You Also Are Being Built Together

Well, good morning. It is a joy to be here, and it's actually a joy not to be in Evansville today, because fun fact, we are doing our dunk tank today. So what a shame, what a shame that I had to come here and miss being the person in that dunk tank. It is a joy to preach to you today, and I want to start with a question. What is the relationship That has changed you the most. What is the relationship in your life where if you look at that relationship, you're like, if it wasn't for that relationship, I would be the most different. I imagine many of us would say our wife or our husband. Maybe some of us would say a mentor, a friend, a teacher. Maybe some of us would even say.

an institution or an organization. If I hadn't have gone to the Boy Scouts, if I wasn't part of this particular school, my life would be on a completely different trajectory than the one that it is on. For me, the answer to that question is very easy. The relationship that has changed and formed my life the most, besides Jesus, obviously that's the Sunday school answer, but the earthly relationship that has changed and formed me the most is with the church, with the church. And I'd like to actually begin today by just telling a little bit of my story, since you don't know me, many of you, particularly as it pertains to the church and my relationship with the church. So I, from a young age, had a very difficult relationship with the church. I did not get along with the church.

And I went to, that's not because I went to a bad church. I went to a wonderful church. I went to the, from pretty, from second grade, I think. I went to the mother church of this church, Church of the Good Shepherd, as it was called then. And I had wonderful elders and pastors and lots of people that loved me and wanted to pour into me. But the problem wasn't with them. The problem was with me. And the thing was that My family had a lot of issues. My parents had a rocky marriage. They would eventually get divorced. And I just always felt like an outsider. I remember sitting in the pews like you are now and watching somebody preach and sitting behind a dad with his arm around his son's shoulder and just being filled with kind of bad feelings about that because I did not feel like I...

fit into that. Like I was part of that. I felt very shy. I felt very diffident. I was very dark. I don't know if we, do kids still use the word emo? Is that still a category of thing? Do they still make emo music? I was emo from a pretty young age and certainly through my teenage years. And so eventually I grew up and I got out of the house and I moved to another town and I was a Christian. So I went to another church But I carried that same sort of outsider-y, emo energy into my relationship with this other church. And I didn't know how to fit in, and I felt bad, and I kind of had a chip on my shoulder. I was kind of an angry young man. It was easy for me to be angry at the church and to see all the kind of hypocrisy in the church. But the problem was that I had, let's just say I had some mental health issues.

I decided that I needed counseling. But I didn't want to, so you might think where the story's going is I went and got counseling from the church. That's not what happened. I went and got counseling from a Christian counseling organization, paid my money, set up to have weekly sessions with this Christian counselor. And I went and I sat down with him and spent the whole first session just explaining what the problem was, what I needed help with. And then he said, come back next week and I will, give you my, you know, we'll begin to get into it. So I waited a week. I came back. I sat down. He said, Nathan, the first thing that you need to do is you need to go on Wednesday to your church and help set up chairs for the kids program. And that is how you're going to overcome all your issues. And I was like, I didn't come because I was having trouble setting up chairs or

or being part of the church, what does that have to do with anything? And he said, well, actually it has to do a lot with everything. Number one, you are just way too self-focused, dude. Like you need to just get outside of yourself, go be with other people, give yourself to other people. Number two, you are not, and this is a Christian counselor who's getting paid to be a Christian counselor and to counsel me, but he says, you're not gonna grow by just talking to me. If you will not plug in, to Christ's body, if you will not be part of Christ's body, if you will not give yourself to God's people, if you will not give to them and let them give to you, then you're just not going to see any real fruit. I'll do what I can for you. But this is a holistic thing. This is about, you can't just solve this issue that you've brought me in isolation. And your big problem is that you're not giving yourself to God's people.

So go do that. And then we'll, you know, talk about your dad and do all the stuff that you expected to do. And so I was like, okay. I didn't like it. I felt kind of gypped. But I said, okay, I will go and I will try. So I went on Wednesday and I helped set up chairs at this church. And I began to go to church and to attempt to have a cheerful attitude about going to church. It wasn't a magic potion that changed my life immediately, but I did find pretty quickly, I think within a few months, actually, that he was absolutely right. That actually, when I just went and gave myself to God's people and let them give themselves to me and tried to have a good attitude and be humble, things really did change.

