Outreach - Vision for 2026

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Good morning everyone. What great singing and it was just listening to the words the lyrics of that worship song we just sang and just listening to everyone's heart just quietened down as actually contemplated the words that it means to I surrender and I think it's a very great place for us to be and when we worship together in the body of Christ is that we have that presence of mind to say well it's not about us Lord it's about you working through us just a couple things before we get into the message just want to let you know and just emphasize in our Christmas carols service Christmas carols event next week week after next we're having a present wrapping competition because where the theme is Jesus is the perfect gift we're a great wave of community be involved to see how good people skills are at wrapping so we're gonna have a wrapping stall during the afternoon and then we're gonna have the grand final up here while I'm bringing the word and so there's points for form points for creativity in wrapping and points for coverage you have to actually cover the object we give you to wrap so I just want to encourage that we're gonna have a sign-on sheet next week for those who are willing to have a go and show us the expertise and their skills let's pray by the way just thank you Lord that I just contemplating those words about what it means to surrender to you but we know there's a world outside of this church building Lord of this property Lord that we interact with on a daily basis and father when we interact with those people Lord they need to understand what those words mean sometimes Lord they're foreign words because our Australian culture says I don't bow down for no man but father we know that through your Lordship Lord we have no choice so it's just our hearts are impacted by that and Lord as we open your words today and Lord discover what outreach is for us Lord our fourth value of our church Lord our intentional value Lord just speak to each heart I ask father that you will work through your spirit to bring us to unison and you father we personally and corporately as a church family as a church body Lord embrace what it means to outreach in our community father we give you thanks and praise for this and Lord as always father the words I pray Lord are not my words but yours in your name amen so I wonder what if I asked you the question what is an effective church what would come into your mind if I asked you to close your eyes now and visualize an effective church that's a really weird word perhaps I should said perfect church yeah now that's not going to work perhaps I should say healthy church when I was at college you can open your eyes now in case you want to go to sleep during the sermon when I was at college of 80 odd years ago a part of our process of being invited into ministry and our registration processes they call it those these days was an interview with these six very stern people who ask us lots of theological questions and one room we call it the seven deadly doors because of seven rooms and in one room there was a question responding to the question what is a healthy church and if I asked you call out now what is a healthy church someone call out whatever you think's on your heart a healthy church is growth healthy healthy church is spirit led healthy church is prayerful healthy church is I've got a million of these okay we'll stop you there thank you all good answers and it was no wrong answer actually but one of the things that got me thinking about today is we're bringing our vision month and launching a vision month to almost a conclusion to take the next step out is how does the healthy church or an effective church impact the community because our fourth value is outreach and some of the things we come up with is the body or assembly of people of faith in the risen in the risen Savior so we have that as our central theme is our risen Savior a church that looks inwardly to build up and outwardly to grow the kingdom and we call that discipleship and we're all part of discipleship groups a lot of us are a lot of us want to be in discipleship groups and we need some more leaders for that as well it's those who realize that with our Christ we can do nothing Paul wrote many letters of introduction to churches we know those when we go through the letters you know correct Romans Corinthians and all those but the Corinthians one has an interesting heart about it I'm going to read from verse four first Corinthians one verse four Paul says this be great if he wrote this to our church I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus for in him you've been enriched in every way with all kinds of speech with all knowledge God thus confirming our testimony about Christ Jesus among you therefore do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly await our Lord Jesus Christ to be reeled he will also keep you firm to the end so you'll be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ wow it goes on to say God is faithful who has called you into his fellowship with his son Jesus Christ what a great letter to receive imagine the people gathering around in the church of Corinth as the scrolls unfurled and reading that letter out we don't do what we do because we want to remake Kabbaltia Baptist famous we do it because we're part of the kingdom of heaven would you agree and so that is our heart that is how we decide do that and what are some of the things we can learn from Paul's understanding we know to we are responders to the Great Commissioner healthy church responds to the Great Commissioner go and make disciples and so we have our discipleship understanding of that we have our approach to that and we have events we have keyed for that but it's also proclaimers of the gospel and we're called to proclaim and the funny thing about proclaiming the gospel is that can happen in a matter of several circumstances it's easy I believe if you're in a comfortable surrounding to proclaim the gospel when it's safe so you know you're with a friend who you invite to church because you surrender by another couple hundred Christians you feel okay the gospel needs to come out here but when you're in a circumstance where it's a bit ornery or a bit hard or a