So this morning you are in for a treat and it is my privilege
to have with us this morning a dear friend of mine, JD pairing.
You met his wife, already introduced his wife, Lori.
She's going to leave that seven primal questions for us
in a few weeks that you need to be a part of that,
but JD is you want to come up here, JD?
JD is the lead.
You've heard me talk about Excel Leadership
Network, the church planning group, JD and Lori lead that.
JD started that with Lori invited us to be a part of it.
It has been the joy, one of the joys of my life and the joy of
our church to get to partner underneath you and your leadership.
You and Lori and plant in churches all around the world.
I met JD in 2004.
Schill and I were in Wisconsin going through the remember that honey
going through Wisconsin.
And Shelly told me, she said, I don't know if you can plan a church,
but a JD says you can, then I'll believe it.
And so, with you, which just what I needed to hear
from, from JD and the team too.
And so from that moment on, God started this relationship
and this partnership, this kingdom work that we've been able to partner
with you and under your leadership.
JD, you, I love you.
I love your wife.
JD loves JD and Lori. Love the Lord. They love each other.
They love their kids. The kids are walking with the Lord.
God is taking them all around the world doing kingdom stuff.
Hard work for the kingdom and I so appreciate the fact
that you are here with us.
Setting up what's next for the next 20.
Please understand I can't say enough about this man
and and Lori, how much I love you and admire you.
Thank you for your investment in me,
your investment in the kingdom, your investment in this church.
You are very dear and special in my world.
And I love you.
So tell us what's next.
All right.
It is such a privilege
and a real honor to be here with you on 20 anniversary.
Happy birthday. Happy anniversary.
Happy whatever.
And, Carl asked me months
ago, will you come at the 20th anniversary party?
And I've been thinking about it ever since and just trying to.
It's kind of hard figure.
What do you say to people who are doing amazing job?
I've been thinking through thinking
I was like, I go this direction, I go this direction.
When, finally
just the other day, I said, I think I'm going to do all three sermons.
I have the hat, so I got three for you.
Two are really short.
The other ones are not.
And, let me just start with here's the first message from God.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
You guys have just been amazing.
Not only the, you know, the top donor to excel network, but partner in ministry.
You've helped start about 800 churches
in the last 20 years, and you've been the top giver to that.
Churches all over Cuba, 125 plus churches.
Mexico 50 plus all over the United States, Austria, Uganda.
Where else are we?
Nicaragua, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, all sorts of places.
You guys have just been amazing.
And you don't you don't know the number of people that you've touched,
and you probably don't have any idea, excuse me.
Of the number of churches that have seen what you guys have done
and have increased their giving
to missions and to church planting,
so many here, well, that's what flip side is doing.
Well, we need so thank you. There's
it's passage in Philippians one that says,
I thank my God and all my remembrance of you,
especially because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day.
It's tonight.
So thank you, thank you, thank you means a ton.
That's the first message pretty quick. Right?
Second one is this.
And don't miss this. This is the message from God.
It came all the way from Elk Grove this morning to tell you this.
You have a great pastor.
You,
As Carl says, I,
I just think the world of Carl and Shelly.
And when I met them,
actually, before I met them, my first introduction to them was
I was leading this church planter assessment center where we're going to see
if they can start churches or not in Green Lake, Wisconsin.
And before the candidates come in, before the couples, before the church
planters come in, we have a little meeting of staff,
and then we ask whoever brought them to give us just a little insight on them.
And the person that brought Carl and Shelly said, oh yeah, he's
in there
pastoring a large church in, Orange County,
and they're going to move and plant a church in Fresno.
And I thought, it's got to be something terribly wrong here.
Right? Who left?
Who leaves Orange County to, anyway?
Fresno.
Then I met them and I thought, wow, these are incredible people.
Young, good looking.
Carl had this incredible head of hair.
No, no, no, he didn't never did see anybody.
Ever seen a picture of Carl with hair?
Anybody know one person?
Anyway, I met them, and it's just an incredible.
And then I found out.
