Transcript Jake Barker Acts 6:1-7 Alright, well what s up Traders Point? My name is Jake and I am one of the pastors here. If this is your first time or you re new around here, we are so honored that you would make this part of your weekend. I want to welcome those of you who are streaming online, wherever you are in the world. We re so glad you tuned in. I want to give you a special invitation. Next weekend would be an awesome time if you ve ever considered joining us at a campus live. If you are in the Indy area, we have 13 services across three campuses. It would be awesome for you to join us to feel it and to even consider what it might be like to be a part of Traders Point. And finally I want to welcome all of our campuses. We are so glad that you ve joined us today for our fifth and final week in our series called Big Church. And over the last few weeks, what we ve been doing is painting a picture of a church we want to be. It s not always the church we are, because every once in a while we make mistakes and we fall on our face. But it s certainly the church we aspire to be, and that s the church God intended from the get-go. So if you missed any of the previous weeks, I d love for you to go back on our website or on our church app and you can catch up. Last week all three campus pastors preached live, and all three of those are available on the web. They did an incredible job. But here s kind of the way we ve been saying it throughout the series. We are really not all that interested in being a big church that just gathers a bunch of people for an hour a week. In fact, we re not really interested in being a big church. We re just interested in having a big impact. We want to have an impact on the lives of the people we know, the people we love. We also want to have an impact in the city we love. Because we believe the Christian life is more than just one hour a week, that it engulfs our entire life. Just all our cards on the table, just so you know who we are: We believe the good news of Jesus is the best news anyone will ever hear, and we want as many people to know it as possible. We want to have as big of an impact as we can. Now if you wouldn t consider yourself a part of this place, or you re not really sure you re in on church at all, you may be wondering and have some relatively reasonable skepticism whether a church leader or a Christian has enough self-awareness to talk about the church. You may be asking yourself a question like, Do they really know? Do they really know the problems of the church? Do they really know the reputation of the
church in the community, and how you guys come off to people? If you are skeptical of our self-awareness, honestly, I don t blame you because as one of them I know Christians in general are not always the most self-aware group of people. It s how we end up with tee-shirts that look like this. Take a look at this. It s a real teeshirt that someone made. It says, It Was Yoohoo He Died For, like the chocolate milk. Someone said this was a good idea and that he was going to make more than one of these and he was going to sell them. That was the business plan. If you have this teeshirt, do not raise your hand. You can go home tonight and burn it, and we ll never talk about it again. No big deal. It s how we end up with videos like this on YouTube. This is a real video on YouTube. It s a Christian break dance video. Somewhere there was a meeting and someone said, How are we going to tell more people about Jesus? And someone said, I know, old white people dancing. This is going to work. Like I m surprised anyone started following Jesus in the 90s. I don t know how it happened, but this stuff is real. So if you are nervous that we actually get it, I don t blame you at all because, again, Christians are not always that self-aware. Here s what I ll tell you. We actually spend a lot of our time as the leaders of this church having conversations with people who are not yet a part of this place. Honestly, we genuinely desire for them to know Jesus like we ve come to know Jesus. So we ask them questions and we re praying for them. We re reaching out to them. You actually need to know that the mission of this church is all about people who aren t here yet. It might sound weird, but we put it like this. We want to remove barriers that keep people from Jesus. We re convinced that there is a bunch of unnecessary things that get in the way of people knowing Jesus, and we want to be a part of the process of removing them, as many as we can, so people can see Jesus as clearly as we ve seen Him. And so, one of the major objections we hear when we re in those conversations sounds something like this. I don t like organized religion. That s why people don t want to come to church. That s why people are out on Jesus Himself. They don t like organized religion. In fact, at all of our campuses if you ve ever heard this or said it yourself, can you just raise your hand? Has anyone ever heard that line before? Look around you. There are lots of hands. People don t like organized religion. When someone says that, I don t believe they re advocating for a more disorganized religion. They re not looking for a sloppy expression of the church, that s not what they 2
