Antioch, Part 1

6 · Second theological observation: the harvest in Antioch was not driven by human resources or strength but by God's power

Second observation here: gospel work in the city of Antioch is driven not by their power, but by God's power. Similarly, gospel work here is not going to be driven by our power, but God's power. Now, what you expect is, if you total up all the resources and the energy and the excitement and the hype, of these people? It's not going to be real high.

Your expectations are not going to be real high. Look, these are refugees. These aren't people with, you know, successful lives and jobs, and they're just kind of rolling in, and they, you know, they seem powerful and influential. No, these are a bunch of refugees fleeing from their hometown. And therefore, what you expect to read is, "And maybe a person got saved," you know.

If you total up their resources, their power, their energy, that's what you expect. But instead, you read this: "The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord." Now, notice that. That is absolutely crucial. Luke, the writer here, is helping us understand why what happens in Antioch happens in Antioch. This group of believers battered, beat-up refugees could do little.

They were weak, but God was with them. That changes the equation. Their little power and weakness plus God's power and strength results in a gospel harvest.

7 · Applies the divine-power principle: the church must not set expectations based on totaling up human resources post-pandemic

And one of the things I think— one of the mistakes I think we can make, church, coming out of this kind of the worst of the pandemic, by God's grace, is that we can begin to think, "Well, what can we do? Let's total up, you know, his gifts and your gifts plus my gifts and their gifts." And it's like, "Well, what can we put together?

I guess that, you know, maybe we can do that." And our expectations are going to be what? They're going to be very low. Antioch shows us that we shouldn't set our expectations based on what we can do, but based on what God can do. Amen? That's what drives us.

8 · Third observation: outward mission is not an optional add-on for especially zealous churches like Antioch—it is essential to New Testament church health

All right, and third observation here I want to make is that— and this is more kind of backing up and looking at the New Testament— we're not meant to see that Antioch is some kind of weird aberration church. That, like, well, I guess the guys in Antioch were real fired up about evangelism, so good for them, and everybody else in the New Testament just does, like, prayer meetings, you know, and just hangs out and has pizza. Well, that's not what we're meant to see. In fact, what we're meant to see is that the health of the New Testament church is bound up not just in an upward, inward way, but in an outward way. I read this book a number of years ago by Ray Ortlund Sr.

It's out of print. You can find it on Amazon if you're willing to pay, like, a bunch of money for, like, a tiny book, but it's worth it because in it— it's called "Three Priorities of a Local Church." And in it, Ray Ortlund just lays out Hey, look, the trajectory of God's people is always 3 directions of ministry: upward to God, inward to one another, and outward to the world. And I remember reading that initially and thinking, like, well, duh. Why did I buy this book? It seems super obvious.

Upward, inward, outward. Yeah, yeah, sure, great, whatever. But he goes through and he breaks down that one of the things that happens is often for us as Christians, we only pick 2 of the 3, right? And for many of us, I think, especially in our kind of church tradition, we often pick upward and inward, meaning we, like, care about God, we care about praise, we care about worship, we care about prayer, and then maybe we even care about theology, and then we care about one another, care about caring for one another. But the third one often becomes like, well, if we have enough energy at the end of the month, we'll get to that.

Okay? I got to go to a prayer meeting, you know. I got to do this. You know, if we have some leftover money in the budget, sure, we'll do some outreach.

9 · Provides biblical grounding for the outward-mission claim by citing the Great Commission (Matthew 28) and Acts 1

And yet, Ray Ortlund shows that this is threaded throughout the Bible. This is non-optional. A couple examples. Matthew 28, Jesus says, "Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations." Right? That's an outward trajectory mission. He says something similar in Acts 1 where he says, "You will be my witnesses in Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth," meaning Jesus did not commission his church just to sit there and hang tight and wait for him to come back.

He commissioned them to go and tell others.

10 · Provides narrative exposition from Mark 5 showing that Jesus not only commissions mission corporately but models it individually

You see this beautifully in Mark chapter 5, one of my favorite Bible stories ever, where Jesus heals a demoniac, this Gentile demoniac. He crosses the sea to look for him. He finds him. The demoniac encounters Jesus.

Jesus heals him, restores him. And it says the demoniac, all he wants to do is to go with Jesus, to be with Jesus. And Jesus tells him this: "No." Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.

