Vision Sunday AM_Refresh 2022

Speaker 1: Amen, thank you for that wonderful singing and special here this morning. You give me just a moment when to get situated up here today is going to be quite a bit different than what we are typically accustomed to today is our vision Sunday. And I want to walk through some things with you all this morning. And I wanted to say, as I'm getting myself set up here Wednesday night, crowd way they go, what a great job. Like, I don't know what he's talking about. Now you wouldn't know if you weren't there. You wouldn't know. But they did it, and it helped in a lot of ways. So thank you so much for that. Probably not too many of us here that are unfamiliar with the idea of a vision Sunday. All of the awesome things that has been happening over the last couple of years is the incorporation of what some are calling a victory Sunday victory Sunday. And so what I want to do this morning is kind of combine those two ideas in our time together. And is that me now, my controlling? Yes, almost. We're almost there. We're still not we are there. There we go. OK. All right, we've got it. Very good. I'd like to combine those two ideas this morning. And so it will be quite a bit different now. Last year, we had our vision Sunday and we happen to have a guest with us that morning and I received a nice long email afterwards, basically telling me that we had offended Jesus by having our vision Sunday that I needed to go back to Bible college because I had no business being a pastor of a church. And it was just it was really I was not expecting it at all. I thought we had done a very good job of giving God the glory and giving him the praise, but apparently we had not. Let me say this right off the bat. What we are doing this morning is in no way trying to make much of man. We want to make much of God and what God did, and I'm reminded this morning of someone 18 twenty three, which says this is the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes and it is good and healthy and right for us to take time periodically to rehearse what God has done. Because if you've been here for four years, you know that there has been some things that we've seen take place that can only be attributed to the work and the blessing and the power of God. And so this morning, everything that we're going to talk about is to his praise and everything that we're going to say this morning about what we hope to accomplish should be understood that it will only take place if God is working with us and for us. And so please do not misunderstand me at all this morning. Now I want you to take your Bibles if you have them. You don't have to stand, but go ahead and turn to acts. Chapter Number Twenty seven acts chapter number twenty seven. And I just want to read the verses that we looked at last week. As a reminder, if you were here last week, this would be very familiar to you. Says version number one of X twenty seven, when it was determined that we should sail into Italy. They delivered Paul and certain other prisoners under one name. Julius, a centurion of Augustus, is banned entering into a ship of address Med.. We launched meaning to sail by the coast of Asia. One Aristarchus, a Macedonian vessel and ICA being with us. And the next day we touched its side and Julius courteously and treated Paul and gave him liberty to go under his friends to what? Refresh himself. This year, I believe the theme that God would have us focus on as we focused on grace last year is this idea of being refreshed. So our theme this year is refreshed. Twenty twenty two. Now there's we'll get to that. But before we get into what that means for this year, I want to do a quick. Refresher. See what they did there on what we've seen got accomplished. Obviously, you can look around and those of you that have been longtime members here. You know that to see the auditorium this fall is actually a down day for us now. I mean, there was a time where this would have been like, Oh my goodness, praise the Lord. We had a huge crowd. Now we look around and think, now we're missing quite a few people. We got a lot of folks that are out sick today, and hopefully they're able to join us through the live stream. But I mean, it's it's no strange thing now for us to have 20 to 50 on a Sunday morning. We praise God for those that he has brought to our church that have gotten incorporated into the ministry, are serving the Lord, using their gifts and talents to reach children and adults and seniors with the gospel. But we've also seen quite a change take place here at the facilities of our church. And I hope this is a good throwback for some of you for the Joe. Can we hit the the platform lights lower those just a little bit. So 2019, this seemed like a big project doing the children's wing, we spent ten thousand dollars on it. It seems like not that much now, but at the time it was a big deal. Just this was Miss Martha. This was your classroom here, Miss Martha. You would not fit in this classroom anymore. You miss Linda. All these classes just grown almost too big for the Fellowship Hall now. I mean, absolutely amazing, but we used to fit around those two tables. That is now the Sunday school office. Most of you will remember the the the mural that went down the stretch of the children's wing hallway, the B nursery that we had. The Polkadot room. The heavenly room. Very dark room. M.D.. This was