One Year Anniversary Service - Denny Duron | 09-20-26

Where darkness abounds, grace therefore much more abounds.

Amen.

That's the season that we're stepping into.

So we say over this next year, to God be the glory, the best is yet to come.

Amen.

Well, I also wouldn't be alive and wouldn't be here, Melanie and I, without our special guests today, who aren't guests, they're family.

But they are here today, and it is very special.

Very special.

Yeah, Pastor Denny and Deonza.

They built a church that saved our lives.

It absolutely saved our lives.

They knew how to answer the cry of a herding community.

And they established a church that's been around for over 65 years now.

And it is a beacon of hope and light and the power and the love and the glory of God in that community.

And when we were called to move here to plant river life, the only thing we knew is that we were going to take what we found there and we were going to bring it here.

And that is our desire.

That is our goal.

And so without further ado, I want to have Pastor Dinny and Deonza come up here.

You guys give them a great welcome as they come.

Pastor Deonza, I'm just gonna hand you the mic.

And if you give it to Pastor Dinny, that's up to you.

We love you guys so much.

There are really no words to say how much we love Melanie and Ben.

And this church, I'm just overwhelmed.

I feel such a presence of God.

I remember when we we've been married 45 years.

46, that's right.

I'm glad I was testing you.

And I remember uh when we married, I had no idea that someday we'd be standing here with seven kids and 21 grandbabies.

Someone say glory to God.

And after that first year of being married, I was pregnant.

I got married seven, I got pregnant seven months after we married.

So on our first anniversary, I was pregnant.

I just want to say this to you.

You're pregnant with the miracle of God, this church.

You are bursting forth with a brand new season because we had no idea what was coming.

We thought it was just us, and we can look around and think, well, it's just us, it's not.

I want you to see that 10 years, 20 years from now, you'll have grandchildren here.

You're gonna, some of you that have never really felt like you've had fruit, you're gonna have people come up and say, you know, it's because of you that I'm here.

It's because of you that our lives turned around.

It's because of you that our children are now serving God.

They're now pastors.

And so the picture I see, the river, river life is perfect because out of these two, I could talk forever, but I'm just gonna say this.

There, there's a river of life that's that's always been flowing through them.

God tested them, made sure you're gonna have enough patience that you could trust him.

But that river is a river that is this community is desperate for.

And I just pray, every one of you, that this will be your anniversary when you jump in the water, you jump in the flow, and you say, I want to be a part of that miracle, I want to have fruit in my life.

We just I we got deep, we came here.

I thought we were supposed to be here at 9:15.

We were only supposed to be here at 10:15, and so I got Danny here early, but we got to hear.

I'm so glad now.

We heard so many of your testimonies that you you that this place is on fire, it's full of the glory of God.

So I just celebrate you and can you just give God glory for what he's done?

One year.

We love you guys.

Amen.

Well, I I I feel right at home.

I'm I'm good, and thank you so much for your help.

And what I would like to say is we need to give this amazing worship team a great round of applause.

What a wonderful job they do.

And I'm I'm all into music and harmonies and all that kind of stuff, have been my whole life.

And so without even realizing it, you know, I'm listening for all that stuff.

And I turned to Deonza in the middle of the worship and I said, What a blend these kids have.

I mean, it was just so edifying and such a blessing.

Don't ever take that for granted.

Uh, let me just say this to you.

There are a lot of people that have great music right now in the body of Christ.

God's anointed a lot of these young people, especially with wonderful songs and great harmonies and wonderful musical ability.

And then there are some other churches that don't have it.

And they are enduring to the end.

But you guys are blessed.

Give them one more hand.

Come on, aren't you pleased with that?

And so good to see my man Brady.

I was just so fired up about seeing him and of course Micah.

And then here's little Aiden, who I've not gotten to know, but I look forward to getting to know him.

Um, the word of God says that God gave some pastors.

God gave some pastors.

And what I know by traveling across this country for the last um 57 years in ministry is that there are pastors places that you find them, and then there are others that are simply punching a clock.

And I hate to say that, but it's the truth.

Uh what God gave you, these guys are amazing pastors.

They have a heart for you.

They not only know your name and know your stuff, but they weep over you.

They intercede for you, and they are a phone call away.

