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into ministry. And so, yeah, I think a lot of it right now is awareness and letting people know like there's a future. This is how to enter into it. Um, and kind of creating that pipeline that exists for a lot of our other uh, professional um, jobs. Yeah. One last thing on that. Um, I think this is where developing a relationship between all of you and us will be helpful because if there are people that you identify in your church that you see that they are gifted in this way and you feel like God may be calling them, we actually need to know who those people are. And so, uh, the last couple years when we were here, I started like talking to all the I would ask the coordinators, hey, who do you recognize in your leaders that you feel like could be in ministry? and they gave me names and I would go find them and be like, "Hey,

my name is Chris. Um, you ever thought about, you know, so I I did like to to plant seeds because I actually think it's like there could be people God is calling, but people are not even thinking about it." So, I wanted to at least plant seeds. And actually, from those conversation, um, there there was and through our visits to the universities, we did have a couple new theology students who decided to go into ministry. One of which is uh the intern that came to our church pastor Matthew Co who is serving in the college young adult department. He wasn't um and God called him and I think we were a part of planting those seeds.

So we'd love to hear from you like hey there's this kid. I think he would be great and then we want to talk to them and meet them and that would be very helpful for us. Yeah. Hold on. Hold on. Before hold on before we answer that question, I have some questions for you. Uh no I mean the the work as we know is going to get done through professional ministers and lay ministry working together. So that's the church training. I think that's one of the key things is we wanted to provide training for lay ministry. The church training we're talking about is a fully focused on lay ministry. Um so I think that's at this current time that's what Kinos has to offer for that. Um, Kinos is a a evolving ministry and it has the ability to be very flexible and to adjust to the needs. So, um, we are open to suggestions like if after this presentation you came and say we need

this, we need this, we need this, that means this is a very successful presentation. We want to hear that. We may not be able to do everything, but if you feel like that is an important need and there's something beyond church training that can do that or or or then we would love to to know and support that. But right now, church training is probably the best way we're going to be supporting lay ministry development. Any questions? All right. Well, thank you so much for your time and attention. 12 p.m. Pastor Paul, before you go, this is my last session here. I just wanted to say thank you to Pastor Paul.

It's been a long time since I've had to run camp meeting, be the point person. Of course, it's a team. There's so many people involved, and Paul does a great job giving credit to them. But there, it does take a leader to pull everything together. And he does lead by his presence being everywhere. Whether it's with a hairet in the kitchen or here in the adults or down at the VBS at the gym or wherever, he's always there. And so we're grateful for you, Pastor Paul. Yeah, it's interesting. We were talking about I mean I I love what's happening with Kinos. Um, it's it's so exciting because uh when I when I was starting out in ministry, we just had YAC, which was Youth Ministry Advisory Council. I think that's what it stood for. Oh.

Um, and it was basically back then it was the KCA, the Korean Church Coun Korean Church Association was having actually I don't think it was even called that, right? It wasn't the the Korean council back then. It just had a different name. But they they were just meeting and so the the the pastors, the English ministry pastors thought, "Why don't we just do something on our own too in English?" And a lot of it was just like eating good food and trying to keep each other from being too lonely. Um I wasn't there for the first meetings. It was all the really old pastors like Jonathan Park and the ones that I don't even feel comfortable calling them by their first names like pastor um and pastor an right uh but then they invited me in to be a part of that when I was a student at first and um that really that that community that forms is so powerful. It

really is. uh you can't find it anywhere else as a pastor and so I'm grateful for it um in the many years that I got to be a part of it and um I'm praying for that next generation to come and experience that as well. Uh if you have people in your church, your children who may be interested in serving in this way of course lay ministry is the future. I'm going to talk a little bit about that today. The ministry is not done by pastors. Ministry is done by all the members of the church. That's how churches grow. That's how we build church. But there is a role that pastors play as well. And we are we are sorely lacking in a younger generation coming into those roles. And I would actually make a plug for us to better support young women stepping into these roles because if off the bat we are eliminating 50% of potential candidates, I mean of

course it's going to be difficult. And that's why even in STEM fields, they're making a big push for women to join STEM fields because they realize that's more than half. Actually, it's larger than half in the United States, a population. And regardless of what you believe about ordination and all of that, the church does not have a stance against women actually being in pastoral ministry. Ordination is an issue that's contentious in our church, which um if you want to talk privately about my opinions about that, I'm happy to share it. But um I will say there is nothing in the church in any of our church stances that said say that women cannot be pastors. And so I would hope that we can support women in ministry because I think that's part of the future. All right, I'll get off my soap box.

