Vision: Take Two
From the Series: Vision
Speaker: Mark Batterson
Date: February 14, 2010
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Transcript
It doesn’t feel like the weekend does it? There’s not a major snowstorm going on! I wish, if we had it in our budget, I felt like we should hand out t-shirts, ‘I survived Snowmageddon!’ How many of you are not shoveled out yet? You still have a vehicle in? Good luck with that! What a crazy couple of weeks we’ve had. I want to say thanks to those who made it out last weekend. Two of our theaters were closed so we couldn’t have services there without breaking and entering, so we didn’t have our services at Georgetown or at Ballston. Welcome back! I’m just curious, how many of you via webcast or podcast, went to church in your pajamas last weekend? Overwhelming! That’s fun! I got the numbers from our digital pastor and we had somewhere around 2,500 via webcast or podcast that tuned in that way. It’s good to be back together.
We kicked off a series last weekend called ‘Vision’ and we are going to continue that series this weekend. Turn in your Bible over to Matthew Chapter 10. Let me say that if you are a guest, what a wonderful weekend for you to be here because you are going to get a sense of who we are and what we are about and where we are headed as a church. So I think it’s a wonderful weekend for you to get a sense of what National Community Church is all about. Matthew 10:1
1He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.
5These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: [This is their inaugural mission, this is the first time the disciples are being sent out, this is the locker room talk before they head out, so this is pretty significant] "Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. 6Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. 7As you go, preach this message: 'The kingdom of heaven is near.' 8Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. 9Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in your belts; 10take no bag for the journey, or extra tunic, or sandals or a staff; for the worker is worth his keep.
11"Whatever town or village you enter, search for some worthy person there and stay at his house until you leave. 12As you enter the home, give it your greeting. 13If the home is deserving, let your peace rest on it; if it is not, let your peace return to you. 14If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. 15I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. 16I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.
Let’s unpack this passage together. Right off the bat, it says Jesus called his 12 disciples to Him. I read that word ‘called’ and it has tremendous significance to me. 14 years ago, I was presented with an opportunity to take a core group of people and pastor a church called National Community Church. I remember praying about it and wrestling with it and thinking, is this something I’m called to do? After weeks of agonizing over that decision, I really felt like the Lord was calling me. I had a little bit of education at that point, I had been to seminary but I had no experience. I had only done one summer internship at a church and literally all I did was manage the men’s softball league, that is what I had on my resume coming into this thing. And I look back on these 14 years and I want to take this opportunity to thank you. What a privilege it has been to serve you and to be part of this thing called National Community Church. I want to tell you that I’ve never more excited about what God is doing at NCC. I’ve never had more fun, and I think it is a testament to an amazing staff and an amazing group of leaders and an amazing congregation, and I count it an absolute privilege to be able to serve you. I will thank the Lord until the day I die that I am called to be your pastor. I’ve said this before but I want to say it again, Lord willing, I want to pastor one church for life, so you’re stuck with me! I know I’m called, but I want you to know, so are you. See, I don’t know how you got here. There are a lot of amazing stories, and I don’t know why you think you are here.
I love hearing stories. Just a couple weeks ago, at our leadership retreat, Will, who leads worship at our Kingstowne location, said that when we launched that location one year ago, one week ago, can we give it up for Kingstowne as they celebrate their one-year anniversary, Will got one of our postcards in the mail! I love it! He started attending and the next thing you know, he is leading worship at our location. So, many of you, maybe a friend invited you or maybe you moved from another part of the country and your pastor said to check out National Community Church, so maybe you just came in to get a cup of coffee at Ebenezers and wondered what was going on. Or maybe you went to see movie on Sunday morning and end up in church. There are so many different ways. I don’t know how you got here or why you are here. Some of you, maybe you like the music, or maybe you like the teaching, or maybe you like someone who is here. My friends, that’s not why you are here. You are here by divine appointment. The Lord has called you to be part of this thing called National Community Church. Last week, here’s what I said, when you walk through the doors, we, National Community Church, become a shareholder in the personal vision that God is giving to you. And I shared some stories of some NCCers and the vision God has given them and the way that we are a part of seeing that vision become reality, but it is a two-way street. When you walk through those doors of the movie theaters, of the coffee house, you become a shareholder of the corporate vision of National Community Church. You become a sub-plot in this story that God is writing through this church. You become a part of something that is bigger than you are, that is more important than you are, that’s longer-lasting than you are, so listen, it is a joy to be a shareholder in your personal vision, but we ought to be equally excited about being a part of the corporate vision that God has given this church.
