Where Do We Go From Here?

Transcribed from the service audio and lightly edited for obvious mis-hearings and paragraphing; wording is Bro. Leland's own. Scripture is quoted as spoken.

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Amen, thank you so much, Lexie, and all of our musicians, we're so blessed, we're so blessed. You know there is a story about an old church that was founded in 1000 A.D. So this church came to be in 1000 A.D. And about 200 years later, almost 200 years later, the roof needed to be replaced on this church. So it's an old church, it's been established for 200 years and so they needed to replace the roof.

And so the caretakers of the church went and found the original architectural drawings of the church. They wanted to know, well if we replace the roof, what does that mean? Now we're going to do that. And there was a note placed in there along with the drawings that simply told them that they had planted a grove of trees, a specific kind of tree, in a plot next to the church. And that they planted that tree because it would be good to replace the roof and anything else that the church needed in future years. And so when they built that church 200 years before that, somebody had the forethought to say, listen, we may not be here when this happens, but let's leave them the resources they need to take care of things whenever they come along. And so because of their foresight, the people that came after them 200 years later had the wood they needed to replace the roof because they had planted the grove of trees that helped them do that. Now I think that's an important point. You see, real vision does not just look at today, but it looks at tomorrow. It looks at those that come after us, a real vision. Now listen, 12 years ago this church was very kind and gave Rose and I a three month sabbatical. And I remember that we went to Montrose, Colorado, and we rented a home for about six weeks. And I would study in the mornings and we would do things in the afternoons. We had a great time together. It was a wonderful time. But one of the things that came out of that that I did not expect, I thought, well, I'm going to get up early anyway. So I thought I'll get up and I'll study at four in the morning until about 11 in the morning. And I'll come up with a whole year's worth of sermons. I mean, I was ready and I had thrown in a little carton thing some books that I wanted to read and some that I was interested in.

And I just happened to have thrown a book in there that talked about vision, the vision of a church. And as I began to read and study and the Lord began to speak to my heart, I realized that every church is unique like a thumbprint. Every church has its own thumbprint. And the Lord said to me, look, you don't need to go to the bookstore and get what the guys across the country are doing. Rick Warren, he did the heavy lifting over in California for his church. And he did what was good for his church, but that's not going to work in our church because every church is like a thumbprint. So the Lord kind of convicted me that when you get back from this sabbatical, you need to come up with a process. You need to come up with a vision that comes from me for First Baptist Church Minden, period. And you don't need to get it out of a book or anything else other than God's word. And so when we got back, I got my staff together and we began to process.

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It took us a year. We ask every question we could. What do we do good? What do we not do good? What kind of resources do we have? What are the needs in our community? What's unique about our community? What's unique about our church? How does all that fit together? And sometimes I would say to them on Tuesday, you're going to come to my house at eight and we're going to work all day until five o'clock and we're going to go through some of this stuff. And I'd feed them lunch and they would come and they'd work all day with me. We had a whiteboard and we'd write stuff out and all of these kinds of things. And we did that for a year to come up with the vision statement that we came up with. Well, then I said, well, you know, we need to get our leadership on board. We came up with a business statement. God gave us a vision unique to us. So I went to my deacons and I spent four or five hours one Saturday with them, went through the whole process, showed them the vision statement. They said, we love it. And we tweaked it a little bit and they said, oh, it's perfect. Then we got our Sunday school teachers and leadership together.

And we said, look, here's what God's led us to do through this whole process. This is the heavy lifting and this is the product of that. And they looked at it and we tweaked it a little more and we had our statement and then we brought it to you. And we said, look, God said to us, it's going to take 10 years to get to this vision. This isn't going to happen in a few months. It's not even happening in a few years. It's going to take 10 years to take a church that's 182 years old and transform the culture of that church to something that it has never been before. And so we were like, okay, so it was a 10-year vision. We brought that to you. We voted on that. That was in 2017. We're in the 10th year this year. I want to remind you of the vision. Can you throw that up there? This is the vision God led us to have. These words are all very important because we, listen, we, we went through this so many times for a year working on this.

