All right, amen.
Well, hey guys, welcome to Mercy Hill at all of our campuses today. My name is Pastor Andrew, and I want to say a special welcome if you are coming here from Church at the Ballpark. All right, so if you came to the ballpark and that was your first time and now you're here, maybe we want to say welcome to you. We are going to be getting into some regroup stuff and this is regroup weekend, but before that, I just want to celebrate, guys. We had an incredible event at Church at the Ballpark.
Let me say three numbers and we'll celebrate these things together.
Okay, it was just under 6,000 people, 141 baptisms, and 138 first-time guests. Can we praise God for what He did? Man, and I want to tell you: if you are one of those, listen, you cannot pull off an event like this without amazing serve teams, okay? And so, when you go to a big event, like at a Coliseum or something like that, the big difference is they're paid staff, they have this huge staff that's like they pay. And of course, we have a staff at Mercy Hill, but not enough people to pull off something like this.
I mean, this is pulled off because of our incredible serve teams. You guys answer the bell every single time we do some kind of event with enthusiasm, and I am so grateful for that. The other thing I want to do is I want to shout out our incredible Mercy Hill students.
Okay, if you guys were there, you know why. They got down on that ball field and just sweated it out. I'm talking 120 degrees, all right. And man, it was they were leading in worship and all of that. When we got there, there was a big gap between where I was going to be preaching and where people were in the seats, you know, in the stands.
And so, those students came down, like filled that whole infield. And so, man, I just want to tell you, we have an incredible student. Ministry here.
So, thank you guys for many of y'all who did that. We saw some incredible stories, too, y'all. We had a college student that gave her life to Christ last year at Mercy Hill. And man, she ended up getting baptized last year, did City Project this summer, has been praying like crazy. Her parents and her brother, she's been sharing with them, sharing with them.
They have recently gotten saved. She baptized them at the ballpark. Can you believe that? Incredible. Um And man, I got a bunch of stories, but let me give you one more segue actually into our message to today.
So, from our High Point campus, we have an incredible family that has adopted these two kids. You guys know at Mercy Hill, those are special families, man. These are chosen families, chosen kids. And they were doing the counseling for the child who was gonna be baptized and was baptized at the ballpark. And they're doing the counseling and they say, What has Jesus done in your life?
And just the heart of a child, right? She says, Number one, he saved me, and number two, he gave me a new family. Right? And what's awesome about that? What's awesome about that is the segue is perfect because, child, you are so right.
He gave you a new family on earth and in heaven, right? And that's what we're going to talk about. If you have a copy of scripture, turn with me to Acts chapter 2. And I want to talk to you guys for just a little while this morning about the concept of Christian community, Christian friendship, doing life together, however you want to say it, right? Christians grow in their maturity in Christ together.
They grow together or they don't grow at all. All right, and that's what we're going to get into today.
So, you know, just to kind of put it in context, grouping together is one of the four tenets of discipleship that we talk about at Mercy Hill a lot. We call it our Acts 2 flywheel. All right, now I'm actually not preaching on the Acts 2 flywheel, even though I'm preaching from Acts 2, but I'm preaching a part of the flywheel, which is group and fellowship. But I want to give it to you. Here's our Acts 2 flywheel.
This is how we talk about discipleship: gather, group. Give and go. These are not the only four things you ever do as a believer. But I'm going to tell you, if you commit your life to these four things, you will go way down the field, all right? It's almost like these four things create kind of a raging current.
And if you jump in the current, you'll move down the river of maturity, okay?
Now, um, The thing about these four is that they're pretty simple, but simple don't mean easy.
Okay, so a lot of times people want to think Christianity is super complex. Oh, I don't know how to grow as a Christian. It's so complex. It's so complex. No, it ain't.
It ain't that complex. It's just hard. You know, those are two, those aren't, those aren't the same thing. I remember I had a good example of this. One time I was sitting around.
And I was reading this article from John Cena in a bodybuilding magazine because that's just, you know, obviously what I do with my spare time.
Okay. And so, you know, so I'm reading this article, and it was shocking to me. I mean, you know, you're talking about these guys that are just the epitome of like, you know, muscle and health and all this stuff. And he says, he says, hey, they were asking him about, man, a healthy life. He said, man, we all know what to do already.
All of us know what to do. Eat the right stuff, drink a lot of water, exercise, and sleep a lot. And what's funny about that is you go to the bookstore, and there's a thousand books lined up to tell you a thousand different things about what it means to be healthy. And it's so complicated. I don't know what to do.