So comed comedian Mo Phillips um he tells a um a joke about about churches. He says, um, uh, there's a man, he's walking down a bridge and he sees another man standing on the edge about to jump. And so he rushes over and he says, ' Don't jump. And surprisingly, the man turns around and says, "Why?" So he's trying to think of a reason. He says, "You have so much to live for." He says, "What do I have to live for?" And so he thought and he says, "Well, are you religious or are you atheist?" He says, "I'm religious." He says, "Oh, so am I. Are you a Christian or are you a Buddhist?" He says, "I'm a Christian."

He says, "Oh, yeah. So am I." "Are you a Baptist or an Episcopalian?" "I'm a Baptist." "Oh, so am I." "Are you a Baptist Church of God or are you Baptist Church of the Lord?" He says, "Oh, I'm Baptist Church of God." He says, "So am I. Are you Baptist Church of God reformed? Are you Baptist Church of God original? He says, "Oh, I'm Baptist Church of God reformed." Says, "Oh, so am I." "Are you Baptist Church of God reformed reformation of 1897 or are you Baptist refor Baptist Church of God reformed Reformation of 1912?" He says, "Oh, I'm Baptist Reformed Church of God reformation of 1912." and he says, "Die, heretic." And he pushes him off the bridge.

Now, we laugh, but we could very easily replace Baptist with Adventists and have a very similar joke, right? Because sometimes we in the church have prioritized the wrong thing. You know, to uh quote Mike Meyers, we put the emphasis on the wrong syllable, right? We've looked at the wrong things and made the minor things the major things. So that's why over the course of this week, we've been looking at what is at the core of following Jesus and following Jesus in a way that helps us to grow. And what we've discovered is that it really comes down to what Jesus says, what he told his disciples right before he was crucified in John chapter 15 when he said, "Remain in me as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself. It must remain in the vine.

Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine. You are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. So the key here is remaining. If we are going to boil following Jesus down to one word, it would be abide, right? Remain. Stay with Jesus. No matter what's going on in your life, no matter where you are, stick with Jesus. Remain attached to the vine and you will grow as a follower of Christ. So abiding in Jesus, abiding with Jesus is what makes us like Jesus. It's what progresses us along this disciplehip pathway that we talked about, right? It's what leads us from birth where we recognize God all the way down around the circle to maturity where we're living this life of love. It's what leads us past the wall that we talked about um two days ago.

the challenges when our our our formulations of what it means to follow God is is challenged when we struggle with doubts about God. Sticking with God, yelling at God through that is what allows us to continue through that wall experience, that spiritual adolescence experience where everything is something that we're trying to push back against. Right? You have some of you have teens in that stage right now. pushing past that is what enables us to grow through it. Now, here's the conundrum. For some reason, our churches are pretty good at helping disciple people through childhood or spiritual childhood, right? From birth to infancy to childhood where they are making connections in the community, getting involved in in the ministries of the church. But we struggle with transitioning them into spiritual adulthood.

And the question is why? Why? Why is it that some of the most engaged people in our church who are coming to all the programs and and serving in the church, they fail to mature fully as followers of Jesus or they just leave the faith altogether. We gave that very sobering statistic, right? About 50% of the most actively engaged youth members will leave their faith after graduating from high school. Now, that research was done about 10 years ago. Hopefully, the numbers have gotten better since then. But even if they have, that that's a very sobering statistic. Why is this happening? So that's why over the last two days, we've been looking at the wall and the inward journey and what it looks like to abide with Jesus through throughout all all of this. And what we've discovered is that abiding with Jesus through the wall and into adulthood looks a little different than than abiding with Jesus in childhood. And that kind of makes

sense, right? Because what it takes to grow as a child physically is different from what it takes to grow as an adult. like we eat different foods. We need less food probably, right? As an adult, um if I I used to Oh, I don't know if I should share this. So, there were times when I was a youth pastor, um and I was younger, I used to love crispy cream donuts. You know, when the hot sign came out, remember when there used to be lines at Crispy Cream Donuts? I would go over there, buy a dozen a box of a dozen donuts and eat it all in like two or three days. It was crazy.