Okay, Orange County, but I was thinking Newport Beach.
I was thinking Dana Point.
Now they're in La Habra, okay?
And they say, well, Harbor is not the armpit of Orange County.
It's more like the crotch. But anyway, there's just like,
and then they weren't going to Fresno,
they're going to Madera Ranchos, which is, much different.
Right. Much better.
And so they're from the Central Valley.
So that made sense.
And they came through.
There's probably 15 couples coming through with them there by far top
as just top, top people.
It was like, whatever they do, they're going to do great.
So I got to meet them.
And then I got offered this job to be the church
planning director for this group of churches.
It was full time.
I said, I'm staying at my church as a pastor.
I'll do it half time. Can I hire some people?
I said, yeah, so the first person I can't, will you do this with me?
And we started and we probably did 100 churches there. And,
and then when we went on our own started Cell Network,
he said, Carl, hey, first, first, first, like, how will you do this?
We do it with us.
And we've been partners ever since.
In fact, he's gone to Ukraine.
Here's what happened in the last few years.
Up in Sacramento, been working with some Ukrainian people.
You know, most of the people from Ukraine
are in this country because of one church in Sacramento.
Brought some somebody from Ukraine over, brought somebody else, brought
somebody else, got an addendum to the, the immigration policy
that said, if you're from Israel, you can come and be an automatic citizen.
They got an addendum that if you
come from Ukraine and are a Christian, you're an automatic citizen.
They brought all these people over,
send them all
over the U.S., all these Ukrainian churches.
But they were getting older and they're starting a younger
church and say, Will you help us start the younger
Ukrainian churches for the next generation?
And we are working on that.
And then last December they came and I said, you know, we're we're doing this.
No, no, no, we want to go put this on pause.
We want to go to Ukraine because it is opening
that we have the possibility of planting over there
and there such a revival of people coming to Christ.
And we need some help.
And will you come?
And I thought, I don't want to go, but I think I know who wants to go
and what I, I brought it up in a group setting.
I didn't even get the sentence out.
I was like, I'm going, I want to go.
One of the front lines.
We've been partnering. Carl is such a rock.
Carl, you're such an influence.
Such an amazing, amazing leader.
20 years here and what this church has done, I just want to say thank you.
And you've got a great pastor.
So those are the first two sermons, right? There's.
It's two short ones.
Let's get into the long one.
If we can.
Oh, by the way, here's my wife's favorite picture of Carl.
This was in Cuba one time we were there,
like end of June to the 4th of July.
And it was so hot and it was so muggy.
And Lori just came to run and she's just laughing.
Laughing like, what's going on? She said, Look at Carl.
He is so hot that he's leaning with his hands
like this because he couldn't do that because it would slip.
So, he is a warrior.
So this is the best picture we have of you.
You got a great.
You got a great pastor
that's got.
Here's the here's the the third message.
It's been 20 years. Okay, great.
What's next?
What is next?
You've done 20 years and you could sit back and say, hey, we did it.
We made it. We we finished, you know?
But what what is.
And that's how do you stay in the game.
How do you stay relevant?
I was in Colorado this week at a retreat with a group of churches, good people.
The same group of churches that sent Laura and I out to play our first church
42 years ago.
She was 12.
I was 13.
We're still David.
She started then 42 years
and,
they approached me about a year ago and said, hey, would you help us?
Our group has not started a church in over 20 years.
What happened?
Say the churches got older, they got.
And they just they in mission drift and they lost their zeal
and they weren't relevant. And we.
So we started to work with them.
Good news is, this week we, commissioned their first church planner.
They had over 20 years.
Yeah, it's great stuff. He's going to,
Fort Collins area.
It's going like crazy there, if you know that we're going to Town of Windsor.
And that was exciting. But I was looking around.
I'm seeing most of these churches are just old.
They they kind of lost their mission.
They probably had their 20 anniversary and then started going downhill
because they they didn't know how to stay relevant.
They didn't know how to look at what is next.
So so how do you stay relevant? How do you stay in the game?
