Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the CCDA podcast. In this episode, you will hear from Pastor Artie Lindsay at the 2025 CCDA conference. Pastor Artie reflects on the theme verse Zechariah 8, 12. He unpacks the six sections of this passage, explores some of what shalom means for us today, and challenges us to continue sowing peace no matter the situation.
Speaker: We hope that you are encouraged and inspired by Pastor Artie's word as you pursue shalom with and in your community. Shalom.
Speaker: Good evening. My name is Artie Lindsay, and I have the privilege of pastoring at Tabernacle Community Church here in Grand Rapids, a multi-ethnic ministry making new and better Christ followers who influence the culture, impact the city and the world for the glory of God.
Speaker: Welcome to Grand mac grand Rapids. my home, and your mission field for this week. It is with deep joy and holy expectation that I welcome you to our city.
Speaker: I'm grateful to the planning team for the opportunity to be here tonight to share God's word.
Speaker: Beloved, we are not gathered here by accident. We gather tonight not just as developers of communities, but as disciples of Christ.
Speaker: Co-laborers in the gospel who believe that justice is not just a word, it's a way.
Speaker: We believe that peace is not just a wish, it's a work.
Speaker: We're not here just to network or to attend workshops, but we're here to encounter God and for God to reorient our lives and our minds so that we are aligned with his vision for shalom.
Speaker: Our theme this week is found in Zechariah 8, verse portion. yay portion and the word of the Lord reads, for there shall be a sowing of peace.
Speaker: The vine shall yield its fruit. The ground shall give its produce. And the skies shall give their dew.
Speaker: This is more than just a verse in the scripture. It's a divine promise. spoken to a people who were rebuilding after exile.
Speaker: Not only was it a divine promise spoken to the people of the past, it is a divine promise spoken to all of us tonight.
Speaker: Those of us who find ourselves struggling, fractured, and fatigued. You see, shalom is not just about ceasefire.
Speaker: It's wholeness. It's justice rolling like a river. It's relational between us and God. It's societal between neighbor and other. It's economic ground giving its produce. It's environmental the skies giving their due.
Speaker: It's generational children playing in the streets again. it's when nothing's missing and nothing's broken.
Speaker: Because everything is in right relationship with God, with neighbor, and with the land.
Speaker: Can I tell you what Shalom looks like?
Speaker: It's all right to talk back.
Speaker: Can I tell you what Shalom looks like? It looks like red line communities being reimagined. It looks like marriages and families thriving, schools flourishing, churches collaborating.
Speaker: It looks like immigrants being embraced instead of erased. It looks like a system that sees the stranger not as a threat, but as a neighbor, as an image bearer, as a gift to the land.
Speaker: Shalom looks like the poor being treated as partners, not projects. It looks like policies that restore dignity, not just handouts, but pathways to prosperity.
Speaker: It looks like wages that bless, not barely survive. Shalom looks like the undocumented child.
Speaker: not being afraid to walk to school, like the refugee not wondering if their welcome has an expiration date.
Speaker: It looks like those who are experiencing public housing and it doesn't feel like a punishment and gentrification doesn't come with an eviction.
Speaker: Brothers and sisters, Shalom looks like bus routes, that go through the neighborhood and go to the places where the jobs are.
Speaker: It looks like affordable and ethical financial opportunities for the unbanked and the underbanked in the hood.
Speaker: Shalom looks like when the last is no longer last. And the first finally learned how to share.
Speaker: It's when the righteous are willing to disadvantage themselves for the advantage of another. That's what Shalom looks like.
Speaker: And so tonight in the time that I have to share with you, I want to walk on a journey. I want to walk through these six sacred tensions that define the sowing of Shalom.
Speaker: what we'll discover and then embrace. you've You've heard many of these things already tonight. This six sacred tensions that define the sowing of shalom.
Speaker: First, we'll explore hope and disappointment.
Speaker: You see, shalom
Speaker: is sown they in the soil of suffering.
Speaker: Shalom is sown in the soil of suffering. The promise of Zechariah comes to a weary people. They were rebuilding after devastation.
Speaker: They found themselves experiencing where their dreams had dried up. Their pockets had become empty.
Speaker: They're experiencing economic collapse. Inflation was running wild. Wages just weren't able to extend throughout the rest of the month.
Speaker: Sound familiar?
Speaker: Their trust was fragile.
Speaker: And in the midst of this context, God says there shall be a sowing of peace. Don't miss this.
Speaker: God sows peace. Even in places where we've only known pain.
Speaker: That God will sow peace. The very places. Because Shalom is sown in the soil of suffering.
Speaker: I'm so glad that this prophetic word is not a word that that that is built upon escapism. It's a prophetic word that is built upon expectation.
