Good morning, Veritas. How are we doing? All right. I got a few claps. Glad to hear it. If we haven't met. My name's Danny. I'm the college ministry director here at Veritas. And I just wanted to say one more time. Thank you for your prayers. Thank you. I know many of you served in unique ways to love and welcome our youth and college students back. Uh, the main thing I'd ask, though, is that you keep praying and keep digging in. Because the funny thing about a kickoff is there's four quarters after that. And so be praying for this year. Be praying that God continues to reach and save students, uh, for the glory of his name and for the good of our campuses and our schools. Uh, that the next generation may raise up to love the Lord even more than us. Amen. All right. Well, today, though, uh, I've got a different task. I have to preach and close up this series, answering the call. And if you have a Bible, flip it to Matthew twenty eight. We're going to start there this morning. Let that propel us into what we're talking about. Uh, as you flip there, I have a confession to make. And my guess is, though, some of you in this room will hopefully be sympathetic. Here's the confession. I don't think I've ever gone to a health checkup with a care physician since I moved out of my parents house. Someone said, wow. Yeah. Um, here's the thing. I've been to urgent care, like when I'm feeling sick, but I've never gotten like, a primary care physician, never put a health check up on the schedule. I feel a little bad sharing that, uh, like, this guy does not have his life together, you know? But I don't feel that bad sharing that. And here's why. Studies would tell me that an estimated ninety percent of Americans put off health screenings and checkups. So good for you, ten percent out there. We're proud of you. Couldn't be us, though. Um, you know, maybe it's because life feels too busy and crazy. Like, the last thing I have time for right now is to schedule an appointment, run it through my insurance, figure all that out. It's a big headache. Um, maybe it's because you already know what the doctor's going to say. you don't like what the doctor's going to say. Right. You don't want his advice about your weight or your cholesterol level and all that good stuff. So either way, you put off the practice of having a doctor examine your body to see, hey, are there signs of dysfunction? And let me tell you what changes I think need to be made. My point with starting this way isn't to talk about the American people's health crisis. Um, but I do actually want to talk about the American Christian health crisis because I wonder if we examine the body of the church, what we would find. I think if we stopped putting off our checkup as the church in America has gotten older, if we carefully examined the state of Christianity, I think we might find a diagnosis that might feel a little uncomfortable. First, we'd find that this checkup that many Christians don't even know what they believe anymore or what makes them Christian. Uh, recent surveys of evangelicals have found that core truths, the things that make Christians Christian, like the personhood of the Holy Spirit, that everyone's born sinful before God, that Jesus is the one way to be made right with God, and that the church is called to share the gospel. Those truths are becoming less and less firmly held. Which I guess isn't that surprising, since only about eleven to twenty percent of American Christians have read the whole Bible. We don't know how to think like Christians anymore because we don't know what Christians believe anymore. I would argue that's a little unhealthy and a little dysfunctional. Second, we'd find that this health checkup that many Christians don't look much different from non-Christians anymore. Let me give you a couple examples. Just so you know, I'm not making this up. Christians and non-Christians have almost the exact same rate of divorce. Less than ten percent of Christians share their faith with others. And here's a doozy. Christians are more likely to be struck by lightning than become cross-cultural missionaries. I could go on, but I think you get the picture. You know, Jesus told us to be salt and light, but we're looking a little diluted and dim today in our belief and in our practice, these core things that make Christians Christian. The modern Christian is a Christian in crisis. Now, when a patient's unhealthy, it's often not always, but often because they've neglected a clear call or prescription from their doctor. A call to eat differently, exercise differently, live differently. A call that's probably hard and uncomfortable, but important. Important to that patient's well-being. And could it be that Jesus has made a clear call to his church that we've subtly drifted from a call that's hard, but necessary for the well-being of his people? And if that's true, what if answering this call could produce a renewal of healthy and vibrant Christianity in this country. But what is this call that produces what I would say fruitful Christianity instead of dysfunctional Christianity? What is that call? And to answer that question, we're going to let a famous passage. I'm sure many of you have read or even heard preached before. And let that be our jumping off point. It's a passage that's famously called the Great Commission. But what I want to do this morning is look at this passage again with fresh eyes to see if the central call in this passage. The actual main action in this passage is still understood by us today. And to see if maybe we haven't understood the significance of this call. So if you have a Bible, we're in Matthew twenty eight eighteen through twenty. That's where we're going to start