The Impact of Vision || Vision Sunday || Patria Church

Father, I thank you so much for the amazing people

that are in this room, who they represent, and the

great witness that they are. Oh God, we recognize we're

living in last days and we must be about our

father's business.

There cannot be any.

Slack in our walk, O God.

People are dying and going to holl left and right,

Oh God, and you need us to come alongside and

share the gospel. And so may the next few moments

that I and Pastor Adam Minister God may administer hope

and life and purpose, inspiration, soberness, somberness, seriousness to what

you've called us to do in Jesus' name, a men

in this month the family business today, we've considered.

It vision Sunday.

As we talk about vision Sunday to you today, vision

is nothing more than setting a horizon for the tomorrow.

It's nothing more than sketching an image and a picture

that we will travel on. And vision is a strategy.

It's a strategy of prayer, ideas, creativity, sacrifice that God

would want us to take. Why is vision so important

in all these words that I just said, Because if

we did not have vision, we would still be at one, one, five, four,

nine old Field in my house in Southridge. If there

was not a vision, we would still be at Shadow Hills.

Elementary School at Oldfield could allow thirty three people to

come to church, and that was it. Elementary could only

handle two hundred people and that was it. So vision

made a stretch for more room to go now to

the business park. In the business park, we could sit

in our main sanctuary eight hundred and forty people. But

that was and we had to go bigger, and we

had to occupy these thirty acres two hundred and fifty

thousand square feet, build a four thousand seat auditorium. But

it stretched us. It wasn't enough. We had to reach

another community. And that other community was Pomona, and so

on and so forth.

With vision pushes us forward.

You will not be here.

Today if we didn't have that vision, because I don't

know where you come along in the journey, but very

few of you were in my house. So vision demanded

that we grow bigger so that you could come and

your lost loved ones could come and find Jesus Christ

and faith in God. Very quickly, I'll read you a scripture,

it says in Luke the fifth chapter, as the crowd

was pressing in on Jesus to hear God's word. He

was standing by the lake of Genesareth. He saw two boats,

notice what's highlighted at the edge of the fishermen had

left them and were washing their nets. He got into

the boat, which belonged to Simon or we know it's Peter,

and asked him to put out a little from the land.

He sat down and was teaching the crowds from the boat.

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, put

out into the deep water and let your.

Nets down for a catch.

Master Simon Peter replied, this professional fisherman, We've worked all

night long and caught nothing, But if you say so,

I'll let down my nets. And when they did this,

they caught a great number of fish, and their nets

began to tear. So they signal their partners in other

boat to come and help them, and they came and

filled the boats so full that they began to sink,

the first lowrider boats ever recorded in history. When Simon

Peter saw this, my God, this professional fishermen that spent

his lifetime, he saw his daddy, his granddaddy, but never

seen anybody do this. He fell on his knees in

the middle of that on that boat in the water,

he said, go away from me, because I'm a sinful man.

For he and all those who were, all those were

with him were amazed, amazed at the catch of fish

they had taken.

Notice my first point is this, they worked all night

and caught nothing. Jesus' vision for the Church, for others

and for you individually is to put an end to

your nothingness. Because title the messages, simply, Jesus has a

bigger vision for you than you have for yourself. And

Jesus' vision for your life, the vision for this church

is to put an end to our nothingness. Maybe when

we experienced some failures or losses, when things are of

no avail in our lives, when we are not getting

the results or little results in our churches, in our ministries,

in our businesses, in our homes, and in our families.

We're living unfulfilled life, an empty life, a barren life

that causes us to be frustrated, tired, and angry. God

wants to put an end to your nothingness. Just a

few weeks ago, I was in Sitka, Alaska, and there's

these amazing pictures of me catching so much fish, I

didn't know what to do with it. I caught a

lot of fish, over one hundred pounds of fish. That

put an end to me. How many times had I

gone in my past fishing and tried all the best

bait and to try the best lures, and spent all

day to catch nothing. But that day it was a

raised I couldn't remember my nothing us for the amount

of fish that I had caught. And that's what vision

will do you in the.

Of little veil in your life, in little results.

The second thing that I recognize that happened is this,

the fish catch was so large.

They signaled their partners.

Jesus' vision for the church for others, for us and

for you, invites and includes others.

The vision is not just for you.

We have a saying here at Patria, we don't do

life alone.

Life is to be shared with somebody.

You have to create partners, community relationships, and we see

these relationships that were done in catching this fish. So

my thought to you is who are you gonna call

when you need help? Who are you gonna call when

you need assistance? Who are you gonna call when you

need aid? Knew who to call when he couldn't do

it alone. Who are you gonna call? Or who can

call on you when they've got a heavy load that

they're trying to bring in but can't do it alone?

Can they call on you for their weighty and heavy

load we do? Who are we gonna share? Who are

we gonna share.

The blessings of the Lord that God has blessed.

Me with with others?

Peter could have hearted this fish and said, I gonna

I'm gonna bless me my household and nobody else. But

the blessing was so big he wanted to invite others.

Petre at Rancho is so big. We invited Pomona, and

then we're gonna buy Corona, and who knows who else

we're gonna invite. When God has blessed you with resources,

who are you gonna include in those resources? I have

some pictures here. This is just one of my freezers,

And in one of my freezers, it's loaded with all

kinds of fish and all kinds of meat. And I'm

just talking because one day it's gonna.

Come up there. You'd be envious. I might.

My freezer looks like a market. I have all kinds

of fish in there. I have all kinds of deer

in there. I have all kinds of pork in there.

I'm an amateur hunter. I went and got all that,

and I fished for it. It's so much. I give

it away. I give it away to employees. When I

go to sheriff duty, I give it away there. Whoever

wants it, I'll give it away to you. I got

a ton of choldies, so I give it away. I've

got so much of a bountiful blessing. I don't hoard

it for myself. I want to give it out. I

want to give it out to other people. That's why

we have vision. That's why we do what we do.

