- [Narrator] We are called by God to share the whole gospel with the whole world. Rockpoint Reaching is each of us. It requires action from us and the need for belief to exist in us, belief in the power of the gospel and the high calling to share. We are Rockpoint Reaching, providing clean water in Kenya, working for better healthcare opportunities in the Philippines, building new church steeples in New Orleans, volunteering time to see hundreds of children learn about Jesus through Vacation Bible School, or donating funds to help support missionaries as they bring the gospel to restricted places and in new languages. New hearts become a part of the kingdom of God. We reach outside our walls as a church family, for the purpose of bringing God glory, as he changes the hearts and lives of those in this world forever. Let's not slow down. Let's look up, look out and ask God today, "What next?"

- Today, we're gonna talk about your involvement in the mission field that many of you find yourselves in. And that's why I've asked a friend of mine from Dallas Theological Seminary, Bill Hendricks, to come and be our speaker. Bill is the Executive Director for Christian Leadership at the Hendrick's Center. Now it has that name because well, they named it after his dad. And it's Dr. Howard Hendricks. If you've been here at Dallas over the years, you know the stories that I've told, we affectionately refer to him as Prof. Hendricks and that's Bill's dad. And I got to know Bill down at Dallas Seminary years ago. We met at a Vietnamese restaurant. So I still remember that. I don't know what it is about food and me, but it just somehow clicks and it becomes photographic. But over the years, we've kept in touch with one another. Bill is the Executive Director there. He's also the President of the Gifted Center, which helps individuals find their gifts and their skills and their talents as they're mobilized into life. And specifically as he's gonna speak into the workplace, because he's also on the steering committee for the theology of work project. And that's very important as we consider the resources that he's made available to us. He's the author and co-author of several books. I'll have that on the resource list that'll come out on Thursday. He's a graduate of Harvard, Boston University, and Dallas Theological Seminary. And I want you to give Bill Hendricks a warm Rockpoint welcome as he comes up.

- Well, Roy, if you remember every meal, remember people by every meal. I'm glad you didn't get food poisoning after that particular dinner. And Roy mentioned, he mentioned that I went to Harvard. Let me just put a perspective on that. It's a true fact that when I was at Harvard, Bill Gates was at Harvard exactly the same time. He was a couple years behind me. And of course in those days, nobody knew that he was Bill Gates. But anyway, he dropped out, I graduated. I think that tells you everything you need to know about going to Harvard. Hey, I want to enroll you this morning to use your imagination, okay? I hesitate to say close your eyes. You may not make it back. Just use your imagination with me, okay? And let's just imagine that here we are a group of Christ followers for our weekly time of worship, Sunday morning. But we have no church building, all right? And we probably have no musical instruments. We certainly don't have an ensemble of musicians and singers. And of course, we have no sound system. We have no projection, we have no technology. We don't really have the New Testament. We may have portions of the Old Testament, or depending on our culture background, we may actually have the entire Old Testament, but the only parts of the New Testament that we have are sayings of Jesus, teachings of Jesus, particularly the Sermon on the Mount that have been passed down to us from our forebears and some of the sayings of the apostles and different fragments of maybe letters that they wrote, but not very much. That means that when our leader stands up to preach, he doesn't really go very deeply into doctrine of theology, 'Cause we don't have much of that yet. And he doesn't spend 30 hours preparing for his sermon, which is usually a fairly brief sermon. Instead he speaks out of a depth of wisdom and insight that he's gained over years of sort of immersing himself in what scripture teaches and what he's gleaned through years of prayer and personal worship in the formation of his own soul and his own walk of Christ. And his sermons are primarily exhortations and applications related to godly living. And they seem to theme around four categories, okay? They theme around sexual ethics. They theme around loving our enemies and taking care of the poor. They theme around living a life of patience that's particularly free from anger and they theme around speaking truth in love. Now, are you still with me? We're imagining we're the body of Christ in that little congregation. And of course, we're probably not quite this big if we're meeting in somebody's house. These are the circumstances in which we're gathered this morning. And on top of all of that, imagine this, we have no plan or strategy or organized approach for how our church is gonna grow. We don't have a missions or outreach program, for that matter, we don't have a bit on staff, who's even tasked with thinking about that. In fact, we don't even let unbelievers join us in our gatherings because frankly it's not safe to do so. And if by some miracle, some unbeliever says, "No, I wanna be a part, I wanna become a Christ follower," we don't just say, "Oh good, pray this prayer. "Now get up and give your testimony and let's baptize you." And you're in. No, we interview them in depth first and try to