We Are Here

Today's a little bit different.

I've announced this the last several weeks.

I sent an email out.

Today's kind of unique.

So if you're here for the very first time, we take one Sunday every year and we talk about where we are as a church.

We talk a little bit about where we've been, but mostly about where we are, where we're headed, what God can do through us and in us, and then we talk about what it's going to take to get there.

That's a little strange for us, to be honest, because we don't really talk about ourselves a lot as a church.

We're not trying to build a brand or anything like that.

We talk a lot about Jesus and a lot about how his love for you and his life that he wants to give you can change everything.

That's what we spend our time talking about.

But it's really important for us to be on the same page.

And so once a year we take a Sunday and I ask you to be here to make it a priority.

And if if someone's not here next week, I'll make them watch the video.

I'll make them, not really.

But we just say, hey, be here, because we have to be on the same page.

We are a family.

This is a movement.

Okay?

And so we've got to be moving in the same direction.

Now, if you are new, the good news is you're gonna learn so much about us today.

You're gonna learn what makes what makes us tick.

You're gonna learn what really makes his hands his hands, what's in our DNA, and it will help you decide if this is something you want to be part of or not.

You may leave and say, nope, not for me.

And if that's the case, I mean I'll be hurt.

I will.

It's just how it is.

But I've been rejected before, and so I will get over it.

Um but honestly, I really hope that that you end up saying, man, this is special, this is unique, because I believe it is.

I believe God is doing something in this church that that it's just it's unusual.

It's amazing, and I believe it's something that needs to catch on and spread.

And so I can't wait to talk about that.

I hope you you get a lot out of that.

But just if you're new, listen, observe, and make a make a choice either way.

If you are part of his hands, if you would say, hey, this is my church, I'm here, I'm invested, I've decided this is where I belong, this is my place.

Can I see you?

Can I just you raise your hand if that's you?

You guys make some like show me that you're here, that you're live.

Okay, good.

Yay.

I just have to, you know.

I'm gonna start by saying this to all of you, number one, okay?

I'm gonna say this.

I'm sorry.

Because, number one, today's gonna be kind of like me and a whiteboard, and I have terrible handwriting because I'm left-handed.

Um, anyone else left-handed?

Do you know do you know what the Latin word for left-handed is?

Sinister.

That is the literally, that is the Latin word that means left-handed.

Lefties, we get kind of a bum deal because everything in the world is designed for all you right-handed people.

Everything.

So whenever you study how to write in school, guess what it assumes?

That you're right-handed.

And so I have really weird handwriting.

You'll just have to deal with it.

It'll be good enough.

I'm also saying I'm sorry because I am gonna talk a little bit longer than I normally do, but you have been forewarned, so you can leave now.

Alright, then you better not, because if I, you know, I'm I'm just teasing.

But but we've kind of reorganized the morning uh to make sure that to accommodate for that time.

We may go ten minutes longer than normal, but this is kind of it's a one, it's a one Sunday thing we do every year.

It's really important.

So I want to make sure we go over everything, okay?

Are we good?

Alright, so we call this we are here Sunday, so here we are.

You're here.

All right?

If you weren't here, you'd be there.

You'd be somewhere else, but you're here.

So we say we are here, but when we say this, I want us to understand right off the bat that this is very important.

There's this word that appears often in, well, not that often actually in the Old Testament.

It's a Hebrew word, and it's the word Hanaini.

All right, just to make sure you're still awake.

Can you say Hanaini?

Say, watch me whip.

Some of you know where that was gonna go, and you didn't you didn't play along, but it's okay.

It's okay.

Some of you are like, I don't understand, just look it up.

It's a thing.

Um, Hanaini.

Hanaini is a Hebrew word that appears eight times in the Old Testament, and it literally translates, here I am.

But it's interesting because it doesn't mean here I am in the sense that someone says your name, calls roll, and you say, Oh, here, present.

Or if you're a mom and your kid just shouts like they do in the house to try to find you, instead of you know walking and looking for you, they just shout and you go, I'm here, I'm in the kitchen.

It's not that word.

That was a Hebrew word that sounds like this.

It sounds like po.

Hinaini means I am here, but but in a very specific way.

It means I'm here, I'm ready to do what I'm called to do.

I'm here.

I'm ready.

Picture like the bat signal, and Batman shows up.

I'm here.

What do you need?

Right?

And so we see it in scripture, for example, in Genesis chapter 22, verse 1.

Genesis 22:1

Sometime later, God tested Abraham's faith.

Abe, God called.

He did not just say, Abe, I ran out of space.

Um, yes, he replied, here I am.

When he says, here I am, he's not just saying, Oh yeah, I'm in here.

He's saying, Okay, I recognize that God is speaking.

Here I am, I'm ready.

Anytime you see this word in scripture, anytime you see this phrase, big things are happening.

You see it again in Exodus 3:4.

Exodus 3:4

This is God calling Moses to be a prophet.

God called to him from the middle of the bush.

This is the burning bush story, if you're familiar.

Moses, Moses, here I am, Moses replied.

That was that word, Hanaini.

And we see it again in Isaiah.

Isaiah became this amazing prophet, but it all started here.

Then I heard the Lord asking, Whom should I send?

Who will go for us?

And I said, Here I am.

This is not him reluctantly saying, Yeah, I mean, if you can't find anyone else, this is him saying, I'll do it.

What do you need done?

I'll do it.

That's a really powerful thing to say, and I know it's asking a lot, but I guess what I'm saying is, who's here right now?

Because I'm here.

All right, it's good to know.

I'm here.

Today, like I said, we're gonna talk about where we are.

We're here, but where are we going?

We've got to start, though, by talking really briefly about where we've been, because I know a lot of us have only been here for a little while.

We've grown as a church by about a thousand people in the last two years.

It's a lot, so you may not know the story.

We're not gonna talk about this for long, because there's a reason your rear view mirror is there, but there's also a reason it's much smaller than your windshield, okay?

If I were to describe the story of his hands to you in two words, I would use two words that begin with the same prefix.

I am.

That's an M.

Um The first one would be this word, important.

This is an important church.

I know that sounds a little like braggadocious, and I'm supposed to say that, being this guy here, but but this is an important church.

And I believe that for a few different reasons.

Number one, God's told me that, as clear as day, this is important.

Something is happening here.

God wants something to happen here that is very unique, that spreads, that affects people, that changes lives, not only in this community, but I believe that actually has an impact on a much, much larger scale than just Cherokee County.

I really believe that with every fiber of my being.

And we'll talk about that in a minute.

But the other word I would use would be this word, improbable.

Because if you know the story of his hands, we should not be here.

I'm serious, we really shouldn't.

The things that have had to happen to start this church and keep this church going do not make any sense.

We should not exist.

It was really improbable over ten years ago when Stephen Susan Craig, who started our church, prayed and asked God what they should do with this fortune that they had from selling a really successful company.

And God said, start a church.

And they said yes.

I mean, seriously, that that doesn't happen.

I wonder sometimes how often people that have a lot more resources than the average person, I wonder how often God tells them to do something really selfless and really big with it, and they go, nah, because you know I know they prayed that, but I don't know about you.

