Growing Responsibly in the Place of Gods Provision

Well, good morning. Great to see all of you here today and a wonderful time of worshiping God through song and now we get to hear from Him today. Thank you, just to add my welcome to Bill's. Thank you for choosing, to worship with us, today.

just, I don't know if this has been said already. but tonight, I know Bill mentioned it is our annual meeting, that's at 6 o'clock here in, in this room and we would love to see all of you here tonight, whether you're a member or, a non-member of, of Cornerstone. if you wanna understand Cornerstone, a meeting like tonight is, really a, a strategic, meeting to attend. Because you'll get to observe our heartbeat as a church.

There's much that we want to share with you tonight. There's much that we want to celebrate, both looking back on 2014 and also, looking ahead, to, this year. If you consider Cornerstone your church home and especially if you are a member of Cornerstone, we would love to have you here, tonight. So again, that's here in this room.

At what time? 6 o'clock, not 6:15. But 6 o'clock, we're gonna be worshiping God through song. We'll be rejoicing in what God is doing in the life of our body here at Cornerstone and looking at our vision for 2015 and there will also be refreshments afterwards.

There's a sense, I think, in which we can say that our annual meeting starts this morning. There's so much that we want to, share with you, today, and rather than packing it all in tonight and going, very, very late, we, have decided to put some of what we would like to say into the service, today. So, essentially, our annual meeting, begins, right now, but the next installment will be at what time? 6 o'clock, OK.

our theme for this year, just to hit this, hard right out of the Right out of the gate, as you see on the slide behind me is growing responsibly in the place of God's, provision. And I'd like to take some time to unpack that a bit this morning to explain to you why this is our theme for 2015, what we mean by it, and a little bit of the story that leads up to, this being our theme for, the year. we had a very definite purpose in making our move from Lindon Street, which was our former location, to Barnes, which is where we are right now.

and this purpose and vision was something that we had put before you as a congregation.

in the two years leading up to our move to this, particular facility, I want to read this vision statement. to you. It goes like this, we want to reach considerably more people in our Sunday services than we are reaching now, and we would like to obtain the use of a facility that allows us the room to accomplish this. We would view such a facility as the front porch that all of our care groups and households share in common, and we would view such a facility as a key entry point through which we can usher people into the wholeness that we are experiencing here in the body life of Cornerstone.

By finding a larger facility in which to house our worship services, we are wanting to enlarge the wide end of the funnel so that we can reach more people and get them launched in their journey toward gospel conversion, gospel immersion, gospel community, gospel mission, and gospel glory. This is a statement that we presented to the congregation. In February of 2013 and then kept putting this before you after that. This vision Emerged from our praying as we should nights.

I don't know if you, recall those, those of you that were a part of them obviously would. This was our logo. we called them pause nights, praying as we should. These were our once a month prayer services that we had on Sunday evening starting in February of 2012 and in those services, We essentially came before God and each of them, and we confess to God that we did not know even how to pray as we should, and we asked him in each of those services to teach us to pray, teach us how to pray tonight in this service.

And in those services, we opened up the floor to our congregation and allowed anybody to come up to the microphone up front. And read scripture and to pray in the Spirit. In other words, trying to think God's thoughts after him and praying responsibly to the leading of the Spirit, and we all would listen in as each person prayed, and we sought to hear the heart of God as it was being expressed through the prayers of his people. We hoped that through these prayers of God's people that we might be able To hear the sound of the approaching footsteps of God's plan for our church.

I listened through all those many prayers seated on the front row, and the elders listened and we ended up drafting a document listing all of the things that God seemed to be saying to our church through the prayers of his people. About a year into those praying as we should nights. The vision that I just read to you was born. By November of 2012, the elders reached unanimity for the very first time that we wanted to leave Linden Street, the Linden Street campus at some point over the next three years and to work toward obtaining a larger facility that would enable us to reach more people.

The only problem was we didn't know where to go. So we agreed we need to leave within the next 3 years, but where are we going to go? We did not know where it was that God wanted us to go. So we continued the prayer nights and we kept you updated on how God was working and how God was leading.