I mean, just that's not bad. That's is that Can you do that now? I don't think I could do that now. I would have major problems if I did that now. Yeah. But but that's I mean what what we can handle as children and what we need as children is different when we need what we need as adult. And yet and yet we haven't as a church and this is my theory of why we we fail to support people well through this journey into adulthood is we fail to adapt with the needs of our our spiritual children entering into adolescence. Yesterday, if those of you who were here for the parenting seminar, Pastor Israel was sharing how adaptability, the willingness to adapt in par parenting is so crucial, right? Because the needs of our ch children change over time, we as parents have to adapt over time. What our children need for us from us when they are one is very different than what

they need from us when they are 15. And so parenting is that um journey to adapt and to change and properly support the younger generation as they grow up. But I don't think us as a church, so I'm making a generalization here. Maybe your church does this very well, but I don't think us as a church, we've done a great job adapting to the needs of people as they mature in Christ. So what what would that look like? That's what I want to share with you today. For our churches to do that, um to paraphrase business theorist um Edwards Deming, he says, "Our churches are perfectly designed to get the results that they do." So, the reason why we're producing great disciples all the way through childhood, but struggling to produce disciples through adulthood, is because that's what our churches are currently designed to do.

So, what would it look like to design them a little bit differently? So, I'd like to explore that with you. And I want to start with a a little bit of a history lesson. Uh because our model for how we do church has changed over the years and we have carried the vestigages of some of those changes all the way to today. So, understanding where they come from helps us to think about the future a little bit better. So in his book future church um Will Manchini he talks about um that uh church growth models they tend to um grow over the period of 20 years and become more and more pervasive right there's the early adopters and then you have the bulk of the majority in the middle and then it starts to wayne towards the end and then the next church model seems to pop up.

And so he he talks about three different eras and and then a fourth of of different models of how we do church. And what's interesting about these models is they seem to be pervade American churches. So that we're only talking about churches in the United States, but American churches um regardless of denomination. So it doesn't matter if you are an Adventist or Episcopalian or a Baptist or non-denominational, these trends seem to be consistent. And it also seems to be consistent across ethnicities as well, right? Whether it's a Korean church or a Chinese church or a Spanish church, it doesn't matter. They seem to be pretty consistent across the board because these trends are tied to shifts that are happening in American society.

Now, some of these are delayed. Like Adventists, we tend to lag a little bit behind the trends of other churches, right? So, we're a little bit behind the curve, but the the trends themselves, the timing may be different, but the trends themselves seem to um to to still be consistent. So, what are these? The first that he talks about is uh the wartime revival from 1940 to 1960. So, the United States, they experienced a national revival during and after World War II. So th that's that's when um that saying there are no atheists in foxholes, right? That that term is traced to World War II and a lot of these these uh soldiers who found faith that supported them through the horrors of war came back wanting to practice that faith. So this is the time period where the United States was the most Christian.

I know that's surprising to some people because a lot of people think that the United States has started off very Christian and has just been in a decline ever since. But that's not actually true. This is the point. This is the peak of the Christianity of or what we call Christendom in the United States, right? Uh Americans uh they came during this time they started to we started to see ourselves with this this mission from God, right? a mission from God to um to say that even though in World War II we did some horrible things. War is terrible, but we did them for the right reasons, right? We were proud of what we accomplished in World War II. And so we began to see ourselves as protectors of the oppressed, as as the conquerors over evil in the world around us. And what's interesting about that is prior to this period, the United States had an isolationist philosophy, right? We we we

interacted with other countries. We we traded with other countries, but we stayed out of their politics and we stayed out of their wars completely. that that's when this famous Monroe doctrine came to be um that um you stay on your side of the ocean and I'll stay on we'll stay on our side of the ocean. But that changed with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. That's when we realized with new technology our oceans would not keep us safe. So then we started we proceeded to remake the world in our image to start uh pushing out the ideals of American um identity that we're so proud of liberty freedom democracy right we felt like we had a man and it it got a little bit deeper than that because we started to feel like that we had a manifest destiny from God to promote these ideals. These are divine ideals that have been entrusted to the United States to spread throughout the world.