Our vision is to intentionally, and that's an important word, intentionally develop followers of Christ and the faithful and passionate leaders who are persistent in serving, humble in obedience, active in sharing their faith and seeking to engage the world through a lifelong commitment to Jesus for the glory of God. That's our vision. That's the vision we've had for the last 10 years. Now I want you to turn in your Bibles to Galatians chapter six, but here's the question, and it's a good question, really. This question wasn't asked of me this week, but it was asked of somebody else, and I thought it was a legitimate question. The question was, so if God gave us a 10-year vision and we've, and this is the 10th year, where do we go now? Where do we go next? And I think that's a great question, and it deserves an answer. And I think what we, where we go next is we keep doing the vision until God enlarges it, changes it, or sends us in another direction. We just keep doing this vision.

44:01

So in Galatians chapter six, Paul is writing to that church in Galatia, and I want you to hear what he says in verse seven through ten, four verses. Here's what he says. [The reading of Galatians 6:7–10 was not fully captured in the audio.] While we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith. So that's what God says to us in Galatians chapter six. And he's, and I believe, of course, everything in the Bible has two different dimensions.

We can, it is all personal for each one of us. We can apply this Scripture to every one of our lives personally, but I think we could also apply this Scripture this morning to us as a church, as a congregation. And to the question of where do we go from here? Where do we go from here? Before I say that, let me just share with you some of the things that God has done in the last ten years. Things that we've seen God do in the last ten years as we've worked up to this vision. Now, what I came to realize is God said to us, it's going to take you ten years to get to this point. And then after that, you continue on. And it has taken us ten years. But it's an amazing thing to see what God's done to a church, a First Baptist church, 182 years old. And yet I've been here, I'm in my 19th year here. This church is not the same church it was when I first came here. I have members of the church tell me this is not the same church that it was years ago.

I have members in the community say to me, this is not the same church that it was. And I just have to say to God be the glory and thank you Jesus. Because that's the only reason it's not the same church that it was. But what are some of the things God's done in these last ten years as we've been working to see him change the culture of our church? Well, the most important thing, we have been privileged to see people saved and their lives changed. You know, we got a youth group, a lot of our young people, they come and they're so active in our community and in our church. And many of them come from families where their families don't go to church. They come without their families and they become an influence to their families when they go back home and take their Christian faith with them. Church planting, we've become a church that plants churches. Right now we've got three churches in the Navajo Indian nation that we're helping to plant. As a matter of fact, we've got a group of folks leaving this week to go to Gallup, New Mexico and they'll be working on the Navajo Indian nation.

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They're in the churches that we're helping to plant. And we've got two churches that we're helping to plant in Italy. So we've got five churches right now that this church is involved with financially in every other way trying to help them in planting the churches that they're doing. God helped us and through these last ten years we had a six and a half million dollar debt and today we have no debt whatsoever. It's paid off completely. There is no debt. We get the privilege of hosting the St. Jude 5K and Fun Run from our parking lot and from our buildings every year and we love that. We love to be a part of our community like that and we're given that opportunity. You may not know this but every May we host three high school graduations right here in this auditorium. Two of those are public schools and they're bringing the graduates and the families into a church, into our church, and they're having their graduation ceremonies right here in this very special place. We do service projects throughout our community. This church, our young people kind of led us in that and now the whole church has gotten involved in working in the food pantries and doing other things in the community as well. We try to do those things. We have a ministry every Thursday. We take the leftovers and we make a few more things from our Wednesday night meal and we bag up a bunch of meals that we deliver to our shut-ins on Thursdays. And then our young people have a thing they call Feed the Need where they come on Saturday and they make a bunch of meals and they deliver them to the homes of those shut-ins. Listen, I remember one Saturday I came up here to just observe it really. They were making about 80 meals that day. They made about 80 meals and boxed them up and they had them all where that group over there went to a certain part of town and they did it as much as they could where they kind of had a pattern.

