Shane Hughes 1-18-26

Good morning, Highland. My name is Shane Hughes. I'm one of the ministers here, and I want to remind you that the vision, the mission of the Highland Church of Christ is to partner with God in the restoration of all things. And particularly the places we're focused on is Highland, Abilene and the world. And so I'm going to talk today about the next part of the Restoration 2029 vision.

It's called Launch Pad. And I think by the end of this sermon, I hope that you are as excited about this initiative as. As I am about it, because I think it's a pretty big deal. Launchpad is gonna undergird the work that we're going to do for the next three years, and it's how you, as a member, get to participate in the work that God is doing all over the place. So we're gonna be in Ephesians 4 today, but if you want to look in your Bible, I'm gonna reference a curious story in Luke chapter 10.

It's this moment where Jesus sends out the 70s, some manuscripts, say 72, and they go out two by two to see if they get it. This is like the midterm exam for the followers of Jesus. He has been teaching them. They have witnessed him performing miracles. They've witnessed him performing feats of power.

They've seen him be the Son of God. And now the question is, do they understand? And I think this moment in Jesus life might be kind of what it's like to drop your son or daughter off at college, because, you know, you've raised them, you know you've done a good job, you know, you've taught them everything that they need to know. But as you drive away from campus knowing that they are on their own in a new way, you kind of wonder, are they going to remember everything? Are they going to go to class or to bed on time?

Are they going to make good friends? Are they going to take care of themselves? Am I confident they know how to do their own laundry? Those kinds of questions. By the way, if you're a college student here, a freshman in particular, if you have not done it yet, now is a great time to change your sheets.

Sometimes you forget. I'm just saying now, new semester, new sheets, maybe more than once a year. Think about it. The question is, are they going to make it on their own? Because Jesus knows the end of the story.

He's turned his face to Jerusalem. He knows that he's not going to be around forever. And these 72 followers, they go to Jewish places and they go to gentile places alike and then they return back to Jesus. And you can imagine with me that Jesus is sitting and watching, waiting for them to turn two by two. He sees them on the horizon and you can't really tell by their posture, their body language how it's gone.

Did they know what to do? Did it blow up in their face? What's it gonna look like? But as they get closer, Jesus can see their faces and they're rejoicing. They have power over demons.

Jesus, it worked. We can do this. And then Jesus says the most curious phrase perhaps that he says anywhere in the Gospels. He says, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. And I got to be honest with you, I am not confident I know exactly what Jesus means when, when he says that.

I think there's a lot of different ways you could read that. I think one way you could read that is to say, you know, maybe Satan took notice. Maybe he's suddenly aware that there's something going on and so he's coming down to earth to investigate, to see what's going on. Or maybe something has knocked Satan off his puny throne. Maybe this is the beginning of the end.

His rule is curtailed. His dominion is broken. Now wait a minute. This is just 70 people and they're performing a few miracles and they've still got a lot to learn. I saw this on social media this week.

I thought it was funny. They say people that are 510 in America are like average height. You know, there's their median height, half the people are taller than them, half the people are smaller than them. But, but calling yourself average seems like an unfortunate thing to do because nobody really wants to be average. So you can either be, if you're 5 10, a guy, the tallest of the smalls or the smallest of the talls, you get to pick, but you're not going to be average.

See, and I'm five ten and a quarter, so I know, like I'm on the tall side.

What does this mean? Is this evil's fall? Has the devil taken notice? Is he coming after them? Because he's going to come after Jesus.

And we know at the end of the story Satan is going to enter and tempt Judas to betray Jesus. We know that's going to happen, but this is just a little mark. It's kind of like just finding a termite in your house. Just one termite. Maybe the devil is responding.

Satan is responding because he knows it's never just one termite. Maybe it's because he knows there's a problem, but it seems disproportionate. Satan falls from power and is brought down to earth. His rule is curtailed, his dominion is broken. This is the turning of the tide.

It's almost as if Jesus says there is still evil in the world. Yes, that's true, but God is conquering evil. And the most amazing thing about this is we don't know who these 70 people are. Are they the same as the disciples that are sent out in Luke chapter nine? But if they are, we know they don't go with money in their pockets.