11 · Makes the sharp theological claim that outward mission is so essential that a church without it is not, by biblical definition, a church

Brothers and sisters, this is not optional. In the Christian life and in our church life, it is not a nice thing to have, to have some outward-oriented mission. It is essential to what it means to be a church. And if we are not thinking of those beyond our fellowship, thinking of those beyond those currently here, if we are not doing the work of Jesus, commissioned by Jesus, if we're not doing that, then I think biblically we're not by definition a church. Because the church is called to the work of Jesus and the commission of Jesus.

And in fact, it's only when you see the church living these things out that the church is healthy in other areas, right?

12 · Introduces the ANTIOCH acronym framework that will structure the three-week series

Now, for me, you got to go with me on this. I am not a real big, like, alliteration pastor where I like everything rhymes, everything has a cool thing, and like— Hope, it's like helping others, people everywhere, you know, like stuff like that. We just don't do a lot of that at the church, all right? But I'm trying to figure out how to encapsulate this, so you have to bear with me.

I'm not good at this, but this is the acronym, all right? We're going to build an Antioch church, and this is what it means. This is what we're going to walk through over the next few weeks. We're doing the first two today. The first two are advancing.

To be an Antioch church means advancing the gospel beyond yourself. Second, Neighboring, neighboring meaning being a church deeply rooted in one place and one people and caring about that community. Third, training, it's a church that trains leaders of all kinds at all levels. Next, interdependent, a church working with and linked with other churches. Next, one-to-one church, meaning a church where ministry happens on the one-to-one level, not just somebody on a platform, not just somebody, you know, with a big megaphone, but But one-to-one ministry.

And then last, a Christ-centered church, a church utterly focused on the singular mission of exalting Christ and being marked and known by that mission. And last, a hopeful church, a church filled with gospel hope despite difficulty and danger even, as we'll see. So we're focusing on the first two today, advancing and neighboring.

13 · Provides extended exposition of Acts 13:1-3 and the narrative arc from Acts 11 to 13, showing how Antioch received Barnabas and Saul, grew strong under their leadership, and then—remarkably—sent them out rather than keeping them

Now, advancing. I want to skip ahead, so turn to Acts 13 with me. We read the beginning of the story. We're going to read the end of the story, Acts 13. And what you're going to see between Acts 11 and 13, here's what happens. There's no named leaders in the Antioch church. There's no pastors or elders.

Remember, these are just refugees. These are just people. And so they send Barnabas from Jerusalem down to help take leadership of the church in Antioch. And he sees, "Man, there's more work than I can do." So he goes to Tarsus, and he goes and gets a guy by the name of Paul, or Saul. Now, Paul— often when we read about Paul the Apostle in our Bible, we think, we read it like this in our heads, "Paul the Apostle," right?

'Cause Paul's the church planter, the missionary, the writer of half the New Testament, Paul. But at this point, that ain't him. He's Saul from Tarsus, a good faithful brother. And so Barnabas, though, knows him, he sees something in him, and he goes and gets him, and Barnabas recruits him, and together the two of them help lead the church, and they build the church up, and you begin to see this church growing in strength. What do you do when you see that, right?

You got two gifted leaders and you see the church being built up. And if I'm that church, I'm thinking, our next move, man, is we gotta sign Paul and Barnabas to long-term multi-season contracts, right? We gotta lock these guys down. We gotta get them to sign, commit. Like, we're gonna keep doing this for 30 years, right?

Right, this is what's gonna happen. And yet, in Acts 13, You see the opposite. Acts 13, verse 1, "Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen, a lifelong friend of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.' Then after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them." them off. This is remarkable.

Instead of just keeping Paul and Barnabas to themselves, the church leaders, they pray and then send them out to the work of the gospel, to the work of church planting and missions beyond themselves. This is a New Testament and first-century changing moment. Kevin DeYoung comments and says this: this isn't the first time the gospel is going to be preached to unbelievers, in Acts. Neither is it the first gospel work Paul or Barnabas will do. But it is the first time we see a church intentionally sending out Christian workers with a mission to another location, right?

Before this, what happens is that God basically sovereignly is advancing, pushing the church forward, even though the church isn't going forward on its own, right? Paul— I mean, God pushes these people out of Jerusalem. He teleports Philip to— in front of this Ethiopian eunuch, right? God is doing these things, and this is the first time in Acts that we see a church praying and planning and sending. First time.

