Luke: 00:07

Enough. I'm going to bring pastor Cameron up, and we're going to pause for some prayer as he gets ready to continue our sermon series. And we've just been talking about mission and vision for our year here at Conduit. Heavenly Father, this morning I ask that as we open your word and as that pastor Cameron delivers the message that you've laid on his heart, that your Holy Spirit would be at work among us, that we would be refreshed, that we would be encouraged, that you would speak to our hearts the word that we need to hear this morning. And Lord, that we might be responsive.

Luke: 00:49

In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Cameron: 00:53

Man, good morning church. How are you this morning? Good. It's good to see you all. We're going to jump right in and begin by like just giving ourselves the gift of a reminder from what we've talked about the last few weeks.

Cameron: 01:08

Not necessarily building Not necessarily building like a scaffolding of an argument or anything like that, but we wanted to take the first of the year to make sure that we were talking about, make sure that the first things were actually the first things. And that we were talking about the first things at the first of the year. So if you remember our very first sermon from the January, beginning of this month, I talked about the supremacy of Jesus. The supremacy of Jesus in all things. Certainly in the world, in all of creation, but also Jesus in like the supremacy of Jesus in the church and the supremacy of Jesus in our relationships, supremacy of Jesus in our hearts, the supremacy of Jesus in our words and in our thoughts, the supremacy of Jesus in all things and over all things.

Cameron: 02:05

From Colossians one fifteen-twenty, Paul says this about Jesus specifically. He says that He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through Him and for Him. He is before all things and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church.

Cameron: 02:49

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent. For in him, the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. That in Jesus and through Jesus, all things were made for Jesus. That nothing in all of creation lies outside of the Lordship of Jesus. Jesus is supreme.

Cameron: 03:38

Jesus is Lord, not just as a spiritual name or a title, but as a position. Jesus is Lord of our lives. Last week, we talked about the goal then, if Jesus is supreme and He holds the authority, His words matter. His life matters. His ministry matters.

Cameron: 04:03

One of the places that we looked at last week was Jesus' last words to His disciples after He had been resurrected from the dead, but before He ascended back into heaven. And He met with His disciples, He came and appeared to His disciples in an upper room, or in Galilee, in Matthew chapter 28 verses 16 through 20. And we see these words here at the end of Matthew's gospel. He said, Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted.

Cameron: 04:42

And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. So there again, Jesus reestablishes, even for His disciples who would then become apostles, that all authority in heaven and on earth belonged to Him. That was the, I guess you could call it a qualifying statement that qualified everything else that would be said afterwards. So all authority on heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore, he says, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

Cameron: 05:32

And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. We talked about the importance of organizing both our life as a community, but also our hearts and our thoughts and our words and our motivations as individuals off of the authority of Jesus to go and to make disciples. Talking a little bit about what it even means to be a disciple. To be transformed in the renewing of our mind by the word of God through faith in Jesus Christ, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, taking us and forming us away from the example and the life of the world and forming us and molding us into the image and likeness of Jesus himself. Paul says in Romans twelve:one-two, he says, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Cameron: 06:40

Remember, we talked about how walking as a disciple is both something that God does in us through his mercy. We cannot become disciple of Jesus without the mercy of God first being applied to our life, overflowing in our life. In view of God's mercy, Paul says, present your bodies as sacrifices, a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. So discipleship becomes the transformation of our mind and our life becomes the mixing together of God's mercy that draws us, and then our response to offer our lives as living sacrifices. God's mercy draws, God's mercy comes close, and then we have a decision to make.

Cameron: 07:39

Will we surrender our will? Will we surrender Lordship and rule of our lives to the one in whom all authority in heaven and on earth rests. And so Paul says, By the mercies of God, present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable. This is your spiritual act of worship. And then he goes on to say that transformation and discipleship is not just about information transfer, right?

