For This Reason - 1 Timothy 4:7-10 - Gospel Church

All right, guys. Well, hey, welcome at all of our locations this weekend.

I want to say something very specific to those of you who may be brand new, like it's your first time with us here at Regional or maybe you're at one of our campuses. Man, I don't want you to feel weird. You feel like you got invited to somebody's birthday party and they didn't tell you it was their own birthday party, right?

And that's what it could feel a little bit weird. Don't feel like that, all right? Man, this is a great opportunity for you to get to know us because today I get the chance to do what I've wanted to do for years now and that is, man, we get a chance to talk about what we're going to hopefully pray to God that we see over the next 10 years. You know, I was told a long time ago, just leadership stuff. Man, you don't cast a vision longer than your organization has been in existence, okay?

That's just generally a good practice. So today is the day that I get to cast the 10-year vision and let's talk about some things that we might get to see, but I hope in that you're going to get a chance to see the heart of our church. Where I want to go, and if you have a copy of scripture, you can turn with me to 1 Timothy chapter 4, all right?

So we're skipping a little bit ahead. We're going to jump back into just kind of moving through our series next week, but we're going to jump to chapter 4 for this week and I'm going to talk just about a couple of verses today. But what I hope you're going to end up seeing is this very simple idea and that is, man, if we can look back and see what God has done through that small launch team, what could He do if we were to open our hands and put our yes on the table now collectively? I mean, when you think about what God has done, He sent over 170 adult missionaries out of this church in the last 10 years. We have seen, I am sure, probably over 100 foster children or adoptions happen in this church in the last 10 years. We've seen close to 1500 baptisms, five campuses, and now four churches that have been parented out of this church. I don't mean partnered with, I mean, they came up and were sent out and raised from this church. And it all goes back to a bunch of 20-somethings with a dream that had a belief that God could do more than they thought or imagined and that the gospel changes everything.

Now, here's my question. If God could do that with a launch team of 30, what could He do with 3,000? If 3,000 people across five locations bought in in the same way that that group of 20-somethings bought in, man, the sky's the limit and what could God do? I mean, Pastor Bobby has talked about before, man, you know, not having any resources.

That stuff's real. Listen, I remember when we launched Mercy Hill, if we needed to go buy five chairs from Walmart for a small group, it was like a three hour meeting, okay? Because it was like, man, we don't have the money for that, okay? I mean, no resources and all of a sudden you have a church that monthly has a budget three times what the year one budget was 10 years ago. What could God do if a church like that opens their hands and buys in in the same way? I pray that we will. Man, I'm as fired up for what God is doing here as I have ever been in my life.

And I hope, and I know that many of our leaders are, many of you are, I see it every single day. Man, I'm hoping all of us will be and we'll make that decision to lean all the way in today, all right? So here's what we're gonna chase down from 1 Timothy chapter four, big idea for this weekend. We will strive, and I wanna talk about a striving, laboring, toiling is what he says. We will strive for God's mission when our hope is placed in Him. We will strive for God's mission when our hope is in Him.

Let's anchor our hope in God and let us strive for the mission and let's lean all the way in and put our yes on the table for the next 10 years. Let's dive in, 1 Timothy chapter four, here's what it says, have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths, rather train yourself for godliness. Now we've talked about this, I'm not gonna get into the irreverent silly myths, we've talked about some of that earlier, but I do wanna get into this idea, train yourself for godliness. Now here's the example that he uses, verse eight, for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life that is to come. So bodily training is good, but you know, the godliness training, that's what we need to be after. Some of us in here are like, man, finally, I don't have to go to the gym anymore.

Okay, no running or what? No, that's not what he's saying, okay? He's using it as an example. And the way that many of us would think about training for our bodies, or we would think about training for a particular skill set at work, or maybe we would train to make our hobby better. We're training ourselves for something. He's saying, man, apply that to something that is eternal instead of temporal. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. This is the verse that I wanna camp on. For to this end, your translation might say, for this reason, we labor, some translations say, this one says, we toil and strive.

Why? Because we have our hopes set on the living God, who is the savior of all people, especially of those who believe. Now he talks about physical training. Physical training is fine and good. It's not eternal though. Godliness training is eternal. Do you know what the other word for training in godliness is? It's a very simple word we throw around all the time. We need to define it more. It's the word discipleship. That's the word training in godliness, raising someone to maturity. It's talking here. Paul is talking about and in verse 10, he says, hey, this is the reason that we toil.