I stood before our congregation, I guess, probably a couple of years ago now, and I said, uh, and of course, my my son is now the pastor of our church.

That was, we have had we have had two uh handoffs in the relay race.

My dad handed the church off to me, um, and then I pastored it for 20 years, and then now it's been handed off to my son.

And I stood before the people and I said, you know, there are two phone numbers you ought to always have.

One is your pastor and one is your doctor.

And I said, You're not gonna ever get your doctor's number again, I promise you.

I said, but I'm gonna see to it that you have my number.

And so I just stand and give my number out.

And you know, there are church growth specialists that will tell you, you can't do that.

You have to let the people go.

Let them go.

Let me tell you something.

I didn't get into this thing to let the people go.

I want to go with the people, I want to be a part of their lives, I want to know their stories, I want to be there in their greatest crises.

I know that there are a lot of pastors, they don't do, they don't do funerals and they don't do weddings.

And I'm going, well, what in the world do you do then?

Because I want to tell you something.

If you cannot celebrate the families of your church in their most grieving and brokenhearted moments, then who are you?

And and and if you can't enjoy the festivity of a marriage, which is the number one thing that a family experiences on the earth, then what's wrong with you?

You need to be involved.

Now I can tell you, this is a family church modeled after a family church that I've been a part of since I was six years old.

And let me tell you, these guys, they're gonna be in the middle of your saddest and most broken-hearted moments, and they are also gonna be right in the middle of your happiest, wonderfully celebrative moments.

Can you just give God glory for a pastor?

You know, this uh I uh I spent a lot of time on this message, and um I'm just not gonna preach it.

Uh, you know, if you'd like a copy of it, I'd be glad to give you a copy of it later.

I I've written it, I've written it out, which I I do everything, you know, so it's you could read it, but I'm not gonna use it today.

Because as I've stood here, the thing that uh that dawns on me is the tangible sense of spiritual legacy in this place.

There is a tangible sense of legacy.

If I were to choose a text for this rambling essay that you're about to hear, then it would be the begats.

Because the bagats are all about legacy.

How many have you ever read The Legacy, the lineage of Jesus?

Sure you have.

Quickly.

Once a year, because there is that day on your Bible reading assignments that you have to read that and you charge through it, right?

But if you read it carefully, it would be stunning to you to know who God chose to bring Messiah into the world.

You'd see people like Rahab the harlot, and you'd go, whoo! Didn't know she was in there.

Right?

You would see others that had sordid reputations and and a hard time in life and found their way to the altar of God, and it would be overwhelming, and it would at the same time be so encouraging to you.

You see, the fact is, as I look over this audience, personally for me, there are so many stories that led to these pastors sitting here.

To them being able to call themselves pastors.

It began probably in 1958.

We're close to celebrating 70 years of being in Shreveport.

There are always pastors that ask me, how do you make a difference in a city?

I only have one answer.

Stay.

Stay.

Stay through the good times, stay through the bad times.

Stay when people are angry at you, stay when they're pleased with you.

Stay when you don't have any money, stay when you got a lot of money.

Stay.

Just stay.

And that's what we've done.

In Shriport, the Durans have stayed.

And now we have the third generation pastor who is the spitting image of my daddy.

He's a real pastor.

I'm an evangelist.

God gave some pastors.

God gave some evangelists.

He gave me as an evangelist, and I was in the role of the set man in the church.

I told my son the other day, I said, son, I said, You're so much like my dad, so much like your papa.

I said, I am so proud of you.

I said, You're a processor.

I said, I love the way you're leading us.

I said, You tell us what you're gonna do.

And then a few weeks later, you tell us again what you're gonna do.

And then you tell us again what you're gonna do.

And then you start to do it, and incrementally you tell us where we're going, you tell us where we've been, you talk about our progress, you talk about what's ahead.

I said, You're so detailed, and I said it's so restful.

I said, for 20 years, when I pastored that church, everybody had whiplash.

I can remember my dad was an evangelist, a traveling evangelist, but he had this pastor's heart.

Oh, how he loved the flock.

And we rolled into Shreeport, Louisiana, and we didn't have anything.

Um there were no earthly possessions that were vying for our attention.

We just didn't have any.

