20/20 Vision Series -- Church Planting as Discipleship

Good to be with you all this morning. Want to thank you guys for leading us in worship. Thank you David for leading us in liturgy. We had an elders retreat this weekend—sort of a staycation elders retreat—and one of the things that was common to all of us was just the sense of isolation and the sense of missing one another that David just prayed for.

One of the things I really miss in our gatherings together is our greeting time. I know some people have always complained that that's their time to run to the bathroom so they can hide—the introverts among us—but it's been a real loss. So I want to ask you to do something this morning, especially if you're joining us online. Pull out your cellphone and text three or four people and tell them today that you miss them and that you'd love to see them in some way or form. Take a walk. We are people who are isolated and we're going to have to do a little bit more extra work than we would on a normal Sunday when we're all in a room together to greet one another. It's just so important—the bonds that we have as a church community. So I want to ask all of you if you would text three or four people, particularly people who you're not connecting with right now, that you're not seeing regularly.

Scripture Reading

We're going to turn our attention again to God's word. We're going through a series on our vision as a church, and I'm going to read for us a couple passages in the book of Acts. If you would, you can turn in your worship guide. I'm going to read from Acts chapter 12 verse 25 to chapter 13 verse 3, and then I'm going to skip over to chapter 15. These are printed in your bulletin as if this is one part of a story, but it's actually several points and I'll try to make sure you understand that.

And Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem when they had completed their service. This is the first missionary journey bringing with them John whose other name was Mark. Now, there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." Then after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them and sent them off. — Acts 12:25–13:3

Now, that results in them going out on what's known in Acts as the first missionary journey. Then we're going to skip over to chapter 15 at the very end here.

This is after some days. Paul said to Barnabas, "Let us return and visit the brothers in every city where we proclaim the word of God and see how they are." Now Barnabas wanted to take with them John called Mark, but Paul thought it best not to take with them one who had withdrawn from them in Pamphilia and had not gone with them to their work. And there arose a sharp disagreement, so that they separated from each other. Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus, but Paul chose Silas and departed, having been commended by the brothers to the grace of the Lord. And he went through Syria and Cilicia strengthening the churches. — Acts 15:36–41

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Historical Context

Little history lesson to start out our sermon this morning. In the first days of the Roman Empire, it's really interesting what happened. Let me go back before that and remind you a little bit of your high school history. There was a Greek philosopher named Plato who developed a system of philosophy which is known today still as Platonic philosophy. One of his students was a man named Aristotle. Aristotle took Plato's philosophy and systematized it. It became known as Aristotelian logic. Aristotle actually developed schools that taught Aristotelian logic, and what was fascinating was what Plato had taught to a small group, Aristotle systematized in a way that could be taught in these academies. So people who would never themselves be philosophers but eventually be doctors or politicians—these people were all trained in Plato's system.

What happened after this is Rome overtook Greece as the superpower of the modern world. Rome had this incredible army, this incredible military system, and so the Roman army sort of overruns Greece and lots of other nations. But a curious thing happened: Greece, even though it was conquered by Rome, ended up being the cultural leader. In other words, the language of the Roman Empire was mostly Greek.

The thinking of the Roman Empire was hugely informed by Aristotelian logic and the schools that were set up. So even though Rome conquered Greece in many ways, Greece conquered Rome because Greece had controlled the way people think and set the bar for how people begin to think, and the language that they used.

What's funny about this is that even though Roman power was incredibly strong at one point, the Greeks really dominated and their culture really dominated. So it's no surprise in some ways when Jesus tells his church to go and make disciples of all nations. The early church heard this the same way that Aristotle did—just to go make training centers, to go launch new churches in all these different cities. That's what we're reading about this morning: the starting of churches in all these different cities that became training centers, which actually ended up changing the way that the Roman Empire thought. And so Christianity infiltrated all regions of the Roman Empire.

We're continuing our series on the ten-year vision of our church. As I said at the beginning, I'm not a big fan of missions and visions for churches for a couple reasons. I don't love business speak applied to the body of Christ. I also think sometimes that can become just meaningless words on a letterhead or on a wall somewhere. I'm also not a big fan of it because Jesus gave us his mission.

