Sunday message · 21 Days of Prayer series
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Message Summary
In the third message of the 21 Days of Prayer series, Pastor Phillip Santillan explains what the church is praying for as it seeks God’s direction about a permanent facility: missional impact. Pointing to Jesus’ command to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28), he sums up the message in one line: missional impact is “God’s people in a place with a people in their place making disciples.”
God’s people are the church’s greatest asset, not its building or programs. Phil describes the church as people committed to be with Jesus, become like Jesus and live like Jesus. Many churches treat Acts 2:42–47 as a checklist that guarantees the Lord will add to their number daily. Yet Phil has seen churches do all of that fervently without growing. The key comes earlier. After the Spirit falls and Peter preaches that God has made Jesus both Lord and Messiah, the crowd is “pierced to the heart” and asks, “What should we do?” (Acts 2:36–37).
Pierced hearts naturally ask what to do, Phil says. Many sermons focus on what we should do, but everything in a church with missional impact flows from being deeply connected to Jesus. That is why the church is praying: prayer is one of the most powerful contexts for experiencing life with Jesus. Trying to live like Jesus without deep affection for him and the fullness of his Spirit becomes a new legalism. He asks when our time with Jesus last felt like being pierced to the heart.
A theology of place, Phil explains, holds that followers of Jesus live where they do, among the people they know, because God has a plan to see disciples made there (Psalm 139:16; Acts 17:26). He asks where our lives happen and with whom, and whether we love those places and people, even the difficult ones. The key is being a local, someone who has decided that where they live is home until God changes it.
Finally, “in their place” means the culture, language, rhythms and values of the people we hope to reach. On a mission trip to Russia at 15, Phil’s team honored local customs out of love, because gospel clarity mattered most. Drawing on Dr. Ed Stetzer, he calls this cultural exegesis: learning what people love, fear and value. People tend to surround themselves with others like them and claim they don’t know any non-Christians, when they simply haven’t extended friendship. There is grace for this, Phil adds, and he needs it too.
He illustrates with Oreos in their familiar package and in a plain brown paper bag: a room of Oreo lovers will choose the package. The Holy Spirit is essential, Phil says, but we should ask whether people want what is inside us because of what our lives communicate. Jesus said that as the Father sent him, he sends us (John 20:21), so every follower of Jesus is a sent one. He prays that God would make the church his people in a place, with a people, in their place, making disciples.