Biblical Patterns For Church Planting

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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So what we're doing today, guys, like I said, really intentionally, we want to format this time in such a way that it lends itself to good discussion, to use the term forging fellowship, so to really get to know one another, to enjoy each other's company, to use a bit of a buzzword.

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It's okay here to be vulnerable and to ask good questions and ask bad questions.

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And so as we're going through, feel free to interrupt, feel free to ask a question, feel free to disagree in a respectful way, to bring

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Scripture to bear on what it is that we're discussing. So if I'm saying something and you're thinking, he hasn't thought of this passage or this passage isn't coming up, but it's a really important one, feel free to bring those things up.

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And I've intentionally formatted things in such a way that I leave some things open -ended with the hope that people will participate and involve themselves in things as we go along.

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So I want to let you guys know that right at the forefront, that format as much as possible.

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It is a teaching thing, but consider me more like a tour guide. So we're going through a point of interest.

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I'm here to show us some of the important landmarks along the way to get us to our destination, but it's an interactive activity all the way through.

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Otherwise it's going to be, I think, far less fruitful if it's just me talking at you.

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There's a time for preaching, but I really want this to be good and interactive. So today what we're going to do, it's not on the outline, but I will draw attention to our timeline that I gave you guys at the onset.

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No, it's the one with the graphic on it. It has a little bit more, Nicole, I'd have mine, but I gave mine away.

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There it is, Nicole has it there. So what that is, that is a tentative timeline that we've given out.

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Lord willing, we would hope to plan to launch the church,

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Grace Fellowship Church, May 16th, 2021. So that is our goal.

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So that's, I think by my calculation, nine weeks away. So what we're doing leading up to that goal is we want to set a good foundation.

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I used one of Nicole's gardening expressions and she appreciated it. And that is we're cultivating the soil to prepare for biblical church planting.

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So we're getting ourselves ready. There's certainly biblically, there's other soil that's yet to be sowed, but we want to make sure that our group is ready for the planting of this church.

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And we have a good understanding of what it means to church plant and also what it means to be a disciple of Christ.

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So that's what we're doing. I've given you a bit of the format. And really I insist, please, please interact, ask questions and we'll get more out of it as a result.

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So on our timeline, it's not indicated there, but our very first week, what we're looking at today is this idea, biblical patterns for church planting.

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And we've been talking about church planting now for a few of you guys for years now, right?

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This whole idea, this future goal of planting a church, for some of us it might not be as familiar.

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But it begs the question, we've been talking about it, and this is a question for you guys, what is church planting?

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So what is it that we are doing when we say we're planting a church? Trying to make disciples, okay, that absolutely falls into it.

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There's more to it, anyone else? Gathering of believers, so the assembling of a people as part of a church.

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Yeah, any other thoughts? Amen, lead people to the faith and make them like Christ.

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That's absolutely true. Well, I think we covered what I would consider biblically to be the definition of church planting, just in this little discussion here.

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I'm going to quote from a guy named J .D. Payne. He's a missiologist, he's written a number of books on church planting.

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I think he has, thus far, of all the definitions of church planting that I've seen, he gives the best one, and it encompasses what we've mentioned here.

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He says that church planting is evangelism, so leading people to Christ, that results in new believers, and those new believers forming new local churches.

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So it is preaching the gospel, it is making disciples, it's assembling as disciples, and it is growing into conformity to Christ, like you said,

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Stanley. Now, I'll ask this question. We will talk about it, but how do we plant churches?

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So we've talked about church planting, we've taught through the statement of faith, we've done a variety of things, we've done

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Bible studies over the course of the last several years, but how do we ultimately plant a church?

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What does that look like? And again, this is a multi -layered answer, so you'll... Yeah, but what are some elements to church planting?

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Evangelism? Okay. Prayer? Yeah. Fellowship?

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Yeah. That's right, just to start meeting.

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That's right, that is actually part of it, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, on your handout that we've put out here, so we're going to fill in some of those details, but I've given you the answer on the handout, and so it says here, the biblical pattern for church planting, and these are what

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I would consider to be the steps of biblical church planting, and that's what we're going to do is go through that today.

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So there really are almost as many churches as there are philosophies of church planting.

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So if you've read... Steve and I have done a lot of the reading over the last number of years on church planting.

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There's the launch large church plant, which I call or has been called instant church, right, where you get a big group of people together, 50 people, 100 people, 200 people, 400 people, and you plant, and you're instantly almost a megachurch in some ways.

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There's that idea of launching large. There's the philosophy of missional, incarnational church planting, so we move into a neighborhood, and then we start a little community there, and that grows into a church.

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There's house churches, and the cell network church planting, multi -site, and so we've seen that in Edmonton in the last couple of years,

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I think, increase, where bigger churches are now saying, we're going to plant another church, but it's like a satellite of theirs, and so the preaching from the main church is piped into the new church plant.

