A Faith Worth Sharing Kickoff Session (Part 2)

Alright. Let's give a minute to this. What stands out to you from Angela Duckworth's definition of grit?

Keep trying. It could be painful, and it probably usually is. It's tied to something outside of yourself—something way outside of yourself. And that's going to have a lot of value to overcome. It gives a central focus for your life. A central focus for our lives. Very clear vision. You don't have to be hungry. It decides how you spend your time.

Now, typically, we associate grit with Olympic athletes or that cancer researcher at Duke or something. It's weird as a Carolina grad to say the word Duke, but just work with me on that. We have certain occupations in mind where we channel this kind of obsession and focus and grittiness. So let's play a little game here, friends. What might our obsession, our compelling idea, our goal, our ultimate concern be, regardless of our calling and occupation?

What I love about what Angela is doing here is making us think through: what is our ultimate concern? Being an Olympic athlete is a good concern, but maybe not the best ultimate concern. Curing cancer is a good concern, but maybe not our ultimate concern. Loving our kids is a really good concern, but maybe not our ultimate concern.

My reading of the scriptures tells us that while we're on Earth, we have been engrafted into the mission of seeing God expand his kingdom and multiply the gospel all over the earth. And our ultimate concern, I think, is to see our lost family, neighbor, and friends being found in Christ. Maybe he's called us to all the cool different jobs and specialties in this room so that we're in all those different spaces while we're doing good work there to see this reality actually happen.

Now what's terrifying about this thought right now, for most of us? Everything else. It's reorienting everything else. Because it's not like God doesn't want you to be a cancer researcher. It doesn't mean God doesn't want you to be a cancer researcher. So we don't have to give up on cancer research, but it's about reprioritizing where it fits and how we spend our time. Does that make sense?

What else is challenging about this concept? We still have to do things—fix separate things. In your own house. Thank you, Katie. It's the good stuff. The concerns usually take up a lot of time, don't they? Between my allergy, my wife's allergies, and my daughter's allergies, what my wife has to do to figure out how to feed us is ridiculous. But if she didn't do it, we would starve. So we can't have ultimate concerns if our main concern isn't just trying to keep us alive. And so there's something valuable and noble about that. This is what I'm talking about reprioritizing our concerns because some concerns may not feel as spiritual, but are really, really, really important.

We have to really believe that they're lost. It's really easy, I think, to go through life not actively thinking about a good guy that you work next to every day—that he's actually lost. I don't actively contemplate that much. So that's the ultimate concern. I really believe that's true. And piggybacking on that, we have to ultimately believe they will not spend eternity with God, that they will actually spend eternity in a place called hell.

This goes back to preaching truth to our hearts and looking at reality as reality. We have friends who are lost, and they're all awesome people. And sometimes we have to look at them and remind ourselves: this person, the scripture says, is an object of God's wrath, and will spend eternity apart from him, and will face the fury of God's justice. I think we have to recover the lostness of the lost.

What else? I guess my own character, if you want to say that. If I really believe this, then why am I not doing more about it?

So it gets exposing, isn't it? What is my ultimate concern? What are my priorities? What values and principles are ruling my life? It's not that this isn't a concern for you. I just think it's getting drowned out by other concerns. And this is where it gets challenging for us followers of Christ. If I gave you a test on how important evangelism is, y'all would all ace it.

At a Presbyterian church, you'd be quoting cool people and having verses—that would be amazing. But then when you have to assess where you're at, it's like, oh, man. It's not like you have to drop everything, but what does it look like for Jesus to reorient our passions and concerns so that we're actually missionally aligned with him? Do you see how challenging this is?

These are conversations that have to be layered with each other when you're talking with your friends and people in your church, because it takes a while to figure this out. There's tons of resistance to us having our lost friends in the kingdom of heaven as our ultimate concern.

Paul talked about this in this passage:

At the same time, pray also for us that God may open a door to us for the word to speak the mystery of Christ for which I am in chains. — Colossians 4:2-6

He was literally in chains. That was an obstacle for him. So what are the other resistances that we experience? They can be both internal and external. You don't want to do something weird at your work and then still need to go back to work. You've got to be savvy. You can't be that weird evangelical and expect to get anywhere. You've got to be savvy, but that is real resistance. Instead of us spending the time to be creative and thoughtful and figure out that narrow path, we're just like, it's too hard.

