A Heritage of Gospel Partnership

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

And at this time, we have David Tribble for his testimony. Thank you, Kimmy. Hi, guys. I have the privilege of sharing my testimony this morning, and I did grow up in church. I was thankful to have parents who were churchgoers, and my mom was singing in church, and my dad would sing, you know, occasionally. So I did have some of that going on and just a lot of church a lot of a lot of youth time Summer camps and things like that. So I did have some great experiences with in those times

You know, man, I have a brother and sister Older sister younger brother. I was a middle child. Where's the middle children at? Okay. There you go. We stick together And So right around middle school my parents I got a divorce, so I come from a split home. And so as a John Mayer song quotes, I got a mom, I got a dad, but they do not have each other. And so, you know, I learned what that was like back and forth a couple of different schools in my high school. But still going to church, still staying pretty connected with that. And I started writing. I started writing in my journals. I started journaling every night just about my day whether it was good or bad and sometimes I would just scribble and I feel like that was a huge part of my journey based on what I'm doing now And so I was still pretty shy. I really really didn't know who I was

And I had accepted the Lord, you know at a youth camp With my friends, you know when I was in fifth grade or something like that. So I had understood what salvation was, and then I think I had accepted, I had also accepted the Lord when I was younger and I got baptized. So these are all things that just build on a foundation of Christ in my life. And so, but I really do believe God started to really understand, show himself in a very real way to me in college when I started seeing God in people, when I actually understood what it meant for people to have God in their life and what He does to their life and how He changes who they are and the way they walk around and their confidence is in Him, not themselves.

And so I just thought myself, I need to know who I am, I need to accept it, and I need to get good at it. And I feel like God showed me what those things were and his plan. As music started to come into my life, I picked up the guitar. I started writing songs soon after because I was already writing in my journal. And I taught myself how to play guitar. I just picked it up. When I was a kid, I tried and my parents, you know, gave me opportunity, but I just didn't have any reason to do anything but go outside and play.

And so, but finally on my terms, It stuck and I taught myself and I've been playing guitar ever since and I was about 18 years old. And so with those things in place, I mean, I just become, I put my confidence in the Lord, I put my confidence in who he has me to be, not myself, because that was a mess, you know, still is. And so fast forward, graduated college somehow, You know, became a teacher. Shout out to all the teachers you guys are putting in the work. It's hard work, my wife included. But I say that my wife came to my life, my amazing wife, Erin, who loves the Lord so much and has just, I mean, made my life so, so much better. We've been married for 13 years. We got married six months after we started dating. And so when you know, you know, I didn't know her parents. So technically, they had been praying for me the whole time that they were praying for someone for her.

And they're still in our lives so much. They're amazing. And then our children. We had Harper, my oldest, who's 10 now. We had her in 2012, and then Emberly in 2018. I mean, I'm the most blessed man on the planet, if you ask me, because I am really fortunate to do what I love to do for living, and I have a beautiful family to do that with, and who supports what I do. But the Lord is just so good, and just the way He orchestrates things, and we don't know what the story looks like until we just keep on pushing through, and we have a journey to tell people about and that testimony is powerful, right? And so let our stories, you know, be loud in front of people that need to hear them. Don't be afraid of those stories, how ugly they might be, because someone has those things to connect with you. So anyway, thank you. Thanks for letting me share my story. And I have a song I'm going to share with you as well. Spirits among us,

