Potted or Planted: Overview

If we've not met, my name's Josh and I'm glad you're here. If we have met, my name's Josh and I'm glad you're here. Works out both ways, right? If you're new today or you've been around for a little while, but you've never connected at Whitewater into the community, I just want to encourage you to do one thing today. I encourage this every single week.

It's the simplest thing you can do. You can walk out into the foyer or over to the information desk and walk up, introduce yourself and tell them you're ready to get connected. You're ready to take a next step. You're ready to share your gifts and your passions with the church and serving whatever that is. We've all got a next step today to take today, and my hope is that you'll do that today.

Almost exactly one year ago, we had vision Sunday. You might have been here last September. We described the kind of church that we want to become over the next three years. And I gotta say, it's been a really fun 12 months since a year ago. And we've gotten to see some incredible things.

But placing that vision out there has given us something to aim at and something to point toward. And it really has started to gain traction. And we're watching God turn us into the kind of church that we've been describing.

But to remind us who were here last September and to share with folks who weren't here last September, maybe for the very first time, I want to remind us of this 36 month vision that we shared a year ago. So I'm going to read that for us now. This is what we want to be true at Whitewater Crossing Christian Church. We are a people of the word, a people of prayer, and a people led by the Holy Spirit. We are a welcoming, vibrant church, a home for believers and a refuge for the broken and suffering.

We are a place where everyone can find hope, care, community, and the healing power of God. We're dedicated disciples of Jesus Christ, committed to making more and better disciples, both healing here and not here. Disciple making is woven into everything we do. We are an intergenerational church that values people in every stage of life. We're champions of the next generation, raising up young disciples and leaders who actively shape our church's future.

At the same time, we honor the wisdom and experience of older generations and foster opportunities for all ages to learn from and support one another. And as we grow together in faith emulating Jesus, we serve one another with humility and love, encouraging and building up the body of Christ. We view our gifts, resources and spheres of influence as tools for expanding God's kingdom and share them generously. We each feel a personal call to evangelism and boldly embody and share the the Gospel. Starting in our homes and extending into our neighborhoods, workplaces and communities, we are unified in our aim to fulfill and embody the Great Commission and the Great Commandment.

We are a church where people are frequently coming to faith and where baptisms are a regular celebratory part of our community. We generously collaborate with local and global individuals and organizations that share our values and mission, offering financial support, resources and volunteers to advance kingdom work in other places every day, in every place, we seek first the Kingdom of God, making Christ known, embodying the fruit of the Spirit, and joyfully building a Kingdom legacy for generations to come. That is a beautiful picture. What we long to be as a church. This is the kind of church that we all want to come to.

This is the kind of church we want to bring our loved ones, friends and family to. This is the kind of church that if we would be that church, we would be changing this world with the Kingdom of God. Amen.

Now, in a lot of ways, we're already living this out, like I said, but we've still got a lot of work to do. And today we're going to talk about some of that work that we still have left to do. But before we get into the message, let's pray together. Will you pray with me? Heavenly Father, you alone are worthy of all of this.

You're worthy of our time. You're worthy of our praise. You're worthy of our obedience. You're worthy of our very lives. And this morning I pray, pray that as we gather together, that you would use me as your mouthpiece.

Not my words, but your words. That you would inspire your church and build up your church and strengthen your church into this future picture of everything that we long to be. So speak through me with boldness today and accuracy. Teach us, Lord. Challenge us.

Make us more like you, and make us willing to do whatever it takes to see this world change for you. In your kingdom. In Jesus name, Amen. Well, back before Heidi and I had kids, we loved to keep a big vegetable garden. And we grew everything we could grow.

We grew squash, zucchini, tomatoes, okra, eggplant, rhubarb, peppers, green beans, sweet peas, all kinds of flowers. If we could grow it, we tried to grow it. And we love to grow the Delicious things and beautiful things. And every year, we would spend a ton of time just getting the soil ready for our plants to go into. Come early spring, on a nice sunny day, I would get the big tiller out, and I would go turn up all that black soil.

