During the question and answer period before you called me, I was asked about growing the church and I told you I would not promise that I would grow this church.
But it’s a legitimate question, and since I have been called and installed, I think it’s a good time to talk about this.
You will remember that at my installation, I talked about how Jesus has an open door for the church that remains faithful and true and I said I believed Jesus has opened a door for this church. I believe that even more today.
Before I go deeper into that, let’s talk about church growth.
Several years ago, I was on a mission trip in the Dominican Republic. There were only three of us from the United States: Kinship Radio Announcer Beth Crosby, Kinship Radio Board member Tom Wetzel, and yours truly. We were there to help a guy named Elpidio Zapata as he was in the process of starting up an internet radio station in Santo Domingo (the capital of the DR) called Radio Digital Bendiciones. (Blessings Digital Radio.)
So, we stayed with Pastor Secundino Ulloa and his wife Altagracia. I love these people. Pastor Secundino (who is more commonly known as “Papa Cundo”) is a wonderful preacher and pastor. I consider him one of my mentors even though we cannot have a conversation without an interpreter. The Holy Spirit just glows out of this guy. And Altagracia is like my Dominican mami. I love that lady.
Anyway, so at one point, we were driving around Santo Domingo in Papa Cundo’s 12 passenger Mazda diesel van. Papa Cundo is driving and I’m in the front passenger’s seat. (I was always in that seat, not because I’m a big shot, but because nobody else wants a front-row seat to traffic in Santo Domingo.) The van behind me is packed with Beth and Tom, two interpreters, and an assortment of Dominicans.
As I’m listening, this conversation breaks out in the back of the van about what causes the church to grow. Now, you all know me, so when I tell you I actually shut up for about fifteen minutes and just listened, you may find that hard to believe, but it actually happened.
During a pause in the conversation (likely caused by a near-death traffic event) I leaned over to our interpreter Christian and asked him to ask Papa Cundo what causes the church to grow.
Secundino responded, “The church grows by three things: Prayer, the Holy Spirit, and the church taking the church outside the walls of the church.”
Then, Secundino said we would see what he meant on that very evening because the church was going to have a crusade that night.
I asked, “What is a crusade?”
Papa Cundo responded, “You will see, Dan Jones.”
What the Altar of Jehovah Church had done that night was pick up all the chairs and all the instruments and all the sound equipment in the church and moved all of it a half-a-block up the street to an intersection where there were three tiendas. These are little stores where they sell a variety of items including beer and other adult beverages. People would gather there at night to stand around or sit outside and drink. Friday and Saturday nights had the biggest crowds.
So, Secundino had the whole church move the church to where the people were and from there they played worship music and praised God and had a great time.
There was also a point where Papa Cundo gave me ten minutes notice that I would be preaching, and I did, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.
See, when Secundino said “taking the church outside the doors of the church,” that’s exactly what he meant and it was a crusade.
Last week I watched a video from the Northwest Conference Webinar Series titled “From Maintenance to Mission, Re-Envisioning The Rural Church for a Changing World.”
It was led by the same Jon Kramka guy that was down here for my installation and the presenter was a guy named Pastor Glenn Daman who has written several books about the rural church. There were also about four other pastors who I am sure are much smarter and more experienced than I am involved and I was very interested to see what they had to say and how the information they presented would help Huntley Community Covenant Church.
I fell asleep 15 minutes into it.
I’m sorry, folks, but the first part of this video was all about how society had changed and people just were not coming to church like they used to fifty years ago.
No kidding.
People have been saying that for fifty years! This was not a news flash and frankly, listening to people talk about it makes me want to drowsy at this point in my life.
But, I kept watching and one of the guys said, “bubblewrap Christianity leaves me flat.”
Okay, now we’re getting somewhere, I thought. So, what are we going to do about it?
Then, Pastor Daman started talking about how the Great Commission said, “Go into all the world…” not stay in the church, and I started listening a little more closely.
And then he said, “I think we have to stop asking the question, “How do we get people into the church?” We need to start asking, “How do we get the church out to where the people are?”
I wanted to introduce him to Papa Cundo.