We were poor, and my mom asked me the other day, said, son, did you ever know we were poor?

I said, No, ma'am, I never did.

She said, Well, I tried to keep it from you, and she did a great job.

But we rolled into town and there was a church of 47 people.

First assembly of God, Cedar Grove, which is a little enclave in Shreeport that has been famous through the years.

It was famous then, it's famous now.

It's just the roughest place.

You don't want to be there after dark.

And we are the proud pastors of First Assembly Cedar Grove, i.e., First Assembly Shreeport, Louisiana.

And I will never forget my dad began to do two things.

Number one, he began to pray because he was a praying man.

As a tiny boy, I would go next door to the church.

We lived in a parsonage that was right next to the church.

It was the first house and first address that the Durans ever had.

Wasn't our house, but it was our house.

And how we loved that house.

My um my dad would go next door to the church and he would pray.

And he loved to walk when he prayed.

He prayed right out loud, and he was in a conversation, a real conversation with God.

And as a little boy, I tagged behind him.

I would walk around the church as he walked around the church.

And I know that it was that time in my life that I really learned to pray.

Repeating what he would say.

In fact, till this very day, I will lay my hands on my grandchildren, and I have so memorized what he said that my prayer for healing is exactly the prayer for healing that he would pray for my children.

I'm talking about legacy.

And here he is giving everything he's got.

He's praying, he's fasting, he's preaching, he's caring for people, he's visiting the members, he's going door to door, he's in the prisons, he's in the hospitals, and the church isn't growing at all.

And he went to prayer one day, brokenhearted.

I wasn't there, he was alone.

It was one of those Gethsemane moments that all God's people go through when you're praying for something and you don't know if you are up to the task.

It's that not my will but thine be done moment.

And he said this to the Lord, Lord, I'm ready to go back on the evangelistic field.

I'm ready to be that itinerant preacher again.

I I cannot live my life without seeing you work and move in the lives of people.

And he was ready to quit.

It was in the late 50s, 1959.

And he heard God speak to him.

He said, Stay right where you are, Rodney.

He said, the best has yet to come.

It became his mantra.

The best is yet to come.

Let me say something to you.

Some of your lives have already been changed by these pastors.

What you need to understand is that every time your life is impacted and changed by a man or a woman of God, or even a fellow worker who happens to be a believer, they paid a price for the anointing that reached you.

We uh began to see the church grow.

It grew to the point that we changed um parts of town because there was no place for this little church to grow.

It was up to 200 now, and it was packed to the walls.

That was before the days of anybody ever having two services on Sunday morning.

I mean, God forbid, that would quench the moving of the spirit.

That's what we thought in those days.

You've got to give God time, you know.

Um, I like it better the way it is right now, by the way.

And I want to tell you, it was amazing when dad decided to take us to the promised land.

We were like the children of Israel.

And let me tell you what happened on that journey.

And it will happen every time you start to take a journey of destiny in this church.

There were people that didn't make the journey with us.

People that you thought would never leave, people that you thought were gonna be with you for life.

My son was talking to me yesterday and he said, Dad, he said, Did you get to talk to so-and-so at the football game?

Because you see, I'm I'm I'm still a football coach.

That's what I do.

I've done that as well as preach all these years.

And so, and if you want to watch my football team, there's a show on Fox Nation that is called God Family Football.

And you can watch that show and you'll find out everything I do during this time in my life.

I'm a 74-year-old football coach.

I shouldn't be on the sidelines as dangerous, but I can tell you, I just have to, I'm called to do it.

And it'll it'll it'll make sense to you when you watch the show.

But he was saying to me, he said, Dad, if you had, did you see so-and-so at the ball game?

And it was a young man that had left our church.

Now he said he went on the best of terms, but we just haven't seen anything of him since he left.

And we've just been troubled.

I said, Oh yeah, I saw him.

I said, I looked up at him and and I was kidding with him, and I said, Well, who are you?

Because I hadn't seen him in a long time.

And he looked at me and he said, I'm your son, I'm your son.

I said, I know who you are, I'm kidding.

I said, Of course I know.

You know, he said to me, he said, Dad, and one day he'll come back and we'll just love him, won't we?

The way you always do.

I said, son, this is what you gotta understand.

