20/20 Vision Series Intro: The Tree

Good to see y'all here this New Year, the beginning of 2021. I know many of us have been like, if we can make it to 2021, we're going to be okay. Well, it's here now. You made it and now it's time to look beyond just making it and it's time to start looking to other things. That's what we're doing this morning.

We gather in Jesus' name and we gather around his word and we gather with his people, even if that's by a screen. It really matters, and I'm so glad you are here this morning. It's no accident. The Lord has things for you here today, whether you're sitting here in this room or out under the tent or watching on a screen.

Let's go to God's word together. We're going to look at Matthew chapter 28, verses 18 through 20. This has been called the Great Commission, and I want to invite you to read aloud together. It's printed in your bulletin. Let's read God's word aloud. Three, two, one.

And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age." — Matthew 28:18-20

Let's pray. Father, we pray the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. You are our rock and our fortress and our redeemer. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.

The Problem of Inaction

Any history buffs here this morning? A couple nerds? Okay, there's some nerds among us. That's right. I have a friend who calls us nerd church. So, very appropriate.

One of the Civil War figures who's kind of disappeared with time is a man named George McClellan. At one point, he was the commander of the Union Armies, and he was probably one of the most promising figures in leadership to ever rise in the military in the United States. They called him the Young Napoleon because he was so smart. He had such an incredible strategic mind. He graduated from West Point at 15 years old. He was super popular, graduated top of his class, and he was really good at recruiting people. When he came on board with the Union Army, he increased participation by 300% in four months. It's no surprise then that Abraham Lincoln made him the general in chief of all the Union Armies.

This incredible mind, incredible military leader—troops loved him and they had this growing confidence under him like, we're gonna do this. We're gonna win this war. But he had a problem. His army was twice as big as the Confederate Army, outnumbering them two to one. They were encamped over wintertime in an area where they lay in a very strategic position, where General Lee's Confederate Army was in a position that was very exposed. Over and over, Abraham Lincoln's like, "Attack. Hey, it's time to go." And McClellan kept coming up with new strategies and thinking about where to put his men. He knew the odds. He knew the time was right. But he wouldn't fight.

This became a real big deal with Abraham Lincoln, of course. What good is it if you have the biggest army? What good is it if you have a popular general and a tremendous strategic advantage if you won't fight? It's sort of the measure of whether or not you're going to be an effective general. Unfortunately, after a long and agonizing time, Lincoln made the decision—which wasn't a popular one—to replace McClellan with a guy who was maybe a fourth of his talent and intelligence but would pick a fight with a fire hydrant. His name was U.S. Grant.

The greatest measure, of course, from the story is the desire to fight, the desire to engage, knowing what you're here for.

The Church's Identity Crisis

You know, if you've grown up in the Bible belt, I think the church sometimes has this problem. We forget why we exist. You may think, actually, kind of watching churches, that the purpose statement for a church is to get bigger and bigger, kind of like McClellan's army. We need to get this bigger and bigger. Or you may think it's about being super well organized and having great programs—again, like McClellan's army, where everything really looks great on the outside. Or you may think the big purpose statement is having great leaders that people like to follow. Again, McClellan—super popular. You may think that the mission of the church is just existing year to year. I mean, that's truly what the church sometimes feels like. We're just holding on.

We hope to survive. And so, like McClellan's army, I think for the church of Jesus Christ—particularly if you're from the Bible Belt where there are lots of churches or you've been to lots of churches—it can be confusing. Why are we doing this? What do we exist for?

In other words, we could as a church raise lots of money. We can get really big. We could have awesome programs, the best kids ministries. We could have the best sermons, and yet if we miss the point that Jesus said—this is what the church is about—we actually fail.

You know, two years ago, about a year and a half ago, our leadership—elders, deacons—we all came together and got a whiteboard out and we wrote down all the things we were doing as a church. We said, "Well, man, we're doing lots of things," and there are lots of good things on this board, but we realized we didn't know our why. We're doing lots of things, but we weren't moving in concert together, and we needed a lot of unifying clarity. So we went through a process—I'll describe that in a moment—to come up with our why and begin to think about that.