How do you make the next 20 years better than even the last 20 years?
What a look at a passage in Scripture from First Corinthians chapter nine.
And this will kind of set the pace.
I think there's like five suggestions, tools in that passage
on how to handle the next 20, how to stay relevant.
Here's the passage, just might be familiar to you.
First Corinthians nine, the Apostle Paul's writings.
Oh, I am free and belong to no man.
I make myself a slave to everyone.
When you here last week,
when the apostle Carl told us about.
It's not servant, it's slave to us.
You're a slave. Remember that?
Okay. See, you got that.
Good job.
I make myself a slave to everyone.
To when? As many as possible. To the Jews.
I became like a Jew
to when the Jews, to those under the lot became like one under law.
Though I myself am not under the law.
So as to when those under the law, to those not having the law,
I became like one not having law, though I am not free from God's law,
but under Christ law, so as to when those not having the law,
then it concludes for the week I became week two, when the week
I become all things to all men, so that by all possible means I might save some.
So how do we handle the next 20?
How do we stay in the game?
How do we not get into mission drift?
How do we make a difference in the next couple decades?
Five ways.
Number one, understand your role.
Understand what you're called
to understand your role as a servant.
According to Carl, that's not correct.
As a slave, you understand
what you're your role is.
And we miss this.
Sometimes in churches, we get caught up.
We think it's about us.
We get 20 years.
We think, oh, great, we can relax now.
But Paul says, no, I'm a slave.
I'm a servant.
That's my role.
You talked about the Charlie Kirk deal.
What's my role with people who disagree with me on that?
What's my role with the people who are doing stuff
and against what I feel like is, you know, God's law?
My role is a servant.
I role, as is our neighbor, posted something
on social media yesterday about this.
It was like, oh no. And I wanted to go.
And actually, you know what I did?
I was like, wait a minute, what's my role? My role
is to be a servant.
That's that's our job is to serve.
Paul says, I talked about the rights we have as Christians, as a person.
I've never used any of these rights.
And I'm not writing this to suggest that I want to start now.
It's not about us.
Statistics say that 90% of American churchgoers
think the church is for them.
That's not what Scripture says.
There's a great quote.
The church is the only cooperative society in the world
that exists for the benefit of nonmembers.
It's not for us.
This is a picture of the guy who said it.
By the way, I don't have his name up there.
Good looking guy.
But anyway, it's not for us.
And then I Like This by Dave Browning.
His book Deliberate Simplicity
a big part of a pastor's job, and I think Carl does as well,
is to keep the church swimming upstream, because the natural current
takes us to a place of inward focus.
We buy new chairs not so that we will get more comfortable,
but so our neighbors and friends will be when they finally arrive.
We pick songs not with just our ear and mind,
but for those who are about to come.
Our role is as a servant.
I grew up in a tradition
that was just so caught up in ceremony
and ritual and traditions they didn't care about.
Well, it was all about them.
And I ran away from the church.
I ended up in a drug fraternity at UCLA,
didn't know it was a drug fraternity until the day I moved in.
And it was, but I came to Christ there and in that fraternity was kind of weird.
We had a rule, because there was 40 guys living in one place,
and there was just one washer and one dryer, clean operated.
And so we had this rule that if you had your stuff in the washer
and it was done, you better get out of there,
because if somebody got there before you
washer dryer, it was fine for them.
In fact, encouraged for them to take your clothes and scatter them
wherever they may be. You might have to wash them again.
That was just what we did.
Sometimes you walk in there, they'd be sticking to the ceiling, all that.
So what that was for I my clothes.
It's a fraternity, right?
I come in
and there's something in the washer so that, Well, I give the guy some time.
Came back a little while later, still there.
And I'm getting ready
to just fling these things, and I just turn my life over to Christ.
And I thought, okay, maybe I shouldn't do that,
put it in the dryer, use my own quarters.
And he came back to change. He still on it.
So I and just something I don't even do to the day I folded the clothes
and I took him out to his room,
talk to us, gave him the clothes, and, he didn't say anything.