Go make disciples of all nations, teaching them, baptizing them, teaching them to obey everything I've commanded and with you always to the end of the earth. — Matthew 28:18-20

But here's why I think that the church many times does need a clear understanding of our vision as a local body: we're asking the question, how? How is God going to work out that mission in this place through this particular group of people? That's what our vision statement is about. Our vision statement answers that question: how?

We look at the Great Commission and we say, how are we going to do that? And here's our answer to that for the next ten years. By God's grace, CTK will become a people deeply transformed by the gospel who plant churches and become cross-cultural disciples and pursue biblical justice, starting in Downtown Raleigh.

If you look at your little diagram on your bulletin, there's a little picture of a tree. We've gone from roots now to look at the fruit. Last week, Elliot Grudem did the first one of these talking about church planting, and I'm going to continue that today. I want to help you understand this: how do people who are being deeply transformed by the gospel begin to connect that to church planting? How are those connected?

Here's my main idea: God uses church planting like a sanctification microwave for his people. I'm going to flesh that out, and we're going to look at this by doing a case study in the life of this man, John Mark, who's mentioned here several times in the book of Acts.

Here are my points. If you take notes, everybody's invited. Second, faith grows best when it's stretched. And third, like Elliot said last week, church planters get the best stories.

Everybody Is Invited

What do we know about this man, John Mark? He's a relatively minor figure in the book of Acts and yet he's mentioned over and over. Let me give you a summary about John Mark.

First is his name. The Bible actually never refers to someone named John Mark like a southern girl's name. You know how southern girls do it? If you grew up in the South, you know—lots of Mary Elizabeth or Emily Janes, people who have two names that we hold together. John Mark's name is not one of those southern girl names, right? It's actually—and you read this a couple times in this passage—John known as Mark, Mark who's also known as John, right? Those are actually interesting because John was a very common Hebrew name in the first century. Mark was a very common Roman name. So instead of reading this as John Mark, you should read it as John slash Mark. This is what we see everywhere else. In fact, in this passage, we read of Saul and Barnabas. Saul's other name was Paul. Barnabas's other name was Joseph. This is a very common practice.

So here's this man, John slash Mark. I want you to think about that when you think of John Mark. I'm going to use his name both ways because he's mentioned both ways in the New Testament.

He's raised in a Christian home. We find out in an earlier part—in chapter 12—that we first meet John Mark when Peter is miraculously released from prison. He's miraculously released from prison and he goes to the house of this woman, Mary, who hosts in her home a little church. Her son's name is John Mark. He's also the nephew of Barnabas.

We know he's raised in a Christian home. He's probably a wealthy one because not a lot of people had enough room to have a church meet in their home. And we also know he's invited—and this is the part I want to hammer on this morning. He was invited. Barnabas and Saul, Barnabas and Paul invite him to go with them.

What I love about chapter 13 is the emphasis on the Holy Spirit's work in the book of Acts. Did you notice this in chapter 13, verse 2?

The Holy Spirit said — Acts 13:2

The Holy Spirit is the actor and director and the producer of everything that's going on in the book of Acts. So the Holy Spirit is the one. It's not just Barnabas and Paul invited him. The Holy Spirit's directing them and inviting them.

So when we talk about church planting, this is one of the very most basic things I want to say over and over again: Everyone is invited. Everyone is invited.

Here's what's sad to me about that, though, in our church context. We've now sent out three church plants, and as has been my pattern every time, I invite people to go. I say, "Hey, you live in this area. You ought to think about this." And every time people are deeply upset with me. I've had people leave our church because I invited them to go on a church plant. And it's almost like they think I'm saying, "There's the door." And I'm like, no, I'm inviting you to a party. I'm not trying to punish you or get you to leave. I'm going to give you something that I think is the best thing for you.

