Kingdom City starts in our hearts. You determining to be a resilient disciple. It then grows in our homes as you then train up other resilient disciples. It then builds in our church as we bring our gifts and our talents and we learn how to use them to spread the gospel and then it spreads in our streets.
The best way to start is in your house, then this house, then we change our city. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Pastor Nate Heitzig wraps up this teaching series and shows you how you can be a part of building a Kingdom City. But first, here's a resource all about the Holy Spirit's power and purpose in your life. How deep is your understanding of the Holy Spirit and the gifts he gives?
Listen as Skip Heitzig unpacks his person and power in this teaching clip. The Holy Spirit is a divine person who helps us. How many of you think you need all the help you can get to live your Christian life?
Yeah, I'm with you. We need help. As you grow in your understanding of the Holy Spirit through our Connect with Skip Heitzig monthly resource, you'll learn how he helps believers, that's you, to walk with Christ.
When it comes to living the Christian life, it's not hard, it's impossible on your own. You need his power to be able to do that. You need his help to be able to do that, and we have his help. For your Connect with Skip Heitzig gift of $50 or more, we'll send you the complete expound Holy Spirit series and Bring the Rain, Skip's book on expositional teaching.
Call 800-922-1888 or give securely online at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Now let's turn to Matthew 5 as we join Nate for today's message, Let's Change 2024. This is where the light comes in. Having aroused their curiosity by what I am and by how I live, I now earn the right to tell them why. This is where good works come into play. Look at verse 16. He says, Let your light so shine before men that they may see what? Your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. So how will the world see that you're a Christian and want what you have, glorify your Father in heaven? Is their marker gonna be your frog bracelet fully relying on God? Oh, that person's a Christian, I see their bracelet. Is it gonna be your God's my co-pilot bumper sticker? Oh, that person must be a Christian. I'm gonna follow them and ask them how I can be a Christian. Is it your Spotify playlist?
Oh, you've got a lot of Elevation songs in your Spotify. You must be a Christian. No, how do they see? They see your good works.
The salt stings. It opens their conscience. It makes them feel and recognize that something's not right. Then the light brings good works. You begin to love them and care for them and serve them. And then the light reveals a way out of the darkness. And by the time it comes around, my turn comes to turn my light on and show you the way out of the lifestyle that you're stuck in that hasn't been leading to happiness, but it's been leading to heartache.
That's how the salt and light interacts with each other. Hal Donaldson, the founder of Convoy of Hope, said the church earns influence through sweat and tears on behalf of the community. You know, too often it's the opposite. I speak, but I don't live, thereby undoing my effectiveness. I salt the roads, but I don't cue the fireworks.
Jesus uses the illustration of being light and showing that light through good works can bring people to repentance. We as believers should be the hardest workers in our entire city. That's been a large part of what Kingdom City has been about. We should be the best citizens. We should be the first to respond to the worst. We should be the first to respond to a need that we see.
We should be the ones feeding the homeless, the ones cleaning our parks, the ones supporting law enforcement, thanking them when we see them. We should be the ones who are giving kids who need homes, homes. Look, Christian should have met the need of foster care a long time ago. Any kid who needs a home, Christian should have their doors open to have these kids live within their home. Colossians 3 23 says, If you do, do it wholeheartedly as unto the Lord. Christian should be the forefront of every society, meeting the needs that society has so that they can see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven.
If anyone should be showing this attitude, it's us. We have to live and walk in the light if we want others to follow. So don't just salt the roads, cue the fireworks.
And third finally, this is my favorite, bang some pots. Look at verse 14. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Now, most people read this verse and assume rightly that it's referring to being vocal about your faith publicly. And I do think that this verse is speaking to that, but can I help you draw perhaps a different conclusion that you might not have seen about this verse? See this section of scripture has been focusing less on what Christians say and more on who they are and what they do. It's not about your lip service, it's about your life service. It's not about saying you're a Christian.
It's not about having the lyrics to lie and memorize. It's not about knowing a couple of Bible verses. It's about living as a Christian.
Again, remember the goal is to be resilient disciples because resilient disciples will almost automatically begin making more resilient disciples through salt and light. And yet so many Christians spend more time worrying about how they are perceived instead of on becoming disciples. What does the person next to me think about me? What does the person in front of me think about me? I know I need to give my life to the Lord, but I don't want to raise my hand because they think I'm a Christian.
