The State of the Church

I want to invite you to take your copy of God's Word and turn with me to Romans chapter 12 and hold your place at verse 9.

Yesterday, Jennifer and I were talking. I was doing a plumbing project, which meant

I had to go back to the store three times, which is a pretty standard thing.

Well, on one of our trips back, we decided to go and enjoy the Lord's Chicken for dinner.

We went to Chick -fil -A. And while we were there, she noted that there was a message on one of the

Facebook groups that someone was looking for a church. And the person on the other side, you know, somebody will put,

I'm looking for a church. And then all these people say, come to our church, come to our church, come to our church. And one person said, come visit our church.

But not tomorrow. We've decided to take a Sunday off. And they're not the only ones.

Today is historically the lowest attended service of the year by numerical statistics.

This is the Sunday that most people who miss church choose to miss church.

The Sunday between Christmas and New Year. And so I have chosen on this

Sunday, which was the likelihood of having the least amount of people to make that my most offensive message.

No, I promise you that nothing I am going to say today has the intention of offending.

But I am going to talk about the state of the church, the state of our church, not the church in general.

We're not going to talk about the overall church or the world church, the capital C Ecclesia Church, you know, the worldwide body of Christ.

No, we're going to talk about Sovereign Grace Family Church. We're going to talk about our struggles.

We're going to talk about our strengths. And we're going to talk about the things that we should be striving for as a body.

So I say right away, if you are a visitor here and you have been considering being part of our body, well, today you're going to hear all about the things that are going on here.

And if you're a visitor who is traveling, and I know there are several of you who are, and I met you this morning, and I'm grateful that you are here with us.

You're going to hear things about our church that may not make much difference to you in the short term, but maybe at some point will be of value to you as you go back to your church and minister alongside other folks.

Because I don't imagine that the problems we face here at Sovereign Grace are unique to us.

I imagine that the things that we struggle with and the things that we battle are the things that a lot of churches deal with.

So I pray that this message will be to you a blessing, those who will be taking it back home.

Every year, the President of the United States gives what is called the State of the

Union Address. This is a formal speech given to Congress and to the nation reporting on the condition of the country and outlining priorities for the year ahead.

It has three main parts. It looks back what has happened. It looks at the present, what is happening.

And it charts a course for the future. What are the goals and the priorities that lie ahead?

And the goal is to answer this question. When the President stands in the halls of Congress and gives the

State of the Union, his job in that moment is to answer the question, how are we doing and where are we going?

How are we doing and where are we going? So I've titled today's message, The State of the

Church, because I want to do the same thing today. How are we doing and where are we going?

And this was my practice for several years. I used to do this every year and for some reason, several years,

I just sort of let it fall by the wayside. So this is the first time

I'm doing this maybe for some of you because some of you have only been members here for the last few years. Maybe you've never heard me do this, but I want you to understand there's good reason for this.

There's good reason for a church to take ecclesiastical stock. One is that we have new members coming all the time.

I mean, we saw two people baptized last week, Brother Frank and now Brother Dean were baptized last week and we have new folks who come in all the time.

Another reason is we're not the same church we were 10 years ago. We're not the same church we were 20 years ago.

We're certainly not the same church we were 50 years ago. You realize this church is almost 70 years old?

And third, it is always important to take stock of ecclesiastical health.

We talk about individual spiritual health. Dale, you've got to take stock of your spiritual health, right?

That means you've got to sometimes sit down and say, where am I in my walk? Where are some things

I need to work on? Where are some things I need to commit to the Lord that I maybe have let slip?

Not just you. I'm just using you because you decided to sit in the front. You don't do that in a Baptist church.

These seats are just for show. You too. So that's what we're doing.

Instead of looking at each of you individually, we're going to look at all of us as a whole, all of us as a church.

And we're going to do that by looking at Romans chapter 12, beginning at verse 9. So let's stand together.

I'm going to be reading from the English Standard Version, and you're welcome to read along with me from the screen, or if you brought your own

Bibles, I encourage you to read those. And this is what it says.

Let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good, love one another with brotherly affection, outdo one another in showing honor.

Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the

Lord, rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer, contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

Let's pray. Father in heaven, I pray, Lord, that you would keep me from error.

For God, you know that I pray that every time I preach, not as simply a rehearsal of repetition, but Lord, you know that it is the very desire of my heart that I would preach the truth and not preach what is false.

And yet, Lord, there is the tendency in the heart of man to want to go after his own ideas.

So I pray that you would keep me tied to the post of your word. And Lord, today as we look specifically at individual needs of our church,

Lord, that you would give us all attention to what is said. Lord, if things are offensive, let them be offensive, not because they're being taken personally, but Lord, let it be that we are offended by the truth.

And yet, Lord, that the truth would not just leave us offended, but cause us to wonder,

Lord, why am I offended? And maybe I need to change. For Lord God, your word tells us if we go to the word and we go away having not been changed, we're like a person who looks in a mirror and then goes away and forgets what he's seen.

So Lord, may it be today that when we look into the mirror of your word, Lord, that we are changed.

Pray for this body. I pray for the visitors. I pray for the youngsters and even for the babies,

Lord. Father, that all would be under the hearing of the word and that it would do its work that only it can do.

That your spirit would take the word preached, mix it with faith, and implant it in the hearts.

And Lord God, do this in accordance with your will, by the power of your spirit, in the name of your dear

Son. Amen. This year at Sovereign Grace Academy, which is our two -year ministry training program that we offer here at Sovereign Grace, we did a course on spiritual gifts.

