[SERMON] Our Vision for the future of HOTL

Experience this inspiring sermon as Pastor Cyle leads us through the vision and future of our church. In this message, we revisit the Vision Banquet, reflect on the journey from Vision 2020 and 2025, and look ahead to Vision 2030, rooted in John 3:30. Pastor Cyle unpacks the three core elements of our new vision, emphasizes the importance of embracing a culture of honor, and issues a heartfelt call to action for our building campaign. The sermon concludes with a special song performance and a closing prayer.

Whether you’re a long-time member or new to our community, this sermon will encourage and motivate you to be part of our shared vision for the future.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and the Recap of our Vision: 3:30
• 3:01 History of HOTL's Vision 2020 and 2025
• 8:06 Vision 3:30 and John 3:30
• 15:45 The Three Core Elements of Vision 3:30
• 16:08 Element 1: Boldly Introduce our Community to Jesus
• 29:13 Element 2: Embrace The Culture of Honor
• 32:08 Multiply Through Discipleship
• 41:14 A Challenge for You and our Building Campaign
• 54:35 A Special Song: Love God Love People
• 59:45 Closing Prayer from Rob Freeman

Transcript

Well, we take time today to pause from our currently scheduled series, the Four Horseman, the Apocalypse. And so if you were hoping to hear about the second horse today, I'm sorry, uh, this is, that's next week. But I, we wanna talk about who we are and why we do it. We do. Last week, we had, on Sunday night, we had a vision banquet in this room.

So this room was transformed, all the chairs taken out. We brought a bunch of tables in, put chairs back in, and we had a banquet in here talking about our vision for the future. And those of you who wanted to come came, we did invite everybody. That was kind of our thing. We invited everybody that wanted to come.

So if you signed up to come, you came. It was a great meal. It was a great time. And so today we're kind of doing a, a smaller synopsis of that because we needed to kind of talk about who we are and why we do what we do as a church. Because the Bible is very clear in the book of Proverbs that a people without a vision perish.

And we believe that a church without a vision, parishes. And so we know what our vision is as a church. We are a church that we love God, love people. That's our mission statement. But we also have a vision that goes along with how do we carry out that mission? That's what we do. And so we have been very intentional in the nine and a half years I've been here to have and stated written vision.

And then everything that we do gets filtered to that through that. And so it's not just here 'cause we are one church across two campuses. We, and we have two services at this campus. Uh, we have Brooklyn campus, which you know, obviously, and we have the Jackson Campus. That's what the Jackson campus looks like.

If you've never been, it used to be Pathway, uh, community Church and which was originally Gethsemane, United Brethren Church. It was a partner, United Brothern Church to us. It actually was very influential on starting this church. And so, uh, you know, 45, 50, well, 50 some years ago. And so now we are back together as one church across two locations.

So it's, uh, it's exciting to see that our vision for our church is not only just here in Brooklyn, but also in Jackson. There, they're talking about this, um, also in Jackson as a church. We're talking about three 30. And so with our vision, it goes to this verse, which is based on John three 30, he must become greater and I must become less.

This is a verse that is a life statement of what we should be believing as followers, Jesus Christ, that Jesus and God must become greater and we must become less. This is opposite the world. The world thinks I should become more and everybody around me should become less. That is just the way culture works.

We know that because we have things like social media, which all is all about getting more followers for me. More likes for me, more shares about how awesome I am or my content is. That is what social media is. It is the opposite of John three 30. It really is. And so I'm not saying it's a sin to be on social media.

It is a sin though, to use social media to be all about you in building you. So there's a danger to it. And so as a church, we, we talk about our vision. So one of the things you need to know about kind of as we go into our vision is when I got here, nine and a half years ago, in 2016, uh, we, we were kind of, the church was kind of in a listless period, not knowing where to go.

And we immediately needed to make some changes. And so we came in after a few months of meeting with the leaders, we decided on the vision for 2020. Now that vision was based on 20 different directives. That's a lot. It was hard to remember without it having it written down. I had it written down. And so that is 20 directives where things that were necessary for us to get from where we were, to where we needed to go and where we thought God was gonna take us.

And it was practical things like improving our children's ministry, flushing out our youth ministry. We actually kind of hired Cody as one of those directives. Been there nine, you know, nine years ago we put a new roof on the building. We replaced broken uh, furnaces and upgraded them. So we did a lot of different things with those 20 directives.

And so every decision we were making was going through the lens of those 20 directives and we would achieve those directives and then we would set new directives. That was kind of our goal. And then we got to 2020. Now in 2016, when I came, 2020 seemed like a long way away, but it came quick right away before you knew it, 2020 was here.

And in 2020 we decided to set a new vision for 2025. And that's the vision that we've been operating under as you've come here. And so that 2025 was five things. It was introduce people to Jesus. It was have a sit one, serve one mentality. It was embrace the culture of honor, multiply over generosity, and remain relevant.

See, I can get those five. I could not get to 20 for you. So I can give you a gist to the 20. Um, but we also know that five is really hard for people. I often, uh, would get three or four and I was like, what was that last one? And when I would ask people, they would do the same. So as we've come into 2020, uh, the end of 2025, we've kind of been talking about what does a vision for 2030 look like?

And we think about this with a vision. Anyone ever been to an eye doctor before, had a vision test. Okay? Why? Some of you, both services people aren't raising their hands like you should not be driving. So like, I promise you, please call me when you're on the road. Um, so if you got the vision test, you got this, this, like those little goggles, they put over your eyes, right?

Like this. And they want you to say, Hey, do read those letters to me. And you have to like read the letters to them. And then they like, they put this thing and it comes down over your eyes. Like, okay, now what do you see? Is it better or worse? Right? Is it better or worse? And they flip it sideways, right? Is it better or worse?

That's a vision test. And if you're like me. You just try to memorize the vision numbers and letters ahead of time. So I got this J-L-D-V-T-P, right? So, and then you see it later, like, I was wrong. So, uh, yeah, uh, I used to have 2010 vision for lasik. And so I would ace that test every time. I was like, this is so good.

Now I'm getting older. And they told me it would go away and it is going away slowly. Like, you're still gonna get old and you're still gonna lose sight. And now I'm just like, I really am squinting. Like, could I get that letter? So anybody do that? Anybody memorize? Is it just me? Am I the only one memorizing the test?