I said, if you're a pastor, just because somebody's time is done with you does not mean your ministry is through with them.

And I said, when somebody leaves the church, when they don't make the journey to the promised land that you're taking, you have to never ever make a statement that they might have to crawl over if they ever want to come back.

You let them leave knowing that they that you love them, that you're concerned about them, and that you will always be available for them.

Of course, my son has watched our whole lives, is that it's happened over and over again.

But a man who is a pastor, like these guys are pastors, they get it.

It's not about them anyway.

You say, doesn't it break your heart if people leave you?

No, it doesn't.

They're not my sheep.

Jesus made that clear to Peter.

He said, You feed the sheep.

They're my sheep.

You feed my sheep.

We're not building our own kingdoms, establishing our own thing.

We're not making this meteoric rise to be a megachurch.

That's not what this place is about.

This place is about family.

It's about you being able to come here every week and knowing what to expect.

Well, um I grew up and I became a football player.

I uh didn't plan to be a football player.

I played high school football.

But one night in a little basement of a small Baptist church over across the river in Bozier City, Louisiana, which Twin Cities, Bozier and Shreeport.

I'd been invited to a meeting and it was there.

The power of the Holy Ghost filled me in a way that I still to this day cannot fully describe.

I walked in one person, I walked out another.

So transformed by the power of the Ghost.

Do you know that?

Do you know you can have an experience with the Holy Spirit like that?

You know it can happen as a teenager, or it can happen in your 70s.

But I want to tell you this.

If you haven't had an experience with the power of the Holy Ghost like that, if I were you, I would never take no for an answer.

And I would wait, as the word of God says, until I was endued with power from on high.

Let me ask you this: don't you want that?

Wouldn't you love to have a glorious, pure, powerful, enabling experience with the Holy Spirit where He just changed everything about you?

That's you.

That's yours.

I walked out of that basement that night.

It was during the Jesus Revolution, you know, the whole Jesus movement that you you're reading about, and some there is even a movie out on it.

And it was happening, happening not just on the West Coast, it was happening everywhere.

And there was this really hip, wonderful, cool lady that was running this prayer meeting.

She was about 65 years old.

She looked like somebody's grandmother.

And she had a pair of glasses with the chain on them, you know, that was perched right on the end of her nose.

And she came over and looked at me and said, What do you want the Lord to do for you, honey?

And I said, I want whatever these people have.

Now I'd been raised in a spirit-filled church, but let me just tell you, that night everything changed.

You say, What are you getting to?

This is anniversary.

Hang on, I'm getting there.

Something happened in our church that was powerful.

At that moment, all the young people in our church began to prioritize the power of the Holy Spirit.

We we would go out onto the streets preaching and witnessing.

We were bold as lions.

It was amazing.

God began to now add another dimension, another color to who we were as a church.

You see, he was building a foundation so we could reach some people in the future that we would not have been able to reach in our past, that were going to be important for you because they were gonna care for you.

I uh very quickly will go through my career.

I went to Louisiana Tech and played football because God called me there.

I told the guy that was recruiting me, I said, I'm not going to play football in college, I'm going to Southwestern College to prepare for the ministry.

He said, Well, won't you just come visit?

And my mom immediately just kind of interjected.

She said, Look, just go to the night when they visit.

So you don't have to go to school there if you don't want.

Just go to go.

And so I told the coach, I said, I'll I'll come to the meeting.

It was actually Terry Bradshaw's last game in IA Stadium at Louisiana Tech.

And he was amazing.

He he threw for about 350 and he ran for 150 yards.

And I mean, he was spectacular, put 77 points on the board.

Crazy.

I liked it, but I wasn't pulled or drawn by that.

Everybody was nice there.

They were supposed to be.

You were being recruited.

But I wasn't moved by that.

I was going to Bible school to prepare to preach the gospel.

The fire of God was in my belly.

And the Lord spoke to me that night and he said this.

He said, I have called you here to play football for my glory.

I didn't know what that meant.

Weren't any Tim Tebows in my day?

I didn't know one Christian football player that was in the NFL.

I didn't know one Christian player in college that was standing up for God.

I didn't even know how that looked, but here's what happened: God sent a sweeping revival to Louisiana Tech.