Speaker: You see, the prophet is saying to the people that God ain't done. And you need to hear that today. That God's not done.
Speaker: Yes, the ground is dry, but the dew is coming.
Speaker: You were cursed among the nations, but but God is preparing you to be a blessing. Next, we'll encounter joy and lament.
Speaker: Zacharias speaks of children playing in the streets, an elder sitting in safety. But this vision that Zachariah gets is born out of tears.
Speaker: Lament.
Speaker: Teals the soil. For joy.
Speaker: Too many believers in Christ. Want to skip the grief. And hurry up and get to the celebration.
Speaker: but But God wants us to linger. God wants us to slow down long enough to experience the grief, to experience the pain, to to know the struggle and the reality of people's lived experience.
Speaker: Before we get to the celebration, why does God do that? Because he wants to walk with you in the midst of the pain. He wants to walk with you through the struggle. So so we've got to stop rushing through the sorrow.
Speaker: God invites us to linger, to weep, and then to rise with a song of resilient joy. You see, i come from a people.
Speaker: I come from a people who experienced weariness. I come from a people who who who had sorrow and grief in their soul and at the same time had a resilient joy. And as the people of God, we need to be people who can encounter both joy and lament.
Speaker: Then there is cultivating and weeping. says the ground will give its produce, is what the text says. is But the ground will not give produce if you don't work it, if you don't cultivate it See, just as too many of us get into this work,
Speaker: And we think because we showed up that justice has now entered the room.
Speaker: Do i have a witness in the house that justice is not microwaved?
Speaker: that that That justice has to be cultivated. It requires planning and organizing and planting and staying faithful even when it looks like nothing's happening.
Speaker: God says you'll sow in tears, but you'll reap in joy. So brothers and sisters, let me encourage you to stay in the field, to keep pulling the weeds,
Speaker: to keep cultivating justice in the space that God has called you into, to keep showing up even when it doesn't make sense, to keep working the ground even when it feels like there isn't a harvest.
Speaker: Don't give up.
Speaker: Because God is faithful. And not only is God faithful, but the ground is faithful when you've been working it. It's designed to produce.
Speaker: It's designed
Speaker: to execute.
Speaker: The fourth movement is peace and polarization.
Speaker: We live in divided times, would you not agree?
Speaker: But the peace of Christ is not passive. Okay, let me say that again. The peace of Christ is not passive.
Speaker: It's prophetic. It speaks truth to power and grace to the wounded. It refuses to play the partisan games.
Speaker: People of God, it refuses to play the partisan games. It breaks barriers.
Speaker: This peace, this peace, this this movement of peace and polarization. The church has got to stop echoing the noise of the culture.
Speaker: We don't get our direction from D.C. and we don't get our direction from any place else except from God's word and from God's spirit.
Speaker: got stop echoing the voice of the culture, the noise of the culture. Instead, can we be a people of the third way? Where we begin to embody peace in such a way that we bridge the gaps between where the world is trying to tear everybody apart.
Speaker: We can offer a third way. That's the way of the kingdom. This is in this movement of peace and polarization. Fifth is working and waiting.
Speaker: Working and waiting.
Speaker: The text says that the skies will give their due.
Speaker: Now, due doesn't fall loudly.
Speaker: doesn't, doesn't.
Speaker: It gathers slowly.
Speaker: Some of you have been laboring in silence. You've been planting seeds. You've been building coalitions. You've been praying for breakthrough.
Speaker: Can I tell you tonight that God sees you?
Speaker: That God loves you? He sees what you've been doing? And right now, God is sending dew.
Speaker: But you're on the brink of giving up. And the harvest is just around the corner. The kingdom comes quietly.
Speaker: But here's what I know to be true. Although it comes quietly, it always comes.
Speaker: The final movement.
Speaker: As we consider this concept of sowing and reaping.
Speaker: As we look at the text, I can't help but to recognize the semicolon. The text says that there shall be a sowing of peace.
Speaker: Semicolon. The vine shall yield. That semicolon holds tension, people of God. It holds tension between sowing and singing.
Speaker: it with me. Sowing and singing. It's between the now and the not yet. It's the reality of what our current experience is and what the possibilities to come.
Speaker: It's this tension. It's this tension. And many of us are living in the time of the semicolon. where we're We're living in this place between injustice and jubilee.
Speaker: where We're living in this place, recognizing that there is pain and sorrow and struggle and difficulty and fracture and also the shalom of God to be present in our experience.
Speaker: Can I tell you in the semicolon that God is still working? that God is still working and too many of us are are are on the precipice of giving up because instead of living in the semicolon, we're living with a period.
Speaker: As if God has finished writing the story. But let me tell you, God is still writing the story. The end of the story is not done. Your life is not done. Your ministry is not done. The work that God is calling you to is not done. You're simply living in a time of the semicolon.