All right. Some of you just don't want admit it because you know, you know that you do it. So like we do it. I like when it's, when they leave it on accidentally before you come in the room. I'm gonna ace this test 'cause I can memorize those letters. So, uh, the tricky doctors will just change the letters in the middle and that's a horrible, so, uh, yeah, I think probably should say the good doctors.

So not the tricky ones. But we all have to have vision to see, and as a church, we have to have a vision. So our vision statements have been like those filters that you get that are the right ones that can help you see the lenses from which we, we view life ministry programs, all that stuff. And so everything that we have done for the last five years has been operating under the vision 2025.

It really does. We do not do anything unintentionally. Everything we do here is, is intentional. Now you may think that seems unintentional, still intentional. We have talked about it. We have, we have talked about the why. We talked about what we're doing. Everything has gone through those, those five different lenses.

And we talk about does this help us encourage people to be overgenerous? Does this help us, uh, introduce people to Jesus? Does this help us get people to serve? Like those are the reasons why we do. And so we know what our calendar is as a church. 'cause our calendar has always gone through the lenses of which we do ministry, which is our vision to carry out the mission of love.

God love people. That's how we program and operate as church. And as we come into 20 30, 20 25 is ending. And so as it's ending, we've been talking about as a governances team for the last few months about what does the future look like. But here's the thing, our 2025 vision wasn't broken. It's actually been going really well.

We've been growing substantially. Uh, we were under a hundred people when I came nine and a half years ago. Now we have six or 700 plus people that call our church home. We regularly have our four 50 between our services and campuses on a Sunday or more, some weeks, like things have been happening, it's been awesome, but we still wanna hone in on what is God saying us to us now about what the future looks like.

That's the goal. And so we don't wanna just keep doing the same thing because we need to say is, is God still saying this is what we're doing? And so as we've been looking for 2030, we've been talking about our vision. And we've really come to the point of this here. And this is a passage that Cody and I, we have talked about for many years.

We've actually done two sermon series on John three 30. We did one called Less, the one called More. We did those, those were two discipleship series we did a long time ago. So we have preached this. We believe this, we think about this often. We talk about it often. And so as we were coming in 30, you guys know we tucked it, we're we're corny vision 2020 for the year.

2020 Vision 2025 for the year. 2025. We love that. We have five points for 2025 because there's a five in it, right? I had 20 for 20. 20, yep. That's super corny. I love it. So, uh, it's also memorable, you could say. So for 2030 we were gonna do 30. No, we're not, we weren't gonna do 30. Uh, I'm just kidding. But there is a three in it.

And so. And so as we think 20, like the vision for 30 30, we've been thinking about like, what's God saying this? And there is a 33 30 in the Bible in John three 30, which is a passage that Cody and I love. We, we literally love this. We've built programs off of it. We've preached this, we've taught this. And so we're thinking like, what are we gonna do?

As we, we've been talking about minimizing our five things down into less. We came up with three, which we'll talk about, which really goes along with the 3 33 points of our vision for 30, 33, 30. We want this to be memorable. We want you to see three 30. You're like, oh, this makes sense. I know why. This is what it is.

'cause it, 'cause it matters. In this passage, John three 30, where he must become greater, I must become less, is really the core of why we do what we do. We exist as a church to make God greater in the world, to make his name known, and for us to become less. It's not about us, it's about Jesus. Everything we do as a church should be about Jesus, not about heart Lakes, uh, really isn't about heart lakes.

We do not care if we get credit for anything in the community. There's lots of things our church does that we don't get credit for. We don't care. There's lots of things this pa our pastors and staff do that they don't get credit for. None of us care. We don't care because it's this, it's about him. It's about Jesus.

If we do what we're called to do, the way he calls us to do it, God takes care of the rest. And people keep coming. I don't know if you know this, we don't pay for advertisements as a church. People just keep showing up. We don't always know where they come from. They just keep coming. If you come here recently, we don't really know how you got here, but we're glad you're here.

So, um, God brought you here somehow. It's just the way it is. And he must become greater and I must become less now. As we get in the future and we launch three services, one of the things we probably will have to start telling people through advertisements that we have three service times. 'cause it gets confusing.

So we might have to start doing that just so people know the time change. But we really are not doing anything intentional to grow. We're just loving people and living out the Bible and people are getting it as they do this in their life. It changes because people will say something different about people.

Like I, this is my favorite thing that happens in the community and I, it's how I know, like we're really caring our, our vision of community. People in the community that do not come to our church will say, Hey, I met so and so from your church and they're great man. There's something different about the people from your church.

And that that different thing is they're just living in a life where God has become greater. They're becoming less, people are seeing more of God in them as they're learning to honor people, love people, and it's just transformative. 'cause the world's not that way. That's just the way it is. The world's mean.

The world's awful. Get on social media, I was just, I just peaked at Twitter and it was like, oh, people are horrible right now. So, I mean, that's kind of the way it always is. And so he must become greater. I must come less. Less. This comes from. Um, John the Baptist in his life. Now, John the Baptist would've been in today's world, he would've been kind of a movement.

Uh, he would've been a movement, right? He would've been a social media influencer. He would've had a following. Uh, people would've wanted to hear what he had to say. He was, he was teaching a different thing at a time when it was necessary. He was dressing in a different way, uh, and people flock to him. He had his own following.

He was popular. He was a popular speaker that people were flocking to. He was his, he was dressed in, in dirty rags and all kinds of stuff, and he was out in the river and he is dunking people under the water and bringing 'em up, and he's teaching 'em, which was just transformative for the time. And people were following him.

He had influence. And we see influence in the world. Like the, the recent thing in, in our world is just seeing what's happened since Charlie Kirk was assassinated, people that followed him, he had a movement, and the people that followed him, they have been moved to go to church. That's just a thing all over the country.

People will go to church in droves. It's happening. And so right now the statistics just came out today that Gen Z, which is people born in 1996 to 2010, which is our 18 to 29 year olds right now, gen Z is the most consistent in church attendance of any generation. That's shocking. That's shocking. That's shocking.

It is really based on what's happened in the last month. Uh, in the last month, gen Z has made a commitment. They're going to church, they're getting it, they're there. There's a movement that's happening and it's powerful. And it's not just in the last month, this last year we've been talking at our governance meetings about how many people are coming to church, especially men are coming to church in droves.

Young women are finally coming to church. Young 20 something women have been absent in church for, for a generation. They've been gone 'cause the world has been pulling them away. And finally young women are starting to come back to church. It's amazing to see changes. We see trends over time. When you've been doing this as long as I've been doing it, you see what happens.

