we do have a special guest Pastor craig who just recently planted a church grafted church. Um, and we've been walking alongside him and his wife. They've been doing this and so amazing and great. Um, so if you'll do me a favor and give a warm welcome to pastor Craig as he comes on up, come on up. Pastor craig. Yeah, yeah. Mm hmm, awesome. Thank you Larken, I love the forced applause because now I don't have to, you know, egg one on from you guys. So that works out really well. I'm all about the pity claps. So don't be afraid to clap. It won't hurt my feelings. It will only boost my ego more jim. You can always count on you a cradle. I got big fans out there. Thank you guys so much for allowing me to be up here and we can put it in right at the last minute because if you got up and left we would all see you. So you're stuck now listening to me. Ah man, it's so good to be back. We have been at Sandra Day O'Connor now this will be our sixth sunday and we meet at 3 30 in the afternoon. I think I have some pictures up here for us to see if I can see as well. We have grafted kids which is a ministry that my wife and a few volunteers have been doing, which is awesome. Uh, it's, it goes along with what clark with pastor clark and holly what they've been doing in kids ministry. So we're super grateful to partner with them. They helped kind of walk us along how to do it. And so we're trying to mirror grafted with mission kids and is there any other pictures? Yeah, that's us. So we meet in the library and it's a beautiful library, believe it or not, they have this awesome window that looks out into the mountains right there off of Happy Valley and I-17 and so if you don't like me, you can be very well distracted by the beauty that is going on behind me while I teach. And one of the great outreaches that we just did with the staff there at Sandra Day O'Connor, they have 100 and 65 Employees at this high school. Yes. It's a very big, big high school. Um, it was funny because I was like, Oh, we could just like do lunch for like 30 teachers. And then I was like, how many people do you have? He was like 165. I was like, I cannot afford that. So what we decided to do was we decided to get these fun little, but let's uh, and uh, we wrote handwritten notes to all the staff that was there, just cheering them on because they have made it through the pandemic, just like the church as and lots of other organizations and our respect for teachers have gone up a notch because they're dealing with a lot of stuff. So the encouragement for my, my people was just write something sweet to this staff just to encourage them and then they get a sugar high and they'll know that grafted church is there for them. So that's what we did just a few weeks ago. And so the picture there of the table is kind of where we did all of that stuff. Um, and that's kind of the meeting area. So for those of you who like to see kind of where we're at what it looks like. That's the picture of that. So huge, huge thank you to every family here that has been praying for grafted church. Um, big thank you to those who have supported grafted church with your resources. Time and finances were so grateful that you guys bought in with john's vision on wanting to plant a church and he's planning to church very quickly three years old here Mission Grove and to plant grafted church. Um, it's no easy task. So I just wanted to commend him for that. He's not here. So he'll never know that we are honoring him for that. And one clap. So then I won't tell them that either because I got way more collapse than he did. But no pastor john is one of a kind, I don't know how you guys understand that if you know that, but for him to do something like that in the first three years of a church, It's unheard of, it's unheard of and we're super honored and blessed that he's taken uh me and my wife are family under his wing and we're doing everything we can do to kind of emulate what Mission Grove does here because we love the mission for the community, because that's what our goal is to. It's to be a light to the community there. So we're excited. It's growing. If you drive past there on the west side of 17, Happy Valley, it is changing by the day. And if you ever make it to the 3239, 17, that is our heartbeat right there. There's a big chip plant company that's coming out from Taiwan, that's where we wanna be, is right there. We want to be a church for the new families that are going to be moving there. Um they've sold all that land on the east and west side of the 17 and three or three to developers to housing communities. Uh so pretty soon our little Area of anthem will become one giant big Phoenix. So it's all going to be covered in that land over the next 5 to 10 years. It'll be, it'll be amazing. And it's not just me that needs to be there. We need lots of churches to come there. But God has given us a first step into the right direction. So thank you guys so so much for your thoughts, prayers and joining pastor john on this mission to plant a church so quickly. And that leads us to our message today. The Essential Church. And it makes sense for us to be talking about it because what better place to talk about the Essential Church then at Mission Grove, which I believe is an essential church, right? Yeah. Okay. Three of us. We're we're getting there. We're getting close. Okay. You guys can be a lot more active. All right, let's hear it. Mission Grove is an essential church. Now, here's the problem. We have heard essential way too many times. And now we've really used that word in almost every category out there. So, I understand that when you hear it, you're kind of like, okay, I've heard that forever now, over the last couple of years. But did you know that essential means absolutely necessary or extremely important? So, when you think about that, and you think about the church and the context of that, it is absolutely essential to have a church among a pandemic. It's absolutely essential in the lifetime that I've lived to have a church during Y2K. Anybody, anybody. Y two K. What's fun is I used to be a youth pastor. Never talked about