As things developed, God led us to consider the Burns Technology Center where we are today. And as we did so, little by little, Our imaginations and our faith grew and long story short, in November of 2013, the elders decided once and for all to lock in the decision to make the transition from the Linden Street campus to the Barnes Technology Center. We wrote to you. Coming back from our elders retreat in November, we wrote to you an eight-page, letter, detailing our thinking and we called the meeting for December 8th in which we asked you to participate with us in the decision that the elders had made.

As elders, we were confident if God was leading us, then he would lead the congregation as well. In that meeting, we put the decision to leave Lindon Street and to come to the Bornes Technology Center. We put that to a vote and 97% Of the congregation voted to affirm. The elders decision.

And stating the 97% who voted to agree or affirm the elder's decision, I feel like I would be remiss if all I did was spoke about the 97% and did not make some mention of the 3%. Honestly, I am just as grateful for the 3% who voted the other way and for the way that 3%. of individuals have carried themselves. I have all of those no ballots taped to my desk in my office still.

And throughout this whole process, I have prayed and asked God to help me as one of the pastors here to lead this congregation in a way that would respect the concerns of those who did not vote in favor of the move. And so their vote has been a help to me, and I believe their ballots. Might have prevented mistakes on our part that I know I might otherwise have made. On top of that, 1 person among that 3% came up to me shortly after the meeting.

And basically announced to me that he was among that 3% and he said to me something like this, he says, I voted against the move, but I want you to know that now that the decision has been made, I'm on your team and I stand ready to do anything needful to help make this move successful. And that folks, is the people. That we have at Cornerstone. We are where we are today and we are the church that we are, not simply because of the 97% who voted yes, but because of the greatness of the hearts of 100% of our people.

Amen. Anyway, based on The decision that was made and the agreement voiced by the congregation, we, began the journey from Lindon Street to Bournes and based on the goals that we had for the move, and the financial costs that we knew would be entailed in the move, we knew. That we needed an additional $50,000 essentially in funds beyond what we already had available. we had started the Capital Growth Fund in January of 2012 and we had about $300,000.

dollars in that fund, but we knew that we needed about $50,000 more to cover the cost of the move without going into debt. So we launched, if you'll recall, the BYOC plus campaign and invited you to give to that. That's the buy your own chair plus a chair for somebody else. We launched that campaign, I believe the second.

week of December and by our annual meeting at the end of January, so about 6 weeks later, you all had given, that 500,000 and above and beyond that. And we were just so blessed by, your generosity and giving to that fund and it's so nice, isn't it, to be sitting in the very chairs that you guys were donating towards. back, a little, over a year ago. At that point, we asked Jonathan Jones to lead the transition from Lindon Street to Bournes, and he embraced that role with the zeal that he is known for with Carlos Cuellar at his side and teams were set up representing all of the areas where decisions needed to be made and planning and work needed to be done.

In order to help us in the transition from Linden Street to Barnes. There were obstacles that emerged as we work towards this goal of this move. Some of those obstacles were surprising and they hit us like a punch in the gut, but we saw all of these obstacles fall away as we prayed and as we trusted the Lord and as we shared some of those with you and as you joined us. And praying regarding these things.

Again and again, we received nothing but confirmation from God that he was in this move and that this move was something that he clearly wanted to happen. He showed his favor by tearing down obstacles through the willing hearts and the labor of so many of you through your generous giving. And also through the guidance that he gave to us at critical points along the way, all of these things. We manifestations of God's favor.

They combined to show us the favor of God upon this move that we as a church body have made. The first Sunday of July, July 6th, we were here. The first Sunday in September of 2014, we had our grand opening service and that service, we had more people than we have ever had on a Sunday morning, all in one service. We had more tacos than we have ever eaten.

On a Sunday morning. And we had more rain. than we ever have had on a Sunday morning. And what an amazing day, that it was for us.

What a time of, of celebration that we had celebrating God's goodness. But this was the vision essentially that brought us here. We want to reach considerably more people in our Sunday services than we are reaching now and we would like to obtain the use of a facility that allows us the room. To accomplish this.

