On this last Sunday of November, Pastors Josh White and Brent Befus did something new: team preaching together. Their message served as the capstone to GBC’s series on church values — and it asked one simple but convicting question: What’s the end game?
Just about everything in life has a purpose. Couples date with the “end game” of knowing if they can love each other for a lifetime. Parents raise kids not to keep them as permanent dependents, but to launch them into their God-given calling. People go to college so they can enter a field and use their gifts. So why do we do church? What are we ultimately working toward?
The Natural End Game: Church Multiplication
If GBC truly commits to living out its values, there is a natural outflow that should follow: reproduction. Healthy churches plant churches. It’s not a matter of if but when — and the series this fall has been preparing the soil for that conversation.
Pastors Josh and Brent gave two practical reasons why this matters right now, right here in Phoenix:
1. We’re in the fastest-growing county in the nation. From 2010 to 2020, Maricopa County added 750,000 people. From July 2020 to July 2021 alone, over 60,000 people moved here. Churches are not being planted and multiplied at anything close to that rate. The harvest field is enormous.
2. Our kids are at stake. Here’s a sobering reality: most kids who grow up in church graduate, leave, and don’t come back. If we don’t actively equip the next generation to own their faith and their calling, we’re not passing the torch — we’re watching it burn out.
The alternative isn’t pretty. Josh outlined three paths churches without a clear “end game” tend to go down:
- Kids leave and don’t return.
- Leadership eventually passes to the next generation, but nothing changes — and the church slowly dies.
- Or, the church intentionally creates opportunities for young people to grow, serve, and multiply — which is what God actually calls local churches to do.
Reviewing Our Values — and the Next Step for Each
Bible-Centered
GBC has always been committed to the authority of Scripture. But Josh challenged the congregation to go further: not just knowing about the Bible, but letting it change us from the inside out.
“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
— Hebrews 4:12
The Bible is not meant to affirm our existing opinions. It is meant to expose our lies, shape our thinking, and transform our hearts. A Bible-centered church doesn’t just stand on the truth — it submits to it.
Making Disciples
A healthy disciple is one who is always growing to become more like Christ — and who actively helps others do the same. This is the posture of multiplication. The challenge? To move from occasional personal evangelism to intentional, relational disciple-making — including in the simple structures like the Triads the church has been encouraging.
Faithful Service
Serving is not optional, but it is also not enough on its own. Ephesians 4:11–16 teaches that church leaders are called to equip the saints for ministry, so that “each part working properly” causes the body to grow. GBC wants to get better at all three: encouraging people to serve, equipping them to do it well, and empowering them to go do it.
Two specific opportunities on the horizon: partnering more deeply with the neighborhood elementary school and with the Crisis Pregnancy Center’s Bridges program — both avenues for tangibly living out faith in the community.
Healthy Relationships
Josh closed with a personal and convicting challenge about the role of personal spiritual vitality. If we are not consistently going to “the well of living water” — a vibrant, daily walk with God — we will engage with others in the body of Christ as “dumping buckets of hot sand.” Healthy relationships with each other flow from a healthy relationship with our Heavenly Father.
“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”
— 1 Peter 2:24–25
So What?
The end game is not a building program. It’s not a attendance goal. It’s not even a specific timeline. It’s this: a church family that is so committed to being Bible-centered, making disciples, serving faithfully, and loving well — that the natural result is more churches, more disciples, more kingdom fruit.
This side of eternity, none of us can control the results. But we can control our commitment to the values God has given us. The question for each of us is simple: Will we join this journey?
Scripture References
- Hebrews 4:12–13 — The living and active Word of God
- Romans 12:1–2 — A living sacrifice: our posture of discipleship
- Ephesians 4:11–16 — Equipping the saints for ministry and growth
- 1 Peter 2:21–25 — Called to follow Christ’s example in humility