Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Jesus's plan for reaching the world is not gathering large groups of people to bask in the anointing of one gifted teacher. His plan for reaching the world, His plan for transforming the world for the Gospel is raising up ordinary people and the power of the Spirit, ordinary people, and sending them out. Welcome back to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, teacher, and theologian, J.D.
Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch, and we're excited to be jumping into God's Word today with you. You're joining us today near the end of our new teaching series called Be the Movement, and we're asking one final question. Because Jesus sent His Spirit to us, the question is no longer if we are called to join His mission. It's only a matter of where and how. Today, Pastor J.D.
teaches on the fourth and final core value. We send every member. You know, living sent isn't a special calling for our church planners and missionaries. It's a calling for you. So grab your Bible and a pen and let's join Pastor J.D.
as he opens God's Word to the book of Acts. We're in our fourth and final week of a series through our core values. We're calling it Be the Movement. Be the Movement. These are four primary values that we have tried to build our church on over the last almost two decades.
The articulations of these things are new, but the concepts are not. We think these are embodied in the life of Jesus. We think they are exemplified by the apostles. They are values that I would say that you would not only build a church on, like we've tried to do, but also values that you should build your life on as well. All right, they were, number one, if you remember the first week, gospel above all.
I won't do a pop quiz with you, but gospel above all, number one. Number two is we do whatever it takes to reach all people. Value number three was, we did last week, we make disciples, not just converts.
And then our fourth value this week, our last one, is that we send every member. There is a myth that a lot of people in the church believe, and that is that calling. You talk about people hear that I'm called by God into something, that that's like this special mystical moment that a select few of super saints in the body of Christ experience. Sometimes we'll, with our college students, refer to it as the Cheerios method of discerning the will of God. You know, where you you steer into your Cheerios expecting it to just, you know, one day spell out what God wants you to do. Be a pastor, or be a missionary in Afghanistan, or be a doctor, or something like that. And if that doesn't happen, then you just are supposed to assume that God expects you to go to church, and be a good person, and pay your tithes, and don't cheat on your spouse, and that's kind of His standard for you. But I've tried to explain that that's not true.
First of all, I stared in my Cheerios for years, and all they ever spit out was, ooh, over and over and over again. It's the only word that I could discern. But even more importantly, the real truth in the Bible is, is that the call to leverage your life for the Great Commission was included in the call to follow Jesus. Matthew 4 19, Jesus said, follow me, and I will make you a fisher of men. Which means that if you're actually following Him, what is He doing? He is turning you into a fisher of men. A short way of saying that is that when you accepted the call to follow Jesus, you accepted the call to be sent to missions.
We always say that the question now is no longer if you were called. The question now is simply where and how. For years, this has been a huge part of this church, a core part of our DNA. And honestly, it's probably what we are most known for as a church nationally. By God's grace, we have sent out, get this, 1258 people from our church over the last decade to go on domestic or international church planting teams. These are people that have uprooted their lives from here in the triangle and moved in a full time way to be a part of a church plant. 597 of those have gone full time with international, as international missionaries. In fact, if you just take a minute and just think about that, and that's almost 600 people. I say this, and again, it's by God's grace, nobody's patting anybody on the back, but most churches, most churches get to experience maybe two or three people of their number going out over the course of three or four decades. We've had nearly 600. The International Mission Board that we work with to send a lot of these people tells us that we have seven times more members on the field from our church than the next closest church out of about 50,000 churches in the convention that we're a part of. These people that we have sent out, and by the way, that's just something, you need to sit back.
There's some things that happen that are so big that you kind of shake your head and say, who but God could have done that? Amen? Amen. Listen, these people that we have sent out have planted, get this, 376 new churches. 376.
About 60 are here in the United States, about 320 are overseas. That makes us right at one-third of our goal of planting a thousand churches, by the way. That is the result of your generosity, is a result of your faith, and it is a result of your commitment to the Great Commission Summit Church.