So I went with some of the young people. Rose and I both did to these homes and these shut-ins. And you know, it's not like they were going to starve to death if they didn't get that one meal. But I'll tell you what they did need. They needed that personal touch from those young people and they knew those young people. A lot of times it was the same young people that would come over and over again to their home and they loved seeing them. Sometimes they were waiting at the door because they knew they were coming on that day. I'll tell you, it's amazing when those young people would look at them and say, how can we pray for you today? And then the young people would pray for them. I'm telling you, that kind of ministry is an incredible ministry. So we've had that ministry going on that God gave us. We've had an Embrace Grace ministry where we said, we don't believe in abortion. We believe abortion is the murder of a child in the womb and so what are we going to do about it? Well, we started a ministry called Embrace Grace where these young women that have no family, have no husbands, they're pregnant.

They can come and they go through about a 13-week Bible study and we give them a baby shower and we tell them about Jesus. And I'll tell you that it's an incredible ministry. There's one of the young ladies that came to our very first year of Embrace Grace. Our very first year. Through that ministry she came into our church. She got saved and she became a member of that church, of our church. And you know that today she's helping to teach Embrace Grace. Two other young ladies who are going through that very same thing. Embrace Grace. What an incredible ministry. We have literally a community-wide Wednesday night supper. You know, look, we talk all the time about why can't we get all the churches together? Why can't we just all kind of get along and get together? On Wednesday night we serve anywhere between 160 to 200 meals. And a lot of those, some of those people are from other churches.

51:00

They come and they eat with us. And so it's the time when the church gathers. And most of those people are our people, but some are from other places. And we're glad to have them. I've seen it before when we'd have linemen come into town for, because of the electricity or something like that. And they'd come in on Wednesday night and get a meal from us as well. Because it's the cheapest place in town to eat on Wednesday night. So they come and it becomes a community-wide Wednesday night supper. We've got a group of ladies that, they have a whole room up there where they sew. They're called the Dorcas ladies after the lady in the Bible, Dorcas. And they make all kinds of things. I have taken bags that they've made and filled them with rice and beans and gone to Nicaragua to the dump people. And given those bags out, they made the bags. They make those pillows, little heart pillows that you see in the hospitals. And they give them out to the hospitals. It's amazing. They make little pillows for the doctor's offices around here. My father-in-law, you know, passed away last December, but he lived with Rose and I for about 18 months.

And she had to take him to a doctor's office for something. And while she was in there, the nurse came in and she said to him, Mr. Chavis, would you like a pillow? And he said, yeah, that would really, that'd be good. That'd be nice. So she went and got a pillow and she said, you know, there's a church in town that makes us these pillows. And she goes, and by the way, I need to tell the receptionist to call them because we're getting low on their pillows. And Rose said, yeah, that's my church that makes those pillows. The Dorcas ladies, they're out there. Nobody, they don't, nobody pats them on the back. They don't beat the drum and let you know all of this. But they're faithfully, every single month, they're up there working, sewing, making dresses, making all kinds of things for nursing homes. They make blankets. They make all kinds of things that they are giving out. I cannot tell you the thousands of things that they have made and given out over the years. It's an amazing ministry. The Dorcas ladies. We have a ministry called the Heart of Grace.

It's a ministry to young women and families who have lost a baby. They lose a baby through a miscarriage or they lose a baby. Sometimes that's, that tragedy happens and we have a ministry where they take them a basket and they've got resources for them and they pray for them and they let them know that they're loved. We can't tell them why they lost their baby. We can't explain all the questions and answer all the questions. But what we can do is love them in Jesus' name and that's what that ministry does, that Heart of Grace ministry. We have a Salt and Light Sunday School class and they have a ministry too of adoption and foster kids. They do a big bazaar every November. They'll be doing it in a few weeks and it's a fun thing. It fills up the gym and listen, you go to that thing and there's all kinds of stuff. But all the money that's taken up there goes to assisting families that are trying to adopt a child or they're fostering a child. So that's an incredible ministry.