He just took them.
And, Anyway, I don't remember that really what was on.
But three months later, he comes knocking on the door.
I'm there with my friend, the two Christians in this 30s
banging on the door.
It's late at night.
What's up? Because I need Jesus.
This happened a number of times, by the way,
and I need Jesus. He came in is like.
So we prayed with him.
He gave his life to Christ. And we're hanging out in front of.
What was it?
Was it was it, you know, something that we had said?
Was it the Bible study we're leaving was at the team meeting we had all the
brothers were, I get my testimony, and Rick gave a little sermon.
What was it? And he said,
remember that time you folded my clothes?
How was it?
It's amazing.
Our neighbor is a Christian now.
He comes to church every Sunday,
and he said, you know, for 22 years,
Lori brought cookies
for him on my doorstep every Christmas and Easter.
And the first few years I brought him back.
And then I started throwing them away.
And now I'm a believer
because of Lori and her serve it.
It's not about us.
It's about us taking the role of servant.
And it's not our job to to set people straight.
It's not our job to tell people where they're wrong and to get upset with them.
It's our job to just be a servant, and that's our role.
And if we keep that role, we will keep
being effective for the gospel.
So understand your role.
Secondly, understand your audience. Who are you dealing with?
Who are the people?
Do we understand
these people?
Well, you know, we've got these, echo chambers that we're in
and we look at other people and we just think they're crazy now.
They're just regurgitating what they're hearing in their echo chamber.
And how are we going to minister that to them if we don't
understand them, if we don't take time to actually
listen to them?
Guy went in for a job interview.
The questions was, where do you see yourself in five years?
And his answer was, I would say, my biggest weakness is
listening.
Right, right.
I don't like it when Lori
says to me, are you even listening to me?
I think that's a really strange way to start a conversation.
There's a barber in our town,
barber in our town, who just got arrested
for selling drugs on the side.
And, I was just amazed because I've been going to this guy for three years.
I had no idea he was a barber.
That's not true.
I don't do drugs, and my wife cuts my hair.
But here's the thing.
We don't.
We miss it. We miss.
We don't understand it.
We don't take the time to go.
What is really happening with these people?
What is going on in their lives
and just getting to know who they are. You.
When you go to these different countries, it's easy
because you got to put yourself in that realm.
You go into Ukraine, you realize in Ukraine it's a very clear
the men are on one side, the women are on the other side.
I found this out because I was doing this Ukrainian event
and I was a pastor's wife.
So what if I gave her a side hug? I'm not even a hugger.
But you know, I do the side hug thing.
And then I realized, you don't do that.
Got to know your audience.
So who are you dealing with? What are the people that you're
you're talking to?
What are they feeling? What are they sensing?
Why are they coming from where they're coming from?
God has put, you know, 8 to 15 people on the front rows of our life.
And he's just saying, hey, you go love.
These people know your role, our role with them is not to just jam it down.
That's a role is to be a servant.
We need to know and understand.
That's our role and we need to understand who they are, where they're coming from.
The more we listen, the more effective we're going to be.
So I would just encourage you, how do you make the next 20 years effective
gets another people? Why?
Why are they thinking like that. And,
you know, take that angle talking to them about Jesus.
Paul says, yes, I try to find common ground
with everyone doing everything I can to save
some.
Third, understand the times.
Understand our
culture, our situation where we are right now.
First Chronicles 1232.
As it goes through, as it's talking about the, the different people,
it says the men of Isaac understood the times and knew what Israel should do.
We need to understand the times.
Things are different.
Your 20 year anniversary.
It's not 2005 anymore.
I was doing some study on 2005,
just how different it was in 2005.
Guess what happened?
YouTube became public.
YouTube went
on. YouTube started in 2005.
Today it's the number two search engine in the world.
2005 one of the most effective companies in our country.
Blockbuster video.
There's only one Blockbuster Video left.
It's in bend, Oregon.
If you ever get a chance to go visit it, pass.
It's just it's just like the old ones.
