Unleash Compassion
SUMMARY
Jeremy Smith, Broadway Church of Christ's executive minister, unpacks the church's mission to "make God's restoring love visible" by grounding it in a Biblical theology of new creation. Drawing from 1 Corinthians 15 and Acts 2, he argues that God is not discarding the world but restoring it through Jesus Christ, and that the church is called to participate in that restoration. Because of this, unleashing compassion is not a secondary Christian activity — it is the very embodiment of God's kingdom breaking into the present world.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Jeremy Smith, executive minister at Broadway Church of Christ, opens by explaining the church's mission statement — not as a PR slogan, but as a living theological framework guiding every decision the church makes. At the heart of that framework is the conviction that God is restoring the world through Jesus Christ and has invited His people to participate. This stands in contrast to the popular notion that God's ultimate plan is to discard the physical world and whisk believers away as disembodied spirits — a view Jeremy identifies as more Gnostic than Biblical.
To ground this theologically, Jeremy turns to 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul defends the bodily resurrection of Jesus and concludes not with a passive "hang in there" encouragement, but with a striking charge: "Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain." This, Jeremy argues, reveals what the early church truly believed — that the work done in the body, in the flesh, in the world, somehow echoes into the new creation God is building. Christian compassion, then, looks both backward to the example of Jesus and forward to the coming kingdom, where there will be no hunger, no hurting, and no marginalization.
This is why Broadway has placed "unleash compassion" at the center of its mission. Quoting theologian N.T. Wright and drawing from Peter's use of Joel's prophecy at Pentecost, Jeremy calls the church to dream again, see visions again, and boldly embody the kingdom of God here and now in Lubbock, Texas. Whether serving at Carpenter's Kitchen, stocking the clothing closet, or helping someone escape homelessness through Open Door, that labor is not in vain — because God is already at work restoring the world, and the church gets to participate.
Long Summary
Jeremy Smith, executive minister at Broadway Church of Christ, steps in as a guest preacher and uses the opportunity to pull back the curtain on the theological convictions driving the church's mission and vision. He begins by addressing a common skepticism about mission statements — that they tend to function as little more than PR slogans plastered on business cards and walls. Jeremy insists Broadway intends something far more substantive: a foundational document that actually shapes the decisions made in elders' meetings, ministry team gatherings, budget conversations, and beyond. Since most members won't be in those rooms, it matters deeply that the congregation understands the theological framework underneath it all.
At the most foundational level, Broadway operates from the conviction that God is restoring the world through Jesus Christ and has invited His people to participate with Him. Jeremy acknowledges this may sound obvious, but argues it is far from assumed in modern and postmodern church culture. Many churches — and much of popular Christian thinking — operate from a framework that is essentially Gnostic: that the physical world is evil, that God's plan is to extract believers from it, and that the end goal is a disembodied existence in heaven. Jeremy pushes back firmly, tracing the original human calling all the way back to Genesis 2, where God placed image-bearers in the garden with real work to do — tending, naming, multiplying, and embodying God's character into creation. Sin complicated that calling, but it did not cancel it.
To build his Biblical case, Jeremy anchors the congregation in 1 Corinthians 15, calling it one of the most incredible passages of Scripture. Paul opens the chapter by reminding the Corinthians of the Gospel he preached — that Christ died for sins, was buried, and was raised on the third day, appearing to Cephas, then to the twelve, then to more than five hundred witnesses. Paul then systematically defends the bodily resurrection against Gnostic influence in Corinth, arguing that Christ's resurrection is the beginning of the resurrection of all God's people, and that Christ will ultimately defeat every enemy, including death itself. The vision Paul paints is not of souls floating away to a spiritual realm, but of a new creation — heaven and earth coming together, as John describes in Revelation, with the kingdom of God coming down to dwell with humanity.