And the last thing, and I'm done. I want to

show you this little video right now, and then I'll

talk about it.

Will end it. Watch this here.

Bring him in.

Oh my god, Oh my goodness.

That guy is massive.

WHOA got him in the eye.

That's the biggest. That's the biggest I've ever seen before.

That's a big king bro How many that's twenty five? Yeah,

that's unbelievable. Out diego, you brought him in. I got a.

Record breaking king salmon that day. Jesus vision for the

church and for others and for us as individuals. That

involves generosity sacrificed. Yes, it will require obedience.

It will stretch us.

To greater heights than we've ever done before.

It will challenge every person that considers Patrio. Their church

is all about the fish. It's all about the catch.

It's all about the souls. We've got to make room.

We got to make room for more fish, more testimonies,

more lives, change bodies, heal, more deliverance, more miracles, family friends,

co workers, and neighbors. That's why vision absolutely has to grow,

so that we could stand and be in awe of

what Jesus did. Like Peter was, I'm amazed. I'm astonished

of what you've done God by saving my life and

saving so many others.

Peter's vision was changed that day.

It went from singular to plural, it went from small

to big. All because he saw a vision area at work,

and his name was Jesus.

Pastor Adam. Yeah, would you share with us the vision?

Come on, let's give it up for a pastor Adam

as he shares the vision.

All right, Well, hey, at this time, what we do

want to do annually is you'll see up on a screen.

There's a number you can text.

What we're gonna start doing every single year on our

vision Sunday is we're gonna create what's called an impact report.

There's a few things that are up on the impact Report.

You'll see it up on a screen if you pull

out your smartphone if you'd like to follow along with me.

There's two ways you can get this impact report. You

can go to our website, so you could go to

Patriot dot Church. You go to our gift page and

you'll see it say impact Report. You could also right now,

for the sake of services, you could text impact to

the number seven one seven six seven. What this impact

report will have and we're gonna walk through it a

little bit. Today is will share and celebrate what God

has done in the past twelve months. So it's important

to talk about where we're going, but it's just as

important to celebrate where God has taken us over the

past twelve months. And so we're going to share with

you salvations, baptisms, grow track, neighborhood groups, attendants. We're also

sharing that impact report, some future things that's coming on

the horizon.

And then lastly, at the end.

Of the Impact report will be our financials, and so

one of the things we want to do is we

want to disclose with you all of our financials, how

much has come in giving, how much has been sent,

what goes into staffing, what goes into mortgages, what goes

into our maintenance bills. We want to be able to

share with you if you're giving in this church, we

want you to know what you give to and where

you give to it and where it goes, so that

as you trust Patriot to be fertile soil for the

good News of God to not only meet your needs

of ministry, but the needs of others, we want you

to know this is what God has done this past

twelve months. And as we do that, we want to

be able to celebrate what God is doing. But we

also want to garner trust in an age where people

are going. If I give to the church, where does

it go? We want to share with you where it goes,

and we want to share with you some vision about

where the church is headed. And so, for the sake

of time, if I walk through every page with you, guys,

and every little bit, it will probably take over an hour.

So I selected some key things that we could share.

You could read the rest on your own at your

leisure to know what's going on. But really I'm going

to highlight some key things that we see and then

I'll close it with a little bit of financials and

then also a little bit about what we're doing today

for Vision Sunday, because we want to close our year

out strong accomplishing a few things. If you've been part

of our church for a number of years, every year

we would do an anniversary offering in the month of April.

Well we've moved it to Vision Sunday now in November.

You notice in April we didn't do an offering for anything,

because we want to do it now starting today for

this month of November, and I'll share with you at

the end what that one time offering is going to

go to. So on top of our ties and offering,

I'm going to share three projects, really four that we

want to finish by the end of this year and

complete and all of us doing.

Our part will help us do that.

And so here's the first thing I want to share

with you, how Heaven has gotten larger during this past year,

and so I want to celebrate over the past twelve months,

one thousand, one hundred and sixty eight people have given

their life to Christ through our campus. Is in our church,

the way we count salvations is those that take.

A next step.

And so if we just counted hands, that number could

be bigger.

But for us, we want to know not just did you.

Raise your hand, did you take the next step of

faith in your journey? Did you go to the website?

Did you sign up for baptisms? And so one hundred

and sixty eight people went to a next step in

our church. The next thing is we had eighteen hundred

people baptized this past year across our campus. Is we

also had our largest baptism we've ever had, which was

over one thousand during Pentecost Sunday this past year.

We thank God for that.

Also right now from our last year, our attendance is

up about eighteen percent on the weekends and so God's

been growing our campus is and that's in Rancho and

that's our campus in Pomona. When you take in all

our other growth factors, the percentage increases.

This is just our weekend attendance.

But when you look at Wednesday, when you look at

our youth ministry, when you look at all our other things,

that percentage is much higher as well. The next thing

I want to share with you is last year's Easter,

we had eleven thousand, six hundred and.

Sixty six people show up.

This Easter, we had fifteen thousand, three hundred and fifteen

people come. We grew this past Easter by over three

thousand people, which was absolutely incredible. In our kids ministry,

we saw one thousand, two hundred and sixty five new

first time visitors in our kids ministry alone. Also in

our youth ministry, we do something called Jesus Club. We're

amongst four high schools. Every single week at lunchtime once

a week, they preach the gospel and they serve pizza.

Right now, every single week we have on average nine

hundred and fifty to one thousand students taking a break

from their lunch to go and hear the gospel at

their local high school. You'll notice there that it's an

increase of thirty percent. They increase by two hundred students

on average from last year. God is moving in our

student ministry in our high schools, and for us, what

we want to do with our student ministries.

