Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:06] Good morning, everybody.
[00:00:08] I'm Ben Fleming. I'm one of the senior pastors here at Westside Church, and we are talking today about vision. So we just spent eight weeks going through our Sunday school series. We were talking about stories from the Old Testament. We're going to spend a couple weeks on vision, and then we head into Advent, and then we go through a gospel, as is our way here at Westside in the new year, all the way up to Easter, then. And so this is a pivotal moment, and I'm gonna be honest with you in that I am nervous about this message. And I'm actively in real time trying to figure out exactly why I think I'm nervous and I feel this way. And this vision message is something that I'm kind of trying to understand even as we speak, is because I care so deeply about this place, and I think God is doing something that's really powerful here. And for my own personal story, I grew up a pastor's kid. I came and started working almost a decade ago.
[00:01:02] And my faith journey has really taken off as a result of having the privilege of being able to work here and work alongside our staff with Evan, with our former pastor, Steve and Suzanne Mickle, and being a part of the legacy here. And I gotta be honest with you, there's been so many points of my life where I have wanted to abandon church for the rest of my life in one single fell swoop.
[00:01:29] And it's. You can chalk it up to certain cultural moments. You could chalk it up to my own cynicism or personality or whatever.
[00:01:36] And something has happened to me here at Westside that made me believe in Jesus and in the church and what we can all be together again.
[00:01:46] And for the sake of Central Oregon, for the sake of the world. And that happening to me is so meaningful and so powerful to me and something that I would never want to exchange or give up. And I think there's a piece of, as we're talking about, the vision and direction of Westside Church. So the vision is a picture of what the future looks like for all of us together as Westside.
[00:02:07] I think I don't want to ruin this thing that I think is so beautiful and is happening right now that we're standing in and spending time in. And so I want you to understand as we talk about vision today, that this thing that is going forward is not as a result of the staff or Ben and Evan or a cool room or a property or whatever.
[00:02:30] It really is the result of Jesus being willing to do a beautiful work among us here in this place.
[00:02:36] And we need to hold that with great honor and integrity and understand that our closeness to Jesus is ultimately the thing that will drive us forward. Amen.
[00:02:45] And so I'm going to begin like this. I'm going to read you the mission and vision statements of our church. And the first is this. The mission. Westside Church exists to equip men, women and children to extend the life and love of Jesus in their world by helping them know Jesus and become more like him. Real simple. And the vision statement is this. Our vision for Westside is that we would be known as an authentic church with shared leadership that is Jesus focused, community oriented, strong and outreach, multi generational empowering of women, friendly to the non churched and de churched and leaning into Spirit led discipleship. We want to be a church that looks like our city, representing our neighborhood's many generations, ethnicities and cultures. We envision a community deeply connected to the life and spirit of God, prayer and discipleship practices in the way of Jesus. We look forward to a future where women and men serve, lead and teach side by side under the lordship of Christ Jesus with authenticity and vulnerability. And we envision a future where Westside church has a reputation for abundantly and generously living and serving people everywhere always.
[00:03:48] Amen.
[00:03:50] That's the vision. Amen. You can clap for that.
[00:03:56] And it's important to understand that we have this picture and it's a little bit funny. Every time I talk about vision, there's a temptation, especially in kind of like my evangelical upbringing, to really hype up this new thing that God is doing. And I believe that God is doing a new thing. But many times the new thing is simply an adjustment of the method because the principle of trying to pursue the life and the love of Jesus is eternal.
[00:04:22] That's not a brand new thing, it's a very old thing and it's an eternal thing.
[00:04:28] But without this vision, this understanding, this this look forward into the future, this picture, Proverbs 29, this vision, people perish.
[00:04:38] And so this principle is important in the same. We need a picture of a future that's worth giving our lives to so that this simply doesn't become some kind of a social club on Shevlin Park Road on the west side of Ben.