This vision was birthed in prayer. It was communicated to the congregation. We all rallied behind it and we are now here by God's gracious providence. Our facility problem which we had at Linden Street is solved.

In a way far beyond what we would have ever asked or thought, God has been good to us and we have so much to celebrate. But what will we do? Now that we are here. What will we do with ourselves now that God has done all of this and so many people have done so much.

To bring us to this place where we now worship. I think it is only fitting. That we commit ourselves afresh to the vision. That drove us here.

That we give our energies to Reaching considerably more people. And as I stated at the outset, as a church, being committed to growing responsibly in this, the place of God's provision for us. That is our vision for this year and even beyond. There are 3 aspects of this vision, of growing responsibly in the place of God's, provision.

first of all, we want to grow, both in maturity and we want to grow in, welcoming people into the journey that we are on from brokenness to wholeness through the gospel of Jesus Christ. The second aspect of this vision is we want to grow in this place, and in our use of this place for God's glory. And a third aspect of this vision is we want to grow responsibly. Responsibly.

These are things that we want to see happen. This is the metric by which we will measure our success as a church over the coming year. I stated negatively, here's what failure would look like for Cornerstone over the next year and beyond. It would be a failure if we don't grow in this place, both in maturity of our ministry.

And the lives that we lead and in the degree to which we are able to welcome more people. Or this would also be a failure. If we grow numerically, but we don't grow responsibly. We grow, but we don't grow with the growth that is truly of God.

And from him. And so we want to get this right. We want to grow, we wanna seize the opportunity that is before us. We want to grow in this place and we want to grow in the right way.

And if this is our goal, then there are several things that we need to do, and I want to just put 5 of them. before you, this morning, 5 things that we would want to do, in order to grow responsibly here in the place of God's, provision. You'll notice that the 1st 4 of these begin with the word realize. So the 1st 4 things we need to do all take place up here, OK?

And then the last one is something that we actually do, or it's actually just something that we are. And we'll get to that as we move along this morning. 5 things that we want to do in order to grow responsibly here in the place of God's provision. Number 1, we need to realize that we have a God who delights in fullness.

Realize that we have a God who delights in fullness. I, I primarily begin with this point because I just think it'd be good for all of us to just behold and enjoy God for a little bit this morning. with something from Genesis one that has been, in my heart and mind as we went throughout that chapter, but we've not really brought this out so much in a message. It's interesting in Genesis 1, we've seen How God used the second half of the creation week to fill the entities that he created in the first half of the creation week.

And most commentaries that you read on Genesis 1 will point out this pattern. God spends the first part of the week, creating the entities that he spends the second part of the week filling up. By the middle of the 3rd day of creation, there are 4, created entities. There's the universal heavenly expanse, there is the earth sky.

There are the seas, and there is the dry land, and they're all empty. Beginning in the middle of the 3rd day, God begins to fill up these entities. He fills the universal heavenly expanse with the sun. The moon and the stars on day 4.

He fills the earth's skies with flying creatures on day 5. He fills the seas with sea creatures on day 5, and he fills the dry land with vegetation and with cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth and with man on day 6. In fact, notice the language of fullness. That we find in Genesis chapter one.

Beginning in verse 20 it says, then God said, let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and God created the great sea monsters and every living thing that moves with which the waters swarmed after their kind, and every winged bird after its kind and God saw that it was good. The text goes on and says, and God blessed them, saying, be fruitful and multiply and fill. That's the command. Fill the waters and the seas and let birds multiply on the earth.

As the story unfolds, God creates Adam. And Eve, verse 28, he says to them, it says, and God bless them and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. That's the mandate. I love what one commentator says about what God is doing here.

he says it this way, from these copious beginnings, these creatures are to keep on multiplying until they fill the earth. Every vestige of emptiness is to be ultimately canceled. Quite literally, the picture we see of God here in the second part of the creation week is a God making war against emptiness. This is a God whose single-minded mission is fullness in every direction.

