[0:00] This message was recorded at Vision Baptist Church in Alfred, Georgia. It is our prayer that you'll be blessed by the preaching of God's Word. Acts chapter 20, verse 28. Just let me real briefly, 12 minutes and I will get you through.
[0:12] We'll pray at 6 or 6.01 so I'll let you know where we are. If I could tell you my heart and my dream and get it across to you, this is what I would say to you. And so I just want to walk you through what the church is.
[0:25] I've heard people say all along, let the church be the church. So that's what I called it. I want you to know, man, this is the greatest thing you can ever be a part of. You're a member of a church that is trying to honor Jesus Christ.
[0:37] The Bible says in Acts 20, 28, Take heed, therefore, unto yourselves and all the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers to feed the church of God.
[0:48] It's his church which he hath purchased with his blood. And so how would the church be the church? Number one, it would take the gospel to the world. Any real New Testament church has to be a crazy missionary sending church.
[1:04] The commission that was given to the church is in Matthew 28, 18 through 20. And Jesus said, I have all rights to say anything I want to say. And I'll tell you what I'm going to say. Take my Bible and get it to the world.
[1:15] Tell everybody, my son died on a cross. And they can be saved and they can begin to serve me and they can begin to tell other people. How does that work in our church? The first thing is we're not an attractional church.
[1:28] I don't know if you know what that means. That means that we're not here to draw them in. We do not change our ministry and our program to get people to like it. We do not seek to put out bait so that lost people will want to come.
[1:39] Now see, if you want to build the newest kind of churches, it has to be attractional. You need a young, good-looking, cool pastor. In fact, there's even a joke out about it, how they lift their arms out and show they've got a tattoo so they can identify with the people.
[1:55] And that's not the kind of church we are. We are a biblical church. So instead of saying come, we say go. Go. The Bible says in Matthew 28, 19, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
[2:08] We will invite people to Jesus, to his church, to his salvation, to his service. We will not change the church to make them want it. We will go and tell them the truth.
[2:20] We will expect a response of obedience from them in getting baptized. We will teach them to live out all that God has put in them. You see, light and darkness never get along.
[2:31] So if you turn on the light, darkness is going to run. And if the Bible is light and God is light and Jesus is light, we're going to preach the Bible here. We will practice what we want our missionaries to practice.
[2:43] And that means that we will get out and seek ways to get the gospel to our community. It means that we will build up strong Christians that are able to reproduce other strong Christians. That's what foundation is about.
[2:55] We are a destination church. That's what they call it. We're a destination church. That means you only go to vision if you want to go to vision. It's not the kind of church that you're going to hear about.
[3:05] Social media never lights up when I preach. I mean, I get through preaching a message. There's never, this is the coolest saying. Oprah will be saying this tomorrow. That just never happens. So we're not, we are what they call a destination church.
[3:19] That means our location isn't as important as it could be because our people want to come to this kind of church. They'll find it where we put it. People will come to our church because they want to come.
[3:30] People will come because they've been saved and are looking for a church that preaches the Bible. People will come because we bring them in. Again, we will seek to see more and more of our members called to carry out, carry the gospel to all the world.
[3:44] I'll just tell you unashamedly. I want to see more people called to be missionaries. You can say, well, brother, I think everybody ought to just serve God. Well, I'll just tell you what I think.
[3:55] I think everybody ought to serve God by carrying this gospel to the world. And I can prove to you in the Bible you don't find a whole lot of verses on sitting around here. You've got a whole lot of verses on how we are to mobilize and get out and carry the gospel.
[4:07] So I want you to know that is my dream. We will seek to help all believers learn to be obedient to him and his teachings. So if you're staying here, I'm challenging you to get out and go on knocking on doors, inviting people to church, sharing the gospel message, and discipling people because we ought to do what we expect missionaries to do when we give that money.
[4:25] Number two. Second thing. We ought to train. We want to train every member to be a minister. Every member to be a minister. And that's the reason I wanted to start out by having everybody come up here.
[4:38] I know you may think that was kind of a waste of time. I know you may think that, hey, you just wanted to read everybody's names. Maybe you think I didn't have enough to say. You didn't know me very well yet. But I want you to know that God wants his church to be people that are working.
