State of the Church 2025

Reflecting on God’s Providence and the Church’s 2024 Journey

All right, this morning we are at the end of 2024. And so it's right and it's good for us as a church to spend some time reflecting today on all the things that God has done, but also looking forward into a new year, 2025.

And asking the question, God, what are you going to do in our church? God, what do you have in mind? Lord, we want to know so that we can be obedient, so we can walk in the path, in the mission that you have for this church.

And just to spend a little time reflecting, this has been a huge year for us. I don't know if you remember, we did this last year at the beginning of 2024 or at the end of 2023, I can't remember which one.

But we sat up here, Josh and I did, and we talked about, this is how we feel like God is calling us to move forward. And here's our plan, we have a plan, and it's a three-step plan, and it begins with us putting up a map.

Now, that was a very challenging thing, even to put up the map, but we finally got it up.

There.

Thank you, Kelsey. And then we started putting pins on that map and began to pray for areas of Northwest Arkansas and say, God, where do you want to send us, where do you want us to go? We want you to kind of drive, be in the driver's seat here.

We're not telling you where we're going to go, we want to hear from you, we want to know where you want us to plant another church. If that's your will, if that's your desire, make it happen, God. I love the coloring sheet this morning that says, it's Psalm 127 .1, unless the Lord builds the house, those that labor, labor in vain.

And from the very beginning, from Kristen and I being in Washington, in the Seattle area, being obedient to a call to come here, that verse has just seemed to be something that we've clung to and hung on to.

God, unless you do this, it's not going to happen. God, unless you do this, we're just going to be statistically one of those church plant failures. God, we don't know anybody. We don't even know where you want us to plant.

And slowly, step by step, His providence has paved the way. He's shown us where to go, and here we are. Here we are, in a beautiful church here in East Springdale, and a great partnership Josh and I have together.

And then you, one of the things I've said before, and I'll say it again, one of the things that we prayed as we were in Seattle, before we even started to come down here, was God, who are the people? Who are the people that you're going to gather together?

God, we can't even imagine what their faces look like. And now, as I look out to you, I see the faces, faces only He could see at that time we were praying for you, and He has done it. He has done it.

Now, in this last year, we set out that three-step, three-phase plan. We started with the map and praying for it, and then we moved in, what was it, August, to go to phase two of let's gather some people together who are thinking about going and planting somewhere, and we think it's going to be over there somewhere, not really knowing even where it was going to be.

And so, we started meeting with a core group of people, and we started dreaming, we started praying, God, where are you going to plant? Where will we meet? Show us the way. Show us the way. And I remember somebody, I can't remember who it was, saying, well, can't you just rent a place, and then that'll be the place that you're going to go?

And it's like, yeah, we could. We could go to some strip mall, we could find a space, and we could rent it. It would be expensive, but we would know, and we'd say, this is where we're going to plant. But instead, we waited.

We waited, and God has provided us a beautiful church building, very similar to this, really. Even looking at the pictures last night, the pendants in the middle of the room, they're different pendants, but they have these pendants in this room, and it's all white on the inside with wood floors, and I'm like, we couldn't have planned this.

We couldn't have chosen this, and yet God made it available to us, and so we're excited about meeting there on South Barrington at the historic Thomas Lakeview Church, and it is really... I can't wait.

I can't wait. Now, so amazing things that God has done, and now we're on the eve, on the verge of planting a new church, something that we only a year ago could only dream about. Now, Josh did a podcast this week, which I thought was very good, and I would encourage you to go listen to his podcast.

It's called Active Faith in 2025, and in that podcast, he lined out some things that we should be faithful to do as Christian people, as Christian men and women in 2025, and they're basic things. They're basic things.

It's like we should be committed to going to church. We should be committed to fellowshipping and being among God's people. Pretty basic, right? We should be in God's Word. We should be reading God's Word together throughout the year, and then we should be in prayer as well, and as I think about those three things, I think, yes, that should be the baseline for where we are.

And my hope this morning is to use that as a jumping-off place and to really encourage us even further in being aggressively on mission in 2025. Now, this morning over there, we have some...our reading plan is typed up.

