It was way back in 1988, in a galaxy far, far away. I mean, it’s a long time ago. Somebody is saying, “What is that?” Yeah, that was the year I was 25 years old. I had been serving with my grandfather who was the founding pastor of this church, prior to that. I would like to take a little bit of time to share some personal things before we go into the scripture and talk about how it can apply. I had been with him for a number of years. It was a small church. I served as a youth leader, then a youth pastor, and then an associate with him where I assisted him. My grandfather was, for all his ministry, almost 30 years here in San Francisco as a pastor of a very small church. In fact, some of you know this, but not everyone necessarily would, he was a bi-vocational pastor. That meant that the church didn’t have enough to support him. He drove a Muni bus here in the city for all that time. When I was growing up, that’s how I remember my grandfather, pastor, and Muni bus driver. I used the connection quite often to get my friends onto the bus when he was driving. I remember that when I was a boy.

Something happened in my life when I was 12 years old. My brother who is one year younger than me, and I, went through my mom and dad splitting apart. Ultimately, they were divorced. Part of that process was that my dad just disappeared from my life. He wasn’t there. Because of certain things that happened I was able to connect with my grandfather. He was my father’s father. It was the relationship I never had with my own father. Even though he was in his late 60s and 70s when our lives intersected. One thing that happened was I had this really powerful experience with Jesus when I was just heading into my teen years. That experience really altered my life.  During that period of time, I decided not to leave San Francisco. I was born and raised here. I had an opportunity to go to school elsewhere for university, but I decided to stay here. I ended up going to State just to be able to serve him. That was where I did my undergrad work. I’ll tell you that it allowed me to stay connected to him. But again, growing up in the church and taking on more responsibility. The church was always a small church and my job was to help implement the vision that he had for it. I tried to be as absolutely loyal as I could.

I remember in 1988 my grandfather called me into the office. His office is where our tech room is now, to my right. He said, “Hey, I want to talk to you.” I’m 25. We had our first child, Caleb, our boy, the first son of our four children. This is the church he pastored, founded, and gave his life to, but never really saw grow in any way. He hands me a piece of paper bigger than this one. I still actually have it. Now the ink is almost gone, but you can just see a little bit of it. He handed me a paper on the church stationery and he said to me, “You’re in charge now.” I looked at the paper and it said, “Thanks for the memories. Adios.” I said, “Gramps, what are you talking about? Thanks for the memories. Adios.”

 He was a unique character. He moved away because he knew he was dying and wanted to create some space. So for the next few months, I didn’t realize it, but he strategically left. He died four months later to be with the Lord. I remember how I felt. Because, one, I had a hard time grieving. I felt responsible for the church. I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. I was still learning. Not only had I lost my grandfather who had been like my father, but I lost my pastor. We were a non-denominational church and I lost my mentor. I know this is going to sound strange like, “How could it be? You’re 50 years apart.” But I lost a friend too, and I felt alone. But I wasn’t. We had some good people who had come up with me through the youth group and we were working together.

One of the things that dawned on me was I could never pastor through the church the way my grandfather pastored. I was a different person. I started to seek the Lord with the team that we had. It was just about 70 of us. We started to seek the Lord in 1988 and ’89. We decided to rename our church Cornerstone. Then we also started to do something that was starting to happen a lot in the ’80s, and so we were moving. This hadn’t really happened that much before, but people started focusing on mission statements. Up until that point, there really hadn’t been drivers and culture. There was a particular book that was written in the ’80s by a man named Stephen Covey called Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He talked about beginning with the end in mind. It’s a fantastic book, by the way. In that book, many people started getting motivated. It was like a cultural movement, both in business profit and nonprofit sectors, to write mission statements. Also, people were writing their own mission statements as guideposts, like North stars. Answering questions such as; Why do we exist? What is our purpose?

It just happened to be something we were talking about. We said, “You know what? We’ve never had a mission statement before. I think we need one for where we’re going.” We started to think about who God wants us to be? What we felt like we were gifted to do. Who we were supposed to be as a part of the witness of Jesus in this city. I can tell you that we wrestled with that and we prayed about it. We ended up coming up with this mission statement again, years ago. I realize not everyone is familiar with it, but we wrote it out way back then to be an exceptional outreach church that establishes people as committed followers of Jesus Christ. Outreach for us had to do with the idea that we wanted to be a church that was extending itself to reaching out to others, to help them come to know Jesus. That’s how we saw it, so we created a lot of things around that.

