Good morning, Veritas. How's everybody doing? Good. Good. If we haven't met, my name is Jordan. Get the privilege of being one of the pastors here, and I am excited to be here this morning. Those of you that don't know, my wife is officially 39 weeks and six days pregnant. And so we weren't exactly sure if I was going to be here today. A couple different people were praying this weekend. One was my wife. She was praying that the baby would come. And. And the second was Taylor Richardson, who was praying that the baby wouldn't come because he spent all weekend with the youth. And if I wasn't here, he was going to be teaching. But the reality is, we're still waiting for this baby. So I'm here, and we get to kick off a two week mini series on the church. You'll see the graphic here on the screen. And this is designed very intentionally as we just consider, what do we do here on a Sunday morning? What does it mean to be the church? And the question of why do we do the church? Like the what and the why? There are two questions that we really need to answer, and I think in today's day and age, there's a ton of confusion. I mean, number one, it's 2024. There seems to be confusion in just about everything. But especially post Covid, when you consider, man, churches shut down and then churches reopened, and, you know, online streaming became a huge thing post Covid. I just remember talking to a college student a couple years ago, and I said, hey, where does your family go to church? And she said, a church name that I recognized. And I said, in North Carolina. I was like, do they live in North Carolina? She's like, no, they live in Cedar rapids. And I was like, oh. And she meant they attended their online campus. And I was like, okay, hold up. There's a ton of confusion around what it means to be the church. And so some of it is like, hey, let's gain clarity together. But also as we just consider who we are in the stage and season of our church. You know, a church plant that's two years old and lord willing, within the next year becomes fully autonomous. We need to answer these questions so that we know how to do church God's way. Like, we don't want to just show up and go through the motions or guess what we are doing. We want to say, what does the Bible say? Here at Veritas, we're Bible people. Those of you who have been with us a while know that typically we'll teach through books of the Bible, and we're gonna do that this year. We're gonna teach through the book of two corinthians, pretty much September, all the way through May with a couple breaks. But that's not what we're doing this morning. So if you have a Bible, I would encourage you to get it out. I'm gonna have you flipping a lot of pages. If you prefer to use a digital bible, that's great, too. No shame. And in fact, it might be quicker for you today because we're going to be looking all over the New Testament answering this question, what makes a church? The what of the church? And I don't know about you guys. I'm a foodie. I love food. It doesn't take much to remind me of food. And when I think about this question, what makes a church? I think about recipes. Like, when you're making something, it's like, what makes fill in the blanken? You know, there's been debate amongst the youth. It's like, is a hot dog a sandwich? Hmm. I don't know. We need to define what a sandwich is. Jude says yes, but when I think about recipes, I tend to think of the ones that are, like, famous in my family. Those dishes or desserts that, you know, are done really well. Think of my mom's lasagna. Top notch. I would take my mom's lasagna over anybody's. My dad's potato salad and my grandma's cranberry cake with warm butter sauce. And any time that I've had somebody else's version of these, I'm like, man, something seems off, right? Or in fact, there was only one time I tried replicating my mom's lasagna, and it just didn't turn out right. You make it and you're like, well, that didn't turn out. Or you taste somebody else, and you're like, maybe I want to spit it out. And the problem is, maybe the recipe is wrong or the recipe is off. When you miss an ingredient or ingredients are misplaced, you end up with a dish or dessert that is at best distorted and at worst destroyed. Something that you wouldn't even want to consume. And when we ask this question, what makes the church? We need to know the recipe. We need to know the necessary ingredients that go into this thing called the church so that we would enjoy it, that we would savor it. Like, the church is the bride of Christ, his beloved. And when we consider man, I want to be a part of a church that I love, a church that I enjoy coming to and belonging to. The question we have to ask is, what are the ingredients? What are the ingredients that will make this a biblical church and one that we enjoy belonging to? And I want to just give a quick disclaimer here, because I think as we answer these questions, one thing that we can be quick to do is look out. We can look out maybe at a previous church we were a part of, or other churches in our communities. And maybe what we're about to talk about this morning almost becomes like a weapon to call out other people and be