Without even me doing anything specific to the issue that I went to him for, it got better. It got a lot better. And so I entered into a really wonderful period of my life, actually, where maybe some of you have had this. It's okay if you haven't, but maybe probably a lot of you have had that point in your life where you're just... Suddenly on fire for Jesus. You're excited. You want to be part of things. You want to be giving yourself to the Lord. Some of you probably had that experience, right? That was this time in my life. I was young. I was vigorous. I was excited about the things of God. Just kind of on fire and really enjoying suddenly being part of God's people and feeling really blessed through that. Then, unfortunately, the church that I was part of, through no fault of mine, failed.

It was a church plant and it just didn't work. And so suddenly I was without a church. And I was like, oh no, I need to find a church. I'm really excited about the idea of, you know, church and being part of God's people and being part of church. So I got to find a church. So I went to a bunch of churches in this town that I was in, trying to connect and find a church that would have the kind of... intimate love and relationship and discipleship and stuff that I was looking for. And looking back, this is over 20 years ago now, maybe it was my fault that I didn't find it. Maybe I just still had a lot of that emo spirit and I just couldn't, you know, maybe some of the churches that I went to are good, but we're good. But my experience was largely that I couldn't really find a church that worked. I remember I went to one for several

Sundays that I thought was pretty good. It seemed really godly. And then one day I'm sitting there and the pastor says, today, before I preach, what I'd like to do is actually spend some of the interpretive or some of the sermon time in an interpretive dance. And then he stepped aside and the music started, the lights went down, the spotlight, and this seems like a really solid church, I swear, up until this. And this woman all in white comes dancing out and prancing around the stage, and it is an interpretive dance about addiction. And so she is being destroyed by addiction, and addiction comes dancing out. It's a bunch of burly dudes in black leotards, and they are pulling her around the stage, knocking her around, and she's getting pulled down by addiction. And then, unfortunately, a guy dressed as Jesus came dancing out, went into the middle of addiction, kind of did like a Power Rangers move.

Addiction went flying everywhere. And I just thought, I don't think this is the church for me. I like interpretive dance as much as the next guy. But somehow, I don't think I'm going to go to this church. So I went to a number of churches, could not find what I was looking for. And I began to realize, wow, I really took for granted my church back home. And I would like to go back. And I'd like to be part of it. And I'd like to go back and have a good attitude this time. you know, try and leave some of that baggage behind. Problem was I was in a different town. I was up for a promotion at my job, but I just decided, you know what? I'm just going to burn it all to the ground and I'm going to go back. Now, it was easy relatively for me to do that. I think I had a few thousand dollars in the bank and I didn't have a wife. I didn't have a kid or anything like that. So, you know.

I could. I was in a position to just, but I just said, it doesn't matter. I don't know where I'm going to work. I'm just going to call my mom, see if I can move back. I just want to be back in the church that I know I should have always loved, but I didn't. And so that's exactly what I did. So sometimes, you know, I've talked to people, what do I do if I'm not, you know, my job takes me to a place where there's not a good church? Well, I don't know what I would say in any given situation, but for me, I did just, I would rather burn it all to the ground and go.

and be part of a good church. And so I went back, and I was part of this good church. And, you know, again, not a magic bullet. It turns out I carried a lot of the baggage still with me. It was still difficult. It was still awkward. It was still, you know, it took time to learn how to be a part of that church. But here's the thing. The decision to move back, to seek the church first, is, like, I'm a terrible sinner, right? I'm not trying to brag, but that is the key good decision of my life. It is the, the only one that even comes close is asking my wife to marry me. But this one's the first one, honestly. Sorry, honey. Put the church first. It totally changed my life in a way that wouldn't necessarily be true for everyone, but for me, My job came out of it. My wife came out of it. My kids came out. Like every possible good thing that I enjoy, God gave to me as a direct fruit of me just saying, I need a church. I got to be part of a good church. And so I love the church. And even when I don't love the church because I'm a sinner, God has used it in my life as the principal instrument to grow me, to help me, to love me.

And so the, you guys seem like a church that likes thesis statements. The thesis statement of this sermon is that God has called a people for himself. God has called and made a people for himself. And the question for you is just whether you'll give yourself to God's people. And I think there's two lies that kind of percolate. Even for a good church like this one, where obviously people are invested, it was really great hearing you guys sing robustly this morning. Like, you guys actually like to sing. You like to be here. That's great. But still, everybody here is going to be tempted not to think that the church is good. They're going to be tempted away from the church one way or another. And there's a couple ways that you can be tempted. Number one, you can actually not believe that the church matters.

