Celebration Sunday - December 28, 2025

Good morning, Resurrected Church.

My name is Richard. I'm the high school youth

director here at Rez. I want to tell you how excited I

am that you're here today. I was at the gym this week, ran

into an old buddy of mine, and he began to tell me his story,

how his son is taking off and started living his own way and

not living the way he raised him to live.

And he gave me a chance to share the story that comes from the

Bible where Jesus is talking about the prodigal son, how the

son took off, turned his back on the dad and just lived a life of

sin and debauchery and all the ways that dad didn't raise him

to be. But that son finally came to his

senses and made his way home. But what's key about that story

is that the father was there waiting for him to come back

with open arms. The father didn't say, hey, you

did this, you did that. He didn't start bringing up the

stuff that he did. He welcomed him home.

And whether you've been here for years, been a Christian for

years, or you're new to this whole Jesus thing, I want to let

you know that the Father is standing there with his arms

wide open saying, come home, I love you, I care for you, you're

safe with me. So Jesus is the way to the

Father. Would you stand and worship with

us this morning? Let everything there is breath,

praise the Lord, praise the Lord.

Let everything there is breath, Praise the Lord, praise the

Lord. I'll praise in the valley, and

I'll praise on them now I'll praise with them.

Sure, I'll praise with them, I'll praise with our number,

I'll praise with surrounding. This crazy is the water my enemy

is rounding. As long as I'm breathing, I've

got a reason to pray. The Lord, Oh my soul, praise the

Lord, Oh my soul. I'll praise when I feel you now,

praise when I don't. I'll praise kiss.

And no, your silly control. Because praise is whipping.

It's more than it's my praise is the shout that brings Jericho

to. As long as I'm breathing, I've

got no reason to pray the Lord. Oh my soul.

Pray the Lord. Oh my soul.

Oh, I won't be quiet. But God is alive.

How could I keep it inside? Oh my soul, I got so good.

He's been so good to us this year.

He deserves some praise this morning.

Here we go. I'll praise, I'll praise.

Kiss yourself. Praise.

Kiss you rain. Praise kiss.

You rose and defeated the great. I'll praise.

Kiss. You're faithful.

Praise kiss, you're true. I'll praise, Kiss this nobody

greater than you. I'll praise Chris yourself.

Praise Chris you reign. I'll praise.

Kiss. You rose and defeated the grave.

I'll praise. Kiss, You're faithful.

Praise kiss, you're true. I'll praise, Kiss this nobody

greater than you. Praise the Lord, Oh my soul, you

know. Raise the Lord, Oh my soul.

Raise the Lord, Oh my soul. Raise Oh my soul.

Oh, I won't be quiet. My God is alive.

How could I keep it inside? I won't be quiet.

My God is alive. How could I keep it inside?

No, I won't be quiet. My God is alive.

How could I keep this Lord? Oh my God.

Let everything, let everything that is great praise the Lord,

praise the Lord. Let everything that is great

praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, Praise the

Lord. Praise the Lord, Praise the

Lord, Praise the Lord. We're going to keep praising

because our God's good and he deserves some more praise.

Amen. When he sees my soul, I'll

testify the blessings on blessings and poured on my life,

and I shall remember it. How could you be?

It turns away tears and new brains, chains of depression

broken by cranes. When I start remembering.

How could you be? Yeah, you can so, so, so, so,

so, so care to me. You can so, so, so, so, so, so

care. There's something there's always

weapons fault in the ground armies with every always round.

We now show from nether rain how you carry my cross.

You call me my name, love me like I was If you didn't leave

me that way. We stand now on live get it let

you take. Oh, you've been so so so so so

so get to me. Can you been so so so so, so so

get to me from morning to night, girls in their eyes I look back

on my life and no need to see. Can you been so so so so.

So good, so good, so good to me. Every day, every night, you're

always so good to me. We praise you, Jesus.

Say God is good, you say all the time.

When I say all the time, you say God is good When I say God is

good, you say all the time. When I say all the time, you say

God is good. When I say God is good, you say

all the time. When I say all the time, you say

God is good. When I say God is good.

What will you say all the time? When I say all the time, you say

God is so, so, so, so, so. Guess me.

Yeah, you so, so, so, so, so, so guess me.

Yeah. Good morning to God, the Lord in

the eyes. I look back.

My life can only see the morning tonight, those in the heart.

I look back on my life in order to see him in so so so so so so

good. Praise King Jesus, he's so good.

All right, guys, take a seat. It's going to be a little bit

different of a Sunday. We started doing this a couple

years ago. The last Sunday of the year.

We take a little bit of time to look back at the year and

celebrate the things that God has been doing in the life of

our church. And so we're going to do that

today. Our church has the never ending,

never changing mission of the Great Commission.

Every church has the same mission.

If you are a Bible believing church, you were commissioned

with the Great Commission and that is our responsibility.

But we have a culture here at our church.

We have things that we value and, and the way a certain way

that we do things and that shapes how we go about doing

ministry, how we form our goals. And so we are on a journey right

now, a vision that we believe that God gave us about two years

ago. And we think that often times

God will. You know, there's segments to

this journey. We're in kind of a three to five

year window of time where we set some goals of the things that we

believe that God is leading us to.

And so we talk about those every once in a while.

It's part of our churches vision.

We are finishing up year 2 of this vision.

So we're going to talk about progress that we've made and

things that we see God doing in the midst of that over the

course of this past year. And so there are four major

parts to our vision. We'll talk about those today.

We'll kind of celebrate a lot of our celebrations inside the

context of those four areas. And we set some goals a few

years ago that are we, they're called B hags, big, hairy,

audacious goals. You ever heard those B hags?

Some of these are big, some of them are difficult.

And we know they're God sized goals.

And what that means is either God is going to show up in power

or we're going to look foolish. And that's really where people

of faith should live. And so God has called us to

invest in four areas. We're going to talk about each

of those today. Here's one of the reasons that

we look back is not to pat ourselves on the back, but

biblically, if you read the Bible, God consistently tells

generations in the Old Testament to remember the things that he's

done because we're such a forgetful people that it doesn't

take us very long to forget how faithful God has been in our

past. And so we want to pause for just

a little bit of time today and look back at this year and

realize God has done some tremendous things in the life of

this church. It gets easy to overlook when

life gets busy or you're going through suffering or pain.

It gets really easy to overlook the things that God has done.

And so this should do three things for us today.

I hope it should encourage you. It should excite you, and I hope

that it inspires you. And, and, and part of the reason

that I hope that is that I believe that complacency and

comfort are the primary enemies of the American church.

We get comfortable and we get complacent and we stop pursuing

Christ the way that we were pursuing him at one point.

And then we wonder why faith is boring and God hasn't changed.

And so I hope this stirs you up today.

I hope it stirs you up to take a next step, whatever that next

step might look like. We're going to give you lots of

information and opportunities to take a next step with our

church. We have handouts celebrating

some of this stuff. We, we have a handout of just

all kinds of next steps. I think there's like 9 or 10

different next steps of things that you might take over the

course of this next year as you pursue Christ In the context of

the Res Church family here, we're going to celebrate a lot

of numbers. I want you to remember this.

Every one of those numbers represents people who have real

stories, who are being transformed by Christ.

And so as we celebrate some of that man, there's so many fun

stories. We will call out a few of those

stories, but we won't even get to tell all those stories today.

But God has been good to a number of people in a number of

ways. And So what we want to celebrate

is not just to glorify Christ today, but we want to celebrate

when we see Christ in someone and we see Christ in a lot of

you. And we want to call that out and

encourage you with it. And so we're going to start with

a video. Logan is going to walk through a

ministry that launched in our church this year called Regen.

And I want you to check this out.

Hello, everybody. My name is Logan, and I'm

celebrating the work that God has done through the

regeneration ministry here at Res Church.

Earlier this year, myself and seven other individuals

commenced from this program, and what that means is that we

completed the 12 steps of regeneration.

