Merger

Merger

he was in the form of God did not count equality with God, a thing to be grasped but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every morning, so that at the name of jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that jesus christ his Lord to the glory of God, the father. Yeah. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Hey, welcome. Thank you for coming. Changes in the air. And just to answer the very first question, yes, This is a new shirt. Um, Annie, Annie finds these shirts for me at all different places in this city and it’s been, it’s fun to be able to, we’re a new shirt, but new shirt, there’s new days and there’s change in the air. We are transitioning as a church from summer time to go time. I mean fall time, Big red welcomes in the future back to school. If Lincoln public schools is happening, changes in the area. So changes are loved and embraced by some and they’re hated and dreaded by others. I understand that, but we are concluding our Book of Philippians and we’re going to stop and pause and take a few weeks and look at our vision for who we are as a church and where we’re going to the church and what got us here won’t get us to the next level as a church. And so we’re transitioning and changing as a church. And so it is fun to be with you. We are experiencing several changes. One is uh, we’ve been from the one service world to the, to service world and that brings about change and growth, were experiencing the structures that smaller churches have to midsize church structures and if you’ve been with jesus one year or many years, you can attest to that. There’s great change that occurs in the life of a disciple, alert or leader is just part of growing up as a church, growing up as a person is to expect change. We, we are, it seems like a lot of kids pre covid and the post covid, some kids grew, it felt like 68 inches over the last covid break and so kids grow and that’s normal and healthy and churches grow and change and develop things that are different than what they used to do versus what they’re going to do going forward in the future. Um, lifers will tell you at this church expects great change and that’s just, that’s normal, That’s healthy. That’s, that’s part of the process of being a people of God, our church is about to embark on a great and grand change that will forever change who we are. And the reason why we’re doing what we’re doing as a pastoral team is mission purpose driven. It’s the why behind the vision is compelling us to step out in this. The waters have changed again as a church. We believe that this changes for better and for our good as the people, as a church, to advance the mission, the cause of christ, to expand the gospel. We believe that is definitely exciting for us. And so I’m going to pause and pray and we’re going to look at the passage and I’m going to cover what I’m excited to talk to you about this morning. So let’s pray God, you, you changed everything when you said in the beginning, let there be light. You changed everything. When jesus said it is finished, you’ve been leading the people of God through seasons of change, out of a chapter, into a different chapter, time and time again through every chapter of our bibles, you are a god of great change you’ve been bringing about new covenants have been closing and moving on and doing new work. Lord your God, who never changes, but also who brings about constant change in our lives? And you grow and you form us into your image. You transform us by the Gospel. We just want to be open handed with the future and trust you King jesus to leave your church, build your church and build us as people. We love you, we trust you and we just want to be known as obedient, humble followers of you who step out in the waters of change again. We just ask that you fulfill your call for our church. Lead us Lord boldly and courageously into the future we purchase help us be about the kingdom of God, not our kingdoms, but about your kingdom. We want you to win here and now with this church in jesus name, we pray this Amen. So Ben told me it’s kind of funny and I don’t know what to do. You create all this tension and use pivot and you stop for five minutes, you talk about the passage and then you go back to the intro. So I’m like, I know Ben, it wasn’t that smooth. So let’s look at it. The passage we’re looking at this morning um is Philippians forward that paul is just the main ideas Paul is expressing gratitude to the Philippians church in philippi, who has been financially supporting him time and time again on all of his multiple missionary journeys. They saw the man, the myth, the missionary paul and they wanted to support him. They believed in him and they’ve been the first in a very, the first giver and the financially generous giver of supporting paul as he has been and his team as he’s been going into unreached, unengaged people, groups of these different cities, advancing the gospel. And at the end of this chapter, the end of Chapter four, Paul writes off a very gracious filled, grateful Letter to his very first ever supporter on his missionary journeys. And so most pastors will probably read over these 13 verses and they will do what I will do next time I do this book of the bible