Our Next 100 Years

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Well, we are right in the middle of that unusual week that we have each year between Christmas and the New Year’s when we’re still kind of reflecting on the traditions that we’ve observed for Christmas time and how those point us to the meaning of Jesus coming and what He did and what He came for. And we’ve got that on one hand, and on the other hand, we’re looking at the coming of a new year. And it’s one of those times where a lot of us will start to take stock of the year that we’ve just had and think about the year to come, even if you’re not a resolution person.

And I’m not. But you can’t help but think about how the year has gone. Like I said, I don’t make resolutions, but I do tend to think about, okay, how did I do this last year?

There are some things I need to work on. Did I do better this last year than I did previously? There are some projects that I feel God leading me to start.

Did I make any progress on it? You know, we start to ask those questions, or at least I do. And we think about what that means for the coming year.

2025 is a meaningful year for this church, or it will be. 2025 is the 100th anniversary of this church, this congregation, starting right here in Lawton, Oklahoma. Now, New Year’s Day is not the anniversary, it’s in July.

But 2025 is the start of that anniversary year. And if you’ve been here very long at all, you know I’m kind of a history nerd. And so a couple years ago on a less busy than usual day, I slipped off.

There’s a little room just past the fellowship hall where we have all kinds of historical things for the church. And I just started leafing through. Some of this was put together years ago during the 75th anniversary.

But I started reading about how this church started. And it started in, as I said, in 1925, when a small group of people came together and they met in a school building here in town. I think it was Lawton High.

I don’t know if that was located over there or where it was in 1925. But they met in a school building, and they first met for a prayer meeting. And then out of a series of prayer meetings and prayerful discussions, they felt like God was leading them to start a church.

and they felt that God was leading them to start a church for very specific reasons. And this is quoted in those writings that are put together about the history of the church, that they set out to start a church where the Bible is preached and a spirit of love prevails. Those were their exact words, the reason why they started Central Baptist Church.

And I love that. I love that because it’s simple and memorable. I love it because it’s right in line with God’s Word, which we’re going to look at this morning.

And I love it because those things are, in fact, what drew my family here. We knew, we had known for some time that God was preparing to move us from where we were serving. We just didn’t know where.

And you know, you always say, God, your will be done. You lead us where you want us to. But you’ve got this checklist in the back of your mind of here’s what I hope God provides.

Now, we’ll go wherever he sends us. Lord, I pray it’s not a war zone. either overseas or sometimes a church can be a war zone in and of itself.

We hope it’s not one of those, but we’ll go wherever you lead. But we had some things that we were hoping for. And as we met with the search committee from this church over the course of months, and it was a lot longer process than usual because the Sunday I was supposed to come in view of a call, the world shut down for COVID.

God, you got to be kidding me with this. The whole world shut down just to inconvenience us. But we got a chance to get to know the people in the search committee even better.

And as they told us stories about this church and about the people here, we fell in love with this church even before we had seen most of you. And then it really kicked in when we came in you have a call months later to the point I’ve told you this before I told Charlotte it’s going to be really awkward if they don’t call me as their pastor because we’re going to that church one way or another there were some things that we were looking for in a church for our family we had experienced and and I even longer in ministry had experienced some churches that were incredibly loving and had experienced some churches that were not and so given the preference between the two. I know what each of us would pick, and that’s one thing we were looking for, a church that genuinely loves one another, for starters, and then loves the community outside.

But not only that, a church where the Bible is taken seriously. And I will tell you, this church is somewhat unique in that regard. Now, I don’t know, I’ve not been part of a lot of churches that say, oh, well, I haven’t been part of any church that said we don’t take the Bible seriously.

But what we discovered in this church, there is a hunger to know God’s Word, and a hunger to obey it, and a hunger to get it right, that is unusual. And that’s not just been my opinion. Other people have told me that as they’ve come in from the outside. Brother that we wanted some place that would love us and our kids and would take the Bible seriously and help us disciple this noisy group of people over here.

By the way, they’re not mad at anybody. They moved to a different section because the little kids are in here today, and they’re a little bit disruptive. That’s just part of it.