I don't know what to do. And John Cena's like, that's kind of bold, man. We sort of know what to do. Eat right, sleep good, drink a lot of water, exercise. We all kind of know.
It's not that it's complicated, it's just that it's hard. Like it's hard to build that into our life, right? Same thing with the faith, these things are not complex, it's just kind of hard to build it in. We're going to need a great value statement: man, why do I want to be in the Christian community? Because a lot of people are like, Man, I don't have time for that, I don't want to do that.
Okay, then why?
Well, here's what we're going to talk about today: God's people. Are devoted to fellowship. This is a mark of Christianity. has been for 2,000 years, will be into eternity. A mark of Christian community is the devotion to the fellowship, to the koinonia, the Bible calls it, to the close relationships that God would give us together in order that we could grow.
Why? Because we either grow together or we don't grow at all.
Now, I know some of us right now, exactly now, are going to start with the excusitis, okay? You catch a case of it real fast.
Well, I don't like people.
Well, I'm an introvert.
Well, I don't have time.
Well, I'm just not really wired that way. I don't know what to tell you this morning other than this. I'm going to say it to you just like my two sons would say it to me. You got all these excuses. Boohoo, man.
Boohoo. I mean, you can have all the excuses in the world. It doesn't change the way that God has set up our Christian growth patterns. It just is what it is. And so, what I want to do is try to give us a picture of the goodness of it.
To try to convert the heart a little bit to say, hey, you know what? I'm gonna, and then I wanna talk to you about: man, if Jesus died to bring us into not just an individual relationship with God, but a people of his own possession. If he died to bring us in, then why would we neglect the assembling of ourselves together and the fellowship that he has bought for us? Acts 2:42 says this: And they devoted themselves. Think about that word, the weight of that word.
They devoted themselves. What are you devoted to? To the apostles' teaching and the fellowship and to the breaking of bread and the prayers. That's four things: teaching, fellowship, prayers. breaking of bread that probably not just not just meals but communion.
Okay, the communion meal. and to the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. We could talk a lot about wonders and signs, but today I want to camp on this idea of group. Guys, Acts 2:42 through 47 provides a picture of the early church.
It's a summary statement of what it looked like to be in the early church.
Now, this is what is so interesting about the Bible and the Christian movement for 2,000 years. Many times the scripture tells us what to be devoted to. without exactly telling the church how to be devoted to it. All right, so I just want to let's just go through this, okay? There's four things that the church was devoted to: teaching, fellowship, communion or breaking of the bread, and the prayers.
Okay, we know that they were devoted to it, but do we know exactly how they were devoted to it? The answer is really no, actually. And I think the Bible does that by design. Why? Because there's a lot of differences in people then 2,000 years ago versus us living right here in the United States, kind of modern existence with cars and internet and cell phones.
And all and all the different differences of all the peoples that live all around the world. My point is: this: the Bible tells us what to be devoted to, but it gives the church a lot of freedom in how we are devoted to it, and exactly what that looks like in different contexts. You could say it like this: faithful churches should never. Change what they are devoted to. But they often change how they are devoted to it, how we go about it.
Think about this, right? Think about teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayers. I want you to just think about Mercy Hill Church, okay? Mercy Hill Church, we do fellowship in three group sessions a year. They're a sprint, not a marathon.
Man, we do them like 10 weeks at a time. We are actually a multi-site movement.
So when we say the word gather, we talk about gathering in different services. I mean, there's dozens of services on the weekend when you think about all the different campuses. And we do it in different locations, but we use technology to say we're gathered together. We do communion, one time a series. I generally preach for about 35 minutes, which is probably the funniest thing I'm gonna say today, okay?
You think about all of these things that we do, all right? Do you realize none of those things are in the Bible? That I just mentioned. None of them. You know why?
Because the Bible tells us what to be devoted to, and it gives the church a lot of freedom in how we are devoted to it. Everything that I just mentioned, there's great faithful churches in Greensboro that do everything the exact opposite of the way I just do it. They might preach for an hour, they may never do multi-site, they may have three group sessions a year. No way, we're going to do group every single week of the year, whatever. It's like this idea of the what is what we're devoted to, the how is sort of how it plays out in each local body.
Now, you say you're camping on that. Why does it matter? Because I want to tell you the how at Mercy Hill in terms of ministry, in terms of ministry philosophy, okay? There's four things that we're devoted to: teaching, breaking of bread, fellowship, prayers. Teaching and breaking bread.
Happen in the gathering for us generally.