bit even volatile sharing the gospel quite different and it's quite typical the disciples give us a great example of this when they talk about it and later we're going to have a good focus on that the Romans 10 says these words everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved and then can they all call on the one sorry how then can they call upon the one who have not believed in and how can they believe in the one who's not heard and how can they hear without someone preaching it calling into a discipleship situation into an evangelistic situation into an outreach situation that's gonna be part of our church family then we've got to say well they're not gonna know if we don't let them know we don't necessarily need to shout it at them we just need to show them what Jesus means to us and how we can impart that upon them and encourage them and so when we have a look at our whole church understanding we have our vision statement to be an intergenerational church Jesus saves everybody from the littlest ones to the oldest ones Jesus saves everyone in between so hence we have something like our coloring in competition and the inspiration came let's not just make coloring in for little kids let's make it for all age groups put your hand up if you've nominated for coloring in come on no one Colette's gonna be mortified was her idea she built the Lord laid that upon her heart and spoke to her in many words and so if we have understanding like that then we say well look we've got a church of multi-age group we've got a huge kids church we've got a huge Christ we've got a lot of people in church so we're an intergenerational church we have two commands committed to growing and going and we have our values transform inform in reach and outreach and over the last four weeks last three weeks including today be the fourth we've learned about what that means for our values and how we can make those into a God-honoring way of life and today with outreach will do the same and so our number four is outreach it falls into I suppose the category of John 15 8 which is our vision vision verse which is everyone should remember that by now our vision versus our focus versus is it on the board is anyone reading it am I the only one this is to my father's glory that you bear much fruit showing that you are my disciples Jesus that's a prayer that Jesus prayed for his disciples and we bear much fruit and how are we going to do that how do you do that I'm going to open the floor now to personal testimonies for people to come up one by one and share how Jesus has helped them to share with others only a few people giggle because you thought I was joking I'm sure there's others who have a great witness in the community but they're just a bit shy about sharing a missional statement is a Kabbaltia Baptist is an intergenerational church that aspires to honor a heavenly father by living as disciples informed by the Bible transformed by the spirit growing together in community and reaching out with the hope of Jesus it's a it all that comes together because it's well we've understood as a group and as we've been going through these last four weeks about being intentional with the gospel about not just letting it happen by accident or not just having a pop the thought pops into your head but by prayerful intercession we come before God and say Lord how can you use us how can we be a beacon in the community how can you use me Lord to be a beacon in the community my just a lot a light in my friendship group a light in my work group a light in my study group I love the fact that a lot of people are saved because someone was bold enough to say hang on a second what you're doing do you need to think about the consequence of your action because there is a better way there is a time when Jesus can impact your life and transform you through the Holy Spirit so the word outreach also has with it the dreaded word evangelism and evangelism is such a broad subject so sometimes we struggle with it when I first heard evangelism I thought of a crusade where we had someone like Billy Graham or someone like that in Brisbane with a big tent at Victoria Park and you went along there and you invited your friends to come along and then you'd have events in your church we'd have an evangelist come and speak and then people would come along you invite your friends along for those events but evangelism happens in many forms in its essence it's reaching out with the hope of Jesus which is our fourth value reaching out with the hope of Jesus it's bearing much fruit and John 158 we talked about evangelism also something else it's personal and it's corporate and one of the things I suppose we struggle with as a church is we do corporate events we do big events and we think well and we have the attitude of heart well hey this is how we're reaching people for Jesus I believe the scripture teaches us that each of us has a personal account of evangelism in our lives a personal connection we can make with someone that we can share a kind word share grace show that God has changed our heart and how can we change theirs sometimes it takes a short time sometimes it's a long time but it's about personal and corporate and doing some research about this I came across three ways to do to unpack this in our minds you may relate to some of them we read an Edmund Chan's book he talks about the marketplace and he quotes in there from Billy Graham saying the next great move that God is going to do Billy Graham said is going to be in the marketplace is going to be in the places where people frequent that sounds not churches the next greatest movement of God is going to be where people frequent outside of churches which is a bit of a confrontation for us because we love church we love our church family love the body of Christ Edmund pointed out and it's a great statistic to have in your head just let me read these for you I couldn't memorize them in Jesus ministries 122 times out of 132 times it happened where in the marketplace that's a huge percentage isn't it Jesus didn't have stuff happening in the synagogues place the worshipers in the marketplace the parable settings when Jesus set the parables there were 45 from 32 about the workplace the marketplace in acts the divine interventions that happened that God spoke through