this morning. And this passage takes place between Jesus's resurrection and his ascension. Jesus, he's risen from the dead. He's defeated sin, Satan, and death. He's about to rise up to the right hand of God. But before Jesus ascension, he says, hey, I have to give the church some clarity on their mission, a mission. We're still living in the middle of today. And here's what it says. And Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and of the son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. Now, one of the reasons this is one of the more well-known passages in Scripture is just how many important ideas are packed in here. This passage has lots to say about the church needing to go to and evangelize unreached people groups around the world. The people that have not had the chance to hear the gospel. That's part of the mission. This passage has lots to say about baptism, about bringing people into the life of the local church. That's part of the mission. This passage has much to say about the confidence Christians should have, that Jesus is present with His church as his church goes throughout the world. But you could spend countless hours preaching each one of those truths that do need to be taught on and understood, all while missing this passage's center of gravity. Okay, I'm going to get nerdy for a moment. If you're a language nerd in the room, this one's for you. Here's what you need to know about the grammar of this passage. If you want to actually understand it and understand what Jesus is telling us. There is one imperative verb in this passage and three participles. I forgot what a participle was until I was like, like reading and studying on this. So let me kind of help walk us through this. An imperative verb that's like the main command and participles are kind of describing how that main command or action will be accomplished. So if I told you win the game by running, passing and catching, win the win the game. That's the imperative verb, the main goal, the main command go out and win while running, catching, passing are the participles, the things that serve the command. Here's why that's important. If we know the imperative verb in this passage, we'll clarify Jesus's main command for his people and what the original Greek of this passage reveals is that go baptize and teach are the participles, and make disciples is the main imperative. Which means that for Jesus going, baptizing, teaching all deeply important things, they are not ends in themselves, but have this goal making more disciples of Jesus. This doesn't mean those things are less important, but it does help us remember. The point of those things is to make not just converts, but disciples in our families, our churches, the unreached places of the world. But what is a disciple? See, the problem is Jesus's central call can kind of get lost on us if we read it too quickly, because we aren't really sure what a disciple is. I think this word is helpful for us to recover because it reminds us of something important. It reminds us that Jesus seems to be after more than just getting more people in church buildings. Uh. See, in Jesus's time, a disciple referred to someone who dedicated their entire lives to follow their teacher. Here's how Doug Greenwold he's an expert in first century context of the Bible puts it. He says this. The essential qualities of first century disciples were desire and submission, and assumed that emulation or imitation and biblical literacy were a given. This included a passion and zeal to embrace the behavior their rabbi deemed best to honor God. It was a radical, willing and totally conforming submission to the authority of their rabbi. If you're going to break this down a little more simply, a disciple is a devoted learner and imitator and follower of their teacher. This means that by calling us to make disciples, Jesus is telling us, hey, I don't just care about getting more bodies in seats. I care about those people becoming devoted learners, imitators, and followers of me. And see, Christianity isn't just about being saved from sin's penalty, though. That's foundational, and we can't lose that. It's also about Out being freed from sin's power. And so you start to look more and more like the one who saved you. Because when you receive the grace of Jesus in salvation, you also receive His Spirit that calls us into a new way of life, a life of looking less and less like our sin, and more and more like our Savior. And we need both dimensions of salvation of our salvation to understand what's the fullness of what Jesus actually invites his people into. But the most important question is, do we actually see this idea of discipleship in Scripture itself? And I think we do. Look at Luke six forty with me, where Jesus says this A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone, when he is fully trained, will be like his teacher. So what's a disciple? According to Jesus, a disciple is a devoted learner who is becoming fully trained to be like his teacher. Let me show you just one other place. This is picked up by Paul. Here's what he says in Galatians four nineteen. This is a really powerful sentence. This is his hope for the church. He says, my little children, for whom I'm again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you. What's Paul's concern for the church in Galatia? That Christ is formed in them, that they become devoted followers, learners, imitators of Jesus, that his, uh, being is formed in them to look less and less like their sin and more and more like their Savior. And we actually see this idea in the Great Commission itself. When Jesus says this, make disciples of all nations. How? Teaching them to observe all I've