Cameron: 08:10

Not just about getting more knowledge or information, as if information ever had the power to change anyone, but that it was the counter forming work of the Holy Spirit that transforms our mind away from the principles of the world and into the principles of the kingdom. He says, Do not be conformed any longer to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what the will of God is, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Now I have the belief that all Christian churches and all people who follow Jesus, all Christian people should hold these two principles that we've talked about in the last few weeks at core to who they understand themselves to be as Christians, but also as core to what they expect or what they would expect that the church would be about. Meaning I would expect that all Christian churches and Christian people would uphold and believe in the supremacy of Jesus over all things. I would also expect and believe that all Christian churches and people should believe that discipleship making or disciple making is the core calling of the church, is the thing in which the church is to be central about.

Cameron: 09:48

That would be my expectation for any church, including ours. But there is also a unique distinctiveness that marks kind of every community and every body of believer. This is one of the beautiful things about understanding the church as the body of Christ, maybe separated by the times in the morning that we meet or the buildings, but connected together through faith by the Spirit of God. And I know Conduit, I've been here for ten years. Before I was here, I was in a church in Fruisburg for eight years.

Cameron: 10:32

That church still has a great pastor and a live congregation over there. I was in a small church in DeWittville for a few years before that. I've attended lots of churches in this area and know a lot of the pastors in this area. And I will say that each church, at least in our area, has this beautiful way in which they distinctively show up in their communities. A beautiful way in which they distinctively minister to those around them.

Cameron: 11:06

A beautiful way in which they go about the process of glorifying Jesus and making disciples. And that's not to be looked at as somehow the parsing out or the unnecessary separation of the body of Christ, but a way in which God uses the diversity of many people and many individual bodies to build His kingdom and to get glory for Himself. And I want to always be a church that celebrates that. But I also want us to kind of understand too, like what distinctive things are about conduit? Like what are some things that maybe are not necessarily separate us or make us different than other churches, but that we could say, you could answer the question when someone asks you the question, Oh, you go to conduit.

Cameron: 12:02

What is conduit all about? What is imp what is important to them? I wanna share what I think are our four cores that are central to our life as a church here at conduit. Okay? Now I want to say two things before I say the rest of it.

Cameron: 12:28

Number one, don't expect any like earth shattering insight here. Okay? Like this is not going to be hopefully not going to be like totally like, wow, how unique we are. No, like actually this is pretty, I think this is pretty simple and pretty boilerplate, but it is what we have determined. This is kind of like if we were to set the church upon four pillars, these would be the four pillars.

Cameron: 13:01

Number two is this. I know I'm going be talking about what these kind of like four major pillars are of our life as a church here. I want you to understand something. All of these things should always be moving us towards love. Should always be moving us towards love.

Cameron: 13:29

A greater love for God, a greater love for our neighbor, a greater love for one another. The apostle Paul says in one Corinthians 13, he says the famous chapter on love. And in the first three verses, he makes sure He's like, I want you to understand first that Paul's not talking about romantic love when he's in one Corinthians 13, although certainly it may apply in romantic situations. But Paul is talking especially about the love that flows out of us through the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. How we are growing in our capacity to love God more and to love one another.

Cameron: 14:10

But he says this about love as a precursor to the definition of what love is. He goes in to say, Love is patient, love is kind, right? It is not rude. It does not boast. It is not self seeking.

Cameron: 14:23

It is not proud. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. It does not delight in evil, but rejoices in the truth. But before he says, Hey, here is what love is.

Cameron: 14:35

He says this, If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but I have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers and I understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all that I have, if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Paul is reminding us all that the bull's eye target of every life that seeks to follow Jesus in faithfulness is the life of love. And it doesn't matter how much faith you have.

Cameron: 15:30

It doesn't matter if you have prophetic witness. It doesn't matter if you can say to that mountain, Be removed and tossed into the sea. It doesn't matter if you can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge and have all wisdom. If you're a big fat jerk, none of it matters. You know?