is a leverage it for like stewardship or making your money go where your mission is. And just, you know, buying in to advance the gospel and being sacrificial here and now for them and their rewards and you know, faithfulness and generosity and you know, it’s that’s what normally I would do hunted passage like this. But in light of the great change we’re about to experience and embark on as a church. I’m going to go from a little different angle. So, first let’s read the passage Philippians, Chapter four verse 10 says this Paul writing to this church. He says, I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last you have renewed your care for me. You are in fact concerned about me, but lack the opportunity to show it. I didn’t say this out of need for I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am. I know both how to have a little and how to have a lot. I know in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being content. Whether well fed or hungry, whether in abundance or in need. I am able to do all things through him who strengthens me still. You did well by sharing with me in my hardships and you Philippians know that in the early days of the Gospel when I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving receiving except you alone. For even in Thessaly Lanka you sent gifts for my needs several times. Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that is increasing in your account. But I’ve received everything in full and I have an abundance. I am fully supplied. Having received from papered itis what you provided a fragrant offering a welcome sacrifice pleasing to God and my God will supply all your needs according to his riches and Glory in christ jesus now in our God and father be glory forever and ever. Amen, greet every saint in christ jesus whose brothers who are with me, greet you all the saints greet you, but especially those from caesar’s household and the grace of the Lord, jesus, christ be with your spirit. And so context is king. The context as we close out this this book in this series is to close out this chapter as a church. The Philippians are models of spinning the resources on what they believe. They put their money where their mouth is, their money, with their mission is and they really do believe it and they’ve invested in Paul time and time again. There faithfully and generously come through when others didn’t and they consistently time and time again were the hand of God to meet needs of Paul’s missionary teams. Over and over again, paul is acknowledging this reality. He’s acknowledging that there are a generous church in philippi, paul is writing to them about their strong support over his career and paul’s at the end of his career, he’s about two years or so scholars saying from when he died, when he was killed in martyr, he’s experienced their support over multiple missionary campaigns to unreached, unengaged people groups. The Philippine church are a model of generosity model of giving. And but paul is on the other side of the model, he’s a model of receiving, receiving a precious gift. It’s a wise person to learn how to do both well, how to give generously, but also how to receive well, how to receive. Biblically. Most of us cannot identify with the financial poverty that paul has experienced, everybody wrote about, but most, most churches cannot truly identify with the financial generosity that the Philippine churches experienced. We, we as uh, we as we have an example as a local church of what it looks like to be a local church of a global impact. We recently, in this last, earlier this year, we’re able to send Barack and Megan Langley to be missionaries to descend network to Alaska because of your giving and our churches giving, we’re supporting them financially as missionaries. On top of that, we’re giving to this cooperative program uh, to help advance the cause of christ on college campuses and in cities, the new church plants. And so cumulative cumulatively as a church. Last year, I think we gave none of our money away. That’s good English. This year. This year we are, we’ve given away 6% of our income to missionaries and church plants as a church. And our goal is to grow that to 10% in the coming years. Our money is going towards gospel in issues and new ventures of reaching, engaging, unreached people groups and collegiate kids. Our goal is to grow this partnership as the coming year is going to be generous as a church. It seems like pastors talk too little about money or too much about money every time pastors talk about money. I know the topic is loaded and you like, grab your wallet and like, what’s he up to? What’s he need? Uh, there’s either misunderstanding or mismanagement about money. I understand that, but I’d like to look at this, this, this passage from the paul’s lens, the receiving lens of this generous church. We say about being generous with your time, your talent, and your treasure as a church. That’s how we define generosity And the most treasured possession that exist on this planet is people souls. That’s the most valuable thing. It’s not the car you drive, the shirt you wore. It’s not it’s not the money of your bank out. It’s people that’s precious to God, and that’s precious to us. And we are on the we are