commanded you. Discipleship isn't just learning some things Jesus taught. It's not just obeying some things Jesus taught, it's learning and imitating him fully because you are in complete submission to him. It's becoming a mature, fully trained follower of Jesus in every sense of the word. That's discipleship. So hopefully now it's clear to us. This is Jesus's central call to make more disciples. And hopefully it's also clear to us that to be a disciple is to be a devoted learner and imitator of Jesus. Because with those two things in place, we're able to understand, okay, what's the central call? Jesus is prescribing us today for the health and fruitfulness of Christianity instead of the dysfunction of Christianity. I'm going to give you the idea a little early, and then we're going to break it down. This is what I'd say. Be a devoted follower of Jesus who seeks to help others become devoted followers of Jesus. That's his call. Be a devoted follower seeking to help others become devoted followers. If you're a Christian, you're called to be a disciple of the Christ you follow. That's a non-negotiable. Discipleship and Christianity are synonymous, not just being a believer of Jesus or a fan of Jesus, but a follower of Jesus. And if you're a Christian, you're also called to help make more disciples, to help see others around you become maturing followers of Jesus. That's the call. Now you might think, okay, our natural next step is like, how do we do this? Because that seems like a big command. The Great Commission is a big deal and we're going to get there. But before we do, I think we need to just take a moment, step back and answer a different question. It's actually a question the church has been asking subtly for a while now. Even if they wouldn't say it like this. This is the question why is this the central command of the Great Commission? Why is this? Why is making disciples so important? And of course, there's a simple but true Sunday school answer. Well, Jesus said. So right. He's our King. He's made a command. And the proof of your love for your king is the extent you'd go to obey him. So let's obey him. Let's follow him. Let's pick up the charge. That's a good reason. It's got to be the foundational reason. But I also want to take some time to help us understand what's the wisdom between our king's command to make disciples? Because in our current church context, I think that our motivation and zeal to actually answer this call and make disciples will only grow if we learn to start seeing things from a bit of a different perspective, not from the world's perspective or even some of our modern evangelical churches perspective, but our Savior's perspective. And we need to take a second and realize that the modern church's perspective on our mission, to our shame, has drifted somewhat far from Jesus's perspective on the church's mission. See, what I'd argue is that over the last fifty years, we've drifted more and more from a make disciples priority to a make attenders priority, and that drift has real implications. See, about fifty years ago, the seeker sensitive or church growth movement started gaining momentum. And it was a movement, a movement that might have started from some good intentions to say, hey, we want to see people come. We want to see people hear the gospel. We want to prioritize getting as many people as possible through the doors of our churches. And they thought, hey, this is what's going to revive the church. That feels more and more irrelevant. Here's how one of the church growth advocates named George Barna put it. He said it's time for the church to adopt a whole new paradigm for understanding itself, a model borrowed from the contemporary business world. The church is a business. It has a product to sell relationships to Jesus and others. Its core product is the message of salvation. Each local church is its own franchise. The church's pastors will be judged not by their teaching and counseling, but their ability to run the church like a business. If these proven truths of marketing are followed, each church can be the Chrysler of tomorrow and recover from the decrepit condition in which many of them find themselves. And once again begin to flourish. That is a vision and opinion on the church's mission. Make no mistake, this is the vision that Barna has for the church more marketing, more celebrity, more business strategy, more relevance. That's going to lead to increased people, which is a good as an end to itself. So that's the goal. More people in the church will revive the church. And let's be honest, equating attenders with success is a really easy thing to start believing if you're living in the middle of it. It doesn't feel exciting to see rooms like this get fuller and think, maybe we've made it exciting to put in new chairs and screens. Uh, exciting to renovate buildings. There's nothing wrong with any of those things, but that kind of energy can be a little intoxicating and can keep us from seeing clearly and soon, without realizing it. We wouldn't say this, but we drift more into caring about attendance than discipleship. Care more about hype and momentum than holiness and maturity. And we begin to think, hey, if the church keeps having more people come through its doors, we must be doing the right thing. Maybe we are. Maybe we aren't. But but here's the problem. Jesus wasn't primarily after an amount of attenders. He was after disciples. Why is that? What did Jesus know that we miss? Why is his imperative in this commission? Make disciples, not just make attenders or make converts? I think it's because Jesus knew two things. Two things that if we look at the rest of the New Testament, prove the wisdom of