those who he'd said in the disciples and apostles to go out and minister and take my word 96% of those weren't in churches or in their life groups or in the discipleship groups 96% of those were in the marketplace 39 out of 40 sorry if you're a mathematician I took a bit of a punt it's a bit of challenging isn't it we come to church because we love Jesus we want to bring our friends to church because that's where they get saved yet the Bible teaches us that a lot of the things that happen are outside of the life of the church the church we learnt last week is about building up Dylan's challenge was how can you use your gifts and talents to build up the the church so that we can gospelize so we can take the gospel out in his book that Sam Chan wrote and no relation to Edmund is how to talk about Jesus without being that guy he called he uses the term merging universes he says you take your Christian universe and you merge it with your non-Christian universe because everyone lives in a non-Christian universe you'll work in that situation yeah no how we going today is everyone okay I'm an interactive pastor I like at least yeah your boo or something no don't clap that'll go straight ahead my dad taught me about that years ago but he talks about merging universes to prayerfully creates instances where you have an integration of social groups as the challenge goes on a little bit further he says invite your non-Christian friends to activities that you and your church do but then he says invite your church friends your Christian friends to what your unchurched or non-Christian friends do that's scary it's safe bringing some come to our board games a church come to our bush chance at church it's awesome fun but if they say you've got a group outside and you say hey look I want to take seven you guys with me and go in into this situation would you come with me remember years ago when we had a prison ministry connected directly to the church up at Woodford and Bruce come up to me one day as a young Christian and said Dougie I think you'd be good in the prison I don't think he matters a inmate it took me up to the prison and he gave me the bit of a spiel about what to do not to holy smokes it was confronting I stood there my expression couldn't be it just the gun through the rigmarole of going through all the inspections getting in there and then you're in the church chapel with all these prisoners and you're really close to them and you're talking to them and you're sharing Jesus with them and you're looking at your watch makes we couldn't take watches we're letting anything in there it's about going to places sometimes that we might feel a bit uncomfortable about but we're taking the gospel to it and that's a challenge to merge universes some of the examples might be you might have a board games night where you just run board games in your community in your around your area so you invite some of your church and Christian friends along to meet some of your unchurched friends that's outreach they don't have to win them to cry straightaway just connect with them and say hey look we think alike it could be motorcycle riding it could be thrashing around in the bush and doing all sorts of fun things on two wheels and one it can be anything to God lays in your heart to share and that's the challenge we have brothers and sisters in Christ is to think okay Lord if you've wired me this way how can I be of use to you for the Kingdom of heaven what is something Lord please pray through the last one is the comfort zone Joey Joey O'Connell wrote a book called breaking the comfort zone a few quite a few years ago now but he sums up the comfort zone like this that's a thick layer of protective insulation I found that personal which keeps you from trying anything that needs changing he's talking about us as Christians as believers it's a spiritual comfort zone like a cocoon that keeps you from responding to God in life and in ministry Jesus we just heard the statistics was outside the comfort zone as a church what's God saying to us as a person what is God saying to you about your comfort zone about thinking about merging universe about thinking about the marketplace and what God can change in your heart there John 15 eight I'll go back to it again I said this is my Father's glory that you bear much fruit showing yourselves to be my disciples and what does that mean it means in faith in relationship and action as my disciples in faith in relationship action what can you do when we come to proclaim him we need to do in the circumstances which I've been deluded before there's a passage in Acts that talks about the disciples being bought before the Sanhedrin it will hostile environment in Acts chapter 5 Gamalel one of the leaders of the Sanhedrin stood up and he said to the body he said you be careful he said if you kill these guys he said it's happened before that people will that you'll wipe them out and then there will be no followers he said if you do that though you raise them up as being people like an honor so he said don't kill these guys so what did the Sanhedrin do let him go not yet this is his words leave these men alone let them go for their purpose or their activity is of human origin it will fail but if it's God's will you will not be able to stop these men you'll only find yourselves fighting against God does that give you some encouragement then we're in a situation where it's a bit iffy that if God's puts you there he's going to look after you and let the glory come to him he speaks persuaded them and they call the apostles in and flog them then they ordered them to be let go and not to speak again in the name of Jesus but all good disciples can't do that can they it says in verse 41 under all the persecution under the flogging under the threats this is their response the disciples left the Sanhedrin rejoicing because they'd been counted worthy of suffering the disgrace for the name day after day in temple courts and from house to house they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah but how hard it is it's safe when we're in a church setting it's safe bringing people on our property but when we take a go across the car park we take Jesus with us because two of our commands are committed to growing and committed to going for Jesus what a great challenge