about to be on the receiving end of the generosity of God in our lives as the church. I want to talk for a second about receiving, well, stewarding a gift. Well, if you look at the passage in verse 10, you can see a theme of gratitude that Paul has for for what these believers sacrifice what they gave up to make it make the mission move forward. There’s a deep level of gratitude. You see him paul. You see in versus 14 through 16, there’s just this partnership, this brother on the wall, sister on the wall, this camaraderie that they have because of one sacrifice someone’s receiving. You see in verse 17, this fruitfulness, this greater level of fruitfulness that they’re they’re released into the mission field to be God’s missionaries and God’s ambassadors and their propelled to a greater level of fruitfulness because of church’s sacrifice. And in verse 18, you see the shared worship fullness of worshiping God and you’re giving worshiping God and the generous receiving on the other end And the verse 19 and 20, you see just faith, they have a shared faith. They have a common language, a common purpose and their faith is both grown from giving and receiving gratitude partnerships, fruitfulness, worship and faith. Today, it seems like God is doing something new in Christianity. God is doing something new in the christian landscape, something wild that that hasn’t happened in the greater body of christ of any pastor living. And you can see that locally and across the nation of America, even globally unprecedented changes happening in Christianity, which brings me to the unusual transition point from the text to what big change we’re about to embark on as a church for several years now, specifically more intensely last year and a half. The pastors have been reaching out and saying in close relationship with another church in town, Restoration city church. You guys have known Dan, he’s coming, spoken here twice the last 9, 10, 11 months or so. He’s coming been a guest preacher here twice. Um, I do believe God is that God has led Shane been and I to a place where we not only are open to talking about potential mergers, but looking for a merger with a brother on the wall where we can truly be better together, stronger together. Now, words matter in terms matter and you can call church adoption, church foster church partnerships, church collaboration, church consolidation, church unification joining forces. There’s all this Burbage christians is when they talk about what we’re talking about this morning, but words matter. The word. The turn that seems best fitted to explain our context of what we’re experiencing is a true honest merger. Our collegiate Ministry of Zane and Faith and a dozen some students is doing fine, doing well and they would have had a very good fall this fall. But Restoration City RC three ministries, has a larger, more established collegiate ministry and our merger of our collegiate group into their college ministry would be the gospel advancing merger. It seems like people talk about mergers when they’re in trouble or their backs against the wall or things aren’t going well. Rarely do christians talk about merging and joining forces to advance the Gospel to advance the great commission. And so our collegiate ministry merger at that level is ideal and really helps propel the cause of price and the Gospel to reach out on college campuses. There’s a critical mass that comes together with this merger where we can have a winsome effect of college service right here in this building on Tuesday nights to reach out to college kids. That’s why we bought this building. That’s why we branded are building. That’s why we’ve renovated this building is to have a winsome tool we can use to reach the next generation of leaders, the next generation of labourers on that campus and in the harvest fields of heaven and this, this merger together stronger together. Theme carries directly from the college side into the community side, Shane been and I’ve been going rolling here for years and we love each other. We love you were doing fine and doing great. But Dan and Derek have a gift mix and availability and a humble desire to work together. And our community side gets an amazing edition of dan and Derek on the community side. Plus the Restoration City family could be joining our community side of our church. Both are collegiate merging. Our and our community merge of our church is compelling. If you look at it Alex Chloe Ryan Derek Zane faith john, there’s seven campus workers focusing on reaching collegiate students, that is a very compelling team and they have a very fun, healthy, critical mass to build and reach out to college students at U. N. L. And that’s our heart’s desire is to be reaching collegiate students at U. N. L. On the community side the post college years, many of our community groups are in a strong enough position to be able to take on new people at various seasons of life. Their singles that could connect with singles, newly married connected, newly married young couples of kids that connect with young couples of kids and young couples with multiple kids that connect with couples with multiple kids and and father figures and mother figures in the room who want to hang out with father figures and