Conversations: Missional Community Growth

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Healthy things always grow, but growth can seem messy or slow.

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Often our hopes of success or growth can be tied to our own need to look good or attract lots of people or some other need for validation.

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God already knows all of your People of Peace and who specifically he is drawing to himself through you and your ministry and your community.

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And he knows the future he has for you.

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You can trust him to perfectly guide you each step of the way.

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If you'll just keep asking what next Lord, and then do what he said.

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You're not running a social club or another program of the church you've engaged in the most meaningful and important journey of your life.

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The pressure's off my friends.

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Enjoy the ride.

Announcer: 00:01:04

Welcome to the Everyday Disciple podcast where you'll learn how to live with greater intentionality.

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and an integrated Faith that naturally fits into every area of life.

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In other words, discipleship as a lifestyle, this is the stuff your parents, pastors, and seminary professors probably forgot to tell you.

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And now here's your host Caesar Kalinowski.

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Ok...

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Rolling again.

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Thanks for joining me.

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Hope you're well, I am a little bit in a funk.

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This last week or so maybe you are too given all that's going on in the Ukraine.

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My heart is broken for those folks and we have many connections there and people that we're serving and training and connected with there.

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And, uh, a lot of friends connected to lots of people there.

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It's kinda broken my heart a little bit this week.

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And of course it's driven me to pray.

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I hope you're all praying for the Ukrainian people and their leaders.

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And also be praying for Putin and his people and all God would be glorified in all this.

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This is such a complex and hard to understand situation.

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I really, and I hate to start out this episode on such a dark note.

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I don't go deep into politics or those kinds of things, but this is happening right now.

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If you're here in this podcast around the time we publish it.

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So I hope you're already playing praying.

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Please join me in praying for the Ukrainian people, for their protection, for their wills, for their stamina, to, to stand strong and hope for the believers to continue to step up and serve.

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I've seen some amazing things going on amongst the church, really serving in this and also be praying for, for Russian people and their leadership as well.

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Wow.

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We'll trust God to glorify himself in this.

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And even though we don't understand it fully now, he'll reveal it some day.

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Okay.

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So that's that.

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We'll try to turn things to a little brighter topic here.

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Now.

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I want to thank our sponsor on the podcast.

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Missio publishing.

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They've got many great resources for Missional living.

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As I keep encouraging you to check that out over at Missio publishing.

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dot com one I wanted to highlight today that I really love is Hugh Halter's book BiVo that's stands for like bi-vocational.

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And as we know, the church in the west is incredibly changing and every denomination's in decline in church, attendance continues to struggle and everything that hangs on the present consumeristic approach to Christiandom is gonna morph and it kinda needs to it's time.

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And so if you think back through history, the gospel came to us through.

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Fully paid or barely paid.

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And mostly non-paid saints, servants of Jesus that we're serving the church.

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That's really the norm and the future, I think of kingdom life.

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And this is what Hugh talks about in BiVo and kingdom life in ministry.

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It really depends on God's people finding creative pathways for leverage.

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All of life into one calling.

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And so this book BiVo by Hugh halter, it's a bit of his own story and it's a framework to help you find maybe a leverage point.

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And how to begin to have maybe a Bi-vocational life, whether you're either a marketplace leader on a business or work in the market, or you're a ministry leader, and you're realizing things are shifting and I need some financial changes or the way we kind of combine all things into one life.

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I think you'll find BiVo to be really encouraging for that.

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Go over and check that book out@missiopublishing.com.

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M I S S O Missio publishing.com?

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I think you'll really enjoy.

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All right.

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So far in our conversation series, we've shown you how you might need to.

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or want to address a whole slew of really important topics, connected to leading folks into discipleship as a lifestyle and Missional living.

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It's been a great series if I do say so myself and I've received a lot of positive feedback.

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So thank you for that.

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You know who you are.

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Thanks for encouraging this series to go and just what you're getting from it.

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Now, if you missed any of the episodes in this series, you may want to go back and check them out.

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We talked about a lot of things.

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You remember all the way back in the first conversations episode we talked about, we don't go to church.

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That's not the buildings, not the church we are.

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And then in the next one, we talked about who we are and we went deeper into our identity.

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Really a pretty cool episode.

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Then we looked at the purpose of the church, making disciples to fill the world with God's glory.

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We looked at the mission of the church and our fourth conversation.

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Then we looked at holistic discipleship, how we make disciples like in all of life and.

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And we went deep into all that.

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We talked about the need for gospel communities on mission, the three legs of the stool.

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And then in the eighth one, we talked about the difference between a small group or a Missional Community.

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That was a pretty cool conversation we compared and contrast it a couple there.

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Last week, we looked at our proactive and reactive mission and the importance of both, but also the importance of not confusing those.

