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Iowa City Church Podcast


Welcome to the Iowa City Church sermon and teaching page.  We know that life can be confusing, and sometime just plain hard.  We believe the best way to live life comes through following Jesus.  These lessons and sermons are designed to be a resource to help you on that journey.  We hope you find them helpful!

Oct 9, 2023

If a tree had a mission, what would it be? Take carbon dioxide and turn it into oxygen? Provide relaxing shade in the scorching hot days of summer? Paint their leaves stunning colors in the fall for everyone to enjoy? Provide material for that beautiful coffee table in your living room? These are all wonderful benefits of a tree, however you couldn't, with confidence say that any of those things is a tree's primary mission. So what is a tree's mission? One word: multiplication.

Every tree has this singular mission of reproducing, not just one tree, but literally hundreds of other trees. Even before a tree is completely mature and full grown it is sending out acorns, helicopter seeds, walnuts and apples to spread seeds with the hope that some of them find a place to germinate and begin to put roots down into the ground. It's not just trees that posses this mission, every single living organism God created was wired with the mission of multiplication.

Is it possible that the mission of the Christian is the same? No, this isn't a call for bigger families and more mini-vans! (Though there is obviously nothing wrong with that.) It's really a challenge for each Christian to consider what the true mission of a Jesus follower is really all about.  

For the typical Christian, the main mission they focus on is maturity. Again, nothing wrong with maturity! It's good to grow in knowledge of Scripture, develop spiritual disciplines and find ministries in which one can serve. However that's not the mission. Jesus gave his people a co-mission, to go and make disciples; to multiply. His disciples took this mission seriously and you and I are eternally grateful that they did! However, it wasn't just their mission...it's ours as well.

As the apostle Paul wraps up his letter to the church in Colossae he invites them to participate with him in the mission of multiplication. Here's the powerful truth we are going to unpack on Sunday: As you live on mission, the more you will mature. For a lot of Christians, they have found that their faith has plateaued or even begun to stagnate. Could it be that what is missing isn't another Bible study but a commitment to the mission of multiplication?

To learn more and discover the apostle Paul's strategy for how to live a life on mission, make sure and listen to the conclusion of the sermon series, Rooted.