I felt like maybe I should dance a little bit at the end of that. Good morning, everybody. Like I said earlier, my name is Nate. It's so good to see you. If you are here when it's 39 degrees and raining, you really want it. So I'm glad to see you. I really do appreciate your being here. A round of applause for yourself, I guess. That was fun for those watching at home. We are in the middle of a series here at the beginning of the year called Known For, where we're just thinking about what are we known for? What is our reputation? In the first week, week one, we looked at ourselves. What are we known for? What do we want to be known for? And then most importantly, what does God want us to be known for, which is our love. And then last week, we talked about family. What does God want your family to be known for? What do you want your family legacy to be? And then next week, we're going to look at what does God want his children to be known for? Our faith in our culture, within the American culture, what does God want his children to be most known for? And how can we as individuals and as a church contribute to building that reputation in our culture that frankly does need to be rebuilt. And then this week, we're going to look at grace. What do we want grace to be known for? This church, right? And we talk about this a lot. We talk about what's our vision and what's our focus. I open the service by reminding us that we do everything that we do to connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. In the fall, in September and October, we did a new series called Five Traits of Grace where we said, hey, if you're a partner of grace, if you're someone who calls grace home, here are the five things we want you to exhibit in your life and be building towards. And we believe in those things so much that we actually have scrapped our material for Discover Grace, our kind of our newcomers class, and we placed it with talking through what those five traits are. If you come to Grace, here's what we want to try to build you into spiritually. Which, speaking of Discover Grace, that's going to be the first Sunday in February. It's where you can just find out more about grace, who we are, what makes us tick. If you want to become, you probably think of it as a member. We don't have members, we have partners, because real quickly, members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute. So we ask for partners of grace. If you want to become a partner, then that's how you do it. You can attend that class and there'll be some stuff to fill out. Or you can just come find out more about who we are. Or I would say if you've been coming here for a really long time but you've never been to one and you're curious about what happens there, you're welcome to come. There are snacks involved. You know you have to sign up. You can just come eat snacks and say hey to everybody and leave. I don't really care. But that's going to be in two weeks. So sign up for that if you want to do that. There's plenty of ways that you can sign up for that. But as we thought about reputation for this week, what do we want grace to be known for? And I kind of meditated on that as a pastor, thinking about the reputation of a church. My mind immediately went to Revelation chapter 2 and 3. Now, some of you know why I instantly thought of Revelation chapter 2 and 3, the Bible scholars in the room. Others of you are thinking, why Revelation, weirdo? Well, here's why. Because yes, Revelation is about the end times, and we did a series on that a little while ago. And in that series, I skipped over chapters 2 and 3, because I said chapters 2 and 3 are kind of parenthetical to the discourse in Revelation where Jesus kind of takes a break and he writes seven letters to seven churches. And in those letters, he tells those churches what they are known for. When I think of you, here's what you're doing well. Here's where you can improve. So when I thought about what does God want the reputation of his church to be, individual small little churches, I thought what better place to go than the one place in the Bible where he addresses seven of them and says, here's what you're known for. And some are good, some are bad. There's only one that gets totally good marks, and that was a church that was being persecuted the entire time. And so they were just bearing up under that persecution, and Jesus praises them for that. But there's another church, probably the most famous church in this discourse, the church in Ephesus, where Jesus tells them that they are known for a lot of things, but there's one thing in particular they're not known for, and they need to get their act together again. This is what Jesus says through the disciple John in the book of Revelation as he addresses the church in Eph false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my namesake and you have not grown weary, but I have this against you that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember, therefore, where you outside in, you're doing a bang-up job. You're doing, the words that we would use, you're doing great ministry. You're doing great ministry. You're firing on all cylinders. Everything's great. Your Sunday morning services are good. You're really ministering to people well. You got things cranking in small groups. Children and students is going really well. Your care is really good. You are doing ministry well. You are executing church well. And on top of that, you have really good theology. You don't