2020 Leadership

Morning. Good morning. Welcome everyone. Good to see you all. Um It’s exciting to be able to work through the end of first peter few anyone noticing anything exciting outside anyone noticed anything at all, garage is gone. Baby steps, we’re getting there. You you line up these contractors and then you get booked to get a quote and you have to just wait till they’re available. Everyone is building and destroying and doing a lot of construction projects. So baby Step number two is down step number three is rocking that bad boy. So we’re hoping to rock that lot. The mud grass lot you might have parked in. Um, hopefully this week. Next week and then privacy fence and then, you know, skyscraper and helicopter pad and we’ll keep going, you know, but just baby step one, the shit has gone. So um, welcome. I’m looking forward to. First peter if you all Today’s theme of Chapter five. It really doesn’t relate to anyone at all. It’s about leading through difficult times, leading through challenging times, leading through hardships. So I know this servant is for someone else today and this passage is for someone else today and no one has experienced anything like that in their life ever. But I propose to you all, you all are all leaders, your potential leaders, your current leaders, you lied at your home, your work, this church, your kids softball league, your your sewer thrower league, which isn’t playing today because the Memorial Day, um you’re you’re all leading at some capacity of influence, um ownership of a group of people that look to you, um you lead your family, your business, your church, all sorts of things. I think there’s There’s things in this passage in Chapter five, the first period that really do apply to your life. And so if Peter is in the Bible, he’s one of Jesus 12 disciples, he’s the leader of the 12 disciples, like the executive pastor of the early church, he had this apostle role, we would coach and support churches in other cities. And if you know a thing or two about Peter, Peter has gone through some incredible hardships and trials, there’s peace time leadership in wartime leadership, it seems like Peter’s experienced a ton of wartime leadership, you can read about in your bible um and he’s not perfect, Peter he’s progress, Peter and he’s made all kinds of mistakes. You can get encouragement from what he’s saying, but if Peter is saying talking about leadership and leading through hard times, I think there’s a lot you can learn from as a leader, a spying leader, current leader and also like first peter appreciate second period before a group of pastors through a conference. Second Peter the story gets worse. First peter for those of you just to catch you up as we end out. Peter it’s it’s a very there’s a lot of persecution happening at the early churches in the roman empire. You know, there’s christians being grabbed and burned alive at stakes. Christians, christian church history, just history says that christians were kidnapped and thrown in a gladiator arena to be fought and killed by gladiators and um by soldiers. It’s like remember the movie Gladiator, the people that they were killing in that movie, we’re probably christians if history is correct, christian and secular history, christians are being severely oppressed and persecuted and they scattered and fleet throughout the major cities and then these smaller cities in the area of Turkey and and Peter wrote this letter to them to prepare them for what is coming, there’s persecution, there’s racial unrest, there’s war, there’s there’s pandemics happening at the time, There’s disease, famine. It is not a good time to be a christian. And Peter’s right into that culture in that context and he knows you and I know what happens in second Peter things get worse. Narrow burns the city down sometime between the first two books and he blames christians for it. And there’s more persecution, more hardship that’s coming for these christians. And so when Peter speaks about pain and suffering and leading through difficult times, the wise men and women in the room would pay attention. I titled This, this this Sermon 2020 leadership, which Before 2019, that’s like you put your ear to the ground, you know what’s coming, your visionary, you see things before other people and you kind of innovate and pivot your organization to build a capitalize an opportunity. Now, the word 2020 means something else. I think it means a suffering, hard, difficult, brutal year. And so maybe that’s just a short term change. But there’s a stigma about the word 2020 that used to mean, you know, 2020 vision, 2020 leadership. But now it means difficult time leadership. And so I I I’m just having fun just coping processing from last year as a leader of many rooms are full of leaders. But Peter is a man who knew good times and bad times. Um, and he knew how to lead through bad times. And so if you want to call it spiritual attack or a season of, you know, war or a season of prosperity versus warfare, difficult, challenging seasons on the life of any organization, any family, any church, There’s