I am so well aware of the fact that because of your demography and geography we have a high turnover rate. We still have about 40% of our congregation that come and go in a single year. That’s because during the summer, we will sometimes have 100 to 200 interns that will be here for a couple of months, then they will move on, or someone is maybe doing a tour or part of the military, and over the years it has been such a joy to literally see thousands and thousands of people walk through this revolving door called National Community Church. I don’t care whether you are here for two months or two years or ten years or twenty years, you are part of the corporate vision that God has given to this church and that’s what I want to talk about this weekend.
In this passage, I think we find two dimensions; you can jot these down, ‘called to’ and ‘sent out’. In this very first verse, it says that He called his twelve disciples to Him. He called them to Himself. I want you to write this down. What God wants to do through you, God does in you. I think many of us want God to do something through us but God is far more concerned about doing something in us. I think we get very focused on what God wants to do through me, but listen, God is far less concerned with what you are doing than who you are becoming. And if you are going to become the person that God has destined you to be, and if you are going to do what God wants you to do, what you need to understand is this, it is going to be a by-product of how much time you spend with Jesus. And just as Jesus called these disciples to Himself, I think that before we get into the logistics of being sent out, I think our heartbeat is that our vision is not corporate growth or church growth, our vision is that you would grow personally in your relationship with Jesus Christ. If we are all doing that, guess what? Everything else takes care of itself.
In Acts Chapter 3, just a little window here, Peter and John are walking into the temple, you may remember this story. There is a man who was lame from birth who, every day his friends would take him and set him down by the temple, by the gate called beautiful. Who knows how many times Peter and John had walked right by him, but on this particular day, he asked for alms, and Peter and John looked at him and here’s what they said, ‘Silver and gold have we none, but what we have we give to you in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, get up and walk.’ And this guy gets up and starts walking. I love the description, it says he goes into the temple and starts cutting a rug.
This week I was watching that Michael Jackson documentary, anybody see that? Because of that, I have this mental image of this guy who has been lame from birth, and I really don’t know what kind of moves he broke into but he was dancing in the temple, and I have this mental image of no inhibition, just going for it in the temple! Listen, Jesus has just been crucified and resurrected just literally weeks before this, and Peter gets up and says, ‘This miracle that you see, it was done in the name of the One that you crucified.’ It causes a little stir with the religious leaders. I want you to listen to what they had to say, because they didn’t know what to do with Peter and John. It says
Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished, and they recognized that they had been with Jesus.
Have you ever been with someone and you could tell they had been with Jesus? I love hanging out with those kinds of people. I shared this last week. I love Dick Foth! He spoke a couple of weeks ago. By the way, he agreed to come back the week after Easter. He is such a blessing to us. I remembered having lunch and I just Twittered this thought afterwards – when I spend 30 minutes with Dick Foth, I feel like I’m 30 years wiser. You know? There are certain people who have a certain effect on you. I think what I’m trying to say is that we want to be a people that literally, the discernable difference in our lives is that people recognize that we have been with Jesus. Before He sends us out on whatever mission we are going on, He calls us to Himself.
The end of 2008, I’ve confessed this to you before, I hit one of those spiritual slumps, and I know it’s easy to think that a pastor should always be on fire spiritually. I wish I could tell you that it’s easy, but it is not. It is so easy to become a paid, professional Christian, but my commitment to you is that I’m going to continue to seek the Lord until the day I die. I’m not going to be perfect. I’m going to have season where I mess up or where I feel like I’m really empty because I’m a human. As soon as I’m completely sanctified, I will let you know! But do not hold your breath! As soon as I’m omniscient, we will send out a mass email! But listen, I want to say this, don’t you take my word for it, you take God’s Word for it. Here’s what happened, at the end of 2008, I felt so empty, like I had nothing to give. Then I read something. It was one of those moments where you know that what you are reading is a divine appointment. It was an article I was reading. A guy by the name of J.I. Packer, who, in the 1970s, wrote a book called Knowing God that was brilliant. It was such a profound book. He said this single statement: every Christian worth his salt reads the Bible from cover to cover every year. I read that and I couldn’t argue with it and it convicted me. I’ll tell you why, because I wasn’t reading the Bible as much as I should. I know that on one level, is there anybody here that feels like you read the Bible too much last year? Or you prayed too much? Or you gave too much? Or you were too loving? No! None of us fit that category, but here’s what happened, I feel like I was reading the Bible for what God wanted to say through me instead of what God wanted to say to me. After I read that, I made what I think was the most important decision I made going into 2009, I decided that I would read through a one-year Bible, because I wanted to hear the voice of the Lord and I wanted God to speak into my life. It changed my life.