your office. I thought it was the Sunday school. I thought it was the storage closet, but it wasn't. It was the office. Not a lot of room there. There's the there's the storage room. That's stressful. And cut out the window. They said it couldn't be done, but we figured out how. Painted, I thought about, oh man, I went all the way back to begin. I thought about putting the picture in here of when we painted over Jesus and you could not cover Jesus. We put three coats of primer over the painting of Jesus, and he kept coming through. We thought we were going to have to call the Catholic Church to come over and do like some kind of holy water ceremony. Throughout this, you'll see so many of our men working. I was joking, Brother Mike's mice came up and helped paint some of the upstairs for the new teen room. And I said I had to pull you in on this eventually because we cannot have a building project without the four mikes being involved. Mike Morgan, Mike Berman, Mike Smyth's and Mike Kay just wouldn't be a success if all four of them didn't have some part to play. But anyways, got all of this done, and the children's wing has been a huge, huge blessing to our church and we needed it. We've had an influx of kids over the last couple of years. We needed that extra space over there, and so we're very grateful for God allowing us to get that done. We also did the sign project. We tried to get some quotes on how much it would cost to put a new sign up, and they were in the 20 to 30 thousand dollar range, which was not doable. And Toby, I'm glad you're here today because you get some screen time here, Toby said. Hey, I think we can do this for like three thousand dollars and we didn't really believe him at the time. But sure enough, we started taking it apart and he said, I can square off those corners. No big deal. And so he spent several days up on a lift and grinding that off and fabricating for us new corners. And here you can see them putting those on. We replaced the fluorescent bulbs inside with LED light strips. And there you can see what the sign looks like now. Same sign, just a little bit of a facelift. Of course, 2020 all of the world shut down, except for the Baptist tabernacle we kept right on going. We had some changes to make to the four year, and it had been a while since it had been given some attention. And the Mike Morgan helped us figure out how to hang these paying these ceiling fans. You look at a ceiling fan out there now and you think, yeah, it's just a ceiling fan hanging from the ceiling. But it was a bit of an ordeal to figure out how to get that done, and they figured out lots of folks came up and helped paint. And if you ever need something done precisely you asked for the mat is much more particular about those things than than I am. And so I started it and he said, a, you want to let me do that? And he got up there and he made sure they were nice and straight and got all of the tile and the carpet pulled out. Of course, you know what it looks like now. Brother Mateo helped us with the with the new welcome table there and brother Eddie, who many of y'all would know helped with getting us the granite at a very good price. And so our foir got a nice refresh for the bill Pippin came in yesterday. Cause for the bill has maybe come for a long time and he walked in. He said, Good night, I didn't even recognize the place. And so appreciate that. Then we gave attention to the gym and I know it's dark, but the paint from the gym floor was just about gone. You can see also there, perhaps, maybe not so much, but we used to have to store all of the tables and chairs and everything along the back wall, and several of the men worked to build the closet. That's here now, so we could get those things put away and there's a better picture of it. You can see how how scraped off everything had become. And so we were able to grind that down and put a new fresh caught on there. There has been an awesome blessing to have. There is not hardly a day of the week that there is not somebody that is not a member of our church that is here on the property using that gym and so that kids and parents that are coming into our facilities and only God knows how he could potentially use that in the future. This year, you may not have heard too much about this. We kind of did it just. With the general budget, and I have to do a building program or anything for that, we gave the old team room a facelift, obviously with the teams moving upstairs. That room is not going to be a teen room anymore, so we wanted to help make it a little bit more adult friendly. So we we got rid of the gray and the black, which then became the red and the blue and painted at a nice neutral color gave it a good wall feature. There wouldn't feature across the back wall and put carpet in there instead of the linoleum. And you can see kind of what it looks like there. Very nice. You haven't been back there. It's good to look at. We got nice, comfortable chairs in there and so not the metal ones. And we're very excited about that. But just a quick a quick refresher here. Over the last four years, we reseal the parking lot and the Tracy. It's good to have you here with us today. He was a trustee at the time, and you'll remember all the meetings about redoing the parking lot and trying to get that thing fixed up. Sixteen thousand children's wing like I said, ten thousand. The sign came