In Regen, they really emphasize confessing your sins both to God

and to other people. And in that, it's kind of broken

down that idea that we have to have it all together, or at

least pretend that we do. Now, because Regen makes us

confront that sin, we're more comfortable talking about it and

in talking about it, that is how we find healing.

And it's benefited myself by helping me grow out of lots of

bad habits. It helped a lot of the other

graduates, and I know it's going to keep benefiting Rez Church in

that way. There are lots of stories

already from region. We had a pilot program where we

trained leaders for a year and they recently, about 2-3 months

ago, launched the first, the first iteration of region here

at our church. And, and so we're really excited

about having a recovery ministry here.

There are groups already in that that are going through that.

And, and Logan is just one of many stories.

We, I told you there are 4 main vision items that I wanted to

kind of classify or categorize everything by.

And the first is this concept of being known.

And here's what that means to us.

We believe that our culture has become increasingly isolated in

the past decades, in fact, particularly with COVID,

training entire generations to disregard intimate human

relationships in lieu of efficiency and convenience.

God calls our church to stand out brightly in The Dark World,

and we believe this means that Christians need to engage in

close relationships that look countercultural.

The hardest part of many disciplines in your life is

simply showing up. The hardest part of getting fit

is showing up at the gym. The hardest part of reading our

Bible is opening it. The hardest part of building

relationships is showing up for community.

And so we put a focus on showing up, being in community, and

growing spiritually. We want everyone in this church

to be in the process of building deep, meaningful relationships

with other believers and increasing in their love for the

Lord. We want to do things that foster

these deep relationships. Now, this means that we want to

keep finding new ways to introduce places for you to get

connected and to find people that are disconnected in our

church. And we want you to have real

clarity on what it would look like to take a next step to grow

in community and in your relationship with Christ.

And so throughout this process, we want there to be a gentle but

consistent urgency to be known. We want the invitation to

intimacy to be ever present in every area of our church.

And should a person choose to attend regularly at res and not

engage in community, I want that to feel uncomfortable because

you're missing out. I don't want you to feel like

you're missing out. And so we set some goals that we

wanted our church to accomplish over the next three to five

years. One of those is we want every

person at res to understand what a next step looks like in the

growth process. We don't want that to be

confusing. The second thing is within the

first three years, and we're two years in now, we wanted to see

300 plus people attending group every week and 60 or more groups

meeting weekly. And we want every person in our

church to be able to honestly say that you feel known by

others in the church. These are our goals for being

known. Richard.

We pray over that. Yes, Father, thank you that you

sent your son to show us what it's like to be in community.

He was never alone. He had his disciples with him.

Lord. So may everyone in here, Lord,

may our church be a church that we are known to each other, that

we would have intimate relationships with one another.

Lord that we would have 300 people attending group, that we

would have 60 plus groups meeting every week and every

person in this church could honestly say that they feel

known by other people in this church and that they could have

real community. Lord, thank you for this and

bless it in the name of Jesus, Amen.

Amen. A couple of things to celebrate

and and if you just think about a lot of the things that we've

rolled out over the last two years, you'll understand the

link to this like why? Why do we have a check in system

on Sunday mornings? Why do we print name tags and

ask everybody to wear them? Because we want to continue to

foster an environment where people are known.

Anonymity is not your friend, being known is your friend.

And so one of the big things that we track this year is how

many people showed up to a community group in 2025.

Yeah, this is amazing. So we have 289 unique group

attenders. That's an amazing number.

That's 200 and 92189 people getting in homes, sitting on

couches, getting vulnerable, confessing sins, gospel

transformation in their lives, becoming known to other people.

It's an amazing number. I, I, I think Sunday morning

attendance is important. Coming and hearing the word and

encouraging one another is very important.

But you can really understand the health of a church by their

small group attendance because it's easy to hide, you know, on

on in a Pew, on a Sunday morning, in a crowd.

But you get in a small group with 8-9 people, you're known.

That's. Right this past year we want to

celebrate this as well. We have 37 new members in our

church and we'll talk about at the end here an opportunity, if

you feel called to membership in the church, how you can take a

next step in that area. We also had some women's

brunches. Oh yeah.

We had a couple women's brunches this year and we had 85 people

attend, 85 ladies attend per brunch.

The ladies are turning out. Yeah, that's amazing.

They're turning out to get some good food and to get fed.

It's an amazing thing. We had 99 people this year who

gave to Res Church for the very first time.

That's pretty cool. You you actually have a story

about you came to the last women's brunch.

Yes, I was here at the women's brunch.

Tell me all about that. But my role is different.

I was here with some fathers and some youth, and we were taking

care of the kids so that the women can be over there getting

ministered to. Well, what happens in that while

there's goldfish flying juice boxes everywhere, Just help

fathers watch kids. Let them make a mess.

But. What we didn't do was let the

women come in and clean it up. We cleaned it up.

It was amazing times we see these fathers step up and help

out with the childcare. It was amazing.

We're going to have more of those.

We, we want to continue to find more opportunities for you to

meet people in the church and spend time with them.

And so we felt like those were really awesome opportunities for

women to not only start to build some community, but to do it

with the Bible open hearing from the Lord, you know, beginning to

build relationships. Here's a couple things that are

coming this year in February. It is my desire.

It's been my desire for about 3 years, by the way, to build a

photo directory of all of you. Now, I probably won't give it to

you, but I want it. And the reason why is I pray for

you by name. And there are a lot of you, a

lot of you like, like a lot of you.

And so as I pray for you, I actually want to pray for you by

face and by name. And so in February, on Sunday

mornings as you come in, there are going to be photographers

here asking to take your picture.

It's not so that we can create some sort of government

database. Watch.

You, they already watch you. You're on Facebook.

It's so that we, the elders who pray for you, can pray for you

by name and by face again, because we think being known is

actually really important. And so you're going to see that

in February if you want to take your picture.

There is a reason. It's because I told them to.

You can blame me for it. 2nd is I want to encourage you if you

have not yet attended a group, if you've not joined a group and

I'm going to keep putting pressure on you to go sit in a

group and and figure out if they're weird is you're weird.

It's not whether or not they're weird, it's just whether or not

you're weirds match. Let's be real.

And so we're going to keep doing that.

In fact, I want to encourage you with a story of of somebody who

joined a group and found their weird was his kind of weird, and

then Christ began to transform him.

So check this out. So, Michael, we want to just

talk about your experience and getting plugged in.

First of all, how long have you been at Resurrection Church now?

Consistently for about two years now.

OK, two years, yeah. And you're in a community group,

right? And tell me everything you're

kind of plugged into right now. So I'm in a community group with

Don Van Sickles Community group, which has been absolute blessing

to be a part of. It's that has led to so many

other chances to plug in here at church last year.

And around December, I mentioned joining the worship team and Don

kind of gave me the motivation to do it.

And then by January I was, I was auditioning in February, I

played my first, my first service.

And it's just been amazing. And then just a few months ago

you have, you invited me to your, your mentorship group.

And that's just been oh man. And the mentorship group has

been phenomenal. This has been so fun.

It's awesome. It's been, and I love to see

somebody that has just really taken everything that Rez has.

Right, you, you've. Stepped into serving, you've

stepped into almost every aspect.

You even told me that it's kind of changed your family's ideal

or view on on giving at 1.0. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

You wanted to say anything about that?

Yeah. We, you know, I, me personally,

I would always kind of be a little hesitant when we'd tie it

and be like, Are you sure that's, you know, OK, can we

afford that? It's something we can manage.

And then just recently, I've been like, take it, take it all,

take it all, you know? So, yeah.

And then just everybody at home has just been so, so, so

astonished by how, like, the whole family dynamic has changed

just from being able to serve in church and being involved so

much. It's just like they see the

difference. They see the growth.

So it's just been a total blessing.

Michael, thank you for talking to us.

Thank you, Dave. You're welcome.

Love you, brother. Love.