Why? It goes back to verse eight. We labor and we toil and we strive that we would see people trained in godliness, brought to maturity, that we would see disciples made. If you've been around Mercy Hill very long, you know this.

At Mercy Hill, we say it like this. Discipleship is word taught and life caught. It's hearing the word of God preached and then it's living it out in groups.

So we say at Mercy Hill, hey, the idea that spiritual growth is complex and nobody can know what you're supposed to do and how do you ever grow in the faith, that's a thing that's out there and it needs to be debunked. Acts chapter 2 tells us pretty easily, man, no, discipleship is simple. That doesn't mean that it's easy, okay? Simple doesn't mean easy. Something can be difficult without being complicated, okay?

It is hard, but it's not complex. It is something that we can look at. We say, well, what are the building blocks of training in godliness or bringing someone to maturity?

The building blocks from Acts chapter 2 are very simple. We gather together for worship and preaching, then we gather in smaller groups for relationships so that we can iron, sharpen iron and life on life. We learn to give of our time, talent and treasure, and then we learn to go and live for something that is higher than ourselves.

And we think about other people rather than us, whether that be the nations or our neighbors, our workplace or the world. If you jump into that stream, God will move you in the current. You will move in godliness. And that's what he's getting at here. It's not easy.

It's simple, but it's not easy, right? And so that's why we need to be trained in it. And Paul says very particularly, all right, that's all verse 8, training in godliness. He says very particularly in verse 10, it is for that reason that he strives and that he labors and that he toils.

It is to raise up disciples. That's what Paul was all about. It's what he's trying to get Timothy to be all about. It's what I hope I'm all about. And it's what I hope you are all about. What I am to do is to train you to be about this. And that's what he says in Ephesians 4.

Look what it says on the screen. And he gave the apostles and prophets and evangelists, the shepherds and the teachers, to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. What is the work of the ministry? I am the equipper, our pastoral team is the equipper of the saints to go out and do the work of the ministry.

But what is that ministry? It is for building up the body of Christ. It is for, you know, you could almost say it another way, training in godliness.

It is for discipling others. It is seeing them brought to maturity until we all attain to the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood and the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Why do we toil? Why do we labor? What are we trying to do? What is the aim that Paul is getting at here? The aim is we toil and we labor to see people brought up into maturity. And that's what he finally gets into in verse 10 when he says, it is for to this end we toil and we strive. That is what Paul is working for.

He is working to see people brought up into the faith. Y'all, this is why you saw a launch team from Raleigh Durham in 2012, a bunch of 20-somethings and college students. Do you know that that team had 10 college students on it that graduated? Many of them had job offers in their majors and they turned those things down and came here and took jobs painting houses and landscaping. We had people that left being teachers and can only find jobs being a teacher's aid.

People sold houses and moved into apartments. Why would they do that? They do it for this end. They did it so that we would see people raised up and trained in godliness.

That's what it was about. People that would be born again and then trained in godliness. You know, I know every single week we have missionaries all over the world that are watching this and I love what he says here in verse 10 to you guys because he says, for we, we do that. We labor, right? Now what do you mean by we?

Paul's not anywhere in the same geographic region as Timothy but they're laboring together. And for some of you guys that can't be here on a 10-year anniversary but you're going to see this later. We love you.

We pray for you and we labor with you. Why are you there? Why are they there, church?

Same reason. To see people born again and brought to maturity. This is why we are here. Christian, there is a purpose to your life.

We say this all the time at Mercy Heal, you were made for more than possessions and promotions and your kids were made for more than straight A's and soccer. You are put where you are for a particular purpose and reason. Some of us in here today might be thinking to yourself, man, it's all random.

That's wrong, bro. Okay, it's not all random. God has you in a particular place, in a particular work environment, in a particular school. He's got you in a particular neighborhood. Some of us, He's got us in places we don't even want to be.

Man, I understand that. You know, He's got us taking children to therapy. He's got us walking in and out of a hospital to see a loved one.

It's not random. We are there to toil. We are there to serve. We are there to labor. We are there to strive.

We are there to see people brought up, born again and brought up into maturity. That is why we labor. Now, it's interesting to me here, we got to just say this. Y'all, He uses the word labor and toil.

