Ministry Success

What I love about this testimony is that it reminds us of our purpose here at Cornerstone to help people journey from brokenness to wholeness through the gospel of Jesus Christ. I also like that it highlights various ministries here at Cornerstone. Phillip's first exposure to Cornerstone was through Milton's online sermons, and from there, Phillip contacted the church hoping to receive counseling. It did not take long before Philip was making the one hour drive from La Mirada, where he lives to the 6 a.m.

Tuesday morning man forum. And eventually Phillip and Carmen began coming together for council, and I remember encouraging them with the idea that they should be able to find a church that was closer to home. They spurned my council and decided to come and visit Cornerstone instead. First impressions are very important and as you can tell from the video, Carmen will never forget the warm greeting that she received from Mario Lemmon and Jonathan Jones and others who were happy to meet her and Philip on that day.

It did not take long for them to connect to a care group. Carmen refers to her care group as family. Phillip describes how the Aquino family embraced him and Carmen in their brokenness, and you saw how such an embrace has left its mark. As a care group leader, it is an absolute joy to observe God's work in and through people like Philip.

And Carmen. And since today represents the start of a new care group ministry year, it makes sense to preach a message focusing on Cornerstone's Care Group ministry. For those of you who are newer to Cornerstone, we started the Care Group ministry about 11 years ago as a way of maintaining a sense of fellowship and intimacy that is often lost as churches grow larger. The elders also saw the Care Group ministry as a necessary and more effective means of providing pastoral oversight for the members of Cornerstone.

In our membership classes, we highlight the importance of care group ministry when we say that membership to Cornerstone requires active participation in one way or another in a care group. We learned from the Bible that Jesus was committed to a smaller group of believers, and we call them the apostles. The net effect of the intimacy that was experienced within that small group is that 11 of the 12 of them would go on in the power of the Lord to transform the Roman world. The apostle Paul illustrates commitment to a smaller group of believers as he almost always ministered to others from within a smaller group of believers.

The apostle John also illustrates ministering to others out of the overflow of being committed to a smaller group of believers. In Acts chapter 2 verses 41 to 47, The writer there provides for us a profile of a thriving church and listen to what Luke in that passage tells us. And day by day, day by day, continuing with one mind in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart.

The early believers made it a habit to gather daily.

And observed that they gathered regularly in a larger setting as well as in smaller settings. They gathered in the temple and they gathered in homes as well. The Bible provides additional reasons as to why we ought to embrace this pattern of being committed to a smaller group of believers, to smaller group fellowships. Consider the one another passages.

We are to be devoted to one another in brotherly love, Romans 12:10. We are to be building up one another, Romans 14:19. Admonishing one another, Romans 15:14, caring for one another. 1 Corinthians 12:25, comforting one another.

First Thessalonians 4:18, encouraging one another day after day, Hebrews 3:13 in considering how to stimulate one another to love and to good deeds, Hebrews 10:24, praying. For one another. James 5:16, we are to be hospitable to one another. First Peter 4:9, we are to use our gifts in serving one another.

First Peter 4:10, and I submit to you that such one another commands, such one another passages implies a level of knowing each other that is better experienced in smaller group settings. Consider the necessity of the exercise of spiritual gifts and the fact that the exercise of multiple gifts is better realized in a large church that employs some form of smaller group gospel communities. Consider intergenerational worship. There are passages in scripture clearly implying that relationships between generations is to be valued.

Jesus tells older disciples to bring the children to him. Paul tells Titus to direct older women to teach younger women. Paul tells Timothy how he is to relate to older men. Younger men, older women, and younger women, Jesus himself reached out to men and women of various ages from different stations in life.

Clearly, intergenerational relationships are to be valued and care groups here at Cornerstone serve as a venue in which that can happen. But my purpose today is not so much to convince you of the value of care groups here at Cornerstone. I do not need to convince you of the fact that believers in the early church met together in homes. Rather, I would like to take the remaining time to address the topic of care group success.

you might refer to these care groups as small groups. Oftentimes we refer to them as house churches, call them whatever you want, but we will be addressing general ministry success and applying that success to our care groups here at Cornerstone. And my prayer is that by the end of this day, you will have a more clear vision of care group success. Vision is important.

