Building Dreams: Oasis City Church's New Chapter

On July 20, 2025, Oasis City Church gathered at Westerville's Amphitheater. With Oasis City Worship and over 19 baptisms, the service emphasized their journey from humble beginnings to acquiring a new property. Our senior leaders shared stories on their growth, the principles of sowing and reaping as per scripture, and their commitment to the city. The script includes announcements about their fishing ministry, an upcoming 'Revive All' conference, and the excitement of purchasing a new building that promises to serve multiple generations. The leaders share personal anecdotes, celebrate the community's dedication, and express gratitude for the faithful contributions that have made their progress possible. They conclude with a collective moment of thanksgiving and joy.

Transcript

Westerville is a city within a park. That's, is that still the slogan? 

Yeah, I think it's one. I think it is, yeah. Yeah. 

A city within one of them, but, and I was driving in on this property and I'm looking at these trees and some of them, just shout out how old do you think that one is?

How old I don't know the answer. So there's not a wrong one. How old do you think this one is? How old do you think all this? So here's the thing. Here's the cool thing about God. We don't have this without seed that was sown. All of this beauty and is, and the longevity of it is because God put a principle, a law in the earth.

It happens to also be in the scripture. And he says that you will reap what you sow. So that's not a pomegranate tree because it didn't have pomegranate seeds, right? And that's not a lime tree. 'cause it didn't have lime seeds. I don't know what tree that is, but let's just pretend it's whatever. It's, and I was reminded when I walked in here, I thought Man, God, your principle is always true.

And here's what he tells us in the scripture. He says that our possessions, our money, our. Whatever we yield in life, our property, our possessions is seed. It's seed. Put your hand wherever your money is right now. Probably left in your car, but where that seed and it's also bread, and it's important for us to know the difference between seed to sow and bread to eat.

But here's what God says. He says, I'll make it easy. He says, first of all, there's something called a tithe, right? And a tithe is. 10%. 10%. So that's easy. You don't have to do math. You don't even have to have calculus or trigonometry. They still have trigonometry. That's what I have when I was a senior, but it was awful.

But even you have a tithe of a 10%, but anything else that you have is seed that you can sow and God produces a harvest and your life is supposed to look like this. All of this great vegetation, and I want to give you an opportunity right now in public to sow a seed, to give your tithe, pay your tithe, but sow a seed into, for us to even be able to do these kinds of things again.

But would you are so faithful, and I'm gonna talk about that in just a minute,

we're gonna, we're gonna ask our wives. They're gonna come out in just a moment. We're gonna talk to you just for a few minutes. This is not gonna be a heavy preaching day. It's a heavy family day, right? So we're gonna eat afterwards. We're gonna have a great time. But one thing that we wanna let you know about how many of you know we want to be a blessing to the city that we're in.

Yes, we want Westerville to want us to be here, right? So part of what that means is we're gonna take every trash with us, all the trash with us. We're gonna clean this place up when we leave, it's gonna be better than it was when we got here, right? 'Cause we love our city. That's one of the ways that we will do that.

And in loving our city, we found a way through a ministry that, that Ray and Angie Turner, come on way, baby Ray. Right here. Right here. Y'all love Ray and Angie. There's Angie right there. Angie, stand up for a minute. Don't you love them? Amen. They've been involved in a fishing ministry for how many years?

17 years. And they started with people years ago. And when they came to OAS City, they said, Hey, we have this ministry. Can we partner? And so we've been faithful in doing a fishing ministry every summer as an outreach to the community just to give them free fishing poles and all that stuff.

This year for the first time, we partnered with the Westerville City Police Department. And so the Westerville City Police and Fire and EMTs came out last month, and we had a spectacular time. They did giveaways. They were, they're fishing with kids. It was a great partnership. It was such a success to the city of Westerville.

They said, can we join you again next month? And so this Saturday, see this Saturday. This Saturday we're gonna be fishing again at Hoff Woods Park. And here's how you can help. Come bring your kids and bring your neighbors, bring your friends, right? And tell people, listen. If they're under 16, we'll give them a fishing pole.