We know they don't have political connections. And nobody's going to write their names in the history books. Luke doesn't even bother to record their names. You're not going to find a single emperor. And.

And this bunch of disciples, no PhDs, no scholars. These are probably working people, fishermen with calloused hands, a tax collector that nobody likes, and yeah, probably some servants and slaves and washermen and guys who know their way around a carpenter shop. And we know that some of them that are part of this moment are not going to make it to the finish line. Some of them will leave Jesus. And not one of them is particularly special on their own.

Not one. But here's what matters and here's what changes everything. It's not so much that they are powerful or important or influential. What changes everything is that God empowers them. God sends them out.

These nobodies become God's ambassadors, all on the most important mission in human history. And when this ragtag group comes back, there's no military generals, no royal bloodlines, no powerful commanders among them. Something happens that all the kings in the world, Jesus says, with all their armies, all their power, could never accomplish. Satan falls from heaven like lightning. In fact, Jesus says, telling these 70 in kind of a special private way, all.

All of those kings would have longed to see this moment. The ones who sit in the box streets whose box seats, who stroll the hallways of power, they wish that they could see what you get to see.

The beginning of the end and the demise of evil. Because Jesus kingdom is coming. Pray together, Heavenly Father, for this moment where we focus our minds and hearts on your word. I pray that you pour through me your gift of preaching, that I might speak your truth in love to these, your people. It's together that the church says amen.

So in Ephesians, chapter four. We were there last week. If you missed that sermon, you can watch it on YouTube. There are these seven ones. And Paul is making the point that these seven ones that we have, all of these ones in common, they do not create uniformity, although we have them all in common, that they do form unity.

They form the ecology where the majestic flourishing, the majestic diversity of gifts can flourish. I think it's kind of like DNA. All living matter on Earth comes from the same four molecules. A, T, G, C. All of them, they come from the same place. But just those four molecules combined in different ways can create anything from bacteria to giraffes, blue whales to ants.

Anything in the created on Earth comes from this one unity. And he does this by talking about grace, but it's not the way you think about grace. Paul begins by saying, each one of us was given grace, a gift according to the measure of Christ's gift. And so we think about the disproportionate response of Satan from these disciples that are just going out to a couple towns to figure it out. Let's realize how disproportionate is the gift to the worthlessness, the worthiness of the people who receive it.

Paul would argue, and he does this in other places in the New Testament, that he did not deserve the gift of God's grace. And I think the Ephesian church would also admit that they didn't earn the gift of God's grace. They weren't important or powerful or noteworthy. But Paul goes on to say, the grace you receive allows you to have gifts that you get to share with others. And when others share their gift with you, that multiplies the experience of God's grace in our midst.

And he talks about these gifts, these graces, graces all over the New Testament and in First Corinthians, he's mostly concerned about worship. And so he talks about how those gifts are expressed in worship. In the pastoral books, Timothy and Titus, he talks about those gifts in terms of leadership, so the character and the quality of leaders around us. But in Ephesians, when he talks about these gifts, he talks about a few roles, these four or maybe five gifts that Paul mentions. Our roles of leadership, apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor, teachers.

And some people think that's the same thing. Some people think that's two different things. It doesn't really matter. But the point is, is that the worthiness of the Ephesian church is not the reason why they get the powerful gifts that they receive. It's not because they have honor.

Have you ever felt that desire to compete for honor, to be the first, the best, the most important? John Barclay writes, within this community, honor does not have to be sought. All the honor that counts has already been given or will be given by God. Freedom from the need to establish their honor and competition. Believers can afford to grant it to others.

And so in this new creation, leadership is fundamentally different. It's not striving. Honor has already been given to everyone, regardless of status. And so can you imagine that experience of you walking into a room or to a party and you're not. You don't have to scan that room to see who's powerful or important so you can cozy up to them so that you look more powerful, important.

