Where we're heading today is part of our collection of talks,
Center of All Things.
Welcome to Center of All Things, Global Edition.
Okay, so we're just carrying on with Center of All Things.
We're just rolling.
And the reason for it is this,
that where we are in the story, the narrative of God,
we're at a place where it makes sense
to include it inside of Global Month,
because what happens in the part of the story we are
is the gospel is going outward,
churches are being established now
in different places, and we're looking
at some of those writings.
So if you were here last week,
you know we talked about the Apostle Paul, right?
And the Apostle Paul was with the church at Ephesus,
and he was giving his farewell to that church.
And so he had the elders,
and he told them very specific things.
Well, then Paul leaves there, he goes to Jerusalem,
and then ends up in Rome.
When he gets to Rome, he ends up in prison.
And part of being jailed, part of being held by the Romans,
is he starts to write letters.
And some of those letters are to churches to encourage them,
and some of them are to individuals.
Now here's what's beautiful.
The individual we're gonna talk about today
that Paul writes a personal letter to,
is a guy named Timothy, right?
So Paul leaves Ephesus, Timothy is sent to Ephesus.
And Timothy is believed that the letter we're gonna read,
that Timothy is in Ephesus,
and he is shepherding that church along with the elders.
And so what's amazing about this part of the story,
is they believe the church in Ephesus,
because of the growth of the church,
was probably a mega church.
And you have this young individual Timothy,
who's been sent there.
And so what Paul does is he goes,
how am I gonna write you a letter,
and I'm gonna encourage you.
And so in 2 Timothy 2, verse one,
this is some of the encouragement he gives Timothy.
You then my son, so you then Timothy,
be strong in the grace that is in who?
Christ Jesus.
Okay, remember center of all things
is that we center our lives where?
On the person of?
Good job, you're in church,
the right answer is always Jesus.
Just gonna give you an easy win.
No matter how new you are, how old you are,
just say Jesus, you'll be in the ballpark, right?
But the reality is that what he's saying is,
hey Timothy, as you step in,
and as you begin to give away, as you begin to lead,
center your life on the person of Jesus.
And then he says, out of that,
and the things you have heard me say,
in the presence of many witnesses,
and trust to reliable people,
who will also be qualified to teach others.
Hey, he starts out with,
hey, the things that you've heard me say, right?
Where?
In the community, in a gathering of people.
Maybe just one of the things to grab and hold onto
is what he's encouraging Timothy,
is Timothy, this is about communal learning
when it comes to Jesus.
Can I give you a caution?
That if you think you hold up with the Bible,
and you're gonna understand everything
and know everything and be the guru,
and you're gonna have everything,
you are seriously lacking
when it comes to growing in your faith.
Why?
Because God put us in family, family is community,
and in community is where we're supposed to learn.
And so he's encouraging Timothy, hey, remember those things.
Remember the things that you received in community,
you heard me say?
It's also believed that there was multiple others
that have poured into Timothy in a communal setting.
He says, here's what you're gonna do,
what you've been given and trust,
give away to reliable people.
So entrust, that word entrust has to do with,
you have something so special to you,
you have something so important,
something that is to be taken care of to be protected.
It reminds me of my daughter, Farrah, she's 10 years old.
She is as cute as can be, right?
Like I love that girl so much.
She is my free will kid.
Here's a definition of her, right?
We drive to school in the morning,
the first thing she does,
window down, takes my phone, puts her music on,
as she sits there with her vans and her little high leg socks,
you know, the whole deal with her black sweatshirt
that has Star Wars on it.
And she's leaning out the windows,
singing at the top of her lungs,
whatever song she's chosen to put on.
Hair blown in the wind and she's on the way to school.
That's who she is.
But here's the thing,
for me to entrust her to your care
means that I have to see in you the ability
to be trustworthy.
What that word is capturing is for me to hand her off to you.
It says entrust, entrust, give away to reliable people.
You know what reliable people are?
People that are faithful.
People that have proven themselves to be trustworthy.