mother figures in the room or all these kids in the room that don’t have a lot of father and mother figures. The demographics of both churches just really seem to merge really well. Together. We are currently operating as two separate churches with the same theology, two separate churches of the same methodology to separate churches with the same age demographics, to separate churches with the same ethnic breakouts to separate church. Is using the same building currently to separate church is attempting to arrange this area of town and U. N. L. Were to separate church. Is looking at the same ministry hurdles that come along with time and size and growth. There’s only so much you can do at our size. There’s only so much the Restoration City Church can do with their size. But together is a very compelling, healthy, strong position we could be to move forward. We are truly better together. We are, we are crazy stronger together as we truly become unified as two churches becoming one. It is wild how the pastoral team have come together. It’s wild how the collegiate staff have come together. It’s wild how warm and welcome. This merger has been embraced by the leaders of Solar Church and it’s wild how exciting how the members of our church have embraced this this call to come together last night. We are two churches that are so compatible. Think of our core values are just gospel community and generosity. Restoration city churches, core values, gospel community purpose, which I like that more than generosity, should be honest. It’s better the purpose of our generosity is the purpose that encompasses all of life. I love it. Um, it’s wild how things work when God is working in and among his people. Satan wants a dis unified church, a divided church. I do not think Satan wants these two churches to be united under the motivation of advancing the gospel, advancing the cause of christ. I don’t think saying once a compelling, robust college ministry at U. N. L. Reaching students for christ, I don’t think saying once a healthy balanced community church supporting the campus outrage, I don’t think saying once a robust paid pastoral team, a robust bi vocational pastoral team, a balance of gift mixes that are desired and designed to build a healthy church. Tom Berlin Bird said this about church measures. He says successful mergers are vehicles of change, not, not perseveres of the past changes is an event. Something that happens, transition is the emotional and psychological processing of the change. It is one of the most this has been one of the most wild, encouraging, weighty, sobering seasons of my pastoral life. I mean, these are people’s lives you’re talking about and I don’t take that lightly. I mean, our people’s lives, you’re, you’re all y’all’s lives, Restoration city churches, people’s lives, their sweet dear people have secret shop them a few times and I guess preached there a couple of weeks back there. Dear sweet people. It seems, this seems like something that always other churches figure out other pastoral teams, work out their leadership teams work out. It seems like this kind of merged. That is so strategic for the mission, for the Gospel Advancement seems to always happen to someone else in my mind. I’ve never thought this could happen to us. I believe God is helping us thread this needle. Is this merger possible? Definitely. It’s just merger feasible. Absolutely. It’s just merger desirable at every level of our church. We’ve been rolling this out, I would say 1,000%. We chained, but, and I have done our homework on this. We’re not walking in, uh, unprepared. We’ve done a theology audit, we’ve done a best practice audit. We’ve done a methodology audit. We’ve done a chemistry audit. We’ve done a team audit. We’ve done a vision audit. This was kind of eerie to me. I think it was shame that as dan at one of our dan and Derek and Ben Shane and I was, we met a couple weeks back Shane asked dan like what’s the ideal hope and future of frustration city church and dan described a multi generational, multi ethnic church, midsize church in the heart of Lincoln. That’s reaching college students and everyone else that is sending out church plants and missionaries. I should sound familiar, should sound familiar. I think that sounds familiar but the vision on it there, we went through open handed and closed handed non negotiables that we both hold near and dear to us as pastors. I’ve sought seven outside local and regional pastors to help give fresh insight and thoughts on the dynamics of this merge. I mean bottom line, I deeply loved and Derek. I’ve known Derek for six years. I know dance for two, some years. I want them to be in my life, I want them to be in your life. I want them to be my pastor. I want them to be your pastor. I know they have stellar character of these men. They have a high threshold for work, they carry a lot of weight, they get stuff done, they have a hard work ethic. They’re driven in hungry men just like shame, just like Ben. They’re men who know their bibles deeply better than me. Do you get what I’m saying? I want to be in a room where I’m not you know chain and then another bibles as well. But I want to be the dumbest guy in the room when it comes to bible knowledge. Um there are men that have