We are grateful. Work in our lives. Show us the way, God. We love you so much. In your name we pray, amen. Amen. Let's open our Bibles up to Hebrews. The very last bit of it. Hebrews chapter 13, verses 18 through 25. Although I cannot guarantee it, and I am not a betting man, most days, I would wager that you have never heard a sermon on the last eight verses of the book of Hebrews. I don't know, I could be wrong. Um, but we will go all the way through the book of Hebrews. Dang it. And that includes the very end, so let's do it. We're going to focus on the last three verses first, and then we're going to kind of jump around so that we can kind of grasp what's going on. As we look at the last three verses, I want you to notice first how personal it gets, and we'll have the verses that will be up here also. So if you can't find them in your Bible, if you're not really used to looking at a Bible,

don't know where Hebrews is, that's fine. It's all gonna be kind of up here. And so Hebrews chapter 13, verses 23 through 25. So the last three verses, it says, you should know that our brother Timothy has been released with whom I shall see you if he comes soon greet all your leaders and all the saints those who come from Italy send you greetings grace be with all of you now this almost reads like a family Christmas letter right it's like it's like updates on people you hadn't seen in a while you know it's like Timothy you remember Timothy, well here's how he's doing. Oh, and the people in Italy, you know, the Church in Italy, they're gonna send you greetings. I recently went to a family reunion on the Caperton side, and those are people I had not seen in 20-plus years. In fact, maybe some of them in 30-plus years. I was a grade schooler the last time I saw them, and so I walk in, and I'm going, okay, you

I'm trying to remember who people are, and so I sit down and I'm right next to someone, and I say, hello, Becky. And she graciously corrected me. It's Sherry. Tried one more time with another relative whose name I should have known. And again, gracious correction, everybody was very sweet. And then Carolyn, who is a great aunt of mine. Carolyn was in front of me, I had not seen Carolyn in 30 years either, and she just turned around and saved me the embarrassment and said, I'm Carolyn, it's good to see you Drew.

And these are people that are blood kin. I mean, these are people that are family. They are capertons, they are rights, they are wares. They are, on my dad's side, they are my people, But their faces had grown terribly unfamiliar over the last 20 or 30 years. What you find here, what we find in verses 23 through 25 is the opposite. We see people that haven't seen each other in a while, and they're very familiar with one another. And really, we see this kind of discussion, these kinds of notes, at the end of all the letters in the New Testament. We see it all over the New Testament, right? Where people are greeting one another and we don't know any of their names. We don't know who these people are, right? We don't know the people in Italy that he's referring to at all, even if he would have included their names. But all of these letters in the New Testament,

they end kind of like a family reunion. In fact, it is so prevalent that every single one, And all 13 of letters from the Apostle Paul, from Romans to Philemon, addresses at least one person with whom he shared ministry. One per... At least one. On the other end of that spectrum, you have Romans 16. Romans 16 alone mentions 35 people. Phoebe, Priscilla, Aquila, Epinetus, Mary, Andronicus, Junia, Ampliatus, Urbanus, Stachus, Apelles, Aristobulus, that's my favorite, Herodion, Narcissus, Trifonia, Tryphosa, Persus, Rufus, Asynchritus, Phlegion, Hermes, Petrovus, Hermus, Philologus, the name I would not want, Julia, Nereus, Olympus, Timothy, Lucius, Jason, Sosa-Potter, Tertius, Gaius, Erasus, Cordus. I list all those names to you. First of all, for you to just remember how unfamiliar you are with all of those names. Okay, if I'm asking you, like, go ahead, give me like five of those names back.

You're like, Rufus, I don't know. And so here's why I list all those names. Here's why I talk about that. Here's why I bring up these verses. It's to ask the question, why are they included in the Bible at all? Why are they there? Why, why at the end of Hebrews, which is kind of this long sermon, okay? So eloquent, we're like diving in the depths of Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Testament priest and the tabernacle and the sacrifice kind of all in one. How cool was that? You know, we're just plumbing the depths here. And at the end, we're like, oh, Timothy says hi. And it just seems strange, doesn't it? It just seems weird. And we actually know Timothy's name, but sometimes you get something like, like Tykikus says hello to Cleopas. Oh, good, I'm glad we have that in Philemon, okay? The reason I believe that the Lord God in heaven, in His infinite wisdom, gave us these

names at the end of these letters is that we need to remember, we need help remembering that these letters, Hebrews included, are the result of people sharing ministry. These names at the end of these letters are the result of people sharing ministry. In other words, most of the New Testament, most of the New Testament, they are letters between real people ministering together through real events. For example, what we looked at last week in Hebrews chapter 13, we talk about false teaching. The reason that we talk about false teaching in Hebrews 13 is because there were actual false teachers. It's not because it's not like just in case there's false teachers, you're going to need to know XYZ. No, no, there's actual false teachers. And so there's a reason that we see it at the end of Hebrews. There's another reason though that we see it at the end of almost every letter in the

