We Exist to Glorify God and Make Disciples

Preached by Pastor Chad Rickenbaker on August 16, 2026 [watch online] | Isaiah 43:7 & Matthew 28:19–20 (NKJV)

Vision 2030 — “We Exist to Glorify God and Make Disciples”

Everyone who is called by My name, Whom I have created for My glory; I have formed him, yes, I have made him.
—Isaiah 43:7

Some Sundays you can feel the weight of what God is doing before anyone opens a Bible. This one started in the water.

Hayes Wallen came first. He has been in this church his entire life, and if you ever want to meet an in-person superhero, it is Hayes. He trusted Christ as Savior a few weeks ago during Vacation Bible School. Then Adam Cooper and his twin daughters, Abby and Paisley. The girls also came to faith at VBS, and Adam, who has known the Lord for quite some time, told me the Holy Spirit had been speaking to him about a step he needed to take, and that he could think of no better time to take it than alongside his daughters. And then Estephania, who was invited to church by someone who cared enough to ask, and who found that this world will sell you a hundred solutions to brokenness and not one of them heals.

Our custom here at Berea First is that when someone comes up out of the water, the first sound we want them to hear is the applause and cheering of God’s people celebrating a new life in Christ. That is the sound this room made four times over.

It came at the end of a full stretch of weeks. We heard Drew Duncan’s testimony of God’s work in his life. We had Sunday school promotion. Our regular fall programming started, and hundreds of people came out on a Wednesday night for Bible study. And then this, a Sunday I have been looking forward to and our staff has been looking forward to, because today is the day we get to present to you what we believe to be God’s direction for our church over the next several years. We are calling it Vision 2030.

Why We Stepped Back

If you have been in our church for a little while, you know that we typically start each January with a new theme. It has been really helpful over the last number of years. A theme guides us in a central direction, it sets our focus for the new year, and it has helped us grow spiritually.

This year we decided to take a different approach. Rather than present a theme in January for a few months of 2026, we took a step back and asked the Lord a bigger question. Lord, where are You leading us? Not just this year, but over the next several years. Where would You have us go, and what would You have us do? Since January our staff has been meeting and praying and seeking His direction, and as we have done that, we have revisited some ultimate purposes. What are we here for as a church? And personally, why do we exist? What is the reason for our existence?

So we went back to the purpose statement we have had since about 2013, that we exist to help people connect with Christ, a statement born out of what we call the Great Commission. It has served us very well over these thirteen years. But as we started down this process, we began to revisit it with some questions in mind. Is the statement clear? Could it be clearer? Is the statement missing anything? Is there anything that should be added to it?

Now, I am aware, to some extent, and I am not necessarily the sharpest knife in the drawer, but I am aware of the potential danger of too much redirection in a church or an organization. I know that. But we have had our current statement for thirteen years, and as we look to the Lord for where He would have us go, I believe there is an opportunity to clarify it and then to add something to it that, in my heart and in my understanding of God’s Word, gets us closer to the ultimate reason for our existence.

We Exist to Glorify God and Make Disciples

The statement we have arrived at, and the one we will begin using today and going forward, is simply this:

We exist to glorify God and make disciples.

Let me say before I unpack it that this statement makes my heart pound in my chest. All the years I have spent in the Word, like you have spent in the Word, reading in the Old Testament and the New and seeking to understand what God is telling us, keep bringing me to two conclusions. The first is that God created us for His glory. That is an ultimate kind of statement. It is the reason I exist, the reason you exist, the reason the church exists. The second is that there is a missional purpose running through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and that Jesus has called us to make disciples.

In my mind and in my heart, those two truths are inescapable. Everything else follows from them.

What Is the Chief End of Man?

Think with me for a moment about ultimate things. If you are a parent or a grandparent and your child came to you and said, hey, why am I here? Why do I exist? What would you say?

There are teaching tools that have been used throughout church history to answer that kind of question concisely. One of them is called a catechism. A catechism is simply a question paired with a specific answer, and a child or a student memorizes both, so that when a parent or a teacher asks the question, the child knows the answer.