like, oh, they call themselves a church. They don't even blank. And I just want to say, let's not do that. Okay? So don't think about other churches in the community, other churches you've been a part of. I want this to be more of a filter for us here at Veritas. Not for us to point a finger at other people, but for us to filter. Who are we, and are we doing church the way that God wants us to do church? So that's my disclaimer. I'm going to stay off the hobby horse for now, but here's what I'm going to do for us this morning. I'm going to give you a definition of what a local church is. This is established somewhat by John Piper. If you know him, he's up in the Minneapolis area. And then our elder team kind of took this and reworked it to make sure that this is what we would say. A local church is based on God's definition. So it's up on the screen, I'll read it for us, and then what we're going to do is walk through it together. So here's a mouthful of a definition. A local church is a group of baptized believers who meet regularly to worship God through Jesus Christ, to be exhorted from the word of God, to edify one another according to their giftings, and to celebrate the Lord's supper under the guidance of duly appointed leaders. Whoa. That is a lot. And again, if you're used to our normal Sunday morning sermons, this is not going to be that. In fact, you might feel like you're in a little bit of a classroom. This is what we would call ecclesiology, and it's rooted on this word ekklesia. In our Creed series, we talked through the phrase church is essential. The word church is this word ekklesia. It means a called out gathering, a called out group of people. And so I'm going to give you ecclesiology 101 we talked about in May in that creed series, the word ekklesia is used 114 times in the New Testament, with the overwhelming majority of them referring to local gatherings like what we're doing this morning. Now, maybe you've heard the word church in regards to, like, the universal church. You know, if we're in Christ, like we're all the church, like all believers of all times, all places, we are the church. And I would say, yes. Amen. But as we look at the New Testament and consider man, who were Paul's letters written to local churches, right. In the book of Revelation, Jesus delivered seven letters to seven real churches and real locations. So we're going to focus in on the local church this morning, and I want us to walk through this definition together. I'm not going to repeat it for you. I would love. Abby, if you wouldn't mind just putting it back up on the screen. I want you guys to look at this. If you're a note taker, I'm going to try and appropriately simplify this for us. Not to dumb it down, but if you're a note taker, so that you can just follow along with me. So the three categories I want to walk through this morning are church organization. That is both church membership and leadership. So, church organization. The second category is church ordinances should be baptism and the Lord's supper. And then the third category is church operations. And what I mean when I say operations are kind of the standard processes or core functions that go into us being a church. So you would be thinking of worship, preaching, and community. Right. Edification. We're going to take these categories one at a time, and I'm going to do my best to keep scripture up on the screens for you guys, for you to follow along. So we're going to tackle church organization first. If you look at the book ends of this definition, what you get are two different groups of people. And I love that because oftentimes when this word church is used, we're prone to think of a place, not a people. We're prone to think of a building. Oh, I'm going to church. Well, what does that mean for a group like us that meets in a cafeteria in a school? Right. It's like, oh, if you were to say, I'm going to church on Tuesday, you would be showing up to lunch with kids, right? So if we don't have a building, are we still a church? And the answer is yes. Right. A church is a people. And specifically in this group of people, there are members and leaders. And when I think of members and leaders. There's one keynote verse that I would love for you guys to know. That's Hebrews 1317. And I will put that up on the screen. Here's what the word of God says. It says, obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls. As those who will have to give an account, let them do this with joy and not with groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. So, as you look at Hebrews 1317, you kind of have to ask yourself two questions. The first is, who are the leaders that you are called to submit to? That's more for the members. Like, what leaders? Any church leader? Or is it your leaders? And then the second question, the one that I'm asking and wrestling with, is, who am I going to give an account for? And when you consider those two equations, I think, fortunately for you, and unfortunately for me, I have the tougher end of the deal here, right? It's like, I will give an account before God for how I, as a pastor and leader in this church, oversee the flock. And so the question I want answered