There were actually two formative experiences that I had that had a lot to do with how we landed where we landed and why we ended up doing what we ended up doing. One of which was connected to something that happened when I was either a junior or senior in high school. I was excited about Jesus. I wanted to invite people to come to church. I was inviting my friends and people I was meeting in school. I remember one time, it just stood out to me so vividly in my mind’s eye. We had a school president. He had never been exposed to church, maybe at one time a Catholic church, but had no real knowledge of the church. He was on his way to Stanford and I said, “Hey, I want you to come to church.” We struck up a friendship. I remember him coming to church and what happened. He came to church and there were all kinds of stuff that started happening that I could tell freaked him out. There were things that he didn’t know, like when they say, “Turn to your Bible to find such and such passages,” we would be able to get there. He didn’t know what he was doing. He felt awkward. There were certain conversations that were happening, certain things that people were doing, it didn’t make sense to him and he didn’t understand it. By the time I was done, I realized that there was such a huge disconnect. I’ll not forget what he said to me afterward. I said, “What’d you think? He goes, “Terry, I really like you, but I don’t think I’m ever going back to your church, man. That place freaks me out. It scared me.”

I thought, “Oh, man.” Then I remember how I started when I would try to bring people to church. There were certain things that happened that were part of the practice of the church. Our church was like this, it was really hard to get into and really hard to get out of. It was one of those. It was a real high commitment, and then if you left, everybody noticed. I started talking to my friends and realized I was spending huge amounts of time trying to prepare them for the experience before they came in. I remember how many conversations I would have. I would say, “Hey, when this happens, I just want you to…” I spent a lot of energy trying to prepare them for what they were going to process through because they had no exposure.

I thought to myself, “If I ever get a chance to lead a church, I’m really going to try, if God allows me, to try to create a place where it’s safe to bring people, so they can hear the message of Jesus and not feel odd, even if they don’t know anything. I really want to be a place where I want to encourage people to talk about the Lord with people they care for or are friends with. I want them to have a certain confidence that they can count on the experience. So that nothing is going to be said that’s going to overtly embarrass them to the extent that it will make no sense. There should be some access points that I won’t talk down to people and create we-them scenarios. I want to create a place where people could be exposed to the goodness and the life of God in a way that would complement the conversations that I hope we’re going on outside of these walls.

On top of that, I had this thing. I know this is going to sound a little strange to some people, but I had this dream. I remember having it years later, right when we were just trying to wrestle with our mission. I remember having this little dream and I walked into the church in my mind. I don’t have a bunch of dreams, but I remember this one. All of a sudden I walked in through the church doors and saw the carpet. It started turning into the grass, just sprouting and then a flower here and a flower there. I saw this man, it wasn’t even like a man, it was like an image of one. I saw this person bow down and start to worship God. It dawned on me that there was something about the beauty of what was happening. A garden experience that was opening up a person, causing them to drop their guard and open up to worshiping God. It started affecting how we started to think about church. We wanted it to be a complimentary, beautiful place. We started talking about how we could use art and music. What was then just the beginning of technology to try to create an experience and an environment where people could get exposure to the things of God. There could be great conversations that could happen. People could start thinking about their own lives.

In combination with wanting to have a place where people could be equipped to live holistic, healthy lives in Jesus, not just learning about stuff that happened years ago in scripture which has value, but also learning how to take that scripture and apply it into our lives. So it shows up in our relationships, how we can work through our own problems, how we can apply it when we’re in the workplace. So this idea and having a church that was both equipping people and a safe place to bring people would create conversations about Jesus that may not happen in any other place. That was the idea. The reason I’m bringing it up is that it lays the root system for where we are now. What we did in addition to a lot of the other “refresh” things that we’ve been doing both inside and outside with the way in which we’re approaching things now, also refreshed our mission statement. 

It says, “Our mission is to live out our faith in Jesus,” and it’s so simple, but yet it has deep meaning, “and invite others into life with Him.” To live out our faith in Jesus and invite into life with Him. The idea here is that it’s connected to our deepest values. It says, “When we do this right, we get out of our comfort zones, we take holy risks and we act as a bridge to Christ in our relationships.” We sum it up in three words, “Live it out.” This has to do with the idea that we want people to be able to start thinking in our church, why we exist. We want to push outward on behalf of the Lord, to live out our faith in Jesus. It means that we’re being thoughtful. It means that we’re intentional about our actions, about the way we are living, and about the effect that we have on other people. It’s just very important for us. This is a driver for us. We have in Matthew 5 a passage that Jesus gave us. I’d like you to look at it with me and see what we’re talking about.