And so John the Baptist, he was the generational movement that people followed him. And where we pick up the story is John, he's, he's out on the river baptizing his followers, and Jesus comes along and Jesus wants to be baptized. And John's like, I shouldn't baptize you Jesus. Like you're the guy, right?

And so ultimately he does baptize Jesus. We know that a voice comes from heaven says, this is my son. And so there's this amazing thing that happens. But what John could have did is said, Hey, Jesus, I need some more likes. I need some more shares. Could you like tell all my people how great I am? So it builds me up.

Maybe get me some more followers because if you say it more people will come and follow me. That is not what John does, John. His mission was to lift Jesus higher. He came to prepare the way for Jesus. When Jesus showed up, John said, Hey, my followers, this is the guy I've been preparing you for. Go and follow him.

That is not our world. That is not what influencers do. I can't imagine Mr. Beast coming here and saying, Hey, I've got a hundred million people on my YouTube. I'll just give 'em all to you, and I'll just walk away into the sunset and never be. That's just not the way of the world. That was the way of John the Baptist life because he lived for something greater than himself.

He lived that, that Jesus is greater and he is less. And so when Jesus came along, he elevated him and lifted him higher and diminished his own way to make it. So that's the call of the followers of Jesus. See, our church is stepping into a fresh vision with the same heartbeat as the last vision that Jesus is at the center.

It. That's the goal. That's who we want to be, that as a church, it's about Jesus. And everything we do is for Jesus to make his name known, to show his love, to live life in a way that's different than the world. So people see Christ through us, and we need to lift Jesus higher. That's the goal. That's who we are as church.

If you don't want to go to church to lift Jesus higher, this is not your church. I'm just promise you that it's not. And so what does this mean for, for us when it comes to our vision there, we, we've gone from five to three because, you know, there's a three in 2030, you'll, you'll get it. Um, stick with me.

There's a lot more of those coming. Um, so, but there's three things. We've kind of taken our five that have been doing great for us and said, what's the core of why these five work? And so our core is that we want to, we changed the first one to boldly introduce our community to Jesus. We wanna recognize that our community, God has this in this community to serve the people in this community and to share the gospel.

That's why we exist here. So we don't exist in California. We exist here. So our focus is here on our community. That's everybody around here, within probably a 45 minute drive. That's our community. That's, we have people drive 45 minutes or last to church on a regular basis. So that's our community. We wanna boldly introduce people to Jesus Next.

Wanna embrace a culture of honor that's been working for us? That's one thing we know as a church. Having a culture of honor here and being different has transformed our church from what it used to be to what it is now, and has allowed us to be a church where we love people and we truly love people and we honor people and we do things different.

And note the culture of honor. It's on the wall. If you ever wanna know it's care about what the people you care about, care about. Assume the best. Release bitterness, restore gently and ask the question. You might be right, but it's loving. Now. I'm just gonna tell you, if you come to me for counseling and you're frustrated with your spouse, we're gonna talk about things like the culture of honor.

I'm gonna say things like that doesn't sound like you assume the best, right? I'm gonna say, well, you might be right, but what's that loving to tell your spouse? Right? Well, my, my husband wants to go to NASCAR and watch football and I'm like, care about what the people you care about, care about, right?

Doesn't mean you have to like, it just means you, you just figure out how you can do some of that together or at least respect it. Those are the things I do in counseling when people come to me and they're, they're arguing or bickering across church. 'cause people are in relationship. When you have this many people in relationship, people fight.

They don't all get along. We go to Are you releasing bitterness? But soandso has always sat in my chair at church. I don't know. That's just making that one up. It does happen. It does happen. Uh, and I'll say, well, you need to release that bitterness. Sit somewhere else, right? And then when you get restored gently, it's having a one-to-one conversation.

This is the big one. It happens all the time. All the time. Don't go talk to all your friends and all your people and say, I need advice on how to handle this situation. That just means you're a gossip. Who doesn't wanna say you're a gossip when you ask for advice, how to handle something. 'cause the Bible makes it really clear.

You go to that person alone and deal with your stuff. You don't go tell your parents. You don't go tell your friends. You don't go tell everybody. You don't go ask for advice, which is just gossip. You just go one-to-one and you resolve it. Here's what happens. When people live outta culture on and they do that.

They resolve it. Yep. They resolve it. When they come to me asking for advice, my advice is, I really think you need to talk to that person. That's my advice. Well, I wanna tell you all of it so you know, I don't care. I don't come to me when it's not resolved. In a one-to-one, 90% of the time that one-to-one resolves everything.

There are times people come back to me, we met, didn't go well, and then I'll say, okay, I can offer to meet with you, we can talk. I can give you like vice that point. But normally if people go to each other with love. And reconciliation in their heart. It's resolved. It is in marriages and friend groups and workplaces and schools.

It really does resolve. Interesting

what is happening right now. I love it. I wanna know which one of you is watching K-Pop back there? We're gonna seal the Han Moon together, guys. Uh, I love it. Is this that tv? I can't wait to find out this week. Who was watching K-Pop in here last? It was Mark. I'm sure of it. I'm sure of it. Yeah. I love it.

That's, that's awesome. Oh, where were we speaking? Embrace the culture of honor. We're gonna have a one-to-one, so, uh uh I love it. Well, they're gonna figure that out as we go. It's great. Next. All right. That's hard to recover from that. I know. Fandango home. This just gets better. Those guys are dying back there.

Yeah. I'm glad it was just K-pop. So, uh, yeah, I'm glad it was just, that would've been a real hard conversation. So, speaking of culture of honor, so, uh, um, we, uh, then the last thing is our, our three, we're gonna multiply through discipleship. That's a big thing. We kind of took our five and when we narrowed them down, we recognize that the three things that we, other things were really just parts of discipleship.

That we want to be a church where we are disciples. Disciple is just a follower of Jesus. So you dunno what the word disciple means. Churchy word, it just means I follow Jesus. So we wanna multiply through discipleship. So by following Jesus, we want to create more people. Who followed Jesus. So we wanna be disciples who make disciples, and we wanna multiply our church through discipleship.

It's a really important thing. A pet peeve of mine has always been when churches baptize people and don't grow, it always bothers me. My whole life, I grew up in a church and that church had 500 people and we would do 60 baptisms a year, and the next year we'd have 490 people. And I'd be like, how do we do 60 baptisms?