54:02

We're privileged to be able to do the Royal Family Kids Camp in the summer for foster kids. It's a special kind of camp. As a matter of fact, we're trying to expand that ministry now because those kids eventually age out of that system. And so now we're trying to expand it to the next level where we can continue to have, even after they age out of that system, we can continue to have an influence in their life and let them know how much Jesus loves them. There's so many other things I can tell you about that I haven't even mentioned. You've got GriefShare for those who have lost a loved one and they come and they, you know, all those things. It just goes on and on. If you saw our ministry fair a few weeks ago, you went in that gym and you just saw table after table. You saw ministry after ministry and those are all things that are happening now. We got one Sunday school class that does a clothes closet. The other day, Rose and I were made aware a few weeks back of a family that had run upon a hard time.

Which economically, it's a hard time. And most people live paycheck to paycheck and they had gotten caught short and they didn't have any food. So Rose went to Jody and Jody helped them get some food. But we got an idea and we were talking to Jody. We said, why couldn't we find an old freezer that somebody would sell us cheap and we could put it in the kitchen. And we could tell our guys, hey, you got some extra venison. You got some extra whatever. Come put it in that freezer so that when we have a need like that, we can send them to the freezer. And we can take care of those folks. And a lot of them might be our own folks. We believe in taking care of our own folks as well. So what I'm telling you is this, God has changed this church in the last 10 years. It is not the same church that it used to be. And when I read this thing and we say, well, what do we do now? We continue on. That's what we do. Just like he says right here, do not get weary in doing good. Don't get weary in doing good.

Now he starts off by saying, don't be deceived. God's not mocked. Whatever you sow, you're going to reap. Now we know that's a basic law of nature. Everybody knows that. I mean, I'm not going to take seeds that would plant an orange tree and end up with an apple tree. It's just not going to happen. Whatever I sow, I'm going to reap. But he goes further than that. He said, for the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life. You see, here's the thing. We always look at that and say, well, that's a bad thing you sow and you reap. Not necessarily if you're sowing the right stuff. That's not a bad thing at all. That's what he's saying here. If you're sowing the right stuff, this isn't a bad thing. This is a good thing. You're sowing what you're reaping. And so what are we sowing as a church? And what have we sown as a church? You know, whenever I look at that verse, I think about Mark chapter four. Mark chapter four is the parable of the sower.

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Jesus tells a story, a parable. He did that often. And he says there was a sower who went out to throw the seed. That's what he did. He sowed the seed. Now you got to understand in those days, they didn't have John Deere tractors. So they tilled up the ground everywhere and the sower, the farmer just got his seed and he just began to broadcast it everywhere. He walked around that field and he threw seed everywhere. And Jesus said now there's four kinds of soils. He said some of that seed fell on some hard, hard packed soil and it couldn't even get into the ground and take root and the birds came and ate it up. Those are people who just don't want to hear about Jesus at all and they don't care what you say. They're not going to be persuaded and they will tell you that. Never takes root. He said, but there's some of that soil that's about two or three inches deep and it took root and it looked really good until the sun came up and got real hot and the heat of the sun burning on it, it withered and it died because it didn't have a strong root system. He said that's those folks that come in our churches and they get really excited about Jesus for about a month and then we never see him again because whenever the heat of life comes at them, they shrivel up and they die. He goes, now there's some of those seeds that fell in the thorns. The thorns choked out the life of that seed. The thorns are those people who are more concerned about what the world can give them and what they can get out of this life than they are the life to come and what God wants in their life. They're concerned about wealth and they're concerned about fame and fortune and all those kinds of things. They're concerned about those kinds of things and so that chokes the life of that seed out. But Jesus said, but there are some of those seeds that fall on good ground and when it falls on the good ground, it takes root and it produces a crop 60 to 100 fold. Jesus said, where you sow that seed doesn't matter. See, the sower wasn't told to go and sow the seed in this place or in that place. He was told, just go sow the seed everywhere, broadcast it everywhere. You let God determine what grows. You sow the seed. And that's our job. That's what we're told to do. And by the way, Jesus started that parable off in Mark 4:3. He starts it off by saying, listen, listen to this. And he ends that parable in verse 9 by saying, he who has ears to hear, let him listen to this. I'm just going to tell you, if God says as book ends, he starts off and he finishes with the words, listen to this. I'm going to say that whatever's in between ought to be really important. Sowing the seed. And that is important over in 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 1. Listen to what God would say, I believe to you and I today as a church. He would say, therefore, since we have this ministry, as we've received mercy, we do not lose heart. Since we have these ministries that God's led us to start in our community to be a part of our community, to be the church that people say, we don't go to that church, but we're glad they're here to be that kind of church as we have received those ministries, he said. And as we realize the mercy we've received, we don't lose heart. See, sometimes we get where we forget the mercy of God in our own life. And when we do that, we're not as quick to share it with others as well. So yeah, I think that Paul says it really right in 2 Corinthians, chapter 4. That's a good statement for us today. He goes, since we have this ministry and we know God's mercy, let's not lose heart. That's exactly what he's told us here. Let us not lose heart in doing good. For in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.