a humble disposition. There are there are there are we first not me, first man, their team men. The fact that these two men are willing to even pray about joining and considering joining us is just wild to me. It feels like it feels like you are winning the lottery as a church able to have the collegiate staff, the pastoral staff. It feels like we just landed a huge blockbuster, you know, unifying mission, advancing merger. But the reality is this is an answer to prayer. It’s an answer to your prayer as a church, as an answer to our prayers of pastoral team. Many of us have our alarms go off at 10:02. We asked our members to set that alarm and their phones that remind you of Luke 10 births to that says the pray to the lord of the harvest whose sends out Labour’s into the field because the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, the pray that God will bring in more laborers, more workers to join us in this harvest field. And so we’ve been praying that I just don’t think we expected that prayer to get answered this quickly. I don’t believe that was on any of our agenda from february until today. That that would happen that quickly increased Alex Chloe Ryan Derek dan. That is insane as wild. Another thing is we’ve been, we’ve been praying about this strategic objectives as the church, we rolled out in february, all of our members. We’ve been praying for the gospel community and generosity to be so generously to send and support one missionary. We’ve accomplished that with your generosity and the church’s generosity of Barack and Megan increased conversions and baptisms. Come on, we want more of that two full services. This merger brings out about very quickly one church plant Derek would come in as a church planning resident for our church, Doubling our community groups, doubling our parking capacity to new pastors and elders and 75 people in our collegiate group. It is wild to think that God maybe knew that ahead of time when we were planning this on our end, I believe God had a plan when he was making us. I feel like our three year plans just became a one year objective. Maybe God has something new for us faster than any of us ever thought as a church and have a very open hands, open heart posture towards what God wants to do, how he just wants to move us and lead us to where he wants to lead us as a church. I’m all in on that. Derek is coming in as a pastor and the church planting resident that is an answer to prayer Zain and faith for getting to work and operate in the context of a team Alex Chloe Ryan and Derek, that is an amazing answer to their personal prayer, you can read their newsletters, they’ve been praying for that dan is coming on as a pastor with strong evangelistic gifting and strong teaching gifting and that’s an answer to our pastoral teams prayer. We’ve been praying for a person that’s gifted an evangelism for a while. Obviously we all should feel called and burden to reach it in to lost this and do our part of sharing the gospel, but there’s a gift there that’s designed to equip and unleash the church, this is really an answer to prayer, its answer to your prayer and our pastoral teams prayer and God is answering your prayer today and it’s humbling in my mind to see Alex Chloe Ryan, Derek dan, all joining our church to do labor on your behalf, on campus and in the community is wild and it’s a tremendous sobering blessing as we close. I want to remind you of what paul’s disposition was on the posture of his heart of receiving a generous gift And receiving. Verse 10 talks about there’s gratitude for the gift four vs 14 and 16, you know, there’s a partnership that occurs For 17, there’s fruitfulness that comes at an increased fruitfulness because of the generosity of others. Verse 18, there’s a shared worshiping of God and the giving and the receiving and we could have a shared worshiping of God being in the same building at the same time, doing church together. And then versus 19 and 20, there’s a unifying faith, increased growth in faith and unifying faith. We’re receiving an amazing gift of the RCC staff, the RCC pastoral team. We’re receiving an amazing gift of the dear people at Restoration City Church. There are sweet family of people. I’ve gone to their their barbecue at branch doc. I’ve been to the church, there’s some dear sweet people. They love each other, they love the word of God and they love their leaders. Well, there are good, healthy church and this is amazing that we would come together to advance the cause of christ. It seems like a win for the Kingdom of God, a win for the body of christ, A win for the Gospel to go forward and strength, A win for the Gospel Witness in this part of Lincoln. It’s a win for the pastoral team. It’s a win for the strategic objectives that our church has been praying about. It’s a win for the community groups side of our church. It’s a win for the collegiate ministry of our church. So our church is healthy enough to even entertain this because of your faith in God and your faithfulness as christians, your leaders of this church, the committee group, leaders of this church, we’ve been able to consider this because of you because of the strength of the community groups we have because of the strength of leadership team we have. This