Apparently God is not glorified by emptiness. He is glorified by fullness. And hence we're not surprised to see this theme of fullness. Not only continue but even explode.

On the pages of the, the New Testament. In fact, in Luke chapter 5, Jesus provides his disciples, with a miraculous catch of fish that was so huge that The text says that the fish filled both of the boats so that they began to sink. Christ checked out the facilities that the disciples had, sized up the boats, and he provided for them a catch that filled up those two entities of the two boats, so much so that they began to sink. And Jesus then alerts the disciples to the fact that this is no fish miracle.

That he is doing here. This is actually a warning that Jesus is providing them. He goes on to say to them, don't be afraid. From now on, you're gonna be catching people.

Letting them know that this is a metaphor for something that is yet to come, and that's exactly what happened in Acts chapter 2, we learned that the church was born and we see that it was launched with a demonstration of fullness, which then begat fullness. It says in Acts 2:1, and when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place, speaking of the 120. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.

and there appeared to them tongues as a fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak from that fullness.

And ultimately, a crowd gathered, the gospel was preached, and that day, a huge catch of fish started to come in. 3000 souls were saved through the preached word. But prior to the salvation of those 3000 souls, the Spirit filled the house. Where they were gathered, the 120, and he filled each one of them and then from that fullness, all of them began to speak and a crowd gathered to see and to hear.

What it was that God was doing. One of the things we learned just from Acts 2 alone, from the birth of the church is that people experiencing the fullness of the Spirit, catch the attention. Of a watching world. We don't catch the attention of the world by becoming like the world.

We catch their attention by being filled with the spirit. That's God's plan for us as a church and for all churches that claim the name of Christ. The church age started with 120 people being filled with the Spirit and that fullness beget more people. Getting saved and themselves experiencing the fullness of the spirit and one can only infer, I think legitimately that an age, the church age that began with such a demonstration of fullness would be characterized by fullness as well, and that is indeed the case.

The language of fullness continues through the New Testament. In fact, in Ephesians 5:18, Paul is, speaking to Christians and he gives them the command, the responsibility, literally, the text reads, be being continuously filled by the Holy Spirit. That's our calling. To be filled by the Spirit.

According to Ephesians 4:10, Christ descended on high so that he might fill all things. That was his agenda and his goal and all of his saving work and all of the blessings that he provides for us in the gospel is so that we would be filled up to all the fullness of God. That's His will for you and me, and that is that we individually experience the fullness of God. And it is the Spirit that he sends.

In order to carry out that filling up. The spirit has been commissioned by The Father to fill us with these blessings all the way up to the very fullness of God, and Paul is speaking to the Ephesian believers, and he's giving them this instruction, be continuously being filled up by the Spirit. The Spirit is seeking to fill you up with the fullness of God found in the gospel. Let the Spirit succeed in that, let him fill you with these blessings that I have been reviewing.

In the early chapters of this book of Ephesians. What we learn from all of these passages is that God is not glorified by empty hearts, and by empty heads, and by empty lives. He glorifies Himself by filling our hearts with his goodness and with the grace of the gospel, and even by not just filling us, but by giving us even more than our hearts can handle. He loves to hear us say with the psalmist in Psalm 23, I'm not only filled, but my cup overflows.

That's the testimony that God desires to elicit from us. That's the testimony that glorifies him. That's the lives that he wants us to lead, lives that are characterized by his fullness. And if we as a church want to grow responsibly here in the place of God's provision, we must first turn and look at him and behold that God is a God who delights in this gospel fullness.

He wants us to experience his fullness. If we're not experiencing that fullness, why would we ever even want to invite anyone to join us? We would be their worst nightmare, right? So we turn, we behold God, a God who delights in fullness, his agenda is for our spiritual fullness, for our hearts to be overflowing with the grace and the goodness and the beauty of the gospel.

That's so critical to us as a church being able to grow responsibly here in the place of God's provision. There's a second thing though that we need to do. And that is to realize that we have a mandate to grow in the communal experience of Christ's fullness. We're not just called to kinda walk around individualistically experiencing fullness.