determine, is your interest genuine and sincere? And if they pass that screen, then we enroll them in about a three to five-year, pretty intensive, arduous instruction and spiritual formation track, at the end of which we examine them to see whether there's actually been a change from the way they used to live to the way they're now living. And if we conclude, yes, there's been that change, then and only then do they stand as a candidate for baptism and only after being baptized, are they considered a member of this community and allowed to share the Lord's supper with us. Now having imagined all that, let me ask you this question. Do you think this whole scenario that I've just given you would be the best way to carry out the Great Commission? You know the Great Commission, I understand you've been talking about the Great Commission given in Matthew, where Jesus says, "Go and make disciples of all the nations, "baptizing them in the name of the father, "the son, the holy spirit, "teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you. "And remember I'm with you to the end of the age." That's what we refer to as the Great Commission. The Great Commission is given roughly five times in the New Testament. This time here in Matthew and then each of the three other gospels have some version of it. And then at the beginning of the Book of Acts, where Jesus tells his followers, "You will receive power when the holy spirit "has come upon you and you will be my witnesses "in Jerusalem and then in the region to Jude and Samaria "and ultimately to the remotest parts of the earth." Jesus spoke this last version of the Great Commission to the 11 remaining disciples and a handful of other followers, just moments before he was taken into heaven and vanished from their site. And that group promptly returned to Jerusalem and made their way to what is referred to, in Acts, as the upper room. Was it the same upper room where Jesus celebrated the Lord's supper with his disciples the night before he was crucified? Quite possibly, we don't know for sure. But what seems clear, both before and after the crucifixion, is that that upper room was a safe place. It was a safe room where they could stay out of sight of the authorities who remember were still hopping mad at Jesus, at his followers, and at this scandal of an empty tomb. But what happens next is a fact of history that scholars are still sort of scratching their heads over to this day. That group of frightened 120 people in an upstairs room grew over the next 300 years to an estimated five to 6 million people in the Roman empire alone. That's about 12% of the population. And the question that we are still trying to figure out is how did that happen? The myth, if I can call it that, they received sort of popular opinion about that, that we sort of, however we get it, we get it, is that the apostles went everywhere and evangelized people first from Jewish backgrounds and from Gentile backgrounds. And by that means churches were planted and pastors were trained and missionaries were dispatched. And that cycle repeated itself over and over until gradually and eventually a lot of people became Christians. And all of this climaxed in 312 AD when the Roman Emperor Constantine himself is facing a battle and he's converted to Christianity when he sees a cross up in the sky and under the cross, the words in this sign, conquer. And from that point, Christianity takes over the empire. That's the story that we have been told or that we tell ourselves. However, all of the evidence from the first 300 years after Christ, suggest a very different story. The apostles indeed fan out across the world, sharing the gospel. But what's remarkable is that after they come and they go, we don't really hear about any more missionaries. We certainly don't have any famous ones or ones that are really known, maybe one. And yet the church grows. The church grows. If you study where did it grow, you now come across some very interesting data. You find out that the first early churches were in the seaports, they were along the trade routes. And you don't have to be a trained sociologist to put some dots together and say, "Huh, this would be where the business people traveled to. "This would be where the sailors traveled to. "This would be where the merchants traveled to." And in fact, when we look in the Book of Acts, which I understand you've been studying, we see some of these kinds of simple, unnamed people, not professionals, just everyday people who somehow had come to faith and their faith went with them wherever they went. We run into a lady named Tabitha in Joppa whose occupation is not given, which suggests that maybe she was not employed. But she's remembered as a person who did good deeds and did charity for the poor and the people around her. We hear about a guy named Simon. All we know is that he is a Tanner and he lives in Joppa. We run into a military officer named Cornelius in Caesarea. When Paul gets to fill a pie, we hear about a woman named Lydia. And she's interesting because she seems to have a business trading in what was called purple. It was a very expensive dye, which suggests that this was a woman of some means because when you sell luxury goods in the Roman empire, you tend to make some decent money. She was a business woman. There was a couple in Corinth named Aquila and Priscilla. They made tents. And we read about Crispus, a Jewish synagogue leader in Corinth. And where I'm going with this, is to make a simple observation. The people who took the gospel to the Roman world were not so much the paid professionals. They were everyday Christians. In other words, they were people like you. They were people