I have a fear of heights. Uh, I don't, I'm not afraid of being like up high. I have a, uh, let me clarify, I have a, I have a fear of open heights. Meaning, uh, anything where you're not like secured in. Like I love roller coasters, but I hate like the line in roller coasters or water, like I love water slides, but I hate the staircase up in water slides, you know, because that's where height comes into play for me, because like those railway, like the railings for tall people is like here. And so like I'm like, Over half my body is over the railing, so like if I slip, like that thing, like, it's not gonna hold, OK, anyway, and so I, I, I've shared this with some of you before. One time I was at the Grand Canyon, and I was trying to be brave and cool, um, with in front of the wife, and it's like, I'm not scared, and so I went to the edge like this. And I'm just looking around and the bar was like right here at like my thigh, um, felt real safe. And so I was like, yeah, I'm great. And so look how brave I am, it's the canyon. And so I'm looking down here, and my very loving, sweet, tender wife. Comes up and grabs my waist, it goes, and I scream like a 4 year old girl that echoed for like 30 seconds down the canyon. And then I sprinted back, shoved an old lady down, and then it was like hugging a tree, and it was not the best moment for me, but um, OK, why do I say this? Well, this week on Netflix, there was a climber named Alex Honnold, who free climbed the Taiwan um 101 skyscraper. 101 floors, no harness, no ropes, just a little bit of chalk, free climbed and they live streamed it. I was like, this could go bad, right? Um, but people were along the way, so it's 1,671 ft tall is the tower, and he climbed it in 90 minutes. So not only did he climb it, he climbed it fast and like people are on the floor, it's like saying hello to him as he goes. Like, can you imagine being at your workplace, like on floor like 82, and like, here comes a man just kind of just like, oh hello, and then just going up the, up the building. And so, so as someone who's afraid of heights, I was like, oh, but it's pretty amazing that someone's able to do that, right? What's also incredible is that over the course of 90 minutes, his viewpoint completely changed, right? Here's what I want to do. Uh, we're all safe and on the ground. Um, but for the next 30 minutes, I want to raise up our spiritual vision and take us a little bit higher up and give us a, a, like a picture of what could be for our church. And so it's a little different than a typical sermon. Uh, we're gonna jump into a book study, uh, next week, we're gonna start work back working through a verse by verse through a book of the Bible, leading us up to Easter, so super excited for that, come back. But for today, what we wanna do is pause. We wanna go up a little higher. We wanna Look back and see all that God did in 2025, and then we just wanna talk about where's the direction that God's taking our church in 2026. And so here's here's why we pick a vision, because our vision as a church is to help every man, woman and child experience Jesus, right? And we do that through planning the gospel, growing in community and multiplying through service. So that vision, that picture of experiencing Jesus doesn't change. But every year we pick a theme. So, and the reason we do that is because when we determine a theme each year, it describes the direction of the church. In other words, how do we help people experience Jesus? Because the season of life we're in is different than we were a couple of years ago, and it's different where we're gonna be a couple of years from now. So where are we right now in 2026? Still feels weird to say. Anybody else feel weird to say that? OK. And so then, um, and what does that look like? What direction are we moving forward here into the new year? So first, let's look back. On the other side of COVID, that's when we started doing this, picking a year, a word for the year. We had the word empower. And we ended that year announcing that we were gonna plant a church. And that church uh was led, we brought in a resident here, a church planting resident. His name was Craig Klauka, and, and then the following year ultimately launched what was called Grafted Church, and, and they're now growing. And so I, what I love is that in the history of our church, before we ever built a building, uh, we planted a church, and that actually connects with our heart because that's why we're called Mission Grove. Is that we want to be a church that plants churches, that plants churches. That's the heartbeat and DNA here, OK? And so that was a great way to start. Then in 2022, our word was more, and we said that we wanted more God, more love, more disciples, and that ended, that season ended with the announcement of the building, right? And that God can do a measuring more than anything we could ask, think, or imagine. And here we were, a young church that survived the pandemic and God opened the opportunity to move into a building. So then in 2023, our word was new, and we talked about we want to walk in the newness of life. And that year ended with us grand opening in that building. And with that, we actually had