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Follow one church's journey as they depart from modern church growth trends and reinvent themselves by equipping everyday Christians to live out their faith in real life. Find episodes and show notes at www.dereksanford.com/reinventingchurch
Danielle (00:00.952)
Thanks for tuning in to the Reinventing Church podcast. We're on a summer break.
But we have a couple special bonus episodes for you. I hope you enjoy them and you'll come back this fall when we launch again with Pastor Derek and I talking about the journey that our church is going through step by step practically as we're actually reinventing church with our staff members and people who are interacting with the thing that we're building together as we move forward. So enjoy this bonus episode and we'll see you in the fall.
Derek (00:49.496)
In 1895, 19 Swedish immigrants started a house church in the corner of 7th and Holland in downtown Erie, the current location of the Grace Leadership Institute. Their desire was to have a gospel presence in the Erie region. And so the Swedish Baptist Church was formed. And looking back through their decisions, one thing was very clear. They were committed to playing offense in order to reach more people with the gospel. And so in 1906,
They build a building to provide stability and to bring in more people. They changed the language of their worship services from Swedish to English in order to reach more people. I found out in recent years from some eerie historians that during a time of great ethnic division in our city, our church opened her doors to other ethnicities to worship in the church building. They eventually moved to a fast-growing suburb called Mill Creek in order to reach more people with the gospel. They believed the church was supposed to play offense.
Offense means looking ahead, making decisions, drawing up new plays and strategies, all for this one solitary purpose, to reach more people with the gospel. And I admire this so much because it's easy to slip into the mode of playing defense as a church, to try to build little bubbles around ourselves and to retreat into our own worlds and to complain about all the evil things out there that the world is doing, to retreat into our own little cocoon with our own little languages and our own little safe people.
Us four and no more. So let's create our own clothing lines and call them Christian. We'll be just like the world, but it'll have a big Jesus on it. Let's create our own coffee shops. It'll be just like the world, but Christians will be more comfortable because there's a big Jesus on the wall. Or let's create our own halftime shows that basically the same thing as the other thing, but but it'll one thing different will be we'll shout Jesus at the end of it. This is called all right. This is called playing defense. Let's retreat from the world.
Let's huddle up over here and talk about how evil all of those people are over there. Let me just say, that is not in our DNA as a church. Each iteration of what is now Grace Church has created and innovated and designed strategies to reach more people for Christ. Since I got here in 1995, we've continued to play offense. We moved from a landlocked three acres in Mill Creek to 31 acres in McCain. We multiplied
Derek (03:09.516)
Church locations across the region. We launched Serveri and the Grace Leadership Institute. We expanded our online ministries on TV. We built partnerships with churches and missionaries around the world. Our ministry is now reaching some 5,000 people every week in the Erie region and many more beyond that. It's really quite amazing what God has done through Grace Church. And I I wonder often what those 19 Swedish immigrants would think if they could see us now. They could have never imagined.
That their grit and tenacity and focus on the mission and the hard decisions they had to make would have led to this many lives being changed and affected some 120 years later. In a very real sense, we are where we are today. We are benefiting from the ministries and the connections and the teachings and the trainings of Grace Church today because of their focus on the mission in front of them and the gospel in front of them. And man, if they could see us now. They were a part of a movement of God.
That outlasted their lifetime. And we are the recipients of their faithfulness. Now let me ask you a question. What if you could be part of a movement of God that would outlast your lifetime? That's what I want to talk to you about today. See, in that same spirit, every three to five years, we ask God, what's next for Grace Church? We pray and we fast and we listen. We've been doing this for a long time. A few years ago, coming out of the COVID fog, that question, what's next for us, landed heavier than ever on me.
The division in our country, and qu Christians being bewitched by political parties, and people walking away from church at an all-time high. Our elders started praying and fasting. Our leaders read a book together, and some of us gathered in in one of our elders' skips, backyard overlooking a beautiful sliver of Erie County, and we began to dream. What would it look like to reimagine how we do church so that we might reach the next generation and those who are far from God? How do we become
A discipleship training center and not just an event center. How do we help our people live out their faith where they live and work and learn and play? And and and what's set in on me is this. I'm not sure everybody knows how to do that. And not because they don't want to, but because we stopped training people at some point. And we thought, man, if we could get really serious about that, what might God do in our whole region? And the awake the lake vision was born. But
Derek (05:36.578)
This is a vision cycle like no other because currently there are no new buildings involved in this vision, no real estate acquisitions, because we're not building buildings, we're building people. It's not just different because it's not about buildings, it's also different in that it's not a top-down vision, it's a bottom-up vision. In other words, it's not dependent upon our leaders chasing down some initiatives that are out there. It's about us, everyday believers, starting right here. It's why we've called this little two-week series Starting Small, Dreaming Big.
