[SPEAKER_00]: This is Dr. Darrell Hall, pastor of the white community church, and welcome to our podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today, we're continuing our sermon series, Wife Fenders, and the message preparing the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to start in the book of John, but we'll spend some time in Matthew and Isaiah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find all these notes in the Bible app.
[SPEAKER_00]: Grab your word.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's study together.
[SPEAKER_00]: John chapter one is where we're going to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just reading one verse in your hearing and for those who've been tracking with us for the last two weeks, I will bring your conclusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: to the message I started a few weeks ago for those, if you're just tapping in a day for the first time on this message, I'm gonna review and bring us up to speed and then we'll close this message together in our wayfinder series.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanna talk today with this law tomorrow, preparing the way, preparing the way, John chapter one verse, twenty-three.
[SPEAKER_00]: The word of the Lord says, He said, I am the voice of one calling out in what church.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the wilderness, make what y'all the way of the Lord's strength as I say of the prophet, the sage, may be seated in the presence of the living God.
[SPEAKER_00]: John the Baptist said, I am the voice of one calling out in the wilderness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Make the way of the Lord's strength.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to talk with this thought in mind, preparing the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: pairing the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you ever got in the car thinking you knew how to get from where you were to where you were going?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then after a few turns you started the second guess.
[SPEAKER_00]: your own navigation ability.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now you scrambling to try to figure out how you got lost so quick when just a few moments ago you thought you knew where you were at.
[SPEAKER_00]: This happened to me at Ebony on yesterday.
[SPEAKER_00]: We left the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: yesterday morning and we drove to my brother-in-law's house in Tucker.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we took all back roads.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I forgot until I was halfway there and I'm a west side.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not from the east side like that for real.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm really noting streets, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So we get off twenty on panola road.
[SPEAKER_00]: We make a right.
[SPEAKER_00]: We go down, make a left on cover to highway.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we turn on South Heresden and I'm completely just.
[SPEAKER_00]: Lost, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So we finally get to my brother-in-law's house.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't know where I was at until I was there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, okay, this is the right destination.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we love, we said, we do know what?
[SPEAKER_00]: We turn on a void the highway and Saturday traffic.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna take the back roads home again.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's what we're gonna do.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're just gonna retrace our steps.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's gonna take us back the highway, seven, eight, and we gonna go home.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we get in the car, no GPS, mind you?
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, yeah, then we turn from here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, I remember this, I remember this.
[SPEAKER_00]: We make a love, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, on to my three minutes in, two turns later.
[SPEAKER_00]: We both, I'm driving with ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: She got away, we lost.
[SPEAKER_00]: We saw loss, we didn't know which path on ways to pick.
[SPEAKER_00]: To get home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Many of us can feel like that in life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can't we?
[SPEAKER_00]: So sure that we know how to get from where we are to our destination and then in that confidence or overconfidence, launch out and two steps in, realize how lost I really feel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm ready to get married, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: You think?
[SPEAKER_00]: To you get married and three months in, you realize we's married now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whoa!
[SPEAKER_00]: Show me the way Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can have a great business I do.
[SPEAKER_00]: A tight business plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you think is a flawless strategy, strategy.
[SPEAKER_00]: The sea money you need to get started.
[SPEAKER_00]: Launch out into your business.
[SPEAKER_00]: Half a year in, then you realize why so many businesses fail in the first three years.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can launch a church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Matter of fact, your church can be planted by an established church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can have great people in that church who will fill the Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're gonna have all these years to develop as a leader, to prepare you for this next iteration of what God wants to do in your life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can get two and a half years into it and realize how much more work it really is than what they taught you in seminary.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes you don't know you lost until you try to go on your own.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's almost like you've got to find out that you don't know what you're going.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then in that moment, this sense of disorienting fear can overcome and overwhelm you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you've got pride issues to do with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to call my woman yesterday.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't let her know I don't know where I'm going.
[SPEAKER_00]: She girl I got this.
[UNKNOWN]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then your ego is on the line and you start to act out of something that's not authentic to who the Holy Spirit made you to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the truth is, I just got lost and then I got scared.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I got scared, I don't know how to fire my way back to her.
[SPEAKER_00]: How many people have ever felt like that in your life?
[SPEAKER_00]: So if we have felt like that or do feel like that, and we know Jesus a little bit more to average, how do you think people feel who don't know the Lord at all?
[SPEAKER_00]: There are people in our lives that God has put in our lives for the express purpose that we can help them when they realize they are lost.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's so many people disoriented.