Now, some of y'all are teachers, okay, and I love this. I know my teacher, my English teacher growing up in high school and all that, they always said, don't mix your metaphors. Well, nobody told Paul that, okay.

If you look in the Bible, I mean, he does it all the time. He goes from, we're talking about athletic training to now all of a sudden we're talking about agriculture. And okay, so we're talking about training the body, now it's like, oh nope, now we're talking about, you know, labor and toil and striving.

But the idea is that sowing the seed is going to be hard, but it's worth it though. It's going to be hard. Ministry is hard. Ministry is hard work.

And listen, I know you probably immediately hear that and you think, man, am I saying my job is hard? No, that's not what I mean, because if you saw earlier in Ephesians 4, my job isn't actually ministry. My job is equipping the ministers, y'all. That's not my job. Your job is the work of the ministry.

I was given to equip you, right? What you do, the ministry that you take on, that's what is hard. It's worth it, but it's hard. Being an everyday Christian with an eternal perspective, it is hard. And you know the word here for labor, toil, strive, all that?

The word is agonizomai, agony is where we get our word. That's kind of crazy, right? I mean, it's like, man, I love doing ministry. All that doesn't mean that it's not hard. Keeping your home open for those kids in the neighborhood that don't have believing parents is not easy. Using vacation time to go on a mission trip and leaving your wife and four little kids behind, that's not easy, right?

It's good. It's totally worth it. We labor, but it's not easy.

Maybe not taking a lifestyle increase every time our pay increases, but instead we do a generosity increase. That's not easy, right? But it is worth it. And that's what the Bible is getting us to see here. We labor and we toil.

Don't get it twisted. It is hard. What I'm calling our church to today, to lean all the way in and let's go for the next 10 years and let's just see what God can do. Man, that doesn't mean that it's easy.

I know it's not easy. Okay, I'm gonna switch back and just talk about our church plant for a minute because y'all, we planted this church. Sometimes church planting is crazy, okay? I mean, we planted this church and it was, man, you would just see some of the crazy stuff happen. We were, man, Anna and I, we had our whole garage as kids stuff and I'm the one with the only one with the truck on our launch team.

So I'm pulling the trailer up to the Burmill Park and we're setting everything up. We're setting everything up over there one night for our worship gathering and I'm like, man, I feel like I smell smoke. And it's like, well, yeah, you do because the speaker's on fire, okay?

So the speaker's burning down and it's got duct tape all over it and everybody's running around. I finally got a chance to pull a fire alarm legitimately. No, we didn't actually.

We got it put out. But I think about that kind of stuff and I'm like, man, it's crazy. I remember one time we showed up at Burmill Park to do church that night and I get there and the whole place is decked out for Christmas.

Nobody told me this. And I walk in, I'm like, man, this is where our lobby is. Oh no, this is Santa's workshop today, okay? I mean, he's in there like sit on his lap and the whole thing. I mean, the guy's in there, jolly old fella and all that.

And I'm like, well, okay, what are we gonna do about this? You gotta walk by Santa, you know, to get into the worship. Some of you guys remember this, okay? And then they say, oh, that's not all. Actually, the other side of the building got rented out by the Humane Society. They're giving away kittens tonight. I'm like, let me get this straight. Somebody comes to church, okay, greatest first time guest experience ever, right?

Like just sit, go ahead and sit on Santa's lap here. And then did you get your kitten and your first time guest back? Thanks a lot, okay? I hope you come back. They never came back, okay? The people that night, I promise you, they never came back. Man, it was crazy. We saw some funny stuff like that. Man, I had the craziest conversations we planned at this church. Man, within the first year, I had these people come in.

All of a sudden, they would come in. They'd come to our church one time, want to meet with me, and they would want to sit down, and they would want to say that God sent them to our church so that they could be my mentor. But I don't need you to mentor me. I'm kind of getting the feeling here, maybe you're a little bit of a wolf, honestly. Come one time and you want to be my mentor, the shepherd's mentor. Man, it was weird. We had a bunch of spiritual stuff going that was crazy. You know, and I think back to our launch team, and then we're gonna, you know, you see them on the screen and all that, and you see them on our stage, and man, I remember the stories of the spiritual attacks and the miscarriages and the crazy things that were happening at work, and all the family stuff that went crazy and financial issues that popped up the second we tried to bring the gospel to this city. It's hard.