It's the same way Jesus described his kingdom. He kept telling the same quiet story that the kingdom doesn't start broad, it starts small. It starts as a seed pressed into dark soil, a pinch of yeast worked through a dough, a mustard seed so tiny that it's almost pointless until it's not pointless. The kingdom doesn't arrive with a headline or fanfare. It grows while no one's watching, slowly, faithfully, inevitably. What looks insignificant in the moment becomes
You know, shelter for birds and nourishment for families and life spreading farther than anyone would have imagined. That's the metaphor. And Jesus is inviting us to trust that God loves to do his biggest work through our smallest beginnings. Starting small isn't a lack of faith. It's often where faith actually begins. And when God is involved, small is never the end of the story. And so this vision initiative, while it has some big scope and big reach attached to it.
It'll never happen if we don't do all the small stuff. We need individual Christians who know how to pray and who know how to read their Bible, know how to connect with God, know what his voice sounds like so they can follow him and so that they can live purposeful lives and know how to be a good friend, to know how to have great conversations, to know how to tell God's story, to be able to explain why they're a person of faith, to be able to find meaning in their work and know why God has placed them where he's placed them. And when struggles come,
To know how to navigate them with God's help. And when things get broken, to know how to walk faithfully with God as He repairs us. I think we all desire this life that I'm describing. And I confess to you, and it breaks my heart, that I've preached to you for many, many years. And we have great worship services and we have great kids' ministries and youth ministries and great programs. But we haven't prioritized training you on how to live that.
Derek (08:01.358)
kind of faithful life of discipleship and calling with Jesus. And now we find ourselves with generations walking away from church. People who are are part of churches are participating less in church. My heart breaks to think that I've served here for decades and and that I haven't properly equipped you with how to actually follow Jesus in your real life. And so that's what I'm given the rest of my days to. I think we can all draw strength from the example of Nehemiah. He was
Walking, sorry, he was working in the capital city of Susa when word came that the the walls of Jerusalem were in ruins. Nehemiah 1 3 says it this way. Says the remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are destroyed by fire. Now, you have to understand what the what the city meant. Jerusalem wasn't just real estate.
It was the sacred city of God, the place where God's people lived, as a countercultural kingdom, doing sex differently and money and power and marriage differently from the world around them. A light and a dark world where people could see God at work. And so when the walls are in ruins, the problem isn't just architectural. It's the identity of God's people is lying in rubble. Their honor and their dignity and their purpose, God's honor, all of it in the dirt.
And so this is bringing dishonor to God. And Nehemiah had been oblivious to it, living comfortably, not allowing himself to think about the plight of his people. And guys, with all the information that we have at our fingertips, we must be careful not to become callous or numb to the needs around us, just like Nehemiah. See, there's a temptation to treat people's spiritual needs like the white noise in the background of our own lives. Are there friends?
Are their neighbors, are their coworkers, are their family members around you who are struggling, who are far from God, who are leaning the ladder of their lives against the wrong wall. Like we we live in an age that's been called the the the age of the great dechurching. Where over the last 25 years, more people have left the church in America than came into the church during the first Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening, all of Billy Graham's worldwide crusades combined. Now,
Derek (10:21.176)
There are positive signs with Gen Z, which I'll talk about in a moment. This exodus away from church is still very real. It's happening in our time. But I want you to see what happens in verse 4 of Nehemiah 1. As soon as I heard these words, he said, I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. And he's absolutely devastated. And if you connect this verse with
With chapter 2, verse 1, you'll find that he fasted and prayed and he wept for three or four months. And there's an interesting piece of history here that that that that shows us that this is a little bit weird. The Babylonian attack that destroyed those walls in Jerusalem happened in 586 BC. We're in 445 BC. That's 141 years ago. Nehemiah is having an emotional breakdown over 141-year-old news.
