Beyond the Checklist: Is Your Discipleship Pathway Powered by the Gospel?

[00:00:05] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]:
Welcome to worship at Williamson's Chapel, United Methodist Church.
[00:00:10] Well, not at Williamson's Chapel.
[00:00:13] Welcome to worship wherever you are.
[00:00:15] My name is Pastor Wes Smith.
[00:00:16] I'm co-senior pastor here at Williamson's Chapel along with my wife, Toni Ruth.
[00:00:22] We are excited that you're joining us online this weekend.
[00:00:26] We made the decision out of an abundance of caution given the forecast for this weekend's weather to
[00:00:34] Cancel in-person worship and provide you this worship opportunity instead online.
[00:00:40] And actually this helps illustrate something about what Tony Ruth will be preaching on this morning which is continuing to talk about the discipleship pathway.
[00:00:50] This past Sunday I talked about growing and Pastor Tony Ruth is going to talk about going deeper and maturing in faith in a deeper way.
[00:01:01] Part of that pathway that we take as disciples is related to worship.
[00:01:06] And as we go deeper as disciples, we begin to understand in powerful ways that worship is not just about being in a certain place at a specific time, although that's important.
[00:01:19] Worship happens anywhere.
[00:01:21] Anywhere we give praise to God, anywhere we honor God, when we pray, when we read Scripture, when we just give thanks to God, those are acts of worship.
[00:01:30] And so as we grow as disciples, worship becomes a daily reality for us.
[00:01:35] We hope that wherever and whenever you're watching this video and joining us in worship, that you are blessed and that you are experiencing the reality of
[00:01:49] Worship and the reality of God's presence with you.
[00:01:52] So now I'm going to invite you to take a deep breath and let us prepare our hearts and minds to worship God.

[00:02:00] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_02]:
My name is Carrie Wright.
[00:02:02] I am the worship pastor here at Williamson's Chapel and I am delighted that you are here and ready to worship with us.
[00:02:10] Wherever you are, if you are cozied up on your couch or if you have a private prayer place or if you're outside running around with the kids listening, find a space to come and allow God to
[00:02:25] In our worship theme in these weeks leading up to now and going forward, we've been talking about the ways that God leads us and moves us.
[00:02:39] The ways that we are called to take another faithful step in our journey.
[00:02:45] Sometimes we are called to do more in our worship journey.
[00:02:51] We come to worship on Sundays or other days of the week.
[00:02:57] Sometimes we need to increase that and to be more faithful more Sundays.
[00:03:02] And sometimes we need to begin to worship better and more during the week.
[00:03:09] Worship is not only on Sunday morning when we come together.
[00:03:13] Worship is all through the week.
[00:03:15] So I invite you wherever you are now to come together with this body worshiping as one to find a place to settle in to light a candle or grab your Bible maybe and allow God to speak to you through this time of worship.
[00:03:34] As we begin, as we begin with the call to worship, I invite you to have these words in the back of your mind rolling around.
[00:03:43] We come to worship God.
[00:03:46] We come to worship God.
[00:03:49] Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord.
[00:03:51] Let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation.
[00:03:55] Let us come before Him with thanksgiving and extol Him with music and song.
[00:04:01] We come to worship God.
[00:04:04] For the Lord is great, the great King above all gods.
[00:04:07] In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him.
[00:04:12] The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land.
[00:04:17] We come to worship God.
[00:04:20] Come, let us bow down in worship.
[00:04:22] Let us kneel before our Lord and our Maker.
[00:04:25] For He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care.
[00:04:33] God our creator and sustainer we are yours and we worship you let us pray living God help us so to hear your word that we may truly understand that understanding we may believe and believing we may follow in all faithfulness and obedience seeking to honor and glory in all that we do through Jesus Christ our Lord
[00:05:01] Today's scripture comes from 1 Peter.
[00:05:04] I invite you to hear these words.
[00:05:07] Rid yourselves therefore of all malice, all guile, insincerity, evil, and slander.
[00:05:14] Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
[00:05:25] Come to him a living stone, though rejected by mortals, yet chosen and precious in God's sight.
[00:05:32] And like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
[00:05:44] For it stands in Scripture, See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.
[00:05:55] This honor, then, is for you who believe.
[00:05:59] But for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner, and a stone that makes them stumble and a rock that makes them fall.
[00:06:11] They stumble because they disobey the word as they were destined to do.