I'm talking about a sweeping revival.

My last two years, he gave me a prophecy.

He said, I am going to give you an undefeated season for the first time in the history of Louisiana Tech for my glory.

And he said, I've ordained you to be the quarterback.

You say, Well, why is that a big deal?

Well, because I was a wide receiver.

Our first two quarterbacks quit.

The third one couldn't run out of sight in a day.

They put me at quarterback from wide receiver.

And I led that team to a 24-1 record, 12 straight wins, a loss, and then 12 more.

The second year, 73, I'm wearing the national championship ring on my right hand.

And all of it was for the glory of Almighty God.

You should have seen, you should have seen my wonderful Southern Baptist coach.

And I love the Southern Baptists because they've kept the Word of God alive in the South and a lot of places around the world.

But I'm going to tell you, you should have seen his face when I walked in after my first game when I had been horrible, horrible.

And I walked in, I said, Don't you move me.

I said, God's ordained me to be the quarterback and we're going to go undefeated.

He thought I was a nut.

If you want to see that on the internet, all you have to do is Google on your way home, not if you're driving, but on your way home, you need to just Google.

It says, Louisiana Tech Revival, Spirit of the Game.

If you're just Louisiana Tech Revival, there's going to be a picture of me.

I vaguely look like myself.

It's when I was in college.

And you'll know it's me.

And you're going to hear him say it in his own words.

I thought he was a nutcase.

He said, but we never lost another game.

You see, what God did was give me a high platform immediately on that campus where I could preach the gospel.

You say, How did you do that?

I got out on the campus at noon and stood on a park bench and preached to the top of my voice that people would come and give their lives to Christ.

Now I'm going to jump way ahead.

Way ahead.

After I finished playing professional football, I took a coaching job at Evangel University in Springfield, Missouri.

Never planned to coach.

Two things I never planned to do.

Preach, excuse me, not preach, but pastor.

I was going to preach, but not pastor.

Never pastor.

Never coach.

That's all I've done my whole life.

Those two things.

I went to Evans University, and there was a young man who showed up to play football for us from Cincinnati.

He's sitting right here.

Mike back.

He hit people so hard.

They should have called him rigor mortis because they got stiff all over.

I'm telling you, he would absolutely knock your lights out.

He was so aggressive.

Quiet, quiet guy.

During my time of coaching there, Deion, we would have anybody that was interested in preaching the gospel on our team over to our house on Tuesday night.

Mike came.

He was so quiet, and I'm talking about miserably quiet.

Quiet.

Nice, yes, good looking, wonderful, sharp, intelligent, but just quiet.

And I'm going, you know, he's going to have a hard time preaching.

He's just like, not going to say anything.

I told Deonzo, I said, the only guy I don't know if he's going to do this is Mike Bag.

He ended up having the most profound impact of every man in the room.

Because when he graduated from Evangel, played four years, he went out to San Diego and tried out for the NFL team.

They cut him the last cut.

That defensive back coach loved him.

But now he wanted to play football somewhere else, so he came to Shreeport, my hometown.

And I went and took a coaching job as an assistant during that summer, is when that league played, just so that I could keep him and the tight end that went also from Evangel from getting cut.

Now, I was really there to keep the tight end from getting cut because he was the guy.

And during that time, he began to work in the church.

And one day he walked up to me and he said, and I was a pastor by the time.

And he said, Pastor, I I want a center where I can reach people that are addicted.

His brother had struggled with addiction.

He understood the pain of addiction in his family firsthand.

Had a burden to see people set for it.

He said, I want a center.

I said, All right, I'm gonna look.

I said, I think I know where I can actually look for something like that.

And I knew that there was a guy that had a church that wasn't being used and it was out in a rural area of East Texas.

And so sure enough, the Lord worked it out.

I mean, it was just supernatural.

They gave us that church and that property, and we started something called Eagle Creek.

Now, this is what you understand about this young man.

He had the background of a pastor who he had been under because he had been there long enough, and he was there at the transition between my from my father to me, and had actually worked on the staff with my dad, with my father.

So he's got all of that in him.

We're talking about legacy, do you understand?

I'm talking about the DNA of my father was in him.

My DNA in him.

So he's willing to do some things that are not the norm in ministry.

