I Believe, but I’m Afraid to Share My Faith 

Do you long to be faith filled but find it hard to? Do you wish for more follow through and less fall through? Maybe you think, “I believe in God, but forgiveness is impossible.” Maybe you believe in God but are scared to share your faith. Or “I believe, but do I really have to be part of a church?” Join us as we try to move forward in belief and practice.

Breaking the Bread: “You Feed Them”
We believe…but do we believe enough to tell our neighbor? We call ourselves Evangelicals…but how much evangelism are we really doing? We believe that Jesus is the answer for us, but do we believe it enough that we think He’s the answer for our friends too?

Transcript

All right. Good morning. Uh, thank you. Uh, I think many of you probably already know me already, but I’m Matt. I’m Emma’s husband if that wasn’t clear.

Uh, and we have been at Community Covenant since we launched back in 2020. Uh, my wife and I also serve on campus with crew and so we get to partner quite a bit with this community region college students uh, just down the block here.

Uh so uh as a little prelude before I hop in when I teach I like to have a little bit of interaction. So I’m going to ask a few questions and I actually want you guys to shout the answers back. So tell me tell me what you think. Give me an actual answer. Uh I’ll try to echo it so the people online can actually hear it in case they can’t hear you. Uh but go ahead and throw out your answers.

Uh, so to start us off, if you had to describe our church to someone who’s never heard of Jesus before, what would you say? A word or two? >> Welcoming. >> Welcoming. Nice. Yeah. >> Honest. >> Honest. Nice. I like it. >> Full of truth. >> Full of truth. Nice. >> Elementary school. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very direct. Yeah, that works, too. That’s great. Uh,

I asked my students a similar question this past year, asking them to describe crew, what they were experiencing on campus. And they talked about community, about friends, about a place to belong. We at church here literally put it in our name. We said we’re community covenant, right? Like it’s something that we care about. And I’m really glad that that’s been their experience and that that’s been your experience here. It’s a place where you can belong.

As staff on campus, we want crew to be this place where living waters run together. Place where you can belong to a community that knows you and a place where you can grow together in your walk with Jesus. That’s the goal. That’s our hope here at Community Covenant, too.

But whether you’re talking about church or you’re talking about crew, that’s not all that we are. Or to be more exact, we we are that community, but we’re also a community that comes with a mission, with a direction, a purpose.

Okay? So, keep talking with me here for a minute. If you had to take a guess, how many countries do you think McDonald’s is in? >> All of them. >> All of them. [laughter] A little less than that, but >> 180. >> 180. Okay. >> 500. >> 500. So, I’ll give you the cap. There’s about 195 countries in the world, depending on how you count it. Okay.

So, McDonald’s is in about 119, 120, somewhere in that range. There are very few places you can go that you can’t find those golden arches. Okay, same question.

Uh but now think for crew for this college ministry. It’s about reaching college students, sending them to the world. How many countries do you think crew is in more than that? More than 100 >> 190. Okay.

Uh what sort of a vision would drive an organization like Crew to say we’re going to expand into 190 countries in 75 years and there’s nobody selling fries, right? Okay.

It’s a vision that’s centered on missions. It’s this vision that’s centered on reaching college students so that they would turn around and reach the world. Crew since it founding has been a missionary organization, not just a college club, not just a place where people can come and find other people who think like them. We wanted to reach college students so they would walk with Jesus for the rest of their lives and so that they would turn around and reach every pocket on campus and then graduate and step into pockets in the world so that they would keep reaching people after they graduate. That’s the goal.

And so, it’s about living waters running together, but it’s also about those living waters running together so that they would step into the dry places. So they would carry it to new places with them. That’s the vision for the church. It’s still about living waters running together so that the world would know the Jesus we worship. It’s living waters running not just to campus but to our neighbors, to our families, to our city. Right?

When I first got connected to Crew as a freshman in college, the idea of missions or evangelism felt really scary. I knew that Jesus had commanded us to tell other people about him. I knew the rule, right? But for the most part, missions and evangelism were this thing that I knew I was supposed to do that in practice just felt really scary.