You see, here's the thing, if I don't know you,
I'm not giving my daughter,
stewardship of my daughter to you.
Not even for 10 minutes.
If I don't know you, I don't trust you.
And what this is saying is you have such a precious gift
you've been given.
Who are you giving it to?
Be wise in who you're giving it to.
Be wise in who you're pouring your life out for.
Be wise that what you're building into
is you are building into people who what?
They have proven themselves to be trustworthy.
They've proven themselves that,
hey, what you've entrusted to me,
you entrusted your daughter to me for a minute to watch.
Now I'll entrust you with 10.
Now I'll entrust you, why?
Because you've stewarded well what's been given.
And that's what he's saying to Timothy.
Timothy, the gift you've been given of the gospel.
You realize the gift you have of Jesus, right?
You realize that what you've been given
in the person of Jesus is the greatest thing on the planet.
There is no greater good news than the person of Jesus.
There is nothing else that can transform the human soul
outside of the person of Jesus.
And you've been given that.
And it says now entrust it to someone else, why?
That they would carry it.
And the last part of that verse says
that they would be qualified to teach.
They would give it away.
You realize that what we're a part of,
the mission of this whole thing,
is make disciples who make disciples,
who make disciples, who make disciples,
who make disciples, who make disciples.
So here's the thing, if you've met Jesus, right?
And you are following Jesus, what are you supposed to do?
Make someone else, right?
Which you can't make anybody do anything,
but what you can do is go, hey, let me introduce you
to Jesus and walk alongside them as they grow.
You're supposed to give it away.
And so this thing's supposed to multiply, right?
You just keep giving it away, giving it away.
Giving it away, giving it away, giving it away,
giving it away.
That's how this works.
So a little challenge, little challenge,
little toe step for you if you like.
I'm gonna step on your toes for a second.
If you've met Jesus, who you giving it away to?
Because that's a call on your life.
If you've met Jesus, who are you giving it away to?
Because that's a call that God has put on you.
He's entrusted you with the greatest gift on planet Earth.
And what he's asking you to do is would you give it away
to someone else?
So who are those people?
This morning, I'm excited
because a conversation we're gonna have,
a conversation with a couple of gentlemen
that God is doing amazing things through
in the Dominican Republic.
They've been partners with Heights.
Nelson in particular has been a partner for 16 years,
which I had brown hair when I met Nelson.
And now I'm gray, so there you go.
But here's what's beautiful.
You get to hear people and hear today from people
in a different cultural country context
that are living out what we just talked about.
So would you do me a favor?
Would you welcome Pastor Alessandro
and Nelson Paulina.
Yeah!
You guys don't normally stop.
You stopped.
What's going on?
Oh, yeah.
Well done.
Okay.
Good to see you.
Well, welcome.
Good morning still.
We're still in the morning, so.
Buenos días.
Good morning.
Buenos días a todos mis amigos.
Buenos días.
Hablan español aquí?
Sí.
Hablan español.
Okay.
Buenos días.
Buenas días.
Good morning and bless you.
So let's do this.
Let's start with a little bit about both of your stories.
Who you are, family, and kick us off in that direction.
Here is the lady, the person who is the most important
in my life, my wife, Grisette.
Mother of three precious children.
My daughter Elizabeth is a Prescott Valley.
Grace was part of the dance team.
And David was a drummer at church.
Our life has been dedicated to the Lord since very early years.
I began to preach when I was 16 years old.
And I have not stopped until now.
My wife and I, when we were still dating, we spent our dating time preaching the gospel.
Today we are the pastors of the ministries called Restoration and Power in the Dominican Republic.
And we work of all kinds of people, doesn't matter.
People who are hungry for Christ.
It's beautiful.
And Nelson, what about you?
Well, following the steps of the pastor, I have to say that my wife is the most important person in my life too.
Well done.
My wife and my son were actually part of the worship team.
Oscar and my wife Leonore.
We have two other children who are in the Dominican Republic, Hector and Sonali.
And I'm blessed that I was born in a Christian family for my whole life.