I don't want to damage that thought that they have of me. We spend more time caring about whether people think we're disciples than investing in making sure we are disciples. Now the reason I think that this is interesting is if you were to go back to the first century church, that church struggled in a different way. They would live the life at home, but they were scared to say they were Christians outside so they would hide their light under a basket because they could get killed if they said they were a Christian.
Now I find the opposite. A lot of people are willing to say, oh yeah, I'm a Christian. They'll talk about it. They'll be more vocal about it. Even if they're not living it, they'll go to church. They'll pretend to be Christians outwardly. Then they'll go home and not live that in front of their family and their kids and their friends and their coworkers. They'll hide their light under a basket.
They get home and it doesn't change the way they live. It's easy to fall into Satan's trap of portraying yourself as one thing publicly and then not living that privately. Do you know who will be the first ones to see if your words in your life don't match?
Those closest to you, your family, your spouse, your kids, your friends, your coworkers. Our Christian character and lifestyle, be it consciously or unconsciously, will affect other people in a positive or a negative way and the compromiser reaches no one. Graham Scroge said of compromise, it prompts us to be silent when we ought to speak out for fear of offending. It prompts us to praise when it is not deserved to keep people our friends.
It prompts us to tolerate sin and not to speak out because to do so might give us enemies. How do we create resilient disciples? Simple, being one yourself. If you are a resilient disciple at home, in church, and in the city, you will create more resilient disciples.
What's the best way to build the kingdom city? Being and building resilient disciples. What's the best way to change APS? Look, I'm gonna tell you it's not through school board meetings. It's not through getting mad and doing signs. It's through building resilient disciples of our kids and then launching them out into the darkness with their light shining, salting the roads, building more resilient disciples, making Bible clubs, seeing kids give their lives to Jesus Christ.
That's how you change APS. You wanna know how to change college campuses? It's not through getting rid of all the professors and the deans, though I'd like to do that. It's through building and creating resilient disciples and launching them onto those campuses to shine their lights and make more disciples. If 12 guys did it for the entire world, imagine what we could do if we were building and launching disciples into this world. We want our kids running through the streets, banging on the pots and the pans of the gospel, waking the sleeping world up, shining their light and their eyes and providing a way out of the darkness, salting the roads and changing the world. But that starts with our commitment to personally being resilient disciples ourselves. You're like, I'm in, I'm gonna get my kids into Calvary Youth, into small groups. I'm gonna get them on the peak. I'm gonna get them in Calvary Kids.
Good, but if you're not doing it at home, doesn't matter. Home for my heart, this whole series, this place, these people, my privilege, you remember our vision for 2023? It was concentric circles. Home applies to my physical home, then my church, then my city.
They get wider. First and foremost, my home. The best way to build the kingdom city is to start by building a kingdom home.
Why? Because you've just multiplied your impact. Right now, you're one disciple, but if you focus on making sure all those in your home are doing the right thing, but if you focus on making sure all those in your home are disciples, you've just multiplied the impact that you can have on the world. And then you bring your kingdom home into our kingdom home, into this church, and we build the kingdom church. And we build a big army of resilient disciples. And then we launch an army of resilient disciples and homes onto the streets.
You know what happens? The world turns upside down by building resilient disciples. We build a kingdom church, which multiplies our impact, and we send resilient disciples to change the world. Kingdom city starts in our hearts, grows in our homes, builds in our church, then spreads in our streets.
I'll say that one more time. Kingdom city starts in our hearts, you determining to be a resilient disciple. It then grows in our homes as you then train up other resilient disciples. It then builds in our churches. We bring our gifts and our talents, and we learn how to use them to spread the gospel. And then it spreads in our streets. The best way to start is in your house, then this house, then we change our city.
Now here's why it's important to start in your home. I want to bring up this slide one more time. 9% resilient disciples, 24% habitual church goers, 41% nomads, 10% prodigals. The reason this is important, all of these people had a Christian backstory and Christian experience, and so Barna wanted to dig a little deeper, and they said, hey, are there any noticeable markers that we can look at these people's lives, maybe things that happened when they were younger, along their faith journey that made them fall into one of those four categories? So they started asking questions, and you know what they found?
It was remarkable. They found some similar characteristics, but they didn't have to do with the church, they had to do with the family. The biggest determining factor that determined where these four groups landed was their family faith experiences in the home.
Bring up the next slide. Overall, they asked these groups of people, would you say your family experience before age 13 was positive, somewhat positive, negative, very negative, not sure. They asked each group this question. Look at what the open practicing Christian said. This is your resilient disciples.