This is a teenager sitting reading the church stuff, and how do we do this many baptisms and then not grow? And I would read, like I was in a Nazarene church at the time, and I'd read, they'd would publish all the churches and all their baptisms. And all their salvations. And you'd have churches that would be 150 and they'd have 30 salvations and they'd have 20 baptisms and they would go to 130.

And how do you have that much life change? And your church shrinks. And then shrinks. And shrinks because it's a facade sometimes that people want to hit metrics and numbers. 'cause the church has pushed those metrics and numbers and denominations for years. And the one thing I love about the United Brothern is they're not pushing those anymore.

Like that. It's not about getting numbers, it's about real life change. And for our church, we've, we've had, we've averaged 40 or 50 baptisms the last few years. It's amazing. But we've also been growing at that same rate, which is wonderful. And that's not saying to brag because we, we set in meetings and we say we don't want to be a church of pastors where we grow.

Uh, we don't grow when, when God is changing people's lives. If we, if we're not growing something's wrong and we need to figure it out, we need to get those lenses back over our eyes and say, alright, why are we having baptisms? Why are people's lives being changed? But yet we're not seeing a movement, we're not seeing growth.

And so. We truly wanna multiply through discipleship. We are big on teaching the word of God. We teach the milk on Sundays. This is force fed to you. The milk is force fed to you. I am preaching milk. I'm preaching the word of God. It's force fed to you. You don't have a choice but to receive. 'cause I'm talking right?

If you don't like it, go watch K-pop. So uh, right. Yeah. So the meat is what you eat. You eat meat, you chew it, you wrestle with it. Meat is your Bible studies. It's your life groups, it's your affinity groups. It's your personal devotions. You chew the Bible all week long. We need to be force fed of the word with milk, and we need to chew it.

That's how we see those passages that Paul is talking about. And so for us, that's discipleship. That's just learning how to follow Jesus and be like Jesus, and then to apply it and live out your life. Because for us, vision statements aren't just words. They're a movement. There're a mandate, they're a mission.

Like, I believe there's been a movement happening here at Heart of Lakes. There has been transformation at Heart of Lakes over the last nine years. In, in the, the mandate has been, we believe God's word is true. It's active and it's life changing. We've seen people come out of all kinds of addiction. We've seen marriages saved.

We have seen miraculous healing. We've seen God do a little bit of everything, and it's been awesome. We brought people on stage to testify and share with you the good news of what God is doing. When people come forward to pray, they come forward to pray because God is doing something through those prayers.

He listens and so we believe that vision statements, they're, they're a mandate. We believe these three things are gonna be our church. We are gonna boldly introduce people to Jesus, our community of Jesus. We are going to embrace the culture of honor, and we're gonna multiply through discipleship, everything that we do as a church.

If it is a group at our church, they are required to share. Bible time, something. There has to be intentional Jesus time. If they don't do it, they're not allowed to be considered a group of a church. And if you ever wonder why a group may not be a group of a church, why is that group of people meaning that's not 'cause they haven't committed to following that.

Like when we go up to the Pines, we don't go up to play. We go up to build relationships because fun over time equals relationships. Cody loves to say that statement, so I'll say it since he's not here to say it, but we go up to have fun. And we build relationships which will then allow people to have community and connection and focus on growing together in Jesus.

When we go up to the vines, there's always a service. There's always a service up north. And when groups go up, like they go fishing, we've asked them to do daily devotionals and have time in, in God's word together and talk about spiritual things. We want them to chew the word together. If we don't do that, then there's no reason for us to exist.

We're not a club, we're not a social service organization. We're a church of people. United under the banner of God. And so everything that we do is that our, our, our, our affinity groups, our clubs, our, our, uh, off-road club and our huddles, angels. We want them to be in the word talking about, it doesn't have to be for an hour.

It could, but it needs to be intentional. We, we espouse that because that's how we multiply through discipleship. It is what we do and why we do what we do, because we know who we are as a church. We are not a church for everybody. We're not, we're a church for people who this is the kind of church that they need right now.

In the season of life that we're in. We know that. There are other churches in town. There's great churches in town, there's great pastors in town, but they offer something different that might be a fit for people. We just happen to know what kind of quirky, corny we are. Uh, we obviously, and what kind of k-pop we like.

And so we know who we are and we know who we're not. And so if, for us as a church, we wanna boldly introduce people to Jesus, our community, to Jesus, that's our goal, our community. And we see in Acts 4 31, we see this. This is when the whole, I can't look at that one anymore. Uh, so this is a moment that the spirit of God is descending upon the disciples as they're about to go out.

And it says here, and when they prayed, the place of which they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness, boldness, boldness. Now, the, the men and women at this moment, they left this moment and went out and changed the face of the world.

They left their jobs, they left their homes and they went out with boldness to tell people about the good news of Jesus. The Holy Spirit led them and they went. Now, that's a level of boldness that I don't think all of us are willing to do. Are you willing to give up your job, leave your house, travel somewhere else in the world and go and share Christ?

Are you really willing to make that decision or are you like, well, I don't have an rv, so you know when I get an rv I can do that. When I, when I got enough money or when I have disposable income, that sounds like it'd be great to do When I have disposable income, I'll go and tell people about Jesus, but I don't.

I don't have it right now. These people didn't care. They were moved. They knew the truth of God and they went and with boldly shared it all. We're really wanting to do as a church is to boldly share in this community. You don't have to leave your home. You don't have to leave your jobs. You just have to do something different.

Share God with this community. Love people. Be different. Be different at the grocery store. Be different at school. Be different at work. Be different about how you love people and how you treat people and watch what God does for us as a church. When we have events, we don't do the bait and switch. I hate that.

I hate when churches bring you in and like try to force feed the gospel down your throat and I trick you, get you here. Now I'm gonna tell you about Jesus. Here's the Bible. We don't do that. We literally program events just to love people. When we do Halloween, we're not gonna be force feeding the Bible down anybody throat.

We're gonna bring 'em in. We're gonna create a very safe environment for families. We're gonna have, our volunteers will be background checks. So people that come in here know this is a safe place where they're gonna be loved. They're gonna be ice cream and candy. There's gonna be games, it's gonna be fun and they're gonna have a great time.

And that fun over time equals relationships. We hope that as they come back and connect with us, it'll create a relationship. So that moment when God is calling them to him, they're gonna say, I'm just going through a real bad season in my life. Where? Where can I go and, and get hope? Oh, part of the lakes has been great.