[00:06:16] But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
[00:06:29] Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people.
[00:06:34] Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
[00:06:39] The word of God for the people of God.
[00:06:42] Thanks be to God.

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_01]:
Welcome to my prayer space here at our home.
[00:06:47] This is the place that I set up for myself where I come to do devotion and to worship, to study, and to pray.
[00:06:53] I hope that you have taken Pastor Carrie's advice and set up a little space in your own home today.
[00:06:59] Maybe you've lit a candle.
[00:07:01] Maybe you just have your Bible open and a cup of coffee.
[00:07:03] I hope there's power and you have coffee.
[00:07:05] So, we want to just invite you to have just a conversation here this morning as we continue to think through our intentional discipleship pathway.
[00:07:14] And I want to invite you to be thinking more practically about what that means for your life.
[00:07:19] We hope you have a copy of the discipleship pathway.
[00:07:22] It was connected to an email that we sent to you.
[00:07:24] It's also available on social media on our website.
[00:07:28] And we hope you have a copy of that.
[00:07:29] The last couple weeks we've been talking to you about this x-axis, if you want to think of it that way.
[00:07:33] These steps of exploring
[00:07:34] Growing, Deepening, Centering, and Transforming.
[00:07:37] Today I want to invite you to take some time to think about the God-given gift of being stuck in one place, to dive a little deeper into what growing in different areas of your life would look like on this
[00:07:49] 1 Peter chapter 2 verses 1 through 5 that we just read reminds us that we are to live lives that are different from lives that we left behind.
[00:08:11] As Wes said last week, or as we would have lived before we had met Christ or before we knew Christ.
[00:08:18] We all have habits, all of us do, right?
[00:08:20] That we need to get rid of so that we can have a full life with Jesus.
[00:08:24] So what drives us to want to give up what used to be, to let go of what was in order to lay hold of something else?
[00:08:32] Well, 1 Peter says that that happens when we have tasted a growing life of discipleship and what that life of discipleship with Jesus can look like.
[00:08:41] When we've tasted, it's a beautiful image, when we've tasted of God's goodness.
[00:08:46] The bitter, sour, foul tastes we've known in the past, those become less appealing to us.
[00:08:52] We crave the goodness that we have tasted in Jesus, in his teachings and in the life that they bring to us.
[00:08:58] 1 Peter 2 calls that craving for spiritual milk, rich food that nourishes us and helps us grow like a mother's milk helps a baby grow.
[00:09:09] Hebrews chapter 5 verses 12 through 14 and 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 2 talk about the importance of not just staying in spiritual milk forever but growing into spiritual solid food across our lifetime in other words God's going to feed us differently along the way just like you and I fed our children differently along the way they didn't stay on mother's milk forever they moved to
[00:09:32] Solid food and at first it was really soft and then they graduated to true solid foods and that's how we grow right we need different things along the way we need to not just stay infants in our faith forever we need to be growing in grace because life with Jesus is not static it's an alive growing thing and we are nourished first with spiritual milk and then as we mature and grow we begin to crave spiritual food solid spiritual food
[00:10:01] So what does that look like practically?
[00:10:03] I mean, what is one faithful step, which is what we've been talking about this whole time?
[00:10:07] What does that actually look like?
[00:10:09] If you look at this Y axis, you're going to see there are different areas of spiritual life.
[00:10:12] Now, these are just five.
[00:10:14] There are plenty of others.
[00:10:15] We've chosen these at Williamson's Chapel because they align with our values as a congregation.
[00:10:21] With building Christ-centered relationship, dynamic and engaging worship, the transformational power of God's Word,
[00:10:28] The Lifelong Journey of Christian Transformation, Meaningful Mission and Service, Generosity.
[00:10:34] These are all things that are part of what we value as a body at Williamson's Chapel.
[00:10:40] So I want to take a minute today to think about what one faithful step as you move along this pathway in one of these different areas might look like.
[00:10:48] What spiritual food, be it milk or soft foods or
[00:10:54] Let's think for a second about building Christ-centered relationships.
[00:11:06] Maybe you're in an exploring place and you've just started coming to Williamson-Chapler.
[00:11:10] Maybe you've been here for a long time and you
[00:11:14] You know, might greet people in the congregation, but you don't really have any real relationships.
[00:11:18] Maybe you start coming to halftime and just getting to know people by name and building some connections and relationships.
[00:11:26] Maybe you need to take a step from that.
