Vision Sunday

Pastor Fletcher preaches about our church’s vision for the next five years, reading from Matthew 5:14-16. Discussion points: Boston is outsized in its influence and potential impact on the world because of its wealth and education, we have goals to raise up new Christians and equip and send missionaries, we want to raise up servants and leaders to fill our church’s needs and allow us to grow, God is the one who builds the house and makes all our efforts mean something.

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  Scripture reader: [Matthew 5:14-16] You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

  This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

  Preacher: Hi, good morning. How are we? Good, it's good to see everybody. My name's Fletcher. I'm the lead pastor here at the church. it's a joy to be with everybody. It's been like 3 weeks since I saw a lot of you. the snow has been ruthless. It's a real winter. Amen. it's been a long time. It's been a long time. It's, it's joyful to have this much snow. Who was here in 2015? OK, there was a few of us, nothing compared to 2015, right? Once you lived through that, you, you feel like you can live through everything. We got the most snow on record in Boston in that year, and so we're, we're doing fine these days, but it's still a lot of snow.

  Today is Vision Sunday. Last week we finished up our series and Daniel, and what we normally like to do as a church is work through books of the Bible because what I have to say is like a lot less interesting than what God has to say, and I just want to be able to proclaim God's word to you all, week after week. So next week we're going to start a series through First Thessalonians, and we'll. Working through the First Thessalonians for like the next couple of months. So we're just going through books of the Bibles generally what we do every once in a while, we'll do a topical thing, but it's very rare.

  But today we're going to take a moment and talk about our vision as a church. So if you were a guest with us today, you get to look, take an inside look at where we're going and what we're believing and why. How we're gonna get there and I hope that it's compelling for you, but if you're, if you don't call this your church home, maybe this will just be something that can maybe be inspiring to you. Otherwise we're just guys, this is like our church family, this is what we're doing and like it's really good for us to have, consider to consider where we're going because vision is so important without a vision. What do, what do organizations do? They flounder. They, they float at best and at worst, they fail. If you don't know where you're going, you can't move forward, you're stuck. The most surefire way to waste your potential, personally and in an organization, is to lack vision. We have to have a vision for where we're going.

  For example, OK, the classic example, most of you can, can smell it coming. OK. Back in the 90s, there was a little floundering tech company that had no focus and they, it was on the brink of failure and at that time, Microsoft was dominating the industry. If you're like me, you're a Windows kid, you know, you just played Window with Windows all the time and. meanwhile, Apple was developing an overwhelming number of products and lacking a clear, any clear strategy and focus and then that turtleneck wearing tech messiah named Steve Jobs came in and gave them vision. Now I know that afterwards someone is gonna come to me and be like, it wasn't actually Steve Jobs, you know, they had these other guys and I'm like, cool, OK, we. We do live where we live and you have a lot of knowledge, thank you, but this is how the story goes, OK? At this point it's just like downloaded into our collective psyche and this is how the story goes. Turtleneck Jesus walked in tech Jesus walked in and he saved the the tech world by saying that we're going to develop only products that function intuitively and are designed beautifully. And as a result, they created what is almost human cyborgs where we all have our phones in our hands at all times with like instant access to the world's information.

  And so we see with that vision, they were able to turn this floundering little company into one of the most profitable in the world. your vision is really important. It directs where you go. We need a vision and as a church, we don't just wanna come up with our vision, but we need God's vision for us. We wanna know what God wants for us as a church. So that's why we're having the little abbreviated service nights for anyone who's in kids, any of you who wanna be there, anyone who online or anyone who just couldn't make it this morning, but also so we could come together and pray. And ask the Lord to make this his vision for us as a church.

  Our vision is baked into our name. It it comes from Jesus himself in the sermon on the Mountain, as we just read a few moments ago, Jesus says, you are the light of the world. A city set upon a hill cannot be hidden. So for us, God has called us to be a city on a hill. Shining and sending the light of Christ throughout Somerville and beyond for generations to come. And that is the simple vision that we have. It is nothing beyond what the Bible tells us to do as Christians, but as we collectively come together to consider where God is calling us, that is the vision that he has given our leaders at this point.

