God's Faithfulness

Hi family. How are you so glad you're here. Thanks for joining us online. I have noticed today for the first time in probably six years or more actually longer than that. Cause I've so much to remember. We are going to cover a lot of really cool ground today, but before we do, I have a couple of things that need to make you aware of. One is you guys know that we've been partnering with Parker Adventist Hospital just to kind of love on them and, and try to encourage some people who are working a lot of hours right now. And they're kind of in the throws of dealing with all of this stuff. And, and they actually, we, we did the meal cards and then we did some food trucks where we just sent the food trucks up there to feed them which was kind of cool. And they sent us a thank you video. I wanted you guys to see it cause it's kinda neat.

Hey Southeast -- thank you so much on behalf of Parker Adventist for what you have done this Christmas by providing us all the gift cards and also these food trucks behind us. On behalf of our whole staff here, we want to thank you and wish you a Merry Christmas.

That was pretty awesome. That's pretty awesome. So, we're doing good work with some of that stuff there. Here's the other thing that I wanted to talk to you about. I believe that the church, like following Jesus is about us becoming sanctified that's the theological term, but more and more and more like Christ in our life and all aspects of our life. The spiritual, the emotional wholeness, the mental wellness, all of that stuff is true, but, there's a pragmatic, tactical approach to the church that should matter. And I just used a lot of really big words. Here's what that means. The church should care about education and about business and about economic development and all of the, like the church should care about those things. Then we should do those things in a way that represents Jesus accurately. And one of the things that I have, personally, been confronted with is my dissatisfaction. You're going to have to hang with me on this -- with how our government is dealing with getting small businesses back open. And here's the deal. Here's the deal. We can complain about it. If we want to bang and change anything I don't want to be, I don't want to just identify the problem. I want to be part of the solution. So here's what we did. We created on our website, there is a Southeast CC.workforce/give. There is a line item now in a dropdown menu. We have our general offering. We have the chest of Joash, which you can give to that. And now we have a new thing called Restart, small business relief. And what I can tell you is this. 100% of the money that you give to Restart will go to help small businesses in our area.

I don't know how this is going to hit. I don't know how many people are gonna give to that. What I, we could have, you know, just a few bucks. I don't know if you've got some extra money coming in the mail that you weren't like, maybe 600 bucks or something that you were surprised you weren't expecting. I'd be like, what else am I going to do with this? It ain't going to buy groceries. I'm sorry. My email is Jeff.Percival@southeastcc.org. So, sorry. I dunno. Like, I dunno what you feel led to give, let me say this though. It's not your time. Your tithe belongs to the Lord. And if you were thinking that I'm just going to give my tithes, cause I want my tithe to go to that. Don't do it, because God won't bless it. And I need God's blessing on this project. We need, our community needs God's blessing. So we might get 10 bucks. I don't know. We might, I would love to have 10,000 people give their $600 stimulus check to this thing. I don't know, like I don't, that'd be 6 million bucks. We could make a big difference in our area for local small businesses. But 100% of it is going to go towards small businesses in Parker. We're going to scale. If it gets big, very bigger, bigger, bigger, we can do that. It's scalable. We can think about, you know, Littleton, Centennial, Castle Rock, all these areas that are around us. And we can do that. We can think about like, you know Nebraska and Wyoming, like we can, if it gets that to that scale we can do that. I want the Lord to bless it at the level that he sees fit, but all of that money will go to help small businesses. Here's the thing 70 million small businesses in the United States, like just the backbone of the middle class. And we got to prop it up. We've got to do something. So if we can, we're going to, we're going to do that. And as much as we're able, okay, so that's coming. I want to make you aware that that's available actually right now you can get online right now and make that happen.