I looked at my crew staff guy in college, and I thought like, okay, he’s the guy who’s willing to talk to strangers about Jesus. He’s the guy who’s going to talk to people on the beach, who’s going to talk to people in the coffee shop, who’s going to talk to people on campus, and he’s probably got a student in tow with him, right? Shivering, but there I knew the great commission. I’d heard people teach on it. I knew it mattered. Go therefore, make disciples of all nations. I was on board. We were supposed to tell others about him. But that felt like too much.

It felt scary. It felt like something that was just really for the professional Christians to do, not the rest of us. I’d memorize some Moana verses, but the idea of taking those to people who didn’t know Jesus felt really scary. Was I going to be brave enough to actually step across that line? I didn’t have what it what it took. I was worried I’d mess up or that they’d think I was an idiot or that I’d teach them something wrong. Like I was really scared about it and I wasn’t ready.

How many you guys have ever felt like you didn’t have the right words, right personality? Thank you, Laura. Just quick show of hands, like throw your hands up. How many felt like you weren’t prepared? Yeah.

So, here here’s the wild thing. We typically identify as something like evangelical Christians, right? It’s literally in our name that we care about evangelism, but statistically about 5% of us share our faith ever. Okay, not just once, but ever. Evangelism’s in our name, and for some reason, the command isn’t sticking. It’s not something that’s shaping how we live out our faith.

We’re terrified of what Jesus told us to go and do. Or we’re just convinced we can’t do it. We’re unqualified. We’re not sure that people want to hear. We believe Jesus help our unbelief. Right?

I want to spend this morning asking this question of why Jesus would ask us, these messed up, ill-equipped, scared people to be the ones to carry his gospel. And I think Jesus has something else going on here. Has something more in mind than just a commandment that we’re going to fail at.

So, let me pray and then we’ll hop in.

Uh Jesus, Jesus, thank you that we get to open your word together this morning. pray that you’d fill me and fill us with your spirit so that we would hear and see you better because of it. Pray in particular for this mission that you’ve set in front of us to be a people who bear life for others, a people who bear your gospel. I pray uh that as we open your word together, you would stir us to that uh to see the worth and the value and the gift uh in being a people who are on mission for you, your name. Amen.

Okay, one more question for you guys here. So, there are two miracles that are recorded in all four gospels. First one’s the resurrection. Maybe that’s a little obvious. Uh, do you guys have a guess of what the second one is? >> Lazarus. That’s good, but no. >> No. Actually, no. You’d think so, right? Birth of Christ would make sense, but it’s only in two of them. Yeah. >> Uh, heaven. That one might actually count, but I didn’t put it in my list. [laughter]

So, the second one, the second one, uh, is feeding the 5,000. Okay? And that’s where we’re going to look this morning. So, if you want to open up with me to Mark 6 30-44, that’s where we’ll be. Let me read for us.

The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going. They had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves.

Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things.

And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.”

And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?” And he said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” And when they found out, they said, “Five and two fish.”

Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the grass. So they sat down in groups by hundreds and by 50s. And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. And he divided the two fish among them.

And all ate and were satisfied. And they took up 12 baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. And of those who ate the loaves were 5,000 men. Okay?

So put yourselves in Jesus disciples place with me for a moment and we’ll walk through the story one more time here.

So Jesus had just sent them out to do ministry on their own before this moment. So they’re coming back together. Uh they’ve been out sharing uh stories of how they preached to the crowds, they healed the sick, they’re celebrating, but they’re tired as they come back together.

Jesus has also had a pretty intense day right before this moment. Jesus has just learned that John the Baptist, his husband, has been executed. Okay? And so Jesus takes his disciples aside to a place where they can be alone. He’s looking for that desolate place so they can rest, so they can recover, so they can share stories, so they can kind of commiserate and celebrate together, right?