like you. People in the business world. People who are professionals of one sort or another. People in healthcare, in food service, in real estate, maybe you're in logistics. Maybe you're an artist or a creative. Maybe you're a student, or you work in academia. People in the government of different levels, people in the military and by extension, first responders. People in the trades and people who do maintenance. People who build things and are in construction. And of course the many people who are employed, but they're not paid, like people who stay home and take care of children or elderly parents. People who are simply unemployed. People who are disabled and can't work or they're ill or in some way, or people who are no longer employed. These are the people who, in the early church, took the gospel and transformed an empire. We have a lot of these same people here this morning and they faced a world, not unlike what ours is becoming. In other words, where Christians are not looked on very kindly and in some quarters are despised and even attacked. And nonetheless, the early church grew. And it didn't grow rapidly. It grew patiently, but irresistibly. It could not be stopped. And I want to emphasize it grew not because the early Christians had an evangelistic strategy, they didn't. But because God already had a strategy and the strategy he was them. And the evidence for that is found right out of Ephesians chapter four. And so if you wanna text to hang all this on this morning, just write Ephesians 4:10. Just to give the context, Ephesians four, Paul is telling the Ephesians church that God has given what he calls gifts to the church, to people. And some of those gifts bear the responsibility to do something with the rest of the body. And that's what verse 10 says. What is that responsibility? Simply this, "To equip the saints "for their work of ministry." "To equip the saints for their work of ministry." There's three sort of constructions in that verse, "To equip the saints for their work of ministry. Well, let's get clear, who are the saints? That word literally means holy ones. And in the early days of the church, it bent everyday Christians. Like the rank and file, salt of the earth people. Not the paid professionals. In fact, there were no paid professionals until after Constantine became emperor. That's a whole another story. Well, that's a whole another story in part because you know what happened soon after that? Saints got co-opted. The word "saints got co-opted," and began to mean Christians who had died and done certain things that qualified them to be saints up there, holy ones up there. That's not what the New Testament means. It means holy ones down here. Holy ones, not by their own merit, but because Christ has sanctified them. And he's talking about people like you, every day Christians who have work to do. And by the way, we're just defining work this morning as whatever it is you do all day, okay? But you are the everyday Christians and the work of these folks that have those particular gifts, it says "You have your ministry," their work of ministry, their work of service. What does that mean? Well, in simple terms, it means that each of us is called, each saint is called to play a part in what God is doing in this world. Each of you is called to play a part in what God is doing in this world, okay? And, therefore, the last construction here, to equip means, in this case, Rockpoint Church. It has a mandate to equip you to do that work, to prepare each saint to play their part. And here's the point, the early church took this equipping part very seriously. They had no strategy for witnessing, but they had a very well developed strategy for equipping. And equipping had to do with the formation of people, the development of people, to make people a certain kind of person, namely a Christ-like person. And so they took great pains to cultivate people over time, to have a certain mindset, which then would lead into certain habits and disciplines that they would follow, which ultimately would be begin to affect their own lifestyle and the way they conducted themselves in the world. It was a strategy that was highly focused on worship and intimacy with Jesus and his teaching. And there was a radical insistence on obedience in doing the teaching of Jesus. And so formation would ultimately result in a transformation from the way one used to live before they came to faith, to living as a Christ follower. And it affected how you would see the world. It affected how you would see other people and it would affect how you responded to the world and other people. In short, you'd start to look a lot more like Jesus. Well, let's say, and I believe it's true that Rockpoint does its job of equipping you. What would that mean for your work, that is what you do all day? Well, for one thing, it would affect how you even think about the work itself, the work that you're doing. Again, whatever it is, may be paid, may not be paid. You may longer be working, but you have grandkids that you have now devoted your life to. Whatever it means for you, I want you to sort of think about, "What is it that I do all day?" One thing that affects is how you regard that and see that thing itself is valuable and worth something, the work itself, okay? How would that be? Well, first of all, that you would do that work with excellence because it matters to God. Every form of legitimate work matters to God. By the way, did you know work is a gift from God? Some of you that may be new news. Some of you might think, "Oh no, work's part of the curse," right? No, no, no, no, no. Work was given before the curse. The very first words that God says to his two