But we were looking for a place that would help us disciple our kids to know God’s Word and to live God’s Word. And I’m so thankful that each of them has somebody in this room that they’ve connected with, that they look up to, and have a special bond with, but on top of that, they just are surrounded by people that are good examples. And I love that those things that we seem to be known for now, those things that drew my family to this church, those things that are right in line with what Scripture teaches a church ought to be, those are the very things that this church was founded on.

those were the very purposes for which we exist and so thinking about where we came from and this history that we have this incredible history that we have to build on coming into what’s going to be our 100th year of ministry I want us to to look at god’s word what it says about these ideas and what our next hundred years need to look like so this morning we’re going to be in Ephesians chapter 4. And we’re going to read verses 11 through 16. And we’re going to see here what Paul says, what the Apostle Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says about why a church ought to exist and where its focus ought to lie.

So once you’ve turned with me to Ephesians chapter 4, if you’d stand as we read together from God’s Word. If you don’t have your Bible or can’t find Ephesians chapter 4, it’ll be on the screen for you. And here’s what God’s Word says.

This is just one of many places where it talks about the way a church ought to be, but I felt like this was a good jumping-off point for us to understand what God has given us to do. It says, starting in verse 11, and He gave some as apostles, some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service. Some translations will say the work of the ministry, to the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming.

But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him, who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. And you may be seated. Now we know as we read this, just based on the name of the book that it’s found in, that he’s writing to the Ephesians.

He’s writing to a specific church at Ephesus, and he’s telling them about what their church is supposed to be. We have to understand that, but we also recognize that he’s not saying things that are unique to Ephesus. These same themes are repeated in the things that he tells Corinth, and the things that he tells Thessalonica, and the things he tells the churches in Galatia.

As a matter of fact, these are things that I can’t see God not wanting for any church. And so even though we recognize that he’s writing to a group of people at Ephesus, this is no less applicable to us today. This design, this model, this goal is no less applicable to us today in 2025 than it was to Ephesus back in the 50s or 60s AD.

And so we read this, and we read what he says about their church, and we apply it to our church, and we recognize that our church is a tool that God uses to bring believers to spiritual maturity. That’s what he’s talking about in this passage, is the church working together so that ministry gets done, so that people are built up, so that people grow closer to Christ. The church’s goal is to help believers be spiritually mature. And it’s important that we understand that, because I think every church, if you asked them, would say, of course, we want people to be spiritually mature.

But that’s not always the focus. I heard somebody interview a group of a panel of pastors one time and said, so your service, is it geared toward the lost or is it geared toward the saved, your church worship service? And there was a big debate about it because some people came down hard on one side or the other.

Now, this is an evangelistic tool. You bring people in and you get them saved. No, this is a discipleship tool.

I think, as I read Scripture, the answer is somewhere in the middle. Now, I’m going to say that primarily, when we come together, what we do as a church is to disciple believers. But we also have to keep an eye out constantly that there could be people who don’t yet believe in our midst, and we want to speak to them as well.

But our primary purpose as a church is to disciple people so they can go out and do ministry, so that we can do ministry together. And it doesn’t mean that there’s not an evangelistic aspect to what we do here. That’s why we present the gospel every time.

So we are reminded and built up in it, but also so if somebody’s sitting here who has never heard the gospel, they will hear the gospel and have a chance to respond. That’s why we offer to visit with them. We give them a chance to respond to that.

We want to make the gospel known. But which is more effective? Presenting the gospel once a week and hoping we may periodically reach somebody once a week with that, or coming together and training people who are going to take the gospel with them every day as they go.

And so primarily the focus of the church, the focus of what we do together, is the spiritual maturity of the believer. And there’s this kind of shotgun effect that goes out of here where the Great Commission is carried forward. And the reason why that’s important is because it determines what we do.

It determines whether we treat the church as a place to build up believers and disciple people, or if we treat the church as a country club or an entertainment place. because it’s very easy to get distracted from what God has called us to do. So as we’re trying to bring believer, and please don’t hear me say something I’m not saying.

That does not mean we don’t invite non-believers to church. That does not mean we don’t welcome non-believers to church. It does not mean we don’t share the gospel with them.

It does not mean that we don’t keep them in mind as we’re planning the service. It’s just what is our primary goal? Our primary goal is to disciple people from here to take the gospel with them where they go.