Instead, there’s this giant crowd that spots where they’re going, shows up before they even get to shore, and because they’ve heard that Jesus can maybe heal a few people, maybe tell a good sermon, they race to get there ahead of them.

My own introverted heart would have been pretty crushed if I looked ahead and saw crowds on the shore, right? I love the work that I get to do with students. It’s very extroverted. Uh and I get to spend tons of time with them. But after a long day, I want to come home and check out. That’s what I do. Okay?

If I’m in the boat like the disciples, I’m looking at Jesus and being like, “Hey, I think the shore over there looks a little better, right? Like, let’s go to the empty one.” Okay? But that’s not what Jesus does.

Instead, Jesus sees this crowd and he doesn’t say, “Sorry, give us a moment. We got to catch a breath.” Jesus says, “Okay, I’m going to have compass compassion on them.” He heals the sick and he preaches and he keeps going all day again. Okay.

After that, any reasonable person would have been tired, would have been exhausted. His disciples are tired. They’re ready to be done. They come to Jesus and they’re like, “Hey, you should send these people home so that they can get some food.”

And under their breath, what they’re probably thinking is, “And so that we can relax, so that we can check out. So that we can get some food cuz we haven’t eaten either. Remember, we hadn’t eaten before this. Now, we still haven’t eaten for another day, Jesus. And we’re tired. We want to spend time alone, just with us. Instead, Jesus answers them with something that sounds insane. He says, “You give them something to eat.”

Remember how big this crowd is? We’re talking 5,000 men, and as Matthew tells us, plus women and children, right? Think like the disciples here. What are you thinking when Jesus says that? >> You’re nuts. >> You’re nuts. Yeah. Yeah, that’s fair. Yeah. Yeah. May maybe something like, “Are you serious, Jesus? Is that really what you’re expecting us to do? I just want a good meal. I want my pillow.

Maybe some time hanging out with these other disciples. I want time processing the last couple of days. I want to tell you what happened, Jesus, while I was gone.” Right? You got to be joking. And instead, you give me this this riddle, right?

But he keeps pressing them and they go back out into the crowd to check how much food they can find. Okay? They come back and the Gospel of John tells us that they found this little boy who has five loaves and two fish. His mom probably packed him a nice lunch to go listen to Jesus, right?

Okay. So, he comes and Jesus takes the boy’s lunch of bread and fish. He blesses it. He breaks it. He sends the disciples out to feed the entire crowd. And somehow it doesn’t. And they have more left over than they actually started with.

Now, there there’s a lot going on in the story. It’s beautiful. We could spend a lot of time here, but I want you guys to hear three things this morning out of this story. Okay.

Uh the first one, the disciples actually aren’t enough. Okay, they’re they may be a little tired and whiny, but that’s not really the problem in this moment. Okay, they’re not wrong when they hear Jesus’s like, “You go feed them.” And they think we can’t they’re not carrying enough food to feed 5,000 people. They don’t have it on them. Okay.

When Jesus said, “You feed them,” it felt like an impossible commandment because it actually was. The disciples balk at the idea of going and buying all of this food because it’s 200 denarii worth. That’s like 200 days wages. These are people who are depending on the support of others so that they can walk around and be itinerant preachers.

They don’t have 200 days wages in the money bag, right? Like they’re not going to be able to feed this crowd. They don’t have the food. They don’t have the money to buy it. They couldn’t do it.

Even Jesus’s suggestion to go see what you can find in the crowd. Go find some food only produces five loaves and two fish. Right? They got a little boy’s lunch. But Jesus says, “You give them something to eat.” Okay.

Second one here. Jesus didn’t need the disciples to feed the crowd. The disciples are still figuring it out. But we’ve got hindsight here. We can look back and we know who Jesus is, right?

We know that Jesus has no problem as God in the flesh being the one to turn around and feed this crowd. When he’s tempted in the wilderness, he’s left fasting without food for 40 days. And Matthew tells us that Satan comes to him and says, “Just turn turn these stones into loaves of bread.”