Man of little faith, I only printed 30 of these, so if they're all gone, then I can email you this, or I can bring some next week. They're right over there. Kristen sent out an email this week just letting you know if you want to do it online and download the app, you can do that.

We did have some technical difficulties, so she may be sending out, or she will be sending out a new email this week to help you with that for those of you who've tried to sign on and had some problems.

But reading through the Bible together, I remember, Kristen and I, in 2020, we started doing it together, and it's been four years. I'm embarking on year five of reading through the Bible for the fifth time.

Now, I, of course, had read through it many times before that, but each year, to be able to do that and to have them strung together, it's not because it's easy. I haven't found it to be easy, but what I found is that I lack discipline in my life, and so this helps me, right?

And maybe it'll help you to also be in community with people, having that accountability. I fell behind last year quite a bit, but then was able to catch up and finish the Bible. So I want to encourage you, if you've never read through the Bible, man, 2025, this could be the year that you join with us and you read through the whole Bible with us.

And there are some parts, I got to say, that are more difficult to get through. First Chronicles 1, that is just a schlog. Some of the genealogies, really, really boring. But to be able to finish and to say, man, I went from cover to cover, and then to do it again and to do it again and to do it again and to see what God does.

There is an inconsistency within our church when we gather together and we say that we believe in the inerrancy, in the infallibility, in the inspiration of Scripture, and yet it's unimportant to us in how we treat it because we get too busy.

Again, I don't think it's a problem of us not loving it. I think we're just undisciplined, and we just need to have some discipline to do that. And then the benefits that come are so great. So, where am I going to go from...listen to Josh's podcast.

I think it's a really good jumping place for us to think about 2025. Last time I preached, there was a verse that I kind of brought from memory, and it wasn't in my notes, but I'm going to use that verse to kind of build on these basics and start our discussion today.

And then I'll talk about it, and then I'll let Josh kind of synthesize some other thoughts that he has. So today is kind of like a tag-team sermon, a little bit of luce libre, in the ring. So first you get me, and then I'll tag Josh in just a little bit.

Paul’s Mission in Colossians 1:28

That verse is 1 Colossians. It's just Colossians. I don't know why that's in my notes. I'm going to be going to 1 Corinthians or 2 Corinthians in just a bit. But Colossians 1 .28, which says, Him we proclaim, warning every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, in order that we may present every man complete or mature in Christ.

And this is Paul speaking to the Colossians, and what he's unrolling and what he's rolling out is his mission. This is the thing that drives him. This is the thing that gets him up in the morning, is that he is going to proclaim Christ, and he's going to focus on every man, presenting them to be complete in Christ.

If we look at...he says he does this with all wisdom. If we go to 1 Corinthians 1 .18, it says,. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise?

Where is the scribe?

Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

For the Jews demand a sign, the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. So when Paul says that he's going to proclaim his message in all wisdom, it's not the wisdom of this age. It is not the wisdom of men, it is not the opinion of man.

It's the word of the cross, it's the message of the atoning sacrifice and purchase of our salvation. And you will find that in no other place, and you'll find that in no other place than in the word of God, which Paul proclaimed and which we still proclaim every Sunday.

So he is proclaiming, him we proclaim. This is Paul's message, it's Christ. Now he doesn't just kind of reductionistically say, I'm just going to preach just the gospel. He's talking from cover to cover, the complete wisdom of God.

And how is he doing it? What is his method? His method is, I'm going to warn every man, I'm going to teach every man. It's interesting how he uses these two activities, warning, because that's what the word of God does when it comes crashing into our lives.

It brings conflict, right? As the truth of God comes into our life, as it's preached, as it's proclaimed into our life, as it's brought to bear in our life, it should make us look at our lives and say, oh, something's wrong.

Something's wrong. There's an adjustment that needs to be made. And because the Holy Spirit works in hand in hand with the word of God, he often brings conviction to our hearts and shows us where we need correction.