Jesus's command. Here's the first one. I think Jesus knew that prioritizing discipleship is what preserves the health of his church. Prioritizing discipleship preserves the health of his church. We see this truth really clearly in Paul's first letter to Corinth. Uh, if you've read First Corinthians, you know, Corinth was a church that had issues severe disunity, clear immorality, selfishness, disorder. Where, though, were all these issues coming from? Well, look at what Paul says in first Corinthians three one and two, but I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it, and even now you are not ready. What was the problem with the Corinthian church. According to Paul, they were deeply, spiritually immature. They had many believers in Jesus. They didn't have many devoted, mature followers of Jesus, and the church's health suffered as a result. If we care not just about the growth of a church externally, but the health of the church internally, we have to care about discipleship in the church. Because if you have many attenders, but few devoted disciples, it's not long before the health of a church becomes compromised. It reminds me a little bit of something that happened a few years ago. Um, there was this group of sounds cringey to even say a group of teenage content creators and influencers who wanted to live in their own house. Okay. Where they're like, hey, we can film social media content together. There's not going to be any parents. It's going to be awesome. So they use their influencer money. They shouldn't have had to rent a mansion in California that they called the hype House. Now, here's my question. How do you think a group of teenage influencers living in a mansion without any supervision turned out? Good. Not good. Some of you are like, that's what my house feels like right now, right? It's not good. Um, here's how it ended up. The landlord ended up suing them for six hundred thousand dollars in property damage. And here's some things that caused the damage. Smashed floor tiles from indoor skateboarding, fire damage from flamethrowers and pyrotechnics being used inside the house. And this is probably the grossest one of all black mold from trash that wasn't taken care of and overflowed into a vent return. Yeah, yeah I know. Much, much more than even that. That's just the scratch of the surface. Turns out, who knew a hype house of immature kids living together doesn't work at all? Here's the question. Why do we think it would work in the church? Do we care about the ongoing health of this church? We need to care about discipleship in this church. We need to care more about this being a holy house than a hype house. If health matters more than hype, then discipleship has to matter even more than mere attendance and numbers. Because if we don't care about discipleship in this church, sooner or later we're going to have a lot of teenage influencers in this church, and it won't be long before we damage this church. But Jesus doesn't just have a negative vision for what a drift from discipleship looks like. I think Jesus has a positive vision for what a commitment to discipleship looks like, because Jesus knew, okay, prioritizing discipleship doesn't just preserve the health of the church. Jesus knew prioritizing discipleship is what's going to produce my power in my church. Well, give me at acts two. It's a passage we've come back to over and over as a church. It's kind of our charter because it gives a powerful vision of what happens when a church is full not just of attenders, but devoted followers. This passage in acts two takes place right after Peter preaches. Three thousand people come to the Lord, and overnight the church goes from eleven to three thousand. That's incredible. But notice what happens next. The three thousand people don't just repent, believe, and go back to their old way of life. This is what acts two says, starting in verse forty two. And they devoted themselves, devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship, the gathering of his people, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And what happens? All came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. If you jump to verse forty six, it says, and day by day, attending the temple together, breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God, having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who are being saved. What happened to Peter's converts? They became disciples. They devoted themselves to the Word of God, the people of God. They became real learners and imitators of Jesus because they loved Jesus and had surrendered completely to him. And what did God produce? God produced awe and power. Discipleship in the church produces power in the church. See, the early church was a powerful community, not because it was relevant or it had more people in it than other communities or had the right strategy. It was powerful because it was a community of disciples. You know, I'm a dude, so it's kind of a given or prerequisite that I think the story of the three hundred Spartans is awesome. You know, I love that story. Um, if you don't know it, there is three hundred Spartans who, with an army of only seven thousand Greeks, held back a Persian army for days, a Persian army that was somewhere between one hundred and fifty thousand to three hundred thousand. And they actually would have even held this army back for longer if it wasn't for one of their own people who betrayed them. And the question is, well, how is such a small group of soldiers such a potent and powerful force? Well, one historian explains it this way the Spartans were among the most disciplined and feared warrior societies in history. Their entire culture was