[SPEAKER_00]: overwhelmed, frustrated.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in my mother-in-law's favorite terminology, discombobulated.
[SPEAKER_00]: You ever tried to spell discombobulated?
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't try it.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how discombobulated came to be a word, because combobulated is not a word.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know how function is a word, so dysfunction is a word.
[SPEAKER_00]: Combobulated is not a word.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anywho.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are many people who were discombobulated, frustrated, disoriented, in marriage, womanhood, manhood, parenthood, business owner's shield, selfhood.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when you change seasons, when the Lord allows you to evolve out of something you were used to, and now you gotta face something you've never faced before, that disorientation can start all over again, can it?
[SPEAKER_00]: You can have a child who excelled in middle school.
[SPEAKER_00]: Soon they go to high school and realize that they teach us not going to walk in the class.
[SPEAKER_00]: They lose their minds.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can have a child who did well in college comes home with a degree or two.
[SPEAKER_00]: You proud of them, but they don't seem to know what to do next.
[SPEAKER_00]: You could have mastered a career, worked it so hard and worked it so well that for twenty twenty five thirty years, you did well and then you retired and you feel as lost as a little child.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you don't work thirty years doing something now retire and you're trying to figure out not just what do I do next.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who do I be next?
[SPEAKER_00]: This experience of fulfilling this oriented because you don't you knew the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Realizing that you need help to find the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something that just makes us all human.
[SPEAKER_00]: It brings us to the foot of a cross to receive a grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe God wants to mediate through this church.
[SPEAKER_00]: We name this church again after Jesus, one of his many self-proclaimed nicknames, I am the way, a metaphor that is a reality to Jesus being the only way to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we also name this church because that's what first century believers will call, followers of the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: We name this church with the idea that we have journeys towards becoming
[SPEAKER_00]: But what that also means is there are people who are not on the way who need help to find it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you look at our church's logo, you'll see this compass in the logo, that compass is intentionally a picture of who we are as a church and who each of us are as believers.
[SPEAKER_00]: God wants to use this church like our compass to help people know which way to turn them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But not just this church corporately, each one of us individually, to point people to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we've been looking now in John chapter one for the last couple of weeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: And John the Baptist, he is not a perfect example.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only perfect example in the Bible is Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every other person in the Bible is a flaw, but real example of what happens when you either obey or disobey God.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this case, John is obedient to the call of God on his life and asks such he functions like a wayfinder and let the church say wayfinder.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's terminology that is integral to the culture of the way community church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we look at John as an example of a wayfinder, a compass, a navigator, somebody who points you to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so as we look at John's life, we started to ask these questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first question we asked a few weeks ago is, what is a wayfinder?
[SPEAKER_00]: And we see in his life that a wayfinder is someone who is a witness who testifies, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: John saw Jesus and he witnessed, he said, behold, the Lamb of God, who comes to take away the sins of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: John testified to others of the true nature of Jesus so that people who didn't know Jesus were come to know Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, we've going to step beyond that to clarify that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just knowing Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you got to know the way of Jesus, you got to go the way of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you've got to show others the way of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, you can grant curse, dishonest, then die her in force to show us the sweet spot of where we want to find ourselves as a wayfinder.
[SPEAKER_00]: All three.
[SPEAKER_00]: together over a lap.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got to know the lure.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got to go the way the lure told me to go and then show others as I'm going.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You can take a picture of this or you can find it on the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have this there in the notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So then we ask the question, who can be a wayfinder?
[SPEAKER_00]: And we looked at John's life and we determined and discovered that from Matthew chapter three verse number four, John the Baptist was a weirdo.
[SPEAKER_00]: I promise you, if we met John the Baptist, he wouldn't be the type of dude you would think could have that huge of a following.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wasn't charismatic and smooth, good looking and well dressed, rich, living in the best part of town.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nah, he wore camels clothes, camels hair as clothes, with a leather belt around his waist.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he ate bugs and honey for food.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, bugs and honey was his food.
[SPEAKER_00]: John the Baptist is that uncle at the family union.
[SPEAKER_00]: Dad, you wanna see them there?
[SPEAKER_00]: You just wouldn't be mad if you did.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't uncle that you glad he okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: But you, you're not really trying to be around him longer than you have to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, and I'm trying not to offend somebody in case.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, let me say it this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was eccentric.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if God can use an eccentric fellow like John,
[SPEAKER_00]: to point people to Jesus, how much more do we find peace and knowing that with all of our idiosyncrasies, all of our unique quirks, all of our personality, what other people may think is awkwardness.