In the Westminster Shorter Catechism of 1647, the very first question is this. What is the chief end of man? Now we think, what does he mean by that? He means, what is the ultimate purpose of man? Above every other reason and every other purpose that could be given for our existence, what is the ultimate one? You can imagine a child wondering exactly that. Why am I here? Is there meaning and purpose to my life?

And here is the answer that catechism gives. “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”

A Creator and a Creature

Here is how I think about it. I got up yesterday morning and one of the TV stations just had animal show after animal show. I was half paying attention, and they were covering elephants. Did you know elephants do not have sweat glands? They do not sweat. They have a gland between the mouth, the eye, and the ear that secretes something, but whatever you are seeing on an elephant, that is not sweat. It went on to talk about some other unique features of elephants. I would tell you more, but that is about all I remember.

But as I watched, I thought about this. I am pretty simple-minded, but it seems ludicrous to me to say that if you rewound the clock far enough back, millions and billions of years, you could get from that elephant to one single solitary cell. Am I the only one who thinks that sounds ludicrous? When I see all those specialized features, I do not think evolutionary process. I think Creator.

And here is what I realize. If there is a Creator, that means I am a creature. Are you tracking with me? There is a Creator, and I am a creature. So if I need to know why I exist, it makes sense to direct my attention to my Creator, because if He made me, He knows why. It would be foolish, would it not, if there is a Creator, which there is, and if He has made Himself known, which He has, and if He has disclosed His will and His purpose for our lives, for us to disregard His plan and try to create our own. So the wisest, most prudent thing I can do as a creature is turn to my Creator and ask Him why He made me.

Created for My Glory

If you have your Bibles, turn with me to Isaiah 43. As you are turning, know that the Lord here is comforting His people in their life as a nation, as they face different dangers and threats. He is reassuring them that they belong to Him:

But now, thus says the LORD, who created you, O Jacob, And He who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; You are Mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, Nor shall the flame scorch you.”
—Isaiah 43:1–2

Now I want you to see verse 7:

Everyone who is called by My name, Whom I have created for My glory; I have formed him, yes, I have made him.
—Isaiah 43:7

Do you see in that verse what I would call an ultimate statement? He is the Creator. We are the created. He is the Creator, we are the creature. And He says, all these people that I have created, and then He tells us why. He lays it right out there. For My glory.

Now obviously that applies to the nation of Israel, but I would argue the case that it applies to all things, to all people, and to every part of creation. All of creation was brought into existence to display the glory of God, and you and I were brought into existence to display the glory of God. It was there from the very beginning, when He created Adam and Eve in His image and gave them a commission:

Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
—Genesis 1:28

They were to fill the earth so that the knowledge of the glory of God would cover it. That was His purpose. You say, well, what about in the New Testament? Paul takes the two most ordinary things he can think of and makes an all-encompassing statement out of them:

Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
—1 Corinthians 10:31

Paul is reiterating what God said to His people back in Isaiah 43. Everything we do is about the glory of God, because we have been created for His glory. And Jesus said it too, and tied it directly to what other people can see:

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.
—Matthew 5:16

Do you see it? There are many, many other passages just like these in the Bible, all pointing to our purpose, to God’s purpose, to God’s calling on us, so that we can align ourselves with it. And as I think about Vision 2030, I am not just thinking about the next four and a half years. I am thinking ten years down the road, fifteen, twenty. One of the reasons I love this purpose statement is that this part of it should never change. What reason would there be to ever change it? From eternity past, from creation forward, God’s intended purpose for us is that we would glorify Him, and God is never going to deviate from that. Whether it is 2026 or 2056, the same is true. We exist for the glory of God.

What It Means to Glorify God

So what does it mean to glorify God? What is God’s glory?

God’s glory is the totality of the fullness of His perfection and who He is as a personal being. It is a fullness that cannot be added to. So listen carefully. To glorify God does not mean that we are adding or contributing anything to His glory. That cannot be done. He is already perfect in His glory.