For eight weeks, Brother Andy, Brother Mike, Brother Bert, and myself taught on the subject of spiritual gifts.

And one of the main texts that we used in that class was Romans 12, verses 3 -8.

In Romans 12, verses 3 -8, Paul gives a list of seven specific spiritual gifts and he lists them along with an exhortation.

Those who prophesy and they're prophesying, for those who teach and they're teaching, for those who give with generosity, for those who do acts of mercy with kindness.

It gives us this, here's what you're doing, here's how you should do it. And so, in that particular class, which was a 201 class, in our academy we do like colleges, you have the 101 classes, which are the basic classes, and then you have 200, 300 courses.

That was a 200 course, and it was a 200 course in ecclesiology. Ecclesiology is the doctrine of what?

The doctrine of the church. Ekklesia, the Greek word where we get our word church, it actually means assembly.

The etymology of the word is those who have been called out, but in the ancient Greek world when you heard the word ecclesia, it meant when people were gathered together for an assembly.

That was what it was called. It was called the ekklesia, the assembly. And so, when we study ecclesiology, we are studying the doctrine of the church.

The doctrine of the gathered body. And this is one of the most important, and yet one of the, it's one of the most important things that we should learn about, and yet one of the most neglected in the modern church.

The modern church has lost its understanding of the ecclesia. It's lost its understanding of the importance of the assembly.

This is why so many people don't even think they need the church anymore. They will say,

I can be a Christian all by myself, and I can be doing all the things Christ wants me to do all by myself, and we end up with this lone wolf

Christianity, which the Bible never speaks of.

The Bible never gives a model of doing it all on your own. Can you be a

Christian without the church? I suppose it's possible, but it's not right. It's not right to live the

Christian life without the fellowship of believers. And so, one of the reasons why that is true is because every believer has a spiritual gift that is meant, according to the

Apostle Paul, to be for the building up of the body. Your spiritual gift is not for you.

One, it's not for you to have pride in. Oh, look at me, I preach, or look at you, you have this gift or that gift.

This is one of my main issues with so much of the charismatic movement, is spiritual gifts are put on display and used as tokens of superiority.

I have this gift, I can do this thing, I'm special. No, your gift is not about making you special, your gift is about blessing others.

And your benefit of being part of the body is that you get to bring the unique mix of gifts that God has given to you into the body, and the church then has its unique mix of gifts that it blesses you with.

Every one of you, in some way, shape, or form, have, through your spiritual gift, blessed me and my family.

There are some of you who have great gifts of generosity, and your generosity has not gone unnoticed.

It's not just in the pulpit, or in the plate, it's in just generous actions.

Some of you have great skills of leadership. Some of you have great skills in mercy and exhortation.

Some of you are just really good at loving people. And you love well, and that does not go unnoticed, even if it doesn't come with a trophy, because what we do in the church doesn't come often with the accolades or awards, but it's there.

And so in that class, in that academy class, when we were going through verses 3 -9, we were looking, or 3 -8, we were looking at the spiritual gifts, we were saying, this is what is why we should understand the value of the church, is because it's the place where God has filled us with His Spirit to come into, to be a part of, so that we can bless others, and others can bless us, and we can, through that mutual relationship, actually be a family.

And that leads us into verse 9. This is, that was the sort of context to where we're getting, because Paul is saying, if you have this gift, do it this way.

If you have this gift, do it this way. Use your gift for the benefit of the church. He talks about that in 1

Corinthians 12, for the mutual edification of the body, because the eye can't say to the ear, I have no need of you, the hand can't say to the foot,

I have no need of you. Every part of the body is important, every part of the body matters, and this is Paul's, 1

Corinthians 12 and Romans 12, interestingly enough, because they're both chapter 12, both of them are the heart of the spiritual gift teachings of the

New Testament. And here in Romans 12, after Paul has given this exhortation to use your spiritual gift to bless others, he now gives a short list of, what

I would say, staccato exhortations. Staccato is in music, when the music is very punchy, right, ta, ta, ta, staccato.

Well we hear this in his words. His words become very sharp, very pointed, very punchy. And they come out rapid fire.

Let love be genuine, a hoard what is evil, hold fast to what is good. You could hear a Southern Baptist preacher just boom, boom, boom.

Love one another with a brotherly affection, outdo one another in showing honor. It's just like everyone starts with a punch and ends with an exclamation point.

This is Paul saying, this is what a Christian church should look like.

This is what a gathered body of believers should be like. And again, looking at it, one, they should love one another.

He says, let love, remember this is in the context of the church. We can talk about the world another day.

We can talk about the family another day. We can talk about the universal church another day.

Today we're talking about this church. And that's what Paul is talking about, the Roman church. And I believe that what

Paul says to the Roman church is just as applicable to Sovereign Grace Family Church as it was to them.

That what Paul is saying to them also applies to us. Let love be genuine.

And I would ask this from the first set. Do you love the people you worship with?

Do you love the people that you worship with? I've said this before and I don't say this in any way to diminish my relationship with my extended family because I have a good relationship with my cousins and my aunts and my uncles.

And I'm thankful that God allowed me to grow up with all of that extended family. But you know what?

I see y 'all lots more than I see them.

And I'm with you more than I am with them. And honestly and truly, unfortunately,

I'm going to be in eternity with y 'all but not with many of them.

This is why you think about Jesus' words when they came to Him and they said, Your mother and brother's outside. Who are my mother and brothers?

The ones who hear the word of the Lord and obey it, right? That's my mother and sister. Now does that mean I don't love my extended family?

No, I love my extended family and I pray that God would save them. I pray God would send them to another church.