And we do that. We build that spiritual maturity. God’s given us at least three things that I see in this text.

We do this by training. And we see this in verses 11 and 12, where he talks about he gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and pastors and teachers. And then he says, why, in verse 12?

Was it so that they do all the work? So they do everything that gets done? No, he says, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of ministry.

Now, that does not mean either that church leadership is there to say, okay, y’all go do stuff. No, we ought to be in the trenches too. If we think we’re too good to serve in the trenches, we don’t belong in any kind of leadership.

However, on the other side of that, there’s a tendency to think, well, that’s what we pay that guy for. He’ll do all of it. And listen, I’m happy to do whatever needs to be done.

But if there’s just one or two guys in each church doing ministry, there’s a lot of ministry that doesn’t get done. I only have so many hours in the week, plus my forgetter is working overtime these days. All right.

And by the way, to be clear in this, none of this is about, hey, here’s all the things we’re doing wrong. This church and the members of this church are far more active in ministry than any place I’ve ever seen. This message and the things I tell you about today are not saying, here’s a problem we need to correct.

It’s saying these are the things we’ve done well, and we need to keep focus on those as we go forward. So that, Lord willing, if He delays His coming, that in 2125, my goodness, that is a long time away. But in 2125, if the Lord has not returned by then, Central Baptist is still running strong and doing ministry and advancing the kingdom right here the way it is in 2025 and the way it was in 1925.

So this is not, hey, we need to do better. This is, let’s keep our focus and stay the course. But we do this by training people for the work of the ministry.

The leaders show and train and teach, and some of this is in a setting like this. Some of this is in classes we have. A lot of this, though, is, hey, come do ministry with me.

Come do hospital visits with me. Come with me as we visit with this person. And you’ve probably all heard the thing about, you know, you start with let me do it and you watch, and then let me do it while you help, and then I’ll let you do it and I’ll help, and then I’ll let you do it and I’ll watch.

There’s a training aspect to ministry. Just come along and do it. That’s why we give, like next week, we’re going to give Caleb another opportunity to preach.

That’s how he grows in those skills. That’s why Benjamin keeps leading children’s devotional. We want to give people opportunities to do ministry. And that applies to everybody.

The church can and it should be the most effective training center that we have for people in ministry. I am not at all against seminary. I went to seminary, but I didn’t start any of that until I’d been in ministry 10 years or more.

My training for ministry was me pestering the pastors at my church growing up that, hey, God’s called me to do what you’re doing, so I’m coming with you. I really didn’t give them a choice, but they took me under their wing, and I learned how to do things by watching them and then working with them. We have that opportunity here for each of us to do ministry and to learn ministry and teach ministry, because ministry is not just the stuff that’s up front.

That may not even always be the most important ministry. And I’ll tell you what, some of the most fulfilling ministries are the things that go on behind the scenes. But our job as a church is to give people opportunities to serve.

Not come and sit and watch, but come with us and let’s do these things together. Train them to serve, call them to serve, and support them as they serve. That’s why he says, church leadership is there for the equipping of the saints for the work of service.

We do this by teaching also in verses 13 and 14. He says, we do these things until we all attain the unity of the faith of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. He says, so that we’re no longer tossed around. So we’re no longer confused about what the truth is.

Part of our goal as a church is that people would understand the historical Christian faith. What I mean by historical Christian faith are the things that the church has always taught to be true. And there are some issues that we argue with and debate about, or argue about and debate about.

There are some things that we fuss about. And we may be right, we may be wrong, but there’s secondary issues. But there are things that believers have always agreed on.

And those are the things that we need to focus on and make sure people understand. That there’s one God. There’s one God who reveals Himself in three eternally distinct persons.

One of those persons, God the Son, came to earth and became a man. And lived without sin. He was born of a virgin.

He lived a sinless life. He was crucified under Pontius Pilate. He was buried.

And three days later, He rose again from the dead. and that death that He died provided for our salvation once and for all so that we could be forgiven, so that we could be reconciled. Jesus is the only way to salvation.

That the Holy Spirit indwells us and leads us. That the Scriptures are God’s Word to mankind. These are things that we’ve always agreed on.