We want to say, hey, boots on the ground.

We love what we're doing in our gyms and in

a but these kids are in the schools. Parents don't

understand the value of student ministry, So let's go to them.

And our students are hungry and our students are exercising leadership.

If you're with us, last week, you heard from one

of our students about how he started at Jesus Club

and how God has been moving.

I want to share with you a little bit about

our faith faith journey as a church.

So what we call a faith journey is when someone

comes up to us and they say, hey, how do

I grow in my faith? We call it the faith journey,

And simply put, Salvation would be a part of that.

Baptism would be a part of that. Also, Growth Track

would be a part of that. Our Forward experience would

be part of that, which heals trauma and pain. But

also on top of that, our small groups are part

of that. So I'd love to share with you that

this past year we had six hundred and seventeen people

go through Growth Track, We had one hundred and forty

eight people go through Forward. We had two hundred and

thirty two neighborhood groups going on. At one point we

had five thousand people in neighborhood groups at one point.

I'll tell you this family, this is a big deal

because if you've been part of our church for more

than ten years, you would know that we started about

six versions of small groups over the past ten years

because people just wouldn't join them, they wouldn't sign up,

and so we try, we threw everything we could to

try to create community. And at at one point, I remember,

we had one hundred and.

Fifty people active in small groups.

To then today we have five thousand people actively in

small groups. God has been absolutely answering incredible prayers. We

had six hundred people go through our care and counseling

and so that's either a counseling, small group meeting with

one of our pastors, taking one of our courses on counseling.

Six hundred people went through that this year and then lastly,

one thousand, six hundred and forty two people are actively

serving in the ministry today. You may see everything we

celebrated and say, hey, I want to get involved in that.

I want to I want to grow that sixteen hundred people.

I want I want I want to start getting involved.

I want to help in kids. I want to help

in youth. I want I want to help in dream Team,

I want to serve in Generosity Center.

Whatever it is. You can go through Growth Track.

If you go through Growth Track and go to our website,

that's your next step to start to plug in. But

we're so thankful about how all of our Fai family,

the church is being the church. We're ministering to the

needs of the people. We're reaching and impacting lives, and

God has been like Pastor Diego said, God is bringing

fish to the boat, and the boat's starting to sink,

and so everyone else. We got to start doing our

part in our own ways. Whether it's our time, whether

it's our talents, or whether it's our treasure. We all

got to start doing our part. And we all are

doing our part, and I thank you for that.

The next thing I want to.

Share with you is a little bit of vision. If

you saw on your impact report, there's a ton of

other data there that you'll be able to see about

what God has done this year. But now I want

to step in with a few moments, and I want

to talk about what we're making room for us. I

want to talk about some campus specific things, and then

I also want to share about some church wise things.

But before we do that, I want to share with

you an update video on one thing.

Hey, Patrian, we are so excited.

We have some amazing news for you.

God is doing big things in this kingdom and here

at Patriot we are headed to a new location.

You know, earlier this year, we had shared with you

in April about God calling us to the city of Corona.

Around the same time, God.

Started to develop our relationship with two incredible pastors, Pastor

Fuego and Tiffany. Over this time, as we started to

not only do life with them, they would come down

to us and we would spend time with them and

we would resource them. We really felt cold to them

because they were church planners and they had planned for

about three years en Core Church. During this time over

this year, we really felt like God was doing something

between us and their church and us and them as pastors.

And over the summer God really began to knit them

to our church. And during that time we all started

talking and we really felt that the Spirit was leading

us to become one family. And so during that time,

Pastor Fuego and Tiffany, they sought the Lord. We sought

the Lord. We had a lot of conversations, We had

a lot of time, God is this year?

Will Holy Spirit are you in this?

And we had had moment of confirmation after confirmation, after confirmation, we.

Knew that God was in this.

And so just not too long ago, towards the end

of the summer, we believed that God was making Encore

to become Patria. So in just a few moments, it's

my honor to introduce you to our new campus pastors,

Pastor Fuego and Tiffany. But you'll notice I haven't said

what city we're going to because after many, many years

and thirty years of being in southern California, we will

now be in northern California for the first time in

the Bay Area. We are joining together as one and

we're going to be serving and reaching the city of Alameda, California.

Alameda's right outside of Oakland.

It's a diverse community in Pastor Fuego and Tiffany have

been in this city for three years and have a

thriving congregation of about five hundred people. And so now

on December twenty second, they will become Patria Alamedia they

will be joining this house and this family, and we

couldn't be more honored. So why don't I introduce you

now to Pastor Fuego.

And Pastor Tiffany.

So here we are when Pastor Fuego and Tiffany, we're

so excited that they're becoming and joining the family.

Pastor Fuego and Tiffany, let's introduce you.

Guys to all of our campuses, and first tell us

a little bit about you guys, how long you've been married,

a little bit about your family, So shoot out Pastor

FuG So, we've been married for eight years, we have

three kids, and we will be having an daughter in

law as well. LEAs can just proposed he did last Saturday,

kind of like a metaphor for us joining together.

Right, Yeah, let's yeah, that's what's cool.

So they've had one a dinner and their son proposed,

and Pastor Fuego and Tiffany kind of use that moment

to talk about this marriage between Encore and Patria and

how Encore is going to be changing their last name,

yes to really Patrio. Now, but your guys's heart, your

vision stays the same. One of the things that I

loved about you guys. I've known you Pastor Fuego for

a couple of years, and then I met Tiffany earlier

this year and I was like, Oh, we're gonna be friends.

You guys got to come down to southern California. But

at that time it wasn't until in August I came

to your church, which is where we're at right now,

and I was here and I was just like, man,

this is our church.

It looks like our church, feels like our church.

