Real People

We celebrated three years as a church. Three years ago on Launch Sunday, I talked about community. Today I have a fresh teaching on the same topic, because one of the greatest things about our church is that people walk in and say, "Oh man, there is real community here." You can jump into a group. You can jump on the Dream Team. You can create some lasting friendships. I love that it is a marker on our church. But I also want you to know that it is by design.

Before we moved to Chattanooga, Missy and I felt called by God to this city. So we would travel up here on weekends and eat in all the restaurants, because you know how much we love to eat out. And we would talk to anybody. We talked to the server at the restaurant and the barista at the coffee shop. I would be driving down a residential street and see somebody watering their lawn, and I would roll the window down and say, "Yo, do you have a minute?" But so many friendly people came up, and we would get out and talk with them.

I would ask different questions. I would say, "Hey, we’re new to town. What are the good churches here?" Then we would share, "We’re starting a church. What would you like to see in a church?" And the question I loved the most was, "Are you involved in church? What’s your church story?"

I learned so much about this city by having candid conversations, in some cases literally on the street. What I came to understand is that Chattanooga does not just need one more church. Chattanooga needs hundreds more churches. A lot of the people we met had great faith in Jesus, and we celebrated with them. But what really moved us were the people who had no faith at all, and the people who had faith at one time but had drifted away. They had lost touch with church. And you could hear it in their voice. Several people said something like, "Man, I really do need to get back there. I’m missing that community in my life."

Those two groups of people are who we knew God was calling us to reach. For three years we have had a front row seat to God bringing those exact people into our church and to see life change take place in their hearts, because they found God here. We are watching Psalm 92 come to life.

The righteous will flourish like a palm tree, they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon; planted in the house of the LORD, they will flourish in the courts of our God. Psalm 92:12-13 (NIV)

God called our family to plant this church, and the purpose was so that you could be planted. Since Launch Sunday, 249 people have made the decision to follow Jesus and 107 have gone public in water baptism. Every single one of those numbers, think of it as a person.

So I want you to know that you are part of something bigger than you. When you give, when you serve on the Dream Team, when you sit in a small group and take off the mask and share your heart, you are honoring God and making a difference. And I just love that it shows the real community, the real people, who are in our church.

Who’s There For You?

Here is the thing. It matters who is in your life. The people you surround yourself with will make you or break you. I know some of you are thinking, "Pastor David, you don’t understand. I’m surrounded by weirdos and goofballs." What I would say to you is that you cannot choose your family, but you can choose your friends. You are in the driver’s seat of your life, and who you allow in the car with you changes everything.

Recently I heard about a young lady who joined our church family. She has been changed by Jesus, and she made a decision because she knows she has to leave her old life completely behind. The decision she made was to move out of her apartment. She understood that if she stayed there, she would get dragged back into the old life, and she has been set free by Jesus. It is hard to move. There is discomfort and pain and cost and all the stuff that comes with that. But she drew a line and said, "This is a new life for me. I’ve got to make sure those old relationships aren’t holding me back anymore." And she has jumped into the deep end of the pool here. She already has friends. She already has community. She is in about four small groups. We love to see that.

We say around here, "Show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future." Proverbs says it even better.

Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm. Proverbs 13:20 (NIV)

I read that verse and I hear the voice of Mr. T saying, "I pity the fool." In my deep and insightful research for this message, I watched an interview with Mr. T on Conan O’Brien, and it went exactly the way you would expect a Mr. T interview to go. But he explained where he got that phrase. He said it came from the Bible. He said the Bible is full of foolish people, and that pity is like mercy, so he was showing mercy to the person doing foolish things.

Here is what Proverbs is actually saying. There is no pity for the fool. The pity is for the friend of the foolish person. It is the companion who suffers harm. So the question is not whether you know any fools. It is who you have in your life and who you are walking with.

So where do we find wise people to walk with? It is what Jesus came up with two thousand years ago. After His death, burial, and resurrection, Jesus became the very first church planter. He took the limitless power He has and created a family. All who believe in Jesus are part of God’s family. Why would He take limitless power and use it to put us all together? Two reasons.

Why Jesus Started the Church

First, there is a person in the world Jesus wants to know. There are people in the world Jesus wants so desperately to know, the people who do not know Him yet. He left the ninety-nine and went after the one. He has compassion on the world and on those who are lost, and He wants a relationship with every single person. So He put His church together as a family to help Him reach them.

Then Jesus came to them and said, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Matthew 28:18-20 (NIV)

We call this the Great Commission. What it really means is that everyone who follows Jesus does so together with others. It is a shared purpose.

Second, there is a purpose in you Jesus wants to build. There is something in you that Jesus wants to draw out. He has already designed it into you, but you have free will, and you get to choose whether you apply the gifts God has given you to what He has called you to do. Jesus launched His church to build His people. I know that is a first grader sentence, but listen to it one more time. Jesus launched His church to build His people. The church exists so you can get better, so you can be blessed, so you can be healed, so you can hear truth and experience grace, and so we can learn together and become more and more like Him. And the best part of all is that He builds us from the inside out, because He placed His Holy Spirit in us. We have a beautiful voice if we will choose to listen to it, the voice of Almighty God that is already building us from the inside out.

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. Ephesians 2:19-22 (NIV)

That is a selah moment. Pause, reflect, and let the Word of God enter your heart. We are being built together, and God is dwelling in us, His church.