[00:04:51] Instead, this is intended to be something that we would give up our very core to that Jesus and how he has lived and served and died and risen again. And the Power that exists inside of all that, that should shake us to our very core so that we might be kind and gentle and full of grace and move with the power, the authority of Jesus into every single aspect of our lives.
[00:05:14] We must be shaken by the greatness of Jesus.
[00:05:21] And so within this, these values come out. These values come out of our church. And that is life, love and Jesus transforming. Bend. And so when we talk about these three things, we're not talking about ideals. Instead, we're describing the kind of future that we believe that God calling us to create.
[00:05:39] Together we're seeing this movement, by the way, this openness. And every time we talk about vision, we have to begin with honesty about where we are as well as the future. And so where we are, we've discovered a lot over the last couple weeks because we asked you to fill out a survey which well over 500 people responded to, by the way, which is incredible. We were hoping for a hundred. Turns out many of you had opinions and I'll be darned. You love Evan Earwicker, let me tell you.
[00:06:11] Just kidding. There was nothing like. I think he got anyway, you know, I don't feel personally attacked, that's all I'm saying.
[00:06:21] And we did. You guys gave us a lot of feedback, which was really wonderful, honestly, about everything experience of what it's like on the property here to the services most. The biggest thing that we wanted to discover was even who is in our church. And so we discovered a lot of those things. We know that you guys exist on a really, really broad political spectrum, that there are major groups that exist in everything from very conservative to very progressive and everything in between.
[00:06:52] We discovered that half of our church has shown up in the last five years.
[00:07:01] The other half obviously before those five years.
[00:07:05] These are great statistics really as far as our experience and what we've seen in the church is that really is like a pre pandemic group and then a post pandemic group.
[00:07:17] And that matters. There's a shakeup that happened in the church and even in Christian culture that informs a lot of that movement.
[00:07:25] But that means that we have to learn in a brand new way how to do community and life together.
[00:07:33] And that can be a difficult thing. Right. We have a wide range of political and generational diversity. We have a wide range of when you join the community. And it showed out in the results that the greatest desire or the greatest area of improvement that Westside could have is that we would be able to find ways to deepen community and belonging to that. There's a fair amount of people that are attending here that still haven't quite found that group that they want to spend their life with, or they haven't found that place where they feel like they truly belong.
[00:08:07] And so this life, love Jesus, is not something that makes us exceptional in light of other churches, but instead it needs to define a lot of this next chapter of how we create that sense and truth of belonging. And so let's walk through each one of these words, this life, love Jesus. And I believe that it'll inform to a greater depth not just the values but the vision of Westside Church.
[00:08:26] So the first word is life. Jesus says in John, chapter 10, verse 7. He says, Therefore Jesus said again, very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep and all who have come before me are thieves and robbers. But the sheep have not listened to them. I'm the gate. However, whoever enters through me will be saved and they will come in and go out and find pasture. And the thief comes only to kill, steal, to kill and destroy. And I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.
[00:08:53] I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.
[00:08:58] If this is a.
[00:09:01] A kind of maybe conventional business meeting or we're casting vision for a timeshare, having life and having it to the full looks like something specific, right? It looks like up and to the right. It looks like an abundant amount of resources. It looks like wealth and comfort. It looks like this crazy, incredible, brand new day that I can live and fulfill this dream. But Jesus's reference to having life and having it to the full is far more about understanding the breadth of experiences that we have in life and having the comfort that Jesus walks through every single one of them with us.
[00:09:39] For those of you who, who have had children, you know that other people who have children post the purest form of their little family unit on Instagram.
[00:09:50] They are so beautiful and so sweet and lovely.
[00:09:56] And what I've discovered as a parent myself is that they're all liars.
[00:10:03] It's just not. It's such a curated. There's only this little bit. And I think you could make the mistake. And I think, you know, for the most part we all know better than this, but we can get caught up in kind of the idea of it is that having a family does not look like this perfect and pure thing.