let bad theology get into that church. You guys are really nailing it there. You're executing church at a very high level. Good job. However, you have, in that execution, fallen away from the things you did at first because you've fallen away from your first love, which is to be Jesus. And you're no longer doing the stuff that you used to do that poured out of a love for Jesus. So you need to refocus yourselves and start doing the things that are fueled by the love of Christ. See, they stopped doing the very deeds that can only be done when they are fueled by a focus on and love for Jesus. They lost their way. They started doing the business of church well. And if you think about church, you can do a lot of church and you don't need Jesus' help at all, right? We have very sophisticated marketing strategies now. We have people in the church who are marketers. We could form a group and we could find out how to do a social media blitz and we could send out mailers and we could get people here. We could have more butts in seats. This row would be so full right behind the Turnburgs there. It would be great if we marketed. It would be fantastic. There are strategies with children. There are things that you can do. You can put on a song up here. You can play songs three in a row together with good transitions and excellent thoughts in between. And you can do all that without Jesus. And I hate to admit this, but it's true and you guys know it's true, so let's just all fess up together. I can preach without Jesus. I can just get up here and get worked up about stuff and tell funny ha-ha jokes and then we can all leave and everybody will be like, I guess that was good, and we'll just all go home. I can do this without having to pray about it. And I know that because I've failed you over the years and done that a couple of times. It's possible for churches to lose their way and start to execute ministry with excellence, forgetting their first love. And then they stop doing those little things that are only done, that are only fueled by a love for Jesus and his love for us. And so as I thought about grace, and I thought about what our reputation is, I thought, you know, in some ways, it's kind of like the opposite of the church in Ephesus. Because I do think that we love pretty well. And I do think that we stay focused on Christ. And it's almost like, hey, at grace, how's your Sunday morning service? Well, there's a poll. And sometimes, sometimes our sound just cuts out. Sometimes, we've been in here when Aaron just like bailed on a song. He's like, we gotta restart this. This is garbage. And then we just, we start again, you know. Sometimes it doesn't go exactly as we want it to go. But man, those people love each other. What if we were known for that? How's your children's ministry at Grace? Well, listen, we've got the best children's pastor. She loves those families really, really well. But, you know, hallway's a little tight, and sometimes there's just random grown-ups back there, because it's the only place we have restrooms. We do our best. And, you know, if you've got a kid in kindergarten to third grade, you're going to have to walk through the rain past the aquarium store down a dark hallway. I don't know why the hallway's always dark. We have lights there. We still turn them on on Sundays. But let me tell you something. The volunteers back there, man, they love your kids. It's the same faces that show up every week, and they love our kids. How's your small groups ministry? Well, Nate keeps saying he's gonna do better at it and then he doesn't. But we always have room for more people and we always find uncommon community there and we love well. When I think about grace, I think about a church that does love well. Now, are we just going to let everything else go? No. We're going to pursue excellence in everything. But we're going to stay focused on loving well. And it just kind of made me think, like, what if we were known for how well we loved? What if that's what we were known for? As a church, when people come in and out of this place, when they visit for one time or they visit for a month, as you talk about church with your friends who don't live here, as people who have moved into grace and then maybe they had to move away, different part of the state or different part of the country or whatever, what if the way that they remember grace is how well we loved? Because I'll tell you, that's all I've ever wanted to be known for. I grew up in church. I've seen a lot of church. At a young age, I began to become aware of what kind of goes on behind the scenes sometimes and how that can hurt people and how egos and agenda can come out there. As a member of a church staff, frankly, I've been a part of a church that lost its way. Started executing ministerially very well, but took our eyes off of Christ. And so all I've ever wanted in leading a church is to lead a church that loves well. All I've ever wanted in leading a church is a church that every week we focus on Jesus. We declare him. Every week our prayer for you is that you leave this room a little closer to Jesus than you were when you walked in. All I've ever wanted to do is be a part of a church that loves well and loves authentically. We say what we mean, we mean what we say. All I've ever wanted to do is be a part of a church that if you start to serve more, if you start to get a peek behind the curtain, if you become an elder or a committee member or you serve during the week and you see us