is, who am I giving an account for? Is it everybody that walks through the doors on a Sunday morning, or is it a particular group of people? So I want to give you guys clarity on who your leaders are from a biblical perspective. And so there's a couple different places you can look. I'm going to reference Titus one for us, but also you can look at one Timothy three. When it comes down to church leadership, here's what Paul writes to Titus in Titus one. He says, this is why I left you in Crete. It's an island where there's several churches established so that you might put what remained into order and appoint elders in every town as I directed you. And then he goes on to say, here's what an elder looks like. If anyone is above reproach, the husband of one wife and his children are believers. Another word you could put there are faithful and not open to the charge of debauchery or insubordination. For an overseer, as God's steward, must be above reproach. He must not be arrogant or quick tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain, but hospitable. A lover of good, self controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. He must hold firm to the trustworthy word is taught so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. So I want to make a few observations from Titus one. When it comes to church leadership, the first is that the words elder and overseer are synonymous all throughout the New Testament. These words, pastor, elder, overseer, they are synonymous. So even as you were to go to our website, if you were to click on elders, you would see Jeff Meyer and myself, and you'd say, well, which one's an elder and which one's a pastor? And the answer is yes, because the words mean the same thing in the New Testament. Now, one thing that not a lot of people know is every time this word, pastor, elder, overseer is used in the New Testament, every single time, it's used in plurality. There's always meant to be plurality when it comes to leadership. And that's a good thing, right? It keeps the appropriate checks and balances. It's not that we would come together as a church and prop up one person, but that there would be plurality in leadership. Another thing that you should note is that leaders are supposed to be local or proximate. Right? That's why Paul told Titus, appoint elders in every town to have elders that are proximate to you. Because as Peter would write in one Peter five, he's charging them to shepherd the flock among you. So as a shepherd, here's what should be true of me. I should be in and amongst the sheep, the flock. You'll know why here when we look back at hebrews 13, but they should be local. And then when it comes to qualifications, as you look at that list, it is almost entirely character, as you would just look at your leaders, you should say, wow, they set an example when it comes to godliness. Now, there is one skill, you could say skill included in that list, and it's that they would be able to teach. They need to be able to understand and teach and guard sound doctrine. Because when it comes to the local church, we want to be, again, we want to be Bible people. You don't want someone that's going to stand in front of you and say, you know, my opinion is, or I've been thinking lately, it's like you don't want that. You want the word of God proclaimed over you. You want to be led by the very words of God himself. And so elders must be able to teach. Now, I want to look back at Hebrews 13 seven. Tell you one thing that's really important. Here's what HebRews 13 seven says. Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God, consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. When leaders are appropriately appointed, they should be men that are easy to follow. It doesn't mean perfect, right? But they should have a character, a godliness, one that is observable, that as you would look at their life, you would say, oh, that's a shepherd that I would trust. That's a shepherd that I would want to follow. And so it's important to know your leaders, to observe their life, and yes, to imitate their faith. So now the question is, who are the members? And if you're sitting in the seat this morning, I would say, maybe you're a member and maybe you aren't. There's actually a process that goes into church membership. So when we use the word the church, and I know Taylor kind of this morning said, what's up, church? And I would say, how's it going, church? Here's who I am talking to. Not necessarily visitors, and certainly not talking to nonbelievers in attendance, though I would hope in every local church there are visitors and there are non believers in attendance. That's part of us being missional and wanting to engage our community. So if you would say, I'm not a christian today, I am so glad you are here. We are grateful that you are visiting our church. And if you're not a member here but you're in attendance this morning, I am so, so glad you're here. But I would say you are not a part of this church yet, because local churches are made up of believers who have made a credible profession of faith through baptism. So I'm going to look at acts chapter two. You guys are probably familiar with this