When Grandpa Tom, who is now with the Lord, took my son to his first Angels baseball game, Andrew got a vision for baseball. So he began working on his swing. My little 4 year old was in the living room with a small wiffle ball bat. I pitched a sponge ball to him and he hit a line drive into an antique looking glass lamp that shattered into 1000 pieces.

He looked at me with wide-eyed terror until I lifted my hands and I began shouting in celebration. Andrew joined me in that celebration. For some reason, my wife, Marcy failed, failed to feel our excitement. But Andrew has studied great hitters over the years in his attempt to get a vision for what a good swing looks like.

I want you to hear this message and process this message together within the context of your care group and then go home later tonight with vision. I want you to have a vision for care group and how God can use you to be a tremendous blessing to the people in your group. And so the message this morning is entitled Ministry Success. Ministry Success, we will be considering 9 ingredients for ministry success in care groups.

Incidentally, these ingredients can be applied in many different ministry settings, but for the purposes here, we're gonna be applying these ingredients to the care group ministry. So 9 ingredients. Number 1, we must behold God. Number 1, we must behold God.

This is absolutely critical for the spiritual health of our care group ministry. We must gather together with a passion and expectation that we behold God. Now think with me for a moment back to Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 6 verse 1. Many of you are familiar with what happens there.

Isaiah sees a vision of the Lord. He says that I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted with the train of His robe filling the temple, and how the story goes, how the vision continues where there were seraphim, and they were crying out one to another, holy, Holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory, and we know that the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of Him who called out while the temple was filling with smoke. And so Isaiah captures a vision of the Lord and his immediate response is to declare woe is me, for I am ruined.

And we know that on the other side of that confession, woe is me, for I am ruined because I am a man of unclean lips.

We know that he experiences forgiveness, and then on the other side of that experience of forgiveness, he is absolutely surrendered to God. I submit to you that laying hold of God is critical, even as we gather together in care groups. John, the apostle John beheld Christ, and such a beholding resulted in a powerful effect. He would spend the rest of his life committed to proclaiming Christ.

Consider with me first John chapter one and verse one. Listen to what John says. John says, what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled concerning the word of life, and the life was manifested, and we have seen, we have seen and we bear witness and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us. And he goes on to say again, what we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you.

You see the apostle John here, he beholds the Lord. He says what we have seen, and the net effect of his beholding the Lord is that his life is completely transformed, and he's ministering to the people that would read this letter out of the overflow of having beheld the Lord. The apostle Paul, think about him for a moment. He beheld the Lord on the road to Damascus and you can read about that in Acts chapter 9.

On the road to Damascus where he was intending to persecute Christians, he got a glimpse of the Lord. Lord Jesus Christ and his life was completely transformed as a result of that. He repented of his sin and he believed in Jesus and he would go on to be one of the greatest Christians ever in the history of the church. It is important to know that beholding the Lord is critical, and we want to do this as we come together in our care groups.

Listen to what the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 3:18. He says, but we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord, we are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory. Notice that transformation happens in connection with beholding the Lord Jesus Christ. And think about the apostle Paul when he prayed for the Ephesians in the book.

of Ephesians, and in his first prayer, therefore the Ephesians, he prayed that God would grant to them a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in Christ. In other words, my prayer for you is that you would behold Christ. Why in the world would he make that prayer because he knew that beholding Christ was critical for their comprehension of gospel truth and the application of gospel in their lives. Therefore, the path to ministry success begins with beholding and abiding in the Lord Jesus Christ.

If the care group ministry is to be all that it can and should be here at Cornerstone, we must gather together and behold the Lord. And this is gonna lead us to the 2nd ingredient for ministry success and care groups. The 2nd ingredient, number 2, we must behold God through the Bible, we must behold God through the Bible. Now think with me for a moment, the early church was clearly committed to the apostolic teaching.

We see this in Acts chapter 2, verses 42 and even following, but in verse 42, it tells us that the early church was committed to the apostolic teaching and that the very heart of their teaching is God. God's purpose in giving to us the apostolic teachings, specifically the New Testament of the Bible, the 27 individual letters written after Christ ascended into heaven, God's purpose in giving to us this New Testament was to reveal Himself to us. Above all, God wants for us to behold His Son Jesus as the one through whose sacrifice on the cross, we have salvation.

