John Gunter: Well, good morning. Good morning. So honored to be with you this morning. Thank you Scott for such kind words. We are happy to be here as well.
And I'm so thankful for a room full of people this morning. Thank you for being here, for celebrating with us. As I look around, I see many different stories, many different backgrounds and reasons you're here. And it's kind of like when Katie and I got married, our song was the Rascal Flats. God bless the broken road that led me straight to you.
I I I think of that as a part of life, That is our life. If I would have planned it out, it probably wouldn't be anything like what I've experienced, right? Yet here we are today celebrating five years and man, God has blessed us. Amen? Amen.
And so what do we do in a moment you don't want to forget? You take pictures, right? You try our best to remember exactly how it went. We we write things down because quite frankly, when we tell the story later, if we didn't write it down, it gets a little bit different. Kinda like a fisherman, right?
A bass groves and it changes. And so we tell the story again for those who weren't there. And so we save our memories. We try to explain to others kind of what happened. Well, five years ago, this church made a decision even before I was able to move down here.
I started working for the church in May. I didn't move until July, but June, we were in this place. And when I heard that we were moving into a CPA firm, I was a little skeptical. Didn't realize this used to be a church, but I remember setting this up and going this will work. And we've got a place to meet.
And so we moved, we trusted, we planted here. And I believe what we're seeing right now is God blessing that. And Joshua asked the same question about, you know, what to do in a moment like this. How do we remember? And God gave him a very specific answer.
So the story in Joshua, Israel had just crossed the Jordan. They had forty years of wilderness behind them. Imagine wandering around for forty years and all of a sudden you're in the spot. I'm gonna have to drive today and the kids are gonna ask, are we there yet? Yes?
Are we there yet? Well, in this moment in Joshua, they have made it to the location. They are standing on the other side of what II can only imagine they thought was impossible at this point after forty years of wondering and and so we begin in Joshua four verses one through five. When all the nation had finished passing over the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, take 12 men from the people, from each tribe a man, and command them saying, take 12 stones from here out of the midst of the Jordan from the very place where the priests feet stood firmly and bring them over with you and lay them down in the place where you lodge tonight. Then Joshua called the 12 men from the people of Israel whom he had appointed, a man from each tribe.
And Joshua said to them, pass on before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel. So notice one stone per tribe carried from the riverbed placed down in camp. This was not decoration. This was not a trophy of we're kind of in a culture now where everybody gets a trophy. I love coaching soccer.
I've coached I nine over in Baytown, and part of that is that every kid gets a medal for a specific characteristic on different weeks. And so you have to make sure everyone gets a medal. Part of me is like, why does everybody get one? But the other thing is that that thing helps us remember something. It reminds us about what we learned, about what we experienced, or all kinds of things.
And we continue in in verse six that this may be a sign among you, a sign, a remembrance. When your children ask in time to come, what do those stones mean to you? Can you imagine someone who didn't experience this looking at these stones and going, what's that all about? So it says, okay, this may be a sign among you when your children ask in time and they will, right? What do those stones mean to you?
Then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the lord. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So, these stones shall be to the people of Israel, a memorial forever and so they were able to remember because of the stones. The question here is he's addressing it weren't for the people that experienced it, They understood. These stones would be a sign not only to them but for the people to come later to ask the question, what's this all about?
God was building for the next generation. We are building for the next generation. This the stones were not a a trophy as in I accomplished something. The stones were a testimony about what god has done. And that's how we ought to look at our church.
Our church is a continuing testimony about the faithfulness of god. And we say amen. So the stones came from the riverbed. Notice he he wasn't told grab the the prettiest stone. The stones were grabbed from the riverbed.
I can't imagine they they look good. This is from the hardest, probably most uncertain place that they would have gone, right? Alright, I've I've gotta get through this river at this point. And so stones weren't to remind them of the easy things. They were to remind them of the very difficult things that God had brought them through.