Okay?
So I preach the Bible, or one of our teams preach the Bible on the weekend. And then we also do what? About once a series, we do communion. These are very important. It's very important.
Don't neglect the gathering.
Okay, the gathering is where we have the life-changing word of God imparted so that our heart can be changed. This is the big difference, y'all, between Christianity and much of the world. And when you think about a modern kind of post-Christian society, you think about Europe, you think about the way the United States is heading. You just have a different worldview. You and I, if you're a believer, I know not everybody's there, okay, but you and I.
We believe we come to church to hear the word so that we will change. We think the community of faith is around us to help us grow and change to be more like Christ. That is so dead opposite of the way that the world thinks. The world thinks, no, what is in me is the gold. Like, what is in me is the true self.
There's nothing in me that needs to change. Actually, what I need to be spending my time doing is peeling back layers so I can get to my truer and truer and truer self. And then the community is not there to help me change, the community is there to affirm. They've got to speak in affirmation to who I am finding myself to be. 75,000 people descended on a mid-sized southern town this weekend for Pride Festival and Parade.
You know the name of that town? It was Greensboro, North Carolina. All right, and here's the thing about the Pride Festival and 75,000 people. You know what it is at its heart? At its heart?
It is a shrine to affirmation. That what is in is to be affirmed by the community. But the Christian faith is the exact opposite. The Christian faith is, no, we come together to be changed. All right, so that changes us, communion changes us, that's the gathering.
All right, that's half of what we do.
Okay, ministry philosophy here. Half. The other half is in group. All right, so if you're not in group, there's four things they committed themselves to. The teaching and breaking bread, we do that on the weekend.
You're like, hey, I come to the weekend gathering. Great, you're doing 50%. What kind of grade is that?
Okay, it's like, hey, great, half of what we do. The other half, the fellowship and the prayers, that happens in our groups where we go from house to house. All right, this is why it's so important. In the group, they fellowship together. That's the word koinonia.
It means close relationship. It means that they built those family ties. Man, brothers and sisters, part of the same family, part of the same team. And we come together to build close relationships and to pray.
Now, I am not telling you guys, I want you to hear me here, okay? I am not telling you that being in a Mercy Hill community group is the only way to do fellowship and prayer. I know that that's not the only way. What I'm telling you is, in our local church, that is our organized way to get to the organic nature of Koinonier relationship. That we would be together and growing.
Now look at verse 44. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belonging and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. Y'all, they made sure they were taken care of. That's a mark of Koinonia Fellowship.
That's a mark of a unified, strong church meeting also from house to house and pouring into one another. They sold their possessions and goods and they gave them to people who were in need. They did good to the household of faith first.
Now, you probably don't believe this or know this in terms of you wouldn't assent to this, but a lot of people do think this verse is actually teaching communism in the scripture. And I just want to equip you to say, man, no, it's really not.
Okay. Communism is a godless ideology that was born from godless men. 100 years, I mean, not way, way back, right? In the last century, it wasn't even that long ago. I mean, you just think it's Joseph Stalin, Mal Sethrong, and Paul Pott.
Hundreds of millions of people murdered.
Okay, this is, I want to make sure we understand, the scripture is not advocating that it's not what it is. This is not communism. This is Christian generosity. This is from the heart God has given me.
Something in the gospel, and now I want to make sure those, especially in the household of faith, are taken care of. And I'm going to tell you something: one of the things that is a mark of a Christian church is that among its people, there is a lot going on of helping. Man, you know, there's a kid doing a summer project, and a group steps in to help fund. Man, there's somebody that loses a job and there's people that step in to help. There's people that are in poverty.
Man, if you're in poverty, if you're in a hard situation, if you're in one of our campuses, single mom, that type of thing, I would tell you, one of the greatest things you could do for the outlook of your future is to invest in a Mercy Hill community group over a long time. Because those bonds and those relationships and those people, people will be rich toward you in good works. In Christian love. And that's what the Bible is saying that they did. It's a great portrait.
Now, what else did they do? Day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad. and generous hearts. They received their food with glad and generous hearts. I love this verse 46.
The phrase is day by day, day by day, attending the temple together. Here's what you could say: life together wasn't just something they did, life together was who they were. Day by day, going to church together, day by day, breaking bread in their homes together, having meals together, traveling together, being together.
Now, here's what I want to tell you guys, and you know this already, but let me just bring it out, okay? If this is that important. How important is it for us to fight for this now more than ever? Because we live in such an individualistic and fragmented society. You know what was different 2,000 years ago?