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There's replanting, so an old church that wants to revitalize themselves, they replant. When we talk about church planting, we're not, when

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I talk about church planting and biblical church planting, while it's not a condemnation of all those models, we have something different in mind, and that's what we're going to talk about today, and so when we do church planting, what we want to do ultimately, where do we want to get our authority for planting churches?

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God, and how does God give us that? How does he relay that? In the Bible. In the

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Bible, that's right, in the Bible, and so while it's good to read good books, and it's good to read good books on church planting, one of the things that we've tried to do, and what we are trying to do, is to use the

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Bible as our church planting manual, and a lot of people don't think of the Bible as a church planting manual, but in fact is.

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There are many sections in the Bible, a lot of passages that tell us exactly how we can plant a church, exactly how the church was planted, and exactly how the church has been planted for the last two millennia, and so what we're going to do is, as we look at what it means to plant a church, how do we plant churches, we're going to look to the

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Bible as our manual for church planting, and I want to say at the onset, as we talk about this, it can sound a little bit like me being judgmental or condemning other forms of church planting, that's not our goal, because what

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I will say is, nowhere in the Bible does it command how we are to plant churches. Nowhere in the

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Bible does it say, this is how you must do it, thou shalt plant it in this way, but rather, when we look in the

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Bible, what we see is an implicit pattern, and so we see implicit patterns, not explicit commands, and we see descriptions, rather than prescriptions, but what

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I think we can do is, look at those descriptions, and from that, get a good idea of how we can best plant a church, and I think there's a couple practical advantages to that.

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What would be, in your guys' minds, some practical advantages to using the Bible as our manual for church planting?

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It's the Word of God, the inerrant Word of God, that's right. Yeah, absolutely.

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Any other thoughts you guys come to mind?

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Look at it in a different way. Yeah. Like I said, not a condemnation of their version, but I'm building a base for why we are approaching it in a certain way.

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But yeah, I hear you. Yeah. Good. You're taking the lead and disagreeing.

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I appreciate that. Any other thoughts?

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So, Steve, you pointed it out right at the beginning, the doctrine of the Word of God. I think that when we look at how churches were planted, for instance, in the book of Acts, and we're going to look at that, one of the things that we see is, we see a form of church planting that God blesses.

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So we see how people who were inspired by the Holy Spirit planted churches, how God recorded that in the

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Bible for generations and generations and generations to read and follow. And I think that there's a lot of benefit from saying, well, how did people plant churches in the

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Bible? However they planted it, that's how we want to plant it. A couple other, I think, practical advantages is that biblical church planting is actually very simple.

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Unlike a lot of different philosophies that require a whole bunch of different steps and a bunch of moving parts and systems, biblical church planting is actually super simple.

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I think maybe that's why it's sometimes ignored, is just because simplicity is viewed as maybe less advantageous than something that is more complex, more involved.

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It's also, I think, an advantage is because of its simplicity, and because it's recorded here, and any

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Christian who has a Bible can read it, it's very reproducible. And so for a church that wants to plant other churches, to look to the

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Bible gives us the opportunity to see how do they plant churches, how can we plant churches, and if you have a question about planting a church,

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I know I'm saying that a lot, you can look to the Bible and see what it says there. And so, as helpful as other good books are, and as helpful as other models may be, and as successful as they might be, and even as much as they might honour

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God, one of the things that we have in terms of our leadership and Steve's participation, in my view, and our sending church, is a

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Biblical model, a model that looks at what does the Scripture say, how did they do it, and let's as close as we can follow their example.

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And so we're going to use the Bible as our primary church planting manual moving forward.

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So I want us now, we're going to look at some of these Biblical patterns for church planting.

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So let's look to Acts chapter 16 that's the one

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I wanted to turn us to Philippians, but Acts chapter 16 what Steve had read for us now

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Steve had read it because we're not going to read it again we're going to skim and look at some of the highlights but we're going to look, you'll see on your handout again, the headings there for planting a

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Biblical church, or planting a church according to Biblical patterns, we're going to find all of those ingredients all of those headings in our text and in other places as we refer there.

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So we see in Acts chapter 16 starting in verse 6 so here we had we see that Paul was, he had been joined by Timothy they were in Lystra, Derbe and Lystra at this point, and it says in verse 5, so the churches were strengthened in the faith, and they increased in number and then when they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the

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Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia and when they had come up to Mysia and attempted to go into Bithynia but the

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Spirit of Jesus did not allow them so passing by Mysia they went down to Troas, and there in Troas the

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Lord gave Paul a vision, what's been called the Macedonian call, and so verse 9, and the vision appeared to Paul in the night, a man of Macedonia was standing there urging him and saying, come over to Macedonia and help us.

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In verse 10, and when Paul had seen the vision immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.

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So according to the biblical patterns what is the very first thing that begins the process of planting a new church?

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Can anyone see anything from that first section there, those first few verses?

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A vision, that's right, I'm going to use the white board today for the sake of what

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I'm going to say here is calling No, it's true though, so calling, being called by God and being sent by the church so that's the very beginning of biblical church planting so if we start anywhere else we're skipping a step so we want to talk about that first now, at the onset

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I'll say this, or I'll ask this question, is it possible to be faithful to the great commission without planting a church?