Do you remember when I preached to you about Abide Ministries?
Okay, Abide Ministries is located in North Omaha, which at one time, had the third-highest murder rate in the nation. Their name comes from John 15:7: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”
The banner on their website reads: “Out of the seats and into the streets.”
So, what happened was this pastor named Ron Dotzler and his wife Twany buy a broken-down house in the middle of one of the worst neighborhoods back in 1989, they fix it up, move in, and they start doing radical Christian stuff like inviting their neighbors to come into their home for supper, raking other people’s lawns, hosting block parties, and just generally loving on the people around them.
Then, they buy up other run-down homes and the people from the church fix them up and they move into those houses and do the same things. The ministry expands and people start getting enthused, the Holy Spirit moves in amazing power, and things snowball and they are giving away food and thousands of diapers and fixing up other people’s homes all over North Omaha.
Ten years into this, the local cops and the FBI –yes, the FBI!!-- show up at this pastor’s door and ask him, “Pastor, what are you doing in these neighborhoods?”
He says, “Why?”
They say, “Because we can document a 75% DECREASE in violent crimes in the neighborhoods where these lighthouses of yours are located.”
BOOM.
Guess what? The love of Jesus Christ changes the world. What a shock!
The radical idea behind Abide Ministries is to do exactly what my grandparents and your grandparents did and their grandparents before them.
We do what Jesus told us: “Love the LORD your God and love your neighbors as yourselves.”
It’s simple. It’s the same thing the apostles did in Jerusalem starting right after Pentecost. They went to the Temple each day, but they didn’t have a church. They met in each other’s homes and they got so enthused by the power of the Holy Spirit in them, they started selling all their stuff and moving in together so they could help more and more people.
And this wave, this tsunami of the Holy Spirit, swept through Jerusalem and out into the whole world!
Every one of those disciples ended up being a missionary and the church was entirely based on ordinary people turned into missionaries by the Holy Spirit bringing the love of Jesus to everyone around them.
And that’s how Christianity became a movement instead of a religion.
Acts 6 tells how the rapidly-growing number of believers in Jerusalem saw widows who didn’t have enough to eat, so they fed them. The believers in Ephesus started picking up babies who had been abandoned on the trash heaps and manure piles and adopting them into their own families.
Can you imagine the effect that had on the world around them?
We have the same open doors. All around us there are people who are hurting, who are in need, whose hearts and minds and souls need someone to love them.
Someone in this church saw that there were people who needed to sit down and have a nice meal once a month, so you all got together and you made it happen –and I have seen that you love doing it! Those Wednesday night suppers are the work of the Holy Spirit, folks!
Some months ago, there was a young person who got hurt on a four-wheeler and you all got together and pitched in and helped out that family.
----- had the Holy Spirit move in her heart and so she stepped outside the doors of the church and started inviting kids into the church, and you all got behind her and are helping with that.
HALLELUJAH!
A couple of weeks ago, ---- and ---- invited me over to their home for homemade pizza and I started talking about some ideas I had for helping folks in Huntley and ----- suggested that we paint the front of the cafe for -------.
Great idea! I’m in! I’ve run a paint brush a time or two in my life. As soon as the weather warms up, I’d be happy to help with that!
And, that leads me to a very good point. I’m the new guy. You people are the experts on this community. You’ve lived here your whole lives – or a lot longer than I have at any rate.
You know what this community needs and, as your pastor, I would much much rather have this church moving on things that are your ideas instead of mine. You are bound to be better at it than I am!
And that leads me to Bravo Zulu – which is a great topic seeing as Veteran’s Day is this Wednesday.
------- had the Holy Spirit put Bravo Zulu on his heart some time ago, but when he and I and ------ went there last week, those Holy Spirit sparks were fanned into flame.
So, as you may or may not know, Bravo Zulu is a home for veterans right in our backyard, just eight miles away, and it’s the first and only sober living place in the nation for veterans with PTS to recover. There are 17 million veterans in the US today and the “official number” is that we’re losing 18 of them every single day to suicide – but if you count all forms of “self-injury mortality” like overdose, that number could be as high as 44 veterans per day.