What strikes Jeremy most, however, is how Paul ends this towering chapter. After declaring "O death, where is your victory?" Paul closes not with a triumphant "hang in there, it's all taken care of," but with this: "Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain" (1 Cor. 15:58). Jeremy finds this stunning. Why end a chapter about resurrection and new creation with a reminder that present labor matters? Because the early church genuinely believed that the work done now — in the body, in the flesh, in the world — would somehow be caught up into what God is doing at the end of all things. This world is not a moral testing ground to be discarded. The work is not in vain.
Jeremy reinforces this with a quote from theologian N.T. Wright, who writes that the mission of the church is to be "the Spirit-filled agency through which genuine, advanced signs of new creation are brought to birth" — actualized again and again in acts of justice and mercy, in sacramental life, in the joining of man and woman, and in the creation of art, music, and beauty. Wright also warns that one of the enemy's chief strategies is to convince parts of the church that all of these things are secondary concerns, since God is "only interested in getting souls into heaven." Jeremy names this as a real and present danger for the modern church.
From there, Jeremy turns to Acts 2 and Peter's sermon at Pentecost, noting that when the Spirit was poured out so powerfully that onlookers thought the disciples were drunk, Peter chose a passage from Joel to explain it — a passage full of Armageddon-like imagery: blood, fire, smoke, the sun turning dark, the moon to blood. Jeremy finds it remarkable that Peter reached for an end-times prophecy to describe the birth of the church. The early Christians understood themselves to be the first fruits of what God was ultimately going to do in all of creation. They were not just a community gathering for personal salvation — they were the embodiment of the coming kingdom, breaking into the present.
This is the theological soil from which Broadway's commitment to "unleash compassion" grows. Jeremy challenges the congregation to ask hard questions: If the church closed its doors tomorrow, would anyone outside these walls notice? Has the Christian life become essentially selfish — focused entirely on personal salvation? He grounds compassion not as a nice add-on for spiritually mature believers, but as the very mode by which the church participates in God's restorative work. We feed the hungry because Jesus fed the hungry, and because in the new creation there will be no hunger. We serve the marginalized because Jesus served the marginalized, and because in the new creation there will be no marginalization. And in the parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus himself makes clear that it is precisely these acts of compassion — caring for the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the imprisoned — that Mark those who truly know Him. Serving at Carpenter's Kitchen, stocking the clothing closet, helping someone find housing through Open Door — none of it is in vain. Somehow, in some way, it will echo into the new creation God is building. The church has been invited to participate, and Broadway intends to show up.
TRANSCRIPT
Karl is in Nashville. He's visiting his daughter there. And so he sends his greetings to you and asks me to fill in. And if you're visiting with us, I just want to say welcome. Glad you're here.
My name's Jeremy Smith. I'm the executive minister here. And if you're visiting, you came on a good Sunday, not just because I'm preaching, but also because one of the things that we're doing is giving you a chance to kind of look under the hood of what makes Broadway Church of Christ such an amazing church, as Troy alluded to in his sermon. And actually, Troy, in your communion talk, you stole a lot of my thunder. And so you're going to hear a lot of repetitiveness, but hopefully that's the Holy Spirit moving.
One of the things that we've been doing over the past couple of years, over really the past year, is thinking more deeply about who we want to be as a church. And in June, we kind of concluded that process and gave you just a brief introduction to who we want to be as a church. And now we're taking some time to really unpack that. And I think this is really important because if you're like me, then you're not a big fan of mission statements. I am not a huge fan of mission statements because what I have found, what I've discovered, is that in most organizations, the way mission statements functions is essentially a PR gimmick.
It's just this slogan or this catchphrase that we come up with, and we put it on business cards and letterheads and maybe plaster on the wall somewhere. But that's about as far as it goes, is it just becomes something that we advertise. But whenever mission statements are used correctly, they are one of the most powerful documents you have as an organization. And we intend to use our mission statement correctly. And really, a mission statement is not so much something that is plastered and used as a PR gimmick outside, but actually becomes a foundational document that guides the decisions that we make.
And so it's really important that we spend some time talking about this as a church, because the reality is, is that as members, you're not going to be a part of every conversation that we have. You're not going to be in every elders meetings. You're not going to be in every ministry team meetings. You may not be on the missions committee meetings. You're not going to be in budget and financial meetings.