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Yes, it absolutely is and we know, what are some passages in the scripture that tell us to go and to make disciples or to preach the gospel or to evangelize can you guys think of some verses?

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Matthew 28 18 to 20 the great commission all authority on heaven and earth so the

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Lord Jesus says to his disciples, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me, go therefore and make disciples of all nations so make disciples, baptizing them, so the ordinances of the church baptizing them in the name of the

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Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you so there's one, can anyone think of any others?

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at the end of another gospel, Acts chapter 1, what does it say there Stanley?

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yeah that's right, Jerusalem Judea, Samaria and to the ends of the earth you will be my witnesses at the end of Mark chapter 16, you'll remember the

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Lord Jesus said to his disciples he said, preach the gospel to the whole creation, so preach the gospel, throughout the bible we find that one of the main thrusts of Christianity, the main thrust of the early church was an impulse to evangelize it was an impulse to make

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Christ known, to preach Christ right, and so that is separate from what

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I'm talking about when I talk about being called and sent everyone, everyone in all the church, if you are a believer to use the words of Charles Spurgeon, he said you are either a missionary or an imposter, meaning that every believer will ultimately they will have that impulse within themselves that guidance the leading of the

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Holy Spirit, the overflow of the abundance of their heart to make Christ known, but that's separate from the calling to church plant all of us are called, all of us are commanded to do the work of an evangelist, but not all of us are sent, but so we see here in Acts chapter 16 that Paul received a very specific calling, so this is something that they received from God and so they opted to obey, but I'm going to rewind us a little bit, so Acts chapter 16 we see this calling, the

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Macedonian call, the Macedonian vision, but let's go back to Acts chapter 13 so in Acts chapter 13 we really see the beginning of all of this and I suppose even earlier, but we'll start in Acts 13 for our sake today so in Acts 13 you might remember if you're familiar with the book of Acts, what had happened was the

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Apostle Paul was not always the Apostle Paul the Apostle Paul at one time was Saul, and Saul was was he friendly towards the church or was he unfriendly towards the church who is that?

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Daryl what was that? he was unfriendly towards the church that's right, not only was he unfriendly he was vehemently against the church, and so you'll remember he was part of the stoning of Stephen everyone laid their coats at Saul's feet when

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Stephen was stoned meaning that he had an active role in that he actively pursued Christians he was even on the road to Jericho trying to persecute

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Christians when the Lord appeared to him the Lord Jesus appeared to him on the road and said

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Saul, why are you persecuting me? and so we read about Saul, Saul becomes the

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Apostle Paul, he goes to Antioch at some point part way through Acts chapter 11, and we're told in Acts chapter 11 that he's teaching there in Antioch, he teaches there for at least a year and then in chapter 13

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Acts 13, now there were in the church at Antioch, prophets and teachers, so some of those were

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Barnabas Simeon, who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manan, a lifelong friend of Herod the

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Tetrarch, and Saul, while they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, so they're worshipping

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God, they're seeking Him, they're waiting upon Him in fasting and it says this, the Holy Spirit said set apart for me

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Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them and after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them out, so this is an example of a calling that is separate from simple obedience to the

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Great Commission, we're all called to obey the Great Commission, we're all called to make disciples, we're all called to evangelize but then there is another calling, a calling over and above that, and we see that here in the life of Paul and Barnabas, or it says here,

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Barnabas and Saul, who is Paul and so this is what I want to talk about now, is what it looks like to be called and sent, and we're going to apply this a little bit to our experience here as a new church plant, so I'll ask you guys the question, how does someone know that they have been called to plant a church?

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Any other thoughts? Thank you. You're on to something though, about persistence, calling from yeah, yeah absolutely, there's a,

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I mean in this case here, they're praying and fasting, they're worshipping and fasting, and the

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Holy Spirit said, set apart for me, Barnabas and Saul do we, do you think, do we, go ahead dear have a gifting, it would be something that other people would recognize in them hopefully, as if you just mentioned it yourself, or there was an automatic outbound listening to the person like,

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I would think that that person wouldn't have a calling that's right, yeah, you're on to something there, and so I think these are all here so first of all, like you said

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Will there's an internal desire I think that the Holy Spirit gives a person, we see that if you want a

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Biblical example 1 Timothy chapter 3 in verse 1, if anyone aspires to the office of overseer, so there's a sense of aspiration, and so maybe

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I'll use the word desire so within that person there's a desire to do the work of ministry, there's an ambition

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Nicole, you pointed out too, a gifting, right, there's has the

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Lord gifted that individual for that work so again, we're talking about the role of an elder, but I think there's a lot of overlap here, when

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Paul says to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 3, he says, he must be able to teach, there must be an ability there, a

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God given ability, and I think about, I use the example of American Idol right, we've all seen clips on American Idol, right, of this person that goes in, people have told them they're great singers they believe in their heart of hearts, that they are just God's gift to music they come in, they go before the judges and they sing and they don't get through the first bar and the judges are like, whoa, whoa, whoa you know, and often times make a mockery of their attempts, right, to sing that should not be a description of that individual so they should have the desire, they should have the willingness, the ambition to do it but there ought also to be the gifting and so the ability primarily to teach is an example that we see in 1