All my friends and mentors have been Christians.
And when I was 11 years old in a Christian meeting in a family, I was a Christian.
Somebody who was chairing the gospel presented the opportunity to receive Jesus.
I was 11 years old and I said, I want Jesus in my heart.
And two months, a couple of months later, I got baptized.
And that was the beginning of my serving life in the kingdom of God.
It's beautiful.
So maybe, maybe walk us through, because you both have different contexts that you're doing ministry in.
What, what has been the most important thing for you to do in your life?
What, what does ministry look like for you in your specific, specific context?
Our ministry in the church begins in the classroom of the school.
And that school had about 400 young people who were students there.
So we began to search for some ideas on how to win them for the Lord.
A lot of the people that we have in church today, they came through the church to God through that school setting.
We are working now, even up to last week, we have about 500 young people that we are
ministering to in the public school system in the Dominican Republic.
The ministry of the youth ministry actually go out into the public schools and preach the gospel to the teenagers.
And they do what they've been learning from us since the beginning.
They go and preach the gospel.
When those new believers come to our church of a lot of needs,
and they enter what we will call a discipleship process.
We teach them so they can see what it is that we do.
We form them, affirm them in the word of God.
And then we teach them that they need to multiply themselves in others.
So they become leaders.
They become the preachers, future pastors, evangelists.
They go through different parts of the country.
And we also plant new churches in places where they go and preach the gospel.
That happens with the children, with the teenagers, and also with the adults.
The time frame between the new believers to the time that they actually are sent out is about a year and two months.
Attending to a special discipleship classes.
And we also do practice and service other kids.
And to share their testimony with their own family and brothers and sisters.
And that has allowed us to grow in the kingdom of God.
Amen. It's beautiful.
Nelson, what about you? What ministry specifically does God have you in at the moment?
Well, my ministry continues in the steps of pastors like Pastor Lisandro.
I've been serving in missions since I was 20 years old, 1996.
I know I look 25, but I'm 48.
And so after serving in about 23 years in different ministry opportunities around the country,
the Lord put in my heart to find the next one.
Who is the next 18, 19, 20 years old young man or woman who the Lord has already planted a desire to serve him in the mission field?
So I ask pastors like Lisandro and other pastors in my country a simple question.
I go and say, so who in your church is going to be you in the next 10 years?
Who's going to take the baton from your hand to be the next pastor, the next evangelist, the next missionary?
If it's a young person between 18, 19 years old, I want to know who that person is.
And of course, they usually have one or two who are ready to learn about what it means to be a Christian leader for tomorrow.
So we begin a process of training that future leader in a combination of four, we call it four dynamics.
Sometimes I like to call it like a kitchen, like a cooking pot where we put four ingredients in it to make sure that Christian person who is young grows to a Christian to be a healthy leader tomorrow.
One of the elements of the cooking is instructions.
Now, they are young so that we all need to learn a lot.
So we make sure that they go to conferences, training, they read books, they learn a lot of topics in life, leadership, also psychology, finances, different topics.
This takes four years of reading and learning and going to going to all kinds of teaching classes.
And then we combine that with a dynamic that we call relational dynamic, which means now we're going to grow a community around you.
So you are not a lonely leader later down the road.
That community is made up by your pastor, but also people who are praying for you, intercessors, people who love you, people who are your mentors.
So when you are already in the mission field in five, ten, fifteen years, you are not headless leader.
You are a family of people, people who are around you and they love you and pray for you.
Then we also do what we call an spiritual dynamic because they are Christians.
They've been recommended by the local pastors, but they are still young.
So some of the regular we call a Christian habits, we want them to develop.
So their prayer life, reading the Bible, meditating in the Lord, going to church, making sure that they actually grounded in the word of God.
And they have a very close relationship with Jesus Christ.
We encourage that all the time.
That's our spiritual dynamic.
And the last thing that we do in the cooking process of this rice and beans that we call Christian leaders tomorrow is the experiential dynamic.
