Vision Sunday is here. Here we go. Wow. We're ready.
We're ready. Vision Sunday. It's your first time with us. Welcome.
It's a good week to come because it's Vision Sunday. And we always say that because we came from a living room on these nights and we're together like this. We see this as one big living room. And so we're just going to share with you what we've been seeing the Lord doing, what we see him doing this next year.
But we always like to start by celebrating. Celebration is one of our core cultures here. And we make a big deal of celebrating, as you just saw like 12 times, well then what's talking? It's like why are we still clapping?
Why are we standing and clapping? We celebrate all the time because we want to make much of what God is doing. We don't want to be people who are unimpressed with what he's doing. But we want to express what we actually feel on the inside.
And if we don't feel it on the inside, we show it on the outside. So that we feel it on the inside. We want to celebrate what he's done. We want to be people that remember his works.
We don't want to just move through it. And forget what he's done. We want to keep it in front of us. And we want to remember his faithfulness.
And so we always start Vision Sunday by celebrating the last year. And this year almost feels a little bit tricky to celebrate because he did so much in us. But it was at the heart level. There was so much that he cultivated in us, on the inside.
And so sometimes it can be hard to articulate some of that when it feels so internal, what he's done in us as a people. But we're going to try a little bit on different ways he's done. OK, the first thing that we have to celebrate is something that a lot of you don't know about this. And it was kind of happening underground, so to speak, is that we have taken huge leap this year in raising up an army of counselors.
And that's something that's been put on our heart for so many years. It's been part of the base vision. And we know that there's so many therapists in our community. And God has given us this call to continue to raise up more Christian counselors that know their identity and Jesus that know the simple gospel, sensitive to the Holy Spirit, but also educated well and understanding trauma and all of the things that we need help with in our souls.
And so we launched a Christian counselor's intensive. And it happened in the fall. There's 13 that went through it. And it's just a giant leap into more and more counselors getting raised up Christian counselors.
And we're just filled with so much excitement. They're continuing their journey as they're growing as counselors. And what a gift to have counselors in our community. I don't know if you've ever tried to find a good counselor?
All of you should have already tried to find a good counselor. We all need counseling. Whether you're feeling like, man, I'm so healthy. I had a perfect family, which none of you did.
We all need counseling. And there's been a stigma for counseling, but I feel like Gen Z and the millennial generation has kind of been like, that's not weird. Yeah, we all got a counseling, right? But I believe that the tide is turning.
And all of us are realizing, man, I want wholeness. I want Shalom. And so it was a huge, huge fall that we launched Christian counselors intensive and are continuing with that. Prayer room has been, man, what God is doing at prayer room and just with prayer in our community is so significant.
We've felt so clearly that the Lord said, hey, I want you to build it around prayer. Everything is going to revolve around the house of prayer and spawn off of the house of prayer. And when we say house of prayer, we're talking about when we gather in this room and when we sit long hours with Jesus. But even what that's just to catalyze prayer in everyday life, where we're praying in secret by ourselves.
We're praying with our community. We're having, there's prayer every single day of the week. We've got prayer before services that we're doing. We've got prayer Monday morning, men's prayer.
So come on, some of you men that showed up to men's prayer, let's go 7 AM. And then Monday night, we've got Devo sets where there's prayer and worship happening. Then Tuesdays and Thursdays, our staff is praying. Wednesday mornings, there's ladies there meeting at 6 AM.
They're beating us men by one hour. But 6 AM prayer for women, you can check that on the communities page. Wednesday night prayer for corporate sets at eight o'clock Fridays. I mean, we're having people over to our house and we're praying.
There's communities praying together. It's just, there's so much prayer and worship happening because we believe it's actually the core of everything that we do. It's the upward expression. It's the looking at God, loving God and knowing him and getting his heart.
It's the everything flows from up. And so I want to encourage you, if you haven't been to prayer, raise your hand if you've been to prayer on Wednesday nights, Wednesday night prayer. Let's go. Wow, you guys beat the three o'clock.
Okay, that's great. Come on. Wednesday nights at 8 PM, we always have prayer room. And we're actually going after specific topics of intercession.
And so on your way out, you can grab one of the prayer room schedules, intercession schedules because we're highlighting a specific item that we're praying for that we're going after together as a community. And so the next couple months, we have it all scheduled out of what we're going to pray for. So put it on your calendar to show up every single week. But if you're like, man, I can't, but I want to go to these three weeks, put those in your calendar, if it's something that you can't be at consistently.