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Timothy chapter 3 and then, Nicole you hit it too, is the affirmation of the church, and we see that so the affirmation of the church, and we see that here in Acts chapter 13 and so this calling wasn't simply given, wasn't simply given to Paul, or wasn't simply given to Barnabas, but it was something that Paul and Barnabas certainly experienced, but the whole church experienced it and so, not only was there the calling the desire, the gifting the leading of the

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Holy Spirit to go, but there was also the sending, and that's a necessary part there are many, many people who go out to do ministry, to,

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I'm going to start a new church, or I'm going to start a new ministry of some kind, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, and they go alone, and they go without a sending church, and that just frankly is not biblical, so we are called we are gifted, or we are able and then we are affirmed, and we're sent by the church, and we see what that sending looks like,

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Acts chapter 13 and verse 3 then after fasting and praying, they laid their hands on them, and sent them off and so there's a sending out from the church and that sending off, it includes a couple of different things, we see first that they fasted and prayed, and so they sought the good of the people that were going it says that they laid hands on them, and so there was a blessing of them, there was we see it in a couple of different places, we won't have time to look at it today, but in 1st

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Timothy 4 Paul talks to Timothy about when he was given gifts by the laying on of hands, or in 1st

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Timothy 5, when Paul says that the church and the leadership of the church should be discerning and not lay hands on too suddenly, and so they sent them away with their blessing, with their prayers, with their support, and with their affirmation, so the some would call that the ordination or the appointing of and so the church is called and sent

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I'm just going to look here to make sure I have everything here and I don't know

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Steve, I was going to ask you, but I didn't get a chance to, but just in terms of our own experience, just so everyone knows, we as a church plant would meet that criteria of being called and being sent, in the sense that, like Nicole pointed out, the

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Lord saved me in 2006 so I was just to give you a one sentence description of me, prior to being saved,

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I was I was a wretch I was clean on the outside or at least had the appearance of cleanliness and filthy on the inside so I was the type of person,

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I was the type of kid, for instance, that all the parents really liked, I remember my teacher would chastise the whole class and then during the recess would come up to me and say,

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Shane, I just want you to know I was talking about everyone but I wasn't talking about you when I said that and so I had this neat and tidy perception or persona, excuse me on the outside, but inside I was full of dead men's bones, and so I was just as rotten as the next kid, the only difference was that I would go up to someone and say, hey, you should go and do this, or hey, you should do this, and I think about, you know, in high school, exposing my friends to substances that I shouldn't have

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I never did it myself, but I was happy to expose other people to it, and that's the kind of person that I was and I was a very religious person,

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Nicole and I went to church almost every Sunday Stanley would have known me at that time early on, went to church every

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Sunday, and yet I didn't read my Bible, I didn't have a Bible I didn't know the Lord, I didn't believe in Christ but after the

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Lord saved me, almost within a matter of months, the Lord gave me a desire to to be a minister of the gospel to shepherd the gospel

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I went to our church within the first year of becoming a believer and said, I would like to be a pastor, how do

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I do that? and being part of a denomination, there was a whole bunch of different processes that, you know, including a master's degree and a variety of other things but that's what we started with, and that was now almost 15 years ago and like Nicole said,

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I still won't shut up about it so the Lord gave me the desire, by God's grace

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He has given us a church that we've been able to exercise those gifts, and develop those gifts, and as a result, we have the affirmation of the church, and our sending church we've been in conversations with for three years and so now

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Bethel Gospel Chapel is sending us to plant a church so, we see that what's the next step?

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so we've been sent, we've been called, excuse me, we've been sent what do we do next? we go, and what do we do?

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you know what? let's see what it says in Acts chapter 16 Acts chapter 16, verse 10 so, when

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Paul had seen the vision immediately, we sought to go on to Macedonia concluding,

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I just want to highlight that word, you know Will, when you said when the Holy Spirit leads us, even after they had this vision, they were still, it was still a walk of faith they concluded that God had sent them, so it wasn't like, you know an audible voice from God undeniable, this is what we must do without any doubt, there was still room for doubt in the sense that it was still a walk of faith they concluded, and it says concluding that God had called us to go, like you said honey to preach the gospel to them, and so the next step in our journey of church planting is preaching the gospel so we preach the gospel and really that's an absolutely essential ingredient to church planting because ultimately what church planting is, is gospel planting right?

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if we think about the definition of church planting from the beginning, what is the definition of church planting? it is evangelism that results in new believers that form into new local churches and so, we go out and preach the gospel, now what was the message that they preached when we say they preached the gospel what did they preach?