[00:10:24] It looks like all of the messiness of every single little bits of life.
[00:10:29] And my kids are now my son just turned 11 and my daughter is 8. We're starting to deal with some of these pre puberty things which are not perfect and pure.
[00:10:43] And I'm kind of beginning to understand, like, I think the fun of parenting is actually going through and wading into all these different experiences and trying to help my kids understand that they're still loved by me. They're still loved by me, they're still loved by me. And I can obsess over all these different methods and how to parent my kids. But ultimately the thing that is going to prove true is that no matter what they go through, I'm gonna be here for them and, and Rebecca's going to be here for them. We're going to do this whole thing together.
[00:11:08] But I refuse to just live in this idea that following after Jesus creates this perfect little curated community for us to go ahead and walk together into. You guys church is scary for people. And I've heard pastors say, look, you just got to get over it, you got to get past it, because we have to live in community. And I look at church and I go, no, it's scary for me too, because people can be mean and churches can be the house of great, incredible gossip that can ruin people's lives forever. And the theology can be such where we're manipulative and we're trying to get people to grow and to move in these different directions, all for the glory of the leadership church. I know because I've experienced it and I've been that leader can be incredibly intensely nasty and yucky and gross and everything that is opposite of what Jesus can be. But I believe that something that's happening here is beyond all of those things and that Jesus is creating a level of depth and discipleship here at Westside that will not be perfect, but I believe that it will move us all forward in the way of Jesus. And so what happens in life, life together, life in community, is that we need to allow ourselves to move into vulnerable spaces in order to continue to grow.
[00:12:21] Jesus offers us more than just this survival about curating our specific community and the friends and the people around us. He offers abundant life together. To walk through grief, to walk through love, to walk through sorrow, to walk through wins and victories. Jesus is with us in the middle of all of these things.
[00:12:40] And so Westside is alive and growing, but growth without connection simply will become a crowd and not a community worth participating in. This last Sunday, we had over 1400 people in the building for the first time since 2019, which is 40% bigger than last weekend compared to the year before. On the exact same weekend, something is happening and growth is happening. And we must be careful to understand that our goal and our vision for westside church is not to grow. And our goal and our vision for westside church isn't to be big and influential. It's to stay near to Jesus. And I believe that in that place, Jesus is compelling, and the crowds will come and we will accommodate and care for them. But ultimately we're trying to stay close to him.
[00:13:27] It says in acts, chapter two, this picture of the early church after Jesus, death and resurrection, and then the church starts as they begin to preach the gospel in the streets. It says, the early church devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship and to breaking a bread and prayer. And everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. And all the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. And every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the lord added to their number daily those who are being saved. The early church devoted to teaching fellowship, breaking bread and prayer. And the result was that everyone was filled with this sense of awe of what was happening in their midst.
[00:14:15] They were never interested in this idea of attending church, but instead they were interested in living as the church.
[00:14:23] We all need a smaller circle, and I would insist on this for anybody that would call themselves a member of westside church. You need a smaller circle, a group, a table, or a friendship where faith is shared. And sometimes this will come in the form of formal small groups that happen here. We're rolling out a new discipleship group where we're going to serve this incredible dinner for three weeks in this January, and we're going to talk about the vision and values of westside again. But we're even more than that going to talk about what we believe it looks like to be a disciple of Jesus Christ at great length and depth and so that people can find connection and community. We also believe that these smaller circles won't come every time in a formal church setting. And we also believe that just because we set up a formal church setting, we don't necessarily believe that you will automatically and immediately find people that you want to spend a lot of your life with.
[00:15:13] These things are complex and difficult and all kinds of baggage and past things and relationships come into play. And we believe that you can find community in the way of Jesus in all kinds of different shapes and forms. So it might be a small group, it might be a Westside one group that happens this next spring, it might be that discipleship group in January.