You awesome. So our second vision category

that we rolled out two years ago is this thing called Love the

10, and I want to explain what that means to us and what we've

been working on over the course of the last couple years when it

comes to this. We believe that the church is

Christ's plan for sharing the hope of the gospel to a broken

world. And we believe that as a church,

we are specifically called to impact the community that is in

close geographic proximity to the campus itself.

And so like, we believe that this church should be full of

people from this neighborhood. And when we rolled out this

idea, actually less than 50% of our church lived within 10

minutes of the the church campus.

And so as we looked around the neighborhood and realized that

the demographics of this neighborhood changed pretty

substantially over the last couple of decades.

And so we spent a lot of time kind of looking at the

demographics, like what what are the needs in these communities

and neighborhoods around the church?

And how can we go about meeting those needs?

Because when you begin to meet those needs, you earn enough

trust to be heard when it comes time to share the gospel.

And so we have built outreach teams that would allow us to

meet needs and to better understand those needs.

We're going to celebrate a lot of areas in this this category

of ways that we have engaged this neighborhood.

And our goal is that our teams and these initiatives would help

us to learn how to better care for the homeless, to make

connections in this community at local parks, to establish a

presence on our school campuses, which we've done and other

potential engagement opportunities.

And so we set these goals two years ago that in the next three

to five years, we would launch an independent daycare or

preschool that primarily serves this local neighborhood.

To create a community centre that is accessible to the local

neighborhood. To renovate our park for

community use. To put ministry on campus at

Bakersfield College and have 150 plus new people from the

neighborhood attending church at Res.

Elder Don, will you pray for our initiative to Love the 10 Love?

To Heavenly Father, we are, in our view, your sovereignty,

power, presence. We praise you at all things.

I bring before you the 148 thousandth souls who live within

10 minute drive to reach our church's doors.

Each carries joys and burdens, hopes and fears, stories known

to you alone. Some are simply trying to

survive, some on the streets. You know who they are.

May you bless these families, these people, the workers, the

children, the elderly, the lonely, and the thriving alike.

Let your spirit move among them, bringing peace where there is

conflict, healing where there is hurt, and opportunity where

there's need. Make Resurrection Church be a

beacon of welcome, a place where neighbors find belonging and

where love overflows beyond our walls.

Guide us to serve faithfully so that every person nearby may

know that they are seen, valued, cherished, and loved.

And may you, the Holy Spirit, work in their lives that they

would know that God knows them, loves them, has a plan for their

lives. And if they don't know you, I

pray that they may come to know you, to have an encounter with

Jesus Christ and their lives be changed for eternity.

We pray these things in Jesus name and for His sake.

Amen. Amen.

One of the ways that we begin to to push into this area is we

built some outreach teams to try to find a way to impact the

local community and local churches, missions and outreach.

And so we sent 67 different individuals from our church last

year. Yeah, we did.

To either other church campuses or to parks, outreach centers of

the Daughters Project, I mean, Keepers of the Cross, you name

it, we were sending people out. And we want to celebrate the 67

individuals that went out into the community last year,

specifically into our partners and partner churches.

Because of what you have done, there are people in this room.

I can't point at them because I don't want to call them out.

That we have come to love, come to call as part of our family

because you were willing to go out into the parks, into the

fields, into the people and actually say, hey, the gospel of

Jesus Christ is there. Come, come.

Let us show you what's happening at Resurrection.

Church in January, we're going to do something called scent,

and we're going to blow these numbers away in January.

Let's go. Yeah, we are.

We are. Excited about that?

Yeah. OK.

Hey, this is Celebration service.

Let's celebrate. Come on, this is our second year

of doing a camp that we called Res Mania.

Anyone remember that one? Res Mania.

There we go. Come on.

So 308 attenders, 158 volunteers.

That was 466 people that participated in a kids camp 4.

166, yeah. You guys showed up.

When we say this is a all hands on deck, you guys don't mess

around. You've brought the gospel.

So many kids. How many kids made decisions?

So 26 kids put their faith in Christ and gave us their name to

follow up with because of a kids camp.

Wow. Yeah.

We also did a youth camp here on campus.

We had 151 youth show up to our our youth camp.

We had 101 volunteers. God bless your soul for a youth

camp. So, so, so 252 people

participating in a youth camp here, 17 decisions for Christ,

22 people baptized. Yeah.

Serious. That means.

That means. Five people, 70 people made

decisions, 5 people who did not make decision also decided when

I need to take that next step into getting baptized and that

that water was something else. Yeah.

So by the end of 22 baptisms, that water might have been holy,

but it was not clean. It was.

It was pretty rough. It washed away all their sins.

But yeah, it was. It looked like it too.

So one of the, one of the events that we did trying to reach the,

the neighborhood was something called Winter Wonderland.

That was a year before, but Winter Wonderland, we put up

little signs and balloons and banners.

And there was a guy named Trent who's driving by, sees the

signs, goes, you know, man, I, I need to go that I just feel like

I should go. Shows up, ends up over at the

prayer tent and realizes, man, God is calling me here and, and

to salvation. So from, from no, not having a

faith in Christ, not pursuing Christ, not in church, not doing

anything faith wise. Winter Wonderland.

I think we gave away like 2000 hot dogs or something.

So some, some cheesy hot dogs end up reaching this man for

Christ. And, and since then he's joined

into he's become a member, he's joined the church, he's joined a

small group. He's begin to serve all over the

place, serve on one of these outreach teams.

Absolutely crazy because of some hot dogs.

Another way, and this goes further than just two years,

another way that we have been making a consistent impact on

our community is that the church operates a thrift store in which

all the proceeds go to missions. That thrift store is called the

Junkateek Outlet. In fact, they're about to open a

second location and there's so many celebrations from that.

We tried to pick one, and we asked Elder Don to share just

just one celebration from that thrift store.

So I'm going to go out script. I'm shocked.

OK, so one of the one of the things I love to do is ride

motorcycles. And the reason you ride

motorcycles in the mountains is because you sit around a

campfire and lie to each other about what you did that day,

right? Yeah.

You celebrate. Remember, I almost died.

But I think this is what heaven's going to be like.

We're sitting around, we're talking Nathan Haverfeld.

I remember when you got baptized, baptized you, right?

And Bryce, Bryce Ivy, I remember when you got baptized and then

two days later you swap lanes on the 99 going north and wrecked

your car, totaled your car two days after getting baptized,

right? And then Michael Lee and

Tiffany, we have all these stories, but we have stories

that we celebrate. I think that's what heaven's

going to be like. I remember when I was lost, but

I was found. I just these crazy, I love

stories. I'd love to to hear stories to

celebrate. And I just love the idea that

we're coming together on a Sunday and celebrating what

God's doing in the lives of us. And I'm going to read this story

because I'll totally screw it up if I if I don't, OK, Because I

know this lady and she's an amazing lady.

Keely at Jado, we are celebrating God's faithfulness

through our partnerships with Keepers of the Cross.

In 2025, we were blessed to hire our second graduate from their

program, Keely Stokes. And on her story is a beautiful

testimony of redemption, courage, and forward momentum.

So I heard her testimony at a Jado lunch on Monday.

They have volunteers and and employees have a lunch and they

celebrate down there on Mondays. I heard Keely's story and it's

just amazing. She talked about being on the

streets for six years. Wow, six years.

So Keely shows up every day with a sense of responsibility,

diligence, and a heart anchored in prayer.

She leads with humility, works hard, and doesn't miss an

opportunity to glorify God and all that she does through faith

and perseverance. Keely purchased her own vehicle,

opening doors to greater independence and service not

only for herself, but for others as she faithfully gives

coworkers, rides and helps wherever she is needed.

In a bold step of faith, Keely asked her parents who care for

her daughter if she could return home after her graduation.

They welcomed her back with open arms.

Today, she is rebuilding a strong and loving relationships

with her daughter and helping ease her parents financial load

by contributing to rent. What God has restored in her

life keenly pays forward with generosity, patience and

kindness to volunteers and Co workers alike.