No, I'm just kidding. If y 'all are watching, y 'all can come. I love them.

But this is my family. My spiritual family is y 'all. You understand?

There's distinction made there. When my heart is broken, it's people in this room that I call.

When my life is going in a way that it shouldn't be, it's people in this room that I would trust to tell me, right?

That's what it's supposed to be. Let love be genuine. That's genuine love.

The world is full of fake love. We talk about fake news. Fake news ain't half as bad as fake love.

Fake news will get you in trouble with some conspiracy theories, but fake love will take you to the grave.

Go back and read Proverbs with the danger of the dangerous, the hoarse woman and the man with the finger.

I don't always remember it the way Mike does. When Mike prays, he prays against those who would bring us into fake love, who would bring us into lust, who would bring us into those dangerous things, right?

The man with the glimmering eye, shiny teeth. Say it, Mike, because I can't say it. That's right.

That's the man that young girls need to watch out for. He looks good, but he's a dangerous man because he's not wanting to love you in your virtue.

He's wanting to steal it from you, right? That's what we worry about. So again, these are things.

Let love be genuine, and then Paul gives this additional thought. He says, not only let love be genuine, which means real, but also hate what is evil.

You know, the word is abhor, but it's our word, it's just hate. And here's the thing that I have to really help people understand sometimes, and I remember years ago there was a teenager in our youth, you guys remember

I was a youth group leader for years before I became the pastor. And there was a boy in the youth group, his name was

Doug. And Doug, one time I said, God hates, and I forget what it was, maybe it was abortion or something,

I said, God hates this thing. And oh, Doug, he said, I didn't know God hated anything.

And I said, Doug, I said, if you love the truth, you hate the lie.

If you love righteousness, you hate wickedness. So if you have genuine love, you're going to also have some genuine hate.

And it's hating that which is opposed to God. You're going to abhor that which is evil.

Now that doesn't mean we go around being actively hateful, because that's not what the admonition is, but it's the opposite of love, or the corresponding thought of love is hating what is evil.

I love my children, therefore I hate that which hurts them. I hate the things that try to get to them online, to try to harm them.

You know, Jennifer and I, just looking out at the different landscapes and different things, the things that are available, and people who try to hurt children through the internet, and try to reach them, connect with them, get them away from their parents, drag them away and use them for their own gratification, or sell them into slavery.

We should hate that, because that is evil. That's one of the gravest evils imaginable.

And if we can't hate that, we don't really love. And that's

Paul's point. He says your love's got to be real, and your hate's got to be against what is genuine, what is true, what is right, against what you love, against God.

You hate what is evil. And we hold fast to what is good. Verse 10, love one another with brotherly affection.

You know, one of the things that I enjoy in the church is when we call each other brother and sister.

Now, not everybody does that, and it's not required, but this morning when

I walked in, I made a point to say, Brother Frank! Because last week,

Frank was baptized, and he became part of the body, and I hollered out, Brother Dean! Even though he's more young enough to be my son, but he still...

But we say that not just because everybody needs a title.

People don't need titles. I don't need a title. I don't need you to call me pastor. I don't need you to call me reverend.

Please don't call me reverend. I don't like that one. People ask me, what do

I call you? Brother Keith is fine. Because we are all part of the body of Christ.

We are brothers and sisters in Christ. We love each other. Now, if you call me pastor, I don't get upset. But at the same time, the most important, just like I said last week, the most important thing to call

God is father. You know, we can talk about Yahweh, Jehovah, El Shaddai, all that stuff, but the most important thing we get to call

God is father. The most important thing we get to call each other is brother and sister. Because that's the love.

This word, Philadelphia, is where we get that word, brotherly love, brotherly affection. Love one another with brotherly affection.

That's the call of... And he says, outdo one another in showing honor, meaning not only do

I want to show you the honor you deserve as a fellow image bearer with Christ, as a fellow member of the church, as a brother and sister in Christ, but I also want to outdo you in that.

I want to be better than you at showing honor to you. Not so that I can say, look at how much better I am than you, but because I want you to be honored above me.

What does Scripture say? Count others more important than yourself. That's what he's saying.

Counting others more important than yourself. Can we do that as a church? Can we genuinely count others more important than ourselves?

That's my prayer. That's my prayer. You know when we don't do that? When we insist on our own way.

Go back to 1 Corinthians 13. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast.

It does not insist on its own way. That's one of the things that tears churches apart.

I have seen church splits. Splits. We have not had one here since I've been the pastor, but we were close.

I'm going to talk about the history of the church in a minute, but we didn't split by God's grace, but I've seen churches split and it almost always is the result of not being willing to put others in front of yourself.

Not being willing to consider others more important than yourself. Do not be slothful in zeal.

Last year, I think it was, may have been the year before, Jennifer does a lot of the teaching with our kids and she taught

JJ the word sluggard and he got a kick out of that word. He thought that was a very interesting word.

Mama, what does a sluggard mean? And she said it's a lazy person. It is a person that doesn't want to get up and go to work, doesn't want to do the things that need to be done, just won't sit around all day, doesn't want to be responsible.

That's a sluggard. And he said, Mama, I don't want to be that.

Praise the Lord. Don't want to be a sluggard. Well this word slothful is in the same idea as the sluggard.

So basically the idea here is not being lazy with our zeal for the Lord. Do not become slothful in zeal, but be fervent in the

Spirit. Serve the Lord. Now I know there are times where you just get wore out.

And we have some folks here who serve so hard, so faithfully all the time that I know it gets tiring.

I know it does. And while we do often need breaks,

I don't think we should take a Sunday off, but we often do need breaks. Let us not grow lazy in our desire.