And this push came in stark contrast with godless what we called godless communism, right? Because they didn't believe in God. And so thus began the Cold War and that tension that that was fought there. And so we often framed at this time this movement not just as a spread of democracy but a spread of God's beacon of light throughout the war world and as a result America America and Christianity became linked Christians and so that during this period is when we started adding things like um under God in our pledge of allegiance. It didn't exist until this period. That national motto in God we trust that came about during this period as well. We even coined the term Judeo-Christian during this time period because we were trying to pull the Jews and the the Catholics alongside us to fight against communism.

So more and more to be an American was to be Christian and to be Christian was to support America. During the Eisenhower administration, this was the peak. As many as four four out of five Americans were in church in a given week. I mean think about that. 80% of Americans were in church. This is not just just um I call myself a Christian. They were actually in churches. I remember a time when the LA Times actually printed full transcripts of sermons in the LA Times, right? So this is this is the peak of of Christendom in the United States. So in this context, churches did not have to evangelize. Not in the United States, right? The goal of churches was not to pull outsiders in. It was to attract loyal patriotic Christians to their church and to form them to be more loyal and patriotic. That was the role that was the strategy of churches during this time period. Okay, we're going to shift

that. During the 1960s to the 1980s, things changed very dramatically because during this time period, as many of you know, national unity was torn apart over very controversial issues like segregation, civil rights, the sexual revolution, feminism, the Vietnam War. Right? So, with the Vietnam War, there was no consensus in the United States that we were doing God's will. There was a lot of disagreement across the United States. Some people thought we were doing the right thing. Other people began to doubt this concept of manifest destiny. Maybe God hasn't called us to do this. Or maybe maybe there is no God at all. Right? Those those things started to be questioned and and people started to lose trust in institutionalized church and institutions in general. And so this is when um spiritual but not religious movements start to come about like the new age movement. Any of you watch those videos warning you about new age, the new age movement before? None

of you. Man, when I was in school, we would be shown in Bible class all these videos about how, you know, new age is so scary that they're they're doing like devilish things like walking across fire, right? laying down on a bed of of nails, which later we found out was just science, right? How they did that. But but there was this this fear over this this newagy thing that was entering not just outside but into church. Um and then there was the baby boom generation that was having children and and moving out from all the conflict that was happening in the in the cities out into a new invention called the suburbs. So how did the the church respond to this?

So the church did not address the issues so much. They fled with the people who were leaving the cities and entering the suburbs. So the churches responded by avoiding the issues altogether and actually just planting churches in the suburbs where the where where everybody was still looking for a church. Right? These are the people that actually still wanted to go to church. They just didn't have a church to go to. So they planted them in the suppers. And so the the goal here was that people had a certain loyalty to a certain denomination. So if you built a church, people would just come. As long as there were people who were part of your denomination in that area, you plant a church, they'll show up. It's kind of like Lomolinda. You plant a church, people show up still because there's so many Adventists still in Lomolinda, which is why the conference has said, "We don't plant any more churches there. We have enough,

right? we need to plant elsewhere. Um, so that that that was that was really the strategy of the church at that time. Go out to the server to where people actually still want to go to church, plant churches there and then you'll have thriving ministries, right? And so our our motto became build and they will come. And since there wasn't as much to do out in the suburbs as there was to do in the cities, churches became the center of community life. churches provided all of the community um organizations that a person would need from birth all the way to death, right? They had MOPS programs, they had AA programs, they had um they had uh children's ministries and Sabbath schools and all of these things. So the church that had the best programs are the ones that people attended. You had good facilities, great programs, people showed up. So that was the goal and that was the strategy of the church during

the 1960s to the 1980s. I was going to have you guys all raise hands of of of if you were alive during this period, but I thought that might be a little bit too personal. So I didn't do that. You can do that mentally. The third era, the new permission era. This was from the 1980s to the two to the 2000s. So there was two societal shifts during this period. First, the cultural revolutions of the previous period finally caught up to the church. They reached the suburbs, right? So, the churches had to now deal with with people who didn't have loyalty to a certain denomination, right? And they were starting to doubt the needs for larger institutions. This is when non-denominational churches started to become very pro popular. Do any of you remember that? When I first heard of a non-denominational church, I I was so confused. I said like, does that mean they don't believe in anything? What what what is a