Keely's life reflects the gospel and action, restoration,

responsibility and a willingness to serve.

We are deeply grateful for Keely and for the privilege of

witnessing God's transforming work in her life.

Amen. Amen.

It's one thing to say that the the the Gospel transforms lives.

It's another thing to literally walk through someone's life as

it's being transformed and and watch as Christ changes them.

Two years ago, because of this initiative, we decided we wanted

to do something around Christmas time.

And So what we did is we collected the names of families

that needed a scholarship to one of the camps or they were part

of our Children Hunger Fund. We have a couple different food

programs. And so all those names, we

contacted those families and we just asked the parents, hey, do

you need help for Christmas for your kids?

Then everyone that said yes, we got lists of what their kids

were into. We bought them, you bought them

gifts. We then called the parents, had

them come and wrap the gifts so that the parent could give the

child the gift from them and not from someone else.

And so I want you to see a couple of the celebrations

around a program we call Give Joy.

It's beginning to look a lot like this everywhere.

You take a look at the 5:00 and 10:00.

It's listening once again with candy canes and silver lands

that glow. Hi Rez Church, my name is

Matisse Camelli and I have the opportunity.

No, I have the privilege of helping with Give Joy this year.

What a blessing you have been and you have really turned out

again. This is our second year that we

have the opportunity to provide gifts for families and it is

such an amazing experience that I get to share a letter from a

family that received gifts last year.

I just wanted to say thank you for getting Christmas gifts for

my kids. I really appreciate getting

gifts for my youngest daughter who wasn't able to attend your

VBS. My husband said when that he

came to pick up the gifts, everyone was so sweet and kind

to them. They were also really a surprise

that everybody knew all of their children's names.

They enjoyed the opportunity to be able to wrap up their own

gifts. They had a lot of fun

experiences while they were here.

They had two birthday parties in the coming months and they also

had a daughter a couple months later.

So being able to be provided with Christmas gifts was a huge

blessing and a joy to their lives.

Thank you again for sharing your love and encouragement to all of

our families. All right, let's stand up and

worship some more. I searched the world, but he

couldn't feel me messing to Prince treasures the pain and

never real. And then you came along.

We'll be back together every time is now satisfied hearing

alone. Oh, there's nothing better than

there's nothing better than Lord, there's nothing.

Now I'm not afraid showing my weakness, my fair is and floors,

but you see them all and you still call me pray because the

God of the the mountain is the God of the valley and there's

out of place your mercy, grace won't fly me again.

Better deed, Lord, is there deed?

Nothing is better than you. Lord, is there deed?

Better deed There's gotta be. Better deed, Lord, is there

deed? Nothing is better.

You turn lordy to tense in, you give beauty for answers.

You turn shame into glory, and you're the only one you can.

You turn lordy to tense in. You give beauty for answers.

You turn shame into glory and you're the only one you can.

You turn crazy into college. You turn falls into armies.

You turn season 2 highways. You're the only one you.

You're the only one you have. Lord is nothing singing out.

Lord is nothing. Nothing is baby.

Oh it's nothing that is nothing that in the Lord is nothing.

You turn crazy into goddess. You turn falls into armies.

You turn season into you're the only one you can.

You turn graves into garden, and you turn seas into Holland.

You're the only one you can. Come on, give God some praise.

He's turning graves into garden. The way to explore all, the

wonder of His grace, the power of salvation, all that pulled me

from the brain. This hope is not empty.

And forever He will reign. He won't be put to shame.

Oh my soul. Sing to the God of the ages.

Sing to the Lord of creation. Sing his praise again.

Sing like the heavens away. Roar like an army of ages.

Sing his praise again. The moment of rest.

I have never been the same. His love took me calm.

My sin was washed away. Now I stand here, forgiven and I

know that I am safe. I won't be good to shave.

Oh my soul, sing to the God of the ages, sing to the Lord of

creation, sing his praise again. Oh my soul, sing like the

heavens awake. Roar like an army of angels.

Sing His praise again. Remember how our God has never

failed, never failed us. Remember that His name will make

away, He'll make away from the cross to the grave.

He is risen and he reigns. Praise the Lord.

Sing His praise again and remember how our God has never

failed, never failed us. Remember that His name will make

a way. He'll make a way.

He is risen and here. And praise the Lord in his grace

Sings to the God of the ages, sings to the Lord of the

creation His praise again. Roar my soul, sing like the

heavens away, roar like an army of angels, Sing His praise

again. Call my soul, Sing to the God of

the ages, sing to the Lord of creation, Sing his praise again.

Oh my soul, sing like the heavens away, roar like an army

of angels, Sing His praise again.

Sing His praise again. Oh sing his praise again, Oh,

sing us praise again, Oh sing us praise again.

Oh, how our God has never failed, never failed.

From the frost the great he's rising, and he brings praise. 1

Seeing his career, life has never failed, never failed us.

Remember that his name will make a way else to the great he is

rising, and the praise to the God of the ages.

Sing his praise again. Sing like the heavens are away,

More like an army of angels. Sing his praise again.

Sing his praise again. All right, have a seat.

The third of our vision items that we're celebrating and

looking back on and remembering is this idea of reaching our

circles. And here's what that means.

We believe that one of the most powerful signs that our church

body, that's you all say me, is living out gospel culture, is

that you would begin to display a willingness to engage those

people that are in your sphere of influence with the gospel.

And so our job is to boldly speak the gospel, but also to

humbly earn the right to be heard by serving them and loving

them. And so I think one of the, one

of the travesties of, of Western culture is this myth that we

separate our lives and that there's a sacred part of our

life and that there's a secular part of our life.

And if you read the Bible, that's not in there.

Every part of our life should be lived on mission for Christ.

Everything that we do should be for the glory of God.

And this means that every aspect of the common life is a

testimony to the lost world. We're called to live our entire

lives as ambassadors of the gospel.

And so in a world now that is where people live these

artificial lives on social media, if you will simply invite

people into the messiness of your real life, it will have

massive gospel implications. And our conviction as a church

is that we should be following the Bible's consistent command

for hospitality by opening up our homes and doing missional

work at our kitchen table in the company lunchroom and the ride

to work with a Co worker. And so we set some goals around

this concept two years ago that in the next three to five years

we would have 300 or more gospel stories where you have invested

in someone for the sake of the gospel.

That we would see 400 or more new guests in the first three

years and that in our annual survey we would see a 90 plus

percent response that you invited someone to church.

Vance, will you pray over this? Sorry, like Heavenly Father, we

just thank you Lord so much for the opportunity we have to be

salt and light to those around us.

Help us Lord to be good witnesses.

Help us Lord be authentic to be real in those areas where we

struggle to not try to put on a face trying to be something

other than we are. The Lord, help us simply to love

others with your kind of love. Give us hearts.

Lord, we thank you for how you're working in our lives.

We thank you, Lord, for how you're working in our community.

And we lift this next year up to you.

Help us Lord, to love those around us in Christ name.

Amen, Amen, Amen. So I I know that this is working

and here's why. We said two years ago we set a

goal, 400 or more guests would come and and that would largely

come because you are inviting them.

Last year alone. How many first time guests do we

have, Vance? 276 it's happening folks.

It's happening. We're.

Going to have to set a new goal. We're going to set a new goal

before we leave today. Those are rookie numbers.

We got to pump those numbers up, all right, Decisions for Christ.

This past year we had 43 people give their life to Christ.

That is awesome. That means they made a decision

to surrender their life to Christ.

They went to the back, they, they gave their name to someone.

They, they, they asked us to pray with them, to celebrate

with them, to follow up with them because they wanted to

pursue a relationship with Jesus.

Now, let me tell you why it's such a big deal in America right

now. Only 20% of churches are

growing. 80% of churches are in decline.

Of the 20% of churches that are growing, only 2% of churches are

growing because people are coming to Christ.

The other. The other 18% is people just

transferring from the 80% they're dying 2%.