is an opportunity adore. We can walk through because of what God has been doing in your life and God sees you and we could even do things like this and the openness because of you. The reality is your faith and your faithfulness puts us in a place where we can even do this. Part two sermon, rob, rob, vision can sticks, I’ve here written down and run through a wall. So my goal is to get you amped up to run through a wall. I don’t know if that worked or not. You can let me know afterwards, but okay, like let’s go. So what’s next? All right, let’s talk about fun, practical things like parking. We’ve been talking about parking every fall for years, except for last year when Covid shutdown churches and that was the problem last year. But this year we’re gonna talk about parking like we do every year. We told our members last night at our members meeting. Hey, members first meeting ever. Remember you remember now? So that means you can’t park here. You need a park at the minimal, there’s 70 80 some parking spots out there. You can park at neighborhood works as 12 spots we can use. And uh on hill at Cosecha Church worked it out with the owner of lobos across the street, We can park 20 cars. They’re just not in front of the store, but the other side of the store. So, I mean, uh, you know, families and uh, father figures, mother figures you can park. We want to honor you, let you park close to the building. General parking is available to. But for everyone that is members. And if you want to pretend you remember, don’t park here, park and walk. Um, but I mean, think single guys, you know, other generations crossed the specific in the atlantic ocean to fight tearing and evil. You can cross 27th street to help advise the cause of christ, but men and women, I love you. God bless you. You can’t park here and that’s fine. We want to be hospitable as we do this to service world that really matters because people hang out and say, how do their friends from the second service and their car is taking spots outside and so we need to create some hospitality space in our parking lot because when you go to a church, you expect to park on the facility on side of that church. And so it is your home church. Thank you and heck we could get crazy, maybe we’ll buy a golf cart and like go shuttle people from the funeral home down there. We can, we can figure out some crazy things in the future. But alright, so parking, Next thing, when will this become known as public knowledge? Well, I think now now it’s public knowledge officially, there’ll be a social media post coming on our college account stuff I’m told and on our church account stuff they’ll be unified post coming, will be blog post coming. We’re gonna email out frequently asked questions often the, so we’re perspective to all the people in our churches ecosystem. So they kind of hear about this. Our goal is to over communicate what we’re doing. Um, Jason be emailing that out to everyone here later today. Um, I, and Shane and Ben will be available for questions. Um, if you’d like to schedule a meeting, we love to clarify and talk through things with you. The next few weeks will be very available to answer questions with you. What else is next? Well, next week dan coke and I’ll be preaching our first unified joint church service together. It’ll be great. We’re gonna, we’re gonna split the time and do a message together. I think it be awesome. I’m expecting dan to give me a notes of what to say because I haven’t thought that far ahead yet, but Danza strong teacher, I’m sure there’s something good, you know? But after next sunday, after the second service, we uh we’ve got a food truck, dan had a contact of a food truck guy who’s going to take on the challenge of trying to feed all of us. And so we’re offering the first service to come to the second service And we’re paying a little bit of the church to make it cheaper for everyone, but it’s gonna be $7 per person to eat. So cash credit, no Bitcoin. Come on down. Um we’re gonna have a massive meal after the second service which will be wild, little big, big fun, bold undertaking to feed everyone. But listen to what your $7 is gonna get. You pulled pork barbecue ribs, brisket, sausage, potato salad, baked beans, chipped and seven up cake for $7. So let’s go, let’s go come next week for lunch. You’re gonna eat somewhere as well, eat it here. Um They’ll be up. There’s a potluck, there’s some guerilla warfare organic potlucks. We’re gonna have launched. Um there’s a potluck on august 13th at six p.m. Here at the church. Everybody bring a main dish with enough to share. I texted Wyatt a photo. Can we show that photo if you have time? Maybe not, but the last name is A to K. Bring aside L dizzy, bring a dessert drink. Some people provided this is how we should do our potluck people. We need to go hard, don’t, don’t go, don’t bring a bag of chips now bring something good and let’s have a fun free or meal here in this building, we won’t have enough tables and chairs for you, but we’ll have food for you if everyone brings enough. Okay, Because we’re not designed to feed this many people, but we can try, if you have questions. You can email tim Cramer. I don’t know if you want me to give your phone number to the livestream, tim Kramer. You