Today, what I want to do is, I want us to remember, I want us to remember 2020 and not for all the things that it took. It took plenty, right? 2020 took a lot. I want us to think about, we did this real intentionally with our family, this Christmas. I wanted our family to take time to remember that God is faithful in the midst of really hard things. Even God is faithful. And so we wanted to talk about all the ways that God has been faithful. And so this morning, for our church family, I want us to look at all the different ways that God has been faithful to our church over the past year. Remembering is important. It's important to God. I want to share some text with you Genesis 26:24. Look at what God says. It says, the Lord appeared to him that same night and said, ‘I am the God of Abraham your father. Fear not, for I am with you and will bless you and multiply your offspring for my servant, Abraham’s sake.’

This is something that God does a lot in the scriptures. When he comes to somebody, he's like, here's who I am. And he always anchors them to a set of stories. I'm the God of Abraham. Well, would you say Abraham, that has a framework for people that calls them back to this story where God showed up in this story. That's who we're talking to the God who shows up in those kinds of spaces. And it's important that we remember that, right? In Genesis 31, this is God coming to Jacob and talking. And he says, “ I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar and made a vow to me.” Remember that moment? I'm that God don't forget that we met. And we made an agreement there. I'm showing up. “Now arise, go out from this land and return to the land of your kindred.”

In Exodus 3, Moses is out herding sheep, and God comes to him and says, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Why? Because this anchors Moses to a series of stories and to a covenantal promise that has been a long time coming. And God's like, I haven't forgotten any of that stuff. I'm that guy who made that promise. And now it's time for us to do something about it. “And Moses hid his face for, he was afraid to look at God.”

Remembering is important to God, but here's the other thing that I would share: remembering is important to God's people. It's important for you and I to remember who God is. Because here's the deal. Like, we know it's really easy to look at 2020 and go, it was only bad. It's really easy for us to do that. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of lows in 2020. There was, but there's a lot of places where God showed up and did things that were pretty stinking amazing. It's important for God's people to remember for a couple of reasons, a lot of reasons, but I want to focus on two. One is it helps remind us of God's promises. Remembering helps remind us of God's promises, Nehemiah. He comes back and here's the interesting thing. So they go into captivity in Babylon, and we're talking more about this actually next week. And they're their slaves. They believed that they went to Babylon because they sinned and you can't stress that enough. Like that is so ingrained in the psyche of the Jewish people coming out of Babylon. When they come back to Israel, they come back determined to live righteous, which is why, by the time Jesus shows up, these Jews are just completely different people. They're just completely different people. And the old Testament there, they just can't get anything right. By the time Jesus shows up, they're so morally pious and disconnected from reality. It's all about Babylon. Well, they come back from Babylon and it doesn't take long before they start kind of falling into their old habits and they start doing things the way that they used to do them. And then as Russ shows up and he tries to love the people back and it kind of works, but it kind of does it.

And then Nehemiah shows up and Nehemiah is like calling people out, pulling beard hair out, like he's fierce. You don't want, you don't want to be on the wrong side of Nehemiah. That's all I can say about him. He got stuff done. You don't want to be on his bad side. Right? Well, they finally rebuild the wall. And in chapter eight, they gathered together for the first time to celebrate. Well, the question is, how do they celebrate? Here's what it says: All the people gathered as one person at the public square which was in front of the Water Gate, and they asked Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses which the Lord had given to Israel. Then Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly of men, women, and all who could listen with understanding, on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it before the public square which was in front of the Water Gate, from early morning until midday.” Okay. Let me first help us understand that 8:00 AM until noon. They read from the law for four hours, right? You guys are like, can you just get to the end of the scripture? It's been five minutes -- four hours they read from the law. Now, don't forget the law is Leviticus, riveting literature, right? It's numbers like that. This is not easy reading, but it gets even more interesting: “in the presence of men and women, those who could understand; and all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law. Ezra the scribe stood at a wooden podium which they had made for the purpose.” And beside him stood a bunch of people, some on his right and some on his left. And that's all I'm going to say about that. That's in the Aaron couch paraphrased version. “Then Ezra opened the book in the side of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up.” Here's why, because when you're reading the words of God, you don't ever sit down, even today. If you go to Israel, like to the Western wall or to some of the areas where they're praying and they're moving in and out of praying and reading or quoting the text, they will always sit for their prayers. They will stand for when they're speaking God's word. I still remember how long it was -- four hours. They stood for the reading of God's word for love, right? We're like, man, could this get any worse? Why? Because it's important for us to remember God's promises. “Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. And all the people answered, ‘amen, amen!’ with the raising of their hands; and then they kneeled down and they worshiped the Lord was with their faces to the ground. Also Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah…”   You guys didn't think I could read them. Did you? “…and the Levites explained the Law to the people while the people remained in their place. They read from the book, from the Law of God, translating to give the sense so that they understood the reading.” Why? Because it's so important for us to be reminded of God's promises. It's so important for us to remember God's promises, especially in the midst of really hard circumstances, which they had just come through a pretty insecure time. They didn't have a city wall to protect them. Like they were totally dependent on God's provision. It's really hard to remember in hard circumstances how good God is. It's hard. So it's important for us to be reminded of his promises.