And so it's important for you to understand the basic theological framework that we have for the decisions that we make. And that's why we're spending time talking about our mission and vision. And underneath all of this is a basic assumption about what it means to be church, who we are supposed to be as a body of Christ gathered in Lubbock, Texas in 2026. And at the most foundational level of what it means to be a church is this statement that we've come up with, which is we believe God is restoring the world through Jesus Christ and has invited us to participate with Him. Now, that may seem like an obvious thing, but I actually think in our modern culture this is not as obvious.
For every churches, the idea of God is restoring the world is not actually pretty common. We're going to talk about this in just a minute among churches in the modern and postmodern world. In fact, actually, I've heard argued more often than the opposite that what God is actually doing is calling us out of the world to escape the world because it's evil and bad. And eventually what God's going to do at the end of all things is just throw the world in the trash can and we're going to move on and be this kind of disembodied spirit floating around one day. But that is not what we believe and that is not what.
In a minute, I'm going to help show what I think that the early church believed. They actually believed that God was doing something significant in the world, that he was restoring it, and that he has invited us to participate in that restoration work. And we believe that this is foundational to what it means. In Genesis 2, whenever God created male and female in the image and likeness of God, and then when he placed them in the garden, he gave them tasks to do, God work to do. They were to be fruitful and multiply, to tend to the garden, to name the animals, that they had a job.
And that job was to embody the characteristics of Christ back into the world. And just because sin happened doesn't mean that original purpose is thrown away. It's changed a little bit. It's become maybe a little bit more convoluted. But the reality is that we believe we are still called to participate with God in His work.
And so when we think about the type of church that we want to become, that type of church is to become a church that makes God's restoring love visible. That's who we want to be as a church. And this concept is contextualized in 2026 in Lubbock, Texas. We want to make God's restoring Love visible in our church community, in our city and in the globe all around. We want to be that type of church.
And so this isn't just thinking about this abstract idea of what it means to be church. No. We are rooting it firmly in what is God calling us to do and to be here today in Lubbock, Texas, and in 2026. And you might ask, if you're not already asleep from my sermon, you might ask, how. How are you going to go about doing that?
And the way that we've learned to talk about this is by using the language of we want to be a church that removes barriers and builds bridges. And so functioning in the background of the decisions we make are decisions about removing barriers and building bridges. And you've already experienced some of this. The reason that we moved Carpenter kitchen down to St. Benedict's is to build a bridge between two organizations that are serving those who don't have access to food. We're building a bridge so that our impact can expand.
One of the reasons we changed the way our Bible classes function is to remove barriers. Because we heard that people were saying, it's kind of hard to know where I'm supposed to go if I'm visiting. And so this philosophy is functioning in the background of the decisions that we make and the way we determine what type of work we're going to do, what type of places we're going to remove barriers and build bridges is in the slogan that Troy said just a few minutes ago. We're going to look for ways to pursue God, to build community, to unleash compassion, and to share Jesus. That's who we're going to be as a church.
That's the process that we're working on every day. Whenever we meet together as a ministry team, as an eldership, as a leadership of this church, those are the questions that we're asking. And so over the past couple of weeks, one of the things that we've been doing is unpacking that. Karl talked about pursuing God and building community. And today I'm going to be talking about the concept of unleashing compassion.
And I think that this is a phenomenal thing that we have in our mission statement. I don't see many churches that have the phrase compassion or the word compassion in their mission statement. They have concepts of pursue God or be connected to God or something like that. They even have the concept of building relationships. That's pretty fundamental to a church, healthy relationships.
But I find that in most churches, the word compassion is not in it. And Actually, what you see is the opposite. Some churches, they may not say this, but they may actually view the world not as a place to be compassionate, but as a place to be hostile. That the world is this evil place seeking to get us. And so we need to rise up as Christian soldiers and battle against the forces of evil that are in our world today.