Now, Jesus doesn’t do it, but it’s not because he couldn’t, right? There’s probably plenty of stones on those hills that would have turned into bread for Jesus. But that’s not what he does. He says, “You go feed them.”

This is the God who said, “Let it be.” Spoke creation into existence. Who doesn’t need the seed investment of five loaves and two fish to create food for that crowd, right? Like, he just didn’t need it.

In Exodus, when the people are hungry and they’re wandering in the wilderness, which might sound a little bit like this desolate place where they are with the crowd from 5,000, what’s God do? He drops mana from heaven. Drops bread from the sky to feed them for 40 years, not for one meal. Okay?

Jesus didn’t need drones to get it to the right spot, right? Like he just dropped bread where they needed it. Okay?

And so when he’s on the seaside that day and he’s feeding this crowd of 5,000, like he doesn’t need the disciples help. They’re an optional part of this for him.

That begs the question, why? Why does Jesus poke at his tired disciples to try to get them to solve a problem that he doesn’t need them for?

Why does he take the little boy’s lunch? Why does he turn the disciples into delivery boys to carry this food around for him when he could have just dropped it out of the sky to the right places? Right?

I think we could take the same wise and turn around and apply them to the great commission, to evangelism, to the mission set in front of us as a church, right?

The God who appeared to Moses in the burning bush doesn’t need you and me to go tell my tell our friends about him. We’re an optional part of that mission.

The Jesus who’s been shown up in the dreams of Muslims on the other side of the world doesn’t need us to carry the gospel to hard-to-reach places. He can do that without us.

I think about my friend Kengo from Japan who showed up here a few years back. Uh he saw something compelling in Jesus, and I got to kind of walk alongside him as that happened. But I was not a necessary part of that journey for Kengo.

I got to be there. So why make the disciples? Why make you and me into delivery boys and girls?

That brings us to our third one. And this is the one that I want you to catch. If you catch nothing else, catch this one. Okay.

Jesus actually wants to give you the privilege, the gift of participating in that mission. There is something good in the act of you getting to participate in it that Jesus is after here for you.

You’re not a necessary part. You can’t do it. But there is a gift in the being a part of it.

You aren’t needed. The disciples weren’t needed. In fact, you can’t do it. You can’t turn the lights on inside of someone’s heart. That’s the thing that Jesus does alone. But he invites us to take part in it.

He wants the disciples to see the miracle as it happens in those baskets that they’re carrying. Okay, I know it feels weird to call something a gift or to call something a privilege that usually scares us. It feels really intimidating, but I think that’s what’s going on when Jesus asks people who he doesn’t need to do a job they can’t do just so that they can be there while he does it through them.

There’s something more than an unfulfillable commandment there. Look back at the text.

Uh, can you spot in the text when the bread actually multiplies? When does the miraculous moment happen? >> Yeah, go for it, Laura. to his disciples and the people he also divided the two fish among them they all were satisfied >> okay so somewhere in those lines you’re totally right yep so I think uh we might be tempted to say it’s the moment Jesus blesses it right like he prays he blesses the food and we’re thinking oh like then magically there’s all this bread but he turns around and then hands it to his disciples to these 12 guys so I think we still got five loaves and two fish now it’s just broken up at that moment okay because they can still carry it and I don’t think they could do that for the 5,000 people okay and so I think Jesus hands them five loaves and two fish.

They carry those broken five loaves and two fish. And so imagine with me again, you’re in those disciples places and Jesus has just handed you this tiny little piece of bread, little piece of fish, and he’s already told the crowd to sit down. They’re sitting in circles waiting on you to deliver their food.

You got a tiny little piece of bread, tiny little piece of fish. Okay, they’re watching you. and you’re walking up to the crowd, maybe this first group of 50, probably feeling a little nervous because who wants to be the guy who walks up to that crowd and is like, “Here’s a tiny little piece of something. Like, maybe this will tide you over at least the first three of you, right?”

Like, as a Midwesterner who regularly hosts events that like involve food and feeding a lot of people, the idea of running out of food at something like this feels like a massive embarrassment, right? Like, this is bad. This is anxiety, right?