Sometimes I pray and God will say something to me, and I'm like, oh no, God, you cut me off.

I was about to give you options.

This was a multiple choice prayer.

Like, what should I do with my money?

Should I buy a boat or move to Europe?

And you said start a church, and that's that's crazy.

Okay?

Because churches, it's is hard.

But that's what God said.

And so they did what anyone would naturally do.

They bought an old Kmart and they turned it into a church.

That's just what you do, right?

Who does that?

No, no, no one does that.

I mean, it's improbable.

I actually looked up online, I was curious this week.

I searched lottery winners who started churches and found no results.

Never happened.

Because it's improbable that they did this, but they did.

They listened to God and they went, they went all in.

Before this even existed, before anyone went to this church, they they they bought this property, they paid for half the renovations, they took out a loan for the rest, but they they invested, and I'll just be honest, I can say it because I'm not them.

They gave over$10 million to do this, right?

And it wasn't like 10 million was 2% or 10% of what they had, it was the vast majority, they they gave, they gave big because they believed big in the vision of this church.

But it's improbable that they would have even done that or could do that.

It's improbable back in 2009 when the economy collapsed, and that created this huge emergency for us as a church, because we were still so new, we were in like a startup phase.

It's improbable that we made it through that because we had to do some big things.

We had to cut our staff from 10, which was already pretty small, for a church like this.

We cut it to two.

We had two people on staff.

I was one of those two people.

That was an interesting time.

I'll just say that.

That was an interesting few years of my life.

It's improbable that we were able to survive that.

It's improbable that two years ago, when Steve and Susan had to step back really suddenly, and myself and a few other people had to step up really suddenly.

It's improbable that we made it through that transition and not only made it through it, but we've grown so much since then.

It's improbable because it happened fast.

I remember someone asked me, do you feel called to this or thrust into it?

And I said, yes.

Just period.

Both things.

It's improbable.

But see, here's the thing you have to understand.

When something is important to God, improbable things will happen to make sure that it survives, to make sure that it grows.

Because when something is important to God, God's gonna own it.

And this church is important to God.

I believe that.

I believe that clearly, I believe it with passion.

This is an important church.

And when something's important to God, the improbable will happen to make sure it does what it needs to do and it grows.

I believe this church is important because of the vision.

Because the vision of his hands is very unique.

There's elements of our vision that you can find anywhere else, but it's the combination of the vision here and the elements in the vision that make this a very special place.

And I want to begin by just saying this.

I love this verse.

It's in 1 Peter 4.10.

Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others as faithful stewards of God's grace in its various forms.

There is not one way to do church.

There's a variety of people in this world, and we need a variety of approaches to be able to reach those people.

In fact, it's when churches forget that they can change their approach without changing their beliefs that things get really stagnant and they lose the ability to reach people.

So the approach that we have here, it's not the only approach.

You're gonna hear me talk about it for a few minutes and understand I believe in it.

I'm passionate about it.

I'm more passionate about doing it this way than any other way, and if I wasn't, I wouldn't be the right person to be here.

But as we talk about the vision, as we talk about who we are and what we want to be, this is not us saying that, hey, if there's another church maybe that you're part of that does it differently, that they're wrong and we're right.

This is how God has called us to do it, and I do believe passionately in it, and I honestly believe that it needs to spread, that it needs to catch on in some ways.

So if I were to talk about the vision of this church and boil it down to four words, which is really hard to do, I would say this.

I would say, number one, this church is about life.

I would also say this church is about love.

This church is about Jesus, which seems obvious, but I'll get to that.

And this church is about this, and this is a longer word, so bear with me.

Authenticity.

Okay.

Life, love, Jesus, and authenticity.

So let's talk about that.

Life.

If you walk around our building, you're gonna see these paintings on the walls, and they're paintings of this tree.

It looks kind of like this.

Marlon, if you're here, forgive me.

Okay?

I'm so sorry.

It's like little dots.

These aren't apples, these are like explosions of balls of I don't know what they are.

Someone asked, ask Marlon what they are, he'll tell you.

I don't know, fruit expl something.

That's it.

Um this is you can buy this if you'd like to.

I'll I'll sell it to you for way less than Marlon would.

I mean, I'm just saying.

It's simple, it's like minimalism or something.

Um these are the tree of life paintings that just decorate our whole church, and the reason is we're a tree of life church.

That's what we say.

That's a teaching that Steve gave when I first started here.

I'd never heard it before.

It was really unique to me.

And it inspired me, it inspired Marlon to paint these paintings.

What we mean by that is this if you read the story of Genesis, the very first story in the Bible, there's this garden, and God makes people and he puts them in the garden, and it's paradise.

It's like perfect.

And there's all these trees, but there are two that are very significant.

One is the tree of life, and one is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And so of the tree of life, God says this He says, Eat freely, which is really cool.

That God wants us to eat freely when it comes to life.

But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God says, Don't eat it.

Don't go there, don't touch it.

It's poison to you, it will kill you.

And this is not God threatening them, saying, Hey, if you eat this, I will kill you.

He's saying, if you eat this, you will die.

That is the result.

But see, people are people, and we we kind of we do what we want to do.

You can tell your kid don't touch that.

What do they do?

They touch it.

And you're like, I just said that.

I literally just said don't touch that.

That's human nature.

And so we ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

It's important to remember that in the beginning the forbidden fruit was not lust or power or greed, it was the knowledge of good and evil.

That's strange, right?

Why wouldn't God want us to know right from wrong?

I think about my relationship with my amazing kids.

I've got Liam who's about to be six, Lily just turned two.

And it's funny, both of them are now at the stage where they know right from wrong.

It really just happened with Lily in the last six months, where I know now definitively that she knows right from wrong.

And so this morning she got here and I ran up to her and I gave her a hug, and I picked her up and I kissed her, and she slapped me in the face.

Which I'm actually okay if she continues that behavior with anyone that tries to kiss her.

I'm actually like, yeah, that's gonna work for me as a dad, right?

But here's the thing if that had happened a year ago, because it did, she was an infant and she would just get mad and annoyed and she'd slap me in the face, it was cute.

Like we watch one-year-olds throw temper tantrums and we go, oh, isn't that adorable?

Let's take a video of this and put it online.

This is so cute.

Three or four-year-old, it's just not as cute, right?

Because they know better, they know right from wrong.

And and the thing is, now that I know my daughter knows right from wrong, she slapped me in the face.

I have to correct that.

So I slapped her in the face.

No, I didn't do that.

Um that's a horrible joke.

What in the world?

Um improvisation.

I I sat there and I held her, and we were in the coffee shop, and I said, Lily, say you're sorry.

And she said, No.

And I told her, I said, I will not put you down until you say you're sorry.

And we had a little staring contest, and I won.

Right?

She said, I'm sorry.

And I said, Okay, great, I put her down.

I forgive you, I love you.

Now here's the reality.

Now that she knows right from wrong, my relationship changes.

I'm now obligated to discipline her.

And I can't say as a parent that I ever looked forward to that.