My mom loves to tell the story of my first birthday. When little Jeffrey was one year old, we came around to my first birthday. My mom bakes a chocolate cake. Two things happened at that party. First, they couldn't get me to eat it. I was very reticent to eat something that was that brown. I didn't want anything to do with it. They had to coax me to try chocolate cake. I really ended up liking it. And then I had an allergic reaction to the icing. So kind of a disaster of a first birthday.

But I think in a lot of ways, our church approaches church planting like baby Jeffrey at one year old. We have to be coaxed into it, and we think we're allergic to it. We think there's something wrong with this.

I want to remind you of this. Maybe you just don't know this about me, but part of my story and my family's story is that Susan and I were sent out in 2002 to plant a church in Downtown Philadelphia. It was one of the hardest and best things ever in my life. We spent almost ten years in Philadelphia, in that area of Philadelphia, planting that church and other churches that came out of that. It was hard and it challenged me in all kinds of ways, but it was amazing and incredible. We saw all kinds of people come to faith, and we saw God provide in incredible ways.

So when I say, "Hey, I want to go on a church plant," I want you to understand where I'm coming from. This is the best thing. You're invited. At CTK, we've said this over and over again: All of us are being called in one way or another to be a part of this. So in the next years, there are really two groups of people at CTK, just like we saw in the book of Acts. There's the radical goers and the radical senders, but all of us are in those categories. We're being called to continue to do this. Everyone is invited. Come on in. This is a party. This is a good thing. This is chocolate cake.

Faith Grows When It's Stretched

The second glimpse we get of John Mark in the book of Acts is in Acts 13. We read here:

Paul and his companions set sail from Paphos and came to Perga and Pamphilia. And John left them and returned to Jerusalem. But they went on from Perga and came to Antioch in Pisidia. — Acts 13

We don't know exactly why John Mark chose to abandon ship or to leave the mission at this point, but this becomes an issue later on when it comes time for them to go back and revisit all the churches. We read this in Acts 15: Paul's like, "We're not taking John Mark," and Barnabas is like, "I want to take John Mark." It becomes such an issue that, just like when The Beatles split up over Yoko Ono, the band splits over this, right? These two early figures in the early church who were so key—Barnabas and Saul—split ways. They take different people with them. Barnabas takes John Mark, Paul takes Silas, and they go and do this.

This may seem like a disaster, but I want to show you something. Luke doesn't comment on this. The author of Acts doesn't ever give a comment like, "Can you believe it? Yoko Ono, right?" He never says anything like that. In fact, what's remarkable to me is there's no comment about this. And that's not surprising, to be honest.

It's not surprising that two leaders in the early church had a difference of opinion about strategy and that God worked through both of them. Both Paul and Barnabas are right in their own way. Paul's looking back and saying, after Cyprus, we went to Turkey and that's where things got rough, and I just don't know if John Mark can handle that. Barnabas looks at this and says, this is an opportunity for this man to mature. This is an opportunity for this man to step up.

Barnabas, whose name means son of encouragement, lives up to his name in this passage. He's like, I'm taking my nephew with me. And I think that's what's remarkable too—Luke, who wrote the book of Acts, could have easily left this detail out. He could have easily skipped this part, but he includes it. He doesn't paint over this division.

Now, I want you to think: why did Barnabas want John Mark to go with him? He wanted him to go because we grow best in places of challenge. I have heard from so many people about Ted Lasso. There are some of you obsessed with Ted Lasso. I've been hearing from lots and lots of friends about this show. Ted Lasso is a TV show on Apple about an American football coach who coached the Wichita State Shockers to a Division Two NCAA title. He gets recruited to go to England to coach an AFC team, the AFC Richmond, a pro team in England. Hijinks ensue. Jason Sudeikis plays Ted Lasso, and it's both funny and a story of a man who steps into a challenging situation and it works. He rises to it.

John Mark—let's translate that Ted Lasso into Christian terms. It's not just that we grow when we're challenged. It's that faith grows best when it's being stretched. Our faith grows best when it's being stretched.

Think of maturing as a believer on a spectrum. There's not just two categories of mature and immature. The reality is all of us think we're more mature than we are, and we're all on the spectrum that God is moving us and working in us by His Spirit to conform us to the image of Christ. That's what sanctification is.