How many of you understand we're not going to reach the world if we keep doing the normal things in ministry?

You do understand that this is beautiful, but nobody is driving by out there thinking, I might like to go to that church.

Nobody.

That's for us.

That's for people that are already here.

You're gonna have to do some things that are out of the box, amen.

So he from what?

Football ministry.

Well, that's a stupid thing.

I agree.

It's really strange.

God uses the foolish things to confound the wise.

Don't you know God's just tickled to use a pig skin to bring people into the kingdom of God?

So here he is, and he's starting a center.

Well, he starts that center, and I can't even tell you the glorious stories that begin to accumulate from him starting that center.

But there was none more profound than when we got word about a young man, and a mama had had to lock him out of the house, and he was sleeping on park benches at a local junior high school, and mama's heart was breaking.

They heard about Eagle Creek, that wasn't enough to get him there.

We had to have a convinced DA who made a rule.

You can either go to jail or you can go to Eagle Creek.

And he thought, well, it's definitely gonna be Eagle Creek.

Am I right on in this?

And Ben Ward goes to Eagle Creek and God transforms his life, changes his life.

It's glorious to see what God does.

But then the enemy comes back to make a second claim.

Oh no, he's perfect.

He he is gonna love every backslider in this place.

He knows what that's like.

But the second time, hallelujah, it worked.

Hallelujah.

Amen.

And he's got this beautiful little accomplice that's with him the whole time.

She just loves him.

You're gonna go left, baby, I'm going left.

You're going right, I'm going right.

She loved it.

She understood that this was the man for her, and he loved her more than life.

Well, it wasn't long before both of them now, now, say, filled with the power of the Holy Ghost.

And they immediately, immediately began to look for something to do.

Well, we had a job available.

Our janitor quit.

It didn't take him ten seconds to accept that job.

Because while he swept and mopped and cleaned and carried, he also was able to be in the house of God and to spend time in God's presence.

He not only didn't complain a day, he was the best one that ever did that job.

We could never get anybody to do it like him after that.

Because it was God's house.

And there was no job too small for Ben.

Smart, sharp, influential, handsome, intelligent, you bet.

But clothed with complete humility.

So grateful for the cross in his life that he with joy swept the courts of the Lord.

Well, hallelujah.

Then we had a job open up with this football cornerback who has his center, where Ben, of course, is very loyal because that's where Jesus changed his life.

And he comes and asks me, I'd like to get Ben Ward on as uh the guy who will be actually at the property, which meant he was going to have the burden of the responsibility to genuinely day by day, moment by moment, disciple those young men.

Now you think about this how much experience your pastors have had just in one on one, nobody seeing, no glory in that.

Some of them making it, some of them not, but just hours and days and weeks and months and years of sitting with one hopeless young man after another.

And for all of that time working then through their issues to get them to the light of God.

Of course, because that's how committed he was, and he will be to you.

When uh Ben came to me and uh actually sat down with me, he and Melody sat down and we began to talk about their next because they were feeling a stirring in their spirit.

They had a chance to join Benny Hinn's ministry, who was a friend of mine, and I Benny had called me and asked me if there was somebody that I knew, a young man that had this, this, this, this, and of course he checked all those boxes, and so I just ran it by him.

He said, Absolutely not, I'm not doing that.

And and uh I said, that's fine.

I had a couple more things that were possibilities, and let me just tell you, after watching him and Melanie, I I I had already thrown out all of the things that were not really great opportunities.

These were great opportunities.

I said, no, that's not what God's saying to us.

And I remember saying to them, then why don't you go to a bedroom community, a developing community in Dallas?

Because the thing that has amazed me about this whole Metroplex thing is how they build towns in 10 minutes.

I don't get it.

And they're real towns.

I mean, I I think Prosper um had one high school like a half hour ago.

And now they're like 13 or something.

I mean, it's just you know, it's just crazy what's happening.

And so I I felt those would be a great church plan.

I'll just well for some reason struck a whole chord with him.

And this is what they determined, and this is what Melody said to me this morning.

She said, we came back here to use the model that we had of a church in Shreveport, Louisiana that was a family church.

So how big is your church, Pastor?

Not that big really.

I said, I know I'm not the best preacher, but I God, I think I'm I think I'm average.