[SPEAKER_00]: If God can use John, God can use me too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I may not eat bugs and eat honey and wear camels hair and a leather belt, but other people may think I'm weird for other reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: The point is, God can use me if I'm willing to show people the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we asked the question, what is the way he found it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who is the way he found it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we asked the question last week, when do I act as a way he found it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, okay, Ralph, what you saying is, God is calling us as believers to show people how to get to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, that's what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, Ralph, when do I do that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do I do that like on Sunday mornings when I invite people to church?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, is that enough?
[SPEAKER_00]: or is it some other time the Lord expects me to do it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I learned.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you really committed the being who got us called you to be, you really never clock out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whew.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the pressure of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that don't mean you always feel like working.
[SPEAKER_00]: It just means you always on the cloud.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a difference.
[SPEAKER_00]: there's a difference.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that don't just apply to me because I'm a pastor that does apply to me, but not just me.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I'm committed to being a person, God is calling me to be the answer to win is whenever, always.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And what John did was John had the Cycle following him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when he saw Jesus, he said, behold, the Lamb of God and the Cycle following John left John to start following Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's when you know it's time to point people to Jesus when the people following you need to be following Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to hear me.
[SPEAKER_00]: God has given every person in his room influence somewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means it's people following you whether you know it or not, like it or not, one in or not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether you ask for it or not, somebody is following you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody's watching you for their cues.
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody's looking at your example for how they should act and react.
[SPEAKER_00]: And God doesn't give us influence just so we can have influence.
[SPEAKER_00]: God doesn't give us followers just so we can boast about how many people follow us.
[SPEAKER_00]: God gives us influence so we can use that influence to point the people to the true answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: The true answer is Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I act as a way find it when I realize that the people looking at me really need to be looking to the lower.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, that's what we've covered in the first three weeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want us to pick up the date with these last few questions and bring your conclusions to our study of John the Baptist.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the fourth question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where do I act as a wayfinder?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, well, so you say God has called me to point people to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, all right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You also saying that that regardless of who I am in all of my personality quirks, God can use me.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's exactly what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to be a super Christian.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a such thing as a super Christian.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Any idea you have of somebody as a super Christian?
[SPEAKER_00]: You missed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You think they got something you don't?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not true.
[SPEAKER_00]: They may just be more developed in it than you are, but they don't have something you don't.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's no longer an excuse for why you can't be used.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all picking up what I'm putting down?
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I got influenced.
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody follow me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if all have a congregation of a few hundred people who come to hear my sirens, I got a, I got a niece or a nephew, a son or a daughter, a coworker, a friend, a grandchild, a godchild.
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody is looking to me whether I know it or not, like it or not, or acts for it or not.
[SPEAKER_00]: And them following me should get them closer to following Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the end of the question is, where do I do this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where do I point people to Jesus?
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you read it too fast, you might miss that is right in the text.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we read it in John chapter one verse number twenty three, John says, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Prepare the way to the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: as Isaiah the prophet said.
[SPEAKER_00]: Matthew says in this way, in Matthew chapter number three, first number one, it says, now when those days, John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at what Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah chapter forty, verse three, says, the voice of one calling out clear from the way for the Lord in the, so where do I act as a wayfinder in the, in the wilderness?
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know what?
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to look for the wilderness.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's everywhere you already go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wilderness is this arid place, this dry place.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is unfruitful and unseen.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's inhospitable and dangerous.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can be scary and disorienting.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like dropping somebody off in the middle of a desert and telling them, find a way home.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have to imagine it because the truth is many of us live like that every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have to look for the wilderness because soon as we go to work tomorrow, we want to write them to the wilderness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just high, dry.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us don't have to look for the wilderness because soon as we go home, we want to write them to the wilderness.
[SPEAKER_00]: isolated, along.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us have to look for the wilderness because the wilderness come to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: You grab your phone, you get a notification about what's happening politically in this nation you like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wilderness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now the reason the wilderness is so disorienting is because we were never designed for wilderness living.
[SPEAKER_00]: when God created man in the beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: He could have put man in the wilderness if he wanted to.
[SPEAKER_00]: But God put man in woman together in a garden, the opposite of wilderness.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm talking about it was plush and lush, green and beautiful vivacious and lively.
[SPEAKER_00]: All the water you need, all the fruit you need animals walking around that you can pet without fearing that they would eat you.
[SPEAKER_00]: A safe place.
[SPEAKER_00]: in an ecosystem that before the fall, before the flood of Noah, an ecosystem that looked and functioned much differently than it does now.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you notice in the Bible, I'm gonna nerd out real quick.
