Your Workplace Is Your Mission

Transcript

Auto-generated from the audio. Click a timestamp to jump to that part of the video.

[0:01] I miss precedented times. Morning Foothill welcome to day 555 of shelter in place. Remember how all of this started when we started to hear about coronavirus or COVID-19 as we now talk about it or SARS-CoV-2 and when we were talking about this we were talking about how we're entering unprecedented times and certainly it has proven to be that don't you just miss precedented times times when life would be possible for me to show up in your church you'd be sitting in the congregation we'd be worshiping together and we would be enjoying that sweet fellowship that we call church happy Sunday everybody I'm Roy Tinklenberg I'm the pastor of Compass Christian Church in Mountain View We started Compass in 2014, and as we planted Compass, we had seven people in our core team, plus my family of five, so that gave us 12. We were questioning, what can we do with 12 people? How can we impact a city as important as Mountain View? How can we make a difference as church planters in a city that already has churches? And so as we were doing our demographic study, and as we were thinking about what God was calling us to do, we landed on two things. The first thing was to go to a part of Mountain View that didn't have a church.

[1:33] Why go to the part of Mountain View that was already churched? Go to the place that didn't have a church. And we found that place in an area called the Mountain View Triangle. If you know the freeways around us, if you go down 85 to 101, and 101 to 237, and then 237 cuts across from Milpitas all the way to 99 Ranch Market. And that triangle is called the Mountain View Triangle. In fact, in the middle of the triangle at the Wisman and Middlefield Junction, there's a little curb-like kind of thing that you can sit on, and it says Mountain View Triangle. So that area of Mountain View is an area with about four or five churches. Five thousand dwelling units, apartments, condominiums, a few single-family homes.

[2:26] And there is one church, a Korean Seventh-day Adventist church. At the very edge of the triangle, there's Mountain View Chinese Christian Church. There was no other church that was really reaching out to the community, and so we planted Compass with that goal in mind. Another thing unique about the triangle is that only half of it is neighborhood, and the other half of it is business. And so we said, if we're going to reach the triangle, we're going to try to reach out to the bedroom community, the people that live here. We're also going to try to reach out to the business community, the people that work here. And in the city of Mountain View, we have approximately about 75,000 inhabitants in our population.

[3:08] And we will more than double that pre-COVID with the workforce that comes in to work in companies like Google, LinkedIn, Intuit, and several of the big marquee Silicon Valley companies that are here in Mountain View and in the Silicon Valley.

[3:28] So before we started having worship in the school that we use, the old Wisman School, which is leased by the German international community to become the German International School, and we leased their hall. Hans-Erik has been there and has been a guest speaker for us before, and has worshiped with us on sabbatical before, so he's familiar with what I'm talking about. But for the rest of you, it's just an NPR like any other multipurpose room. It's the cafeteria tables fold down. There's a bit of a stage. We set up chairs, and that's where we would do worship before we were forced to go online like every other church. And before we had a worship service there, we started. I started with a little bit of a I started a Bible study or prayer group with a group of Googlers, and I discovered these Googlers by just asking around, who do you know that works at Google? Because we figured that if we were going to reach this city, the bedroom community and the business community, we should reach the campus that was right in our backyard. And if I were planting a church in a university town, had I been planting in Berkeley, in fact, the seven people that planted with me all came from Berkeley. They all attended Cal and got jobs in Silicon Valley,

[4:48] and they were all part of a campus ministry that was part of their church called Harvest. And so Harvest, this small Taiwanese church in Berkeley, had a campus ministry to the University of California. And so we were thinking along the same lines that as we planted Compass, we would also have a campus ministry. But instead of going to Stanford, that may be one of the closest campuses, or to Santa Clara University, we would go to an even closer campus. And that campus would be Google. And we would start to reach out to the Googlers. We would start to talk to them and ask them how we could help them. How we could encourage them. How we could equip them for the ministry that God had given them to do. And that's what I want to talk to you about today. A ministry that God has given each and every one of us. of his children each and every one of us who are followers or disciples of Jesus Christ and so to do that I want to look at what is known as the Great Commission and the scripture is here go therefore and make disciples of all the nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you so I want to stop there there's there's more in the latter part of this commission but I want to

