Have you ever prayed for something and then you actually got it? And then you're all of a sudden you have this moment like, 00 no, what now? Right? Like you really want the promotion. But then you realize, oh, the promotion actually means a lot more work, right? You, you pray for the kids. And now you, you got a lot of less sleep. Right. You want the business to grow. But as the business grows, your business grows. You pray for patience. That's always a tricky one, right? Cause then what does God do? God provides the opportunity to grow in patience, right? Here's the thing, is that sometimes the things you pray for require you to change. And new seasons require us to be new people as well, that we can't be stagnant. That it's, it's not spiritual growth is not just a straight line. There's a lot of ups and downs. But if you want different results in your life, you can't just keep doing the same things over and over again. And sometimes when you are growing, when you're maturing, Like that growth brings with it complexity. And that complexity requires us to change. And it's the changing process that God uses to mature our faith. And so that's true for you. That's true for me. Well we're gonna discuss today too, it's also true for our church. See, for years, we were praying for people to hear the gospel. For years, we were praying for families to find community, for disciples to grow, for lives to be transformed. And, and guess what? It, it's, it's actually happening. Praise God. I mean, over the last 5 years, our church has grown by roughly 200%. So we can clap. In just the last two years alone, we've grown by 52%. Um, they're not sure, like 252 sounds less than 200, so they weren't sure to clap. But it's OK to clap. We've, we've, 50% growth is still pretty good, I think. Um, and we're seeing lives change. Uh, just, I mean, This weekend, largest youth retreat we've had so far. This summer, largest VBS that we've had. We launched a third service this last season, like we're seeing God move. And not even a but, but and. We need to change with it. Cause sometimes I think we pray and we're like, oh, like, or we listen to a sermon. Have you ever listened to a sermon? And then your first thoughts like, oh, that'd be really good for that person. You know, it's like, and God's like, no, no, no, that's for you. Like, oh man, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they need to hear that. Like, why? Because it's really hard to elbow yourself in the side. You know what I mean? Like we, we get those messages or you see something online or you or you read something and you kind of elbow the friend, the spouse, the sibling, right? But it's hard to kind of elbow yourself. But like, the reality is, God will bring change, God will bring growth in your lives, and we have to respond to that. See, this morning's message is entitled, uh, we're just getting started because we are celebrating all that God's done. But we're also trusting for what God's going to do. And so, if you're taking notes, I encourage you to write this down, that healthy growth requires healthy change. Healthy growth requires healthy change. That's true for you. That's true for me. It's also true for our church that you cannot become who God is calling you to become while insisting that everything in your life actually stay exactly the same. What is it that God is growing in your life right now that requires change from you personally? Let's process this together through studying a season when the first church had to do this. If you have your Bibles, go ahead and open up to Acts chapter 6. And to give some context here, Jesus promises the Holy Spirit in Acts chapter 1, the church starts in Acts chapter 2, and it starts to grow, OK? In Acts 1:15, there's about 120 believers. By Acts 2:41, there's 3000 people in the church. By Acts 4:4, there's 5000 men in the church, and the word is growing and the word is spreading. Now, there are some people who lied in the church, OK? And so they had to deal with that in Acts 5, but we come to Acts chapter 6, and we're gonna pick up things here in verse one. Now, in these days, when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose. Don't you love it that in the very first church, immediately after growth, there was church complaining. I love that. So that's not, it's not a thing of American church now that we complain. Like the first church. There was an immediate complaint. OK. What were they complaining about? They had a genuine concern. A complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. So a Hellenist was a Greek kind of Jewish believer, if you will. So you have the Hebrew Jews, like the people that grew up, the Old Testament Jewish people, the Israelites, if you will, the Hebrews, who then hear the gospel and respond to the gospel, and then you have the Gentiles, which is simply not Jewish. And then it's a primarily Greek culture. And so you have these Greek Jewish believers, OK? So that's why we get this idea of Hellenas. And so you have people within the church, you have widows who were not receiving care like they should. Maybe in amount, maybe in quality. We don't know the exact details. We just know some things were being missed. OK. We continue reading here in verse 2. And the 12 summoned the full number of disciples, and they said, it is not right that we should give up preaching the word to serve tables. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the spirit and wisdom whom we will appoint to this duty, but we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word. And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip. And then some names that are hard to pronounce that I'm just gonna let you read. Yeah. These set before the apostles, and they prayed and they laid their hands on them. And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith. OK So, here's what's happening. I mean. The disciples were seeing growth, and they were trying to minister to everybody. But as there was growth, there was change, and so they, they were missing some people. And now, you could read this and it sounds like, OK, all right, just get people to do these other jobs and then we're gonna do what's important. That's actually not what the text says. Because the similar wording for the ministry of preaching of the word is actually a similar phrasing to serving of the tables. And I want you to notice really two things. First, OK, think about who is the best example in the Bible for these two different types of ministries. The preaching of the word prayer and then serving and meeting physical needs. OK, if we're gonna go to somebody who is like the best preacher with the strongest prayer life, who's that gonna be? Jesus, you're hesitant. You're like, I don't wanna say Jesus and be wrong. It's OK. If you say Jesus, in most cases, you're probably right in the church setting, OK? Jesus, right? We're about to study his greatest sermon starting next week. So we're not like the best preacher, the strongest prayer life is Jesus. We get that ministry of the word and prayer. Also, if we're looking at someone who sets the example. To be a servant, to love on people, to do the nitty gritty, to go and to understand and, and meet the needs of the people. Who is our greatest picture of being a servant? Jesus, OK? He washed the feet of the disciples. He came in Mark 10:45, not to be served, but to serve. So what they're saying here, OK, is we need to be like Jesus in this way. And we need more people to be like Jesus in this way. And so that's the first thing. Notice that there is value in both types of ministry. The second thing I want you to notice is the type of people that they're calling up into this ministry. It says to find people with good reputation or high character, with spiritual maturity and practical wisdom. In other words, there is value to serving. That you need people of character and competency to make a difference. An interesting fact is that these names are Greek names. So, it was the Greek widow widows that were not being cared for, and it calls up most likely seven gentlemen with high character, high leadership, high wisdom with Greek names, right, to lead this. And we know that it has impact for a couple of reasons. One, in 6, chapter 6, verse 1, it says, the disciples were increasing in number. But by the time we get to verse 7, It says the number of disciples multiplied greatly. So we went from addition to multiplication in 7 verses, right? And then we don't have time to read it, but the very next chapter, OK, they're in chapter 6, now in verse chapter 7, is all about the first martyr of the early church. And who did God bestow the honor to be the first martyr? Stephen, who was actually appointed in this chapter. The next chapter, chapter 8, is all about ministry, and we have this guy who's an evangelist, right? Who shares Christ in Samaria. Who was that gentleman? That was we have Philip. And so God not only calls up, raises up more leaders, but actually immediately puts them to use. And we go from addition to multiplication in the church or first Church. So here's the pattern of healthy growth. This is true for the church. This is true for us. We're gonna see in a moment. It's also happened in the Old Testament as well. But here's, here's what this looks like. First, you see God move and where God moves, things grow. And when there is growth, then that growth leads to strain. So we have growth and then we have strain. And then as things grow and you have, when you have strain, you need to change, right? When I think of straining, I think about uh my awkward middle school self where I was basically this height and about 50 pounds, it felt like at the time. And, and like I had some, I, I don't hear it as much anymore, but, uh, but there was a, there was a phase where it seemed like every teenager had, uh, at least boy growing up had something called Osgood slaughter. Did anyone ever hear that term? OK. So, uh, so Osgood slaughter, it sounds like a butcher shop term, but it actually just means that your bones grow faster than your muscles and tendons. And so sometimes in your legs, it starts to grind a little bit and you get pain, and we had to wear these really snazzy, cool little. Braces on your knees. I say snazzy because it felt as nerdy as it sounded. Um, and so like you wear it just to help the knee cause sometimes we don't all grow at the same time, like every parts of our body, OK? So the church is hap this is happening in the church. There's growth, which leads to strain, which requires change. Like, hey, this isn't gonna work long term. And the change then leads to more leaders, right? With the training, equipping, empowering