Two weeks ago, I was at a conference speaking to about 1,500 Anglican pastors and I didn’t get to say ‘Hi’ to J.I. Packer, but I stood in the back of the room because he did the devotion in the morning. Part of me wanted to go throw a big hug on J.I. Packer. He’s got to be at least 117 years old, but bless his heart, he was up there preaching his heart out and part of me wanted to tell him that he would never know how that one statement impacted me. Honestly, it is the reason why this weekend, if you don’t here anything else, it is time my friends, we’ve been talking about this for months – here it is! Lent begins Ash Wednesday. This week, we kick it off. The bottom line is this, we want to encourage every NCCer to be a part of a Bible reading challenge. It begins on Wednesday. I want to say a huge thanks to our media team, Jeremy Sexton in particular. This guy has been working 25 hours every day. And our discipleship team who worked tirelessly, Heather Zempel, Chris and John, our discipleship team really did the plowing that made this Bible reading plan possible.
The bottom line is this – we are calling it LXVI, Roman numerals, there are 66 books in the Bible. From Garden to City, because we want this to be a spiritual journey where we literally go from the Garden of Eden to that New Jerusalem in Revelation. We are not going to read chronologically, we are going to do some meandering here and there, but it thrills my soul to think about all of us reading the Bible together on a daily basis. Then our messages on the weekend are going to be on the reading from the previous week. So, here’s the deal, we have a Bible reading plan and we have a commitment card, but because of the snow this week, they are still at the printer. I think that’s awesome, because it forces us to really encourage you to take a step.
Let’s go ahead and take a peak here at our From Garden to City website, launched today. On this website, what you are going to find is a reading plan. We are going to have the daily reading on there, if you are an online person and want to read it there. We’ve got resources for you. We just want to help you succeed at this challenge. Then on Tuesday night, at our All Church Celebration, have I mentioned our All Church Celebration? Let me interrupt this regularly scheduled sermon for this brief announcement! Take out your postcards, I’m going to totally lose where I am, but take out your postcards because I am so excited about this. At the Lincoln Theater on Tuesday night, which is Fat Tuesday, this is awesome, do you know what is right next to the Lincoln Theater? Ben’s Chili Bowl! It does not get any better than that! So you come out on Fat Tuesday, get a little Ben’s Chili Bowl, and then we are going to throw down. It is going to be a night of celebration and worship. We’ve got some fun stuff up our sleeves. And I’m going to share with you what I believe ranks as one of the greatest miracles in the history of National Community Church. I want to wait to tell you when we are all together. We will raise the roof together. Tuesday night, Lincoln Theater, be there. We will have reading plans. We will have commitment cards. We will have our annual report. We are going to give all of that to you on Tuesday night, but if you want to make that commitment now, you can do it on the website so easily. Go to the site and there’s a spot that says Take the Challenge and all you do is just your name and email. Why? Because I know from personal experience that if I don’t commit myself to something, I’m not going to do it, I won’t stick with it. This is where, as your pastor, I’m going to push you. Please, make that commitment, take that challenge. I’m going to tell you something else, because I know how the enemy works. The enemy is a liar. If you miss one daily reading, the enemy will tell you to throw in the towel and quit reading. No you don’t! We are not perfect. If you read the Bible more than you would have, are you better off? It is not about being perfect at this plan, it is about something so much deeper. It’s the desire to be with Jesus. Please make this connection. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about it this way, but in John 1, one name for Jesus is The Word. How do you hang out with Jesus? Hang out in the Word. As you read the Word, you are hanging out with Jesus. So when I say that our vision that He has called us to Himself, it is just about us spending more time with Him. I’m convinced of this – the solution to whatever problem you have is probably spending more time with Jesus. The Lord is calling us to Him.