Still never thought it would be a campus yet, but

it was more so like, oh, we're.

Doing ministry alike or really. Then in that moment, got

started stirring something.

So why don't you share a little bit about like

your heart for this city in Alameda? What has got

done for you in Tiffany to draw you here. There's

so many cities in the Bay Area. The Bay Area

is actually only one of three cities in America that's

the least Christian in all.

Of the United States.

So you came to a missionary place to reach Alameda.

Where did that come from?

Well, hey, it was all birthed out of prayer and

definitely God gave us this vision that this Alameda is

an island surrounded by water, but it was spiritually dry,

and so when we were here on this island, we

wanted to do We wanted to seek the loss right,

teach the fount, and send disciples, and so our missions aligned.

But being here, we just saw so many families serving together.

And that's what we even love about Patriot. It really

is family. And so we were seeing all families work together,

little kids to their mother and father, all working together

in kids ministry, security, and they're coming and bringing.

Other family members.

So we're just excited about that making an impact in

high schools everywhere outreaches, and so it's the same thing

that Patriot does. We just started to see man like

our hearts align and we know that our friendship grew

from there as well.

Yeah, So we just love like being able to have

your covering.

And now we have found our own family. We did

a series called Find Your People, and we didn't know

that we were going to find our.

People literally yeah.

Yeah, And I think what's incredible and speak a little

bit to this is in April, you know, we changed

our name from Abundant Living Family Church to Patriot. Yeah,

And one of the reasons why is because me and

my dad are founding pastor. We did have a huge

sense that God was going to expand our family one.

Day, and we thought we would lead by example by

first changing our name. Now, many people in our church

didn't get that right away.

They were like, why you know, normally when you change

a name, something wrong happened. But when you feel like

God is doing something and you have an opportunity, you

either be obedient and you say yes, or you don't

and you threw your own pride or whatever.

So we felt we were obedient.

We said, hey, we're going to be patriot because we

felt we needed to lead by example that one day

other churches would join our family, and we wanted.

Those churches to see, hey, we did it first.

We changed our name first, We did all these things first,

and so man, I didn't know God would answer that

prayer within nine months, like giving birth to a baby,

like within nine months.

The first church was already.

We were like, hey, this is family, So Matt, what

happened where you guys said, hey, we're on court. Most

people they we hold tight to like our own thing.

You both were just like, we're going to join what

we feel like God is doing, and we're gonna maybe

step this name to the side and become part of Patriot.

Like what what over the past couple of months has

sturtin you guys to do that?

Well?

I always say to me, it's pretty simple, like we've

been approached by other churches to see if we wanted

to join, but we're like no, no, Like we kind

of have our own kind of thing. But when we

were asked by you and Aaron, like something just in

my heart just started to bubble up, and I started

to think about myself, Why am I wrestling with this?

Do I not want it? Is it pride?

Is it because I want to name? And then really,

I just heard you put language to something like, man,

is it about the name or is it about the mission?

And so that just blessed my heart to know like

it is about the mission. We want to make disciples

of all nations, right.

And that's what we want to do. We want to

do it together.

I mean, I don't I think that looks more like family.

And we are setting a tone an example for other

churches and other people to know, like we're here to

lift up the name that's above every name, right, and

that's the name of Jesus and man, if we could

do it together with Patriot being the name family, let's

do it. Then Yeah, let's do it.

Man. That's incredible.

And I think that's really the place we were at, too,

which was you know, our name had meant everything to

us for thirty years, but it was God told us, behold,

I'm going to do a new thing, you know, declares

the Lord. And we didn't even understand it. But now

as we see moments like this, we understand. Even why

we became Patriot, we understand. I mean, I think what

was beautiful is like you guys could come down to

our church many times over the past twelve months and

every time you would get clothes from.

US, hats and t shirts, and you wear it. You'd

wear it to your church.

But what's funny is like we didn't know this originally,

you guys, your church was just going to join a

network of church that we were going to start. And

we always knew a core would be Encore, but we

would be still maybe a covering in a network family.

But for both of us, God just said something different. Yes,

and God wants to reach the Bay Area. You know

what it makes disciples and we're excited to do it alongside.

Of you guys.

So yes, so Patriot.

We're so excited that on December twenty second of our

church will become Patriot Alameda.

And we are so thrilled that Fuego and Tiffany.

We will bring them all the campuses and make some

introductions and things like that. They've already come down many times.

You brought a whole team during conference. I mean it

was just God has been in this and we're going

to start building some teams to come on up here

and we're going to be installing culture and helping their teams.

There is already an incredible move of God here in

this church and in this city, and we're going to

see God do more and do further than he ever

has before. So let's celebrate what God is doing through

Patrio Church. Let's praise God just one more time. Let's

thank the Lord for his goodness and his mercy. We're

excited about what God is doing in our church. Yeah,

praise God. If you don't know where Alameda is, like

I shared, it's the city next to Oakland. It's an

island of eighty thousand people and it desperately needs the gospel.

In the Bay Area, there are only a handful of churches. Truthfully,

it's not like us down in southern California. It feels

like there's a large church on every corner. Not in

northern California. Less than two percent of people in the

Bay claim to be Christian. In our area, thirty percent

of our area and above claim to be Christian. So

they're truly in a missions field and we're excited pray

for them because Pastor Fuego and Tiffany are telling their

church this morning. Pastor Aaron is with them as they

tell their church. They've already told their leaders last week,

they told some of their legacy people last week, but

this Sunday they tell their church and kind of share

the news about what's going on.

And then Ashley and I will directly.

After second service, we'll take a flight up there and

we're going to hold a town hall with their church

and just talk about our history, our story, why we're

joining together, and we just want to love on them

as they transition to be one of our campuses.

And we'll share with you.

In the coming weeks how you can be involved and

help in whatever way possible.