non-denominational church? Right? But it was an expression of the church that tried to separate itself from a larger institution that people were scared of or doubted um was necessary. Right? So this is that time period. The second shift that h that characterized this time was an economic shift. We moved from in the United States from being a producer economy to a consumer economy. See, our manufacturing industry had become so efficient that we overcame the scarcity um problem that was in existence in the United States and and these manufacturing organizations began to overproduce. So then it was all about how do we sell people all of these things that they don't need but we want them to want.

Right? That was really the goal because before you didn't have to sell things too too much because there was a scarcity. So if it's available, I'll buy it. But since we're overproducing, there are so many different options. You go into a you go into a supermarket and there's like 20 brands of ketchup, right? Like who needs 20 different brands of ketchup? But that's that's each one is trying to reach a certain niche, right? Oh, this one doesn't use high fructose corn syrup. that only uses cane sugar, right? And so it was all about the marketers and not the manufacturers. It's it's how you sell yourself that really got people to buy in. And that affected the church as well. This is the time period when people like Rick Warren and Bill Hibbles began to rethink church because now they saw that just having a certain denominational church isn't going to ensure people to show up. You actually have to reach these dechurched

people, not unchurched, because they had been going to church but they lost faith in the organization and they left. So, how do we create a space where these dechurched people will want to come back or how do we reach some unchurched people and bring them in as well? Like what does that look like? And so they began to de deconstruct the church from the ground up thinking about those people who had never been in church before. Like what would they think about our church? And they began to create seeker friendly churches. Do you remember that term? Have you you familiar with that term? Yeah. seeker friendly churches. Um, so they redesigned church buildings, you know, removed the pews because people didn't sit sit in pews anywhere else except for in church. You put in chairs instead.

That's what people were comfortable with, right? Remove the organ because the only place the organ was played was in baseball games, right? Nowhere else. So remove the organ. You brought in music that people were more comfortable with, right? That they're more familiar with. it became more about a concert style approach to to music and not just a song service because that's what people are used to going to is a concert and not um doing karaoke on the screen. Right? So these are the shifts that happened in the programming and in the facilities of the church. Sermons started to change as well. In the past, people would just read scripture and then just dive into it because you assumed that people would accept that if it's in scripture, it's true and it's just a matter of understanding what scripture is saying.

But instead, people would the sermons would start from felt needs, right? We had to prove that scripture had something meaningful to say to people's lives because it wasn't assumed anymore. So it changed the model of church changed towards reaching people who didn't who were not familiar with church and bringing them in. Now that I think was a healthy shift but the challenge was it was still about bringing people into the church because that is where you met God. The church is the place where people met God because society as a whole was becoming less and less Christian. So this is the last bastion where God really has his reign. This is where the kingdom of God still exists is in the church. And so we brought them in. So this was the third model of of um of churches. Um if some of you may recognize this, especially if you're a pastor, this is put together by Rick Warren. And he would talk about

different circles of of commit commitment. And you would start with the community and these are com people who are committed to not attending church, right? And then the crowd are those who are committed to attending church. The congregation are those who are committed to um to a small group or community. Committed are those who are committed to service. And then core are those who are committed to leadership in the church. But if you notice the language, and I love this when I was younger, I was like, "Oh, this is a great framework." But notice the language is all church centered. It's all about how do we get people who are outside of the church into the church and committed to giving, serving, and living in this church. It was it became a lot more church- centered as opposed to Christ centered.

So I want to pause here for a moment. What are your thoughts about all of this? Questions about this so far. Probably should go back. Any questions? Not yet. Okay, we'll move on for now. But I will be asking another question after this one. So get ready. All right. So there are some disciplehip assumptions that we have now since carried since we've gone through these eras. These are the vestigages of all of these previous eras that we still to some degree hold within the church. The first assumption, we talked about this already, that the church is where people come to meet God, right? That God is tied to a physical location almost like the holy place in the sanctuary, right?