Vision 2020 Series

You know, so today I'm starting a new sermon series called Vision 2020, which was designed to be in 2020, but something called COVID came along and bumped us back. So here we are. New Year. Time to start it up. It's a little out of sync with my calendar, but pastors love little things that line up—but it don't work like that. So that's alright.

Here's my outline today. If you're going to take notes: our why, our what, and our so what. Our why, our what, and our so what.

I'm going to introduce you this morning to a new vision statement that our elders have come up with. We actually finished this last January at an elders retreat, and I'm really excited about this because this new vision statement is going to set the trajectory for our church for the next ten years.

But I'll be super honest: I'm not a big fan of vision statements. A lot of times those feel like business speak, you know? And the church is not a business or a corporation. Or it can feel like some words that an organization puts on the wall, but they become meaningless words after a long time. They just sort of are there.

So, I just want to say all those things so you don't send me emails, because I agree with you. I don't love all this stuff. But every faithful church really has its vision statement, which comes from Jesus's vision statement for the church, right?

Matthew 28:18-20

The Great Commission. And so, like every faithful church in the Bible, we're really just riffing in some way or another. And our new vision statement is no different. All we're saying is: How do we as a church aim to fulfill the Great Commission as a body? How do we aim to do this?

Our elders went through about a year and a half process to come up with this. We started in June 2019 and went through January 2020, and here we are. So here's what it is.

The Apple Tree Vision

I'm going to use a visual to explain this. If you'll humor me one moment. I was supposed to pull this up earlier, but I forgot.

I'm a gardener, and I do love gardens and trees. So we're going to use an agricultural metaphor. The Bible is full of agricultural metaphors. In fact, we read one for our assurance of pardon this morning from Psalm 146. Over and over, God and his word cause people to be like a tree or like a vine or like a shrub in the desert. Jesus says, "I'm the vine, you're the branches." Over and over, this is a biblical image.

So I'm using this image this morning of an apple tree. I hope you can see this. I hope people on the camera can see this. And for this illustration, let me just say that this is an all y'all picture. This is not a you picture. This is an all y'all. You know how we use the phrase y'all, and y'all can mean one of you or a lot of you, but all y'all always means all of us, right? So this is not an individual. This is us as a church. CTK—we're an apple tree.

And here's what I want to point us to. First, and here's the most important part: by God's grace, we want to be a people that are deeply transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ. In other words, if you look at this tree—the tree has branches, the tree has fruits, it has a trunk—but the most important part is what its roots are sunk into.

I'm even going to draw on this. Our roots—we want to be sunk deeply into Christ, into Jesus. We want every man and woman and child to be continually growing and transformed by Jesus Christ. We want our roots to go deep in him and to keep going deeper into him.

And I want to underscore this over and over again: What matters at CTK? What's our church based around? Jesus. The gospel. The gospel. The gospel.

Now, I need to say that because in a couple of months, some of you are going to say, "Oh, you're leaving behind the gospel. You're moving on from that to talk about other things," and I'm going to point you back to the sermon. I'm going to say, "See, no, this is what we are about as a church. This is the main point."

We have been faithful over years—since our very beginning, over twenty, twenty-one years now—to make Jesus and his gospel the centerpoint of our church, and that is not going to change. In fact, Jesus is so central. I want to remind you that in Jesus's words in John 15, he says this:

"Apart from me, you can do nothing." — John 15:5

We're really not just saying Jesus is kind of our big idea. We're saying, no, this is what our roots go into, and we're powerless without him. We're like a puppet without a hand in it. We're like a tree without any roots—like your Christmas tree that's not going to grow anything on it anymore. It's out by the curb now.

I want you to notice not only the roots, but two other things that really matter for a tree. One is the sunshine, and the other is the rain, and both of these are important to us.

The Rain: God's Word

First, the rain. We grow as a church as we are watered by God's word. In Isaiah 55, it says:

"As the rain and snow come down from heaven and don't return void, but water the earth, make it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish the purposes for which I sent it." — Isaiah 55:10-11

God's word—a regular watering of God's word in the life of people—this is one of the key things that makes people grow, and we're not going to depart from that.