We did a trip up there. I went in there.
It's like silly. I'm trying to return this.
And it wasn't rewound, and they give me a hard time, but,
things have changed
so much in in number one selling
cell phone, 2005 Nokia.
Anybody have a Nokia on you today?
Anybody in here have a Nokia flip phone?
Okay. You need to understand the times.
If you still have a Nokia
how about this in 2005,
did you know that, gay marriage was not legal in California?
It was not legal in the United States.
20 years,
2005 here in California,
we had a Republican governor
member, Arnold, things have changed.
We don't have a Republican governor anymore.
2005 years.
The average cost of a brand new car was.
You must have been here for service, right?
$22,000.
Maybe you bought a car in 2005.
$22,000.
And then today, do you know what the average cost of a new car is?
$48,401.
I believe that bestselling car,
bestselling, vehicle,
2005 Ford F1 series
today bestselling vehicle, Ford F1 series.
Some things don't change
to 2005.
There was an assassination attempt on George Bush in the country
of Georgia.
Some things don't change, but some things do.
We need to understand the times.
I'm sure what we're dealing with understand who these people are.
The whole culture.
Understand that you know, 2005, we were told kids
aren't interested, you know, young people, they aren't interested in Christ at all.
Now, in 19 to 29 year olds are coming to Christ like crazy.
There's five
churches in Worcester, Massachusetts, the northeast.
Nobody's interested in the gospel, right?
Five churches have contacted us and say, hey, we need your help
because all of our churches have tripled in the last year
and a half, and it's all 19 to 29 year olds.
What do we do?
Understand the times, understand what's happening.
We need we need to kind of get out of our own little bubble
and realize, well, it's been great.
Oh 5 to 2025
let's get ready for 2030, 2035, 2040, 2045.
We have to understand what is going on around us.
Doesn't mean we have to kind of give in to the culture.
We're still in the world, but not of it.
But we have to be aware.
We don't have to get caught up in it.
We don't have to succumb.
But we do need to understand the times.
If we're going to be, if we're going to be effective.
Not a lot of people know this about me, but I'm a time traveler.
The only catch is so far I can look travel through time, same rate.
Everyone else is go.
I like this quote.
They are called for in times of change.
Learners inherit the earth while the learner find themselves
beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
Why are those churches and Rocky Mountains dwindling?
Why is it so hard?
Because they are dealing
with a world that doesn't exist anymore.
And I look and
most of the churches at that conference
had not seen anybody come to Christ in their church in the last year.
Most of them had not seen a baptism in their church in the last year,
and they're wondering why.
So I guess they're not good people, and they might even have understood the role,
but they don't understand the people they're dealing with
or the times we're living in.
And we've got to adjust.
We've got to be malleable.
We've got to be new wineskins so that God can put
his changes in us and we can serve other people.
So get to number four.
How to stay relevant.
Understand the message.
Or have you ever just got the wrong message?
Seven years ago,
we bought a refrigerator and it was going to be delivered
the next day, and I took the day off of work and stayed.
It was waiting for it to be delivered.
This is back before cell phones and stuff and I'm waiting.
And waiting didn't come, so I don't know what that's about, but,
the next day I got this call from this guy,
and he said, I think I have your refrigerator.
Okay, I live down the street.
So what's going on?
He said, well, I'm at work in San Francisco.
We were in the Bay area. It's I'm in San Francisco, I'm at work.
The babysitter calls and leaves a message.
The refrigerator is in the garage.
So what?
He raced home because he said, what is going on?
You're supposed to be washing, right? Yes.
And I put it in the fridge and delivered it there.
They got the wrong message.
And we go through life and we just miss it.
My mom used to tell this story all the time,
about to start a birthday party for a neighborhood kid.
He was turning eight years old.
She went down, she got the cake.
He opens up the cake and he goes, couldn't.
Good luck, Agnes.
Mom got the wrong cake.
She picked up the cake that was supposed to be for this girl
who's going off to the convent to become a nun.