Church is where God is. This is why we we say things like, you know, you should walk in the sanctuary and not run because it's a holy it's holy ground. This is where God is, right? So evangelism consists of inviting people to come into the church. It is come and see rather than go and tell, right? It's all about pulling people in. And then also disciplehip becomes something that organizations do and not individuals do. There is a reliance on the church as an organization to handle the discipling of of people. I saw this as a youth pastor. I you know I was hired to be a youth pastor and what what they told me my job was was basically to do the things in discipling the the youth that the parents felt illquipped to do themselves like we don't know how to teach our youth about Jesus so will you teach them about Jesus and the roles became very distinguished the parents job was to get

the kids to the church the church's job was to get the kids to God, right? That became that ca became the the dividing line, right? Okay. So, that's a first disciplehip assumption. Second disciplehip assumption, the church is thriving if attendance at its programs is growing. And I understand this because attendance is a very easily accessible metric. It's very easy to count the number of people within a church. But when attendance becomes our primary metric of success, the goal begins to shift from growth in an in people to growth in the attendance of a program, right? That becomes our goal. And when that's the goal, uh the best way to do that is to create attractive and compelling programs to draw people in. Programs that young families want to attend. So children's programs became so crucial. VBS, right? Who has the best VBS? Who has the best children's Sabbath school? Those are the things. Who has the Sabbath school that my kids want to

go to, right? Became the goal because that's how we get people to participate in these programs. And there becomes an underlying belief that the church's programs and facilities are what grow people. All right. Third assumption. more people will follow Jesus if we follow if we make following Jesus attractive. So outstanding customer service, right? Um marketing the church in a compelling manner, having irresistible programs, these became the goal of the church. But the question is, are these assumptions correct? Is this the way church works? Is the church the primary place where people meet God? Is God tied to a physical location? Is the church thriving if attendance in his programs is growing? Like is that the metric that we use to know whether a church is thriving?

And will more people follow Jesus if we make following him look attractive? I want you to turn to the people next to you and discuss because I would love to hear your feedback on this. Um what agree disagree uncomfortable with questions that you have. All right, turn. All right. I love the discussion. I hope you'll continue this afterwards. But I want to show you a passage. I want to show you a passage now where where the Apostle Paul actually talks about what it looks like to grow up as a Christian. And I want you to think about these assumptions and compare them to what Paul says. Okay? Does Paul affirm some of these? Does he push back on some of these in 1 Corinthians chapter 3:es 1-4?

Right? So this is what Paul writes. Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the spirit, but as people who are still worldly. I'm going to pause here for a second. Paul is addressing Christians that he had actually a church that he had already he had started in the past. And um there was a lot of fighting happening in this church, right? And that's what he's addressing here. So I could not address you as people who live by the spirit, but as people who are still worldly, mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly.

For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? For when one says, 'I follow Paul and another I follow polus, are you not mere human beings? So what is Paul saying? What are some things that he's saying about uh being growing as a follower of Christ? I was going to have a discussion here, but I think we're running out of time. So I'm going to just share my thoughts and and then you guys can push back on me later. So the first thing I see is that he expects people to grow, right? There's an assumption of growth from infancy to adulthood. And he's frustrated that these people who have been Christians now for an extended period of time haven't grown the way that he expected them to do. That's the first thing I see. There's a movement from being worldly to being spiritual.

And how he defines worldly is that they are quarreling and there's arguments between them. Okay, so that's the first thing I see. The second thing I see is that what children need to grow is different than what adults need to grow. Right? He says, "I gave you milk because that's what you needed as a child, but you should be eating solid food by now and you're not able to handle it." So there is a difference in what people need to grow. Third, and this might be the most controversial. It seems to me that Paul is saying that the metric for disciplehip is not attendance in programs. It's not participation in small groups. The metric for success of disciplehip is unity.

Right? It's unity. He's saying that if you live by the spirit and you're not worldly, then there shouldn't be this quarreling among you. There should be more unity in the body of Christ. Now, unity is not the same thing as uniformity. I don't think Paul is saying that we just pretend that everything is okay and that we don't fight. Conflict is a natural part of human existence. We talked about I shared that with you last last year. So, that's not what Paul is saying. What Paul is saying is that in your division and in your diversity and in your differences, can you still love one another as fellow followers of Christ? Can you still can you stop from competing with one another and still work cooperatively with one another?