And they’re just walking up their tiny little piece of bread, tiny little piece of fish to their group, first group of 50. No, the next group over there still has to eat from this too. But you do it.

You break off a piece of bread. You hand it to someone in the first circle and they begin to break off pieces and they’re passing it around the circle. And somehow it keeps going, keeps feeding the people. And then strangely as you look in your hand, you realize, I’ve still got bread. I’ve still got fish.

You walk to the next circle. You keep feeding them. You keep carrying it. Each person’s getting a piece. is getting passed around the circle. It happens again and again and again. And at some point, I got to imagine you’re trying to look at your hand and catch the moment when that bread turns into more bread, right? Like when’s the actual moment?

And if it’s anything like missions or evangelism in the way that I’ve experienced it, it’s really hard to spot the moment, but you feel it and you see the fruit of it, right? You see the bread that just keeps feeding, the fish that just keep going somehow. You see the people eating.

In the end, you pick up more bread and fish than you actually started with. The crowd feels fed. They’re satisfied. Midwestern potluck success, right? Like we did it.

This is a special moment for the disciples. It’s why it ends up recorded in all four gospels. There’s something about them getting to participate in it and seeing it and feeling it that makes this one stick for them in a way that made all four of those gospel writers say like this this moment has to be in here. We have to tell this story.

They got to do the impossible, the thing they actually couldn’t do.

There’s this moment in Ezekiel 47 that I take my students to regularly throughout the year where there’s an angel taking Ezekiel and he shows them this imaginary temple where water flows out of the temple but when it starts it’s this tiny little trickle and then as they go away from the temple it gets deeper and wider and deeper and wider doing a thing that water shouldn’t do in a desert where it should just be soaking into the ground and somehow it’s just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. is changing the desert as it goes.

Eventually gets to a place where it’s too deep, too wide to even swim across for Ezekiel.

And then the angel turns to Ezekiel and says, “Son of man, do you do you see this?” He wants them to pause and see the weird water, the water that’s doing the thing it’s not supposed to. That’s acting miraculous. It’s producing life in a way that it’s not supposed to.

In the same way, I think Jesus wants his disciples to carry the bread so he can turn around afterwards and say, “Son of man, do you do you see this? Do you see what happened? Did you participate in the moment? Did you get it? Because in seeing it, in participating in it, we get to see Jesus for who he is a little bit better. We get to see that life in him a little bit better. We get to go with him.

And so, I think him inviting us in to be boys and girls delivering bread. We get to be people who follow in the footsteps of the bread of life, carrying bread for him.

Jesus never needed us to complete the mission to announce the gospel to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth. But as a God who loved us, he always wanted to include us in that.

We weren’t the necessary part of it. We were the desired part of it because there’s something good that he’s giving to us in it.

The first time I hopped on a plane to cross an ocean, tell people about Jesus, I was still a student. I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t know what I was doing. I had maybe shared the gospel handful of times. And usually, I had my discipler or a friend there with me to really be the person leading the conversation or to be the person to catch me when I started to mess it up, right? I always kind of had my safety net.

I wasn’t ready for it. I was still scared of it. And I certainly wasn’t ready to go to another country and tell people about Jesus when it was technically illegal to tell them about Jesus in that country.

But while I was there, I met an East Asian student who picked the English name Hastings. I don’t know how he picked that name. That’s just what he called himself.

Uh, so I met him uh and would we would hang out on campus, get to know each other. Few meetings in, we walk through kind of this like mediocre garden in the middle of campus with this pool and a bridge. One that like sticks in my brain but was nothing special in the moment, right?

I don’t remember who started the conversation, but eventually the conversation got to Jesus. Soon as it got there, Hastings kind of took over. He told me that he’d search for a Bible because he wanted to read one, but Bibles in his country were hard to find. He couldn’t figure out how to get his hands on one.

He finally did get one, but it’s a King James version. English wasn’t his first language. And so, he tries reading it, and he can’t make sense of what’s happening in it. He got to the Tower of Babel and he gave up. He couldn’t understand it.