According to the Mission Roll Call website, “...post-traumatic stress (PTS) remains a leading factor in veteran suicide. Among veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, 15% experience PTS symptoms in any given year, and about a third are estimated to face PTS at some point in their lifetime. Due to its prevalence, PTS is now known as the “signature wound” of the Global War on Terror. Difficult-to-navigate health care only exacerbates this issue, and is unfortunately common: Nearly 45% of veterans experience delays or postponement related to health care services at VA facilities.”
All of that is why Bravo Zulu was founded. They have room for 12 guys, but right now there are nine guys staying there. They pay $650 a month and they have their own room, but the kitchen, laundry, and bathroom facilities are shared. Therapy dogs are also part of the deal and they have a kennel for those dogs. They have a substantial workout area in a nearby shop building, and it’s just a very, very cool facility.
We talked with Ryan MacNamee, the Project Leader, and a resident named -----. Also in attendance was the house dog, -------, who is a big white lovable retriever of some kind.
Guys who come there may not start out with a job, a car, or food. There is a pantry with enough food that a guy could use until he gets a job and can buy his own food, but ----- saw an opportunity to help there. He’s already agreed to donate a hog and he’s arranged for a butcher shop to process that hog at no charge. We’re talking about buying them a freezer to keep that pork in because right now all they have is two refrigerators with overhead freezers and a small chest freezer in the utility room.
And, yes, these guys could also use socks but as ----- said, it’s much more than socks. Their goal is to provide comprehensive support for sobriety, mental and physical health, and spiritual growth. So, there’s a lot we can do, and I’m in for helping these guys out as the Holy Spirit moves. Let’s start talking as a family of believers about what we do and how we do it. I’m really looking forward to seeing what the Holy Spirit does in this! HALLELUJAH!
But that’s the deal, see. We don’t grow the church by coming up with slick marketing campaigns and catchy slogans and cool graphics. This is not corporate America and this church is not a box of Wheaties or a package of Twinkies.
No, the way this works is that beautiful, beautiful verse from Matthew 6:33:
“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (ESV)
We do it because the love of Jesus compels us to do it. We do it because He loved us enough to die for us and we just cannot help but love others and act on that love. We do it because Jesus has opened a door in the hearts of people who have loneliness and pain and emptiness that only the love of Jesus can heal and make whole. We do it because he designed us to do it.
But we don’t do it trying to drag others through the doors of this church. It’s an amazing irony that a lot of the people who most need the love of Jesus have something going on in them that prevents them from getting anywhere near the door of a church or us “church people.” That’s why the folks over in East Chain get 300 people on their church lawn on summer Sundays.
Years ago, the Holy Spirit did a thing in my heart where I actually experienced how wide, how long, how high, how wide, and how deep His love is and it changed my life forever. It brought me to tears. When I lead people on a mission trip, I pray, I beg the LORD, that the people he has given me will experience those same tears.
So I’m going to pray right now: Father, grant that each one of these people here before me today will experience those Holy Spirit tears at some point in their life and have their lives changed forever. I pray that each of them will be put into a situation where something they are involved in will bring those same precious Holy Spirit tears into another person’s life and THAT person will in turn be changed forever!
AMEN! LORD, let it be so!
And, when that happens and the doorposts and the lintels in the throne room of God start shaking and His love comes busting out the doors of heaven, remember Ephesians 2:10:
“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” (NLT)
He designed each of us to do the things He planned for us from before the beginning of the universe - before the beginning of time. Doing those things is the most glorious, amazing, fun I can ever imagine doing! That’s what I live for. That’s my mission in life. I LOVE when that happens!
And when that happens, when you all are glowing with the Holy Spirit and the love of Jesus, at some point in your lives, there will come a day when you are having a conversation with someone and they look at you and go, “So, where do you go to church?”
BOOM!
That’s when you’ll know what truly grows the church.
HALELUJAH!
(Sermon I preached at HCCC on 11/8/2026. Names of congregants redacted for their protection. Photo courtesy of Pixabay.)
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