Greater Things than Jesus - Light the Darkness



Greater Things than Jesus

Greater Things Message Series

January 4, 2009

Happy New Year. Hopefully you had some time to rest and reflect over the holidays. It is good to see you here and ready for the New Year.

Belinda and I thank you for the time to get away and reconnect with our extended family. We went to Kentucky to see Belinda’s family. It was a rich time for us. We are so blessed to have a family that loves being together. We got to spend time with my parents and my brothers family here before we went there so we are doubly blessed.

I hope you enjoyed your family and friends. I also hope you take the time each year to count your blessings. I encourage you to being the year with humble gratitude for the life God has given to you. Wherever there is good, find it, identify it, and thank God and others for the privileges and blessings in your life.

I appreciate the clean, fresh start that a New Year gives. I like that and need that fresh page as much as anyone but I want to write on it in a way that is aware of building on the past to make a better future. I want to embrace what was good and eliminate that which was a drag.

With these things in mind I sat down to write about some of the reasons I love this community we have here at Indian Creek.

Ten Reasons I love this community we have here at Indian Creek Community Church.

• We are a people who live out our faith; we are active in our service

• We are committed to diversity and God is answering our prayers to increase it

• We dare to be on the leading edge with our faith; we risk, we innovate and we stretch to be the best we can be

• You can feel the genuine love here we have for each other and all God’s children

• We have a heart for the world, we partner locally, nationally, internationally

• We are a place of grace and healing

• We worship and pray with all of our heart

• We are a generous church in the way we give what we have away to others

• You can see God is at work in our midst in many ways, it is miraculous

• We are a positive and healthy community, we speak well of each other and others

• We have a HUGE vision that is impacting our city, nation and world. We want every person to find their gift and use it because we are about helping people find their way back to God.

I am very grateful to be your Pastor. Maybe it is sappy but I am a Pastor that is very in love with the people of God in this place. I love what is growing here. Thank you for being you. I love who you are and what God is doing in us.

Thank You

I want to say “thank you” to everyone who invited someone to the Christmas Eve services and who served to make them possible.

We average right at 1,000 a week here with adults, students and children. But we hosted 1533 in the three services on Christmas eve. That’s a 50% increase over a typical Sunday attendance so thank you for making it possible. If you invited a friend remember to have a follow up conversation with them. Studies show that it is friends that lead friends to Christ far more than it is services in a church. If we are going to help people find their way back to God it will take all of us doing our part.

There were 12 persons who made first time commitments and we are following up to welcome them to the family. There were 4 that marked they are “considering.” And 10 families told us they found a church home at Indian Creek.

Thank you for remembering that the very reason we have Christmas is to reach out. I know all of us have ways of celebrating Christmas, thanks to those who acknowledge that Christmas is about making room for others to find their way back to God. Some of you sacrificed your own convenience at Christmas and I think you made a good choice. Thank you.

Set Some Goals for the New Year

Each time we come to a New Year I always take some time to set goals and envision what the year can be. I am in that process now personally and I hope you do the same. I want to be my best for God and I know I’m going to be better if I set some goals and envision what the New Year can bring.

There are at least three basic questions I need to answer about my life and they are, who am I, why am I here and what has God asked me to do. The answers to these questions needs to be lived out in my every day life.

I prayerfully lift these questions and answers up to God throughout the year. At the end of the year and the beginning of the next I take inventory and adjust to stay on course. This process leads me to an exciting and a fulfilling life. I’ll admit that it also challenges me at such a deep level that it leads me to be humble and dependent on God. I don’t always accomplish everything I set out to do so I regularly re-evaluate and adjust. I encourage everyone of you to go through a similar process. Will you do that?

Greater Things

At Indian Creek Community Church we’ve set up an ongoing annual cycle of dreaming, praying and evaluating. I’m very excited about taking this month of January to lay out for you in detail the vision God is giving our leadership for the next decade. I’ve never been as stoked as I am right now for what I believe God is going to do in this next year among us.

We call this series, Greater Things. You saw the titles on the bumper a few minutes ago. They are Greater Things

• Than Jesus,

• Than What We See

• Than What We Ask

• Greater Things Than What We Imagine

We believe that God is saying to us as a church that we are in a “new day” so we want to mark this milestone. As good as the past is, there are greater things ahead.

Will say it with me, There are greater things ahead! Great, let’s say it together again with faith There are greater things ahead.

The School Days 1985-1996

As I look back over the 23 years at Indian Creek Community Church I can see several chapters very clearly. I’ve often called the first 11 years, 1985 to 1996 the School Days. We were a portable church in those days. It wasn’t hard to remember that the church isn’t a building because we didn’t have one. We met in three different schools during that time. We grew from a core group of 25 to 500.