  So 4 points as we walk through this vision. First, where has God placed us? Second, What is the vision that he's given to us? Third, what are the obstacles to this vision? And fourth, how are we going to do it? How are we going to accomplish this vision? So, #1, where has God placed us? Alright, so this comes with a little story also, and it's, the second story behind our name, because the first story is very obvious. Our name comes from Matthew chapter 5. Jesus telling the Christians to be a city set upon a hill.

  But back in 1630, there was a ship that crossed the Atlantic Sea called the Arbela. And it was coming from England to Massachusetts full of those wonderfully cheery people known as Puritans and as they were on their way across the ocean, they contained many of the people who would go on to establish Massachusetts as one of the first colonies of the United States, including a man named John Winthrop who would go on to become the first governor of Massachusetts and as they're on their way. Across the Atlantic, Winthrop stands up and he delivers a sermon, and it's a sermon that's been quoted many times over. It became very popular after JFK quoted it in one of his presidential inau in his presidential inauguration speech. We also saw Ronald Reagan quote it. We also saw Obama quoted. Almost every president since JFK has quoted it at some point. It is in, it's just been downloaded into the American psyche as who we are meant to be.

  And the the the sermon was called a model of Christian charity, but it's become more widely known as the city on a hill sermon and what Winthrop was preaching is he was saying we are going to establish this colony as a city on a hill, shining the light of the gospel back to the heathens in England. Boston will be an exemplary place. The whole Massachusetts colony will be an exemplary place of Christian love and charity, and that was the vision behind this area, so much so to where Boston is still known as the city upon a hill. You still see that nickname thrown out there. If you Wikipedia, Boston, you see City on a Hill written there. If you go to Showtime and look at the, the, the TV show City on the Hill has Kevin Bacon in it, OK? It's only a few years old. About 5 years ago they were just driving buses everywhere that had our free advertisement on it. City on the Hill was just written everywhere throughout all of Boston.

  But Boston is a far cry from the vision that John Winthrop first had. We continue to be a city on a hill, but not in the ways that he said we should be. Less about 2% of the population of Boston belongs or attends regularly a gospel believing church. That would put us into unreached people groups throughout the globe. That's like lower than than like almost any other nation. It's a very low percentage of people who would say that that is what they believe. the greater Boston area is known as the 3rd least church city in the country. Only ranking behind the Bay Area and Burlington, Vermont. But yeah, Burlington Vermont. I mean, OK, let's just call ourselves second, OK? Like is that city, you know. That, yeah, anyways, Vermont catching, catching strays on a Sunday morning. Sorry, Vermont, we like to ski up there, but you know, just because you have one street with a lot of markets on it and a bunch of Birkenstocks and an ice cream shop close by does not make you a metropolitan area.

  Massachusetts is a very - sorry, Vermont - a very influential place but instead of being known for the gospel as Winthrop, imagine Boston is known, the Boston area is known for education, innovation, and utter sports dominance. Any locals? OK, where Boston is a global city. We're a global city. Back in 2011 when we first started looking at Global City Index, when I first started looking at it, Boston was ranked way into the 20ths into Global City Index, which is this index that's put together by Oxford Publishing Group, and they look at different things like. they like, the, the standard of living and economics and education and and environment and all these different things they put them together and they rank the global cities, which is basically saying the most influential cities are the best cities to live and advance your career where influential people might come from.

  And Boston used to be back in the 20s, just like 10 years ago, but we've gone from 21st to 11th in the past 10 years. So since 2015, all the way up to 11th, published in 2024. And one of the crazy things about Boston being the 11th most influential or global city in the world is that we are just so much smaller than every other city in front of us. The cities in front of us are the cities like Paris, London, New York, and Boston. I'm sorry, we're tiny little brother. To all of those cities, it's just a little, but I love that Onion article where it says, people of Boston wake up on Monday pretending they live in a real city and they get on their cute little trains and, and ride into town. That's, that's us, OK? It's like a, you know, it's a cute little city at the same time. Vermont catches strays, but so does Boston and.