want. What they re saying is they don t like the dark side of organized religion. What they re saying is they don t like it when people abuse their positions of leadership. We would have to be honest. There have been people in church settings who have leveraged their positions of authority to abuse the people they lead. That has happened. What they mean is they don t like the manipulation of Scripture to justify sinful behavior. We would have to be honest and say historically speaking there have been people who have used the Bible to justify behavior like chauvinism, racism, or greed. That s all true. If that s what you mean by, I don t like organized religion, I ll just raise my hand too. I m out on all that as well. The natural conclusion when you hear all those things is if that s possible if getting together and organizing as a church that it s possible it could go down that road, why even bother? Why would you even take the risk of being a part of a group of people who could potentially do those kinds of things to you? And the question is, Isn t my relationship with Jesus enough? Isn t my saving relationship, my individual relationship enough? Why should I ever be a part of anything except just me and God? What we re going to do today I m not going to spend a single second defending your previous experience. We know many of you show up to a place like this and you have been burnt by a church. You are hurt, bruised and you need to come here to heal. We say this a lot. If you need to stay anonymous and be in a season of healing, you are more than welcome to do that. You can just let us know when you re ready to be known. There are others of you who, maybe it wasn t a church, but you were hurt by some kind of leadership structure and you have some real trust issues with authority. You re working through those things. Again, we re glad you re here. Take your time to work through those. I m not going to spend a single second defending your previous experience. Here s what we are going to do. We re going to go back and look at the early church and ask: What did God intend for this to be? And is it possible that we, collectively, as a group of people, as the church at Traders Point, can become a church like that? What I think is true about you, because it s true about me and it s true about every single person I ve ever met, is that we all want community. We want to belong to a place. We want to be a part of something. Now there are some of you who showed up today and you don t have that at all. You would describe yourself as isolated, lonely, and you really want to be a part of something but you re not sure church is it. There are others of you who are like, I m kind of good. I have community. I have it in my neighborhood. I have it with my friends. I have a bunch of good work relationships. 3
So why in the world do I need church if I ve already got all of that? Here s what I d like to pitch to you today, and you don t have to agree with me yet or at all. But I d like for you to give it your full consideration. Here s what I d like to say. The church at its best is the best community you ll ever find. Church at its best, and sometimes it s not at its best and I get that, but church at its best is the best community you ll ever find because the church has one thing no other group of people has. In order to really flush that out, what we re going to do is spend our time in the book of the Bible called Acts. So if you have a Bible or a Bible app you can head that way. It s the fifth book of the New Testament. It s the Book of Acts and we re going to be in chapter 6. If you don t have a Bible, it s totally fine. The verses, they re going to be on the screen next to me. And if you re not all that familiar with the book of Acts, let me give you the lay of the land. Acts is a history of the early church. It s kind of how it all got started and how it grew, and really the beginnings of what we re doing right here today. And the church was launched with a bang. This guy named Peter, who had been following Jesus for the last few years, stood up in the public square and preached an incredible sermon. I mean, it was lights out. People were compelled and it cut to the heart. At least 3,000 people that day decided to follow Jesus and be baptized. They decided to go all-in for Jesus 3,000 people. It was amazing. Being baptized, what that means is it is an outward expression of our commitment to Jesus. It s when people go down into the water and are raised back up. It symbolizes dying to an old way of life, and coming up new, committed to Jesus. At least 3,000 people did it on that day. That s just amazing. But those people had no more dried off from their baptism before the early church faced opposition. The first form of opposition was from external pressure and external persecution from the local religious leaders. You see, they were not enthusiastic about another belief system infringing on their turf. So they intimidated and they bullied, and they threatened the local church leaders so they would stop preaching the name of Jesus. But these guys were so convicted and they were so courageous because of the Spirit of God within them, they looked them back in the eyes and said, We can t stop and we won t stop. And the church was not going to be deterred by the external persecution of the religious leaders. And then, after the outside persecution there was internal corruption within the church itself. You see, one of the values of the early church was generosity. And these people, they were selling their possessions and they were sharing their earnings with everyone 4
in the church so everyone had what they needed. But then along came one couple and they lied about how generous they were being. They falsified their giving report, and God punished them severely to snuff out that threat that threatened the life of that early church. So there was outside persecution and internal corruption, all in the early days of the church. Eventually, if you hang around church long enough you might hear someone, and it s usually a Christian, say something like this, I wish we could go back to being the early church. I wish we could go back to the early days because they were so pure. Today it s so messed up and they had it right. They are painting this utopian picture of some ideal community that, honestly, it just didn t exist because this is the truth: The church was messy from day one. The church has always been messy. There hasn t been a single moment when it wasn t messy. There was a couple who died because they lied about their generosity. And then there was another group