We'll set them up to fish. We're gonna teach 'em to fish. There's there's no strings or lines attached.

Hey, they'll get better from here. But we're gonna have a great time. And so this one be a great thing. There's another way that we are gonna celebrate the Lord together. In the house of the Lord coming this October, 

right? September, yeah. September. So if you have your phones, 'cause you just gave on your phone, you can also go to the church center app and right now you could register for something that's called Revive All.

It is our annual conference and it, we have surprises for you this year. Last year was the first time we'd done it that way and we said, man, God just kissed it. It was so good. We had all these healings and testimonies that took place. And so revival is happening September 4, 5, 6. And we've got three four really unique and special.

People that are with us, we don't just have guest speakers, we got family members that come. Even if you don't know them, you're about to know them. And I just want to say, you should register. And here's the thing we're doing when you register. We've done something different this year, so we've made the registration as low as possible and it gets you the morning sessions.

It gets you the workshops, it gets you per personal prophetic ministry. It gets oh, it gets you like a reserved seat for the day you can have it at, because at night we're making it totally free and open and we're gonna have overflow seating and all sorts of things. So you can come to the night for free, but you register for the day sessions.

I'm telling you, it's gonna be so incredibly worth it. You're gonna want to do that. So Chris Durso is from. New York City. Yeah. Anybody know Chris? Yeah. He's just doing an amazing job passing in a, an amazing church. As a matter of fact, he's launching a church that very weekend too. He's coming to be with us and going back, launching a new church right there in Manhattan.

So it's gonna be awesome. Chris will be there. Lafe, Hetland Lafe has been with us before, and I'm telling you, this man carries a life transformation. Transformative mess message about the love of God. You need to come to hear Lafe because he's just ridiculously brilliant and carries the love of God.

We've got for the first time, Tracy Armstrong. He's with us. He's out in Washington the state of Washington and Tracy. Is a great communicator, preacher, but he really operates and functions and signs and wonders and miracles. So there's gonna be a lot of healings that take place. There's gonna be a lot of just great opportunity for the supernatural to work.

All those guys are gonna be doing workshops and teaching and of course pastor Tara's gonna be teaching a workshop. Pastor Lynn's gonna be teaching a workshop. Pastor Adam's gonna be doing, it's gonna be so good, OC worship. Who is, they were here, they were, trust me. But Oc Worship's gonna be leading worship, and we have a great friend, Matt Gilman from Orlando that's gonna be with us leading.

So you want to register for revival. And let me tell you, it will get packed and it will be sold out. So register today. And if you didn't do it yet, then just wait until we're done talking and then you can do it. 

Amen. Yeah, it's gonna be a great time. It's gonna be good. Gonna be a great time.

We're gonna share with you some big exciting news here and we want our wifes to join us. And for this to be just a, would you welcome 

the 

ladies time for us to have a conversation around some exciting things that God is doing? Because we've now, Oasis City started what, in 2012?

12 20 12. And so in 2012 we're now 12, 13 years. So we start our 13th year. And in that God's done so much. And so we want you to hear just a little bit about where God has brought us from and the exciting news that's taken place. If you have your Bibles open up to Psalm 37.

Psalm 37. We're doing summer in the Psalms. And so we wanted to yeah, to talk to you out of this scripture in Psalm 37. And I'm gonna let Bill take it away here in, in just a moment. He's gonna lead us this, but. Psalm 37 is this beautiful psalm and it's really a wisdom psalm. Say, wisdom.

Wisdom. 

It's a wisdom psalm. So what it means is it reads very much like a proverb, right? So Psalm 37 is one that's not as connected. I, with the same theme or thought all the way throughout as others, because it's really an acrostic poem. It's. It's 20 different it's 40 verses, which are coupled together, and then the 20 of them are each letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

And it starts at the beginning, goes all the way through the end. So it's a really neat in Hebrew, but it's hard for us to see that in English. And but it's really this nuggets of wisdom. And so when you look at the overall, what the theme is, there's really this picture of land, this picture of the righteous inheriting the land.