[SPEAKER_00]: I ain't even mean to say this, it's not my notes.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you notice in the Bible, after the flood of Noah, people start living a hundred and twenty years and less.
[SPEAKER_00]: The flood of Noah redesigned not just the earth's surface, but the earth's atmosphere.
[SPEAKER_00]: The earth's atmosphere was designed from the beginning for us to live here forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why God told Adam and Eve in the middle of the garden is a tree of life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Had they eaten the tree of life, we never would have died.
[SPEAKER_00]: We would be here forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when saying enters, death starts to happen slowly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you see people living to be nine hundred, eight hundred, seven hundred, six hundred, three hundred, Floyd, a hundred and twenty days.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then the song to say is, three score and ten.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if by reason of strength, four score.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: God designed us to live and flourish forever in our garden economy, environment, and ecosystem, saying enters, and now the wilderness becomes a part of our experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Ossoller, are they kicked out of the garden?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do they feel how capacity is to live in the wilderness?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we see these people in the wilderness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't we follow in Moses?
[SPEAKER_00]: They suppose we go from Egypt to the Promised Land.
[SPEAKER_00]: They walk into the wilderness out of a rare sea, do the wrong thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: One verse, two says, they close the BDR E. Levin days, they were there for the years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what the geography of the soul teaches us is sometimes where your feet are, is where your heart is.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they in the wilderness for forty years, doing what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Just walking in circles.
[SPEAKER_00]: because of wilderness to do that to you on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You thought you had a shortcut to destiny.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you just get stuck in this place you didn't know how you got into.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you realized really where my feet are, it's prophetical where my soul is.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel lost.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if it's not that I'm lost in the wilderness, what about when I did everything the Lord told me to do and He just pushed me in the wilderness?
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus gets baptized.
[SPEAKER_00]: The heavens open.
[SPEAKER_00]: Avoid speaks from heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is my beloved son and whom I will please.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the Holy Spirit did this to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wilderness.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was obedient.
[SPEAKER_00]: He got baptized.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, Katie, and Shonda.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yikes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I brought this to the told us all this before we baptized.
[SPEAKER_00]: You ever got your life on the right track and still found yourself in the wilderness?
[SPEAKER_00]: You like, hold on now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just got baptized.
[SPEAKER_00]: You said, you love me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to the starting point.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Holy Spirit pushes him into the wilderness for forty days.
[SPEAKER_00]: No food, no drink, no confirmation from God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then Satan shows up in the test town.
[SPEAKER_00]: The real business was not a part of God's original design, but now we cannot become who we will be without going through it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where we show people the way they life with Jesus in the wilderness.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that mean, Ralph?
[SPEAKER_00]: That means a way of finding is more likely to join a friend in the wilderness than invite a friend to the garden.
[SPEAKER_00]: A wayfinder is somebody who can say, you know what?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not so safe that I forgot how I feel to live in the wilderness.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I want to invite you to church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I think the people at my church are nice.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I hope you enjoyed the worship and the Word.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I want to with you through this wilderness.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be a friend to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll come join you like Jonathan did when David was in the wilderness in Zif.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was there hiding for his life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jonathan went to the wilderness as a friend to be in the wilderness with David.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe before you invite somebody in the church the next time, ask them if this is on where they can, they won't you become.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you gotta be careful because of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, you wanna come to the wilderness?
[SPEAKER_00]: Come to the bluff.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna see a house.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna have some shoes hanging on the power line in front of the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: Come in there house.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all get the point on making.
[SPEAKER_00]: We join people in their struggle because we're not so removed from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that we know the Lord a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, where do I at this rate find it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Number five.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, why should I do this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so you're saying all believers should know Jesus, do what Jesus say, do and then help other people know him.
[SPEAKER_00]: But why don't?
[SPEAKER_00]: What's my motivation?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, after all, I'm not a preacher.
[SPEAKER_00]: What it really sound like, Reverend, is you trying to get us to do the job.
[SPEAKER_00]: We pay you to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, Reverend, you're not finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna finna.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, so can I do your job?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I brought you the way, Father.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's my motivation for this?
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, look at what John asked in Matthew chapter eleven verse three.
[SPEAKER_00]: John says to Jesus, are you the coming one or are we to look for someone else?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is John the Baptist who just said, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now he's saying, are you really here?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or was I wrong, you know, that preaching I was doing about you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Did I give you my faith by my state?
[SPEAKER_00]: or are you really the son of God?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you really the savior of the world?
[SPEAKER_00]: What has happened to John that he has gone from, hey y'all, that's the Lamb of God, to a little cousin?