It is this Jesus whom we in the scriptures behold and consequently worship.

Think about the New Testament with me for a moment. In Matthew, we behold Jesus as king, in Mark, we behold Jesus as servant, in Luke, we behold Jesus as the Son of Man, and in John's Gospel, Jesus is revealed. Revealed as the Son of God. You see, the purpose of the gospels is to reveal the truth about Jesus.

God's word is delivered to us in order that God reveals Himself to us, and each of the four gospel writers directs us to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as well. And so when you think about it, in each of the gospels, the crescendo of everything is the fact that Jesus died on a cross for us, so that our sins might be forgiven, and not only that, but he was raised bodily from the dead, and he ultimately ascended onto the right hand of the Father. This is the gospel, and this is the gospel that we proclaim.

In Acts, we behold a God who mightily works through the power of the gospel to transform sinners and build his church.

Every single epistle reveals truths about God, especially gospel truths that are then applied in practical ways to how we live life. The Bible reveals to us a clear link then between beholding God and then being transformed by His word. His word reveals Himself to us and the net effect of that is, is that we ought to experience transformation. Transformation is the end result of God's word to 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us that all scripture is inspired by God and that it is profitable and notice the end result or, or the goal of it is that we, the man of God may be adequate equipped for every good work.

So God reveals Himself to us, and on the other side of that revelation, He's providing us with commands to follow. He's giving us direction for life, and as we embrace Him and apply the truth in our life, the net effect is that we are complete, we are adequate, we are equipped for every good work. Think about the writer of Hebrews with me for a minute. He directs our attention to this Jesus.

Again, the point that I am asserting here is that God reveals Himself to us through his words. Take Hebrews for example, the writer there directs our attention to this Jesus who is our great high priest. That's the whole thrust I think of what Hebrews is about. It's about presenting Jesus to us as our great high priest, and on the other side of the fact that Jesus is our high priest, we are given command to approach him in prayer.

Hebrews 4:16 says, let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in our times of need, and this leads us then to the next ingredient for ministry success here at Cornerstone. As it relates to care groups. Number 3, we must behold God in prayer. We must behold God, we must behold God through His word, OK, and we must behold Him within the context of prayer as we pray together.

According to Acts 2:42, once again, the early church was committed to prayer. And you will know this that the very next statement is that quote, everyone kept feeling a sense of awe. They were strongly committed to the apostolic teaching, to fellowship, to breaking of bread, and to prayer, and immediately reread that everyone kept feeling a sense of awe. They were continually devoting themselves to prayer.

They were seeking hard after God, beholding Him in prayer, and then everyone kept feeling a sense of awe. The word for awe is Phobos. The King James Version translates the word fear. And the early church prayed and such prayer is associated then with the fear of God.

They experienced God as a result of prayer amongst other things. They beheld God in prayer and experienced his presence, and this is a critical ingredient for care group success. We are not gathering together in social clubs. Our primary purpose is not to watch a football game, not that there is anything wrong with watching a football game.

Our primary purpose is not to watch the Boston Red Sox beat up on the, oh, that doesn't work. Although there is nothing wrong with gathering together and watching a ball game from time to time, but our purpose is to come together in biblical fellowship marked by prayer in which we behold the living God and experience a genuine fear of the Lord. Colossians says to keep seeking the things above Colossians 3:1, and implied in this is that we behold God in prayer, we are to seek Him, and we are to keep seeking Him, and he is to be the object of our ultimate desire.

Ephesians 6:18 says, pray at all times in the Spirit.

First Thessalonians 5:17 says, pray without ceasing. First Timothy 2:8 says, I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands. So far, the 1st 3 ingredients of ministry success pertains to our relationship to God. We must behold God.

We behold Him in the Bible and within the environment of prayer, and such a beholding is critical to our personal transformation. This is an essential part of what we do when we gather together in our care groups. As we behold the Lord and embrace His word, we will or we should experience change. We will grow, and if we do not experience change, we should feel concerned.

After all, the Lord who has spoken to us through the Bible makes it clear that genuine faith always results in a transformed life in which good works are evident, and you can track that down in James 2:14 through 26. You see, James links our faith in Christ to fruitful living, our Faith in Christ, our beholding Christ is linked to fruitful living. If there is no fruit, it is likely that we have no root. And speaking of fruit, let's now transition from our vertical relationship with the Lord to our horizontal relationships with one another as we consider 1/4 ingredient for care group.