I never had a child and said, Oh, I can't wait till the day I can you know punish them for doing the wrong thing.

Not at all.

I kind of wish they stayed innocent.

I kind of wish they they didn't know right from wrong, and our relationship would be much more simple.

But because they do know right from wrong, I have to I have to discipline them.

See, God wanted our relationship with Him to be like that, to be innocent.

But because we know right from wrong, because we kind of ate from that tree, whether that's literal or metaphoric, it doesn't really matter, because we ate from that tree, he's obligated to discipline us and teach us.

And that changed our relationship with God.

But see, then Jesus came and he paid the price for our knowledge of right from wrong and our inability to live that way.

He paid the price so that we can go back to the other tree.

We can live at the tree of life, we can eat freely of life, and we can have a relationship with God that's about freedom and passion and love and not about rules and regulations.

See, another way to say knowledge of good and evil, or maybe obsession with the knowledge of good and evil, is religion.

Because that's what religion loves, right?

Religion makes lists.

This is bad, this is good, this is right, this is wrong.

Don't do this, do this.

Religion loves to look at the world and categorize everything and rank every sin, but God did not want us to live there.

And so, as a church, we're not gonna be a church that's about looking at our culture and saying, that's bad, that's bad, this is good, this is good.

It is not our job to be the good and evil police of the world.

It's our job to love people.

We want to live our lives in a right way so that nothing gets in the way of our ability to love.

We don't want our love to lose its credibility, but it's not our job to tell the world they're wrong.

We don't point out the faults in other people's lives, we point to Jesus because we're gonna live at the tree of life.

That's who we are as a church.

I agree.

Good.

Glad y'all are into this.

All right, here we go.

Love.

We love love in his hands, mainly because love's a big deal to God.

Jesus said that the world will know you by your love.

And so we say this all the time, and y'all know this by now.

We're a church that wants to help people get God's love, grow in his love, and then give that love away.

And you need all three, because if you don't get God's love, you can't grow it.

If you don't grow it, you won't have enough of it to give away.

If you don't give it away, someone else won't get it.

And so we have to do all these things.

And the reality is this: we love you.

We love you.

We will inconvenience ourselves to show you love, because that's what love does.

And so we we do so many things that create so much work so that we can accomplish this and help you accomplish this in your life.

Because we love you, we're gonna tell you the truth.

We don't spin, we don't manipulate and try to give you some type of messaging.

We just tell you how it is.

We just tell you this is the deal, this is what's happening, this is what's going on, this is who we are.

You love people when you tell them the truth.

Because we love you, we're gonna help you.

We're gonna do everything we can to help you.

And that help might be small, it might be us praying for you, which is actually a lot bigger than it sounds, but we might pray for you.

That's why we don't leave the building until every prayer request has been typed up and sent out to our prayer teams, until every person that's waiting for prayer has been prayed for, because we will inconvenience ourselves to love you.

That's why we invest so heavily in our kids' areas.

Because we love your kids.

And we know that if we say we love you, but we don't love your kids, it means we don't love you.

I love the fact that for the last 10 years that we've been in this building, we haven't done a renovation to this room one time.

Everything we have here is still the original stuff, and we're actually getting pretty close to where we're gonna have to do some new things because stuff doesn't last forever, you know?

It's crazy, right?

Technology doesn't live forever.

But we've renovated our kid spaces like five times because we love those kids and they don't get leftovers.

They get the best.

They do, they get the best because we love them.

That's why that's why we're so passionate about meeting needs.

You know, last year alone, we we raised over$15,000 to meet needs of people here at the church.

Just that.

We gave away over$150,000 to the community last year because we give 10% of everything that comes in.

We'll talk about that in a little bit.

But but just specifically, needs here.

People that that go to this church that came here and said, I'm in trouble.

We$15,000, and that doesn't even count what we spent on counseling to help people with counseling last year and all that.

It's just because we love them.

Because when you love people, you kind of find a way.

That doesn't mean that sometimes someone comes to us and the loving thing to do is actually not to give them money, but to give them wise counsel.

That's true.

But when we decide that, hey, they they need this, we're gonna figure out a way.

We talked about Lynn Walker a couple weeks ago.

Lynn got diagnosed with cancer two months after her husband died of cancer, their finances have already been completely demolished because of his treatment.

And we found out about that, and we're like, we gotta do something as a church.

So we had this event called Canvas, and we sold tickets to it, and we raised money, and a week ago Friday, we were able to give her$11,800 to help her out.

I mean, that's amazing.

It's amazing.

But it's all because of love.

You just need to understand that we love to love people, we live to love people to Jesus.

And so we love you, and we will inconvenience ourselves to love you, we'll inconvenience ourselves to help you grow.

You know, that's why we do foundations that class, that's why it's so important for us to spend all this work and energy and time so you can grow in your relationship with God.

It's because we love you.

As a church, we exist to love people to Jesus.

Now, I said Jesus is part of our vision, and that should be the case, right?

It's a church, obviously.

But here's what we mean by that, because we're very specific about that.

What we mean is this Jesus gets famous and no one else.

Okay?

One.

That's the next word, right?

Thank you.

Jesus gets famous and no one else.

This is not a pastor-centric church.

This is not even a church-centric church.

You liking church is not the end game.

We want you to know Jesus.

Because church is not the answer.

I'm certainly not the answer.

That's wow.

Um Jesus is the answer.

And I'll be honest, this is something that the church actually kind of struggles with in America.

And probably everywhere else.

I don't know.

I just live here.

We really struggle with this.

Think about this.

Jesus said this in Matthew 28.

He said it so clearly.

He said, Don't let anyone call you father because you all have one father.

That's Jesus.

And it's not like that's I don't know what you mean by that, Jesus.

That's a confusing thing you say.

He said, do not let anyone call you father because you have one father.

Yet there's this whole 2,000-year history of us calling all these people father.

And Jesus says, Don't do that.

Jesus said, Don't let anyone call you teacher because you have one teacher.

What Jesus is saying is don't put people up on a pedestal.

Because what happens when we put people on a pedestal?

They fall off.

Because they can't handle that pressure.

And when they fall off, they tend to fall hard, and then we regret that we ever put them there in the first place.

But Jesus is saying, look, I told you not to put them there in the first place.

And if you wouldn't have put them there, they wouldn't have fallen off, and they'd be better, and we'd be better.

And Jesus is the one that belongs on the pedestal.

And so he gets famous here, nobody else.

Our spotlight is on Jesus.

We're not existing to be a platform for anyone to get their name out there.

I don't want you to follow me on Twitter.

That's why I don't have Twitter.

And if I did, I wouldn't care how many followers I have.

I want to know how many followers Jesus has.

That's the only thing we care about.

Now let me let me say this.

I'm not saying that there aren't going to be pastors or church leaders that don't gain notoriety because they have a vision or a gift that's so that's so good and right that God wants to give them a big audience.

I'm not saying that at all.

There are a lot of Pastors, even in this community, even in Atlanta, there are some really well-known pastors who have done this amazing faithful thing for years and years and years, and as a result, God has given them a voice with a lot of people.