Your ability to do that shows the maturity of the church. So a church that is thriving according to Paul's metric I would say is a church that is growing more and more united because that is what it means to grow more and more like Christ. See the metric for individual growth is humble love. The metric for church growth is humble unity. That's the that's that's what Paul seems to be designating here. And that comes from embracing each other's differences and a willingness to listen and learn from people that think differently than we do and believe differently than we do. This is what Jesus prayed for his disciples on the night before he was crucified. He said, "My prayer is not for them to them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message." So this is not just for his immediate disciples. This is also for us, right? That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I

am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me. That they may be one as we are one. I in them and you in me. So that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Notice that in his prayer for the church, he prayed that we would be one as he and the father are one. What he is what he wants for the church is the same unity that is found in the trinity. That's what he wants for us.

And so, so, um, God is picturing us coming to be one with one another with the same kind of love that he and his father and the Holy Spirit share. This then Jesus says something even more fascinating. He doesn't just say that's the metric. He says unity is not just the metric of of a church's thriving. It is the method of the churches thriving because he says when the church is united, they will draw people to Christ. So it's not our compelling programs that draw people to Christ. It's our love for one another. When people see the love that we have for one another in a world that is growing ever more polarized, right, with with all of the arguments and the and the infighting that is happening all across our society, the church should be the one place where people can come and be different but still be loved.

That is God's vision for the church. And that's what people are longing for. We're even hearing this. I don't know if any of you um listen to the Freconomics podcast. They almost have an as many subscribers as the Podluck podcast. Almost. Not quite there yet. But the in this in one of the latest episodes, they they're talk they talk to a college professor. man, I wish I remembered uh the name of the university that he's the professor of. But he talked about how it's a difficult environment for universities in general and educ higher education in general, but they seem to be thriving. And part of the reason that he attributes to their success is that he decided that the university was not the place where we pushed a certain political agenda.

the university should be the place where students are taught to think critically about every political agenda. And so he as a uh as a uh president never takes a stance on any political topic because he says that's not my role. Once I take a stance, I've lost half of my population. I can't speak to them. So instead he creates contexts where we can invite people who take different stances, listen to them, have conversations about them and to learn to think critically. And that's what he ascribes to his success. There's a book out there called the courageous middle that asserts the same thing. This idea that we need to create people are looking for spaces where we can actually have conversations about difficult things and still walk away caring for one another. And if anywhere that should happen, it should be in the church because that is what God is calling us towards is that kind of unity and love. Right? That is what

draws, he says, is what makes it compelling for people to follow God. And again, this is not unity for unity's sake, right? This is unity that comes about because we come together in the Trinity, right? It's it's us drawing closer to God and other people drawing closer to God that makes us draw closer to one another. We're not just going this way to each other. We're going this way up to God, right? That's what creates this kind of unity. Jesus says, "When I am lifted up, I would draw all men to myself." Right? So, it needs to be a Christ centered community. So, here's my summary. These are my thoughts about disciplehip.

The church is not where people come to meet God. God is where the church goes to meet people. And since God is not just found in the church, he's found everywhere. Our role as the people of God is to go where God is working and work alongside him. That should be our goal to find the places where God is active. And it's not always just in the church. Hopefully, it is in the church too, but it's also everywhere else in society. Where is God moving and how do we work out there alongside him? So, that's the first thing, right? Second, the metric for a thriving church is unity, not attendance. Our ability to love and embrace each other in our differences is what shows whether a church is truly thriving. You could be a small church that is welcoming and loving to every pure person who walks in and that is a thriving church.

Third, our compelling relationships, not our compelling programs, is what draws people to Jesus. You know, the longer I'm in ministry, the more I realize that the primary tool God uses to change people's lives is not programs, it's relationships. the relationship that we have with God that infuses love into our relationship for each other. So if you study scripture, the primary place where disciplehip actually happened in scripture was in the home. And in the home, we don't create programs to draw our kids to Christ. Right? The most compelling argument for Christ, our children following Christ, is us. us us loving God and loving our children. Well, that is what draws our children to God. You know that 50% metric that I talked about earlier. The good news about that or maybe the scary news about that Fuller Institute they they looked at all the different factors of what actually draw drew pe children into staying with Christ after graduating.