These people that lived together and worked together, they actually lived in close proximity to one another. Many of the times in an agrarian society, if they were going to go work in the fields, they also came home and ate meals together. They also were people who lived together. All right, my point is, they had a lot of life together baked in that you and I don't have baked in anymore. Man, the advent of the automobile.
Now, where do we all live? Different places. The advent of technology. We think we're closed because we're only a phone call away or only a text away. But man, what's it really done?
Man, when's the last time you sat down over a meal, unrushed, hour and a half? Like, man, let's just kind of dive into each other's lives. You understand what I'm saying? Like, we live in such a fragmented and individualistic society. We've got to fight for this more than ever because it is harder for us now.
One of the things that I have found is so interesting to me is how many people have this as their testimony. If they were a believer in college, I grew in college. Man, I was so, you know, my faith just soared. My relationships. Bible studies, man, I just, and they're three years out of college, and they're like, man, I feel like I'm stagnant in my faith.
I feel like I'm not growing like I did. You know that that whole thing is really an argument for what I'm saying here. You know why people grow so fast in college? Because it's the one time in their life that they live like in a commune. The same people that they are going to Bible study with is the same people that they play intermurals with, is the same people that they go to church with, is the same people that they go eat meals with, is the same people that they literally live with.
And what happens? It is a oven, a hot bed. Man, it's just like somebody shoots like a gun on top of your relationship with Christ and it just kind of, you know, it's like an energy ray that just kind of makes it go wild. Why? Because that's what community does.
And you and I, we don't live in that world. I understand that. You and I aren't going out to the fields. We're not living in the same housing. Like, I get that.
So, what we gotta do to fight for a slice of this is to really pull together and say, okay, well, if the church is gonna run three regroup sessions a year for 10 weeks. Then I probably should try to dive all the way into at least that. You know, like I need to dive all the way into what I can do. Y'all, the early church did life together. This is what they did.
They saw it that way. They saw it as a family, they saw it as a team. They saw it as being all together. And that's what we need to do as well. We are on the same team.
I've got a nephew. He's a third-generation football player in Clay County, Florida.
So my dad played. I played. He's playing. And man, he's a sharp kid and he's a cerebral kid. And he really thought about if he was going to accept Christ or not.
And man, years into his life and going to church and family praying for him and all this stuff, finally, 16 or 17 years old, he accepted Christ. We got a chance to be at his baptism. You know what he said at his baptism? He said, I want to be baptized. Why?
And remember, he's a football player, he thinks like that. I want to be baptized. Why? Because it's time to join the team. There's a people.
There's a team, there's a family. When you were saved and I was saved, yes, we come in individually, but there's nothing individualistic. about our faith. It's entirely corporate.
Alright, so let me give you an example. We are people of his own possession. 1 Peter 2:9 says, We are not individuals of his own possession. We are all part of the body of Christ. That's Romans 12.5.
They did not neglect assembling themselves together. Hebrews 10:25, and neither should we. There was life together, and you know what happened? It was so attractive to the outside world. Look at verse 47: praising God and having favor with all the people, and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
Now, I'm gonna go back and read this again, okay? Verse 47. I want you to notice what it doesn't say, it doesn't say, and witnessing. Being evangelistic. and sharing the gospel.
People are getting saved day by day, does it? That's not what it says. It says, praising God. And having favor with all the people. They were doing life together, they were praising God together.
And here's the deal: man: fellowship is attractive in a lonely world. And we are lonely. This whole thing is getting painted on the backdrop, modern society, of where we are. You understand, and I understand. Humans have only been trying to figure out how to interact with things like cell phones, Facebook, and social media for like 20 years.
I mean, thousands of years of human history. And all of a sudden in the last 20, we're trying to figure out how to interact with all this stuff. And what has it produced?
Well, I'll tell you, in 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General said we have an epidemic in this country of loneliness. The CDC, they said, hey, 30% of adults in this country. are considered to be alone, lonely, isolated. You know, it's just now, take that as the backdrop and paint this picture.
of life together. Friendship building in. I have a mandate from God not to live alone. Mandate from God to grow together. We either grow together or we don't grow at all.
And think about that, praising God together, and then how attractive is that? When the church is taking care of each other, when we're breaking bread from house to house, when we not only go to church, but we go to group together, all that, how attractive is that for the world? When the world looks in. And sees a community group surround that family who just has a premature baby and months of meals are taken care of. What do you think the world thinks?