Okay, So whether you need a weekend get.

Away with your spouse, plan it up in the north

and go visit our new campus and love on them

and welcome them to the family. So come December twenty second,

make plans to just go up there and love on them.

And also we're gonna immediately Tuesday we go back up

and we just start planning renovations to make it look

like Patriots. So when you go to Pomona and Rancho,

it looks very similar majority of it. So we're gonna

do that up there as well. We also plan to

open a coffee shop.

Up there to reach the community.

There's a junior high right next door to them, in

an elementary school, and we want to start serving families

immediately and share the gospel and so some great things

that Lord is doing up there. And we can only

do this because of continued generosity. Here's what I also

want to share is starting on February first, we're gonna

start having a Saturday night service back here at Rancho,

and so we are gonna have six pm Saturday service

because we want to reach more people. We want to

help more people to get service. My wife was a

big vocal component because when she grew up she went

to Saturday service here because she was an athlete. In

Sundays she was traveling and playing. And also I had

other pastors ask me, are you ever going to start

a Saturday because I want a place to be fed

when I'm not preaching on Sundays, And so we know,

we thought, yeah, you know, we could do that. Not

only can we reach new people, other pastors really consider

us a covering for their church and they love being

fed and also inspired by this church. It's not just

because of the building, it's because of the people. When

I have pastors come to our church, they're like, oh

my goodness, your people are amazing. They try to trade

our people for their people, and I say, no, you

can't have our people. Those are our people, you get,

you know, But now they love it's the environment that

our church sets together as a tribe. So Saturday Service

starting on February first, ninety days, so make sure we

need people in kids ministry. We need people to join

dream Team. The reason why it has to be ninety

days out because we have to build a team. We

can't just open the service and no one would be

playing worship. Nobody would I wouldn't even be here to speak,

so we need a little time to change all of

our schedules and adjusts, but ninety days out.

Additionally, as you guys.

Have seen, we're finishing our courtyard expansion, and so just

to share those pictures with you, if you haven't seen,

I encourage you to go in the courtyard. We redid

our gates with windows so that you can see the progress.

But we're almost finished with our courtyard, and so in

our courtyard you've already seen the shading, but by really

the north side is supposed to be done by the

Christmas weekend of this year, so in about a month,

and then the southern side, which is a pickleball court,

is going to be done in the top of the

month of January.

These are all.

Places not only to facilitate community, but also allow you

to just hang either spend time in your word or

meet some friends, whole neighborhood groups.

These are places.

Also one of the things I love is when I'm

in the courtyard and I'm hanging out with people, my

sons drive me absolutely crazy. They pull on my jacket,

they're asking for my phone. And so then that's why

we built the Lucky climber, so that if you have

little ones, send them into that thing, forget about them

and to have a coffee, hang out with your friend

or talk to your spouse and enjoy. And so additionally,

what we didn't share with you as well, we're doing

two other things in the courtyard.

Number one is we're building a.

Outdoor coffee shop that's gonna be out there on the bottom.

And we're also creating two outdoor stores. So we're gonna

transform our current bookstore. We're gonna make that our growth

track center, so that's where we're gonna start. We're gonna

renovate that whole place to hold all of our growth

track meetings.

And then outside, we have two of these.

Containers that we've purchased that will serve as our store

now and so people will be able to just go

out in the courtyard and either get a book, a bybar,

or any of the Patriot merchandise. And so this is

all going to be finished in the top of January

as well. And so we're about sixty days out from

this courtyard expansion.

But I'll share with you in a few moments.

We do have about a five hundred to six hundred

thousand dollars need to finish this.

And so.

We were, you know, when we met with Fuego's landlord,

because they lease right now, we were negotiating with him

about a possibility to sell the building that you saw

that they're at. One of the first questions he asked

is he said, how much does the government give you

to potentially purchase my building? We say, the government doesn't

give us anything. It's our people that give to this.

And he couldn't believe it. He's like, he thought, well,

government would have to help you with something, right, and

we said, no, it's our people. And so when it

comes to the courtyard, we don't someone the government or

we don't ask the city official come and they say, oh,

you need five hundred thousand dollars left.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So all my question, all I ask is is if

your kids are gonna play in the lucky climber, if

you're gonna sit on the fire pits, if you go

sit in the shade, do whatever part the Lord puts

on your heart.

That's it. Okay, So we all just do our part.

Some people could do more, some people could do less,

and that's all that matters is that we do our part.

I don't expect Matthias and Thomas to pay the electricity bill,

but I do expect them to put their shoes up

in their room. And so it matches the rate at

which every person is different. I want you to a

college student come to me and he said, I only

have twenty dollars to give towards this project you guys

have doing. And he said, it's a lot to me.

But I look at the number of what you're trying

to raise, and my twenty dollars wouldn't even make a debt.

And I told him God always will supply seed to

the sower. So I told him it's we don't need

your twenty dollars. It's sacrificial giving. So twenty dollars is

a lot to you. Then watch God will do something.

He came back to me six months later and said

he got a promotion from his job and he really

he personally connected it out of that obedience that not

all the time, but for him, he felt that's what

God did. So I'll share with that in a few moments.

But we want to finish the courtyard. Well, we don't

want to pull out of our savings to finish the courtyard.

We absolutely hate loans because rates are crazy, so we

don't want to touch any of that stuff. We believe

that our church can do our part to finish by

the end of the year. And we're going to open

this thing and we're all going to enjoy it, and

we're going to reach people.

People are going to be ministered too through that community.

Additionally, what's gonna happen, I want to share with you

a little bit about our national and global outreach. So

here at our church, when we look at missions, we

look at it locally, nationally, and globally, and we have

missionaries all across the globe. And so we have missionaries

in places like Nigeria and Thailand and Brazil, and so

we support those those missionaries, Philippines.