That's. Sad.

First of all, that's sad. Second of all, that means we're

the 2% because people are hearing the gospel of Christ and

in transformative things are happening in their life.

Yeah. Most definitely, Most

definitely. As a result of the last two

years of people meeting Jesus, that means we have a bunch of

baptisms this year. How many?

83. 8083. Baptisms now how?

How? How many did we have baptisms

just a few weeks ago? How many total?

18 baptisms a couple weeks ago. Thanks God.

So let me give you some context for that.

In America, we're a Southern Baptist church.

The average Southern Baptist church in America right now in

2025 had 2.5 baptisms this year. Wait, wait, wait a minute 2

Where did they get the? Hat they just put their legs in.

I want you to understand that to have 43 people come to Christ,

to have 83 people be baptized, means that God is doing

something transformative and miraculous in our midst.

And I don't want you to miss it or think it is commonplace,

because it's not. No, no.

It is God's working. God is working.

It's not us, folks, it's the Lord.

IA couple years ago, Sean, who's going to join me up here in a

minute was, was far from the Lord.

Life was a mess, all sorts of craziness.

And as he begins to pursue the Lord, people in his life in his

circle noticed. And as God began to transform

him and do something miraculous in his life, people saw it.

And and I want to tell you it is one of the most compelling,

contagious things that will ever happen as you begin to see God

miraculously transform someone who you thought could never

change. And so as a result of what was

happening in Sean's walk, his family started showing up to

church and then he got to baptize his sister.

And it's got to begin to change her life at work.

She begin to just live differently.

And as a result of that, the people at her work begin to

notice and she begin to talk to people who are hurting and

suffering. And I got a phone call out of

the blue at church the other day and I pick it up and there's a

lady that I've never met asking how, how do I buy my husband the

Bible? Like what does that look like?

How do I tell the what? And I'm like, what a what an odd

random call in the middle of a day.

You know, I'm just talking about, OK, here's how you find

the ball. You know, and I and we, we end

up, we have our staff is really good investigators.

And so they space book stocks and people.

And I didn't say that out loud. And they found out was a Co

worker of Shawn's sister. I don't want you to miss what's

happening. It's not people that went to

seminary, that's some people that got ordained right.

It's it's people that love Jesus.

Jesus begin to do transformative work inside their life.

They begin to actually pursue Christ wholeheartedly.

And then everything changed. And when everything changed,

everyone noticed. When everyone noticed, more

people changed. That's actually the gospel.

That's being solved in. Life Vance, you and I do

something with some elders and deacons and prayer warriors

every single Sunday morning. We have for almost 2 years now.

Well, we get up early, we get here at 6:30.

What? What do we spend our time doing?

This is great. 6:30 at the building, at the very back of a

property behind the gym. That's our office building.

A group of us. Some are elders, some are

deacons, some are just folks that have a big interest in

prayer. We gather at 6:30 and we pray.

We pray to not just for our church, we pray also for

churches in the communities. We pray for lots of other things

as well. And in that time, we've got to

know another pastor who also has a heart for prayer.

And this is Pastor Johnny from Columbus Street Baptist Church.

It's a little church just a little ways up on the Bluffs

above us. And he has become a regular at

our 630 prayer meeting. So by the way, this is a bit of

an ad, OK. If you're interested in prayer,

we would love to have you join us.

We we pray, we pray for about 40 churches by name, their pastors,

their family members, their kids, their wives, their

congregations, the life of the church, most of them here in

Kern County, some of them all around the world.

We pray for them every Sunday morning.

Then we send them text messages during the week to let them

know. We got a lot of people praying

for you and Pastor Johnny started joining us and praying

for those churches as well. We've been praying for his

church for a while and we want you to hear from him.

Good morning, Rez. This is John Lucero, my pastor

down the street at Columbus Street Baptist Church.

I just want to give a word of encouragement that the body has

done to allow your elders, allow your pastors of this church to

join together in prayer. For other churches.

I have witnessed it first hand, week after week after week.

I've been given the privilege and opportunity to join in with

that. And it's, it's a very powerful

source of encouragement, knowing that the local church is doing

its job and praying for the rest of the body of, of Christ.

I witnessed it first hand. Thank you all the Saints at Rez

for allowing your staff and your pastors to to do this.

And just want to thank you for the investments you've made in

our church and the other churches here in Kern County.

God bless. Amen.

Amen. The fourth thing that is on our

vision roll out that we rolled out two years ago that we've

been working on is preparing people to lead.

And, and here's what I mean by that.

I'm going to read this to you, but I also want to explain

something. This is the second largest

Southern Baptist church in the county of Kern.

And I, we, we begin to realize that if we aren't producing

pastors, ministers, directors for ministry to plant churches

and revitalize churches, who is it that we expect to do it?

We're the second largest church in our denomination in this

county. And we're not doing it, are we?

I mean, there's one left. I mean, I don't know that we

have any excuses. And so the, the Bible is

extremely consistent on 2 values that we often set apart.

We, we, we set them almost at odds at one another because on

one side, the Bible would say there's this clear call for, for

older, more mature Saints to lead and to guide the church.

And on the other side, there's a clear call for the church to

invest in and raise up young leaders.

And in the past 20 years, the American church has shown a

really troublesome trend. Church congregations are getting

older twice as fast as the national population.

Churches are dying because they're getting old fast.

The average clergy person is getting substantially older.

And so we believe that it is our job to raise up and train the

next generation of church leaders.

And if we want to empower them, we're going to have to make

space for them in positions of authority in our church.

We're going to have to be open to God calling them to do this

in other places, to send them out.

And so we want to intentionally investigate more ways to do

this, from internships to co-ops, to takeovers to church

plants. We've been working on this for

about two years. We're going to announce some

stuff today to reach other neighborhoods and other

communities in Bakersfield to plant more churches, to

revitalize more churches. And so two years ago, we set

some goals for the next 5 years. Number one, we want to formalize

our ordination process to ordain and send ministers.

Secondly, we want to build a pipeline of pastoral training

and opportunity to produce ministry leaders to send out,

not just to keep. And 3rd, we want to proactively

seek partnerships for planting, replanting, revitalizing

opportunities. We pray over that, Sean.

Yes. Lord, we are humbled at the move

of your spirit in this church, that on this Sunday we get to

sit and experience the fruit of our labor in Your spirit.

That we get to rejoice that people are coming into this

church building and hearing the gospel for the first time.

We rejoice on salvations. We rejoice for baptisms.

And God, we rejoice that you are equipping the Saints for the

work of ministry is that you simply do not call us into

salvation, but you call us to equip us for the work of

ministry. So God, that is our prayer as

that we become a light, a beacon on the hill for this community

that is lost, that you would continue to equip and raise up

ministers to proclaim the good news of the hope of Jesus Christ

to those who are lost. And it's in Jesus name we pray.

Amen. Amen.

One of the churches that we got to support of the last two

years, we got to support a church planter.

Send Network has is part of the SBC.

We partner with them to plant churches.

And so someone that's near and dear to our heart is planting a

church in Pasadena. In fact, you know him because he

was your first small group leader, right?

Yes, so. My wife and IJC, we've been

coming to rest for about 5 years.

When we moved to Bakersfield from Orange County, our first

group leader was Derek Berry. A lot of you probably know

Derek, and I don't know about you guys, but have you ever

looked at a pastor and he just had head pastor vibes?

Yeah, Yeah. That was that's Derek Berry,

man. His, his theology is so

encouraging. He puts Jesus so high.

And, and it's an honor to say that we've been able to partner

with Derek Berry and his church plant in Pasadena.

Because of the the giving here at Rez and the way we we

formalize missions, our missions department sent their church

plant $20,000 to get started. Praise God.

And since they planted, we got to go down to their inaugural

service when they commissioned and had their their first

members. They have since merged with a

church in Pasadena and have a permanent church building now.

And so we're very excited for them.

Yeah, We've also, we've also gotten to partner with a church.