hard times ahead. That is the macro theme you see throughout the entire bible and just human history as an ex history teacher. That hard times are coming And first Peter five really equips you how to be a capable, competent leader that leads through challenging times when people are critical in attacking. It really helps you as a leader lead during difficult times. And if you can’t lead during difficult times are I don’t know, I think, I don’t know. There’s only a few examples in the bible when people got to lead through peaceful times. Most of the times that the entire bible there is challenging and heartaches are at every chapter. We didn’t pray it. I was in trolling. Let’s pray. Let’s pray God thank you for these men and women that came here to study out first. Peter and close it out. Lord. As we as we finish up this book, Lord, we just wanna be led by you. If you’re leading our church in your time of peace or in time of war, time of prosperity and growth and enlarging or time of shrinking and consolidating and dying. It is all from your hand, jesus, king, jesus, we love you, we commit our time to I said you just direct us and encourage us and instruct us on where to go and what to do and what you are doing in this church, like we just want to follow you and where you’re leading. Multiplier time, help us to see and understand your law and understand your word first. Peter five really well today, Lord as you pursue leadership of um just utilize us Lord train us in the passage today, jesus name, we pray this, Amen Peter’s pedigree, his street cred, he’s one of Jesus 12 disciples Leader of the early church, he’s one of the leader of the 12 disciples and he was in a three year intensive boot camp with Jesus when he was being developed and trained. That was his version of seminary. Peter seemed to play the executive role pastor at the early church and he made a great deal of conflict, difficult situations, made all kinds of brutal decisions throughout the early history of the church. He was arrested multiple times in the new testament and ultimately he got in trouble for storing things up so much that he got persecuted to the point where he got killed by the emperor of Rome, crucified, upside down next to his wife. So he knows this world he’s talking about. So when Peter opens his mouth, we should listen as he closes out with some words to the elders of these churches. There’s this group of churches scattered throughout these two that the area of Turkey, which is about the size of Nebraska and Kansas, a group of churches. And there’s a team of elders, men in each of those main cities that these letters circulated from. And he’s gearing their mind up. He’s getting their motivation up to view persecution rightly as a leader of God’s people. And I think I think this, I’ve enjoyed looking at this passage and I think you’ll enjoy it too. So first peter 51 let’s read it together is peter running. He says, I exhort you, I exhort the elders, the elders among you as fellow elder and witness to the suffering of christ as well as one who shares in the glory about to be revealed. The word elder in the jewish culture was a was a man who was established a mature and a qualified man of character who had some skills and the jewish culture really held elders in high regard. Um in this age is just because you’re old doesn’t mean you’re wise, but in that age using the term elder means you’re a wise older man who knew and saw a thing or two who is viewed as a city leader in a village or a part of the jewish social culture. So why is he saying this as fellow elder and witnessed the suffering of christ? Let’s keen on that verse a little bit. The key to leadership. The key to learning about leadership is learning about leadership from the vision, the perspective that jesus gives you of how to be a leader, jesus, the ultimate leader I propose for you, Peter says he saw jesus lead his life those three years and he saw jesus suffer and die brutally suffocating on the cross, That’s the cross. There’d be, there’d be a person with their hands nailed into the side of the cross, with their feet nailed on the bottom of the cross and they’d have to pull themselves up to take a grasp of they’re and then their fatigue your muscles, they’d hang back down and as as time goes on slowly the person across would die from asphyxiation. She has unjustly died on the cross for our sins is what the bible teaches us and it really she scars your psyche. When you see someone slowly executed, brutally suffocated, unjustly in front of you. Many of you all saw the video last summer of George Floyd being slowly suffocated to death and it just makes you angry seeing that I think of how scarring that would be for Peter as he watched Jesus slowly suffer and die suffocating and dying. Excruciating death on the cross. He watched Jesus suffer in the end of his life. He watched Jesus suffered those three years of ministry as people attacked him, try to stone him as a they tried to kill him and they tried to assassinate him. He couldn’t go into the major cities because if you get the crowd stirred