brand new, we could say spanking new human creatures, had to do with their work, their purpose, their mission, their marching orders. The very first words he says, "Be fruitful, multiply, "fill the earth, rule over it." God wants us to make the world and its people flourish. The world on its own is not very fruitful. All it does is give us raw resources, right? I've never stood next to a mountain of war and been standing there and all of a sudden a Mercedes-Benz pops out of that mountain. Never seen it happen. No, only human beings can add value to the Earth's resources to make them fruitful. So somebody's gotta get that or out that ground and turn it into metal. And somebody else has to shape that metal into a car. Somebody else has to get the oil out of the ground and refine it to put into the car to drive. Somebody else has to put the roads down. Somebody else, they gotta grow the food for all these workers to do that work. Somebody else gotta educate all those workers so they can do that work. Somebody's gotta finance all that work. Somebody's gotta take care of the health needs of these people as they do the work. Somebody's gotta take care of the spiritual needs of these people as they do the work. We have all kinds of stuff that have to happen to make the world and its people flourish. And I don't know what your work is, but somewhere, you are in this big web of relationships that God has ordained, that you might cause the world and its people to flourish. And by the way, on top of that, God has made you the way he's made you and he's given to each and every human being a means of causing the world and its people to flourish. We call that your giftedness, we call that your giftedness, every single one of you has been given a means of causing the world and its people to flourish. It's a whole another topic to talk about. I just wanna put that in there so that you're aware of it. Because in addition to doing your work with excellence, you also wanna ideally do it with competence, right? You want it to be done well, you want it to be done correctly. You don't want it to be shoddy work that you screwed it up. That gets into the whole issue of job fit, which is where you try to find work that fits who you are in terms of your giftedness so you can actually deploy that. But this issue of excellence and competence come together to buy you credibility when you finally do open your mouth about the gospel. 'Cause let's face it, you won't have a hearing if your work is sloppy and it doesn't hold up. Imagine you invite a plumber to your house because you've got a plumbing problem. And when the plumber leaves, the problem's worse than when they came, but you're out another 200 bucks or whatever. Oh, and by the way, on this way out the door, the plumber said, "Oh, here's a flyer, "our church is having a program next week. "We're gonna have a comedian there. "And there'll be a magician there for your kids. "You really ought to come." And you're thinking, "Are you kidding me? "You just screwed up my whole bathroom. "You think I'm gonna come here about ..." The excellence of your work gives you credibility with the people that you are trying to witness to. Formation would also affect your work in terms of how you deal with your coworkers. It's not new news to you that you are called by Christ to love your coworkers. All right, that sounds good. I guess that means be nice to 'em, at least means be nice to 'em. But we've now got coworkers that they're mad. They're mad at Christians. They think Christians are the problem. They've frankly become our enemies. Well, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus turned up the heat. He said, "Yeah, it's real easy to love people that love you, "but I want you to love your enemies. "In fact, I want you to pray "for the people that persecute you." Invite you even now, as I'm speaking, think about, "Okay, where I work in my neighborhood, "I know there's somebody who hates me. "I know there's somebody who hates my Jesus. "I may have even gotten persecuted by that." Would you mind putting that person right at the top of your prayer list tomorrow morning? That's what Jesus is asking us to do. But before we get there, we gotta clean up some love in-house. 'Cause today, before we love our enemies, before we love those who persecute us, we've now got a new problem, which is really an old problem, which is, "Huh, I've got other fellow believers "that I got problems with and they got problems with me." Well, the New Testament could not be clear on what we're supposed to do about that. Take for instance, Philippians two. "So if there's any encouragement in Christ, "any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, "any affection and sympathy complete my joy "by being of the same mind, having the same love, "being in full accord and of one mind," hmm, one mind, "do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, "but in humility, count others more significant "than yourselves." Wow, that's a tall order, but that's in-house. He's talking, let's start with your brothers and sisters in Christ or Colossians chapter three. "Renounce the darkness, put on the light." And then he says, "Put on then as God's chosen ones "holy and beloved compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, "meekness, and patience bearing with one another, "and if one has a complaint against another," you may got a complaint this morning. He's talking to us. "If anyone has a complaint against another, "forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, "so you also must forgive. "And above all these, put on love, "which binds everything together in perfect harmony "and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts." Wow, we