And so by God's grace, He's really done that here. So again, it's what we as a church are known for nationally, but here's the question I want to ask you today. And me, is that true of you?
This idea that you are sent, is that true of you? Every weekend, whether we're in a large group or groups like this, we end our services with a little phrase. You know what that phrase is? Say it out loud with me. You know it.
How do we end every service? Three words. You are sent. Exactly. When we say that, we're not talking only about the church planters or future church planters or international missionaries. We're saying that to every one of you.
Every member is sent. Y'all listen, the more that I study the book of Acts, the more I have become convinced that Jesus' plan for reaching the world is not gathering large groups of people to bask in the anointing of one gifted teacher. His plan for reaching the world, His plan for transforming the world for the Gospel, is raising up ordinary people in the power of the Spirit, ordinary people, and sending them out. So to that end, what I want to do for this fourth value is I want to walk you through the story of one such ordinary guy in the book of Acts who literally changed the world.
And I don't even say that lightly. We always say he changed the world. You know, I mean, he actually changed the world. Christian history shifted because of this guy's life. And what I want to do is I want to show you four convictions that shape the life of this ordinary member of the early church, four convictions that should also shape your life. This man's name is Stephen, and his story begins in Acts chapter 6.
So if you've got your Bible, I'd love for you to take it out and open it up, turn it on, whatever you've got there. And I'm going to walk you through the two chapters that form the basic gist of his life. As you're turning there, Acts 6, let me give you the context.
Stephen, hear this very clearly, because people always get confused on this. I'm going to give you a Bible trivia thing here, okay? Stephen was not an apostle. He was not one of the twelve disciples. Stephen was just a so-called ordinary guy.
Sometimes you hear them referred to as laymen, a lay person. But Stephen's story is going to mark what I would argue is the turning point in the book of Acts. You see, up until this moment in Acts 6, as far as we know, the gospel had yet to leave the borders of Jerusalem, even though, even though Jesus had clearly said, clearly said in Acts 1 8 that he wanted the apostles to carry the gospel from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the uttermost parts of the earth, all right? It's still, by the time we get to Acts chapter 6, it hadn't done that yet.
Now, it's been an exciting ride with three thousand people getting saved in a day, and then, you know, you've got miracles, and you've got people getting struck dead in the offering, and so there's been a lot of things that have been happening. But the point is, by the time you get to Acts chapter 6, the apostles and the early church are still huddled together in Jerusalem, holding hands in one big small group, singing, you know, Kumbaya. That all is going to change with the story of Stephen.
In chapter 6, Stephen gets selected to help deliver food to widows so that the apostles can devote themselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word. What you should hear from that, by the way, is that Stephen's job, in one sense, was not really that important. Stephen was not elected teacher. He wasn't elected group president. He didn't write any books. He didn't get asked to speak at any conferences. He was not considered to be one of the theological or missional leaders of the early church.
He's just a table waiter. I mean, he was the Meals on Wheels of the early church. Yet, Acts 6-7 tells you that this servant, Stephen, did his job so well, and his witness was so full of the Spirit and so compelling, that it got the attention of a lot of people in the community, including a lot of Jewish priests, who begin to turn in large numbers to faith in Christ. Well, that, of course, got the attention of the Sanhedrin.
That was the group, like the ruling group of Jews, and they didn't like that. A lot of people were coming to faith in Christ, so they began to try to discredit Stephen. I love this verse, Acts 6-10.
Yet, yet they could not withstand all these trained guys that got more degrees on their walls than thermometers. They couldn't withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which this ordinary, untrained layman, who'd never been to seminary, the wisdom and power with which he was speaking. In Acts 7, they drag him before the Jewish council, where Stephen proceeds to give the longest recorded and least seeker-friendly sermon, I might add, in the entire Bible. The basic point of the sermon in Acts 7 that Stephen delivers there before the Sanhedrin is, you Jews killed all the other prophets, and that's why you killed Jesus, too. The message reaches a crescendo at the end of chapter 7, and that's where we're actually going to start reading.