The word of God is a correcting tool, but it's more than that. More than just correcting, it teaches us, and it teaches us a new way of living. Something that's not kind of a default to our nature. It's God's way, and we need to learn it.

So Paul's message is he's proclaiming Christ. His method is to bring exhortation to crash into our lives and to warn us. And then to teach us a new way. He does that with all wisdom, right? In order that, and here's Paul's view of the future, right?

As a minister of the gospel, he has a view of the future that he's gonna be called into an account one day, and he says, so that, so that I might present every man complete in Christ. And there's the goal.

There's the goal. It's what I said when I preached last time. That's the goal of discipleship. It's not just getting through a book study that you've done together. It's reaching that place of completeness.

The word in the Greek is telos, and that word telos talks about the function of why something was created, of reaching that. And this is why you were created, is that you might be complete in Christ. So that becomes Paul's goal.

And why did I, why did I, it could even go even further where he says, and with, I just strive to do this with all the striving that I can. He is totally motivated. And it's not just a message that he's preaching.

It's not just, it's not just the preaching from a pulpit, but it's actually how he lives. It is part of, it's every part of who he is. In fact, Paul, more than others, suffered for the gospel. In fact, if we go to 2 Corinthians 11, 24, he says, five times I received at the hands of the Jews 40 lashes, less one.

Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day, I was adrift at sea on frequent journeys in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from the Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at the sea, danger from false brothers, in toil and hardship through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.

And apart from other things, there's the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all of the churches. Who is weak and I'm not weak. Who is made to fall and I'm not indignant. Paul is like, he's lost so much to do the job.

I think about what it's cost me and my family, and I go, man, it doesn't even compare to.

This.

It doesn't even compare to this. But Paul would say, it's all worth it. It's all worth it. And so, again, preaching, proclaiming Christ, not just in our words, but in every aspect of our life. My question is for us, as we look at Paul, is can we somehow capture this intensity?

Can we somehow get this aggressive with God's call on our lives? Who he's called us to be as Covenant Baptist Church, or Grace Covenant. And I believe that Paul did this through his preaching, but he also discipled men.

Titus and Timothy are great examples of this. If we go to 1 Timothy, he calls Timothy his true child in the faith. He says this, he says, I charge you, I entrust you, Timothy, my child. He says later, he says, be trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.

Paul was in Timothy's life. Now, why do I describe Paul in this passage in a state of the church message? Well, I want, well, three things. First, you should know this. You should know that Josh and I feel the same calling that Paul does.

We want to imitate Paul in this. We want to double down in our role as shepherds, which means we want to disciple you. We want to train you up in the faith, and not just sanctification, we want you to prepare you for the work of ministry.

That's what Paul says in Ephesians 4 .12, that we should prepare you, we should train you up in the work of the ministry. We're realizing in this mission of planting churches that the bottleneck in the process is training up mature believers who are ready to be sent out.

And if God continues to give us grace in this area, if He continues, and I have every confidence that He is going to, this is going to be our difficult work, which requires stubborn patience and a deep commitment to a really clunky and not efficient process called discipleship.

The second reason, besides you just knowing that, that that's what, that's the burning desire that we have as your pastors. The second is that we call you into that work. First, because you should know you are that work that we are going to be doing, which means you can either avail yourself to that, or you can resist that.

And my plea to you this morning is that you would avail yourself to that, that you would give yourself into this work as well. That God would allow us as your shepherds to come alongside you, to help you mature in your faith, because for both of us, as teachers of the Word, we feel the pressure.

There is a stiffer judgment for us, and there's going to be a day that we are called into account, and we want to stand there beside you and present you mature in Christ's church. That's our hope, that's our desire.

But it's just like the gym, you know, sometimes you have a gym membership, whether it's through work or somebody gives it to you as a gift. If you never use it, there's no benefit to you. So I'm calling you to that.

But also, the third reason that we call you into that work is because this is also not just something Paul is saying, hey, look what I do, but he's saying, imitate me, he's saying, you guys should come along and you should do this as well.