There's a little church in Wasco called Griffith Ave.

Baptist. And we got to go out there.

We've we've sent teams out there, we've helped them with

their harvest festival, with outreach events.

We've gotten to send some of our preaching team out there at

various times in order to give their pastor a break because he

doesn't get a lot of breaks. And since then, Pastor Kevin has

actually come. He joins us now weekly on

Wednesdays at our preaching team meeting when we're working

through preaching and sermons. And he drives in from Wasco and

sits with us, gives us ideas and a lot of rez series that we

preach here. He'll take some of that creative

stuff and he'll go back and preach those same series at his

church in Wasco. And so we're really excited at

what God is doing out in Wasco. We've, we continue to try to

find new ways to partner. If you hear a call for Griffith

Ave. Baptist around here, that's

probably us trying to find more ways to partner with them.

And so make sure you jump in. There's another church plant

that's not our church plant, but we've been partnering with as

well, and that's Northside. Yeah.

You want to talk about them? Yeah, I think it's super cool

here at RES it's, I mean you can see that we're equipping leaders

to go into the mission field. We want teachers, preachers,

administrative workers. So we're planting, but not only

that, we're also revitalizing. So I think it's super cool.

I look at Wrest Mania and I'm looking at all these amazing

bounce houses we have and the go Kart track.

And it's amazing that we've been able to sew into North Side to

revitalize the church and also with all of our cool toys.

Yeah, so Valley Baptist has sent two families in the last year.

I'm sorry, 2 pastors and then a bunch of families from their

church and financial support to revitalize 2 local churches.

One of those was Northside and so we got to partner with them

by sending all of our bounce houses over for, for some of

their events and sending teams over to help them.

And our, we have a little pine Derby track we got to send over

and all sorts of fun stuff like that.

And so very excited. They have grown substantially

since they have started here this year.

They're not even 12 months in and God is already saving people

at that church. It's, it's pretty amazing.

And then also had an opportunity this past year to go and partner

with Grace Baptist Church and go to their men's retreat and

preach at those men's retreat. And I'll be honest, whenever I

go preach at something with guns, I'm always worried that no

one's listening because they're just ready to get to the

frisbees and the firearms and the food, right.

And so, but I will tell you that as a result of getting some of

these men's events that I get invited to speak at, we've

gotten to see people sometimes years later show up and go, Hey,

I, I heard the, the gospel, I heard you preach this scripture

two years ago, three years ago, four years ago.

And, and I just wanted you to know.

And so like we continue to find ways to sew into other churches

and other organizations. I do want to celebrate a couple

things. One of the first things I want

to celebrate is you've heard this before.

We're going to keep talking about it.

Mentorship, which is a 2 year commitment, usually very early

in the morning. It's a lot of reading, it's a

lot of work, it's a lot of discipline has borne just

amazing fruit in the lives of people in our church.

We currently have 50, four people going through a

mentorship right now. Amen.

Yeah, Praise God. Sean, you went through a

mentorship and now you're leading a mentorship group.

You want to talk about that? I also tell myself when I get on

stage, I'm not going to cry. I might cry.

I think all of you have seen me cry at this point.

Yes, we have. Yes.

So yeah, 2 1/2 years ago, my my life was at a rock bottom.

Alcoholism, drug addiction. I had quit a career job, was

getting kicked out of my apartment.

My wife was moving to South Carolina and I met with the

elders and they said, hey, we want to be your accountability.

We want to love on you to get you through this time.

So I started mentorship and I was half brain dead at the time.

I mean, I could barely think, but I praised God that there

were men in my life who rallied around me, who encouraged me,

who held me to account. And I can say today that not

only have I graduated mentorship, my relationship with

my wife is being restored as we speak.

But now I am a mentor, helping men walking the same path that I

once walked. So Amen.

It's amazing. Amen.

Very cool. One of the so many stories you

guys just don't get to see one of the dreams that we've had for

a couple years again for raising that next generation.

We we've poured a lot of resources and time into hiring a

full time high school pastor and a full time middle school pastor

because we really think the next generation gets ignored

unfortunately at too many churches.

It's why America is in the position that it's in today

where churches are getting really old, pastors are getting

really old. There's no one to raise that

banner up. And so we've poured a lot of

energy and resource into those. One of the things that's come of

that, it's not just the the growth and the pursuit of Christ

in the middle school and, and the, the high school rooms, if

you've been in there, but they have actually begun to develop

their own worship team. And so they're now youth that

lead youth in worship on Wednesday nights.

We're going to talk about some stuff in just a minute that's

coming because of how hungry our young adults are right now for

Jesus. There's some there's some great

stuff coming. Before we do that, I want you to

see two more stories of God raising people into leadership

that had no idea they were ever going to be in leadership.

But as God begin to work in them, what you saw developed in

them through a sanctification process LED them to leading

ministries in this church. So take a listen to this.

Hi, I'm Chris Heinberger and this is Brenda Mayer.

We are here to celebrate Brenda's journey through

leadership and guest experience. So you don't know it, but Brenda

started in the coffee shop. And once Brenda raised up

leaders that she was able to hand it off to, she became a

door holder, a grader and a bulletin passer router.

I know it's not proper English. It's OK.

And then she moved into service lead on a Sunday morning, and

then we moved her into guest experience director.

And that conversation began at a Starbucks where I said, hey,

you're already doing this. What do you think about taking

it on officially? What was your reaction to that?

Holy cow, what am I doing? And you're doing a great job.

So what have you been your wins in guest experience this year?

I have really gotten to enjoy meeting new people, helping

hopefully my team gain new skills, stretch them a little

bit. I've been asking people to do

jobs that they don't normally do.

So that because that's kind of the way I came up is Chris would

say, hey, can you drive the car today?

Hey, can you do this today? And when you have all of those

pieces, then it's easier to jump into something like this.

Absolutely. So what are your goals for 2026?

I think my goals for 2026 are to get more people good plug, good

job, get more people into guest experience and and just do the

best we can to serve our church. All right, fist bump girl.

Thanks. Hi, I'm Jessica and I'm so

excited to be here with Brandy. This is Brandy lease and I've

got to know her very well. And one of the things that I've

really enjoyed is just seeing her grow.

She came to church, she started serving and then I could see

this natural leader come out in her.

So I made a big act. And what did I ask?

I asked her if she would like to be our RES Kids Sunday director.

What did you feel when I asked you that question?

Honored but overwhelmed. Honored Roblox and scared that I

could not fill the shoes of the previous Sunday Director.

You're doing you're doing wonderfully.

All right. So can you share with us some

really like big wins that you've had in kids recently?

Volunteers? I've been able to shoulder tap

and get more volunteers that I have to choose from.

Our numbers have been consistently up.

So kids are coming, parents are coming.

So growth, too many kids is an amazing problem to have.

And just the Sundays are running very smoothly now.

They've just become like second nature.

Awesome. All right, So what are you

looking forward to in 2026? More.

Kids, more volunteers, more fun days, and just sharing the love

of Jesus with these young hearts.

But come on campus. Awesome.

We're so glad that we can celebrate Brandy's leadership.

All right, I'm going to holler at you for just a minute because

I don't believe in having a Sunday where the Bible is not

open. And we're not, we're not talking

about just at least a little bit.

So if you have your Bibles, turn with me to Matthew 28.

We're just going to read a couple verses today, and then

we'll end our service. This is Jesus.

Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to

which Jesus had directed them, and when they saw him, they

worshipped him. But some doubted.

And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on

earth has been given to me. Go therefore, and make disciples

of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of

the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all

that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you always to

the end of the age. We call this the Great

Commission. It is the same gospel message

throughout history, for the last 2000 years, across different

cultures, across different regions, ultimately to multiple

generations. We have been commissioned, if

you call Christ King, to go and make disciples.

He gave us Scripture, He gave us prayer, taught us how to do it,

and he gave us the Helper, the Holy Spirit.