I hope I covered all that. Go to www.fromgardentocity.com and check it out. I’m so excited about where God is taking it. And I would say, before we even get into logistics of casting some vision and talking about some goals, those are secondary. What’s primary is that we are called to be with Him and if we are seeking the Lord, we are going to get where God wants us to go. Say Amen!
Now, Jesus doesn’t call us to Him and then just say, ‘Stay here.’ We are called to Jesus but we are also sent out. Here’s what’s so exciting to me, 2,000 years ago, Jesus cast this vision and it is still happening. I don’t know if we connect the dots, but on Friday morning, we sent a team of NCCers, we’ll take ten missions trips this year, we sent a team of NCCers, they hopped on a plane and headed to Ethiopia. You know a couple of years ago, we planted a church in Addis. It is now several thousand people strong, and now we’ve been working to help establish a ministry center to an AIDS colony on Entoto Mountain outside the city. That’s just one mission that we are on. Is that not an extension of this? Is that not a fulfillment of the vision that Jesus cast 2,000 years ago? We are doing it and we are going to keep doing it. It’s not like this is something new. No, this is ancient. This is us doing what Jesus instructed us to do 2,000 years ago.
Here’s what I love about this. We read this passage but did you catch all of it? The don’t take any extra gold or silver and no bag or tunic. Basically, here was Jesus’ plan – no itinerary, no map, no money, no supplies, just go for it. I’m thinking to myself that that’s a bad plan. No resources or networks, and oh yeah, you’ll be like sheep in a wolves cage. That doesn’t sound safe to me. It just doesn’t seem like a good plan. That’s what I love about it and why it is a brilliant plan. I want to tell you something up front, if you aren’t careful, you can begin trusting your plans more than you trust God. I’m going to tell you some things and be totally honest, we do not have clarity on some of our 2010 vision when it comes to when and where. And that has been eating me alive and it wasn’t until yesterday that I felt this spiritual breakthrough in my spirit and realized that God has us right where He wants us, and it’s ok that we don’t have all the logistics or all the itineraries or chronological timelines. I don’t have all the topographical maps, we don’t even know what this year is going to look like, and that’s ok. We know we are sent, and that’s the key.
Now, I want to talk about our 2020 vision and then a little bit about our 2010 vision. This is the first time in 14 years that we’ve been led to be this specific with setting some goals for our congregation, and it scared me a little bit. So I called our staff to a week of prayer and fasting because I said we need to hear from the Lord on this. This cannot be our agenda for God, this has to be God’s agenda for us. But I’m also fearful that sometimes if you don’t set goals, if you don’t cast vision, then you get too comfortable where you are at and I don’t think that’s good stewardship. So, what I’m about to share, I don’t know how you are going to receive it, but here is a very simplified version of our 2020 vision and then I’ll break it down.
Write this down: 20 by 20 and 2 by 20. I believe that the Lord wants us to launch 20 locations by 2020, and the second half of that vision is that we would be giving 2 million dollars annually to missions by 2020. So let me talk about that. It was many years ago that the school closed down where we were meeting and we started meeting at the theater at Union Station and I went into this thing with the traditional mindset of meet in a rented facility so you can buy or build a church building. Then we started meeting in the Union Station and it started growing on me. I liked the seats, I liked the screens, I love the smell of popcorn. I can’t go to a movie now without being ready to worship the Lord! Doing church in the marketplace became part of our DNA didn’t it? Then one day, I’m walking home, and I have what I can only describe as a vision. It wasn’t handwriting on the sidewalk, there weren’t angelic choirs, but I saw this metro map and I envisioned us meeting in movie theaters throughout the D.C. area. At the time, that scared me, because this whole multi-site concept wasn’t anything that anybody was doing. It seemed so foreign and I asked the Lord if I was hearing from Him. One of the most beautiful moments, it’s why we survey like crazy around here, I remember thinking, Lord, we better test this vision, so we took a survey and said, how many of you would be willing to be part of a launch team as we think about launching a location at Ballston Common Mall? And I remember our whisper number, the internal number amongst our team was that we needed 100 people to pull this thing off. I’ll never forget the survey results, 99 people filled out a survey saying they would definitely or probably want to be part of a launch team. And I realized I hadn’t filled one out! God confirmed it in such an amazing way. So we have a multi-site vision and we want to meet in movie theaters where possible. There are 39 movie theaters in the metro D.C. area! We are coming to a theater near you!