Y two K. Never did okay. Because they didn't know what that was. And I was aging myself here. I feel like I'm welcome. Alright. The church is essential during the Y two gay time. The church was very essential in the eight when the market crashed. I could speak of that personally with my family who, who suffered greatly during that time. Uh, we could think about 9 11 in the church's response to that and how essential the church was during that time and now through a couple of years of a pandemic, we can also see how essential the churches Starting Grafted church. It's been really encouraging because we have a small group that we're meeting with at 3:30 on Sundays and we have about 30, people who come. Um, and we, we get this opportunity to start something from the ground up. We get the opportunity to lay a foundation down and to build a church. Now, the little history nerd in me gets very, very excited about something like this. And hopefully at the end of this conversation, you will also be incredibly encouraged how awesome our God is and how the church has made it through thousands of years of persecutions, pandemics, Droughts, failures, all of that to be where we're at in 2022. It's a total God thing. And I hope that it encourages you as much as it does me. So let's pray and we'll jump into it. God, thank you for this morning. Thank you for this church. Thank you for this facility. Thank you for the people here. The staff. Thank you for the elders. Thank you for the men and women who serve faithfully for those who are behind the scenes from the tech teams to, to the greeters to the setup, thank you so much for how this church functions every week to glorify you to be a light to, to the community, to seek the lost, to care for the homeless to uh, drive down to Mexico to build a house for a family. I got This church is essential on every definition of essential. And so may we be encouraged this morning that what you're doing today has been playing for thousands of years and that it's the best is yet to come. We thank you for your church. And we ask that you bless this message today. Amen. So Colossians 1 16 or 1 18 is uh, is a big verse for me as we're building a church. Um, it's, in my opinion, it's not a manmade institution. It's God's gift to humanity. And what's really essential for me when we're talking about building a church in the North Valley is that we got to make sure we get one thing absolutely right from the get go that it's not craig clark who is going to be building a church to glorify edify, puff him up. It's gonna be a church that honors and glorifies and lifts up the name of jesus in this verse. Even though it's a small verse. And yes, I chopped it out of a big section of great passages there in colossians. This verse is fundamentally uh, key to grafted success is that if christ is the head of the body of the church, the church will be successful. This is a promise that was given to us. This is the formula that works. This is what we're gonna do everything we can do to make sure that we honor and glorify the name of jesus by making sure that his ways are the ways that get chosen. That his direction is the path, we choose that his thoughts and his focus and his direction on the church is right in the heart beat with grafted. And so if we can just picture real quick, a body with a head as you're looking at me on stage, the head does a lot of things wherever the head turns, looks, motions, monitors, whatever the head intellectually thinks reasons uh thinks about breathe, walk, move direct, left, right, straight center. The body reacts to the head so the head doesn't function because the body is is somehow sending signals up to the head. And then the heads doing the head is what starts everything. The heads what starts the motions, the heads which starts the direction the path, the thought process and the guiding. And it makes absolute sense why jesus would stay very quickly that the church, it functions when I am the head and you are the body and paul goes into greater detail about how we function as a body. That we each represent different parts of the body and together as a unit, we are whole, we are functional, we make sense. We are heartbeat to a community, we are a hospital, to the herding to the sick. We are that because the body functions really well when the head is on straight and when jesus is the head, then the body functions based off of the head. And so as jesus is the key, he is the reason he's the head, he's the start, the foundation, everything functions out of that which makes the bodywork and move and act according to the head. So this passage for us is really crucial in understanding that the foundations of our church will never be a man made institution, but it will be everything that jesus desires it to be. And so what does that require? A crazy amount of trust. We left comfortable bility from a full time job, great benefits everything that could have successfully landed me and my wife and our family for years to come, we could have stayed there and been happy. Same story with pastor john, he was in a situation very similar to ours where he could have just stayed and he could have just been happy there. So there's a greater call when we are asked to go do something like this. So what does it take to start a church? It takes a massive leap of faith but it's not a blind leap when we read through God's word and we see how the church is supposed to move and grow and be a light to the community and reach the loss planting churches makes all the scents. And so when we started that path of understanding what it means to plant a church and, and grow, it was really about trying to seek a community, an area that was in desperate need of the Gospel. And so that takes not just a massive leap of faith, but it takes a lot of prayer, it takes a lot of just being quiet, It takes a lot of driving around, I mean, I drive every day to drop my kids off at school, uh, to commute now is kind of a freelancer who just hops around at coffee shops and now does a lot of reading and studying and writing. And so there's a lot of time where it's just