And then we'd wait a few days to a week until that dried out. And then I'd take the tiller back out and till it back up and break up those clumps so that all, all of the roots of these plants could grow deep and wide and they could have everything that they needed to thrive. We'd remove rocks and sticks and weeds. We'd test the soil. We would amend it with nutrients and with fertilizer, whatever it needed, whatever it needed to make sure that the plants had plenty of fuel to grow and produce fruit.

Long before it was time to plant, we were hard at work. Then, about the time we thought the last frost had come, we would plant our plants in the garden. Some we had started from seeds ourselves. Some we bought in big flats, but they were all in small pots and flats. Now, imagine, after all of that work and prep, after tilling and testing and fertilizing and preparing for, we just plopped those plants inside of the pots and flats, on top of the soil, and just expected them to grow.

What would happen? Well, they'd never grow to their potential. They'd never have a chance for their roots to go down deep. They'd never bear much fruit, if any at all. They'd be right on top of everything provided for them that they need to grow.

And yet they would always be kept from it because they're in a pot. It would be a complete waste of our time. It would result in spindly, meaty, undernourished plants that would fall over in the slightest wind, and all while just under their containers, the perfect environment. Everything they need to grow is right there. We didn't keep a potted garden.

That would be insane. We kept a planted garden. We planted the garden because when you plant a garden in rich soil, it has everything it needs to grow. The roots go deep and it produces fruit so plentiful, it spills over. It spills over onto your table and onto your neighbor's table and into jars and into the freezer and into baskets to give away.

That's the difference that being planted makes. And I think when it comes to gardening, we totally understand this. This makes sense to us. It's far greater to be planted than to be potted. It allows for the greatest growth potential, the greatest fruit Production.

But what about when it comes to our faith? And what about when it comes to being a part of this gathered church here at Whitewater? Do we believe that being planted is better than being potted? Here's a question for us all to consider. Are we sitting in a pot on top of the prepared soil, or have we actually planted ourselves in the soil?

And today, as we start a series, that considers what it looks like for us to be a people who are planted rather than potted, both in the context of the gathered church and in our individual and sent lives, too, at Whitewater, we want to be a people of the word, a people of prayer, a people led by the Holy Spirit, committed to making disciples here and not here. And as we consider this vision, I want us to keep this potted or planted question in mind. Because just like a garden, potted people are spindly and needy and undernourished. Potted people never reach their full potential. Potted people never grow deep roots.

Potted people blow over in the wind. They never produce an abundance of fruit. And we'll start by looking at the broad picture of what it means to be planted. And then over the next few weeks, we're going to get incredibly practical. We'll see how being planted shows up in the way that we give, the way that we serve, the way that we gather while we're here and while we're not here.

And then we'll go even deeper over several weeks into what we're calling gospel practices. These are the rhythms and practices of planted people that help us to not just be planted in this church, but also be truly rooted in Christ, wherever we are. So today, let's start with identifying what it looks like to be potted or planted in this church gathering. I think many of us show up on Sunday, and we sit right on top of everything we need, but we never let our roots actually go deep into the soil. Here's what that looks like.

Here's what that looks like. And if this is offensive, it's probably because it's true. Okay? If you're potted rather than planted, then you show up here. Statistics say about 1.6 times a month.

You carry your pot in. You set your potted backside down on a soft chair right on top of the rich soil that's been prepared for you. And you get a little spritz of water from the sermon. You get a couple little grains of fertilizer from a nice conversation in the lobby or your favorite song that Laura sang. And then you pick up your pot and you head out till next month.

Now, the nice thing about a pot is you can move it around whenever you like. You don't like what the guy behind the podium says, just pick your pot up and move to a new patch of soil, right? The music is too loud or too boring or too whatever. Great. It's got those little handles on the sides.

Just pick it up, carry it to a new place and set it back down. Your kid didn't have as much fun as they should have had in church and and you had to make them come. Well, pick your pot up, go plop it down in another place. It's like the carry on luggage version of Christian community. It's really convenient.