What God has called us to do is to display His glory. Just as the heavens and the earth and creation itself are a testimony to the power of God, our lives are to display His glory. In what way? In our praise. When we were singing a few moments ago about that old rugged cross, that is singing to the glory of God, that He would send His Son Jesus to die on that cross, to bear our shame and take the penalty for our sin. But it is not just in praise and worship. It is in our words. Our words glorify Him or they do not. Our actions glorify Him or they do not. So do our testimony, our witness, our faith, our trust, our obedience.

When God calls us in His Word to do hard things and we do them regardless of the consequences, God is glorified. When you might be given over to fear about some circumstance in your life, but instead you trust Him in the midst of the uncertainty, God is glorified. When you see someone in need and, out of the provision of God in your life, you share what you have to meet that need, God is glorified. Through our purity, through our holiness, through our enjoyment of Him, God is glorified.

We exist for God’s glory. This is a calling to a life of God-centeredness.

A Life of God-Centeredness

Do you remember in the Old Testament, the story of the Tower of Babel? The people came together, all speaking the same language, and they set out to build:

And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”
—Genesis 11:4

God saw what they were up to. The work ceased, He confused their languages, and He scattered them. Do you remember what the issue was? The issue, as God identified it, was right there in what they said. We will make a name for ourselves. We will build a tower unlike any other, it will ascend into the heavens, and we will make a name for ourselves. And God said, not so fast. That is not what I am about in this creation. I created you not to make a name for yourself, but so that you would display My name.

Now hear what I am not saying. I am not saying this is inherently evil or wrong. But as I think about it, the antithesis of displaying the glory of God is a selfie. You turn the camera around, strike your pose, and then you post it somewhere so that people can see you. Does that not sound like the opposite of what God created us for? He is saying, do not display your glory, display Mine. Do not make life to be about you, make it to be about Me, because I created you for My glory.

You say, well, that sounds awfully selfish of God, that He would make everything to be about Him. That seems pretty self-absorbed, that God would want us to devote our lives to glorifying Him. Here is what you have to understand. He is the Creator, we are the creature, and we experience His best for us when we live in accordance with His design and purpose. Do you believe that?

Has God done sufficiently enough for us that we should be convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt that He is for our good? The last time I checked, He gave His only begotten Son on that old rugged cross so that sinful, selfish people like you and me, people who have been just like the crowd at Babel saying look at me, look at me, could be forgiven of our sins and spend eternity in heaven. I think He has already shown that if I live in agreement and in alignment with His Word and His will, it is of no detriment to me. It is only for my good.

Enjoying God Is Never Private

Now let us go back to the Westminster Shorter Catechism for a moment. The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. If you still have your Bibles close at hand, turn with me to Psalm 67. Here is what I want you to see. This purpose of our lives, and this purpose of our church, which is to glorify God, has a missional intent behind it:

God be merciful to us and bless us, And cause His face to shine upon us. Selah That Your way may be known on earth, Your salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise You, O God; Let all the peoples praise You. Oh, let the nations be glad and sing for joy! For You shall judge the people righteously, And govern the nations on earth. Selah Let the peoples praise You, O God; Let all the peoples praise You.
—Psalm 67:1–5

You can see easily in this psalm the call to the glory of God. Praising God, worshiping God. It is right there. But I want you to see the missional intent behind it, that it is for all the peoples, for all the nations. Let all the peoples praise You.

Glorifying God and enjoying God is not for a self-centered purpose. God is not glorified in private religion. God is not glorified in private religion. Well, me and God, we kind of have our own thing. I believe in God and I believe in Jesus and I just keep it to myself. It is my own private thing, really no one else’s business, and I would not want to interfere in anyone else’s business either.

No. Understand that this purpose we have been given to glorify God carries, from within the heart of God, a missional intent. He desires to be praised and honored and glorified among all nations and all peoples.

Listen to this from Dennis Hollinger. He observes that the psalmist genuinely wants to enjoy the blessings of God, and rightly so, because they are wonderful gifts that remind us God gives Himself in grace and mercy and wants the very best for us: joy, peace, hope, meaning, and a sense of divine presence and power within. But he says it is equally clear that we cannot stop there, because the enjoyment of God is not for our own self-centeredness. It is true enjoyment, but never narcissistic. It is true pleasure, but never pleasure as an end in itself, apart from a wider context and purpose and meaning.