do our day-to-day stuff, that what you find out is there's nothing going on back there that ain't going on up here. It's just an authentically loving place. And what's so great is the church that hired me wants exactly that too. I think that's why it's been such a good marriage for nearly six years now. And so when I think about the church that I've always wanted to be a part of, I hope very sincerely that it's the church that you've always wanted to be a part of. That it's a church that we can say about ourselves, you know what, whatever else is true, we love well. We always focus on Jesus. And we always love one another well. Before the service, the worship team kind of gathers, and we just kind of talk through the service, and then we pray. And Aaron says, is there anything we should pray about? And I said, yeah, today feels weird. Today feels weird. I won't tell you why. It's just family stuff. Kids are sick and yada, yada, yada. But I'm coming in here with my hair on fire this morning. Erin Winston, our children's pastor, she's coming in here with her hair on fire. Things just kind of, they just kind of felt weird this morning and we just stopped and we prayed as a worship team, God, would the things that matter to you go really well this morning? Would the things that don't matter to you, would they not matter to us at all? Would we not care about them at the end of the day? And at the end of the day, God, would you just focus us on you? We want that to be our prayer every week. We want to love Jesus and love others really well every week. And so I thought, you know, it's one thing to make the point that we want to be a church that's known for loving well. Sure. That's great. I don't think any of you would disagree with that. I'm not going to make more arguments that that's what we need to do. If you don't want to be a part of a church that's known for how well it loves Jesus and loves others, then this ain't the place. But if you do, I thought what I would do is now use the rest of my time this morning to give you some practical ways to love others. What can a church practically do? How can we put meat on this bone? What can we actually do to love others well as a church and to build our reputation in the community and in the people we serve as a church that loves well? And so actually what I've done is I've come up with a list. And if you've been here for a while, you know I don't like listy sermons because listyy sermons are disengaging and boring and frankly, lazy in their preparation. But this one needed a list. And then I went extra pastor on you and I alliterated it. How about that? Each point starts with the same first two letters. Point number two, just know that when I get to point number two, I'm really proud of both of those words that I was able to think of them and make them mean what they need to mean. Okay, this is where unusually listy and alliterated today, but let's go. Let's go through our list. Now listen, here's why I don't like listy sermons, because you can't remember a list of five things. All right, no one's going to leave here and commit them to memory. The whole series I did on the five traits of grace, I'd be surprised if any of you could list more than one of them. So I know you're not going to remember all these. So my encouragement on the front end of the list is that you maybe take one and think, yeah, I can lock onto that and I can do that. And that's how I can love others well while I participate in grace. So let's go through the list. How can we love well? How can we build a reputation of loving well as a church? Number one, unselfish attendance. Unselfish attendance. Here's what I mean. Here's what I thought about it. I, for almost 20 years now, have been getting paid to go to church. I don't know if you realize that, but pastors, we get paid to be here. And I don't really know what motivates people to go to church. I was trying to think about that this week and I just had to be honest. I don't know. I have to go. So I don't, I haven't walked in your shoes. I don't know why you got up and showered and braved the elements. I assume you showered and then braved the elements to come in today. But I would imagine for many of us, if not most of us, we're kind of thinking about ourselves. I want to go to church because I'm going to get something out of it. Because God speaks to me there. Because I kind of get some Jesus. See my friends, and that's good. I'm not saying that that shouldn't motivate you. I'm happy that motivates you if it does. Maybe we're serving somewhere. Maybe we want to just see our friends. Maybe church or our people. I've talked to some folks who have kind of fallen into the habit of over COVID watching the service online, but every now and again they come back to church because it's like those are our people. We miss them and we love them. Maybe it's to participate in corporate worship. That's my favorite part of every Sunday morning service is just standing right there and getting to sing. Getting to worship with the rest of you guys. Hearing my church praise my God. Maybe it's like an obligation. You kind of feel like you just need to do it. I got a big sale coming up this week and I'm going to need a big man's blessing so I'm going to go and check the church box. Maybe it's for your kids. I don't know. But I would bet that there's some sort of, and I use this word but I use it because it's accurate. I don't use it to be derogatory. There's some sort of selfish motive to come here. And