up and he’d be sharing and speaking of religious leaders and so he had to speak on the countryside, he had people trying to assassinate him. I mean Jesus, three year ministry was a brutal three year ministry and then he died painfully and dramatically, Jesus says the elders that they all to seem to be eyewitnesses of jesus, end of his life and his suffering of his earthly ministry. But just like Jesus suffered. We, as leaders of God’s people have to have the mantra of suffering. If we don’t get that, we’re going to miss the whole purpose of what it is to be to be a leader of God’s people. Seems like Ceos and Cfos and Ceos get the biggest problems that are in the organization, the people problems. The most complicated, not stunt I the most difficult people to work with these people. It’s not just this computer software that supply chain thing or this Salesforce account, it’s the leaders of those organizations that they have to work with leading God’s people. You have to be called to suffer. Just like christ Did could I show uh, to show a photo, Kara? My son drew this photo. That’s a good one. Let’s go to this one. My son drew this photo and it’s like, oh that’s that’s your thinking, that’s terrible. I know what you’re thinking, that’s amazing. I whatever you know, so what what is concerning should be he drew what he thinks I do. This is making me question every life choice I’ve had in my life here. Like there’s lights, their speakers. These are speakers and there’s a guy with a Britney spears mike and a big haircut and a bible I guess. And it looks like mindless masses out here. I’m like this is concerning and I’m wondering what I’m doing with my life. And so I don’t view my experience as a pastor. Like my son does have you. My experience as a pastor is a lot of suffering, a lot of sweating and a lot of serving, which the scholars would say it should be, we should feed God sheep, lead God sheep and protect God’s sheep. But regardless, I don’t, my kids got a romantic version of what what I do for a living. I I don’t feel like this is what I, this is not my experience. This hour of miles a week is not what makes pastors quit all over the nation. This hour is not what makes guys quit. It’s the rest of the week that makes guys quit. I think Peter just really wants to take this young elder audience and these young churches and really just give them a vision for what the future is going to be like, good times or bad. They need to be geared up to suffer like jesus. And he uses an analogy here in verse two, before we jump in diverse too, I wanna, let’s let’s stick to the let’s let’s let’s show the next couple of photos for your visual learners. He talks about shepherds and so these are the tools of a shepherd staff, feel like I’ve seen a staff before. And so I don’t know what that other thing is. A rod, but the staff is designed to be like, that’s too can’t bend that. The staff is designed to extend the reach of a shepherd so we can hook the neck or the flank or the leg of a sheep. Does that make sense? And you’re like, okay, great. I’ve seen that with a little boy in the nursery, sunday school christmas play holding a little shepherd’s staff. Great! You’ve seen this tacky photo. I’m sorry. You’ve seen this photo of a Aryan white jesus, that’s actually jewish. Right, So let’s go back to the first photo and then this rod. You haven’t seen that at christmas, easter christmas pageant. A rod, a staff is to keep sheep from wandering and string. And a rod. What is with a rod? So shepherds had these two tools and so I’d like to just remind you a few passages, psalms 23 says, even when I go through the darkest valley, I fear no danger for you are with me. Your Rod and your staff. They comfort me like Rod staff For Samuel 17 David used, which I’m going to call his thug club is his Rod to beat off Lions and bears. They were trying to kill the sheep and he’d club them to death. You don’t use a shepherd’s staff to do that. Used a baseball bat club Proverbs 1324 says the one who will not use the Rod hates his son, but the one who loves him, disciplines him diligently. That’s talking about Christian loving instruction of spanking your kid, paddling your kid in a loving structured way. I mean a pre pastor story driving in college. I drove a lot of small little cheap beater cars. I’m a big guy in a little car. And sometimes these, these guys and big trucks will get mad at me because I was a Denver driver and I’d cut people off and drive fast. I’m sorry, I’m repenting still. But but like I found that if a little, you know, little car and a big arm comes out of a little car and I’m holding this like this, this piece of rebar that I found at work in the trash and I tap it on the top of the car. Those big trucks would back up a little bit if they’re, you know, honking and on your bumper and stuff. So I mean I’m not road rage and I’m just saying like, you know, there’s a place in a time for rods and staffs and so hebrews 12, 5 and six as this. My son do not take the Lord’s discipline lightly or lose heart when you are reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and