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what they need to do to be saved and what is that? Christ and him crucified, that's right so, it's interesting that when they were sent, when the

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Lord sent them to Macedonia we heard about it as Steve read, there was

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Lydia this wealthy woman who was a worshipper of God, there was a slave girl, there were what

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I would say are corrupt city officials and that the gospel to preach the gospel was not to preach social justice and it wasn't to preach you know some type of health and wealth, deliverance from even bondage to demons it wasn't to abolish poverty or corruption, it was it was to preach

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Christ and him crucified, verse 10 God had called them to preach the gospel, concluded us to preach the gospel to them now so we'll see maybe before we get ahead of ourselves this gospel that they preached so we see the conversion of Lydia right, so you've got this wealthy woman, it says that she was a worshipper of God, and so she was religious but is it enough to be religious?

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is it enough to have a desire for God apart from new birth in Christ?

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no you're such a troll today honey no it wasn't enough even though they were worshippers they could have said, oh you know this is a religious person, she believes in the one

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God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or she desires to pray, no it wasn't enough to be of the outward trappings, they need to preach the gospel, and to preach the gospel even to Lydia, and we see what happens here in verse 14, at the end of verse 14 right before verse 15, it says the

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Lord opened her heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul and so this is one of the things that we need to appreciate, that when when we've been called and sent, and we go to preach the gospel, ultimately who is our hope?

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who are we relying upon to act as we preach the gospel? I'm okay with silence we're relying on the word of God and we're relying on the power of God we're relying on God to open the hearts of people and to pay attention we see something very similar wording in Acts chapter 13 so if we turn back there just for a second verse 48 says and when the

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Gentiles heard this so when they heard the gospel they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the

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Lord and as many as were appointed to eternal life, believed and so when we are called, when we're called by God when we're sent, we go and preach the gospel and we trust in God that this is the appointed means that God has given to save sinners.

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Romans 1 says that Paul says, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.

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And so Paul said to the Corinthians he says, it's neither he who waters neither he who plants neither he who waters but it is who that causes the growth.

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It's God that causes the growth. And so for us, in our context our job as a church planning team, as a core group is to preach the gospel does it require putting the flesh to death?

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Steve, you did some evangelism in Sherwood Park I think it was last year, right? I remember you saying, you came back and you said that was just the most flesh -killing experience of my life, right?

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Do you want to tell us why was that the most flesh -killing experience of your life? Not a single one, right?

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A lot of doors in your face maybe, right? And yet that is God's appointed means. We walk by faithfulness and what

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I like to say is doing evangelism is like being a letter carrier, right? When we preach the gospel our job is not to pretty it up and make it acceptable and then deliver it to people and then somehow convince them to take it.

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Our goal as ministers of reconciliation is like faithful letter carriers. What does a letter carrier do?

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They get a message they take it and they deliver it faithfully. They don't stand at the door and convince the person to open the letter.

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They don't convince them to pay the bill inside the envelope. They simply deliver the message and that's what we need to do is take the message of the gospel to unbelievers and then expect that God will, as it says here in Acts 13, open people's hearts.

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Open the hearts of the Lydia's. Deliver the slave girls. That he will, because of his sovereignty he'll cause an earthquake that causes the jail cells to open and the prison guard or the jailer is at the end of his rope and hears the gospel just at the right time.

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What must I do to be saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

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Now, if you've read the book of Acts I'll ask this. No one on a lease.

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I'm going to ask you guys in the back. So when God calls us to plant a church and we go out and we preach the gospel and we explain it freely and we do a really good job of explaining the gospel, everyone's going to believe when they hear it, right?

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No. No, they won't. So the next thing that we will see in our journey of church planting is this.

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We are going to see unbelief and belief and I could have just skipped that step, but I think that's a necessary step when we talk about biblical church planting.

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We're going to preach the gospel and you know what? Some people are not going to believe. By God's grace some will.

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If we are faithful, some will believe but there will be many that don't believe.

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I think about Matthew chapter 7, right? Broad is the way that leads to destruction and many there are that go that way.

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The reality is many people are, their eyes have been blinded by Satan. They're dead in their trespasses and sins.

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God is not opening their hearts and their eyes and they will not believe.

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But many will believe. And let me ask you guys a question. How might our experience of immediate gratification, we live in an immediate gratification culture, right?

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So if I want to read a book on my Kindle right now, right now, or if I want to read a book in general,

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I can order it on my Kindle and get it this second. If I don't have a Kindle, I can download the app onto my iPad or my phone or whatever device

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I have and I can read that book right this second. If I want to order a new pair of sunglasses or a new watch or you name it,

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I have Amazon Prime. Or if I, you know, or I have movies on demand or whatever it is.

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We live in an immediate gratification culture. And let me ask you, how do you think in our experience, living in an immediate gratification culture, how does that, how might that hinder our experience as a church planning team in light of the fact that some will believe and some will not?

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Yeah, we might preach faithfully and not see results. And how does that hinder us?

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How might that hinder us potentially if we don't have a biblical view of evangelism and the outcome of evangelism?

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How might it hinder us that we might not see results immediately? It's discouraging, right?

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We're a small group. We're not a launch large group. I praise the

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Lord for every single person in this room, but we're not a launch large group. But the reality is there will be times when we are met with unbelief and it will be discouraging, very, very discouraging.