Those people have been wonderful. Why don't we go check out Heart Lakes and see if maybe they're, they have an answer. 'cause there's something different about those people. It happens all the time. People tell me that all the time. Well, I've been coming to your events for years and just thought, you know, we should come and check things out.

That's how it works. You just boldly introduce people by loving them. And that's, that is really kind of our secret sauce. We just literally love people and God keeps sending them. He just does. And if you're here, you might be one of those people. Yep, that was me. Um, it's not a trick. It's God, we just love people and watch what he does.

Embracing Culture of Honor

'cause he knows when he wants to send someone or he's calling them to him. As a church we wanna embrace the culture of honor? The culture of honor, as we said, is something that's been working for us. We want to honor people. Uh, that's based off Romans 1210, which is outdo one another and showing honor. We talk about that verse a lot.

I got a different verse for you today. Over here, one Peter two, it is gonna be hard. One Peter two 17. Honor everyone love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. We're to honor everyone. Whether you like him, whether you don't like him, we're to honor everyone. And that just means that respect. It means you don't have to be best friends, but respect them here.

This is everyone. I am friends with people who are Ohio State fans. Did you know this? My life group is full of them somehow. So I feel like they all got together, like let's join his life group. So, and then they have the audacity say, do you guys wanna watch the game together? No, no, we're not doing that. I love you, but I honor you.

But we don't, we're not gonna do that together. So we're not gonna talk that weekend. So no matter what happens, I won't call them. They won't call me. It'd be great. So we're gonna honor each other. When we have differences, opinion, we can still honor each other. Love the brotherhood. That's the church. We're to love the brotherhood we are.

Whether or not you always get along, whether you're not like every, we got so many people in our church. You're not gonna like everybody here. It's okay sitting the other side of the church or go to a different service. If you don't like 'em enough, go to the other campus. I mean, that's just the way it is.

Go to campus for season. It happens. People go through seasons. It's okay to not like somebody, but you still have to love them. You still have to respect them and you still have to honor them because that's what we're called to do. That's the truth. And if you do that and you a hundred people, you can be in relationship with people and you don't have to be their best friends.

You don't have to go out to eat. You can still love them. And then fear God. That really goes back to John three 30. If we fear God, if we truly fear God, he is greater, we are less. It is really simple. That means I understand how great he is and how minuscule I am, and I understand how that fear is reverence, like revere God.

So you revere God. That means I am less 'cause I know my place. That's what John the Baptist did. He feared God. He knew who Jesus was and he knew who he was. And then honor the emperor. That means our government. So whether or not you always agree with the government, you can still respect it. This honors respect doesn't mean you have to love it.

Doesn't mean you have to like people in the other political opinions, but you do have to respect people and treat 'em as human beings. You do. This is honor the emperor. That's for our kids. In school, you have to respect your teachers. You have to respect your principals. You do. This is your workplace.

Honor the emperor. This is the people in charge. This is your boss. Whether or not they're likable, alright? Whether or not they have good character or morals, whatever. Still gotta respect them. Doesn't mean you have to like 'em. We have to learn to honor people because it's a way that we show love and love shows Jesus. Next, multiply through discipleship.

For us as a church, we want to grow. Because God is doing amazing things in people's lives. That's why we talk about some really difficult topics. We have talked about every sin that I can think of. I got, I got some more that I, we haven't talked about. We've done vices series where I just pick sins and we talk about 'em and we really go talk about things that a lot of churches try to stay away from 'em 'cause they're difficult.

But we wanna say, Hey, if this is your struggle, here's what the Bible says about this and this is how you can get through it. And we have seen people's lives can be completely transformed through our like vices theory. We've talked about messy topics in our messy series. We've talked about those difficult things so that hopefully you can be equipped to follow Jesus and then help others learn to follow Jesus.

We hit those topics. Now we're talking about the four horsemen apocalypse, because people are talking about the end of time, right? We got, supposedly aliens are coming in November, according to TikTok. So gotta be ready for it. So I saw a picture of a cigar shaped object with a dinosaur on top of it. I, you know how that's happening?

So like. I see too many things on social media these days, but we wanna be a church. We talk about topics that that can help you follow Jesus better and have conversations to help others understand how to follow Jesus better too. This comes from Second Timothy two. Two it says, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses is trust of faithful men and, and women who will be able to teach.

Teach others. Also, this is, this is Paul. He's writing to his protege, his mentee. He's a mentor and he is saying, Hey, by the way, when I'm teaching this stuff, it's to entrust it to you. It people like you. So then you go teach it. The reason we come to church is so then we can then learn and teach. That's why you're supposed to be here.

I don't know if you know this, it's not. So you can get some nugget of wisdom that you can lock away in your heart and then you can think about and cherish all week long. It's, oh, I'm so glad I learned that truth and do nothing with it. But that's what the majority of Christians do. Treat people church up all the time.

'cause I don't get enough from me. That, that we're never supposed to get enough for us. On a Sunday morning, you're supposed to get enough to motivate you to go tell more people about Jesus. That's what Sundays are supposed to be about. Just so you know, you're always supposed to be moving with movement.

In faith, we are supposed to go be entrusted with truth, then teach the truth. That is the goal. You should be in your life, in your home, in your schools, in your workplaces, in the community, teaching the truth of God to others. That's why we exist to multiply through discipleship because vision without action's just words.

It's just words. That's all it is and for a lot of Christians in my life, being that I'm 46, I've seen a lot of Christians with a lot of words and no action to follow it up. I can. I've seen people could spit out Bible verse after Bible verse, they just had it memorized and I never once saw an ounce of Christianity in their life.

We have to see Christ. We have to see action. Today as a church, we choose movement. The reason we are launching a new vision, 'cause we don't wanna settle into the old and say, well, that's just good enough. We wanna move forward with a vision that moves us into something better and greater. We don't care how big this church gets.

I don't know if you know this, we could care less. We don't have a number we want to hit, we just want to be faithful. As the pastor of this church, the more people we get causes more problems. For me. I just want you to know that more people, I gotta counsel more people that have to get along, more services that we have to add.

It creates good problems, but we're okay with the good problems. We'll navigate it. God continues to provide. So it's not like we're up here saying, oh, I want more work. No, I just wanna continue to love Jesus and see what happens. And as Jesus, as a movement goes forward, God always shows up and provides.

It's amazing how God continues to provide and provide and provide if we just follow his lead. And so as a church, that's our goal. With our vision, we really feel as leadership. We're

battery. I'm telling Jesse, can I get, whoop, I'm gonna, I'm tweaking out the last of the batteries here. It's on a red. So, so here we go. Pause for, uh, battery identification. I don't know. Here we go.