New Testament. And it's because the Spirit always brings together spiritual families that share ministry. It's what the Spirit does. The Hebrews church, right, the church that we read about in Hebrews, the one that receives the letter, it is simply, simply one spiritual family that the Spirit used to make disciples and give God glory. That's it. That's what this church is. And it's the same for the Romans church, for the Galatians church, for the Philippians church, for the Corinthian church, it's Colossians church, it's all the same. These are a spiritual family, this is a letter addressed to a spiritual family who's sharing ministry and these letters are occasional. They have a reason to be written. And it really makes sense, it really flows into the fact that the Spirit really is always at work in us doing something, birthing something new. The Spirit, for

example, illuminates Scripture. We see that in John 16. This love actually is poured into us through the Spirit. That's Romans 5. The Spirit enables us to cry out to the Father at all. That's Romans 8. The Spirit makes us more like Jesus. That's Galatians 5. The Spirit makes us forget ourselves in the interest of others, Philippians 2, and the Spirit is our collective pace-setter. We walk by the Spirit. That's also Galatians 5. The Spirit is the one that is working in us to illuminate Scripture, to awaken us to the truth. But more than that, more than individually, the Spirit is bringing people together. The Spirit puts a desire in somebody who's a believer to be with other believers. It's not like we all became Christians and we thought, we should put together a church. That would be a good idea. No, that's something that the Spirit is doing, has done, will continue to do until the end of time.

And so at the end of the letter of Hebrews then, what we see is the culmination of what the Spirit has already done. We see the Spirit bringing people to life in Jesus. We see the Spirit bringing them together as a spiritual family, and we see them sharing the work of ministry, and that is why we're mentioning Timothy at the end of Hebrews. That's why those in Italy are sending their greetings, is because these are real people in real space and time that are really sending greetings through a real letter. And they're doing it because they're sharing ministry. What we find in the rest of the text this morning in verses 18 through 25 that we haven't read yet, these are what I would consider to be markers of shared ministry in a church body. Indicators, if you will, that our church body is sharing ministry.

And so we're gonna jump around these verses. The first two I wanna look at are verses 18 and 22. Hebrews chapter 13, verses 18 and 22. It says, pray for us, for we are sure that we have a clear conscience desiring to act honorably in all things. Then 22, I appeal to you brothers, bear with my word of exhortation, for I've written to you briefly. He's saying, pray for us that we can have clear consciences. Pray for us to act honorably. If we're going to share ministry together, if we are sharing ministry together, then we are growing up together. In other words, we truly, truly desire to glorify God in our lives, and we desire for God to be glorified in the lives of the people of our church, of our spiritual family. In fact, I mean, this is the reason that the letter is written. I've written to you briefly, so that you will bear with my word of exhortation. So this is the letter, this is the letter, be exhorted.

Follow Jesus, run the race, be of one mind, resist sin, embrace discipline, worship till you're dead. Sacrifice together, stand strong, outdo one another in showing honor, right? This is the reason this letter is written so that this church will be together. Why? Because we are for one another's spiritual maturity. Look, I get it. I get it. You face crises, you wanna grow, you wanna overcome, yes, yes and amen. Part of my spiritual growth though is to make sure that Kenneth Harrington is growing in spiritual maturity. I make that my business, and I hope and pray that he makes it his business, that I'm doing the same thing. That he cares maybe even more about my spiritual maturity than I care about his. Excuse me, let me say that again. That he cares even more about my spiritual maturity than he cares about his own. That's what I meant, sorry. That this is the picture of sharing ministry.