it's okay. Church should serve everyone who comes. But can we also add to that some unselfish motives? Can we begin to think about what it looks like to come for other people as well? A great example of this happened this morning. Some of y'all got here and it was raining. And there was people out there with umbrellas walking you to your car. My hope is that they prioritize the mamas with babies and maybe the older ladies who aren't quite as quick as they used to be and the dudes that are about their age. You just stood there and laughed at them and watched them walk through the rain without offering them umbrellas. That would be ideal out there. But I was out in the lobby as the first song started taking care of something, and I saw Phil over here, our head usher, who I give a hard time for his huge ego about being our head usher. He's out of control, man. He's soaked. His hair's soaked. I fist pounded him. I was so excited. I saw how wet he was and how much he had just been out there just serving people without ever being asked to. Nobody asked him to grab an umbrella. He just did it. And I fist pounded him really hard. And he was like, that stung really bad. My hand's freezing. Also, Phil's a sissy. But Craig Holiday was out there. He grabbed an umbrella. And one of my favorites, Kyle and Ashlyn, now Ashlyn Tolbert, yes, they got married last weekend. They got back from their honeymoon last night, decided to come to church. He's not even being paid for this. He's not on the clock. He got here and then said, I gotta get an umbrella and just immediately started walking people in. All that is unselfish church attendance. Say hey to somebody you don't know. Long time grace people, I'm being serious about this. If you come to church and the only people you talk to at church are your people that you already know, they're the only people you acknowledge or shake hands with, that's a little selfish, isn't it? Let's reach outside of our circles. We're small enough that we know new faces. Let's say hey to them. Let's make sure they feel welcome. Unselfish church attendance looks like serving in the children's ministry so that mamas and daddies can sit in here and experience what God has for them in the worship service. It looks like inviting people to sit next to you that you might not know. To me, this is going to sound weird, one of the things that unselfish church attendance is, is singing loud. I can do this. When Aaron lays out and he's not singing and it's just our voices, which is always really beautiful to me, I sing extra loud. If you sit around me, you know. That's the penalty for getting here late. You got to hear my voice. But I'm singing loud to make space for you to sing too if you don't want to sing so loud. When we come to church on Sundays, let's not just think about our experience and what God has for us, but let's think about ways that we can be used by God even while we're here so that the folks who come here can feel loved every week. The next one. The second thing we can do to love well is to offer untethered inclusion. How about that? I'm telling you. Untethered inclusion. One of the ways that I think about grace, and I've thought about it like this from the beginning, and it's not something that I articulate a lot, because frankly, it wasn't something that I was totally comfortable with. But the more I think about it, the more I embrace it. I really think about grace as kind of a triage unit for those who have been hurt by church. We all know, we all have stories of people who got used up and spit out and burnt up at church. Of people who did get behind the scenes and find that there were egos and agendas involved and those hurt. Of people who served faithfully at church and then hit a rough patch or a hard time and the people they thought were close to them abandoned them. Or maybe they watched leaders fail. Or maybe they watched elder boards disappoint. Or maybe they watched their kids be mistreated. Or any number of things that churches can screw up. But here's the thing. We're not above any of that. Matter of fact, we're going to do something this year to hurt somebody in this room. And I hope when it happens that we're the first ones to see it and apologize and make it right. So I don't want to pretend like grace is some bastion or oasis where we do everything perfectly. But we try. We try really hard to be authentic and to love well. And one of the ways that we can do that is to make this a place of respite and rest for those who have been hurt by church. Does that make sense? Untethered inclusion means you come here and we're going to include you in everything we do. We're going to love on you. We're going to invite you to things. We're going to fold you into small group. We're going to talk to you on Sunday morning. We're going to treat you like you give the most, like you serve the most, like you love the most, and we're just going to let you rest. Our inclusion of you into circles and pockets in the church has nothing to do with what you give to the church or how you serve the church. I've been a part of churches in the past where everybody was just made to feel like a cog in the machine, right? We're reaching the community for Christ. We're doing this. We're going to go plant this thing. We're going to go do this thing. And what's your part that you can do? And the people in the church who were valued the most were the ones who showed up the most often and served the hardest and gave the most. And I just don't think that's