So the question then becomes, okay, so why should we care about a culture that doesn't care about us? Why should we care about a culture that's really almost hostile to us at times as Christians? And let me tell you why we should care, because Jesus cares. That's why we should care, because Jesus cares. And you see it all through His Word. John 3:16, you know it by heart, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Absolutely. Over in Galatians chapter 2 and verse 20, that's a verse that many people know by heart as well. Paul says, I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me in the life which I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God. Listen to this, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. That's what Paul writes. That's the truth of God's Word, that Jesus loved us and gave Himself up for us.

I love Romans 5:8. Romans 5:8 is one of my favorite verses. But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. And certainly we can't leave out 1 John chapter 4 verse 19. We love because He first loved us. You see, over and over again in the Bible we see that. We see that Jesus cared about us. That's why we're here today. That's why we are Christians today. That's why we're a part of His kingdom and His family today. Why? Because He cared about us. And He also cares about the world that's out there lost with no hope. And they're all heading to hell as fast as they can. Not even realizing some of them, what's in store for them. But God.

1:03:02

So often in the Bible we see those two words, don't we? Everything was this away. Everything was messed up. The world's broken. The world is sin-cursed. All of that. But God. God wouldn't allow it to stay that way. God came. Jesus came. And He made the difference. And He paid that price on the cross. And He gave us His own righteousness. And He gave us His record of never breaking the Ten Commandments. And all of a sudden those who stood condemned, there was no evidence to convict them anymore. Because it had already been paid for. And there's no double jeopardy with God. Jesus paid it. And we get the privilege. We get the grace. And we get the mercy. But God. And that's what He wants to do in the world we live in. And that's why as a church we can't give up on the vision that God gave us. It's not over until He comes again. It's not over until either He comes again or He takes us home.

One or the other. It doesn't really matter. But then He goes on and He says this. Not only does He tell us in verse 9, let us not lose heart in doing good for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary. But then He says this. So then while we have opportunity, see right now we have an opportunity. Someday we may not have. There are nations in the world where they don't have the opportunities we do to share God's love with people. I've ministered a lot to Muslim people in different Muslim nations. I'm telling you they do not have that freedom in those nations. I witnessed to an Egyptian Muslim cab driver one time. He was talking to me about Jesus because they believed that Jesus was a prophet. They just don't believe he was the Son of God. And he's talking about the palm trees and they represent something about Jesus. And I said to him, so that must mean he was more than just a man. Oh man, I'm telling you immediately he went like this.

He was driving. Took his hands off the wheel. No, no, no. I'm like, yeah, go ahead and put your hands on the wheel. Let's drive. He's driving along and he's all and he begins to be afraid because I had said that this is that one phrase to him. He pulls up to a mosque, gets out of the cab, goes in and prays and then comes back out and finishes taking me where I was supposed to go because he was so afraid of the simple words that I spoke and the idea behind them. Listen, there are a lot of places where they don't have the opportunities we do. We've got the freedom to share. We've got those things in America right now. We may not always have them. I don't know. But Paul says while we have opportunity, this is our day. And we need to seize that day and not give up on that vision. While we have opportunity, he said, let us do good to all people and especially to those who are of the household of the faith.