[6:21] stop there for right now because this is probably a passage that's very familiar to all of us and it's known as the Great Commission this comes to the disciples as Jesus is about to ascend into heaven so this is one of the final messages that Jesus is going to give to his disciples and when you get the opportunity to to hear that final word from somebody you usually want to lean in you usually want to to hear what they have to say and to to really focus it on what it is that they are trying to communicate and so let's do that today and and let's try to lean in and before we do much more than that I want to do a little bit of a word study so when we look at this passage we start with the word go and look at look look look look look us to go to places like Taiwan or places like the 1040 window and certainly it does but it speaks to us beyond the classic understanding of missions the things that you might hear if you've ever been to Urbana or if you have been to any other kinds of missionary conferences or read missionary biographies all of which have been very foundational in my own spiritual development but I want to correct something about our understanding of this verse and the the thing that I need to correct is that this is the main verb

[8:29] make disciples okay so the main verb is make disciples and then there are three participles that are supporting this main verb and you're gonna find them in the description below. here where it says baptizing so make disciples baptizing them in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit and here's the other one teaching now I said there were three so where's the third one well it's right here it's go which could be said going the main the main verb is make disciples and it's supported by three participles the way that we make disciples is by baptizing people in the name of the Father Son and Holy Spirit by teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you and by going to do this so some people would retranslate this passage to say as you go as you go make disciples the reason I think this is really important for us is because then it makes the great commission something that is not just for missionaries who decide to go to Africa but it's a great commission that's for all of us and of course we understood the great commission was for all of us in in many different ways but one of the ways that we've understood it is that there will be great commission for great go there will be others who support and send and pray and that's the classic understanding

[10:20] of missions but what i want to do is i want to take this fuller understanding of the great commission and see that the main verb is make disciples and this applies to all of us it applies to all of us wherever we go as we go as we're going about life we are called to make disciples not just when we get on an airplane and land on another continent or cross a border into another country are we on mission but we are called to be on mission 24 7 365 days of the year and so what does that look like well i think it could look like this and and you say well what is this um we'll get there this is your life this is your life and um every morning and we get up and we make breakfast and we have some coffee and kind of get get ourselves ready for for work and so we do the same thing on tuesday morning and then on wednesday morning and then on thursday morning and then on friday morning and then we finally get a weekend okay and then the evenings we come home from work and we and i say that um based on precedent at times because i know that going to work and coming home from work it doesn't really require any going in fact today you're in my bedroom and um this is this is where i work this is where i live that's

[12:04] where i sleep and so going in this sense of the word is more figurative than actual but you're gonna come home from work you're gonna have dinner you're gonna relax with the family you might watch some netflix monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday and then you get this great weekend but what's this huge block in your life well this huge block in your life is work and so i want to think about this where is jesus sending you day after day week after week as his disciple or is he sending you well after you roll out of bed and you brush your teeth and you put a shirt on over your sweats or whatever it is that you're doing these days and you're not doing anything you're not doing anything you roll up to the kitchen table or to the desk or to the study and you just go to another part of the room another part of the house and you go to work and but day after day monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday jesus is sending you to work and yes i miss precedented times i miss it where i'm not all of it i mean it's nice not to have a commute it's nice not to have to ride cal train we hope it doesn't go away but um it's really nice also to for me to to go to google and have my monday morning prayer meeting in the campus at moffett park and to to meet with googlers at 8 a.m

[14:05] and start their week in prayer and to strategize in prayer over how god is calling us and what god wants us to do and to ask for blessings on our work and to ask for blessings on our co-workers to ask for blessings over the company to ask for blessings over the country to pray and for for one another to support one another and and to do that from my bedroom over google meet it's good but it's far better for me when i get to actually engage in person um and and sit down with the workers in their workplace and and enjoy some fellowship and and pray together and for for you maybe you missed that interaction with your co-workers as well um maybe maybe you might not have the opportunity to do that but maybe you might have the opportunity to do that if you're tired and zoomed out and you know we talk a lot about zoom fatigue we talk a lot about how we're so zoomed out we're becoming zoombies um and so work is a whole new reality in this season of being sheltered in place while we try to flatten the curve which is all good and responsible action and um i wouldn't have us do otherwise but i want you just to get the picture of the way that there's a big block of our life that is part of the life that god gave you part of the life that god created for you