But we believe that God is restoring the world, and he does that primarily through acts of mercy and compassion. And so what I want to do today is help us come up with a basic theology of what we mean when we use the word compassion and why it is so fundamental to what it means to be church. And I want to do that by essentially having us look at a basic question in the church today, or in the church, the early church. One of the things that have happened is over the past couple of years we've been reflecting on, on what it means to be church, and some of the greatest work on developing what's known as an ecclesiology. Your definition of what it means to be church has come from mission people, missiologists who have argued, and maybe you've heard this phrase before, that we need to be a church that is a mission shaped church.
That's hard to say, mission shaped church. And what they mean by that is that the concept of mission should not be just one of the many facets that you do if you're into that kind of thing, amongst all the other things that we do as a church. But actually the argument has become that missions is the overarching umbrella on which everything else sits. And it's because they have flipped the way we think about missions to talking about the mission of God. And so you have people like Jürgen Moltmann who have said that the church doesn't have a mission, that God's mission has a church.
And that changes the way that we talk about what it means to be church. And so what I think is that something that will be helpful for us is to think more deeply about what it means to be a church on mission. And the only way that you can do that is to ask an even more fundamental question. And that is, what is God up to in the world today? What is the purpose of all of this?
And the way that you answer that question will determine how you live your life. It'll determine your discipleship process, and it'll determine what it means to be church. How do you answer the question, what is God doing in our world today? What is he up to? What is all of this pointing to?
Because what I find is that most modern and post modern churches today answer that question by simply saying, well, the whole purpose of all of this is just to go to heaven. And that becomes the whole of their theology about what it means to be a church is just to go to heaven. And in fact, growing up, if you grew up like me, you heard statements about the purpose is to go to heaven and take as many people with you. But that concept would have been really, really foreign to the early church. Well, actually it wouldn't have been foreign.
That concept is actually Gnostic, that one day we will become disembodied spirits and go off to heaven and this whole physical world will be thrown in the trash. That is not actually what the Biblical view of what God intends to do is. Now, unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time to unpack that completely. We could spend a whole series talking about that concept. But I'm just going to introduce you a little bit.
If the purpose isn't just to go to heaven, then what did the early Christians, what did the apostles, the early church, think was the actual purpose of what it means to be church? And in one of the passages I want to root us in is First Corinthians, chapter 15. To me, this is one of the most incredible passages of scripture where Paul does some of the most amazing work with helping us understand what this is all headed to. And Paul is intentionally contradicting what Gnostic teachers were teaching in Corinth. And he does this by opening chapter 15, by reminding the Corinthians of the Gospel.
He says, now I want to remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preach to you, which you have received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed it in vain, for I delivered you from. From. For I delivered to you as a first importance what I also received. And here is the gospel that Paul preaches. That Christ has died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the 12, then appeared to more than 500 brothers, at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
Paul is calling back to a foundational view of what the Gospel is. He is reminding the Corinthians of what it is that he originally preached. And it starts fundamentally with the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which was witnessed by 500 people. And then he goes to unpack and defend the idea of the resurrection. And he goes through and in First Corinthians.
I wish we could spend all week talking about the different concepts of First Corinthians, but this is some of the things that Paul unpacks for the Corinthians. That the resurrection of Jesus was historically witnessed. That if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ himself was not raised. That Christ's resurrection is the beginning of the resurrection of God's people. And that Christ will ultimately defeat every enemy and including death itself.
And that the resurrection body will be transformed and not really, and not just merely revived. Paul argues that what God is up to in the world is not becoming a disembodied spirit, but the resurrection of the dead. What John alludes to as the new creation. Heaven and earth coming together. Not a destruction of creation, but a new creation.
The image we see at the end of Revelation is the kingdom of God coming down out of Jerusalem to make its dwelling with men. That God is going to come and make his dwelling with humans, not humans are going to go and make their dwelling with God. There is a new heavens and a new earth. And this concept was foundational for the church. It framed how they lived their lives.