And five years ago, we planted, we moved in faith. And as much as that might feel like a a decision on our part, and and it was, God was with us all along. That is stone one for us. We moved in faith. And stone two for us is we built a foundation here when it wasn't guaranteed.
Right? It's very easy to step out and do something when you know you've got backup. When you know you've got insurance, when you know if this fails, I'm still covered, That's fine. That doesn't feel risky. But when you don't know, when the future is uncertain, that's when you have to step out in faith when things are not guaranteed.
And guess what? That takes a lot of work, doesn't it? And let's be honest, not every season of these five years has been easy. Somebody say amen. There were moments where maybe the future of this church were a little uncertain.
There were quite frankly people who decided they didn't want this to succeed anymore. Let's not ignore it, let's just name it, right? Yet I want you to take just a second and look around. We are still here. God has blessed that.
I I like this verse in Isaiah. I think it's overused. I think it's misquoted at times because we wanna use this for everything. No weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their vindication from me declares the Lord.
Now sometime, like I said, I think this is overused, kind of taken out of context. Think sometimes we drive into the Walmart parking lot, and somebody takes our spot that we thought we had up close. We're like, not today, Satan. No weapon. Not as I don't I don't think that was what it meant.
But quite frankly, we have had obstacles, haven't we? We have had people speak against. Don't want this to succeed. Don't like the preacher. Don't like the youth minister.
Whatever. Don't like the elders. Don't like anything. Quite frankly, some people I'm pretty sure don't like anything, I've met them. But God's promises are this, no weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed.
And what we see is that the biggest blessing often comes after the biggest challenge. Probably a year and a half ago, I wasn't sure I would be here anymore. Not that I didn't want to be here, but I wasn't sure I would be. And I'll be honest with you, I thought that's what God wanted. I thought, okay.
Well, it's it's time to go be a blessing somewhere else because that's what I wanna be. And I'll tell you, I am thankful that those doors closed and doors reopened Because God blessed not only myself, but this church. And so when we stepped out with unknown, not guaranteed, I believe we have stepped out into something that we call faith. It's not theoretical at this point, right? We can talk about it.
Oh, we ought to step out in faith, but until you do it, you don't get the experience, do you? Oh, we should do that. We should do that. I will do it and see come back to me and tell me how that feels. So what this means, I think this verse is not just a slogan for us, think it's part of our testimony.
I think when we look back at this church, we can say, we weren't unique, we had our struggles, we had even division at times. But God blessed us, I believe, because we remained faithful. Notice I did not say we remain perfect, did we? Not one of us, and that's okay. But I believe at the end of the day, what we said was, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cling to him.
What you will hear this church say over and over is closer to God, closer to each other. And if we do those two things, as Jesus called those the greatest command, love God and love your neighbor, God is gonna bless this place. He's gonna continue to bless us. Stone three for us is that lives have been changed. Some of you didn't expect to be sitting in the church this morning, did you?
Let's just say. You had different patterns of life. You weren't weren't used to going to church. You maybe a spouse did, maybe they didn't, maybe you'd fallen out of the habit of going, and here you are today. Lives change and as I look around, I I I've seen people be baptized.
I've seen people come back to church. I've seen people come back to church and immediately get involved in things like crucial, critical parts of this church. Because God can do something even larger than we imagine. Families have found a home here, and we want to continue that. Now stone four for us that I believe is I kind of alluded to, the right people stayed.
Let me say that again. The right people stayed. The difference I have felt in this church has been nothing short of amazing. Yes? In people that love each other, that care about unity, being there for one another despite differences, despite different understandings about different things, but we care about one another, and we want to be here for one another.
I can't even begin to imagine what God can do with something like that. A people that care for one another, especially in our culture, which feels like we're just so divided on everything. Where at times, I have to watch what I say. You believe that? If I don't say that my wife will.
If you ever hear me say, don't know if I should say this, my wife is over there cringing in her seat saying don't say it, don't say it, don't say it. And let's talk about what we have right now. We have 11 acres that we own outright. Right here in Mont Belvieu, that's crazy. I would love to have I'm from Arkansas.
