Discover

Discover

A truck driver was hauling a load of 50 penguins to the zoo. Unfortunately, his truck broke down. He eventually waved down another truck and offered the driver $500 to take the penguins to the zoo. The next day the first truck driver got his truck fixed and drove into town and couldn’t believe his eyes! Just ahead of him he saw the second truck driver crossing the road with the 50 penguins waddling single file behind him. He jumped out of his truck, ran up to the guy and said, “What’s going on? I gave you $500 to take these penguins to the zoo!” The man responded, “I did take them to the zoo. But I had enough money left over so now we’re going to the movies.” That guy didn’t fully understand what he was supposed to be doing. Likewise, many believers today are fuzzy about what it means to be the church and the body of Christ or even what it means to be a follower of Jesus. We need to learn these things anew as we are about “Connecting diverse communities to a lifestyle devoted to Jesus.”

Today we’re looking at the strategy “Discover”. At the heart of Christianity is the invitation to discover something new. God is an inviting God and wants each of us not only to know him but to discover life in Him and the body of Christ at its fullest. To discover means to uncover or to explore a new thing. God calls us to do just that! Psalm 66:5: “Come and see what God has done, how awesome his works in man’s behalf!” It’s our calling too. Philip said to Nathaniel in Luke 1:46 in response to his skepticism about Jesus: “Come and see.” In John 4:29, the Samaritan woman is so moved by Jesus that she runs to tell others and makes this invitation: “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” Time and again, people are invited to come discover who Jesus is and what living for Jesus is really about.

Many times we need to discover a new thing in something we’ve done all our life. The problem is that many of us learned that at one time in our lives but over time we have lost that power, that excitement, that move of the Spirit and that vibrant relationship with Jesus. Many of us are just going through the motions because we’ve always done it that way. But one thing that I’ve learned from weight lifting is that when you start a new routine with new exercises it first shocks the body and starts its to grow. But after 6-8 weeks, the body starts adjust and you reach a point of diminishing returns. Before long, the body stops growing. The only way to get growing again is to change what you’re doing. Many times we need to discover a new thing in something we’ve done all our life for growth.

The same is true for a lot of us. We’ve been Christians all our life but many of us are either plateaued or stagnant. And now God has implanted a new vision in the life of this church and it’s unlike anything we have ever seen or experienced in our Christian walk. We can’t just open our doors and expect that people of different backgrounds, cultures and life experiences will be attracted to our way of being the church and our way of doing church: our music, our language and our culture. We can’t keep doing the same things we have always done and reach different people. We have to learn a new way to be the church. And that’s going to ask a lot of us. Mosaix video “Once you’re focused be ready to work hard. Plan to be uncomfortable. Hang onto your hat, it’s a wild ride. So much of what I thought I knew, God just took a jackhammer to it…..If there’s one piece of advice that I could offer to anybody who’s just starting on this path, it would simply be: to stay broken. Being uncomfortable to some degree is a good thing because the church has not been formulated for me, it’s been formulated for Him, for Christ. Swallow our pride, give up our preferences, consider others more important than ourselves.” Becoming a multi ethnic church is outside our comfort zone and unlike anything we’ve ever done before. So we need to learn how to be the church anew.

We must be willing to discover and learn to be the church in a new way. That’s why the Vision Team felt it was so critical to have as part of our strategy, “Discover” so that people, those new to us and even those who have been a part of the church all of their life, can come and learn a new way of what it means to be the body of Christ and doing ministry in a multi-ethnic context. So one step in our Discover Strategy is going to be a class to learn the principles of what it means to do ministry in a multi ethnic context.