the most baptisms ever. And so there in 20203, I think we had more baptisms in the previous four years combined, which was awesome. Then in 2024, our word was stronger, and we wanted to strengthen the staff and, and launch new ministries. And so we brought people on like Brandon, we brought people on like Pastor Kurt, and we're able to launch uh these incredible ministries like Next Steps and membership and uh marriage class, parenting class, and a lot of awesome stuff. And then last year, our word was focused, where we really leaned into our vision, mission, and, and ultimately led to us seeing the biggest growth year that we've ever seen, and you're gonna see what I mean here in a few minutes. But uh really ended there with launching a third service. And so God's really been on the move. And so before we jump into what this year's theme's gonna be, I wanna take just a few minutes and share some of the numbers to share these stories with you of all that God did in 2025. Can we do that? Cool, I'm glad you said yes. If you said no, I didn't know where to go from there. OK, but you, enough of you said yes, and so we're gonna do it. Hey, let's celebrate what God did in 2025. Uh, think about it in those three categories, right? It's always plant, grow, multiply for us. And so in the plant the gospel category, what we saw is average weekend attendance was 399 people, uh, every single week, spread out over those, uh, entire year. On Easter, we saw 826 people. On Christmas, we had 882. Here's one we can clap for. We saw 163 salvations this year, 19 baptisms. Which is awesome. We're also growing in our online presence as well, so thank you guys for tuning in, or accidentally finding us and, and just not tuning away. Uh, but we actually had over 40,000 views this year, almost 2000 subscribers, and here's how I know God's on the move within our ministries. The two top viewed videos on our channel this year were what is the gospel and what is the disciple, with over 12,000 views on those two videos alone. Isn't that cool? Yeah. Let's take a look at our next gen ministries here within kids. Uh, our vacation Bible school this last summer had 104 kids. Over the course of the year, we, we, uh, ministered to 161 new kids. And if you take all the kids combined, uh, we had 310 kids in Grove Kids Ministry. Isn't that awesome? And, and then within students, uh, we took it deeper there too. Now we're running about 40 on a weekly basis, which is awesome. And then this summer we went to our first summer camp on the other side of the pandemic here, so we saw 32 people go to that, and our weekend retreat here was 48 people, and we just got back last night from the Phoenix Youth Conference. So we're seeing this momentum within the next generation, and we're seeing that our kids and our teens really are the church of today. Now let's talk a little bit about growing. In community that we said that we we launched our next step classes again. Sign up at the next round is coming this next Sunday, but we had 61 people take their next step of faith in one of those classes, and then, and growing in community, we had 6 different Bible studies, 3 different equipping classes, 6 growth groups, and in total, we had 304 unique or different people involved themselves in one of those ministries this year. Isn't that awesome? So 304 unique people, so the names attached with all of the individuals here within those 15 different community environments. And so we really genuinely believe that to grow spiritually, you have to be involved in more than just a Sunday morning gathering. We love the gathering, it's important, it's valuable. But if you're only coming to this, I'm, I just wanna tell you, you're missing out. You have 304 people, and if, if somebody jumps in today, we'll make it 305, OK? That one. Help you grow because the best way to grow spiritually is to also connect relationally. And so we're doing that as a church. OK, now, and multiply in service, that this year we had 285 different opportunities of serving that were filled, and that was filled by 181 people. That was awesome. So thank you so much for serving. Uh, and then financially or through service projects, we supported 11 organizations this last year, and I'm getting older and that text is small, so I'm going to read it from here. Um, from the screen is that Cave Creek Unified School District, Converge Southwest, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, uh, Found Future, Harvest Compassion Center, Rescue Not Arrested, the. Initiative, which is our global partner in church planting, and we shared two weeks ago that we just ended a four-year campaign where we partnered with 81 different individuals, churches and organizations in Arizona, and raised $1.6 million to plant over 4000 churches in India and Bangladesh. Isn't that awesome? That's the Timothy Initiative. We partner also with Thrive AZ Foster Care Ministry, our neighbors next door at Tutor Time. Vision Arizona is our church planting efforts here and then the YMC um Desert Foothills, or YMCA Desert Foothills here in the community. And then we are involved in a lot of church planting efforts around the valley and beyond. So let me just highlight two of