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you really who I thought you were?
[SPEAKER_00]: John asked this question from jail.
[SPEAKER_00]: John gets locked up, not because he did some wrong, but because he did some right.
[SPEAKER_00]: John spoke truth to power.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means John told the king that this king was doing something immoral and he told the king to his face.
[SPEAKER_00]: And because the king is absolute monarch and can do what the king wants to do, the king threw him in jail instead of listening to him that what he was doing was wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Charles John in jail.
[SPEAKER_00]: John is in jail and the longer he is in jail, the weaker his faith gets.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was sure about Jesus when he was free.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now that he has an outcome that he doesn't want, now he's starting to doubt if everything he believes was real.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do I need to be a wayfinder?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because one day I may need somebody to help me find my way again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hear me, just because you found, don't mean you can get lost again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Won't tell you who thank you, Stan, unless you fall.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why should I show somebody the way?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I don't know what my future holds and something may happen in my life that may make me doubt God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm gonna need somebody to come tap me on the shoulder and say, hey, there are all them sermons you was preaching.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now it's time to believe him again.
[SPEAKER_00]: because faith is not static, is it?
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't just get faith in always, keep it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Let the wrong thing happen in your life that you want to wish on your worst ending.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's easy to preach when you freak.
[SPEAKER_00]: What about when you get locked up with doing the right thing?
[SPEAKER_00]: And not only is he got son, he your cousin too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about the question he just asked and the doubt in that question.
[SPEAKER_00]: John the Baptist knew Jesus was God's son before either one of them was born.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Bible says that Elizabeth was six months pregnant with John.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mary walks in to Elizabeth.
[SPEAKER_00]: She found out that she just got pregnant.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, her baby daddy.
[SPEAKER_00]: She walks in.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: She walks in, Elizabeth is pregnant with John.
[SPEAKER_00]: Soon as Mary walks in, John in the womb catches a Baptist feed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Prenatal he knew that was God's son.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how can you be sure before you born of his identity and then get locked up and started down if he really to one or not?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because life will do that till you want it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some can happen in your future.
[SPEAKER_00]: That can make you doubt everything you thought you knew.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in a moment, you can go from found the loss.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you need somebody to love you enough to connect you back to the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: John sinning jail, so he tells some of his partners, and go ask him if he don't want or not.
[SPEAKER_00]: So his friends, they go to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: They say, hey, Jesus, John told us, can't ask you a question.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you the one or should we look for another?
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus didn't even answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't say, man, tell him I'm the one.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, just tell him what you see happening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell him all the miracles that are going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go tell him.
[SPEAKER_00]: They leave to go tell John.
[SPEAKER_00]: Soon as they leave to go tell John, listen to what Jesus says about John.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus said, truly I say to you, among those born of women, there has not a reason anyone greater than who you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: John in jail, mad at God and Jesus, because he thought he should be free for doing the right thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: He starts to doubt.
[SPEAKER_00]: He tells friends, go talk to Jesus for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: The friends go talk to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus says, just tell them what you see.
[SPEAKER_00]: Soon as they walk away, Jesus start bragging on John.
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't let the friends hear it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He let the friends leave.
[SPEAKER_00]: He overhears saying, y'all, the greatest human being ever born was John the Baptist.
[SPEAKER_00]: The greatest one ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: Grated in David, Moses, Sarah, Rebecca,
[SPEAKER_00]: The greatest human being.
[SPEAKER_00]: The greatest human ever born to.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's greater than Joe.
[SPEAKER_00]: He greater than Elijah.
[SPEAKER_00]: The greatest human being ever born is doubting if I'm really the one right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he didn't let John's friends hear it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he didn't get John out of jail.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the King who threw John in jail, beheaded John.
[SPEAKER_00]: in jail.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why should I be a wayfinder?
[SPEAKER_00]: Not because one day I'm gonna need somebody to help me find my way, but I should be a wayfinder because I won't Jesus to be proud of me even when I don't get the results I want.
[SPEAKER_00]: We do stuff to try to make people love us who ain't gonna never like us anyway.
[SPEAKER_00]: We will sell our integrity and character to make somebody approve of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think we needed their approval to get to our next level.
[SPEAKER_00]: Still show up to the future in the do a lot from the inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want people's attention and affection that ain't worth a hill of beans when it all comes to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reason I want to point people to the way is because I don't know what's going to happen in my future.
[SPEAKER_00]: My faith is fragile because I'm a human being.