Cameron: 15:52

If you have not love, you're just making noise with all the spiritual language. This is Paul's central idea, and it's not somehow separate from Jesus. Like Jesus and Paul had different ideas. Okay? So we want to in all of these core principles or pillars, we always want to be moving to a place towards love.

Cameron: 16:22

We're not listing these as kind of alternatives to the fruit of the Holy Spirit's life within us, but rather as key elements to growing in things like love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Okay? So if we were to talk about if we were to ask the question then or to phrase the idea like this, how does the spirit, the Holy Spirit's life within us grow our capacity to love? That is the main question that we're answering this morning. Okay?

Cameron: 17:10

So what are some of the, like, what I will say is conduits' unique contribution or distinctiveness apart from just, of course, believing in the supremacy of Jesus and the task of making disciples, always moving towards love? How would we define ourselves maybe uniquely in a way? Well, the first way that we are going to define this unique core pillar, I'm gonna have four main pillars for us this morning. And the first one is, the first core pillar is the pillar of presence. We, as a people, are dedicated to the pursuit of God's presence.

Cameron: 17:57

This is the core idea to what we celebrate at Christmas and Advent, the idea of Jesus as Emmanuel. God actually with us, incarnated with us. By faith in Jesus, the presence of the Holy Spirit comes radically into our lives. This is a main point that we focused on, especially in the 2025. Understanding the idea that in pursuing God We talked about this as pursuing God's face, seeking God's face, as opposed to the idea of seeking, just seeking God's hand.

Cameron: 18:46

In scripture, there's a lot of like kind of euphemistic language. And in that some language, there's phrases like, Oh, seeking God's face. What does it mean to seek God's face that seems like a strange thing to say? What does it mean to seek God's hand? To seek God's hand means that you The Bible uses that as a way to talk about seeking the blessing or the gift or the favor of God.

Cameron: 19:18

We want to receive things from God. This is God, maybe it's a little bit simplistically, but this is God as just heavenly spiritual vending machine. I ask for the thing, I press the right spiritual button, I get the thing because that's God's job, is to give me the things that I need. Seeking God's hand. Seeking God's face is to seek not just his gifts, but to seek his presence.

Cameron: 20:02

To seek his To seek him in himself apart from simply receiving things from him. This is the difference now between knowing Christianity, but not knowing God. Seeking knowledge of the holy, but not intimacy with the holy. Becoming a more moral person, but not becoming a more loving person. If you remember from our study in Exodus and the people of Israel, as they were kind of wandering through the wilderness being led by Moses and the pillar of cloud and fire, right?

Cameron: 20:47

And Moses comes to this very specific point where he has a conversation with God and the conversation goes somewhat like, Hey, God, it is your presence with us that marks and defines us as your people. If you pull your presence, there's nothing distinctively, there's nothing distinctive about us that makes us yours. In Exodus chapter 33 verses 14 through 17, it's where we find this. And he said, God, my presence will go with you and I will give you rest. And Moses said to him, 'If your presence does not go with me, do not bring me up from here.

Cameron: 21:41

For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth? And the Lord said to Moses, this very thing that you have spoken, I will do, for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name. It was the very presence of God that went with the people that became the distinctive marker for how others knew that they were God's people. Without the listen, without the presence of God in our midst as a community of people, why even bother?

Cameron: 22:41

We might as well be the Kiwanis Club. Right? Without the presence of God. It is the presence of God that marks out marks us as the type of community that we are. So presence.

Cameron: 23:01

We are dedicated to the pursuit of God's presence. Number two, talked a lot about this last week, formation. We are discipled into living like Jesus, loving like Jesus, and serving like Jesus. Formation is the work of God through his spirit to transform us into the image and likeness of Jesus so that we live our lives like Jesus lived his life. That we love others like Jesus loved others and loved the Father.

Cameron: 23:43

That we serve others like Jesus served others. Formation is about both the active work of the Holy Spirit in His Word to form us into the image and likeness of His Son. But it is also like we talked about last week, a counter formational process. We live in a world that is a formation machine, wanting to make you like, literally, there are whole industries of technology that are built around forming your desires. People spend every day, every hour of their working day, trying to figure out how to get you to desire the thing that they're selling or giving.