And as long as you stay potted too, man, you never have to actually do anything. You can just complain about it. It's pretty fantastic. It's not your job to fix the soil. It's not your job to pull the weeds.

It's not your job to water anybody else. That's somebody else's job because this is their soil. All you have to do is sit in your little container, sip the parts of things that you like to take in, and move on when it doesn't suit your taste. But there's a downside to being potted rather than planted. When storms come, when the diagnosis hits, when your marriage cracks, when your finances are struggling, when you need help, when your kids wander, you find yourself tipping over because there's nothing holding you steady.

There are no roots in the ground. And it's most often the potted folks who complain when they experience something like that, that the church didn't do enough to help them. But without roots in a community, you miss the care and the love that can only come from people actually truly knowing your you walking with you, helping carry your burdens alongside you because you're planted together. And when you're planted beside each other, your roots become intertwined with each other. You can't even help it.

You're planted in the same soil. Now, another downside is that potted plants don't produce much fruit, which means there's little to share when someone else is in need, or when a neighbor needs some encouragement in prayer, or when the church family needs your strength or your gifts. When we're potted, we look around at others and we see that they all have more fruit than we do. And because they do, we conclude that they should be the ones that have to give it away. But God didn't design us to sit alone in a container on top of the soil.

He designed us to be planted in, in the soil, surrounded by his people, growing into a strong life giving vine or tree that can stand in any season, that's not shaken and toppled by wind that comes by, that's producing abundant fruit. And if you remember, during our Fruit of the Spirit series, we used this analogy. We said an apple tree. You will never watch an apple tree pull an apple off of its branch and polish it off on its shirt and take a bite. Why?

Because the fruit that is produced by a tree is not of primary benefit to the tree. The fruit that's produced by a tree or a vine or a plant is a primary benefit to others.

What's more is the seeds inside that fruit. They have the capacity to grow more plants, more vines, more trees that produce more fruit. That's primary benefit is to others and it just keeps going because we're all temporary. But if we're potted, if we're potted, we will always have a scarcity mindset when it comes to sharing our fruit. We will always have a shortage of resources, a shortage of nutrients, whether that's emotional energy to give to someone else, time to share, financial resources, to be generous with gifts and passions to share for the building up of others.

But the Bible describes a different reality for those who are planted. A completely different reality. Psalm 1:3 describes those who are rooted in God and his ways. This is what it says. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither.

Whatever they do prospers. Psalm 92:12. 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.

They will still bear fruit in old age. They will stay fresh and green, proclaiming, the Lord is upright, he is my rock, and there is no wickedness in him. Isaiah 60:1 describes a time when God will come and restore his people from captivity. And later Jesus quotes this section and he says, I am the one who has come to fulfill all of this. Here's how he describes those who are rooted in him.

Isaiah 60:1. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor. That's what it looks like to be planted rather than potted. When you're in a pot, you can only hold the resources that fit inside of your pot. But when you are planted in the kingdom soil, God's resources are fueling us all the time, mutually fueling and Encouraging and holding each other up and being sustained by God himself.

This is what it looks like to be planted rather than potted. And I want you to know that everything that we do when we gather here, everything that we do, every ministry, every environment, every sermon, every call to action, it is about ensuring that the soil is prepared, that the nutrients are there, that the water is there, that everything is set up to be planted in this soil so that we can grow and thrive and produce abundant fruit. That's why we're here. This is why Whitewater Kids and Whitewater Youth work, to meet kids and students right where they are, creating spaces where they can be planted and grow at their level. This is why we offer things like Whitewater Discovers and discipling groups where together we dig into the Word, we pray with and for each other, experience real connection, accountability and real community.

This is why we offer prayer at the bottom of the ramp every single week, so that our roots can be intertwined together, so that our fruit can be of benefit to others. This is why we gather weekly in worship, why we sing songs, why we proclaim the Word, why we give, why we serve, why we invite. This is why we constantly encourage you to be in the Word, in prayer, seeking God and taking next steps. Because God intends for us to be more than loosely affiliated potted attenders who just happen to park our pots in the same field. He calls us to be planted people.