Zeal is a strong desire, a strong willingness, a desire to do. And it's easy for us to become slothful in that.

It's easy for us to let that be the thing that we let go. Paul says don't do that, but be fervent in the

Spirit and serve the Lord. And you know this is in the context of the body.

How do you serve the Lord? You can't reach up into heaven and give God anything with your hands, but you can serve the people around you and in doing so you serve the

Lord. Think about Matthew's Gospel when Jesus is talking about those who gave water to the thirsty and visited those in prison and helped those in need.

And he says, and when you did it to the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.

How do you serve the Lord? Serve one another. Jesus told his disciples, as you have seen me wash your feet, so wash each other's feet.

Now I don't take that as a command that we ought to go around and take our shoes off and everybody wash each other's feet, even though some churches do and I ain't against it.

But I don't think that that's the point. The point is that Christ gets down, he wraps himself with a towel and he shows himself to be a servant to his men and he says, in the way that I have served you, so you serve one another.

So you serve one another. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.

This verse 12 deals with those who are struggling. Maybe it's struggling with grief, maybe it's struggling with pain, maybe it's struggling with sin.

Whatever it is, rejoice in the fact that you have hope in Christ. Be patient in your time of trouble and be constant in prayer, not only for yourself but for others.

Be generous, verse 13, contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

Hospitality comes from the word for outsider.

Xenos is the word, you've probably heard the phrase xenophobia, which means fear of outsiders, fear of people who are different.

That's xenophobia. Well xenophilia is love of outsiders, love of people.

All of us are different, amen? You all do your lives different than I do my life.

We're all different from one another, and I don't mean in every way, but in many ways we live different lives.

You come to my house, my dishes are going to be in a different place than your dishes, my TV is going to be mounted in a different place than your

TV, even if you don't even have a TV. Our lives are different, but we are called to love those who are different than us.

One of the most difficult things in church life is expecting that I am the standard for you.

I've heard people who act that way. They say if I do it this way, everybody should do it this way.

And what's sad is sometimes those people end up as leaders in churches, and they'll end up being the ones who require things that are never meant to be required by the

Word of God of their people. Can we love each other and our differences?

Can we be patient with one another when we differ? Now are there some things we need to be unified on?

Absolutely. And I don't have time this morning to walk through all of the essentials, but there are essentials and you should know what they are.

But brothers and sisters, we can differ on secondary matters and still be faithful in the church of God.

Now, as I said, I chose this section of the text because these very things the

Roman Christians needed to hear 2 ,000 years ago are what we need to hear at SGFC now in 2026.

And I would normally have taken more time in my exposition, but because I now want to move on to application,

I'm going to jump into the application portion, which is more of the State of the Union message I talked about earlier. But I was not going to just minimize

God's Word. I wanted to talk about what Paul says because I do think all of it will apply to everything

I'm about to say. But as we go through application and move to the application portion of the sermon,

I want to ask this question, and don't answer out loud, but I do want to ask, how many of you know the history of this church?

How many of you know the history of this church? Now I ask that question because if you come to the church and you join, most of the time

I sit down with you and I talk to you about it. And I tell you the history because I think the history matters.

You understand this church started in 1958 and it was a church plant from another

Disciples of Christ church. And Jack, you're here, you may remember, was it Central Christian or was it Riverside?

Was it Central Christian Church or Riverside Christian Church? Riverside? Okay. Jack and Shirley are our only charter members.

They've been here since 1958. I think that deserves a round of applause. Jack was part of the church,

Jack and Shirley were part of the church when it started. Miss Pat, my stepmom, I think you've been here the next longest. Maybe Mr.

Paul, you all can fight over who's been here longer. And we've got Walter and Sharon who've been here a long time.

Looking out, I can't think how many others. But this church started in 1958 and it was part of the

Disciples of Christ denomination. Now if you know anything about the Disciples of Christ denomination, the

Disciples of Christ denomination is actually, the denomination itself was more liberal.

Now the church was conservative. You can be a conservative church in a liberal denomination. In fact, that's what's happening with a lot of Methodists.

There are Methodist churches that are in the United Methodist denomination. The United Methodist denomination has waved bye -bye to Christianity.

So that's why so many United Methodist churches are now converting to global Methodists. A global Methodist church means they're concerned with staying conservative

Bible -believing churches, at least as far as a Methodist can be. They still got problems, but at least they're recognizing how far apart they had been.

We were called Forest Christian Church. That was the name of the church, 1958. It was founded.

And in 1999, my predecessor, Daryl Olges, chose to leave the

Disciples and he led the church to leave the Disciples. And I'm thankful that he did. I'm thankful I didn't have to do that. I'm thankful that he led the way.

For all the differences I may have had with Daryl, I'm thankful for that. He led the church out of that denomination.

And you know why? We just got fed up with how far they had drifted from God's Word.

The last national conference that our church attended with the disciples of Christ, they had tables set up, pro -abortion tables.

They were handing out condoms. At the national conference, and this was 1999.

So 26 years ago, they were debating about blood diamonds in Sierra Leone.

It was social justice, liberal theology, and pagan sexuality.

It was a far gone denomination. And so we departed.

And we became a non -denominational church. 2000, we were a non -denominational church.

By the way, the same year I got saved. I got saved in 99. The same year we left was the same year

I got saved. So we begin now as a non -denominational church, going through what it means to grow and be different.

And we were. And in 2006, I became the pastor. January of 2006,

Daryl retired and I was brought in. And I began to preach verse by verse, which was something we had never had before.