Cameron: 24:39

And they are really, really good at it. You all know this because every time you talk about something that would be nice and then you pick up your phone, right, you got advertisements for that very thing. Right? Like the world I'm not even This is not some like put your tinfoil hat on type of thing. The world is literally listening to the desires of your heart and forming the culture around giving you that thing.

Cameron: 25:11

You know how dangerous that is? You know how dangerous our desires are if they are not sanctified and surrendered to the Lord? If we have not been formed by His Word, if we are not actively being transformed in our minds by God's Word and His Spirit, how our desires can get so twisted and turned upside down that we want things, think about things, love things, and desire things that are so far from kingdom values that we become indistinguishable from the world around us. And so being formed by the word of God and the spirit of God is crucial so that we do not end up in the world. Discipleship is faithful imitation of the one in whom we are following.

Cameron: 26:07

Like I said earlier, not just the transfer of knowledge, but the master's life superimposed upon the disciple's life. Laying the life of the master upon my own and letting it overtake me. It's transformation of mind and habits and practices and affections. Paul has this interesting way of talking about how the transformed life shows up in a world that is untransformed. And in one particular part of two Corinthians, I don't have it up on the screen for you, but in one particular part of two Corinthians, he talks about how the transformed life, the life that has been formed to the image and likeness of Jesus, where you're living like Jesus, loving like Jesus, serving like Jesus, is the aroma of Christ to a world that is perishing.

Cameron: 27:16

And the aroma of Christ in a world that is perishing, he says, is a stench. It is so the To a world that is perishing, that knows not Jesus, that is not conformed to his image, the literal smell of the one who has been transformed by Jesus is a stench. But then he goes on to say, But to those who are being saved, the aroma of Christ is the smell of life. It's the thing of life. Listen, I wanna be I wanna be a stench in the nostrils of the world.

Cameron: 28:10

It's easier for some than others. Know. That aroma, okay, that the the way in which a transformed life shows up in the world goes on to kind of our next pillar. That that listen. I'll get to it in a second.

Cameron: 28:28

The next pillar is mission. K? What what are what is something distinctive or maybe unique about conduit? We have presence. We're dedicated to the pursuit of God's presence formation.

Cameron: 28:40

We are we are discipled into living like Jesus, loving like Jesus, and serving like Jesus. And the third is mission. We we partner with God in his active redemption of the world through Jesus. The language is important here and the understanding is important. We don't have a mission.

Cameron: 29:09

God has a mission to redeem the world to himself through Jesus. He has a church to help build the kingdom that is his mission. God is on a mission to redeem the world to himself through Jesus Christ, and he invites us, those who have been transformed, those who are a stench in the nostrils of the world, he invites us to be a part of that mission. It is the life of Jesus in us that draws people to Jesus. This is really important here, okay?

Cameron: 29:55

You and I, we do not win souls for Jesus. When do hear that? You couldn't even save your own soul. You certainly cannot win another's soul for Him. We do not win souls for Jesus.

Cameron: 30:18

Jesus redeems souls for the glory of God the Father. It is the ministry of Jesus that draws people to Himself. And it is in the drawing of Jesus that people fall in love with the Father, We get to partner with Jesus, with God, in the active work of Jesus drawing men, women, children, people to Himself. And there's many ways that we partner with them. We're gonna talk about those.

Cameron: 31:00

Okay? There's many ways that we partner with God as He draws people through Jesus. But listen, these are not foreign ideas. This is not like a radical idea at all. We don't save people.

Cameron: 31:11

Jesus saves people. We do not win souls. Jesus wins souls. Jesus himself said several times, John six forty four, Jesus says, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. See, there was a moment in time.

Cameron: 31:37

There was a moment in time where in God's grace, God drew you to himself. Even now, even maybe in the hardness of your heart, the darkness of your mind, the abstinence of your will, you might be saying, God's not drawing me anywhere. Well, where are you sitting? You might not recognize it. You might like it.