He calls us to encourage one another, invest in one another, bear with one another, thrive together, grow together, share our resources with and for one another, and produce fruit together. That's what planted church looks like. And if you choose to stay potted, you will never experience the fullness of what God has in mind for you or for the church. And if we're going to experience the kind of life, community in church that the Bible describes to us, that the Bible calls us to, we've got to be planted participants, not potted spectators. We've got to be contributors rooted in the soil, not just consumers in pots on top of the soil.

The church was never designed to be an event you buy a ticket to and you sit back and enjoy the show. It was designed to be more like family Thanksgiving, where everybody has something to bring. Some bring the main dish, some bring this side, some bring desserts, some bring the new baby. Some bring the set up the tables. Some tell the stories and keep the laughter going.

Some stick around and clean up afterwards. This is the model in the planted church. Everybody's got a role. Now, if you're brand new Here, no one expects you to get rooted overnight. Roots take time.

But if you've been here six months, a year, a decade, and you are honestly no more rooted now than you were when you got here, no more invested than the day that you arrived, I know it might hurt to hear this, but the truth is, you're not planted. You're potted. This is not your church family. This is where you come to church. These are two very different things.

And I'm not trying to shame you. I'm trying to invite you into the greater thing.

So what does it look like to be planted? As a participant in this community of believers? This is what we're looking at over the next several weeks. It means consistently showing up. It means investing your time, passions, skills, and gifts and letting your roots get tangled up with others.

It means sharing your faith at whatever and your fruit at whatever level God has given it to to you. It means leveraging all of these things, even in small ways, to help nourish others. Because planted people don't just sit on the soil. We draw life from it and we give life back to it. See, God intended this gathering to be a garden of planted people, each one contributing, each one serving, each one bearing fruit, all with different gifts, different roles, varying fruits for the good of the whole body.

And the Bible describes this over and over and over. We read in 1st Corinthians 12:4 there are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone, it is the same God at work. Now, to each one, the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.

1st Peter 4:10 each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others as faithful stewards of God's grace in its various forms. Ephesians 4:11. So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers to equip his people for works of service so that the Body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Mature plants are the ones that grow fruit. Romans 12:4.

For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. That's a crazy reality. Each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts according to the grace given to each of us. Acts 4, 32 describes the early church.

This is what it looked like for them. All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. Philippians 2, 3, 4. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, rather in humility.

Value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of the others. This is countercultural. This is un American, quite frankly. This goes against everything that we naturally do on our own. And yet this is exactly what God is calling us to.

These are just a few of the many verses that the Bible shows us about what God wants us to have and to be that he's given each of us gifts and resources to be given freely to this body, to this collective soil that we're all planted in. A rooted body of believers to be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attending to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. I've used this verse so many times. This is mind numbing. Like, if we really believe what's in this book, we're not done yet, church.

We're not done yet. We've just begun. I don't know about you looking in the mirror, but when I look in the mirror, I have not become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Yet. That means we're not done.

That means I need you and you need me, and we need each other in this body of believers, this planted garden of people pursuing Christ. And until Jesus returns, we're not done. So over these next weeks, we want to ask ourselves what it looks like to be a planted contributing participant rather than a potted, consuming spectator. And we'll talk about what that means for how we show up in our gathering here, and how we all bring something to the meal and how we serve one another in love. And we'll talk about what it looks like individually and in our homes and as we go.

So I have two simple things. Every sermon doesn't matter if we do nothing about it. If we all sit here and go, yes, I agree, other people should definitely be planted. We've missed the whole thing. And quite frankly, if that's all this is, you show up, put a quarter in, and I give you a nice sermon that you can nod your head and never do a thing about.

Let me just pack my stuff and go home. God's calling us to do something Church. And if you're not convicted by this, check your pulse. Check your pulse and check your intentions. We're either here to be the kind of the church that God wants us to be, or we're here to just sip a little bit and get some entertainment and go home.