You can just, on some, I doubt there's anyone in this room, maybe there is, but I doubt there's anyone who would just say, the church doesn't matter. But you can certainly be tempted functionally in the way you live to not show up, to not go to the extracurricular things, not show up for your small group, for to not give your heart, to carry bitterness, to not give yourself to God's people the way that you're supposed to give yourself to God's people. That's certainly. a thing that you might be tempted by. Just actually not really truly believing that the church matters, that it's God's people and that it's how he'll work in your life. I think the other way that some people in this room might be tempted away from the church is we might just feel a lot of church hurt. We might just feel, I mean, it's actually hard. It's hard being a church. It's hard living in.

intimate relationship with other sinners. It's really difficult. And as much as I love the church, and I do, I really am a big geek for the church. The church is great. But also, my biggest regrets are in the church. My biggest embarrassments are in the church. The place where I've been the most disappointed in people has been in the church. Certainly the place where people have been the most disappointed in me has been The church, the place that seemed to promise the most and then fall the shortest, the place where I've been the most angry with people, the place where there's relationships that have just been lost and I no longer talk to that person anymore. All that stuff actually is in the church. So being the church can be hard. It can be difficult. It can be complicated, relationally, emotionally, spiritually.

There can be a lot of pain involved in living in vulnerable community with one another. So I want to speak to all of that today. But first, I just want to read some scriptures and assert the importance of the church. So let me just go through three things that the Bible says about the church's importance in our lives. So three things about the church's importance in our lives. Number one. Very obvious, but worth saying. Christ came to save a people, not individuals in isolation. Ephesians 2, 18 to 22 says, For through him we both have our access in one spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and are of God's household, having been built.

on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole building being fitted together is growing into a holy temple of the Lord in whom you are also being built together into a dwelling of God in the spirit. Now there is so much that we could say about that. We could spend all morning just on that passage. We could spend multiple mornings just opening up that passage. But the thing that I want you to see principally It's just that we are a body, that God is making a people for himself, that every one of us is a brick in the temple. I mean, it's a really like kind of scary high calling, right? Every one of us is a little part of the temple that is the dwelling place of God. We are being built into that. So you, it's a dirty word if you don't, I'm not a big Marxism fan.

But we are a collective. We are a collective. We have a corporate identity. The whole American kind of pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of thing, individual achievement, is not Christianity, actually. It's just not. God did not come principally to save individuals and to give you an individual walk. He came and saved you to be part of a household. So that's the first thing. Very simple. Next, as I've been saying, Christ grows you. God grows you. He matures you through the church. You cannot hope to achieve maturity in your obedience to Jesus without the church. So we'll read from Ephesians 4, starting in verse 11. And he gave some as apostles and some as prophets.

and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. Now again, so many things we could say. We see there again the theme of us all being part of a body, a corporate identity.

What I want you to see there specifically is we reach maturity through the church. He provides the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ. To a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. God has given you, particularly your leaders, your pastors, and your elders to help you to grow, to disciple you, to mature you. And you're not going to get very far without them. You're not going to get very far in rebellion to them. And I would add to that, you know, not as important, but your small group leader, your godly mothers in Israel, right? Your wise older friends. God has given you the people of the church and particularly the authorities in the church to grow you.

There is no true growth. It's what my counselor told me all these years ago. He's like, you're not going to grow just with me. And I really think that's true. There's no true, lasting, good growth in God that just happens by yourself, you and your Bible. I think, this might sound a little scandalous, but hopefully not that scandalous. I think quiet time for many kind of modern evangelicals It's like our sacrament, you know, Catholics go to mass and they do the thing and then that infuses them with kind of a special grace or whatever. There's a lot of people that think, if I just read my Bible by myself and I pray, then I will be infused with special grace and I will have special insight and God will, you know, kind of owe me growth. And it's not, of course, you know, this is not against, I'm not preaching against quiet time. Of course, it's important. Of course, you should do it. Of course, God works through it. But man, a lot of people,

go very bad if that's the only thing that they have, if they're not being tempered by the church, if they're not rubbing up against other people, if they're not submitting themselves to the preaching of the word, if they're not submitting themselves to their pastors and elders. I think especially when it comes to fighting sin, many of us try to muscle through and fight our sin. We think we can fight our sin alone. And it's just not true. There's no, you know, one of the, I like action movies, right? One of the cliches that I've seen now for 40 years of my life that I'm so tired of is the action movie where there's like the really cool, you know, super assassin or whatever, the hero. And then 90 guys attack him and he defeats all of them.