And it is our job, we believe, to diligently seek God and to

pay attention to where He is at work.

We get ourselves into a lot of trouble when we try to dictate

where God should move. You ever done that?

You decided you had some dreams and God just needed to come

fulfill them for you. Bill Clem tells a story in his

book Disciple about moving his family to the Midwest.

And on the first of those dark and starry nights out in the

Midwest, his kids encountered fireflies.

I don't know if you've ever seen fireflies.

It's quite the phenomenon. And so they captured a bunch of

the fireflies and they put them in a glass jar, only to wake up

the next morning and they were all dead.

Just dead bugs you see free and flying around.

They were vibrant and amazing, but stuck in a jar.

You don't get light and life, you get death.

And we do that often when we lean on religion instead of

seeking God. When we think that God will

respond in a certain way to our emotions, our incantations, our

Pretty Little traditions, and that God will just do whatever

the formulaic thing is that God does.

Here's the thing. You cannot put God in a box.

The whole point of the second commandment isn't simply about

idolatry. It's the idea, the hubris, the

arrogance of mankind to think that they could ever represent

God with a statue or a picture. He's God.

That's why when they asked his name, he said, I am, I am.

We cannot contain or control God.

Instead, our job is to follow him.

We worship him, and we go where he leads.

I didn't come to this church as a pastor with a plan, a little

plan of, oh, here's exactly how God's going to work.

I had no idea. Instead, the elders and I humbly

sought God and we observed where we saw him at work and we built

the plan. And we will change the plan when

we see where God is leading, what he's doing, because we're

two years in to following God, because we see him at work.

And as we followed God the past few years, we have celebrated

tremendous things that we have never celebrated before.

Not because we came up with the ideas, but because we got on our

knees, We poured our hearts out to God, and then we paid

attention where he was moving. And so now two years of just

following where God's leading to be known, to love the 10, to

reach our circles and to prepare people to lead, we are making

significant progress in those areas.

So we have not hit sixty groups yet.

We haven't hit 300 people every single week showing up to a

group. But man, we're making progress.

And if you aren't, if you're not in a small group, I'm telling

you, it will change your life. It will change your life.

If you're in a small group and you have heard our call for

needing more leaders, more small group leaders, the first step to

that is you need to be a member. So if you're not a member, but

you feel called to be a member of this church, I want you to

ask your small group leader, hey, how do I do that?

And we will get you started becoming a member of this

church. We have five year goals to

launch a daycare to put a ministry on campus at

Bakersfield College in Cal State.

And this year we plan to put a full time missionary on campus

at the college campuses in Bakersfield.

Do I know how exactly yet? I do not.

But I see God at work. I see Him at work in the young

adults in this church. I see him growing a hunger for

the Lord and people from 16 to 26.

And I'm not going to ignore it. We set a goal for 150 new people

from this neighborhood attending res and we're well well on our

way to finishing that well before the five years.

We set a goal of 400 plus new guests and we hit 280 this past

year alone. We're well past that number, and

we are on our way to preparing leaders.

We will finalize this year an ordination process, and we will

launch in the spring a test version of our pastoral

residency program here at RES to start ordaining and sending

pastors from this church to plant churches, which means

there's going to be some gospel goodbyes.

They're going to be people that you absolutely love that are

going to leave here, not because they're mad, but because God has

a call on their life that they cannot ignore.

We're not going to get mad at that.

We're going to give God glory for that.

And every single one of you can be a part of what's going on

here. Say me listen every there are so

many ways to take a next step and step into what we see God

doing as you begin to notice what's God is doing in your life

and in the context of this church family to step into that

1st is this. If you don't know Jesus in a

personal way, I in just a minute, I'm going to explain

what it looks like to meet him and to understand that he is

king and and this is the most important decision you're ever

going to make. Secondly, throughout this year,

you're going to hear us talk about it over and over again to

get into community group, to serve and to give.

We, we think that there are 4 signs of engagement to show up

on Sunday, to show up to a community group to serve and to

give. They're just the four consistent

things you see in Acts. We're going to talk about them

all the time. They are healthy, they're

biblical, and God will use them to transform you.

We talk about them every single month at a lunch for people that

are disengaged. We're going to we're going to,

we're going to have a lunch every single month in 2026 just

for people that have not been able to find a way to get

engaged yet, for you to come to that lunch and hear more about

how to get engaged and take a next step.

And we're going to continue to offer you opportunities.

And, and some of these sound maybe like very basic goals.

And for some of you, that's all you really need right now is a

basic goal. You just need to take a next

step. Here's what I believe.

I believe that a church maintains and builds momentum

not when a small group of people go and do supernatural crazy

things, but actually when when a majority of the church begins to

be captivated by who Jesus is and what he's doing here on

earth. And when we begin to see that as

a majority of a church, as we, as this happens and spreads in

the in the pews and around our church, it has an exponential

effect. And what it leads to is revival.

It leads to a city turned upside down in the most beautiful

possible way for the glory of God.

You see, every single one of us has been commissioned by Christ

to go and make disciples. The Great Commission was not for

pastors and preachers. The Great Commission was for

auto mechanics and school teachers, Stay at home moms and

baristas. Pastors are called to equip the

Saints for works of service. You are enlisted in his army if

you call him king. You were called to live like it.

And here's the thing, Kings don't make suggestions.

Someday I will stand before Christ, and I will answer for

every moment of my life, and I will answer for everyone of you

too. And I want to answer well.

I want to hear well done, my good and faithful servant, and I

want you to hear it too. So maybe you know, Christ is

King and you want to know what's next for you.

Well, I've got a few things and we handed them out on a little

paper today. There are a bunch of things

coming this year. There's so many that if I just

tell them to you verbally, you'll forget about them.

So I want to give you a, a take home to look at them.

Here's something I want you to think about because you might

need to start planning now. There's a conference April 30th,

May 1st, 2nd, right in that time frame, very beginning of May

called Thrive. I want every single one of you

to go, man. I would like the hotels that

have space problems because there's too many people from

Bakersfield up there. It's in Sacramento.

We will carpool up there. We'll be in vans and minivans

and cars and do Rd. trips and all sorts of fun stuff.

But it's our opportunity as a church family to go up

somewhere, to be encouraged, to be inspired, to spend time

talking about what God is doing, to begin to dream about what God

can do. So I want you to go and, and

you're absolutely right, you're going to have to take time off

work and you're going to have to, oh, there's complexities to

it. It is difficult and it might

cost some money and you might have to get a hotel room.

But listen, once you all do that for Disney anyways, right?

Because here's the thing, we don't have any problem spending

and investing money in the things that we love.

So take the risk. Worst case scenario, it was a

trip to lovely Sacramento. Most churches have about 2 to 3%

of the members of their church doing all of the inviting in the

church. That is the statistic. 2 to 3%

of the people in the church do all of the inviting, all of the

evangelism. Say me, I want you to commit to

reaching the lost in 2026. Not 2%.

Not 3%. If you call Rez your home, I

want you to commit to reaching people who are far from God.

Every single one of you. We're going to spend the next

month, all of January, on a series called Sent.

Because you have been sent, you have been commissioned.

And we're going to talk through ways that you can begin to learn

what evangelism looks like, the ways you can begin to explain

your faith, ways you can partner with organizations all around

Bakersfield to make an impact in people's lives.

We're going to offer you ways to join in local partnerships.

We're going to invite you to an evangelism conference here in

town at Valley Baptist in February that you can sign up

for. That's free.

All you have to do is show up on a Saturday.

We're going to have two guest speakers in January specifically

invited to come and share with you about missions and reaching

the lost. This year it is our goal to put

a full time missionary on our college campuses here in

Bakersfield for them to raise up teams from this church to go do

events at Bakersfield College and Cal State Bakersfield.

I believe that right now Cal State Bakersfield is the black

hole of the gospel in Bakersfield.

There are no churches within 3 miles of that campus that

actually match anywhere close the demographic of the campus.