I got to share the gospel with Hastings using this like printed out version of a gospel tract in both English and in his language. It was something that a 5-year-old could have read to him. It took no special skill on my part.

He chose to follow Jesus that day.

I could have been tempted to walk out of that moment and believe like I had done something really special, that I had done a really good job or that I had been trained really, really well for that moment, that my five loaves and two fish were just right for what Hastings needed.

But a week later, I’m hanging out with Hastings again, and he comes back and he tells me like, “Hey, did you know after you left, I went to go tutor a kid that I’ve been meeting with for a year?” I go over to his house and his mom before I left invited me to come to house church with them.

Now, in Hastings country, getting an invite to house church is really hard. They’re illegal. They wait a long time before they invite someone in. And even as crew staff, like or as the crew person connecting him, like I would have had to meet with him for a long time before we could have entrusted him with an invite to a house church.

But Jesus had placed another Christian in his life, someone else carrying five loaves and two fish to be the person to invite him.

An hour after he said yes to following Jesus, he’s already getting the invitation.

My five loaves and two fish weren’t enough. That mom’s five loaves and two fish weren’t enough in the moment, right? But Jesus took them both and multiplied them in our hands, blessing them so that before I ever brought him to the conversation, there’s already work happening in Hastings’s life to call him into life.

And over the years, as I’ve gotten to do this, not just as a student, but as my job and get to be there for conversations like that with students, that’s kind of how it works.

That special conversations with Hastings where it felt like Jesus was doing something behind the scenes and then it just pulled together in the last minutes and my five loaves, my two fish turned into something magical, something beautiful there that I’ve come to realize that wasn’t just a missions overseas sort of thing. Okay?

It’s a Jesus thing. I’m gonna trust him and I’m going to carry the bread and he’s going to show up and meet me with the rest of it.

I haven’t gotten so much better at sharing the gospel that my bread and fish are enough now. They’re still not. I still get nervous. I still stress having the right words when I walk into those conversations.

But I’ve learned that my words aren’t magic in those spaces. Jesus doesn’t bring me to the conversation because he desperately needs me there. He brings me to the conversation because he wants me to participate in this moment when that bread starts multiplying.

He wants me to see it, to see him in it.

So I get to go as a gift to be a part of carrying the gospel for others.

In the same way Jesus wants you guys to participate in the mission, to be a part of carrying the bread so someone else can hear, someone else can know.

It’s a privilege to get to carry the bread to offer it to hungry and tired people.

So bring your two your five loaves, your two fish. He wants you to come half equipped, scared, maybe confused, unsure how you’re doing it, right? So that he gets to turn around in the end and say, “Hey, did you see it? Did you see the moment when it multiplied?”

Jesus wants to bring you on mission with him so that you get to share the joy in carrying the bread, seeing that miracle life, miracle life when your friend makes a decision to say yes. Say, “Yeah, I want that too. I want to follow Jesus.”

So, here’s my invitation for you this morning.

Don’t miss the invitation when Jesus asks you to deliver the bread for someone. Okay? Even if you don’t think you’re ready, it’s just not actually about what you do.

When you get the offer to go on mission, whether that’s to your friend who doesn’t know Jesus or your co-worker who might say yes to an invite to church or it’s to a close country on the other side of the world, let me invite you to say yes because Jesus has something good for you in it. in that invitation.

Say yes not because Jesus commanded you to go. He did do that. Uh but say yes because Jesus wants to let you carry the bread. He wants you to experience the moment when the author of life bears life through you. For those you love, for those you don’t know yet.

So, say yes to the mission you’ve been invited to. Pick up the bread.

Let me pray for us.

Uh Jesus, thanks for this morning. Thanks, so we get to open your word together to think about what it means to be people who will carry the bread for others. I pray for uh my brothers and sisters here. Would you fill us with your spirit and let us be a people who uh are willing to bear the gospel for the sake of others knowing you. Amen.