My name is Jason Dome. I'm from North Carolina. Which isn't Texas, but we do what we can. Whoever assembled the lineup, it was important that Mala and I be back-to-back. They didn't know that and it was important that we go in this order and they didn't know that.

Matthew chapter 13 verse 23, but he who received the seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces some a hundredfold, some 60, and some 30. Something that has persistently been on my mind and in my heart is the long-term fruitfulness of our little church. I'm part of a little church. And especially in the category of missions, I would consider our church to be representative of family integrated churches in the sense that we're small and we're resource constrained. We are we're limited in our human resources.

We have people, I love the people that we have, they're good people, but there's not that many of us. We're limited in our financial resources. Praise the Lord, he's given us what we need every step along the way but the finances haven't exactly been piling up on the side during that period of time. And so pastors think in terms of how can long-term fruitfulness be top of mind when viability is still something that you think about. Something significantly shaped my thinking that happened five years ago.

It was my first opportunity to go to Pensacola and see with my own eyes Mount Zion, the church, and Chapel Library, their primary international ministry. Why was that such a critical moment for me? Why did that shape my thinking so much? Well it's because Mount Zion and Chapel Library are little, there's nothing there for the better part of their 30-year history. Almost 40-year history.

They've been 50 people or less, often a lot less, God's blessed them recently and so they're a fair amount more than that now but that is not typical for their history. But even in spite of their size, they as a church have been disproportionately fruitful. So to go down there and see that as a pastor of a teeny church with limited human resources and limited financial resources, I'm interested to know how you can be this size and be disproportionately fruitful. When I say little, I mean that they've had 30 or 40 or 50 people for most of their church history when I say disproportionately fruitful they've collected over 800 titles of some of the best Christian literature you can put your hands on they send it all over the world and they won't take money for it. How did they do this?

I think they would attribute it, or at least I would attribute it, to three things. Number one, God. God did that. They have the favor of God. They sought the favor of God and they received the favor of God, he has blessed them.

Number two, very early on they had a sense of what they should be doing and they did it and they did it for a long time without being distracted. So that brings me to my third point. They had a committed focus for a long period of time, meaning there's a thousand good worthy things that a church can engage in but if you try to engage in more than a handful you end up doing nothing with any of them and they understood that and so they bore down on this thing that they thought that the Lord would have them do and they stayed focused on it year after year after year and the fruit has come, has come. And they've outpaced giant churches who have thrashed around not knowing what God would have them do and so they change their focus every three or four or five years and they have nothing to show for it. I participated in that.

I've led some of that. How many pastors in the room have participated and led some of that, we all have. And so when I look at that church it's one example of many I'm sure and they don't want the praise for it I'm sure But I say that like that's what our church wants to be when we grow up Not in every way we don't want to have to put up with Jeff Pollard And so we've been trying to do this in the category of missions. Eight years ago I met Mala. Mala who was just standing here and we connected and we started working together in little ways.

We're finishing up our eighth year of working together sort of in progressively more significant ways. And across those years there have been many many many many many other opportunities, worthy opportunities, good opportunities, opportunities I hope someone will engage in, but we felt like we shouldn't because of the cost. The cost to this thing that we're working on, knowing that the only way we're going to be disproportionately fruitful is to stay focused and keep our heads down and keep going for a long time. Last year in Malawi, so this this would have been the year the end of year seven for us working together. By the way we've worked together on both shores, worked together quite a bit here.

We've worked together quite a bit there. Last year at the end of year seven we We started to harvest from seeds that were planted three or four or five years ago. And then this solidifies in my mind the only way you harvest those things is if you plant the seeds and then you weed and then you water and you keep after it, that's the only way you're there to harvest. And now we're considering things that we couldn't have even talked about two years ago. The things that we did last year in Malawi we couldn't have done in year four or year five.

The things just weren't in place to do that, but last year they were. And we had some of our most fruitful times together, bar none, absolutely. And they were things that we could have only done in year seven. Do you understand what I'm saying? And now we're talking about things that we couldn't have even discussed a couple of years ago.

All that to say this, brothers, let's take the time to pray and think and pray and think and pray and think and pray and think until we're sure we know what God wants us about in our connection with the Great Commission to take the gospel to the nations. And once we're sure we know, let's focus on it for a long time. Not getting distraction, please don't give $100 a month to 20 missionaries, okay? Like, invest, invest! This year and next year and a decade from now and two decades from now.

I want Ben and Raphael to work together. What in the world does that mean? Ben's my grandson. Ben's 18 months old. Ben can't say one meaningful thing except for Bapa.

I'm Bapa, that's meaningful. Raphael is, in Blantyre it's a young church, they're just getting married, they're just having boys, Raphael is one of the first little boys who's coming up, Raphael Moontally. I want them to work together. I want them to harvest seeds that Mala and I are planting. Now I know I can't even control, I certainly can't control whether Ben is born again and I can't control whether Rafael Muntali is born again and unless what I want to chain them to work that I'm doing.

I'm not saying that we can cause them to be born again, I'm not saying we should chain them to what we're doing I'm saying we should work together over the long haul in such a compelling way that they can't be they can't wait to be old enough to engage in the work themselves like They see us reaping from the seeds that we sowed 10 years ago and it's exciting and God is moving and they can't wait until they can enter into the labors alongside us. Let's pray. Father, we want to be fruitful in our own lives according to this verse in Matthew 13 about personal fruitfulness, and yet we want to see that bleed over into something that's not directly part of that passage the fruitfulness of our churches but God we know that churches are fruitful to a greater or lesser degree we want to be a part of a hundredfold if Christ would be honored by that if Christ would exalt be exalted in that we desire it I pray Lord that you would press on our hearts where we should engage, what we could work on together over the long haul, and then once we're sure we know what you would have us about that we would give ourselves to it year after year and even decade after decade that we would work on things that are too big to be done in a generation.

I pray that you would help and bless your people in Jesus name. Amen.