[4:51] And everybody doing the smallest jobs are all important. In Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 11, We went over it this morning, so I'm not going to spend much time there. He gave the leadership to perfect the saints to do the work so that people would grow.
[5:05] And every joint, effectually working in the measure of every part, will get the job done. So God gave gifted people to the church that were to perfect or mature the saints so that they could get involved in ministry so that the body would grow.
[5:22] Every joint and every part was to find their place in the body and in the ministry. It is our goal that every one of you be involved in ministry. Two things I'd like.
[5:34] If I could tell you. Number one, everybody ought to be a self-feeder. It's a great day when your kid learns to put their own food in their mouth and not their hair. Amen? It's a great day.
[5:45] Every Christian ought to learn how to get this book and learn and have a daily time with God and be growing self-feeders. They ought to be able to feed themselves spiritually.
[5:56] They also should not be spectators. I should be leading a great team, a whole host of people, which I feel like we are, that are doing great work for God. So I challenge you to get involved in some ministry.
[6:09] No one should be a spectator. No one should be finding a place to sit. Nobody ought to be a splinter gatherer. Everybody ought to be out working. You should get involved in foundations.
[6:22] You should be learning how to teach others. Now, John, and I will help you and the church will help you. We'll give you the material. We'll teach you how to use the material. Maybe you're thinking, well, I have better material.
[6:33] Well, if you do, you'd already be doing it. So you're not. So let's get with it. Just come and get involved in the ministry. And don't be too proud to say, let somebody show me how to do something. We need people that learn about Jesus.
[6:46] People ought to know the truth and they ought to learn that. You can be teaching others. You should get involved. You should feel real responsibility for what God's doing here at Vision. Everybody in this room, you ought to be like, this is my church.
[7:00] And if the gospel goes out, it's up to me. If the lights get turned on, it's up to me. If the lights get turned off, it's up to me. This is not a social club. It's not a dinner theater.
[7:10] It's not an entertainment venue. It is a working body. It's a place where you join with others in serving God and man. No place for sideline coaching because you'll be too involved in the game to have time for second guessing.
[7:25] You know who knows more about the Super Bowl than anybody tonight? You, the fan. And the other idiots that are going to tell you what's going on. But the guy throwing the ball, catching the ball, and getting his head beat into the ground, he don't know nothing.
[7:40] If he knew anything, he wouldn't be there. He'd be talking about the game like you. Well, here it is. We're in the church. Amen? So get in. You won't have anything to complain about. You'll be so busy. You'll be getting tackled and tackling.
[7:52] That's a lot of fun to tackle. You will be an integral part of all that God is doing here. We have no desire for our church not to grow. We expect growth. For that reason, one man or a staff of pastors can never take care of all that we have to do as a church.
[8:07] Visitation, funerals, sick people, regular house calls must be taken care of by many in our church. And I'll just say they are at this church. The deacons do it. Sunday school teachers do it.
[8:18] Thank you so much. You should be involved in a small group so you can find out where the needs are and love people. It will not be a job that's named in the bulletin, but it will be a job that's making a difference.
[8:29] If you see a need, figure out how to meet it. We give you that freedom and liberty. Vision has a strategy. You're listening to it right now. We want to get the gospel of the world. We want every member to become a minister.
[8:41] We want everyone involved in discipleship. We all want to be involved with our missionaries. We don't want to have any wasted meetings. No meetings to meet. No special buildings to brag about.
[8:52] Bricks and mortar, but men and women that are prepared to serve. I've got four minutes. So three pages and two. Here you go. 2 Timothy 2.2. Number three, training others to be in ministry.
[9:05] So the first one is, the first thing, we're moving through a whole progression of what the church ought to be. And so now the church ought to be a group training others.
[9:18] In 2 Timothy 2.2, Paul said, What you've heard of me among many witnesses is the same commitment out of faithful men who will be able to teach others also. So as a church, all ought to become, all of us ought to become servers, ministers.
[9:32] But there will be some people that are going to go out as leaders and pastors and missionaries. And the honest truth is in most churches when a guy's going to be a missionary or a guy's going to go to the field, it shocks everybody. Around here it shocks me when they don't.