And you wanna read that? Read the, I can read that. 

Come on, Jesus. Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord. He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in him. He will bring forth your righteousness as light and your justice as the noon day.

And he says in verse nine for evil doers will be cut off, but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land. Come on, we just talked about. Waiting on God. We sang about it even when we don't see it. And one thing we've been praying for years is the opportunity to have a space of our own.

So guess what? We bought a building. Woo.

Yeah. Won't he do it? 

Come on, won't 

he do? I'm standing for this part 'cause I'm excited. And you're gonna hear all more about it and such, but we have been, we here's how we've been able to buy a building. We had three days notice that this building was going for sale and this property was gonna go for sale.

It happened to be right here in Westerville, which that doesn't happen often at all. And and we needed to be able to put an offer in. And have the, and have financing be ready in three days. We had to get the board together. We had to say, guys, is this a good decision? All this had to happen so quickly, and here's how we were able to win the bid.

Receive the contract, we were able to do it with knowing that we had the down payment already because of two things. Because of your faithfulness? Yes. In giving. 

Yeah. Yes. 

The first thing is the fact that you are faithful Yes. In giving. And a lot of our first fruits funds that we've been raising are, sowing into and believing God for, and faith that it would go towards a property.

We had that money available. And the second reason is because our church, our staff, our board of directors our team. Has been faithful stewards of God's promises. We've never had debt in our whole life, 13 years. We've never had debt before. So we were able because of your faithfulness, our faithfulness, and ultimately the faithfulness of God to say, yes, we want it.

Sign the dotted line, and now we've been able to get financing and the whole sort. So you're gonna hear a lot more about it. You're gonna see pictures. We are gonna be starting some exciting things in that property. Right now, it's not large enough to be our main campus because we can't fit all y'all in there.

However, we've got plans to, to expand that property. And so we will be worshiping in a couple locations and we have different ministries that will take place in different of our locations, but they're only two miles apart. And you're gonna hear all. Sorts of things about that, and we're gonna be talking about a little bit more in the fall and how you can partner with us to be able to do what God's called us to do in that land.

So aren't we happy? 

Yes. Yes. Can we just one more lift up just a celebration to the Lord for come on. Thank you Lord. Yes. Jesus, us He's so faithful. Years God is so faithful and so in, in Psalm 37 verse three it says, trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and be befriend, faithfulness, delight yourself for the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Amen. And I think that kind of wisdom promise for us shows that in entrusting God, God is faithful to give us the desire. We've had a desire now for 13 years to own property. Yeah. To own land to actually be able to do something more than just hold services. And the things that we do in our current facility.

And God has been so faithful but how many of God is faithful, but he requires faithfulness of us. And then so many times throughout our lives, God is interested in developing and growing that faith in us. And so he takes us through difficult seasons or things where we actually can't do them on our own, that we have to trust him.

And so for the last, especially four or five years we've been saying, God, where's the property? Where is it? Lord, where's the building? God, what are you doing? It reminded us of how we started and I don't know if you guys know this, but when we started the church, we actually had a plan to start this church on the east side of Pittsburgh.

We all lived in Pittsburgh and we were excited about a church plant. God was stirring this. And so we had a plan and Bishop was all for it. And we said, Hey, we're gonna do a church plan of Covenant Church. On the east side of Pittsburgh. And I'll never forget that week, and within one week we had three doors, like slam shut, 

boom.

And not like three doors. Like we were like, oh, we gotta resist the enemy. But we really felt wait a minute, we think this is God, right? That God's shutting a door. And I don't know, have you ever thought you knew what God was doing in your life and then all of a sudden you realize you didn't?

Yeah. 

Have you ever quit your job and then knowing that you're gonna start a church and then. God shut that door. 

Because the scripture says, man makes his plan. Yes. But God establishes his ways. Yeah. Amen. And so all God wants is for our plans to line up with his ways. Yeah. And when they don't, he's y'all you're supposed to be in Columbus for a little while we need, I need to get you there.