  At the same time, we're the 13th on the global cities. We have the 13th, we're 11th on global cities. We have the 13th largest GDP in the entire world. Isn't that kind of crazy that a small place like Boston would have the 13th largest GDP and the 6th largest GDP in terms of per person. So what you have in Boston. Is that you have people from all over the world coming to study in this area, Boston, Cambridge, I'm using Boston as the general area here. Some choose to stay, but others leave and do important thing influential things all around the world. How many of us have met someone that came and studied for a short amount of time and then went to go lead something amazing somewhere else in the world? And I've heard it said now there is no way to verify this quote. This is just like a made up statistic, but I think you'll go with it. 1 out of every 5 world leaders has done substantial time in Boston, whether that be leading or interning or studying, whatever that might be, they've spent substantial time here.

  I mean, when Barack Obama went to Harvard Law School, where did he live? Like two blocks over there they have a little painting of him painted on the sidewalk. the same guy who owns our community space, our landlord, he owns the building that Obama, lived in, and so he loves telling that story too, about, and they call it the Rose Garden now. It's actually like on Google. It's like the Rose Garden. There's an American there's like a White House flag in front of it. Just look, you'll see it it's across the street right over there. But influential people tend to spend time in this area.

  And so the question is, what would happen if there was a true movement of God in our area? What would happen if God really did something? We have the opportunity to reach tomorrow's global leaders because we're such an international place also. I haven't counted literally, but I would guess there's at least a dozen different native languages represented just in our church, just an international place. What an opportunity.

  In fact, one could make the argument that the Boston area is the most important place or most influential and possibly most strategic place to reach with the gospel. Due to the global potential impact that we could have, in particular, I think Somerville is a strategic place. As I said, people moved to Somerville and live here. Somerville is a highly dense place in case you haven't noticed, OK? If you've ever lived with your windows open during the summer and you hear your neighbor chewing their potato chips, you know what I'm talking about. And that has happened to many of us, OK? Usually it's either they're fighting or they're chewing something very loudly, and that's what you hear. It's a very dense place. In fact, the only city in the entire country that is as dense as we are, but has more population than us is New York City. Somerville is a very dense place and so it's where the people are.

  And as you reach people, you are moving the mission of God forward. Isn't that what God has sent us to do, but to reach people. Our church is currently about 6 years old, maybe 6.5, creeping up on 7, you know, we're like that, that older, gentleman who might or or lady who might not want to admit their age at this point. We're creeping up on 7, we're 615 and um. I just am wondering what God wants to do with us in the next 5 years. We're gonna say one of those years from the 6.5, we're just not gonna count it, it was COVID, OK? Everyone just subtract one from their age, it's totally fine. Nothing happened that year, um. And so, we've been around for about 5 years.

  Where is God going to take us the next 5 years? I really do believe that most churches, by the time they hit 10 years, should have a pretty good idea of what God has called them to be who God has called them to be. And so where has God called us to be in the year 2030? In 1630, John Winthrop came over on the Arbela and delivered his sermon. And so our vision as a church is in the next 5 years that we can be established well enough to prepare us to last for the next 100 years where no one in this room is alive, but the church continues to go and the mission of God continues to move forward in Somerville and beyond. So that we can celebrate the 100th anniversary of John Winthrop's sermon.

  No, none of us will, Lord willing, be in heaven, or in the kingdom to come, may, may he come before this happens. But may we establish a church that can last beyond us. For my children, my children's children and your children, and for the generations that will come and study at the great institutions that we have in this area, for the people that will come and start companies. We want to see city on a hill. Last, sending and shining. The good news of Jesus for generations to come, may he establish that.