The second reason why it's important for us to remember is that it helps remind us of God's faithfulness. Like, what good are God's promises if, when it comes to point of need, he doesn't show up -- that God's promises are credible, his faithfulness is real, and that's something that's so important for us. Here's Genesis 28 -- this is the precursor to the verse that we read earlier about Jacob. Here's what it says. “Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Huron.” And you guys are like, Oh, of course he did. “And he came to a certain place.” If you're, if you're reading along in your Bible, you should underline that. “He came to a certain place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and laid down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold” -- here's a lot of beholds. “The Lord stood above it and said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of Abraham, your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the West and to the East and to the North and to the South, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.’ Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “surely the Lord is in this place, and I, I did not know it.” And the English doesn't translate the second I and it's a travesty. “And he was afraid and said, how awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Another question that we have to wrestle with is why, why is Jacob so shook by this? Like what's going on that this bothers him so much. Well, here's what bothers him so much. In his world, gods are always located, they're attached to something. They're in a temple there. And I mean, that's, that's really the Jewish perspective, right? All the way up until the tearing of the veil, that's the Jewish perspective. We talk about the tearing of the veil as if God did that to allow us into his presence. The tearing of the veil, from the Jewish perspective, was about letting God out to get into the world. Gods in their mind are always attached to a river, a space, the grain, the temple, the whatever. They're located, they're in a space -- they're not omnipresent. And so, what Jacob does is, he stops in a certain place -- some random, no place, no place -- and all of a sudden, God's presence shows up and he's blown away by it. And he's reminded that God is faithful. And the promise that he made to Abraham is going to be fulfilled in his life.

I want to share some of the ways that God's been faithful to us. Just so that you know, this is, there's so much here and I could never do it all justice, but I want to give us some of this stuff. I had to cut a ton out of our year end reports. I've five keys to church growth. You need to hang on to these five keys to church growth. Number one is whole donuts. Do you know how churches buy donuts and then cut them to save money? Like I hate that. I literally will not go to that church. If you want me to be a part of that church, give me a whole donut. That's funny. Number two is two-ply toilet paper. I know you guys know what single is. Like, it's not, that is not how you grow a church. I don't want to go to that church. Number three is good coffee. Like don't get bad coffee and you guys again, well, you're from the Midwest. You're from the West Colorado. If you're from the Northwest, you would be on your knees right now thanking Jesus that I said that. Number four is hand soap that smells good. I hate it when you get to the sink, and it's all antiseptic. I feel like I'm at the doctor's office. Like that's a bad equation. I don't go to the doctor's office unless I feel bad. Right? I don't want to come to church and go, Oh, this reminds me of every time I feel bad. The last one is pens that write well. And here's why churches try to save money with pens that write poorly. They try to buy cheap pens and put their logo on them. And then it's like, every time you pick that pen up to write with, you're like, Oh, I hate that pen. Oh, that's the Southeast pen. Hate that Southeast pen. Like, do you want your logo on anything that does that to people, right? Like these are my keys to church growth.