So we send them out, we allow them to test and taste different ministry opportunities with children, with adults, sports, medicine,
every possible area that we could present it to them so they can be begun to understand and be clear about what their calling is.
This takes four years.
And as they go in through college, completing their college education and also completing their training program,
now they can begin to match their career with that calling that the Lord has put in their hearts.
So we are sending out very competent and very deep Christian leaders for tomorrow.
It's beautiful.
Just to connect some dots along the way here, what you're hearing and hopefully what's connecting is what we talked about in Second Timothy
of that process that Paul is encouraging Timothy to do.
What you're getting to see here is that process being lived out.
So the role the church is playing and then the role that Nelson and his team are playing in how do you continue to develop people.
But what I want you to also catch is it's not about training pastors.
The goal isn't that everybody becomes pastors and nobody steps into the workspace outside of the church.
The goal is that people who are stepping into careers, I met a young lady last night that's going to med school
and wants to be a doctor and is two years into med school and also going through the training program.
The goal is that they are equipped to live the gospel out in the context of their job.
They're equipped to do what we're talking, what Paul's being encouraged to do, essentially in a formal role in a church.
What you're seeing lived out and what's happening in the Dominican is that it's being carried forward into the workspaces.
And it's beautiful.
So maybe just as you've got to interact with different people and you're raising people up, maybe just some stories that would help encourage and kind of celebrate.
Amen. Well, one of my favorite, we have 21 students who are graduating from our program this December.
So I think that deserve a praise to the Lord.
One of them is today actually running the light system here at the church today, which is thank you for the opportunity for him to have that experience.
He's doing great, right? He's doing great. The lights are on. Let's go.
His name is Isaac and him and his twin brother came to be recommended by the local pastor, Pastor Isandro, to be part of our program.
Well, Isaac is going to be a civil engineer.
He's going to call us for that. And his twin brother is going to be an architect.
So they came to be part of our program basically because a bell was the first to recommend it has a very clear pastoral calling.
So we want to make sure that he come. I saw kind of join us in the process because he was coming to all of our meetings anyways and eating all of our pizzas.
And we're like, OK, just you can stay around. That's not a problem.
But then both of them three years ago had this wonderful opportunity.
We had a ministry partner in Houston who sends playgrounds to the Dominican Republic and around the world.
And they gave us three playgrounds three years ago to install in places where children have never seen one.
Well, I don't know how to install the playground.
They sent a team, small team of three or four of them, to train us how to do it.
To my surprise, when a bell and Isaac look at the blueprints of the playground and they were looking at all these dimensions and angles and how to do it right.
All the distances I look at those papers, I'm like, I don't know what that means.
But for them, it was life. They could see it.
They were like, wow, we're going to school to learn how to apply these dimensions and these things into something that will actually be used.
And so they helped a lot in the installation of three massive playgrounds.
And they enjoyed it so much that we want to do this forever.
Well, the day that the kids came to celebrate the opening of the playgrounds, can you imagine a place where kids have never seen it?
Hundreds of kids in line jumping in those ropes and doing all the things.
A bell and Isaac were like crying and celebrating so much that they can actually be part of something that is going to be a magnet to bring children,
their mothers and their parents around the church.
And now they want to do it for the rest of their life.
And it's amazing to see that.
It's amazing. And church, you've had a taste of that.
That those of you that were along for the ride when we were talking about Prescott Valley and plans for a playground and you're like, what is this about?
And then to see the community and just the gift.
It's not lost on me to hear the story of Isaac and what's going on there.
It's just beautiful. It's beautiful to see.
Pasa Alessandro, maybe either a story to encourage or just a challenge for the church and encouragement to the church.
What I want to say to the church, sometimes we don't find ourselves capable of doing something so they can reach the joy.
When we hear together in this beautiful place and we hear the word that our pastor is dealing today,
I can see that Paul is talking to Timoteo as a son.
He can introduce him as somebody that he knows came out of him, like he's his spiritual son.
And then he says, go and find the reliable man who can continue this teaching of the word.
That they can learn from you as you have seen it too.