Ministry success. Number 4, we must proclaim the gospel to one another. We must proclaim the gospel to one another. Think with me, please.

All 27 New Testament books were written by men whose primary purpose is to proclaim Christ. The New Testament writers ministers out of the overflow of their experience of the gospel. Their train of thought consistently starts with gospel and results in application. Rarely are commands given outside of a gospel context.

Like the New Testament writers, we must minister out of the overflow of our experience. Of the gospel. I want us to once again consider John in 1 John chapter 1, verses 1 through 4. Let us look at what he says again, says what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have beheld and our hands have handled concerning the word of life and the life was manifested and we have seen and we bear witness.

And we proclaim to you the eternal life. He's ministering out of the overflow of his direct experience of the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, we proclaim to you the one in whom you can experience life, we proclaim to you Jesus, which was with the Father and was manifest. suggested to us and then he goes on to say what we have seen and heard, again, everything is connected to its experience of Christ, what we have seen and heard, what we know to be true, we proclaim to you also.

You see his ministry approach is rooted in gospel, it is rooted in Christ. It is a gospel-centered approach to ministry. And so John beheld God, resulting in his proclamation of God. Listen to what Paul writes to the Colossians.

Remember, this is the Paul who came face to face with the Lord Jesus on the road to Damascus and listen to what he says, Colossians 1:28, he says, and we proclaim him. What's your approach, Paul, to ministry? We proclaim him. I think of elsewhere in the Bible where Paul says, we proclaim to know nothing, except for Christ and Him crucified.

You see, Paul's whole ministry was rooted in the person and work of Jesus, and that's what he proclaimed. And if we are to experience success in the care group context and in any ministry context, our success is gonna be rooted in our proclamation of the King of kings and the Lord of Lords. When we gather together in our care groups, we must proclaim Christ to one another. this is one of the blessings of celebrating the Lord's supper together when we meet in our care groups.

In celebrating the Lord's Supper, what do we do? We proclaim the Lord's death until he returns, and we ought never to grow weary. of celebrating communion together when we come together in our care group setting. Communion, if you will, ought to be a highlight of what we do when we gather together and we remember that our sins have been atoned for.

What a blessing it is in the care group context to celebrate the table of the Lord together. When folks open up and they share their struggles, what do we do? We come alongside. We weep with those who weep.

we rejoice for those who rejoice, but we also look for the opportunity that God by the Spirit gives to us to insert gospel into the equation, and we build one another up in Christ. Well, let us move on to the next ingredient for care group success, number 5, number 5, we must pray for one another, we must pray for one another. We cannot expect to have success apart from prayer. Remember Jesus says, apart from me, you can do nothing, and so we have to come to Him, dependent upon him, praying to him so that he might do the work that only he can do in and amongst us.

We have already considered the fact that the early church continually devoted themselves to prayer. We considered the fact that they beheld God in prayer, but that is not all that they did in prayer. They prayed for one another. They must have known one another and then prayed for one another in appropriate and relevant ways.

Consider the example of Paul and how he would pray and in particular Paul's prayers for the Ephesians and let this be a model for us as to how we ought to pray for one another when we gather together in our care groups. Remember Paul in his letter to the Ephesians in the 1st 3 chapters. He's giving them gospel, but in that letter, in those 1st 3 chapters, there are two prayers that he makes. His first prayer in chapter 1 is a prayer in which he prays for the Ephesians that God would give to them a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Christ.

In other words, Paul is saying, I'm praying to God for you that he would give to you the ability to behold him. I want you to have a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Christ. I want for Christ to be revealed to you. I want you through the eyes of faith to be able to behold him, and the The reason why Paul would pray such a prayer like that is because he knew that in order for them to comprehend gospel reality, they had to behold Christ.

And so he would pray for them to be able to behold Christ and so we should pray for one another. Oh God, help the people in my care group to catch a glimpse of their savior. Help the people in my care group to behold the Lord Jesus Christ through the eyes of faith. But look at Paul's second prayer, they're at the end of chapter 3, and Paul is praying for the Ephesians, and when he prays for them, he is praying that God would strengthen them with power by the Spirit in the inner man.