Internal and External Barriers to Evangelism

I think we're afraid of losing real friendships. That's real resistance. Some people say, "Don't talk to me about that," or they're in a hard place. What else? Some people feel just a lot smarter than you. When I was a brand new believer at eighteen, talking to my dad's colleagues and friends, everyone had a PhD or was a doctor or something, and I wasn't. It was horrible. That's a reality of being in the Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill area—everyone probably is smarter than you. And then when you start talking about Jesus, your IQ level just plummets in front of them.

So sometimes it's fear of losing relationships. Sometimes it's like, I don't want to be the idiot in the room. "You actually believe in Jesus?" And then whatever mocking or sarcastic statement comes next. It's a real problem. It's real resistance.

There's also resistance from being around other believers. They may have their opinions and thoughts, different ideas about education or whatever. You're meeting resistance from your own friends and other people. We're our own worst enemies when it comes to being on mission. There's the fear of saying the wrong thing. If I say the wrong thing, I've lost him. You lose a believing friend, much less a nonbelieving friend. But I cannot tell you how important our fellowship is, because if we're not aligned on what we're trying to accomplish, we just pull each other down.

The default mode for evangelicalism anywhere in North America is so low that when someone pops up with some dynamism to their faith, we just pull that person down. It's a real issue. The worst resistance is internal, more than it is external. If you have a bunch of laissez-faire Christians, the last thing you want to do is hang out with the Jesus freak that's all about evangelism. That poor person gets alienated in every church. You know—"Let's go share the gospel." And they're like, "Please just get away from me."

Naming Your Resistance

Two Sundays from now, we'll get into this more deeply. But you're going to have to start naming the behavior or the resistance that's getting in the way and start naming the deeper motivation below it so you can preach the gospel to it. Can I give you a hint without ruining my future lessons? Don't name it nicely. We tend to domesticate our sins, treat it like a cute little puppy. "Oh, I'm just having a hard time getting to sit," versus a ferocious animal trying to destroy you. Sin in the Bible is usually referred more to the ferocious animal than the puppy. Right?

So you're like, "Oh, I'm just worried what my friends are gonna say." That's a domesticated puppy version. Do you see what I'm saying? If you can be more brutally honest with yourself about the behavior you want to change, you'll get to the motivation much faster, which then will allow you to know what the real battle in your heart is—which requires the gospel. Are you tracking with me?

That's a whole other module, so we'll get to that in due time. But I want us talking about that because at some point, you will have deep conversations about what behaviors we collectively employ that keep us collectively from doing evangelism where we all pull each other down. That one's a hard one, isn't it?

So what's our ultimate concern gonna be here? When we get towards the tail end of this time of training together based on who's still left in the room, we're in this—like, this is stuff that different layers in the church will have to keep discussing over and over and over.

So how are you activating grit? Friends, having a collaborative fellowship and a shared mission, I've found, is the key for all of us. Because if you want to be having renewal dynamics, you have to be in fellowship with each other. If you be enjoying your missional identity, it's because you're in fellowship together.

When I was an associate pastor of a church I helped start in Orlando, I coplanned with a friend. I took on the role of leadership development in groups so I could take tons of trips to India. And he wanted to preach a lot, which I was like, that's great. When we were working on groups, I quickly realized some group community groups—all you do is just meet once a week. It's not fellowship. It's not community. It's not deep friendships. It's not aligning. It's just like, oh, as a follower of Jesus, I have to go to a community group once a week.

Other community groups, these people were starting to missionally align and figure out how to do the Christian life together. And community group night was like date night. It wasn't the only time they saw each other, but it was the time they all looked forward to seeing each other. Do you see the difference? Is it a meeting I have to go to, or is it date night?

So what we quickly realized is about a third of our groups actually had real fellowship, and the rest of them didn't. Then we're like, oh man, how do we reorient our groups so there's real fellowship? Now, isn't that really hard in North America in middle class, upwardly mobile communities? It's painful for any pastor in a middle class, upwardly mobile community to actually help their church form community groups where they actually have real fellowship, where they're actually preaching the gospel to each other and helping each other at lost fronts. Are you talking with me?

I'm not trying to sugarcoat this—we can do this. This is really hard. It's gonna take us to figure this out. Does that make sense? I just wanted to name it. We're not solving that today. That's other modules.

Let's take a ten to fifteen minute break, and then we'll get back to it. You're doing great. Thanks for being super engaged and for the dialogue. This is where it gets fun. I had to kind of rattle you, go after your heart a little bit in the first couple things. Now let's get super practical and deeply embedded in the text.