As you have seen it from me, teach them to do it as you do it too.
One of the greatest challenges that we have is that there's a war out there who's loose.
We might be very happy inside the church, but how many families are crying because their children are getting lost today.
What you have learned here, do it with somebody else out there.
Get out of this place convinced.
Obviously life is not easy, but when you have a big challenge,
but when you learn to give others what you have already received, God takes care of your needs.
The one way that we can be blessed is when we are a blessing to others.
And we give them what we want for us, so the others can receive it too.
In the name of Jesus, I bless you.
Thank you.
I mentioned up top that it was 16 years ago, there was a couple of us from Heights.
Colby was one myself, and we got to go on a trip.
What we were sent on was we know God's calling Heights to something else when it comes to the global expression of partnering with the gospel.
We went to the Dominican Republic, got to meet Nelson.
He drove us around all over and just kind of showed us what the needs were, which were many,
but also showed us a vision for one of the things that God had put on our hearts is that we wanted to partner with people,
that they were doing the work of the ministry.
And in doing the work of the ministry, their goal was to see it transferred and continue on through the Dominican people to the Dominican people.
And that was really, really important for us.
And it's a beautiful partnership that I've got to watch Nelson do that in different roles, in different ways.
But the mission has always been the same, that the gospel would go forward through a vision of reaching people where they're at and helping them step up and then take it out.
And so just want to say thank you for the partnerships we've got with you guys.
And would you give them a huge hand?
Church, I hope that, I hope you're blessed.
And what I mean by that is this, that I hope you don't miss, I hope you don't miss the goodness of God and what Jesus is building on our planet.
I mean, think about it for a second.
While we're doing this in little old Prescott, how many places are, one, celebrating who Jesus is and putting him center today around our planet?
And we get to join with that.
And this morning it's partnerships in the gospel, right?
But it could be easy, it could be easy to walk away and celebrate that and miss you.
And I don't want to miss you this morning because you're not here by chance.
You didn't just stumble in this morning and something was missed on you.
I believe that God has given you a calling.
That that's not unique to anyone on the stage.
Sometimes we think that the person with the mic, it's their job.
But the way the gospel was designed to go from here, the way the gospel that was designed to move is through people.
And you are, you are those people.
And so the call on your life is what is God calling you towards?
Who is he calling you towards?
Who is he asking you to take what you've been given?
And you may go, I'm in the front end of all that.
I just met him.
Awesome.
Then give away what you have.
But if you've been entrusted and you've been given much, then there's a call on you to entrust and give that away.
And that's not unique to age.
That's not unique to stage of life.
That is just if you are breathing and you are a follower of Jesus, who is God calling you?
And you are a follower of Jesus. Who is God calling you towards today?
What is he calling you towards?
And are you going to have the courage to step in and follow him?
And so I would love to pray because we sang some words that I believe in the name of Jesus, that I believe in the resurrection.
If you believe those things are true, then you've got to also go.
Then I believe that God has a purpose and a call on me.
And so I want to pray for you before we sing those words again, that you would hear from the Holy Spirit and you would be faithful to get up and take whatever steps you need to take to step in today.
And that may look very different for everyone, but the Holy Spirit will guide.
So let me pray.
God, we come before you this morning.
Thank you for being our creator.
Thank you for being our maker.
Thank you for being the one, the one who does not change.
Thank you for being the author of this story.
Thank you that you are writing each chapter and page of that narrative through your people.
God, we humbly sit and say thank you for going to a cross, for taking on our shame and our punishment and our guilt.
And for the grace and mercy and restoration and rescue that we receive.
Thank you for saving us.
Jesus, we long to put you at the center as we put you at the center.
It means that you call us outward to others.
And so Holy Spirit, would you speak to your people?
Would you nudge them?
Would you move in their soul?
Would they be convinced that you are leading them to step out?
And would you give them the courage to follow?
We thank you for loving us.
Thank you for loving us first.
Thank you for grace and mercy.
We are grateful people.
Thank you for everything that you have done for us.