That's a good thing.

There is a fine line, though, between that happening as a result of what God is doing, and then people trying to use the church as a platform.

I'll never forget, I was 23 years old.

Steve Craig, who started this church, is my mentor, and he took me out to lunch and he said, Justin, the last thing this country needs is another Christian celebrity.

And so at his hands, if that's something you want in your life, this is not the place for you to be.

And that stuck with me.

That's why I don't have a title.

That's why no one's name's on our building.

That's why there's no one's bio or face on our billboard or our website.

Sometimes people go to our website and say, Yeah, but I can't see and like learn about the pastor and the people in leadership.

And we're like, we know.

It's on purpose and we love it.

We're anonymous that way.

But we just don't want anyone to get the attention that Jesus deserves.

Because I'll be honest, if I take 5% of it for myself one day, I'll stand in front of him and he'll ask for it back.

So I'd rather just give it to him now, right?

That's how it should be.

Okay.

This is a big deal.

Now, authenticity.

This is a big one for us.

And I'm gonna spend a few minutes talking about this because I I I love the authenticity of this place.

How genuine of a place this is is unique.

And this might be the thing that makes us more unique than anything else, because authenticity is not something that the church in America is very good at.

In fact, it's downright bad most times.

And the reason I say that, I know that sounds critical, I'm just being honest.

You can look at yourself, because we're part of the church world and self-evaluate, right?

And so you don't hear people who aren't Christians say, Man, I don't really believe in Jesus, but I'll tell you what about churches.

That is the most real and genuine what you see is what you get thing that there is.

I mean, you don't hear that because it's just not true most of the time.

Actually, what you hear are complaints about how fake it is.

In fact, a lot of us maybe grew up going to church and we realize one day, hey, what's happening here is fake.

I don't want to be part of this anymore.

Maybe we left the church and then God brought us back.

But we realized at one point in time that this isn't real, this is fake.

See, fake happens for a lot of different reasons in the church world.

Number one, it can happen because of this thing.

We try to stand on some type of moral high ground.

But pretty quickly that becomes moral hypocrisy.

And so what happens is in the church culture, we we get so obsessed with trying to live this holy life that we start to think we're holy.

And we start to think that we're holy not because God has declared us holy and made us holy by the sacrifice of Jesus, because he has made us holy, but we think we're holy because of the way we live.

And so we act like we're holier than we are, and then we tell everyone in our culture what they're doing wrong.

We're living at the tree of knowledge of good and evil, right?

We're telling everyone what they're failing at.

We we we sort of condemn our culture, condemn people in our culture.

We act like we're better, and then what happens?

We mess up.

Because we're human beings and we sin.

And the Bible says we all fall short of God's glory, and then the world looks back at us and says, aha! See, you're hypocrites.

And the reality is we kind of are, but we just don't pretend not to be here.

I mean, the reason I go to the gym is because I'm in bad shape, right?

It's simple.

Why would I go there if I was not?

Maybe that's why the people in good shape are there.

I don't, that just clicked.

Okay, but either way, either way, we don't stand on some type of moral soapbox and pretend like we're better, because if we don't do that, guess what doesn't happen?

We don't get knocked off the soapbox.

You need to understand if you go to his hands that we're all a big mess.

But it's okay because we we have a God that loves us, that wants to help us clean that mess up.

So we'll never pretend like we're better than you because we're not.

I am not better than you.

No one here, no one here is.

The church becomes fake also because people that lead the church tend to pretend, there's a lot of pressure, to be life experts.

To be life experts, right?

So you want your pastor, you want your leaders to look the part.

You want them to dress the part, you want them to have a successful life, right?

You you want them to smile a lot and have really good white teeth.

There's probably a dentist for pastors out there that has made a killing.

Because if you want to sell a book, man, you better have that smile.

And so what happens is because pastors have this pressure to be life experts, we pretend like we have it all together when we don't.

And we pretend to talk to you like we can somehow tell you how to live your life.

Here's the reality: I'm not a life expert, and I'm certainly not an expert in your life.

I haven't lived a day of your life.

Now, here's what I know: there is a life expert.

His name is Jesus Christ.

And he's a life expert not only because he lived life, but because he authored life.

And he does know how you should live your life, and all I want to do is help you know him.

And I'll share things he's taught me.

Thank you.

Um I'll share things he's taught me as I've messed up my life pretty good.

And I'll look at the mistakes and the issues I have, and I'll share the things he shared with me in hopes that the Holy Spirit will show you how that can impact your life.

But but I'm not a life expert.

I never will be.

The day I die, I'll still be trying to figure it out.

So we don't pretend to be that here.

There's there's one more thing that really gets in the way of authenticity in the church, and this is kind of a new thing, and it's kind of strange.

So I need you to stay with me for a second.

Are you guys still with me?

Are you all here?

Okay, we're here.

Okay.

This is this word.

It's excellence.

Now, this, again, is strange because I'm actually really passionate about excellence.

But here's what I mean by this.

Hey, growing up in the church, because I grew up in the church from the time I was in the fourth grade on.

I remember my parents got invited to church in the fourth grade, and I was really upset because I did not enjoy it or like it at first, but I met Jesus and I thought he was awesome, and I had great friends, and I loved it.

But we just went to this small Baptist church that I have these amazing fond memories of.

I mean, I'll never get over how blessed my life has been because of that place in Missouri.

But excellence was not really a thing that we were striving for.

Okay, so some of you didn't grow up in church, some of you did.

So those of you who did, did anyone ever grow up in a church that did this thing called special music?

Anyone know what I mean when I say special music?

Oh, a couple of you raised your hand and put your head down like this.

Okay.

Let me explain the concept of special music to you.

This is what I grew up with.

Let's say you have a song that you really like, and it's inspirational, and it talks about God, and you come up to me today and say, Justin, I have this song, it's my favorite song.

I'd like to sing it next week on stage in front of everyone.

And I would say, sure, here's a microphone.

And then guess what would happen?

It would be terrible and awful.

And that's what happened every Sunday.

Every Sunday with special music.

So I grew up in this church, and and man, it was so bad.

When American Idol came out and everyone was like in shock, saying, I can't believe these people think they're good singers and they're doing this and it's horrible, and then they sit there and it's like they don't understand.

I wasn't shocked.

I had seen that every Sunday for years.

To me, that was church, right?

Because there was no concept that, hey, this should be, you know, good.

So maybe the people leading worship should be good at music.

Maybe the person talking should be interesting to listen to.

Maybe the people greeting at the door should be, I don't know, friendly.

Maybe the people working in the kids' areas should like children, right?

Anyone ever have like a Sunday school teacher that didn't like kids?

What in the world?

Right?

And so about 25 years ago, this really started to change.

And it's a good thing that it happened.

It's a good thing.

But see, what happens with us as human beings is sometimes a good thing happens and we grab a hold of it and we just have this way of becoming obsessed with it, and it stops being as good as it as it could be.

Maybe it's met its purpose and we need to move on to something else, but we just keep we keep at it.

And so here's what I mean by this.