of people who were starting a church, and they were requiring circumcision as an admission ticket. And there was this other church, and they were celebrating their progressive mindset so much they were affirming a stepson sleeping with his step mother. This stuff is messy, messy from day one. And you need to know if you are at any of our campuses and you are considering calling this place home, just fair warning we are messy. We are messy because I m here. And we re messy because the people around you are here. And we re messy because you re here. And what happens is all of us have this individual mess, and then we all meet together and all of the sudden there is this collective mess. And then your mess gets on my mess, and that s how this works. And if you ever find that perfect church that seems super-clean, don t show up because you ll mess it up. That s how this works. In fact there s this one commentator, his name is Ajith Fernando. I love how he put it, Every group of Christians that tries to practice true community will sooner or later encounter problems. So, even though the church was incredibly messy from day one, it was growing like crazy. Look what happened. Acts 6:1, here s what it says. But as the believers rapidly multiplied, there were rumblings of discontent. If you ve ever been a part of a growing church, organization, or team, you know what this is like. Things are growing, therefore they are changing, and so not everyone is 5
happy. There are rumblings of discontent. There was murmuring. There was grumbling. And I know you know what that kind of sounds like, but I really want us to feel it. At all of our campuses, I m going to count to three and you re going to turn to the person next to you and you re going to say the word grumble in your most dissatisfied voice. You re just going to turn to them and say, Grumble, grumble, grumble, grumble. Ready? One, two, three, go. Do you hear that? That is the worst sound ever. As a leader, it s like nails on a chalkboard, just people grumbling and murmuring and groaning. This is the worst. And I can imagine the way it was going here in the early church. They were looking at each other saying, Who invited all these people? I didn t invite them. Did you invite them? Where did they come from? They don t know what we ve been through. I remember when there were just 12 of us. Those were the good old days. That s when they listened to us. That s when I had a voice. Do they even know what s going on anymore? Grumble, grumble, grumble. At the end of verse 1 we figure out where the grumbling was coming from. Let s read it together. It says this. The Greek-speaking believers complained about the Hebrewspeaking believers, saying that their widows were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food. Let me break this down for you. This church was in the city of Jerusalem. At this point in history Jerusalem had become the middle-eastern version of Boca Raton. All these widows were moving in to retire and live out the rest of their days. There s shuffleboard and Jell-O the whole deal. All these widows were moving in and they didn t have resources for a couple of different reasons. Maybe their husbands passed without leaving them the necessary funds to live out the rest of their days. Some of them had participated in the generosity of the church and they had given so much away that now they were in real need. So they needed to be taken care of. Now if they didn t have relatives in the city, the church took responsibility to make sure the widows were cared for. Now there was a Jewish system of distributing resources but because these widows had now converted to Christianity, those resources were most likely not available to them anymore. So now it was on the church to take care of them. Here s where it gets sticky. Not only was the church messy from day one: The church was diverse from day one. So remember Peter, they guy who stood up in the public square and preached the 6
sermon? He was one guy preaching one sermon in one language, yet miraculously people from all different kinds of languages heard that sermon in their native tongue that day. God did not want language to be a barrier to keep people from the good news of Jesus. He made it as accessible as possible from the very moment the church was born. So that means, amongst those 3,000 people who responded, there were people who spoke different languages and they all joined the early church. So here in this church in Jerusalem there were some widows who spoke the Hebrew language of Aramaic, the ones the church leaders spoke, and there were other widows who spoke Greek. The accusation that s being leveled against the leaders of the church is that the ones who spoke the Jewish language, they were being taken care of. But the ones who spoke Greek, they were being neglected, ignored, or even discriminated against when it came time to get the food. So let s, just for a second, feel the weight and the possible ramifications of the accusation. Here s what they re saying: Certain people are being neglected because of their language, ethnicity, and culture. Now one more time, just to see if this sounds familiar: Certain people (in the church) are being neglected because of their language, ethnicity, and culture. Does that sound familiar? In fact, that s the same ghost that has been haunting the American church for the last 250 years. Depending on where you come from, depending on what you look like, depending on what language you speak, it s affected how you were treated by the church. For all intents and purposes, from everything we know, it does not seem like this was an intentional neglect or intentional discrimination. It just seems like a purely administrative oversight by the leaders in the church. But we know that with any group of people, especially in a church, the small little things like organizational misalignment can grow into massive molehills where there are accusations leveled against leaders integrity. Here s what could happen. When you see this, when you see this organizational mistake, you can easily come to the conclusion that, Wait a minute? Do we like the Jewish people more than we do the Greek people? Do they get better treatment than the other widows? Do these guys know what is going on? Are they even aware of what is happening in their church? Are they just in it for themselves? This kind of thing can grow, and grow, and grow in churches. Over decades, churches have split over things like this over and over again. So what we have here is a true test of community in the early church. It s easy to be in 7