All right, so the, the only thing you guys are gonna remember is the batteries died and we had a K-pop video. So, uh, you guys are gonna not remember a word we said today, but you remember the golden. Song and H moon. Uh, so what does this mean for you? This is a good time. This is a good time for the, for that to transition here.

Why are we telling you all this? Because as a church, we wanna let the church be where Jesus increases. That's our goal in our worship, in our love and our community. That is our goal. We exist in this community to show people Jesus. We do not exist to build a temple to ourselves. We do not exist to create this, this beautiful building where we just sit here and do our own thing and we ignore the community.

We exist to love this community. That's why we exist. What one of the reasons why we're doing the project that we're doing now, we're just trying to expand a little bit so we can continue to have room to love people. That's what we're doing. We're not trying to build some mega structure and $10 million facility.

We're literally just trying to facilitate growth so we can continue to love people. We're gonna keep doing the same programming. A lot of churches, when they do building campaigns, they, they end everything. They minimize their staff. And they end a lot of their programs. That's, that's what they do because they have to be able to afford the payment.

And so I was just at church, I spoke at a church this summer and it was a church of a 1200 seat auditorium. They took out a third of the chairs and there were 200 people there when I spoke in their room that had 800 seats left. It looked empty. And when I talked to the pastor about it, well they spent less money, but they couldn't afford it.

So they had to get, they had to cut down like a third of their staff. They had to cut most of their programs to pay for the payment. And what they essentially did was build this beautiful building. I love that building. It was awesome. I loved everything about it, except the fact I would never wanna pay for it.

But they weren't, they, they basically ended doing ministry and when they stopped doing ministry, people didn't show up anymore and it was sad. We wanna be a church where Jesus and Christs and everything we do after that flows out of that. If God wants us to have a new building, it'll happen one day in his time.

If he doesn't, it doesn't matter. We'll see what he does, but we wanna, we want to increase Jesus in our worship and our love in our community. We also wanna speak Jesus boldly in our neighborhoods, in our schools, and our workplaces. We want children and teenagers to be going school, talking about the goodness of Jesus.

We want Bible studies to spring up in the schools. We want our kids to launch 'em. We want that, that to happen. We've seen a couple of them happen already in the last few years with our high schoolers. Cody is impressive upon our kids. Go and start groups. Start Bible studies. Get into schools. Tell your friends about Jesus.

We had 32 kids, middle school kids here last night for an event that's the most we've ever had in a middle school event ever. It's awesome. We wanna see those kids transformed by the word of God, and we wanna speak Jesus boldly in the places that we go and the programs that we do and the people that we come across.

And then we want to outdo one another and honor inside and outside the church. It's not just about us in here. It's about how do we act in the community? How do we love people? We love to, to take cookies to the school. We love to get KY Donuts for the teachers, right? We, we like to get 600 calories and serve it to them just to love 'em, right?

We don't give 'em a Bible. We just give 'em the ky, right? And we just say, we love you. We appreciate you. We do the same thing with our police. We do the same thing with our fire. We've, we've helped out the businesses in town. We really are trying to be part of this community. That's what we wanna do. People, if you come to this church, they need to know that you're part of something, that you support the business.

Go shop and buy at the business in our community. Go eat at the restaurants here. Support this community. If you live in Napoleon and do the same thing in Napoleon, you live in Addison, do the same thing. Like let people know, Hey, I'm here because I'm part of this community. I love you and I want you to be successful, and I love Jesus.

It's okay to boldly tell people that you love them and the why behind the love that you have for them. Let's outdo one another and showing honor inside and outside the church, and then commit to discipleship. That multiplies leaders, families, and faith. You need to be a disciple in your family. If you're a parent, if you're a grandparent, you need to talk about Jesus in your home.

You need to be talking about Jesus at work if you can. And if you're not allowed to just wear one of 'em Jesus shirts, and then they'll know that you love them because of Jesus, even though you're unlovable, right? I still love you, right? Um, you need to talk about any chance you get. You need to talk about Jesus.

Let people know that you love Jesus. Because if you love them differently than the world and you honor them differently in the world, they'll get it. They'll get the why. Just don't hide the fact that you love Jesus. You don't have to shove it down their throat. Just let 'em know that you love Jesus and the way that you live and the way that you love.

And then I have a question for you and make it easy for you. I'm gonna challenge you. This vision is our vision, but it's ultimately, it's the church's vision. It's the vision of God's word. I mean, this is pretty practical. Tell people about Jesus. Make disciples, and honor and love people is literally the core of the gospel.

There is nothing there that's not the core of the gospel. So my question is, will you, will you step into a three 30 vision in your own life? Is Jesus gonna become greater in life and you're gonna become less, or you're just gonna keep living for you and coming into church? 'cause it feels good, but I'm still living for me.

Call to Action and Building Campaign

Or are you really gonna believe that Jesus should become greater and I become less in my life? You gonna make that decision if you do? I'm gonna challenge you this today. Take out your connection card, challenge time on the back of your connection card. You gotta write your name on the front so we know that you're in.

I want you to write the words I'm in. Just write, I'm in. This is not one I don't think you have to pray about and think about. You either know you're in or you know you're not in. That's kind the way it works. I'm either in with Jesus or I'm not. And so I want you to write your name 'cause I'm gonna make a list of people and we're gonna give people this opportunity all year long, um, to be in.

And then I'm gonna put that list up. I'm gonna pray over those names. Not gonna call you. You're not gonna bug you. We, we don't, we hate, we hate that. We don't wanna do that to you. We'll just pray for you. We'll just say, Hey Lord, help this person live out the three 30 vision in their own life and in their relationship with others and in this church.

And help our church. If you're in it means you're gonna be doing this in your own life and you're gonna be supporting that vision here at church. That's what it means that you're gonna be praying for that. You're gonna be living that out in your life. And so if you do that now, because we're moving to three services, we're putting these now in the black boxes on the way out.

So we'll go ahead and rip it off. Oh wait, sorry. 1, 2, 3. Sorry. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Try two. Try two. I got another one. Forgot to do this first service. Now the count of three. 1, 2, 3. There you go. So I had an extra this week. Um, we want you to be in, you can drop that in and we'll be praying for you. Be praying for each other.