Here's some other things that happened -- by the way we did go through 8,000 pens this year, 8,000 pens we gave to people and they write well, they write well. Here's some fun stats. These are fun ones. Our maintenance crews set up and tore down 9,000 tables and 40,000 chairs. None of those guys are overweight. They work hard. Our volunteers for Sunday morning services consume 2,145 breakfast burritos. Like, I don't know how you count that, but that is an epic statistic. We have gone through 33,200 cups of communion. That's cool. We've had 2,139 coffees served in the cafe. 204 pots of free coffee. I know, again, you guys aren't from the Northwest or you'd be like, yes, that that's the one where God showed up. We had several major events in the world of our quarantine. We did three Treasure House bread drives, which were awesome. That was awesome. And the good thing is in, in the, during the shutdown, we did one in May and one in June -- the money that they were able to get there, and we'll talk more about Treasure House here in a little bit, but the money that they were able to actually finance them because what they do in order to finance their ministry is to sell the bread. Well, every business that they sold to was shut down. So what do you do? What do you do with that? Well, they, our church was able to support that, which is incredible. We did the volunteer appreciation drive through. Remember that? If you were a volunteer and we had to drive through you remember that that was fun. We did the Brad Gray conference, which was awesome. We had the, You Make Me Smile event, which was awesome. And I was going to wear my championship belt. I'm not saying it's awesome, but I'm not, not saying it. Like it was pretty incredible. It was pretty incredible. Here's some, some other things, Oh, we did our outdoor worship night. Remember that? We did it. Here's, here's some other fun things, 170 goody bags for local military and 157 stockings filled with gift cards for local military. Nora and Nancy answered 1,886 emails about Brush Fire, which is the reservation system that you guys are like, what is this evil thing that we're doing right now? Just so that, you know, we are talking about, it's going to look like for us to do away with that in the next coming couple of months. So I'm excited about that. Our average attendance, when we started 2020, our average attendance was just a little bit over 2000 for 2019. Our average attendance year to date has been 5,000. I love and hate that at the same time, because what it means is like we're really engaging an online community that's significant. And, and it also means that people are hungry for spiritual things. Like people are looking and engaging the church. And these are people that are from literally all over the country that are calling Southeast their home church. That's, that's fantastic. And yet it's a bummer to me that we can't just throw open the gates and let everybody come in and sit here whenever they want, wherever they want. You know, like we gotta manage that. And so there's, there's been some logistical challenges with that, but man, praise the Lord. In this year, to double at, I think the official number is 181% growth. I don't know. If you're a business owner and you go, yeah, that's not really a good percentage of growth. I would love to see your business model cause that's incredible what God did there. We had 36 baptisms in a year where we weren't allowed to put people in water. When we got here, there were no life groups. We launched our life groups in February. You remember then, in March, we lost our life groups. And yet today 644 people are in 79 life group. Here's another one. I didn't, I didn't give this to you guys to the first service. So this is bonus material. Tim and Russ, Tim Hayes, and Russ, you know, Russ 74 hospital visits, plus 55 visits to assisted living nursing home shut-ins, 17 funerals and three weddings. We did, I want to read about missions and I, again, I got so, so much! I'll pick a couple of the missions to support CIC central India, Christian mission. We, we are familiar with them. Their teaching services have all gone online and now they're reaching five to 10 times more people. Here's one, one example. They said one church has gone from teaching 2000 people face-to-face to now at least half a million. Take that COVID, right?! That's incredible. That's incredible. They're seeing 2,500 to 3000 people a month accept Christ. Like that's, that's amazing that that's going on in the midst of this. Well, we can't do anything when COVID is over, then we'll get back to business, God's up to stuff. And we need to remember that, like, God didn't decide to take a nap in 2020 -- kind of feels like it, but he didn't, he didn't decide to take a nap. Mountain Child, which is a mission that we support that's here, that's local. I mean, it's not local in what they do, but they're local in that their headquarters are here. 41,980 Nepalis were served including 5,979 individual households with healthcare education, environmental and child labor issues while continuing attempts to eradicate human trafficking, 12 identified Tibetan Buddhist villages in the Himalayas had been receiving COVID relief care in the name of Jesus in an unreached area and where Christianity is illegal. You can't speak of it, right? And yet people are coming to Christ because of it. Man, so, so many more awesome things with our missions. Let me see  -- what kind of, Oh gosh, dang it. I always run out of time. Let me tell you just a little bit about our staff and some of the cool things that God's doing with our staff. When we got here, one of the things that we observed was that the staff had experienced a lot of trauma. Like the 18 months prior to our showing up they were without a leader. And some of the things leading up to that, like there was just a lot, it was tough. And there was all these dynamics of leadership with congregation and elders and leadership team and staff, and like, and there was all this questions and people were in and the staff felt like they were a little bit caught in the middle of a congregational members asking staff questions and not getting the answers that there was just so much. And so, by the time we showed up, they were like, I don't really have what it takes for another push. And then I was walking to our office one day and I noticed that we have this incredible counseling center. I don't know if you know that, this counseling center, it's amazing. It's amazing. They're really, really good. And so I just asked like, why, why aren't we, why aren't we using that for our staff? Because I believe that the best gift that I can give you as a congregation is a healthy staff. And so what we did was we decided to make a decision that the church would pay. If our staff wants to use our counseling center, church would pay for that. So, so far we've, we've paid for 116 hours, no, 126 hours of counseling for our staff, which is pretty incredible. And now like the culture has changed, like all the cool kids go to counseling. Like that's, if you don't go to counseling, he's like, really you don't like, you think you've got yourself a figured out. And I know, I know that for some of us, like talking about counseling is hard. Like, I don't like it that you talk about counseling, here's the deal. You probably need to go to counseling for that. And I, I know for me, if you want a pastor that's got everything together and figured it out, either this is the wrong church or I’m the wrong pastor, because I don't have it all figured out. Like there's a lot of stuff I have to work on and grow, and I want to be, I want to be as whole, and, and as Christ-like of a pastor as I can be, I want to be that, but I got some work to do. And counseling has afforded the opportunity for me to process some of that. And I can tell you this, I am vastly healthier today than I was when I got here. And I was, I was good then -- I'm really good now. No, it's been so helpful. It's been so helpful. And I, and it's just been, so it's been so good for our staff. It's changed the -- let me say this, I gotta, I gotta share this story with you guys. Our staff culture has completely transformed. It's completely transformed. And, and I've empirical data for this. We worked with a group called Best Christian Workplaces and they do assessments of work culture and faith-based organizations, not just churches, but faith based organizations in genera. They came in in 2018 to do kind of a, everybody was trying to get a beat on exactly where everything was at, right. And when they took it. So they have a spectrum of healthy, less healthy or more healthy. And they have 52 questions that arranged like one to five. And so the average, your, what your average score is says where you're at on this health meter and the meter is between 3.25 and  4.75. I think it's how it goes. Like you're not going to be perfect, but you're, you know, when they took the test in 2018, our staff scored 3.13, which means it wasn't even on the scale. It was so toxic. So destructive, so messed up that it wasn't even on the scale. This last year we took it and we scored a 4.17. Now here's what that means. Here's what that means. Our staff did the single biggest, largest jump in one year of any organization that they've ever worked with. And for those of you that don't like counseling, counseling was a major part of us getting healthy. It was a major part of us getting healthy so that we, and people actually like coming to work. Now, it's kind of fun. It's kind of fun. I like coming to work, but that happened. We brought on in 2020 -- during the pandemic with everything was all crazy and hectic -- we brought on seven full-time staff and five part-time staff to continue to meet the demands of our church.

