Introduction
Let me begin with a discipleship question: will we trust and obey Jesus in the real decisions of everyday life? Christ forms us through truth received, repentance practiced, and obedience lived out.
Main Points
Grace and Justification
so tonight we're going to go through i think eight or nine kind of overarching um themed topics that will really just give you an understanding as people who go to calvary boise of what we're going to be up to as a church this fall so everything from now until christmas that we're going to do i just wanted to take a minute to kind of share some of the vision behind the things that we're going to be doing so that you would one know the heart behind it and to just be ready for what the lord is going to be doing in our church and the different opportunities that we have to go through the word together to do some engagement with each other and our city together so tonight you're going to hear from me i'm going to invite up some of my people over here to share in things that they're going to be helping oversee or lead and then and then at the end of this if you guys just want to hang out and talk to any one of us or me and just kind of give some questions or answers or anything that we can do to just fellowship afterwards we'll have a little bit of time afterwards as well but it's been a while since we've done an event or an evening like this so i don't really know exactly how long this will take we have our estimations but as you can see we're already six minutes behind schedule that's all right you guys have nowhere to be for the next hour and a half um so the format of the night is we're going to talk through uh topic by topic what we're up to if you've got if you came to church this last weekend you could have gotten a fall uh basically a fall overview the next three months of our year just to let you know some of these things we're going to go through a lot of those things and i just want to say it now and i'll say it again at the end on your way out at the welcome center some of those fall overview bulletins are available and i grabbed a couple here because i wanted to have a visual aid so this is a lot of the things that we'll be talking about tonight just what's coming up in the fall so grab one on the way out but sit back enjoy as i invite up my first let's call him a guest although he's also a friend he's also an elder of our church uh kirk krager if you would come up no i'm kidding it's tom velasco welcome up tom velasco how you doing big guy man it's good to see you when's the last time i saw you a few minutes ago i don't know if you guys know this but tom is my mentor in the faith i really got into ministry and was introduced to the preaching and teaching ministry uh under your mentorship so thank you thank you're welcome and what tom and i are going to talk about is the teaching plan for the fall i think one of the most important things that we're going to do as a church and one of the most important things that you should really be looking out for in a church is how are they allowing the word to lead and that is why we study the word that's why we want to know what it says because it's good to have sound doctrine and know your theology but it's also good to be led by the word and so our two main ways as a church that we get together to open the word and try to understand the way that god is leading us through it for this fall semester if you want to call it that is going to be our wednesday night service and then what we do on our sundays and then as an extension of that you're going to hear a little bit tonight about our communities which you i hope have already heard a little bit about so kirk is in the um he's in the shadows waiting to talk about that but first and i hope that all of you who are here on wednesday night have carved out wednesday nights for your schedule because we are such blessed people i really believe that to have tom velasco is one of the teachers that god has provided for us tom thank you as a person who has a full-time vocation of teaching you teach at ambrose school and you also as an elder of this church are accepting the invitation to be a teaching elder so thank you so much will you tell us about what's upcoming uh for wednesday this fall well so i'm you know i see a lot of familiar faces uh some of them are familiar faces just because i've known you for a long time some of you though i have seen somewhat regularly over the course of last winter and spring for the most part winter and spring when i did a class that was called theology but wasn't a theology class it was there was plenty of theology there was lots of theology i just don't know that i would have thought of it as a theology class it's not your typical like i'm going to sign up for a theology class and learn systematic theology it was a study through genesis yeah more or less the idea was that we were taking we were taking a look at stories from the book of genesis and the idea of learning theology through stories uh when you take a look at jesus and the way he taught he made stories kind of the central point of his particular mission well not his mission but his teaching ministry he of course you know as you all know spoke to the people to the multitudes and to his disciples in parables stories become a way for us to kind of come to understand theological truths and of course to understand the deep and important meaningful parts of the gospel in a way that connects with our lives um uh that's kind of the whole point of a metaphor or an allegory an analogy it's that when you're talking about god you're describing somebody who is truly not comprehensible by our human minds i mean we don't we lack the faculty to really take in who he is but he speaks to us through a medium that we share that is the word so he speaks to us through his word and he tells us stories that illustrate for us or that teach us um the principles that he wants to ingrain in our lives so that was kind of the idea is we would take a look at certain theological principles by looking at stories in the book of genesis and we're going to carry on with