[00:15:31] And it might be simply connecting really well with a coworker or a neighbor, developing trust and closeness and care in this life together.
[00:15:41] Which is why we try to program a lot around here. But we don't over program, at least in my opinion.
[00:15:49] This last Halloween is a great example. We don't do trunk or treat. We don't do harvest parties or anything like that. And it's not because we're lazy.
[00:15:56] It's with intention. And that's not shade to any of those programs. And a lot of people do them and they're really, really great. And I participated in them.
[00:16:03] We believe as a leadership, what could be better for our church than a night where neighbors open up their doors to other neighbors and we intentionally walk around our neighborhood and meet as many people as we can and eat Twix. These are good things.
[00:16:24] Again, that's not shade to anybody or any other program or anything like that. What I am specifically referencing is that you are going to find a lot of these ways of community in formal places at Westside, and you are also simply going to find them by being kind to your neighbor.
[00:16:37] And both those things matter deeply.
[00:16:42] This life together in community produces awe. Okay, Love is the second thing. Life. Love Jesus. Love is number two. In Matthew 22. It says this hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. And one of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question, teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law? And Jesus replied, love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.
[00:17:07] And the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.
[00:17:10] And all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. Love God, love your neighbor.
[00:17:15] One thing that I've noticed about our culture, in the kind of divisive moment that it feels like right now, and I've never experienced a more divisive moment in my life. You may have experienced something different, but in my life I feel like it's the most divisive our nation has been, even the Christian faith has been. And one thing that I've noticed, that divisiveness gives permission to. It gives permission for you to hate a very specific group of people.
[00:17:39] It gives you license to do actually feels really, really good to hate a specific group of people.
[00:17:46] And I've hung out with folks that really, really care for those who are most vulnerable in our communities. Those who don't have homes and those who don't have finances, those who need food. And I've spent time with some of them and I can feel the intense hatred that they have for the rich.
[00:18:03] And I felt the opposite.
[00:18:06] Now, I want you to understand that when it comes to love with Jesus, loving our neighbors, this is an all inclusive group. Neighbor Jesus even told this story once where someone said, he said, look, you gotta love your neighbor. And someone said, well, who really is my neighbor? Being like, can you tell me how far the cul de sac really goes?
[00:18:27] Is it these five? Is it that seven? Is it my hoa?
[00:18:32] Really? Where is it? And Jesus, he doesn't do this in my mind. He rolls his eyes, but he does not do that.
[00:18:39] He goes, ugh, let me tell you a story.
[00:18:44] And that story is about the Good Samaritan, in which the Samaritan is actually the hero of the story. And if you don't know, Samaritans are the most despised of people.
[00:18:56] And so all the time, the culture and the divisiveness is giving us the opportunity to answer the question of who is my neighbor? And we get to answer back, well, it's everybody but this group.
[00:19:07] It's everybody but the conservatives, because they're the worst. It's everybody but the progressives. It's everybody but the west side. It's everybody but the east side. It's everybody but this group. And I want to tell you that this sentence is going to be completed in just about every way that you could possibly think of. Love your west side neighbor. Love your east side neighbor. Love your rich neighbor. Love your poor neighbor. Love your Muslim neighbor. Love your Buddhist neighbor. Love your Jewish neighbor. Love your Christian neighbor. Cause they can be some of the worst sometimes.
[00:19:35] Love your neighbor. That cuts you off in traffic and takes up two parking spaces. No, we get to hate the two parking space people.
[00:19:43] I just want one, just one group to hate what they having to ask permission.
[00:19:51] And Jesus doesn't give us the opportunity to do that. This love thing, it keeps going. It's exhausting how far the love of Jesus will go. It's irritating, it's frustrating. And it doesn't ever fit the algorithm of outrage. Instead, it belongs in the theology of the way of Jesus.
[00:20:09] Ephesians 4. 3 says, make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit together in the bond of peace.
[00:20:15] Every effort to keep unity in the spirit.