And this is how we ought to pray for one another, oh God, I pray that you out of the overflow of your grace, and by your mercy, God, that You would strengthen my brothers and sisters by the power of the Spirit in the inner man, heal and transform and change them, go to the deeper part of who they are and make them to be like Christ, and he goes on to pray. so that Christ might dwell in their heart through faith. This is Paul praying, oh God, I pray that Christ would dwell in their hearts through faith, that you would build up their faith in Christ and Christ would be at home in their hearts, and that there would be no interference, but when I see my brother or sister, I would see Christ at work in and through.

My brother and sister, and then Paul goes on in that prayer that they would experience the love of Christ, right, that they would understand together with all of the saints, what is the magnitude of the love of Christ, that they would experience this love of Christ in the context of community, and he describes this love as a love that goes beyond mere human comprehension.

OK, he wants for them in the context of his praying for them, he's praying for them to experience this love and the final thing that they would be filled. that they would be filled with all of the fullness of Jesus Christ. When we come together in our care groups, and when we pray for one another, not just in care group, but in our homes with our families and whatnot, we want to be praying to God for one another, that God would reveal Himself and build one another up in a way that is similar to how the apostle Paul here is praying.

For those whom he loved himself.

Let us now consider the next ingredient for ministry success 6. We must care for one another. Of course, when we pray for one another, we care, but we, we don't wanna stop with just praying. If it is within our means, we want to do something proactive by way of, of, literally caring for one another.

And so we must care for one another. This is what we observe in the early church. Again, we are going back to Acts 2:42 to 47. I would like at this point to read this passage.

this is where much of the heart of this message is derived from, but let me just read it and point out a few things, from this text. it says that they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread. This is communion and to prayer, and everyone kept feeling a sense of awe and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles. You see, the apostles, by God's grace were given the ability to run around.

And, and to pray for people and to heal them. This was a special time in the history of the church where apostolic power and authority was being given and the apostles would see people who were not doing well physically and out of the overflow of mercy because they cared, they would lay hands on and heal people and so this is what was happening in the early church and so it tells us then. That there were many, many signs and wonders that were taking place through the apostles.

It says in verse 44 that all those who had believed were together, they had all things in common, and this is they began selling their property and possessions, and they were sharing with them all as anyone might have need.

You see, there's this mercy ministry that is happening in the early church, those who had an abundance would observe that there were some who were suffering need and those who had abundance would take things that they owned and sell them. They would sell their land and they would raise the money as a result and they would give to people who had need in various ways and for various purposes and reasons, but there was this spirit of generosity and the spirit of giving. It says day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, breaking bread from house to house.

Is it not care?

Is it not caring to just open your home to the people of God and to welcome them in with joy and with happiness? That is what it means to care, that's part of what it means to care, just to be hospitable. So they were taking their meals together, they were sharing meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart. They were praising God and having favor with all of the people.

Know this, God through the apostles performing miracles, caring for people, meeting needs. Notice how they had all things in common and selling their property and possessions and sharing with them all as anyone who might have need. We have experienced, we have observed this spirit of caring over the years in our care group ministry. I think of one care group in which a family in need was given a van.

There is another care group that conspired against a man who was going through a very difficult season and this care group set up a game in which this man would win the prize. And when this man opened the prize, he was absolutely stunned to see that inside of the package or the envelope, I'm not sure what it was, but there was $1700 inside of that. And this is just merely but an example of how one particular care group rallied behind the need of a person to minister to that need.

I think of another care group that raised the funds for a woman to visit her father when his health was ailing.

These are just a few examples. We do not have time to count all of the examples. And what I want for you to understand, brothers and sisters, is that there is a ton that you can do to effectively minister care to the folks in your care group. You may not be able to give money, but you can give time, you can give up your prayers, you can, you can give of things that you have.

there are different ways that you can seek to minister to the people in your group and thus meet need. And so let us move on then to the 7th ingredient for ministry success. Number 7, we must invite others to join us. Think with me for a moment about the great commission in Matthew 28:19, Jesus says, go.

and make disciples. Go and make disciples. I submit to you that success in our small group ministry hinges upon our ability to go and to reach out to people and to invite people into our group, and to even invite those who are unsaved and to bring them into the fold of Christian fellowship. First John chapter 1 verses 1 through 4, I have referred to this passage a number of times now and you will read it together later when you gather together in your care groups.