Okay, sometimes, there's a dot, I don't know what that's for.

Let's just use it.

Now it's a T.

Here's authenticity, and here's excellence.

And sometimes excellence is pursued at the expense of authenticity.

So you're trying so hard to make everything awesome and everything great, and so it's rehearsed and it's planned and it's really slick and it's really, I don't know, it's staged and it's good, and everything is right, everything's there, but the problem is it's not it's not real anymore.

And when excellence is valued above authenticity, what happens is this is that church becomes a production, it becomes a show.

It might be a really good show.

And everyone putting the show on means really well.

They want a good thing to happen, but it becomes a show.

Now, when I say this, there are production elements in church.

We have lights and we have a sound team, and you know, the band practices.

It's not like they just show up and go, oh, oh, kind of just figure it out.

You know, we practice, we want it to be good.

Excellence is important, but not excellence at the expense of authenticity.

Because church should never be a production.

You know why?

Because Jesus is not a product, he's a person.

This isn't a product we're trying to sell.

This can't be a show.

And I look at the church in America and there's some great things happening, and I mean, it's it's awesome.

God is bringing so many people to Him, but I do see this big trend as churches are trying really hard to be so excellent.

Excellence is happening, but it's sacrificing authenticity.

So the reality is it's no more real than the fake stuff people ran away from.

It's just really well marketed and it's really slick.

Megan, my wife, put it this way sometimes we think in church that we're trying to impress people to Jesus.

Just be like, wow, look at how awesome that was, and look at how cool that was.

And hey, we want to do cool things, we want to go all out, we want to have fun.

There's nothing wrong with that, but we're not gonna impress people to Jesus, we're gonna love people to Jesus.

And so this is never going to be a show.

That's very important.

If it ever feels that way, I just want you to understand this.

If it ever feels that way, if you ever come here on a Sunday and you feel like, man, that was good, it just was kind of fake.

You need to have a conversation with me right away because something has gone terribly wrong.

We're meant to be authentic, we're meant to be genuine.

And here's where that all becomes really special.

When you put those four things together, when we start really behaving authentically, this is how we kind of define authenticity.

You behave like you believe.

That's what it means to be authentic, right?

Your behavior matches your beliefs.

So there's a lot of people in the world that aren't doing things right, but they're authentic.

They just believe wrong.

They're behaving like they believe, but their beliefs are a little off, right?

But that's authenticity.

If we would behave like we believed, the world would be a much better place.

And so if we look at that and we say, hey, yes, um, the church should be known by its love.

The church should be known by life and not this rigid religion.

The church should be known for its laser-sharp focus on Jesus.

The church should be known for authenticity.

What would the world be like?

What would America be like if people who didn't know Jesus looked at the church and said, Man, I have never seen that kind of love, I've never seen that much life, I've never seen that much authenticity, and I've never seen such passion for a person like Jesus as I've seen in that place.

If that was the reputation that the church had in America, do you think things would change?

Do you believe that?

I wonder how many people don't know Jesus because they looked at something fake and they looked at something that was about religion and not about life, and they looked at something that was about judgment and not love, and they said, No, thank you.

No, thank you.

That that happens in millions of lives, but what if it didn't?

What if people looked and said, I can't find that kind of authenticity anywhere else?

I can't find that kind of love anywhere else.

I can't find that kind of life and freedom anywhere else.

If that was the reputation of the church, millions upon millions of people would know Jesus that do not right now.

And I believe that needs to happen.

And I believe this church can be a big part of that.

Because see, I think I think things can happen here that will cause the world to take notice.

I think things can happen in this church, and when someone comes to us and says, Oh, how'd you guys grow like you did?

Is it is it because of your what was your marketing plan?

And we'll be like, oh, it was really easy.

We don't have one.

We don't.

I have a marketing degree, and it really bothers me that I get to use that like zilch here.

It just doesn't work here.

We put some stuff on Facebook from time to time.

That's not like a marketing strategy.

That's like, hey, this is it's our microphone.

Come here.

See, this isn't a brand, it's not a product.

This is a family.

We want you to be part of it.

And I believe that if we live out this vision, I believe that two things will happen.

Number one, I believe that thousands upon thousands of people will come to know Jesus and their lives will be changed, and their marriages will be changed, and their families will be changed, and everything will change for the better.

But I also believe that as that happens, this church will become more than just a local church.

This church will become a movement.

A movement that can be like a city on a hill where people can say, hey, look, we don't have to do all this garbage to succeed.

We can just love Jesus and love people and be authentic and be all about life and let the Holy Spirit do the Holy Spirit's job.

We don't have to do it for him.

I want to see that happen, and I believe it will.

We just have to behave like we believe.

This church is a movement, and you're at the the beginning of it, which is really exciting.

I've always wanted to be part of something bigger than myself, and this church is that tenfold.

But how do we get there?

How do we get there?

This needs to grow.

When I say this needs to grow, I mean this movement of churches that are that are about the authenticity and the love and the life of Jesus.

That needs to grow, but I also mean that this needs to grow in the short term.

Because if you have a long-term goal, you're never gonna get there if you don't get to the short-term goal, too.

Like I want to lose 30 pounds this year.

Oh, you guys are awesome.

In the first service I said that, and like five people laughed.

And I was like, what does that mean?

What is that?

What am I supposed to do with that?

But but I want to lose 30 pounds this year.

Now I'm never gonna lose 30 pounds if I don't get to five.

I can't skip five and somehow arrive at 30.

It doesn't work like that.

And so if we want this to be the movement that it's meant to be, and it is meant to be a movement, then we've got to make sure that this in the short term grows.

And here's the great thing about that.

All we have to do, all we have to do to see that happen is this.

We just have to behave like we believe.

That's it.

That's the revelation.

If we just behave like we believe, if our behavior matches our beliefs, this will grow, we will have what we need to continue reaching people, to continue changing lives.

See, if you believe in the vision of this church, if you believe that it's important, if you believe that God's using it, if you believe that it's it's bigger than yourself and it's something worth all the time and the energy and the effort that goes into this place, week in and week out.

If you believe that, we're just asking that your behavior matches it.

Because if your behavior matches it, you're gonna do some things.

You just are.

Number one, you're gonna you're gonna invite people.

You're gonna see people that need their lives to change, you're gonna love them enough to say, Hey, would you come with me?

You're just gonna do that.

Because your behavior is matching your beliefs.

You're gonna do some other things.

You're gonna serve.

You're gonna use your talents and your gifts, and you're gonna say, hey, I'll use what I have to make this better.

Because you guys are the church.

The church is people, it's not a building, you're the church.

You have the gifts, the talents, the abilities, the expertise that's needed for this place to have all it needs.

And you're also gonna do something called give.

Now, this is everyone's favorite thing to talk about in church, right?

Giving.

Woo! Um we don't we don't focus a whole lot on the finances here.

And that's in large part because churches talk about it way too much.

It's just the truth.

I talk about it every single week in the sense that I thank you for giving and I direct people how to give, you know.

So there's four columns at the back of the room.

You guys know this spiel.