56% said they had a very positive experience in their home as children. We go down the open non-practicing Christians. This would be your lapsed Christians, 46%, and then you see that that 14% negative gets higher, and the very negative gets higher. Then you go down to closed Christians. These would be your prodigals, 42%, 11%, 6%. Go down to your open non-Christians.
These are the people who really want nothing to do with the church. Only 32% had a very positive experience. 18% had a somewhat negative, 15% very negative, so 33% had a negative experience. And it gets worse when they get into teenagers.
Go to the next slide. They asked them, overall, would your family experience during your teenage years? Again, they asked them the same question. Again, look, you're open practicing Christians. These are your resilient disciples. 43% and 35%, 78% said they had a positive experience in their home with their family while they were a teenager.
And look how it drops off. By the time you get to open non-Christians, look how small that number is. You have 49% of people saying they had a negative experience with their family at home. This is what's fascinating. That's what's determining their faith. And so what things are they identifying as positive and negative in their family experience? I'm gonna go a bit deeper.
Go to the next slide. This is resilient disciples. This is your 9%. They asked this group of people, these are the people who are doing what we want them to do. They're in that place. They asked them if a person wanted to know about your personal faith story, which of these would you say were most important for them to know about? And they had a whole list and people picked.
They asked each group to pick. Of this group, the resilient disciples, what impacted their faith most was I experienced answered prayer. I experienced a strong sense that God was real.
Now check this out. My family prayed together. I received a good education. My family played games together.
What happened that was so spiritual in your home? We laughed. We played games. We laughed. We had fun with each other. We enjoyed our family dynamic. My family openly shared our feelings and emotions. When I came home, my parents could see that I was sad. They didn't tell me, hey, rejoicing the Lord always.
Okay. They asked me, how are you? Why are you sad? What's going on in your life? Let's talk about it.
Let's work through your emotions. The unexpected death of a close loved one. So they didn't live a perfect life. They experienced pain, death of a loved one. Down there, 20%, I experienced significant loss or grief. My family sang songs together.
I was able to travel for enjoyment. Now what's fascinating, this list is almost identical to the list of lapsed Christians and habitual churchgoers. A much lower percentage point on those, but the same list, which by the way shows you can create an environment that creates resilient disciples, but the choice is still your kids. The choice is still yours if you're going to be a resilient disciple. But when we go to the prodigals, these are those who have deconstructed.
These who have walked away from the church, want nothing to do with it. The list is very different. Let's go to that one.
This is your 10%. Look at their list. First of all, look how few of the things on the list they identified with, but look at the things on the list they did identify with. I received a good education, but it just gets worse from there. Depression. I experienced significant loss or grief. The unexpected death of a loved one. Emotional abuse.
Mental health issues. My parents got divorced. Poverty. The death of a close loved one. My family relocated and moved to a different place.
You know what I see on this list? Loneliness. Loneliness.
Loneliness and lack of connection, lack of relationship, lack of an ability to talk through what I'm going through. If you notice on both lists, they both experience grief. They both experienced the loss of a loved one, significant grief. As a matter of fact, the resilient disciples identified with that more in some cases of experiencing that. The difference is that the resilient disciples were talking about it. They were working through it with their family, whereas the prodigals were stuffing it down. The disciples experienced emotional connection. The prodigals experienced emotional abuse.
They both experienced pain, but the prodigals didn't experience any of those positive markers as well. I want you to notice what's not on that list. In either of the groups, I went to church every Sunday. I heard a really good message one time.
It's not on the list. Their outcome of where they fall as disciples or prodigals in their faith journey has less to do with what happens in church and more to do with what's happening in the home. The home. They both heard the same Sunday school stories.
They both sang the same songs, but they had very different experiences. Look, it used to be true that if you won the dad to Christ, they would say the whole family would follow. Did you ever hear that before? Win the man, you win the family. You know that's actually shifted in recent years? Now studies actually show if you win the mom to Christ, you win the whole family.
Why? Because moms tend to be the ones focusing on these things. Playing games as a family, talking through emotions as a family, praying as a family, education, singing songs in the home. You know what moms said when they were asked what they liked most and least about their churches? What they liked most, and this was by a long shot, 63%.
The next closest was 32%. 63% of moms said what they liked most about their church was small groups. Community.