in right under four thousand five hundred. We did the four year for twenty gym floor. Twenty seven. We did the adult classroom, the old team room for three thousand dollars. And then last year, during our vision Sunday, we said we were going to be very ambitious and try to find two large projects. And you can do the quick math there. The two large projects that we we decided to do last year. Each of them on their own was more than every other project that we had done up to that point put together. I remember one of the men came up to me after a vision Sunday last year and said, Yeah, that's pretty ambitious. You better get it done now because the way the economy is looking, there ain't no way you're going to get that done. Last vision Sunday was just full of encouragement. We set out to raise eighty thousand for the playground and eighty thousand for the team room, and we ended up raising ninety seven thousand for the playground in ninety eight thousand for the team room. Only God can do that. The playground is slated to come in late January, early February. No, it's been a long wait, but it is coming to an end in the teen room is moving along wonderfully every week. There is progress. Like I said, the men were up there yesterday. They did all the priming for the walls and then they were able to paint one of the long walls. And so we are looking forward to getting all of the paint done this week so that the team can come back and put in the drop ceiling and then we can move on to flooring, finishing out the electrical. We hope to be up there having class with the teenagers within the next month or two. So I'm very excited about all that has taken place with that and praise the Lord for what he has done. So over the last four years, two hundred seventy five thousand dollars invested in facility updates, which we desperately, desperately needed. Now, so that brings us to this question of what is the plan for twenty twenty two? Well, like I already said, the plan is to focus on this idea of refreshment to be refreshed, and I think it's important for us to remember that there is a biblical principle of work and rest, work and rest. Jesus is our God. Establish this from the very beginning. When he created the world six days later, on the seventh day, he rested when God was giving the law to the Israelites, and he gave them six days to do all of their work. And then the seventh day the Sabbath Day was to be a day of rest. We talked before about Jesus and his disciples after they had gone out and done all of their missions work. They came back together for a time of rest. And so over the last four years, like you've seen, we have we have worked very hard to get these things done. Most of the work has been accomplished by the men of the church that have different skills the guys bless them with. But if we're going to have a year of refreshment, then we need to have a year where we focus on rest. There needs to be a time of rest. Perhaps you haven't been one of the ones that's been out there, painting or laying the floor or helping with the electrical or tearing down walls. But there is not hardly a person in this church that hasn't been involved in supporting the work that has gone on. And so we want to have a year where we give the church a Sabbath rest from these types of projects. The meaning of refreshment is also to restore any time you have work like that taking place. It takes time away from other things. And so this year, we want to redirect our focus and attention from the the physical facilities and move it towards more of the ministries and focusing on giving attention to different ministries that that may need a little bit extra attention. It also means to revive and hopefully through this year of rest and refreshment, we will all be revived and ready when the the next big project comes along. And then finally, care, rest, restore, revive and care. These are the four words that the Bible associated with that word refreshment as we saw it in acts chapter number twenty seven. And so these are the words that are going to characterize, hopefully our church this year. Now, if you look through the Bible at the word refreshment, you cannot get refreshment apart from God's people. It is. It is absolutely intertwined that God's people and refreshment go hand in hand. And so, like we said last week, we want our church to be a place where people can come to be refreshed. I want our members to be refreshed when they come here. I want guests to feel refreshed when they come here. And so there will be some care that is given some attention that is given to making sure that happens. Now, as far as the building goes, there is there is there's there's the fact that we all can start to feel and that is that we will soon have a space issue. You can see the attendance over the last four years on a Sunday morning is getting closer and closer to that 240 mark. Talk to the different men of the church that were involved in the construction of the building back in the early 2000s, and this auditorium can comfortably seat about 225 250 if you start to really slam people in there close to each other. We've had some services where we've seen that. And you know how tight it can feel. There is a principle that is outside of just churches, but any auditorium, whether it be a theater, a school or whatever the case may be. Once a room gets to about 80 percent capacity, then