You could also give online at hisangechurch.com.

We have a mobile app, there's a lot of different ways to give, great.

Um funny, I I got a I got a comment one time.

Sometimes people leave comments.

If you're a comment lever, you're awesome.

All feedback is vital and valuable.

Thank you very much.

Um sometimes it's a little rude, but it's okay.

It's all vital.

There's two types of feedback we get.

There's the feedback where someone comes to us and says, Hey, I noticed this.

I think that should change.

And I love that because there's a face and we can have a conversation, we can talk.

And then there's the feedback that's like, I wrote this on a prayer request card, which is a little offensive, but and I left it in the prayer box, and we would go, Oh, it's a prayer.

Oh no, it's an insult.

Okay.

Um, but we listen to all feedback.

I got one a couple of months ago, and it said, Justin talks way, way, way, way, way too long.

And I was slightly hurt, but I did look back at the last few weeks and I was running up there on the time.

So y'all know sometimes I can go, and I know I'm going now, but I told you in advance, I'm sorry, we're gonna talk longer.

Okay?

And you didn't leave.

So, and then they put and stop talking about giving every week.

We get it.

But here's the thing they wrote that on a prayer request card and they put that in a giving envelope.

So I don't think they got it at all.

I kind of feel like that was the opposite of getting it.

You know, there's a dollar in there, okay, maybe, but I don't know.

So, so I'll always stand here and thank you.

Those of you who give financially, you're doing something very few people do.

I'm gonna thank you for that because that's unusual behavior.

Very few people on earth ever give to anything bigger than themselves.

So thank you.

I'll thank you every single week.

Giving isn't very fun to talk about in the church, though, because it just gets talked about wrong.

There's all this pressure, there's all this manipulation, there's all these promises that, oh, if you give, God's gonna give you ten times more.

And sometimes God does that because he can do what he wants, right?

And he loves to bless people who give.

He makes that very clear in scripture, but sometimes the church uses that and says, oh, if you'll give this much, you know, you'll get this much.

And if those guys believe that, they wouldn't, they would just give all their money every week.

Right?

If it's that surefire of a way to get rich.

So we don't talk about it that way, but I do want to talk about it here for just a minute.

I want to explain this because it's actually very important.

See, here's the thing giving is is hard.

It's been hard for us as a church, and that really makes sense.

It's been kind of especially hard here at his hands, and it makes sense because Stephen Susan personally bankrolled this church for so long.

And so we kind of got to be the kids that live with free rent way longer than they should live with free rent.

You know?

You ever have kids that have gotten older and they call you one day and they go, Mom, Dad, my car just broke down and it cost five hundred dollars.

And you go, Yeah.

I know, right?

Like, yeah.

You remember when your car broke down when you're 17?

Guess how much it costs?

And they have this moment of sticker shock where they realize how much things cost for the first time and they they freak out for a little bit.

See, we got to sort of live in that bubble a little longer than most churches because we had two people that were so generous and so able to give so much more than we could give that we sort of we sort of lived there for a while.

And so we had two people giving a ton, and we had the rest of us, you know, many of us chipping in, absolutely, many of us giving committed, you know, in a great way, but but overall our giving was really low.

It was so the average church, our size and our demographic, we don't really, we don't have a target audience, we're just we're here, we're in Woodstock, so draw a circle, that's our audience.

But the average church kind of in our in our place, in our demographic, should average about$25 per person per Sunday.

We were averaging about 10 three or four years ago.

So a little below average.

And that was a big deal.

So we we could have gone at that a number of different ways.

Number one, we could have said, hey, you know this whole not passing a plate or a bucket thing, it's a nice idea, right?

But apparently this isn't working.

Maybe we need to put people on the spot a little bit more.

And we could have gone and bought buckets, they're not expensive.

I mean, I understand the investment.

One bucket, fill it up, cost of the bucket covered in one Sunday, right?

But we didn't do that, you know why?

Because we behave like we believe.

And we don't believe in that.

We don't believe in pressuring you to give.

I don't believe in putting you on the spot.

I never want one person here to be like, well, I guess I should give because that guy gave next to me, and these people are probably gonna give, and I don't want to be the one that doesn't give.

I don't ever want you to feel that way.

That's not right.

We could have done this big giving campaign.

We could have had all this marketing and this big spiel, but we didn't do that.

You know why?

Because we don't believe in that.

And we behave like we believe.

So I just went to you guys, this was uh June of 2014, and I said, hey, some things need to change.

And I need you to respond.

And I trust God to speak to you, and I trust you to respond.

And many of you did, and because you did, a lot changed.

And we're in a much better place now, but but things really still need to grow.

We've made a lot of strides, we really have, but but it needs to continue.

Because, well, first of all, we've grown a lot, right?

And that's really exciting.

But as we grow, there's more needs.

That's just the way it is.

Megan and I are about to have our third child, and more kids does not equal less money.

Well, it equals less money in your bank account, but not less money that you need to spend, right?

And so we've grown so much, and those, those there's needs for that.

For example, last year we had grown so much in our kids' area that we had to create a new area for fourth and fifth graders.

We had to build out a whole new space for them.

And it's awesome.

It's the tree house.

You should go check it out if you haven't seen it.

Actually, don't, because when I tell people to do that, they get really freaked out.

Who are all these people?

Um, schedule time.

I don't know.

So it's an awesome space, but but we had to build that out because we grew.

That was a growth problem, but a good problem to have.

Because we've grown so much this year, we're gonna have to renovate our first our K through third grade area.

It needs a big renovation.

Because right now, in that room, there's probably about 110 K through third graders in one room.

And they're doing an amazing creative job at holding all their attention.

But have you ever tried to hold the attention of a hundred K through third graders?

For you know, they're killing me right now if I go long.

At one time, that's hard.

So we want to do this this build out in there where we can kind of separate them and move them around and teach one group at a time while.

The other groups doing something else and have it be what it needs to be because those kids deserve the best.

We have financial needs here.

We need a new roof.

We really need a new roof.

We've needed one for about three years.

But it costs$300,000.

I know, right?

See, that's the moment that I was talking about.

Everyone's like, what?

This is our this is our being 19 and having a car breakdown moment.

What in the world?

And we might go$300,000.

That's impossible.

That's crazy.

There's a lot of people that are part of this church.

And you divide that by the number of people we have, and it's it's not even hard if we would just be willing to give.

But here's the reality.

The way we do giving, it's very simple.

We behave like we believe.

So let me tell you what we believe.

I know this is small, bear with me.

Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart.

That's 2 Corinthians 9 7.

That's what it says.

That's what we believe about giving.

Each of you should decide in your heart how much to give based on what God tells you.

It's between you and God.

So I'm never going to stand here and say, oh, you need to give X percent or you need to give X number of dollars.

That's not my job.

It's not my job to get you to give.

It's my job to make this a place worth giving to.

That's the role I have.

Okay?

So you're never gonna hear us as a church tell you, give X number of dollars, you need to give this percentage, because blah, blah, blah.

We're not gonna do that.

This is between you and God.

But here's what this says.

This is scripture, by the way.