No, we actually have a mandate to link our lives together and labor together to enrich our capacity to experience Christ's fullness and community. With one another. Let me just read this verse, we're not gonna break it down or anything, but it says in Ephesians 4:8, 11, and he gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers. Christ descended on high to give gifts to men and to fill all things.

That's his agenda. How does he achieve this filling? He gives Apostles, prophets, whose testimony is recorded for us on the pages of scripture, and some as evangelist or gospelizers and some as pastors and teachers. Why?

For the equipping of the saints literally into the work of ministry, to the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man. That's not talking about individuals, us as a church, becoming a mature person, a single entity to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. He goes on to say in verse 15, this happens as we are speaking the truth and love. We are to grow up in all aspects into him, who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

We have a mandate to grow, and fundamentally, that means to grow in the communal experience of Christ's fullness. Christ's burden for the church is that the church attains a unity. And a maturity and a stature that is consistent with what one would expect, given the fullness of Christ. It's just wrong for a church to be weak.

And emaciated and anemic when the fullness of Christ is so available and he died to make that fullness available. God wants us as a church to be unified. With a unity that comes from fullness. He wants us to be mature with the maturity that is born out of fullness in Christ.

He wants us to be a tall church with a long stride and a long reach and with the height. That comes from fullness in Christ. According to Ephesians 4, this fullness gets experienced and expressed as we grow into Christ, that's the direction we need to grow into him. Not into the world, we grow into Him.

Our lives are all about Him. And also as we are fitted and held together in relationship with each other, as each person is doing his or her part in the church. God wants us to be the church that people would look at and conclude that there must be a fullness of something at our core. A fountain of fullness from which our unity and our maturity and our spiritual stature flows from.

When this happens, we see the growth of the body. That's Paul's agenda and what he says here, this is Christ's agenda. He died, he was buried, he was raised, he's ascended. He gives these gifts to the church, ultimately so that it can generate the growth of the body as it builds itself up in love.

This is the will of God for his church. This is growth in spiritual maturity, this is growth in relationships, this is growth in love, this is growth in Christ likeness. And this is a growth in people being reached and welcomed into the same journey of growing that Christ has saved us into. So if we want to grow responsibly in the place of God's provision, we need to realize we have a God who delights in fullness.

We also need to realize that this God calls us. And the communal experience of His fullness in Christ and we are to grow into that. There's yet another thing we need to do, and that is number 3, we need to realize that we, I believe, have a mandate to fill the space that God has provided us at, at Bourne's. I want us to ponder this for just a few minutes in addition to the other things that we have said up to this point.

In Luke 12:48, Jesus says, from everyone who has been given much, shall much be required. And we've been given, so much this year. God has been so good. To us, to make it possible for us to find ourselves here as a congregation today.

What will we do with this blessing? We should celebrate it, we should feel joy over it, and with that, we should tell ourselves, the one to whom much is given. Much will be required. How will we use what God has provided us for His glory?

As I stated at the outset, our vision and coming to this place was to reach considerably more people. We put this before you again and again, from a human standpoint, your labor and your giving and your support has made all of this possible where we're at today. From a divine standpoint, God showed His favor upon this vision by making it all possible. There were literally moments, guys, where we saw God do the equivalent of parting the Red Sea.

In order to make it possible for us to be here. He showed his hand in a number of ways, just reminding us I'm with you, and I'm the one making this happen. And the question is, why did God do this? He did this because he intends to do something with us now that we're here.

We're not just here to celebrate. We're here because we have a mission to accomplish. And being here sets us up to accomplish that mission. God has brought us here and shown us His favor because I believe he wants us to reach Considerably more people than we have reached up to this point.

The way I see it in the past. we had a facility problem. Problem solved. Now we have an empty space problem.

And a mandate to fill it, I think, with precious souls. We have the same empty space problem that God had on day 345, and 6 of creation, and he set about to solving that empty space problem and putting that space to use, and he did not rest until that mission was accomplished and we have a similar opportunity before us. I think the best way for us to honor God and to honor the tireless labor and the generosity of so many people that all work together to bring us to where we are today is to commit ourselves to welcoming other people.