The Sunlight: The Holy Spirit

Second, the sunlight here is the Holy Spirit. Some people think Presbyterians don't love the Holy Spirit. We love the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit in Second Corinthians 3 tells us the Spirit is the one who makes people grow. The Spirit is the one. Listen to this:

"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled faces, are beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." — 2 Corinthians 3:17-18

It is the Spirit's work to conform people to Jesus, to transform us deeply to be like him. We want every person at CTK to experience deep gospel transformation. That's the phrase I want you to remember: gospel transformation. Deep roots, more and more like Christ, becoming more and more disciples. We want to be rooted in him so that every person grows more and more to be like him.

Leadership: The Tool for Cultivation

Now, picture a little tiny shovel stuck in the dirt—this represents leadership.

There's a funny passage where the church is arguing about their favorite leader. You ever heard this one? It's in First Corinthians 1. Paul is addressing this church, and they're sort of split up over who's their favorite. Some of them are like, "Well, I like Paul," and others are like, "Well, Apollos is my favorite. He says those words just right, and I can always track with him." And Paul responds. He's like, "Y'all are missing the point. Who is Apollos? Who is Paul? What do you think we are?"

"I planted the seed, Paul has watered it, but God has made it grow. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. You are God's field." — 1 Corinthians 3:6-7, 9

The point here is this: it is the purpose of church leadership to mulch and to prune and put fertilizer out and to make good compost for next year and to trim things back and to weed and to protect the tree. That's what church leaders do. Our deacons, our elders, our women's leadership team, our community group leaders—none of these people can make things grow. We're just called to this ministry of stewardship, of cultivation.

Bearing Fruit

But I want you to realize, we can't just finish this right here. A lot of churches are like, "Okay, that's what we got. We're supposed to be growing." But Jesus has told us:

"You are appointed to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last." — John 15:16

It's not just enough to be a tree. God intends that his people—all y'all, CTK—would be fruitful for him. That's the focus. We're looking at Matthew 28 because it directs us into what are the apples on this tree. What are the fruits that God has called us to produce? Because the church in America—remember, like George McClellan—we gotta remember what we're supposed to be doing. What is it we're supposed to be producing?

I want to look at these three fruits that come straight out of Matthew 28:18-20. Really, to say this is a new vision statement—or more accurately, a newish vision statement. I'm just making explicit what has been implied and implicit at CTK for years. I'm just going to make that more clear. That's all I'm doing.

So let's listen again to Matthew 28:18-20:

Go therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I've commanded you and behold, I'm with you to the end of the age. — Matthew 28:18-20

Here's the rest of the vision statement: People deeply transformed by the gospel who plant churches, are becoming cross-cultural disciples, and pursue biblical justice. Let me break those down.

First Fruit: Plant Churches

When the early church heard this command of Jesus—go and make disciples of all nations—what did they do? Well, go read the book of Acts. They went and started new churches all over the Roman Empire.

You know, when I was in college, the Berlin Wall came down. For you younger folks, you don't remember how crazy that was. It was the biggest event of my first political world by far because the Cold War was over. The Soviet Union was crumbling, and it was unbelievable. What happened immediately after that was a movement called The Commission. This was a big thing when I was about to graduate college. The idea was, let's send people to Russia. Let's send people to all the former Soviet bloc countries and share the gospel. There was an enormous effort that went out—an enormous outpouring of students mobilized to go take the gospel.

Well, what's funny is years now after this, you look back and that was a miserable failure. I mean, it was a colossal failure. I can't tell you how much money was spent on this, how many people went, how many resources were poured out from the church in America to go to the former Soviet Union. And you know what? Nothing happened.

Well, contrast that with the greatest mission movement of the last twenty years. It's another communist country. What is it? China. That's right. China has been an unbelievable success. The gospel going forth in China has cost the rest of the world almost zero in terms of resources, but has been incredibly effective. What's the difference? Planting churches. House churches all over China.

You see, the Great Commission is fulfilled by planting churches. Read the book of Acts. The Great Commission involves sending Christians to go start new churches in new places. It involves going out. Church planting is at the center of the Great Commission, and we have and we're going to continue to do that.