  And so what is the vision that God has given us? Point number 2, what is the vision that God has given us? It's, it's simply that the city on a hill is a community of faith that cannot be hidden, shining and sending the light of Christ in Somerville and beyond for generations to come. As I said, this whole thing is feeding off of Jesus' vision that he gives us in Matthew chapter 5, and when we say that we're a community of faith that cannot be hidden, a community of faith that cannot be hidden. He's talking about a city on a hill that cannot be hidden. I really wanted to use the word unignorable here, but my elders, my elders, they're not my elders, your elders, wouldn't. Let me because it's not a word, and they said Fletcher, you can't make up a word to put into our vision statement. And so we're not using unignorable because unignorable also has this connotation that it could be obnoxious, you know, if someone's unignorable they're obnoxious. Lots of churches are obnoxious and I don't want to be one of those, so let's just not use unignorable.

  Let's say that we cannot be hidden. And that the, the vision that God has is that we could be this church that is unignorably unobnoxious because we shine the love of Christ, we display authentic faith in action. And this is, I think the antidote antidote to skepticism in our area. People believe all kinds of crazy things about Christians, do they not? Have you ever had a conversation with someone who just thought Christians were crazy or evil or whatever it might be, and it became very apparent early on that they did not know you were a Christian.

  This has happened to many of us, and I really do believe that most people think these unfortunate things about Christians, because they don't know a single Christian that they respect. They only see what they, what happens on TV or on the internet, which we are not sending our best on the TV. Let's just be honest. And. They haven't actually met a Christian that they respect. So what would happen if everyone in Somerville knew at least one Christian that they respect? And someone who's worthy of the honor of the name of Christ. They might not convert, but it would definitely open their mind to the things of Christianity, would it not? God has called us to be the shining light to our community.

  Now, let me just be cautious here. I'm cautious putting numerical goals on a vision for a church. I think that we just are called to be faithful and whatever that looks like, whatever God has for us for the next 5 years, hands are open, you know? Hands are open. Also, there's no part of me that wants to be a mega church pastor. That's just not part of who I am. I don't think I would be a good mega church pastor, that's just not for me, but I do want us to be ambitious in reaching our community to know Christ because Jesus has given us the mission to go and make disciples of all nations, and I think that we have a strategic place to do that.

  So let's just put it this way. What would happen? If over the next 5 years, we just developed this pattern of seeing people come to know Christ, and we see. 50 people Come to know Jesus. That's including children growing up, meeting Jesus, but also just 50 people from the community. That's 10 a year. It doesn't feel that outrageous to consider that. It's a little bit faster than we're currently seeing, but it's not that crazy. But what would happen if we just dropped 50 new believers in our church right now? Well, could we disciple them? Could we teach them to follow Jesus? Do we have enough believers owning the mission of God to disciple that many new believers? Probably not.

  And so as we grow as a church, we need to not only grow in new Christians, I hope we grow in new Christians that are disciples that make disciples that go on to make more disciples, but also we need established believers to partner with us in the mission that we have here. It will also require us to scale up everything. I mean, if we are going to reach that many people, we're going to have to consider what it, what it will take to do that.

  So if we just take who we are right now. 150 people call this church home, probably that's probably something around there. You don't often see them on all on the same Sunday, but we probably have 150 people who call this church home. If we were to add 50 new believers, we'd probably need to add double the number of established believers in that process. So around double the size that we are now, like 300. If God wants to bring us to 300 in 5 years, I'm all here for it. Although there are lots of obstacles that we're gonna face, everything will have to scale, our budget will have to scale, our our services, everything that we're doing will have to scale.

  We'll have to consider a lot of different things, but if we want to continue to shine the light for generations to come, this is certainly one of the ambitious goals the Lord could give to us. Not only that, but we also want to send the light of Christ all over Boston and throughout the world. We want to continue to plant churches. I don't wanna overlook that. I hope that in the next 5 years that we're ready to send or we have already sent a church plant out of our church. And if we just say, hey, 300 is the cat, we're never gonna grow beyond that, we just wanna keep on planting churches all throughout New England and the world.