built around military excellence. Serving in the military is mandatory. Training was rigorous. From a young age, Spartans underwent a training system which focused on endurance, discipline, combat skills. Compared to other warrior cultures, Spartans stood out for their cohesion and training. Unlike many ancient armies, Spartan soldiers fought as a unified unit rather than as individuals, making them exceptionally effective. I don't know about you, but I read this and I think, what if the church put their energy and passion into out Spartan Sparta? What if we produced and fought for and trained Christians like that? See, with a devoted, disciplined, unified army, the Spartans didn't need many people to make a stand. What if we were devoted, disciplined, unified followers of Jesus? Give me a few hundred mature disciples over thousands of attenders every day of the week, because that's where the church is. Power flows from. Church. There's incredible wisdom in Jesus's call to make disciples. There's a reason it's the central imperative of his Great commission. We don't want to be a church that cares more about hype than holiness, or a church that has a lot of attenders, but little. Or we want to be a church of disciples. Because a church of disciples is a healthy church, it's a powerful church. And here's what's most important. If a church is healthy and powerful, that's what makes it a God glorifying church. A church that produces passionate followers of Jesus. A church that sends missionaries to the ends of the earth. A church that teaches the next generation everything Jesus commanded. A church that sees real faith and new life. Because the gospel is powerfully present. Because it is filled with people genuinely longing to follow and devote their lives to becoming like Jesus. And that's the mission God calls us into. Well, that still leaves us with the question of, okay, how? How do we answer Jesus's central call in the commission? How do we make disciples? And I think when you ask that question, every person is tempted to fall into one of two ditches. The first ditch is what I'd call the burden ditch. Here's what I mean. When you think about making disciples in this call, the first emotions you feel are shame or guilt or overwhelm because you're like, hey, I okay, I can't point to twenty people I've taken from immaturity to maturity and I don't even know how I would do that. Or, hey, I don't know how I could possibly have the time to teach someone else everything Jesus commanded. I don't even know everything Jesus commanded. And so for you, the Great Commission becomes one of the kind of classic Christian guilt passages that kind of makes you squirm a little, because for you, the challenge feels like an overwhelming burden. Well, if that's one ditch, the other ditch is what I'd call the bystander ditch. And that's the attitude of if someone else will take care of it, that becomes an easier and easier thing to believe when you're a part of a bigger church. Just like car by car, passing someone on the side of the road needing help, saying, hey, there's plenty of other cars stopping by, someone will stop. We can drive by discipleship opportunities thinking someone else will take care of it. So if the burden ditch leads you to being crushed by Jesus's command. This bystander ditch leads to us ignoring Jesus's command. So how do we avoid both those ditches? Well, here's what I think we need to remember. If we want to pursue this command without being crushed by it. Here's the good news for us today. Discipleship isn't an individual sport. It's actually a team sport where every individual has a small but important part to play. If you look back at Matthew twenty eight sixteen, two verses before this great commission is given, here's what you'd notice. This is who Jesus is speaking to. It says, now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus directed them. Notice Jesus didn't give this commission to an individual. He gave it to the church. He was beginning to build. And after all, not any one of these eleven disciples could go into all the nations and preach the gospel before they died. Not any one of these individuals could teach every person who professed faith, everything Jesus commanded. But what these individuals could do is begin building and multiplying Jesus's church, a body that now comprises billions of people around the world seeking to be faithful to this command and the truth that frees us from burden or by standing, is the truth that discipleship is not an individual sport, it's a team sport. Or to put it this way, it's a lot more like football than like golf. So here's what I mean. In golf, you win the championship. So it's built on your performance. But in football you play your one small but important part on the team. It doesn't matter that Tom Brady is the Goat. He can't win a Super Bowl by himself. He needs people to throw the ball to. He needs people to block for him. He needs coaches to scheme players open and on and on. Here's what I'm saying. Recognizing that you are a part of a church frees you from both the burden and bystander ditch because you realize, I don't have to do this alone, and I don't have to do all of it alone. But you realize, hey, I have a team counting on me. A team that needs me to be devoted to the mission we're called to together. So with that in mind, here are the two things I'd encourage you to, if you want to answer this call and make disciples for the health and power of Christ Church. First, some of you need to be lovingly challenged to decide whether or not it's time to commit to this team. You know, a team can't accomplish its mission until its members buy in. And in the same way, a church can't