punishes every son he receives. So as we read verse to think there’s there’s love love and there’s tough love and Peter executive ceo of the early church, peter who’s an apostle leader of disciples, he’s going to help these young elders in these young churches scattered throughout this region, realized that when trials and sufferings are coming, I gotta be lovey and I got to be tough. E I gotta do tough love and love love, I gotta have both. That makes sense. First Peter 25 says this Shepherd, God’s flock among you, not overseeing out of compulsion, but willingly as God would have you, not out of greed for money, but eagerly not lording it over those entrusted you. But being examples to the flock and when the chief Shepherd appears, he will receive the unf aiding crown of glory. And so this this passage we’re looking at today to the rest of the chapter is the strong, one of the strongest exhortations the pastors to really give them a vision for just what they do and why they do it. Their motivations matter. See, satan doesn’t want you to obey as a christian, his desires that you do not obey God and you reject God, but if you do obey God, satan wants you to obey it. Really twisted evil motives. It’s like I was able to share the gospel. The guy this last week. It was an honor as a privilege. It was a good talk. God shut up is encouraging. It was good. But if I do that, knowing I could work it into a sermons, I can feel better than you are or I can work in a conversation or if I can boastfully tell this guy he needs jesus, need to repent and follow God. If I do it wrong motives, I’ll lose my reward and I’ll lose the results of the work of God. We need to do the work of God with the right motives as we do the work of God. And I love how Peter not only like tells the pastors the shepherd pastors, you know, tough love love love, but he talks about their motivation. The rest of this chapter, he talks about the hard issues, restless chapters as these men lead through difficult times and the more difficult times. The context of the early church. They’re coming out of a trial and going into a massive mega trial and first Peter two, you can read ahead and see all about it, things get worse. And there’s these leadership axioms, you should see these leadership value principles and so one that I think we should just notice and reflect its what we currently embrace. We have a hybrid leadership model, have a team of elders leading the charge of this church if Shane better mike And he’s the apostle which none of us are apostles, he’s Jesus right hand man, the leader of the 12 disciples, the early church, right, he’s Peter wrote the Bible. None of us are that guy. He wrote a letter to a team of elders and those elders had roles and the thing is like individuals if left alone with no checks and balances of a board or a team around them, they can be abusive, they can get burned out, they can blow up, they don’t do well left to ourselves. Does that make sense? We can look you can google celebrity pasture in american Christianity and see that very quickly. Celebrity Solo Pastors who is the king of all their world, They don’t last the test of time. And then there’s the other extreme where you have all total flat organization that can get wrapped up in politics that can wrapped bureaucracy can wrapped up in stalemate bullet extremes. I propose to are not ideal but I love how scholars point out how God the father is the leader of the trinity. But as God the son and God the holy spirit, they work in complete unity or like other or paul writes about the new testament family, there’s a husband and wife. They’re in charge of all the rebel razzle of all those kids and the whole household and family but the husband is the head of the family. There’s this submission to each other but there’s also a headship and the husband and there’s the God the father leading the trinity. And so I love that we got Shane. Ben and mike and mike can be misled, mike could walk off the crazy cliff. But Shane had been, well, let me and they’re the best part of this church. We have the strongest other team. I feel like in this nation, I love chain a bit. But Shane had been really provided stability to us in a health to us as a team of elders. Does that make sense? And we’ve had this plurality, this hybrid model between a guy who’s full time running around his hair on fire and guys were like calm down like you’re fine, let’s keep moving forward. I mean, we have the best of both worlds. Like I believe the new testament church laid out for the best of both worlds. They have guys are going broke trying to do it and they have a team of men that are helping do it together, provides the strength and stability. We have this even in our small groups and that’s where we get critiqued as all of our small groups, Almost all of them except for two and I think they’re working on stuff. They’re transitioning people season like. But there’s almost all of our small groups have a team of leaders leading it. It’s four people or it’s five people. It’s a two couples or it’s a group of singles or