Some of you are like, I I went I went to public school, I don't get it. Okay. So that would be like me getting up here and saying
I'm here to announce to your church, President Abraham Lincoln has been shot. And for somebody weeping about it for four months, most of you would say, like, yeah, we heard we heard. That was a long time ago. Like we've we've all kind of moved on. But all we hear in this text is that Nehemiah got the same news everyone had known for 141 years. And so the question is: why is he weeping and fasting and mourning for months? And here's what I think it is.
He didn't receive new information. He received the same information that he had known, but with a new perspective. God, the Holy Spirit, opened Nehemiah's heart to have God's heart for this situation, and it wrecked him. Here's a principle I want you to hold on to. A calling doesn't begin with new information. It begins with new eyes for old information. Nehemiah didn't learn something he didn't know. He was suddenly impacted by something he had been numb to, or he'd become numb to.
Derek (12:25.1)
And when you pray for God to open your eyes and to break your heart, just a warning that's a dangerous prayer because God will start keeping you up at night. He'll start waking you up in the morning with a burden, which is part of the cost of a calling. We're living a moment no less spiritually broken than Jerusalem was in Nehemiah's day. But most of us aren't weeping over it. We've grown so accustomed to the spiritual bankruptcy around us that it all feels almost normal.
We scroll past it, we've made peace with it. But when God gets a hold of your heart and He He breaks your heart for what breaks his heart, man, watch out, because then you have to do something. See, Nehemiah couldn't just feel bad from Susa. Heartbreak leads to action. It always does. And so Ephesians 2:10 in the New Testament tells us that we've been saved by God, yes. But also that we've been created for good works.
That God has prepared in advance for us to do. In other words, you have a calling, and your calling isn't something that you have to manufacture, it's something that you have to respond to. God has already planted it inside you. You just need to nurture it and water it and help it come to life. And so Nehemiah didn't rebuild the walls alone. He he didn't hire a contractor, he didn't write a check. He gathered up families to rebuild a section of the wall that is nearest to their home. Merchants.
Priests, perfume makers, goldsmiths, shoulder to shoulder, each one responsible for their stretch of the wall. And the wall went up in 52 days, simply because ordinary people each did their part. The small beginning became a big result because the work was multiplied across many hands. It's the exact same strategy Jesus used for his gospel to reach the world. He poured into twelve, and they poured into some more.
And pretty soon a small movement in a small corner of the Middle East became the dominant worldview on planet Earth. Walt Heydrikson put it this way: He said, The reason the Church of Jesus Christ finds it so hard to stay on top of the Great Commission is that the population of the world is multiplying while the church is merely adding. And addition can never keep pace with multiplication. That's the shift that we want to make at grace. We've been doing church by addition. Invite people, maybe we'll add.
Derek (14:46.358)
A few more each year. But equip people to be disciples who make disciples, and the math changes completely. Think about it like this. If I offered you a deal, $10,000 a day for 30 days, a whole month, or one penny that doubles in value every day for 30 days that same month, which would you take? And most people would say, I'll take the 10,000 a day. That's 300,000 by the end of the month. That sounds great, but the penny?
By day 30, as it doubles, that penny becomes $10.7 million. See, that's the difference between addition and multiplication. Now apply that to the kingdom. If somebody's an incredible evangelist and they win a person to Christ every day for 20 years, that's 7,300 people. Amazing. Can you imagine getting to heaven with that? But if that same person spent the whole first year discipling just one person so deeply that they could disciple someone else.
For a year. And that pattern kept doubling every year in 20 years, you'd have over a million people. Do it in groups of three, you'd reach the world in 21 years. Do it in groups of four, you'd reach the world in 17 years. This is not, I'm sorry, this is what Jesus asked us to do: not to go and hold church services, not to go and do worship nights, not to go and run kids' ministries, but to go and make disciples. And you'll reach the world with the gospel.
In a short amount of time. The math of Jesus Plan works brilliantly, which means the problem was never in the design of Jesus plan. The problem has always been in our willingness to obey it.
And again, we're entering a new season at grace. And the and the goal is to not add a bunch more programs, it's not to build a bunch more buildings. It's to multiply the kind of Christ followers who can do the same for someone else. That's what Awake the Lake is built on. The vision is stated this way, and here's the big finished product. The vision states that by 2035,
Derek (16:44.736)
30,000 people from Cleveland to Buffalo have mobilized to step in to their kingdom calling to bring gospel influence into the everyday places of life. Now, that's a big, and we've made the mistake before with big visions of turning our attention outward first. How are we gonna chase this down out there? But the moment that we're in right now is just a moment of praying and practicing. That's what Nehemiah did. He prayed and he fasted and he said, God, what am I supposed to do about this?