Speaker: Because shalom is unfolding. it is unfolding.
Speaker: See, here's what i what I've learned about God. Sometimes, sometimes I have to catch up with what God is doing.
Speaker: so Sometimes god God is unfolding shalom in my world, in my space, and I don't always recognize it.
Speaker: How many times have we put a period on God?
Speaker: And God is simply saying it's on Paul's beloved. So CCDA family, we cannot talk about shalom.
Speaker: without talking about Jesus.
Speaker: Because the dew came down, not just on the crops, but in the form of Christ himself, do i have a witness in the house.
Speaker: Ephesians 2.14 says, he is our peace. The gospel reveals him as the seed and the sower. Beloved, our elder brother entered our ruins absorbed our curse, and when they buried him in the grave like he was a seed in the ground, he got up on the third day with all power in his hands, in resurrection power as the first fruit of all of creation.
Speaker: Because he lives. Because he's alive. The call for you and I tonight is a call that is simple, but it's a call that is costly.
Speaker: You've got to sow peace, brothers and sisters. You've got to keep sowing peace, not performative peace, not passive peace, but peace that disrupts, peace that restores, peace that brings about resurrection power in our lives. Do have a witness in the house? Somebody ought to praise God right now because he's called us to sow peace and to keep sowing peace. But some of us are tired.
Speaker: Some of us have been sowing in hard soil. Some of us have been planting in policy and praying in protest. And you haven't seen any fruit yet.
Speaker: But don't stop. Don't give up. Don't quit because God is faithful. And when you're faithful to the call that God has given you, I'm here to tell you that the dew is on its way.
Speaker: That the dew is on its way. But don't forget that you've got Jesus and that's more than enough. to strengthen you, to give you what you need, to keep fighting the good fight, to keep sowing in peace. When everybody else is sowing in disharmony, everybody else is sowing in disruption, you can sow in peace because you know the Prince of Peace, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords.
Speaker: I just want to encourage you tonight not to give up. Don't lose heart. Don't stop. Keep going.
Speaker: Don't quit. Know that God is faithful, that God will give you the strength that you need. when the When the work gets too heavy to carry, Jesus says, I'll come alongside and I'll help carry the burden.
Speaker: Sometimes we're trying to carry stuff that God will carry himself. Give it over to him. Somebody ought to praise him.
Speaker: Somebody ought to thank him. Hasn't God been good to you? Hasn't he made a way out of no way? Hasn't he provided for you?
Speaker: Hasn't he produced more than you could ever imagine or think? Isn't he worthy to be praised? So this week, this week, this week, this week, as you walk these streets, as you sit in these sessions, as you stand in your calling, know this, that you are a sower of peace. You are a king's kid. You are beloved by God. You were sent here with an assignment and a purpose.
Speaker: This is no accident tonight. Us gathering in this space is no accident. This is God's divine plan. Stand in your calling.
Speaker: Be bold in who God has made you to be. Be a sower of peace when rivalry is all around you. Be a peacemaker.
Speaker: Help them to see what the kingdom looks like. Show them what the king looks like. That's what it means to glorify God. It's to give people a correct view of who God is. You're on assignment. You've got an assignment. Stand in that assignment.
Speaker: People of God, stand up. People of God, give God some praise right now.
Speaker: Give them some praise right now. There's breakthrough that needs to happen right now in this place. You need to be reaffirmed in who God has called you to be.
Speaker: A people of peace.
Speaker: Shalom.
Speaker: Say it with me. When you get weary and you want to give up, here's God's promise.
Speaker: The seed will grow well. The vine will yield its fruit. The ground will give its produce.
Speaker: And the skies will give their dew. Now let's try it again. The seed will grow well. Come on with some declaration.
Speaker: The vine will yield its fruit.
Speaker: The ground will give its produce. And the skies will give their due.
Speaker: Receive the promise of God tonight.
Speaker: O God of justice and joy, you who sow seeds of righteousness and rain down dew from heaven, plant in us a vision of shalom till the hard soil of our cynicism comes.
Speaker: Water our weary hearts with hope and raise up from this conference a harvest of healers and prophets and entrepreneurs and teachers and organizers and artists and pastors and God above all, peacemakers, who together declare that the kingdom of God is at hand And the shalom of God is on the move.
Speaker: Thank you for listening to the CCDA podcast, and thank you to Pastor Artie Lindsay for this word and wisdom. See the show notes of this episode for more information about Pastor Artie and where you can get a replay of this year's conference plenaries.
Speaker: Thanks again for listening to this episode. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode is produced by me, Sarah Callan, in association with k Christina Boer.
Speaker: We will be back soon with another episode featuring CCD practitioners who are committed to seeing people and communities experience God's Shalom. We'll see then.