You know, no sweat. He just takes them all. Now, maybe somewhere there is some, you know, maybe the CIA has a training program where you can learn to decimate a room full of enemies. I don't know. But what I do know is, as a Christian, you cannot hope to decimate a room full of demons yourself. You don't go it alone. You don't, ah, yeah, I'll just fight this, you know, this pornography addiction, this overeating, this pride, this lust, whatever. I can deal with it. No, no, no, no. You confess it. You ask for prayer. You take counsel. That's how you grow. You try and do it yourself, you'll just splat. It'll be bad, right? So Christ came to save a people. Christ grows you through the church. The third thing I want to say is because of all that, faithful Christians respond with commitment to the church, and we are commanded to respond with commitment.

to the church. Hebrews 10, 24 and 25 says this, and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the day drawing near. So it is assumed throughout the scripture that we are a body. It is taught that we are a body, but it is also commanded that we should give ourselves to the body. Christianity is something that we are commanded to practice together. It's like as if God is our Heavenly Father. He's saying to us, like, put down your iPhone, put down your Wii, go play with your brothers and sisters. I want you to do this together. There is no stirring one another up from a distance. There's no encouraging one another in isolation. There's no loving one another without proximity.

The Christian life requires committed presence. So all through the New Testament, all through the Old Testament too, it's assumed that we are baptized into a body, shepherded by elders, discipled by a congregation, equipped and nourished through the word and the sacrament, built up as a temple. I don't think there's probably anybody in here that would really argue with that. I mean, you all got up this morning, so that speaks pretty well for you. How do we go wrong? If basically everybody would agree with me, but I think many of us might also agree that, well, I don't actually give myself to the church entirely 100% the way that I should. So why not? Well, I already sort of touched on it, but let's go through it again. I mean, number one, you could just be an ignoramus. Maybe you just actually never knew. Maybe everything I'm saying to you this morning is news. You've never thought about.

the primacy of the church. Maybe there's somebody and you're, oh, well, okay. In which case, great. Now you can give yourself to the church. Wonderful. Problem solved. Maybe you're lazy. Maybe you just don't like to get up and go to things. In which case, you should go. Great. Problem solved. Maybe you're proud and you'd rather like find your internet preachers. Well, don't do that. Problem solved. But I think, I think actually, for many of us, what it is, is what I said before. Doing life together is just, it's painful. It can be painful. Letting other people see your sin is painful. And dealing with other people's sin is painful. And the church is full of sinners, chief among them, this guy. And so we're just going to do that a lot. Let's talk about both of those. Let's talk about being vulnerable about our own sin, and let's talk about dealing with other people's sins. So when it comes to being vulnerable with their own sin, there he is. Is that James? Deacon James back there? Hi. So fun fact about me, went to school with that guy. Grade school through most of high school, we were pretty good friends. His brother brought Napalm to school one day, but that's a story that I won't tell.

But we had a lot of fun. So here's a story that he definitely doesn't remember because it just doesn't matter, but it happens to involve him. So we were at, I was about 14. He would have been about 13. We were at a Subway sandwich shop together. And I had never been. For whatever reason, I made it to 14, and I never had the pleasure of eating at a Subway sandwich shop before. And Jamie was there. I called him Jamie back in the day. I was there. Some cute girls were there, I think. A bunch of high school people were there. And I went to order my sandwich at Subway. And I did not realize that Subway is one of those places where you go down the line and you say, I'll have a little lettuce, I'll have some vinaigrette, whatever. I just thought you went up and you ordered your sandwich like a regular restaurant. So I went up to the counter and I ordered my sandwich like an idiot.

You know, I'll have a black forest ham, whatever, with some chips in it. And the Subway lady, probably, you know, late 90s, making four bucks an hour or whatever, looked very confused. And Jamie kind of sidled up to me and he said, you got to go through the line. You got to do this. Like, he corrected me in my usage of how to get a Subway sandwich. In front of, as I said, important detail, cute girls. And I was really embarrassed. I was really embarrassed. That's the whole story. It's not that great of a story. And I'm sure you don't remember that. Yeah, well, you should. You should be sorry for what you did. I felt really embarrassed. I felt really bad because here I was trying to pass myself off as a man of the world who knows how to order a sandwich at a place, and I was exposed as a fraud.

