Every person God has placed in your life is there for a reason. Your neighbors, your coworkers, your friends at the ballpark, the mom you see every week at the playground. None of it is random. The people around you aren’t there by accident. This past Sunday, Pastor Chip Dean brought the most practical message of the I Will Build My Church series, showing everyday disciples how to make disciples right where they already are.
Ordinary Disciples Making Everyday Disciples
Pastor Chip opened with a simple but convicting observation. Jesus gave his last words to ordinary people. Fishermen. A tax collector. A mason. Teenagers who had never traveled more than eighty miles from home. He looked at them and said go and make disciples of all nations.
They must have felt exactly the way most of us feel when we read that. You could do it, Jesus. But not me.
Pastor Chip had a direct response. You are right. You cannot do it. Neither can he. Jesus never said that we could. He said he would. He said he would do it through us.
To illustrate, he told the story of Jimmy Wales, who had the idea to put an encyclopedia in everyone’s pocket. He hired professors and professionals to write it. After a full year, only twenty articles were produced. Too much peer review. Too little time. Nobody wanted to read them anyway. So he opened it up to everyday ordinary people and called it Wikipedia. In the first month they had two hundred articles. By the end of the year, eighteen thousand. Today there are sixty-eight million articles in three hundred sixty-four languages.
Jesus had the same idea two thousand years earlier. He did not give the gospel to the professionals. He gave it to ordinary people just like you and just like me.
God’s Promises Give You Power
Pastor Chip worked through the end of the Matthew 16 passage that the series has been built on. Starting at verse 13, Jesus asks his disciples who people say he is. They list the options. A prophet. Elijah. Jeremiah. Jesus turns it personal. But who do you say that I am?
Peter answers. You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Jesus responds with a promise. Blessed are you. He tells Peter that this confession, not Peter himself, is the rock on which he will build his church. Every other cult and religion acknowledges Jesus as something. A great man. A prophet. A teacher. Only those who confess that Jesus is God, that he is the Christ, the Son of the living God, have it right.
Then Jesus says something most people have never heard fully unpacked. He says, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. In the original language, what Jesus is saying is that what has already been determined in heaven is what we are called to declare on earth. Whatever the Bible calls sin is sin. Whatever the Bible calls righteous is righteous. When you do not know what to do or what to say, go with the word of God. It is always right. It will always work.
Pastor Chip used the illustration of unused gift cards. Americans have over twenty-seven billion dollars sitting in unused gift cards right now. Untapped potential. That is exactly what most Christians have in their lives. They have been given the keys of the kingdom of heaven and they have never used them.
Your Purpose Is Already Clear
The second part of the message focused on purpose. Pastor Chip went to Matthew 28:16-20, the great commission, which he called the passage he will come back to more than any other as pastor.
After the resurrection, Jesus gathers his disciples on a mountain. Some worship. Some doubt. Jesus came to them and said all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Then he gave that authority to them with a clear assignment. Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded. And I am with you always, to the end of the age.
Jesus is not calling the qualified. He is qualifying the called. The pattern is simple. Lead people to Jesus so they can be saved. Help them get baptized. Bring them into the church. Disciple them. Watch them make disciples too.
Pastor Chip compared it to the Olympic torch. No single runner carries it from Olympia to the Olympic stadium. It goes from runner to runner, leg to leg. Jesus has handed you the torch. Your job is to hand it to someone else. You share the gospel. The Holy Spirit does the convincing.
The People Around You Are Your Circle
The third and most practical part of the message was about what Pastor Chip called your circle’s priorities, drawn from Ephesians 2:10. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
The word workmanship in the original language means masterpiece. God has placed his image in you. That is the masterpiece. He then gave the room three questions to sit with.
Who are you? What is your story? Your testimony? Your passions and abilities? No one has a story exactly like yours. God wants to use both the hard parts and the good parts.
Who is your circle? Who are the people God has surrounded you with that you find yourself thinking about, praying for, or feeling a pull toward? Family members. Neighbors. Coworkers. The parents at the ballpark. The people you see at the same coffee shop every week. These are not random. God has given them to you.
How do you connect? This is where the everyday disciplemaker steps in. You do not need a seminary degree. You do not need to have all the answers. All you need to know is Jesus.
Pastor Chip gave real examples from real people. A couple in the church who started a group in their home because their unsaved friends would never walk into a church building but they might walk into a living room. People who started lunch Bible studies at work. Moms who gathered other moms from the playground. A run club at a local trail where someone shared a verse and prayed before the run. Men at a driving range sharing the word over lunch. Pickle ball groups. Waffle House tables. College campuses. Gaming sessions online.
The pattern is always the same. Here is Jesus. Here is a verse. How can I pray for you? What would you love to see God do in your life?
That is it. That is how Jesus builds his church. One ordinary conversation at a time.
There’s a Seat for You
Whether you have known Jesus for decades or you are just starting to wonder what following him actually looks like, you belong here. We are a church that believes the people around you are not there by accident. God put them there so you could be part of his story.
Plan Your Visit and come find your community here. Or take your next step and Get Connected with our church family. We would love to be your circle.