Let me talk some of our extended mission local missions, partners, Treasure House. Let's see, I love Treasure House, by the way, if you don't know who the Treasure House people are, you should. They do real work. They, they are really helping people that they work with -- people who are at the bottom, whether that's through addiction or homelessness or a combination of those things. And they bring them into their house and let them live with them for a year and disciple them. And the, the high highs and the low lows of that kind of ministry is really, really hard. It takes a special kind of somebody to do that. From our church, they received $5,000 for turkeys for hams and bread supplies for Christmas and Thanksgiving from SECC members. Dwight and Angelia were sent to Turkey by an anonymous donor from a church. Listen to this story. This is so crazy. Dwight and Angelia, who are the directors of the Treasure House -- they were praying. Lord, we really want to go to Turkey with Aaron and we don't have, how we can afford it. Can you provide a way? Literally, at the same moment, Tom got an email from someone in our church saying, Hey, the Lord told me in my devotion time this morning that I need to pay for them to go to Turkey. So I got to make the call -- this is why I like my job. I got to call them and say, Hey, I got to tell you what God did. And of course, Angelia, I wish she was more expressive, but she screamed and cried and all that. I mean, it was just awesome, right? It was just this really cool moment. We got to see God do that. We've had over 60 life group members, who've gone and volunteered with them to make bread together so that they can sell that bread to help finance their ministry, which is awesome.