And and our family growing up, it was whenever there was a miscommunication,
it was always good luck. Agnes.
I think when
we are talking to people about Jesus, they're saying,
good luck, Agnes, because we miss it.
We miss it. We just.
I think we've messed up the message,
and we got to be careful that we don't mess it up going forward.
If you ask, why do people not go to church?
I've been doing this informal survey for the last 30 years.
Why people don't go to church.
Number one reason to say the same.
Some of the others have changed.
Number two, reason why people in the United States say they don't go to church.
Number two is everybody at church is a hypocrite.
And I like to say, well, we always have room for one more.
So, number three, reason why people don't go to church.
Number three,
pretty new.
The church hates gays.
The church hates the LGBT, whatever community.
The church hates them, and we're known for hate.
That's what we're known for.
Number number four, reason
people don't go to church.
All I want my money.
That's what we're known for.
We're just known for
the whole money stuff.
Number five, reason why people don't go to church is it's sad
and gloomy, and all they talk about is death.
And I was in Colorado and at this conference
with these churches, every, every song, the last stanza was about death.
When we've been there 10,000 years, I've it's always about dying at the end of it.
And is that our message?
We're going to die
and you're going to.
Is that our message number one reason why people don't go to church
hasn't changed in decades.
The number one reason why people say I don't go to church is
it's irrelevant.
Does it make a difference?
They're talking about issues that aren't even on my radar.
They say 100 years old songs.
They sit on 100 years old furniture and they use 100 years old
I and vow and sign language.
And it's just irrelevant to me.
And I think works more relevant than Jesus.
Paul says this.
What's the message?
It's the opportunity to preach the good news.
It's about the good.
We should be known for the good news going forward.
Let's make sure we still are known for good news,
for further good stuff and the gospel.
Pretty clear.
It's just as simple as A-b-c, right?
And the the A is it's kind of the bad news.
All has sinned and fall short of law.
We've got we've all messed up.
We've all blown it.
We we've all just fallen short.
We all have that sense of evil inside of us.
Yes, we're created in God's
image, but we're falling.
And we have to admit that
we have to be open about that.
And we have to abandon
the old, not just
sick of our life, not just sorry for our life, but surrender
where we just say, yes, I meant I need help.
I can't do this on my.
When I came to Christ, it was like, I'm tired of trying to figure this out
on my own.
I'm trying to work my tired of working my way to heaven.
It's not working at all.
That gets us to the bit to believe that Jesus gave us perfect life for me,
it was crucified in my place, praying for each one of my sins,
resulting in full forgiveness and reconciliation to God.
God, through Jesus, offers full forgiveness.
That's what we should be known for.
Our favorite stories is in acts chapter 13, where Paul and Barnabas
are, in this, in this church.
And they ask him to, hey, give them talk to them.
Paul gets up and talks
and something happened to him that's never happened to me is right.
After we got done, they said, we want you to give the same sermon next week.
Nobody's ever asked me that.
So I say, what?
What was the sermon? Not.
And then you look down the next week, it says almost the entire town.
Almost the whole town came to hear what he had to say.
So what was he talking about?
And a bunch of people came to Christ.
So what was his message about?
If you look, his message was in this man, Jesus.
There is forgiveness of sins.
We all need forgiveness.
Well, I understand the people next in your neighborhood,
the people that just we all, we all get the whole forgiveness thing
because we all need it to admit, believe.
But then there's a C, which means there's a commitment
that needs to be made.
I met with a friend of mine, Don, for lunch once a month.
We've been doing it for years.
Just he's not a believer yet, but I'm just talk to him, he says.
I get it.
I gotta admit, I'm a sinner.
That's another problem.
I believe in Jesus, but it calls for a commitment.
And I'm not a commitment guy.
It's for living with his, girlfriend for years and years.
He's not a commitment.
You've got to be a commitment person.
If we're a servant, if we're slave, we have to make that commitment.
We we commit to follow Jesus every day and say, he does.
I'm here for you. That's the good news and the good news.
This will change your life. It's good news.