Men, for you in your families, to be able to disciple your children and your wife in the Lord is what you're called to do. If we go back to the Old Testament, look at Deuteronomy 6, that is what you're called to do as men, and we want to equip you to do that, okay?

Women, you should look at your husband and you should say, he needs to do this so that he can teach me, so that he can disciple me, so he can disciple our children. Kids, you should look at your parents, you should look at your father and say, man, I want my father to be discipled so that he can train me up in the Lord.

So that's my exhortation for us as we move forward in 2025, is that we would continue to be faithful in doing the work of the ministry, which is equipping you. And when I say we, it's Josh and I certainly, but it's also you as well, men.

I want you to feel the call to that this morning and go, you know what, that's me too. I need to be that aggressive that I would be able to train and present my family as complete in Christ someday. And I think that that's essential for where God is bringing us in 2025.

Like I said, should he give us the grace to plant another church? I think the hard part for us is to have mature men and women who are ready to be sent out. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to, I'm going to tag Josh, turn it over to him so that we can hear what you're going to do with that.

The Great Commission, Law and Gospel, and the Church’s Mission

If you'll turn your Bibles to Titus chapter one, that's where I'm going to park it this morning. I think it's an amazing thing. I'm a lot of things, but I'm not an administrator and I'm not an organizer.

And so I really had no idea what Bart was going to say. And like, frankly, I just trust him enough where I really didn't care what he was going.

To say.

Like I was going to be surprised and happy about it. And I think he's likewise. I think what's going to be interesting for you to hear is the cohesion and the like-mindedness. And we didn't have to plan that because we've had so many conversations and so much time dreaming about the day that was going to come.

And we approach it with a lot of excitement. And I approach it as a bittersweet thing, as, you know, as our partnership takes on a different dimension where, you know, he's going to be a fellow pastor across town.

And we hope that someday that there's, you know, we've said that dream of hopefully someday that there's churches that gather together to sing songs and that, you know, there's elders that are helping each other across the community.

And I think that that's the vision that Paul saw in Titus. And I love Titus because it's such a rough and tumble book. And it's so intensely practical. And I think if you were to get the personality of Paul, you really see it in Titus, that there's a job to be done and there's a no-nonsense way that this job is going to be done.

Before I do that, I think it's easy for me to forget to lay our purpose before you in really black and white terms. And this, first of all, if you've not been around church enough to know every church does not get to decide what their mission is.

Christ has given us the mission of the church. We don't get to decide what it is. The mission of the church is to go to the nations to baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and to teach them all that Christ has commanded them.

So you see that there's a law and gospel in the Great Commission. And so that means that as the church, that we're to disciple our people who are here to teach them what God has commanded them, so that they would go and live that life.

Because we know, as the Lord said in John 14, 15, that if you love him, you will obey his commandments. And to obey the commandments, you have to know the commandments. And our heart in regeneration is tuned to love God's commandments.

That's where the law and gospel mingle together. Not in salvation, but in sanctification. And so for us, we don't get to decide what the Great Commission is. We don't get to decide what our mission is.

But what we do get to do is to simplify and to lay before our people, what are we trying to accomplish here? What is the Great Commission about? And we see a few points, and we broke it down. It's on our website.

And it's what our front-facing, like if you look at what is Covenant Baptist Church about, you're going to see this really quickly. Number one, the preaching of the word expositionally and fearlessly.

So we do not dilute the word of God. And I know because I've talked to several of you guys that there is a hunger to be in.

Mark.

You know, we've been out of our 1 Samuel for about six weeks now, and it really, I can feel that pressure.

Right?

And that's a good thing. Because that's what we do here. It's core to the mission, that we're going to go through books, that we're going to do it without diluting, and we go where the word of God takes us.

Simple as that. The second thing that we see is that we are to disciple one another and cultivate evangelism and courage to be ambassadors for Christ, making our appeals on behalf of our King. We are not to be afraid of men.

We are to proclaim the good news of Christ, and that means that man is lost and dying, that we are rebel sinners, and that we need Jesus, that we are on a pathway to destruction, but that Christ has made peace between God and man through his death on the cross and his resurrection.