Cameron: 32:10

You might not be ready for it, but make no mistake about it. No one is here by accident. No one. God, through his mercy, has drawn you to himself at the right time in the right moment for the right purposes. Jesus went on to say Luke chapter 19 verse 10.

Cameron: 32:44

Why? What is the very reason that he came? Jesus, the son of man, came to seek and save those who were lost. We use this term to be on mission. And I know that that's not necessarily a super well known term or kind of self explanatory, so I want to make sure that I at least give you my understanding or my definition of what I mean when I say that.

Cameron: 33:17

To be on mission is to engage our culture. As a people, we are to be on mission, to engage the culture with gospel centered people, gospel centered perspectives, and gospel centered plans. Meaning that we go out, It's been said that we go out to build colonies of heaven in the kingdom of darkness. Popping down little colonies of gospel centered people, gospel centered perspective, gospel centered plans, so that the darkness of the kingdom in which we are a colony of man, just going to slowly, like a virus, take it over. I think that partnership with God in His redemptive purposes for the world, as it pertains to mission, comes about in kind of like two primary ways, is how I kind of understand it and how I want to communicate it.

Cameron: 34:31

The first is what you probably are aware of, just the word evangelism. How are we on mission in the world? How are we building a colony of heaven and a kingdom of darkness? Well, first is evangelism. The outward, verbal, practical, tangible, actual way that we are sharing the story of God's work in our lives to partner with God as He's drawing them to Himself.

Cameron: 35:08

But I don't also don't want us to get too off the trail here. Most of us Okay, I'm not gonna say most of us. Me, Cameron. Cameron tends to be pretty selfish. Every day I ask the Lord to Sanctify me more and more to live like Jesus, love like Jesus, serve like Jesus, so I'm more selfless today than I am selfish today.

Cameron: 35:41

But you know, in the core of my selfishness, it's really easy to believe that my story is about me. What I've gone through is about me. What I've experienced is about me. The things that I've lost, the story's about me. The things that I've gained, the story's about me.

Cameron: 36:06

My story is about me. And that's why it becomes really, really, really difficult for us to always make sense out of what happens in our stories. Because we try to create meaning, and we try to manufacture purpose for our stories out of our self. Man, I got to make this make sense somehow. I got to make the dots connect.

Cameron: 36:41

This story about me, I don't understand it. And I don't get it. I got to create some kind of purpose for this. Listen, if no one has ever told you, I want you to hear it today. Your story is not about you.

Cameron: 36:59

It's not. Your story is not about you. I love you, and I love your story, but it ain't about you. Our stories are about the one who created us. Even our stories lay underneath the supremacy of Jesus.

Cameron: 37:25

Our stories are always about the God who draws us, the God who redeems, the God who changes, the God who saves, the God who has come, the God who will come again. Even the very way that most of us understand our stories, being lost and far from God, and God coming and rescuing us, are in some ways wrapped up, even like this idea of the parable in It's Luke 15, the parable of the prodigal What? Parable of the prodigal son. This is a perfect example. How does that parable start?

Cameron: 38:14

There was two sons who had a father. Is that how it starts? No. That's not how it starts. There was a father who had two sons.

Cameron: 38:31

Who is the parable about? The father. We want to make our story about us like we want to make the parable of the prodigal son about us. I was far away and God came and saved. Yes, maybe.

Cameron: 38:51

Maybe. Glory to God. Glory to God for your story. But don't get it twisted. The story is not about you.

Cameron: 39:00

The story is about the God who comes and saves. The story is about the God who sees the one who's far off and comes running in mercy. The story is about the God whose faithfulness stayed with the son that stayed as well as the son who left. The story is always about God. You have a story to tell for sure, and people need to hear it.

Cameron: 39:28

Absolutely. But it is not your story. It's the story of God's mercy in your life. How he drew you at a time where you were far away. It's the story of God's deliverance of you.