[00:11:28] Maybe you've been there.
[00:11:29] You need to take a step to growing into maybe joining a small group.
[00:11:33] Small groups are great places to start making connections beyond that surface level, knowing what is going on in other people's lives and sharing your life with other people and building some relationships that are grounded in a common sense of God's Word and a common desire to follow Jesus.
[00:11:49] Maybe you take a step further and join bereavement teams and journey with people
[00:11:54] As they're going through some of their harder spiritual seasons in their life, maybe you start cultivating a prayer relationship with somebody that you know they're praying for you and you're praying for them.
[00:12:06] My mom did that with a good friend at one point in her life.
[00:12:10] It was deeply meaningful to her.
[00:12:13] Maybe Stephen ministry might be your next step.
[00:12:15] Stephen ministry is a care ministry we have at the church.
[00:12:18] Maybe you're going through a rough season and you just need somebody to come and be your companion, to come alongside you, to just listen and pray with you and love you.
[00:12:26] That's another way to take just one more step along the journey of building some Christ-centered relationships.
[00:12:35] Worship.
[00:12:36] Carrie talked a little bit about this at the beginning of our time together this morning, and I just want to reinforce some of what she said.
[00:12:44] You know, a first step in worship is showing up in the sanctuary and thinking about how it makes you feel.
[00:12:50] And that's not a bad place to be, but that's an exploring place to be.
[00:12:54] That's spiritual milk.
[00:12:56] God calls us to keep growing in our understanding of what worship is, to grow in a commitment to be present, to be fully present, even in those days that maybe we don't feel like it so much.
[00:13:07] And then maybe your next step might be into something like creating a space, a space and intentionality in your home, a place where you are consistently about the work of prayer and worship and adoration of God.
[00:13:20] It could be that you're making worship part of your daily life in the ways that you're singing.
[00:13:26] Maybe you begin to understand that worship is the ongoing work of a whole life that praises God.
[00:13:34] Spiritual Growth and Study.
[00:13:36] That one's a little bit easier.
[00:13:38] When I was a little girl, this was the very first Bible I ever had.
[00:13:41] And it is a New Living Translation.
[00:13:43] You can tell how old I am by the cover of this book.
[00:13:47] And it was the first Bible that I ever had.
[00:13:50] It's got pictures in it.
[00:13:52] There's the Tower of Babel.
[00:13:54] And that was the first Bible I had.
[00:13:56] This is the second Bible I ever got.
[00:13:58] This was the one that my church gave me when I was in later elementary school.
[00:14:03] And I remember spending time and going through its pages and learning.
[00:14:08] It's the King James Version.
[00:14:10] It's got my name on it.
[00:14:11] Maybe you got a Bible like this in your childhood.
[00:14:13] And this served me well for a long time.
[00:14:16] Until it didn't.
[00:14:18] And then I got a little older to high school.
[00:14:20] I started in high school getting the upper room.
[00:14:24] I would pick up the upper room at church and I would take just a basic Bible.
[00:14:28] It was a more modernized translation like this one, but it's just a basic translation of the scripture.
[00:14:34] And I would read my devotion at night and I would do Bible study.
[00:14:38] And as I continued to grow in my faith and in my study, I eventually got this Bible.
[00:14:44] This is a Bible I've had since, actually since college, all through seminary.
[00:14:47] I have several study Bibles.
[00:14:48] This is the personal one I use at home, but I have several at work that I use.
[00:14:53] And I've moved into having a study Bible.
[00:14:55] And the difference between a study Bible and just your basic Bible is that it's got notes in it so that it can help you understand, bless all the things falling out of it,
[00:15:04] It can help you understand what scriptures mean.
[00:15:08] What's it talking about?
[00:15:09] Historical context and the things that can help you to grow and deepen in your life with God to understand more fully what's going on in the scripture.
[00:15:17] What was happening at the time?
[00:15:19] Who's Paul writing these letters to?
[00:15:21] What is the context?
[00:15:23] 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 1st, 2nd Kings.
[00:15:26] What's about these Psalms?
[00:15:28] What do these metaphors mean?
[00:15:30] And they can help us to grow in our life with God.
[00:15:33] Our hope is that you are growing not just by studying the Word, but that you're also joining small groups and listening to things where you can grow in some good theology, developing a deeper, richer, more fulsome sense of the nature of God.