for us because outreach is an attitude for us then it goes into the saying that if against all opposition from the world we still speak the truth with great joy next and expressed peace we have that in various venues and various situations we read that from acts 5 that we read that as believers as people who are seeking Christ and do his will that he's not going to let anything stop us he's going to walk with us he's going to give us opportunities to engage one of the things that I do when I'm doing baptism classes as I call them is that I have an opportunity for the person doing the baptism to share their testimony and they do that in front of church and sometimes that's quite overpowering for them but one of the teaching things about is how to write a testimony I say you do two testimonies you do a two minute one that just says what I was before as a Christian how I became a Christian why I became a Christian what it means to be a Christian now and why you're being baptized so it takes two minutes a sentence for each some of you from the old days might remember that if you're in my class and then I said you write a ten minute one ten minutes one when you got someone locked in the car and they can't go anywhere and you share and share and share because they're just going to sit there quietly and patiently and listen to your words they come from your heart how hard is it to share your personal saviour that you have and your desire to share it with him with them as a church we have a couple of things we want to aim at and I want to encourage us and Dylan gave me this inspiration last week so thank you Dylan about our vision resolutions these are things we intentionally set aside as a church leadership we believe the church can engage in over the next year and perhaps a little bit beyond we want to equip equip disciples with hope explored a Christian to explore an alpha and we're doing that now and we continue to do that to give you a quit to help you to do it well to share your faith and to be real to people initiate religious instruction in school that'd be a great aim wouldn't it there's not many there's I think there's five classes in our area and they are all a beach me school RE doesn't exist it's the principles are waiting but we need to put RE into schools and so we're going to look at doing that next year in a very real way and praying into that support and highlight missions local and beyond in prayer and financial ways which we do utilize Easter and Christmas as community events and then what else could we do what would God land hard as a church that you can be in contact with or we can do together some of the things I thought about after writing this was things like Anzac day do we represent ourselves represent Jesus at Anzac day there's appreciation days when I was at Gatton we're right across the road from the police station and I was only there a few weeks and the gentleman popped into my office plunked himself down and proceeded to tell me about police appreciation day and what our church do a basket for them and I thought it can't hurt the police across the road and so we did up that for them we know when we were participating in that if you remember when Brett Ford was was shot out in the Lockyer Valley there was a huge big service in the community hall and they asked the pastors to run that service and we had everybody from the community there hundreds and hundreds of people from first responders all through Ambo's and police there and we got to share the hope of Jesus that group because the mayor said we need to bring the community together can you guys work that out we all looked at each other and went yes and so we participated in that as opportunities for us please pray about those opportunities and come and see church leaders come and talk to the pastors and myself Dave and Dylan what is God saying to your heart about this today outreach is an interesting one to finish up our vision with and I'm just going to close down with just a couple of things it's not so much as serving it's more or less an informal information this morning this morning but if you understand and embrace and can you please pray into our vision and our mission and say Lord how can you use me in this time how's what's my part in the picture as an individual as a person before God what is my role in this and he'll give you an answer because we firmly believe this is the vision for the church after praying for a month about it and looking into different things about it and talking to people this is what God has laid in our hearts to share it comes from our heart to your heart what is God saying I mentioned before that Paul wrote letters of encouragement to Philippians church and I'm going to finish now worship team if you'd like to come up just was reading this passage from flippings the start of Philippians 1 verse 3 it says I thank God every time I remember you in all my prayers for all of you I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now being confident of this that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ Heavenly Father we thank you for the challenge that you've given us as a church thank you Lord for the testimony and the work of Kabbaltia Baptist over the last many many years Lord's from his first planning in 68 all the way through to now but we don't want to be static but we want to say that we are a good church with a great building a huge car park or whatever father we want to say Lord we want to be disciples of yours and help to outreach the community Lord train us up we pray Lord convict our spirits Lord speak to us in a real and personal way we may contribute to the kingdom of heaven Lord may be effective for the kingdom of heaven bring glory to you Lord father to receive a letter like flippians and Corinthians Lord to say that Lord we are praying for each other Lord there are others praying for us Lord that we can be in partnership with the gospel Lord is such a greatness spirit to have Lord I pray that on each person here today Lord you walk and speak with each person here today and Lord those at home as well father what it means to be in relationship with you and to share your love and grace with others father we stand before you Lord we realize we can't do anything without you you're our Lord and our Saviour your name. Amen.