Community. They liked small groups. They liked the ability to connect with one another, talk about what was going on in their life, realize that someone else is also going through it, cry together, laugh together, grow together.
You know what they liked least was resounding. It was that their church doesn't support their emotional and mental health. You see the correlation between what the kids experienced and determine their outcome and what moms are saying they need? It isn't more content, it's the opportunity to see and experience that what they are hearing is real and can actually help them in their lives. They need community to talk with, share their struggles with, reason out their faith with, laugh with, cry with, share their stories with.
And guess what? If you're not doing that for your family in your home, they're gonna do that somewhere else and identify with a different group of people. And they're gonna realize that what you say you believe isn't real to you, so why should it be real to them?
Because it really can't have an effect on the pain, the life that they're going through. And so talk about these things in your home, don't hide it. The home should be the place where everything is open, there's nothing off limits, let's talk about it, let's work through it, let's talk about what's going on in your life, let's dig into it, let's pray, let's cry, let's sing, let's laugh, let's do it all. Too many kids hear the church, their parents and Christians talk about faith but not live it, and one of the reasons I believe we as a country or in the post-Christian society we're in is because adults who grew up in the church are deconstructing their faith, not because intellectually it might not make sense like a lot of people say, but because they've never truly had a positive Christian experience at home. They saw Christians who cared more about publicly perceived holiness than they did about personal holiness.
What those kids experienced was an emphasis on how things look to not enough time spent connecting with them and asking them how they are. A positive Christian experience at home is the singularly most important factor in sustained faith, that's what those statistics show. A positive Christian experience at home is the singularly most important factor in sustained faith. Now I said the list looks the same if you get into the lapsed Christians and the habitual church goers, so you can do everything right at home and you could still not create resilient disciples because it's still your kids and your own choice to do that. But the likelihood is that you would create an environment that those kids would then continue going on to go to church, say that they're a Christian, but not really live it. So the added work has to be done on the individual level, which of course we know is biblical. To create resilient disciples, I'm going to close with this, you have to be a resilient disciple. Otherwise the next generation will see right through it, but there's hope.
One more time, bring up that very first slide, promise I'm about to close. Again, 9% are resilient disciples. We can look at that number and say, man, that's depressing because that's the definition of a Christian. So really only 9% of people are actually Christians.
But you know what? I look at that 41% of nomads, lapsed Christians, I look at that 10% of prodigals and ex-Christians, 51%, that's where our opportunity is church. That's where the opportunity is. That group of people need to be shown what being a real Christian is. They need to experience salt and light. They need to experience the gospel message. And while the resilient disciples are at an all-time low, there's hope. Because did you know that openness to faith is actually an all-time high?
Actually 72% of people in the world today would call themselves spiritually open to a faith experience. Which means they're just waiting for you. They're just waiting for you to come shine a light, to come salt the roads, to stop hiding under a basket. They're just waiting to experience a real encounter with something that can change the way that they live their lives and what they experience on a day-to-day basis. Could these, that 51%, could those, the prodigals and the laps, not be an image of the dry bones in Ezekiel 37, where God declared to them, prophesy to these bones and say to them, dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.
I will make breath enter you and you will come to life. Could these prodigals not breathe life into their lungs and wake up from their slumber and preach the gospel on the streets? So if you're here, bring that up one more time. Bring that slide up one more time.
Bring that slide up one more time. If you're here in the 24% or the 41%, you call yourself a Christian, but you're not really a resilient disciple. Can you make it your goal this year to move from here over to here so that you can help reach those who are there? Can we move from just being churchgoers or people who say we're Christian on an airplane or an Uber and be resilient disciples that are reaching the prodigals and the lost? Can we make more resilient disciples this year?
Don't make a bunch of dumb resolutions that you're not going to keep anyways. Instead, make a simple, singular commitment to be a disciple of Christ. Change has to begin in your heart. What a powerful truth. That's Nate Heitink with a message from the series Kingdom City. Find the full message as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskipp.com. Now, here's Skip to share how you can connect you and many others with the truth of God's word with a gift to keep these messages going out around the world through Connect with Skip Heitink. All believers are called to help others encounter the God who is seeking them out, and our goal is to come alongside friends like you to encourage you to help others connect with God through His word.
And that's why we share these messages with you and with others. And today, you can take action to ensure these teachings keep reaching more people all around the U.S. and the globe. This year, I'm praying for resources to grow the reach of these broadcasts into more major U.S. cities, and you can help make that possible with your generosity.
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