[9:44] It ought to be like, man, we're expecting people to leave. You ought to be looking at everybody like, when are you leaving? Where are you going? What are you going to do? How are you winning people to Christ? What's the difference that you're making that you can make as a difference?
[9:56] As pastor and staff, we will devote our lives to preparing the next generation to carry the gospel to the world. We'll prepare men and women to impact the world to the best of our ability.
[10:08] There will be no great men of God that are really impressive here. We will simply train them to carry the gospel. We will think that if you're one of a kind, you're a failure.
[10:19] You're not a success if you don't have a successor. All in our ministry should be training someone else for the ministry. Function number four. We are functioning as a pillar and the ground of the truth.
[10:31] And I've got to give you this, but we're a Bible-preaching church. So we're going to tell them the Bible. We're going to fill them up with the Word of God, and we're going to get the Bible into them. I'm going to skip everything I would say there, but that's the whole point.
[10:43] That when they come into this church, it ought to be like, man, this place is full of the Bible. This place is full of the Word of God. You sit down in a Sunday school class, you ought to hear it. When you hear people over here talking, it ought to be that God's Word permeates everything about us and who we are.
[10:59] We are the pillar and the ground of the truth. We will be working as a church of self-feeders that know how to grow from God's Word. We won't be involved in showmanship, entertainment.
[11:10] We will be involved in teaching the truth. We will work at bringing in other preachers and teachers of the truth so vision can truly be a pillar and ground of the truth. Last one.
[11:21] One minute. Ephesians 3.21. We will honor Jesus every way we can. Ephesians 3.21 says, He ought to be glorified by our presence to worship, glorified by our obedience, by our sharing the gospel, by our love for His Word, by our doing good works in our community, by loving people just like they are.
[11:49] But He ought to be glorified because we live and practice His grace. He should be glorified because we sing and preach about Him. He should be glorified as we see new souls coming to Him.
[12:01] So Vision Baptist Church, I honestly tell you from the bottom of my heart, God's doing great things. He has been doing great things. Over a million, one hundred thousand dollars given to missions, that ought to bless your heart.
[12:14] All the missionaries that God has allowed to have a part in this church, all the young people that are training, all the Sunday school classes are meeting all over the building. You can't hardly hear yourself think on a Sunday morning. That's a wonderful thing.
[12:25] It's a beehive of activity. Amen? There are plenty of churches you can go to and you'll hear everything. There won't be nobody there. Drop a pen and they'll all hear it. But you're in a church where it's happening and I'm proud of you and I thank God for you.
[12:36] And I expect fully that God's going to give us more missionaries and God's going to let us see more done. And I would like to challenge you to be a part of the church. Not just a part of the church that sits, not just a part of the church that sits down and listens, but a part of the church that says, shoulder to the wheel, pushing the load, carrying the load, doing my part.
[12:57] I'm asking you to get in. I'm asking you to help. I'm asking you to say, this is the ministry God put me in. It's six o'clock and I said, I'd do it. We're going to pray. But this is a prayer I'm going to ask you to do.
[13:08] I'm going to ask you to do the weirdest thing. I know y'all never do this at this church. I'm going to ask you to get out of your seat, come up here to the altar and say on your knees before God, I will get under the load more than ever.
[13:20] Tonight we ask God for a vision. We ask God to do something. So I'm asking you to do what you never do. It won't hurt you. Just come, get on your knees and say, God, I'm praying for vision for this coming year. And so if you'll come right now, we're going to have a word of prayer together.
[13:33] Where is my Miss Pepperdine? You'll be ready to pray. A play, not pray. I'll have you pray too if you don't watch it. Let's pray. Let's ask God to bless vision. Let's ask God to help us carry everything out.
[13:45] Let's dedicate ourselves to Him to get the gospel message around the world. Because we want to honor God. It's a God night. It's a God thing. Because we're just going to do that and ask God to work.
[13:57] This message was recorded at Vision Baptist Church in Alfredo, Georgia. For more information, log on to www.visionbaptist.com where you can find our service times, location, contact information, and more audio and video recordings.