In Matthew 5 Jesus says, “You’re the light of the world. A city that’s set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand and it gives light to all that are in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in Heaven.” Now, what does this passage do? It places us a priority Jesus did on good works, on goodness, and on the quality of our life. How we live, our actions, our attitudes, our service, and the way we treat people. The whole point of this is he’s saying, “I want you to think about how you’re living, about the goodness of your life, because I want you to be a difference-maker for God. I want you people to be led to the Father because of the way they see you live.” He’s telling his followers that how you live matters. It’s not just what you say. Now, it’s a very important point. Now take that passage that Jesus gave us. It clearly places the emphasis on what we do, how we treat others, the goodness of our life, and the good works. In contrast with, or put it right next to what Jesus said in Matthew 28, is what Jesus said right before His ascension.

Jesus says, “Now, the 11 disciples went to Galilee to the mountain, to which Jesus had directed them, and when they saw Him, they worshiped Him, but some doubted. Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples,'” that’s a committed follower, “‘of all nations of all different peoples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. Behold, I am with you always, even in the end of the age.'” Can you see the different accent that is being placed by Jesus? In the first passage, Jesus is talking about being a light, being a people committed to good works, and talking about how we live. In the second, He’s talking about how we need to be committed. If we love Him, we need to be committed to helping people come to know Him and become committed followers. He’s talking about talking about Him. Proclaiming who He is, sharing who He is.

This is summed up by the apostle Paul in Romans 10. It says, “The message is very close. It’s on your lips, it’s in your heart, and that message is the very message about faith that we preach.” Here it is. “If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead you will be saved, for it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God. It is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.” As the scriptures tell us, “Anyone who trusts in Him will never be disgraced.” Jew and Gentile are the same in this respect. They have the same Lord who gives generously to all who call on Him, for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Now, watch the series of questions that follow. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, but how can they call on Him to save them unless they believe in Him? How can they believe in Him if they’ve never heard about Him? How can they hear about Him unless someone tells them? How will anyone go and tell them without even being sent? That is why the scriptures say, “How beautiful are the feet of the messengers who bring good news.” But not everyone welcomes the good news. That’s what the prophet Isaiah said, “Lord, who has believed our message?” Faith comes from hearing the good news about Christ.

What we see is that this gospel, this good news has been given to us to be given away. We have been invited into the story of Jesus so that we can also invite others into it. This is why our church exists. We exist to invite people into the story of Jesus. We exist to reach out and to represent His heart, to share the good news of what He can do in a person’s life. We exist to see people come to know Him and be His disciples as our purpose, as a people, and it’s embedded. I want to put up some principles around this, just for us to consider thoughtfully. One thing that is pretty clear to me is that faith is ignited when people hear about Christ. It means that people who know Him and claim to love Him, need to both live a good life and be willing to talk about Him because in some cases, the only Jesus they’re ever going to see is the Jesus they see in the people that they trust. People like you and me.

Let me put a couple of things out there for us to think about that connect exactly to why we’re saying what we were talking about. Words without a well-lived good work-oriented life at best rings hollow. You know it and I know it. At worst it can drive people away from Christ. A lot of people have been very damaged because of hypocrisy, disconnect, or lack of congruence. I’m not talking about perfection, because not one of us is perfect. We’re not even close. We all have flaws. We all have weaknesses. We all have sins. That’s a fact. What I am saying is there’s a relative consistency that would cause people to say that when we act in a certain way, we’re acting out of character as they know us. That there’s a consistency in our life that reflects something of God’s reality. We’re not the same person we would’ve been because of what the Lord is doing in our lives. That is a very important distinction.

The same is also true from another angle. I’m talking about a follower of Jesus, good works, goodness never connected to Christ in any meaningful way are of limited value. I didn’t say it has no value, but it is so much less than it could or should be. I was having this discussion with my oldest son. It may cause people to like us and admire us and say, “Oh man, you’re a good worker,” or, “You’re an honest person,” or, “You’re a good guy,” or, “You’re a woman who I can trust.” You don’t jump in on stuff. But I’ll say this. If there is never a connection made between who we are and the one we serve and say we love, if that connection is not even made subtly or modestly, then we have failed Him. Or at least, we probably have passively denied Him in some way. I know that’s a strong statement. In the end, we either love Him or we don’t. When you love someone, you’re not ashamed of them. This is either good news or it isn’t. If it’s good news, then it’s worth sharing. It must be shared. I guess what I’m saying is that both good works and good words are needed. Action and confession, service and benediction, faith lived, faith spoken, not one or the other, and with a little art sensitivity and joy thrown in.