[00:20:21] Love is not just a Feeling, which is the truth that we discover in all this. It's how we choose to live and to lead and how we understand Jesus together.
[00:20:31] So we're politically and generationally diverse, and that is a gift. And we will understand that within an understanding of this love of Jesus, God is forming us into a testimony that love is stronger than any of these labels.
[00:20:44] And so we must show up for people that don't see the world like us. We have to listen longer than we speak. And we have to remember that Jesus didn't die to make us identical. Instead, he died to make us one in him.
[00:20:57] And in this way, love spills out into bend through initiatives that we have here, like safe housing and outreach and partnerships and generosity. We insist on being known not what for what, what we are against, but instead how we love.
[00:21:13] Now, finally, the third thing, and of course the most important thing, is Jesus, the center of it all.
[00:21:20] I'm having to catch my breath from talking so loud.
[00:21:26] There we go. I've been wanting to do that for the last two minutes. Okay.
[00:21:32] Colossians 1 says this. He's before all things, and in him all things hold together.
[00:21:37] He is the head of the body of the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything, he might have supremacy. He's before all things, and in him all things hold together.
[00:21:50] If life is what we receive and love is how we live, then Jesus is actually the centerpiece that actually binds those things.
[00:22:01] The church must be a steady place where Jesus remains.
[00:22:06] Now, this is one of the hardest bits.
[00:22:09] I've been pastoring for almost two decades now, and there's. Somewhere along the way, I realized that my job is to tell the same story over and over and over and over every weekend. What are you gonna talk about this weekend? Jesus.
[00:22:23] Well, how are you gonna teach this Old Testament passage? We're gonna find Jesus in it. How are you gonna teach the gospel? We're gonna follow Jesus around.
[00:22:30] And there's a moment as a preacher and as a communicator where that feels a little claustrophobic.
[00:22:36] And you start being like, wow, we're gonna do this again, the Jesus thing. And he's born and he dies. And it's.
[00:22:44] And also within that tension and that difficulty and what can sometimes feel like repetition, we actually find the way that the church was called to be.
[00:22:53] It's so tempting to get bored with the story of the grace and the mercy and the forgiveness and the salvation that Jesus offers that we begin to insert what is purely our opinion and desires and selfishness into the story in order to punch it up a bit.
[00:23:12] But Jesus draws us back to this center of gravity.
[00:23:16] Jesus, so many times in his moments of ministry was called weak and slow, especially by the religious leaders, because they insisted that they present questions that they thought only had two answers and Jesus would always find another way. Jesus calls us in a divisive political and social moment to find a better way than the options that we are provided right in front of us.
[00:23:40] Jesus offers us an opportunity to care for our neighbors, to parent our children, to have love in our marriages, and to care for our community in a way that often no one is thinking about, because we have this side and that side. And yet Jesus doesn't exist in the middle. He's not calling us to be moderates. Instead he's calling us to this entirely brand new way to see and envision and to love the world.
[00:24:03] That's how he binds us together.
[00:24:06] And this matters because we don't gather, because we agree on everything. Instead we agree on this one name. And that is Jesus. He's not this add on to this great vision statement that I read you. Instead, he is the very vision itself.
[00:24:22] And that brings clarity and stability.
[00:24:27] And so what does life in community look like? Well, it's going to be new small groups. There's ministry teams and shared tables. And we're going to move from the crowd and the community that way. By the way, if you feel like you're longing for belonging, a great way to do it to find people is to volunteer here.
[00:24:44] That always sounds like a sales pitch, but it's not.
[00:24:51] It's truly how people find those communities.
[00:24:56] We believe in love in action, this deeper impact in bend through service, generosity and partnerships. Tangible love.
[00:25:02] And every single one of these things, Jesus must be at the center. While methods will shift, the message has to stay the same.
[00:25:14] Methods will shift.
[00:25:16] I don't want to make the mistake of being that church that says we have this great vision because our methods have changed.