  I think that this is such a strategic place to send missionaries from because we have people who speak native languages of all over the world. And so my prayer is that through the city on a hill network of churches that in the next 10 years we might send 50 missionaries and maybe a lot of them are are bi vocational, because I don't think we could fund 50 missionaries out of our church, but maybe some of them are full-time vocational missionaries, and maybe God has called some of you to consider what it might be like to be that type of missionary.

  And this is a big vision, and whenever I think about it, I don't wanna make it about me, I wanna make it about God, and I'm just reminded. I can be daunted, but I'm reminded of, of what Jesus told his disciples in Matthew chapter 9, verse 37, he says, then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

  So point 3, what are some of the obstacles? I think that you're already thinking through them as I lay out a big vision like this, you're already thinking, well, that would mean this and that would mean this. So I'm just gonna lay out a few obstacles that we have. OK, let's just, let's just speak them into being, OK? so that you, we all can acknowledge the things they're saying in the way. First is church size dynamics. If we grow as a church, things are gonna change as we are a church. Those of you who were with us 6 years ago. Things have changed over the past 6 years as we've grown as a church. Your decision making processes change over that time, your complexity changes, and as the church grows in size, it doesn't just grow in complexity, at the same rate, but your complexity is almost exponential.

  So a church of double the size is 4 times more complicated and it tends to be like that with any organization as they continue to grow. And the second obstacle that we have to this vision are our facilities. So, this church. What a blessing from the Lord, you guys, but also this church building. What a blessing from the Lord. We've been in this church building since we got started. And it's just been a great place for us to be. It is owned by an organization by a church called Vida Real International. We are so thankful for Vida Real. They have been fair with us and they are a Bible believing church. They, are a gospel believing church. We have so much in common with them. We're thankful for that. We wanna emphasize what we have in common with them and just really grateful for partners in the gospel in many ways. And so, in no way am I trying to say anything about our landlords or our building. I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea. We are so thankful for where God's put us.

  But this building sometimes feels like your first apartment out of college, you know, where it's like, hey, on first it's nice, let's check it out and then you get in it's like, oh we have roommates cool and then it's like, oh, I people keep on leaving their dishes places and there's someone sleeping on the couch and it's kind of dirtier than what I would prefer and you know if I had this apartment to myself, things would look a little bit different than they do. And if you are a member or a regular volunteer or a deacon here you certainly know what I'm saying, that there's lots of things in this building that may not be the exact same way that we would do it if we had exclusive use. I mean, for example, every single Sunday it requires 20 plus volunteers to come and get things set up. The chairs are usually in a different position, the, the CoaH kids is different. They have a school that meets here throughout the week.

  It just takes people put out signs and everything that goes with that. Not only that, but our sound techs, they're just back there like tapping wires together, trying, trying to figure out what's working, like you'll, it's like a couple of weeks ago we couldn't get the TVs to work. It was playing like. Lifetime movie or something and I one of our volunteers just crawled underneath the table and start plugging in random cords just like I hope this works and then they found one that said City on a hill do not unplug written on it it was unplugged so they just stuck it back in there OK? We have roommates. That's what happens when you have roommates, people change things.

  A couple weeks ago or a couple of months ago, I showed up one Sunday and there was a an aquarium. In the entry. And look. I'm not a fish guy, OK, but that fish was way too large. OK, God's, that fish was too large for that aquarium, OK, like that's one of God's creatures and how are you gonna do that to Oscar, the blue koi fish that belongs in a pond somewhere, not a little aquarium. Guys, Oscar lived too short of a life. Rest in peace, Oscar. Rest in peace. One Sunday we showed up. Oscar was swimming around and it was like Oscar looks kind of sad, guys. Like, he's not happy in this aquarium anymore. It's time for him to go on to be with fish Jesus and, and we came in here, we did church, we came back out there. We had to put a body bag over Oscar. He, he, he went on to the next life, during my sermon, I, I finally did it. I bored someone to death.