Let me give a little bit of love to our Maryland folks, you guys have been knocking on the door. I want to say this, we tend to overestimate what we can accomplish in two years but we underestimate what we can accomplish in ten years. You think long term, we are going to get there.
Those 20 locations, let me break it down. I don’t know in ten years exactly how that breaks down or what it looks like, but we know that we want to continue to meet in movie theaters, and we didn’t do Ebenezers with the idea that we would do it once. That’s not good stewardship. God is blessing it, we need to do it again. We netted $100,000 profit last year and every penny of profit went to missions! What an amazing thing! We need to keep doing that. My hunch is that most of those locations are movie theaters and coffeehouses. But also, in 2011, we will launch our first international location in Berlin, Germany. Do you think we are doing that thinking – let’s do it once? No, that’s not how our minds operate. If God blesses it, we are going to keep doing it.
Then the Lord has begun to put on our hearts, you know we have church planters in residence. They come and are on our staff for a year or two and then we send them out, but we want to take that to another level. Are there some major metropolitan areas in the Northwest, major cities that we need to target? It’s how we do church and the Lord is blessing it, do we need to think maybe even beyond the beltway? So, again, I’m so aware this, I’m a guy that’s a failed church planter. When I was in seminary, I tried to plant a church and it didn’t work. Here’s the funny thing, I literally had a 25-year plan, and I got an A on it, but the thing went belly-up. I understand, we are not going to trust our plans more than we trust God, but I just know that He is sending us out.
I want to tell you something, there are a couple of reasons. One, we need to do it out of necessity. Do you remember when the theater at Union Station closed and I said that I prayed we wouldn’t lose a single person. God must laugh at our human-sized prayers. Did you know that we’ve grown several hundred people since then? Can you praise the Lord for that? God is growing us, and the truth is, we need to keep expanding. I’ll get into that in the 2010 vision. Part of it is this miracle that I’m going to share with you on Tuesday night. I’m going to tell you this, the reason we are getting more aggressive in advancing the kingdom is because to do anything less would be an affront to the miracle that God has done. My friends, we have the resources and we have the people. Do you know that when we asked you to fill out those serve cards a couple of weeks ago, those response was so huge at some of our locations that we didn’t even have enough ministry slots to accommodate all the people who want to serve. So you hang in there and we are going to launch a location and God is going to tap some of you on the shoulder and want you to be part of it. So you hang in there and we’ll get there.
Now, the second half of this vision, I want you to hear the heart. 20 by 20, good for us, it’s going to stretch us. We are not going to get comfortable. Here’s the second half, this is really the why. I’m going to say this a couple times, we need to grow more so we can give more. We need to grow more so we can give more. We need to grow more so we can give more. I have always believe, these are two deeply held convictions, that God is going to bless us in proportion to how we are giving to missions. Last year, we have $575,000 to missions. Praise God! But it’s not enough. In the double-0 decade, we gave $2,698,216.96. Praise God! It’s not enough. It thrills my soul because I remember that first $50 check we wrote when we weren’t even a self-supporting church. When our income was $2,000 a month and it cost $1,600 to rent the school where we met. That left $400 for my salary and all other expenses. But we were faithful. I remember after we gave that $50 check, by the way, our income went from $2,000 to $6,000. Is that a 300% increase in giving, and we never looked back. I'm convinced that why God is blessing us, in this down economy, our giving was up. Wait until you see our annual report. God has blessed us, because we are going to give to missions. I also believe that God is going to bless us in proportion to how we care for the poor in our city. We are doing some wonderful things. I don’t want to say that it’s nothing. I love our In Service ministry. One person at a time, we are going to love them and we are going to restore some dignity. Second Saturday, so many people out shoveling, showing love in practical ways, we need to keep taking it to another level. It’s why we are praying. I believe during our week of fasting that there was some breakthrough that happened and the day is going to come that we have a dream center, in a part of our city where we are meeting needs 24/7 and making a huge impact. We will get there.
Motivation. How can we get to that 2 million dollar mark and be giving that annually? It’s not that we are not doing the math because we are. I know that we need to quadruple in size. We need to be a church or 6 or 7 or 8 thousand people so that our income quadruples so we can give more to missions. So, we need to launch more locations so we can reach more people so that we can give more to missions. We are doing it because the Lord has sent us out.