those. So I mentioned that Grafted Church, uh, they moved to a new location here on the west side of the valley, and this year alone, they actually baptized 31 people and launched 9 community groups. Which is super fun. And then if you were here, uh, we had my friend Fernando, uh, Pastor Fernando come and speak here a couple of times and we've been praying for social church. Uh, Social Church is launching today out in Buckeye, so Social Church is launching today. So, uh, these Grove of churches is growing, and we're super excited for that. So if you can tell, I'm excited, God is moving, and I really believe the best is yet to come. And so what is the year for 2026? Well, over the last couple of months, so like November, December here, spent time praying, and then began the first three weeks of January with kind of mod of a modified prayer and fasting personally, and then, uh, and, and really felt God leading us in a certain direction that then uh brought that to our, our staff, and we spent a couple of days praying over, processing, planning out the year. And so where we feel God is leading. It's not just more and more, more, more, more, but rather, we want to holistically see people's lives changed for Jesus, right? And so the word that God placed on my heart, that placed on our team's heart is this, that the word for 2026 is going to be transformed. It's gonna be transformed. OK, and the reason for that is because transformed people. Changed the world. Transform people, change the world, and it has to come from the inside out. I'm pulling this word directly from Romans chapter 12 verse 2. To set us up here, Romans chapter 1 through 11 talks all about the goodness and mercies of God, as well as the sinfulness of man. And so over and over and over again, we see his goodness, and you get to chapter 12, and in verse one, he says, in view of God's mercy. Offer your body as a living sacrifice. Well, that's kind of a confusing thing. So what does that look like? Well, then it explains it here and takes it a step further and makes it really practical in verse two, which is the premise for our message today. And it says, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. So I wanna leave this verse up here for a minute because I want you to notice a few things. First, We do not want to be conformed. If you look at the tense there, right? It, it is, we are on the passive end of receiving that. In other words, the word um conform comes from the Greek root word schema, which means from an outward form, pattern or mold, that the world is constantly trying to pressure us to look like itself. Right. If you, if, um, if you were over this last Christmas season making Christmas cookies, right? You, you take those little forms and you start Cutting out those things in the same way, the world wants you to be a cookie cutter version of itself. Right? And so it's this pressure to look, feel, think, act, purchase things and follow, right? We live constantly with this pressure. To live out, especially here on the edge of Phoenix, Scottsdale, Cave Creek, Carefree, right? We never change out of school, do we? Like the cliques still exist, the pressure still exists. They're still the cool kids. Apparently as adults, they're named the Joneses because we're always trying to keep up with them. And that we think we're trying to fit in and and and and be approved of and, and followed by and, and, and liked online and and get this affirmation all from the outside. Because the world's gonna give you this message that if you look like us on the outside, then you're gonna feel good on the inside. But I think in your gut and in your soul, you know that's not true, right? So what do we do with that? Well, if we're not to be conformed, this is we are to be transformed. Well, that's also an active present. This this idea of ongoingness that it's active, but it's also passive because we are not just transforming, that we are being transformed. Well, who's transforming us? God. And it's the direct opposite message from the world, cause the world will say, er here from a distance that we're gonna form you into what we want. And when you look like us, think like us, feel like us, dress like us, then you will be OK and improved and loved. But rather, God now is transforming us. It's that root word where we get our word metamorphosis, right? So think of school, think about the caterpillar, then cocoon into the butterfly, right? You're being transformed or shaped from the inside out. That it's God who changes you at the core, at the soul level, that from the inside you wrestle with your sin, your doubts, your struggles, those things that you are no longer identified by what somebody else says you are, but who God says you are, and He created you in His image. And in that separation, because of our sin, he comes and takes that payment and that penalty and comes in and says, I'm gonna transform you. Well, how do we do that? Well, we see that transformation because it starts with our mindset. Right. And as we study his life, his words, his purpose, his person. That starts to change how we think, and when we change how we think, it changes how we live. And as we change how we live, we become what