You understand? It's contagious. When you got people in group. that have conflict with one another. And instead of doing what the world does, which is throw your hands up, cut you off, never going to talk to you again, leave the church, whatever, instead of that, they say, man, we're going to sit at the table, we're going to get elders involved if we need to, whatever we got to do, we're going to work this thing out, and we're going to be unified on the back end of this.
That's contagious. to the world. And that's what happened. And people were praising God. All right, now here's what big application point for this weekend.
This is what I want to call you to. We've seen the picture, we've seen the goodness.
So here's what I'm going to call you to: devote yourself to fellowship in group. Devote yourself to fellowship in group. The opposite of Christian growth in group is Christian so-called growth in individuality and alone. And here's the deal. It's a modern, hyper, hyper-modern invention pretty much of the West to say we're going to do Christian growth alone.
And we live in a world, man. A lot of people do. It's going to be me and my coffee and Caleb and Jesus and a Bible, and that's how I'm going to grow. And I don't need accountability, and I don't need nobody else. You think that's your way to Christian growth?
Satan knows that's your way to shrink. to to to go backwards When you don't have the accountability and you don't have The people pushing on you and you pushing on them, and the people to run with you, and you to run with them. We grow together. Listen, Christians grow in community, or they don't grow. That's it.
We grow together. or we don't grow at all. I have seen a sickening thing before where families, to me, families, I think what happens is they're in the faith for a long time and all of a sudden they wake up one day and they feel like they have outgrown the need for community and gathering. And it is the height of hubris, and it is also incredibly sad. Because what happens?
It's like, man, we don't really need the gathering anymore. We're pretty strong Christians. We're teaching our kids or whatever. And next thing you know, it's the lake house and travel ball, and now we don't need to come to hear sermons or take communion together anymore. I mean these families may not realize it, but they might go years without even taking communion.
And they haven't even thought about it. You know, it's just like we outgrew it. They don't need group anymore, right? They've, hey, we don't need community. Why?
Because we have an endless amount of celebrity pastor podcasts, you know, and we don't have to be in group anymore, and it's really tragic. You know why? Because that story ends sometimes. A lot of ways. It's like it it's it's crazy.
It's like mom gets addicted to wine. Dad steps out on his marriage, kids are going nuts. It's five years later, and they look back and honestly ask: man, I don't really know what happened. I could tell you exactly what happened. You stopped running with people.
You got smarter than what God called you to. I mean, think about it. You decided to circumvent the simple, hard path to Christian growth, which includes community. You just decided, man, we're smarter than that. And now you live with the results of it.
And I want to save you from that. I want you to think about this. Grow together, you don't grow at all. Mercy Hill group is the way that we do that. We think about John 13: love one another as I have loved you.
That happens in group. Romans 12:10, devote yourself to one another, outdo one another in showing honor. We do that in group. Romans 12:16, live in harmony. Galatians 5:13, serve one another.
All of this. Happens and the group life, and I want to call you to be involved in it.
Now, I mentioned this earlier: if you need one more, kind of you're like, man, I see it, I understand he's called me to it. Think about how good it is. You know, the price of any ticket shows you how good the show is going to be. Is that true? You know, like when you think about the price of the ticket to get in.
The price of admission. God is calling you to a seat at the table where the price of admission was the blood of His Son. Is that a fellowship that we're just going to sort of neglect? I mean, think about this. Jesus was cut off on the cross so that we could be brought in and the family.
He went to the cross for us. You and I lived a life of sin. We're kicked out of the family. We deserve nothing but death in hell. But Jesus came in to take those things on our behalf, lived a life we didn't live, died a death that we deserved, and in his resurrection, we get a chance to come back into relationship with him.
Listen, and when we accept God as our Father through the blood of Jesus Christ, we get a bunch of brothers and sisters. That's how it works. You are not saved as an individual. You are saved as an individual, but you're saved into a people. A people of his own possession.
It doesn't say an individual of his own possession. It says a people of his own possession.
So what I would call you to do is say, hey, And let's think about this for a minute. If Jesus died to bring this community to me, why would I neglect this?
So, three questions, and I'm done. All right. First question. Are you in a group? Can I ask you, can I ask this question another way?
Are you very serious about your faith? Are you in a group? Are you serious? It's like, man, I come on the weekend, but I'm not in a group. Maybe you're not real serious.
It's possible that you're in here right now and you're like, man, I have this other Christian group that is like, man, that's like my people, my group, and all that. I'm not like, I'm not, okay. But what about those who are like, yeah, I'm not really investing? In group, I'm not investing in fellowship, in devoting myself to fellowship. Then I would call you to do it today.