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So if you missed any of those, I want to encourage you to go back.

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They're all pretty short.

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These are shorter episodes than normal by a little bit, and just catch up or re hear those or share them with whoever you think you need to.

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They're not perfect.

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They're a little corny and spots.

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I know, but I think they kind of make the point and they'll give you handles for how to start having these types of conversations.

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Now, today, we'll hear a conversation about the messiness of Missional Community growth from the outside.

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Looking in Michelle communities can look pretty attractive and they appear to be a straight line of growth toward multiple.

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Well, it's not always, so maybe you could guess that, but I think our hope is that that's how it's going to be.

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If you downloaded the full be the church little ebook that these conversations all came from, you'll notice each one of them has like an image attached that kind of illustrates the whole sort of conversation.

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In a, in a nutshell, the one for this one is two growth charts next to each other.

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And the one on the left, the little growth chart and left says how everybody thinks Missional Community growth goes.

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Kind of a straight line up from the bottom left up to the top.

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Right.

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And then on the right side, it says how Missional Community growth really looks and it starts at the bottom left and then it's all these squiggles and it goes all over the place before heading up into the right.

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It's not a straight line and it's a great illustration.

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You see when leading a Missional Community issues arise around things like schedules, perceived busy-ness lack of commitment to the mission.

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People show up with hurt feelings, personal preferences, maybe there's changes in their life, job or pregnancies.

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Oftentimes their sickness that'll affect people's commitment or able.

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To connect and all that, uh, people move away.

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Let me just tell you the small is, big and slow is

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fast and healthy.

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Always grow, but not always in the way or at the pace that we may have anticipated.

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And we'll talk about that more in a little while.

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So now in our final conversation series episode, let's hear a conversation between a couple of guys who are leading missional communities.

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One of them is newer to the process

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and he's a little disappointed in how things are going with his community.

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Here it is take a listen.

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How you doing Josh?

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What's shaken.

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Oh, man, I gotta be honest with you.

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I'm a little frustrated or maybe I'm just disappointed or needing to realign my expectations on some stuff.

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Let it out, buddy.

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Take a deep breath and fill me in a little well, as you know, our Missional Community has been a total blessing.

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We've never really experienced our faith in such real and tangible ways before and last fall, we were able to send a bunch of our family out and they multiplied into another Missional Community.

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Yeah.

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I can see where you're coming from.

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That sounds horrible.

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What where's the rub?

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Okay.

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It seems like we're always taking two steps forward and one step.

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Then a hard left a U-turn jam on the brakes, man.

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I don't know what we're doing sometimes.

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I guess I just figured by now we'd have a little smoother path and just keep making disciples and it would get a little easier.

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Josh was passionate when he spoke about this, what are your biggest challenges as you see them drew asked?

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Now, there always seems to be a few people in our MC that are not really on board.

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They say they want to be a part of making disciples with.

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But their priorities and how they choose to spend their time.

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Don't really line up with that.

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I guess it's an issue of motivation.

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Have you tried shaming them?

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I'm just kidding.

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Well, I probably have without meaning to, but seriously, I know it's a gospel issue.

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Just like I need to be consistently reminded of what Jesus has done for me.

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So I'll live out of a heart of gratefulness and joy.

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So it is with everyone else in our MC.

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It's like, we know this stuff, but we don't always live.

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Like we believe it.

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And that's the point of discipleship, Josh.

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We're on this journey together, moving from unbelief to belief in every area of life.

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That's never a straight line.

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Some things need to be learned and relearned until they sink below the neck line into our hearts.

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So they can truly become part of how we live.

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Last month drew, we had a couple who I thought were totally sold out.

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And they left our Missional Community.

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They said they were just too busy for all of this right now.

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Like this life on mission was an add on to their lives and it just wasn't going to fit into their busy schedule.

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How could I have helped them understand that all of life is a discipleship opportunity waiting to happen.

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I think you are Josh by living in modeling it.

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I know it's tough when everyone's not on the same page.

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This whole life as a Missional Community is messy.

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It's a glorious mess, but it's messy.

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I would keep loving that couple and inviting them back to the adventure, but don't let it derail the rest of the group.

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Keep doing what the spirit leads you to do in faith.

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If it's God's will, they'll be back and we never know what route or path God may have them on in the long run.

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I know he'll use their time in community with you to shape their lives for his glory.

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Ongoing.

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You just may not get to see that season with them.

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And that helps man.

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Once again, I'm learning that this is not something I get to control.

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In fact, I don't really want to.

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Just keep loving people.

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My brother, when you look back over that twisted path and a few more years, it'll be covered with fruit and changed lives and you'll be having this same type of conversation with another young leader.

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While you try to talk him back off ledge.

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Okay.

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I realize this may not be the exact stage of life, where the situation you find yourself in right now, but I hope it's helped you see that.