You know, taking the gospel across the street to a neighbor and asking them to come to church, there's risk in that. You know, it's hard. Thinking about attend one, serve one, rather than just being a consumer for the next 10 years. Like, it's hard. What I want to try to tell you, though, is that it's worth it. And he's gonna get into that. And listen, every believer that comes to a moment where somebody calls them to lean all the way in, they gotta have this moment where they realize laboring and toil has its roots in agony.

That doesn't mean it's not worth it, doesn't mean it's not good, but it does mean that it's hard. And every believer at some point even goes to the place where they're wondering if it's worth it. You know, I was thinking about this. Stephen Forman, this is crazy.

Stephen Forman and his wife Emily, they ended up being missionaries, a crazy place in North Africa. Their first date they ever went on, he hands her, some of y'all know this book, he hands her a copy of the book, the Fox's Book of Martyrs, on their first date. Well, that's strong. You know what I mean? And he just said, hey man, I just want to be up front. That this is what my life is about. Like, man, I'm going. You know, we're going.

And man, she bought all the way in. And they left it all. They left an incredible career here. They left all, man, they brought four kids. They go to the hardest place that you can go in the hardest time that you can go. And Stephen was martyred in a dirt street by Al-Qaeda.

They had seen incredible gospel movement, things that they saw there still going on. And on the flight back home, it hits Emily, as it has hit many of our missionaries, as it hits many of us, and as even we struggle with and we're trying to figure out if we're going to take the vacation days to work at Mercy Hill Kids Week next summer. It all comes around. The question is, man, was it worth it? She wrestled with that.

Emily did for months. But you know what, she comes to the conclusion it was absolutely worth it. God is worth it. It's hard, but He's worth it. Is it worth it to us? I know what you're asking. You're like, man, you keep saying it's worth it. It's worth it, but you haven't given actually the why.

I know. I'm building it up to say this. This is why it's worth it.

Look at verse 10. For to this end we toil and strive. We know what that is. That's the what. That's the aim.

To this end, verse 8, we're trying to get people into training godliness and discipleship, but that's not the why. Why is it worth it? This is why it's worth it. Because we have our hope set on the living God. That's why it's worth it.

The Savior, who is Savior of all people, especially of those who believe. That's why it's worth it. It's worth it. Is it hard? Yes. Am I going to call you to some things that are hard today? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes.

Why? Because God is alive, and He is active, and He is moving, and He has a mission, and He wants to convince you that there is a greater purpose to your life and to my life than what the American dream, which is actually a nightmare, has to offer us. That's what it's about. A living God who has a mission. We strive to see disciples made because, this is the why, we serve a living God who is a missional God. If Jesus isn't raised and God isn't moving, we are all fools and I am the chief. But if Jesus is alive and if God is moving, then it is worth every bit of our life to strive and to labor and to toil. To see disciples made, they will be our reward. We will see them in heaven for all of eternity.

I mean, this is worth it if these things are true. And I think about that in my life. Man, that God is alive. You know, I gave my life to Christ very early in my life, six years old. That don't mean I haven't had bumps. It doesn't mean I haven't seen the darkness in different situations in my life. But I look back and it's like, man, I was six years old. It had to be like the first time God was ever calling. You know, and I just praise God for that.

And one of the things I look back on in my life that is an absolute fact is that I'm 38 years old. I got saved when I was six and I do not have one memory in my life of ever actually feeling alone. He's alive. He is moving. He is Christian. He is in us and He has given us this mission. Look at what it says, that He is the Savior of all people, especially those who believe. Don't get all tripped up on this verse.

People want to go crazy with it. Another way that you can easily translate this verse is to say that He is the Savior of all people. That is to say those who believe. All right, the idea being here is not that there's two types of Savior or something like that or universalism or something like that. All it's saying is that Jesus Christ is available to anyone who would trust in Him. John 3 16 tells us, man, Jesus was given for the whole world. It is a gift, though, that has to be accessed by faith. There is a mission for all of us. Now, it starts with you and it starts with me, okay? It starts here before, but then the Gospel came to us on its way to somebody else, but it did come to us.

And I've got to push now just for a minute and just say, man, has it come to you? Have you experienced setting your hope on the living God? Have you set your hope on a God who has a mission that is out there for you? You know, Jesus Christ is the Savior for all people.

You can trust Him. Every single one of us, under the sound of my voice at our campuses today, if God is calling you today, salvation can be yours today. Will you come to Him?