As a clown, you know? All I wanted to do was eat fresh. Instead, I was eating humble pie. I tell that story precisely because it is silly. Precisely because it doesn't matter. And yet, I could probably, if I thought about it long enough, still put myself back there and feel burning shame. that I did not know how to order a Subway and that I felt stupid. You know, it's just one of those things. Objectively, I know no one cared, but I felt really stupid. And I still, you know, obviously, such a minor thing, I still remember it vividly. Now, if that is how bad I feel about being exposed as someone who doesn't know how to order a sandwich the right way at one of the worst restaurants, How do you think I feel about when people have opinions about my parenting? How do you think I feel about my sin being exposed? How do you think I feel about being vulnerable about just who I am in the mess of my life? The things I haven't figured out yet. The ways that I need to grow. It is hard to be vulnerable and be honest with people.

It is hard for people for the discrepancy between what we should be and what we wish we were and the way we'd like to portray ourselves. And then the reality to be exposed. If you spend too much time with people in the kind of fellowship that we are called to have, they will suddenly realize that you are not anything. And you'll have to deal with that. And it is hard. It is hard for me. And I would say, I would rate myself, not in the subway story, but generally I would say I'm pretty good at being kind of honest or whatever. I mean, I have other sins, but being like sort of what you see, what you get kind of thing is sort of who I am. But still, there's so many places where I just don't want people to see. I don't want them to mess. And so I draw back from fellowship. We can't do that.

We need to show up. We need to be vulnerable. We need to be real. Now, the second thing that makes it so hard to be in fellowship with each other is dealing with other people's sins, whether they're very minor sins or just stupid things or things that annoy you. There's all that whole category of things, right? But there's also like real sins that you will deal with as you... Live in fellowship with other people as you do Christian life with other people. Again, I have been so personally disappointed by people in the church. I've dealt with, you know, father figures who weren't so fatherly, pastors who had feet of clay, people certainly, as I've done, had the privilege to do some ministry, people who I've poured time and energy and money and...

hours at my house with my family into, and then they've spurned me and worse, spurned Jesus. Wolves, you know, actual predators, actual bad guys that come in among the flock. People I've loved where just complicated relational dynamics have kicked in and, you know, now we're not talking. It's really actually very hard. You know, you can't be a romantic about life together. I mean, I love the church and I love life together. And I think it is, you know, it's what I'm calling us to this morning because I think it's so valuable. And it's what God has for us. But let's not idealize it, you know? It can be very difficult. And there can be things that are so hard. And so what do you do with that? How do you process that? How do you...

Figure that out. Well, again, we could preach 12 sermons on that. But let me give one big answer. You need to understand that you are in the middle of something. You, as a member of the body of Christ, are in the middle point. You are not at the end and you are not at the beginning. You are in the middle. You are in... a process of transformation. You are in the middle of the church's becoming. Let me explain. So there's a famous passage about the church that I haven't gotten to yet, but I'm going to read it right now. This is from the great marriage passage that many of you probably read at your weddings, right? Ephesians 5, beginning in verse 25. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her so that he might sanctify her.

having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless. The church is Christ's bride. The church is Christ's bride. And he did not choose her because she was beautiful. He chose her when she was ugly, and he made her beautiful. And that work was accomplished on the cross once and for all, but there is still so much work to be done to transform sinful people like me, sinful people like you, into our little piece of the glorious, blameless, spotless bride.

into that brick that is worthy of being built into a temple that is the dwelling place for God. We are not spotless and wrinkle-free yet. We are not done yet. We are still becoming. It is messy. And oftentimes the work that God will give you individually as the church, as he purifies his bride, is the work that you expect to share the gospel with somebody, to invite somebody into your home, go and listen to the preaching of the word, to volunteer and play in the band, to, you know, all the stuff that we think, oh yeah, that's church stuff, right? But there is other work that maybe we don't expect. There's the work of having a hard conversation with somebody. There's the work of just working through very complicated things with people relationally, one step at a time, by faith, trusting God that we can get somewhere with this, even though I don't know how we're going to do it. Sometimes the work that God calls us to is to grieve. Sometimes the work that God calls us to is just to be sad for a little while over something and not rushing through it so that we can figure out, oh, that was God's purpose in that, and so now I don't have to be. No, no, no. Sometimes the work is actually to just be sad, and that's okay. Sometimes the work is to endure.