  So let's just put it like this, OK? If this was our building, there would be a few changes that we would do around here. Also, if our vision is to last until. 2130. Are we really gonna rent a building for the next 100 years like this, you know, are we gonna? No matter how good our partnership is and how thankful we are for Vida Real, we really are very thankful for them, and it has just been a great place for us. I think that we have to pray forward where God wants us to be facility wise, and if our vision is to double in size, we have to pray for where God wants us to be facility wise. I would love for God to give us this church building. I would love for God to give us a church building. I would love for God to open up another situation, maybe one with parking. Wouldn't that be amazing? This church building comes with zero parking spots. It is a true city building, but we're just going to pray for that God might do something. And, and give us a place to be long term.

  The third obstacle to accomplishing our vision is transience. Who's felt that? Yeah. Doesn't it just hurt, you know, I've been here for 13 years. I'm just relationally exhausted. To be really honest with you guys, we've been here for 13 years. I feel like we're on like our 10th set of friends, over that 13 years, and we're really thankful for those, for those friends, for the friends that we have is I'm not trying to cast any shade on our friends, you know, living in Boston it's like this two-edged sword where you get awesome people all the time moving here. You're like, you're so interesting, you're an interesting person, you're really gonna do great things, and then they move though because it's just that way. And it's just this thing that we experienced.

  I think that over the past 6 years that probably 3 or 400 people have called our church church home, you know, it's not like we're not reaching people. We are reaching people. It's just transience, it's hard and so it's certainly an obstacle. I think that there's an opportunity there. I think that one we need to mourn that, OK? If you're, if you've been here for a while, it's OK to mourn. It's also OK to come together and say, hey, we're gonna stay, and that's gonna be an application point in just a moment that some of us need to stay.

  If we're gonna see this mission of God move forward, if we're really gonna reach this influential important place for the gospel, but at the same time. We have such potential to be a missionary sending place. I mean we have to start seeing ourselves that way or we're not gonna survive. We have to start seeing ourselves as people who can send people if we're gonna reach this place for the gospel, we're going to be able to see people move and. And reach other people with the gospel, but we do need a certain number of people to stay and, and look, I, I'll put it this way, OK? I have no plans on leaving, but if anyone tells me today that they're leaving, just not today, OK? if anyone tells me today that they're leaving, I might just lay down on the stage and let my soul leave my body, OK? I'm we're not doing that today, OK? Next week if you're moving, let me know that's fine, we'll pray for you, we'll send you out, but not today, right?

  Bad enough, this is particularly a year that we've experienced more transience than we have in a little while. we had an elderly and his family, Jeremy and Virginia and their 3 kids. They left back in November, and, it's just, and, and there's been several other key leaders that we'd love and it's just like the Lord calls people other places and we're happy for you, but we just don't wanna hear about it today, OK?

  So, point 4, how are we going to accomplish this vision? How are we going to accomplish this vision? Am I? I'm coming unclipped, sorry. Not unhinged, OK, just unclipped, um. How are we going to accomplish this vision? Well, we've already started with prayer. We've already started with prayer. Are you as leaders of the church, we've gotten together as elders and talked through this several times. We brought in the deacons, had a whole vision meeting about it and the staff, and we, and we prayed these things forward, and we're just going to continue to, to pray these things forward. And if God decides, nope, this vision isn't for you. Then that's fine. We're, it's just open hands guys, but we want to be open to maybe this is the vision, and we're going to pursue this until God you, you set, you close the door for us.

  And so if we don't accomplish any of these goals, it doesn't mean that we're a failure, it just means that God wanted something else for us. And so we're going to be praying. That's one reason why we're inviting you to come tonight. It's, I'm going to give an abbreviated version of this vision, and then we're just going to pray it forward and sing some songs, and that's what we're going to be this evening. Don't feel any pressure to be there, but we would, we're going to be praying this forward. And if you want to know just how we're going to be accomplishing this, some of the next steps, well, it starts with just our overall strategy.

  Now we've been going over this in the member class for the past 2, so we've been trialing it out. I haven't, but then if you went through the membership class before these 2, or you haven't been through the membership class, this will all be new to you. So this is our strategy as a church. This is how we're going to accomplish the mission that God has given to us, and this might feel somewhat new but also familiar. So here we have it here.