passage. It's post pentecost. The spirit of God has descended on the disciples. And Peter stands up in acts two and just cuts into the crowd, right? Preaches about this Jesus whom you crucified, right? According to the predestined plan of God. In the crowd, it says that they are cut to the heart, they're convicted, and they to Peter ask this question, what must we do to be saved? And Peter tells them to repent and be baptized. Every one of you. Now let me be clear. You are not saved because of the act of baptism. You are saved because of the finished work of Christ and the very response in faith. Ephesians two would say that you are saved by grace through faith. It is not of works, it is not of your own doing, so that you cannot boast in yourself. However, as you read throughout the New Testament, you will see that every person who makes a credible profession of faith in the New Testament as a follower of Jesus does so by the very act of baptism. Baptism was the public proclamation of faith. And so here's what acts two says. So those who received his word were baptized. And there were added that day about 3000 souls. That's another interesting thing. As you follow the book of acts, they're keeping track of how many people are being added to the local church. And it says they, the disciples, the baptized believers, devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread. And the prayers and awe came upon every soul. Many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles and all who believed were together and had all things in common. They were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had needed. And day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number, day by day those who were being saved. So in this passage you see church members who are people who have responded in faith, were obedient to the scriptures in baptism. And now you see this profound commitment to the Lord and to one another, right? This commitment to gathering, this commitment to community, to the apostles teaching, to the prayers, to the breaking of bread, communion, right? Caring for one another to the point that they're selling their possessions to meet one another's needs. There's this commitment to God and commitment to one another. And so we would say members of Veritas are those who have gone through the process of saying, hey, this is my church, I am committed to serving this church. I am committed to giving to this church and I am committed to living on mission with this church. One way that we talk through that is people who are committed to giving their time, their talents and their treasures for what God is doing in and through this local body. That's why we have a membership class. Like next week we're going to talk through, hey, here's who we are as a church. Here's what we believe, here's our ministry philosophy, here's what it means to be a member, right? When you look at romans twelve or one corinthians twelve, it says, hey, we are one body made up of many members. We need one another to follow Jesus. And I think what's most, perhaps most important when you consider membership is the idea of accountability for your soul, right? Hebrews 1317. Like, isn't it helpful to know that as you follow Jesus, there are qualified men who will one day give an account to God for how they're caring for you? That should be a comfort to you when you hear this terminology? Like shepherd and sheep. That means like, the members of the church are sheep. How many of you guys know anything about sheep? Okay, hear me when I say this. I'm a sheep too, right? Praise God. Jesus is the great shepherd of the sheep. He needs to shepherd my soul, too. But here's what's true of sheep. One commentator said this sheep are the most helpless of creatures. They have no wisdom and they have no weapons. Another way you could say this, sheep are considered to be dumb and defenseless. And what sheep need is a good shepherd to keep them close. And so when you just consider man, here's what's true of my own soul. I'm prone to wander. I'm prone to leave the God I love. I'm prone to go astray. Membership keeps me close in proximity, number one, with other sheep, and number two, with shepherds who can keep me in and a part of the fold. It is a huge comfort as a member. But the question is, who do we hold accountable, right? Because it would be really odd if you just visited this morning and I walked up to you. This is the first time we met. And I said, hey, I wanted to let you know that I saw you at bullies in Centerpoint yesterday and you appeared drunk. Let me reprimand you. And you're like, first off, who are you? Tell me your name. And second off, I didn't ask for this, right? So when it comes to accountability, there has to be a kind of a mutual agreement of, hey, I want accountability. And for your church leaders to say, we are going to provide accountability. So a couple texts for you guys to look at. Matthew 18 is a good one, pretty well known for church discipline, and I almost hate that that word discipline is used, though it is appropriate. I'd rather call this a passage on church restoration. Church restoration. Because here's what Jesus says in Matthew 18. He says, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault. Between you and him alone. And if he listens to you, you've gained your brother, right? That's restoration. So if you have a fellow member of Veritas who you know is sinning, there's this call to go talk to them about it, point it out, show them in the scriptures where they're missing the mark and Lord willing, win them back to Jesus. But it says if he doesn't listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. Okay, so am I going to stand up here on stage and say, hey, guys, I just wanted to let you know and air out of someone's sin in front of this entire group? No, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do that in front of our members, those who have asked for accountability. And it says, if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a gentile or tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. God is giving the local church a level of authority on earth to say, you're kind of a kingdom outpost, not necessarily to make a definitive statement you are a Christian or you're not a Christian, but to say, hey, to the best of our ability, as we look at the fruit of your life, we want to let you know that we believe you're a Christian. That's why we're treating you this way. Or if you're living in unrepentant sin, to be people that love you enough, to say, I don't think that you have saving faith, and I'm going to treat you like a non believer, hoping that you will repent and place your faith in the finished work of Jesus. I'm not going to teach the whole passage, but one corinthians five is another great place to go. The church in Corinth was a mess, an absolute mess. It gives us a ton of hope for the church in America. Let's be honest, right? First, corinthians five, there's sexual immorality running rampant in the church. And Paul writes, and he says, hey, here's what you guys need to do. You need to deal with the sin that is in and amongst your members, your body. But at the end of this passage, he says, for what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside, therefore purge the evil person from among you. And I think, man, we are just far too quick, myself included. We are far too quick sometimes to point the finger out there and to say, man, do you see what those people are doing? And, man, do you see how they are acting? And when Paul is telling the church in Corinth, hey, here's who you're called to judge one another. You who have called yourself followers of Jesus, let's hold one another to a standard of holiness. Let's love each other enough to have the hard conversation and confront sin rather than saying, wow, this is uncomfortable, this will feel awkward. Maybe it'll make our friendship frayed. I don't know. Let's be obedient to the scriptures and fight for one another's holiness. That is the win of church membership, that we would hold one another tight as we follow Jesus together. And so, yeah, you have to ask yourself this question now, who's the insider? Who's the outsider? How do we know? And I've already alluded to it. Here's a shocker. Baptism. Right here at Veritas, we say, hey, baptism is a requirement for membership. And I would say because that's how Jesus designed it. We as the church, actually don't have the discretion to pick and choose which ordinances we observe and which we don't. If Jesus said, hey, this is what you ought to do in the great commission. Go and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded. That is what we ought to do as a church is to say, hey, you have placed your faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Praise God. Here's what I would call you to do. Be baptized. Be baptized. Now, even that word baptism, we're in that, like, church ordinances section. Now, if you're a note taker, I think there's been confusion primarily through, you know, misguided and misguided practices throughout church history. I know I myself was raised in the lutheran church, was baptized as an infant, and then I came to trust in Jesus as a junior in college. And I came back to my parents and I said, hey, I was just reading the book of acts, and I think I'm supposed to be baptized. What I actually said is, I think I'm supposed to be re baptized. And my parents said, what do you mean? And this wasn't my language then, but it is my language now that I'd love to help guide you. When you consider baptism, baptism is both a response and a representation. It's both a response and a representation. So when I say baptism is a response, I'm even looking at acts two that we just looked at, acts 241. It says, those who received his word were baptized. So baptism came as a response in faith. It was not something that was done to them, but something that they, in mutual agreement, said, I am choosing to be baptized because of what Jesus has done for me. And so I think there's a way that we can honor those who have gone before us. Like my parents who chose to have me baptized as a baby. I know my parents deepest desire is that I would know, love and follow Jesus, Jesus forever. And when I circled back to them as a junior in college eleven years ago today, I was like, hey, thank you for your desire to have me a part of the local church. Thank