Remarkable. Remarkable. Up until this moment, that had not happened, and after this moment, this becomes the predominant pattern of the New Testament and of the global church. The other thing you see here is up until this moment, Paul and Barnabas had not been specifically identified and deployed by a church in this way, right? You see, Barnabas is a good faithful brother.

They— the guys in Jerusalem send Barnabas, but Barnabas is not like Barnabas, right? He's just like, hey, who can we send? I guess Barnabas is super encouraging. We should send Barnabas. I don't know who, but he seems encouraging, right?

And they see a gift in Barnabas for building up the the church. And then, again, you don't see Paul the apostle, you see Saul from Tarsus. And yet, as Paul does work, they see a grace gifting on his life to preach the gospel, to bring others to Christ, to build up the church. And in fact, notice that it says that they're just to set them apart for the work that they've been called to. Now, if I'm the guys in Antioch, I'm like, you know what, Paul and Barnabas, I know what this word of the Lord means.

It means, "You stay right here, brothers. You're set apart to this work right here, you know. Let's send Manaen, the friend of Herod," which is sketchy. "Let's send that guy out, right? I don't know what that relationship was like, but let's send that guy.

You guys stay here." And yet that team of leaders prays and thinks and says, "What if these gifts are meant to be used beyond us?" First time that's happened in the New Testament.

14 · Personal story analogy contrasting dead-end streets (cul-de-sacs) with intersections

Look, I grew up on a dead-end street, and I don't mean that about, like, I mean that like geographically, not like vocationally or culturally, right? Okay, I'm not making a comment about my neighbors in that neighborhood. They were very nice, even though one of the neighbors, literally the sign when you get into the neighborhood, it was like stop and had the name of the street and then had a dead end pointing right to like the garage of the house. On the corner, so it did feel personal for them.

But growing up in that little kind of dead-end street, it was basically like a big cul-de-sac, and there was enough room that it didn't feel too much like a dead-end, right? You could, if you're 10, you could ride your bike up the hill, you know, there's some houses, you could ride your bike down the hill, and then it circles. You go back up the hill, you go down the hill. It felt like, yeah, it felt like we could go places. It felt like we could do things.

But once you were in that little cul-de-sac, you weren't getting out except going back the way you came. And here's what happens for us as Christians and for us as churches. Too often Christians and churches become dead-end Christians and churches, meaning the gospel arrives with them, but it goes nowhere from them. The gospel just stops. The gospel just drives around in a cul-de-sac over and over.

And what we see in Antioch is that the pattern of life for the Christian and for the church is that we're meant to be intersections. We're meant to go from here to there, from there to there, from there to there, right? In the neighborhood I live now, it's like every street goes somewhere. It goes up to the trails of the mountain, it goes down to I-10, it goes over to the valley, it goes— you just start driving a road, you get somewhere. That's what we're meant to be.

That's the model of New Testament ministry.

15 · Theological claim grounding the Antioch sending pattern in the pattern of Jesus

Here's what I'm trying to say. Antioch churches are churches that intentionally and sacrificially advance advance the mission. This is the pattern. This is what we are meant to do.

And as we'll see, this is the pattern of Jesus. Look, here's how we know that this really is supposed to be a normal part of church culture, because this is what Jesus has done for us. It's not as though, like, "Man, I wonder— we've never seen anything like this before." No, this is the pattern of Jesus, right? As we were singing last week, that old song that I'd even forgotten about, he came from heaven to earth to show us the way, from earth to the cross, my debt to pay, right? This is a move, a Savior in motion.

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says, I've come to seek and save the lost, right? That means going from here to there, from there to there, right? That is the motion of Jesus. Trajectory of Jesus. And we know that Jesus is doing this.

We know he continues to do this because we are sitting saved in this room. Apart from the Savior continuing to seek and save the lost, we would not be here, brothers and sisters.

This is what Jesus has done for us. So for the church in Antioch, it wasn't a strange, foreign thing to take some of their best friends and send them far away, because that's what God had done with his Son. That's what they themselves had experienced.

16 · Extended personal testimony recounting the church's legacy of sending families (Ramos, Walsh, Kim) and resulting in gospel fruit (over 2,000 people added through church plants)

So the pattern of Jesus— this is not just the pattern of Jesus, church. This is our legacy as a church. Look, I grew up in this church as a kid in the church, and one of the— I loved a lot of things about our church. I loved that one time we turned this whole thing into an ancient marketplace for VBS, which was amazing. You had to crawl through a little hole halfway through, and it was awesome.