At CTK, we've planted three churches now. We've sent out three times. In 2014, we sent out Resurrection Life down toward Apex and Holly Springs. In 2017, we sent out Renewal up Capitol Boulevard. And then this past year, 2020, we sent out Reconciliation out toward Knightdale. We're going to continue to do that.

But we also want to make that really practical for everybody in our congregation to participate in. We've been partnered for years with a group called Leaders Collective. Elliot Grudem, who was the pastor here at CTK before me, is back as one of our assistant pastors. He leads Leaders Collective, and their whole goal is to help build healthy churches and healthy pastors. Every year they gather a cohort of six to seven church planters and they invest in them. Duane went through this. Russell went through this. We're going to continue to send people through this. But we are financially partnered and actually nesting the offices of Leaders Collective in our building. We want to provide more and more ways for our people to have personal touches with the six or seven church planters who are going out all over the country every year.

God is doing lots of things you're probably not even aware of through CTK, and we're going to continue to invest in that.

Second Fruit: Cross-Cultural Disciples

When the early church heard "go make disciples of all nations," what did they do? Again, read the book of Acts. They became cross-cultural disciples.

What does that mean? Well, the word there in the Great Commission—"all nations"—is the word ethne. It's where we get our word "ethnic." So if you go eat at an ethnic restaurant, you're eating at a restaurant that has a Greek root from the Bible in its name. Ethne simply means people groups have distinctive ways of doing everything.

For example, an ethnic group may have distinctive ways of thinking.

It's called a worldview or distinctive ways of talking. That's called an accent. They have distinctive ways the way they relate to each other. That's called their customs. They have a way that they view time. The way that they spend their money, the way that they play. All those things are part of an ethnic.

So when the early church heard this call, "go make disciples of all nations," they understood that God was shuffling the deck on them of their priorities. He's shuffling the deck of what's really important anymore. And in First Peter, we read that God has made us to be a people, a new chosen people, holy and dearly beloved. Same word there: ethne.

And it's a weird idea because this is what the gospel does. Becoming a Christian doesn't erase your background. It doesn't change who your people are or where you come from or what you talk like. But it does shuffle the deck on your priorities. It says, you know what? What used to matter is not primary for you. Now what matters is you're part of God's people. And He doesn't remove all those old cultural markers. Those are still there. But it bumps them down the list.

This is what happened in the book of Acts. They're like, "Oh, the gospel is only for the Jews." And God was like, "I got all kinds of plans for you. You gotta learn to eat different. You gotta learn to sit with different people at the table. You've gotta learn to talk with all kinds of different people. You've got to learn to submit your cultural preferences for the sake of the gospel."

They began to see and submit cultural preferences to say, you know, that stuff that matters much—I thought it did. What matters is the new unity of what God is doing among His people.

Cross-Cultural Discipleship

So our aim as a church is cross-cultural discipleship. Now, of course, we are disciples of Jesus, not anything else, right? But our discipleship of the gospel should always move us out toward other people. It should always move us outward—not just to the ones who are like you and look like you and sound like you and live like you.

And here's the problem with the church in America: like attracts like. Man, that's true all over the country. Churches are filled with people who are like each other because it's easy, right? It's easy. CTK, I'm afraid, we're no different. We operate by a like-attracts-like principle.

We need to look at our church culture and ask some hard questions. We need to grow in cultural competency. We need to say, are there preferences here that we're actually living out that we're not even aware of? Are there blind spots? And particularly, are there blind spots for the Americans around race? Around race, which in this country has so divided Christians for years and years and years.

So when I say, "Hey, we want to be a cross-cultural church," let me be super clear about that. We're not simply saying we hope that CTK will become multicultural or multiethnic on a Sunday morning. There are three reasons why we're not saying that.

One is, it's arrogant. We think, "Oh, we're gonna change some words on a page and suddenly people of color just gonna fill up CTK." See, it says, come be like us. Come to us. Be like us.

Second, it could be superficial. I mean, all of you have probably seen the college catalog pictures, right? You know what it looks like? There's a couple brown ones and a white one and they're all smiling and sitting around together and singing Kumbaya together. We all know that's a sales pitch.