more leaders then leads to multiplication. So you have growth, strain, requires change, which brings in more leaders, which leads to multiplication. But it isn't just found in the New Testament. We see an example of this in the Old Testament. So we're gonna go to Exodus chapter 18, Exodus chapter 18. And here to set up our story here is Moses, OK? Moses, I think of Charlton Heston with in the old school, uh, you know, let my people go like that picture. That's what just comes to my mind. So think of Moses, OK? He defeats Pharaoh, the greatest leader at the time, leads the Israelites out of 400 years of slavery. They crossed the sea through a miracle. They're now wandering through the wilderness, being provided food service by God every day called manna, right? He's leading these people, he's pointing them to God, and he gets a visit from his father-in-law. Anyone get visits from the in-laws? OK. Um, so you think like this is gonna be like, hey, look at, look at what God's doing, look what I'm doing, right? Trying to impress his wife's dad is named Jethro. But let's, let's see what happens here, OK? Exodus 18:13. The next day, Moses sat to judge the people and the people stood around Moses from morning till evening. And when Moses' father-in-law saw all that he was doing for the people, he said, What is this that you're doing for the people? And why do you sit alone and all the people stand around you from morning till evening? And Moses said to his father-in-law, because the people come to me to inquire of God. And when they have a dispute, they come to me and I decide between one person and another, and I make them know the statues of God and his laws. I mean, you gotta be feeling pretty good if you're, you know, trying to impress the father of your wife, right? Like you're like, hey, I, I'm doing pretty good. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, freed an entire nation of people. They all come to me for advice, right? I'm introducing them to God. Like this is pretty good. What does he say in verse 17? And his name's Jethro. Moses's father-in-law said to him, what you're doing is not good. And thus begins the pattern of disappointing your in-laws from no, no, but why? He's actually Jethro is very wise, actually. Here's why. He says, for you and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out. He's like, this is not good for you. This is not good for them. He says, for the things it's too, this thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to do it alone. Now, obey my voice. I will give you advice and God will be with you, that you shall represent the people before God and bring their cases to God. So, he's not diminishing what Moses was doing. But in verse 20 he says, and you shall warn them about the statutes and the laws and make them know the way in which they must walk and what they must do. Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy, who hate to bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, hundreds, 50s, and 10s. And let them judge the people at all times. Every great matter they shall bring to you, but any small matter, they shall decide themselves. So it'll be easier for you and they will bear the burden with you. That if you do this, God will direct you, you will be able to endure, and all the people also will go to their place in peace. You see the similar pattern there? There is growth, there's lots of people, but then there's strain. I mean, if Moses has to decide everything, nothing's getting done. Or not everything that needs to be done, right? So then strain requires change. Changes, and what do you need to do? He needs to appoint leaders, but leaders of what? High character, spiritual maturity, right? Wisdom. But if you do that, it leads to multiplied impact. Right? So we see this movement from growth to strain, to change, to leaders to multiplication, OK? What does that mean for you? What does that mean for me? Well, there's an image in the early church fathers used often, uh, that I wanna bring back, at least in our context. Uh, that actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it. And that's the image of a trellis and the vine, a trellis in the vine. So here's a uh image of, of a trellis and vine, just so you get an understanding. So the trellis is the structure on which a vine grows. We just spent the summer talking about the fruit of the Spirit, how we're called to be connected to the vine who is Jesus. And understand that the vine brings with it growth. In the early church, Paul talks about how, hey, some will plant the seeds, some will water, but it's only God that provides the growth, right? But vines for the most part, grow on a structure or on something that that in which they can flourish, right? So there's trellis, there's a vine. So a modern day author that uses this imagery, for example, would be someone named John Mark Comer, who loves this because he actually is quoting a guy named Saint Benedict, who had who had something called the rule of life. So not rules of life, but a rule of life, which is a structure or system or thought process that helps guide or direct your life. And so there was discussion that's not fully agreed, but going back centuries that this idea of rule of life comes from this Latin word that has a similar root to art in the word itself that another