Into the journey that we are on from brokenness to wholeness.

We still have room for more people in this auditorium and in our education space that we have. Why shouldn't we fill this space with more people who can hear the good news about Jesus Christ? Why shouldn't we do that? And why shouldn't we believe that God is perfectly capable of filling This campus with people that we can show Christ's love to.

A God that can populate the known universe which is 27 billion light years in diameter with over 40 6 trillion stars. should have little trouble filling this small space with precious souls. A God who can cause the seas to swarm with living creatures should have no trouble filling the other rooms of this building available to us with precious souls that we can teach and we can evangelize, and we can show Christ's love to and we can take with us on our journey from brokenness to wholeness.

God has brought us here because he wants us to reach out to and to welcome more people into this amazing journey.

And I don't think the question before us really is, is God willing. I think the question before us is, are we willing? One of the challenges that I have felt in my soul over the last, 2 or 3 years is this challenge that, that I can't and we can't be selfish with what God has given to us and the two primary things God has blessed us with as a church is Jesus Christ and one another. We have something in those two things that this community desperately needs, and that is the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ.

And we also have a wonderful congregation of people who love Jesus and who are on an amazing journey from brokenness to wholeness. I believe this congregation is one of the best kept secrets. In Riverside, I want more people to know you. I want more people to experience the journey that we are on, from the brokenness of sin to glory in Jesus Christ.

And then we get enriched by all those that God brings to us as well. And so we wanna grow as a church, we wanna grow in maturity and in the reach of our ministry and people being reached and welcomed into what God is doing here at Cornerstone. but our theme, guys, is not simply growing in the place of God's provision, but growing responsibly in the place of God's provision. We don't want to just grow in these ways, we wanna grow right.

And if we're going to do that, then there's a 4th thing we need to do, and that is to realize that there's good growth and there's bad growth. There's good growth and there's bad growth. In Matthew 7:7, Jesus says, every good tree bears good fruit and the bad tree bears bad fruit. It's not enough to just bear fruit, there's good fruit and there's bad fruit.

Same with growth, there's good growth, and there is bad growth. Not all church growth is good. There's some churches that are not growing at all. There's some churches that are growing by leaps and bounds, but it is not a growth that is of God, and then other churches are growing with a growth that is from God, and we want to be among that number.

If we're to grow as God wants us to grow, we need to keep in mind that there is good growth and there's bad growth. What is that? Well, let me tell you what bad growth is. Bad growth is increasing numbers of people whom we manipulate into attending Cornerstone, who are not interested in journeying from brokenness to wholeness through the gospel of Jesus Christ, nor are they interested in any of the biblical means.

By which that journey can be fostered. Such people do not see themselves as broken, they do not see themselves as sinners, nor they do they believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. They do not see themselves as needing. To be saved with a salvation that comes from outside of themselves.

They don't want to hear talk about sin. And about brokenness. They just wanna be built up and affirmed and told good things about themselves. what guys, with just some adjustments, we can pack this place with such people.

John MacArthur says it is easy to build a massive church full of non-elect people. That's easy to do. We don't want bad growth. We want good growth.

What is good growth? Good growth is the addition of people whom God is bringing to us. And moving them to join us in our journey to glory through the gospel of Jesus Christ, experiencing conversion, gospel immersion, community, mission, And ultimately on to glory. This is the growth that we want to see.

Those people whose hearts God is touching, those people that God adds to our number, not whom we add to our number, those people who, because of the Spirit of God working in their heart, will see themselves as broken sinners in need of salvation through Jesus, and they see themselves as needing to be saved. With a salvation that they know they can't produce on their own. This is the right growth, a growth that comes from God, and I think God has put us here because I think God has it in his plan to do this work and to add to our number and it's him doing it.

So that we can welcome them in.

And have them be partners. We partner with them and they with us in this journey of salvation that we are on. This is the growth that we wanna see, and I want you to know as one of the elders here, I'm very concerned that we get this right. I do not, I do not just want to grow.

