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EPISODE NOTES
In this episode of the Transforming the Church podcast, Pastor Derwin Gray emphasizes the core mission of the church: to inspire, equip, and encourage leaders to spread the gospel and embrace their roles as shepherds. He reflects on the transformative nature of the church, highlighting that it is not defined by buildings or denominations but rather by the community of believers united under the blood of Jesus. Presenting a two-part message titled “Trust the Process,” Derwin delves into John 4:4-42, where Jesus breaks cultural barriers by engaging with a Samaritan woman, encouraging leaders to become cross-cultural missionaries and true representatives of God’s love. Pastor Derwin challenges listeners to reevaluate their priorities and the mission of the church, arguing that the focus should not lie in political ideologies but rather in the profound need for evangelism and reaching the lost. He presents the concept that true joy comes from engaging in God’s mission—seeing lives transformed through faith in Christ. By illustrating the need for intentionality in sharing the gospel and affirming the dignity of others, Pastor Derwin inspires believers to cultivate relationships, trust the process of salvation, and remain open to the transformative power of God’s love, promoting a collective pursuit of fulfilling Christ’s mission in the world.
Here are a few of the practical things you’ll learn in this episode:
- Cross-Cultural Mission and Evangelism: Pastor Derwin emphasizes the importance of being cross-cultural missionaries, inspired by Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman in John 4. He challenges leaders to be lit up with God’s love and to equip their communities to reach out beyond cultural and racial barriers, just as Jesus did.
- The True Mission of the Church: The sermon highlights that the primary mission of the church is to seek and save the lost, as Jesus did. Pastor Derwin points out that many Christians have shifted focus to other issues, but the core mission should be evangelism and sharing the gospel, which brings true joy and transformation.
- The Role of Love in Evangelism: Pastor Derwin discusses how being “lit up with love” for Christ compels believers to share their faith. Evangelism is not just a duty but an overflow of a love relationship with Jesus. This love should drive Christians to invite others into the joy and hope found in Christ.
- Trusting the Process of Evangelism: The sermon underscores that bringing someone to faith is a process involving planting, watering, and harvesting. Each step is important, and ultimately, it is God who gives the increase. Christians are called to be faithful in their roles, trusting that God will work through their efforts.
QUOTES
- “The church is not bricks. It is not mortar, it is not networks, it is not denominations. It is a people of every nation, tribe and tongue that Jesus blood bought on the cross and the empty tomb.” – Dr Derwin L Gray
- “The saving love of God in Christ will find you even when you’re trying to hide.” – Dr
Derwin L Gray
PODCAST RESOURCES
• More from Derwin: www.derwinlgray.com and www.transformationchurch.tc/podcast
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• The Transforming the Church Podcast is part of the ChurchLeaders Podcast Network.
CONNECT WITH DERWIN
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/derwinlgray
• Instagram: @derwinlgray
RATE, LEAVE A REVIEW, & SHARE
If you’ve been impacted by this podcast, please leave a rating and a review, and share with someone in your life.
SHOW TRANSCRIPTION
Hey, guys, this is Pastor Derwin Gray of Transformation Church. And welcome to the
Transforming the Church podcast. Quickly. If the Transforming the Church podcast is
encouraging you, challenging you, inspiring you, compelling you to grow in the knowledge of King Jesus, compelling you to grow as a shepherd leader. What I want you to do is this.
I want you to hit that subscribe button I’m talking about. Hit it the way Troy Palomalu used to hit wide receivers. Bow, I need you to hit it and then I need you to share it. Share it with your friends. Share with other ministry leaders. Your participation, your partnership is essential. Thank you so much. So the goal of Transforming a Church podcast is simple. We want to inspire, we want to equip, and we want to encourage leaders to lead more gospel. Yep, I made up a whole new word. We want leaders to lead from the life, the death, the
resurrection of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit to the glory of God the Father. Because
when the church is transformed, the world will be transformed. And the church is not bricks. It is not mortar, it is not networks, it is not denominations. It is a people of every nation, tribe and tongue that Jesus blood bought on the cross and the empty tomb.
So let’s get it in this episode of Transformative Church podcast. It’s going to be a two part
episode. So part one is trust the process part one, and trust the process part two. And what we’re going to do is we’re going to explore the beautiful riches of John, chapter 4. This is where Jesus takes his Jewish disciples and into Samaria. In other words, Jesus takes his Jewish boys on the wrong side of the tracks. When Jesus was born, in his humanity, Israel and the Samaritan Jews and Samaritans had a 700 year racial religious feud. Where did it begin? It began in 722 BC the Northern Ten Tribes of Israel were in idolatry. Instead of reaching the pagans, the pagans reached and transformed them.
God passed judgment and the mighty Assyrians captured them, assimilated them. And out of that came a people called the Samaritans. Okay? And in 1 BC the Samaritans desecrated the Jewish temple in Jerusalem with dead man’s bones. And so you got a big religious beef and you have an ethnic racial beef, because the Jews viewed Samaritans not as half Jew, but as a pure gentile, idolatrous people.
And so there’s a big problem. I’m often asked, if you were forced, what passage of scripture would you preach that gives the totality of the gospel I would preach from Luke 10:25-37, which is the story of quote unquote, the Good Samaritan and what love looks like. And I would preach John 4:4-42, where Jesus goes to Samaria. So that’s the backdrop of trusting the process. My objective in these episodes is this.