I love the worship songs we sang growing up. I love that every once in a while we'd get so hyped up that people would just start dancing around the auditorium, which was amazing. So you've never seen, like, some 50-year-old dad that you've never— you know, you think, like, that guy's dancing around. He must be real excited about something. I love that.

Excited about Jesus. One thing I didn't like was this. It seemed like every few years our family said goodbye to our best friends. I grew up in the backyard of the Ramos family. It was a great family, lived near us.

We'd go hang out at their house all the time. We'd play soccer in the backyard. I could probably still tell you which bushes were the goals in their backyard if they're still there. And then one day my parents took me aside and told me that they were going to be moving to Ciudad Juárez because their dad was going to be a pastor there. I remember thinking, "Why?" They could just stay here.

But then over the years, I remember spending my teen years, early teen years, with the Walsh family. They had a pool, so they were super popular. And we didn't have a pool. And so, like, they had a pool, and we're like, everybody's at their house. And so we would hang out in their house.

And then a few years later, they were called to move to Canada for gospel work. And I'm like, well, Wadis is at least close. Why are you guys going to Canada? That means, like, I don't even know where that is. It's just up.

You just go up forever till the North Pole, and there's Canada. That's what my understanding of geography was at the time. And why are we doing this, right? I remember every Christmas— the day before Christmas Eve is a made-up holiday in our family called Christmas Adam, so named by my dad, who's very, very proud of this made-up holiday. And every Christmas Adam, we would spend in East Bend with our friends the Kims.

Dr. Kim was a Texas Tech doctor who supervised residents. And we'd go over there and we'd go from their house down to Eastridge and look at the lights. And then one day they told us that they were going to move to Dallas to become part of a church plant. And we said goodbye.

And I didn't understand it at the time, but now I do. They and many others like them were sent out by our church to intentionally and sacrificially advance the gospel beyond us. And church, our sacrifices have resulted in a harvest of gospel fruit over the last 35, 40 years. I don't know if you're aware of this. Listen, my math is real sketchy.

I'm not a great math guy. I took at UTEP, I took math for social sciences because that's a math created for liberal arts majors that can't pass any other math and they have to pass a math by somebody. So they give us this math that's like baby math, and they're like, "Can you do this?" And we're like, "Maybe." And so we pass it barely. So this is my math. But thinking about— so crazy, I gave one number and then somebody reminded me of another church and I was like, "Oh yeah." So the church, the churches that we've invested people into have grown or added Over the years, over 2,000 people.

Cross of Grace, you have planted the equivalent of 2 megachurches in your 35, 40-year history.

And there's one church— they were like, "What about this church?" And I was like, "Oh, yeah, that's probably another 500, 600, 700 people." Church, this is our legacy, and this is what I'm jealous of. That this not just be our legacy, but this be our future. We don't want to come out of COVID and this pandemic season and go, great, let's just lock the doors, nobody leaves. I didn't like that. Let's just all hang out and have pizza for a few years, okay?

And military people are like, we're going to PCS. No, you're not. Sorry, we're going to let the Army know you're just going to stay here. We're just going to hang out and have pizza for a while, okay? But this can't just be our legacy, church.

This must be our future. This is the pattern of God, right? This is what we are called to do. I believe this. I believe that there are men in our church who will plant churches.

I believe there are families in our church who will go overseas. I believe that there are people who are not yet even saved or added to the church that will be raised up and sent out. This is what we are called to do, church, because this is what Jesus has done for us. We're to be an advancing church.

17 · Signals the shift from the first major section (Advancing) to the second (Neighboring)

Second, more briefly, we'll be— we want to be a neighboring church.

18 · Defines 'neighboring' as a verb (a made-up definition)—being deeply rooted and deeply known in one's own city

Now, that word "neighboring," this definition I'm going to use is not in any dictionary that I'm aware of, but I'm allowed— because that by virtue of my English degree, I can make up new definitions of words. It's one of the things they let you do when they give you the degree. They're like, "Yeah, you can make up new words and new definitions." So here I go, making up this definition. Neighboring as a verb. The church in Antioch was not just a church that cared about cities beyond it, but it's a church that was deeply rooted and deeply known in its own city, right?

19 · Exposition of Acts 11:26 showing that the Antioch believers were known well enough by the city to be given the name 'Christians'—which means they lived out and among the people, not cloistered in a ghetto

You read that in— actually, look at chapter 11, verse 26, end of 26. Look at this with me. 11:26, it says this: For a whole year Paul and Barnabas met with the church and taught a great many people. And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians. Now, that's remarkable in the history of the New Testament, but one of the things it tells you is that the people in Antioch knew these Christians well enough to get to know the most important thing about them.