So I believe it because I believe scripture.

I believe this every bit as much as I believe anything else.

It says this.

It says, each of you should give.

Each of you.

But let's just talk about this for a second.

Because here's the reality.

And this is gonna be a little challenging, and I'm gonna make some assumptions, so forgive me in advance if I make some poor assumptions, but I do want to talk about this.

I think it's important.

Are you open to talking about this?

Okay.

Eight people.

This is awesome.

All right, here we go.

Each of you should give.

Now, the reality is simply this.

Some of us don't.

And some of us do.

Because each of us don't.

That's just the truth.

In fact, the vast majority of us don't.

Now, those of you who don't, it's probably for one or two reasons.

Number one, you are a selfish jerk.

I'm gonna X that out.

Because uh because I don't think that's the truth.

I don't think anyone's coming here being like, I'm not giving a dime, and on my way out, I'm taking extra free coffee with me.

Ha ha ha ha.

Like I don't think that's happening.

And if it is, stop it.

Just stop.

No, that's that's not how it is.

No one no one here is is living that way.

This is this is, and again, this is an assumption, so correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I think most of us who don't give, maybe even all of us who don't give think.

I want to.

I want to be generous, I want to give, but I can't.

Now, that is actually true in a very, very small percentage of people, especially living in this country, especially living in this community.

There are some of us here that because of the circumstances of our lives, we are not in a place to give a dime.

I get that.

In fact, I was talking with a friend of mine that's just had heart surgery and all these other things going on, and he's he can't right now, and that's fine.

In fact, it's those people that we need to help as a church.

That's our job there, not the other way around.

So this is true, but it's true in a very, very minuscule percentage.

The average person that thinks this, because I've thought this, I've been there.

So if you're there, this is not me, this isn't guilt.

That verse actually continues to say that you should never give out of compulsion or because someone's like twisting your arm.

So if you feel like your arm's being twisted, don't give.

But what I want to challenge you with is to really reflect on this and ask yourself if it's true.

Are you living the way you want to live?

Is your behavior matching your beliefs?

Okay, so we might say this: I want to, but I can't afford to.

That's a pretty common thought.

It's a misconception for the most part, but but here's what we're saying when we say that.

I just want you to think about this.

When I say I want to give, but I can't afford to, what I'm actually saying is when I have more, then I'll give.

Right?

Makes sense.

But think about it this way.

I have a son.

Talk about him often, Liam.

I'm about to have two sons.

I actually technically do, one of them's just, you know, contained for about a week or two.

He's gonna come out, it's gonna get crazy.

I love spending time with my son, but I don't have a lot of free time.

I'm a very busy person.

I'm sure all of us are.

I'm busy.

So what if I did this to my son?

If I said, oh man, I don't, I don't have a lot of free time right now.

I don't have much, I don't have nearly as much as I'd like to have because of the season of life that I'm in.

So I'll give more time to my son when I have more time.

I can't afford to give him much time right now because I don't have a lot of time.

So when I have more time, then I'll give it to him.

If that's my mentality, will that ever happen?

No.

And he'll turn 18 years old and he'll move out and he'll be bitter because dad never gave him time.

And the whole time I'll be like, no, son, I wanted to.

I just couldn't.

I couldn't afford it, I didn't have much.

Life does not organize itself around what's important to you.

You have to organize your life around what's important to you.

That's the way it works.

God does not say, oh, if you want to do big things, wait till I give you a lot of big things.

No, he says, if you're faithful with the little things, then I'll give you more.

And there's a lot of people here, a lot of people here who are who are struggling financially.

And I'm just being 100% honest with you, a big part of the reason why is because you don't do it God's way.

And God's way works.

And you've had a hard time trusting that.

It's it's kind of counterintuitive, but I'm not going to do this because it would be manipulation.

But if I said, hey, raise your hand if you started giving and your whole world fell apart financially, and you look back on it and you say, the day I started giving, that's the day that I knew it all went south.

Right?

There might be like one hand, one poor soul, and we'll help you.

But what if what if I said this?

If I said, hey, those of you in here who maybe used to not give, you didn't do it God's way, you started doing it God's way, you started doing things the way God says to do it, and that's when your life started to change and things got better and things increased and advanced, the number of hands would be felt.

Because God's way works.

You can afford it.

Maybe you say this, you say, I want to, but I can't, oh man, I can't give enough for it to count.

Well, see, that's not true.

Because, like I said, this roof that we need to replace,$300,000, you divide that by 2,000 adults, it's not much.

It's not.

As a family, we can do a lot.

You know, we we raised that$11,800 for Lynn, not because one person wrote a check for$10,000, because a lot of people gave a little.

And it added up.

And it changed, it changed her situation right now.

That's what happens when we give what we can.

So you can't afford to give, and you can actually give enough for it to count.

We might say this, I can't trust God with my money, and that's always a strange one to me, but I get it because I struggle with that too.

But I look at my own life and I say, how can I say, God, I trust you with my eternal salvation?

I just don't trust you with my money.

Because it should work the opposite.

It should be like, I trust you with my money, but I have a harder time trusting you with my soul.

I don't understand how I can say I trust you with my soul, but not my money, because one is way more important than the other.

Right?

You can trust God.

God's way works.

Try it out.

If you've never done it, how's it working out for you?

Try it.

We might say this, I can't trust the church with my money.

I get that.

Churches have done some stupid things with money.

My wife and I give 10% here every single, every single month.

10% like it's a bill.

I heard someone tell me one time, well, yeah, that's different, but you work there.

And I'm like, it's there's not like some guy named Smitty in the back with a visor and a cigar divvying out the giving, being like, hey, here's your cut.

You know, it's not how it works at all.

If you know a guy named Smitty, he probably smokes cigars, okay?

It just seems consistent with that.

That's not how it's not how it works here.

My wife and I'll say this.

We trust this church with our money.

We invest 10% of it every single month.

That's 10% that could go to a lot of other things, but we believe in this.

We want our behavior to match that.

You know, as a church, we give 10% of everything that comes in back to the community every single month.

That means if we have a really good month and people are generous, we give 10%.

That means if we have a rough month and giving's not what it needs to be, maybe, and things break around the building, guess what?

We still give 10%.

As a church, I'll say this.

If you have any question ever about our finances, you want to know a thing.

I'll tell you anything you want to know.

I'll tell you dollar amounts.

We got nothing to hide.

I'll tell you whatever you would like to know.

Send me an email, walk up to me and say, hey, explain this to me.

And I'll be like, all right, here's how it is.

We actually brought in a consulting group because I'm 32 and need help.

Does that make sense?

Um with especially with the financial stuff, because we wanted to know where we're at.

And it was awesome because this group said, hey, you know, this is some stuff that I would do differently, and here's this and that.

But they said, but I gotta tell you guys, we go and we see a lot of churches.

And a lot of times we look at the churches and we're like, guys, your spending is way off.

And they said, Yours is not.

It's really, we kind of expected to have to do a lot more work, but they said, You you guys are you're you're putting your money where your mouth is.

You're doing what you're supposed to do.