There's a prayer that I've been praying that I that I want to invite you into. And it just goes like this God, stir a spiritual awake a spiritual awakening in our time and let it begin with me. Awaken our church, God, awaken our city, awaken our region. And please, God, would you start with me? And this is a dangerous prayer. But I'm asking you to begin to pray it. Because here's what I believe. It's my big idea today that when ordinary people take steps of ordinary obedience, God can awaken entire regions.
And that's what Nehemiah shows us. This is a bottom up vision, not a top-down vision. So that's a big number that I shared. But that big number isn't what we're chasing. That big number will just happen if we will do a few little things. And so let me talk about those few little things that I want to invite us to think about. These are three small steps toward our big dream. First is multiplying everyday disciples. Last week I introduced you again to our four dream disciple roles compassionate storyteller.
Savvy follower, intentional friend, embedded influencer. We believe that if you will embrace and live out these roles in your everyday life, where you live, work, learn, and play, it will have a massive kingdom influence on our church and even on our whole region. And there's a big shift that's happening. We're not interested in just teaching about these roles. We want to train you in them. So we have two of our four training labs already written and tested and piloted.
And I couldn't be more pumped. See, ch teaching changes what you know. Training changes what you can do. So, for example, I could teach you everything there is to know about swimming. I know you're sitting there going, man, you look like a swimming instructor. I could teach you about buoyancy and breathing techniques and the physics of a free freestyle stroke. And you could take notes on those instructions and you could pass a test and you could get an A. And you might still drown in the deep end.
Derek (19:11.298)
Because knowing about swimming and knowing how to swim are two completely different things. And at some point, you have to kind of dive into the water and figure it out. And for too long, the church has made discipleship information-centric when really discipleship is obedience-centric. We've settled for people who can kind of pass a Bible quiz, but they freeze up when a coworker asks, why do you believe what you believe?
Or people who have sat in worship services for 20 years, but but never once have shared their faith story out loud. Not because they don't want to, but because they've never been trained. And so we're flipping the model. We want you to walk out of a training environment, not just knowing something you didn't know when you walked in, but able to do something that you couldn't do when you walked in. And it's already happening. So in our intentional friend training lab, we were learning how how to ask great questions and how
Derek (19:47.64)
too.
Derek (20:07.884)
Good questions can open the door for a normal conversation to become a spiritual conversation. So we gathered in the training lab and we sat around tables and we practiced asking questions. The following week, a man came up after class in tears. He'd been at a party and he found himself alone with the host of the party, a friend of his, and he started just asking questions, doing what we learned to do. And before they were done, the friend had opened up about a broken marriage after many decades. And the guy said,
I seized the moment. I asked if I could pray for him, which is not something that I really do, but but but we grabbed hands right there and we prayed for him right there. A a week earlier, he didn't have that skill, and now all of a sudden, he's a spiritual resource for this person. In that same class, a man finally found words to say to one of his children that that he had never been able to say before. He wrote them in a letter of blessing over his kid's life. In our savvy follower class, somebody
that because of new skills in praying and listening to God, they sensed God confirming that they should stay at a job that they were planning to leave. This is real boots on the ground, faith obedience. And maybe the most encouraging comment came from someone who said, you know what? These things are so transferable that I'm learning in this lab. I feel like I can walk out right now and teach it to somebody else. You understand what that is? That's a disciple of Jesus making disciple of Jesus. That's multiplication.
That's Nehemiah's wall going up because ordinary people were equipped to build their section of the wall. That's what we're after. Not a church full of people who hear great sermons, but a church full of people who are trained and ready, who can turn around and do for somebody else what was done for them. Dallas Willard said it this way He said, The greatest issue facing the world today. Man, that's a mouthful. The greatest issue facing the world today, with all its heartbreaking needs.
Is whether those who are identified as Christians will become disciples, apprentices, practitioners of Jesus Christ, steadily learning from him how to live the life of the kingdom of the heavens into every corner of human existence.