you. That you invested so much in me so that I would know, love and follow Jesus. I want you to know I've trusted in him. And now under conviction by the Holy Spirit because of what the word of God says, I actually think that I'm supposed to be baptized as a response in faith. And here's how I'm going to do that. By immersion. This word immersion. So the word for baptism is actually baptizo. You learned a new word today. It means to immerse in water. So the word baptism itself means to immerse. And that's important when you consider that baptism is a representation. A representation. Romans six is kind of a keynote passage for us as we consider baptism. I'm going to paraphrase it for you for the sake of time, but Paul is writing to believers in Rome and he says, hey, are we to continue in sin so that grace may abound? By no means. Here's why. Don't you remember your baptism after you placed your faith in Jesus? Here's what you did. You were pushed underwater. That was communicating that the old you is dead, just like Jesus really died. You going under the water was saying, the old you is dead. And don't you remember when you were brought up out of the water, you communicated that you're a new creation in Christ Jesus. Just like Jesus rose from the dead. That is true of you. You are now a new creation in Christ Jesus. And the first command given in the entire book of Romans is to essentially remember, consider your baptism. So he's calling these believers in Rome back to an act of faith that they made when they placed their finished work, their faith in the finished work of Jesus. And he said, hey, remember this call to action? Your union with Christ? Just like Christ died, the old you died. Just like Christ was raised from the dead, you are a new creation. You are called to remember that. And here's what's true. Baptism, whether we like it or not, belongs to the local church. Now, as you read through the book of acts, you're going to come across a couple different baptisms that are kind of the outliers, right? The ethiopian eunuch, maybe you're familiar with that. This man who's just sitting alongside the road reading the prophet Isaiah, and Peter comes alongside him. He's like, hey, do you know what you're reading? He's like, no, but would you tell me? Okay, come on. This is a lob. I wish this would happen today where you, like, walk into work and someone's reading their bible, and you're like, do you know what you're reading? They're like, no, please tell me. And then you just spill the gospel on them, and they're like, all right, where's the water? I want baptized. Okay? It doesn't happen that way. And in today's day and age, especially here in America, there are established local churches to provide baptism for the sake of accountability, to see baptism and membership closely connected, because, again, as we see in the New Testament, every follower of Jesus was baptized into, ideally, a local congregation, unless there was not a local congregation established like the ethiopian eunuch, to see these together for the sake of community and accountability. Now, baptism is a one time thing, right? You've placed your faith in Jesus, you're baptized. And then the question is, like, now what? When it comes to ordinances, if I want man that maybe quote unquote spiritual high, or I want to call to remembrance what Jesus has done for me, do I just need to keep getting baptized? I say, no, please don't. Here's why. We have the Lord's supper, communion, and here at Veritas, we get the opportunity to do this every single week, with, again, rare exceptions, like outdoor services and things like that. This ongoing practice of communion, because if baptism is about your union with Christ, the Lord's supper is about your communion with Christ. It's about an ongoing, repetitive relationship with Jesus. And it's actually analogous to when you look at the Old Testament, the observance of Passover, where Israel would time and time again kind of align themselves with the exodus generation to allow that experience to shape their current life and circumstances, to look back at the faithfulness of God and say, this is like anchoring me in this season. This is anchoring me in life right now. And so we get to do that every week. We get to come and partake of the elements, right? The body, which was Christ, the bread, which is Christ's body, broken. For you, it's a remembrance that Jesus as an atoning sacrifice. So guess what? You don't have to sacrifice yourself because Jesus sacrifice was sufficient. And then as we take of the cup, we remember Jesus blood, which was poured out for us. It's a remembrance that he himself took the very wrath of God on his head. That we deserved when he was crucified. And so guess what? You are no longer under wrath if you are in Christ Jesus. One thing I would love to note, I'm going to have one corinthians eleven up on the screen for you. I'm just going to look at the tail end of this passage here, starting in verse 26. So Paul is writing to this church in Corinth again. I said, they're really messed up. They were, like, coming each week, and some people weren't getting communion, and some people were getting drunk on communion. Really