community and everything is awesome. Everyone s happy and you re in the honeymoon phase. That stuff is easy. That stuff doesn t count. It s in moments like this you really test the nature of a community. When things are threatening to fall apart, how do people respond? Now watch how the early church leaders responded in verse 2 through 4, So the twelve called a meeting of all the believers. They said, We apostles should spend our time teaching the word of God, not running a food program. And so, brothers, select seven men who are well respected and are full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will give them this responsibility. Then we apostles can spend our time in prayer and teaching the word. Alright, now when the author, a guy named Luke, when he referred to the 12 he s talking about the guys who gave up their livelihood to follow Jesus and learn from Him. And they were tasked with representing Him when He was gone starting the church. So they were the guys people were complaining against. They were leading the church. This was a problem. People were looking at those guys and saying, What s wrong with them? So it s important to notice how they responded to the criticism. They could have looked at this and said, Let s just kind of ignore this deal. Let s sweep it under the rug because this is bad PR for a local church. Imagine the news tonight if you heard this story: Local Mega-church Preaches to Thousands: Lets Widows Starve. That s not a great look. They easily could have just ignored it. They could have grown defensive and said, You don t know what it s like to be me. You don t know what it s like all this pressure I have I was just a fisherman. I didn t ask for all this responsibility. I didn t go to school for all this. Why don t you try to do what I do? They could have gotten defensive, but they didn t. They could have withdrawn from relationship and said, How could you question us? How could you question our integrity, our character? We ve known each other forever. You know me. How could you do that? They didn t ignore it. They didn t get defensive. They didn t withdraw. They called a meeting and they tackled the issue head-on because you know this, and I know this: Leaders take responsibility. At this point in the life of the early church, these 12, their names were on every responsibility. They were preaching, praying, counseling, discipling, developing, budgeting, and they were running this food program. They had everything on their plate. And the truth is, this church had grown to thousands and it was impossible for 12 people to run the whole deal. Honestly, no matter what the scope and scale of the church, no one should do 8
everything. No one should ever do everything. There are certain people who are good at things, and other people who aren t. There are certain people who have certain gifts, and certain people who don t. We need everybody together. That s the point of the church. No one should do everything. So what they did is they said, We know our particular gifts and callings. The apostles, the 12, they were called to preach and to pray. That was what they were uniquely setup to do and that was their primary, not exclusive, but primary responsibility. So they had to prioritize their time to make sure there was enough time for that. So they raised up seven other people to have the responsibility to own the food program. They delegated responsibility and they organized the early church. Now there is a truth we can t afford to miss and we need to spend some time chewing on it. It is this. At no point did the 12 say, Preaching and praying is the really important stuff, the spiritual stuff, so we need someone else to deal with the food program. They didn t say, We re going to do the really cool stuff, the really important stuff, so we need someone else to take care of people with their murmuring and complaining. They didn t say that at all. In fact, the truth is: All service is spiritual. All service is spiritual. No matter what you re doing, all service is spiritual. How do we know that? Well if you look at the qualifications they required for the people who were going to run the food program, they were three things. They said they had to have a good reputation, they had to be full of the Holy Spirit, and they had to be full of wisdom. Those were spiritual qualifications to run the food program. So they didn t say, Hey, who here is the most proficient at MS Excel? We just need a spreadsheet. Could someone just organize this deal? They didn t say any of that. They said, Who are the most qualified people to run this? with their character first and their skill set second, because all service is spiritual. Now one of the greatest disservices I believe the church in general has done, I believe it s mostly unintentional, is that we have accidently communicated that there is some hierarchy of gifts, strengths, and callings. As if certain things are more important than others. I get how that happens. There s like platforms, microphones, and spotlights and you can kind of come to the conclusion this might be more important than other things. But I sincerely believe this. What I am doing right now in this moment is no more spiritual and no more important than the people who at this moment are hanging out in the Kids Ministry and investing in our kids. It s not more important. It s not more spiritual. They are equally important and equally spiritual. 9