[SPEAKER_00]: But also I want to point people to the way because I want Jesus to be proud of me even if I get results.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to wish for my worst enemy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want Jesus to double tap on my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I approve.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like what you do but it's not just what you do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like who you be.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm proud of you, because only his affirmation is what matters in time and attorney.
[SPEAKER_00]: Only he is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm talking about your parents too.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love my parents.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have outgrown the need for my mom and dad to be proud of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to break their heart.
[SPEAKER_00]: I honor my father my mother.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when they say they proud of me, I do turn to a little boy like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I'm saying is, I'm not relying on that to feel sturdy inside.
[SPEAKER_00]: You all picking up what I'm putting down?
[SPEAKER_00]: I want Jesus when I'm not around, to tell a good about me.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why, here's the last thing that I'll be doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I become a way funder?
[SPEAKER_00]: So we asked these five W's and one H. How?
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, we have you keep bringing up this time, Ray Finder?
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I do this?
[SPEAKER_00]: When I say wayfinder, I'm really using branded language.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just the way we at the way describe what the Bible calls a witness or a disciple or a Christian, you know what I'm saying or a believer.
[SPEAKER_00]: But here in the way community church, we've designed a reproducible process that we are pointing people to to help walk you through
[SPEAKER_00]: What we believe helps you to become a mature disciple.
[SPEAKER_00]: After which point you completed, then we certify you at church anniversary and you become what we define as a certified weight finder.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the way to raise the bar of what really matters in the life of a church, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know I earned this person a lot because she is worthy of honor and she don't seek it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But this program has been led by Karen McClinney for two and a half years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we started this church two and a half years ago, and it's a great many people that we couldn't have done this without, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But Karen is definitely one of the names at the top of that list.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because she really took personally and seriously, helping this church become a place where disciples can be intentionally grown.
[SPEAKER_00]: And not just something we talk about, but something we strategize towards.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that process is what we call wayfinders.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let everybody say wayfinders.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, we have a new leader of wayfinders.
[SPEAKER_00]: Karen has just transitioned out of that leadership role.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Kiari Kendrick is a new leader of our wayfinders.
[SPEAKER_00]: We thank God for him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm gonna just do this real quick.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm asking a couple of people to stay here in the next few minutes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Karen, can you stand?
[SPEAKER_00]: I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm sorry.
[SPEAKER_00]: She don't like attention.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody look over there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Key, can you stand real quick?
[SPEAKER_00]: These are our two leaders.
[SPEAKER_00]: We thank God for both of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can be seated.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what it comprises of is four different studies that when you go through these studies, we certify you as a wayfinder.
[SPEAKER_00]: The goal is to equip you to become who God has called you to be, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's not my job to answer all your friends' questions about the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of y'all like, yes it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't answer it, who go answer it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Ephesians four says that is my job to equip you for the work of the ministry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's where we, the, I notice may seem subtle, but it's so important.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we look at the pastor as the one who does the work, it makes us all spectators.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's never the, that's not the biblical design.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just a good business model when somebody won't job security.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't need a business model that protects my job security.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because the way community church don't provide for me, God provides for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, don't take my check.
[SPEAKER_00]: Board of Directors, please.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I'm saying is I refuse to design this church to protect my job interests.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe the Lord is going to provide whatever happens as we evolve and grow.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do really mean it.
[SPEAKER_00]: My job is not to do the work while y'all root me on.
[SPEAKER_00]: My job is to root y'all on while you do the work wherever you go and live.
[SPEAKER_00]: So really, instead of me being the superstar on the field, that you're all like, oh man, pastor amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm really the cheerleader.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can do it, yes you can.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're a way to find it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're a good man.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my job.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can see that coming to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Frankie, Frankie, he's our man of he can do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Shaila can.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my job.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell me about something great you're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I celebrate something great you're doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you hear what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go!
[SPEAKER_00]: That's me.
[SPEAKER_00]: My job is to make sure you equil and create a safe ecosystem where you can be and grow, regardless of age and stage, male or female.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all understand what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_00]: Create a culture where the Holy Spirit reigns, not where human ego reigns through position or leadership.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we do that, then now we invert the pyramid.
[SPEAKER_00]: So no longer is it, we are looking up to the pastor, we invert the pyramid and the pastor creates an environment that supports us all.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's an inverted pyramid as upside down.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm at the bottom, you're at the top.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so we do that through a process called WayFinders.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here are the four studies in that system, and I'll let you all go here in a minute, churches and team sport.