It wasn't as though everybody moved to Antioch and they cloistered themselves off in kind of a Christian ghetto, and it's like, "Hey, what goes on down there?" "I don't know. Those are those people from Jerusalem. I'm not sure what's what was going on. No, they lived out and among the city, so much so that everybody in the city could tell they are about one thing: this guy Jesus, right? They gave themselves to the work of neighboring.

20 · Exposition of Acts 11:20 showing that the Antioch believers crossed cultural and linguistic lines (Aramaic speakers to Greek speakers) to share the gospel with neighbors different from themselves

You see this also in verse 20 where it says, "Some of the Christians also spoke to the Greek speakers, preaching the Lord Jesus," right? So they're probably a bunch of people primarily speaking Aramaic, and they come and they begin to talk to people who Don't look like them, don't think like them, don't sound like them. Their neighbors, not just that looked like them or felt like them, but the neighbors different from them. They didn't— they indiscriminately shared the gospel with this new community, whoever the Lord had placed nearby, right? This pattern continues again and again, again throughout the New Testament.

This command from Jesus to love your neighbor, it's expressed rest, not from a distance, but up close.

That's where Christian life is meant to be lived.

21 · Personal story contrasting two types of neighbors: closed-garage neighbors (who hide, avoid interaction, and remain mysterious) and open-garage neighbors (who invite people in, engage, and build relationships)

Now, look, I— for the last few years, we've lived in a new-build kind of neighborhood, and there are two kind of people that move into the neighborhood, okay? Closed-garage Christians and open-garage Christians— or closed-garage— not Christians, I'm sorry— closed-garage neighbors and open-garage neighbors. Right? There are some neighbors that are closed garage neighbors where they show up, you see the moving truck, you see some activity, the moving truck is gone, and it's like a mystery.

It's like, where did they go? And you see them come home from work and the garage goes up and they get in like a little spaceport and it goes down. And like, who is that? Is there somebody living in that house? I remember there was one house, I was utterly perplexed.

Is someone there? I don't know. And then one day I saw a flash from the window. I'm I'm like, oh, a person. They do live there.

You know, like, and should they ever see you, I remember this one neighbor I tried to say hi to. I was like, hey man, hey, how you doing? And he literally goes like this. He's one of those like, like literally not even like a full greet, like a, like I gotta get back over here, man. And there are other neighbors that are open garage neighbors, right?

I've got this one neighbor across from me, he put a pool table in his garage and he invites his friends over and they all like play pool. Now they got rid of the pool table, so I'm not sure what they're doing. They watch like football games and stuff in there. The door is open, if you're there, they'll yell at you, "Hey, you want a beer?" And I'm like, "Uh, maybe, I don't know." For Halloween, they made a haunted house in their garage and they were super like, "You gotta come over and try this." And I'm like, "Uh, I don't know." You know, but these guys are so friendly. They're open garage neighbors.

Here's what I'm trying to say. Christians are meant to be open garage Christians, not closed garage Christians. We're not just meant to live on the surface of the community around us. We're meant to live in and among the community around us.

22 · Theological claim grounding the Neighboring principle in the Incarnation

And church, this is, again, the pattern of Jesus. The church is not doing something strange here. They're living out the pattern of Jesus, right? When Christ came to minister, he did not drop off a pamphlet. He moved into the neighborhood, as it were.

He didn't just arrive and then the next day die for our sins and he's like, man, 2 days is all I can do. I'm out. Good luck. No, he, he took on flesh. He lived among the people, right?

This is the pattern of Jesus. Jesus came to us. He ministered even to people like us, and therefore the church is called to live out the pattern of Jesus.

23 · Recounts the church's recent legacy of turning outward after a period of inward suffering—resulting in Rescue Mission residents attending, neighbors coming to church, and neighbors being saved

And this is also a legacy we want to steward. If you've been around our church, you know that there was a period of our time where suffering and difficulty had turned our church inward. There had been some losses, there had been some hardships, and we became a little more disconnected from our community. And then about 10 years ago, God began a work of turning us outward, a beautiful amazing work that we're still in process on. But, but it resulted in things like, you know, 2 or 3 rows being filled with Rescue Mission residents for a while, for a long season of our church. It means that more neighbors from our actual church neighborhood come to church here. We've seen neighbors saved through the neighborhood outreach team, right?