accomplish its mission without people who love that mission and say, I have to be a part of that. So the question, maybe the uncomfortable question some of you need to consider is, have I been on the fringes here? AM I more of an attender than a member? And maybe today, God's inviting you to stop viewing church as a service for your comfort or convenience or encouragement alone, and instead view it as the body of Christ. You're a vital part of. See, I want to set before you Paul's vision for the church and why it's. People can't just be consumers but have to be participants. Here's what he says in Romans twelve. He says, for as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function. So we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. We could go on. I'm going to stop there though, for Paul. Notice in these couple verses we see the church isn't an event you come to once or twice a month to get a positivity boost. It's a body that builds one another up through the gifts God's given each one of us individually. And I hope you hear this more as an invitation and motivation than a guilt trip. When you don't show up, when you don't serve, when you don't commit. Not only do you miss out on others building you up and discipling you, others miss out on your unique giftings and the way you could help them take another step forward in Christian maturity. If the church is going to grow into a community of mature disciples, we need one another desperately. That's the first part of answering this call. Commit to the team. But here's the second part. For those who say I'm in. After I commit to the team, here's what I'd encourage you and invite you to do. Play your position passionately. Play your position passionately. Figure out, okay, what is my position? What's my small but important contribution to this team and play it. And here's what I mean. Think about the people God has put around you and simply answering this question. How can I help them take one more step forward to look more like Christ? See, I think we often overcomplicate discipleship. We think, okay, I got to sit across the table from someone for two hours and explain every doctrine to them. We think we have to have all the answers or have it all together before you can play a part in someone else's spiritual growth. But I love how Mark Dever defines discipleship when he says this discipleship is helping someone follow Jesus by doing deliberate, spiritual good in their life. Discipleship, all. It is helping someone follow Jesus by doing deliberate spiritual good in their life. And this is what that means. You don't have to be an expert in theological studies to be a disciple maker. You don't have to be a certain age to be a disciple maker. You just need to be a devoted member of God's body. Play your position and consider how can I do deliberate, spiritual good to someone around me to help them look more like Jesus? Let me give you some real flesh and blood examples in this local church of this. Because here's the thing. I don't know your unique giftings. I don't know who God's put around you in your circle of influence. I can't make a blanket application to every person in this room, but I can tell you how I've seen this in this local church, and maybe it'll set your gears turning on how you could do deliberate spiritual good in someone's life to help them look more like Jesus. Uh, Gunther is a member in our church who meets with a few of our college guys. Uh, and I'm sure these guys have learned a lot from him, but the thing that's marked them most is how seriously Gunther's led them to pursue memorizing scripture. And each week they memorize verses. They put them on slips of paper, they put them in a bowl, then they take them out and they have to recite them together. And since then, more of God's Word has been on the lips and minds of three college guys in this church than you'd probably think Gunther isn't doing anything. You need a degree in theological studies to do. He's just helping three guys memorize scripture and doing deliberate spiritual good in their lives. Phil started serving in Veritas Kids on Sunday morning with second graders. You might not know it because it's not on a stage. It's not flashy, but he's been faithfully committed to investing in these kids for over five years now. And now that they're moving out of Veritas kids, he's following them to Veritas Youth to still lead them. Phil isn't doing anything insane, but he's doing something worthwhile. He's sacrificing a couple hours each week to just show up in their life and model what ordinary faithfulness and love for Jesus looks like over years. That's doing deliberate spiritual good in someone's life to help them look more like Jesus. When Veritas kids are really in a pinch, they've even put me in the nursery before. Uh. And one of the sweetest things I saw while being there is faithful women in that nursery, praying for your kids and family by name. Every single service. That's discipleship not only for those little ones, but for me and the younger volunteers who serve with them and watch them, and what their prayer for the families of these churches looks like. I literally have a list of about ten more. But here's just one more. For the sake of time, I think I have a picture of me and Carrie Trantham. This is us from last Thursday. And here's the thing no one's taught me more about prayer than Carrie Trantham. Not because he led a five week class on prayer, though that would be great, but because every Thursday night he comes and prays for our students the whole time we have Thursday night service here. And honestly, only God knows how many students have been impacted by God answering those prayers. I would guess