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I will tell you that some of the most discouraging moments of my life have been since I expressed an interest to plant a church.

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It just is. And Nicole, by God's grace, and Steve, by God's grace, and other people along the way have come alongside me and the

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Lord has put them in a different place than me at that moment, and they've kind of picked me up and helped me dust myself off and, okay, let's continue to plant the church, right?

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We know that we lost an important member, an important family on our team in the last few months, right?

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And the whole thought was, you know, do we throw in the towel, right? But we need to have realistic expectations that when we go, when we preach, some people will not believe.

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But by God's grace, some people, some will believe. Some will believe planting a church is just like planting a real garden.

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Harson, have you ever done a science experiment where you plant a bean and then watch it grow as part of your science class?

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Have you done that? I've actually never done that. We did that when we were in school.

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Maybe they don't do that anymore because that was 20 years ago, 30 years ago. What was the most science you got 20 years ago?

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That's all we knew back then. But you plant your bean in the soil and they put it under the grow lights, at least in our classroom when we did the science experiment, and everyone waters it.

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And what does everyone do the next day when they come into school, right? Everyone, like if they're enthusiastic, everyone runs up to the grow light and sees and there's still just dirt and there's still just a seed in the dirt.

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Right? There's not any growth happening. But what happens is you water it and what happens is the light pours down on it.

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The next day you come and there might be a little tip of green pointing out of the soil and then a little bud and it grows and it grows and it grows.

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And that's exactly how church planting is. It really is, it is slow and it's difficult work but it's good work.

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I've said that recently. I'll tell you a story of a church planter who's not really looked at usually as a church planter but in church history, a man named

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Adoniram Judson. Adoniram Judson lived in the 1800s. He was a missionary from America who he went, he sailed

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I think it was something like 108 days or 110 days from the east coast of the

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United States to India, so around Africa and to India and then eventually to Myanmar or Burma as it was called then, with his wife.

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And I wanted to share just some of the experiences of Adoniram Judson. So Adoniram when he went the place they landed had 42 degree temperatures.

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So I spent a month in Indonesia and I found that almost unbearable. And this was even hotter than it was in Indonesia.

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42 degree temperatures, they were faced with malaria, with dysentery, with cholera.

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In the first few years of his ministry, two of his wives, it sounds like a polygamist,

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I better reword that. He had a wife, she died, he remarried, that wife died.

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In the course of these marriages they had 13 children. The reason they had 13 children was because seven of those children died.

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At one point when there was a civil war that was happening or a war between I think it was the

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East India Company and some other some of the locals, any foreigner they arrested and so they arrested him.

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They put him in jail. In order to keep them secure in the jail they hung them by their feet and the only thing that touched the ground was their shoulders and their heads on the ground.

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They were kept that way all day. You can imagine in super hot climates where there's dysentery and other things, there were disease, there would be dead bodies hanging beside him.

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Eventually he was released. At one point he went through almost a nervous breakdown and went into complete isolation and eventually the

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Lord brought him out of that and after six years of experiencing that and ministering, the

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Lord gave Adoniram Judson his first convert. But he endured for six years under that condition and I think in our experience we would have been there six weeks and we would have been out of there but he labored diligently for six years and not only that but in the twelve years after that there were eighteen more converts and so he ended up with something like eighteen or nineteen converts in the first twelve years of his ministry there but by God's grace, what did he do with the seed that was planted there?

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If you were to go to Myanmar today, there are three thousand seven hundred Baptist churches that link their existence back to Adoniram Judson and of the three thousand seven hundred churches that are there that consists of six hundred and seventeen thousand members and so planting church in many ways we're sowing seeds and some of the outcome of these seeds we will not see but if we walk by faith, we preach the word, we trust

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God in the sovereignty of God that's what got Adoniram Judson through that experience was looking to the

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God who is sovereign, who does all things who is able to do all things, who will do all things according to his plan people will come to faith in Christ Now Nicole we've experienced a lot of this journey right and you said we talk about it, we talk about it so what do we do next?

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We do it so by God's grace we are called, we go and preach some will not believe but some will believe and there is evidence of that in this room that some have believed next thing we do is we assemble and that's what we're preparing for now is to assemble as a local church now let me ask you guys a question how many people do we need to meet together to assemble?

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I put that really high didn't I? how many people do we need to assemble?

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where two or three are gathered in my name there I am among you as soon as we have a plurality we have a basis for assembling and we see that if you marry a martyr it's also a holy congregation right?

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so like you are saying but you are there gathered so it's not necessarily assembling with 5, 10, 1 million it starts somewhere one congregation or two then you preach then those who believe and gradually, gradually that's right by God's grace you assemble some will be married and then increase

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I remember Stanley, you said something like probably over 10 years ago that I still think about regularly and I remember you saying we should not despise small beginnings right?