is seen and described as a new creation. And that's what we want for this year. is that we want to see this change. So in church terms, this idea of justification is to be declared righteous or to declared free, which is what Jesus accomplished on the cross. But then there's this other idea that goes adjacent to it, and that's sanctification, where there's this growing process where God matures and works in us and through us to grow us to make us more like Him. And so my heart for this year is that we would be transformed to look more like him in 2026. That we're not just launching new and new things, we might do that, but more importantly, we wanna holistically see our lives be shaped around the practices in the person of Jesus. So we want to go deeper. We want to go Closer and connected to the God who made us, OK? One of the other times that we see this word transformed comes from 2 Corinthians chapter 3. Paul writes these words, he says, now the Lord is Spirit. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom. I wanna pause here because right before this verse, it talks about how in the Old Testament, Moses had the Spirit of God on him. And ultimately, he would be given the old covenant on tablets of stone, the 10 Commandments, the law, right? But Paul would say that the law, that old covenant would lead to death, right? It, it would show us our sin. It was a mirror up against our lives to realize that we need a savior, but he says, but then God gives us the Spirit. The Holy Spirit would come, and the Holy Spirit doesn't dwell on us, but actually dwells inside of us so that now we can be changed or transformed inside out, and that here we have not just rules and regulation, but freedom and joy. And he does this crazy thing where he talks about Moses. Now, if you're talking about Moses, like Moses is the is the goat of prophets, right? If you, if you can send plagues, and you can conquer a Pharaoh and part a sea and lead people out of slavery, that's pretty good. But Paul, right before this verse says, because we have the spirit, we can be bold, unlike Moses over here. Isn't that crazy to think about for a second? That like Moses wished to be, would wish to be us in this scenario. Here's what I mean, OK? Verse 18, and we all. OK, not just the profits or the The religious type or the spiritually mature or like the top leaders. It says we all believers with unveiled face, meaning there is nothing between us and God. When Moses had to meet with God, there was something in between. When Moses tried to come down and talk to the people, he had to wear a veil because they couldn't see cause just in an interaction with God on the top of the mountain, he started to glow, just a little tiny glimpse of his glory, but he says Moses had a veil, his face, Moses was hidden, but not us. All of us unveiled face, beholding the glory of God. See, you become what you behold. Beholding is this idea of an active ongoing worship posture. It's an active holding with reverence and awe. And so I think what the problem is, is that we are, everyone's beholding, we're just beholding the wrong thing. Right? We're beholding the world. And longing after the things of the world, so that at the end of it, what do we look like? The world. But it says here that we are beholding the glory of God and are being actively here, transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. In Colossians 1:15, Jesus is described as the image of the invisible God. And then you go back to the garden when we were created. What were we created in? In his image. And so it says we are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is spirit. In other words, we are being transformed day by day, moment by moment, a little more into his likeness to look a little more like Jesus. Dallas Willer put it this way, he said, discipleship is the process of becoming who Jesus would be if he were you. We are not just being made different, we're being made new. We're not just trying to be like the best version of a caterpillar that you can be. Right? It's something completely different. We're not bad becoming good. We're not sick, becoming better. We're spiritually dead, becoming alive. I think back to when I years ago I baptized a teen named JD and he came out of the water, and I said, JD how do you feel? He says, I feel awake. That's what transformation does. Because that's who God is. But let's clarify what I mean here. What is a disciple? Disciple here is, I take it from Matthew 4:19 in which Jesus called his first disciples. He said, he said to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. Follow me and I'll make you fishers of men. So at its simplest form, a disciple was a follower of Jesus. But what we also see from this verse is really three components of being a disciple. One, you follow Jesus. Two, you fellowship with believers, he he said to them, he said to plural, right? That's why we gather, that's why we want you in community. That's why we want you connected, that we fellowship with believers because we need each other. We're called the body, right? Not the the pinkies or the liver or the toe, like, we are the body, we need each other. But then lastly, we are called for