Derek (22:20.27)
So we have some launch classes coming up to orient you to these four roles. We also have what we're calling samplers of both of those training labs I just mentioned. Savvy follower on March 2nd, Intentional Friend on March 3rd. Just 75 minutes or so in one evening. And if you'd like to try it out, we would love to have you there. We're also building a growth plan that you can own and and work. It's like a a diet or exercise plan, except for your spiritual life. And so we're saying
We want to double down on multiplying everyday disciples. The second way this vision plays out is multiplying everyday influencers. I said earlier that Ephesians 2:10 says that God hasn't just saved you and called you to be a disciple, He's put an assignment before you to be a disciple maker, to influence other people. See, every single Christian has influence over other people wherever you live and work and learn and play. By the way, we're reclaiming this term.
Influencer from the modern nonsense that it's become. The word has always meant something deep and rich, more deep and rich than some kid on YouTube running around playing pranks on people. So every Christian is an everyday influencer. And we like to say the question of discipleship is, can I trust God? When you became a Christian, you're deciding, can I trust God? The question of influence is, can God trust me? See, Jesus didn't just invite the disciples to be with him.
He said, follow me, so that's an invitation. But he also invited them into an assignment. He said, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. This is the journey of every Christian. So one of our deep commitments is to help every Christian at grace to discover their God-given calling. And then help you determine where you're called to live that out. Certainly in your family, that's a given.
But also, we want to invite you to name an arena of your life in the next season, your neighborhood, the marketplace where you work, a nonprofit, an affinity group. Name one of these things as your main mission field, the church. See, in one of those spaces, you are called to be a pastor of a parish. And some of you are thinking, a pastor of a parish. Like, dude, I'm still afraid to pray out loud. Or like I'm still mumbling swear words under my breath every time a kid does something. All right. Listen.
Derek (24:37.91)
Seems like a big leap for a pastor. And if that's you, if you're going, well, wow, that seems like grad school. I'm in, you know, elementary. I want to just go back to this everyday disciple thing. Start there and work on your growth. Find a group, find a team to meet with and just start working on these discipleship roles. That's a great starting place. But at some point in your journey, you're going to realize that God hasn't just invited you to be his child, he's invited you into an assignment.
Derek (24:48.088)
You just.
Derek (25:07.49)
And he has you where he has you for a reason. One of my favorite authors, Frederick Biekner, has a quote that says, Calling is where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet. I love that. So you don't just ask what makes you come alive because you'll wind up a narcissist. And you don't just ask what the world needs, or you're gonna burn out. The sweet spot of a calling is figuring out how you've been uniquely wired and then asking who and where has God called me to serve with these.
Things that he's given me. And there's incredible clarity that comes when you can start putting words to that calling. And that's what handcrafted is designed to do. A couple of years ago, I was able to co-author this training with our friends from Clarity House. We've been piloting it at Grace, and now we're ready to open it up to the congregation. So there are six classes starting in March, intentionally small. And one of the deliverables out of this class that that
i is is is we look at everything that that has made you who you are. So your passions, your history, life history, your skills, and we distill all of that down into a two-word calling statement. A statement that you can carry into any room. And so we've had engineers take this class and stay-at-home moms and commercial fishermen and artists and physicists and doctors and college professors and business owners and people who are caring for their elderly parents. They they've all come through the class.
And and and those things that I just mentioned are their roles and their jobs. But it's something totally different to be able to say, whether I'm at work or whether I'm at the gym or whether I'm at the dinner table with my family, I know that this is why God has put me on planet Earth. And then who are the people and where are the places that God has called me to right now? Nate came through one of our pilot groups, he and Dewey and a few other guys from Grace decided to start a Bible study in their neighborhood.
And to invite guys who either don't go to church or who go to different churches. They now have 12 guys meeting up for a Bible study, some of whom would never walk into a church building. but but they they're like, This this group of guys is pretty cool. And here's the gold: they actually started a group chat so that they could stay connected in between times that they meet, and that's where the real life happens. You know what that is? That's multiplying everyday influencers. And as more of that happens in our neighborhoods.
Derek (27:30.23)
In our work cubicles, in our nonprofits, in our running clubs, in our book clubs, in our dinner groups, in the cigar bar, wherever you find yourself, you're saying, I'm called by God to step up and to be an influence here for his kingdom. So we have a handcrafted website up. You can go peruse it. I would love for all six classes that we're offering in March to fill up quickly. It's at whoisgrace.com/slash handcrafted. And I would love for you to jump in there. But a third small step.
Toward this big dream is this. It's multiplying everywhere churches. Multiplying everywhere churches. So our vision doesn't stop with a deepening discipleship or helping influencers to find their kingdom calling. It includes a reimagining of the church dispersed. Most people think of a church like a crowd that's gathered in a building, but we want to multiply and resource and encourage and partner with the church scattered.