it feels too full to people. Now you may not care if you're at 80 percent capacity and you're smashed up next to your family, your family. But I guess that comes in and the church is at 80 percent capacity is going to feel like there is not a place for them. I've been very encouraged by the growth that we've seen in our church, the new members that have come in every year. We're going to talk about it at the business meeting in February. But I think it's like 2018. We had thirty five new members, 2019 we had seventy five new members, 2020 we had 30 new members and then last year we had fifty five new members. Now if you think and you look around at the auditorium, now we add another 50 new members. It's going to start getting pretty tight in here. And the fact of the matter is that the size of all of our auditorium will become a cap on how many people we can have here at our church now. Collinsville is not slowing down in its. Is it it's getting bigger? And if we going to keep up with the growth of Collinsville, then it, then we're going to have to make some changes. We're going to have to think about the future. I was doing some research through the documents that brother Jim Short had saved. He had his folder of all of the meeting notes in the building committee notes from when they were building the building. And I found a note in there from nineteen ninety six, when Pastor Cain held a meeting with the church to discuss the lack of space at the old property and the need to prepare for future growth. I'm assuming you would probably remember this very well, but for me, I didn't realize that it had gone back to nineteen ninety six, the preparations and the planning for making the move to this building. There were several options that were placed before the church. There was the option to buy property near the old property. There was the option to build perhaps a new building on the old property and then there was the option to move and buy completely new property and build a new building. It was not until 2002 that the church finished that process of planning, purchasing and building this building. And the church moved here where we assemble now and have assembled for almost 20 years now. So this year will mark 20 years of ministry in this building, and I believe that it is time for us to begin the process, as they did back in 1996 of planning for future expansion. Now, praise God. All right. Praise God that he granted our church 13 acres, 13 acres. That is amazing. I called brother Eddie James and we all know Eddie from here in town about purchasing the five acres next door to us. I still have not given up on that. You would pray with me about that. I think God needs to put it on Brother Eddie's heart to give us a similar deal as he gave us last time. Those of you that don't know we were able to purchase the 13 acres here for seventy five thousand dollars, not per acre total. OK, that's a deal. But anyways, we were talking and he said, Gary, you don't need any more land. You've got 13 acres. I know what he's saying. I'd still like to have the five acres, but we do. We've got plenty of room here to grow and expand. And so this year, we'll be working with the officers to begin the process of planning for future expansion. The process will start this year as we look to take some baby steps in the direction of what it'll mean for us to make room for more people here on this property. So here are some steps that I hope to take this year. With God's help, God has allowed us to succeed and to see every year the things that we said we wanted to set out to do. We've seen them take place every year. We've seen it come to fruition. So we're trusting God to help us as we look at some of these things. Number one, this is a big one. We want to make room in our monthly budget for a future loan payment with all of the intention that we've been giving to the current facilities and getting them up to date, making the necessary improvements and that we're needed. It's been I mean, every year we've had a surplus, but not a huge surplus like we could have. We just let everything stay the way it is. And so we have been using the money that has been coming in. I don't think any of you want us to be money hoarders. We want to be prepared for the future, right? Prepared for for things that might come up without expect unexpectedly. But this year, we're going to give attention to making sure that our monthly budgets begin to grow in their surpluses so that when the time does come for us to seek a loan, the financial folks will be taking a look at the church's history. We'll look and see that we have a strong enough financial support base to support a monthly payment. We want to analyze the pros and cons of renovating parts of the current facility versus undertaking new construction. Some of you would know that there are plans for a balcony to be put in place here in the auditorium. The the actual roof line is about 10 feet higher than the ceiling in here, and so there is room to move everything up. An initial estimate on what that would be. Not at all binding or anything like that would be between five hundred and seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars to renovate this room to add more seating. The balcony that we would be looking at adding would add about 50 to seventy five seats. And so we're going to have to really consider whether or not three