word used to describe like a trellis-like structure. And so to have, for example, on a personal level, to have a rule of life is to put, have you put the structures and systems in your life so that you can flourish to become who God has called you to be, right? Do you have the private disciplines and values and decision-making processes to help you grow? Another way to think about it is that on on a personal level, if Jesus is the living water, spiritual disciplines are the straw. Right? So reading scripture, prayer, and, and organizing it. And even if you're not spiritual, we understand this concept of trellis and vine, right? If you wanna eat healthy, OK, that's vine. Well, I mean, actually, literally at that point, but, but what I'm saying is Vine, the diet that you follow, that's the trellis, right? Getting in shape, that's gonna be the vine. The workout plan is the trellis, right? Maximizing your impact on the on the schedule, that's Vine. Relationships, meeting, right? The calendar and the system to organize it, that's trellis. And so we see all throughout life in so many areas of our lives, that there is both trellis work and there is vine work. So Vine work when it comes to ministry now, is anything related to people. And connecting with God and with each other. Reading your Bible, praying, making disciples who make disciples, finding community, being vulnerable, being open, sharing, confessing, forgiving, serving, right? Those actions that bring about life. It's fine work. But what do we know about vines? We know that vines without a trellis at some point reach a limit. They stop growing or they get tangled and it gets messy. So that's where the trellis comes in. But the trellis represents this idea of systems and structure that promote growth. Now, what do we know about trellis? A trellis is for the support of the vine, right? I've seen churches and in church world, maybe you know this in even workplaces and business and marketplace as well, but I've seen some trellis emphasis churches, right? Like the church exists for the program or the system or the structure, or maybe you work in a company where it feels like the people work for the system, not the system for the people. You know what I'm talking about, right? And so we have to understand that people don't go to the vineyard to look at a trellis. Like, wow, look at that trellis. If there's just nothing on it. I mean, unless you're like a trellis maker or something. But do you know what I'm saying though? You're tracking with me? Right? You need both. There's vine work, there's trellis work. But the purpose of strengthening the trellis is so that we can see the vine flourish and grow. Now, what does that mean for you and me? Well, healthy growth requires healthy change. That as the vine grows, we gotta strengthen the trellis. Let me ask you, what is God growing in you right now? Where is God stretching you? What if, what if the thing that you're worried about, stressing about, praying for is the very thing God's gonna use? To make you more like him. Maybe you haven't even done anything wrong, you're actually growing and maturity and so now you're actually being more convicted of sin. You're actually more burdened for the brokenness of the world, not because you're bad, but because you're growing. But you can't keep living the way that you're living. If God's gonna keep growing, how he wants to grow you. That we have to mature. We have to strengthen the trellis. And so how is God growing you? And the question then becomes, well, then how is God growing our church? How's God growing our church? Let's go under the hood a little bit for a few minutes, OK? So our vision from the very beginning is that we exist to help every man, woman and child experience Jesus. The reason we started this church is because not for another program, not for another trellis, but so we want people to encounter and come to know and and understand who Jesus is and who Jesus could be in their life. That's our vision. How do we do that? How do we live that out? Well, our mission is simply to plant the gospel, grow in community, multiply through service. Plant, grow, multiply. We believe doing that is gonna help people experience Jesus. And then what are our values? Well, to find our values of why we do things the way we do, we go back to the very first church. And so from Acts chapter 2, we pull out 5 values. As a church, we, we value biblical truth. Authentic community. Notice it's not perfect community, it's authentic community. An empowered service. Again, that model's plant grow multiply. And then the last two really infiltrate everything that we do. Joyful generosity, right? When we give, we give because Jesus gave, right? And it is a blessing. It is a joy to give, right? If you find joyful people, my guess is they're generous people, right? It's part of that. It's a joy to give. It's not a burden to give, it's a joy to give. And then we have life transformation that we wanna see people saved. We wanna see people baptized. Also, we want to see marriages healed and restored and kids growing up in Christ's likeness and people being become bold and sharing their faith with their coworker, and that they know the word, that they pray the word that they serve and meet the needs of the people around them, so that we see life transformation