I want to grow right. If we grow wrong, that will be our worst nightmare. I wanna only grow with the growth that is of God. And so, how do we do that?

How do we make sure that we grow with a growth that is from God? Well, this is the final thing we'll look at this morning, and that is, let's just be the church. Let's be The church in Ephesians 1:22 and 23, Paul tells us that the church is the body of Christ, the church is the fullness of him who fills all in all. The church is the place where the fullness of God is experienced, where God's fullness resides here on earth.

It's in the church, Christ Church, as the church does. What Christ Church is supposed to do as the body of Christ. And again, if we're not doing this and operating as a church should, why would we even want to invite anyone? To join us in whatever it is that we are doing.

And even if we are successful to whatever degree, to then stand before God and know that we just played church, we didn't do what Christ wanted us to do, and we stand before God at the judgment and everything we did gets burned up. That would be awful. I want what we do here to last for eternity and to win Christ's approval at the judgment. That's what all of us want.

And so how do we, how do we behave? How do we do life in ministry in a way that would ensure that we're growing with the growth that is from God, it's good growth, and it actually literally stifles or chases away the bad growth. Well, let's just be the church. Some churches in an effort to reach the world, lose their identity.

They become as much like the world as possible in order to win the world over to themselves. But when churches do that, they will never win the world to Christ. Instead, all they have done is succeeded in showing that the world has already won them. To itself It's kinda sad.

The church today is really the only institution I know of that tries to become unlike itself. In order to bring more people in. It doesn't make sense. Why does the church alone do this?

Try to become as much unlike itself and hide as much about itself as it can when other establishments and institutions In our culture, don't ever even think to do something like this. I read an article this week by a guy named Samuel Key, where he talks about this very thing that's happening in churches and even in the way that people assess churches and I've taken what he says here and I've trimmed it down, and I wanna just read to you a trimmed down version of what he says.

Listen to this. He says, I'm sitting in a donut shop.

I've been here many times and no one, nobody has ever complained about this place saying This doughnut shop is too doughnutty. It's a doughnut shop, so you expect it to be doughnutty. No one ever said that a sporting event was too sporty, or a library too booky, a concert too musicy, or a home too homey, a college too schooly, or a hospital too hospital. Yet I hear all the time.

That church was too churchy But what else should it be? And why the double standard? Why do we condemn the church for being about Jesus, your soul? God, spirituality, conviction of sin.

Heaven, hell, salvation, righteousness, and judgment. The church does nobody any favors when it refuses to be churchy. The church needs to be churchy and it must stop apologizing for doing so. He goes on to deliver this challenge to the church.

He says, church, do not hide your scriptures, your sacraments, your worship, your preaching, your service, your call to repentance, your lament. Your urgency or your joy in Jesus. Stand firm, be churchy, be Jesus, be the light of the world. Amen.

Here at Cornerstone. We will not hide our scriptures. We will not hide the gospel. We will not hide our worship, our repentance.

We will not hide our laments. Even some of the worship songs that we sing, there's a lament and a recognition of sin and some might say, oh, don't let lost people see that. We will not hide our laments. We will not hide our repentance, and we will not hide our joy in Jesus and in His amazing grace.

We will be Jesus. We will be gospelly at every turn. And we will be light, not. L I T E.

But L I G H T. That's what we're called to do. As a church, we are the church and we will be the church in obedience to Christ. And if we as the church want to grow the way that the church ought to grow with a good growth, then we need to be the church that Christ wants us to be.

We need to be a church that is committed to the preaching and the teaching. And the following of scriptures. As long as we keep God's word central, then we will minister to those whose hearts God is touching and those with tickling ears who hate the truth, they won't be able to stand being around us. See, by being committed to the faithful teaching of God's word, it, it creates a separation.

It exposes people for what they are. Those that have itching ears for lies and they hate the truth, the preaching of the word will reveal that and chase them away. Those whose hearts God is actually touching will be drawn to the light of God's word. The same is true with the gospel of Jesus Christ, the gospel is foolishness.