can email Hello at solar Church dot com and we can feel questions there. That that sounds good. So there’s gonna be some big social events, we’re gonna lean into community and what that looks like. That’s a core value of both churches and we really want to embrace RCC is a precious gift in our world. Um, and then after that dan and I, and we’ll be launching a mini series of our core values as a church around gospel community and the purpose of our generosity. It will be great. So, what else is next? Mike, come and eat. Got it parked somewhere else. Got it. All right, well, what else is next is? So, there’s suggestions. There’s urgings, there’s policies, there’s commands. I’d like to make a soft suggestion to our community groups. I would suggest that you sit together singing together, served together at the same service. It’s a suggestion. It’s wild. Not that it’s a hard fast rule. It’s a suggestion, but like, the reality is as there’s more people coming to the church, like there has been, you have more services. People can fall through the cracks and that’s not anyone’s design or desire to make a church feel smaller if your whole career group set there and you served together and you set together, it’s a very fun, compelling way to include people in community and also have that accountability piece of where have you been? You know what I’m saying? Because right now the only one that goes to both services in my community group is me. So most of you don’t go to both services and you assume the best of the other service that your people are there. But the reality is people can fall through the cracks and we should be faithful shepherds of chasing our loving our sheep and it helps if you see her sheep weekly. And uh, so that’s just a practical suggestion, a soft suggestion to our communities to pray about consolidating to a service. Not a rule, but it winds them principle to help us feel smaller as we grow larger. I’d like to close with a story which is our story and uh, sobering compelling story. That is the reality we have to face. Um, we had two pastors visit our church the last since june till a couple weeks ago. One pastor sat right there where mike is sitting and then the other pastor sat there behind john two different services to different experiences. I asked both of them the following a couple of weeks like, hey, they came on their vacation and crashed our service unannounced was like, hey, how was your experience like that church? What do you notice? Any advice for us? The one that set back there said I was surprised at how cold it was. I’m not like temperature cold or it’s like, no, just no one talked to me. No one reached out to me. No one shook my hands. You know, they’re all talking to each other, but no one talked to me. And then the second pastor that came a couple of weeks later, he said, I was treated like a rock star. There’s people all around lined up to talk to me, shake my hand. I wanted to get to know me. They were just, it was, it was fun to get that much attention and people coming after me. He didn’t say that’s coming after it. But you know, like, you know, so what changed between that first guys experience that second pastors experience at our church was I gotta win some advice from another pasture in town that he tells his leaders to do, which I’m gonna tell everyone of you to do is talk to two new people before you talk to your people. The only thing that changed is we were reminded of reaching out to the least in the loss and people we don’t know. And I think that’s very important right now because a the fall the fall increases coming b we have another church is about to join us next sunday. I think it’s very important that we are hospitable. Not just that there’s a parking spot and here’s the sunday school, here’s a band and no one talks to you. We have to be very reminding you of who we are and what got us here is the friendly, warm community of people reaching out to new people, inviting people to join them into their community groups, invite people to join them in their lunch dates, coffee dates, play dates. That is what is precious and dear to us as a church and there’s no reason we should lose that as we continue to go forward. Just a reminder, talked to some new people before you talk to people, you recognize. Amen. So it’s all remember that last point, especially. Okay, so let’s, uh, let’s pray, Joshua closes out in communion. Let’s pray God. I thank you for this time together. I thank you for what you’re doing in our church. I thank you for dan Derek Alex Chloe and Ryan and the Restoration City Church Family. You’re a generous God to us. You’ve given us more than we deserve, more than we. More than anything or anyone of us deserve. You gave us jesus, you gave us the gospel. He gave us the church. You’ve given us so much resources and tools at our disposal. Lord, we are, we are unworthy of all that we received from you. I ask that you just continue to help us to be good stewards of what you’ve given us. Lord. Good stewards of the relationships we have and the relationships were growing your growing us into. I just thank you for the faith of RCC to step out on faith and join us. God, I said, just really help advance the Gospel, advance the cause of christ Because of this.