  Gospel people seek the presence of God in worship, are shaped into the image of Christ through discipleship and are sent out by the Holy Spirit on mission. I love this mission statement, for a lot of different reasons, we have a little chart to help you see how this is shaped. so the first one we seek the Father in worship, we're shaped by the Son through discipleship and we're sent by the Holy Spirit on mission. And it's like these, these action verbs seeking shaped sent with it it's the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I think if you have, if you get anything in Christianity, it has to be that that's what we're all about. And then the, the different models of worship, the different things that we do, we do worship, discipleship and mission and this is what we are all about. This is the regular stuff for us as a church. It's just norm do the normal Christian stuff, but do it with an intentionality.

  And then there, I have 4 specific next steps for us as we pursue the vision of God that he has for us. And here we go. The first one is this. That we live sent, number one, that we live sent that we think like a missionary and if you call this your church home, I pray that you will consider this vision, not just your church's vision, but your vision because the church is a people and it's a people united together and it's our vision together so you have your own life that you live with a purpose, and you're not just a member here, you're a part of our family, and so this vision is your vision.

  This means that you consider the mission of God in all of your decisions. What will help you to accomplish this mission not only in your home, but in your workplace and everywhere else. We cannot, and you, you don't you don't sever your spiritual life from your real life. These things go together. And for some of you, maybe God is calling you to live sent right here, but really this is what I want us to embody, that you are thinking like a missionary, living sent wherever you are. So if you move, you don't leave, OK? Let me, you don't leave, we send you. Alright, we have a, a missionary mindset, and if you move on from our place, we're sending you there. It's not you, you're like a missionary for us, for God, wherever you go.

  And so you, but if you stay here, you're a lower case missionary here also. And so that's one, the first step that we own the vision together, that we live sent thinking like a missionary. The second is lead. we need more leaders at our church. If we're going to grow this rapidly in the next 5 years, we're going to have to scale everything and it just comes with increased, complexity, and not only that, but also we have transience in our leadership team at times. And so what we're going to need to continue to develop more leaders as a church. We need more community group leaders almost every single community group at our church feels pretty full at the moment to where I'm kind of like emailing folks being like. Hey, who could take on one more person? All right, who, who wants them and everybody's such a trooper and everybody's, no one's told me no so far, OK, that we can't take anybody else, but we need more community group leaders.

  Maybe God is calling you to step into that need to train as a community group leader. We're going to be having a, a community group leader training and if you're interested in that, we'd love for you to dive in. We're going to need more deacons in the coming. In the coming year our deacons serve 1 year terms that can be renewed year after year, but several are going to be stepping down and so we need more deacons. Well, Michael has been a production deacon for several years and he's been out of town for 2 weeks and hence people are just like tapping wires together back there trying to make things work, facetiming folks and showing them pictures of, of what needs to happen, but we need someone to take on the tech for our church and say, I will be the production deacon, I will figure out how everything works, I will be the person that the buck stops here.

  Lord willing, you don't get called very often and you don't have to make a lot of changes because we do have a good system, but we need someone to be the buck stops here person with that. We need that production deacon because Michael is going to be becoming an elder, Lord willing, in March and so this is something we need in the next couple of weeks for someone to step up into that. And basically I told, I told Alexa because we did an interview with his wife Alexa and she was like, I'm a little concerned it's a lot of responsibility on top of what he's currently doing. I'm like, Alexa, Michael will not be the production deacon after he becomes an elder so I have to live up to that word so step up, we need you.

  And we, we're going to need more elders, also. If you don't wanna lead, maybe a first step towards leading, if you're not ready for that is serving. We always need er er servants at our church. the old saying, many of you have heard this, that 20% of the people do 80% of the work, certainly true at many churches, certainly true. I can look out here. Many of you are serving in many different ways. I can honor some people. I'll, I'll honor Anneke, who's leading us in in worship today. Her, her husband Matt's leading a community group, setting up chairs many Sundays. She leads worship. Teaches a kids class and does meals and is the meals Ministry leader, which we have an info meeting about today, right? After the service. So if you're interested in Meals Ministry, we would love for you to join and hear more about that. We just need more people to be serving and doing these things. We're constantly looking for volunteers.