This is the end of Stephen's message. Now, when they heard these things, they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him. I've had some bad reactions to sermons of mine, but I'm happy to tell you that that has never happened to me right there.
Whatever it is, it sounds terrifying. Verse 55, Yet Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, Behold, I see this heavens open, and I see the Son of Man, Jesus, standing right there at the right hand of God.
But they cried out with a loud voice, and they stopped their ears, and they rushed together at him. Then they cast Stephen out of the city, and they stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul. By the way, if you've read the book of Acts, you know that this young man is going to change his name in a few years to the Paul, and he's going to become the greatest apostle of all of them, and the greatest missionary we've ever known. Yet at this point, he still hates Jesus. He's still killing Christians, and he's going by the name of Saul. As they were stoning Stephen, he called out, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And then Stephen, falling to his knees, cried out with a loud voice, Lord, do not hold this sin against them. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.
Now, watch this. In your Bible, I bet there's a chapter break right there at the end of chapter seven, right? I would suggest to you that's an unfortunate place for a chapter break. By the way, in the original writing of the Bible, the Holy Spirit did not inspire chapter breaks, so I'm not, like, correcting the Holy Spirit when I say that, okay?
We added those later. But I would say that this is not a good place for one because Stephen's story doesn't end there at the end of chapter seven. Stephen's story continues on into chapter eight.
Watch this. There arose on that day, what day is he talking about? He's talking about the day of Stephen's martyrdom, a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, watch this, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of, look at these two words, Judea and Samaria, right? Remember Acts 1-8? That's where the Gospel's supposed to go. Now, look at these next three words.
So important. Except the apostles. The apostles were not included in those who were scattered, and those who were scattered went about preaching the Word.
Y'all, listen, first, there it is. First time the Gospel leaves the borders of Jerusalem, and I want you to let this sink in. First time the Gospel goes outside of the borders, not a single apostle is involved.
Not even indirectly. It's Stephen's service that provokes the trial. It's Stephen's testimony that provokes the riot. And of all those who leave preaching the Word, right? By the way, when I say preaching the Word, I don't mean what I do, like, professionally.
I mean just, like, telling others about Jesus. Of all those who left preaching the Word, Luke, the writer of Acts, goes out of his way to point out that not a single one of the apostles was included. See, I believe Stephen's story is given to us as an example of how the Gospel expands globally. You see, Stephen's story comes at this pivotal moment in the book of Acts. Like, scholars say, Acts 1-8 is your key verse in the book of Acts.
It lays out the outline for the book. The Gospel's going to go from Jerusalem, Judea, to Samaria, the uttermost parts of the earth, right? And so, by the time we get to Acts 8, it hadn't happened then. And at this pivotal moment where it does, what you have at the center of that story is not an apostle. You've got a layman, and his name is Stephen. Stephen is a picture of the so-called ordinary Christian in the church, what they should look like. He gives you, he shows you what they should look like, and what will happen in the world when they do. Stephen is a picture of every member, showing you all every member, not just the spiritual ones, right?
How every member is sent, right? Not just the ones who've been to seminary, not just the ones who know a ton about the Bible, not just the ones who have squeaky clean paths. All Christians are to live sin. If you've been a Christian for 10 minutes, right, you got saved during our worship set previously, you were sent.
You, all of you, you are sent. So here is the first of those four convictions I told you that shaped Stephen's life. Four convictions, I would say, of those who transformed the world. Number one, God wants to use me. Listen, these are not deep or profound.
They're very simple. God wants to use me. Some at church and our guests here, I hope I've said this enough to you that it is drilled into your subconscious.
You. God wants to use you. Historically, ordinary believers like Stephen have always been the tip of the gospel spear.
He's got an intention to use you in the life of somebody to bring them from darkness to light. If you go back and you study, if you study Christian history, what you'll see is that the gospel has always traveled around the world faster on the wings of business than it has through apostolic effort. One of my, there's a writer named Stephen Neil, he's a church historian.