I began to preach verse by verse through the Bible. I started with the gospel of Luke. And God used the expositional preaching of his word to begin to change us into the church that he wanted us to be.

Now I am not in any way saying it was all me. It was not. God was using many people.

I would not be here today if it weren't for Jack Bunning. Jack Bunning stood with me when many people didn't want to hear what

I had to say. Many people did not want to hear reformed teaching.

It's not popular, you know that. Many people did not want to hear God's word preached verse by verse because when you preach verse by verse, you preach the verses people don't want to hear.

It's a lot easier to preach the verses everybody likes and skip the verses people don't like. But when you go verse by verse, you don't have a choice.

People know if you skipped a section. Hey, what happened to verses 9 to 13? Well, Sister Mary Margaret wouldn't like that.

We don't have a Sister Mary Margaret, so I figured I'd throw that. But you know, that's what

God began to use to bring about change. And as we go along history of the church,

I don't want to get too bogged down in this because we need to get to today. Real quick things to remember.

2009, we officially adopted that we were going to begin going in a reformed direction with our theology.

2011, we changed our name. We went from being Forest Christian Church to Sovereign Grace Family Church which affirmed that we had gone in that direction.

And that year, we also began to avoid and eliminate children's church.

Not because we hate children. We love children. We love them so much we want them in here.

We didn't want to send them down to color and to run around and play.

We wanted them to learn how to sit in church. I came to this church when I was seven.

Met Pat. Dad and Pat got married. Pat made me start coming to church. And I say made me, she sure enough did.

I didn't have a choice. And you know what? There were no children's church. From the age of seven,

I sat right next to her. She wouldn't even let me go to the bathroom. Just so y 'all know, I was raised right.

She wouldn't let me go to, thank God she let me draw. That was the one thing. I could at least keep my hands busy.

But the point of it is, 2011, we began a different style of worship.

We wanted children in here with us. We wanted to be family integrated. Not because we think youth or children's church are necessarily evil or wrong.

It's just not what we wanted to do. We wanted our children here with us. And we wanted to train them from a young age how to sit in here.

Y 'all might hear every once in a while, Theo's three years old. And he's loud and he's into everything.

But we want him in here. So we're training him to be in here. And it takes, it's training.

I mean, we got a nursery and we know that little babies have to have a place to be taken.

And that's why we have that. But that there is there so that we train and we take him and we come back and we train.

And it's work and it's worth the effort. It's worth the work. And we encourage you.

We say if your baby makes noise, nobody cares. And if somebody gives you a dirty look, you smile at them and show them you're a pretty baby.

How you gonna be ugly to that? Church kept moving, kept growing.

Things kept happening. We got two new elders about 10 years ago.

And those two new elders really came in and began to help shape the life of our church.

And I say that that's why the last 10 years is different than the previous years. Because we had one man who had served as a pastor in a church and another who had served as a pastor of a church.

So we had two pastors come in and now these men wanted to help teach and preach.

And it was a blessing to have Mike and Andy come in alongside and do that. So the last 10 years, they've helped shape the ministry here.

In 2020 -ish, we adopted the first London Baptist Confession of Faith and officially became a

Baptist church by confession. Tying ourselves to the history of the

Baptist movement. So we started in a liberal denomination, conservative church in a liberal denomination.

But now God has taken us to being confessionally

Baptist. And over the last five years, several good things have been happening.

We started the academy. Actually that was in 2018, so that was more than five years ago. We started the academy. We have over 200 students in our online program who take classes from us, get certificates from us.

And we keep that program going all the time. You don't see it because we only do classes here a couple times a year, but it's always going online.

We have students online. This is how God is working and has been working.

And that leads us up to where we are today. So having said all that, this last part hopefully will go relatively quickly because we're going to look at what

I said before. We're going to look at our struggles, our strengths, and our strivings. Number one, what are the struggles that we face as a church?

What are the struggles that we face? And I'm trying to be, I want you to know, when I wrote this, and I'm remodeling my wife's kitchen, so I wrote this all at night.

I've been working all during the day and I've been staying up all night. I haven't slept in a week. That's okay.

But this is the night rantings of your pastor. So here we go.

Struggles we face. Number one, we are not a new church.

You say, why is that a struggle? There has been, in the last several years, a lot of new churches that have popped up.

And a lot of these new church plants are very exciting. They have exciting names.

All of them are named after a random action verb. Elevate, percolate, salivate.

It's all named. It's, you know, it's these church, everything's exciting because it's new.

It's fresh. Many of them don't have anybody over 40 years old. And I say that not to say,

I'm not speaking ill of them, but so many of these younger churches are starting out and they're building everything based on young people.

They have very little elderly people, very little older people, very little white heads when you walk in a room. Mike, can

I speak to you for a minute? Didn't you say one of the things that you and Sybil when you came here that was most encouraging is that you saw white hair?

Yeah. But I say this is a struggle because sometimes people come here and they don't feel the excitement and the newness of a church plant.

And they feel like, oh, this is just all a bunch of old people. And I'm getting old too. I got white hair on both sides. I call this little

Sovereign Grace and this one's Thea. It wasn't like this. I got a picture of him when he was born.

I didn't have hardly any of this. But he's bringing it on. But you understand what

I'm saying is this is a struggle for some of us. I've met with people this year who were looking at us and considering us as churches.

And I meet with them and I talk to them and oftentimes it's between us and church plant. And the thing about being part of a church plant is it's exciting.

Decisions are being made. You're part of the decision. You're part of that effort. You're part of seeing it grow. And then you come into an old church that's been here for a while and it's like, nothing's been exciting here for 20 years.