All over the world.

We help and serve missionaries. We also help and support

industries nationally. We support ministries like art churches which want

to church plant, so they want to meet the needs

of cities by planning more churches, and we give to them.

We also give towards convoy a hope, like we just

did recently with the hurricanes, and when a natural disaster comes,

they come and serve people in the name of Jesus

and then locally, we have our Generosity Center in Rancho

and Pomona and every single week we serve thousands and

hundreds of families and people. And so just so you

know about our local Generosity Center. This year, four hundred

and three thousand dollars were given towards our missions and outreach.

That's not what we gave out, that's what came in.

And so that's family to family, that's someone that wanted

to give towards one of our missionaries directly or whatever

else that may be. Four hundred and three thousand dollars

would spent towards that. Our Generosity Center, one point one

million pounds of food was given away this past year.

The Twama one point one million pounds.

Of food I saw. I weigh a lot.

I can't even fathom how much weight that is, but

that is how much we gave away the past twelve

months on our Saturdays at our Generosity Center. Additionally, we

reached one hundred and three thirty seven thousand people at

our Generosity Center, and that equals thirty two thousand people

this year. Families this year were met by our Generosity Center.

They came, they didn't have food on their table. This

week and we supplied them with a full fridge through

our Generosity Center and anyone can serve at it. It's

at our old property in Utica that we still have

and facilitate today. I just want to spend a few moments.

It's further in your actual impact plan. You can read

more to into it, but I do just want to

survey a little bit about our financial breakdown. So I

just want you to see this when it came to

our finances, this year is this past year. The left

side is the income. The right side is how much

was expenditure, So that's how much was spent, and so

total income giving this past year was thirteen million, one

hundred and fifty eight thousand dollars five hundred and eighty four.

Right now, we're tracking towards our giving being about ten

percent increase from last year, and so we're really thankful

for all of your generosity and partnership. We had one

hundred and ninety thousand come into our missions and outreach.

We had one point we have a preschool here at

our Rancho campus. We're launching one at our Pomona campus.

One point three million dollars came in from our preschool,

so that's parents that we serve on a weekly basis.

And then we have a partnership with UCA and so

they lease currently lease our property.

More likely starting next year.

There's a merger happening with our private school, and so

next year we'll actually share their financials as well, but

as of right now, it's technically still separated on the books.

And so we get between our old church property, which

is our Utica building that we still own and lease out.

We also have our relationship with our private school here

on site. We exercise oversight, but they have historically ran

separately and they leased from us. Two million dollars came

in from those two things, and so those investments help

us to do real ministry. It helps us to go

and reinvest in our campuses or whatever that else that is.

And so totally our total income generated this past year

is sixteen million, five hundred and seventy three dollars. You'll

see over here what our operational budget breaks out, and

this is now what leaves over the past twelve months.

So six point eight million is staffing. That's every staffing

we have. That that that is maintenance, that's facilities, that's

our preschool that's everything operationally on a ministry side, and

so ministry operations two point four million was spent towards that.

So it's anything we have to spend to actually operate

the ministry and so like in our Generosity Center, if

we need to buy a new truck to serve people

or whatever, that is all those kind of operations fit

into that.

Our facilities.

So that's electricity, that's mortgages, that's everything like that. Four

point seven million dollars annually. Okay, so some people our

mortgage is made, you know sometimes fifteen thousand year or

twenty thousand a year for the year thirty thousand a year.

Ours is four point seven million dollars a year. Our

electricity bill when we you know, try to do the

ac in the summer when it's really hot, sometimes it

can be one hundred thousand dollars for electricity that much,

and we're looking at our electricity bill at home thinking

it's crazy. Well, when we get those, we we we

we have hot flashes too when we see those. Our

Generosity Center, we spent four hundred and three thousand dollars

to operate our Generosity Center and our missions and benevolence

as well, and so if that's someone financially need in

our congregation or someone passes away, and we come alongside

of them and help in any way that goes there.

And then lastly, two point three million was spent on

special projects. So built into this is like our courtyard,

and so we've already spent over a million dollars into

renovating our courtyard, and so that like that that would

be in as well. So you'll see sixteen point eight

million was spent this year, and so we spent more

than what came in. And to a degree that's okay

because save for reasons like this and stuff like that.

But Lord Willing, what we would love to do to

finish this project, we don't want to dip more into

spending than what came in. So that's part of this

vision Sunday to finish our courtyard. We're about six hundred

thousand dollars out to finish our courtyard. We don't want

to dip any deeper into a savings or anything else,

because we also you never know what happens in our nation,

and so if something changes economically and change giving, we

have to have some type of savings so that we

can muster through, and so we never want to expedite

our savings account because then that means we're not ready

for any rainy day. There are times that ac systems

break out and they're not cheap here at this campus,

and so we need a savings to be prepared for that,

not to build the courtyard, and so we would love

to finish the year strong without increasing this side so

that this side doesn't feel it. So that's transparently our finances.

If you're new year, you may be like, do they

do this every Sunday? No, we don't do this every

Sunday once a year. We do this as a family now,

and it's for a transparent so that we all know

what our church is doing and where it's going towards.

We have a board that oversights over us.

We have elders and deacons that walk alongside of us,

and so we have an executive team that walks alongside

of these things we do. And as we have oversight,

they walk alongside of us in our budgets as well.

Well. Let me share about two things.

As we kind of land the plane, here's what we're

gonna do this weekend. You'll see that you came in

with this document and there's a QR code that you

could scan in the back. What that QR code will

take you to is our giving page. And you'll notice

when we did our financials. One of the best ways

we can plan for the future is that if anyone

considers this church their home church, and they give monthly,

the best thing for us is that if you set

an amount in your heart.

The Bible talks about apostle upon encourages us.