[15:56] part of the life that god has designed for you destined for you chosen for you and for others for a sweet time that we box out of our schedule and that we consider our discipleship and maybe we have a small group and so maybe that's a Wednesday night small group and we'll gather with our Wednesday night small group and that's our discipleship maybe we serve maybe we we serve in youth ministries and you maybe that's on Friday and I don't remember which night it is over at your church but we consider that part of our discipleship and of course this time that we're in right now Sunday morning yeah we consider Sunday morning our discipleship too because that's our church time and we look at our discipleship as being these smaller components of our life versus our whole life and what I'd like for us to think about today is how this is meant to be an integral part of our life and that's what we're going to be doing today and what we're going to be doing today is how this is meant to be an integral part of our discipleship and an essential part of our mission because as we saw in the scripture as we go we are called to make disciples so how do we do that well I'm going to give you a really simple three-point strategy I'm going to share four more points about what we did when

[17:56] we started with that first group and then we're going to go through the next group if you want to remember them if you want to remember them if you want to remember them if you want to remember them if you want to remember them if you remember them if you want to remember them if you want to remember them if you remember them if you want to remember them if you want to remember them if you remember them if you want to remember them if you want to remember them if you remember them if you want to remember them if you want to remember them if you remember them if you want to remember them if you want to remember them if you remember them if you want to remember them if you remember them if you remember them if you remember them if you remember them if you remember them if you remember them if you remember them if you remember them if you remember them if you remember them if you remember them if you remember them if you remember them if you remember them on the truths of the gospel you center on all that god has for you and has done for you and his love for you you cast your worries on him you lay aside your burdens you let go of your grudges and and you center and we need to do this because as jesus said that when we abide in him

[18:54] we can bear much fruit and so we want to center we want to abide we want to dwell in jesus with the goal of being able to make disciples of being able to bear fruit and and i'm not just talking about the fruit of making disciples like new converts but also the fruit of being a person that brings the presence and the shalom of jesus into the world of the gospel into the places that we go bring being a person of peace being an a non-anxious presence in the midst of a very anxious world we can only do this when we first get grounded in god when we first get centered and so that's the first strategy is abide center get grounded then the second strategy is awareness and that is simply being aware of the people around you and aware of their needs and one of the ways that you're you become aware of their needs is simply to ask how are you doing how is this pandemic affecting you do you know anybody are any of your loved ones impacted by this just simply ask now most most of the time when we ask somebody how you doing how you doing how you doing how you doing how you doing how you doing how you doing how you doing how you doing how how how how off because we're taught to be like ducks on a pond where the water just

[20:44] rolls right off of us well underneath underneath the surface our feet might be frantically paddling but we're gonna look like everything's cool everything's smooth all is good and occasionally however you start to build trust you start to develop enough competence in relationship enough capital relational capital with somebody that they will answer your how are you doing question and they'll share how they're doing now if you are my friend and you came up to me and you asked me how you doing and Hans Eric knows this because he is my friend and he did ask me I would tell you this was a crazy week okay so on Friday we're gonna be doing a little bit of a Friday my oldest daughter Bethany had wisdom teeth extracted and normally that's not something that I would be anxious about in fact we kind of delayed this because we thought it's fine it's just wisdom teeth but what we didn't see in the x-rays at her dentist office the oral surgeon saw was that one of her wisdom teeth was impacted by wisdom teeth and it was growing backwards so that the root was growing towards a facial nerve that drops down and he told us that there was a 5% chance that she could have paralysis in her face as a result of this surgery as they went in