That's the feeling sometimes. So that can be a struggle. How do we avoid that?

Well we're going to talk about that in a little bit. But I'm just, right now I'm just outlining the struggles. One is we're not new.

Two, we're not big. Now we're bigger in some churches. I talk to pastors that pastor 15 people.

And hey, those guys are faithful and they love the Lord and they love those 15 people and praise the Lord for them.

But in the grand scheme of things this is not a big church. So we miss out on a lot of what bigger churches have.

It's real appealing to go to a church that has a family fun zone. That has an entire playground in the building.

That has 14 different youth programs and everything that you could possibly want. Let me just say this about that.

Years ago I was standing outside with one of our deacons and he said, he said, what are we about?

He asked me specifically, what do you think is the most important thing that we do here?

I said, we teach the word of God. That's what we do here. That's the most important thing. Outside of everything else, that's what we do.

And I believe we do that well. And he says, then we need to make that the number one focus. And that's when we started the academy.

Because we said, we can't do everything. We're not big enough to do everything. We don't have enough people to have an orchestra.

I wish we did. I love to lead music. I love to hear orchestra music. And Mr. Irv was one of my favorite people ever.

And for those who don't remember him, he passed away a few years ago. He's one of my favorite people. He played the trumpet and he sang with that great soprano voice.

He was a beautiful saint of God. But we don't got an orchestra here. We don't have so much of what a lot of bigger churches have.

But you know what we do have is we teach the word of God. And we're going to focus on that.

Because we can't be everything but we can be that. We can be that. And we do it not just through the preaching.

It's Sunday school. It's the catechism class. It's not just this hour on Sunday morning.

Again, we have the academy which has students all the time. We have an online teaching ministry.

We have all kinds of things. That's our focus. It's to teach God's word. But it's a struggle because that's not what everybody wants.

But we ain't here for what people want. We're here for what God's gifted us to do, right? Third struggle.

We're not near. Now I don't mean we're not near in the sense that we're not near to one another. But y 'all, we are geographically diverse.

We got folks who drive over an hour to come to church on Sunday morning. Brother Mike lives almost in the water that way.

I'm in his house. You can throw a stone and hit the ocean. You can throw it pretty hard. But he lives at the beach.

Brother Andy lives in Yulee. Far north as you can get that way before hitting Georgia.

And I live in the greatest city in the world. Callahan, Florida. God's little hamlet.

My little slice of heaven. None of us live in Jacksonville proper.

Jacksonville Beach, Yulee, Callahan. Why would people drive an hour to get here?

I don't know. Other than we teach the word of God. There's not a lot of churches that do what we do in that regard.

And therefore, it's worth the drive. We got a new family coming from St.

Augustine. And we've talked about that, haven't we? I don't mean to call you out, brother, but we said it's a long drive.

We got people who come from Sanderson. They're almost in Lake City. We will never again be a community church.

And I don't mean community church like Grace Community, John MacArthur.

That's a name. I mean a church which is the people. Now, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to reach the people around here.

Jennifer and I, I'll tell you something. Every time we drive by, there's four new apartment complexes. There's one down here, there's one down here, there's one over there, and there's one over there.

And every time we drive by them, I'm like salivating because I want to go and walk through and just give a track to everybody in there.

But they have rules and gates. If I end up breaking the rules and I'm like this, y 'all have to come get me.

But I do believe we should try to reach our community. Don't get me wrong. But I'm saying, though, because of this, it's a struggle with our relationships because we are geographically diverse.

This is where love being genuine, going back to the text, it has to be intentionally genuine or we will not really be the church because we won't really be engaging with one another more than the 45 minutes to an hour that we're here on a

Sunday or two hours. Our services last a little longer. So that's the three areas we struggle.

What are the strengths we possess? And again, I'm going to go quick because I know this is supposed to be a short message. I don't know how to do that.

Three things, three areas we, I believe we excel. And again, this is my time to tell you how great

I think you all are. And I do. Three areas I think we excel. Number one, I think we are a welcoming body.

Every time we have visitors come, and this year we've had more visitors from out of town than ever. Our online ministry has reached people and people come and visit us because they're out of town.

We have a few today who are doing that. And you know what? Every time they come and I talk to them afterwards, they say how thankful they are to be welcomed because I know,

I know I've been to, every time I go out of town, I visit churches, I've been to churches where nobody even talks to you. So for that,

I will give you this one very encouraging accolade. You guys have done a great job at making people feel welcome.

And that's good. Number two, I think we're sincere. Now I was trying,

I wanted to, I was going to use the word authentic, but that word is thrown around so much today. What I mean is this.

I am grateful for what I perceive to be a genuine lack of hypocrisy.

What does that mean? I think you guys are honest with me and I try to be honest with you about my struggles and about the things that I know

I need to grow in. And I think that we have cultivated an atmosphere here of transparency when it comes to those things.

Because one of the most dangerous things in a church is a church where it's, it's like that old song from the nineties.

Yeah, it's old now. Shiny plastic people. There was a contemporary

Christian band back in the nineties. It was a shiny plastic people and shiny plastic steeples, right?

Like, like we come to church and we put on a face. That is a dangerous thing to fake it.

But I know this and I think Andy and Mike would affirm this all day long.

If you are having a struggle I want to know so that I can pray for you and love you and be constant with you in that.

That's what the text says. Be constant in prayer. And I think that we have done a good job of cultivating that.

I love that shirt that I wear and some of y 'all may not ever saw it but it says, warning, just barely saved.

Some people get real offended by that shirt. As I say, wait a minute, you're saved to the uttermost. I know, but that started from our men's group.