But when you think about 1 John chapter 1, verses 1 through 4, listen to what John says. He says, we write these things to you so that you might have fellowship with us. John is saying, I want for you to have the experience of fellowship with us, and he says, and indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son. We, our community, me and my ministry companions, we are writing these things to you.

It's not a me or an I, it is a we and an us, and we are writing these things to you so that You might have fellowship with us, we want to draw you into this fellowship so that you might have fellowship with us and he helps us to understand and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son. Do you get a sense of what is going on here? We've got this fellowship that is being experienced within the context of our triune God, God the Father, Son, the Spirit. And then what happens is out of the overflow of that fellowship, you've got John who has just proclaimed that God, the one we have seen, and John is saying, we are writing these things to you, we proclaim Christ to you and we write these things to you so that you may be brought into the fellowship that we enjoy and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.

John is inviting people to join him in fellowship. Our care groups can be a place where we invite seekers to come and to experience Christian community. Before I came to Christ, I was invited to hang out with Christians in their homes while I was in college and so it was apartments. I noticed that they had a joy that I was missing and as a result, I would eventually come to faith in Christ.

I see these smaller groups of these college believers running around with their stupid joy. And I began to feel empty inside of myself, and I was provoked to jealousy, and the net effect is that I knew that they had something that I didn't have, and I would come to want that. And when God revealed to me the gospel, and I believed in the gospel, I had what it is that my hungering soul was thirsting for, I had Christ. We must have a vision for reaching out and bringing folks into our care group.

But be careful This can be painful. If our groups get too big, we will have to multiply. Such multiplication can be painful. When the apostle Paul left the Ephesian Church in Acts chapter 20 in order to run around and plant churches and minister to young churches, it was painful.

The Ephesian elders there wept at the thought that Paul was leaving them. But it was necessary for the greater good. The pain was necessary for the greater good of the gospel, and I submit to you that the most successful care groups are the ones that give birth to others. Giving birth hurts, so I hear.

But it is necessary for life and it results in joy. When a woman finally completes her labor in giving birth to a child, the pain is forgotten and it gives way to joy, right? I believe that to be true most of the time. Well, let us turn to the 8th ingredient for ministry success.

Ingredient number 8, we must manifest and we must pursue joy. We must manifest and we must pursue joy. We must relate to others out of the overflow of joy and for the purpose of our own increasing joy. Psalm 16:11 tells us that in God's presence, there is fullness of joy at his right hand, pleasures forevermore.

Galatians 5:22 tells us that joy is a fruit of the Spirit. It is something that's produced in us as we walk by the Spirit and as we relish gospel realities and are filled with the Spirit. The net effect of that is, is that joy is produced. Paul commands the Philippians to rejoice in the Lord always.

In Philippians chapter 4, verse 4, he says, rejoice in the Lord always and again I will say rejoice. And again, John himself in 1 John 1:4, makes it clear that he wrote for the purpose of his and his companions, his ministry companions' joy, we write these things to you, so that our joy Might be made complete. You see, John understood that his ability, his capacity for joy hinged upon folks coming into relationship to Jesus, his joy hinged upon other people and, and them coming into the Fellowship and experiencing what he experienced with God, the Father and the Son Jesus Christ.

Again, John says we write these things to you so that our joy might be made complete and guess what, when that happens, God Himself is pleasured.

That brings joy to Almighty God Himself, how beautiful it is, how good and how pleasant it is when brothers dwell together. In unity So success and care group hinges upon our ability to experience joy in our relationships with one another and then finally, the 9th ingredient for ministry, success and as we apply this to the care group ministry, the small group, the house church ministry here at Cornerstone, we must embrace commitment. We must embrace commitment. We have already noted that the early Church of Acts 2:42 was deeply committed to relationship, and such commitment is evident in them meeting daily, whether in the temple or house to house.

When you look at Paul, it's very clear by his example that he was a man committed to relationship. When you look at John, for example, as we already have, it becomes, I think, quite clear to us that he was strongly committed to relationship. And I want here to point out two levels of commitment from John, again, coming from 1 John 1:1 through 42 levels. I'm not gonna get into the commitment of his relationship to Christ.