whatnot. There’s a variety of gift mix and there’s a variety of teams of a plurality brought to leading those small groups. Does that make sense? It’s it’s a redundancy, it’s the support. So as a group grows and multiplies more people are developed. But also it just shares the decision waking burden, this decision making burden, the weight of leadership. You can have a day off, you can have weeks off, you can go on vacation and not shut everything down. Teams Outperform individuals unless that they’re playing Lebron James. Um teams win in the end and Christianity’s a team based sport and we really want to lean into that as a church. So you see single leadership and plural leadership and that hybrid model in this passage of peter writing letters to pastures, he probably had a part of raising up and commissioning out from the larger church there in Jerusalem and he’s writing this letter to them to be bold in the leadership but also bold and yielding to their leadership of each other. I just love this checks and balances. You see throughout the new testament church, what we’re attempting to implement as as solar Church. But even families need this, your business needs this as you’re going through difficult times, you have to have a team of wise counsel working through that by yourself. You won’t see clearly with a team, you’ll see the picture clearer as you’re leading through difficult times. You’ve got to lean into the strength of the team. We have this in our church. We’re hoping to grow this in our church, of adding more elders in our church. We’re hoping to add, we’re praying that God will double the number of community groups we have in our church, which is an amazing blessing and amazing prayer. But I think God might be doing here in our church, my teams that perform individuals, christian is a team sport. So peter is riding the position of a team of elders that are leading these churches, He’s encouraging them to fall and pursue jesus and prepared for suffering. And he talks about jesus sheep, The chief shepherd, when he jumps in diverse to shepherd God’s flock among you, not overseeing out of compulsion, but willingly as God would have you willingly shepherd. God’s people willingly lied and teach and protect and feed God’s people is what he’s telling his others to do. They should do it out of there, calling out of what God has called them and giving them capacity to do and they should feel a joy in that service. They should not be compelled or browbeating or guilt trip to do anything. They should do it because God has called these people to lead the people of God. Because here thinking like mike, I feel exhausted. Mike, I feel stretched too thin. I feel overwhelmed. I feel like I don’t have enough hours in the day for my own life, much less anyone beyond that, I would challenge you. Are you leading out of the call that God has placed on your life or out of compulsion? Are people twisting your arm and browbeating you to do things? Are you doing? What’s okay but not what’s best for your life? What is best for your life Is what God has called you to any skilled you and gifted you to do. If you’re exhausted and worn thin, it’s because you’re probably doing too much and you say no to some things, you say no one back up to something. So you can say yes to what God has called you to. There is power in saying no to okay, opportunities for what is the best thing for your life? We have a young leadership team in our church. I think there’s about 34, 33, leaders that that are working on this. And I feel like there’s a lot going on as a as a church. Um and it’s encouraging. But I do think as we continue to grow in our maturity and growing our age of the congregation, we need to get more tunnel vision on what is happening and what we’re going to give our focus to with your calling. The Goddess place in your life has also given you a gift and we’re using the gift that God has given you to fulfill the call of God in your life, there’s life and joy in that call. There’s jobs, responsibilities and roles that other people could fill that. It might be more gifted to fill that God has called the fill. But as we get, as we continue to go as a church, as we continue to grow as a church, we’re gonna hope to lean into specialization of your gifting and your calling as a christian. We want you to do what God has equipped you to do in this church that other people can’t do. So now I just gave you a big old window to say no to ministry. Let’s look at verse two, he talks about eagerly inverse to if you look at your bibles eagerly aber in college before I was raised up as a pastor, I was in a church, I was a deacon of set up and tear down and a deacon of the college group, some of your laughing. I know, but we had a we had a mobile church in Lincoln With like 60 people, 70 people maybe. We have a college service on Tuesday nights and why it’s dorm and the stuff was in his dorm and we hauled it from his dorm to the he hauled it from the dorm to the campus most nights. And then we had a Wednesday night service, about 70 80 kids maybe in Omaha. And then a sunday