1:06:02

He goes, do good to all people, but especially to God's people, especially those who are part of the church, part of the kingdom. Do good to all people, but especially, don't forget them as well. Now let me tell you what I worry about sometimes. I worry because I've seen, I read an article in a business magazine years ago and I don't really read business magazines. I probably was in a doctor's office and didn't have anything else to read. I don't know. But in this article, it talked about the life, the life cycle of a business. I thought that was kind of interesting. So I'm reading it and they said, this business starts off really aggressive. Man, they're going after business. They're calling people. They're going to door to door to homes. They're going to businesses. They're doing whatever it is, whatever product they're trying to sell that they're creating, they are going after it really aggressively. And their business begins to grow and they begin to make a profit and even more so and more so. And then eventually they get to a place where they say, now we have to protect what we've got. And so they start looking inward instead of looking outward. And their business plateaus. And eventually this article said one of two things happened. They either will develop a new product or improve the one they've got and change or they will cease to exist. They'll die. It's kind of like a prevent defense at the end of the ball game, right? That never prevents the other team from scoring. It's the same thing. We get so protective. And I've even had people say to me before things, you know, they'll say, well, what about, we got to take care of number one. I said, no, no, no, no, no, that's not the attitude that we're supposed to have. I had a deacon in another church one time, a long time ago, tell me. He said, the cooperative program is just another tax.

I said, no, you don't get it. No, it's not a tax. We're not being taxed. We're joyfully joining in with other churches to do missions around the world. Look, we can't say, well, we got to take care of here first and then take care of that. Why can't we say that preacher? Because of what Jesus said in Philippians two, do nothing from selfish selfishness or empty conceit. But with humility of mind, regard one another as more important than yourselves. Now listen to what he says in verse four of Philippians two. He's talking about Jesus. Now if we're going to be like Jesus, do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. We started a vision quest 10 years ago and God has blessed it. And we are not the same people and we're not the same church that we were 10 years ago. But I do not want us to ever look at the community out there and say, well, it's getting too difficult.

Look, let me tell you something. It is going to be messy. It's going to be costly, sacrificial costly, and it's going to be inconvenient. And it's going to put you out. People are going to start coming to this church and somebody's going to get your seat with your name on it. Right? Yeah. I mean, it's going to be costly and it's going to be inconvenient. I'm just telling you, we've got to go where it's costly, where it's inconvenient, where it's messy. We've got to continue to go there until Jesus comes back. We can't start saying we've got to draw back because it's getting too costly, too messy. We can't do that. What are we leaving for the next generation if we do that? God gave us a vision and we by faith stepped out on that vision and we have seen God do amazing things in the last 10 years in this church.

1:10:04

But he's not through yet. And he won't be until we're in heaven with him. And when we [unclear], we'll see him face to face. That'll be our vision. But until then, God gave us that vision. And I love it. We are trying to develop leaders intentionally doing that. I love it when Chad told me the other day, he said, you know, I had a pastor from a church in Ruston came up and said, thank you for sending your young people our way because they are making such a difference. It's amazing. They love that. Look, we are young people. I went to the BCM, the Baptist Collegiate Ministry, thing a week before last to their Tuesday night elevate. They have a Bible study. They feed the kids and have a Bible study. I don't know. There's probably a couple hundred kids there. And our young people were there. Some of our young people were there. We've got young people that are leading worship in churches, young people that are doing youth ministries in churches all over the place. That's what that's all about.

Intentionally developing believers of Christ into leaders, leaders who serve. That's encouraging to me. When I hear the testimonies, when I look at what God's doing in our church, that's encouraging to me. Let me just kind of wrap it up. Bob Edens, he lived for 51 years, completely blind. Couldn't see anything. The only thing he knew about the world was what he heard and what he could feel with his fingers. That's all. That's all he knew about the world. And then all of a sudden there was a new surgical procedure and they did this surgery on him. And for the first time in his life, he was able to see. Can you imagine opening his eyes for the first time when he saw the world, when he saw the office he was in, the first time he was completely overwhelmed. As a matter of fact, he said this. He was kind of astonished when he said it. He never would have dreamed that yellow is so yellow.