It's not just that, you know, can I hit my personal goals, Can I be all I wanna be? No, I mean, it's much more than that. It's caring for another person that they would grow in Christ, that they would experience joy, that they would be strong, that they would be able to resist temptation, resist sin. We don't just smile on Sundays and part ways, we are brothers and sisters in a spiritual family. If we are sharing ministry, we are growing up together. We're growing up together. We are for one another's spiritual maturity. Some of the things that we see in verses 19 and then again in 23 through 25, I urge you 19, I urge you the more earnestly to do this in order that I may be restored to you the sooner and then 23 through 25, we just read it, but it's an update on Timothy, greeting The leaders, those who come from Italy, greet you also. If we are sharing ministry like they were

at the end of Hebrews here and all over the New Testament, then we are enjoying time together. We're enjoying time together. In other words, it's not just that they support one another, but they got deep and abiding joy from hearing about what Jesus was doing in another person, right? It's not they just sat down, like they didn't just like playing board games together, although, you know, board games, that's fun. But it's more than that. It's about hearing what Jesus is doing in the life of other people. When you hear what Jesus is doing in the life of another person, it is powerful in innumerable ways. It is a huge encouragement. I'm just going to list you three. This is just for fun. When you hear what Jesus is doing in another person's life, it encourages you when you feel spiritually dry. When you feel spiritually dry and you hear somebody else say, you know what, the Lord

man, I was in prayer today and it was just a blessing. It was a, I mean, the Lord spoke and encouraged me. Just hearing that helps somebody who is spiritually dry. It helps you recall when you're the dry one. It helps you recall what Jesus has done for you. It's also powerful in that hearing what Jesus has done in somebody else's life chips away at your pride. Because at times, we can become convinced that it is all up to us. And when we hear what Jesus is doing in the life of another person, it's an encouragement. Oh, okay, yeah, I forgot. Yeah, the Spirit's totally at work without my permission. When I'm asleep, the Spirit's working. Okay, I should remember that. Also, it is powerful in that. It reminds you that the kingdom is bigger than you. Right? Look, sometimes, and I get this way too, sometimes whenever we are depressed, whenever we are kind of down about whatever's going on,

it's because we're kind of stuck in our own life. We're kind of stuck in our own head, and we can't really see anything happening outside of whatever's going on here. So if we have maybe some personal failures, if we have some things, like just some sins we just can't kick or we've just really been in a valley, you know, the past couple of days, man, when you hear what Jesus is doing in somebody else's life,

you are suddenly reminded that the kingdom that you are a part of is much bigger than how you feel or what you were able to do that week. And that is such a good, powerful thing about hearing what somebody else is doing. Sharing ministry is only possible as we make time to be together, as we hear about what Jesus is doing. Otherwise, otherwise, we're just doing ministry alone and we happen to be in the same location. So sharing ministry, we're growing up together. Sharing ministry, we are enjoying time together. Let's look at this last part, verses 20 and 21 right in the middle. And this is known as a benediction. It says, now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight,

through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever, amen. This is called a benediction because it is invoking God's blessing. It is asking God to bless in a specific way. We call that a benediction. So it's asking for a blessing. To what end? What blessing is it asking for? It's right there in the beginning of verse 21. It says, may the God of peace do what? Verse 21, equip you with everything good that you may do His will. If we're going to share ministry, if we're gonna be together as a church body, then we need to obey the mission. We need to understand that God in heaven is equipping you to do His will. God desires to work in each of us