A Church For Real People

I think the church should be the most real place on the planet. We do not have time for pretense. I would much rather talk about how to help you become real, because that is what God wants. So here is what real people do. People who are pursuing God passionately and following Jesus well are the realest people on the planet.

Real people tell you the truth

I hope you have real friends who tell you the truth. We do. Some of them sit on the front row, and sometimes they just have to tell us the truth. I also have three teenagers, so I get told the truth a lot. I do not have to ask for it. It is free consultation. I ask my daughter, "Was what I wore on Sunday okay? Should I wear it again?" I ask my boys, "Was the joke funny?" And I appreciate them letting me know, "No, Dad, don’t tell that joke ever again." And I listen to them, because they are probably right.

When you are close, like a family, truth is so much easier. That is how it should be in the church. We should not hold back with one another. My kids are not afraid to share the truth with me, and I can receive it.

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. Ephesians 4:15 (NIV)

Our growth has a goal, and that is to be more like Jesus. We need the truth of God’s Word in us, and we need people who speak God’s Word over our lives and help us when we drift off course. We need somebody who can come in and say, "Hey, let me help you here. Let me take care of that blind spot for you."

Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. Ephesians 4:25 (NIV)

We cannot afford lies or falsehood, or even reservations, with each other. We are going to be candid. But we can do that in love, which leads to the second thing.

Real people build you up

Our best friends are people we met at church. I do not have anybody I met at the tire shop who became my best friend. All of our friends are church people, and that is a product of small groups. Friends should build you up.

Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. Ephesians 4:29 (NIV)

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Ephesians 4:32 (NIV)

The right friends know how to keep the balance between grace and truth. Truth without grace is mean. Grace without truth is meaningless. We need both, and the right friends will help you with both. That is why we have small groups at Rise Church. That is where community really happens. Sixty percent of our church is plugged into a small group, and I am not going to stop talking about small groups. I would like to see us get to one hundred percent.

Real people hold you together

Maybe you have had a point in your life where you felt like, "I just don’t have it together right now." The best people come alongside you. They are not going to judge you. But they are not going to enable you either. They are going to speak truth in love, and they are going to help you be held together.

From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. Ephesians 4:16 (NIV)

That is why we serve on the Dream Team. Every single person has a place and an opportunity to help do the work of Jesus in His church, to help people be held together, and to help there be a bond of peace among us.

I have an incredible story about a family who experienced real people. They experienced real community, and in the process of doing so, they experienced real healing in their lives. Austin and SarahReagan Hughes were here from the very beginning. There is a lot more to their story than we had time to share. It is an incredible story of God’s ongoing faithfulness, healing in their family and healing in their own hearts, and it is a reminder to us all that God is indeed limitless. I loved that Austin and SarahReagan shared about the authority they have in Christ, but also that they were lifted. They were built up by this church, by the body of Christ, by being surrounded with the right people. It was all the difference for them.

One thing SarahReagan shared with us off camera, that I know she would be willing for you to know, is that she used to carry a lot of medical anxiety. She and Austin both work in medicine, so they know what is possible, and when their kids were born she started placing that fear on them. Then came a week of waiting on a report about their son. Her mom came to town to take care of the kids, and SarahReagan went to work. She told me, "Pastor David, you don’t understand. The way I used to be, I never would have been able to focus on work. But I just went to work, because I knew my God had it. We had prayed, and we left it with Him." At the end of that week they got the beautiful report. I just think that is a testament to the power of God on display.

We Are a Church For

As I close, I want to tell you what we are for. It is easy for a church to be known for what it is against. We are against something. We are against the devil and all of his schemes. But we are also for some beautiful things.

Not even a year into this church, in the summer of 2024, I was praying and journaling, and I just started typing. I found it again recently, and I think it is for this moment. Here is what I wrote.

We are a church for all people. We are a church for real people. We are a church for rich people, for middle class people, and for broke people. We are for black people, brown people, white people, and people of every color on earth.

We are for atheists and for agnostics who have never cracked open a Bible. We are for new Christians who are camped out in the book of Romans and might hit a psalm or two, and for decades long believers who have the New Testament memorized and a picture of Billy Graham hanging in their living room.

We are for the blue collar worker, the white collar worker, the stay at home mom, the person with a disability who cannot work right now, and the person who is out of a job. We are for the faithful and the fearful. We are for those who love and for those who feel unloved. We are for people who have it "all together" and for people whose lives are a total wreck.

We are for those who know their purpose and for those who have no idea why they are here. We are for the person who is searching and the person who feels lost. We are for the person who is far from God and the person who has been found.

The last line I wrote was this: "We are for people. Real people. All people."

If you want to know what this church is all about, we love Jesus, and we love every single person who comes our way. And we want you to have a relationship with Jesus.

Maybe you are that atheist or that agnostic. Maybe you are searching and feel lost. Maybe you knew God at one time but walked away, and some of it was the people you surrounded yourself with, people who were tearing you down instead of cheering you on. The realest person ever is Jesus, and He is the one you want to know. You do not have to fix your life first. You will not be able to anyway. Acknowledge Him in the middle of the mess. Bring the sin, bring the junk, bring the doubts and the questions, and let Him plant the truth of His Word in your heart. The things that have held you back will not limit you anymore.

He gave His life for you. He paid a price you and I could not pay. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. If you are ready to say yes to Jesus, we would love to help you take that step. Find a Bible-believing church to call home. Be water baptized. Join a small group. And if you are looking for a church family, we would love for it to be this one. Take your next step at rise.church.