And he said, I don't have words. That's what he said. And he would spend his life after that watching jet contrails in the sky and watching sunsets. Things that you and I take for granted. Listen, God's love and grace and mercy in our lives is so precious and special. I don't ever want us to take that for granted. I don't want to be that kind of church that takes that for granted. Because when the church takes God for granted and the church loses sight of their vision and their ministry, you know what happens? They become like those businesses. When the church says, well, we're not going to change. We don't care what. I shall not be moved. That's my hymn. When the church says that right there, they die. I could name for you probably four or five churches right now in this area that are closing their doors. Why? Because they lost sight of God's grace in their life.

1:13:01

They lost sight of their mission. They lost sight of the vision that God gave them. We have a vision until God changes that vision, we're marching on. We're going to keep going. We're not quitting until God takes us home. I remember reading about Walt Disney. Before he built Disney World, he flew over that central Florida. It was just swampy land and dirt. That's all it was. He flew over it and he looked, but when he saw it, he didn't see swamp and dirt and all that. He saw a family resort where people could come and bring their children to a fun place with hotels and all the different things that they have at Disney World. And everybody loves to go to Disney World. That's what Walt Disney saw. Sadly enough, he died before the park was ever open. He died like five years before it was even finished. And his brother Roy Disney, he put his retirement on hold and said, I'm going to help make sure that my brother's dream comes true.

And I'm going to help make sure this is finished and open to the public. And so Roy Disney did that. Well, a reporter asked him one day. He said, listen, do you wish that Walt Disney could have lived to see this? Could have lived to see what's happened here? Roy Disney looked at him and he said, he did see it. That's why it's here. He did see it. That's why it's here. 30, 40, 50, 100 years from now. What will people see? Here. Well, they say those were some visionary people who never quit loving Jesus and loving people who never quit coming up with new ways to get the community into their church and get the church into the community. Well, they say that about us. How are we setting up the generations to come right here in Minden, Louisiana and around the world to continue to make an important point? We have got to throw the seed. And we don't worry where it lands. We don't worry where it lands. It's not our job. God grows the seed. We just throw it. We're just the sowers. Let's throw it everywhere. I don't care what part of town it lands in. I don't care what the economic status is it lands in. Let's throw the seed everywhere and let God do what God does. And let us not, dear ones, stop short. Let's don't say we almost completed the vision as a church. Let's don't say, well, we got close. We did 99% of it. No, no, no. See, if we stop short, it's a failure. Let us continue on until the day that Jesus comes again or he takes us home or he changes that vision or enlarges it to something else. Would you bow with me? In a moment, Todd's going to come lead us in a verse of invitation. And if you're here this morning and you've never made Jesus your Lord and Savior, and I don't care how many churches you've joined and how many baptisteries you've been in, really, it's not about any of that. That's just pure old religion and that's going to do nothing but have you stand before God and he's going to say, depart from me, you workers of iniquity, I never knew you. Because it's a relationship with a living God. If you don't have that, I would love for you to come talk to one of our pastors. We'd love to pray for you, pray with you, help you along the way. If you need a church home and you've said, hey, I think this is it. Why don't you come tell one of our pastors, I want this to be my church home. You need to pray with the pastor, you need to get on your knees at this altar, you're welcome to come today. Father, we are so grateful for what you've done in our midst.

Lord, some of this has really been miraculous. We look back of who we are today and what we were then and it's not the same. So much has changed in such a positive way. And Lord, we're not the only ones that have benefited from that, but churches all around have benefited from that very thing, that very vision as it continues on in the life of our young people and our folks that go to other places eventually, they move away. And we thank you for that. Thank you that we could kind of have as a church, a local church, an impact that's global. And we thank you for that. So Lord, bless us. Enlarge our territory. Lord, give us that commitment. We understand your grace because we've experienced it. And Lord, we want it for those folks out there that don't know you.

1:18:00

Help us, Lord, to accomplish this vision you've given us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Would you stand with me? Todd's going to lead us in a verse, just a verse of invitation. If you need to come, I invite you to come right now as he leaves.