When you give, go and ask the Lord what you

should give, and let the Lord tell you what you

ought to give. The best thing for us is that

if you set it as a monthly expense like you

would anything else, that let's us plan and know for

the future. So that's one of the best things for

us as a church that like I have I have

reoccurring giving, I just set a number monthly, I have

it come out the first and the fifteenth to two

separate numbers. And then that way, I just I said

it I built my family, we build it in our budget,

and then we forget about it. We don't we say

that's what we give. And so that would be one

of the best things for us. If you say, what

could I do for the church to help further that

setting in your heart. Monthly what you give that helps.

But here's what helps to finish the project. We're doing

three things this month. Here's the three things we're doing

this month. Is if you scan this, you'll be able

to give today or starting next week. We're gonna all

we're gonna actually start giving next week, but you can

start it today. But next week we're gonna come together.

We're gonna all give for Vision Sunday. It's a one

time miracle offering to finish three things. Here's the three

things that we're doing as a church. What we've always

done is we've taken a local project, national project and

then a church project. And so the three things we're

doing as a church is the first one one is

right now, we're partnering with Convoy a Hope and in Africa,

in the past more than the past fifty years, there's

a hunger and water crist happening in most of the

continent of Africa. And so what we've committed with Convoy

Hope is we've committed to sponsor two schools in Kenya

for seventy thousand dollars that for the next twelve months,

we're going to cover their food and water the church

or for their schools went through Convoy Hope. And so

we're committed to a global project. And so today and

this month for our miracle offering, the first dollars in

is immediately going to go towards Convoy Hope in those

two schools in Kenya that we're going to sponsor. The

second thing that we're sponsoring, and we're coming alongside of

Right now, there is three thousand and four hundred languages.

Who don't have access to the Bible.

In their language. It's not been translated yet in their language.

One thousand languages in the world don't even have one

verse of scripture translated in their language.

They don't have access.

So if a missionary came and preached about Jesus and

they said, I want to learn more, tell me about

that book you're reading from, their answer would be it's

not in your language yet. So imagine today you wanted

to make sure if the preacher was preaching correctly, and

you wanted to open a Bible and you wanted to.

Read it, what verse was he reading?

You can't do that for three thousand languages, and so

we're partnering with an organization called Illuminations where we're it

costs one million dollars to transfer it. To translate one

Bible in someone's language, takes seven years to translate language.

If you think about how often we need a pastor

to help us interpret the Bible, just think about translating

that Bible. In the Bible's written in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic,

and so most translators got to take it in Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic,

mostly talk it in English and then translate it into

that whatever that language is.

And they got to make.

Sure all the words are correctly because we don't mess

with God scripture. So it takes a seven to ten

years to translate one Bible a million dollars. So we

told Illuminations that the next translation that's on the docket,

we want to translate one book of scripture, the Book

of Joshua, for thirty thousand dollars. And so that's how

much it costs to translate it one book into a

known language. And so we committed the Book of Joshua

because next year, on our Wednesday nights, our next book

study we're going to do is from the book of Marcus.

We're going to jump into the Old Testament book and

we're going to study the Book of Joshua all next

year on Wednesday nights. And so we said, hey, give

us the Book of Joshua to translate. And then lastly,

I'll share in a moment after this video before we

close the courtyard project what we.

Want to close out giving towards.

So I just want you to see a little bit

though about Convoy Hope and illuminations before we leave together.

So check this out.

There was only one generation that God chose to watch

the Red Sea be divided. There was only one generation

that God chose to see the sun stand still in

the sky. There was only one generation that God chose

to witness the resurrection of Jesus. Throughout the history of

the world, God has chosen unique generations to witness and

accomplish his sovereign plan, including the translation of his Holy Word.

It was the generation of John Wickliffe who saw the

Bible written in English for the first time. It was

the generation of Cassiodoro de Rena that saw the scriptures

fully translated into Spanish. It was the generation of Samuel

Crauter that saw the Bible translated into the West African

language of Yoruba, and the generation of Pandita Ramabi that

saw the Scriptures translated into the Indian language of Marati.

From one century to the next. God has called an

equipment his people to carry his word forward, and today

we are standing in one of the most remarkable moments

in all of human history. For the first time ever,

we can advance the translation of Scripture into every known language.

The work is already underway through an alliance of translation

partners called Illuminations. It's fully expected that in our lifetime

one hundred percent of the world population will have access

to a key portion of Scripture, ninety nine point ninety

six percent will have the entire New Testament, and ninety

five percent will have the Full Bible. This milestone will

only happen once, and you can be a part of it.

Right now. Every follower of Jesus has the opportunity to

step into this history making moment by joining the Scripture

trans movement with Illuminations. Through radical generosity and prayer, you

can advance this Kingdom word from spoken languages to sign languages.

Every person on Earth desperately needs the good news of

Jesus in the language that they best understand, and through

the Illuminations partners, we can make it possible within our lifetime.

Future generations will remember this moment when the global Church

united together. The time is now in God's perfect will.

He has chosen one generation to make his word accessible

to every remaining tribe and tongue to the ends of

the earth, and we are the one generation.

Tens of millions of people suffer under the unbearable burden

of malnutrition, and they have absolutely no hope. This is

a place that NGOs typically don't come to. This is

a place where people sit in isolation, in seclusion, completely alone,

wondering if there's a God who actually even cares.

Well.

Convoy of Hope.

Is going to do something about it, one person, one village,

one family, one meal at a time.

So those are the two projects we're going to come

alongside of. And here's the thing. Here's our total need

starting from now till the end of the year.

Is the first thing.

Is is total need is seven hundred and thirteen thousand

dollars to finish.

Out the year. The top part is the.