Now imagine if this is your view, that God doesn't just intend to throw the world in the trash can, but actually intends to restore it. If you're Paul and you're writing this amazing chapter, I encourage you to go read it. This amazing chapter on the resurrection of the dead. How might you end this chapter? Right.
I would think that if I was writing this, I would give this kind of hoorah moment of like, hey, just stick in there. You guys got this. Hang in there. God's going to do everything, right? It's all going to be good.
God's going to raise us. Don't worry about those who have died. Everything's going to be okay. But that is not how Paul ends this. The last verse of chapter 15 to me is one of the most amazing verses in Scripture.
It's not at all what I expect after talking about all that Jesus has done that, oh, death, where is your victory? It's not there anymore. It has been defeated. Paul ends by saying, therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
Is that not striking to you? Why end this passage on going to heaven, on resurrection of the dead, reminding the Corinthians that the work that they do is not in vain?
The reason for it is because the early church believed that what God was up to was not getting rid of everything that we've done, that this world was not just a moral testing ground to determine whether or not we are a good person or a bad person. And then later will come all the fun stuff that happens later on, but actually that the work we do today in the body, in the flesh, is not in vain. That somehow, in some way, it will be ultimately captured up into what God is doing at the end of all things, that he is going to be restoring the world. That somehow the work that we do is going to be about the new creation, that somehow we get to be what Paul uses as the first fruits of that new creation that is to come, and our work will be about that. And if that is your view, as opposed to God's just going to throw this whole thing in the trash can and move on, if that is really your view of what God is up to and your view of the Church, then it will change your entire perspective of what it means to be church here today.
Theologian N.T. wright wrote that the mission of the Church then is to be the Spirit filled agency through which genuine, advanced signs of new creation are brought to birth. What God accomplished in Jesus resurrection is to be actualized again and again in acts of justice and mercy in the sacramental life, which mysteriously takes up water, bread and wine into God's purposes. And the marriage of man and woman, which from Genesis to Revelation, acts as a potent symbol of the fruitful joining of heaven and earth and the creation and celebration of art, music, literature, and a thousand other vehicles of beauty.
The reason why all these can become contested and controversial is precisely because the dark enemy, though basically defeated on the cross, is still determined to thwart, delay or distort the ultimate transforming reunion of heaven and earth as much as possible. And one of those thwarting practices is to persuade parts of the Church that all of these are in fact secondary concerns, since God is only interested in getting souls into heaven.
One of the things that Troy talked about in his communion talk was about us reflecting on the works of Jesus as a mode for what we are supposed to be doing as the church. And that is one side of it. Christian faith. Christian work is rooted in looking back at who Jesus is and taking up the work that Jesus did because Jesus did it. But it's also looking forward to the way things are going to be in the future, what God is ultimately doing.
And it's between these two things that Christian work is anchored. We feed the hungry because Jesus fed the hungry, but also because in the new creation there will be no hunger. We tend to those who are hurting because Jesus tended to those who are hurting, but also because in the new creation there will be no hurting. We reach out to the marginalized because Jesus reached out to the marginalized, but also because in the new creation there will be no marginalization. We reflect both backwards and forwards.
And it's in that mode of thinking that the church gets its power, that that work becomes not in vain anymore. It is anchored between these two things. And the question we have to reflect on as a church is, are we doing that? Are we thinking about what life will be like when Jesus prayed, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven? Are we thinking about what that life will be like and bringing avenues of that to life here and now?
If we were to close our doors tomorrow, would anyone outside of these walls even notice how impactful of a church are we in our community, or are we just concerned about our own personal salvation? Getting ourselves into heaven? Has our entire Christian life become essentially selfish?
The early church, it wasn't about that. They had full faith that God had already taken care of them. And so what their job was was to bring about compassion, acts of mercy in the world. And I think that this term, compassion is a really, really good term for this reason, because I think it is rooted in. It's not just about us.