have our work cut out for us. We've gotta go love the people at work even the ones that hate us. We can start by loving the people close at hand, who are inside the body of Christ. And this was a problem in the early church every bit as much as it is to today. But that love for our fellow Christians also buys us credibility with the watching world. We don't love each other, they don't wanna hear about our Jesus. Now speaking of prayer, formation says that we can now begin to pray for our coworkers and pray with our coworkers. Do you pray for your coworkers? Again, some of you may have to think broadly, "Well, who are my coworkers?" Again, if you're like a grandparent, maybe you do pray for that wayward grandchild and wait to see what God does. By the way, it works in reverse, grandchildren praying for grandparents. I have that story. My father's father was not a believer. And as a child, I remember we would pray for him. I would pray for him. The story's told, I don't know if it's true or not. He came to our house one time and before a meal, I said, "Well, grandad," I'm told, I said, "Well, grandad, are you a Christian yet?" "Oh, no son, that's not in my " Supposedly, I said, "Well, that's okay. "You will be soon 'cause we're praying for you." But God takes prayer seriously. And roll the clock forward, 50 years later, whatever it was, as he was on his deathbed, he had been met by a friend of my dad's, it's a long story. The guy befriended him, struck up a relationship, visited him in the hospital. He was at the point where he would at least listen to somebody talk about Jesus. And one day, that guy comes in and my dad had been in the military. He said, "Okay, I got a new commander." And he'd come to faith. The prayer was answered. God is patient. God is faithful. And that's what you gotta remember with our evangelism, is we don't have to seal the deal immediately. Let me just say about praying for coworkers. I encourage you to be open about offering to pray with people and for people. A lot of people find out you're a Christian or they know you go to church or you've got your Christian thing, whatever. "That's fine for you, that's not really for me." And then God goes to work and something happens. And suddenly they're like, "Oh my gosh, I need help." And you can tell it, and you go into work and you're like, "Charlie, what's wrong?" "Oh man, I just found out my mom's got cancer." "Oh, I'm so sorry. "Can I pray for you?" You go into work and you get to talking over lunch and you find out your coworker's son has got problems, being bullied or whatever. "Oh man, that sounds awful. "Can I pray for you?" The amazing thing is I've never had anybody say, "No, you can't pray for me." Even the atheists are like, "Yeah, we can't hurt. "Go ahead, whatever." But most of the time the person says, "Oh my gosh, yes, "nobody's ever offered to pray for me before. "You would do that for me?" Everything I'm saying here this morning is counterintuitive. I can feel some of you're probably going, "Bill, this is maybe interesting, "but frankly, you haven't really taught me anything "about how I'm supposed to witness to my coworkers." Well, it all depends on what you mean by the word, witness. Go back to that Acts 1:8 version of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus said, "The holy spirit will come "and then you will be my witnesses." Not you will do witnessing, "You will be my witnesses." The implication here is Jesus is saying, "I'm going to do the witnessing through you. "I'm going to do the witnessing through you, "because I'm gonna show people through you, "what a changed life looks like. "I'm gonna invade your life with my holy spirit. "I'm gonna take you from what you were to who you are in me. "And when people see that, "more importantly, when they feel that, "when you demonstrate that, "not because you're trying to gin up the energy to do it, "but because you've now been formed "in a Christlike lifestyle and mindset and tone, "they start to feel the attractiveness of the gospel." And so the focus of our lives should not be so much on, "Okay, I gotta do this sort of witnessing project." No, the focus should be on godly living. The focus should be on forming your character and your tone. The focus should be on intimacy with Jesus and on radical, practical obedience to his word before a watching world. And they are watching. And also we can slow down. The early church took 300 years, okay? And they didn't seem particularly in a hurry, and neither was God. Because God seems to move over time. And he works over time in a heart, and that heart is in a person who looks at another person and says, "Okay, I have this experience, "this experience, this experience, this experience. "And there's something that comes together "that says, "Something's going on here. "There's something different."" And when the time is right and the pain is enough and the holy spirit prompts them, they move toward you and they say, "Hey, would you tell me more "about this Jesus?" Let's pray. Father, may we be patient people, caring people, praying people, earnest people, but may our patience be resting in the trust that you are at work. And frankly you're at work through us. That's your plan. Father, I pray for these saints here at Rockpoint. Lord, would you begin to and continue to work in their lives with the end of working through their lives, to reach people in this community? And in your good time, Lord, may people say, "Please tell me more about this Jesus." Thank you, that you placed us in the world to be your salt and your light, your voice, your hands, your feet, most of all, your heart. We pray all this in your name, amen.