Our time, I believe, calls for a new approach to church. And so we have locations, as you know, in McCain and in the Commons and Harbor Creek. But I believe the tip of the spear going forward is not large churches in big buildings on expensive real estate like we have. I imagine church expressions in homes and in fire halls and in storefronts across our region, meeting under the Grace Church umbrella using our resources, but led locally.
We're in the early stages of our first micro site in Cagnateville Pieg. Shout out to all of you who are gathered watching together in Cagnateville with your leader Lauren Little. We imagine more of these intimate expressions of the church popping up across our region. But not just micro churches, we're also imagining a network of non-traditional church partners. Church partners leading businesses and nonprofits and ministries through all through a Christian lens.
all in a mutually beneficial partnership with Grace Church. We're still working all of that out. And honestly, most of it is going to emerge as we live out steps one and two of what I just described. Everyday discipleship, everyday influence. This is a bottom-up vision, as I said.
Derek (29:42.808)
But as we've prayed and as we've asked God to to speak, a a geographic picture has emerged. We believe God is calling us to reach the Lake Erie region, Cleveland to Buffalo, nine counties, Cuyahoga, Lake, Ashtabula, Erie, Crawford, Warren, Chautauqua, Erie, and Niagara. Approximately three million people across those nine counties. And research shows that if you can change the mind and heart of one percent of a population, you have a real chance to move the needle in that area. And so we ask.
What if over the next 10 years we could help 1% of that population discover and live out their divine calling? That's where that 30,000 number comes from, 30,000 people. There's a lot more to come about this. Starting next fall, we're going to be bringing much more clarity and specifics to this broader vision with objective measures and things that we can actually point to, including a residency program, by the way, for young leaders and new ideas on how we will support and multiply both disciples.
And leaders across the region. But right now, right now, as I said, it's just about praying and practicing. And so will you pray? Will you pray for your own spiritual growth? Will you pray for our community? Will you pray for those nine counties from Cleveland to Buffalo? And then will you practice? Will you sign up for one of these opportunities, launch, or try one of the samplers, or jump into handcrafted? Like we've got a bunch of options starting in March so that you can try them out. Own
Your spiritual growth journey. You can find links to all of the things I mentioned at whoisgrace.com/slash awake the lake. I mentioned earlier that the church nationally is in decline. And while that's true, I recently spent a few days with Pastor Larry Osborne, who's been a mentor of mine from afar and been pastoring for over 40 years. He meets with thousands of pastors in little cohorts in his home every year.
And so he has this kind of true boots on the ground perspective about what is going on across our country, what God is doing in churches around the United States. And I asked him about this spiritual resurgence that we're hearing about, about Gen Z and young men coming back to faith. And having lived through the Jesus movement of the 60s, Larry said that the the trends right now are remarkably similar to what was stirring back then.
Derek (32:06.446)
In fact, Larry has been saying in these cohorts for years that God seems to be lurking in the bushes, he's waiting to emerge, and that over this past year, right now, this season we're in, in C.S. Lewis's language, Aslan is on the move. And so I asked him, having lived through the Jesus movement and led a church during that time, how should the church respond now? And he said these words. He said, People are hungry. Go get souls right now.
And it takes me back to that prayer. God, stir a spiritual awakening in our time and let it begin with me. I want to ask you to sit with that for a moment because here's what stirs me. Somewhere right now, there's a teenager in a high school hallway who's one conversation away from encountering Jesus and living the rest of their life as a life of impact. There's a single mom in a neighborhood wondering if God even sees her anymore.
There's a man on the treadmill next to you who would never walk into a church at the gym, but he would sit down at a table with someone and have a cup of coffee if that person genuinely cared. Most of these folks these days in 2026 are not going to willingly come to a church like ours.
And so we have to go to them. And we can. Because God has always done his biggest work through ordinary people who simply said yes. Nineteen Swedish immigrants said yes in 1895. And look what God did. And now it's our turn. We're we're carrying the baton on our leg of the race. And by God's grace,
Christians who come after us, the ones that we will never meet, they may look back and say, We're so thankful that those Christians at Grace in 2026 decided to play offense. They prayed dangerous prayers and God moved. And now look what He's done. Spirit of God, would you move in our generation? I love you guys.