Making Connections with the Lost

So we're gonna talk about how to make connections. As you look at this beautiful little hashtag with those little names there, Paul actually has some thoughtful things to say about how you can deepen those connections and grow those fringes. The text basically says: How should we connect the lost? You need to act wisely towards outsiders.

Act is a verb. It's an imperative to walk wisely, meaning of limited opportunity, time, resources towards—against your posture. Outsiders. This is actually a technical term that Paul's using for people who are aliens to Jesus and his grace. Super straightforward, right? Walk wisely towards outsiders.

Connecting with the lost is absolutely essential. Again, it's weird that Paul has to write this in a letter, and it's weird that I have to then reinforce it out loud. But that's the reality for Christians of all time. So then it's gonna create questions that we have to think about.

Now, where could your walking line up with things you already enjoy doing? If you're gonna walk towards lost folks in your life, what do you already enjoy doing that you could do a lot more of? Or where are you already around outsiders that could just be a little bit more intentional?

Some of you are actually in fun, collaborative work environments. Some of you may actually live on a street where neighbors actually talk to each other. Depending on that, there might be some built-in things in your life. You're like, oh, this is great.

What can you realistically handle? This is a big deal. When I was a church planter, I had these two guys in their late forties with great career paths. One was working at IBM. The other one was a professor at Carolina, and they had teenage kids. One of them took me to lunch. He's like, Rue, we're gonna tithe.

We're gonna be here every Sunday, but I'm gonna be the worst member you've ever seen for the next five years. And I was like, I'm 30 at this point, so I have no idea. And he was just like, I have teenage kids, and I don't know how to do anything else. I'm like, oh, okay. And he was true to his word. He was the worst member for the next five years. And then I moved on to Orlando, and suddenly he becomes like Mr. Deacon. He starts serving, becomes available, and he was completely true to his word. And I caught up to him, and I didn't really understand what he was saying until I had teenagers. And then I was like, oh.

So sometimes you get into life situations where your bandwidth gets really narrowed, and so you have to be super intentional with that limited bandwidth. What will you not walk towards to better walk towards outsiders? This is the harder question. We love opportunities. We love things being open ended. We don't like missing out on stuff. So how do we not do the nine cool things that are on our plate so we can do the one thing that's important?

I mean, it's interesting. I have church planters I'm coaching right now, and that's the main question I'm asking them. This is not unique to this room. This is a real challenge. Sometimes we get so ambitious about our lives and all the things we're trying to accomplish that we just don't have space to be intentional with lost friends in our life. Does that make sense?

And then what has prevented gospel connection in your life in the past? Just being aware of those things. You can have something so simple as Paul saying act wisely towards outsiders. And for us, when we read it on the surface, of course, Paul. Of course, I'm gonna act wisely towards outsiders. Only to start pondering it going, oh, man. This is gonna make me look at my priorities. This is gonna make me face my ultimate concern. Oh, man. I have to not do these five things I really enjoy doing so I can do this one thing. See how that works?

Now I found this actually gets worked out best with other believers in your life where you're processing and praying this through together. This could be your community group. It could be relationships you've already formed in the church. But if you're not processing this out loud with another human being, you're probably not making any progress on this. Do you see how these questions get to your heart pretty quick? And then you gotta stay there until the Spirit gives you clarity. And that's hard. It's hard to create time for conversations like this, isn't it?

Building Connections With Acquaintances

Alright. So let's go back to your hashtag exercise. Some of those people on those hashtags are friends, and some of them are more like acquaintances. So for the people who are more on the acquaintance side where you wanna build a friendship, what's one thing you can do with that person to build a greater connection?

Invite them over for dinner. Yes. So hospitality is the go to. What else? Act of kindness. Some kind of act of kindness. Hey, I noticed that your yard was overwhelmed with leaves. I blew it off for you. What else? Foundational thing with your hairdresser. I remembered what she said, and I asked her about it in different things. Yes. Absolutely. Just remembering what they say and bringing it up. Excellent. Which is gonna require you to actually pray for them. Good. What else? You can just communicate with them more. Yeah. Sending them a text. Yes. Excellent.

And then it's just being creative. Sometimes you become friends with a person because you have a shared passion that feels frivolous. I've become friends with people I would never thought I'd become friends with because we're both big Carolina fans. And the good and the bad bonds you. Going eight and five or seven and six in football when we had Mac Brown last four or five years was deeply frustrating. This current Carolina team not having a big man and barely winning any games is very frustrating. So I found that the frustrating bonds you even more than the non-frustrating.