[00:15:49] You can take one little step at a time by joining a Bible study
[00:15:52] or picking up a devotion or deciding that you're going to create a different practice for yourself.
[00:15:58] Maybe you want to use a prayer book.
[00:16:00] I have several that I use.
[00:16:01] Here's one that I really love.
[00:16:03] It's called Venite.
[00:16:04] I pray out of this book on the regular.
[00:16:06] If you do prayer time with us on Facebook Live on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you know that sometimes we will pray out of this book.
[00:16:13] There are all sorts of ways to do that.
[00:16:15] I'll journal.
[00:16:16] Maybe that works for you.
[00:16:17] Maybe it doesn't.
[00:16:18] But we want you to think about what is one little step that you could take to just grow a little deeper, to go from spiritual milk to spiritual solid food in your life with Jesus.
[00:16:28] Serving.
[00:16:28] That's the next one.
[00:16:29] Maybe services is sort of an easy place to start because it feels like it's something that's doable.
[00:16:36] We all know that God calls us to to take care of one another, to serve one another.
[00:16:40] So maybe you start by your just serve once a year at Rise Against Hunger.
[00:16:44] You come and help pack foods and
[00:16:46] You find that deeply meaningful.
[00:16:47] That's a great place to start.
[00:16:48] Start thinking about the world outside of yourself.
[00:16:51] Maybe you serve at church when you're specifically asked.
[00:16:55] Like if somebody said, hey, we need somebody to collect the offering today, or we want somebody to serve communion today, or hey, I need some help with Vacation Bible School.
[00:17:03] Maybe that's a good starting point for you.
[00:17:05] That might be a growing place for you.
[00:17:08] But growing in service means that you do start stepping up a little bit.
[00:17:13] You start noticing the things that need done.
[00:17:16] and offering to help before somebody asks you to help.
[00:17:19] You start maybe picking up one of our meaningful service days where we go out into the community together to serve at Feed and See or Bridge of Hearts or Foster Love, Adopt, Repeat the Christian Mission, Habitat for Humanity, a number of things that you're willing to go and take a day or three hours and go
[00:17:36] and that would be a great step to take to grow in your understanding of what it means to serve others it would get you in community with people that you are serving where you're making some connections and it's not just me helping somebody it's me seeing who I'm helping and letting that relationship begin to build
[00:17:54] Maybe you start then going to some of those things by yourself or inviting a friend to go with you or you choose to lead a serve team at the church.
[00:18:02] You commit to some ongoing service.
[00:18:04] You know one of the things that we're getting ready to do here at Williamson's is we're getting ready to move worship
[00:18:09] At 9 30 to 9 15 to give a little bit more breathing room for them the spirit to be able to move among us in that 9 30 worship service because there's just some some real tight time constraint there and one of the things we're going to need is more people to help in children's ministry um 15 extra minutes down in children's ministry sometimes can be a little bit challenging so what would it look like for you to call to call holly um
[00:18:32] and Ask Her.
[00:18:33] Tell me what I can do to help you and then commit to, I don't know, once a month.
[00:18:38] Even once a month can make a huge difference.
[00:18:40] So I want to encourage you to think about maybe that's your one next faithful step.
[00:18:44] The last pathway is generosity.
[00:18:47] We did this last year and I want to thank you all for all of that because we have some beautiful results to share with you about how giving has increased at Williamson Chapel almost 10% up over giving in 2024 because of you.
[00:19:00] We're so thankful.
[00:19:01] So thankful for you and your generosity.
[00:19:04] Maybe you took a faithful step last year.
[00:19:06] Maybe God's calling you to take one this year to move maybe from sporadic giving to more consistent giving.
[00:19:13] And if you've been consistent giving, but maybe you've been giving a consistent gift, but it's one or two percent.
[00:19:19] Maybe God's calling you to take one more faithful step and increase your percentage of giving.
[00:19:24] Maybe God's calling you to grow into a tithe.
[00:19:26] Maybe God's calling you, if you're already a tither, to take a deeper step.
[00:19:30] You know, Wes and I have been tithing for 20 years, and I was, you know, patting myself on the back feeling good, like, you know, I'm probably over here in this centering, transforming, and then God told me, you know, Tony Ruth, you're still down here, and you're still deepening.
[00:19:42] God said, you know, you give to the church, but when was the last time you brought food to First Food Sunday?
[00:19:48] and I was convicted by that.