So stop making your plan here. That was real hard news. Yeah. I cried for days. I was on my face crying. We just bought a house. In that direction. You guys live there. You were looking at a property at a town home and you were looking to, and man, I don't know about y'all, but that don't remind me. I need some healing.

Maybe we got a minister, a good little RTF session after this. No, but God is so faithful. He's so good. But man, when two families move to a city 250 miles away and you don't know people there and you start a church. By faith in a rented house in the living room you're basically saying, God, this is it.

And we used to say, remember, people would ask us, what do you, what are you gonna do? If it doesn't work, what are you gonna do if it doesn't work? And we just said this, no plan. No plan B. 

Yeah. And you mentioned Proverbs 16. We make our plans, but God directs our steps. And one of my favorite scriptures in Proverbs three, says, trust in the Lord with all your heart.

And lean not on your own understanding. That's hard though. Yeah. Isn't it's hard when you're trying to trust God and not leaning. 'cause he does give us a mind to think and to plan and to strategize. Amen. But not leaning on your understanding means we have to lean on him and trusting God. And God brought this about this building about, just as in the beginning, he directed our steps in the beginning when we thought we knew where we were going.

Yep. But he led us there. And those weren't easy years at the beginning. No they really weren't 

because you can let the wives testify. You always want hear what they, what's the truth behind the microphone? 

It's a miracle we're all married still, and like each other. Yeah. Yeah. 

We really love each other.

What was that like for you? Early on, what were some of the, how did we learn to trust God in those, in the early years, 

guys I we didn't have money. No money say, no money. No money. And ever since I was a little girl, I tell this story all the time, but my dad looked at me and he said, Tara, you have champagne taste on a Coke budget.

Church planning and having no money was not fun, guys. I even watched children in my home. And if you know about anything about me, I love business. I love entrepreneurship. If you watch children like little kids for a living, I just want you to raise your hands right now. God bless you, every one of you for your anointing and grace, but it was, we had to do so many things that we didn't quite feel graced for.

Yeah. 

Yeah. I was working three jobs at one point, doing the church thing, teaching at a preschool, and teaching at a college. I was teaching three year olds, and then college freshmen all in the same week. But you do what you have to do what God's called you to do. And you just put a, sometimes you just gotta put your big girl pants on and do it and get something done.

And so those first few years, Tara watched my kids. Which. So it's pretty sad when we were talking about watching kids, you realize it was your kids and my kids. 

There were others. 

I told you would learn something today. You would definitely, but 

my kids were a handful back in the day.

Y'all. What you see now is different from then. Okay, we'll just stop there. 

He was driving a school bus. Anybody remember his school bus stories? Yes. 

Yeah. He was your mother. If Pastor Adam drove you to school, raise your hands.

It's 

one 

way to grow a church.

And then waited tables at night.

Yeah. 

Yeah it was a difficult season and but through it, you know what God has called you to do and you stay faithful to it. And I remember those early years, talking about, we had a vision statement and it was really nice. It was concise. We were a multicultural community embracing God's presence and empowering people to live supernatural Christian lives.

That's 

it. That was our mission statement. But the problem was I 

was the only multicultural in the mix. 

You really were. I wasn't, 

I was holding it down. Y'all. Thank you. You were. If you, yes. Come on. Come on, Lynn, all of you people with color, raise your hand. Come on. Hallelujah. Thank you for helping me out.

Praise the Lord. Where's all my Croatians? 



Oh. One of the funny memories that I have from that season is realizing that what was in our hearts and what God is called to do, being a multicultural community, being a diverse community, representing, the kingdom. We were in, in heart and mind, but we weren't actually in with our eyes.

You know what I mean? Like it didn't look that way. 

Me and Bill did. 

I know. I'm saying, and our congregation, we had it together. Didn't look that way. No, it did not. And we kept thinking, man, what else 

do 

we gotta do? What do we, so Tara stood up one Sunday morning at Heather down. 