happening all across the board that we start to become more like Jesus. That's our vision. That's our mission. That's our values. And then every year we pick a word in the beginning of the year to kind of give us a little bit of direction on how do we live that out. And so the word to start this year was transformed. So all year we've been working through how can we become more like Jesus, both in our vine work and in our trellis work. So I want to take just 5 minutes here and just give you some updates so you can kind of see what's happening behind the scenes and why we're doing it, because I just shared with you how much God has grown within the church, and God is growing the church. And because God is growing, we gotta strengthen the trellis if we want to see God continue to move. So here's what we're doing. Let me share with you 3 things that we're doing as a church, 3 ways that we are gonna see this God strengthen our trellis system here at the church is number 1 is leadership. OK. Notice in Acts 6, also in Acts 18, that if we're gonna grow, we gotta develop more leaders. Personally, I would define leadership as the process of influencing people to partner together for a common purpose. OK. I, I love leadership. I nerd out on leadership, got a doctorate in leadership, and so I love that stuff. So if you wanna nerd out on leadership and leadership books and podcasts, talk to me after. We'll, we'll connect. It's fun. But let me for today, let me just share 4 things with leadership, OK? It's a process cause it's ongoing. It's a directional thing, not a destination. You're never done leading or growing in your leadership. Second, it's about people. People are the ministry. People are the goal. The goal is not to use people to build the ministry. Our ministry is people. That's it, right? And then we're working together. Right? We're partnering together, not uniformity, but in unity, that in disagreement we can grow. And we're working together for what? To bring about the glory of God, to love the Lord your God with our heart, soul, mind and strength, to love people as ourselves even further as Jesus loved us to go and be a light into a world that desperately needs it. I wanna be a church we're storming the gates of hell, that we're not afraid of what the world's gonna come because I've read the end of. The book, and he wins. And so we get a chance to be partakers of his divine nature and that God includes us in his vision, his mission to transform the world. That's why we are praying His kingdom come. His will be done in Cave Creek in North Phoenix and Carefree and Scottsdale, as in heaven. Amen. So what does that mean? Well, we're strengthening our leadership. We brought on Chris, uh, Dewald this summer, executive pastor, uh, someone who, uh, really specialize in systems and organization and operations. He's also a pastor at heart. We're excited for that. But then, and then within our ministries, we're really gonna be launching leadership. Initiatives across the church, within every single ministry, within students. I'm looking with, with my friend here who's helping us develop the student one with me, but across every single ministry, we're, we're launching leadership development in every ministry because we don't wanna just fill a spot, we wanna form your soul. And if we're gonna reach more people, we gotta develop leaders who develop leaders. We gotta make disciples who are making disciples who make disciples. So be on the lookout across the board where we are strengthening our ministries and strength from the inside out as we are multiplying leadership to go to that next level to see what God could do. Yeah. That's one way. Another way we're growing is in stewardship. When I say stewardship, I mean strengthening our systems, our financial accountability. Our communication and our membership so that we can steward our people and resources for the with greater clarity and with greater faithfulness. Uh, super grateful for our team. Uh, we went through, uh, we had to let go of a company that was doing some bookkeeping and stuff last year, and we, we took it back in-house, got everything straightened in order, and super grateful for all our volunteers. Some of you in this room and beyond have helped us with that process. Um, bringing in Chris is also gonna help too. And so we've got the chart of. Accounts updated and we want to increase in transparency and sharing that with you. So let me just give you a snapshot. We're not gonna bore you with a ton of numbers. I wanna give you a few numbers. And I do wanna invite those that are interested. We do have a more detailed sheet in the lobby on the welcome table, OK? So let me just walk through. So our fiscal year is gonna run from July to June, so kind of tracking with the school year. And so last year from 25 to 26, uh God brought in just over a million dollars within the church. OK? God brought in just over a million dollars. And then for those familiar with our story, we received a large investment to get into our leased building space that we had to use as a guarantee for the space, meaning uh the company that's running this is like, well, if you go out of business, they still need rent paid. So we had to put money aside. In an account that's used for that, that then we get to stair step down. And so we get to pull out a portion of