that more or less it's going to be picking up where we left off uh i believe genesis 24 is where we left off we'll have to double check we know we left off and i hope all of you who left off there uh didn't fall off the cliffhanger that you left this with tommy left us at abraham's death correct which i think is actually genesis 25 20 24 and this is why we have these meetings where did we leave off we didn't meet beforehand anyway i went a little bit beyond where i'm going to start because i'm actually going to start with abraham still being alive okay i'm backing up a prequel and we're going to it's going to be like a prequel but i did talk about his death yes he did so maybe 23 then that we'll look at but i'm picking up with the story of how uh eleazar the servant uh obtained a wife uh who would of course well i don't wanna give a spoiler if you haven't read ahead but who obtained a wife for abraham's son isaac so we're gonna we're gonna start off with that and i think there's some really interesting principles from that story so as now you're all being invited to our wednesday night through the bible class with tom in genesis we're planning on live streaming that again so if you can't make it we hope that you can stay in touch with that teaching and the goal for this fall is to finish our study in the book of genesis so that's the goal i'm so appreciative of that i think the breakdown works really well to get from essentially isaac to the end of the joseph story and then if we can finish genesis as a preview to the next time we cast some vision we're hoping to go through the book of exodus with tom which i'm so excited about as a forecast to the spring so stick around but are you excited about that i'm very excited and i would like to point out that he just dropped the phrase through the bible on you all i don't know he didn't set that up uh and just you know he didn't set it up with me either we actually just talked about it just trying to go through the whole counsel of god so who knows where this is going to go but hey we fly by the seat of our pants up here right yeah and i certainly yeah and i just encourage all of you to continue to encourage tom to take us through the bible on wednesday nights so that's wednesdays now i thought it would be worth having this kind of open vision cast for our teaching time because we also teach the word on sundays and if you around for last time that tom was teaching genesis on wednesday you know that we also paired that on our sunday gathering so we would essentially take what tom was teaching on our wednesday through genesis and then we would also look at that on our sundays this fall we're going to do that a little bit different so all of genesis will be on our wednesday night service on our sunday night service or sunday morning sunday morning so at 9 15 uh 11 15 a.m not pm don't come at 11 15 p.m um i really wanted to just continue this um i guess really just looking to god's word for the times that we live in and i'm so grateful for the way that at least in my own life sermon on the mount just refreshed me for my love of following jesus in the midst of all other competing interests that sometimes we get pulled in and so i'm just praying through after sermon on the mount where do we go and just to give you kind of a philosophical view of going through the word as a church typically calvary chapels go through genesis through revelation and i think that's really wise to go through the word and in a way that really whether you like it or not you're going to get to portions of the word that you didn't necessarily think about going through so here's a rhythm that i found helpful for just our journey over the last couple years we have not by a design of my own but just as we've prayed through these seasons where we go to our sunday and we say where should we be in the word i found there to be a rhythm between the old testament the new testament which is i think really healthy as you consider consuming the word both valid ways as tom already described to understand what god is trying to say to us for the times we live in through the stories of the old testament that we can learn from and also through the epistles and the in the wisdom and the gospel in the new testament so as we finish an encounter that we had with jesus in the book of matthew i'm going to encourage all of you to be in at least in the conversation with genesis and i found something that we did really helpful in between uh the epistles that we were going through i think we left off in colossians before we went to genesis do you guys remember when we did the psalms we just took a time to go through the psalms and just be refreshed by the word and what you find in a rhythm is new testament old testament with some wisdom the wisdom of the psalms and so as we allow the old testament to be covered on wednesday night i want to look at some wisdom writing of the new testament and the book of james is really considered the wisdom writing the proverbs of the new testament and so from the kickoff to our wednesday on our sunday mornings we're actually going to start a study in the book of james called gospel on the ground basically how do we live all this stuff out the book of james faith in action how do we go through the trials of the current state of the world with joy in trial how do we continually seek god for wisdom how do we pray how do we do all these things that it seems as though the church is being stirred up in for a hunger for wisdom a hunger for a faith that has some boots on the ground aspect of it so we're going to study the book of james leading up to a runway to our christmas season where we're going to do another study so from september essentially till december we're going to be in the book of james so i hope that you will process that in your own journey through the word and i hope that you'll be blessed as we go through the book of james on sunday anything to add to that tom yeah i mean mostly just affirming kind of what you were saying about the book of james one thing i appreciate about it is it is very concrete i'm a big fan of concrete examples