[00:19:51] And so God's been cultivating in Wes and I as part of that Next Faithful Step for us a commitment to bringing food every First Food Sunday, looking at giving beyond a tithe.
[00:20:02] God's continually calling us and what I found in that is that it's deepening my life with God and connecting me in more meaningful ways.
[00:20:10] I'm learning there's so much joy
[00:20:12] In the giving, especially if you're doing something like bringing food to First Food Sunday and then you're going to the Christian Mission and you get to see that food that we bring on the shelves going home with people who are hungry.
[00:20:24] It's such a big difference maker.
[00:20:26] Now that whole thing is not meant to be exhaustive.
[00:20:29] They're just some suggestions to get you thinking about where you have tasted the goodness of God in your life and what God is already doing in you and where you might be craving something a little deeper.
[00:20:42] What is your one next faithful step?
[00:20:45] Friends, you do not have to take a step at every area all at once.
[00:20:48] That's not the point.
[00:20:49] Frankly, if you tried to pick where you are in each of these areas and move in all of them, that's a recipe for frustration and failure.
[00:20:56] Don't do that to yourself.
[00:20:57] What we're asking you to do is just pick one.
[00:21:01] Pick one of these columns.
[00:21:03] And figure out where you are.
[00:21:04] Maybe you're at worship and you're growing and you want to take a step into deepening.
[00:21:09] Maybe you're deepening down here at generosity and you want to take a step into centering, transforming.
[00:21:16] Whatever your block is that you are feeling a craving in your spirit to grow, we're asking you to find that spot.
[00:21:24] You don't have to take a step in every area.
[00:21:26] You might be exploring in one area, growing in another, deepening in another, centering in another.
[00:21:32] It's your journey.
[00:21:33] It's your path.
[00:21:33] Just like for me, it's my journey and my path.
[00:21:36] And your one next faithful step is where you are hearing God speak to you about where He wants you to be growing.
[00:21:43] We want to know what your steps are, and we want you to know that we are praying for you in them.
[00:21:48] So I'm going to invite you.
[00:21:49] My email address is here at the bottom of the screen.
[00:21:53] In the quiet of this weekend, if you make a decision that you're going to take one faithful step, how about shoot me an email?
[00:21:58] Let me know just that you're taking one faithful step, or maybe let me know, hey, I'm hanging out.
[00:22:03] I want to take a step in worship, from exploring to growing.
[00:22:07] I want to take a step in study and growth, spiritual growth.
[00:22:12] Growing into deepening.
[00:22:14] I want to take a step in relationships from deepening into centering.
[00:22:19] Shoot me an email.
[00:22:20] I'd love to hear what your next faithful step is.
[00:22:23] We pray for you today and we are looking forward to seeing you next week.
[00:22:27] Be safe and have fun.

[00:22:30] [SPEAKER SPEAKER_00]:
We are so glad that you joined us to be together, even if virtually, to hear God's Word proclaimed, to pray and to give praise and glory to God.
[00:22:41] Our hope and prayer this weekend is that you all are safe.
[00:22:45] As of when I'm recording,
[00:22:48] This, the forecast is calling for some pretty treacherous weather, so take care of yourselves and of one another, and we pray that God would help us all to return safely to in-person worship next weekend.
[00:23:02] This morning, I want to talk just a second about our tithes and offerings.
[00:23:07] Now, I know there are a number of folks who, a number of you who give online or have automatic giving.
[00:23:15] If you do not and you're interested in that, you can find information out about that on our website.
[00:23:21] You can scan the QR code to give your offering this morning online, or you can see the address for the church, you can give your offering
[00:23:30] You can mail that into the church.
[00:23:32] Either way, we are so grateful for your support for the church and for the amazing things that God is doing here at Williamson's Chapel.
[00:23:43] We pray that God would bless the gifts that you give
[00:23:47] To the church so that the church may continue to do the work that God is calling us to do.
[00:23:55] We pray that you will take the word that has been shared with you this morning and continue to grow as disciples, understanding that worship can happen anywhere where we're praising God and giving God glory and thanks.
[00:24:11] We hope that you were blessed and inspired as we worship together
[00:24:16] This weekend.
[00:24:19] May you all be safe and blessed and may you go with this benediction.
[00:24:24] May the Lord bless you and keep you.
[00:24:26] May the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
[00:24:30] May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.
[00:24:34] In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
[00:24:37] Amen.
[00:24:37] Friends, go in peace.