Everybody had a lot of land. I moved from four acres to a quarter acre. This church has got 11 acres that God can do something with. Now, whether we sell part of it or we use all of it or whatever, that's gonna be up to God. I don't think any of us know what that's gonna look like.
But my goodness, are we blessed that we have this. And look around, stone number six for us, as we go into year number six, is we are growing. Every week, I have somebody walk through the door that I've never seen. I have people that I meet for the first time, and they're already saying things like, I'll see you next week. I don't know what it is, but I feel like God is using this church.
And we are growing, and you should be just know that you are a big, huge part of that. I want to thank you all for the way that you've come here and gotten involved. It is scary walking into a new place. It's scary stepping up and doing new things, even wearing shorts on Sunday. I got out of the truck with her van this morning, and Tyler looked at me and said, well, everybody said casual.
I wore shorts and you dressed up. Way to go. Yeah. It's a new experience. But you are a part of this, and I'll be honest.
I still see this as the foundation of this church. I know it's been five years, but if you are here this morning, I consider you founding members of this church. This is our first location. We've had all kinds of changes and difference differences of opinion that that led to things and now we have come past it and we are growing and you are part of this church and what I want you to do this morning is I want you to leave here with a sense that I am part of building this church. That when we see the stones in the future, when someone asks about the stones in the future, you're gonna be able to explain it because you were there.
I remember when we met in that CPA firm. Yeah. I remember when we had so many people in here, we had to just change things up because we we just couldn't fit everyone. I remember when god blessed us through this. Well, there's a detail in Joshua four that we just read that that's kind of easy to miss and I mentioned a little bit earlier.
God didn't tell him to find the nice stones. He told him to grab them from the riverbank, the place they had just been, the dangerous place and again, that is the reminder of what they had been through. Those stones make for the best testimony, don't they? Because how many of you have have been through a hard time in your life? And and again, you wouldn't choose it, don't want it, rather not have it again.
But on this side of it, you see the blessing. Yes? Whether it's hard work in school, I don't wanna write another paper in my life. Anybody else? I'd rather not do that.
There are are things in life, there are are hardships, are people that are difficult that you have to deal with, but on the other side of that is the blessing. And that's where you see god is faithful. Maybe I didn't understand it in the moment but god was with me every step of the way. So, who are the children in this story? The children in our story are the people who don't know the church's story yet.
It's the family two streets over. It's the family you're thinking about. I need to invite them to church. It's the people you work with, the coworker who hadn't been inside a church in years. It's the person in year six, year eight, year ten that walks into this building and doesn't know the whole story, but you can say I was there.
I was a part of that. Here are our stones and what this is what this means when they ask, what is this place? Why does it feel different? Or what do these people have? Now, we created a video.
And I'm just praying that the audio works. For whatever reason, this morning, our computer decided it was no longer playing audio. Scott has gone around and gotten video from people, and, if it works, we will just cheer. If it does not work, I will stand here for four minutes in silence, awkwardly looking at you. No, I won't.
We'll skip on. Are you ready? Everybody prayed up. What is your favorite thing about Eagle Community Church of Christ?
Speaker 2: My favorite thing is being able to see all the kids grow in their faith and get excited about Jesus and all the young families and the acceptance that the church has towards them.
Speaker 3: Okay. One of my favorite things to be here is to gather together with some people that love God, love other people, and hear the message, and praise God too. Sure.
John Gunter: You. Young family community is coming up, and the singing is okay.
Speaker 4: Well, I love that we all get together, and we just worship God and Jesus. And I love being with my friends and family. My favorite thing
Speaker 5: about our church is how warm and friendly everybody is and how just committed to being in relationship with each other that we are. There are lots of opportunities to spend time together, and it's really important to everybody that we do that. My favorite thing about Eagle Community Church of Christ is how much love and support that everyone has for each other, members and visitors. It's been
Speaker 6: a true. Amazing. Just fellowship with the brotherhood, family, everybody just welcome our family in so so much, man. We just enjoy being here and just spending time with each other members of the congregation.
