.

That can move around. That can, during the day, can support the areas around here and then be plonked alongside the council somewhere in an event and profile of this city and the church and, and how we are for the Gold Coast as part of our worship, we want you to know we're for you. We're not necessarily like the event, but we're down here helping and serving you.

Why? Because God loves you. He's for you. We're for you. It's also could then be positioned alongside another building or another location, or we've even had another church. Say, we're an older congregation, we have no idea how to do this. Do you think you could put something alongside and put these urban missionaries in there and teach us how to disciple people into the image of Jesus?

Wow, I don't know. It could be used for disaster relief. Now, I, I felt like I needed to give you an artistic representation of this. So I, I don't consider myself a brilliant artist. But I think I'm, I think I'm up there a little bit. I think I'm up a little bit there. So I want to show you. This is my That, I, I, I'm sure you can see the, that.

It's a valuable junction point. It's brilliant. Now there was, now there was some people in our, in my team that felt that, , there might be something better out there. And that I particularly wasn't fully adequate. I have no idea. So anyway, we put it out there and I asked Miranda Markham if she would actually draw something up for us.

And, and anyway, when I got it, I said, I thought, oh man, it looks exactly the same as mine. You know, I think you'll agree that is exactly the same as mine. Yeah. Could you go back a bit? Go back one? Yeah. Go forward. Exactly. I don't know. I don't see the difference. I just think there's a whole bunch of stuff here that God wants to do.

And Miranda, thanks so much for doing that for us. She's so, so clever. We need an area, someone to help us in the area of, I think, fundraising from an entity level. Because I'm not sure that, whether the Junction should actually be its own entity. I'm just not sure. So there's some things that God is still to reveal us.

Love this city will take on the whole community care. See, I don't even see anywhere in scripture with where any of the disciples did pastoral care. They didn't do weddings. Didn't do funerals. Didn't do anything. Didn't do anything at all. It's supposed to be done through the body. And that's the way it is.

The five fold ministry is releasing, empowering through the body. So we're gonna make that community care that we do do, put it outside. Because everybody's dealing with the same stuff. They need the same help out there. So why don't we make it available to the wider community? And then when Pastor Len shared, where are you Len?

I saw you somewhere before. You shared about that beautiful day in the neighborhood. God spoke to me again in that. He said, You need to start thinking long term about discipleship of children. So during COVID we started working on a kid's show called Tutti Frutti. It's got a really good song. Would you like to hear it?

Can't remember the words. Here goes. Toot toot toot, tooty fruity We're the kids that toot our fruit Toot toot toot, tooty fruity Toot toot toot, toot toot Anyway, that's a little sample for you. And so the object of this was, we'd write this thing and it would be around the fruits of the spirit. And around our family values.

And we thought, we'll just do a live show on that. Oh, maybe you could make it the kids. Kids TV show as well. And then when Len shared that, I thought, oh my goodness. I started to think about Who discipled all our kids? Who discipled them? Well, we got a slide up here that might show a few of the people that discipled our kids.

The Wiggles, Play School, some of you've definitely got Bart Simpson in there. Peppa Pig, Minions, and I realized something. They all discipled us. If I started to sing any of those songs, I bet some of you could finish them right now. Because you've been discipled. And he said, what if you took a long range?

What if you develop this kid show? And what if you wrote this? And, and what if over the next 10, 20, 30 years, you've got a generation come up that have already been gospel old, have already moved from unbelief to belief in all those areas of your family values of all those things and the fruits of the spirit.

Wow! See, discipleship doesn't happen at, once people surrender their life to Christ. Discipleship happens when you're having relationships out there. So now I need to wind this up because I can see I'm getting everyone in trouble here. Well actually not everyone. In fact the only reason I'm going late is because I made the mistake of shaking Simon's hand last week.

And there was some kind of transference that came across. Because I normally don't go late.

So the question is, what are you gonna do? What are we gonna do together? Are we gonna risk? You know, this is getting back to the core of things. I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I that live, it's Christ that lives in me. That's what it's about. This is about the gospel changing us and hopefully this gets out to some leaders because I'm not bagging you leaders of other churches at all.