And if you find yourself in a place like that, where that's your work as a churchman, as a churchwoman, then the thing that you can't do is be surprised. Like, oh man, I can't believe it's hard and complicated when a bunch of sinners get together and try to be the spotless bride of Jesus. What a shocker that there's complications. What you can't do is be bitter, be angry, be upset. I mean, if you read the New Testament, you read the letters to Galatians, to Corinthians, to many of the churches, it's just like you can hardly believe that those are churches sometimes. Honestly. You read the seven churches in the early chapters of Revelation. It's like, well, this one's cold, this one's dead, this one's deserted its first love. But they were all worth the Apostle John writing a letter to.

It is difficult work. It is difficult work doing the work of being the body of Christ. We have to do it with faith. We have to do it with patience. We have to do it with understanding. And maybe most importantly, we cannot do it with bitterness. That is so, so easy. I mean, even with like not particularly dramatic things, it is just so easy to be bitter towards the person who has a tone of voice that you don't like, or you go to the... their small group at their house and the toilet paper in the bathroom wasn't replaced or whatever. I mean, those little things are opportunities that Satan will take to destroy relationships, to make us angry, to make us bitter, right? And so we must have faith. We must see that we have a wonderful opportunity to be a part of the purification of Christ's bride. And I think...

It's a little bit like, I always hate it when I hear people complain, you know, comedians will do routines about airplane, bad airplane food, or the headrests in airplane, you know. Oh, it's such a drag being on an airplane. The lines are so long, the food's so bad. And it's like, you're flying through the sky! It's a miracle undreamed of for centuries! And whatever accusation you can make against the church, Whatever you want to say about her, whatever scandal you're fixated on, whatever terrible thing, whatever personal injury you've received, that's just not the headline. The headline is the miracle of us being a body together. How much good fruit comes out of it all the time. It's incredible. It's absolutely incredible.

It is absolutely, the fact that God could take sinful men like me, like Daniel, like Abraham, like Eric, and suddenly we're the fathers of the church. That is a miracle. The fact that we could be the children in the church, that we could love each other, that we could help each other, that we can exhort each other, that we can rebuke each other. It's amazing that anything gets done at all when you think about how sinful you actually are. How petty you actually are. The fact that we are living, we are standing in an incredible miracle right now, and we just, we cannot lose sight of that. It is so cool. It is such a blessing, the body that God has given us to be part of. We had a thing happen at our church, a very terrible thing a few years ago, where a beloved family left very suddenly, and it was very hard.

It was, they handled it very poorly and it was just, it was difficult for all kinds of people. You know, one of the bigger things that our young church has had to deal with. And I was gone a lot that during those weeks, I was out, you know, had to go to a lot of late night meetings, some of them with this man that was leaving and just, I wasn't home. And my daughter, who was four at the time, asked, my wife, like, mom, where's dad? Where's he been? And she couldn't think of what to say to explain this complicated church situation. So she just said, he's fighting the bad guys, honey. He's fighting the bad guys to save the church. Now, maybe what she should have said is, God is fighting the bad guys through Jesus. But don't get hung up on that. That was just what she thought of.

to tell my daughter in the moment. And so the thing is, kids actually listen and pay attention to those things and take them seriously, right? So little Theo thinks, oh, daddy's out fighting the bad guy so that the church won't be destroyed. And we did not realize how seriously she had taken it until the end of that week, that Sunday, when we drove to church. My wife pulls into the parking lot. Theo sees the church building standing. And she puts her hands up in the air and she says, it's still here. It's still here. God saved the church. And man, what a sweet moment. I think about that all the time. I think about that all the time. And it's like my creed or something. It's still here. Okay. It's still here. And, you know, we can look back 2,000 years. We can talk about the Inquisition. Whatever you want to talk about.

Still here. You can look back at any kind of hurt, any kind of scandal. I know a lot of you guys, I mean, I'm talking around, I guess, the elephant in the room. A lot of you guys have pain, church, recent church hurt. And I don't know a lot about it, but I know you must have it. And it's still here. It's still here. And praise God for that. What a wonderful, wonderful blessing. So we love you guys. I love you guys. I commend your... elders and your pastors to you. And I hope you'll give yourselves to them and to this church with humility. And we'll certainly be praying for you at Church of the King. We love you guys. Let me pray for you now.