The Building Years 1997-2005

In 1996 we completed our first facility and we launched into what I now call the Building Years. We not only built a building but we grew up as a church in many ways. I have those years continuing until 2005. It was a time of rapid double digit growth for us as a church. In those days we met in the Activity Center. But we were very pressed for space and we dreamed of expanding so we could build what we called “a launching pad” for future ministry.

The Expanding Years 2006-2008

I call the years 2006-2008 the Expanding Years as we completed this phase three facility. We completely overhauled all the internal systems and our mission/vision to make this next chapter we are now living possible. I think the most important thing that happened during this time, and the thing I’m the most excited about, is that we became a “Live Out” church.

We shifted our focus from trying to attract people to come to Indian Creek because of all the great programs we offered to--giving ourselves away to be the hands and feet of Jesus in our community and world. Of course we still want to attract people but now our focus is to move the church outside these walls. We aren’t waiting for the world to come to us we are taking the mission to the people.

We rewrote our mission to make it simple, biblical and easy to remember, Our Mission: We love God, we love People and we Live Out the love of Jesus. We adopted a new vision statement, Our Vision: Help people find their way back to God. We believe we have redefined ourselves in a biblical and missional way in order to fulfill the original plans for His church and for our specific congregation. We built the staff and the operating system to make this next chapter possible.

The Multiplication Years 2009--

I believe this next decade, starting now in 2009, will be a decade of Multiplication. As the leadership has been thinking, praying and preparing several people have been led independently to scriptures like Isaiah 43:18, Forget all that--it is nothing compared to what I am going to do. For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?

We believe the new thing God is speaking about is that God wants us to become a Multi-site church. Most churches are what are sometimes called a “single cell church,” with one church at one location. We believe God wants Indian Creek to become one church with multiple locations. We will have one mission, one vision, one leadership team, one budget with multiple locations, the next one launching this Easter, April 12, in Gardner.

The 2020 Vision Project

We’ve set out to fulfill the 2020 Vision that God gave us to build a strategic network of campuses across Kansas City to help 5,000+ find their way back to God.

Gardner Notes

I’m sure you’ve heard us talking about the Gardner launch throughout the latter part of the fall. You probably know that we’ve chosen Ben Stears, who grew up as a student in this church, to later become our Journey Student Ministries leader, as the campus pastor for Gardner. We are excited about the core group Ben is building and in a few minutes Ben is going to come and give us an update about how things are going in Gardner. But Gardner is only the first of several new sites we envision over the next decade.

You are Needed

We don’t know yet where the new locations will be or who will be a part of the leadership team but we do know it will take all of us actively involved in God’s vision for it to become a reality. And that is a big part of the motivation behind the sharing of this message series.

There is something very important for you to do. If you call Indian Creek Community Church your church home my prayer for each of you is to have God’s passion ignite a vision worth dying for inside of you. I pray you will know how deeply God loves you. He desires an intimate and personal relationship with you and then He wants you to share His heart for the world. I want you to be so full of Him that life has never been sweeter and you want to give the love you’ve discovered away to everyone you meet.

And then I want everyone to take a giant step up in giving and serving to turn the dream into a reality. If we do that, these next ten years in the life of this church will enable us to help more than 5,000 people find their way back to God. And the sites we start, if they multiply and grow, will enable us to reach the city of Kansas City.

We’ve believed since year three of Indian Creek that we are to embrace a city reaching vision that would enable us to build a network of twenty some churches. It is a big hairy audacious goal but we want to give ourselves completely to God and see what He can do through us.

I know we can do this because it is a vision born out the scripture. It is a biblical plan and it is inspired by the Holy Spirit so it will carry His divine power. And I believe we will step up to fulfill the dream God is giving us.

John 14:10-16

I want to take you now to our key scripture text for the series and it is John 14:10-16.

John 14:10-16

10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I speak are not my own, but my Father who lives in me does his work through me. 11 Just believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Or at least believe because of the work you have seen me do.

 12 “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father.

Will you say it with me, There are greater things ahead!

13 You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father. 14 Yes, ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it!

Jesus Promises the Holy Spirit

 15 “If you love me, obey[a] my commandments. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate,[b] who will never leave you.

I still remember the first time I truly comprehended what Jesus was saying to His disciples. I was a young teen and I didn’t know a lot about leadership, or life for that matter, but I remember being flabbergasted at the audacity of Jesus to tell His disciples they would do GREATER things because He was LEAVING! I had to stop reading to digest what He just said.