quarters of a million dollars is worth spending to add 75 seats. There are other options that we have talked about with the officers as far as pushing into the gym. And so it's not just a a slap it on their decision of we need a new building. We're going to look and see what the best course of action is, how to get the most bang for our buck. How about that? We've talked about this as well, meeting with a church consultant architect to work out a master plan to get the most out of our property. We don't want to start putting buildings up without a plan. We want to make sure we know where we're going in the future of what we have right now. As far as the building footprint is the total build out of what was planned. And so any new buildings. We want to make sure that we have a plan moving forward. And so those are three of the things that we hope to do make room in our monthly budget. Analyze the pros and cons of renovation versus new construction, and then work with a church consultant architect to work out a master plan for the remainder of the property that has not been built on. So this means no major projects for 2022. The one thing that we probably will do, but it'll be similar to renovating the adult classroom is updating our fellowship hall. But that will be a low impact project that most of you probably will not be impacted by at all. We're going to focus on building up our savings, not so that we can hoard it, but so that we can invest it into the future of our church. And this will mean more time for the pastor and staff to focus on other areas of improvement. Like I said, we want to give care to some of the other areas of the church. A church is not just a building. Although it's nice to have a nice building. So we want to give attention to some other things. Now here are two of the things that I wanted to share with you that we plan on focusing on what areas do we want to improve on? Number one, we want to improve on our hospitality ministry and this Michel has done a great job with our hospitality ministry so far. And we've talked just briefly about some of our plans for the future. She's already started implementing some of those, but will I'll detail more of that. Just a second hospitality, but also our Sunday school program. And God has blessed our Sunday school program. We have expanded the offerings for adult classes as well as our children, and we want to take the next step in our Sunday school program. All right. So first, let's talk about hospitality. Our hospitality ministry is made up of three different roles. Most of you probably think of the greeters, and they are definitely the front line of the hospitality ministry. But our hospitality ministry also includes our ushers, and we are working on having a more solidified, committed group of ushers. So on a Sunday morning, the same men know that they're going to be ushers each week. They know if they're not going to be there, they've got an alternate that they can call and they know what their responsibilities are because ushering goes beyond just helping take up the offering. But then we also have our safety team, and I'm so grateful for the men that that walk the building, lock the doors, sit in the foyer to make sure that we are safe in here. And so these are the three levels, but we want to make a few changes to some of these roles. First, we want more consistent teams and then we want better training for our volunteers. It's not fair to a volunteer, no matter where they serve for us to just stick them in a room and say, All right. Figure it out. We don't want to do that to anybody if someone is going to take the step of volunteering for a role. We want to make sure we do our part to prepare them for that. And by and in order to do that, we need to have a consistent plan on ministry responsibilities for these different folks during the services. So our hospitality process could look like this. Greeters are the first level of hospitality. They open the doors and extend the greeting and a smile to everyone that comes in. They do not pass out bulletins, though. I was watching Where's Brother Can Replicate, might be in Junior Church, where the cam came in this morning with, I don't know, 15 items in his arms and our greeters didn't try to hand him a bulletin or anything like that. But can you imagine carrying everything in? Maybe you haven't had kids for a while, but you've got a carrier, you've got a diaper bag, you've got your Bible, you've got another kid hanging on to your your shirt and someone's trying to hand your Bolton. That's not when somebody wants a bulletin. And so our readers are just there to help get you in the doors, greet you, smile and tell them that they're telling you that you're glad they're glad you're here. Ushers are level two. Ushers are the ones who potentially stand at the doors. We have two doors to the auditorium. They stand there. They pass out the bulletins. You come for Sunday school, your bulletin will be in your Sunday school class and your teacher will make sure you get one of those. Ushers are also the ones who, if you were here on Wednesday night, we talked about this. They offer to help direct people to their classes. Kids family comes in with children, they look lost, they look new. And Usher would be the one to say, Hey, can I take you to our junior church class? Not show you, not point you in the direction? Can I take you there? That