Yeah. It wa i, you get to those moments where you just don't know how else to say it, but to say it, you know what I'm saying?

And so I knew that God had. Not only called the church to be multicultural, multi-generational, but especially the worship. And when I looked, it's wow, worship is so segregated because we all have our preferences, right? And so I just began to pray and I remember I would hold auditions and every, listen, it's changed y'all, so don't get it twisted.

Every single audition, only white people showed up. And so finally I got in front of the church. I said, listen, I'm having an audition after service. If you're white, you cannot come. It was the only way we could really start to build and grow. And she really said that. I really did. And they were like, oh my gosh.

But let me tell you, thank God we weren't 

streaming then. Yeah, we weren't screaming. There's no record of this.

And yet now it's all over the internet. Jesus. But now you look around and worship. Did you happen to take a minute and look around how beautiful this is? Yeah. So it's like sometimes you can have a dream in your heart and you can have a vision, but if you don't have intentionality, you won't get there.

Yeah. And the next part of this, Psalm 37 it talks of first about, dwelling in the land or occupying the land and. I think we've done that for 12 years. We've been here trying to buy property, trying to buy land. But in a sense, we've leased a space and we've been occupying, and there's a faithful aspect to that.

There's a season of leasing and renting that we've been in, that we've been faithful. We paid our bills. You've said we've never gone into debt, been debt. We've saved money for a building for the future without knowing what it would look like or where it would be. And we've been faithful in this season of occupying the land.

But there comes then another level, a next step of. Of inheritance, yeah. And the scripture says in verse seven, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Fret not yourself. I love that. Yeah. I think it means, don't worry, but it says, fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way over the man who carries out evil devices, and you know what's funny about that is when you look at prosperity I don't, I know you guys never deal with comparison. But as church planters, bill we had to drive by some of the biggest churches in Columbus every Sunday morning. We had 

to pray for them, 

And we would pray for them and bless them as you see them growing and as we're meeting in a little rental space.

Yep. And then these things test your pastors as well, right? About worrying in comparison and all these things. And godly people prospering, but you're like, God what is your plan? But then in verse nine it says but those who wait for the Lord, there's a season of waiting, shall inherit the land.

Come on. Yes. And so we see this picture of going from occupying and dwelling in the land to inheriting the land. And I don't know about you but to me, inheritance speaks of generations. Yeah. There's a, there's an immediate connection of generational impact when it comes to inheritance. And so in inheriting the land it appears like God has now given us land in Westerville where we can do something that is not just for us, but it's for the future, but it's for generations to come.

And so talk a little bit about that. About what God can do now. In a space that is, we've been faithful in 12 years of occupying and dwelling in the land. Now what can God do now that he's giving us land in a city that we've dwelt in and been faithful, but now he's given us something that is for generations?

Yeah, the one thing that comes to mind is the spiritual aspect of owning the land. If you just read Moses' writings in Deuteronomy. That God once has always wanted his people to, to have land. Even when they were nomads and they didn't have land, he always promised land because there was blessing in the land.

And he talks about your field, which is your business. And so God uses your business, okay? Whatever that is. If you're an owner or if you're, if you're an employee somewhere, but whatever business you do, God wants to bless that business. So that you help bless his land. And that's why giving to the church is important to be able to move forward.

And it's not just for something for us to have as an asset on the books. It's for us to be able to have generational provision and see God bless generations from. From a piece of property from being right in the heart of a community, even if we as a church are bigger than that property, there's something important in the spirit when you own it, you can speak into the city as an owner.

To something there, there's a spiritual component to that. That is great. 'cause we can plant churches, we can rent out schools and lease facilities and plant churches all over Ohio or in Columbus. But there's something special when, and we didn't know, honestly, we said, remember two years ago we said God, 'cause we have all these prophetic words, y'all know that.

We got prophecy after prophecy about expansion and all these sorts of things. And we finally said. We don't know what's gonna come first if it's gonna be a church plan, another location, or if it's gonna be us buying something. Or do we buy a main campus and do we, we didn't know what, but we just said, God, we give it to you and we're not gonna make these plans.