We— this is our legacy church, but it must also be our future. We as a church want to always orient our our budget and our staff and our church calendar so that the work of neighboring is not an optional activity for our church, but an essential activity for our church. We don't get to the end of the month and think, do we have enough time or money to do anything with the church neighborhood or the city community around us? No, that goes in from the beginning. That's the kind of church we want to be.

24 · Personal pastoral aside acknowledging that many in the congregation (including the pastor himself) may view El Paso as undesirable or unexciting

Now look, I know El Paso is a weird place, man. I grew up here. Waiting for the day I could leave. And I wanted to leave because I'm like, man, this church, this place has nothing cool. It has no Disneyland, no Six Flags even, no sports teams, no, you know, this store that I like.

What is even here? You know, that's my attitude. But God has changed my approach to this. Maybe you grew up here waiting to get out. Maybe something brought you here and you can't wait to leave.

Here's what I know. Here's what I want to encourage you with today, brothers and sisters. Jesus loves this community and so should we. Because this community is filled with image bearers who are made in the image of Jesus, who will have an eternity that they will spend one way or the other.

25 · Illustration from the August 3rd Walmart shooting and the Azkárate art installation honoring the victims

You know, this week our community marked the tragic anniversary of August 3rd, where 23 people were killed at a Walmart on what seemed like a normal day. And a couple years ago, one of the art installations that went in down at Azkárate was these figures, like these people that were made out of like grass and leaves, but out of them were all these flowers coming. And the artist was trying to symbolize the beauty of each of their lives. Even if we didn't know them, we could see the beauty and dignity and worth of each individual life. Put on display in this beautiful art display.

And I remember just looking at the pictures. You can look them up. I looked at the pictures and I cried because I didn't know these people, but I do know that each and every one of their lives meant something and was full of image and value because they were made in the image of God.

26 · Application tying the August 3rd tragedy to the urgency of neighboring

So I was looking back through those photos this week and I saw them again and I felt like God impressed something on my heart. Which I hadn't felt before, which was this: every single person in this community is as worthy of dignity and value and is equally an image bearer of God. Now, we rightly mourn 23 tragically lost in a single day, but church, there are people all around us full of dignity, value, and worth who will not make it to the end of the year. And we don't know who they are. There's so many that began 2019 that aren't beginning 2021, right? Or that will not make it to 2022. The urgency of our mission and the reality of what is around us should drive us earnestly to the work of neighboring in a way that it never has before.

We know now, church, things can be taken away quickly. May we more earnestly than ever take this gospel to our community.

27 · Introduces the Cross of Grace challenge coin as a physical symbol of the church's Advancing and Neighboring identity

Now, I want to show you something that we're going to be doing. We've talked about wanting to have a gift— not a gift, kind of a symbol of our partnership together as a church. And so we are going to make— if you're in the military or law enforcement, you guys know what a challenge coin is? Anybody know what a challenge coin is? Put your hand up if you know what a challenge coin is. I got to explain to everybody else. Okay, so like, I have one from the Sergeant Major's Academy, the One of the guys recently that graduated gave us one as, like, a gift and thank you to the church. And so it's a coin that basically when you go through an experience together, when you become part of a brotherhood or sisterhood or group, it's something that you carry and say, like, this is us.

And it symbolizes who you are. And so we are going to make a Cross of Grace challenge coin. But I want you to look at the design of it, because when you get it, I want it to be— I want you to understand it. So in the middle, there's our church. Right?

That's our building. Cross of Grace. That symbolizes who we are. That symbolizes the people in this room, which is beautiful. And we almost on the back put some, like, more church-oriented stuff.

Some faces or some people or, you know, something like something else about the church. As I prayed about it, I thought, no, no, no. The back of it's going to have— that's actually— we had an artist design El Paso's downtown skyline. That is our city. That's not a city, that's our city.

And above it is going to be written, "You are sent," so that we feel constantly the beauty and value of the community that God has placed us in, in the church, but the desperate need and desperate opportunity we have to go to the city around us and take the gospel to those around us. Yes. So you're going to be getting one of those in the next few weeks.

28 · Signals the shift from exposition and illustration to concrete strategic implications for the church's life and structure

Now, very briefly, I want to just give some implications of what this means for us as a church. As we think about advancing and neighboring, just some brief implications of what this means.