We started Southeast U this year which was new and, and, and it fits in with one of our values that we will teach our people the Bible. We will because I'm tired. I'm so weary of American Christians being so ignorant of what the scriptures actually say. Like, how do you make godly decisions when you don't know what God's word says? And I know that there've been people who are like, it's just so it's so irrelevant. So many words and not very many pictures. It's not like reading a magazine. It's not, it's more good. So we had 202 participants sign up and participate in Southeast U in the fall semester. We're getting ready to start our spring semester here, coming up, which is going to be awesome. It's going to be awesome to do that. Really, really excited. Let me keep moving.

SECOR --  let's talk about SECOR. This is fun. SECOR has fed 74,092 people through their free food market. And especially this year, that's been something that's huge. As of November 1st, they distributed 4,256,900 pounds of food. That's pretty awesome. Their volunteer family has grown from 100 to 837 individual volunteers. And they've given close to 15,000 hours of volunteer time. That's awesome. Through our partnership with SECOR, we did the Christmas outreach. You know, normally we do the, pull the tags off the trees and go by the presents and all that stuff. This year was different because it's 2020. So, what we did instead was to buy gift cards that could be given to families so that they could go and purchase these things, right. We purchased gift cards for, let me get the number, right? 1,586 kids and 625 families. Can you give that perspective? Let me give that perspective. Since 2006, which is how long this Christmas outreach has been going on, this was the largest one we've ever done -- in a world where, economically, everything was unstable. You guys stepped up! Like God put that on your heart. And that's awesome. That's awesome. I'm so proud of how God is working in our hearts.

Covered -- 29 total survivors worked with in 2020 -- 13 survivors entered their program. These are trafficking, human trafficking, 13 survivors entered their program. All 13 of them lost their job because of COVID in 2020, and then figured out how to get new jobs. It’s just really, really incredible. Campus Life, which is another student ministry that we support – that had 455 students, and in 2020 they had 30 teenagers give their life to Jesus. Like these are game-changers and they're game-changers that God used our church to work in. Like there are really cool things going on in our church. And we gotta remember that. We've got to remember that.

Let me tell you just for a couple of minutes where we're headed in 2021, I believe. And this is me speaking out of my own relationship with the Lord, 2021, for churches that are willing to listen to the Lord, is going to be a spark of something really, really special. God is going to leverage the world that we're in right now and on the other side of that, really amazing things are going to happen in the name of Jesus. If we'll be faithful, it's a big gift, right?