He wrote a classic book called The History of Christian Missions, and he said the only thing that was more remarkable than the rapidity of the spread of the gospel in the first century was its anonymity. He said, by the time you get to the end of the first century, 99 AD, he said you've got three major church planting centers, Antioch, Alexandria, and Rome. He said what they all have in common is that we have no idea who founded the churches in Antioch, Alexandria, or Rome.
No idea. No famous apostle founded any of those churches. The founding of the church in Antioch is actually recorded for us in Acts 11.
You could read it later. All it says, I'll give you a little spoiler here, all it says is, some brothers, some brothers moved to Antioch and the hand of the Lord was with them when they planted a church in Antioch. Them. Everybody say them. Them, right? Them means a bunch of guys who's, they're like the credits at the end of the movie, like bystander number three, a bunch of guys whose names I'm not going to mention because you've never heard of them and you probably won't hear about them again anyway, just ordinary guys. Yet these ordinary men and women planted a church that would one day send out the apostle Paul and become the greatest mission-sending church in the first century. Ordinary people, see?
Them. Like good news, we're all part of the them. You hadn't all been to seminary.
You don't have a professional ministry job, but you're part of the them, and that means you're God's plan A for impacting the world. Hey, I would tell you the same thing is true today. The same thing is true today. You look at where Christianity is spreading fastest in the world. You won't find people like me.
You'll find people like you. I read this recently that if you add up all the evangelical missionaries, meaning just in churches similar, somewhat similar to ours, all the evangelical missionaries from every denomination in the world that are working in what we call the 1040 window. You know the 1040 window between the 10th and 40th parallel where all the unreached people groups are places like China, India, Afghanistan, Indonesia, places like that. If you add up all the missionaries from all the denominations, the total number is 40,000. By the way, praise God for that. We need 10 times that many. All right, 40,000. If you add up, get this, the number of Americans, just US citizens that are working in so-called secular employment, meaning their doctors or whatever, you know, over there, educators, that number right now, as I stand here before you, that number is 2 million. Now, US citizens, 37% identify as born-again.
Let's just all look at each other and acknowledge that's not really true, right? Two-thirds of them are not serious about their faith or... So let's just take two-thirds off and let's just take a third of that number.
In fact, let's cut that in half just to be on the conservative side. You understand that if just seven or eight percent of those people that were there understood, right, because they identify as born-again Christians, they understood that their primary role in life where God sends them is to be a disciple-making disciple, and they saw themselves as sent even in a secular job, you understand, see, listen, that that would take the number of missionaries in the 1040 window from 40,000 to 240,000, and it wouldn't cost the church another dime, right? I actually got to see this up close, and I'm sure I've told you this story before with my dad. My dad's never been paid a dime for ministry in his life, never in full-time ministry. He was the plant manager of a textile factory, and when he retired, literally the day that he retired, his company called him back in that afternoon and said, congratulations in your retirement.
We'd like to rehire you to now go overseas and set up a plant for us. It's right in the middle of the 1040 window. They didn't call it the 1040 window, but that's where it was, and so my mom and he for about 18 months go over there, and I'm telling you, they rubbed shoulders with East Asian businessmen that I could never get close to on a short-term mission trip, handing out water bottles or doing a you know, an internet cafe. While he was there, he was able to lead a couple of these men to Christ and be a part of an early, you know, kind of an early church plant over there, right? You know what the total cost to our church was for that? Zero dollars. In fact, we made money on the deal because he kept high then the whole time that he was over there, right?
That's the future of how the Great Commission is going to go forward. I can tell you about the Parkers who moved to North Africa recently from our church to run a CrossFit gym over there. I can tell you about Craig, who's the head of an engineering firm in South Asia, or Kevin, a former firefighter who now builds wells in Central Asia.