that every December, a security deposit and then we can use for ministry. Up to this point, they had to offset construction, had to offset expenses as we were growing numerically, but we weren't quite growing as fast financially, right? So that kinda offset those things. But by praise God, we are completely debt-free as a church, OK? So we're excited for that. Um, you know, and transparency too, we don't own the building, but we do have a nice runway in this space, and we're paying those bills. And so that's where that goes to that. So some personnel, about 48% with the personnel, then you see the facility, both lease, rent, fixing up things, going through. There's a lot of trellis work that I'll just summarize that, right? Administration, marketing, but also all the printing, all the making of things, all of the database, all the subscription, all, all those things behind the scenes that make things run. That's in that category. You see in their programming, which is just the detail, I mean, personnel and facilities is also part of programming, right? And leadership, and, and admin too. And so just the details behind that. And then I wanna point out too that we really believe in being a generous church. And so we set aside 10% for uh ministry tithe to local outreach, to missions, to church planting. Uh, so you can see last year we actually spent or gave away 60,000. In addition, we also set aside 40,000 that we have an account for continued and future, uh, ministry impact. And so church planting resources as opportunities come up. So we're using it for Mexico trip coming up, we're using it for more church planting stuff, uh, local outreach increasing there. And so that number is there and then going into next year, we're going to continue at 10% every month, putting it in a special account that we can use directly for impact in this community. Right, in the state and even worldwide with church planting and beyond. OK? So you can see those numbers again, details, more details in the lobby. And then, uh, going into this year, just so you know, the, with the growth, we're increasing budget now to 1.2%. Uh, and you can see the breakdown within that, and 1.2%. And then the plan then for that security deposit that's gonna come in December, is that we're gonna take 75,000 for contingency. Uh, right? So things, uh, that come in like air conditioners break, which happened, right? Other things happen where we need it, as we wanna be wise. And then also for strategic planning, as God opens up doors, whether it could be next staffing hire, it could be increased ministry and outreach opportunities, it could be updates within the lobby, classrooms, other things here too. Anything that comes up, we wanna be in a place and position ready to jump on it, right? And so we're putting money for, for that as well as you can see where the spending is going. And so I'm super excited for what God's doing in and through this church, but I want you to see this as well. And so we're stewarding financially, we're also stewarding membership. Uh, just to give you a little bit of background, uh, you know, we were at a certain phase for the 1st 6 years of the church, and now in the last 2, Again, we've grown by 52%, right? So growing, uh, dramatically, grown by 200% in the last five years. Well, things change and as things change, we launch stuff. So we, we started Next Steps, we started membership and we created these different ministries to try to get more aligned. But what we haven't done. Uh, which we're gonna start doing is actually using membership as part of that leadership development process, disciple-making process. And so, uh, things like getting more regular communication for me, having actual member meetings where we have prayer time, disciple making time, we're gonna start having the financial reports quarterly for those that are interested in that type of stuff. We'll have it available monthly for those that are curious, probably reporting quarterly, just to, as a standard practice. But we wanna increase the transparency with that because it's all about discipleship and ministry. Right? And so all these systems are growing in our stewardship and in our leadership. The last thing here we wanna do is then we also wanna grow in the Trellis system for our capacity, OK? Uh, we've increased chairs in the room. You'll see sometimes we're moving stuff around. Uh, we're trying to fit things. Um, as you can see in this room right now, we're almost at capacity, right? We're almost at capacity. And so here's what I'm gonna ask specifically. Uh, I'm looking for 10 families, directly 10 families. To help really steward and invest in and grow that 11:30 service. As we grow that 11:30 service to to own that, it's gonna free up space, uh, statistically speaking, uh, first-time guests tend to come the very first time to the 10 o'clock hour. So we wanna create room for those as well as bring the energy into the 11:30 service and that all three services are growing together to reach more people for the kingdom and glory of God. OK? So I'm asking specifically for 10 families to pray about and consider and then go ahead and move to that 11:30 service. Now, along with the 11:30 to increase ministry, we are then um adding that middle school Bible study for the kids. Grades 6 through 8, so they can keep growing as