morning service of 200 some people than a saturday night service of 120 people, two trailers to cities to college groups. Three sunday morning services. It was a crazy world of having volunteers lining up to unload and set up and tear down and reassemble and put away. It was a crazy weird hair on fire kind of life where I hated my phone ringing and good stuff like that as we did church Tuesday, Wednesday, friday saturday. It was ridiculous. Anyways, whatever. Um, and so then my dad came and spoke to one of the college groups one night. He’s like, my, could I share that with him? And he’s like, well let me share this little quick message with you. Um, and so he shared a message with our college group that night as a guest speaker. He talked about four levels of servants. And I’m gonna get to eagerly at the end. There four levels of servants. I think it’s convicting. Let’s look at it. Uh, number one level of services. They’re not willing. They’re not willing. Level one of servant is we ask you to do something you’re not willing. So we know better. We know better. So we want to ask you or we will ask you to just say no or you avoid us. Let’s level two. They’re willing if they’re willing to serve, if they get to give announcements, they can take photos, they get a give communion thoughts. They’re gonna do something prestigious or popular or convenient and they’re willing if they don’t have to do anything difficult. Level three, which is the whole room, I’m sure all of you, this is level three. You’re willing. You just you’re just oblivious to what’s going on. You need someone to ask you to do something. I know pre covid we had about 80% of our churches people serving in a typical month. We had a huge spiritual muscle for serving. I know that and I know we had a year and a half year break where we didn’t offer anything. We all took a yearlong sabbatical to find ourselves. And I know those livestream people. I’m coming for you, coming for your livestream people. But we’re willing if I mean, we’re willing Just ask, that’s most of our heart as a church. And then level four here, is there already serving their eagerly serving? And that’s the 20% of the people in our church that have been running this churches last year, and I think that 20% is tired and they need level three people to join them. They need those 100 members of our church to really embrace the call of God and the reach in this part of the city. It’s part of our membership expectations. View members, you’ve seen this document right here, is serving your small group. If someone’s moving, you should serve and you know, someone’s need to paint, you should paint, if someone needs something you’re smarter, we should help your people, you’re smarter. And then down here, it’s serving your church expectations of members and the bible backs it. And so we’re coming peters exhorting his churches. I’m gonna exhort my one church. We need to, we need to realize this reality. And so here’s, here’s, here’s just uh, I’m gonna do this first. I’m gonna take a sidebar here for five minutes. Okay? And I’m going to draw a picture. You can hang with me a little bit. Right? So I feel like the rest of this chapter is just peter like halftime locker room pep talk speech to all of his elders, leaders in these churches. Like let’s go team, let’s get it, let’s fire it up, kick the tires, like the fires, you know, let’s let’s do our thing church. And so I feel like he’s really kicking button. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna this market don’t work. Yeah, it works enough. All right. So, so I don’t remember which accesses which one’s X one Y. And so I’ve read about a dozen, sorry, I’ve read about a dozen books On church patterns, life history, Grove leadership, all that stuff. Um, and it seems like in general this is a broad stroke statement. The beginning to the end of the church is about a 50 year window Like it or not. It’s about 50 years that if a church starts in, if it actually gets off the ground and starts to fly, It lasts about 50 years. And so this is defined as the emerging church season where the church is starting and growing. This is defined as the plateau church season. This is the declining church season and this is the dying church season. You see this little bell curve 50 years and so four out of five churches in America won’t grow past 200. Does that make sense? Our churches specific pattern? I think it started before I was born, um with a group of christians and it did a few of these, you know, uh 120 range is what I was told is what it capped out at. And then the last five years we’ve been on a fun little growth curve, but we’ve really been going like this the last couple of years, Month to month. You know you have a baby dedication weekend, you have a memorial week, you have another you know you have, you know what I’m saying? There’s months and months season the season we were at that 182-10 range for several years. And then Covid happened. And so I propose to you that I think one silver lining from all of Covid, which is not, you know, it’s a dark not fun time, but one