 Hi friends, it's so good to be with you today and just appreciate the opportunity. First of all, for those of you who may not know me, my name is Matt Temple and I'm the associate director of New Church Starts in the Center for Church Development in the North Texas Conference. I love the theme and the topic that you all are talking about today, this idea, this very important question of has the church left the building? And the reality is, and all of us know, I mean there's been countless articles written over the last 15 or 20 years telling us how much the world has shifted and the perceptions that our society has of the church are dramatically different today than they were even 20 or 30 years ago. It used to be that you would build a church building right in the center of town and the expectation was that everyone was coming to church. But the problem with the world like that, the challenge that we run into is that the church can quickly begin to think that we are at the center of God's mission. There's a misciologist named Christopher Wright, he's from South Africa and he says this, he says it's not so much the case that God has a mission for the church in the world as it is that God has a church for God's mission in the world. Let me read that again, it's not so much the case that God has a mission for the church in the world as it is that God has a church for the mission in the world. Mission was not made for the church, the church was made for mission. Has the church left the building? That's what we want to talk about today. But here's the problem, change is hard for us. Change is hard for all humanity. We want consistency. We want predictability. It's part of our survival instinct to have something that gives us the illusion that we're in control. And so as our world has changed in a lot of ways, it's actually caused the church to hunker down deeper into their building rather than leave their building. And that's the challenge for us is to get up the courage to face the reality of the world that we're living in and not give up our witness, but move into the world to be the witness. And listen to what the writer of Psalms in Psalms 137 says. Now just to set this up a little bit, the people, the children of Israel, God's people, they've gone to the Promised Land, they've been there, they kind of didn't do things right. So they were exiled out of the Promised Land into Babylon. And that's where this psalm takes place, is the people of God have been taken out of their homeland and they're now living in exile. They've gone from being the center of society to being on the outskirts of society. They've gone from being a respected people to a captive people. And with that has come a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety. And listen to what they say in Psalms 137. By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps, for there our captors asked us for songs and our tormentors asked us for mirth saying, Sing us the songs of Zion. But how could we sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? If you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither, let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you. If I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy. Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites, the day that Jerusalem fell, how they said, Tear it down, tear it down, down to its foundations, O daughter Babylon, you devastator. Happy shall they be who pay you back what you have done to us. Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rocks. Those are strong, strong words of lament that speak to a people who are wrestling with their new situation and not necessarily finding a way forward in the midst of it. They're thinking back on Zion. They're remembering the good old days, the way it used to be, the songs we used to sing, the ways we used to do things. They've come to see society, the society that is around them as an enemy, something that they need to be saved from or protected from rather than the object of God's mission, the sphere, the place where God works and where God moves. And you can see within it that the people in Babylon are spiritually hungry. It's just different than the way it used to be, but they're saying in this text, sing us some of your songs and the people refuse to bear witness because they haven't figured out, as Leslie Newbiggins says, how to bear witness to the gospel from a position not of strength but of weakness. Has the church left the building? Now, God responds to this lament actually in Jeremiah 29. God responds to the people who are singing this lament. And we know Jeremiah 29 because of Jeremiah 29-11. But if you go back further earlier in the chapter, verses four through nine, you begin to see what God's telling them and how God's challenging them to change their posture and their attitude about the world around them. Listen to what God says in Jeremiah 29. The Lord of heavenly forces the God of Israel proclaims to all the exiles whom I have sent from Jerusalem to Babylon. Interesting. I've sent you. You are exactly where you're supposed to be right now in this moment of time. This moment is what you were made for. This moment is what I have called you to. This moment has not taken me by surprise. And this is what God says to them. Build houses and settle down. Cultivate gardens and eat what they produce. Get married and have children and then help your sons find wives and your daughters find husbands in order that they too may have children. Increase in number there. You don't have to decrease in number there. You can increase in number there so that you don't dwindle away. Promote the welfare of the city to which I have sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it because your future depends on its welfare. The Lord of heavenly forces the God of Israel proclaims, don't let the prophets and diviners in your midst mislead you. Don't pay attention to their dreams. They are prophesying lies to you in my name. I didn't send them, declares the Lord. So basically God's saying, y'all are sort of hunkered down in these enclaves in the outside of the city. I want you to go into the city. I want you to build houses. I want you to find jobs. I want you to plant gardens. I want you to get married. I want you to have children. I want you to thrive in this new environment. You don't have to decrease. You can increase. And it's shifting our posture, and this is what I want to close with. It's shifting our posture from being the host to being the guest. What does it look like for you to be a guest in your community? What does it look like for you to identify places in your neighborhood where people already gather, where people are already investing their time and building relationships, and go join a group, or join a pottery class, or go join a dance class, or go be a part of something, a committee within your community, and begin to build some relationships there, and to seek the welfare of the city. What would it look like for you to leave your Bible studies, or leave your Sunday school classes, or leave your small groups and move outside of the church to begin to build some relationships with your neighbors? Maybe a progressive dinner where you start with the first course at one person's house, and move house to house, and eat different courses of the meal together. What would it look like for you to begin to intentionally engage the people around you? A theology of guesting instead of hosting, where you're not looking to invite people to something, but you're looking to be invited to something. What would it look like if our churches didn't only count how many people came to the things that we invite them to, but also counted how many times the people in our churches are actually invited to things because they've begun to build relationships with people outside of their church, and they're now being invited into people's lives to do life with them, to have conversations with them, to be a part of the community with them. We believe from our missiology that God is at work all around us. We're not bringing Jesus into our neighborhood. Jesus is already there. Our job is to leave the building, go into those spaces, and bear witness to the good news in those places. Wesley speaks to this in his sermon on the omnipotence of God, where he says, but allowing that God is here, as in every place, that he is about our bed and about our path, that he besets us behind and before and lays his hand upon us, what inference should we draw from him? What use should we make of this awful consideration? What's the consideration that God's at work all around us outside of our buildings? Is it not meat and right to humble ourselves before God's majesty? Should we not labor continually to acknowledge God's presence? Friends, God is at work all around you, in your neighborhood, in your community, outside the walls of your church because the world is the realm of God's mission, not the church. And our job is to labor continually to muster up the courage to stand up out of our comfortable places, our comfortable spaces, and move out into the world, move out into our society, move out into the neighborhood and bear witness to the good news that's there. I'm praying for you all as you have conversations today, as you talk through what this looks like, and my prayer is that we will continually grow in our capacity as a church in North Texas to leave the building, to become guests in our community, and to bear witness to the gospel there. Thank you so much for letting me share. It's been great being with you.