would be our ushers they offer to help people. They're also responsible for assisting the service inside the auditorium. It is the ushers that would help a late comer find a spot so that we don't have someone just wandering looking for a place. Because, like we talked about on Wednesday, the back roads are usually pretty full, and so they end up having to walk further and further and further to the front, causing quite a distraction. So the ushers help with that. Then we have our safety team safety team is level three. They lock the doors after the service has started. They greet and assist late comers. If you're a greeter, you know that 10 minutes after the service has started, you come in. What happens when someone comes in after the ten minutes? Are they just wandering through an empty hallway? No. Our safety team is there to help them find their place. So if the ushers are responsible for assisting the service inside the auditorium, then the safety team is responsible for assisting the service outside the auditorium. And so these are the three levels of our hospitality process greeters, ushers and safety team. And we want to give attention to this group this year and just help that that whole ministry take another step in its effectiveness and ability to minister. Let's talk about this one Sunday school, and I love all of our Sunday school teachers and classes. I'm so grateful for the way it's been able to expand. We currently have the following adult classes. We've got two young adults class that I teach, and I love those guys and girls. They do a wonderful job, great interaction and conversation with each other. That's for anyone that's graduated from high school. Moving on into adulthood, we've got our family foundations class that Brother Matt teaches, and these are young marrieds that either some of them have kids and don't have kids, but it's dealing with some of the issues pertaining to early married life. We've got our homebuilders class. These are more established families, perhaps older elementary teenage years. Families Brother has been teaches that class. Our senior adults meet here in the auditorium with brother Arnie. We have our ladies class with Miss Linda. And so that's our that's what we have right now, and we would like to do a couple of things to improve this. First, you'll notice that all but one of these classes is set up on an age based division. Young adults, young marrieds, builders, senior adults. Miss Linda is the only one the outlier with the ladies class, and she has young ladies, the older ladies in her class. But what we're looking to try out later this year, it's tentatively scheduled for this summer, is a more elective based structure for our Sunday school time. And so our Sunday school schedule could look something like this. A new members class meeting in the primary church room Financial Peace University class meaning in the adult classroom. So where's the adult classroom? It's the old team room. Well, let's not call it the old team or teen room for the next 50 years. OK. You can have a discipleship class here in the auditorium. A study of effusions in the junior church room, or brother, has been teachers now. Love and respect a marriage class meeting in the fellowship hall. There's a new book coming out that I'm excited. I don't know if I'll read it, but I guess I probably will called women in the Gospels. And so maybe we'll have a ladies class meeting in the gym, then maybe in the mission department, in the mission departments only occupied like three weeks out of the year. So maybe we have a class in there for men. Wow. OK, maybe not called masculine mandate, that's a good book that I've referenced before, but you can see a lot more. We have more classes, more variety and you you decide on your class based on the topic that's being discussed or the book that's being covered rather than. Well, you know, I'm pushing sixty five, but I really don't want to go in there with the senior adults because then I'm one of the old people, so I'll just hang out here with Brother Aspen for a little bit longer. Now some of these, you can tell, are still somewhat age based, somewhat age directed. For example, you know, love and respect. You've been married for 50 years. You probably yeah, I got this. Maybe you need it more than anybody. I don't know. But Financial Peace University? That would be a great class for our young adults to be a part of as they get their financial independence started just to get off on the right foot. But there's a couple of other benefits to this new structure. Number one, it provides for refreshment for our teachers. Remember, one of the means one of the definitions of refreshment is what rest? We're learning, Arnie. How many weeks out of the year do you teach Sunday School? Every week, Linda, every week or there every week, I expect brother Matt to teach Sunday school just about every week and I expect myself to teach Sunday School just about every week. You know why? Because it's my job. I get a paycheck from the church to do these things. What news do not learning there as well? They don't get a paycheck doing this as volunteers, as all of our Sunday school teachers are. They are volunteers here. And so what this would do by going to this structure is we would operate in quarters. And so there would be four quarters in the year, 12 week quarters, which I know doesn't add up to 50 to 12 