the way that God wants his church structured. I just don't think that those in leadership in the church should care the most about the people who do the most for them to scratch their back. I think our inclusion and our love of other people needs to be untethered to whatever service they're offering the church. So we love without expectation of reciprocity here. It is untethered to any other requirements. We're just going to include you and love you. So if you have been hurt by church, come and rest here. I've had meetings with people where I'll go out to lunch with a guy and he'll say, yeah, you know, I used to play an instrument back in the day. I used to play for churches. I got burnt out on that, so I don't do it anymore. And I'll tell them. You can ask them. I'll tell them. All right, I'll give you a year. I will not tell Aaron on you so he doesn't come after you. I will not bring it up again. I will not ask you to serve in that way for a year. At the end of the year, I'll just check on you. See if you want to serve. And I mean it. And we'll let people come here and we'll let people rest. Now what I would say to the people that are resting, resting is not retirement. At some point or another, we've got to get to work. But if you need rest, you can rest here. Because we're going to offer you untethered inclusion. Next thing we're going to do to continue to build a reputation of love is we're going to offer unforgettable care. Not required care. Not bare minimum care. We're going to offer unforgettable care. Last year, somebody brought a gentleman to our attention who lives in Capitol Towers. He's confined to his wheelchair. He can't even get out of his wheelchair on his own, so he sleeps in it. And he lives in an apartment over there. And we were told that he would want to come to church with us, and so we made some arrangements to come to church. It was very easy to do. But there was two people in our church that wanted to go see him and meet him. And so they went to this man's apartment. And I can only imagine what an apartment would look like when the sole occupant of it cannot get out of his wheelchair. But I'm guessing to say that it was not tidy is probably the most generous description of the way that it looked. Those people cleaned that apartment for six hours on their own. No one asked them to do that. They just saw a need and they met it. That's unforgettable care. That man will never forget what they did for them. I have seen in our church unforgettable care offered time and time and time again. People who don't just meet the minimum requirement of, yeah, I am praying for you, but who actually show up and do the thing. You know what Stephen ministry offers? Unforgettable care. To walk with you in life in a way that you'll never forget the time Jesus put that little angel in your life to walk with you through that hard part. So every church has opportunities to care. All of us will have opportunities to care at some point or another, and my challenge to you is when you do, offer care that is unforgettable. And do it because your desperate hope is through offering that care, they will see Jesus in how much you cared. The fourth thing we can do to continue to build a reputation of love is offer uncommon community. I think it's one of the things that defines grace. Uncommon community. At the first Sunday of the year, well, that we met, because the first one was the first, and we didn't meet because, you know, we chilled out. But on the 8th, we met. And I got into a conversation with somebody afterwards who wanted to talk about the Christmas Eve service. They're like, man, listen, I got to tell you. He said his brother-in-law was in town. He lives in South Carolina. So his brother-in-law was in town. And after the service, which he praised and thought was good, and I said, which one did you come to? And he said, the 330. And I said, oh, that wasn't even a good one. The five was way better. And he said that after the service that his brother-in-law was like, man, what's the deal with this place? He's like, what do you mean? He's like, the people are incredible. The service was great. Sermon was good. Worship was good. But the people are unbelievable. I've never experienced community like this. And my buddy was just like, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's cool. We love each other here. It's really great. He's like, no, no, no, I've never experienced anything like it. And he's like, I know, we feel really lucky. And they just kind of moved on. Two full days later, brother-in-law's still at his house, grabs him, pulls him aside. And he's like, no, listen, man, I'm not kidding. What's the deal with that place? I've not been a part of church for a while. I want to be involved in a church like that. How can I find what you have? That's you guys. That's the people. And I thought this week, how do I describe what that person experienced on a Christmas Eve service, the community that he saw, and put that into replicatable behaviors that we can do moving forward. And I don't know. So here's the thing, okay? Here's the really smart thing I'm going to tell you so that we can continue to have uncommon community. Just keep really liking each other is the thing. This church here is a church that's built on friendships. I would be thrilled to have lunch with anybody. I don't know if I want to take an eight-hour road trip with anybody in here, but I'd be thrilled to have lunch with anybody in here, talk to you, get to know you. I