These are things that we need people to understand. That’s what He’s teaching about the unity of the faith, there are some things that we hold in common that are just non-negotiable. And some of the greatest threats that the church faces, and I don’t just mean central, but God’s church is everywhere today.

The things that we face are distortions of these that would lead us astray from these teachings. two of the big ones that come to mind right now are prosperity teaching that the gospel is all about becoming wealthy or healthy or having all the things you want or progressivism that questions the reliability of God’s word questions God’s word as the standard and these things erode the historical Christian faith so we teach the unity of the faith because we want people not to be confused. We want them to come to the knowledge of the Son of God.

So we equip people, we want people to know Jesus Christ. We want them to know Jesus intellectually. We want them to know what the Bible says about who He is. And we teach them because we want them to know Him experientially.

Those are two different things, and they’re both very important. You can know Jesus experientially and not understand who He is, But you can also know who Jesus is and not actually know him. And we teach God’s word and we teach it throughout.

We just spent, what, three months going through the Old Testament and how we find Jesus there. We teach because we want people to know Jesus. And so we equip them to grow in wisdom.

We equip them so that they can avoid confusion and deception. It’s out there. If you want to go find something today that will tell you untrue things about Jesus, you can find it.

You can find it on TV. You can find it on social media. You can find it.

Sometimes you can find it from people shouting at you on a street corner. But it’s hard to know if somebody’s telling you the truth. That’s why I tell you frequently, don’t just believe it because I said it.

Go look at God’s Word. And if what I say doesn’t match up with what this says, then ignore me. because this is the standard.

But we teach this so that people will understand the truth and know Jesus Christ. Our job is to teach the Bible without compromise or apology so that we can help people learn to study it for themselves and on top of that to obey what it teaches. That was foundational to us when we started in 1925. It’s who we are today, and I pray to God that it’s who we are for the next hundred years.

And then we see in verses 15 and 16 that these things are really hard to pass on when you’re kind of a lone ranger. We do these things in community. Look at what he says here.

He says, speaking the truth in love, there’s a relational aspect. Sometimes we have to teach and correct each other. There has to be truth.

There has to be love. But he says, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body. There’s this idea that we are not just individuals who occupy the same room a few times a week.

We are a body, and Christ is the head of that body, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together. If you’ve ever looked at one of those charts of the human body, you see that there are all these muscles and sinews and things that hold all of it together and make it work, and it’s fascinating. I mean, I don’t want to go watch surgery videos or anything, but when you look at how the body works, it’s fascinating how God designed all of this to work, and it’s not by accident that Paul uses the same imagery here for us to understand that we are connected so that by each of us doing what God has called us to do, something greater is done than what each of us could accomplish on our own.

The whole body being held together by what every joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part causes the growth. What he’s telling us is we work better together, we grow better together, we reach spiritual maturity more quickly together than we would alone. And I almost hate to use the terminology because it’s been co-opted by so many politicians, but we’re stronger together.

We’re better together. This is what he’s telling us. So we do these things in community, and our job as a church is to complement and support one another.

When I say complement, I don’t just mean, hey, you’re doing a great job, although that is nice. But I mean complement like when God puts us together so our strengths complement our weaknesses. Now, this is what he describes in marriage.

There are areas of my strength and Charla’s weakness and Charla’s strength and my weakness. There are a lot of details that need to be noticed. And you would be amazed by what I don’t notice.

Christy, I say this in the office all the time, right? To you and Stella, you’d be amazed what I don’t notice. My wife notices everything.

God put us together. And that’s really helpful sometimes in parenting. You can see where that would be helpful, right, to notice things.

God put us together to complement each other. A strength I have is I am really calm in a crisis. And sometimes she needs that.

God put us together to complement one another’s weaknesses with our strengths. And our job as a church is to come together and complement one another so that where you’re weak, somebody else may be strong, and where you’re strong, somebody. .

. You know what I’m trying to say. I got mixed up about how to say it, but.

. . Where the strengths and weaknesses offset each other, and we support each other, and we help each other to fulfill the Great Commission.