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Not everything happens as quickly or in the way we want it to people drop off the radar and out of community.

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This is messy stuff.

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On this journey, you got to trust that God is filling your lives with opportunities for discipleship and kingdom expansion every day.

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And some you'll notice others.

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You may not.

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Now earlier, I said healthy things always grow and that's because everything God created has the seed of multiplication built into it.

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Plants, animals, humans, families, communities, and even the church.

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This in many ways is the storyline of the Bible.

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God blessed Adam and Eve, and sent them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

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And when God restarted all of humanity through Noah and his family, he commanded them to be fruitful and multiply and increase the number of people exponentially.

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Remember when God changed, Jacob's named Israel and confirmed his calling, reaffirming his covenant with Abraham.

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And his people God said to him, I am God almighty, be fruitful and multiply.

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And as Jesus sent his disciples out into the world on his great eternal mission, he commissioned them with the same command, go and make disciples all over the world.

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That's pretty much be fruitful and multiply when it comes to discipleship and the growth of Missional communities.

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Multiplication, doesn't just happen.

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Just like we talked about in the last episode, you won't make a disciple accidentally.

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Well, in my experience, multiplication doesn't just happen accidentally either everything we do must be intentionally simple, scalable, and easily reproducible.

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If we're not careful, our communities will remain or revert back to inward focused, small groups or purely Bible studies or self-help circles.

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So then why multiply?

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If it's so much work, why not just get a group of people and hang out?

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Well, there's a lot more at stake than just us being happy and having our holy huddle.

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Right?

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We talk about this a lot on the podcast.

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Think back with me, the prophet Habakkuk declared the father's vision for the earth.

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When he said for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea as we multiply and expand the church as disciples of Jesus are becoming more like him and making more disciples God's glory is multiplied.

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The writer of Hebrews said that Jesus is the radiance of his father's glory and the exact imprint of his nature it's the purpose and plan of the gospel, that more and more of Jesus life and ministry through his disciples, fill up every nook and cranny and family and neighborhood, every nation on the planet.

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This is how God is filling the earth with his glory.

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That's why we do all this.

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Why we are so privileged to be and make disciples of Jesus.

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Uh, life given to making disciples is a life lived, fulfilling.

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God's eternal purpose for us and for all of creation, talk about living a life of purpose.

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I want this for myself, my family, my kids and grandchildren.

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Thanks father for calling us into this amazing life with you.

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That's why we multiply.

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And that's why.

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We buckle up some times and we keep making disciples and multiplying leaders in multiplying communities.

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And because we get to, it's a part of God's grand purpose for us.

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All right now, it's time to leave you with the big three takeaways from today's topic.

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So if you want a copy of this, if you're busy, you can't write these down, but it's something you'd like to talk about.

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You're sharing this conversation.

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You want the big three, just go over to Everyday.

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Disciple dot com forward slash big three.

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And we'll send you a printable PDF of this.

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Week's big three.

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Here we go.

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Here's number one.

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If you're leading a Missional Community, who do you need to have this conversation?

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Go for it or at least send them a link to this episode.

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And then maybe after they've listened, get together and discuss all of this.

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If you and others in your community are feeling frustrated with certain aspects of life on mission, this will be encouraging to them.

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And if you're married, be sure to listen to this and have a conversation around this topic with your spouse.

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Number two, your desire to make disciples and build gospel centered communities on mission is a part of God's eternal purpose.

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The purpose of the gospel, it really is.

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You're not running a social club or another program of the church you've engaged in the most meaningful and important journey of your life.

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As you increasingly live out of your God-given identity.

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Ask the holy spirit to give you more wisdom and grace and the intentionality you need to continue on in this great work.

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And number three, healthy things always grow, but growth can seem messy or slow.

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Often our hopes of success or growth can be tied to our own need to look good or attract lots of people or some other need for validation.

Caesar: 00:18:10

God already knows all of your People of Peace and who specifically he is drawing to himself through you and your ministry and your community.

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And he knows the future he has for you.

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You can trust him to perfectly guide you each step of the way.

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If you'll just keep asking what next Lord, and then do what he says, the pressure's off my friends.

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Enjoy the ride.

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Okay.

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I hope that's encouraging to you and I hope you'll have these conversations and I hope you'll share this whole series with someone else that you love.

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I think you'll be glad you did.

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And I think there'll be really encouraged now.

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That's it for today?

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Join me next week.

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As we talk about the habit of small steps, I'm going to share with you a simple exercise that we do with the folks that we coach.

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That helps them consistently take small steps in their disciple-making progress.

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I think it will really encourage you as well.

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I'll talk to you soon.

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Thanks for joining us today.

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For more information on this show and to get loads of free discipleship resources, visit Everyday Disciple dot com.