So what will make you look the best or the funniest? What will advance your career or bump your status? Imagine walking into a room where the center or the locus of authority is not the one with the most money or power or influence, but the ones who are most spiritually mature. And if you can imagine that room, it's the church. Because God has given gifts to all of us disproportionate from our ability.

But Paul goes on to say something a little bit more. He says that the grace is other people. That's how you experience it. The sacrament. We're the sacrament.

That's how we receive grace. It's from one another. Here at Highland, we follow the pathway. There's four signs over there, four different things that we want you to engage in on a regular experience. Worship, communion at table baptism, and the ongoing spiritual formation of your life and service, like Jesus on the cross.

And if you think about those four things, the reality is you can't really do any of them by yourself for very long. You can't serve communion to yourself. You can't be. You can't baptize yourself. You certainly can't serve one someone else without having another, an object to serve.

All of them require somebody else in your relationship, some sort of community around you for them to work for you to receive God's grace, you have to have community. These are sacraments, and they all involve others. It's not a bug, it's a feature.

And it's this thing that that connects you closest to God, also simultaneously draws you to either others immediately, or it so radically changes your perception of them that it changes how you serve them. And so these four or five roles, they only have one purpose. To equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until all of us come to the unity and the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. And so what this Text is saying it's the leader's job to equip. It's not necessarily the leader's job to do, it's the leader's job to equip.

And so I think a good metaphor for leadership in the kingdom might be something like a midwife or a golf caddy. A midwife cannot deliver the baby for you as much as in that moment you might like for them to. They cannot do that for you. All they can do is coach you and talk to you, remind you of the things you already have learned, remind you of the things you've already known to give you hope that this process is going to result in good fortune. That's all a midwife can do.

They cannot deliver the baby for you. A caddy cannot make the golf swing for you. They can tell you how far it is to the tee. They can recommend a club that might be the best one for use. They can carry your bag if you're too tired or unwilling to do it, but they cannot putt for you.

And I think that's the way it is in the kingdom with leadership. It's our job to hand you the club. It's our job to tell you it's going to be okay. It's our job to remind us of the future that we have already been given. It's a leader's job to equip.

Brian Gibbs, one of our elders, he sent this message to me and it's just been ringing around in my head as we approach this idea of vision together. He said, I think we should become an Ephesians 4 church. He says, my vision is to be a church that is Christ led, spirit empowered, elder blessed, staff equipped, but most importantly, member driven. And the reason that Brian said this and the reason we all agree in this is because this is what Paul says. Each part must do the work that allows the body to grow up, to be mature, to be complete.

And it takes each part for us to get there. And this is one of the healthiest parts of our Church of Christ DNA. It's because we have firmly believed since the very beginning in what the author of First Peter calls the priesthood of all believers in the Church of Christ. We ordain our ministers here at Highland, but there's no rule that if you're not ordained, you couldn't do a funeral or a wedding or serve someone communion or, or preach a sermon. All of us have at least one sermon in us.

All of us can serve others. It's not this special role that's only limited to A few that get to stand on the platform. We all get to share in giving God's grace to others. The priesthood in the ancient near east and then the Old Testament, it stood in between God for the people and the people for God. And the most powerful moments in my life is not when I've served as priest, but when I've been been served by a priest, a fellow believer.

You may not know this, but the most important part of my Sunday morning, the best part of my Sunday morning is at about 8:30 when I go to the prayer room and somebody meets me there. And I don't always know who it's going to be, but somebody meets me there and they pray for me and they ask that they bless this moment. They ask that they bless these words. They ask that our congregation is able to hear and that we can lean into what God is trying to speak to us. That is the best part of my day on a Sunday, when someone else stands between God and me.

For me, It's like Dorothy Day. If you don't know the story of Dorothy Day, she was a Catholic Worker, and she was living in New York during the Great Depression, and she was trying to find ways to serve the poor. And she began as a freelance journalist, and she was covering the hunger marches in 1932. And she was filled with grief because the Catholic Church offered no adequate vehicle to respond to the injustice and the suffering that she saw. The march had been inspired and led by the Communists, not the Christians, and that bothered her.