If I was in that group I think I would have said, wait! What did you just say? Can we rewind here? We will do greater things because you leave! There are three things hard to believe in one statement. First, You are LEAVING? We signed up to follow you not to do the ministry without you! Secondly, what do you mean we can do greater things that you? Greater than raising the dead, greater than feeding the 5,000! How do you get GREATER than that? And thirdly who is the Holy Spirit and how does He factor into this.

In John 14 Jesus just goes right on with His teaching and I don’t see any evidence of the disciples calling time out. But I had to stop reading, put my Bible aside for the moment, and ask myself, if what I read could really be true.

Then I went to the question, if I believed it what would that look like in my life. Because we are the disciples He speaks of when He says we will do greater things. This is a mind bloggling scripture! It will take some time for each of us to unpack what it means and that is why we’ve dedicated the next three weeks of this series to understand what God is saying to us through it.

Greater Things

Someone graciously advised me that the GREATER things were not greater in terms of the quality of the miracles but greater in terms of the quantity or the scope of the work.

Jesus in the three years of His ministry never traveled over 60 miles and He never actually touched over 50,000 persons. But the ministry He ignited in the hearts of His followers that was fueled by the leadership of the Holy Spirit, now reaches around the world. Today rough estimates of the total number of those who claim to follow Jesus Christ number over two billion people.

It was always Jesus plan to work through people. Jesus, when He was on earth, was limited like we are to time and space. But once the payment for sin was made the Spirit that resided in the body of Jesus is now free to fill every heart that invites Jesus in to forgive and to lead. So where Jesus could feed 5,000 at a given moment in time while He was here now His followers feed multiple thousands at every moment around the world.

My favorite example is in Acts 2 where 120 disciples fasted and prayed in the Upper Room until the Holy Spirit filled them so powerfully that when they went out into the streets to preach the Good News 3,000 persons found their way back to God on one day.

Greater Things at Indian Creek

And the Greater Things apply to us at Indian Creek Community Church. Because Jesus lives in you and lives in me the rest of that section, specifically verses13, 14 becomes our promise: You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father. Yes, ask me for anything in my name and I will do it. John 14:13, 14

Ask in His Name

This isn’t a blank check as if we could make up whatever we want and ask God for it and He is obligated to give it to us. There is an important phrase in there—ask in my name. That means according to my will. It doesn’t mean we close all of our prayers, in Jesus name, amen--although that is not a bad way to pray. What it means is that if we are praying for something that is within the will of God, Jesus will make it happen to give glory to the Father. Ask Him for it and He will do it.

So, to make the application here, when we believe God has said clearly to us in prayer that He wants us to help 5,000+ find their way back to God through the ministry of Indian Creek, we pray that prayer with faith. When we pray that we will successfully launch multiple churches like they did throughout the book of Acts. We believe we are at the beginning of the Greater Things the scriptures talk about.

Read through the Book of Acts

Will you start today reading the book of Acts? If you read a chapter a day you can read it through in the month of January. Will you add that to your list of New Year resolutions? Thank you. It will lay the foundation for understanding the biblical basis for planting church campuses.

Multiple Sites

If it was true of Jesus that being limited to one place at one moment in time limits the extent of the reach it is also true of one church in one location. When a church moves to multiple sites there are exponential results. This coming year we will have the same mission and the same ministries affecting two locations. We will have serve days in Olathe AND Gardner. We will have Easter services in Olathe and Gardner. Those are just a few of the bigger events. Every day there will be new touches as we love God, love people and live out.

You have a Part to Play

This can happen when all of us do what I requested earlier, we allow the passion of God for people to ignite a vision within us worth dying for and we all take a big step up into the plan of God for our own personal lives.

This kind of vision requires everyone to empty the grandstands and to get out onto the playing field. There is a role for everyone to play. Some will be stepping out of positions here in the Olathe congregation to plant in Gardner. Others here will be stepping up into new places of service. I’m confident of this, that on that first Sunday, Easter Sunday, April 12, that we will have people trained and ready to serve in every position in Gardner. And I’m also confident that every position here will be filled. I believe this campus will grow back within about six weeks so that we can’t even tell numerically that they are gone. And I believe that they will launch there with between 250 and 350. That is a definitely a “greater thing” because we’ve chosen to trust God and step out in faith. I believe we can pray for that and expect that it will come to pass.

I want to introduce you to Ben Stears and let you hear from him how it is going as he prepares to lead the Gardner campus.