Speaker 7: My favorite thing about this church is the small groups.
Speaker 6: I think it's the friends and family that I have here, all the love and all the togetherness we have. Everybody most everybody gets along great. Our men's group is active and actually doing involved in doing things around the church, for the church.
Speaker 7: I really like the hospitality and the loving and generosity of the people here.
Speaker 4: The people. Everyone here is family.
Speaker 7: Church of Christ. The
Speaker 3: love. The fun times. And
Speaker 7: preaching. And I'm gonna do
Speaker 5: the second favorite thing is just the non judgment. I feel like our church is just very loving and nonjudgmental and meets you where you are, and I really appreciate that. I would say the singing is always uplifting and also the sermons are always relatable.
Speaker 4: Kids class, it's because you learn new things and you get to know more about Jesus.
Speaker 8: I think it's the community itself. It's a it's a tight knit group of people. They're very welcoming and accepting. I think my favorite of that is our men's group and the amount of communication that we have on a daily basis. It's really kinda neat.
Whether you need whether you need help or or rejoicing, we're all there for each other. And that that to me is what it is.
Speaker 7: One is happy to be here. We all love on one another, and we share our good points and our bad points, and it's just family. The best thing is
Speaker 9: that they just make you feel like family.
Speaker 7: From the moment we walked in
Speaker 9: the door, we've never felt like anything less than family, and they've
Speaker 10: just loved on us since we've been here.
Speaker 7: The love. The love for God and love for each other, and we're not afraid to show it.
John Gunter: I would say the family aspect. Yeah. My
Speaker 3: favorite thing is the unity and the singing. I like the singing that gets given. It's joyous.
Speaker 4: Children's Bible study.
John Gunter: Praise god. That works. Can we thank Scott for taking all those videos? I hope you enjoyed that. It was a lot of fun to put together.
Evan had no idea that I put that on his slide or anything. But what a blessing. What a blessing to hear from all of those different people what they enjoy about this church. And so if you weren't on there, I want you to be asking yourself the question, all right, what where do I fit in this? Because I promise you do fit.
The people here are the foundation for this church, right? We build that foundation on our faith in Jesus Christ. That's what brought us here. That's what's gonna grow this church. And I'm gonna say something that maybe seems a little out there.
I think the next five years are gonna be way better than the last five years. I believe with all of my heart that this church is about to double in the next five years, at least. But what that takes is you getting involved. What that takes is you showing up and you saying, I'm not just gonna sit here, I'm gonna be a part of this. You don't have to look a certain way, you don't have to have a certain background.
What we want is people who love God and wanna love each other more to be a part of this church. And if you believe that, let's make it happen. I believe God is going to bless us tremendously. I have watched what God has done when things were hard. I have watched what the church did and how the church held on in in difficult times.
I've watched people stay and sacrifice. Maybe they felt like they'd fit somewhere else better. Or the man, I don't want some of this stuff. And now we've got the blessing and god, I don't believe, brought us through all of that to stay here just to celebrate that. I I believe god brought us through that season to help us grow this church in Mont Belvieu.
Now, doubling does not happen by accident. It happens when people who already belong to the family, the people on the video, you in your seat, start bringing people in. I don't know if you know this, but some of you knew people, we have prayed for you for a very long time. Those of you who've been here, know, I have prayed up here so many times for the people we don't yet know. Because I think that's how growth works.
Now we could come up with all kinds of systems, and we've tried it over the years, right? How do we get people in? But I think the number one component of all of that is prayer. And we're going to be a praying congregation looking forward, giving that to god. God, this is yours.
We don't even know these people. Sometimes, we're afraid when we have prayer requests. I'm afraid I'll miss somebody. God knows, right? And so, we can pray with faith that god knows.
So you know someone who needs what you have found here. All they need is an invitation. Bring that family who needs something real. All the things we try to do, we strive to do in this church is to be authentic. That's why shorts are okay this morning.