me and my thoughts, which is probably never that good of a thing to be, but this season has been really good because God has specifically called us into a location where the gospel is desperately needed in a community that is about to explode. And I pray that God will get us right right time at the right place to serve as a church, with new families coming in, potentially new people from around the world coming to this manufacturing company. So we can save more people for the kingdom. So it takes a leap of faith, not blind faith knowing that God is gonna provide. And then it takes a lot of prayer. So the foundation, if we lay it on christ, If we put christ at the head, then we're already winning. We're already doing uh in my opinion, what what makes sense to to function correctly as a healthy church. When you think about the church, what are some descriptive terms or words that come to mind? There's so many great words that are used throughout the new testament that just that I just love, I love this one. This one's my favorite descriptive term about the church is that she's the bride of christ. Now I love that in a healthy marriage between a husband and a wife and a god honoring marriage. You see how the husband loves the wife unconditionally sacrificial e does everything to meet her, needs to provide to care to protect. And when I think about the broken human that can do that somewhat well, I think about jesus who is perfect in every aspect and how he loves his bride, the church and how he cares for the bride, his church, how he provides how he protects that word. The descriptive word for the church is the bride of christ is my favorite. It's my favorite because it's not a manmade institution. It's not something that you and I have conjured up for thousands of years and have successfully figured out a perfect formula for the church to function and to bring revenue in. It's more than that. And so we see how jesus protects his bride the church. Now we think about the global church. What are some words that kind of come to mind when you think about the church around the world? What are some terms or what are some things that kind of pop into your head? I think of um persecuted, I think of like bold um or down a couple too um sacrificial. Now when you think about the american church, nice to your conscious because I'm not asking you to shout it out. What are some terms that come to mind? I think on the positive side, I think of some words like innovative, I think of mountain movers large fading 11 dying. Okay, it's a little dark. I know a lot of us are thinking that when we think about the american church but there's some positives that come from it as well now what about Mission Grove? Easy, Easy. So Jesus founded and started the church, that's, that's the takeaway, that's the key that I really want us to to grasp right now Jesus started and founded the church. So we're gonna look at a scripture here in Matthew 16 and hopefully this will be an encouragement to you Jesus founded and started the church and we see this When Peter and Jesus had this interaction and it was in Matthew 16 starting at verse 13 now when Jesus came into the district of caesarea philippi, he asked his disciples, who do you say that the son who do people say that the son of man is so yeah, so what's the word on the street? Right, Jesus is asking his disciples because they've, they've they've done some pretty cool stuff. Jesus got his name out there, he's done some great miracles, he's healed people and he's drawn a crowd to himself and now just in the conversations that he has with his disciples, he's asking a very simple question, what's the word? What's, what are people talking about about me? What are people saying that I am and the disciples, you know, as they're getting together and they're conversating and they're talking with Jesus, they're like, well something saying that you're this awesome profit, who's dead and now you're back, some say Elijah, Jeremiah and then I'm sure there's so many other people that they're talking about that Matthew just said and other profits right, that they were just so much was going around so many rumors were spreading so many ideas of what people thought this man to be, was coming around and and you know what's so funny is that we have that same system in our day and age today where we spread rumors and and we, we, we spread different ideas about a television show or what happened to an athlete when they fell or or a big pastor who fell and we were spreading rumors about why or how it happened or all these things and it's just funny that jesus is like, well who are people saying that? I am just to hear what people are talking about around the streets and then it goes from either maybe this like very light casual conversation of of just throwing out names and stuff to a very intimate personal moment where jesus turns to them and says, okay, so so now we got that out of the way. Well who do you say that I am? And I don't know, we don't get the pauses, we don't get the dot dot dots, We don't get the bubbles circulated in the bible. But I'm imagining a moment of just everyone kind of looking around at each other like who, who's going to say something, who's gonna open up their mouth and try and say who you are. This very, very uh powerful statement is given by Simon Peter and this is what he says in verse 16, he says you are the christ, the son of the living god. And jesus responded, he said, blessed are you Simon bar Jonah for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven. So it's a very interesting comment that Peter makes because at this time obviously there was something special about this guy. I mean it's, it's obvious at this moment. You don't see this happening every day on the streets. So there's a unique something about this man, He's kind, he's nice, you can never catch him. He's not lying, he's not cheating stealing, he's performing miracles. He's dining with the prostitutes, the lepers, the the tax collectors, the sinners. So there's a sweet, compassionate guy and I don't know if men would say that back then you're a really nice guy. And