I like that shirt too. But we had a men's group and the men would pray for one another and one of the men would always say, pastor, before I tell you what to pray for me just know

I'm barely saved. And it was just a funny way of saying we're all in this together. We're all going through the process of sanctification.

None of us has it 100 % right and being authentic with one another is a big important part of who we are.

And as soon as we start finding the hypocrisy growing that's when we need to start rebuking one another.

You need to be honest and authentic as much as I think that word's been overused.

And I say this last one and it may sound braggadocious. I promise I'm not trying to be braggadocious. I'm just trying to tell you

I'm encouraged by this. I'm encouraged that we're solid. What I mean by we're solid? When it comes to our theology it's not something left to chance.

When it comes to our teaching it's not something left to foolishness and vain ideas but we teach and preach and focus our teaching on the word of God.

I don't get everything right. Don't get me wrong but I believe we're solid in our theology.

Years ago we had a motto and it was I'm not going to lie borrowed it from James White.

The motto was theology matters. We had it printed on our t -shirts. We had it all over the building because we said this theology is the study of God and to know

God matters and I believe that's one of the areas we have continued to be seeking right.

Alright. Last one. This is the one I've been dreading. This is the one

I've been dreading. What are some things we need to do? What are some areas to strive in?

Four things and we'll be done. I say

I'm dreading this because my fear is that some of you may hear this and take some of this personally because it's not personal but this has got to be

I've got to say it. I talked to both of our elders about what I was going to say because these things are so important and so many people who aren't here this morning maybe they'll hear it online if they do hopefully they will but God ordained who was going to be here so if you're here to hear it it's for you.

Number one we need intentional fellowship.

Our geography demands intentionality. What does that mean?

Brother I'm not ever going to see you if I don't make the effort. I'm not ever going to talk to you if I don't you live on the other side of the planet from me.

Right? I'm pointing at Caleb but I could be pointing at anybody

I could be pointing at Richard Dale's not that far away and thank God Jack lives in the metropolis of Callahan but but the point is if we live the way we do and we have a church that is the way it is we have to do the work of actually being intentional with our relationships.

It will never be real relationships if we show up five minutes late on Sunday morning and leave as soon as the amen comes at the end and we never talk to one another.

I'm telling you this is the part that I worry about if we are not intentional about engaging with one another we won't be fulfilling the commands of scripture which call us to love one another and minister to one another with our gifts.

It's not going to happen if we don't put out the effort. It has to be intentional and only so much can come from the top only so much can come from the elders and from the deacons.

We cannot manage your social schedule you have to be responsible to reach out to one another if you are lonely there's a solution and it's not more programs it's not more life groups we're going to change the name of Sunday School we're going to call it

Life Group because I hear people say all the time our church doesn't do

Sunday School we do Life Groups well what's the difference well we meet on Tuesday night at somebody's house that's great we meet on Sunday morning at 9 .30

it's Life Group come to Life Group you want more than what we get for the hour and a half on Sunday morning come to Sunday School call it

Life Group call it Equipping Hour call it the Hour of Power I don't care what you call it just come every

Wednesday night our children gather for Catechism and our adults gather for Prayer and Study and eight people show up every

Wednesday night we gather well we live far away that's true but it ain't going to be any different if we do it at your house you're still far away the one good thing about the church is everybody knows where it's at I mean are you following what

I'm putting down are you now I'm meddling right I stopped preaching start meddling right because this is the issue the issue is intentionality the issue is is are do we really want this do we want to do what the

Bible calls us to do and fulfill those commands to love one another to do those things it it requires intentional fellowship second thing and I again

I said I was going to go fast we need men who lead we need men who are leaders what am

I talking about brothers this church cannot and must not be built on the backs of our wives it needs to be built by men who lead and their wives are coming along behind them you say what what are you talking about why are you talking about women what are you even referring to brothers you are the ones who are supposed to lead your family and you are the ones who are supposed to be leading here

God has called the men of the church to be leaders in the church not everyone is called to be an elder not everyone is called to be a deacon but if you are a father in your home you should be leading your children to church you should be leading your wife to church, you should be leading your wife at home.

God has called you to lead and you do that and it won't just change your home, it'll change the church.

It'll change the church. And we'll see leaders arise. We need deacons.

We do. And we're praying that God would raise them up among us.

We pray that God would raise up elders among us. Men who are qualified to teach the word of God.

But you don't have to be an elder or a deacon to lead.

It starts in your home. Your home needs it, your church needs it. So that's the second thing.

Number three, we need to recognize the changes that are coming. Changes are coming.

What do I mean by changes are coming? I said, this ain't the same church it was ten years ago.

This ain't even the same church it was two years ago. I heard something the other day, I said it to Mike, I don't know if I said it to Andy, maybe

I did. We talk a lot. I said, ministry is preaching to a parade because it's always changing.

It's always changing. Sometimes that means people are coming and going. This is, this is, how many of you have been here more than ten years?

A few. How many of you have been here less than five? A lot more hands just went up.

The only consistent thing in ministry is change. People change and with them bring new gifts and with them bring new challenges.

Different ways of connecting with people have changed. Social media has changed the world and in many ways has changed the church because it changes the way we interact with one another.

Some of it for the bad and some of it's better. I'll tell you this, I know more about many of your lives now because I can see you on Facebook in different places and I see pictures and things.

That's not necessarily bad. What's bad is when we use it for evil. But the good part is I get to see

Christopher in his army uniform and I get to see his parents go in and watching him graduate and I see all these beautiful pictures.