So check that out. And then, man, we got to celebrate October 23rd. What God did, October 23rd was unreal what he did because we did, we started our three o'clock service and then it just continued for five and a half hours, right? I don't know if you were there on October 23rd, but what God did was so significant because he really brought an alignment to what he's been speaking alignment for so many months since the start of the year.
And it was an alignment around his lordship. It was a stake in the ground moment for us saying, you're going to lead it. We're going to surrender our leadership and we're going to surrender under you as our leader in every part of our life and our secret life and our financial life and our corporate life. You're going to be the leader and we're going to follow.
And it was so special how it ended. If you weren't here on that Sunday, it ended with us actually clearing the debt of credit card debt in the room that was present. The Lord began to speak to us and we just pulled the trigger. It was the supernatural generosity that happened.
Do you guys remember we set up a whiteboard at the front of the room? People are writing their credit card debt down and then we flipped over and we were writing what we were going to give to clear our brothers and sisters debts. My goodness, God has been aligning our treasure so that our hearts would be with the body, that our hearts would be one, that we would be one as the Lord and Jesus are one. So it was such a beautiful time and then $419,419 were committed to give to the debt and people are sending us text messages after the service.
It's Philippians 419. Look for 19 is talking about the double year of the double portion and Philippians 419, he's going to provide above and beyond what we need. And it's just beautiful as leadership where it's like, no, you can't write these things up. It's just the Lord authoring these kisses from heaven for us as a community.
So it was a really special Sunday and it's just continued what God has done and what he activated. It's been really a special season. Our favorite part about that was hearing how after that Sunday, different communities and groups of friends just started doing that together. It's like, okay, who has debt and they're clearing each other's debt.
And so our hope and our heart is that that would just continue to have a ripple effect throughout the community and that's not just about that happening in a service, but ideally that's happening in the body. And so anyway, I want to highlight a couple of our conferences that we did last year. Our conferences were so fun. We did one day conferences and our first one was the hunger conference with Corey Russell.
You guys remember that? That was such an impactful weekend for us. And I think we all left for sure marked by hunger, but also leaving going, oh my goodness, we just got commissioned as a House of Prayer. And that wasn't even the focus of the conference, but it was just the Holy Spirit was so strategic with his leadership.
And by the end of that night, we're like, he just commissioned us as a House of Prayer in our city. And so grateful for his leadership in that way. Then we had Dan Moller here for the identity conference. Dan, though, man, we love him so much.
He just texted the other day and was like checking in on the building. He's like, what's the building update? We're praying for you guys. And he just loves you guys so much.
And we're so grateful for Dan as a spiritual father to this House. But leaving that weekend going, man, it's the simple gospel, right? It's the simple gospel understanding our identity, the finished work of the cross. It's so simple.
It's Jesus. And then heelyans happened that night that were so significant. It was such a powerful night. Oh, so good.
And then we had Jeremiah Johnson. That wasn't a conference, but we look back at last year and go, man, that seemed like a pivotal night for us as a body as well. If you guys remember, we had him on the calendar to come. And then his schedule was just so packed that he was actually planning to cancel with us.
And so he told the Lord. He's like, I'm going to cancel this. But unless you want me to go, if it's important for me to go to every day, you're going to have to give me a dream. And that night the Lord gave him a dream.
And the Lord told him to come to every day and encourage us about faith, favor, and finances. And what's wild about this is if we're going to talk a little bit about the building search, so if you don't know what I mean about the building, we're going to get to it in a second. But Jeremiah didn't know the building search situation. When he got this word, we hadn't even found the land yet.
And then the week that we found the land was the week he was actually coming. So it was a couple days after we found the land. And he comes and he goes, the Lord told me to tell you, faith, favor, and finances. We're like, check, check, check.
We're going to need all three. This is wild. So we knew that that was a word that the Lord had for us this season. And it really emboldened us early on in this journey to lay hold of what's in front of us.
Yeah, we were just so blessed to have so many of those voices at strategic times in the fall and felt like that was really significant. Want to talk about our next one day conference that's coming up in April. We've got a one day conference coming. And it's called the Kingdom Finance Conference.
It's a one day conference on a Sunday called Kingdom Finances. And there's a teacher coming from Bethel Redding. He's part of the senior leadership team, Stephen De Silva. And he is such a gifted teacher in equipping the body of Christ in having a prosperous soul when it comes to thinking about finances.
And we felt like, man, it was such a confirmation. When God did all those things on October 23rd, we were already working on this conference and putting it on the calendar. And so just the confirmation of how God's been leading us to actually walk out the Luke 1234 passage of where your treasure is, your heart will be also. This is, we're stepping into what he's inviting us to step into.
And so we're filled with so much anticipation. Stephen is so gifted with not just talking about the practicals of financial health, but also uprooting all of the lies. How many of you guys know that there's lies as it relates to finances that we're struggling with a lot of the time. And he just has such a beautiful way to actually uproot so many of those lies and do it in a way that feels life-giving.
And there's just so much truth. And I believe that there's freedom for so many of us at this conference. So we can't wait to destroy the destructive mindsets that are hanging out underneath the surface on finances. And early bird tickets are available right now.
And you guys know how one day conferences are. They go fast. So take advantage of the early bird tickets. This is our first day that we've opened up registration.
So sign up. We'll leave that up on the screen a little bit longer if you want to grab it. I want to announce something very exciting that is coming this fall. This is something we've been excited to offer since before every day even started.
We know that our desire is to be a training and equipping center. So our desire is to train and equip everyday believers. That's our way to empower them. And so to be a training and equipping house or center, there's something that we really would like to do.
And that is start in ministry school. And so this fall, every day is starting its own ministry school. It's called the everyday lifestyle school. Now, I'll talk a little bit about this.
We can't, we're not opening registration yet, but we just want you to know and be excited. We are so excited about this. And it's a registration we'll open later on. But I just want to talk about it really briefly that for some of us we may hear a ministry school and think, oh, that must be for people who want to be pastors at churches.
And that's cool. But I want to be really clear that this is for every believer, the everyday believer. We believe that if you follow Jesus, that you are called to ministry because you are a minister of the gospel and whether that is in a church or a ministry or a nonprofit or if it's in the workplace, the business sphere, if you're in the medical sphere, if you are a stay at home parent, whatever it is, if you're a student, you're called to be a minister of the gospel. And so ministry school is for every believer.
And so we have been really intentional when we've been curating the school to make sure that it's accessible then to the everyday believer. It is not just for college students or young adults, it is for you if you are working, if you're in school, if you're retired, it doesn't matter. This school will happen in the evenings. So you don't have to quit your job to go to school or sacrifice other things to go to school.
There will be a commitment involved of course, but it will be evenings so that it's possible for you to do it as an everyday believer. Our hope is that you don't leave a school with just a bunch of head knowledge, but that you've been given the tools to actually live a sustainable, holistic lifestyle of following Jesus and then making disciples. And so what does it look like to give tools that will sustain you for the decades to come, of following Him, whether you are thinking about your current family or your future family or your current spouse, your future spouse, your current workplace, your future workplace, we want to offer tools to the everyday believer that will help you to build a framework, have a biblical worldview to understand how to rightly divide even like what's happening culturally, how to apply your faith to it and have real practical, tangible ways to grow in following Him. And so lifestyle school, starting this fall, we're so excited about it.
It's the first year of lifestyle school. We can't wait for the first year. I mean, there's always something special about the first year. And so we're excited for all those memories that are going to happen in the fall.
Okay? All right, it's time for a building update. Time for a building update. If you've been around for a little bit, you know that we found a property that we're pursuing.
If you're new to everyday, it has been such a journey for us. We've been on a four year journey of searching for a building, lots of detours along the way, and we don't own this property. So this is a property that we're renting out on Sundays and Wednesdays and Mondays. And, and so Elmwood has been so generous towards us to actually allow us to meet here.
We're so grateful. You can give a hand clap to Elmwood for sure. My goodness. You know, when we moved to Elmwood, we are probably about a hundred and they weren't necessarily anticipating that you would all be sitting here.
Okay? So seven years later, we're just so grateful for them. And they've let us know, hey, there's a timetable here and we have to move out. There's a kind eviction notice that is coming in August.
Okay? And so we need to move out of Elmwood in August. And so we are searching for a space that can be a temporary location for us while we pursue the purchase of this property that we believe God gave us a property and showed us this property that we actually get to give to him as an offering, that he wants it and we're going to give it to him. So we're doing everything we can as a community to give it to him, knowing that we can't give it to him without him doing some things and strengthening us, right?
So it's this weird dynamic of you're going to have to do the miracles, but we want to give it to you. And so it's this fun journey of faith, favorite finances like Jeremiah Johnson talked about. Okay? So we found this miracle property is what we're calling it.
And we were we've been searching for this property for four years, just believing for this pipe dream of Lord, could you fulfill a vision that Katie had in 2006 of having a house of prayer built on the Mississippi River overlooking downtown? And we've been driving the river from St. Paul to Minneapolis for years. And on November 1st, we drove up on this property and pulled up on this property and found this property.
And we knew this is it. And so we've been pursuing this property. It's been a two month journey. When we called our broker and said, Hey, we found this property we want to pursue.
He said, he literally said, That's impossible. I know which property you're talking about. And it's impossible. If that actually happened, it would be on the front page of the newspaper.
That's what he said to us. And so we've been we've been believing in faith that the Lord's going to do the impossible. And we we feel conviction that the base vision that God gave us so many years ago is actually supposed to thrive and live on that piece of land. And so we've been working kind of this owner doesn't want to sell the property has been the story long for quite a while, right?
For the last two months, the owner has been going, I'm not interested in selling. And we've been negotiating and praying and negotiating and praying. And there hasn't been any traction for literally two months. And so as we were putting in an offer last week, we continued to pray.
And there was breakthrough last week as we've been praying because for so long, it's like there's closed doors, closed doors. I'm not interested in all of a sudden we've got a counter offer in writing from the seller, which means this is such a breakthrough guys because we've sent in offers and it's crickets. And this counter offer shows us that he actually wants to work with us and they want to sell it now. There's been this huge shift of going, okay, there's now all of a sudden an openness that there wasn't before.
Guys, listen, listen. I know we haven't shared the full story that there's so many details in this story. But even that we were able to put in an offer at the amount that we did is miraculous. And then when we put in the offer, we got a response on our offer and the gap was only 750,000 between our offer and their counter offer.
Let's go. As a board, we're going to be making decisions. You can be praying for us as a board because we're going to be making decisions tomorrow. Yeah, tomorrow's Monday.
We're going to be meeting as a board and we're going to be pulling triggers on responding to the counter offer on Tuesday. And that's what we're planning on. And so there's a lot of moving pieces, but we're filled with so much faith that the Lord of the impossible, the miracle worker is going to make a way. He's going to pave the way.
He's going to tear down the walls around this property and we believe that he can do it and that we get to do it with him and partner with his heart. So my goodness. You've taken us through a timeline? I should.
You should. Let's do it. Okay. Let's talk more about the building.
Okay. Sorry, I was losing it a little more. We're just closing it out. We're not done at all.
Thank you for saving me. I want to give a picture of what these next year and a half to two years might look like when we take the property under contract in February. Okay. Here we go.
All right. So when we sign the contract and the purchase agreement is signed. What happens is what they call due diligence period, which is a time where we're researching the property, we're understanding the environmental conditions, we're writing plans, we're working on funding, we're raising money as a community so that we can have a down payment for the closing when that date comes. And so all of those things, and there's many more things that we need to accomplish like zoning because it's not zoned properly.
So there's a lot of things that we a lot of hurdles that we're going to overcome during due diligence. And then once we close on the property, that's when we are going to remodel the property. And the remodel of the property is not like, hey, it's a couple months. Let's throw some paint on the walls.
We're talking about this needs some work, this property needs some work. Okay. And it's, I don't know if you saw the move in date, but it's a little bit out there. Some of you are like, I'm going to have seven to eight kids and I'm not even married yet by that time, right?
You have a couple sets of triplets by that time. All right. So, but we're wanting you to understand the scope of time that it's actually going to take for us as a community. And, and this is a long term steadfast enduring faith journey, right?
But it's going to be an exciting one for us to be on. And there's going to be such a special moment. We move into that building. I can't imagine what that's going to feel like.
It's, yeah, it's going to be special. But I believe that the Lord is going to begin to lead us in a way where we're not just going to microwave faith, but we're going to slow cook faith, right? That's what we've been talking about. And so this is the outlook.
In the meantime, you'll notice if we're going to be moving in in the spring in 2025, then we're going to need a place to actually temporarily meet at from August to March 2025. And so that's what you can be praying for as well. We're still trying to figure that out. We're knocking on doors of churches in the area and we're pursuing local churches that can actually act as a temporary location for us for that next year and a half or two years.
But I want to say this that we, we're going to talk about the building a lot, but it's never been about a building. That's right. And the building is a tool. It's right.
It's not the vision. It's a resource. It's not actually what we dreamed of. Right?
So what happens in the building is that there's people that love God and they love people. And we feel called as a ministry to empower the people, to love Him and facilitate Him being loved and Him being honored and Him being made much of. And then those people be holding Him and then becoming like Him, right? The vision will never be, let's build a really nice building and we arrived, right?
God is calling us as a community to become a people and we as a people are going to become a dwelling place. Building means it's like if this building didn't have you in it, there would be no significance about this property. But you're here and you love Him and you're sitting next to someone else that loves Him and that's why it's significant that this building is here. Right now, there's like an atmosphere that has been created because of the people of God.
And so when we dream about the future space, it's not about the property. We're going to talk about the property because we have to and it's important and we're excited about it. But the thing that will always excite us and fill out the reason why we wake up in the morning is because of a lifestyle and it's called a kingdom lifestyle. It's called a following Jesus and ending spectator Christianity in the West.
It's about a new day for American Christianity. It's about the understanding and the expression of Christianity changing in one generation. And I'm telling you this, that the thing that is going to define our generation, everybody that's alive today and the shift of the expression and the understanding is not going to be technological. The thing that is not going to be like when we look back at the history books of the 2020s and the 2030s and the 2040s and the 2050s, the church is not going to be defined by and then the body of Christ went online.
And then the body of Christ went into the metaverse. You guys, the church is going to be defined by her martyr love. She's going to be defined by her radical love for Jesus, radical love for those that are different than her, radical love for the bride loving herself and then the world going, I've never seen that type of love. Who are they looking at?
There's a behold on the people of God. Who are they looking at? It's like John the Baptist says, behold. And that is what is going to happen in the body of Christ.
There's going to be a behold that's going to capture us as a people. And then it's going to arrest the whole nation with jealousy. It's just going to be like the Jews are going to get jealous, but I'm believing for a whole culture of America, the whole West going, I'm jealous for what they have. Because it's not going to be the pastors and the ministers that have a message to preach.
It's going to be the people of God that are a message that have become the gospel message. It's not going to be a good message with a good ministry time and a good worship time. It's going to be the people of God being the people of God looking like Him, becoming like Him and sharing seeds of the gospel everywhere they go. And all of a sudden there's this, there's this orchard.
And all of a sudden there's this garden and it's turning into a city. And all of a sudden we're not waiting for the garden city of Jerusalem, but Minneapolis and St. Paul is turning into a garden city before he returns because we've just been seeding. We're just seeding the gospel, seeding the love of God everywhere we go.
See, the building is amazing, but what God is doing in us, that's what Jesus is most excited about. Do you think Jesus is like, yes, the building. He loves it. He's like, man, he loves beautiful spaces, right?
It's like he's the one that dreamed up the temple. He's the one that dreamed up all these places. But man, the temple of your body. Whoa.
He designed that with his very own hands. So God is God is making the main thing the main thing as we're on this building journey. We're going to raise millions and millions of dollars. And then once we get the property, we're going to raise probably 10 plus million dollars.
And I don't know how more millions and I don't know how we're going to do it. He's going to have to do it, right? But we're going to keep on going back to what it's actually about, right? Yeah.
That's the heart. That's what he's been doing. It's like we keep saying he he's going to make us the people and it's like, I just even want to say he has been making us the people. So what he's been doing in us and he is going to complete that work that he started in us individually, but also corporately.
What does it mean and what does it look like to not just have my mind focused on my own individual development in God, so to speak, but to think of the corporate body, to think in we, to think in us is so not American and is so counterintuitive to how we think and like the structure in which we think. And he's going to really shape us, I believe, even in this next year as we lean into unity, it's going to be significant. Yeah, it's really going to be an all hands on deck journey for us as a people. And I think that in those moments, I don't know if you've, you know, those movies like war movies and it's like it's all hands on deck, right?
But it creates a different level of connection in those friendships and those relationships that I think is significant. And I think that that's the journey that we're going to experience as a group as we're in transition. It's an all hands on deck time. One of the things that we want to communicate as leadership that we think is really important for us all to be aware of is as we're transitioning out of Elmwood, Elmwood has been inexpensive.
And we're so grateful for that in terms of the rent being lower. But as we're looking as a board at these other options, we just need to communicate. It's increased. It's going to increase our expenses, $10,000 to $15,000 a month as a community, just in rent.
And so because that's going to be a stretch for us as a community, because in the last year, if we were having $10,000 to $15,000 of an increase of expense, we would have been in the red multiple months. And it's important for us to be aware of that as a whole community. But I believe that if you're part of every day, you know, it's like part of our history is whenever there's a need, it always gets met. And there's just like a cheerfulness on us as a people where we just cheerfully give.
That's the one requirement for us as a people that the Lord gives. It can be in secret. Secret is great. But it better be cheerful.
And so it's not a I should or I have to. It's this cheerful, joyful, joyful journey of, man, we are a generous people. If you just recently started coming to every day, man, in every way and every day, it's a good word. Listen, what we do as a people is we just, we give and we invest in what God is doing here, because we actually care about what God is doing here, right?
It's like, man, I've been impacted. You've been impacted. My kids have been impacted. I just want to, I want to invest financially in what God is doing here.
And as a people, if you've just started coming to every day, it's like the treasure where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. If you want your heart to be more connected to what God is doing, you start allocating your treasure into where you want your heart to go. And so I want to encourage you, if you haven't started giving it every day and you're calling it home, I want to encourage you to start giving it to the season. Even if you're going like, it's a mite.
It's just like five bucks. That five bucks is significant. Jesus is looking at that five bucks and he's like, yes. And then there's other ways that we all can serve and all that we can give if you're going, man, I can't financially give, but I can give with my energy.
We can talk about that a little bit. But we want you to know that there's ways that we are actually going to have to capture more income as a community as we go into this next season so we can be healthy as a community. And that's not including adding any staff. It's just like the reality of we need a bigger space because we're not in a room, especially for those of you three PMers that came to the Five Thirty, thank you.
But we know that a larger space is going to create more of an expense. That's just obvious. And now the reality is before us as a community. So we want to communicate that.
But man, it gets to be a cheerful journey. Not like a, isn't it? I'm so glad. I'm so glad in my heart that we get to have cheer in our giving and it's not a manipulative thing that the pastor's saying.
You know what I'm saying? That we get to, it's just like part of our culture. And when a body is in need, the body should communicate need. That's actually really healthy and really good to communicate need.
And so in this season, we want to be open and honest, transparent with what the needs are and so that we can rally together and be the body. And so if you're not already investing financially, we want to invite you to do that. And if you're not, if you're not serving in some way and you have capacity to do so, we want to invite you to do that. And I specifically want to even speak to if you're new to the body, but you're locked in and you're like, I want to be it every day, but I'm new.
Or maybe I'm not new, but I've just never gotten plugged in. And when I come on Sundays or Wednesdays or whenever, I still kind of feel like a guest. I still walk in and feel like I don't really know very many people here. If that is your experience, I really want to encourage you to serve for a season.
It's not, it doesn't have to even be forever, but to serve for a season. We think that's one of the healthiest ways to engage is you're coming in and the first thing you do is just start serving. That just gets you rolling with getting to know people. And then from there, you start joining communities and then you're starting different communities or ministries and you're on mission and you're everyday life.
And all that I think starting with serving is really, really helpful to change your perspective. That when you're walking in the doors, you're not a guest anymore, but this is your house. And it just changes your whole perspective. And so I want to encourage you, if you don't feel very connected, just give a season of serving and it will change for you.
And you'll just meet so many people. So we do have some areas that we could use extra help, extra hands on deck. And so those are above me here, but I'll highlight hospitality, video and photo, musicians, kids, I know even for musicians, we're about to do an audition. So if you're an experienced musician, if you want to audition, it's a great time.
So you can follow this QR code if you have interest in any of those areas. Or if you feel disconnected and none of those areas interest you, you can ask the Lord, is there an area, even if it would be stretching for me, is there an area that you would have me serve in this season? And we have seen, I think especially in kids, we have seen the funnest testimonies of people going, I never thought I was a kid's person. I'm looking at Jason right now.
He's shared that testimony. It's like, I didn't know if I was even a kid's person. I don't know if I was good with kids, but I felt this prompting to serve with children. It changed my life.
And so that's not just for kids in any of these areas, hospitality. It's like maybe you want to grow in the area of just serving. It's like, okay, I just want to learn how to host people better and you're starting to just jump in on these teams. So the best way to make this place feel like home is for you to take ownership and leadership of the space to build the community that you want to be a part of.
And so I want to encourage you guys, in this season, it really is the all hands on deck season. Don't sit on the sidelines. Be part of the family. Be connected to the body.
And it will bear so much fruit in your life truly. Come on. All right. Are you guys ready for the words of the year?
Oh, it is time. Okay. We're putting them up and we always make you guess, but it's getting harder and harder because there's more and more years. And okay, we'll start.
We like to just remember because a lot of these words have become part of our culture. So a lot of them will sound really familiar to you. 2016, does anybody know? 2016.
Throw guesses. Shout it out. Why so shy, ladies? Times two.
You are right. Times two lifestyle. We felt conviction that God's called us to live lives that are multiplying, right? That we get to make disciples that make disciples that were supposed to live at times two lifestyle.
2017. Close, but a couple years early. Healthy homes. Healthy homes.
Healthy homes. This conviction that God gave us as a people that we get to have healthy homes and healthy hearts and healthy marriages is actually the key to cultural transformation. 2018. 2018.
The year of positioning. The year that we positioned ourselves before the Lord at his table, at his feet and in his council. That was a really special year. 2019.
Family first. First. Family first. That we are the family of God so that the Lord is highlighting that we would get healthiest families but also that as a people, as a body, we are the family of God.
Jesus saying that's what family is. 2020 was a year. But I think 2020 really started us on a journey that we still find ourselves in of putting him in first place. Remember the word for 2020?
All for one. 2021. Who remembers that? Raise the white flag.
Surrendering to his leadership and to his lordship. And then last year. One, two, three, four alignment. Which was we look out of the words mean a lot to us.
But alignment is our treasured word. What he did in us this year and how he brought that word to the forefront the entire year. It really was like such a guiding word for us the whole year. So as we've prayed about 2023, which is weird to say that that's the year we live in.
And 2023. Lord, what are you saying? And we've felt tension because we actually just don't feel like we're done with alignment. We don't feel like we're turning the page to a new chapter.
We feel like we're still on the page. We still feel like we're on the operating table and he is still rewiring things in our brains and he's still reconnecting things and softening our hearts. It's like I don't want you to stop working on us Lord. I love the alignment that you're bringing.
And so in a lot of ways, we want to say the word is still alignment. So keep that still at the forefront. We're still in process on that. But so this year's word, we're approaching it a little bit differently.
And it's almost more of a focus for this year that we felt like the Lord was highlighting. And instead of it being a word, it's actually a group of passages. And so this year's word or focus is John 13 through 17. And so these are the chapters we are going to be giving ourselves to.
And I just believe it's going to be a year that feels like a treasure hunt, mining the scriptures and treasuring the words of Jesus. And I look at the end of 2023 and I just believe that we're going to go, I fell in love with the man Jesus because of his words. And so we're encouraging you to dive into these passages even in your own time. In a couple of weeks, we're going to do instead of a normal message, we're just going to do a corporate reading of the entire chunk of scripture and just get it in us.
And we're just going to be marinating in this group of passages for the year. And so yeah, do you want to talk a little bit context about this? Oh, I would love to. Yes.
With John 13 through 17, it's this passage that the setting is where Jesus is speaking with his disciples on the eve of the crucifixion. And so it is actually right before he goes to the cross and it's his last messages that he leaves with his disciples as they're going into transition. And as we look at this whole next year, we are entering into a season of transition, aren't we? We're entering into this time of unknown and uncharted territory for us as a community.
And many of you maybe feel that for your lives personally. You're entering into uncharted territory and you're jumping out of the boat of what's next. And Jesus has specific messages to actually carry his people through times of transition. And we believe that God has actually gifted us.
It's like he's wrapped up John 13 through 17 and he's going, I'm giving this to you as a gift as you as a people go through the season together. And there's so many little gifts inside of the big gift of John 13 through 17. There's so many promises. He's talking about the promise of the Holy Spirit.
He's giving us vision for relationship with God. He's even saying things like, I'm the way, the truth and the life. I'm going to remind you of everything that I've said through the Holy Spirit. Those are the things that you need when you're in a time of transition to be reminded of what you're forgetting about when the storm is swirling and when there's betrayal and when there's a crucifixion and when it's day two and Jesus got crucified on day one and he's in the grave and it's day two.
And in that time of transition, you go, I need to remember the words that he said to me. And I believe that our season moving forward is this kiss from heaven of John 13 through 17. That exactly what Katie was talking about, that we would fall in love with the man, the God man who in John 17 at the end of this passage is saying, I want them to know you the way that I know you. I want them to love you the way that I love you.
I want them to be one as we are one. How many of you know when you're in a time of transition that you need unity with brothers and sisters and you're not supposed to go alone? You're not supposed to be out there. There's so much here that the Lord is highlighting and we're so grateful for his leadership because there's so many moments already where we go, Lord, I don't know how to do this.
Lord, I don't have the charisma. I don't have the knowledge. I don't have the insight. I don't know how to do any of this.
You've given us the gift of John 13 through 17 and we are going to be found leaning on our beloved. Do you know at the end of this whole story line that we're going to go as a community? What's cool is you have your own story but you're part of a bigger story that is being written as a community that we're going after. We're part of a bigger story that God is writing.
We're going to look back in this impossible story that we're embarking on, even the story of a new day for American Christianity or Indian spectator Christianity and this building that's just like impossible. These are all impossible. It's impossible. But when it happens, he's going to get the glory because we know that we can't do it.
We can't do it in our strength. We can't do it with our wisdom. We can't do it with all of our resources. But he's going to get the glory at the end, isn't he?
He's going to get all the credit. Let's all stand. We're going to go into a time of prayer. We're going to have the worship team come up.
We always like to close vision Sunday by just going into a time of intercession and prayer for the body going into the next season. So this is kind of a commissioning time where we're just praying over this next season. So if you want, you can spread out and have some leaders that are going to come and pray if you guys want to gather up to the front with us. And I want to encourage you, if you are feeling, if you're committed to this body, and this is your church home, but you're feeling disconnected either from the body, from people or from the vision of where we're headed or whatever it is, if you're feeling disconnected at all, this moment is so perfect for you to actually turn it into conversation with the Holy Spirit and ask him to start giving you his heart for the people here.
If that's where you feel the disconnect, to connect your heart to the vision. If that's where you feel the disconnect, whatever it is, Lord, would you give me your heart and would you knit my heart with these people? Would you, like, if you, I want you to remember this moment, there's some of you that come into this room and you actually feel isolated. And I just want you to take notice right now that there's coming a day, if you turn this to the place of prayer and action, that there's coming a day for you that you're going to look around this room and go, I really can call them family.
I see him doing that for you, that right now you couldn't even fathom it. If you look around there and be like, how could I look at this room and say, this is family? But I just, I feel the Lord right now just saying, there's coming a day where you will be able to call this body, family, if you start in the place of prayer and then in your actions move toward people and building relationships. And so we're just going to pray as we pray, just a reminder that we agree in prayer.
So when someone is praying, we lift our voice when they're praying something that we want to, we're saying, I want that too. Yes, Lord, we're agreeing with each other as a family. And so Lord, we just thank you for this next season that you're ushering us into as a body. Yes, to everything that you have for this house in Jesus' name.
Yeah, Father, we thank you that as you're continuing this process of alignment, as we're going into transition, you've given us pages of red letters that we get to pour over. You've given us Holy Spirit, you're doing it. You're reminding us the things that Jesus said. You're fulfilling what Jesus said, even in this action, plus submitting to your word.
Jesus, we agree that you're the leader we've always dreamed of and that when insecurity comes, that when all the tension comes, there's a safe place in abiding in you. I think that even in that passage, you talk about the power of abiding in the vine. So we stand firmly planted in our decision that we're not moving from the position of abiding in you. We love your leadership, God.
Yes, I agree. We love your leadership. Holy Spirit, I thank you for the places you've taken us in the prayer room, into what it looks like to experience your joy. And I just thank you that will be known as a house of joy.
Would you take us deeper into the joy of being your sons and daughters, into the joy of being a part of the family of God? Yeah, would you restore to us the joy of your salvation? Thank you, Lord.