I think if you wanted to find the place most devoid of the

gospel in all of town, all you have to do is walk to Cal State

Bakersfield. So we're going to go get it

because they need to hear about Jesus.

This year. We're going to start a residency

program to begin to prepare pastors to send away.

That is the scariest thing I've said all day.

As much as you go, man, we need a lot more help.

We sure do. And we're going to send people

away anyways because that's the gospel before you leave today.

They're going to be QR codes and there's a link on our website

just in case you miss it. You just go to resurrect dot

church slash Bible. We're going to start a new Bible

reading year reading plan January 1st.

I want you to join with us. This be our third year doing it.

We're going to do it via the EU version app this year so you can

all friend one another and we can see who's not not reading,

That's all. You can't see that it's a joke.

I want listen, you want to grow in Christ, open your Bible.

You want to hear from God, read your Bible.

You want to hear from God out loud, read your Bible out loud.

This year we're going to invite 1000 people to church and we're

going to see at least 250 of those actually say yes to that

invite and come and hear the gospel preached.

And many of those people are only going to come if you invite

them. So what we decide is we're going

to have a fun time measuring this.

Here's what we're going to do. We have someone building this

big wall of plexiglass that you can see through.

And we're going to take ping pong balls.

And every time you invite someone, when you come in on a

Sunday, I want you to take one. I want you to write the name of

the person you invited. I want you to put it in.

And they're going to start stacking up.

And every time one of those invites comes, there's a

different color ball. And I want you to celebrate the

fact that that person said yes. And I want you to put your name

on that. And I want you to put it in.

And every time someone gives their life to Christ in 2026,

we're going to write that down. We're going to put it in the

wall. And every time someone follows

salvation with believers baptism in 2026, you have whatever color

you're going to put their name on it.

You can put it in that wall. And by the end of the year,

we're going to have a whole lot of ping pong balls.

We celebrated 54 people are in mentorship right now, but the

next round of people who's going to go through mentorship, you're

sitting in the pews right now and God's been at work in your

life and you've been hearing about this and you're like, man,

I wish I was in that. Well, guess what?

You can be in that. You talk to your small group

leader, they'll get in touch with us and we'll do another

round of people that are really going hard after Jesus.

Baptisms are coming up. Again, if you have not stepped

forward in obedience and never been baptized believers baptism,

we're doing that in February. You can sign up for it right

now. I mentioned a moment ago that

the most important decision you'll ever make is to know

Christ personally as king of your life.

So if you're here today or you're watching online and

you've never done that, I want to give you an opportunity to do

that. You see, for so many of us, this

is how it works. God has been wooing us and

working on us, sometimes for years, and we wonder what it is.

See, we think we're the one that has actually been seeking Jesus,

But the fact of the matter is, most of us have been rebellion

against God, and He's in the loving, gracious way, pulling us

to Him. And so maybe that's you today,

maybe you showed up or you're watching online and God has been

after you for some time and you weren't sure what that really

was. And you're realizing in this

moment that is actually Jesus trying to save you.

The message of the Bible is that every single one of us was born

dead in sin, under the curse of sin.

And it is only Jesus redemptive sacrifice on the cross that

enables us to have any sort of relationship with God at all.

And so if you desire that, I want to give you an opportunity

to surrender to your life to Jesus today.

Will you bow with me for just a moment as we close our service?

If that's you. Someone that's never put their

faith in Christ, but is is realizing that God is calling

them to salvation. The Bible says in Romans 10 that

if we would declare with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and

believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, that

we can be saved because with the heart 1 believes, with the mouth

1 declares and is justified. So if you want to give your life

to Christ today, I just want you to with everyone, heads bowed

and eyes closed, say this prayer quietly or silently after me.

Jesus, I know I am lost and I need to be saved and I want to

put my faith in you, surrender my life to you and be adopted

into your family so I give everything to you, Be my Lord.

Please Jesus, if you said that prayer for the very first time,

will you be brave and raise your hand for me to see?

Thank you, thank you. Put your hands down in Jesus

name, Amen. You said that prayer for the

very first time. Welcome to the family.

We're going to close and I'm going to get you out of here,

but I want to leave you with a story.

I believe that we are, we sit at a tipping point right now in our

church. God has not given us a small

blessing, Amen. These past two years have been

tremendous. He has been so gracious to us,

but my question for each of you is what what will we do with

what God has done for us? God has provided for us.

He has moved tremendously in our midst of the we could be

encouraged and see it. What's next?

When I was thinking about this over the holidays as at home and

all the family at home, you know, as a kid, I grew up really

poor and so soda was a luxury. We bought 12 litre and you

weren't allowed to drink it during the week.

You had to stare at it. And then on Sundays after

church, everybody could get a cup of soda.

And so as a dad, it bothers me like to no end to walk around my

house and there be these soda cans have been left out and

they're like 3/4 full all the time, right?

Like, are you wasting all this soda?

My daughter was home for the holidays from out of town, and

she took our car to the store on Christmas Eve.

And as she's leaving an intersection, right as the light

turns green, she she pulls forward in the car and it

shudders and stops. And she's like, yeah, Daddy just

shut off on me. And then right after it did, a

car blew the red light at 50 miles an hour, missed her by a

foot. You see, the car has a safety

feature and it saw that the car wasn't going to stop in the

intersection and it shut the car down and lock the ABS up.

That was Christmas Eve, and I was thinking over the holidays.

Oh how different my Christmas Day could have been in the ER or

at the morgue instead of sitting at home with my family around

the fire And it made me think. I wonder how many times God has

saved me and I didn't even realize it.

Friday I I was walking through the house and only to find

another can of lukewarm Dr. Xevia.

You know what's funny is it didn't bother me at all.

She's just happy to have my daughter alive and healthy.

There are countless number of things at this church for you to

complain about, to be annoyed by, to wish were different.

It's totally true. In fact, if you're to look for

them, it won't be hard to find them at all.

We tend to find what we're looking for.

But what if you and I overlook? I I think we get in a habit of

overlooking all the time what a treasure it is for God to be

moving in our midst in such a way that he is, God is at work

in our midst. We see it, we see miracles

happening. I get the benefit of sitting

with pastors in this town and, and they ask, hey, what's going

on? And I get to share just little

bits of what I shared today. And they cannot believe what is

happening here. It is such a tremendous thing.

And I don't want you to miss this.

I don't want you to miss what God is doing in this moment just

because there are things that are uncomfortable here or I

can't imagine missing a move of God.

And so I don't want you to simply see that it's happening

and not be part of it. I, I, I don't, I don't want you

to hear about these stories and wish you were part of it, but

never, never be part of it. I don't want you to get to the

end of your life and look back and go, man, all those things

were happening and I never stepped into it.

So I just want to encourage you to step into what God is doing

to this church right now. Don't be passive.

Don't spend your energy and time looking for the things that are

wrong because I guarantee you will find them.

Rather, notice what God is doing and step into what He's doing

and it will never be the same for you.

Our prayer team is going to come up right now to pray with you.

No matter what's going on in your life, we want to pray for

you and with you. If moments ago you made a

decision, a declaration to follow Christ with your life.

There are tables in the back. They say I raised my hand.

We want to celebrate with you. We have a gift for you.

So will you stand? We're going to sing a song and

we're going to respond as the Lord leads.

As you leave today, let me pray over you for 2026.

Father, we thank you for this people and this time and this

place that you have called and commissioned.

You call them your own. You call them your sons and your

daughters. You've put Your spirit in them,

that you've called them on mission to live out the

remaining days of their life, however many, however few, they

may be on mission to know you because there's a day you're

going to call them home and there will be no more tears and

be no more pain. So God help us to step into that

in 2026. Father, shine your face upon

them. Be gracious to them.

Pour out Your blessing upon them.

God, help us to turn to this Dark World and let them know the

only thing that really matters, God, that you are real and you

are true and that you love them and you're calling them home.

Protect this people as they go out.

God in Jesus name, Amen. Be well Church, see you next

week.