So I mean, you don't have to be weird. How else do you develop friendships? Like, dude, can you believe what just happened here? Or like, hey, we just got Belichick. This is amazing. Right? So you could talk endlessly and actually build a friendship with someone over a shared passion. See how that works? So hospitality is good, but then just figuring out how I can make a connection with somebody. What's the most creative way I can build that connection with them? It's really, really important.

Now sometimes that might not be obvious to you. So don't you need another believer in your life to help you process how to be creative to form and deepen those connections?

Sometimes you're in a work environment where you're actually friends with someone, but you're not sure how to take that friendship to the next level in that context. So you just need someone in your space to help you think through it—how would I take another step towards this person? That's not weird. Do you see how that works? It requires creativity on our part. Innovation. And usually when we hit that creativity innovation wall, we're like, this is too hard.

Any of you work out on a regular basis? Yeah. It's hard doing it by ourselves, isn't it? I've gotten to the point now where I look forward to it. Josh hates human beings—I'm picking this up really fast. It's like, no, I like my little bubble.

So in college, it was really easy for me to stay in shape because I always had weightlifting or workout partners, and they're in your dorm. It was low hanging fruit. Just starting to get back in shape the last six months has been extremely hard for me because I've been by myself trying to do it. And as I've been reflecting on that, having just another person makes all the difference in so many areas of my life.

If you're gonna start building connections and praying for people and loving the lost, having an evangelism buddy is a huge deal. This is what fellowship actually is. It's that person you get coffee with going, "I don't know how to take this relationship forward. What do I do?" And you just brainstorm for thirty minutes over coffee. And then praying, which may be the most important thing you do.

So I want you to look at your hashtag exercise—circle the people you're trying to make connections with, or maybe put a star or asterisk, whatever special symbol you want. Right now, just think of one thing you can do to make that connection. In the future, we're gonna have you build relationships with people where you're processing this on a regular basis. But for now, how can you grow that connection? What's something creative you can do with that person?

Hospitality as Your Greatest Tool

If you're neighbors, it's as simple as having them over for dinner. I think hospitality is by far the biggest tool you have in your tool belt. It's how the Christian church won over the Roman Empire. How did a fledgling underground church take over the greatest empire of all time? Hospitality. Books are written about it. That was our evangelistic strategy.

How many of you are from a small Southern town at some point? How important is hospitality in a Southern small town? Extremely important. It's the way you say to your friends. It communicates something very powerful and important. If you go anywhere outside the United States, hospitality is a huge deal. Guess what? You don't have to be from a Southern small town to know the importance of hospitality.

As people get more and more isolated from each other, when you have someone in your home, it's a big deal. It just disarms people when you're sitting around a table eating a really good warm meal, just hanging out talking. If you haven't had someone over your home that doesn't know Jesus, that's a great place to start.

Gospel-Shaped Friendships

So you're making connections. Be creative. How are you activating those connections? As you're connecting with people, you want to have gospel-shaped friendships.

When I lived in Orlando, I moved there and thought, how am I gonna meet people? I quickly realized, oh, there has to be an alumni association group here that watches basketball games together. I went on Facebook, it came up immediately. I joined the group and asked when they were meeting. They said, "We'd love to have you," and told me the bar where they always meet.

When I showed up, the bar was even decorated for us, and there were like 40 alumni there to watch a basketball game. I was like, this is amazing. I noticed some dudes about my age, and we started sitting together over the various games. We actually had a lot in common—we all had boys around the same age. We started exchanging phone numbers, then we'd text, "Hey, you going tonight? Yeah, I'll be there." And I was like, we're connecting. This is amazing.

Then as we transitioned to friendships, do you know when I realized I was becoming friends? One of them said, "Hey, we've got guys with boys the same age. It's still weird to come out to a bar with our boys."

How about I host and you bring your boys with you, and we'll watch it together? I was like, he's my friend. This is so exciting. Do you see how unsophisticated this is?

Alright. So friendships. Paul literally says "making the most of the time." If we got really literal, he's saying buying up the opportunity. That's literally what it says in the Greek, translated in English. So it's very commercial language. He's challenging us to be super strategic, getting the most out of that opportunity, having the ultimate goal in mind.