I wanna get into two levels of commitment regarding the horizontal relationships. OK, so follow with me. John was committed to his ministry companions. Additionally, he was committed to those whom he was writing to, his companions and those that he was writing to.

The picture painted is that John was connected to his fellow ministry companions as well as seeking to be connected to those that he was writing to. And so one of the things that I want to submit to you is that we are going to experiment. here at Cornerstone with a little bit of a change, OK, so hold on to your seats. One of the things we're going to experiment with here is providing more opportunity for our care group leaders and their spouses to fellowship together.

So we will seek to meet as care groups. Leaders on the first Sunday of the month. Church-wide, we encourage our folks to use the first Sunday of the month to connect with one another in informal ways. Consider this first Sunday of the month as a day when you are free to be creative with how you will invest your time.

you may still meet with others in your care group. You might want to meet with others whom you ordinarily cannot fellowship with. You might feel a need for some family time and that is all OK. Care groups will continue to meet church-wide on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th, and if there is a 5th Sunday in the month, we will continue to meet church-wide during those Sundays, but on the 1st Sunday of the month, the care group leaders and wives together, we are prioritizing coming together for the purpose of, of growing together in our relationships with one another and encouraging one another so that God willing, we might do an even better job of serving the flock here at Cornerstone.

That is our passion, that is our desire, because we know that the day will come when we stand before Christ and we will have to give an account, and we want to do so well. We want to hear the Lord say to us, well done, and we want to serve you well, and we want for you, when you stand before the Lord to be able to say, I am so glad that you had such and such care group leader over me because they cared for me and they did a wonderful job of leading the care group. I just wanna say, Just direct us to one final example of relational commitment.

We looked at the early church, we look at John, we look at Paul, for example.

But let us not forget Jesus Himself. He is the ultimate example of relational commitment. Right, Jesus is the one who left the glory of heaven to dwell amongst sinners like ourselves in order to die on the cross so that we might be brought into a relationship with him and with one another. Notice that in all of these examples, the early church, Paul, John, Jesus, that the issue of relational commitment was not a matter of I have to, but it was a matter of I get to.

For them, their joy was rooted in relationship. We read about Jesus that who for the joy set before Him enjoyed the cross. What was the joy? It was bringing us into relationship with Himself, and because of that joy, he was willing to enjoy the cross.

Our message has been entitled Ministry Success, Nine Ingredients for Ministry, Success in Care Groups. Our vision here at Cornerstone is that we gather together in care group, that as we gather together in care group, that we enthusiastically behold God through the Bible within the context of prayer and that we proclaim the God that we behold to one another. We want to experience transformation together, we want to pray for and to care for one another and we want to bring others into the fellowship that we enjoy.

And we do these things because we know in part that our own joy hinges upon this.

In short, our desire is that we as a church will follow the model of the early church in her strong commitment to gospel relationships that so often were forged within the context of the homes of one another. I would like to ask you to join with me in prayer. Dear Lord, we just thank you so much for your word. We thank you so much for the Care Group ministry here at Cornerstone.

I pray, Lord, that over the course of time, every person who is a member here would be effectively connected. I pray, Father, for each of the different care groups that you would cause them over this next ministry year to thrive, to grow, to be vibrant, to multiply if that be your will. I pray, Father, that you would just cause us to reach out to people and to bring them in and that Lord, your kingdom would advance through the care group ministry even. Father God, now we want to give to you a portion of what you have given to us as we, take out of, out of the stuff that you have provided us with.

We want to just, just give these monies, give, give this money to you. We pray that you would use it for the purpose of advancing your kingdom, spreading your fame, and thank you, Lord, for how it is that you are at work. We thank you, Lord, again for the example of Philip and Carmen. And others in this church who have been transformed by the power of the gospel, and we thank you, oh God, for the privilege that you give to us to help people journey from brokenness to wholeness to the power of the gospel, and we thank you, God, that you have taken us on this journey, for we all are broken, but God, we have a great God, we have a wonderful savior, and we know that in you, we are you.

If any man be in Christ. He is a new creation. And so thank you, Lord, for making us new creatures in Christ, and we look forward to the day when we will see you face to face, and until then, God, help us to be about your business. We pray these things in Jesus' name.