Six hundred and thirteen thousand is to complete here in

Rancho our renovation in the courtyard, and some of it

immediately also will go towards launching Patria Alameda. As I shared,

there's some renovations we have to do, there's some things

we have to get ready for them, and so that

will go to them. We also seventy thousand dollars is

going to go towards sponsoring two schools immediately in Kenya.

And then lastly thirty thousand is going to go towards

translating the Book of Joshua in the next translation and

so together.

Here's what I want you to know is the first

dollars in.

Go towards these two projects, the seventy thousand and the

thirty thousand dollars. We don't say, oh, let's raise six

hundred thirteen thousand dollars and then whatever is left over

we give to those in need.

No, we first start with those in need.

Because we are blessed as a church the fact that

we get what we have and we get to do

what we do. We don't say, oh, you know what,

you wait for us, We got some other stuff right now,

you get first.

And so and so what we do immediately.

Is the first one hundred thousand dollars that comes in

that gets sent out, and we always meet that. That's

what we know. We don't always meet the total need,

but we always meet the missional need and so that

will always happen.

And so today, as.

We leave here together, we just ask over the next

seven days, just pray and ask the Lord if there's

something the Lord would want you to do. If the

Lord says no, you know, if you're newer to the

church or you're still visiting us checking this out, please,

you know, don't feel like we're asking you to give.

This is for those that call the church home.

This is for those that get fed here, that serve here,

that connect here, and.

This is us to further God's mission.

And so we just asked that as you take this

document home, is that you just pray about what you

could give. When you're ready, you can go to our

website and you'll see that there's a tab when you

go to give, but if you scan this it'll take

you straight there. You can go directly to Vision Sunday.

So Vision Sunday everything that's given is what's called a

locked fund. So whatever you give towards that has to

go towards these projects don't go to anything else. And

so as you give, we just asked the next seven days,

you just ask. If God answers you today or tomorrow,

you can start giving. But next week we're gonna come

together and have a prayer together, and we're gonna give

our seed. In the past, we'd have like buckets and

stuff and we'd celebrate that, but now we all just

give digitally. So throughout the week, as you're ready, we

encourage you to do so we'll share lastly about it.

Next week Pastor Diego will share and we'll pray for

that offering. And then by about the first or second

week of December, we'll share about what has come in.

Because we give a chance for everyone to kind of

plan their finances. And some people will be able to

do it immediately. Some people will say, oh, I could

probably do it December first or whatever that may be.

And so we give about three to four weeks for

that vision Sunday to come in and we'll share with you.

So you can either scan the code, scan your document.

But we're just excited about what God is doing in

the life of the church. I'm just glad and I'm

thankful that we're connected to a life giving church, and

we're connected to a church that we see what God

is doing today, and God is doing incredible things in

our church.

We just want to further that.

So you may be new here today, you may be saying, hey,

why do they talk about all these things?

What are all these things done for? Well?

Because one day all of us will stand before Jesus,

And the Bible says that when you stand before Jesus,

Jesus will say two things to us. He will either

see say well done, good and faithful servant, which, in

other words, when you were on earth, you followed me,

you preach the gospel, you lived the gospel, you were

led by the spirit, you expanded my kingdom. Or he

will say, depart from me. I never knew you. And

so for us, all of us, we all have a

desire to stand before God one day and hear from

him well done, good and faithful servant. We have a

commandment from Jesus. Matthew twenty eight tells us that we

are called to make disciples of all nations, and discipleship

looks like a lot of different things. Discipleship looks like

teaching the Bible. Discipleship looks like gathering around a fireplace.

Discipleship look like raising our kids in the house of God.

Discipleship looks like worshiping God. Discipleship looks like planning churches

so that others would hear the gospel. Until all people

have heard the gospel, we will not stop preaching the gospel.

And until Jesus returns, we will not quit. So as

a church, if you say, what is all this for,

there is a fervency and a hunger from all of

us to see Jesus return. There's a hunger and fervency

for all of us to not only hear the gospel,

but also people be discipled in Jesus. I'm thankful that

when I met Jesus in two thousand and seven, I

look a lot different than that day I did in

two thousand and seven. That's what discipleship is. And so

everything we do financially, everything we do missionly, is to

get people. If the Bible talks about growing from glory

to glory, as we continue to bear the image of Jesus,

we want to hear one day standing before Jesus well done.

That's what we want and not just an auDA boy.

But you understood my assignment for you in your life.

Well, where does all that start?

It starts first with a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

It doesn't start with guilt, It doesn't start with condemnation,

it doesn't start with force.

The first step.

To hearing well done, good and faithful servant, is have

I confessed Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.

One day we all will individually stand before God. We

can't look at a grandparent that went to church. We

can't look at a mom or dad that went to church.

We stand before God alone on that day. And it's

God's greatest desire that all his children be united in

his kingdom. But not everyone will, because some people will

reject the message of Jesus. So I'm here to give

you hope today that if you're ready to say yes

to a savior that loves you so much so that

he died for you, if you're ready to repent of

your sins and turn away from your old ways and

pursue Jesus, not be perfect in your life, but live

a life striving for the goodness of God, then I

encourage you right now, as we bow our heads and

close our eyes, that we say a prayer together. It's

a prayer of confessional sin. It's also a prayer of

acceptance of Jesus in our life. And if you're here

in this place today and you've never given your life

to Jesus Christ, and you're ready.

To take that step forward and say.

Jesus, I'm going all in, I'm going to repent of

my sins and I'm going to follow you. Then I

encourage you no matter where you're at. You may be online,

you may be in the courtyard and made in this room.

But I pray we all repeat this prayer together. Would

you say this with me, Dear Lord Jesus, in this moment,

I confess you as Lord and Savior. I believe in

my heart that you died on the cross and you

rose three days later, And from this day forward I

commit to follow you for the rest of my days.

In Jesus's name. Amen.