Let me talk for a minute about 2010. You are still digesting, aren’t you? The wheels are going like this. But let me talk briefly about 2010. We’ve never launched more than one location in a year, and we need to do at least two this year. Here’s the good news, we have lots of options. Here’s the bad news, we don’t know exactly when or where. And it’s killing me. I can’t tell you how every human fiber within me wanted to get up here this weekend and say here’s when and here’s where. It’s killing me, but I’m so grateful. I feel a little bit like Abraham. Hebrews 11:8 says he went even though he didn’t know where he was going. I love that! We are going! We’re not sure where. The truth is we have some prayer options out there that we are weighing. Here’s one. There is a method to our madness. There is a reason why we want to do our All Church Celebration at the Lincoln Theater, because we want a location, U Street, Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, downtown. We need something in that part of the city. And we are negotiation with management, but they have productions so it’s complicated, you don’t know if you can get it on the weekend, you think about a weeknight if you can’t get it every week, you think about something with a different frequency. So there are a lot of unanswered questions, but we are doing Tuesday night in part because we want to try it on and we want them to try us on. I don’t know what that’s going to look like or how that’s going to turn out, but we would love a location in that neck of the woods. Another theater we’ve looked at is Mazza Galleria, and this is cool, their management is begging us to come. They so desperately want us to be there. It’s right on the border, right between Upper Northwest and Maryland. Strategic location, so that’s a possibility. There is another theater, and because there are extenuating factor involved, I can’t put all those cards on the table, but it’s a door that is opening to us that when it does, we will walk through it. Here’s the crazy thing, it could happen on Easter, and we could have two weeks to mobilize, or it could happen next fall, I have no idea. But haven’t we always said that we are a tabernacle church? We are not a temple or a stationary place of worship, we are a tabernacle, and when the cloud moves, we are going to move with it. Listen, it was probably a lot harder to pack up a couple million people in the desert and follow a cloud then it is for us to think about what door God is opening. What’s so beautiful about this is that we are not going to trust our plan, we are going to trust the Lord. He wants us to get there more than we want to get there, and He is going to reveal his timing and He is going to reveal when and where in his timing and it will happen.
So I know there is a little part of you right now saying ‘thanks for nothing, we really appreciate all that non-information you’ve given us.’ Hey, you are so welcome! It’s all I got, but the Lord is calling us to step out in faith and continue to pursue Him. And we may not know where we are sent to but we know who we are called to. We are called to Him. And if we continue to pursue that calling, He is going to reveal where He is sending us to.
One last thing, I am so excited about Berlin. The reason why we haven’t talked about it in depth is because we know it takes a lot more time and effort to mobilize something that’s going to happen in another country. But can I tell you one thing? I want to plant a little seed this weekend. Why is it that we only relocate for occupational reasons or romantic reasons? Is it possible that maybe God is calling some of us to relocate for kingdom reasons? Part of what I love about this opportunity is this is an opportunity to take our missions to a whole new level. I want to thank you, those of you who have gone on missions trips and you’ve invested your own money, you invested a week or ten days and you used your vacation days to go on those trips and I honor that. But why can’t we give a couple years? We move to lots of different places for lots of different reasons? Why can’t we do something like that? I have no idea what the Lord is going to do. We just know that He is sending us, and if He is sending, we are going. Amen! Let’s pray.
Father, we thank You. What a privilege it is to be a part of this thing called National Community Church. Thank You for the corporate vision you’ve given to us. I pray that every person right now, by your Spirit would feel like a shareholder, that there would be a sense of excitement, something would leap in our spirit as we think about what you are calling us to. Lord, I pray that every person would own this challenge, that they would know that it’s not generic, not the Lord is calling us, no, the Lord is calling me, He is calling me, He is calling me by name, He is calling me to Him. Lord I pray that as we embark on this huge undertaking, this journey that You’ve called us to that there would be tremendous excitement and joy, that Lord we wouldn’t do it for the wrong reasons but that we would do it because we have a desire to be with You. Lord I pray for Tuesday night, may You be glorified as we come together and sing your praises and celebrate who You are and the vision that you’ve given to us. Lord as we think about 2010 and 2020, O God, You are sending us out. May we be faithful to go where You’ve called us to go when You call us to go. It is not about us, it is about You. May your kingdom come and may your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Ministry Transcription
Margaret Salyers
606-706-5006
margaretsalyers@gmail.com