What they re doing is they are giving up their time and investing in young people. They are making the good news of Jesus as accessible as possible to those kids and partnering with parents so that someday those kids can have a relationship with Jesus. That s incredibly important and incredibly spiritual. What I m doing right now in this moment is no more spiritual and no more important than those people who helped you park your cars when you were coming in today. And the way some of you drive, they are the real MVPs. Especially you, sir, at the North campus in the third row. We saw what you did. You should be ashamed of yourself. It s disgraceful. It s unbelievable. They are trying to create an environment where people can come and know they are welcome here and they can hear about Jesus and that they belong before they believe. They are very much contributing to everything that is happening here. This is no more important, no more spiritual. I can t put it any better than the apostle Paul put it. He said it like this in 1 Corinthians 12:5, There are different kind of gifts, but the same Spirit is the source of them all. There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us. All service is spiritual, but that s not enough. We can t stop there. Here s another disservice that I think maybe we ve accidently communicated. There are certain people who are really called and gifted and there are certain people who are like normal. There are two categories. There are the called and gifted, super-christians and then there is like everybody else in the normal category, if that s a thing. And this may not sound true. You may not agree with me yet but consider this: All Christians are called to ministry. If you re all-in for Jesus, you are called to ministry. Now again, we kind of did this thing where we said, Okay, those people who are called to ministry, those are the kinds of people who work at a church. Or they re the ones who move to another country, and they serve as missionaries. Or maybe they get the role of elder. But I m a normal Christian. I m a normal person. I ve got a life and I just kind of chip in every once in a while but I m not called to ministry. Here is the problem. There is not an ounce of evidence that there is such a thing as a Christian who isn t called to the ministry. In fact, and here is the cool thing, there are many of you, actually all of you, who will have a ministry and a platform that someone like me will never have. Here s how I know. People like me who have titles and roles and these kinds of things, we have one 10
challenge in our normal, daily lives. It s when we get to know people and in the midst of small talk it comes to that dreaded question we have no idea how to answer, which is, What do you do for a living? I usually say, I m a Pastor, and I m not ashamed of doing that. It just simply changes the conversation. Peoples body language gets really tense. Then they apologize for some of those words they used earlier in the conversation. I m like, No, no, no, you don t have to apologize. I try to figure out a different way of saying it, I help lead a community organization that s invested in the spiritual and emotional health of people in the It doesn t work. People get weird about that too. I am toast. I cannot explain what I do without changing the whole deal. You? You don t have that same challenge. You have a platform and a relationship I don t get to have. In fact, I m meeting with a guy on a regular basis. He s a young guy named Mitch and Mitch is a personal trainer. He s the nicest guy on earth. People love Mitch. Every day he has a captive audience with individuals who are coming to him particularly for advice on physical fitness. He gets to have relationships with them and he can lead them and even minister to them. He has a platform I don t have. No one is coming to me for advice on physical fitness. I don t know why. It hurts my feelings a little bit, but that s fine. Mitch has a ministry I will never have. My wife and I lead a group in our neighborhood and we love it. There s a guy named Craig and he has served in various roles in our homeowners association in our neighborhood. If you want to see the darkness of humanity, you just need to look at a homeowners association Facebook group. That s where it all comes out because the grass in the median is a half inch longer than it should be, and the street youths are playing their music to loud and someone needs to do something about it, and apparently that s Craig s job. Craig has an opportunity to receive them in apparently the darkest moment of their lives. He can do it with patience and grace and represent Jesus. There s another guy in our group and his name is Kevin. He coaches his daughters softball team. I don t know if you ve ever coached seven-year-old girls in organized sports but it is a test in patience. So he does so with grace, and he has relationships with the families. Mitch, Craig, and Kevin, they have platforms and ministries I will never have. All Christians are called to ministry. You see, this extends way beyond one hour a week where we contribute in a place like this. Ministry is every day. Here is my simple question, and it s the only question I m going to ask you all day long: 11