well. And then, uh, be on the lookout this fall. I mean, we are launching more Bible studies than we've ever had. We're launching more outreach opportunities and ministry opportunities than we've ever had. We're going back to Mexico in November for missions. We're adding more stuff on there. We're talking about church planting, we got leadership conferences, we got a parenting conference. So a lot of these things happen and yes, I've had 3 cups of coffee, just track with me. OK. And so, this is Trellis work, right? And the reason is not just for the trellis itself, is that we want to see the vine grow. That's why we wanna increase our leadership. We wanna increase in our stewardship. We wanna increase in our capacity to see how things can change and grow. So that's why healthy growth requires healthy change. I genuinely believe that we are entering a brand new season as a church. And here's what I'm gonna ask for every single person to do. OK, here's what I'm gonna ask every single person to do. Number one, I'm asking everybody in the room to lean in. To lean in Look, we live in a culture that is individualistic, that is consumeristic. That Christianity becomes just a little addition on the side, right? Oh, well, I, it didn't rain today. It's not 120, or I'll go to church, right? Like, don't just come to church. Let's be the church. We come in and we understand that you have something to give, that we enter the room with worship to give something, not just simply to get something. That you have skills and abilities. And opportunities to love, encourage, pray for, and bless. But we gotta lean in. We're gonna do our best to make these things excellent. And God honoring and, but we can't do this alone. This church is not a building simply to come to, it's a movement to belong to. And I think God has called you here for a reason. And I don't know about you, but I wanna go change the world. Like, if, if we're just coming in for a couple of songs, a few like a TED Talk and, and just a discussion piece before lunch, like, what are we doing? Do you know what I'm saying? We have a God who defeated death itself, and then said, I'm gonna change the world and I'm gonna use you to do it. That's something I wanna be a part of. So I want you to lean in. Number 2, I want you to step up. And by step, I mean, step up, I mean, find your place to serve, find your place to connect, find your place to lead, because you got something to give. This is not just like, oh, yeah, there's a church, you should go there for that thing. No. What about your workplace? What about your neighbors? What about seeing a need in the community? Say, I'm gonna step in and fill that need. What about that burden that you feel that you can go be a blessing to somebody else? Imagine what God could do if we collectively step up for the glory of God and give our lives and our obedience and our hearts and our allegiance to God's mission, God's vision for this world. So I want you to lean in. I want you to set up a blessing here. I want you to reach out. I want you to reach out because I want you to hear me. It is not about church growth here. Like if we're pursuing church growth, what are we doing? It's about gospel growth. It's about what is God doing in your life and in my life, in your neighbor's life, and your co-worker's life, and your friend's life. Like, here's the deal. If we try to grow the church on our own, it's not gonna work, OK? But if we try to honor God and grow in our relationship vertically, and grow in our love horizontally, and see what God can do, and we start making disciples who make disciples, and we start loving and serving like Jesus did, and we devote ourselves to prayer and to the word, and to our hearts and our lives around this thing called the gospel that I'm telling you, I think the church probably is also gonna grow. But we're not pursuing the trellis, we're pursuing the vine. In just a moment, I'm gonna pray and we're gonna take communion together. And what we wanna do is that we wanna remember where this all started. That we have something called a living hope, and it's, it's living because Jesus Christ came down, took on the form of man, died on the cross. Taking your penalty and mine, was buried and rose again, defeating death itself and launching the largest movement in world history known as the church. And he then invited you and me into this process. We want to take some time to remember that. Will you pray with me? Dear God, help us to remember that the goal is not a bigger trellis. The goal is to worship you. To help people experience you, Jesus. We want to see more seeds planted, deeper roots grown, more fruit produce a greater harvest, not for our sake, but for yours. God help us to lean in, to step up, to reach out. Because God, we believe that what you've done so far in our church is only the beginning. And ultimately, God, we believe that you are here, you are real, you are alive. Our hope is alive and we're living, and so that God, we devote our lives to you, because here at the church, we may be broken, we may have shortcomings, we may have questions, we may have doubts, but God, you are working, you are moving. And here at the church, help us remember what you've done and to believe wholeheartedly that we're just getting started. We love you, God and your sons, and we pray. Amen.