thankfully we don't have those comments about if anybody said anything. But Peter gets this special word driven by the holy spirit to pronounce in front of everyone. There you are the christ, the son of the living god. I'll bet you could hear a pin drop in that moment in that room as it was a fun conversations about, oh we thought you were Jonah, we thought you were elijah. And then it was like who do you say I am? And it's just like what? And Simon in, in, in this faith steps up and makes this proclamation, you are the christ, the son of the living god. Now there's an interesting story here with Simon, Peter is that Simon is his original name And back in John one, jesus gives him a new name maybe because Simon was super common back then. And jesus is just about giving cool nicknames to everyone, but he gives him the name Peter and its cafes and an Aramaic, it means rock And so there's a really cool play on words here that we're about to read where Jesus makes this proclamation to Peter, he says this in verse 18, I tell you you are. Peter isn't that interesting, You're peter. But really his name is Simon, his original birth name is Simon. But Jesus makes this proclamation, you are peter. And on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth, shall we loosen in heaven? Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the christ. So verse 18, I see two things about this term, the rock? Yes, it's cool that Jesus gave Simon the nickname Peter, which means rock. But what's also very interesting to me is that rock is a characteristic trait of God. Throughout the old testament. If you were to read of the descriptive names of God, there's 100, there's hundreds of them. And one of them is the rock. Now, when you think about the rock, when you think about rock, what are some things that kind of come to mind when you think about rock? Don't say Dwayne johnson or you should leave right away when you think about rock. What are some things that you think of? I think of? Unstoppable. I think of solid, firm concrete, unchanging unwavering. So I believe that jesus used this rock in this section for two meanings. 1 to represent Peter. Absolute,, absolutely. This was meant for Peter to hear this word on Caiaphas the rock, you will start the church along with the other apostles. And we see this play out in the Book of Acts, we see Simon Peter take a major role in the church movement. We see that, but I also see that this rock meant something greater as well in that what Peter just announced through this special revelation that you are the son, the living are, that you are the son of living. Oh my goodness, let's get that right, You are the christ, the son of the living God. That I think that was one of those statements that have penetrated the church for thousands of years. That upon this rock on this truth that Peter proclaimed jesus to be on that rock. The church has yet to fall apart and the promises scene right there, the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And as the church begins, its foundation was on the rock, the christ, the son of the living God. The church in the early stages, was not defined by the walls within or the denominations that are represented or the worship for those who are on stage, rather, the church was defined by the people. The church was and is a group of people with a common goal of, of glorifying God edifying one another and following the commands of jesus. The church comes together as a body of believers has very little to do with the building or the surroundings. Churches exist around the world underneath tents, in basements and in storefronts, schools and of course in buildings as well, Mission Grove, along with grafted church, we've had we have the greatest opportunity to start a church here in the valley that will reach the lost and deepen the faith of the mature to serve the community and to love those around us. Can we just take two seconds this morning and be humbled by the promise given in Matthew, how true it is and how it continues to remain steadfast. I mean, think about it, we're a church plant in phoenix Arizona, a place that no one knew about for a very, very, very long time That this letter that was written in Matthew and the church movement in acts was written 2000 years ago. And they had no concept that we were ever hear that they had no idea that there was a world across the oceans that they lived on by the mediterranean sea that they thought that the ends of the world, we're just right around their area. Because you couldn't travel very far in that time. Think about how the church over 2000 years has faced monumental persecution worldwide and how in the early stages in the church and Acts in the 1st 100 years of the church movement after jesus died, it was met with some of the most grotesque, horrendous, disgusting persecution. I mean, reading about it in my church history class, you can hardly stomach what these emperors did to this movement. The roman emperor Nero at the time knew how dangerous it was. If you allowed a cult, a culture, a religious movement to stir to gain a population and to go, it could in fact overthrow an empire, some argue that it did. So what did Nero do in the early stages, he did everything he could do to get his hands on anyone who breathed the name of jesus christ and he killed them in the most horrific ways. If the church was a church started by a man made institution, I promise you within that season where there's no stability, there's no church sponsors, there's no denominations to back you up during your persecution. It's just you and a couple of people that the church would have died really quickly. However, if the church was started by a sovereign god who saw that the movement of the church would go global one day to reach more people for the kingdom, then it will get through the worst persecutions, to the biggest of droughts, to the hardest of times in a pandemic, to continue to glorify his name, that is how we can be so excited that we can gather together on Sundays as a church family to rub shoulders with each other to worship, to glorify God, to edify one another