it's way more than you might think. But what I can say is, if nothing else, Carrie's discipled me and my staff to be more passionate people of prayer. I could go on and on. I have like ten or fifteen more. I'm even looking out and seeing faces in this room of more examples of discipleship. But do you see how all these people are different people with different ages, and they're all doing different things, but because of how God weaves each one of them into this local church, a strong cord of discipleship being woven, where countless people are being more and more mature followers of Jesus. They aren't doing it by themselves, but they're playing their position. So who's someone around you here in this local church? You could do deliberate, spiritual good to to help them look more like Jesus. What's the way you've grown as a follower of Jesus? You could pass on even if you just became a Christian yesterday, you can still refresh somebody with the truth of the gospel that saved you. But whatever it is, answer the call by making disciples for the health of the church, for the power of the church, and for the glory of Christ. Because what would be sweeter than playing a part in this great commission? And what could be sweeter than being a church where we don't just care about making a tenders or getting people in seats, but seeing people become mature, devoted followers of Jesus. That's the kind of church I want to be at. And I hope you do, too. And here's the thing. In some ways, this sounds pretty ordinary. Like, I'm not asking you to go evangelize the world, go disciple hundreds of people, or even put on some big event that's going to be noticed by the news. I'm asking you to commit to the local church and ask, who in my life can I help? Look more like Jesus. But here's the thing. This ordinary, disciple making mission will have extraordinary results. If each one of us answered this call because of the power of multiplication. Okay, I want to set up two different scenarios for you. In the first scenario, imagine that you're the most effective evangelist in the world. You share the gospel and you see thousands of people. A thousand people get saved every day. If you did that for thirty three years, almost eleven million people would have placed their faith in Jesus. That's amazing. Like evangelism is good. Don't hear me discount that. But here's the second scenario that one college pastor gave in a book that, after I read it, still stuck with me. If you made it your mission to find just one other person to pour into this year, one person to help look more like Jesus. And then the next year, both of you went and you did the same thing with someone else. Just multiplying the amount of mature disciples by two each year. Do you know how many people would be mature disciples of Christ in thirty three years would be eight point five billion people and Veritas. I have good news for you. There are nine hundred members in this church. So what if this year each one said, I'm just going to faithfully help someone else look more like Jesus. And what if next year those nine hundred were sent out to do the same? Literally before the end of most of our lifetimes. Here's what would happen. God's promise in Habakkuk two fourteen would become a reality when he says this, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Could it be this is how the church went from eleven men to billions of men? Could it be that this is how the church would experience a revival of spiritual health and power in our time? What could happen in our city, nation, and world if we answered this call? We'll only know if we answer it. And the ultimate reason you can answer it with courage is because we have this promise from the King who has called us to it. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. Make no mistake, Jesus is going to keep his promise to disciple the nations through his church. The only question is, do you want to experience the joy of getting in on it? And do we want to be a church that experiences the joy of getting in on it? And when Jesus calls us, how are we going to answer? Pray with me. Lord, it's not unclear to me standing up here and realizing that really the only reason I'm up here teaching others and being a part of this local church is because of how many people you faithfully put around me, who just did a little bit to help me look more like Jesus and played their position for my parents, who faithfully discipled me and just were ordinary, faithful parents that loved Jesus to us. Jessi Wunderlich and Jamie Cedars, who took a chance on letting a scared middle schooler lead worship and learn about how to do that to professors at Moody and friends at Moody Bible Institute who faithfully poured into me when I was just learning what it looked like to follow you to faithful pastors at so many different churches. Lord, I could go on and on, but not any one of those people did that alone in my life. It was people all around me just trying to do deliberate, spiritual good, to help me look more like Jesus and Lord. We have a room full of people that love you. And what could happen if we did the same thing? Just asking, Lord, who would you put around us to help us look more like Jesus? To help them look more like Jesus? Lord, I pray that we would answer this call. Yes, it requires sacrifice. It requires commitment. It requires uncomfortability. Lord, your great commission is beautiful and we want to see a healthy church and a potent church. Not so that Veritas name is great, but so Christ's name is vindicated and proclaimed not only here, but to the ends of the earth. So would you do that, Lord, by your grace for your glory. We love you and ask this in your name. Amen.