And I'm not satisfied with that kind of church. And so I try to make it as simple as possible for us to take a step. Here's how simple I want to make it today. Just two things that I'm going to ask you to do. Two things.

The first is this. Commit to being here for as many Sundays as you can possibly be here between now and the end of November for this series between now and the end of November. Just keep showing up. Just keep showing up. I know you'll have things planned.

I'll be gone for a couple of those Sundays myself. But if we are going to be this kind of planted roots intertwined kind of church, then we have to grow together. We have to keep our eyes fixed on the same things together. The same water, the same soil, the same nutrients. And so I'm asking you, just commit.

Commit to showing up, be present here. The second is this. Every Sunday that you are here, commit to learning the name of one person, just one. We all come in, we take our same little route. We sit down in our same little section.

We talk to the people that we've always talked to, and we don't meet anyone new. And I'm out there sweating to death, trying to learn as many new names as I can possibly learn. But are we a family? Are we a family? Or am I everyone's stepdad?

Like, how is this going to work, Church? We've got to be roots intertwined. And if we're going to do that, we have to know each other. So commit to learning the name of one person every week. One person every week.

And here's the thing, okay, listen. I know you got that person or that group of people that you have said hi to for months, years, decades, and you cannot remember their name. I cannot be the only one that does that. Okay? So it is Free Pass Sunday.

All right, here's what we're going to do. It's called no Name, no Shame Sunday. No name, no shame. You don't have a name that comes to mind. No.

Shame on you today. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to make it as easy as possible. We're going to talk to somebody and we're going to introduce ourselves to them. Like, they don't know our name.

And we're going to start with, hi, I'm Josh. And we're not going to. Which is going to be weird, and it's going to be totally fine. And someone is going to go, thank God. Shout out, because I don't remember her name.

And we're gonna do that. No name, no shame. Sunday. Okay, so here's the commitment. Talk to somebody today, tell them your name, and then remember their name and call them by name.

Next Sunday and every week that you're here, at least through this November series, commit to learning one name.

If we're going to become the kind of church that we want to become, we've got to be planted, contributing participants. Church. These are two very small things. Everyone can do these things. Commit to being here.

Learn one name a week, and be here for the next 12 weeks. As we dig into what it looks like to be a healthy, planted church, remember those words from Psalm 92. These are beautiful, beautiful words. Those who are planted in the house of the Lord will flourish. They will produce fruit into their old age.

They will stay fresh and green. It doesn't say they might have the capacity to do those things. It says they will do those things. That's the kind of life that I would want to have. Some of you are getting older and you're thinking, man, that sounds great.

That sounds great. I would love to produce fruit into my old years and to be green and refreshed all of the time. But it takes all of us sharing our fruit with one another. That's the kind of church I want us to be. Will you?

Will you come with us? Will you come with us? Will you commit to two tiny little things? Show up and get to know somebody. And let's begin the roots intertwining with one another, holding each other up, building each other up in love until Christ returns.

Can we do this together, Church? Both of you are here. Can we do this together, Church? Let's be that kind of church.

Will you pray with me, God? Today I just pray first against every thick, dense, heavy pot. Those of us who just kind of, instead of digging into the soil and putting our roots in, we just keep getting bigger pots, bigger, heavier pots that make us feel like we're planted, but we're not planted. They make us feel like this is our home and our family and our people. But, God, the truth is we're not.

Would you break through that? Today? I pray for those who've just shown up and they're scared to death of what it looks like. To be planted and intertwined. That's a scary thing for some of us.

Would you make us bold to set roots down and begin the process of growing together? Would you help us commit to just showing up? And would you draw us in? Not just anybody. Holy Spirit, we pray that you would take over our awareness and our eyes as we step out into this space in the lobby, in this room, that you will draw us to someone that we can connect with and tell them our name and hear their name.

God, I don't want to be a church that only shows up on Sunday. I don't want to be a church that just turns off church in the afternoon when it's time for lunch. God, I want to be a deeply communal, planted church together. So help us to be that kind of church. In Jesus name, amen.