That's great because even though I couldn't be there with you, I could share in that moment with you, that's a good thing.

And taking advantage of the good things is a good thing. This is why we've been active in online ministry and the online ministry has really made a pretty big impact.

That's not all we're about but that's part of what we're doing. Over 3 ,000 people a week hear the gospel on my show and I'm thankful for that.

I'm not bragging about that, that's not me elevating it, but if you're wondering why I do that every Tuesday night with my wife and we sit for two hours and answer people's

Bible questions, if you wonder why that is it's worth the effort. 3 ,000 people hear it every week.

That's why it's worth the effort. So recognizing change and change coming and the things that are happening, we need to be seeing those things and here's what happens with those changes.

New opportunities for service come. This guy right here, yeah, yeah, everybody can see you.

That boy right there is the backbone of this entire operation right here. And the people who are watching this service at home are watching it because he's the one smart enough to keep it running and we need more folks that want to do that.

We need folks, Ms. Janice, Ms. LaVon, you guys volunteered to help with the academy and I'm thankful because I can't do it all by myself.

We have 200 students, I couldn't possibly do that. There are places for you to serve if you would just step up to serve, but you have to recognize it ain't going to be like it was 20 years ago.

When change comes, so comes the needs change. All right, last thing, sorry it's taken so long.

Never intended this message to be this long. Consistency is needed and I will say this is our biggest issue is consistency.

Why is it we have 65 people one week and 109 the next week? That's not a random number, that's a number of the last four weeks because we count every week.

Is being here and being consistent valuable to you?

Yes, because it's valuable to all of us. I'm thankful that I can count on many of you to know that you're going to be here week in and week out unless there's a death or sickness or something, you're going to be here.

But so many folks, it's an option. I tell you what man, and again,

I'm talking about a lot of people today, I'm going to bring back up my stepmama. It wasn't an option when

I was a kid. This was the rule at our house.

If you weren't sick enough to stay home from work, you weren't sick enough to stay home from church. Consistency matters because it's how we're able to actually count on those gifts being used and being ministered to.

This was the hard thing to say because I'm not saying if you miss church on a Sunday every once in a while, it's not a,

I'm going to come to your house and read you the right act. It's not about that. But it is, this is, shouldn't, if everybody who was a member of this church were here on a

Sunday, we would have to put out more tables. But it never is. I ask you this, do you understand that your presence matters?

Do you understand that being, that participating, and not just being present with your, with your, with your, with your self in a seat, but being present with your spirit and your heart, greeting people, loving people, talking to people, praying for people.

You know what, one of the best things you could do if you've never done it before is when somebody comes up and says, hey, would you pray for me about something, actually go up and pray for them.

I started doing that on the, on the show. People would come in. We have live show.

People ask, my father died this week, would you pray for me? We stop and pray for that person. I don't know them from anybody.

But why should it be different? If Janice, if you come up to me and say, I'm in a need, pray for me.

Why would I, I'll pray for you and I'll forget. But if I pray for you while you're there, you know, one,

I did pray for you, and two, we had that opportunity to invest in one another and use our spiritual gifts.

This is the kind of stuff I'm talking about, being consistent, being fervent in spirit, serving the

Lord by serving one another. This is what Paul was calling the first century church to, and it's what we should be calling each other to.

All to the glory of Christ. Why do we worship? To glorify our

Lord. Why do we evangelize? So that others would worship the

Lord. Because God deserves to be worshipped. Say, I evangelize so people go to heaven.

That's the blessed benefit of it. But the actual reason why you want somebody to get saved is because they're not worshiping

God and they should be. They should be. Because God deserves the worship.

The most important thing, and I'll close, the most important thing we have to do as a church and never forget this, is we have to be 100 % devoted to Christ and his gospel.

And while I haven't really given the gospel yet, I want to give it now as we move into the time for the table. You understand, if you come here and you're a believer, it was the gospel that brought you here, but it was also the gospel that keeps you going.

We never outgrow the gospel. We never outgrow that truth. And it's the one thing that binds us together as a family.

The Bible says that all of us are sinners. And God sent his son into the world and he gave his life on a cross so that sinners could be reconciled to God.

Our sin separated us from God. Christ came and rescued us from that sin. He paid the penalty for our sin and he took upon himself our punishment so that he could give us his righteousness and we could stand before God dressed in his righteousness alone.

So this morning, if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, in just a moment we're going to have this table. And this table is going to be a reminder of the unity that we have around that gospel.

And if you're a visitor with us today, you are welcome to have communion with us with only one stipulation.

You must be a believer. Well, maybe, let me say two stipulations. And if you are a member of your local church, you must be in good standing with that church and not under any form of discipline.

If the church has put you under discipline, we stand with them until such time as you're reconciled. But if you're not under discipline and you are in good standing with your church and you are a believer, we welcome you to participate in the table with us.

Let's pray. Father, Lord, I thank you for this opportunity to talk about so much and yet have so much more that I wish

I could say. Lord, I pray that this would not be taken as a message that was just venting over needs and issues, but Lord, a message of love that we have so much that we could be as a church and Lord, we want to strive to be those things.

But it will require intentionality. It will require leadership. It will require being able to recognize changes and it will require consistency.

Lord, may it be that you draw us to that. Give us that,

Lord. And Lord, for those who came today who don't know you, maybe it's a child, maybe it's an adult, maybe it's someone who's visiting or maybe it's someone who's been here for a while.

If they do not know you, I pray that you would save them by your grace and through your gospel in Jesus name.

Amen. Let us come to the Lord's table and remembrance. We come here just for one thing, to remember his death.