She ached with the realization that there were so many comfortable churchgoers who gave little heed to the misery of the needy and the groaning of the poor. And that was the tipping point in her life that led her and her friend Peter to start the Catholic worker newspaper in 1933. And that newspaper began to change the way that Christians in America understood their relationship to people who were poor. That understanding, that transformation, left her to say this beautiful quote, I really only love God as much as I love the person love the least.

And from that holy ache that she felt, she decided to get to work and for her life. The core question that she lived with was, whom is the church for? Her dissatisfaction wasn't cynicism, it was prophetic love. She stayed in the church, not despite its failures, but to embody what what it was supposed to be. A community radically committed to the poor, living out the Gospel's call to hospitality, justice and love.

Now, there's a lot of things that the church needs to be, and this is one facet of that thing. And she held onto it deeply. At the end of her life, she said, we have all known the long loneliness, and we have learned that the only solution is love. And that love comes community.

The whole thing began because she felt this spiritual ache, a holy discontentment about the way that the world was, and she decided to do something about it. Like, there's something profoundly spiritual hidden in that restless feeling you get when you notice something is wrong with the world. It's the stirring in your heart when you see a need. It's not random, it's not commentary, it's calling.

And so if you have ever thought to yourself, you know, someone ought to do something about that, if you've ever felt that holy discontentment, guess what? God is doing something about that. And the someone that God is using is you, right? Moses saw oppressed people. He saw the oppression of his people.

Esther noticed the plot against the Jews. Nehemiah heard about Jerusalem's broken walls. And each could have thought, you know, someone should do something about that at some point. But that's not what happened. Instead, they discovered they were the someone.

And what follows after that in Scripture is the most wild ride of God's grace. And as God uses them to change the story, this isn't about striving in your own strength and carrying the weight of the world alone. Remember, the gifts that you've been given are a grace for others, and their gifts are a grace for you. But it is about recognizing when God stirs your heart toward a need. God is inviting you into partnership.

You bring your availability. God brings his ability. You offer your willingness. God provides a way. And so the 2029 vision of the Highland Church of Christ is about providing one roof at a time, a new roof for somebody that desperately needs it, and to keep those under roofs that need just a little bit of help, the lightest of touch to stay in their place.

It's about helping one child at a time at the worst part of their life and supporting those they're doing that work around them. But it's also about one holy discontentment at a time. And the good news is that Highland is actually really good at this. In fact, for most of the time that Highland has existed, we have been doing this very thing. I want to show you a video with David Lang talking about Launchpad in the early Bronze Age.

When I was a student here, I got to get involved with ministry with Bill and Audrey Nash. A lot of our older members will know Bill and Audrey. Bill felt very called. He felt personally challenged to actually get involved and not just be a spectator. But he felt very unprepared and like he had no skills or gifts.

And he met with David Ray, I believe this is right. He met with David Ray and said, I can't preach, I can't teach, I can't this, I can't that, I can't that. But I can drive a bus. But I can drive a bus. Small to grand.

And usually grand doesn't start out grand. He started driving people pick him up for church. He met some. Some young adults who had special needs brought them. And that blossomed into a special needs ministry where he and Audrey brought children and young adults who had special needs to church.

We had a class with them, involved college volunteers to help, help with them pretty much on a one on one basis. When I get to heaven, grace of God, I get to heaven. First thing I want to do, of course, is meet Jesus. Then I'm going to ask, where's Terry and Jimmy and Charlie, three of those many special needs students. Jimmy made me laugh every time, Every time.

A young adult with down syndrome, Terry, 18 years old, in a wheelchair, just ravaged by rheumatoid arthritis and whatever else. Charlie, the sweetest, kindest, most loving person I've ever met. What launches? The point is, what launches from here in some wild grace mirror, what launches here, here reaches the heavenlies. Smaller grid, smaller gr.

That's. That's exactly what we're about with Launchpad. What we go way, way back in the whole concept, the whole idea of it. We say it's in our DNA, it's our character, it's in our bones.