29 · First strategic implication: the church's strategy is to plant neighborhood churches throughout the El Paso region (and beyond) rather than building one large central church

First, our strategy is planting neighborhood churches throughout the El Paso region. Now, the sprawling nature of El Paso means that one church, our church, located where it is can be evangelistically faithful and evangelistically effective. But we believe it's going to be more effective over time to get churches into the various pockets and communities of El Paso rather than trying to get everybody to come drive in to us. Especially Vince, when he moved here, he moved out beyond the loop initially. And he was talking to one of his neighbors.

And he was saying, hey, we're going to be— you know, I'm moving here because of this church, you know, in Central. And the neighbor was like, where's the church again? He's like, oh, it's in Central. It's by I-10/55. Before, and he's like, man, you should have picked a closer church, right?

It's just like, I don't know why you're going over there all the time. Like, okay, you know, that's just— it's kind of foreign. If you're a believer, you're like, yeah, I'll drive for the fellowship. If you're not a believer, someone's inviting you, man, that's, that's going to be hard. We want to make it more— we want to embed ourselves more in the neighborhoods of El Paso.

That means we want to send and sacrifice and see brothers sisters and churches planted, be on the loop for that guy. I don't know who that guy is, but we're going to go get him, right? In the northwest, in the lower valley, in Horizon. And one of the older members of the church corrected me after the first message in the first service, and he said, what about Cruces? And I said, okay, Cruces, let's go.

What about Deming? All right, let's go. What about Alamogordo? Sure. And he's like— and then he's drawing it, and he's got his map on his phone, and he's like, what about this?

And this is another good community we We could get into it. I'm like, yes, that's what I'm talking about, okay? So we start here, we keep going, all right?

30 · Second strategic implication: church health is measured by sending capacity, not seating capacity

Second, our church health is measured in our sending capacity, not our seating capacity. At our church size, which is about 400, you get enough scale to start offering more and more ministries and programs and services. It kind of feels like some days, like, yeah, we should have one of these and we should have one of those, right? But our goal, I want you to understand this, our goal is not just to build build this church as large as we possibly can. Our goal is to plant and send and sow gospel seed in other areas, right? And I'm not saying I'm opposed to being a big church, but what I'm saying is that can't be the measure of our faithfulness. We can keep adding seats and we can build a bigger building and think, "Yeah, we're being faithful." No, not according to the pattern of Antioch. We might be, but it doesn't mean we are. We want to keep our ministry profile simple, right? We don't want a calendar that's so packed Monday through Friday that we have no time to spend with Vince's neighbor out beyond the loop, right? We have no time to stop by the neighbor who's inviting people over to play pool. We want to live in and among our community, not just cloister ourselves off.

So we want to be careful of that. In addition to that, we want to build structures and systems that that will survive as we send people to plant more churches. We don't ever want to be like, well, we can't send them because otherwise what will happen to this ministry? We want to say, great, let's send them and let's figure out what will happen to the ministry.

31 · Extended analogy comparing Cross of Grace to Taco Tote—a restaurant that does a few things well rather than trying to be all things to all people

Oh, man, I don't think I have time to do the Taco Tote thing. You got to do it? Okay, Vince says I got to do it. All right, we're going to do the Taco Tote thing and then we'll end. All right, I think we're supposed to be a Taco Tote church. And who's been to Taco Tote?

All right. And everybody else, raise your hand. And you guys aren't Christians, I think, because God has given you his common grace in these areas and you're just not even taking advantage of those. And I don't know what the Lord's going to say about that. But this is what I mean.

At Taco Tote, there's 3 elements of Taco Tote, right? You have a tortilla. You pick corn or flour. They're both good. My dad says corn.

My mom says flour. It's okay. You pick whichever one you want. Then there's meat. You can get adobado.

You can get sirloin. You can get— I think they have beefsteak. They have— I'm sorry. Are you guys hungry yet? They're just various things.

You could pick your favorite. And then they have one of the things that I know will survive from this earth to the new heavens and the new earth, which is the Taco Tote salsa bar. It's this glorious bar. It's full of different salsas and different things. Things and different toppings.

And so you— that— but, but that's all it is. Like, you can't go up to the window and be like, hey, hey, I would like a Mexican combination plate with a chile relleno. They're just going to look at you like, get out of here. Like, this is Taco Tote. We sell tacos.