[00:25:24] That's not true at all. And methods will constantly be changing. You guys know that there used to be a skate park and a rock climbing wall in that student center over there. And then the insurance premiums went nuts and so our vision as a church changed.
[00:25:42] Those are method.
[00:25:45] They're cool and they're fun and they're interesting. And groups will sometimes look like this and then they'll look like that. And big programs that we run sometimes will look like this and look like that. And those are all methods wrapped around the true principle that is, Jesus is everything to us.
[00:26:04] So I want to ask you today as we close, where is God calling you to step in deeper into community?
[00:26:09] That might be the toughest one.
[00:26:12] Are you willing to be vulnerable enough to get to know some people around you that might see the world a little bit differently than you, and they might see it exactly like you do? Are you willing to wade into some of these waters in order to create a depth of relationship with others and with Jesus?
[00:26:26] That is so tough because so many of us have so much trauma or baggage or difficulty from the past, and it's so vulnerable to walk into attempt at community. And I would encourage you to prayerfully consider. Is this a moment for you to not walk out of every difficulty that you've ever had, but choose to try to walk into something new?
[00:26:53] Is God calling you to step in deeper into service?
[00:26:56] Is there a place that you want to jump in? Not even just in Westside, but in this community at large. Do you want to volunteer with youth? Do you want to think about volunteering with youth?
[00:27:06] Do you want to help those who are most vulnerable in this city? Do you want to help clean up streets and do you want to help provide Christmas gifts for people in need? Do you want to serve? Because today is a great day to do so.
[00:27:21] Is God inviting you to step deeper into trust? Not trust of Ben and Evan or the leadership of Westside Church?
[00:27:29] I would appreciate that. But far greater is a trust in Jesus, believing that his Holy Spirit is with you and guiding you.
[00:27:38] Philippians 1 says this being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. God is doing something here that goes beyond myself and it goes beyond you. And that should give us confidence as we head into the future.
[00:27:55] God began something beautiful here and he is not done.
[00:28:00] It was great.
[00:28:01] For those of you who've been around for a little while, you remember Steve and Suzanne Mickle, who pastored here for quite some time, and then just a couple years ago, they left staff. Steve is still Evan and I's boss, actually, with a denomination.
[00:28:14] He's an incredible boss. We love Steve. Steve meant so much and means so much to this community.
[00:28:21] But after he left his staff and he came back and he was preaching, he met with some of us in one of the rooms and where all the volunteers gather.
[00:28:33] And somebody came up to him and said, hello, are you new here? To Steve Mickle, one of our volunteers.
[00:28:41] And I saw the whole thing happen.
[00:28:44] And he goes and he finishes talking to them. And he turns over to me and he goes, huh?
[00:28:50] It's something to not really matter in the long term.
[00:28:56] And it happened like that.
[00:28:57] It dedicated a decade of his life. And the Mickels are such an incredible family and Steve still has such an influence here. And there is something that in a moment is a little heartbreaking.
[00:29:09] Understanding that pretty easily replaceable here.
[00:29:15] And there's something beautiful that gives me a lot of courage as we head into the future, that God's purpose for this place does not rest on one or two people. Instead, there is a greater purpose happening in and among us that none of us, I believe, can stop.
[00:29:34] God is going to do his work.
[00:29:38] And so when the story of west side is told, I hope it's said that we trusted God for what's next. That we chose unity over division when division just seems so right and so tasty so often that we live life together, that we practice love together and that we made Jesus impossible to ignore.
[00:29:57] I'm talking about the real Jesus.
[00:29:59] I'm talking about the most authentic Jesus. Not hot take TikTok Jesus not He's only on my political side. Jesus this. Jesus that insists on loving and caring for and finishing the love my neighbor sentence with everyone in this world.
[00:30:18] Let us be a church that's truly marked by life, love and Jesus. Amen.
[00:30:22] Amen.
