Look, I know we all want to blame someone for the pain and suffering in this world and God is an easy target.  But, Paul, in Romans, tells us that sin and death (ultimately pain and suffering) entered the world through one man and his sin and in the same way, death has come to all men.

-It is the result of sin penetrating the world that causes suffering – not God

 This is key for us to understand – we DO NOT live in the world as God created it to be…  We live in what Theologians call, a fallen world.

Ever wanted something so bad you could taste it?  It’s hard to be patient in those moments.  God is perfect in his patience and He is purposefully waiting to redeem this world and return it to it’s original state until the absolute last moment.  Peter says, “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance”.

-God’s perceived slowness is really purposeful patience.

HERE IS THE LOGIC:

-at the return of Christ there will be a separation of the righteous from the unrighteous

-this means that anyone who has not accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior will be sent to hell

-God is patiently waiting to redeem the earth – waiting for all to have the opportunity to hear and repent

-God weighs the timing of His return against the need for those who are perishing to be reconciled (connected) to Himself

-God is using the death and resurrection of Christ to redeem the world one man at a time…  Each time someone is infected with the Gospel, sin is eradicated and the person becomes a carrier who can transmit the antidote to the next person…

This is primary to becoming advanced as a Christ Follower – to be ruined spiritually by the leadership of Christ. It is a shuttle lie of Satan that you need something more than the grace of Christ, the indwelling of the Spirit and the connection with the Father. These three are who should and can feed you, this one is where your sustenance comes from. Paul often times sites his strength came from the power of Christ which worked so mightily in him.

See, I self-sacrifice because Someone sacrificed for me. I serve, because I have been served. I find, because I was found! At Epic we give without thought of return, because in the same manner we have been given too.

When we can become advanced to this level – I believe the Kingdom will begin to advance! Because one person at a time people will be seeing the love of Christ lived out in front of them – and that’s powerful!

Previously at EPIC: We had explored the idea that when we choose not to forgive, that we are really choosing not to trust God. When you get right down to it, forgiveness is essentially the action of giving up our right to revenge and trusting that God will repay whoever for any injustice done to us. This is important for us to grasp, that forgiveness is trust in God.

It is easy to understand how to forgive, but for some of us the question is more about “why I should forgive?”. I mean, let’s be honest – some of us have experienced horrific things that should not even be discussed in mixed company, and to expect us to forgive those people can seem trite. I think it’s pretty legitimate to ask why we even need to do this.

Jesus spoke to this subject in Matthew 18:21-35

21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?”
22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.[f]

23 “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand talents[g] was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.

26 “The servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii.[h] He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’

30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened.

32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

You see, if you’ve been forgiven, your reaction should be to forgive others. Forgiveness begets forgiveness. I think it’s interesting that Jesus says, in vs. 35, that if we withhold forgiveness that we can literally turn off the grace that God has been bestowed up on us – we can effectively mute it’s effectiveness in our own lives because we haven’t learned anything from being forgiven.

Why do I need to forgive? Because I have been forgiven. I am a dirty rotten scoundrel (which is a great movie, by the way…) – I am not worth the “worth” that God has placed on my life. This is not me being humble, this is me being real. I am nothing more than a man who has been forgiven, and when I withhold that same forgiveness to others, I have bought into the hypocrisy that can so easily pervade religious thinking. I forgive, because I have been forgiven – how about you?

Have you ever been in near-miss car accident?  Last night, Jenni and I were driving home and this cat ran out in front of us.  I saw it, but Jenni yelled “CAT!” and I jerked on the wheel and slammed on the brakes.  It wasn’t that big of a deal, but it got the adrenaline flowing and I single handedly saved a cats life (what was I thinking – sorry cat lovers). That incident wasn’t too life altering, but I have been in a few instances in a car where the maneuvers I made and the corrections I engaged were literally a matter of life or death.  In those moments, as the driver, you have to make quick decisions and changes – you must react in order to survive.  We have all come across car wrecks where the situation or the driver were such that the proper corrections were not made (sometimes because there were no feasible corrections to stop the impending crash).