So we need to understand that shining our light involves both living and speaking. In light of that, let’s remember to ask God to fill us with relational discernment, conversational wisdom, and courage. I say this out of the conviction that there are people that the Lord has divinely set up for you to meet and talk to on His behalf. I realize that there are some environments that are extraordinarily delicate. I just talk to too many of you to realize that in the climate we have, you have to be so careful. In the weeks ahead, we’re going to look at a case study of a man named Daniel who is in the scripture. He has a book named after him as well. His writing’s profound and prophetic. His example has so much to do with how to live in a hostile environment and be a person of integrity. There’s a lot to learn there. I realize that a lot of us find ourselves in situations where we may need at times the Lord to fill us with relational discernment, to know when we’re able to share or not to share. It requires tact and thoughtfulness.

There might be times where we don’t even do it. Someone says, “Ah. How you say it matters.” Look, I love words. How you say something does matter. There are times where the bigger issue for God is not how you’re saying it. It’s that you’re willing to say it. Sometimes that authentic sharing of your story and what the Lord has done in your life is the bigger issue than exactly saying it correctly. In fact, there are some people who may value that way more. There are people that some of us can reach that I can’t reach, or someone else next to us can’t reach. There are certain people we’re connected to, certain ways of engagement that you are the person to talk to them about the Lord. That is meant to be. When that happens, Jesus said this from Matthew. He talks about going out as wolves. “I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, and I want you to be as wise as a serpent, as gentle as a dove.” I want to talk about that verse later on, too. But this is an interesting verse because He’s talking about when you walk out there. “Ask the Lord to help you to be wise and at the same time, gentle, but not ashamed of Jesus. Don’t be ashamed of the Lord.”

“Do you know what I’m going to risk if I do that?” I don’t know. I’m not saying you take crazy risks all the time. I’m not saying be foolish or just start talking. I am saying there are going to be times where we have to decide, do I love Jesus more? What does He mean to me? If I’m hearing someone sharing their life and they’re hurting, should I not speak up and say, “Hey, I go to church. Hey, how would you like to do it? Would you like to come with me?” It might be that simple. I’m telling you, lives get altered in divine appointments that turn into these conversations. All of a sudden, we’re saying, “Oh, they’ll never be open.” They are more open. There are people that are ready. They’re ready and no one’s talking to them. I realize we live in a very angry age. It’s an angry time. Everybody’s yelling, tweeting. Everybody’s taking up sides, saying, “You got to join in the vitriol. You got to be angry at somebody.” Some of that I get, but I feel like there’s more than enough anger to go around right now.

Maybe I just want to follow Jesus, try to have no malice in my heart as much as I can, and live peaceably. I want to live for the Lord. The first thing that I am is a follower of Jesus. Each one of us has asked, “What is my core driver? At the end of the day, where’s my real identity?” For me, this is a follower of Jesus. That’s my starting point. Everything else is secondary and will pass away. Here’s another thought. Before life can flow out of us, it has to flow in us. I can say live it out, but the internal work is imperative. There is no way to adequately represent the life of Jesus. We say live out your faith in Jesus and invite others into life with Him. Remember, I’m talking about these divine conversations that happen when a person has open eyes because there’s stuff happening all around us. It’s happening in our jobs. It’s happening with people that we’re going to school with. There are people sitting by us at the coffee house. I’m not saying we’re all to be talking all the time. I am saying there’s a lot of times when we spend time with the Lord at a private level, He will show up in a public way.

Whatever shows up publicly is always a result of what’s going on internally. The two are connected. That’s why things like devotions matter. Taking time to honor the Lord in the early part of our day. Reading His words and letting them sit in us. Having Godly conversations with other people who also love Him. We want to train and encourage each other together to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord. That’s why having a small group, matters and why ministries serve together. These things matter. Jesus was the originator of a small group. He trained His disciples that way. Two is better than one. The threefold cord is not easily broken. Life was never meant to be done alone. Life, to go out of us, has to come into us. It’s how we made it work. It’s how it works. It’s how it works in the Kingdom. We want to be filled so we can flow, live in so we can live out.