We're just gonna, we're gonna keep our eyes open. We're gonna keep praying. But lo and behold, that's what the Lord did. That's the order of events that he wanted. Yeah. And that's what he is going to bless. Yeah. And so you get to be a part of that. You get to be a part of kingdom ownership. Because you are a part of this family and it's gonna be, again, generational and the building's gonna be able to be used for kids and adults, and it's gonna be used for seniors and it's gonna be amazing.

And 20 years from now and 30 years from now, it's still gonna be blessing the community, the city and the ministry of Oasis City will be able to continue on. So I'm excited about that. Yeah. 

One thing that was really cool, you guys know Papa Joe? Who knows Papa Joe. Do you not love him? He's such an accurate prophetic word.

We were sitting with him. It was very casual, he was like, I feel this prophetically, he said, plant the campus and I'll give you the hub. Yep. And so sometimes we can feel like, wow, that is, like you're saying, that's not really my plan, but I feel like the Lord gave us that word so that when this opened up we were like.

Oh, this lines up with the word. And it's gonna be incredible. Yeah. 

So what we're looking at is we have a piece of property that's about five acres that we know can, we can build a future sanctuary on from three to 500. But it's probably not gonna be our main campus. It is probably a second campus for us.

And the, it looks like that sometime, probably by the end of this year, we'll be able to hold services in a second campus. Come on here in, a short 10 or 12 minutes from right here where we're at and from our current location is 

advocating for a fourth service, 

whatever.

And then I was like no, not at all. Not at all. Not at all. Even in this man's wisdom says this, I read all the church strategy and they say, you gotta be a thousand to 1500 people before you start a campus. And so we have this plan and we have this strategy, but from the very beginning we said. You know what? We've read all the books, we've read all the church planning books, we've gone to the conferences. We've done all of our due diligence. And then ultimately, God leads you where he wants you to go. And so we are so excited about the possibility, the potential that God has.

We know we're gonna be able to have we believe a preschool there very soon. It's gonna be a service to the community. We're gonna have people in the community in that building every single day. It is gonna be an incredible life giving church that will be here in Westerville For generations. Yeah.

For generations and generations. And we're so excited about what God is doing. But it's because of your faithfulness. Faithfulness, because of your giving, because of your faithful stewardship and all that God has given you. And so Oasis City Church is growing. Yes. Oasis City Church is following the plan and the path that God has for it.

And we're so glad that you're a part of this journey. Amen. Are you glad to be a part of it? Amen. 

Alright. I want to go back to the back in the day and just talk about his faithfulness because. We came out of Covenant Church of Pittsburgh. If you didn't know that, you know it, you can see it on, information on our history and such.

But it was a larger church. But and they had things, they were known for worship and they were known for stuff and conferences and events and all sorts of stuff. And then we came and we had like we said, we had no money. We had no budget. We had churches and other ministries that invested into us for the first year.

And and that was the, that was really by the grace of God that we were able to do it. And I remember we were trying to. Get a sound system together to have a public service. Now, mind you, we started in our living room, and then when we started public services in the Westerville Community Center, we did not have enough money to pay for the rent every week.

So we did two public services and two home services, because that's just how we had to do it. We did. And if we were gonna sit around and wait, we were just gonna be sitting around. So we were too big for the houses but not big enough to rent the community center every week. But, and I remember we, some churches invested into us.

We got a sound system, we got microphones and, we had one preaching microphone, like we had two, three singer microphones. We had, we barely had anything. And I went back to Covenant Church where we came out of to preach at a conference or something. And as I'm walking onto the stage, they handed me a microphone.

And I remember looking at the microphone for the first time. Now, I had used that microphone years and years pass, but this was different. I looked at the microphone, I said, that microphone costs $1,500. It was the first time I computed it. And then I said, we don't have $1,500 to buy a microphone.