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you said that, it probably meant nothing to you but I've thought of that it meant nothing to you in the sense that that wasn't meant to be necessarily counsel for my life but you said that and I've thought about that regularly for well over 10 years when it was that you last said that in one church planning book

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I was reading just recently they said you should not start meeting you should not assemble until you have at least 100 people and there's a big problem there because that is bigger than the median size of most

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North American churches it's bigger than a lot of things but no,

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Matthew 18, where two or three are gathered, there I am among you what

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I'm more inclined to say is what do we need to assemble a church? we need a faithful few the faithful few those people who really have repented of their sins who believe on the

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Lord Jesus Christ who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who want to honor him and glorify him and by golly we have a church by golly,

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I know but we're going to assemble

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I've just lost I can't assemble anymore because I've used that expression but we have enough to assemble when we have a faithful few and let's think about it for a second when we think about the word church if you remember back to our study of ecclesiology, what does the word church mean?

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assembly of God's people ecclesia is out kaleo is called and so all the church is an assembly of those who have been reached with the gospel, who have believed who have been called out and are coming together to form a new church

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I like what Luther Martin Luther said, the seven characteristics of a church are these we won't be slave to these but I thought it was interesting he said that the word is preached that the ordinances are faithfully administered so baptism in the

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Lord's Supper there's church discipline and so there's a sense of accountability within the group there are biblical offices in place so elder and deacon

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I would disagree with him and say that's not needed for a church but it's helpful he says there's worship and then number seven it's interesting he includes these what you might expect, word, baptism

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Lord's Supper, discipline, biblical offices worship and he said the last thing you need to be a church is suffering he says seventh the holy

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Christian people are externally recognized by the possession of the sacred cross they must endure every misfortune and persecution, all kinds of trials and evil from the devil the world and the flesh since the servant was not greater than the master as Jesus had taught, the church would suffer in this world as it served

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Christ faithfully Martin Luther knew something about suffering, he endured a lot of opposition obviously as a reformer but we should expect that it's going to be difficult to be a faithful church in the world next thing so we've gone, we've preached, people believe we've assembled, what do we do next?

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is that it? we've done it so discipleship the next thing that we do and like you said

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Stanley right, we preach the gospel and then let me ask you, what is the goal of discipleship?

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what is the goal of the ministry of the church? to worship, to glorify

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God and to make disciples and what does it mean to make disciples? I guess that's what I'm asking what is the aim of discipleship?

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when we have someone and we are discipling them and we're teaching them how to read their bibles and how to walk with God in prayer what is the end?

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those are means but what is the end? to spread the word of God to spread the word of God that's included that is the ultimate end goal but I'll take part of what you said there

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Darryl you said the word Jesus right the goal of discipleship ultimately is conformity to Jesus and so what we do when we meet as a church we assemble but we don't assemble just as a country club, now we're

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Christians and we hang out and we do fun things together we assemble for what purpose we assemble?

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primarily to worship God to study the bible that we might be conformed to the person of Jesus Christ so we do we do discipleship now what does that discipleship look like?

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what should that discipleship look like in the life of the church day to day? probably for a

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Christian to think godly leadership that people can imitate, yes, so imitation is a big one, yeah any others?

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what discipleship should look like day to day in the church? what's that?

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deliberate study of the word I think in our if I remember how we've labeled discipleship in our purpose statement or in our priorities, sorry is the robust, robust biblical study so not just reading our one chapter one verse a day as part of the daily bread, as helpful as that might be, but getting in the word getting in the word alone, getting in the word as a church, expository preaching, so teaching and preaching through the bible anything else?

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I think that discipleship in the church, this is my goal for our church plan, is that we would be a people that are first of all hungering and thirsting for righteousness, desiring to be like Christ, and then how do we do that?

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we assemble we come together we worship god, so we sing hymns that are rich in theological meaning the kind of hymns that if you didn't have your bible and you read those, you'd have enough truth that would hold you off until you could get your bible back, right we pray together, we celebrate the ordinances together, so the lord's supper baptism,

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I mentioned that we preach the word of god we make much of what god has written for us here, and then we encourage one another, we hold each other accountable, so we do this corporately, but we do this individually and so it should be this is my hope and my vision for this church plan, is that that Will, or Stanley or Nicole or anybody in this room can come here with a friend or another believer in Christ maybe you've shared the gospel with them, and you've come to faith maybe not, but you can say that, oh well, someone can come to you and say, who are you discipling?

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and you can say, oh I'm discipling this person or who's discipling you?

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oh well so and so is discipling me, we should all have a relationship with one another where we are being discipled and we are discipling and so there's continuously this desire to grow the apostle

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Paul how did he do this? so Acts chapter 16 just to take that back to our text, verse 40 so they went out of the prison and visited

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Lydia, and when they had seen the brothers, they encouraged them and departed so there's encouragement and we see what

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Paul does over and over and over again, he encourages the churches in Acts chapter 14 verse 22 so after they had made disciples, it says that they strengthened the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God and so Paul wrote letters,

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Paul taught I think about what Paul said to the

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Colossian church, he said it was his calling, what God had given him was to make the word of God fully known he said to the

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Galatian church my little children for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, this

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Philippian church that Paul planted what did he do? we have one of the letters that he wrote to that church to instruct them how to live and so discipleship is essential to the gathered life of the church do you ever get bored when people are teaching and preaching?