kind of coming back to stories and things even though james is not a book full of stories he gives you very real life practical ways to carry out the call of god on our lives and so i just think it's one of those books that can be challenging in a way that maybe certain others can't because it's really meeting the road i mean actually gospel on the ground is kind of a perfect right it's you're seeing how practically it's supposed to be lived and done i love the overlap because next week we're going to end the sermon on the mount with jesus famously saying anyone who hears these words of mine and does them i will liken him to a wise builder who built on the rock and james picks that theme up and says do it do your faith live it out and you guys have we all as a church as believers we have a lot of opportunity to live out faith in such a time as this so i trust that the book of james as you said will be a challenge that will push us closer towards the lord and brighten the light that he calls us to shine before we move on i'm going to invite someone else up i also want to just cast a little vision on the concept of going through the word and that the team of pastors that we have that i truly feel god has raised up with the gift of teaching so tom velasco is an incredible teacher i'm so excited to have you teach through wednesdays and some of the sundays as we go through that also just to give vision over the last couple weeks this summer was a great way for other pastors to get involved you got to hear from noah in the summer of the mountain his first sermon ever which at least you know in this setting he does a lot of bible studies and then also parker uh picked up the reigns on the sermon on the mount kirk krager taught uh on our fourth of july weekend and then there's also going to be another kirk krieger sighting next uh this upcoming weekend so i just wanted to and really this is an extension of some of the things that were on my heart as we went through the passage of scripture just to not elevate the um the personalities of men and i really want our church to whether it's me teaching or whether it's one of the other gifted pastors that god has equipped to teach it's good for us to be willing and accepting of the way that god wants to stir in us so i do want the book of james and some of these other opportunities to be an opportunity for other pastors to preach so i hope that you guys will encourage them and be willing to break up the sometimes the monopoly that one pastor can have on the pulpit but that's just one thought and to that point is there a picture of parker and noah that i can share right now okay there you go oh that's a great picture so parker and noah are not here tonight although they have plenty of things they can cast vision on because they have gone to a teaching conference in portland oregon uh noah is although as he shared on sunday very it's a test of his faith to teach it really is it's public speaking is not great but he really wants to step into the gifting parker is a he reminds me of kind of when i was starting out in ministry he's just such a i don't know i just love him so much now i feel like i'm complimenting myself because i said it reminded me of me but i just want to do everything i can to encourage parker to grow in the gift of teaching um if you guys have students in senior high youth group or our senior youth group i have so much confidence that they're being taken through the word soundly and rightly and it's being rightly divided because parker has a genuine heart for the word so i encourage those guys to go and be built up and equipped and i just wanted to share that photo with you as a picture of the teaching team that god has given us for this church so two guys to be praying for this weekend they're at a conference all day today and then also tomorrow in portland it's called the teach the conference is called the art of teaching thank you that's why you're there kirk i'm just going to continue to call on you so pray for them in that in that regard and then i'm going to invite tom velasco back up in a little bit to talk about some other things that will involve teaching i'm gonna have you slide down the couch i'm gonna have you slide down the couch to make a room you said that made it sound like i was going i was leaving you can but i prefer you to stay because i love you so much slide down the couch tom's going to stay up here because he's so lovable will you guys help me welcome up danielle davis i'm going to have thank you for all that you do and that wasn't a great so while you're here i would love for you guys to have a better understanding of all of the different people that make this place organized and accessible in one of the behind the scenes people and amazing laborers is our events coordinator daniel davis so anything that we do that requires the event team to really have their boots on the ground and all the organizations so church in the park and all of the bigger events for christmas and easter and organizing things like this and the behind the scenes of all that is daniel davis and the reason i'm inviting you up now is because not everything that we need to talk about or even need to grow in or mature in as a church will always be funneled through the pulpit on sunday and wednesday so there needs to be time where we have conversations about cultural issues or about things that are happening in different seasons of life that won't necessarily be a sermon series so we have quite a few conferences planned for this fall and even into next year but i wanted to have you share a couple of the things that we're doing beyond the pulpit to have those broader conversations through conferences for this fall so do you want to take us through uh the ones coming up in order yeah so our next uh the conference we have coming up is stories unveiled and this is a conference for women and this is a valley-wide conference that has happened the last few years and we have the honor of hosting it this year and so it's going to be a sweet time the heart behind this conference is breaking down the walls of our stories and