If it was up to me, by myself, to reach all of Lawton, and then Oklahoma, and then the United States, and the uttermost parts of the world, as Jesus talked about Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the world, if it were up to me to fulfill the Great Commission by myself, it would be a lost cause, because people are being born faster than I can even talk to them. But He put us together. and you go into places and circles of people in this community that I’ll never encounter and vice versa.

God has put us together so that the Great Commission could be advanced and we draw strength from each other. Now I know this is going to tell you on the screen that this is just the beginning of point two. but the bulk of the message was in point one so don’t panic okay we’re coming close to the end here fulfilling this purpose that god has given us as a church to bring people to spiritual maturity by training by teaching by doing these things in community fulfilling that purpose requires commitment he’s not talking to people who were yeah some days I’m not really feeling it the people at Ephesus were putting their lives on the line being part of the church.

It was an actual commitment, and he’s saying, you’re part of a body together, you’re serving together. Fulfilling the church’s purpose requires commitment. It’s really hard to plan my day if I’m not sure.

It’s really hard to plan what I’m going to accomplish tomorrow. If I’m not sure, my right leg may just take the day off tomorrow. By the way, I’m not saying.

. . I grew up with a steady diet of you don’t ever miss church or, you know, God loves you less.

I don’t know how that worked, but that’s not what this is, okay? This is not, there’s no reason ever to miss church. This is just talking about our level of commitment to what God has called us to do together, and it requires a commitment, first of all, from the church to focus on the right things, to focus on what God has given us to do.

And it’s important we remember what those things are because there are so many distractions around us. It’s also a commitment from the church as a whole to support and equip people as they go to do ministry. Listen, if God has called you to do ministry of some kind, you should be able to count on this church to come alongside you and help you do that.

It doesn’t mean we always have the funds to underwrite everything, but there’s a lot of ministry that can be done without budgets. But if there’s a ministry God’s called you to do, the first place you ought to go is to your church body and your church leadership and say, God has put this on my heart. How can you help me get started?

And I know I’ve had a few conversations like that over the years that people come in and say, you know, this has been on my heart, but I really don’t want to bother you. Are you kidding me? this is what Ephesians 4, this is why I’m here.

This is what excites me and gets me up in the morning. The thought that I might get to have that kind of conversation. If God’s put something on your heart to do ministry, it is our job to help you with that ministry.

And so there’s got to be a commitment from the church that we’re not just sending people out to do ministry. We’re actually equipping them and giving them the tools and the support and the encouragement that they need. two of the commitments are from the church and one of the commitments is from the individual to actually be an active participant in the life of the church it takes all of us working together to accomplish god’s purposes for this church and as we look at how he describes spiritual maturity here and the church working together to bring bring people to spiritual maturity he talks about growing closer to Christ. He talks about the knowledge of Christ. Everything here is centered around Jesus, and really that’s what spiritual maturity is, growing to be more like Jesus.

And the bottom line is we’re going to do that, we’re more likely to grow in that direction if we’re growing in that direction together. But all of this is not just about being spiritually mature so that I can say, hey, look at me and how mature I am. It’s because we’re wanting to point people to Jesus Christ. And so as we think about this anniversary coming up, as we think about what it means for us and where we’ve come from and where we might go over the next hundred years, if the Lord delays His coming that long, in our next hundred years, we should resolve to point people to Jesus Christ in everything that we do.

That ought to be job one for this church. That ought to be the beginning thought of everything we do. That makes me think of years ago, years ago when George W.

Bush was running for governor of Texas. He was running against Ann Richards, who was the incumbent governor. And she was so annoyed with him.

She gave an interview where she said he has one thought, and that’s tax cuts. You ask him, what time is it? And he says, tax cuts.

that ought to be our thought not tax cuts although that would be nice but what points people to jesus central baptist church what are you going to do today we’re going to point people to jesus what are you going to focus on the things that point people to jesus what are you going to put your time and treasure and talent into the things that point people to jesus What are you going to stress about Whether we’re pointing people to Jesus You come in our house You go to our bedroom You shake us out of a dead sleep First thought on our mind is How can I point people to Jesus That’s what it means to be a church that Invests in spiritual maturity of people A church that’s tethered to the Bible. A church that’s committed to loving people. It’s a church that’s pointing people to Jesus.

And I pray that we continue to be that.