to make us obey, okay? That is oddly put on purpose, okay? We don't think about it like that all the time. We think about maybe how we're going to obey God. Yes and indeed, let's do that. Yes, that's biblical, yes. But we also need to be just as biblical and say, God wants to work in us to make us obey, to create obedience in us. And this is the part of the gospel that we often miss. Because whenever we understand that we are not in total control of everything, whenever we understand that there is a big capital P-L-A-N plan going on all around us that we are caught up in, the kingdom of God is moving, it's happening. People are being made new, marriages are being healed, people are being healed of addiction, it's happening. Not just the bad is happening. The stuff you hear on the news is not the only thing that's happening, okay? It's not. What you don't hear on the news

are people that are being healed. Because it doesn't make the front page. It doesn't get clicks. The gospel that we all miss is that it's not up to us. That there's freedom in that. Many times, this is what we need to hear whenever we are emotionally or kind of spiritually barricaded, when we're kind of stuck in one perspective and we start to feel overwhelmed.

We start to feel disqualified. Maybe we start to feel like we don't even know where to start. We start to feel like we're drowning. We all go through seasons like that, Where we're overwhelmed, where we say, okay, if I have to be obedient, if I have to be obedient, now, okay, well, I gotta clean up my act. If I have to be obedient, then I have to make sure, you know, I got my spiritual to-dos all in order. If I have to be obedient, if the Lord is doing that in me, then I really gotta step up. I really gotta, I can't, you know, I can't say anything bad to anybody. I've gotta really mind my P's and Q's. I gotta, and you start really getting locked down on that. You start really feeling the walls closing in. But I just want to read that benediction again. It says, may the God of peace. There's a reason that God is described as the God of peace. He's the God of a lot of things.

But here in this benediction, he's the God of peace. He is the great shepherd. God wants to work in you by his eternal covenant. His eternal covenant. In other words, the promise that He made, that He's keeping, that's what He wants to work in you through. And He wants to work in us through Jesus Christ. Those verses, as we read them, should not be wagging the finger to make you feel bad. Those verses should be helping you find deep encouragement to share ministry because God Himself is keeping the peace. God Himself is tending to your heart like a shepherd. God Himself is keeping His eternal covenant. God Himself is working that in you through Jesus Christ. What a blessing, if that's a blessing, say amen.

If God is doing all that, if God's doing all that, what's our part? What's our part? Well, I've heard it said that 90% of life is showing up. I think that's a lot of following the Lord too. It's just showing up, just being present. It's like Isaiah, right? So the Apostle Paul had a Damascus Road experience, right? But what did Isaiah have? A raised hand. Here am I, send me, I'll go, I'll go. Our part is being present, it's raising our hand, it's listening to him. It is spending time with Him, spending time sharing ministry with our spiritual family. In fact, if we're going to cooperate this, there's one question to ask really is, what's the best way that we can cooperate with God as already doing? What's a way that the Lord has gifted me and called me, and a way that makes sense with kind of where I'm at in life, right? How can I cooperate with what the Lord is already doing?

I don't need to copy what another person's doing. I don't need to somehow make my, I don't need to become an Instagram influencer. I don't need to make my life look like somebody else's life. I need to ask the question quite simply, how can I raise my hand? How can I open my life to cooperate with what the Lord is calling me to cooperate with? I want to leave you this morning with three ways that you can share ministry in our body this morning. And by no means am I trying to limit it to three, I'm just trying to be concise and clear. If I listed all the points, we'd be here until 1 30 and nobody wants that. Not even me. Okay, let's talk about three ways we could share the we share ministry. First, first way worship services on a Sunday morning. Look, I understand we do this every week. I get it. I would just say, there's a reason we do this every week. And, and

the reason that we do it is that is that it is an expression of love and care for one another. That if we are if we are sharing ministry, we need to physically be in the same place. And look, it's not, man, I hope it's never, at least now it's not. It's not a fashion show. It's not a how good do you look on a Sunday morning. It's not if you come more, you're more spiritual, if you miss one, you're, you know, reprobate. It's not that. That's not what we're going for. And if anybody would espouse that kind of thinking or that kind of attitude, you can, You can tell them to give me a call, tell them to talk to me. Look, Sunday morning is our chance to look one another in the eye and say, how is it with you? How is it going? What's your week been like? Can I pray for you right now in person? a chance to physically meet needs. That's why we have donuts. It's not just to lure