  Lord, praise God. I asked Alexis, how like how, how are we doing on kids volunteers? And I don't ask that question because I know the answer is always we need more. And for the first time in my entire 20 years of ministry, she was like, we're doing pretty good. And I was like, wow, all right, good, good on you all thank you for serving but we do always just need more volunteers and if you wanna step in there one place that we're looking to create a new team is a facilities team someone not only that can handle some of the basic maintenance around here that isn't always taken care of um. Things that we might cause or might want to see change and happen, but also we need another team to help us look for a long term home, that's somewhere that we can thrive for the next 100 years.

  So if God's calling you to serve or lead in any of these ways, talk to me. We're still a small enough church where I can just be like, yo, just talk to me, OK? I'll write down your name, we'll make it happen. and the fourth is give. all this takes money, and I hate asking for money, and I will confidently say that so far in the history of our church, money has not ever been a hindrance to anything we've wanted to do for the gospel. Praise God. That it, it hasn't been a barrier, and that's really what I want to see continue is that finances are not a barrier to what God has for us here at this church.

  And so if you call this your church home, I pray that you'll give and give in proportion of what the Lord has given to you, but if we're going to continue to grow, our budget has to grow proportionally and this year we are planning on and going to hire a second full-time staff member, someone to help do spiritual formations at our church and with other things as well. And so that is something that we're excited about, but we have to continue to see the finances not get in the way. And so maybe God is just calling you to be to be generous towards this vision to say, hey, I want to see this church last for generations to come and and your step might just be some generosity there. Thank you for being generous. We do have a generous church to wrap things up, I just wanna take a moment and pray.

  And invite you to come pray with us tonight. Be reminded of 1 Corinthians chapter 3 where it says, so neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything but only God who makes the growth. It's not about us. And so if this is not your church home, you got a sneak peek into what we're doing and what we're thinking and where we're going, but if this is your church home, we hope that you will own this vision that this will be for you. And each week, one thing that we do during our worship gathering is we participate in a sacred meal. And it's to remind us that we're not alone in this mission.

  What does Jesus say when he sends us on mission? Matthew 28. Let's look at it briefly. I haven't memorized, but I'm also gonna read it for you, just in case I mess it up. Um. Matthew chapter 28. He gives us the great commission. And he says this, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you, and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. This mission that God has given to us is not possible and it in fact it's pointless unless Jesus is with us, and that's really what our goal is, is to be near to Jesus and for him to make himself known to those around us.

  So when we come to the table, we're coming to Jesus. When we come to receive this meal, the spiritual presence of Jesus is with us, and he's being reminded I've not left you alone. I'm with you still. That he has taken our penalty, died the death that we deserve, and been resurrected to new life so that we might have life in him. And that's the reason why we do all these things is for this good news that Jesus has given us. So if Jesus is your savior, if you're owning this vision, if this is part of who you are, that you are following Jesus, we invite you to the table. Evaluate yourself, think through how you can better follow Christ, and repent of your sins, but you are invited to the table because Jesus is enough for you.

  And over the next song we invite you to come and receive communion. So if you would, if you are able to stand as we come to the table and prepare our hearts.

  Father, we thank you for this opportunity to come to Christ again, and God, we pray for this vision. God, would you do a great thing in our church? Would would we do it together? God, I, I don't if it's up to me, we're not doing it, but Holy Spirit, we pray that you would do a great thing here because we believe in the mission that you've given to us and we pray that you would help this church to be established for generations to come, reaching our neighbors and shining and sending the the light of Christ throughout Somerville and throughout the world. Father, I pray for anyone here who is struggling with your presence and struggling to feel excited about this mission because they feel just distant from you. I pray that you would meet them in this moment. And then as we, as we come to you, that you would give us the bread of life, and you would give us life and joy, and we ask this in Christ's name, Amen.