But actually compassion isn't just something secondary that good little Christians do so they can get in heaven. But actually compassion is rooted in the belief that God is already up to something in the world, and we get to participate in that. And like Troy, I love the word unleash. I think the word unleash is a perfect word for compassion. And the reason I think it's such a good word for compassion is because I think that it's the closest modern word we get to the concept, the Biblical concept of being poured out.
And so whenever we read, when Nick just read about the Spirit coming upon the disciples at the Pentecost, the word that is used there is that the Spirit was poured out on them. And it's this description of this overwhelming flow that comes out of us. It is overwhelming us to the point where the people listening to the disciples were so enamored by the Holy Spirit, so overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit, that people could only rationalize it by saying that they were drunk. Now, I don't know if you've ever been so on fire for God that the only way somebody could describe your Behavior is being high or drunk. I don't know if that's ever happened to you.
That's never happened to me. But that's what was happening to the early Christians at the foundation of the church. The Holy Spirit was so overwhelming on them that people had to rationalize it by saying they were drunk. And Peter has to stand up and say, that is not what's going on. Something else is going on.
And I think that this is one of the most amazing points of the beginning of Scripture or of the beginning of the church. Peter is about to explain what is happening at the foundation of the church. Take yourself back there for a moment. Put yourself in Peter's place. If you had to stand up and describe.
Pick any verse from the Old Testament to explain what is happening at the foundation of the church. What verse might you pick? Maybe something from the Psalms, maybe go back to, like Abraham's, you know, God talking about what Jesus is going to do through Abraham. I think it's interesting that Peter chooses a doomsday prophecy to describe the beginning of the church. Right?
He says in this. He says, in the last day, God says, quoting from Joel, I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions. Your old men will dream dreams even on my servants, both men and women.
I will pour out my spirit in those days and they will prophesy. I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below. Blood and fire and billows of smoke. The sun will turn to darkness, the moon to blood, before the coming and great and glorious day of the Lord. And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Peter uses an Armageddon language to describe the foundation of the church. He uses a passage that predicts what God is going to do at the end times to frame the identity of the church. It's not just about us here and now. The early Christians firmly believed that they were a fulfillment of what was to come, that they were the first fruits of what God was ultimately going to do in all of creation. And that's why he uses imagery like a moon turning to blood and the sun being blotted out.
He uses this Armageddon language to say that is happening now at Pentecost Church.
Dream again, see visions again, prophesy again. We need to be a church that catches the vision of what God is doing in the world. We need to be a church that dreams about what God is ultimately going to do. And we need to speak boldly about it again, just like the early church did. That has not changed.
We are to be a fulfillment of what God is ultimately going to do here and now. The actualization, the embodiment of God's kingdom, His mission in the world. And we can only do that if we dream, if we see what he's up to in the world and we start working on it. This is why compassion is such an important thing. When you look around and you see all of our posters on the wall of all of the local mission points that we're involved in, this is why it's not just about us and our own personal salvation.
What Paul reminds us is the same thing he reminded the Corinthians. When you give clothing to our clothing closet, it is not in vain. When you go and serve at St. Benedict's or Carpenter's Kitchen and feed someone a meal, it is not in vain.
When we go over to open door and help those people get out of homelessness and into housing, it is not in vain. Somehow, in some way, it will echo and show up again in what God is intending to do for all people in all places. In fact, Jesus himself says that when you do this, you're actually not doing it just for them. You're doing it for me, you're doing it for him. In the parable of the sheep and the goats, he tells them, and people will say, Jesus, didn't we cast out demons in your name?
Didn't we speak in tongues in your name? And Jesus response to them is, I don't know you. It's not enough to simply call on the name of God.
The way Jesus says that we will determine whether or not someone is a sheep or a goat is based on how they treat those who are hungry, those who are thirsty, those who are naked, those who are in prison. It is acts of compassion. Those are the people who know Jesus, not just calling his name. So you want to know why unleash compassion is one of our mission statements? Well, that's why we believe that God is already at work in our world, that what God intended to do in the garden, he is going to ultimately complete in the new creation.
That God's restoring love is breaking through in our world, and he has invited you and I to participate.