I have been thinking a lot about church planting, especially the way we planted Epic – it’s called “Parachute Planting”, the idea being that you parachute into an unfamiliar area and try to find people and help them get connected to God and form a church out of it.  There are better ways of doing church planting, but that was the option we had to work with when engaging Wichita.  The early days of a church that has been started as a Parachute plant feel a little like a car wreck that might be impending.  What I mean is that in order to survive the early days of this scenario (an organization full of people who don’t know each other being thrust into relationship and leadership) the organization operates in a “Correction” mentality.  Some of you who have been with Epic for a while will identify with this.  There is a problem, a systems issue, a new challenge on the horizon and “Kent” stepped in, exerted some influence to try and course correct and then stepped out.  The honest truth is, in order for us to make it to our second birthday (which we celebrated just earlier this month), this type of leadership was necessary.

While a correction type of leadership was necessary, that type of leadership has some definite drawbacks.  It has huge potential to hurt people.  It has huge potential to give leadership to someone who should have earned it instead of inheriting it.  It has huge potential to cause the organization to become risk adverse (being afraid to take the calculated faith steps that started the original organization in the first place). This is where we find ourselves.  We are on the verge of a shift in the life of Epic, and if we don’t recognize that shift, some people will feel very much left behind or fearful of the future.  We are moving from Correction to Direction.  The problem is, just like someone coming out of a potential car wreck – folks who have existed in the two years of correction leadership may feel the adrenaline still pumping and constantly be pushing on the imaginary passenger side break (you know you do it).  You know what I’m talking about, right?  I mean, you’ve felt that fearfulness and the high alert of the adrenaline after the near-miss that causes you to be fearful and apprehensive for the next hour of the drive.

We are on the verge of a seismic shift at Epic – some of you are already feeling it in your ministry areas.  But if we cannot acknowledge that we may still have left over baggage from the previous leadership style, we may never move forward to see people get connected to God, one person at a time! “So, Kent, what’s this direction then?”  I can share the big picture – and yes, as you hear it, you will say to yourself, “Self!  What about this?  What about that?  Have you thought about this?”.  As I share this vision and direction, I want you to know I am asking those questions too, that’s kind of the point.  To focus our energy as a church into asking the right questions to fulfill the vision God is giving the church!  That to me is exciting, because it means if you are asking the right questions, then you are in the right place!  I’m not presenting a solution – I’m presenting a destination, something to give us organizational direction.

The Direction:

I believe God is calling Epic to plant new life-giving churches in Wichita and then out into the rural parts of Kansas where the church is dying.  I am not talking about one or two churches, I am talking about the potential of a reproducing movement of churches of hundreds and thousands that would impact the rural parts of our country (I believe these places are raising up generations of children that move to our cultural centers, cities, and influence the American landscape).  I do not have the full picture lined out right now, and that’s ok.  I feel like my job is going to be to keep pointing us towards the end of seeing people get connected to God, one person at a time.

If you were to ask me what something like this may look like, I would tell you that I believe the end result may look something like a hub and spoke system.  Think tinker-toys (remember, the little wood wheels and sticks?) .  You would have a hub church that spokes out into a different area or region and plants another church – this church has within it the potential to hub and spoke out another church and is expected to do so itself.  the system would create a network of interlocking spokes and hubs of churches that are sharing resources across the system and working together to catalyze a movement that would connect people to God one person at a time. This is big!  Honestly, this was the vision we started with as we moved to plant Epic in the first place – this is what got me excited about church planting, this picture God placed in my heart to see people being connected one at a time.  But the truth is, I was afraid to share this direction because it seems so big and so unattainable.   What if we fail?  What if we can’t pull it off?  These were all of the what if questions I had and that kept me from sharing this vision clearly and you may be having them as well.