And third, the other reason that being merely a multicultural church on Sundays isn't good enough: it's because it's too small. It's too small. The gospel compels us toward a much larger goal. It compels us not toward just Sundays but Monday through Saturday—the rest of our week.

If you read the end of the book—go read the end of the story. This is the one book where you're supposed to read the end of the story first. Go read Revelation. In Revelation 7, all these people gathered around the throne together and they're praising God in one language? Is it? Come on, class. No. No. Multiple languages. All their different languages.

You know what? What that means is God is not about assimilation. God is not about everybody being uniform and the same, but unity around Jesus with all of our differences, in all of our ways.

This is why we're not just shooting for racial reconciliation as a church or racial equality, but racial equity. This is why we say, hey, it's not just multiculturalism or interculturalism but cross-culturalism. And we white people have the most to learn in that, to be honest.

We want every man, woman, and child to live a cross-cultural life Monday through Saturday for the sake of the gospel. For the sake of the gospel.

So in ten years, our lives will be different. Of course, I'd love it if our church looked different on Sunday morning, but what really matters is what our lives look like during the week. To do this, we're going to have to talk about some stuff. We're going to talk about all the barriers that there are in a Southern American urban context. We're going to have to talk about our history. We're going to have to talk about hard things that maybe after this year you're tired of talking about, but I think church is always the best place to talk about hard things—not the worst, the best.

In the next few weeks, we are going to talk about color blindness, and we're going to talk about racism not as a skin issue but as a sin issue. We're going to talk about why we talk about Black Lives Matter. We're going to talk about white guilt. We're going to talk about all those things because we want to grow. We want to produce fruit. You know, we didn't develop this vision statement in the last nine months. You might think that looking at our news, but it just tells us we're on the right pathway.

So let me cut off one thing at the pass. By wading into these waters, CTK is not selling out to critical race theory or identity politics. If you've been here for any length of time, you know we touch on all the hard things. You know we haven't given an inch on things like gender and sexuality. We've been super faithful to the Bible. Nobody is leaving the Bible or the gospel behind in this church. There's no slippery slope here when you try to obey Scripture.

But if we love the gospel and we prize Jesus, we're going to keep putting these things in front of ourselves as a church so that we might grow in gospel fruit, because we believe cultural competency and cross-cultural discipleship is a fruit of the gospel. The good news is that CTK has been talking about this for years. We just haven't made it explicit. As we grow into more maturity, we want 2 Corinthians 10 to be one of our watchwords.

We may take every thought captive and make it obedient to Christ. Everything under him. — 2 Corinthians 10

A cross-cultural church in the book of Acts was an apologetic in the Roman Empire for the truth of Jesus. They were astounded by what they saw. It's our elders' hope that a cross-cultural church in Raleigh will also be an apologetic for the truth of the gospel.

Biblical Justice

When the early church heard the call to teach them to obey everything Jesus commanded, what did they do? Read the book of Acts. They took care of their neighbors. They took care of people in need. In effect, they obeyed Micah 6:8.

He has told you, O man, what is good and what the Lord desires: to seek justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with your God. — Micah 6:8

I know that the word "justice" is loaded in this culture. Our elders are not naive. Yet at our elders retreat last year, we unanimously said we gotta use that word. It's a Bible word. It doesn't need to be avoided. It needs to be reclaimed. Go back and read Scripture. Read your Old Testament. It is filled with calls for God's people to embrace the call to justice. The book of Isaiah is amazing. Justice is probably the most important word in the first 39 chapters of Isaiah. It's in Amos, it's in Micah, it's in Jeremiah, it's in Lamentations. It's all over the Pentateuch. It's all over your Bible. This call to seek justice.

Biblical justice is something we need to know. Here's what we mean by biblical justice: Following God's command to seek and bring biblical wholeness to image bearers in our society and our world.

I've heard people say the problem with justice today is that justice without Jesus is just us. I get that. It's sad to me that the church, especially the Bible-believing church, is one of the last places where we talk about justice, because this is our word. We know what shalom means.