[SPEAKER_00]: It only takes a half day to go through that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm talking about like three or four hours, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll give you a Chick-fil-A sandwich.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some coffee, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: The second one is, the cycle shift.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is the two-day weekend.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in the Friday, Saturday or Saturday Sunday.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes we go no Friday and you're gonna be here a long time on Saturday.
[SPEAKER_00]: I ain't gonna hold you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it's a Saturday and then you do it, so on that the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's only one weekend.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got fifty-one other weekends to not be at church.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, number three, leading life change in small groups.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a half day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking about two or three hours in the morning or afternoon.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know when they schedule it, but you won't be here that long.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not even enough for two whole meals.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the fourth study is the longest of all, and it's called real-life discipleship.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's twelve chapters.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can either do one chapter per week for twelve weeks or two chapters per week for six weeks.
[SPEAKER_00]: We tend to do the six week model that just means you and they're a little longer.
[SPEAKER_00]: But these four together, once you complete them at church in a varsery, we certify you at which point now you no longer just a church member.
[SPEAKER_00]: You join the Baptist.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Order woman at the will.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next week I'm gonna preach about the woman at the will.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we got male wayfonders in the word.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got female wayfonders in the word.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: You join the Baptist on the woman at the will.
[SPEAKER_00]: You point in people to Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, but you have the confidence of knowing that I got something to work with and not trying to figure out what to take from past the sermon to use to help somebody else grow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I got training and my church has resource me and I got people like an axe for help and support me as I do whatever God has called me to do and become who God has called me to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm gonna run down some stats and I'm really grateful for over the first two and a half years of the way community church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm gonna start it this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody asked me, how many members do we have?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's even worse than I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care.
[SPEAKER_00]: I promise you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't care how many members we got.
[SPEAKER_00]: The only tool reasons that I would care how many members we got is to put it in my bio when I go other places to speak.
[SPEAKER_00]: So why don't you introduce me?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm over there like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Trying to look real important.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I'm saying?
[SPEAKER_00]: I like often the killer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he passes the way, coming through to their church with seventy thousand members.
[SPEAKER_00]: Either for my bio to make me sing far or for me to brag to my other friends and pastors.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, man, how many members you got?
[SPEAKER_00]: I got seventy thousand.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really don't care.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, how many wayfines we got?
[SPEAKER_00]: Ninety-five.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was going through the list of wayfinders and I was mad, because it's like four of them who made I can't put together with the man.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of the nine and five, I know the nine and one of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: That matters to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: That matters.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so I'm going to start with some specs real quick.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the pie that kind of shows what the years on that we've been in existence and how many wayfinders we got in each year.
[SPEAKER_00]: We started with fifteen who were already certified.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the process we call wayfinders, Karen and I took it and stand and we made it our own, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But it was something EBC was already dorm and in one version we've taken it and made it the central
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, process of what we do here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we baptize it in our own language and branded, called it Wayfinder.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, fifteen people came over already certified.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then in our first year in existence, we added, um, forty-nine people, then last year we added twenty-four people.
[SPEAKER_00]: This year, seven have already completed.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think another twenty-three or twenty-six.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't remember the number key.
[SPEAKER_00]: Twenty-five are currently in the pipeline.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if those twenty-five completed, we will have thirty-two this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's ninety-five and all.
[SPEAKER_00]: If we get the church anniversary in a twenty-five and then now complete it, we'll be up to a hundred and twenty-five certified.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's why that's important to me because I've taken what could have been just a church member or a fan of my preaching and made them a spiritual leader.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's why I'm important.
[SPEAKER_00]: Giving you something you can give somebody else, not just making you co-dependent on what I give you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just spoon-feet, and you teaching how to cook for yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, of the nine five way funders, we've got twice as many women as we do men.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got sixty three women who are way funders and thirty two men.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that's pretty much true in anything positive in the black community.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got twice as many girls graduate from high school, twice as many girls going to college.
[SPEAKER_00]: Twice as many girls who still got good teeth.
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And y'all laugh and they're proven it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I got some sociological reasons why I think that's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe in systemic racism, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's something about politics.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is about a dominant race, designing a culture to categorically weaken it by emasculating its men and abusing its women.
[SPEAKER_00]: To the tone of three hundred years, you do the math.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all picking on what I'm playing now.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I ain't talking about that today.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we got to twice as many women as we do men, and I am thankful for both numbers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for the women, because women follow Jesus when the men deserve it all.