and to lean on his word to lean on the church during hard times to find ways in this church to serve it to better it, to grow it to reach the lost. The church was not founded by men, jesus gave the church to humanity. So three takeaways that um I got from this study Number one, God desires to join with us in life's pursuits. God desires to join us to join with us in life's pursuits. Okay now we're gonna take a leap right now, we're gonna go from the new testament. The church starts all the way back to the garden and before the fall, God created Adam and Eve and he had communion with them, fellowship with him, He dined with him. They hung out. There was a relationship that was there in this garden before the fall, before the fall, God gave Adam a command, cultivate intend and take care of this place. And so in our, in our humanity, we are driven with this necessity to work. And the majority of us in here we we work unpleasantly. We find our work environment to not be healthy, not our biggest fan, not our joyous place, but God before the fall. Saw in man the need to tend to work to cultivate, to take care of. And so he gave responsibilities before the fall to tend to cultivate to work and Adam found joy in that he got to name animals. I mean how cool would that be? He got to cultivate, Watch things grow. He got to tend. He got to cut things and prune things and and and watch these trees and and berries, bushes and everything like that to to grow and multiply. And then him and Adam, him and Ive had this great relationship together where they were drawn in together as one and they were called to procreate, to expand, to multiply to grow all of this before the fall. And so God gave responsibility to husband and wife, to men and women before the fall. And I love that God partnered with them during that season of time. Now the fall comes where Adam Me, Adam and Eve totally screw things up. They fall to the deception of satan and the Brokenness is there and God leaves them, destroys the world and creates another one. God shows up in the cool of the day, walking around wondering Adam, where are you? I, for me that moment is very precious. He could have just been like dead. Right, let's try this again. But in the Brokenness of that space, he says, Adam, where are you in Adam's sins in his guilt and his shame. I don't know where we are. I'm naked. Right well, how do you know your naked Adam? So instant guilt and shame covers himself up and then the blame game the woman who gave me, she's the one who did it. How dare she and God right there in the midst of Brokenness proclaims that the gospel will be started today in you eve, There will be a seed that thousands of years later is going to come. And he gives us amazing analogy about crushing the serpents head and getting bit on the heel and how we see that in the triumphal cross and the resurrected christ God partners with man before the fall, he gives him responsibility after the fall. He tells him that the Gospel, the good news is being proclaimed right now and then throughout the old testament history through the promise of a chosen people group called the Israelites. He continues to work with this broken fallen people to glorify, to be a light, to edify the nations around them, to do everything that they can possibly do to proclaim the good name of God. And then we find us in the church, a church that was started by christ given to man to tend it, to cultivate it to take care of it, isn't our God. Amazing that in our broken state, he still gives us the keys to his church, to his plan, to his movement, to globalize the church, to meet people in unknown areas, to talk about christ, to spread the gospel, to encourage the underground church, the church in the tents, the church and the storefronts, the church and the schools, the churches in the churches, to be a light to the community, to reach the loss for christ. That isn't it amazing gift that God has given us the other two I've talked about this whole time. The church is essential. Number three of the church's everything to us. You play a huge part in Mission Grove. God wants you to join this church to help serve this church. You get the greatest opportunity to serve God's church. That is such an honor. So find ways to serve Mission Grove has plenty of opportunities to serve. Maybe God is calling you to fill the gaps to serve in the nursery and the kids ministry and the worship team and the tech team and the greeters. There's countless ways to serve here at Mission Grove. You can play that part and that is amazing. Mission Grove and grafted church. We've been called implanted by God to reach the lost to love God and to love others. So how are you doing that? How are you loving God? How are you loving others? And how are you loving his church? Let's pray God! What an honor it is to stay in here 2022 and proclaim the good news to proclaim that the church isn't dead to proclaim that the church is all you God. Thank you that you are the head of the church and that we submit to you that we as a body. We can't do anything without you, that you direct us, that you guide us, that you lead us. And so may we be that may we be humbled to know that you are in control. Mm hmm. Some of us we've allowed fear to really rule our lives. But perfect love cast out fear. So God may you resignation in the believers hearts and minds today that are so afraid of tomorrow and let them know that you got this that you are in control and that your church, your church will rise. Your your church will shine, Your church will reach the lost, Your church will continue to move, grow, build some of them will fall. Some of them were close. And who knows maybe that's because we became the head and you became the body. We don't really know why things happen. But we trust you that in your sovereign hands that you are in control of all things. So God bless Mission Grove for another season. Bless crafted churches were just a baby taking baby steps. Give us boldness courage to reach the Lost and to be a light that proclaims your glory. Thank you so much for your church and your church family. We love you. Mhm