Man, the first step for you is to get saved, become a believer, get in the family, admit your sin, believe in what Christ has done. Confess him as the Lord of your life. But I would say this: if you're not investing in a, if you're not in a group, man, how serious are we about trying hard? To grow in the way that God calls us to, or we're becoming too smart, maybe for our own good. All right?
So here's the deal: if you wanna get in a group, You walk out to the lobby at your campus, right here at the Ridge as well. You walk out in that lobby, there's gonna be people with that bright green shirt on holding things. They're gonna say, Hey, let's get in a group. The other way you can do it, you can text the word group. To 87217.
I'll say that again. 87217. All right, man, what do you say? What am I signing up for? You're signing up for a 10-week sprint.
It's a sprint, not a marathon.
Okay, and when it's over, we really mean that. Like, what happens is in January, when we regroup, you'll have the chance to get back in that group or to get in a different group with a different time date if you need it. You know, early on at Mercy Hill, we used to do this thing where we realized when you got in a group, there was no way out. Other than to quit or die. Turns out that's a deterrent from wanting to get in one, okay?
So it's like, hey, we're not doing that. Jump in. Run with us, and then we'll r we'll figure it out in January again. We'll do that three times a year. Hey.
Are you in a group? Second. Are you devoted to group? Signing up ain't the same thing as showing up. I'm talking about showing up week in, week out.
Get there early, stay late, invest in the community. Ask how you can help. Right? That's what we're talking about. Just think about the devotion.
It's one thing to be in, it's another thing to be devoted to. It's another thing to be all the way in. You guys know what I mean by that. You probably work with people that are kind of half in, half out. Your kids are on sports teams where you could tell the kid and that family they're sort of halfway in and out.
And then you got other people that are like, man, we live. breathe and die this stuff. And that's what we're talking about for group. Like for 10 weeks, let's go all the way to the bottom of this thing. Let's be real serious with it and see what God does in your life.
See how he changes you. You know, I think about in my life, our directional elder team is like my group, okay? And I think about how those men shape me. Also, our leadership team and other pastors that I'm around and things like that. And I think, man, I know, and some dear friends that I have right here at Mercy Hill, it's like, I know in my life, It moves me down the field of my maturity if I'm running with guys in my life that are just dogs for the kingdom.
I'm talking about these are dudes, man. They want to give their money away. They want to share the gospel. They got eyes for one woman. They think about their body and their finances.
They take mission trips. They take time off of work so they can be in stuff at church. Like, that's the kind of guys when I'm around them, it makes me want to run. Harder. Invest, devote.
Be around those people. Be one of those people to somebody else. Thirdly, Lastly. Little bit of a curveball. Will you lead a group?
Would you lead? All right. Man, I'm talking about you. You've been thinking about it. You've been trying to kick it around, you're on our campuses.
You got people pushing on you about it, your group leader. I want you to think about all the blessings God's put in your life. Man, hey, he's blessed you with a home that's got a living room. I mean, you guys get the theme, right? Half of what we do at Mercy Hill happens here.
Not here. It happens right there. God's blessed you, the place that you can do it. God bless you to be discipled at Mercy Hill or around some people that have led group. You're blessed to have a great group leader right now.
And you're always listening, every one of us are going to have this opportunity. I can sit here where it's comfortable, or I can stretch myself for the mission of God. You know, I can stretch out for the mission. And I can actually be used in impactful ways. I'm not going to challenge you.
Hey, we need group leaders. You know, for the last 14 years, but really, really, especially the last two. At Mercy Hill, guys, what God has done in terms of bringing people to this church is just unbelievable. It's amazing. We celebrate that church growth.
We celebrate the new people that are coming in and getting saved and being discipled. But you want to know, Pastor's Worst Nightmare? There's more coming than we can put in group, and all we have to offer them is the weekend. All right, that's not that we man we We want to stay away from that. Would you jump in and would you lead a group?
All right. If you do and you can, you guys got this card on the way in. It's a regroup interest dinner for apprentices. If you are new and you're like, you know what?
Okay, this is kind of pushing me over the edge. People talk to me about this. Or maybe you're new, you're from out of state. You're like, dude, I used to lead a bunch of groups at our old church that was a lot like Mercy Hill.
Okay, let's talk about it. All right. Jump in to this apprentice interest dinner. We would love to talk to you about it. It's not a commitment to lead a group, but it's a commitment to come and hear about it and learn about it.
All right.