the children. It's not. Although it works, that's not really what we're trying to do. Look, we're just trying to create an environment that just, it's conducive to talking, to sitting. It's why we have little pub tables out there. That's why we have coffee, right? Because, I don't know if you're like me, man. Coffee's like the grease for the engine of my mouth, right? Like I can just talk more when I've got coffee flowing, okay? This is why we have preschool and nursery ministry during the service. This is why when we come together, we wanna be able to sit down, to look at each other in the eye, and to really talk, to really listen. Sunday morning worship services. We have them for sharing ministry. The second thing, we have Lord's Supper services on Wednesday night. It's not every Wednesday night, it's about every six to eight weeks. And I'll tell you right now,

our next one is Wednesday, January 18th, okay? You can put it in the bank. Wednesday, January 18th will be our next Lord Supper service. It'll be at six o'clock, six to seven 30. The expressed purpose of that Lord's Supper service is to listen to what Jesus is doing in the lives of other people. It's to encourage those that are spiritually dry. It chips away at our pride. It reminds us that there's a bigger kingdom. When you and I take the bread and the cup, we're doing something that Christians globally are doing and Christians have done for millennia. It is a way for us, one way for us to express, hey, we all love Jesus. It's his body, his blood that we remember. It's not how great we are, it's not how great that other church was, it's not how great this worship service is, it's not any of that, it's how good Jesus is. And it reminds us of those things. We focus very hard on making that time a blessing for everybody that is there.

Those Lord's Supper services are good. And like I said, next one, Wednesday, January 18th. The last one is ministry teams. One of my wife's favorite times of the year. What is it, babe? Well, that's true. Sorry, church calendar, I didn't set her up for this, you can tell because she didn't give me the answer. Your favorite thing that we do together as a church is? It's where we all serve together? Sorry, it's VVS Rec Week, I'm sorry. It's VVS, sorry, I put her on the spot. Now you're gonna have to take my word for it. Well, I will pay for that later, sorry, babe.

Lunch is gonna be hard today. Okay, just a moment of silence for me sleeping in my own bed tonight. Okay, sorry. My wife, sorry, yeah, she doesn't love you. My wife very often says, in fact, so often, I thought she would say it to me, that one of her favorite things to do as a church body is VBS Rec Week. And if you've never been a part of VBS, you haven't seen it, with VBS Rec Week, we have 80 or so kids descending on our church grounds, church grounds, all these chairs are cleared, we're doing crazy things, adults are dressed,

in very goofy costumes, we're having a really great time with the kids, inside, outside, and it takes so many different people, so many different kinds of gifts to pull off. We need people that are able-bodied to play games with kids outside, so that rules me out. We need people to cook food and prepare snacks, so that rules me out too. We need people to do lots of different things, right, that I'm not good at doing, but many of you are good at doing. Sometimes you're one-on-one with kids, and sometimes you're several degrees removed, and you're just fine with that. But something that my wife will always say about it, she says, I love that we all are serving together, and it's an opportunity to meet people that you've never met before, but you're not just sitting across a table saying, Hi, what's your name? My name is this. Oh, what are some of your interests?

Like, that's kind of painful for many people, including my wife. But it's really good for many people, working alongside other people and getting to know them that way, right? You don't have to wait for VBS Rec Week to do that. We have a lot of different ways that people can serve together. And it is amazing what happens whenever we do serve together, when people discover they're gifting, when they share a passion with another person, or not just with another person, when they share a passion with a team that shares a similar passion, man, things ignite. I've got a good friend named Joe Salinas. Joe Salinas, when I met him, had just become a Christian, I don't know, couple years before that. The way he became a Christian though was somebody invited him. He was going to a church. Somebody invited him to serve sixth graders on Sunday night. They were doing kind of this discipleship training thing for sixth graders. And Don Holt