When Kim and I moved back to Chapel Hill from seminary to start a church, we were so poor. I mean, our salary was set so low. I still don't know how we did it. I had to refinance my mortgage just to send my son to preschool. That's crazy. But when we were hanging out with lost people, Kim and I were like, how are we gonna do this?

I remember Kim—I thought I was gonna be the great evangelist that was gonna change Chapel Hill. It turns out my wife was way better with little Jacob, meeting people than I was. Puppies and little kids. Amazing people magnets, right? And so she would go to all the free things, like Barnes and Noble's train table, whatever it was, to meet other moms. And guess what? There were other moms in upwardly pseudo mobile homes who were also dirt poor looking for free things to do with their kids as well.

So Kim kept bumping into them, and then their kids played parallel to each other enough that the moms used that as an excuse to become friends. And then I remember Kim and I having these really hard actual conversations like, they're wanting to go to Chick-fil-A, but we don't have it in our budget. And I was like, how do we not? This is for the kingdom. Go to Chick-fil-A. But here's the scary thing. We couldn't afford Chick-fil-A in our budget. But we're like, this is what we gotta do.

They would have us over for dinner, so we'd have them all over for dinner. I was sitting there going, oh my gosh. Feeding six adults well is so expensive. But how do we not do this? I'm sharing real life tensions from when we were 30 years old. Like, I was like, I don't know if I can afford evangelism. And then what I quickly realized is I can't afford not to do evangelism. If we're gonna go broke, we're gonna go broke for doing this.

Don't you think Jesus is watching and cares and he's gonna provide? Like, if his kids and his brothers and sisters are actually putting themselves on the line for evangelism, I think he's gonna show up and take care of his kids and little siblings. See how that works?

So Kim was great at this. I remember going, I'm gonna go to bars and restaurants, establishments in Carver and Chapel Hill and win all these people to Jesus. She and little Jacob were building these deep relationships where those were turning into friendships. And you know what she did? She just loved her friends. She just loved her new friends. And we're so grateful our kids played along and actually then became friends as well.

See how that works? And then at some point, I was like, maybe I should just piggyback off of this. There's a few seats morphing there. This might actually go somewhere.

Friendship and Christ

Friendships. No one has greater love than this: when they lay down their life for his friends.

No one has greater love than this: when they lay down their life for his friends. — John 15:13

So honestly, when we begin to lean into our friendship with Christ, it's when we begin to understand what friendship with other people means. Jesus did everything for us. Think about it—if I can use Paul's commercial language, think about how much you're worth to Jesus, that the king of the universe would sacrifice himself to buy you, to purchase you. It's unbelievable.

So when that reality of how Jesus is our friend and what he did to be our friend kicks in, it starts making earthly friendships just way more manageable. Of course I'm gonna have them over for dinner and take a hit to do it. Of course I'm gonna go to Chick-fil-A when I can't afford it. Whatever the cost, because that's the cost Jesus paid for me. Again, it's the gospel that fuels that kind of friendship and sacrifice. See how it works?

So right now, if you're like, oh, it's hard to build friendships, just go back to your friendship with Christ, and that will fuel you into building the friendships you need here on earth.

We have to do this. What is friendship? Two people going the same way. Two people going the same way. I like it. Keep going. I know it's that word we all use and none of us know how to define it. Except Katie, sort of. No, no, no. It's good. I'm just giving you props there.

Being there for one another. Being there for one another. Okay. Going the same way and being there for one another. This is good. Collective definition building here. What else? Getting to know someone.

Shared camaraderie. Just enjoying each other. There's a play to it, a banter. Caring for each other. And usually, friendships are built around some kind of concern or cause or shared interest.

CS Lewis has this great quote about, like, "You too? Like, you're into this as well?" And that's how I became friends with those guys in Orlando. We just really cared about Carolina basketball way more than we should. We were getting to know each other around the table during a timeout, and they're like—I was recounting how when Kenny Smith and Michael Jordan should've won a championship, some dude from an SEC school fouled Kenny Smith, and he broke his shoulder. And that killed Michael Jordan's ability his junior year to win a national championship because we were the team in the world, and how I hated that team. I'm blanking on a name right now. I just hated that team.

And then the guy stopped me. He's like, "Woah, woah, woah. Drew, you're telling me you have a twenty-five year grudge against an SEC school because of one foul?"

I was like, "Yeah."

He was like, "You're my kind of friend."

Instant best friends from that point forward. It's weird how friendships can be born, right? It's weird who turns into our friends.