And we preach that unapologetically, and we want to disciple you to preach that fearlessly. And I hear stories throughout the year, and I'll just name, I know, I know what's going on at UPS right now.

And I'm so excited by it. You know, I'm excited by men of zeal who are going into the place where young men are throwing boxes and working with their backs, and they're preaching the good news in there.

And we're starting to see a harvest. And I think we're going to continue to see a harvest as we empower our people to go out where they are and to make disciples. Number three, the mission gives us a responsibility to pray, that we pray for courage, we pray for peace, we pray for urgency to live holy lives that show our reverence and gratitude to God.

There will be no holy living without prayer, and there will be no growth of the church without prayer, and there will be no making of disciples without prayer. It's the first thing we should do. It's something we should do with our children.

It's something we should do with our spouse. It's something we should do alone. We should do it in the car. We should do it at lunch, at work. We should be on our knees, and we should do it together. And that's been a core building block of this church is that we pray together.

And we invite you to do that. Every Sunday at 9 .30, we meet together and we pray. And I want you to come. Number four, the mission has us loving one another by living as a community who speaks truthfully, meets the needs of one another, and urges one another to righteous living.

We do not live the Christian life in a vacuum individually. We live it with each other. And that means that we have to fear God more than fearing man, and we tell one another the truth. That means we encourage, but we also exhort and rebuke.

And we have hard conversations, and we love each other enough to know that we can have brotherly conversations that do not destroy the relationship. And men, you understand this, that the relationships that you hold dearest in your life are the relationships that have gone through rocky times.

Because that fire refines, and it burns the dross off. And what we see is the love that we have for one another through being able to walk through everything together. That's what makes family so strong, is that we live life together and we see everything.

Everything. Number five, the mission has us to fearlessly engage culture, to spread the word of Christ so that through our words, many might hear and be convicted of sin, so that they would repent and become disciples.

And here at Covenant Baptist Church, those are the things that every church should be doing. That's not specific to us. That's what the Great Commission has. That's it kind of broken out and more atomized in a sense, where we go point by point.

But at Covenant Baptist Church, and I should say this right now, it's my thing to be a little bit strident. Let me just say, I'm not being passive aggressive. What I want to do is I want to present a positive vision.

And so I'm not talking about anybody else. I'm talking about us. And at Covenant Baptist Church, our vision is not to build big buildings and to amass as many people in here as we can and to amass as much money as we can.

Our vision and how we see the Christian life being borne out is we look back. And what we want to do is not disparage our brothers who are in bigger churches, who have resources who can do things that we can't.

But we have kind of a guerrilla warfare mindset, where what we want to do is we want to take our towns corner by corner with small parish type churches, where we have elders that go out and they group together with a core group of believers, and people come because they are hearing the gospel proclaimed, and that builds relationships that are intermingled like this.

Because when churches scale to a certain size, this can't happen anymore. So for us, that's not our vision. Our vision is to be a church that becomes a replicating church. We desire to train and develop qualified men into eldership so that we can joyfully commission and support new churches, emphasizing Northwest Arkansas first, but eventually extending the vision to the ends of the earth.

We believe this to be the pattern of the New Testament apostolic churches who appointed elders and went from city to city, starting new churches. We have to be a church that's faithful to God's word, intense in prayer and discipleship, and dedicated to the mission of discipling the nations.

We believe firmly that the church is the primary method by which God has and will continue to build his kingdom. And that brings us to Titus. Look, I could go 50 minutes on this one. I won't.

All right?

I've got a short amount of time, but I want to read these critical verses in Titus 1, but I need to give you a little bit of context. The context is that Titus is being sent to the barbaric island of Crete in the Mediterranean, and this is a rough place.

We would see later that Paul says that the Cretans are lazy, gluttonous liars. They're beasts. And he says, this saying is true. Now does that mean every single Cretan? No, but we don't get lost in the jumble.

This is a island that has a bunch of rough people who are making arguments and destroying families and are fighting against the gospel of Christ. And so Paul sends Titus to this island with a mandate, and this mandate is to go from town to town and to appoint elders so that they would put everything in order.