You need to pray that the people in this church also get the vision. They get it. Even the ones you don't necessarily like. Right. In this church. Right. And in the community. Pray for them because this is about the future of huddle. We are, we are going somewhere intentionally as a church. This is our three 30 vision.

This is who we are and why, what we do, we do. And to make that happen. We are, we're growing. We're growing. And the reality is, I told the first services, we can't take the the people that are extra here and move you to the first service because if we do that, they'll have too many people. And you'll still have too many people.

Like we can't balance out, people are asking, why don't you just balance out the services and ask people to move? We could, we would still have too many people in the service and we still have too many people that we then, we'd have too many people in our service. So we're moving the three service practically.

'cause we just can't make that shift work numbers wise, because when we have 400, 4 50 people here and two services, we're still full, two full in both services because we need to be 70% full for visitors to think there's room for them here. That's shareology. It's actually a thing. And so, uh, you're like, now you're gonna remember that word too, right?

So, but that's the reality of it. And so we understand this. So that's why we're going to three services. And so what we wanna do is we wanna expand this room in a way that we can have more people in here as we move forward. And so you can see a picture of these pictures in the lobby, so you can check 'em out in the hall.

But we look to add an equipment platform in the middle of this room, knock that wall out, move it back. We can add 30 seats there. Um, it'll actually change the lobby. You can see the, the, the design here. And so what that'll look like, you can see all this in the lobby. And then, um, the lobby will look different as well.

'cause we'll be taking that wall and moving into the lobby. It'll look nice and different and beautiful. And uh, we also recognize part of the issue we have is parking. We do not have enough parking spots for the people that we have currently. It's kind of a congested mess in between services. We want to add a parking lot out front.

And so we have some designs here that we've been working towards, uh, add 50 some parking spots out front, which gives us more space for all the people here. Also, if you've ever been to one of our events, Halloween, Easter Egg Hunt, we don't have enough parking for any of the, we are way too busy as a community doing community events.

We don't have any parking here, so we need more parking for our events and activities, how wood, all those different things. And so this was part of our kind of first tier that we wanna do as parking. And so we're working on that. We're going through the process with the township now, and we have multiple tiers.

One we do now, one we do, you know, next, and then one that's kind of a later goal. And so I'm not gonna go through what all the tiers are. But the big one here would be parking lot and redoing this facility in here, we also wanna renovate the bathrooms. That's important for some of the ladies here. They would like to renovate the bathrooms in our tier two.

We'd like to expand the ladies' restroom. Guys don't care. So, uh, they don't care at all. They could care less. They've got a urinal, they're fine. So, um, literally is what somebody told me. We've got a urine, we're fine. So, um, so our goal is tier one. We're building the foundation of where we're going. Tier two is we wanna expand our reach a bit with some of those.

And these are all in the lobby, so you can just peruse those signs. Part of tier two would be we bring an entrance from the, into the court, into the courtyard, into here. Put a new entrance, we'd like to put a portico out there so you don't have to go the car in the rain, it's whole thing. Um, so those are some goals that we have for the future.

And then three, we really wanna secure our future as we move forward. So how we do this, we now remember three 30, we want to do three tiers of 30 months a piece. So that's two and a half years each. I could wish it was three, but it's not. Uh, and so it ends up being about seven and a half years. So we know that the phase we're in, we're gonna be in a growth phase for a while.

We anticipate that that's what's gonna happen. So we're always gonna be in a growth and building and fundraising phase. We just have to, uh, pastors, I hate talking about money. It's my least favorite thing. It's why we get really flipping about, um, all these things when it comes to, we don't really spend a lot of time on offering.

We're gonna do better with that. Uh, because I know that's a problem. I hate being accused of talking about money as a pastor, uh, because it seems self. Indulgent and it's really not. And so we're gonna do better about this. So part of our plan is in our 30 month plan, the next two and a half years, we want you to set your, your alarms on your phone to three 30 every day.

We want you to pray for a church, but we don't just want you to pray for a church. If you're in, you need to praying that you get it every day at 33, 3 30, when your alarm goes off, you need to think he must become greater and I must become less. That means you're probably at work, you're probably at school, um, or on your way home from school.

And so that's a great time for you to think, was I living this out today? Was, was, was God greater and I left today? Or do I need to work on it? And then pray that also for our church, that we keep our vision goggles on. To that point, on the third Sunday of every month, we're gonna do better about talking about campaign.

We've done two campaigns here. We've successfully completed both of them, but we didn't talk about 'em. We like launched them and then talk about 'em like once a year. That's not, it's not what you should be doing when you do a campaign. We're gonna talk about the every third Sunday of the month three. So we're gonna talk about our campaign, not as long as today, but we're gonna mention it and give new people a chance to be part of the campaign, be part of our vision, be part of who we are.

We need to be more intentional about that, and that's one of the things I need to be more intentional as your pastor in doing that and getting over that hurdle of just talking about money. And then on, on March 30th, three 30, okay, we are gonna have a vision concert. We are gonna release an album, uh, of our own original music.

That's part of why, you know, Cyleigh's up here. Cody sang a song for our last one. We are working towards some things like that. We want to have a celebration, a worship event. Uh, we want to have testimonies. We're just gonna have a praise and kind of connect and just, that's gonna be part of our three 30 we're gonna do every march.

We're very excited about that as we move forward. And then on the third and 30th of the month, we're just gonna put out some kind of updates, prayer, devotions, testimony, something just to keep people excited about what God is doing in life change. We want to hear your stories. We want to hear your life change.

We wanna be able to share it with each other, to encourage each other that he must become greater and I must become less. And it's not to make you more, it's to say, Hey, God is real and he's transformative in my life. And then how we're gonna do this is for us, how this practically will work. It's why we gave you these campaign cards on some of the seats there.

Uh, these are on the campaign cards. We want you to participate financially in the campaign. Uh, we're asking you to invest in the kingdom. Like really believe this. We don't want you, if you wanna invest, we don't want you to take your ties and offerings and give to the campaign. A campaign is always over and above ties and offerings because I don't wanna have to get up here in a month or two and say, Hey, we just laid off some staff.

Because everybody gave to the campaign and not their TI army. Like this is additional. You pray about it. You think about it. Last Sunday night, we had 140 people in here and they got a chance to pray and think about this and we, they got the long version of this. Some of you, this is the first time you're hearing about it.

The great thing is in the couple weeks and third Sunday we're gonna talk about this again. You'll have another chance to commit and you're welcome to take those cards. You can fill 'em out, you can make a donation or you can commit, um, to being part of this and you put 'em in, in the black boxes. Or you can scan the QR code on the screen and you can also do the same that's in the lobby, but we don't you to pray about it.