week quarters. And the ideal circumstance would be that our teachers would teach a quarter and then get a quarter off teacher quarter, get a quarter off to give them that time to rest. Refresh re-energize study for the next quarter that they're going to teach without having to currently be teaching something else. Doesn't that sound nice? I think it sounds really nice. And so we want to allow our teachers to be refreshed. Some of them may teach two quarters a year. Some may only teach one quarter a year. I've been taught that this is Warner about doing the Financial Peace University, and that would probably be a once a year. One quarter a year commitment. So she would be free. She has other responsibilities with the nursery and such. She'd be free to do those on the other three quarters of the year. And so we want to help our teachers in this way. I believe it also provides the opportunity to engage more members in the teaching ministry. We've got a lot of new members, a lot of new members that have ability to teach. We've got a lot of time members who have ability to teach. And so by having this, this alternating schedule, we can more than double the amount of opportunities for people to teach a class. And I think that is very important for our church that we would have more men and ladies that are comfortable with teaching a class. And so this would help us move towards that. This means that members have the freedom to go to a class that most interests them or speaks to their stage of life. Will there be people who just go to a certain teacher's class every time they're teaching? Yes, absolutely. But you don't have to. It's not age based. It's an elective based system. It also provides for the potential for interaction with other segments of the church that a person might not normally interact with. We give a lot of tension in saying, Hey, you know, the teenagers are not a church of their own. They need to interact with everybody else. Well, yeah, so do the adults. And so just segregating different groups and they never interact is not healthy. This provides the potential for interaction with other segments of the church. And then it also has the potential for bringing more people into the Sunday School Ministry. With a 12 week quarter every 12 weeks, we'll be giving attention to what all the new classes are. And this is my fault. I don't say a whole lot about what's coming up in Sunday school in the main service. But by doing this, then there will be announcements about here are the classes go. Sign up for the class. Get to know your new teacher. I believe it'll help our Sunday School Ministry continue to grow in the amount of people that it can reach. So refresh. Twenty twenty two. Take a break from renovation and prepare for the possibility of expansion. We're going to focus on improving some vital areas of ministry around the church. Hospitality Ministry, our Sunday School Ministry. Doing these things, we hope to give a refreshment to our church. We don't want, you know, we don't want to sit stagnant. We don't want to become stale. We want to continue to push to improve our ability to minister to people. We cannot just accept that the way things are or the best way is that they need to be. We can we can see that there needs to be improvement and progress in different areas. We want to prepare for the future when it comes to the building space and giving more space for God to bring more people into our church as our community continues to grow. And so this is the plan that we have for the year, and I'm excited to see how God's going to help us accomplish these things. And the report that will be able to give you at the end of this year of how God worked and what he was able to do through our efforts to serve him. Not really much for me to say as far as an invitation, as far as like, all right, you know, we preached on sin. Come get right. Well, what I would like to ask you is to consider during our time of invitation is praying about and just there you're seeing here at the altar prayed about how God would have you to be involved this year. What would God have you do to be a refreshment to someone else? What would God have you do to be involved with making our church a more refreshing place in the year? Twenty twenty two. So anyway, let's all stand and have a word prayer with you. I'll ask for the mat and the solution to make their way up here, and we'll take some time to pray together as a church for the upcoming year. Your only father, we thank you for this day. Thank you for all your faithfulness to us, your faithfulness to this church, which you have provided and directed us Lord for the last sixty six, almost sixty seven years. God, I pray that this year would be no different. That we would see your hand at work throughout the year, accomplishing different things that can only be attributed to your power, your hand at work in our midst. Or thank you for every person that Lord is a member here that invests in the ministry and sacrifices for your gospel to be spread through the missions. Local outreach, the the training that takes place here on a weekly basis. Or I pray that you would continue to bring more servants that would be involved in the ministry here at this church. Lord, we love you so much. We thank you for your many blessings and it's in Jesus name. I ask these things amen.

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