Would you put your trust in Him today? Jesus Christ was given, the Son of God, stepped into humanity in order to be a sacrifice and an atonement for your sin. In our sin, we are separated from God forever. We deserve nothing but hell for eternity.

And God is totally just to do that. But Jesus Christ stepped into our shoes and He was a sacrifice for us. Will you invite Him into your life? Would you claim that gift by faith today?

And I pray that you would. Some of you maybe, some of you maybe are in this mode, all right, and I don't know exactly what your story might be, but some of you might be in this mode because you're in this kind of religious culture in the south or whatever, and you might be in this mode of like highs and lows in kind of a faith story where it's like, man, you know, different arcs of your life are like, I got really excited about God and then I just kind of totally fell off, and then I get really excited and I totally fall off, and then I'm reading my Bible, and then I just, you know, haven't thought about that in six months. And it's these wild extremes that are going up and down and up and down. Now listen, every Christian struggles, so you got to check the Spirit in your own life. Is it possible that you've never actually set your hope on God in the first place?

Is it possible that you never actually yielded and invited Him into your life? And that's what's creating all of these highs and lows and highs and lows. Is it possible that that's where you are? It's like, I've said this before, it's like what Jerry Seinfeld said about pop tarts, all right? A pop tart can never go stale because it was never fresh, okay? You've heard that before, right? And it's like some of us think we're going stale. No, you were never fresh. We think I'm going stale.

Maybe it's that you never set your hope on God. You can do that today. Here's why I'm pushing that so hard. Because I'm about to push this church as hard as I ever have to say, will you lean all the way in?

Will we put our yes on the table and become the launch team for the next 10 years? But I don't want to do that and hype you up in a motivational way that puts you on a red hot for a little while just to turn ice cold again. And maybe what actually needs to happen is that you give your life to Christ today and pray, God, in my sin, you sent Jesus as a Savior. I'm turning loose in my life, and I'm turning to Him as my Lord. Would you pray that prayer with me even today? And when you do, you need to get baptized on October 6th and October 9th. You know, Pastor Jeremy Dager, whom I love, okay? And he was, Pastor JD referenced him in the video. You guys know they now went and planted Port City in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

They're just moving up there. I love Jeremy. You know, it tore my heart out. It tore my heart.

I mean, I'm all for it. I'm excited for him, but you want to talk about just breaking somebody's heart when they said he said he was going to Halifax. Jeremy came and he said, ma'am, we're going, you know, we're going to Halifax, Nova Scotia. When he finally told me that they were actually going, I remember looking at him and saying, man, you're going to Russia. Varsity, you know, I guess I didn't know Nova Scotia is not Russia.

That's Canada. Okay. So anyway, they're going to Canada, but I bring up Jeremy. I bring up Jeremy in this message because you guys don't know this, but Jeremy, listen, man, as being a pastor, baptism was his Achilles heel for years.

Okay. I mean, the first time he stepped up to baptize somebody at Mercy Hill, he was all nervous. I could see him shaking like this and he gets the person to baptize him. And I promise you right before he's about to go on, you know, when you baptize somebody, you say, you know, in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy, he grabs him and he says, by the power vested in me, I now pronounce you, wait, wait, that's not right.

That's not right. The second time you baptize somebody, he baptizes them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy temple. We're like, what do you dunk though?

I mean, I remember talking to Bobby, like, I mean, Bobby's got the PhD. I'm like, what do you do theologically with that? Do we got to rebaptize?

I don't know what we do. Okay. You know, so I bring that up a little bit to, man, just talk about Jeremy. He's such a, he's such a founder and we want to honor him today.

And I just, that was honoring. So anyway, but I just think about, I just think about, man, I think about it in all seriousness, man, all the people that Jeremy personally baptized in this church, I mean, personally, because he had, he had raised them up, these college kids and all these, man, some of you guys need to walk through those baptism waters on, on October 6th. And I pray to receive him today and go public then.

All right. And then we can get into, then it's time to say, man, is my yes on the table. Now let me move to the rest of the church, right? Hey, if you're a believer here today, if you call Mercy Hill home, man, this is the part where I want us to lean in. We've got to decide, man, who we're going to be in the next 10 years.