We're, first of , we have moved Josh McBride to be full-time online campus pastor. We have a huge online community and people from literally all over the nation are, they call Southeast home. And when they're going to watch church, this is their service. And I know that for some people it's like, why would you even mess with those people? Even pastor friends of mine, like why would you mess with those people? Here's why, because there's no difference between that person that's watching online, religiously every week. They're showing up and they're watching and they're engaging the service. And they're trying to do, there's no difference between that person and the person who comes through our door late and then leaves while the last songs being sung so that they can get their kids early and get the lunch before the Baptists. I think there's no difference between those. In fact, I would say I would take the one who's really trying to engage right every time. But because they come through the door, we feel like somehow they're more important. Now we have to figure out how to serve and love on everyone. We're called to make disciples. And if those people are going to call Southeast home, we're going to do our best to disciple them. So we're going to try to do that. We're figuring that out, Josh is doing a tremendous job. He's doing a tremendous job with that. It's already, I'm like, Oh, that's a great idea. I never, would've thought of that. Like, he's got all kinds of things going on that are awesome.

Let me say something else that we're doing. We have hired, and she will start in January, a biblical justice pastor. Now I know that as soon as I say the word justice, people are going to be like raising their eyebrow, ask you if you've been with us over the last couple of months, we've been talking a lot about how justice and righteousness keep showing up in the Bible over and over and over justice and righteousness, justice, and righteousness. You can't escape justice as a biblical mandate for God's people. So let me explain to you what this is going to encompass just a little bit at a very high level. The biblical justice pastor is going to have six major areas of focus. Number one is racial reconciliation. We are going to be a part of the solution. I was so frustrated that we found ourselves kind of caught in the middle of something that we didn't know, even how to have a conversation about this summer. We didn’t even know how to have a conversation about it. And so even within our own body, people were more or less emotionally invested in it. And it just got, it just got really dysfunctional in a hurry. Number two is going to be gender issues in Christ. There is no slave or free Jew or Greek male or female. Why do we keep treating people? Supportively? Number three is LGBTQ community. We are going to take the gospel there. And I know that some of, some of you are like those people. Yep. I want a church full of them. They need Jesus. Number four is the area of adoption. We need to care about adoption. Number five is the area of abortion. We need to care about that conversation and do it well. Not just be finger pointers, truth bullies. That's not helpful. It's not helpful. And number six is human trafficking. We live not just in an area, Denver, but in a town Parker that is one of the worst areas for human trafficking in the nation. And we're not doing anything about it. Like if there was ever a place where God was calling his people, come on now. And I know that you're like, I like coming to church and having really good music and enduring the sermon and then leaving and feeling like I did my spiritual obligation. That's not Christianity. We are going to make a difference for the kingdom. And if we don't want to be a part of that, then what in the world are we doing? What if we don't want to be a part of the solution in the real issues where God is calling us to meet him? We just came through advent, Jesus came in the stable, cause he wants to meet us in the stables of our life. He wants to meet us in the stables of our community. Where are they? Let's go be a part of the solution. There --those are things that we can do. We can actually affect those things. And I know that it's scary and it's uncomfortable and it's all. Yep. Yep. I know all those things and God still calls us to it. So we're going there. We're going there. I don't know exactly what all that looks like. I don't, I don't know. I don't have a 12 step plan on it. I just know that that's where the Lord's taking us. And again that, that's just where the Lord's taking us. That doesn't mean I'm not forcing anyone to do anything that they don't want to do. I'm just saying if you want to be a part of Southeast, that's where we're headed and it's important for us to go there.

I have some implications. Let me, let me get to your implications here. Implication number one, even in hard circumstances, God has proven himself faithful over and over and over and over and over in hard circumstances. God has proven himself faithful.