bad. Really bad. And Paul is saying, you guys are not even. This isn't the Lord's supper you're doing. I don't know what you want to call it, but that's not how God designed it. And then he reminds them of Jesus words. And he says, for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. This is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. What? As I read that passage, I'm like, okay. What we do every week really matters. It really matters to say, God will not be mocked if what we are doing every time we come to the table is say, man, this is actually, like, representative of what Jesus did for us. There's a call to examine ourselves, to look at our lives and say, am I a follower of Jesus? Am I partaking of the elements because of my trust in him? Is there any unrepentant sinhouse in my heart that I need to confess to God? And to do that with diligence every single week before you come to the table? Because the warning here is judgment, right? It sounds crazy to think, but it's like, is God's word God's word or is it not? There's this call to real, like, strong self examination. And as I consider both baptism and the Lord's supper, just a note to parents, the room. I know this is hard, especially with little kids who look up to you and would love to do everything you're doing. I've done college ministry for the last five years. I think a word of caution is to say, let's help our kids understand what we're doing. When we partake of the elements, but let's appropriately guard them from participating in the Lord's supper if we don't know where their heart is at. If we don't know where their heart is at. I would rather us, like, coach them and train them and help them understand what we're doing than to give them a false sense of assurance that they belong to Jesus if maybe they don't yet. And so what you could do as a parent during communion time is you could walk them through what you're doing and you could pray with them or pray for them. But maybe, maybe it's best just to say, hey, let's wait for now. Because just like baptism, communion doesn't save you. And so if they don't partake of communion, they're not missing out on salvation. It's a great coaching and discipleship opportunity as a parent that you would have with your child. All right, I am running out of time. I'm going to try and keep this succinct. We're going to cover church operations. Church operations. There's a lot here, but Taylor is going to cover a lot of it next week, so I'm going to give you guys the scripture references. Here's what we do as a church. We meet regularly. In fact, we meet weekly, every Sunday here at 09:15 a.m. and Hebrews 10 24 25 would tell you to not neglect the gathering as a follower of Jesus. The word neglect means that you are forgetting to do something that you ought to do. So we meet regularly. Here's what we do. We worship God through Jesus Christ. That's why we exist. When you look at Ephesians one, which is one of the most beautiful run on sentences you will ever come across, there's two different times where he says, this is why we're doing this. To the praise of the glory of goddess. Everything that we do is under the banner of Jesus Christ, his finished and sufficient and beautiful work on our behalf. Everything that we do is out of an overflow of that to say, God, we want to come. We want to listen from your word. We want to sing like we are a singing people. One of our college students who is in Bangkok, Thailand on missions last summer came back and they said, the first time I told a Thai native that I was a Christian, they said, you guys are the people that sing. Isn't that awesome? It's like that Christianity is known to be a singing people. And I heard one pastor say it this way. We sing to God because he is too good to simply talk about. We sing to God because he is too good to simply talk about. And in Ephesians 518 21, we're actually called to address one another as we sing. So, yes, worship is primarily vertical. We're singing to God. But let's be honest, worship has horizontal implications, especially, as you know, your church, right? If I can look across the way and see somebody singing who just got a cancer diagnosis, I'm like, wow, they serve a great God. Or I can see a junior high student raising their hands in worship after I know that they had a terrible week of school. I'm like, praise God. They serve an amazing God. It stirs us up. So, yes, we must be a singing people. We want to be exhorted from the word. I've covered that. I'll try not to beat a dead horse. But the book of Second Timothy, it's Paul's final letter. You know, he's writing from his deathbed to a young pastor in Ephesus by the name of Timothy. And time and time again, he comes back to guard sound doctrine, preach the word. Hold true to the testimony of the scriptures. It's just like if he has one word to a young pastor, he says, preach the Bible. Teach the Bible, because it is God breathed, and it is profitable in every way that we would be trained up to know, love, and follow the Lord. And then lastly, we are called to edify one another. We are called to edify one another. I love a couple different passages. That is helpful. They are both twelve Romans twelve