really just sharing the redemption that god has brought us through this in those stories and so there's going to be a lot of different speakers it's a saturday conference uh and it's going to be just a sweet time of hearing how god has worked and how he has redeemed and just done beautiful things in people's lives um through some hard stuff and so we've got a couple ladies from our church that are going to be here sharing uh you can register online at storiesunveiledconference.com i'm picking up a theme that we didn't necessarily plan but there is something powerful about the story and i just think through the book of acts when the disciples and the followers of christ empowered by the holy spirit we're called to give witness to what he's doing and we live in such an interesting time to where the stories that god is taking people through really do encourage and embolden us through the fog that we find ourselves in so for the women specifically and i do encourage you if at all possible to go to this i know the women from our church that will be speaking and some really powerful stories and is this one of those conferences that has a tendency to fill up pretty fast yeah we would encourage you to go ahead and get registered for this one if you think you're going to be able to make it they do have a live stream option so if for some reason you're not able to attend the day of you can watch it and you'll have access to it after the conference as well to watch okay so conference number two is called cultivate and i know reggie's had a huge part to play in the vision for that but can you tell us a little bit about what's planned for that conference yeah so this conference is really exciting we uh when we first started talking about we want to have a family conference like that was the heart behind it as we were talking about what we wanted to teach on what the heart behind it was going to be what the workshops were going to be we quickly realized that this wasn't just for families like that this was for anyone in any walk of life that the truths are going to be presented apply to everyone and so it came out of just this desire to meet the needs and the neat thing about this one is we have two tracks so we have a family track and then we have a growth track and then family track has some fun like workshops like princesses and dragon slayers is one of the workshops like it's just gonna be a really sweet time um to go deeper in like how we can grow in our living lives that are christ-centered and i know it's that tight rope because it really is more than a family conference but when reggie and i were kind of praying through the times we live in and the family ministry it's like is there it seems like the day and age we live in one of the targets on the back of the design of god is the family and just the way that whether it's the family that he intended for the corps or the church family that includes people that aren't necessarily mom's dad's daughter or everyone's in that kind of range but the church family and the in the core of the family by god's design seems to be something that we really need to encourage and secure and make sure that we are people who love god's design and are willing to be built up in god's design for both the blood flaming and the family of god so whether you're a mom or a dad or a single person you know in this family we really want to be unified in what god's design for all this stuff is yeah and the great thing about this conference is we've kept the cost really low we want it to be accessible to everyone so the cost is fifteen dollars per person but if you register early it's ten dollars a person so for a two-day conference that is just such a great deal um to get to hear from a lot of gifted speakers the third conference that we're going to be doing this one specifically is why i say we've got to have conversations that we're not going to every week on a sunday morning or wednesday necessarily cover but again the day and age that we live in one of the biggest things as we send young people off to college or we all just try to navigate the political tension of our world is how we be believers salt light standing on the truth of god and the authority of his word in a culture that has the ideals that are so different than god in the area of sexuality and so we are going to have a conference called uh well we're going to have an evening that is it's called to the lgbtq conversation and so we have just it's incredible we've got dr preston sprinkle coming and he is nationally known um they run the center for faith gender and sexuality and so we're going to have a wednesday night where we're going to have a conference here to have a conversation and dr preston is going to just dr preston sprinkle sorry he's going to lay down the biblical and theological and relational foundation for how we address this conversation and how we engage in it and the way that we engage is so critically important and so he's going to give us what that looks like so it and i'm grateful for the way that god has brought preston and his family to just be part of our church but this is this is a i have a feeling this is something that all the churches will be invited to and will fill up pretty quickly and i hope you guys all know where we stand as a church very clear what god says about the design for sexuality between a man and a woman and husband and wife and so we have a very clear stance but we also want to ju
Conclusion
We return to the opening teaching: discipleship is not just information, it is transformation through faith and obedience to Jesus. If we receive His Word and walk it out, He will shape us into people who endure and bear fruit.
Lord Jesus, help me hear Your Word, obey it with faith, and grow as Your disciple. Amen.
Conclusion
We return to the opening teaching: discipleship is not just information, it is transformation through faith and obedience to Jesus. If we receive His Word and walk it out, He will shape us into people who endure and bear fruit.
Closing Prayer
Lord Jesus, help me hear Your Word, obey it with faith, and grow as Your disciple. Amen.