said to Joe Salinas, hey Joe, come and serve with me. And Joe said, I never understood the gospel until I had to explain it to a sixth grader. He never did. And he was working as a lab tech back then. As I knew Joe and just kept kind of pouring into Joe and knowing Joe and listening to his story, talking with him more, he became, I mean, he kept serving with sixth graders and then he started serving with youth ministry and then he started serving, he just served, they served with me in men's ministry. He served in a couple of different ways and now he's a youth pastor in his hometown. Well that all started because because somebody asked him to work with sixth graders and he really discovered the gospel for the first time when he had to tell it to a sixth grader. Listen, those stories are waiting to be unpacked all over the place. And so my encouragement today,

we have a sign up list that is at the start table. The start table is immediately through those doors on your left and your left again, it's right there. We have numerous places that you can serve, numerous ways that you can serve. If you would like to serve, but don't really know how you're gifted to do so, that's fine, we can talk. I have an assessment that you can take that can help you kind of figure out what that's gonna look like. But here's my encouragement. As a church body, I want you to serve somewhere. I want you to serve with other people so that you can get to know them. I want you to serve with other people so that you can get to know the Lord more. I know Hollis and Carol, I know you guys are serving in grade school ministry, and I will talk to Carol and I will say to her, hey, you know, is everything going good with grade school ministry, with all that?

And the woman gushes, okay? Now Carol doesn't gush that often. She's not exactly a gusher, but she does whenever she's talking about grade school ministry. She loves ministering to those kids. She loves reminding them of what's true. She loves sharing the gospel with them, making it age appropriate, really helping them understand kind of what's going on. And so let me just encourage you, man, sometimes you don't find out what you need to find out unless you're willing to get your hands dirty. Now what we do, and I'm not going to go into it too much, but what we do with our church is we ask everybody to serve six months at a time. And we ask everybody to serve one, two, or three

Sundays a month. That's it. We have a high value on sharing ministry here. I've heard countless stories of, yeah, I was at a church, I started working in whatever ministry, and then I was locked in for two years. And I could never, you know, I was like disconnected from everybody else. In fact, I was having a conversation with somebody this morning who just offered that conversation to me. Like, I wasn't digging for, you know, details. Many of us have those kinds of stories where we started serving, we could never get out. That's not what I want to do with our church. I want us to continually rotate, continually share ministry. Like I said, serve one, two, or three Sundays a month, but never all the time. And so you can even serve on two different teams. That's great. you to consider doing that. We are about to enter into re-up season. So in December, all the team leaders are gonna be calling

all the people on their teams saying, okay, what about the next six months? What about the next six months? So I want you to be thinking about how you can do that, how we can share ministry together. And it's way more about plug and holes. It's way more than that. It's about us being a church body together. Today, we're gonna enter into a time right now of invitation and response. If there's a way that you just want to respond, that's cool. If you need to come forward, if you want to join the church, if you want to be baptized, if there's anything like that, I'm going to be right up here and you can come forward. And so as we sing, as we stand and pray, I pray that you would respond to what the Lord's doing. Would you pray with me? Jesus, thank you so much for this morning. I pray that you would help us to listen to all that you are calling us toward. I pray that you would help us to see and hear

what your spirit is saying to us. Let us be encouraged. Let us be bonded together in the bonds of ministry, in the covenant of you, in the eternal covenant that you are maintaining. Help us to find grace in it. It's your name that we pray. Amen. Would you stand and sing? The days and grace, how sweet the sound, The saviour it slayed me. I once was lost and found, was blind, But now I see. Grace that taught my heart to fear and grace my fears really How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed My chains are gone, I've been set free My God, my Savior has ransomed me And like a flood, His mercy reigns Unending the basil, the sky Now to Him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages, but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings have been made known to all nations,

to the command of the eternal God.