I have come to the conviction that  me not sharing this direction has left Epic stuck in a correction system that has hurt us.  I believe this direction, this vision of something so great that God would have to show up for us to accomplish it, is the kind of thing that He wants us to engage in.  It is the kind of thing that pushes us to rely on Him, the kind of thing that forces us to prayer, to engaging the mission of connecting people.  it is the thing that invokes creativity and drives us to raise up leaders.  It makes everything each of us is doing to further the mission of God in the world that much more important. I am not sure how all this will play out – I think this is a 10-15 year vision.  I am working with our team of leaders to start taking this direction and working backwards to today to say, “what are our next steps as a church in the next 6 months.”  I think you will start seeing things in the near future that look much more like direction than correction and my hope is that it makes your soul sing to know you are a part of the ground floor of something that could be huge! I will say this, as we move forward there are three values that we have begun to identify about this whole process that Epic must begin to embody.

1. Reproducing - everything we do must be marked with an intentionality towards reproducing.  This means every leader in our organization is intentional about reproducing their position – if we plan on starting new churches the practical side means we have to have many more leaders and artists and so, reproduction is a HIGH value!
2. Simple – we must maintain a model that is simple – complex systems are not reproducible.  This means we will continue to push harder into connection groups, stuff for kids, outreach, and Sunday morning celebration services rather than creating a bajillion ministries for ever single thing under the sun.  Simple is reproducible.
3. Biblically Responsible – look, at Epic, we believe the bible to be God’s word, that means something for us.  It means we are going to do our best to speak where the bible speaks and be silent where the bible is silent.  We are going to be honest when we are operating in areas of opinion and take stands where we believe the bible is clear.  This matters because we are not trying to please anyone but the tri-une God of the Bible!

I believe that these three values give us a workable paradigm to begin exploring the direction God has called us to – planting hub and spoke churches to impact the rural part of Kansas and beyond!

I want to invite you to join us in dreaming!  I want to invite you to begin praying!  I want to invite you to begin getting involved and contributing your talents, energy, time and resources to be a part of the most compelling vision I have ever personally encountered!

That’s the kind of church I want to be involved in! That’s the kind of church I long for Epic to be!

Question: Are we there yet? What could we do to get there?

There is a big push in American Christianity for “Personal Evangelism”, it is the idea that you personally are sharing your faith with other people.  I’m, obviously, a big proponent of this – I don’t think anything gets my proverbial engine revving as much as sharing Jesus with another person.  But lately, I have been thinking about how often in scripture there are instances of one person sharing their faith on their own.  Honestly, I can only think of two – Phillip with the Etheopian Eunich in Acts and Paul at the Aeopogus in the book of Acts as well.  There may be more, but that’s what comes to mind.  As I thought about it, most of the evangelism in the book of acts and even the Gospels came in at a minimum of 2 and was really uber effective in larger groups (think of Acts 2 at Pentecost – we know that there were at least 12 who were speaking in other languages and possible as many as 120 – thousands were added to their number that day as evangelism was done in community).

Often times Christians of today bauk at the idea of doing evangelism as a group – but Jesus sent out missionaries 2 x 2 (Luke 10), John & Peter (Acts 3) went to the temple and stirred up some minds, Acts 5:12-16 tells us that the disciples met daily in Solomon’s colonnade and that people were added daily to their number.  Paul & Silas, Paul & Barnabas, Paul & Timothy – any of those names ring a bell – interesting that we talk about them together, why?  Because they went as a team, as community.

What does this mean?  It may mean that Christians engaging their community at large as a Christian community has tremendous power that we may just be missing.  It means that doing it alone is not bad, but it may be harder than having the momentum of a community of Christ followers living out the gospel with people who don’t have gospel.  It may mean that as Christians, our Connection Groups need to join together to start thinking of ways to impact the world.  That our churches should start to come together to interact in the “Colonades” of our day – the YMCA’s, the fairs and festivals, the mall, wherever it is that people are and we can find ways to positively impact them with the gospel.

What have we been missing by simply missing community…?