Lastly, be happy. Or at least happier. Be a little more positive. We can talk about Jesus all we want. But if we’re just walking around depressed and sad all the time, it’s like, “Come and get what I have. Come and die. Follow Jesus.” I’d be happy. Jesus gave us the Beatitudes. He says, “Be the blessed blesser.” I’m not saying fake a smile. I’m not saying we pretend when things are hard and that they’re not. The joy of the Lord is my strength. I have a reason to be loved because He just loves me. If you’re loved, you can’t be too sad. How much does He love me? He gave it all. God spared not His own son. He loves us, pursues us, cares for us, gives a presence to us, and gives a promise of what is yet to be. The Lord is good.

The thing is that when they saw Jesus coming, people in the Bible days didn’t say, “Oh, there He is. The unhappy man is coming.” No, He was a happy man. Some of you may have noticed when you came in that the outside of the building was painted, but the church garage got painted as well. In fact, after service, you may want to just jump across the street and even take a shot, consider posting it, and sending it off because it’s kind of cool. It is a modern rendition. We hired one of the finest street artists, commissioned him to paint and do that project, and he goes to our church. We said we had a particular vision in mind because we were thinking about our mission statement. We were thinking “live out.” Live out our faith in Jesus and invite others into life with Him.

Live out our life with Jesus and invite others into life. When we do the painting, let’s create something that gets it out. If you haven’t noticed, it is like a mural in Mecca. A street mural. If you go down, you get the mural alley. There are tours being led all the time because I’m here a lot and I see it. They’re stopping to look at the Women’s Building, look at the mural alley. We said, “Hmm.” People are taking pictures, coming from all over the place. We said, “You know what? Live out our faith. Why don’t we create something? Make a statement about the goodness of God.” We said, “Let’s do this. Let’s create.” So you’ll notice it shows creation, but it also shows something else. On the garage door itself, notice this, it says, “John 316, ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever would believe in Him would not perish, that death would not be the final word, but that He would have the undying everlasting life of God.”

The idea was to figure out a spot where the shot will be taken and embed the scripture into it. When it’s taken for whatever the motive because it’s a true statement, we wanted everybody to know it. We said, “That’ll take the message of Jesus and send it out who knows where.” If you look closely along the wall, embedded in there are different key verses that when shots are taken, it will carry out. The whole idea is we want to live it out, and the idea of being loved. Jesus looked at the people and had compassion for them. I went back and reread it in between services because I was thinking, “Where was that?” It says, “He saw the crowds and He had compassion on the people. He saw them as being harmed and He saw them as having no shepherd.” He saw people basically troubled everywhere and said to His disciples, “You need to lift up your eyes. Did you see? The harvest is plenteous. The fruit is overripe. There are people who need it so badly, but there’s no one to harvest.”

Jesus didn’t say, “You go out into the harvest.” He says, “Pray to the Lord of the harvest that He will send forth laborers into the harvest because the field is white into harvest.” I’m thinking, Lord, there are people all around us who are just waiting at some point for someone to just talk to them about the Lord. I have a feeling that some of us are going to change people’s lives forever with a single invitation. On top of that, the lives that get affected out of that, some people because of your willingness to step forward in even a small way and invite someone to just be present with the Lord, will actually end up affecting, in some cases, people who will be born that you will never meet.

Some of us are here because someone long ago connected to someone, who connected to someone, who connected to someone, and it connected to us. If you could see strings over time of people who shared and how each of us was affected, it’d be like this maze of strings, different people affecting others for Christ. Who’s the person that we’re supposed to touch? Let us be courageous. Let’s live out our faith in Jesus and invite others into Him. Let me pray.

Even now, Lord, I thank you for the great, great privilege of being able to talk about what you can do. I ask that you would help some of us to live more like you, to live better, to live more biblically-aligned lives, and we need your grace to do that. There are others of us, Lord, that honestly, the real challenge for us is just not to be ashamed of you. It’s amazing. We’ll talk about all kinds of things, but to take that risk to talk about you, scares us. Sometimes because of the consequences, sometimes we just don’t want to take the risk. Help us to remember to not be afraid, not be ashamed, and to identify ourselves with you. You’re the great unifier. In an age of division, you’re the great unifier. I ask that you would speak to all of our hearts, be with us as we close the service out, help us to be lights, help us to live it out. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.