Herald of Truth Media Event Evangelism, Christian Homes of Abilene, Disability Resources Incorporated, Young Children's World. On and on and on and on. There are dozens. I mention a few and overlook a lot of ministry opportunities that a group feels called by God to initiate. They get together and they do it.

And so I couldn't be more excited about this. Let's do it. Let's keep doing it, because we've always done it.

So let me be clear. Launchpad is an initiative that we're going to roll out. You're going to see the website in about three, four weeks. Almost there. Launchpad is an initiative for you to begin doing the work that you feel called to do and for the.

The strength and the wisdom and the resources and the support of Highland to get behind you and those around you as you do this work. You cannot do it by yourself. You're going to have to have a community around you, you guys are going to have to do it together. But if you have a need and you see a problem and you think, I'm being called to do this, then no one's going to stop you. We're going to support you.

Launch. Launchpad is a metaphor, right? Like, but it fits. You can imagine the rocket sitting there ready to take off, to go into the heavens. But it takes mission control, a group of people there watching dials and making sure everything's organized.

It takes that gantry that's sticking out the tower to scaffold an idea before it takes off. It takes the resources to build the rocket and get it up there. And there's. There's going to be a team inside the rocket that, that manages everything. All of that.

It takes a team. But we're going to do it together. I know this sounds like a lot, but it's part of the DNA of our church to start new ministries and initiatives and to find innovative ways to serve our church and our community. It's something that we've been doing for the last hundred years, and it's something that we've been doing in the recent past. We have a great example that I want to show you.

Cheryl Cunningham and the prayer team. They did the thing just like a year ago. Here's Cheryl talking about that.

We wanted to make a space that. Where prayer was just. It was so accessible that anybody could walk in and use the space and either post prayers or receive prayer. The prayer room is a place that has been designed to be a sacred space where people can come in and, you know, be in relationship with, commune with the Lord, either in solitude or with other people. We knew our children were leading in prayer over in their area of the building, but we wanted there to be a very visible space in the middle of the building that was useful to people of all ages.

First, we talked with Shane and Suzetta a little bit about who we were and what we felt Hyla needed as far as different ways to access prayer and for different avenues to prayer. And prayer is a spiritual formation activity. And once we kind of had answered some of those questions, we knew we needed a space. And so we went and sat down with Suzette and just told her, here's what we're thinking. And she jumped on the idea with this.

She saw the vision and then she empowered us basically to move forward and to make that vision into a reality. Really encouraging to me spiritually, that we had an idea and that idea was valued. And not only was it valued, but they Said, yes, we support you. Go do it. And so we saw a need, we thought we had a solution, and we were totally and completely empowered to move forward with that.

And I think that's, as Christians, really what we're called to do, to see how is God working in the world and how can I partner with him? We know he's a God who wants to redeem and to restore all things. So what's my part in that? Where can I do that? And that's why this was so meaningful, I think, to me, is that we came up with an idea and it was encouraged and it was supported till it was a reality.

So do you see what happened? A holy discontentment that our church didn't have a centralized place and experience for prayer for us to gather together. And a person that felt that on their heart deeply enough to say, hey, somebody should do something about this. And then they realized it's us. And then they went to leadership, and a leadership equipped them and.

And resourced them to do what they wanted to do so that they could serve the Highland community. That's what we're talking about. We're going to have more information in the next few months. You're going to hear more and more stories. But do you have a nagging gripe that won't seem to go away?

Do you have a dream for what service might look like? Do you want to see Satan fall? It begins small, as. As David said, not many great things begin great. But because of God's disproportionate grace, because of God's disproportionate love, when we partner with God in the restoration of all things, we are very excited to see what happens when this church is unleashed in our city and in our world.

I'm very excited and I'm very curious to know what God will do with Launchpad over the next three years. Will you please stand for our benediction, Highland? All of the DNA that you need, all of the resources, all of the ideas you already have in your heart. God has already spoken to us about the future that God desires for us to achieve. So may you be bold and courageous as you listen to God's voice.

May we do the things we are called to do. May you go in God's love and go in peace.