We're fine with that. What you want what we want people to know about this church is that we are real people. Myself, the elders, bible teachers, deacons, you name it. We want to share the good things about life, the Instagram worthy picture, and we also want to share that we struggle. And that's okay because we have a savior who's taking care of all of that.
And if you're a person in need of a home, a place that will accept you and walk beside you, this is the place to be this morning. A few minutes ago, we read from Ephesians four one through six and verses five and six, you see one lord, one faith, one baptism, one god. And that that's what unifies all of us. That sure we can have disagreements and and differences on all kinds of other things, but one lord, one faith, one baptism. Let's hold the big thing as the big thing.
The main thing is the main thing and let's unify around that. In verse two, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. Don't think Paul knew we were gonna deal deal with differences and and, just the way people are? He says this because he knows some people just don't just don't mesh well. Right?
So what you have to do, whether you think you you you fit with someone, your personalities are similar, I wanna deal with everyone with humility, gentleness, with patience, bearing with each other in love, eager to maintain the unity in the spirit of the spirit in the bond of peace. To be eager to do something means I'm gonna seek it out. I'm gonna strive for that. That is what I desire. Do you desire that this morning?
I love this church. I love where this church is. I love how this church has endured. And I love that this is the spirit I feel right now. That we are eager for a unity around the spirit.
Now, what if somebody had decided they didn't want to pick up a stone, and they didn't want to remember? What I have noticed in church is often, very often, the people who leave lost connection before they ever left. And by the time they left, they didn't have anything to lose because they had disconnected themselves. And so what I'm asking you to do this morning is to connect, to pick up a stone, to remember that you were here. You will be able to tell people, I was here at the beginning.
I was here when that church started to grow. And I think God is going to bless us through that. Your presence here is not optional. That sounded harsh? I hope so.
Your presence here is not optional, and let me tell you why. You are someone's stone. How many of you are sitting in the same place you do every week? I see some of you had to move, but most of you is in the same spot. You know what that feels like when the person that usually sits beside you looks over and you're not there?
Now I don't wanna I'm not guilting you for taking a vacation. Don't get me wrong. But sometimes we slack off and we disconnect, don't we? You are someone's stone. How many of you grew up sitting beside someone who was a good singer and they've passed on and, man, I miss them.
They were your stone. They were your connection. But you are someone else's stone, and we need you here. And so let me wrap this up this morning. I know preachers say that and then preach for another fifteen minutes.
I'm not gonna do that. But God was faithful when it was hard. When the Israelites walked through the wilderness, they could have split up and goodness knows they griped a lot. Why can't we go back? Let's do this again.
Man, we had it better over there. We've done the same thing. And God has still blessed us. He's brought us through. And look at the fruit that is being produced right now.
And so I just want to end this way. Let's not just celebrate what God has done. Let's build something the next generation can be proud of. Yes. That is not just about us.
I told somebody the other day, what a legacy it would be if I or the elders, deacons, whoever, we trained up so many people that maybe you're not comfortable being in front of people, you're not comfortable serving yet but we trained up so many people that I wasn't even needed. What a legacy that would be. And that's the desire we have. If you are not a part of this church in a way that you are serving, we wanna get you connected. We don't wanna be blocking your way.
The only reason I stand before you this morning is that someone else moved out of the way so I could preach or that I could teach a Bible class when I was up here shaking and they're like, oh no, they're gonna ask me a tough question. And we wanna be that people. We're not trying to just build and and be a big church just to be a big church. We wanna grow the lord's church here. What I mean by the Lord's church is people who love God.
That they feel they are a part of this, they are connected, they are working, they are serving, and this is yours. It's not mine. It's not Terry's or Scott's or Robert's. It is ours, and God walks with us. So cast your stone.
If you are not yet a follower of Jesus, we'd love to see that happen today. We'd love to see you baptized into his name, begin that walk with him, and I'll tell you, it's not gonna be perfect but all of us imperfect people will walk side by side with you and encourage you along the way. We've got a gonna have a time of invitation. We'd love to pray with you. Would you respond as we stand as we say this morning?