Cameron: 39:41

It's the way that that that that God found you in the mess of your life and you relented to his mercy. It is the story the story is not just meant for you. The story is meant for others who through you will come to know him. Evangelism. We are on mission by sharing the story, God's story in our lives, but we're also on mission with acts of mercy.

Cameron: 40:11

Okay? Multiple examples in the New Testament, especially of Jesus telling his disciples, we live like Jesus. Right? We love like Jesus, and we serve like Jesus. And if we take that seriously, we see multiple examples where Jesus is saying to his disciples, to the crowds, to the sick, to the hungry, And Jesus saw them and he what?

Cameron: 40:39

He had compassion on them. He didn't see them as a project. He didn't see them as a target. He didn't see them as just numbers to build the crowd. He saw them and he was on mission to them because he had compassion on them.

Cameron: 41:01

It was the mercy of God in him that moved him to mission for others. The fourth pillar this morning, when we're going to end on here, is the pillar of community. We have been called out of the world and into the family of God. This is very, very specific here. And all of these will try and be spending more time on this year.

Cameron: 41:37

Wanna get the ideas out to you, though. Community, we have been called out of the world and into a family of into the family of God. It's so important here. When I see Stan or John say, Hey, brother. Good to see you this morning.

Cameron: 41:57

When I see Lindsay, right? And I see Carlo and I see Melissa, hey, good to see you this morning, sister. Like when I say, hey, brother, it's not just like a good Hulk Hogan slogan, okay? I'm not just channeling my inner Hulk. Okay?

Cameron: 42:25

To call each other brother and sister is a theological belief. It is rooted and grounded in our understanding of who we are as a group of people. Okay? One of the things that we hear the most about what people love about conduit is the sense of community that is here. They say it's like that it feels authentic to them.

Cameron: 42:56

It feels vulnerable. It feels real. It embraces people and situations where they are rather than where people think they should be, etcetera, etcetera. And listen, I agree. That's one of the I love this place.

Cameron: 43:10

One of the things that we really want to be able to do even as we grow as a church and as a congregation is to preserve that. Preserve that authenticity. Preserve that sense of embracing the realities of life. But listen, there is more to the idea of community than just a place to belong. Okay?

Cameron: 43:37

And I said a little bit about this already. I wanna say much more about this this year. I think it's such an important idea. Community is a theological idea. We are not just a spiritual social club.

Cameron: 43:57

We're not like the Lions Club or Zanta or the PTA or whatever. Those are all fine and good and have value. This is not that. That is not who we are. Our connection with one another comes from our common faith in Jesus and is deeply rooted in God's purposes for the world.

Cameron: 44:30

Our faith in Jesus becomes the marker for our connection with one another over top of and before any worldly difference than we could possibly have. It is our common faith in Jesus Christ that marks us as together as a community before and stronger and deeper and more significant than any worldly thing that would seek to divide us from one another. This is one of the core things that the Apostle Paul talked about in his ministry, about how the things that once separated Jew from Gentile are now gone in light of Jesus. The two, he says in Ephesians chapter two, have become one by faith in Jesus. In Galatians three twenty eight, he says this, There is now therefore, there's neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female.

Cameron: 45:45

You are all one in Christ. Look at even just the makeup of the disciples in the same group of people that Jesus organized himself to become the apostles that would carry on the life changing, history changing message of the gospel of Jesus Christ was made up of people who could not have been more worldly different from one another. You had Matthew the tax collector, who was a friend of the Roman occupiers, who was a Jew who gathered taxes from his fellow Jews and gave it to the Romans. Matthew the tax collector, working for the purposes of the gospel alongside Simon the zealot. It might not mean much to you, zealot wasn't his last name.

Cameron: 46:45

Zealot Okay? Was the political party that he was a part of. And it was a party who was actively trying to, by violence and force, kill the Roman occupiers so that the Jewish people could live in independence from them once again. So you had a guy who worked for the Roman occupiers, and you had a guy that was trying to kill the Roman occupiers. And they're like, Yeah, let's do this thing together.