So here's what I call you to do, man. Let's strive for God's mission, believing that he is worth it. Let's strive for God's mission in the next 10 years in greater ways than we have in the first 10 years, man. We serve a God who is alive. We serve a God who has put us on a mission and we can become a launch team again. One of the great fears I have at Mercy Hill, and I'm talking about myself before I promise you before I'm talking about any elder, before I'm talking about any staff member, before I'm talking about any community group leader, I'm talking about me. You guys, man, just look at the world.

It seems like our fire can begin to fade as the church gets older. Doesn't it? Does it not? I mean, is that not just, that's a big fear that I have.

Why? Because it's that passage in Hosea chapter 13, that God blesses you a bunch and all of a sudden you begin to like the blessing more than God. You begin to start saying, I'm pretty satisfied with this.

I don't need you. I mean, you think I don't feel that? Man, coming from where we were, back against the wall willing to punch ourselves out, that launch team came here, we were willing to do anything to reach this city. And I think about that now 10 years later and I'm like, man, there's a danger in getting comfortable, there's a danger in having more stuff, there's a danger in all of that. And so I'm calling myself back to this before I'm calling anybody else, but I just think, man, is our hope in God, a living God who has a mission for us for this reason we labor. Or to this end, as our pastor said today, we strive and we toil.

Now I want to call us to make that decision today. Man, it's been 10 years, I understand that. There is such an achievement in that.

God is glorified in that. It's awesome. But guys, we've got to understand, man, the story is not finished. It's just but got started, right?

I mean, the starting line gun has just kind of gone off. And what God is going to do through the church here. And I want us to get that in our mind that our story is not finished. We want to honor the past, but we want to understand where God is taking us. Mercy Hill Church, what is our story? This is generally our story. In the 30s AD, Jesus Christ commissioned some disciples to go make disciples to the ends of the earth and they had never heard of a town called Greensboro yet, okay?

This is about 30 something AD. Those guys begin to go out like crazy. And by mid first century, they're starting to see disciples made and actually some missionaries have even been sent to some places like Egypt and even people have popped up in India. And there's this kind of, these Christians are just kind of going around. But by the end of the first century AD, there were church planting centers in Rome and Antioch and different places that are beginning to start sending churches out.

So that by 300 AD, you have just about half of the Roman empire that has now professed faith in Christ. 400 AD, you have a guy named Patrick, okay? That has a dream, wakes up, goes and shares the gospel with a bunch of people in Ireland and we now commemorate that, some people do, by getting smashed and pinching each other, okay?

Not sure what that's about. That's kind of an odd way to celebrate that, all right? But that's what people around the world do.

But you guys understand Saint Patrick, whatever. Man, this is the mission movement starting to go out. By the end of the sixth century, 40 missionaries were commissioned to go to a place called England that was filled with barbarians at the time, okay? And they go out and they start seeing massive movement where thousands of people are coming to Christ and hundreds of churches are beginning to be planted. Now, for the next 500 years or so, things get sketchy. That's why we call it the dark ages, all right? But you know what happened during that time? The next few hundred years, people actually started waking up that the power of God was in His Word.

And it shouldn't just be held by a few, but that we should be able to read the Word for ourself. And so when you get into the 1300s and 1400s, what you end up seeing is people like John Wycliffe and all this, they start to get the Word out and face the persecution that comes with that. But by 1611, the greatest viral before viral was viral happened when the King James Bible was printed. Then with the Gutenberg press and all that kind of stuff, and then it begins to go all over the place, and as it does, with it comes a missionary movement. Listen, when people move back to worship, the next thing that always happens is missions.

When people worship rightly, they wake up to realize, and there's a lot of people who don't know this God. And so that was one of the next couple 300 years. The next couple 300 years are the Moravian movement and names like William Carey, and a little bit later than that, Adoniram Judson, and different names that many of us might know, and our kids maybe read their biographies. And in the midst of all of that missionary movement, what happens in 1609, John Smith plants the first what we would kind of now look back at as a baptistic church, meaning that they stood on the Word of God as the sole authority, and they decided that baptism should happen after someone's conversion. You weren't born a Christian, you were born again.