What we're hoping is that over here we're hoping that our church, every month, monthly, there'll be 330, $33 shares. That people will say, Hey, I'll take a share, or I'll take five shares, or I'll take three shares, or I'll take 10 shares and I'll give that monthly and over 30 months. That equals $330,000.

Don't do the math. It doesn't quite work. It's like 200, it's like $326,700. I just believe someone else is gonna give the extra to make it three 30. So that's why it works. But we're, that's what we're, we're really hoping, like from, and I'll just give you a practical example because I'm part of this with you.

This is, this money is not paying any staff. It's not gonna bonuses. This is a hundred percent gonna, the projects, we said nothing else. So I'm not getting anything outta this. My family has already had a conversation. We sat down after Sunday night and we talked. I want my children to think and pray about taking their own shares because we say over and over and over again, they are the now of the church.

They're not the future. And if they're the now, they should be invested. Now they, my 13-year-old may not be able to take a full share 'cause he has no job. Right? So that's really just my money then. Right? So, but he can sacrifice, that's what we're talking about. Maybe take a half share a course share, but my 19-year-old can, right?

They, they, they're working towards. And so we, we really are talking about what, what can we do as a family to invest this. I know some of you're in the cancel Netflix craze right now, right? And so if you are, you've got some extra funds, right? How many accounts did you cancel? All right. See, maybe you need to take your Netflix share.

Um, but we really want you to pray about this. We need 330, 30 $3 shares a month, which really equates to 110 people at a hundred dollars a month, which is a really doable campaign for a church our side. We, we didn't try to make this difficult because we know we're gonna need to do this ongoing as we continue to grow because we do foresee a time that potentially we may be building a big building out in, out in the side yard, which we know would be a minimum of $2.5 million building projects.

And we just know we're not at that place financially to do that. We believe if God wants us to do that, we will grow enough that we'll have the equilibrium people to do that project. What we need to do now is be faithful and to grow as God is asking us to do. And so this is our project. We also believe there'll be three of these $330,000 projects.

There'll be nine 90 or about a million dollars. And so there's a, a table in the next page that you can also see in the lobby out here. So there's a table that you'll see. It just kind of shows that this is a really realistic, you're welcome to give one time gift and say, I'll take all my shares and it has the, the, the next graphic, we'll have all the totals on it.

So like for. One share for, for the whole time is nine 90. So you're welcome to give a one-time gift. You're welcome to give monthly, um, you're welcome to give yearly, you're welcome to do a little of each. That would be helpful. We, we believe we could hit this goal. Uh, I'd love to hit the goal earlier than two and a half years so we can move into tier two.

Especially those of you who would like those renovated, expanded bathrooms, that would be helpful. Um, so that's in tier two. See, that's the carrot for the horse. Um, so, so, but we're just really excited about what God is doing. These are good problems to have. Um, we are, we are great. We are doing well financially.

As a church, you probably wanna know that. Uh, we are actually looking at the process of switching banks, um, and we talking to a new bank and the, the one guy just told me, Hey, the CEO of our bank says we gotta get this one. Like, they want us to come do business with 'em because one, we make really good financial decisions.

We're in a really strong financial position. And also they know we're gonna be raising a bunch of money, which they want to come to their bank. And so it's, it's exciting to know that we have. Institutions in our community that respect what we're doing and how we're doing what we're doing. And so, God has been really good to us.

We just pray that you really think and pray about can you be part of this vision moving forward as part of it. We also need you to be praying for us now, some people who came Sunday night, they may be prepared to give today. And so, uh, I have something special for you and you're welcome to give. During this time, you could take your, uh, your, your gift and your campaign, uh, commitment and take it back and put in the black box.

I think it's gonna be pretty distracting. That distracting. That's what I learned last week. So if you'd like to participate, you may give, you can give any time. You, the QR code goes directly to Tylee. You can set up reoccurring gifts. That's very easy to do it. Um, we just want you to pray and consider, can you help us get to where we're going because it's, it's amazing what God's doing.

Now for your special thing, um, I wrote a song for Cody to sing, but obviously Cody, he's not gonna be able to sing for quite a while. As he heals. But my daughter, Cyleigh, has the same vocal range as Cody. So Cyleigh is gonna perform this song for you. There. She's, so, I hope you enjoy, uh, this song was written basically for the vision, uh, or for our mission of our church.

[Song plays]

 Good job, Cyleigh. Um, I'm so excited we're moving into, um, our vision 2030, but I wanna take this time to thank all you, um, that have helped with kids ministry, with the lodge, with, with volunteering around the church, just getting us through that 2025 vision that's been been so great, seeing, seeing the life change.

Um, but at this time, I would like to pray over our vision 30, our vision 2030. And I would love for you to join, join in with me as we pray. God, we are just so thankful, thankful for what you're doing, not just at this church, but in our lives, the way that you're transforming the community, not because of us.

But because of your word and having it come through us, Lord, as we, as we move forward, and sometimes we, we feel things are outside of our comfort zone, but let us remember, because you came in our heart. You live in us and you put the Holy Spirit in us to just help us be bold. Help us to introduce our neighbors, our coworkers, our friends, people on the, on the playground, to people at the at the board table.

Um, Lord, we, we, we passionately love you.

The culture of honor that we have just continued to, to move forward through, um, help us to filter our lives through that help us to care about what the people we care about, care about. Help us to assume the best. Life just comes at us with, with different things. And he wants to throw us off course, but help us to, um, restore gently help us to release that bitterness.

And, and the one that really, really hurts sometimes is we might be right, but is it loving? Are we setting that example, that that reflects your goodness, that, that you have in our life, that you've given to us because you died on the cross. You took all of those sins. Lord, as we do this, um, we just, we just ask for your boldness, um, to know that you are greater and we are less.

And through that, help us build disciples because you commanded us to you, you told us to go forth, build disciples, introduce you to all the nations. We pray that all those things that we can do them. With the power that you've given us. Lord, thank you for Pastor Kyle and his wisdom and guidance. Thank you for Pastor Cody.

Um, just the, the excitement that he brings, that the, that the, that the kids just love to be around him and also for Matt and Mark that are at the Jackson campus as they're, they're growing. Um, Lord, I just sincerely pray that you continue to guide us, and I'm so thankful for all that we have. In Jesus name, amen.

Amen.