There's no way of dressing it up to where it's not the gospel is at its core foolishness to those who are perishing. It is a scandal. And an offense to those who are perishing, whose hearts God is not touching and regenerating, but to those who Whom God is touching, the gospel is incredibly good news. Paul says in one of his letters that the gospel is an aroma of life to some, and it smells like death.

To other people. So how do we know who is who? We preach the gospel and we keep it central in everything that we do, and it exposes people for what they really are. These are two key things that we'll stay committed to the preaching and teaching of scriptures and keeping the gospel central and all that we do.

We also wanna be committed here at Cornerstone to biblical leadership, the faithful shepherds, it is our belief that where there are faithful shepherds, Christ will send his sheep. And so we want strong eldership, strong leadership here. So that those whom Christ does send our way will be properly cared for and shepherded. Another way that we are the church is by being a congregation of ministers, not where we hire pastors to do the work of the ministry, but where our pastors calling is to equip the people of the church to do the work of the ministry.

We often like to say that if you're a member of Cornerstone, welcome to the staff of this church. You are the staff and as elders and pastors, our role is we get the thrill of equipping you and resourcing you for the work of ministry. If I could throw one final thing in. That I think would rightly characterize us as a church, it would be covenantal community.

Covenantal relationships or community. In order to grow and be the church that Christ wants us to be, we need to be in community with one another and do relationships and not just relationships but covenant. Relationships. Not doing casual relationships or consumer relationships where we can just up and walk away at whatever point someone offends us, but to where we actually enter into covenant relationships with one another.

It is covenantal relationships that serve as the richest matrix for spiritual growth and transformation. That's what church membership is all about. That's why we have a membership covenant here at Cornerstone. In 1 Corinthians 11.

Christ is speaking to his disciples and, and he is holding up the cup and he says this cup is the new covenant in my blood and a part of what he's saying there is my relationship with you is a covenant relationship. I'm making promises to you, I am pledged to you over the long haul, through thick and thin. I am in a covenant relationship with you and it's inside of that covenant relationship with Jesus that we experience. grace and transformation, right?

And so if I want to be like Christ, And I look at the people, which is you, that he has coveted himself to, and I really want to be like him. Then I should be thinking, I wanna be like him and also enter into a covenant relationship. With the people that Christ has entered into a covenant relationship with in this local body. It's when we've pledged ourselves to one another.

In covenant relationship that an atmosphere is created where we are free to be ourselves and we are free to be vulnerable and transparent and we can grow and flourish in that context, unlike any other. I believe God has blessed us as a church and brought us here because we have something to offer to the people of this community. I want us to ask God to show us that and to help us to be The church that Christ wants us to be and all the ways that he has gifted us to be and to be the community of brothers and sisters that would be just a rich environment to invite other people into.

All the way from brokenness to glory, and may we seek out and welcome other people into that and to share with them the goodness of what Christ has done in us.

We'll unpack more, tonight, but this will suffice for this morning. Let's go to God in prayer, let's just ask him to help us as a church. Lord, if there's any here today who have never cried out to you for salvation, I just pray that they would See the beauty of just being a part of a family, the family of God, the family of Jesus Christ. What a blessing that you have saved us, adopted us, forgiven us of our sins, and made us your children.

And Lord, we, we know the day is gonna come when We all stand before you. And we give an account for how we did church here. And we want, we want to be rejoicing in that day rather than grieved. We're here because I think you wanna use us, Lord.

There are people that you want reached beyond what we have reached up to this point, and you're calling us into something and And, and we want to get it right. We want to grow with growth that comes from you. And maturity, and also in hospitality and welcoming people into the grace of the gospel that we're tasting so deeply of. That's what we want.

Where you are the one who brings this about and not us. But we will leave that to you, Lord, and your sovereignty, but we ask you to help us to be the church. That you have called us to be and that you have saved us to be. And may we glorify you.

And touch many lives in the process. We thank You, Lord, for this opportunity to give our offerings to you, receive these funds and do much with every penny that is given for the glory of Jesus, in whose name we pray, and all God's people said,