[22:24] to extract this tooth in fact when they did take the tooth they broke the tooth and they decided to leave the root tip in and take everything else out and removed it for them because they just as a precautionary measure they did not want to risk this impacting her her smile her ability to speak her appearance if they would have damaged that nerve so I was anxious I was anxious as a dad on Friday I was anxious as she started to recover I was anxious as her recovery took longer than our other daughter who had also had her wisdom teeth removed removed and so there was this anxiety that I had. Then on Sunday night my son was saying you know I feel kind of chills like maybe I'm getting a fever and you know normally not a big deal right people get fevers come and go whatever it caused it they're not minor but they're not major but in the season that we're in with coronavirus a fever is like cause for sounding the alarms right and so on Monday morning he woke up we took his temperature and yes he was feverish around a hundred and by Monday afternoon he had spiked to 102 so we had him go get tested for coronavirus and he has been subsequently quarantined in a bedroom here in our apartments just behind this wall right

[24:06] here so it's his sister's bedroom he had just moved home from college and so we moved my youngest into the living room where she's now living in the living room and our middle child my son Ben is quarantined in this bedroom while we wait to find out whether or not you know we're going to be able to get him back to school and we're going to be able to get him back to school we're going to get him back to school crazy week now i share all of that way more than i would maybe in a workplace water cooler conversation or over a zoom call where somebody says how are you doing but with my closest friends are not even all of my closest friends i just shared it with a bunch of you who are strangers i i'm willing to to share that maybe i overshare um but i'm willing to share that and if you had a friend that were vulnerable and open and sharing what's going on in their life with you how are you going to respond and my encouragement to you is you respond from that center place and you you listen to them you listen to any prompting that the scriptures that you've learned um maybe some some of these scriptures will come to mind and and god will use those scriptures to prompt you maybe um the way that you've been raised the

[26:11] way that others have modeled discipleship for you maybe that example will prompt you maybe it'll be a a little whisper from the holy spirit like philip got in acts chapter 8 where the spirit says go up to that chariot and he goes up to the chariot in an endemic endemic endemic endemic endemic endemic endemic but in that moment what I would encourage you to do is when they say oh man I'm so stressed and I have a number of friends that are stressed for a number of different reasons financial reasons work we're all enduring unprecedented stressful times really hard times and so how are we how we to respond to them and the thing that I want to encourage you to do is just listen first to them listen to the Holy Spirit for that opportunity and I would encourage you if possible to say remember Can I pray for you?

[27:26] And this is something that we have been training people to do in Google and in Facebook and in the workplace fellowships that we come alongside of and support. And there are people in these companies that have had hundreds of conversations like this where they'll say, how are you? And somebody will say something and they'll express their need. And then they'll say, could I pray for you? And right there, they will just take 10 seconds and they will pray for them. And they'll say it like this, like, you don't need to close your eyes or anything. In fact, you could just like look over my shoulder and I'll look down here at the table. And this could happen in the cafeteria. This could happen by somebody's desk. This could happen in the water cooler. Elevator is not a very good place for that. But, you know, it can happen pretty much anywhere on the work campus. And. And you make it look as if it's a normal conversation that's happening.

[28:26] And as you kind of look over their shoulder, look down and they look over your shoulder and and you just say, God, I just pray that you would be with. And if somebody were praying for me, they'd be saying, I just pray that you'd be with Roy and with his son, Ben, and that his son, Ben, will get a negative test result on his covid test and that whatever it is that's caused him to have this.

[28:58] So if you were praying for them for some time for Oh no, thank you, thank you for praying. And sometimes you'll have people, when you actually look again at one another, as you lift your head up, as they lower their head down, and you actually make eye contact, you might see tears in their eyes. You might see that they feel like they are being cared for, and they are being loved. And that's exactly what we want them to feel.

[29:51] Because in order to make disciples, we need to love people. In order to fulfill the Great Commission, we need to fulfill the Great Commandment. And that is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. And so my encouragement to you today is to take... this simple technique of centering yourself, being aware, and asking, and praying. And the way that you can remember it is the word CAP.

[30:42] C, center. A, aware. Or ask. And P. Pray. And I know it's harder because it's harder to have these kinds of conversations on Google Meet and Zoom or WebEx or Microsoft Teams or whatever it is that your company uses, BlueJeans. And I've been on every one of those formats in the last 555 days since we've started this COVID shelter-in-place.

[31:16] But it's still possible. It's still possible to be caring and to show that you are loving to your coworkers in a time like this. And not only is it possible, it's necessary. It is absolutely necessary. Because there are so many people that are looking for encouragement.