Church Planting as a Tool for Discipleship

Here's my point: sanctification in church planting is like a microwave. You cook something on the stove and it may take a while to heat up. You put it in the microwave for a minute—really fast. There's something about church planting that cooks faster, because church planting reveals all the immaturity within us. Church planting is hard, and because of that, it exposes areas where we need to grow that we wouldn't have seen as quickly otherwise.

That's why at CTK, we view church planting as an incredible tool for evangelism—that's what Elliot spoke of last week—but we also view it as an incredible tool for discipleship. That's one of our big nugget ideas at CTK. This is a tool for helping believers grow.

All of us need to grow in our maturity, and faith is funny. Faith is like a balloon. When you get a balloon out of the bag, you stretch it before you blow it up, and that stretching process makes it easier for it to expand. Same with faith. It needs to be stretched. Staying at a normal church just doesn't do that as quickly. Sure, you might be asked to lead worship or lead a community group, lead a Bible study, be part of children's ministries. All those things are good, but it's easy to hide in a bigger church. It's easier to stay in the background. If you miss a couple Sundays, nobody really notices.

In a small church plant setting, it's all hands on deck. You're needed for everything, and that is a good thing. It matters if someone drops out or doesn't show up or disappears.

Now, let's be honest about stretching. No one likes it. No one wants hard or challenge. Everybody resists this. We want the safe harbor, not the open sea. We want to hike in the woods on Sunday afternoon, not a quest like Lord of the Rings across miles and miles. We actually naturally yearn for what is really most detrimental to us faith-wise. We want safety.

Most of you are probably too young to remember this, but there was a great experiment done starting in 1980 called the Biodome. The Biodome was this experiment of going out in the desert and creating a giant contained ecosystem that was climate controlled. It was an experiment to see how life could work in an artificial environment. The soil conditions were set right. The humidity was set right.

The temperature was set right for all these things to grow. And so crops grew there. People lived in the biodome. It's an experiment to see how that worked. There was only one thing that didn't work well in the biodome. And scientists were baffled by this for a long time. What they noticed was that trees would grow to a certain height and then topple over. Trees did not thrive in the biodome and they couldn't figure out why for a long time. And then somebody realized there's one thing that's missing for trees in the biodome: wind. We forgot to create the condition of wind in the biodome. And what they found was trees needed wind in order for their roots to have to go deeper. They needed resistance for roots to go deeper.

Now, brothers and sisters, this is antithetical to what we think. We're like, I want safe—you know, wind in my life. Heavy storms are the things I want the least. And yet it's wind. It's resistance. It's heavy storms which actually cause us as Christians to have our roots go deeper into Christ and to trust him. Church planting causes you to have to pray harder and to give more and to serve in more frontline ways. It's where faith grows. It's a great environment. It's not a biodome.

And incidentally, this is also true for your kids. This is true for your kids. One of the responses I routinely come across in our church is like, "Hey, would you consider going, young family? Oh, it's not a good time. We have little kids." And that makes me so sad. We have this myth that what our kids need best to grow in a church is lots of ministries and lots of things that are age appropriate for them.

Testimony this morning: My kids grew up in Philadelphia in a church for ten years without a kids' ministry. And you know what? They thrived. They sat through worship services. We developed a kids' ministry after years for unbelieving families because they didn't know how their kids were going to do in the church. They didn't. But for believers' kids, my kids did great. They got to see the Holy Spirit at work. They got to see people's lives get changed. They were involved in praying in big ways for the lives of people to be transformed by the gospel. They were meaningful parts of the church in ways that you can't imagine. Your kids will not suffer. They will not experience lack in a place where they have to learn to be the church.

So here's my call for you this morning: Let them out of the biodome. That is not good for them.

You know, if you look on our CTK website, you will notice that there are only two of our three church plants listed. That's because in 2019, our second church plant, Renewal Presbyterian Church, closed down. And that was a complicated and really hard and really sad event. But you know what it wasn't? It wasn't a failure. It was not a failure.