All right, is that what you want? You want a taco? I'm like, uh, yes. Okay, that's— and, and, and what I mean by that is this: they're not trying to do everything. They're just trying to do one thing, a few things, and do them well.

And as a church, we want to be the kind of church that does a few things and does them well. And here's the 3 things we want to do well. We want to gather on Sundays well. We want this to go well, to encourage people, to proclaim the gospel, to build the church up. We want to have groups where people can form relationships with other people, and they can do all kinds of things.

They can do Christmas in July like our group did. They can do other stuff. They can— whatever you want to do. You can go out and shoot in the desert. Whatever your group does, awesome, embrace it.

And third, we want to have mission opportunities. We want to have neighborhood outreach. We want to have places that we can We plug our folks into the community around us. And those are the 3 things we do. If somebody has a new idea for, like, a middle school puppet ministry, our question is going to be, does it do one of those things?

Is it Sunday? Is it a group that builds people together in the church and grows in disciples? Or is it a mission opportunity? And if you try to argue that your middle school puppet ministry is an effective outreach, probably Vince is going to talk to you about that because I don't know. But that's the kind of church we want to be.

32 · Pastoral confession: the pastor himself feels the inward drift post-COVID and the temptation to avoid neighboring (illustrated by dreading soccer sideline small talk)

All right. Well, let me end by saying— oh, you know what? I need that journal, Dad. Can you hand me that? So I'm going to end by saying this, because I think my big burden for the next few weeks is that we not, at the end of COVID begin to just drift inward.

Look, I can feel that in my own life. I can feel like I just— I don't— I'm just going to— we signed up our kids for soccer. And one of the things initially, I was like, oh, I'm going to have to talk to parents for like an hour. Like, "Hey, buddy, who are you?" You know, like, I just hate small talk like that. And then as I was preparing this message, the Lord is like, "Oh, well, well, well, look who has an opportunity to neighbor." And I was just like, "Ugh." And I think in light of all we've experienced, we want to lean into that, not away from it.

33 · Introduces an illustration from Todd Peterson's cancer testimony (published in Sovereign Grace Journal)

I want to end with one story from actually Todd Peterson, one of our elders. And he shares in the new Sovereign Grace Journal about his battle with cancer. And one of the things he says is this, he says, "God began to impress a distinct truth on my heart. I experienced the distinct awareness that every day, every encounter with other people was an opportunity to reflect the realities of a personal relationship with God and hope in the gospel of Jesus."

34 · Continues the Todd Peterson illustration with the story of the nurse on the elevator who was overwhelmed by his shirt ('No Jesus, No Peace') while he wore a patient wristband

He says, "One of my— on my frequent trips to MD Anderson in Houston, I began to see each encounter with patients, workers, doctors, and nurses in the hospital as a small moment of opportunity to reflect the reality of the peace that passes understanding. I'll never forget an encounter with a nurse on an elevator. She looked at me and saw my shirt that said, "No Jesus, No Peace," and then saw my patient wristband. As tears welled in her eyes, all she could say was, "I'm just overwhelmed at your shirt. Thank you." She worked there every day, but the message that there was hope beyond the death she regularly witnessed was comforting and life-giving.

35 · Concludes the Todd Peterson illustration with Peterson's summary: cancer gave him urgency because life is fleeting, but that urgency created daily opportunities to share Jesus

He ends by saying this: Cancer had given me a new urgency that I have never lived with before, one that saw life as much more fleeting, but one filled with daily opportunities to share the hope that is in Jesus.

Church, may we come out of this more eager for daily opportunities to intentionally advance and intentionally neighbor in the name of Jesus. Would you stand?

36 · Closing prayer thanking God for seeking and saving the congregation, acknowledging the wonder of Christ coming up close rather than staying distant, and asking that the church would not shrink back but lean forward into gospel work in the coming year

Lord, we pray today that these would— this example would sink into our hearts, God. But we especially want to begin by just saying we are amazed that we sit in this room because You sought and saved us. That's unbelievable. God, that is unbelievable that the risen Son of God would in some way come to seek and save us, that you did not stay distant from us, you came up close to us and changed our lives. And, Lord, you then commissioned your church to go do the same.

And so, Lord, I pray, I pray that in this next year God, we would not shrink back from our community and from gospel work, but lean forward toward it, lean in toward it, in the name of Jesus and the pattern of Jesus. Lord, I pray that you would do more than we ask or think. In your name we pray. Amen.