Implication number two, because God is faithful, we can dream big dreams. Like, our dreams for the kingdom, God's dreams are so big that if God isn't in them, they'll fail. And if we're not dreaming those kinds of dreams for the kingdom, then we're not dreaming God's dreams. Like, God doesn't need us to accomplish big things for him. He's inviting us to partner with him and changing the world because then we learn who he is, right? This isn't about us conjuring up things. It's about us being obedient to where he's taking us, but they should create enough fear in us that when you think about it, you, you, pardon the expression, you pee down your leg a little bit. Like, it should be that scary Because, if God's not in it, it's going to completely collapse. That's where we need to go. That's where we need to go.

Implication number three, once again, we stand at an incredible crossroads. This point in history is unlike anything that we've had the opportunity to be a part of both in the bad and in the good, the potential for where we can go as a church if we'll be faithful. Implication number four then is this, God is inviting us into his plans. This should both scare us and inspire us. It should both scare us and inspire us. It's weird. How, when you're really following God, war and peace kind of co-exist -- there is going to be opposition. We are going to face people going, what in the world are you doing? I don't get it. I don't understand it. I don't like it. I don't, whatever. We are going to face those people. And yet the peace of knowing that we're in the hip pocket of God and where he's taking us is more important than anything else. We've got to go there.

Communion is what we do every week at the end of our sermon time, where we take the bread and the juice. And it's this reminder of Jesus, his death, burial, and resurrection, right? Jesus has modeled what it costs us to be a part of the kingdom isn't well, we constantly work towards a place of comfort. It's not that Jesus's model is about laying our lives down completely so that we can take up the life that God has for us, which I promise you is scary and better than anything that we could come up with on our own. So let's take a minute and ponder that because this morning, here's what I'm going to ask of you. Communion at one level is this space where we kind of publicly say, Hey, I've heard what you said and some of it even bothered me, but I believe that this is where the Lord is calling us. And so I just want to tell everyone around me that I'm in this for communion, this public declaration amongst us. So if you don't want to partner with Southeastern where the Lord's taking us, that's okay. I'm not mad about that, but I would invite you to pass on communion this week. This is an opportunity for us to say, Hey God, we're in, we're in for big things. We're in for really changing the world or in for making a big difference. Let's take a minute and talk with the Lord. As we prepare our hearts to make that decision

On the night, Jesus was betrayed. He took bread and he broke it. And he said, this is my body, which is given for you. So whenever you eat this bread, do it in remembrance of me. I think it's important for us to remember this model of laying our lives down. Let's take it together. And then after the dinner he took a cup, he said, this cup, this is the new covenant, my blood, which is shed for you. So whenever you drink this cup, do it in remembrance of me.

Lord. We love you. We're committed to, you got to do what you will do in this place. Search our hearts. Lord, make us yours. God, thank you that you have chosen to use us in this world so that we can know you. And Lord, may we be part of the solution of making your kingdom go further and further and further. That we can see hearts transformed with your love and people set free from pain. God, thank you for the fact that you never leave us and you don't forsake us in your name. Amen. 

I’m excited for 2021 for two reasons. Number one is that it's not 2020. The other one is because I think God is going to be up to big things, big things, and he's inviting us to be a part of those things. And I'm super thankful and super thankful for that. God has not abandoned his children. He has not abandoned his children. And I know that for some of us, we came in here today, discouraged, distracted, despondent, whatever. If you want to pray with somebody right after they get done singing their last little piece here at the end of the service, there'll be, there's some people up here to be praying with you. Our prayer room is open again. And so if you want to go in there and pray just by yourself, or pray with somebody in there, you can totally do that as well. Or you can pray with somebody up here, whatever suits you. But we just want to invite you to be a part of what God's doing. May we be people who actually make real, tangible changes in the name of Jesus in 2021. Thank you for coming. Have a great week.