You know who told me that it wasn't a failure? I'll tell you who. The people who went. Our elders did a debrief meeting with all the members of Renewal Presbyterian Church that came from CTK and wanted to join us. And we had this great conversation. And what was profound about this was both how sad they were at the closing of Renewal, but the message that they wanted to convey to the rest of the church: "Guys, you have to change the narrative at CTK. Everybody thinks church planting is so hard. We think church planting is so fun. This is the best thing that happened to my faith even though it closed down. This is the best thing I've been a part of even though it no longer exists." Their testimony was that faith needs to be stretched. That's what they experienced.

John Mark's Redemption

You know, here's the rest of the story for John Mark. Acts 15 is by no means the end of the road for him. Over time, Paul changes his mind about John Mark. We read in Colossians 4:

My fellow prisoner Aristocos sends you his greetings as does Mark, the cousin of Barnabas. You've received instructions about him. If he comes to you, welcome him.

In 2 Timothy 4, at the end of his life, Paul says:

Get Mark and bring him with you because he is helpful to me in my ministry.

We know too that John Mark had a close relationship with Peter. As I said early on, when Peter is released from prison by the Holy Spirit, he goes to the home of John Mark. That's a lifelong friendship. Over time, Peter writes this in 1 Peter 5:

He calls him his true son in the Lord.

Deep emotional connection with this man. And most scholars think that John Mark was the one who went to Rome when Peter was in prison there and he wrote out all of Peter's first person account of the life of Jesus. This actually becomes what in your Bibles is called the Gospel of Mark. Peter passes this all on to Mark. Mark is the one who writes this all down for the benefit of the church and goes on to continue leading in the church.

I mean, thank the Lord for Barnabas that he didn't give up on this guy. Thank the Lord that he didn't give up on his nephew. One of the key things a team has to have in playing basketball is the ability to rebound. You know, somebody misses a shot and you need the Dennis Rodman, the king of rebounds, who's going to get everything. Teams need that in order to win games. I think that in the Bible, we see all of these pictures of failed leaders, a failed people that miss shots, but God sort of gets them on the rebound and he's not done with them. He uses them over and over. People like John Mark.

So here's what I want to leave you with this morning. Everyone's invited. Your faith grows best when it's stretched. Finally, church planters have the best stories. Last week, Elliot, when he preached about church planting as evangelism, he talked about story after story of experience of pastors planting churches. But what's true is that there's not one church planter. There's a whole bunch of church planters. There's a whole bunch of people who are part of launching every one of these churches. And we want you as elders in the church—I can say this on behalf of our session—we really want our church to have the best stories. We want this for you. We want you to be a part of this because there are all kinds of John Mark stories out there of what God does through normal people.

Stories of Church Planters

Let me tell you about my friend Robert Christian. Robert was part of our church plant in Philadelphia. He was a guy in his 20s, single, was a chef in a restaurant in the neighborhood, and totally unchurched background. He was in our community group for a while. Susan was reminding me of this this week—when we start our prayer time, you know, mature Christians know that there's a game you play when it's prayer time in community groups. You know what the game is? You're trying to keep track of who's been prayed for yet and who hasn't. So if you're a mature Christian, you're like, okay, I'm going to make sure we cover everybody. Robert just didn't know the rules. He'd be in the middle of prayer saying, "Lord, I pray for—hey, what's your name? Oh, yeah." He would interrupt everything and just didn't know the rules, but it was so heartfelt.

Robert also didn't grow up with a Bible. I remember him coming over to our house and asking us, "Hey, can I have one of your kids' cartoon Bibles? I want a picture Bible so I can understand the whole story." Picking up a regular Bible was overwhelming to him, but he was like, "I'm so ADD—like, picture Bible, that's perfect."