I do not know whether you ever enjoy God, but I have been enjoying God today. Has anybody else been enjoying God today? Seeing a dad and his twin daughters get baptized. Seeing Hayes, our superhero, get baptized. Seeing Estephania get baptized. Seeing people up here with the gift of music leading us to celebrate the presence of God. And as I have been enjoying God today, I realize that this joy, this enjoyment of God, is not something He intends for us to contain. He intends for us to share it.

Which leads us to the second part of our purpose statement.

…And Make Disciples

So let us turn to the New Testament. God desires to be glorified, but not just locally and not just among a few. He does not want it to be our best-kept secret. He wants His glory known among all people. He wants all people to come to know Him in saving faith, so that they can worship Him and glorify Him and be the recipients of His blessing. So turn with me to Matthew 28:19:

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.
—Matthew 28:19–20

Listen, when you look at that verse, the primary command in it is make disciples. And look at what follows: teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. That is why we have Sunday morning Bible study classes. That is why we have Wednesday night Bible study groups. Because we need to be taught to obey God’s Word.

When I look at the Bible, this just seems to leap off the page. I exist for the glory of God, and the primary command He has given us as disciples is that we would make disciples. That is, that we would witness and share the gospel with people so that they themselves would come to faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. They themselves would then begin to display the glory of God from their lives, their words, their actions, their good deeds, their obedience to the gospel, their following of Christ. And so we make disciples, and it replicates over and over and over again, all the way to the ends of the earth. It is our mission and our calling.

Let me ask you, how long are we going to be about the business of making disciples? Until He comes. And how long are we to be about the business of glorifying God? Not just here, and not just until He comes. For all eternity.

Six Core Convictions

So how are we going to do this? If that is our purpose statement, what are the core convictions that will lead us? What are the rails we are going to ride on to get there? Let me share six core values that serve as the guide rails as we live out this calling.

Number one, prayer. We intentionally seek God first in all things. Why? Because without His divine enablement and power, we are not going to fulfill any of this.

Number two, community. We regularly gather to foster authentic community. We gather to encourage each other and to inspire one another as we live out our purpose.

Number three, worship. We wholeheartedly worship God in spirit and in truth, and that means both privately and corporately. This right here is the corporate expression of worship. But this should not be the only worship happening in your life as a displayer of the glory of God. You should be worshiping God the other six days of the week, so that when we gather on Sunday, the choir and the musicians are not having to warm us up to worship. When we gather, it should already be bubbling over, because we have been doing it all week.

Number four, discipleship. We relationally disciple every believer toward maturity in Christ. There are two very important words there. One is discipleship. The other is relationally. When I study the discipleship model of Jesus in the New Testament, I see that He invited those disciples to be with Him, and it was in the context of everyday life and relationship that He taught them the principles of the kingdom of God. We want to replicate that. We want our discipleship processes here to be relationally focused.

Number five, ministry. We lovingly serve our neighbor. Jesus said, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven (Matthew 5:16).

Number six, evangelism. We boldly share the gospel in Berea and to the ends of the earth.

Seven Things We Will Do

As we have prayed about the next few years, both as it relates to this purpose statement and to our convictional values, here are some measurable goals we believe God is leading us to work toward over the next four and a half years or so.

Number one, we will dedicate January to prayer and fasting. January is the first month of the year, and as we start each year we want to make sure our hearts and lives and ministry and focus are properly aligned with God. I do not know how else to do that but to pray and seek the Lord. We will unpack more of that later.

Number two, we will establish a biblical counseling center. One of the things we have agreed upon as a staff is that in our church and in our community there are a lot of hurting people who need counsel from God’s Word so that they can find healing and encouragement. And as they find that, even from a place of brokenness, they can begin to glorify God.