see rich and deep friendships in this church. I see the way new people are incorporated. I'm so proud of how well we love each other and how much we really do genuinely like each other. And so maybe that uncommon community beyond just liking each other a lot comes with being intentional about spending time with each other outside of church. Just, you know, being like friends. But whatever it is, whatever's there, that's what makes grace go. It's not me. It's not the worship. It's the people. That's why we have Big Night Out. We're doing another one. March 24th. First one in three years. Mark your calendars, baby. It's going to be a big one. Where's Doug Funk? Is he in here? Hey, Doug. We're doing your retirement party, baby. We were supposed to have a retirement party in 2020, and then the Lord sent COVID, and we didn't get to do it. But we're going to do it now, man. It's going to be really fun. March 24th, we're going to hang out. And when we hang out, we go somewhere. We go to Compass Rose or somewhere like that, and the owners say, do you just want us to reserve the whole space? And we say, no way, because we want other people from the community to come and see our community. And we want to invite them into it. We want you to invite your friends so they can look around and be like, you guys all like each other. Yeah, we do. We're pretty tight. At Grace, we want to continue to have an uncommon community that comes from having a genuine affection and appreciation of each other. And then finally, you can't make this list of what we can do to build our reputation of loving well without noting this. We need to be a church of unbroken focus. Unbroken focus on Jesus. I quote this passage a lot, Hebrews 12, 1 and 2. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles and run the race that is set before us. As grace, we are running a race. We are doing our part. It is our time on the field. We are going and we are loving and we are trying hard. How do we run our race well? Throw off the sin and the weight that entangles? 12.2, by focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We forsook all things for the sake of the cross. Guys, none of this, none of this is possible without Jesus. Nothing that we do as a church is possible without Jesus. And I hate to break it to you, we don't have any strategies here. We did a campaign a while back. We did it all wrong. We had no strategy. We just thought, well, you know, if it's important to God, we'll raise the money. If it's not, we won't. It'll be all right. We're going to do another one. We're going to have the same attitude. There will be no strategies. We have no strategy for church growth. We have no strategy beyond just loving well and loving Jesus. That's all we got. We're just going to do it every week. And none of these things are possible, unselfish attendance, offering untethered inclusion. None of this is possible if it's not fueled by Jesus. What was Ephesus guilty of? They lost sight of their first love, and because they lost sight of their first love, they stopped doing all the little things they did at first that can only be fueled by a love of Christ. So this is the one. I told you there's going to be five and just pick one. You can't do all of them. Everybody has to do this one. Everybody has to do this one. We can only be a church that loves well if we have an unbroken focus on our Savior. On a personal level, on a corporate level. I'll say it again. I always say it. There's nothing more important that we can do in our whole life than wake up every day and spend time in God's Word and time in prayer. We need to pursue Jesus on our own. We need to come every week and we need to celebrate Jesus. We need to walk out these doors and be determined to show people Jesus. And in those ways, we will love in all the little ways and we will do all the little things that the church in Ephesus forgot to do that will keep our eyes focused on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. And we will be a church that is known for exactly what God wants us to be known for which is loving others as Christ loved us. So that's my commission to you. Let's continue to be a church that's known for loving well. Let's do it by leaning into those things that I mentioned and by never forgetting to keep our eyes focused on Christ in a way that is unbroken, in a way that is consistent, and in a way that is urgent. Trusting that love to fuel all the other things he wants us to do as a church. Let's pray. Jesus, we love you. I pray that everything that happens here would draw us more close to you. God, I pray that a desire for you, a desire for your spirit, a desire for your son, a desire for your word would burn in all of us. That we would be fueled by it, that we would wake up because of it, That we would love well because of it. And that that love that we have for you would spur all of these little things that conspire to make this church a place that's known for loving well. God, would you use grace however you see fit? Would you use this little church with our little community and our friendships to advance your kingdom? And would people who come here week after week, whether it's their first week or their hundredth, would they leave this place a little bit closer to you than when they came? Would they leave this place with a greater desire for you, Jesus, than what they walked in here with? And will you just give us a heart to repeat that every week? We love you and we need you. In Jesus' name, amen.