Let's pick it up in verse 5. For this reason I left you in Crete, that you would set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you, namely, if any man is beyond reproach, the husband of one wife having faithful children who are not accused of dissipation or rebellious.

For the overseer must be beyond reproach as God's steward, not self-willed, not quick-tempered, not addicted to wine, not pugnacious, not fond of dishonest gain, but hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, righteous, holy, self-controlled, holding fast to the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able to both exhort in sound doctrine and to reprove those who contradict.

So let's take this passage and let's see what was Paul seeing. Paul was seeing an island that had a bunch of Christians in it who were out of order. And because these sheep were out of order, because they did not have a shepherd, they were being blown around by the winds of doctrine from evil men who were coming in and trying to disrupt families.

And so Paul's solution to the problem in Crete was to send Titus out to raise up elders who met these qualifications in every city on the island. There needed to be a lot of elders, a lot of elders. And Paul had relentlessly, zealously, ferociously, single-mindedly trained up men for this purpose.

And so Titus is kind of a lieutenant of Paul who's going to Crete, and Paul has entrusted Titus with this job, and this is a hard job. Imagine going into these cities, and the consequences of failure are high, as sheep are devoured by wolves, but Titus is entrusted.

And so we see a landscape in Northwest Arkansas today of waning cultural Christianity that is awash in a sea of churches. And there are Christians aplenty in Northwest Arkansas, and there are a lot of good churches in Northwest Arkansas, but there are a lot of sheep that are exposed to wolves in Northwest Arkansas, and there are a lot of lazy, gluttonous, lying, beastly pastors in Northwest Arkansas.

And what we see is the need, the need to put things in order. And so in our very small, seemingly insignificant part of the world, it's been my fondest dream that this church, in its old, old building with creaky floors that would roll a ball from front to back because of the tilt, that the baptistery might fall through, don't be worried, all of this, I thought, wouldn't it be incredible, wouldn't it be incredible if this small church, with its meager resources, was to be the mother of dozens of churches in Northwest Arkansas?

That's the fiery vision that I have, and it's the vision, it's the thing that drives me. And I think about it this way, I told Alana and Brady, I think over a year ago, as we were sitting at dinner, and I said, my thing is I read the parable of the dishonest manager, it's come into several of my sermons, and Jesus says something that has haunted me for years, he said, the sons of earth are shrewd, but the sons of light are often not shrewd.

Use your wealth to build up heavenly friends. And the walking orders to me are to pour out my life for something that matters, for something that matters, for something that my children are going to be able to enjoy, for something that my grandchildren are going to be able to enjoy, and something that is a preserving agent in my community and my town that I've spent my whole adult life working in.

I love this city, and I love its people, and I see that they are lost, and I see that there is a need for order. And so for us, what does it mean to set things in order? It means first that we don't make enemies of the good guys who are here, right?

We are in agreement with and partners with, either explicitly or implicitly, with every church who preaches the true gospel, even if we disagree on philosophies, methods, or emphasis. They're our friends, and we're for them.

We don't want their destruction. We don't feel good when they fall apart. Even when we disagree strongly, we pray for them. And where there is more disagreement, there should be more prayer, that we would be united in brotherhood, even if we have to go our separate ways.

We see a growing trend in our area and across the country of Christians who seek more serious-minded churches in the face of the loss of cultural Christian comforts. True believers have a need to hear the word preached without diluting.

There's a need for that. There's a hunger, and it brings people who are not Calvinists into Reformed churches, and it brings people who are dispensationalists into Covenantal churches, because there are things that are more important than the secondary and tertiary doctrines.

What's more important is that we're brothers. What's more important is that we have a desire to work with Christians of a simple faith. What's more important is that there's a vision to evangelize the lost and to grow the kingdom, and we have eternity, once we know, to talk about who was right and who was wrong on these secondary and tertiary issues.

And we're going to be fine with it. It's going to be okay. So there's much to set in order. We need men to set this in order, and those men have to have character. That's what Paul is telling Titus. Look at the—we can bind them together.