mission. And so we fish for people. Like we take this news and we share it with the world around us. So what is a disciple? A disciple is somebody who follows Jesus, fellowships with believers and fishes for people. OK. What we wanna do in this process of transformation is that we're really called to go deeper, and the only way to go deeper, if I'm just being honest with you here, is to get real and to add systems into your life. Like we could almost say the theme for this year is systems, but that's not very sexy. Just being like, hey, my goal, my word for 26 is systems. There's like some people in accounting, like, just, this is my time. But isn't it true? You need systems in place to grow and scale. James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, says you don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. And so yes, we have a lot more people than we had before, and so what we wanna do is create the systems across the board to strengthen that so that we're building systems that where transformation can happen. Right? So everything from financial reporting, right? Like we've, everything's above board, we've been good, but now the size and scope and scale, we want to increase the transparency, right? So not just on the leadership level, but church-wide, you're gonna see where the money's going, right? Well, you gotta create those systems that not just reporting for taxes and whatnot, but actually within the church, so you can see with that. That's a, that's a system we're gonna improve, right? We've created next steps in memberships, but now we're gonna add the layers to the memberships. OK, here's what this means. Here's what this impacts. This is what it looks like. Here's how you become one. Here's what you do next, right? Those are systems. Within our ministries, what is a volunteer onboarding and coming in? What are your clear next steps? Not just a volunteer in a ministry, but how you grow in your faith and how do you become a leader, right? Things like leadership pipelines and, and going through, and so we're gonna put all these systems in place. Why? Because we wanna go deeper together. To see transformation. So let me start by throwing something out, and there's gonna be a lot behind this, but you don't need to take it all in. Just, I want you to get how intentional I wanna get and how detailed we wanna get over the course of this next year, OK? This is what we call, we're launching here today. This is the discipleship framework. OK, you're gonna see this throughout the year, but this is what this looks like is that there are stages to growth. And this makes sense intuitively, but we wanna talk about that spiritually as well. So the first stage of spiritual growth is what we're gonna call seeds, right? It's a seeker. Some of you are in this category, right? You're curious and you came in, right? You're not quite sure what we're doing, OK? Jesus himself in John 1:39 says, come and see, right? He welcomes them in. He's always welcoming the skeptic and the sinners along with the saints, right? So come and see. Well, the goal of the, of the seed states, which again in Mark 4, the parable of the sower, right? What is the sow, what is he sowing? The word, right? And, and so what we're trying to do is getting people in the various environments and relationships to engage with the gospel. With the end goal to believe in Jesus. John 3:16. For God's to love the world, that gave His only Son, so that what we might believe. John 20:31. These things have been written down that you may believe. Right? We want to see seekers come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior. Right? Well, once you have the seed, then you have to have the soil in your heart, then you have to go to the next stage, which is putting roots in your life. Right? Which is the follower. This is where Jesus says, come follow me. It's one thing to say you believe, it's another thing to actually obey what he tells you to do, right? That's what it means to be a Christian. Yes, it's belief, but the belief leads you to obedience, right? And so you have the follower of Jesus, where he says, come and follow me. He says in Colossians 2:6-7, right? As you received him, so walk in him, rooted and built up, right? Acts 2, so they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, uh, the great commission, right? Bapti make disciples, baptizing them in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. What's the second part? Teaching them to sing songs? Teaching them to acknowledge once a week for 30 minutes, yep. You know, teaching them to obey, right? So the goal of the seed stage and the seekers is to believe. Then you start to grow that I say, oh, the goal of the follower is actually to obey what Jesus said to do. That you can share your faith as soon as you get saved, you know that? Like, when does, like, how quickly does a candle give off light when it's lit? Immediately Sometimes we think as Christians, we gotta wait to we're like, oh well, someday I'm gonna do this and be mature. No, or right out of the gate, you can obey. Right? And you can lead people. OK, then the next stage here is that you go then to fruit. Once you get the roots, you start to grow