potentially encouraging thing from Covid is it forced us to do something that would have been unheard of pre Covid. We took our church of you know, 1 91 82 10. That was happy packed out this room way more than we do right now. And we had all the people staffed. It was great. We broke it up to two services two worlds for the whole year. Since june right. We didn’t for science well enough professionals, enough for anything nursery. We didn’t offer a lot of stuff and we spread everyone out. I don’t know how I could have cast that vision or Shane better. I could have sold that vision to that church. Pre Covid. I think Covid gives us an opportunity to embrace the two service world seasonally as a church. Does that make sense? Because we have the capacity to park and fit 150 adults with our limited parking. And then those people bring in usually 40, 50 kids and we have 200 person church and then we’ll just grow altogether. And the wedding’s I did last week. And the weddings I’m doing two weeks from now will be funerals, 30 40 from now. It’ll be great. I’m gonna grow old, you’re gonna grow old. My wife says, I’m gonna get white hair someday, it’ll be great, it’ll be wonderful and we’ll grow old together and it’s not even just the pattern that we could be out, but I propose that we become a seasonal to service church seasonally, ideally we consolidate in the summers if we do that this summer, not sure anyone will tell us what, you know. But I mean right now, it’s like we pack this room out. That’s probably not culturally smart right now with Covid next next summer, next fall. That would be different if we brought everyone together again. Does that make sense? But I do think if we’re like the mission accomplished, we fill this room once we’re done, we go home, we’re done. We’re done. Reaching people were done at making disciples were done by people in this world. Here’s the Admiral add mark. Funny thing. All right. I think I think it could be a trap. You’re like, what do you mean? My theory is if I ask if we pastors ask the 20% of our people that are already serving to work both services. It creates a false sense of comfort and people show up and they hang out for six months, nine months a year and then we asked them to serve. I don’t think they will join us in serving. I’ve seen it happen with other pastors, other churches and you really wear out your core of your church. So I propose we we figure out what this looks like. But we really grow into just offering a smaller diet version of sunday school. If we came together, we can have a full blooded, amazing science school. But if we offer to leaner versions of greeting leaner versions of coffee, it creates a need and a vacuum that we can fill. If it doesn’t work, we’ll consolidate and be great. The rest of our life would be wonderful. We’ll grow old together. But I’m saying as a young church, if maybe God is using Covid to help us grow past that growth period of the two service world, I can’t think of a way that we could have done this without Covid apart from Covid. But but now he’s back to a peters back to addressing people. So I encourage you to step out on faith, pray about stepping on faith. We have a history of a lot of christian men and women giving, serving and attending in heroic ways and we had a year off as christians, a year off from attending giving and serving as we? Re fire up things and make decisions in the coming weeks and months about what to do for this summer and for this fall, especially if we hypothetically do merge up for this summer, I pray we come together so we can come apart next fall because it is going to be very difficult to do anything beyond what we have done the last few years with our limited capacity unless someone wants to buy three blocks in the neighborhood and expand our parking lot, let us know. But otherwise I do think it would be very difficult to, but I also think when you first came here, people invited you into serving, attending and leading early on in your time with us early on there, like join us, help us with advanced the Ministry. I don’t want to lose that and cater to marginal christians like to attend to not have to do much with their faith. So Peter’s back to exhorting his people. So examples of the flock, verse three, I love that Peter wrote this and I love that Peter is not perfect, but Peter shows significant progress in his life. From Baby Peter in the book of Matthew to Peter in the book of Peter, Peter has grown in leaps and bounds every step of the way and our goal is not to be perfect husbands, perfect employees, perfect christians, perfect leaders. Our goal is to be always showing progress in those areas. That should be a realistic goal that you’re growing and advancing and your faith is enlarging and you’re making progress in your walk with God, just like Peter, No one else in the new testament made more mistakes than Peter, but God had big plans for him because he kept getting humble and moving forward. Peter’s life screams progress, not perfection, he screams learning, growing and moving forward. And this letter is ending as a Peter