And the number one, by far, the number one thing that drew their ch children into following Jesus even after graduation was parents practicing their faith at home. That's that was it. And I know that as a parent, that's a scary thought. And it's not 100%. You could love Jesus with all of your heart and and love your children and they may still decide they're going to check other things out. That can happen. So this is not to create shame or guilt over our children. But it does say that relationships are so crucial in this process. You don't need to have the most exciting youth ministry and the best most compelling youth pastor who can great give a great sermon. Those things are good. Those things might help. But the most important thing we can do as churches, I think, are support to support parents in their ministry to their children. How are we discipling parents to disciple their children?

Well, how are we supporting parents so that they aren't looking for a youth pastor to disciple their children for them? Right? What are we doing for that? See, the programs of their church don't change people. People change people. People are the primary tool that God uses to transform people's lives. And you know, think thinking about how we walk through this process. I mean, think about the wall. When you're struggling with doubt about God, you're not looking for another program. You're looking for someone who loves you, who knows you, who's willing to walk alongside of you. That is what helps people to grow. Now, I'm not saying get rid of all the programs of the church. All right? It's not what I'm saying. But we need to put them in the right place because programs should be just opportunities for life-changing relationships to form.

Right? The reason why we have things like VBS is not just to get kids excited about church. That's part of it, but also to connect them to adults who love them and know them and care about them. The reason why we have small groups is to study the Bible, but it's also so that life-changing relationships can form within the small group. That is the reason why we do these ministries. And yet sometimes we've gotten so busy in creating like the perfect program that we don't have time for people. We don't have time for relationships. What would it look like to create a church that flipped that around? So when I was in the fifth grade, we moved to Santa Rosa and uh we attended a very small church.

It even it wasn't even a church at that point. It was called a group. I don't know if you know the the the different stages of development for a church in in the Adventist um system, but you become a group, then a company, and then a church, right? We were just a group, right? Very small. And um and as Korean Adventist churches did, um every Friday night we would go to church and we'd have vespers, we'd have worship, but it was all in Korean. So eventually all us kids, we would wiggle, distract, and finally make our way out of that room and go outside to play. And um so one of our favorite games to play when we were out there on Friday night was a game we called Romans and Christians because you know it was Sabbath.

You had to have some kind of Christian theme. So, you know what? What did the Romans do to the do to the Christians? They persecuted them, right? So, my cousin and I, who I won't name, my cousin and I, we were the oldest guys. So, we said, we said, "Okay, you all run and hide. You're the Christians." And then we went out, sought them out, and persecuted them. Literally, I think now they call that bullying, but back then we just called it Romans and Christians. After a while, my uncle, he started to realize what was happening and decided to do something about it. And he he wasn't a youth pastor, you know, he'd never gone to seminary. He I don't think he ever read a book on youth ministry, but he just knew that he wanted to invest in us.

So every Friday night, and some of you who were part of that church remember, every Friday night, he would gather us together and he'd teach us random things about life, right? Like he taught us how to play guitar. He taught about us about chairo being a chiropractor. He brought a speaker. I remember that like I I learned there that when you wash dishes, you shouldn't bend over. You should put your knee against the thing and lean so that it protects your back. You know, it's not something that you're excited about when you are a teenager, but I still remember it. It's one of the few things I actually remember. But the most important thing that he taught us was that we were responsible for the next generation.

And so, he would have us teach Sabbath school. He would have us teach Bible studies. He even had us preach. He gave us opportunities to preach. and he is part of the reason why I moved from being a bully to being a leader of the church and I am a pastor today. And I think all of us could point to someone like that, someone who invested in us, who cared deeply about us. This is why we're still in the church. So what I would encourage is when you go back to your churches, think about how do we prioritize people over programs? programs have their place, but what would it look like to emphasize the relationship? Some of you are already doing that. Well, I've heard about that during all of the church spotlights. What would what would that look like? Because that is how we build church.

Let's pray. Our good and gracious God, thank you for being a God who loves us. Help us to