Ben Stears

Pastor, Gardner Campus

Conclusion

It is exciting to hear what God is doing in Ben and through the vision to plant a new campus in Gardner. I close today with an invitation to be a part of the Greater Things God is doing.

We said earlier that God has always chosen to work through people. This can only happen if you will let God’s passion ignite a vision in you worth living and dying for.

I ask you today to live for something greater than yourself.

Pray

Will you pray that God reveals His love for you and His heart for the world? We need the power of the Holy Spirit to fill us like He filled the disciples in the Upper Room.

Without the power of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives we are like a surfer waiting to catch a wave. But the power of the wave of the Holy Spirit can totally carry us to victory over sin and divine strength to do what we can only do when He is at work in us.

Give

We need every person to be a tithing person to make this 2020 Project possible. We need to raise $2M dollars above our 2007 giving over the next two years. We are going to hold our General Fund budget steady over these next two years but it will require $2M to turn the dream into reality. The good news is if every one of us will give one dollar out of every ten we make we will raise more than the 2M we need.

Fifty per-cent of the people who attend Indian Creek give zero to the ministry here. If everyone gets on board this is very doable.

In the next few weeks we will roll out the plan for funding the project but it is easy to remember, every person a tithing person will raise a surplus that enables 5,000+ to find their way back to God.

Get Into Community

We want every person who calls Indian Creek home to find life giving community. It is the support system every one of us needs to love God, love people and live out the love of Jesus. We are launching new groups in the month of January and we also are offering new Wednesday, Explore and Alpha classes.

Step Up into Service

Some are stepping out to serve in Gardner and others who are investing here in Olathe need to step up into service. We want everyone to find the joy of serving out of their sweet spot where their passion, giftedness and life experience meet. If you will step up will you mark on your Welcome card that you want to find a place of service and drop that card in the basket in the back and you’ll get a call and personal service to help get you connected in service? Thank you.

This is how the greater things will happen here, when we are praying, giving, sharing community and serving. Will you be a part of the next chapter here at Indian Creek?

Lord, Please Use Me

Will you pray this prayer daily throughout January, Lord, please use me?

Prayer

Communion

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God’s Vision

Over the years I’ve learned several things about following the will of God. It doesn’t always happen the exact way I envision it. And it doesn’t always happen in the timing that I envision it, in fact it rarely does. But the end result is even better than I imagined and I’m better for the process. More is accomplished because I tried than if I had simply sat in evaluation of the vision and thought—it’s too big, it can’t be done.

I thought I might share a few of those hard to imagine things to encourage your faith today.

• When we were a small core group of 25 we believed God called us to become a church of 1,000+

• As a church of 350 we felt led to start our first church plant, we gave away 50 persons to launch Celebration Community Church with Pastor Fred Bruner.

• As a ten year old church needing to build we launched a second church, Capstone with Pastor Troy Redstone at the same time as we were raising money to build our first building.

• When we prepared to build we were about 500 persons and we had to raise $330,000 cash as a down payment to borrow $2M and we did it. We also paid off the $2M before we built phase 2.

• We built Phase 2 for $2M and paid it off in two years.

• We built Phase 3 and today we have a $30M asset with $1M debt.

• We’ve seen that original core group grow from 25 to over 2,500 who call Indian Creek home.

None of these visions came without lots of prayer, sweat, faith and generosity but they were BIG dreams made possible by a people who humbly gave themselves to God. They were God inspired visions and they came to pass to give glory to God and to fulfill His purposes.

Sometimes people will ask me, did you ever in your wildest dreams imagine this and I say, yes, this is what we saw in our faith. I actually thought the growth would come faster but what I did not see was how far the reach would be from Indian Creek in our nation and even internationally.

The Church Planting Tree

I didn’t see at that time that eight persons including me would pastor church plants or restarts from Indian Creek. I’m including in that group Steve Chiles who left Indian Creek in year three to go to a church plant, the two planters I’ve already mentioned, plus Ralph Eaton and Dennis Carnahan who went to restarts and turned those churches around and James Vogt who last year launched a new church plant in Ontario, OR.

The reach of Indian Creek Community Church gave birth to CMA, the Church Multiplication Association who has now helped 60+ churches start across the U.S. and is now assisting a church plant in Humburg, Germany.

So yes, the vision is BIG and it is dynamic. It is hard to predict exactly how, where and when but much more happens because we dream and we follow the dream than if we simply used human logic and did only that which we knew we could do.

I want to praise God for being the Source! He is the power behind everything but He has chosen to work through people. And remember the mission—it is all about helping people find their way back to God.

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