How do we as leaders, one, be so lit up with God’s love that we are cross-cultural missionaries for the glory of God? Two, how do we equip the people we lead to do likewise?
Because check this out, church, we have a problem. And it’s not what you think. American
Christians, we have a problem, but it’s not what you think.
Often we think the problem is politics. Yes, the politics have taken the church captive, both on the progressive left and the fundamentalist right. Yeah, it has a problem. And political idolatry is growing cancerous fruit within the body of Christ that so often now people will disagree with their pastor if their pastor disagrees with their favorite political propagandist, I mean pundit, which makes it very, very challenging. And I’m simply proposing, instead of letting politics filter the Bible, the Bible should filter politics for us.
I’m grateful to be an American. I’m grateful for the Constitution. I think it’s amazing. But the Constitution will be null and void if there’s not people of integrity who actually lead from this document. But more importantly, we as the church have an ancient eternal document. The grass will fade away, but the word of God will never fade away. And so this podcast is about us being more Christianly, more gospel, more Bible centric, more Holy Spirit led. All right, so, so our primary problem is this. We’re on a mission, but it’s not necessarily with Jesus. We’re on a mission for power, we’re on a mission for survival.
We’re on a mission for money. We’re on all types of missions. But simply put, you and I have been created by God for God, so that God’s glory can be expressed through us. And if you think that that’s not joyful, you don’t understand what God has done for us in Christ. In the ancient recesses of eternity, before there was time, God existed in and of himself, lacking nothing, living in this incredible reality of the Father, Son and Holy spirit. That’s why 1 John 4:8 says that God is love. Love is not something that God does eternally. The Father, the Son has been loving each other in this inter penetrational reality that the ancient church fathers called a dance. Salvation is simply an invitation to the ultimate party.
And the invitation comes only by grace. And when we are invited into this dance, into participating, as Peter says in 2 Peter 1:4, in the very nature of God being reborn, we are not only downloaded with everything we need for life and godliness, but but we’re given a new mission that all of life becomes worship. Our work, our play, everything becomes an opportunity to bring God glory, to join him on mission. That’s where joy is. And that’s where there’s a lot of followers of Christ who don’t have joy. They come to God as a consumer versus a participant. They come to God as a customer instead of a child. A consumer says, God, I need this for my gold. A customer says, I want to buy this and this for my gold. A participant says, I’m united to Christ.
A child says, father, not my will, but thy will be done. Luke 19:10 is our mission statement because it’s Jesus mission statement. And it says this. For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save the lost. Let’s marinate for a minute the term Son of Man. Luke, a Gentile, is quoting from Daniel, chapter nine, where there’s a figure called the Ancient of Days. And one who is like the Ancient of Days, the Son of Man. And the Son of Man has divine authority. He has the characteristics of Yahweh. Why?
Because that is Jesus. And so the Jewish Messiah would be called the Son of Man. And Jesus is like, whoop, here I am. What did the Son of Man come to do? For the Son of Man has come to make sure all of our dreams come true.
Nope, don’t say, doesn’t say that. And by the way, on a side note, the dreams that God has for us are so much better than our dreams. So much better. If somebody would have told me at 26 years old, when I bowed my knee to Jesus and drank from the well of his living water, that one day I would be able to serve a community like Transformation Church and a greater body of Christ. If somebody told me that one day I would preach the gospel in the slums of Calcutta, India, that I would preach the gospel in Norway and Spain and Germany and other parts of the world, man, my dreams were too small for what God wanted to do.
I bet your dreams are too small as well. Your dreams may not look like what God has for me, but what God has for you is so much better than what you have for you. You for the Son of Man. Here’s his mission has come to seek in that good news that we have A seeking God. A God who seeks for us and searches for us in our darkest places. And to do what? To save the lost. The Greek word there is sozo, and it means to rescue, to heal. The word lost there means ruin or destruction. So I want you to think about this.
Imagine someone taking a shovel. You know, a shovel, you dig in the ground, you throw up dirt, and putting it on the freeway and trying to drive it like a car. You would first of all say, hey, do you need any help? Because something’s wrong. That’s a shovel. That’s not what it’s designed for. It’s not a car. Well, to be lost is. Is like we are designed for something else. Being used for purposes for which we were not created for sin is not the purpose for which we were created for.
We were created to be found in the righteousness of Christ. We were created for the glory and the goodness of God, to be a conduit, a channel in which the river of life flows through to flood the earth with. With the glory of God. That’s what we, as leaders experience, embody, and shape. I suspect that the mission of the American church is reflected more in Mark 4:18-19.
Jesus the Rabbi and his humanity, that he is the God incarnate that he is, is dropping some profound Jewish wisdom by way of illustration. And. And he says this. Others are like seeds sewn amongst thorns. So he’s talking about seeds being cast. The first seed is grabbed by ravens fastly. The second seed grows really fast, but it has no anchoring. So the sun burns it up. And here’s the third seed. And this is where I think the American church is. Others are like seeds sown among thorns. These are the ones who hear the Word. But the worries of this age, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things enter in and choke the Word. And it becomes unfruitful. That’s where I think we are. And the only thing that can keep us from choking, the only thing that can keep us from buying the lies of. Of wealth. The only thing that can keep us from the worries of this age is to keep our eyes on Jesus, to behold him, his grace, his mercy, his kindness, his goodness. For two decades, people have asked me, pastor, what do you do to grow? Of course I read the Bible, of course I pray.