Cameron: 47:17

All right? Some of y'all can't even have lunch with your aunt because of what she posts politically on Facebook. We got these dudes over here who are like completely opposite of the spectrum, but for the sake of the glory of the kingdom of God, they're like, Yeah, let's do this. This is the power of faith in Jesus, to connect those who were once so far away from one another, but who are now united in faith and purpose. The church, like the scripture describes us so much more than just kind of a ragtag social club.

Cameron: 47:57

It calls us a royal priesthood, a holy nation, the body of Christ, the bride of Christ. We are sons and daughters of the Most High. We are members of God's household. It calls us a holy sanctuary and much, much more. See, even in our understanding of community, the church must be a counter practice, a set of habits, rhythms, and community that intentionally undoes what the world has formed and reforms us into the likeness of Christ.

Cameron: 48:37

We carry one another's burdens. We mourn. We weep. We celebrate and support. We pray for one another.

Cameron: 48:45

We serve one another. We are generous to one another. We serve with one another. We challenge one another. We forgive.

Cameron: 48:51

Community is the context. It is the environment where we grow and are transformed to live, love, and serve more like Jesus. It is the place in which it happens. Now listen, some of our ministries will be specifically geared as a church. Some of our ministries will be specifically geared towards one of these four pillars.

Cameron: 49:20

For instance, as far as mission is concerned and mercy is concerned, the food truck is an excellent example of this, right? It goes out on mission to bring gospel centered people, perspective, and plans into a world of darkness. And it shows up in a spirit and a heart and an attitude of mercy because they have compassion. Right? We have community and formation showing up in things like what pastor Luke talked about this morning, the men's breakfast, the women's breakfast.

Cameron: 49:59

We're gathering in community. We're praying for one another, being formed by God's word. We are seeking the face of God in worship nights and prayer gatherings. So listen, there are individual ministries where these things are on like kind of individual display, but all of our ministries should reflect these four things in some way or some degree. Next week, I want to talk to you about a few things.

Cameron: 50:30

You're probably going to see it as a little bit more like I don't want to say I don't know. I don't know what it's going to look like yet. It's going to be the same and different all the same time. I don't know. I want to talk to you a little bit in light of these things, in light of how the church has been growing, in light of the next season of ministry, where we kind of have been discerning the direction of conduit to be moving.

Cameron: 51:00

So the next season for life in the community here, talk a little bit about our yearly focus, our direction in leadership, kind of responding to the growth that we see happening here. So that's what we're going to do next week. And then two weeks from now, we're going to start a new series. It's a five week series on the doctrinal statement of conduit or the statement of belief or the faith statement, however you come to know it. It's like, what are the core theological things that conduit believes?

Cameron: 51:31

You can find that statement of faith on our website, but we're gonna be taking about five weeks to talk about those and to try and dig a deep theological well early in the year about what we believe and why we believe it. So, let's go to the Lord in prayer as the worship team comes back up. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. We thank you for the gift of your mercy, Lord, that draws us close to you, that draws us near to you. Heavenly Father, we believe that you are actively working to redeem the world to yourself through your son, Jesus.

Cameron: 52:13

Lord, that you're calling, that you've called us into partnership with you in that. We wanna respond, Lord, by letting you use your story of redeeming and transforming us to help transform others. Father, we pray that you would show us your face, that we would see and know you, Lord, not just your gifts, but your presence, who you are. In Jesus' name, amen. We just wanna be like you, Jesus.

Cameron: 52:56

We give all that we have to know you, Have your hope live in our heart, Lord. Heavenly Father, we pray that by your mercy, we would offer ourselves, our bodies as living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to you. Conforming our minds no longer to the pattern of the world, letting our minds be renewed that we might know the good, pleasing, and perfect will of the father. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Cameron: 53:33

Kando, you are loved. Have a great week. We'll see you next time.