is gearing the churches up to focus for even more crisis. The team of elders that are leading these churches, he says in verse five, in the same way you are younger, be subject to the elders. You are younger be subject to the others. I mean, our our church doesn’t have a great deal of elders. Older men and women, the ones we do have, we love them and we would hug you or we do hug you, you’re sweet and you’re great. Um, I know in college when I was a college kid, I had a lot of answers for life and I had a dorm sofa that was so great for naps. It took a lot of good naps on that sofa. That couch. But my friends and I would pile a lot of opinions about how to make money, how to leave families, how to run businesses, how to run churches, how to reach out. We had a lot of thoughts as an 1819 year old and we said a lot of things that run the pile in from that sofa. Our wisdom was just, it was amazing and I wish I had that sofa, so I know what to do with my life nowadays, but my wife got rid of it, but when I was young, that pile of ignorance sounded great. That’s because there’s no old person to come along and just kind of pop a hole in it, you know, and make it just deflate all that pride and all that arrogance and hubris of youth. If you knew me, then yeah, that’s the definition of not this passage. So let’s keep reading all of you clothe yourselves with humility towards one another, because they’re going into conflict as the church clothe yourself of humility towards one another, because God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. I think it’s ironic that he called out young men and women and says God resists pride, and I think I just so timely verse six, humble yourself, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you at the proper time, cast all your cares on him because he cares about you. Such a good word for young leaders. I know that when I was young, I was very, very much this was my mantra. Humble, your hand, humble, your head under the mighty hand of God, because in God’s timing, in God’s way, God will lift you up, because ultimately, I’m not fighting against the elders of my church, or my leader, my small group, or well, I’m not fighting against humans on fight against God who sees me and sees my proud heart and he knows what mayhem and destruction I bring into that community group. I bring on to that church. If I was a proud leader, proud pastors kill churches, proud community leaders, kill communicators, pride, and leading spiritual matters is just cancerous toxic. Its nuclear, everyone around you becomes proud, just fleas through your speech and your actions and omissions and sleight of hands. Pride is the ultimate cancer killer of any church. And if you’re a proud person that’s leading a church is just, it’s just nuclear, you can’t touch it, you can’t go near it. God hates pride. The Jersey of satan has pride on the back, the Jersey of jesus has humility on the back, you’re playing for team humble, jesus, or team proud satan, and those two cultures cannot mix men and women. It’s such a good word for young men and women. Such a good word for old men, old women. And there’s many painful years ahead in your life and God will humble you. The hand of God will humble you’re proud heart or you will humble yourself. It’s God’s you have conflict with God’s God’s will and your will. There’s a conflict with God’s timing and your timing and you have to humble yourself and what God is sovereign has a plan for your life. Remember, young leaders, You’re on God’s timeline, his school of development. David spent 30 years David and remember David & Life, David spent 30 years running for his life before he became king of Israel men and women. There is a training ground that happens in people’s souls as they humble themselves and place themselves under galley authority under the authority of God’s word and ultimately God’s plan for their life. Anyone ever heard the phrase, if it could be, if it if it’s to be, it’s up to me, my man, we’ll skip that analogy, then we can talk about the lobby later, all right, But the room is always smarter than than the individual and obviously in this church with the amount of gifted men and women that we have, I believe that is really true, that the group is smarter than an individual, but I believe I’m praying that God will make us humbler men and women as you grow older because as trials and suffering come at Solar Church and they will the rest of our life, they will, I pray that God would see a humble leadership team of this church, humble people that get their head low and their hand low so that God can lead them humble you is the better you. God opposes proud christians. God opposes the proud nous that is in the christian soul, Humble yourself on the mighty hand of God, humility has mentioned almost 900 times in your Bible. It is amazing what your community group can accomplish if no one cares about who gets the credit, it’s amazing what this service this church can accomplish. If no one cares about who gets the credit. God ask us ordinary people to do extraordinary things and saying.