There's forgiveness there. That's what we need to be known for.
That should be our message.
We need to understand that our message is not about hate.
It's not about hypocrisy.
It's not about money.
It's not about death.
It's about the good news.
We should be joyful.
We should be, you know, people who,
when other people see us, they go, hey, wow, there's something there.
Understand the message. Want to make a difference?
Let's hold on to the truth of the gospel.
And then the last deal.
How to stay relevant
is to understand the goal.
So my role,
the other people, the times, the message.
But then what's.
What's the goal?
You ever hit the wrong goal?
Ever scored for the wrong team,
right. Ever.
Just kind of messed up that.
Oh, you wanted me to do that.
And I did this.
We need to hit the goal.
And it's this I have become all things to all mentioned
that by all possible means, I might save some.
Paul, you don't save them. Jesus saves them.
Of course he knows that.
But God has given us the ministry of reconciling people to him.
He's put those people in your life, and the goal is for you to win some.
The goal is the the people in our lives is probably not going to hear it
from anybody else. And they're watching us.
They're watching you.
They're watching me, and they're they're wondering if
if we get it, do we understand them?
Do we understand the times?
What's the message?
Is it clear and our goal in life is simply.
God use this to win some
and going to the next 20 years, if we could just have this whole mentality
that, hey, we're not done.
We are servants
and we need to understand the people around us,
and we're going to listen to them
and we're going to kind of try to get what's going on in the culture.
We may not agree, we may not completely understand that.
We may not know why, but we're going to try to
understand the time so we know what to do, and we're going to have
a clear message that cuts through all the other crap there.
It gets so the people can hear it, and by all means,
we might save some.
And then Paul says, this
I do all of this for the sake of the gospel
that I might share in his blessings.
Well, here we are today. We're sharing the blessings of the gospel.
I get an opportunity to come up here, come down here.
Sharing the blessings of it is just so amazing,
such a privilege to be here and just see the blessings of the gospel.
We get to share that we get to be partners.
Do you not know that a race all the runners run
but only one gets the prize run in such a way
with urgency.
Let's face the future with urgency.
We want the next 20
to be even more impactful
than the last 20.
Here's the challenge.
What do you need to understand?
We go through this. What?
What's maybe. So I got to reframe my whole
role thing because sometimes I just think it's about me.
Sometimes the things about me showing other people that I'm right or wrong,
no understand.
Or maybe I just, you know what?
I haven't taken the time to listen to why this person is doing
the things they're doing and why they're not getting it.
When I talk to them about Jesus, maybe it's this whole culture thing.
I've been so anti culture that I've just stayed away.
Instead of just saying, hey, I need to understand the times
so so we can know what flip side should do.
Maybe I've just been a little muddy
with my message.
I come off as more judgmental than good news
or or
or maybe I just need to step back and go, wow, you know,
I've missed out on the goal.
I missed shooting for the wrong.
Instead of realizing, hey, the goal is that God would use me
to to win some and continue to use flip side to win.
So I'm so excited for your future.
You've got a great leader.
You're wonderful people, so generous.
You're making a major impact.
Keep it up.
Thank you for the privilege of being here.
Let me pray for you. God, thank you for these people.
Thank you for this church.
Thank you for Carl and Shelly
and the staff here and the way that you have used them.
Thank you for the leadership.
We pray your protection around Carl and the team as they go to Ukraine
and beyond, and the protection around us as well as we share the good news.
God, will you just help us to understand our role
and to enjoy the fact that we are your slaves
and we're servants to these people around us?
We help us to understand the the folks that we're dealing with.
Show us those people in our sphere of influence
that you're calling us to be
the primary spokesperson for you, to them,
God, we don't understand this culture, but you give us enough
glimpse of understanding so that we can maneuver through it
without just being thrown off our
our game because of what's happening out there.
Help us have clarity with the message that it's good news
that God saved me, and he can save you to.
And we just look forward to what's going to happen in the future.
Pray for this church.
Pray your blessing upon it.
Christ name. Amen.
Amen.