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my only caution to you is don't sit too close to the window, okay? the apostle

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Paul one time, he was teaching and he was teaching a long long time which sometimes I'm guilty of and I apologize for that, but he was teaching a long long time, it says until midnight and there was a young man named

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Eutychus who was sitting on the windowsill and he fell three stories out of the windowsill hit the ground and he died thankfully

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God, Paul went downstairs to see Eutychus and God raised him back to life through Paul, but Paul preached, he taught the word of God, he taught it until people died but we don't want to kill anyone here, but we're not going to apologize for preaching the bible and I would say too as members of the church and church plant, it's good to be good listeners and to know how to be a good listener and to take notes there's even books written about being good listeners and certainly

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I and anyone who's in a position of leadership, owe it to you to be a good teacher and then lastly so we've done all these things we've done discipleship, surely we're done no, there's one more you're exactly right

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Noah we're going to get there and I'll just fill this one in here, develop leaders so right from the get go we see in the church that Paul recognized that a church was not complete until elders were in place just as an exercise here to stay active, let's go to Titus chapter 1 together and this of course is our last point,

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Titus chapter 1 and so he says in verse 5 to Titus, this is

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Paul writing to Titus he says, this is why I left you in Crete so that you might put what remained into order, so what was the last piece in that church that they needed what does it say there and appoint elders so and we see this actually in Paul's ministry that one of the things that he took great pains to do is to ensure that the church had good leaders so if you turn just a couple pages over to 2

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Timothy 2 in chapter 2 we see a leadership development verse 2

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Timothy 2 -2 and he says I'll start from verse 1 you then my child be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also, so entrusting the gospel message, entrusting good doctrine the doctrine of the word of God to faithful men who will be able to teach also, and the very last verse we'll look at here as part of this is

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Acts chapter 14 in verse 23 so we already read verse 22 they encouraged them they said through many tribulations you must enter the kingdom of heaven and then verse 23 and when they had appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting they committed them to the

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Lord and so Steve and I have already been working on this, we already have a plan to develop leaders we're working on something that's going to be formal, because our goal at the end of this all, you'll see

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Noah Bear you said it, connect that arrow right, our whole goal is that we want to be not only a church plant, not only a church but we want to be a church planting church and so we want to multiply we want to multiply, so we want to call, or be called and be sent, we want to preach, we want to trust in the sovereignty of God that people will believe, we will assemble, we will make disciples we will intentionally develop leaders, so we're looking at theological training pastoral training missiological training, and then what do we want to do as those individuals are called, we want to send them and see that reproduced again and so that is the vision for Grace Fellowship Church to be a church that does these things well, that assembles well, that does discipleship well develops our leaders well, and ultimately that reproduces churches so that in 100 years or in 200 years or Lord willing, however long we can see a situation like Adoniram Judson, labor hard work hard, plant seeds experience discouragement but trust in a holy faithful sovereign

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God who we know will cause growth according to his will and his time, and so that is our vision for Grace Fellowship Church and this is what we want to do as a church plant, and so when we say we want to meet

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May 16th as a local church, that's the step that we're at, we've aimed, we want to pull the trigger and we want to continue to do these things well, so were there any questions about that?

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Are you guys tracking with me? You're following along? Awesome. It is yeah, visuals are helpful yeah yeah, visuals are helpful, absolutely well, that's all brothers and sisters, so let's pray and then we'll take it from here

01:03:56

Father Father Lord, we don't desire to follow any man's formula we don't desire to follow our own formula but Lord, we want to take what you said in your word all of this, and we believe that this is faithful to what you've said in your word and what you've left displayed through the life of the churches in the

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New Testament and Lord, we want to be faithful to carry out the work that we believe that you've called us to, that we believe you've sent us forward for and Father, we do ask as I look at this board,

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Father, that we would be faithful in preaching the gospel that we wouldn't skip that step because it's hard and Lord, that as we do,

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Father, that you would open the hearts of people, the people outside of these walls, perhaps people inside these walls now

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Lord, that you would be pleased to open people's minds to understand the gospel and to come to faith in Christ and believe on the

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Lord Jesus and that they would be saved and Lord, in all that we do Father, we pray that you would be glorified, oh

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Lord, that you would be extolled as holy and righteous and good

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Lord, that is our only desire we could say it forever and ever and ever and it doesn't get old,

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Lord, that we would decrease and that you would increase that is our desire,

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Lord that we could serve you faithfully, that we could walk with you God, through Jesus Christ and then die and Lord, that you would be glorified in our living and in our laboring and in our dying and Lord, that is enough oh

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Lord, I pray that we would walk with you that we would be a people that hunger and thirst for righteousness and that Lord, that you'd be blessed by us and Lord, we know that we would be blessed to walk with you draw us near Lord, near blessed

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Lord, to thy precious bleeding side that is our aim that is our heart,