And so I just tell you this, I trust this church with my money.

And I think you can too.

If you ever have a question, ask me.

So we we say things like, I want to, but I can't.

And I just want to challenge you this morning and have you be open to maybe investigating that yourself and asking yourself, is that really true?

Because here's here's where it really comes home.

I believe that all of us want to live here.

I believe everyone in this room wants to be a generous human being that gives to something bigger than themselves.

I believe we all want to be here.

Now, for those of us that are here, number one, well done, because that is a hard place to be.

That's why very few people do that.

This actually requires some sacrifice, it requires commitment, it requires you to be generous.

Very few people on earth, like I said, ever give to something bigger than themselves.

So you're doing an amazing thing.

But even those of us who do give, there's two categories.

There's those of us who give based on our circumstances.

I did not budget well for space.

Hold on.

So this line gets bigger.

Um, and there's those of us who give based on commitment.

Now, one of these, oh, that went off the screen, didn't it?

Well, you know.

We'll just say commit, because that's how words work.

Um, if you give based on your circumstances, that means you give out of convenience.

And hey, again, that's awesome.

You're giving, you're doing something very few people do.

If you give out of commitment, that means you're not giving based on convenience, you're giving based on conviction.

And I just want to ask all of you who give, what do you want to be known by?

What do you want to be defined by?

Do you want to be defined by your circumstances?

Or do you want to be defined by your convictions?

Because, see, I don't want my kids to grow up one day and be like, let me tell you about dad.

When life was going well, when he had a good day at work, he was such a joy to be around.

He was so fun.

No, I want them to say, hey, rain or shine, no matter what.

Dad was solid.

Because he lived out of conviction.

You know, if you were a farmer, let's say that, right?

Yeah.

This is that awkward, I don't know when to clap or not thing.

It's okay.

Just go with the spirit.

Um if I was a farmer, which I've never done, but I can imagine that, if I farmed based on my circumstances, I would die.

I just would.

If I said, hey, when when it's when it's nice weather and I got good sleep and I'm in the mood, I'll go out and work my fields, I would die.

But if I if I farmed based on commitment, conviction, day in, day out, whether it was easy or hard, it's gonna work.

And the simple truth is this pretty much 99% of what actually happens here happens because of this group of people.

It just does.

And if you're living right there, you just need to know that, that you're you're getting it done.

So I said a few years ago things needed to change for us giving-wise, and they still need to keep changing.

Check this out.

This is amazing.

So, four years ago, 10% of the people at this church were doing this.

10%.

And then we had that conversation, right?

That conversation, and we said, hey, things need to change, and that 10%, watch this, became 14%.

Boom! It's a very effective message.

And see, you look at that and you're like, oh, oh, 4% growth.

It was actually a lot more overall giving growth because a lot more people started doing this, which is really valuable, so thank you.

But this 4%, here's what you need to understand.

That 4% changed everything.

Changed everything.

That 4% growth made it possible for us to hire three new staff members and afford to do that, which allowed us to do some things we'd never been able to do before.

We had never had a person whose sole focus was adult growth in this church.

And so foundations and home groups, all that, that's all the result of that 4%, of us being able to do that.

Because four years ago, we had on average about 90 adults involved in something other than Sunday mornings, coming to some type of class or group or something like that.

Today, if you combine home groups with the foundations class, it's like 600 adults.

All because of that 4% growth.

All because we could afford to put someone there.

Last year we were able to start paying more toward paying off this building, which we need to get paid off, and we're going to get it paid off.

Absolutely.

We started being able to pay$16,000 more a month on our building, every single month last year, because of that 4%.

Because that's how much that changes things.

So, what happens this year if that 14% becomes 20%?

That's just gonna require a lot of us saying, hey, I'll behave like I believe.

If that becomes 20%, things like a new roof and things like you know, renovating our kids' spaces, that's that's done.

That's handled.

We don't have to do some big push.

It's just it's gonna be taken care of, it's gonna be there.

We just need you to live this way.

Someone asked me, what happens if this becomes like 70%?

Oh man, let me tell you, here's what happens.

When that becomes 70%, that's when the church gets to tell the government that the government can stop doing the church's job.

That's when the church can say, hey, don't worry about the school, we've got that.

Seriously.

That's when the church can say, hey, de facts, keep your money because we've got the kids.

We've got them covered.

Because you gotta realize that a lot of what the government does in our community are things that the church is actually supposed to do, and we're better at it when we have the ability to.

We are.

But what oftentimes keeps the church from doing that is people not doing this.

And so I'm asking you today, if you're part of his hands, if you're one of the people that said, Hey, I'm here.

I'm here in that sense of the word, right?

We looked at this word to begin, this word right here.

If your heart is to say, I'm here, all I'm asking for you today is to be here.

Just be here.

And you understand what I mean when I say that.

Be here.

Let your behavior match your beliefs.

Be part of something so much bigger than yourself.

Be part of lives changing left and right, be part of marriages healing, be part of families coming together, be part of children knowing Jesus, be part of adults knowing Jesus, be part of this community changing and shifting as more and more people know Jesus and live their life for him.

Be part of the love and the freedom and the authenticity and the life of this place spreading beyond just these walls and affecting churches all over the place.

Be part of the movement.

The only way to be part of it is to be part of it.

Be here.

Let your behavior match your beliefs.

This is an important year for us.

As we wrap up, the worship team is gonna come back up.

This is a very important year.

This is this is a year that I really believe as a church, we need we need to own it.

More than we ever have before.

And there's not gonna be pressure, and there's not gonna be arm twisting, and there's never gonna be a giant thermometer.

Unless we really need to measure the temperature.

I don't know.

Um but there is the reality that it's on us.

And that's God's design.

God could do it himself, he doesn't need us, but he chooses to use us.

And I I don't know about you, but I look forward to the day that I get to stand in front of God and I get to experience the joy of hearing him say, look, you just you did what I asked you to do.

You were authentic, you behaved like you said you believed.

I look forward to that day, and I think you do too.

And so I'm gonna I'm gonna challenge you all year long in a really loving way, because I love you guys to be here, to be part of it, to behave like you believe and to live the life I believe you want to live.

I believe you want to live that life of commitment, that life of conviction.

I believe you can.

So start.

Does that sound good?

All right, let's pray.

God, I want to thank you so much for this church.

Lord, thank you for every single person that's here.

God, I want to thank you in advance for the people that I know are gonna step up.

I believe that we're gonna see that 14% grow.

And, you know, God, just in my my flesh, I'd like to say, oh, maybe it'll become 20%.

I don't know what it's gonna be, only you know that.

There's part of me that wants to hedge and wants to set like a goal that's very attainable, but uh, but that's not how you are.

And so Lord, I just ask that you would blow our expectations out of the water.

Our heart is for this community.

We're not trying to puff ourselves up, we're not trying to be some some big deal.

You're the big deal.

It's you.

We just want to we want to do what we can do to grow your kingdom.

So, Lord, we trust you.

We love you.

We're here.

We're a group of people who are saying to you right now, here I am.

And we love you.

Amen.