Robert used his gifts in our church. He was a chef, as I said, and Robert figured out a way he could serve our church was by baking the communion bread every week. One of the things that happened regularly at Liberty Church when I was pastoring there is I'd go during the part of the service to do the Lord's supper, and I take the bread and it was still hot. I tear it and say, "Jesus's body broken for you," and steam would come out of it because he'd gotten up at five to bake the bread for service that morning. Robert now lives in Middle Tennessee. He's married. He has kids. He's a mature Christian involved with the church there. I'm so proud of Robert. What a great John Mark.

Second story: Kimmy Oliver. Kimmy was part of my youth group in suburban Philly for years before my family moved into Philadelphia to plant a church. Kimmy was really quiet and really sweet—not what we'd think of as a leader type or a bold person. But when we started our church plant, Kimmy and her sister and her sister's friend, Rachel and Becky, they all moved into an apartment a few blocks away from us, and they were part of the original launch team of our church.

Over years being a part of that church plant, Kimmy got married to a great guy named Andy. Andy was one of our guys who became an elder in our church after years of serving and growing. It was funny watching what happened after we left Philadelphia. I would get these news reports about what Kimmy was doing in the neighborhood. She had a couple kids at this point and she started a mom's collective that met at this building every week. It became an evangelistic outreach that was just sort of very organic but also very intentional—where Kimmy put together this mom's group that was doing tons of bringing people into the church that otherwise would have nothing to do with the church. She's one of my heroes. She's a John Mark story.

I asked for some of these stories from local church planters. I talked to Lindsay Williams who planted Midtown Community Church, and I love this story he tells.

He tells the story of a guy who recently graduated from UNC Chapel Hill and moved into the neighborhood to become part of the church plant. He shows up one Sunday to serve in children's ministry with a black eye. When Lindsay asked what happened, he said he'd gotten in a bar fight the night before and had been charged with a misdemeanor. Yet Lindsay said, "You can still serve this morning. You can still serve in children's ministry."

Ten years later, Lindsay says, he's married with two kids. He's been a small group leader for a number of years and was nominated for the office of deacon. That's a John Mark story.

One of my last ones is about our current church plant. I don't know if you've met Ryan, Sam, and Ava Brown, but they have three kids that are part of Reconciliation. They come with two parents, Jake and Hannah, who've been a part of Reconciliation's church plant. Jake's a deacon at CTK. Those kids have been a part in a joyful way of serving and helping out in that church plant. They're there every Sunday really early helping their family set up. They're on the first impressions team handing out bulletins and welcoming people. Ryan, Sam, and Ava are some of my heroes.

In fact, if you go back and listen to one of our most recent podcasts from December, you'll hear an interview with Ryan, who's 13. She says some things like this: "Church planting is just different from being a part of an established normal church. It's different than just showing up. I feel like I'm actually doing something. It's like going to a movie theater and being part of the movie." She's awesome.

I just want to praise God for these three John Marks—Ryan, Sam, and Ava. This is church planting. One of the reasons we're into this is we believe church planting is God's sanctification microwave.

A Call to Action

Here's my call to you this morning. We want you to have the best stories. We want you to be the best stories. I mean, I believe that there are people right now who are sort of hiding out at CTK who are able to blend in the background, who God really wants to do something profound in your life. It's going to require you to take a step that maybe you don't want to or wouldn't feel like doing, but stepping out would make all the difference.

Would you also join me in encouraging our current church plant? Right now they're meeting in an online-only fashion, but people from our congregation have gone out and they need your encouragement. They need you to drop them notes. This spring they're going to need you to plan to show up at Reconciliation like once a month—just show up and be there and remind them that you remember them and you're praying for them and you're really thankful for them.

My hope is that God continues to use our church for the expansion of His kingdom both for His glory and also for your joy. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Lord, we thank you that John Mark's story is given to us in Scripture to encourage us this morning. Lord, we are tempted to think—many of us—that we have nothing to offer or we think that life is already too full. Lord, I pray that you encourage us this morning, that you're always at work, Holy Spirit, transforming your people into the likeness of Christ. I pray, Father, that our church would have the joy of continuing to send and go—radical senders, radical goers. We pray this, Lord, for your glory, for the salvation of people who don't yet know you, and for our joy and growth in Christ. We pray this in His name. Amen.