What is your everyday opportunity? If you re all in for Jesus you just need to know you ve been called into ministry. Whether you signed up for it or not, whether you realize it or not, you re in. So the question is: What is your everyday opportunity? What is your unique platform that someone like me will never have? Watch what happened once they started delegating responsibility and ownership within the church. Look what happened in verse 7. So they organized the food program, and then it says this, So God s message continued to spread. The number of believers greatly increased in Jerusalem, and many of the Jewish priests were converted too. So the apostles, they took responsibility, then they delegated responsibility, and the Word of God spread. The church launched with a sermon and spread with organization. This whole behind the scenes administrative gifts, they re not less than. They are not less important. They are just as spiritual and as much a part of being a church with a big impact. So I want to return to my simple question and it s the one I want you to chew on all week long. It is this. What is your everyday ministry opportunity? Here at Traders Point we believe the best way of applying what you hear in this context in your life is by being a part of a group. We want to make this place a little bit smaller. We want you to connect with people and grow in your faith, and the best way of doing that is by joining a group of 8 to10 people, meeting on a regular basis, and talking about how you are growing in your faith. If you re not a part of a group, we d love for you to stop by Connection Central at all of our campuses and find out what it s like to be part of a group. You can even sign up for one today. If you re in a group, this is really where we want you spending your time: What is your everyday ministry opportunity? I just feel you have a platform you didn t realize you have. You have people in your life God actually put in your way, and you re passing them by because you thought it was ordinary, normal, and you didn t see it as spectacular so you dismissed it because it wasn t an opportunity. Here s what I m saying. You have everyday ministry opportunity to make a big impact in the lives of the people you know. We want to be a church that makes a big impact, and it s not just collectively as we meet together but it s with individuals as believers in Jesus as we live out our faith in our everyday life. So let me wrap up our series like this. Like I said before, I believe the church at its best is 12
the best community you ll ever find. I believe that because the church has one thing that no other group of people do, and it s the simple thing called the gospel. The gospel is the good news of Jesus and it goes like this. It says because of our sin When we fell short of the standard God set it put us in debt to God, a debt that we could never pay. There was this great chasm between us and God and no amount of good behavior, no amount of hard scrubbing could get that dirt off us and get us back into relationship. We were toast. We had no hope. So what happened is God, even though we didn t earn an ounce of His mercy, He sent His Son Jesus on a rescue mission to save us from our sin. And Jesus stood in our place and took the punishment we deserved and instead gave us the reward only He could earn, which was a good relationship with God. And now, as a church, we gather together and we re exclusively this you ll not see anyone other than sinners saved by grace. There s not another category. That s all we are, sinners saved by grace. So because the church has the gospel, all of us are on the same level. You can t possibly show up to a room full of messy people with your mess and say, I m better than you. It doesn t work. It doesn t make any sense. There is no room for arrogance in a room full of messy people. We say, You know what? We needed a Savior, and we all need a Savior, therefore we re all on the same level. And because the church has the gospel, you and I, we can find unity in the midst of our differences. And we may come from different neighborhoods, and we may come from different languages and church experiences, but we can find unity in the fact that we have one Savior and His name is Jesus. And we have one mission, which is to make Him known. And because the church has the gospel, you and I, we can become a people who are purely selfless. I ve got to be honest, I haven t seen that anywhere else in the world. The Bible says we consider others better than ourselves. That means we are continually lifting people up, not trying to climb over them as if they re some ladder of success. We are continually pouring out every ounce of generosity God has given us because we realize we are recipients of the greatest act of generosity ever in the world: Jesus dying for our sins. Because the church has the gospel, I believe it is the greatest community the world will ever find. I just need you to know I love the church. Of course I do, I m biased and all that. I need you to know I loved the church before I started working for one. And I ve seen it all. I love the church and I know her warts, and her bumps, and her bruises. I ve been loved by people in the church, and I ve been hurt by people in the church. And I ve been encouraged by people in the church, and people in the church have gossiped about me personally. 13
I ve seen it all, I ve experienced it all and I m telling you I still love the church because the church is the only place I found in my life where I could show up and say, I don t have it all together, and someone else said, Me too. And someone else said, Let s do this together. When we realize we are nothing more than sinners saved by grace, we can become the most beautiful collection of misfits and works in progress, all for the Glory of God. I love the church and I hope you love her too. And we would love for you to be part of what God is doing in and through Traders Point. So let me pray for you. Father, we are so grateful for Your word that makes it clear who we are and who You are, and how grateful we can be that, even in the midst of everything we bring to this table, you loved us anyway. You showed us mercy. You showed us grace. I pray that truth rings in our head all day and all week and for the rest of our lives. That it can become the filter through which we operate every single day. And it s in Your good name we pray. Amen. 14