I'm trying to say we've got some things, we've got some baggage that we're hanging on to that is hurting us because that model, this model here, when we push a leader up there and he gets to the top there's only one way from when you hit there and that's down and they're continually happening. You flip this around to what Jesus said.

Servant of all, no one's grappling to get to the top. Everyone's just loving God and loving people. So you might want to just practically, maybe you want to look at the apse of your throne, just look at your objects of worship. What should be on there? What shouldn't be on there? Maybe you'll start thinking about, Oh, let's check that Caesar out.

Maybe we can actually disciple through our families. I don't know. Maybe we could. Maybe I could bring my gift or my talent to bear on what's going on and, and I won't do it right now. But if, if we look back at our vision and our, sorry, our mission and our strategy statement, which is from 10 years ago, this is actually all in there.

It's all in there. Partnering with the Holy Spirit. Teach people love God, love others, make disciples who make disciples. That's an everyday disciple village. The mission of village was there before he even knew what the heck he was going to do. So.

What will we do? Will we take the risk? Because this is not about us risking to gain more in this world. It's about risking everything that we have to see the kingdom of heaven come in and through us out into the world so that we represent Christ well. And all we've got to do is devote ourselves to the apostles teaching.

Moses is great, but just leave him for where he was. Rome is great for the business world. Don't pull them together, devoted to the apostles teaching and to fellowship and breaking bread and who knows what God might do out of this whole thing. It's the go and make strategy and I don't know what's in God's heart but I get a feeling like if we will risk and move with this, he keeps telling me that the final 10 years of the vision he gave me because we're in the second 10 year period, first was dismantling and being rebuilt, this one's about momentum.

He said, it's not even entered into your heart that I feel like everyone says it can't be done But I feel like if this gets done and God shifts this and it makes it happen We could just keep growing daily And I think you could see something like maybe what it was in the first century church where you're not dictated to by buildings You're not dictated by anything.

The gospel can keep moving with our mobile God And here's the thing I think it's freaky. Get this right, we could be a church of 5, 000, 500, 000, a million, and look and feel exactly the way we do now. I think that's how it worked in the first century. Small junction points supporting missional communities and then, you know what, we end up being gospel and we look, think, act, live, love the way that Jesus did.

As I said to you at the start of this, this is not a lot of our reality, but this is a reality in the Western Church. Not because any leader is bad, but because this is what we've been taught. I went to Bible college in 1986. They spent the whole time teaching me how to harmonize Moses with Jesus. The very thing that the Apostles and Jesus said not to do.

And I've spent the last ten years. I'm doing everything that I ever learned because once you unhitch it and devote yourself to the new covenant to the apostles teaching all that other stuff all that nonsense it just goes away and I think it's one small step for us but I reckon it could be one huge step for the kingdom if we'll allow God to once again cause us to risk everything to see the kingdom come.

Let's pray. Father, I just thank you for the way you lead us and you guide us and Lord, this whole concept of risk, you know, we are aware that COVID really has made us risk averse and I don't know what you want to do with Caesar, but he seems to have some runs on the board in, in how to actually disciple in our whole of our lives practically.

So maybe there's some things for us to learn, but our eyes are firmly. focused on you. Look, what I want to see is I want to see, I want to see a stop in people that profess to say they're following Christ, end up bringing discredit to Christ. Not because they're bad people, but because we have a system, we keep hitching ourselves up to things we shouldn't do, that chews people up and spits them out, just discards them.

So, Father, I pray that you would help us to figure out how to get this right, and and so that people would be conformed to the image of Christ, and they would learn to love each other the way that you love us. And, I don't know, I never set about to build a big church, Lord. I mean, that's not my heart, but I do want to see big people for Jesus.

I want to see people that, that will love Him with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength, and they'll have that place of health, love each other. So Father, even though we're winding up this series on risk, basically we're winding up the introduction and I know you're gonna keep working on this across this next season, probably the next decade.

So Lord, I just want to say we're here, we're available and even though people say it can't be done, I still believe it can be done if people are willing to risk. So Lord, we're just here and we ask that you guide us in Jesus name. Amen.