A lot of times Christians just want to talk about the justice of the cross, whereby God justifies a sinner in His sight by the death of Jesus. And we say hallelujah, amen. We preached through Romans completely a couple years ago, and we believe in that with all of our hearts. And yet a biblical view of justice includes the justice of the cross and justice for neighbor. It's both. You can't separate them because it's the justice of the cross whereby God calls sinners to Himself through the death of Jesus. He calls His people then to live out justice for others, for neighbor.

That is giving everybody their due as image bearers and particularly four groups in the Old Testament: the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the poor. So those who know God, those who know what shalom is, the fullness of what God's kingdom looks like should be leading the way—not trailing behind but leading the way of saying, "You know, we really know justice because we know the justifier. We know the King of Justice whose throne is established on justice."

And it should change the way then we look at all of our lives. Our jobs, our possessions, our relationships. And while justice without Jesus is just us, loving Jesus without seeking justice is a diminished gospel. It's a diminished gospel. It's leaving out the biggest commands of scripture. And you know who's poor for that? Not God. Who is it? Us. We're poorer for that.

Isaiah 58: The Justice God Desires

Isaiah 58 is this weird passage where God's talking about his people and they're like, "Why don't you like our fasting and our worship?" He's like, "Well, here's the kind of fasting I desire: for you to break the chains of injustice, to care for the weak." And then he makes all these promises connected to this.

Listen to this. He says:

If you do these things, then your light will break forth like the dawn, your healing will spring up speedily, your righteousness shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. You'll call and the Lord will answer you, you'll cry, he will say, "Here I am." If you pour out your heart for the hungry, satisfy the desires of the afflicted, then your light will rise in the darkness, your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desires in scorched places. Make your bones strong. You'll be like a well watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters don't fail. And your ancient ruins will be rebuilt. — Isaiah 58

I mean, when I hear those things, my heart skips a beat. If I could define what I want the Lord to do in my life in 2021, man, I want to be able to call on him and he says, "Here I am." He wants to make my life and your life like a well watered garden. Rebuild the ancient places. Fix all the places where we're really hurting. And those things are tied to his people seeking biblical justice.

Man, I want some of that.

A Journey With Jesus

So here's our "so what," and I'm going to switch metaphors on you—but I've done that already. We did the army guy, the military. Then we did agriculture. Now we're going to talk about taking a trip.

Remember, Jesus says in this passage, "Look, I'm with you always. Even to the ends of the earth." I want you to picture with me. I think Jesus is inviting our church to go on a journey. To follow him.

And you know, if you take a trip, it's going to cost you something. You take a car trip, it's going to cost you gasoline money. You take an airline trip, it's going to cost you plane ticket. You take a train trip, you gotta pay the fare, right? It costs you something to go somewhere. And if you don't go, yeah, you save the money, but you don't get to see. You don't get to experience.

Well, there's another cost, and maybe a harder thing for some of us is that when you start a journey, the first step is the hardest one. Outside your front door, right? You gotta actually go. You actually have to step outside your front door.

But look, if there is one thing that you and I have learned from 2020, it's this: we're kind of tired of home, right? I've spent way too many hours in my house. I'm kind of tired of my house. Anybody else tired of their house at this point? Like, that's a fine place, right? I'm not going to kick my house around, but I just wanted—I'm tired of being there. There could be too much of a good thing. There could be too much of comfort.

So look, it's okay. I want you to hear again: God is inviting us on a journey. It's going to cost us something. It's going to mean we have to take a step and leave behind some comforts. But man, he's going to be with us, and he has things in store for us.

I don't know where we're going. I know his commission. I know this tree that our elders really feel like the Lord gave us, really unanimous about all this. Man, only he can tell us where we're going, and I can't wait to see. Ten years from now, I can't wait to see.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we thank you. In this fog that has been 2020, where we can only think about two weeks ahead, it's hard to think about a future. And yet Lord, I thank you this morning that we get to talk about a future. Thank you that we get to talk about where we're headed. Lord, I pray, Father, we don't want to go unless you go with us. Unless you are at work regularly, transforming and working in us. So we pray, Father, for more of you, more of your spirit, more of your power at work in your church.

Lord, we pray that you would help us not be afraid. Help us to trust you and take steps. Father, as we lean into this sermon series over the next couple months, we pray that you would help us as we struggle to understand where you're calling us and leading us. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen.