Oh my goodness, you guys so good to just worship with you. Oh my goodness, that was so powerful. That team, they just left the room where I would honor them. We'll honor them later when I see them come back in, but just such a powerful time.
And I know that there's things to work through with having our Mass Song, but just gathering with you. You're the hungry ones and just choosing him. It's so, so good. Tonight we're gonna do kind of a living room.
We're calling these our family meetings as a community. If you guys have been getting our emails, you're seeing that we updated you, that we're gonna do some family meetings for a while. We do family meetings when there's a lot to talk about. One of there needs to be some real talk.
We need to connect as a family. So we like to picture this like our living room. We started in a living room. And so just picture yourself in our living room.
It's just a large living room. And this is just our chance to share our heart with you and just reconnect a little bit after such a crazy season. So we wanted to start by just recapping what just happened in the last hour of many months. So we've just been kind of looking at the storyline of it again and just wanted to review it as a community now that we're in a room together.
At least those of us that could join tonight. And so we were talking about it. We had to ask our staff today, wait, what was the date of our last service? How long has it actually been?
And our last service, like Josh said earlier, was March 8. And so it has been just under five months since we gathered back together. And when we went into March 8 was the worship night. I don't know if you guys remember that.
We had a worship night on Friday. And then service was a worship night. It was a really great service. We left having, we're just like, see you next week.
Not thinking about COVID-19 at all, for sure, was not on our radar. And then Wednesday night of that week, we had a conversation with Nick. And he brought up. I wonder if we need to pray about canceling our trip to the Philippines.
We had a team leaving for the Philippines Thursday morning at like 7 AM. And so at 9 PM on Wednesday, we were all praying. Like, Lord, what are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to cancel this trip?
Because we were starting to hear about travel bans happening. We don't want our team to get stuck. What do we do? And we just felt like the Holy Spirit said, you need to cancel the trip.
And so just those that were on the Philippines team, whether that's so gracefully and all of our global trips that had to be canceled for the rest of this year, it was so sad to have to do that. And they got word that their trip was canceled hours before they were getting on a plane. And so that was Wednesday night, then Friday. So this was all the same week.
Friday, we let the whole church know that we wouldn't have services on Sunday because of our limited capacity in this space. And so we canceled church service for that Sunday. And that Sunday, our staff left town, went to a cabin to pray. We're like, Lord, we don't know what this season is going to be, but we need to hear your heart and we need to connect with you.
And so we left town for the sole purpose of just seeing what he was going to say to us. And we were laughing today, talking about just remembering how I said to our staff when we were sending out communication to cancel service. I said, you know, we need to be prepared because we might have to cancel services for like two Sundays, maybe even three, and we just need to be prepared for that. I know that sounds crazy.
It's hard to believe, but we just need to be ready for that and really seek the Lord for what he's saying for the next two to three weeks. So you can imagine we are all surprised and it has been a curveball season to say the least. And so we left town, we saw the Lord, and we kind of just committed. He said, we're not going to look at what any other church is doing right now.
We are just going to not be looking on social media at what other churches are saying. We're just going to ask the Lord what he is saying so that we can be faithful to that. And that really is our heart. You know that we're not here to play church.
You know that we're not here to just do the things that a local church is supposed to do. We're just our commitment to you and to this community is that we just want to do our best to obey the Lord. And we believe that each church community is accountable to the Lord for how they steward their community. And so we believe that every church leader, we believe they are seeking God for what they're supposed to do for their community, but that was our responsibility too.
And so you'll see, you guys saw that throughout this season, we did some things that were unconventional. We did not do some things that local church is supposed to do. And that was not because we just chose not to, just because we felt like that's what the Lord is leading us to do. And so while we were praying during that week, we felt like the Lord said pretty clearly to not put out any additional sermons or messages.
We felt so clearly like he said, I have already prepared your people through the messages that have already been spoken, remind your people of what they already know. And so that's what this season was. You did not see additional messaging besides the updates every couple of weeks because we were looking back as a community. I hope that you did.
And if you didn't go back and look at them because it really, if you could take any of these messages, put them into right now and it would be like, wow, I think you just gave that word on Sunday. It feels so applicable and we feel so shepherded by God that he would have put those messages in the heart of our team to shepherd our community into the season that none of us had any idea was coming. And so that was one thing, not taking additional messaging and two, to lean into the place of prayer and worship. And so you saw that in our daily soaking sets that we put online.
And then on top of that, he said, and when it's time to open again, open the prayer room first, not church services, the prayer room first. This is a stake in the ground moment for our community that we are keeping first things first, my individual connection with God, my intimacy, my walk with him personally is first things first and that is what anchors our community. And so whether you felt like you were a part of that and understood that, I want you to know that that just happened for this church family that we have put a stake in the ground that walking with Jesus, loving him with all of our hearts is the first priority beyond a church service or any other program that we have. And so the prayer room has been amazing to have that open.
As you guys know, it's a dream in our hearts to have a prayer room open in our city every day of the week. And we've been able to open it three day, three evenings, a week and we just see what God is doing establishing us as a people of prayer and a people of intimacy. And so I just want to even celebrate some of the things from within our community and the ways that we have seen you guys rolling up your sleeves and working hard and joining together. And so one would be communities, community leaders, the ways that you guys gathered to lead those of you who gathered in communities, you did it over Zoom.
And Zoom is a bummer to try to do community over Zoom to take a real thing and was hard. And you stuck with it because your desire was to run together and not to become isolated in this season. And we saw that rise up in our community, even though it was hard and really inconvenient. We saw with our creatives team, you guys, under Nicole Paul's leadership, the amount of work that has had to go into the creative world, we were not set up for live streaming.
We were on Facebook live and we kind of just all remember Facebook live. We jumped as a staff, like just don't watch Facebook live. You know, their quality is just such a bummer. But we were able through this season to be able to live stream.
So that's why we're even seeing some cameras tonight, which I know even that is something for us to get used to as a community. But now we have people that are at home, that are able to engage who aren't ready to come to services. And that is such a gift in how our creative team has rallied to make that possible. So let's just give it up, even for those that are quick cameras right now, and out such an amazing apparel line.
Giving us the prophetic message that we are the bounce back kids, that we are coming back different, we are coming back changed, and we're coming back stronger than ever. And so I hope you grab that apparel because it is so good. It's sold out now. I'm so sorry.
I don't even know if I should talk about it because it's sold out. You can't even grab it. I also got creatives. What other growth kids?
Kids can be taught about growth kids. I see some growth kids, teachers, man, the faithfulness of this team. Our growth kids team is so radical. They were doing Zoom calls with our kids two days a week.
They did snail mail writing letters to all of the children. They had the families wrote snail mail back to the owners. The growth kids owners did parades and went to all of the homes of our children. And we opened growth kids before we even opened Sunday services.
Many of you maybe don't even know that. But we've had growth kids for the last month because these owners are just ready to stay connected to these kids. And just want to say thank you to you guys when it's meant to our family. Obviously we have children and girl kids and just the families of growth.
We're just so thankful for how you have just been so sacrificial in your love, extravagant and your love through this season, when it's a hard season for you too. And so just to shepherd our kids, it's just such a gift to us. So good. I, as we were praying about this first week, we were just reminded of the last five months really showing off the enemy being pretty good at his job.
Stealing, killing, destroying, and dividing, accusing, and conquering. And if I was to go around and teach one of you and ask, hey, what has 2020 been like? Most of us, I think all of us probably, would say all of the things that the enemy has done. But very few of us would be able to articulate what God is doing before.
And I believe as the people of God, we need to carry revelation that in the midst of the darkness that we're seeing, that there's actually a light that has shown into the darkness, and the darkness doesn't understand it. And I believe as a people, we actually have that at the tip of our tongue, and that we start seeing from a place where we're seated with Christ in heavenly places, amen? And so Katie and I felt so strongly that, man, the enemy has been doing a lot. He's been getting a lot of air time, right?
But God has been up to things. And so we just wanna, we were gonna preach it, and then we decided we just wanna write it down, and feel like it's just, it's a good way to articulate concisely, this is what we feel like God has been up to over the last five months. So I'm gonna read it, and if you wanna close your eyes to concentrate, you can. If you're getting a little sleepy, just praying your tongues under your breath, and I'm just stir yourself up in the spirit.
Ah, don't fall asleep, okay? Are we ready? What has God been doing? We believe God is establishing healthy homes.
We see God in his kindness, shepherding his people towards healthy hearts. We see the idolatry of self being exposed. Self protection, self pity, self righteousness. Selfishness, even a lack of self care is getting exposed.
We see healthy homes being established in this season of the unknown. Family values are being processed on the threshing floor. Many marriages and families are stronger than ever as they reorient their lives around Jesus. Our church family is operating more and more like a real family.
We see our community rallying around those who are hurting and meeting practical needs. We see our people being vulnerable and sharing their own need and hurt. And we see our church stepping into kingdom and empathy. We believe God is redefining our allegiance.
We see believers engaging with the stake in the ground moment that our allegiance is first and foremost to Jesus. No earthly kingdom or political party could come close to representing our king in the fullness of his kingdom. We see believers waking up to the Davidic revelation that some trust in horses and some trust in chariots, but we are to trust in the Lord God Almighty. As for this house, we will seek his kingdom first.
We believe God is waking the church up to injustice. In the midst of the realization of the corruption of people and power structures in our nation, we see the church taking a stand for the things in God's heart. The church is slowly adopting God's heart for justice, preparing to lay down her life for the things he laid his life down for. The white majority churches of our nation are waking up to our responsibility as the people of God, to notice injustice, to name injustice, and to nurture change in our hearts and spheres of influence.
We see believers opening up their hearts to be their brothers keeper, anchored in the value of all for one and one for all. We believe God is bringing a season of creative innovation. In the midst of such chaos and unknown, we see God depositing creative solutions to business leaders, families, churches, entrepreneurs, doctors, educators, artists, and the list goes on. We believe that this will be known as one of the most innovative seasons of the 21st century.
God is releasing wisdom and revelation for every sphere. New models are coming. And lastly, we believe God is pruning the church of America. God is positioning the church for long-term freefulness that will not be overcome by external shakings.
We see church leaders reorienting priorities, trimming the excess that they've given into and returning to their first love. The question of the true definition of church is rising to the surface, and the discontent of the believer's heart is being given room to breathe. Bride of Christ is beginning to realize what she was created for. We see the church rising from this John 15 pruning season shining brighter than ever before, the way she was always destined to.
We are one step closer to seeing the end of specting a Christian. You see how different it is to hear what the Lord is doing. I know for me, it just feels like I can breathe deeper. You feel peace.
You feel joy. You're brought into that heavenly perspective. And we just believe that that is like when we thought about how do we want to come back together? We want to come back anchoring ourselves in what he's doing.
And so we want to invite you right now as we close service. We are going to have more of a, instead of going back into worship in this season because we need to keep our services a little bit shorter, we're going to close services of an instrumental, more contemplative time for us to dial down and connect with Holy Spirit for ourselves and go, okay, how can I apply this? What are you saying to me before we leave the doors? And so we just want to invite you to ask the Lord this same question.
This is what we see. This is what Josh and KDC when we look at what we see God doing. And we're looking at this for our family too. God, what are the things that you've done in the midst of even the challenges that this has been for our family?
What have you been doing? I'm going to get my eyes on what you see. I want to get my eyes on where you've been working, that I haven't even realized it. And so I want to invite you into that for you personally, for your family, for your group of friends, for your sphere, your workplace, your neighbors, whatever that looks like for you, just asking him honestly, what have you been doing?
I want to be able to name what those things are, set those things or what's on my lips when I talk about the year 2020. I want to be anchored in what God established inside of me in the year 2020. And so I'm going to pray, and then we'll give us about five minutes, and then we'll close our service. Jesus, we just say that your voice is the only voice that matters.
Your opinion is the only opinion that matters. We thank you, God, that you've given us the authority to be seated with you in heavenly places, to have heavenly perspective, to see things the way you see them. And so we just ask you if this is true for you right now. I just invite you to whisper to him personally for yourself and to say, Jesus, I want to see what you've been doing in my life.
Show me where you've been working. Show me where you've been moving. Help me Holy Spirit to change my perspective. I just invite you right now, Holy Spirit, change my perspective of this season.
Help me to see.