I can tell you about Samantha, who's a woman that's working in a red light district in Central Asia, who's doing wellness and hygiene training for young women there. I can tell you about Rachel, who's a counselor who works with abuse victims but is just choosing to do it in a place outside the United States as a part of one of our church planting teams, or Cameron, who runs a textile manufacturing shop overseas, or Jessica, who's an elementary ed major who teaches missionary kids. I can also tell you about countless people who've gone with one of our domestic church plants and pursued their careers in a city where we're doing something strategic, where places like Denver, Orlando, Atlanta, Miami, or even the Dominican Republic, and I know that's not really part of the United States, but you understand, like we the people that we have mobilized to do their job in a place where they can use it as a part of a church plan. Let me give you a vision for following Jesus, right, whether you feel called to ministry or not. Here's your vision for following Jesus. Whatever God made you good at, and He didn't make all of you good at being preachers, public speakers, or worship leaders, or writers, whatever He made you good at, you should do that well to the glory of God, but why not also do it somewhere strategic for the mission of God? Of all the factors that go into where you pursue your career, why wouldn't the kingdom of God be the largest of those factors?
That's living sin. Here's the second conviction that we see from Stephen's life that's going to go hand in hand with the first one. Number two, the Holy Spirit fills me. You know what makes Stephen remarkable is his confidence, the confidence that stares down the Sanhedrin, a confidence that he apparently gained from an awareness of the fullness of the Spirit within him. The most common characteristic that is repeated about Stephen was that he was filled with the Spirit. What gives ordinary people such extraordinary confidence and effectiveness is the knowledge of the power of the Spirit within them. All believers, of course, have the Holy Spirit, right, so you have that, but what gives you confidence like Stephen is your awareness, your knowledge of the Spirit within you. God wants to use you. Whatever it is that you're good at, whatever occupation you've chosen to do, do it well.
Do it somewhere strategic and do it for the glory of God. You're listening to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian J.D. Greer, and if you've missed any of the previous messages in our teaching series called Be the Movement, you can find them all online at jdgreer.com. J.D., our new study guide follows this current teaching series, but it's a little bit different in that it's not really a book that you sit down to read, but it's also not working through just one passage or a book of the Bible. It's a bit of a hybrid.
Can you tell us a bit about it? Yeah, it is a little different, Molly. This is sort of a here and now book that's got a study guide about joining God in what he's doing right now with us. You know, the Summit Church, our mission statement is that we want to follow the Holy Spirit and then to create a movement of disciple-making disciples, and sometimes people brush over that following the Holy Spirit part because you're just like, oh, well, Christianity, I'm going out to do a bunch of things for God. I can tell you that is an exhausting way to live, partnering with the Holy Spirit and raising our children instead of doing it for them. So anyway, all that to say is I think that this will actually help people to join the Holy Spirit in the central mission that he has.
You know, sometimes people listen to us and they're like, well, I could never do what you do, Molly, in addressing, I can never do what you do, JD, in teaching. But there is a disciple-making capacity that God calls each of us to. This will show you how you can have a role in it and how you can live that out.
Reach disciple sin. That's what God has called the earliest disciples to do. It's what he's called you and I to do.
And that's what this study is all about. It's about God's movement and you moving along with him. You're invited to request this resource when you donate today to support this ministry.
It's our way of saying thanks for your partnership. So while we can't necessarily be a movement alone, we can join God's movement and do our part. And it all happens within the context of the local church. We can prioritize the gospel above all in our individual lives, and we can do whatever it takes to reach people around us.
This is definitely a resource and a topic that's bigger than any one of us, but each one of us has to do our part. When you give to Summit Life, you're not lining anyone's pocket. Every penny you give goes to covering the cost of producing and distributing these messages so that more people can dive into the gospel with us and grow as disciples. While we are not a local church here at Summit Life, our mission remains the same, to share the love of Jesus and to make disciples wherever we go.
Your gift helps spread the gospel message on the radio, TV, and web to people across the country and even around the world. Join that mission when you give today and remember to ask for your copy of our newest resource titled, Be the Movement. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.
Or give and request the study book online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vitovich. Don't miss tomorrow's program when we wrap up the Be the Movement series with the four convictions of those who transform the world. We'll see you on Wednesday for Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.
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