and one Corinthians twelve. We are one body with many members. And within that, that means some of us are strong at things, and some of us are weak at things. But we need each other, right? A hand can't say to a foot, I don't need you, or an ear can't say to an eye, I don't need you. We have different giftings, and we're called to use those. This word edify means to build up or to strengthen one another. I mean, here in America, we have such an individualistic culture that far too often we ask the question, what am I getting out of it? And I'd say, that's not the point. That's not the point. The question is, what do you have to give to the local church? And, man, what would it look like if all of us showed up every Sunday to say, man, who can I encourage today? Who can I remind of truth today? Who can I build up today? Who can I serve today? You would love belonging to this church. And so to wrap this up again, this is more of a classroom type setting. I understand that. But as you just consider those categories, church organization, the question is, how do you apply that? I don't want you to get paralyzed here. You guys have heard the phrase paralysis by analysis. Like, you could come out of the sermon and say, man, I think there's twelve different things I want to grow in. Pick one. Please pick one. So if it's church organization, if it's like you haven't been a member, you haven't committed to membership. Come to membership class next Sunday. Learn about it. I'm not even telling you to commit yet, but at least consider what it would look like to be a member. Or maybe you are a member and you need to start asking yourself the question, am I honoring the commitments I made when I signed up to be a member here? Church ordinances. Have you been baptized? If not, pursue baptism. We have a baptism class coming up next month. If you have been baptized, let's take communion seriously again. We do it every week, but let's take that time to examine our hearts and come to the Lord's table with hearts prepared. And when it comes to church operations, I mean, this isn't hard to say, it's hard to do. Commit to gathering. Make it a priority. Prepare your heart before you come. I remember when Ellie and I were at Candeo in Cedar falls, another salt network church, someone had mentioned to me, you know, with how much time goes into preparing for a Sunday morning behind the scenes, I wonder what it would look like if each member gave a 10th of the time to prepare their own art. And that was confronting to me as a member of the local church, because oftentimes I would just show up. And as I started to say, man, I want to start actually preparing my own heart for what's coming on Sunday morning, I saw the local church through a whole different lens. And so maybe it's just you giving yourself ten more minutes on a Sunday morning to say, how do I need to prepare for this Sunday morning? And lord, give me eyes to see other people and church. Here's what's true as we look at these elements, this definition of a local church, if we miss ingredients, it's not to say necessarily that we won't be a local church. I'm just saying it won't be a local church you enjoy. It'll be dry. It'll lack the taste, the flavor, the life that you want to be a part of. But if. If you look at this definition seriously and say, man, I want to take accountability for what I can, and I want to hold our church leaders to accountability, to lead this church the way it's supposed to be led. We're going to end up with a church we love, right? Like a good dessert to be enjoyed. Right. And to be shared with others. But again, it's not just about us. Ephesians one, to the praise of his glory. The reason that we want to get the recipe right is not just so that we would enjoy church, but so that we would have an acts two type of church. And that's my prayer, right, as I consider Veritas Urbana. Awe coming upon every soul. Ugh. It'd be amazing if every Sunday we walked out and we said, would you believe what God did today? That would be amazing. And then with that, day by day, the Lord adding to their number those who were being saves that man. There would be a day that we set up 200 chairs and were like, all right, God, we sold you short. There's more people here than we have chairs for. Praise God. More people that can worship our great God and savior. Amen. Let's pray together. Father, I just thank you for the promise that you are committed to building your church. You will build it. God, we are so blessed beyond measure to simply have a front row seat to what you are doing here at Veritas Church in Urbana, Iowa, from the ground up. God, you have been building it with Christ Jesus as our cornerstone. And, Jesus, thank you that all of what we do is not about us, but is ultimately about you. Your perfect life, your substitutionary death, your victorious resurrection, and that we stand as a righteous people, not because of works done of our own, but because of what you did on our behalf. And so, God, I pray that we would be a church that honors you to the praise of your glory, that you would lead us as we seek to faithfully follow you now and forever. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.