up, right? John 15:5, right? Abide in me, and you will bear fruit. It's also what we call the worker, right? What's the purpose of the church? Ephesians 4, equip the saints for the work of the ministry. So we wanna, so in the seeker stage, we're engaging with the gospel. In the root stage, we are then establishing the biblical foundations. In the fruit stage, we are equipping people for life and ministry. Right? And so we're teaching people not just on your own power, we are training you ultimately actually to abide. So you follow Jesus that as you are connected and grow in your connection to God, you start producing, as it says in Galatians 5, the fruit of the Spirit. Right? Are you starting to look a little more like Jesus, right? Taking your faith a little more serious, uh, your obedience is going further and further and you're starting to look a little more like him. Through the Spirit, which then leads to the fourth component here, which is where we see the harvest, right? You see the seed, you see the roots, you see the fruit, that's one nice plant, but at the end of the day, we're called to be disciple makers, right? Who make disciples. Right? And it's beyond us. What does Jesus say about the harvest? He said, the harvest is plentiful, the laborers are few. Right? We want to change that, at least in mission growth. Right? That we wanna make disciple makers, that ultimately we want to then empower people to make those. So we're engaging with the gospel, we're establishing biblical foundations, we're equipping people for life and ministry, and then we're empowering the everyday person to make disciples who makes disciples. It's then when we're gonna see the harvest of God and we're gonna see revival, and we're gonna see momentum and movement break out. At the end of his Gospel, John says in John 20:21, he says, as the Father sent me, so I am sending you. You're gonna see this come back into play and we're gonna develop this a lot further, but we want you just to continue to take steps. So think about this. How do you go from seeds to roots? It's actually intermission. You gotta plant the gospel. Right A seed is nothing. Right? Until it's planted If not on the baseball field, you'd be surrounded by sunflower plants all everywhere, right? They get chewed up, spit on the ground. Nothing happens unless it's planted. Right? Are you planting the gospel in your life? Are you taking the seed of his word and planted it into your life with your belief in him? Well, then, how do you go from roots to fruit? We think you need people. That's why we want to grow in community. Right? That's why we have Bible studies and equipping classes and growth groups and ministries. Why? Because when you connect relationally, You can hold each other accountable, and grow, and share and connect, and study together, asking questions and praying for, and ministering to, and as you do that collectively, we're gonna start to see fruit in your life, transformation happening. Right? And then how do you go from fruit to harvest? Well, the last thing here then is that you multiply through service. It becomes less about you, and more about reaching more of the people around you, empowering them. To make disciples. That is God's plan A. He said, you will be my witnesses, Jerusalem, Judea, Samira to the ends of the earth. So the reason we wanna transform is because we wanna go deeper this year and be more intentional with the systems across the board. So because I want your life to look a little more like Jesus than it does today. Why? Because transformed people change the world. And what that looks like to start. I remembering three things. Number 1, transformation begins with beholding. You're not gonna change by just uh try harder. No, behold the goodness and the glory of God and allow him to transform you from the inside out. 2, transformation then leads to obedience. He doesn't come into your life to make you feel good. He comes into your life to change it. Is there a step you need to take? Can you think, can you identify what stage you're on in that journey, right? Cause I think God wants to move you. To become a cycle maker. And then 3, transformation leads to multiple and multiplies to others. This is too good to keep to ourselves. It's too good. It's too true. It's too good. The world will say, all the pressure you to look like them. Jesus changes your life from the inside out so that we can now say, no, I don't want you to look like me. I want you to look more like Jesus. This is what it means to be a disciple. This is what we're gonna focus on in 2026. This is what we're gonna see God do, and I'm telling you, this could be the best year of your life. But it only happens through him and for him. Will you pray with me? Dear Heavenly Father, we pray that you would shape us day by day, moment by moment, into your image, beholding your glory, changing us. One day at a time. I pray this year that you would help us transform into a new season, into new people, into followers and disciples, and disciple makers for you, God. We wanna see a harvest this year. But it starts here, it starts now, and it starts with us. We love you. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.