[SPEAKER_00]: We said we have in a lot, a hundred of them signed up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Women just have this desire, especially healthy women, to nurture, give and make something come alive that they believe in.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm also grateful for that number of men, because brother, you have trusted me to be your spiritual leader.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you look me in my eye, you shake my hand, some of y'all older than me, and respect me all the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of y'all older than me, my dad.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, never belittle me like no little boy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I act like a little boy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Point is, you don't belittle me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't take for granted a black man, trusting another man to be his spiritual leader, but tell him to do anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, here's our wayfinders by age.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the last graphic I'm going to show you.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, one of the values of our churches, we are into generational community.
[SPEAKER_00]: What that means is we care about every age and stage.
[SPEAKER_00]: We love and equity and this is a safe place for people regardless of age and stage to grow and thrive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, we have a youth center to gender because I believe our children are most vulnerable among us.
[SPEAKER_00]: They need our oversight.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that doesn't mean we don't care about people as they age.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ages and will not be an issue for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I state that prophetically and pastorally with all the authority that comes with being the founding pass of this church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some churches pick a age group and love them more than other age groups.
[SPEAKER_00]: We not gonna make that false choice.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna do the hard work of being a family with all ages I had to tell you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're going to do that work, and we've done that work.
[SPEAKER_00]: On our governing board, it's five of us, two of us are in our seventies, two are in their fifties, I'm in my thirties.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our governing board is intergenerational.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't just start this church and get a bunch of people in my age or younger to sit on the governing board to control the resources of this church.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's people on the board older than to be my parents.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'll pick an ornament down.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're in a generation from the top to the bottom.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when you look at those who are certified wave funders, we got seventy-year-olds who are certified wave funders.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got eight of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got twenty-five people in their sixties who are certified wave funders.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got twenty-three in their fifties.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eleven in their forties.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fifteen in their thirties.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like me in my wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: One in their twenties and twelve who don't want to tell us they age.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll do you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right now, if you're in this room and you're a certified wayfinder, would you please stand to your feet?
[SPEAKER_00]: Stand to your feet?
[SPEAKER_00]: Can we thank God for those around us?
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, y'all, we can do a little bit better than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: T-D-O-C-C, gang, gang, all day.
[SPEAKER_00]: You may be seated.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'ma let y'all go in a quick minute.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I had them stand because their standing is a testimony to the fact that I didn't spend the last thirty minutes line in y'all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you got any questions about this church to spirit of this church, the process of becoming a wayfonder, you got all these people who just do it, you go ask them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ask them about their experience, they'll tell you the truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, here's the last two things I want to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: My vision for this church, if you are a serious, you consider yourself a serious part of the way community church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you are a member, you are committed, you believe in what God is doing here.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the first time I think I've stated something that I believe is a vision God has given me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the vision I believe for the way community church.
[SPEAKER_00]: We will have five hundred certified wayfinders by our tenth anniversary.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a vision.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, why is that important?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you need that for any idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to hear me.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people come to me, Rev, I got a lot to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying your idea is not good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm saying, are you ready to be the idea you want to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not trying to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Squash good ideas, I'm trying to build people who can handle the weight of glory.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my job.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't come up with all the ideas and a vision shouldn't be primarily material.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: If my, if I got a pen said, my vision is something material to have a big church, fifty thousand square feet.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my vision, that's not a vision, that's ego.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever God gave a vision that vision, the people were central to that vision.
[SPEAKER_00]: Long before the Lord said, I'm gonna give you a lamb flow and look at honey.
[SPEAKER_00]: He said, I'm gonna make you the father of many nations you ain't gonna read.
[SPEAKER_00]: I count all your kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna bring a great people from you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I believe if we got five hundred people who are committed to helping show people the way the life of the Jesus, it ain't nothing God can't do through this church.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we got people equipped for whatever ideas we come up with.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're not pulling on my saying people with a new everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Following the people who really committed really about that action.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can plan on the churches.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But before we say yes, are we ready?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just trying to get you ready.
[SPEAKER_00]: I ain't trying to hold you back.
[SPEAKER_00]: I promise you.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I ever say no to you, it's because I'm believing God for a deeper yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: A more meaningful yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to waste your excitement to be a part of this church on something that won't matter in a year.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would rather you be mad at me because I told you no to an idea why you was getting ready and then you look up in five years and you are somebody you always dreamed you really could be.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my commitment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Five hundred, certified wayfathers by a tenth anniversary.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you consider yourself a serious part of this church, pray for that, that it be the Lord's will to come to pass.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, here's the last thing I want to say about our wayfathers, we got two who have already gone ahead.
[SPEAKER_00]: One is staying cold, man.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one is Anna Wiggum, who's who's funeral services we had here about a month ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we give God praise for that legacy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Get a load of handcuffer praise if you work.