We had hand me downs and we had a few and that moment it was really humbling because you can be in a setting and preach to all these people and, but you realize that it's the little things, it's a very humbling moment. And it's those little things that say, God, when I get back to Columbus and we get in the community center and we set up and tear.

I'm going to be thankful. Yeah. For every microphone, every cable, every music stand. Yes. Every it turned that we had to just start giving thanks even for what we didn't see. Lord, just thank you that you are, because gratitude is so easy to depart from your thinking and when we begin to give thanks.

We began to just be thankful. The Lord just began to add to us and then he began to multiply us. But the people of God, you guys raise your hand if you were ever in one of our community center services. Wow. Hey, look at you. You stuck with us all these years. It wasn't for the people of God. Wow. 

Speaking of the people of God when bill had originally sent me what we were gonna be talking about in Psalms 37 and.

I remember and I was reading the, the scripture, trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell on, so that's not, oh, no, I'm sorry. Verse four, delight yourself in the Lord. He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord and trust also in him. And he will do it. And I remember when we, he will do it.

And I remember. Starting out. I was the, I was a softball player. Anyone play softball or baseball? And you have that position? Some 

of us do. Some of us just lose. We have a team, don't we? I wasn't trying to 

go there, sorry guys. But I remember my position on the team was, I was called the utility player.

Remember what the utility player is that meant I played any position they needed, they could, would throw me in and my job was to hold it down the best of my ability. So that was what I did. So I was utility player. We start, I had no idea that the Lord was training me for church planting, huh? Because for Wasted City Church, I was the utility player. I pretty much worked in every area of the church trying to help get things started, keep things going, and that was my role. But I never realized I should be so grateful and thankful for that. But because of it, I got to work with and serve alongside everyone who walked into the church at some point.

And I realized that as I'm reading that God was so faithful and though my heart was, Lord, bring someone who can do this better than me. Like I, bring someone who can do that. Bring someone who can fill this role. I'm willing to do it, but I know there's someone. Who's gifted, who's called for it, and every time I said that prayer, God brought someone.

You don't guys don't realize it. When we started in my house, I was the percussionist 

and the keyboard player, 

then I was the keyboard player. I did everything. And I wasn't necessarily good at any of it, but I was willing to trust God that he had the right people that would come along. And I look at all of you those who raised your hand, you're there from the start.

We've accomplished and done so much over these last 13 years, but none of it was done without all of your willingness. Wow. To be here to set up long hours, tear down, get here early to rehearsal, stay here late to clean up, the people on the stage get to look like the stars, but it's you guys.

It's you guys who have made such a difference and all I could do as I was just trying to come up with something was just, I'm just so grateful that you are the delight. Yeah. That the Lord has brought and we're here today because of all of you. Yeah. You are amazing. So I want you to give yourselves a round of applause.

Come on. Because you are the difference makers. You are the world changers. You are the ones that are gonna change Westerville 'cause of what you guys do. Yeah. Even 

today, there are people serving that you don't even see. Because they were here early, setting up parking and doing that, musicians getting here early for sound checks and people having water and medical team, and security teams, all those things are happening because people are volunteering and saying, yeah, I, I want to, I wanna give my time to make a service like this happen.

So it's just awesome. 

It's incredible. It's incredible. Psalm 100, why don't you stand with me? And if you're getting baptized, you can go ahead and make your way down here. Oh, we're gonna go into some baptisms. But why don't you stand with me? As we, we wanna end with thanksgiving with gratitude here today.

We've talked about the faithfulness of God, the faithfulness of his people and there's these psalms that are written, that are Psalms of Thanksgiving. And Psalm 100 says this. It says, it's says, shout joyfully to the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with jubilation. Aren't you glad we got happy serving people?

Serve the Lord with jubilation. Come before him with rejoicing. Know that the Lord himself is good. It is he who made us and not we ourselves. We are his people and the sheep of his pastor. So enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courtyards with praise. Give thanks to him. Bless his name. For the Lord is good.

His Mercy's everlasting and his faithfulness is to all generations. Can we just lift up one more time,