Number three, we will develop a leadership pipeline. We will disciple, equip, and deploy current and future ministry leaders by creating a clear pathway for leadership development. One of the clear callings in the Bible for ministry leaders in the church is exactly this:

for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,
—Ephesians 4:12

Number four, we will strengthen relational discipleship. One of the goals will be to engage as many people in discipleship groups as attend our worship services, creating groups where believers grow, care for one another, and live out their faith together. In other words, if Jesus thought it important to call twelve men to follow Him, and if Jesus thought it important to impart kingdom principles to those twelve in a relational environment, then I think we should make that a priority too.

Number five, we will share the gospel boldly. We will pursue 10,000 gospel conversations by equipping and encouraging every believer to boldly share the hope of Jesus Christ with others. He has called us to make disciples, and His purpose is that we should glorify Him. We will glorify Him by telling other people about Him. There will be a system and a process where you can record your gospel conversations, and over the next few years we are going to count them and add them up, with the prayerful intent that by 2030 we as a church family will have had ten thousand of them.

Number six, we will mobilize the church in Acts 1:8 ministry. That is where Jesus told the disciples:

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.
—Acts 1:8

We want to mobilize at least 75 percent of our congregation in outreach ministry, here in Berea, in our state, nationally, and internationally. Why would that be a goal and a commitment? Because it is what Jesus called us to do.

Number seven, we will prioritize church planting partnerships. We already do this and we already have a few, but our goal will be to partner with four church plants through prayer, financial support, and short-term mission teams, helping establish gospel-centered churches in communities that need them most. One of our church planting partners is in Boston, a city that is about two percent evangelical. The overwhelming number of people there do not know Jesus. Another of our partners is in Eagle Mountain, Utah, where the percentage of Bible-believing Christians is two percent or less. It is a place of great need. And you see how our purpose statement guides this. If people hear about Jesus and they meet Jesus, then they can glorify Jesus. They cannot glorify Him if they do not know Him.

Will You Commit?

There have been a few times since January when I wondered to myself, is this going to be worth the wait? My internal clock is used to looking at the next year and being ready by January to launch into some new initiative. We did not do that this year, and I felt a little bit like I was in the lurch, because that is how I am used to leading.

I am telling you, I am more excited right now than I have been throughout the entirety of the process. How do you improve on glorifying God and making disciples? To me it is so clear. And now to have goals that go along with that purpose, goals we can all collectively strive toward, is better still. Nothing is as empowering in a church as the church being unified around the common goal that God has given it.

So here is my call to you. Let us join together. Make the commitment today, in your life and to this church and to Jesus above all, that you will commit to the purpose and that you will commit to the process. In the coming weeks and months we will begin to unveil how each of these moves forward in sequence, and as those become apparent, I want to ask you, would you join together with us? Every time we have started an initiative, there has been movement and momentum in our church, and my prayer is that this is going to be that times ten. How could God not move and bless if we commit to ten thousand gospel conversations over the next four years, to a counseling ministry serving the needs of hurting people, to helping people get mobilized in ministry?

Not just to go along for the ride, though. To be a contributor in it. Lord, help me find my place in this.

Heavenly Father, we thank You for the clarity of Your Word, that You make it so obvious what our purpose is, as You define it. Your definition is the only one that matters, because You are the one who created us. And what You have given us in Your Word is that we exist for Your glory. Father, where we have fallen short of that in our words, our actions, our lives, our lack of obedience or faith, forgive us. We thank You that You are gracious and merciful, ready and willing and eager to forgive. Help us today to align our lives with Your purpose. Help us as a church to have this flag flying over all that we do, to bring glory to Your name and to make disciples. Do it for Your name’s sake, Lord. Do it for Your glory. Help us to be a God-centered people. It is in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Scripture references in this message: Isaiah 43:1–2; Isaiah 43:7; Genesis 1:28; 1 Corinthians 10:31; Matthew 5:16; Genesis 11:4; Psalm 67:1–5; Matthew 28:19–20; Ephesians 4:12; Acts 1:8. (NKJV) The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647) is quoted in the answer to its first question.

Want to go deeper? Join us on Sunday mornings, in a Sunday evening small group, or in a Wednesday night Bible study at Berea First Baptist Church.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.