And I said, and our worship is above average.

And I said, we've got loving people.

And I said, our arms are open to everybody.

And I said, we're active in the community and we're a missions church.

And God just doesn't look like folks are coming and that this church is growing the way it ought to.

And the Lord spoke to me louder than audible.

And I want you to hear this because this is going to be for you too.

And He said, Don't ever talk to me about that again.

He said, I have made you a petri dish.

Now let me just say this to you.

I had two bad subjects in that school.

If it was English, if it was history, if it was social studies of any kind, I'm going to tell you, I was going to make, I knocked it out of the park.

But if it was math or science, some people are summa cumalati, I was oladi.

I'm just telling you.

I I just I was not there.

So so when he God spoke to me, Petri dish, I I honestly had to stop and think, but that was one of the terms I knew.

And then he continued, here's what I said of the Lord.

I said, Lord, you'll have to explain that.

This is the truth.

I now sometimes when preachers come and talk to you like this, you think that they talk to Jesus every 10 minutes like this.

That doesn't happen.

What we do is this we come and we preach, and we've got like 30 minutes or whatever, and we put a lot of illustrations in.

That's a lifetime.

Got it?

So I don't want you to think that I have this thing with God that I'm, you know, we're talking in sentences, and he's talking back, I'm questioning.

That's not it.

Wish it was that way.

But this is one of those rare times, and he said, I don't want you to ever ask me about that again.

I've made you a petri dish.

I said, Will you please explain it?

He said, somewhere in America today, he said, there is a scientist who is locked away and he's surrounded by FBI people because the culture that he is developing on the petri dish is going to heal nations.

And he said, I've made you a petri dish.

He said, I will take from the culture that you are building in a small place, and I will heal things around the world.

And we have watched God do that.

Over and over and over again.

Somebody was saying, anybody here know Gelani Lewis?

Anybody raise your hand if you know Gelani Lewis?

You know Gelani?

Shreveport boy.

I coached him, halfback, graduated from our school.

How many of you heard of Doe Jones, Dominic Jones, the great great worship, the great worshiper, uh Grammy Awarden?

Graduate of our high school.

I could go on and on with people that you know.

Anybody ever uh heard of Byron Copeland?

Y'all know Byron Copeland who was a okay, Byron, okay.

Well, he coached at our school in Shreepport.

I I had a pastor, uh Pastor Robert Morris saw me at uh at a funeral, and he walked over to me and he said, Denny, I don't know how many, and I stopped him in mid-sentence.

I said, I do.

I said, You got 11 people on your staff that used to be on my staff, and I said, It's time you sent me somebody.

Why is that?

Because that's who he made us, and that's who he's gonna make you.

When you come here Sunday after Sunday, I don't want you to worry about how many.

If you get caught up in that trap, you'll get shallow.

You just keep going deep with what God's called you to do.

You're a family church, you're different, you're gonna make a difference, you're gonna care about people.

You are never ever going to abandon the grassroots.

This place is gonna be real to the core, it's gonna be real, and it's gonna be about you and your family and your lineage.

Hallelujah.

So, all I can say is this when you start talking about a church and how you choose a church, don't ever make a mistake.

It is always about the leader.

I said it is always about the leader, a leader that is sensitive to the voice of God, a leader that models what he and she preaches.

They live their lives before you.

A leader that understands that when you are at your worst, he or she still has the responsibility to care for you, to be there for you.

A leader that never makes it about himself or herself, but always makes it about the Lord's sheep, and every day shows up thankful to be doing what they're doing.

You have finished one year.

We are celebrating the first of many years together, and we are following with great confidence leaders that are going to get us to the place we need to be as families and individuals.

I want you to stand with me, please, all over this place.

Now, for those of you that are wondering, I do preach the Bible.

Had a lot of Bible in that message.

Like I said, you can have it if you want it.

But today is not about that.

Today is a celebration of what God has called us to and who God has called us to.

You're so blessed to have this leadership.

And like all great leaders, the only thing I have heard since I walked on this property and began to run the gauntlet of shaking everybody's hand here has been about you.

Because they are convinced that God has sent you to partner with them to do something really rare in the Metroplex.

Praise God.

Hallelujah.