And in being born again, then you took baptism after that. But by 1638, they had begun to plant churches all over the place, and the powers that be started persecuting them. There's this big theme all the way from the book of Acts of persecution, scattering the church, and then what happens? More churches begin to get planted and popping up. And so in 1638, fleeing persecution, some brothers come over here and plant a church in Rhode Island that has those same beliefs. And that church begins to grow, and it finally plants a church in Chilon County in 1727 in North Carolina. In the midst of the Great Awakening in 1740 or so, all of a sudden thousands of people are coming to Christ under people like George Whitefield and all of these. They're coming to Christ all over the place, and there is a massive revival that breaks out in the state of North Carolina. And a dude named Shubel Stearns, that some of you guys may have heard of, all right, he finds out about it from up north, and he's like, dude, I got to be part of this. And so he comes and moves his family down to where? Liberty, North Carolina. They go right down the road. I mean, probably not even an hour from here, right?

I mean, not even not even that. And they plant the Sandy Creek Church, which blows up by that day's standards. 600-some people, they start planting churches like crazy, and it's a movement. They plant over 40 churches in North Carolina. One of them they plant in Durham, North Carolina that is called the Rose of Sharon Church in Durham over the next 100 years.

That's probably about 1800, okay? The next 100 years, that church begins to grow. It changes names like churches do. It morphs. It's a living being. It's moving around.

It changes a bunch of names also. But by 1907, it had landed and stabilized and plants a church in North, plants another church, and are you getting a theme here, you know? Plants another church in North Durham. That church was called the North Durham Church, very creative, okay? 1959, that church, reaching outside of its borders, decides that it needs to plant a church further north in Durham. And they, in trying to plant that church, decide to call a young man that's 28 years old named brother Sam James from Greensboro, North Carolina, okay, who was on his way to be a legendary missionary. We have the opportunity to have him preach here this year. Legendary missionary in Vietnam, but on his way there, he was stopped because of a heart condition of his son. And so he had to stop off in Durham. So he gathers some brothers together, begins to pour into them, gathers the brother and the sisters, and they start to plant a little Baptist mission, they call it back then, called Grace Baptist Mission that grew into a great church called Homestead Heights Baptist Church that changed its name to the Summit Church and hired a 28-year-old pastor named J.D.

Greer in 2002. And within a few years after that, Pastor J.D. had a vision laid on his heart to plant a thousand churches in a generation, listen to me, not out of the summit, but it was out of churches that came out of the summit. It was churches planting churches, planting churches, and the aggregate of a bunch of Mercy Hill type families, right, ends up seeing a thousand churches planted by 2050.

And by God's grace, we're going to see it happen. In 2012, after five years of cultivation, there was a team led by me and Pastor Bobby and Pastor Bobby and about 30 other 20-somethings that heeded the call. And in 2012, we came to be one of those, I think we were the second or third one to go out, and we planted a church in, planted a church moving here in May of 2012. Y'all, by that fall, we launched our church with a couple hundred people. By the rest of that fall, man, we had already sent our first missionary to Africa, and we had our first baptism on October 14th of 2012, a brother that many of you guys might even know to this day named Alex Nollett, who is now, I know, who is now training. Now they are being trained maybe to be sent out.

They're actually living in Raleigh-Durham right now, right? 50 baptisms in that first year, a ton of those being college students. It was crazy.

It was revival. God was moving, and it was just nuts. And within two years, on our second birthday, we had moved into the space right over here where I'm at preaching in the kids' space, and in four services totally packed out, man, we broke a thousand in attendance for the first time on our second birthday. But more exciting than that was a little bit later on that year in 2014, we had our first missionary family raise up to decide to move with a church that we were partnering with when the Heath family moved out to the Bridge Church in Wilmington to help them get going. A couple years after that, in 2016, we had the largest city project that we'd ever had. Thirty-five students bought in all summer, man, to worship, to do ministry, to be shaped here, and on the heels of having that city project that summer, all those college students, the Clifton Road campus launched that fall, praise God, and we officially became a multi-site church. You know, I think about that in 2012, our whole goal, somebody asked me what our goal was in 2012. I didn't know, I didn't have a bunch of goals. I was like, man, we want to go there and be faithful. That's not a great goal, I guess, okay?

And so, you know, people were like, man, put some handles on it for me. I said, okay, we want to see 500 people gathered at year five. November 2017, we had not seen in five years 500 people gathered. Actually, November 2017 was our 500th baptism when Sabrina was baptized here at Mercy Hill. We had probably partnered with about 10 churches by 2019, but in 2019, we made that move from going to partnering to parenting, and we sent 50 of our folks down to plant New City Church in Tampa, Florida, and with that church was our 100th adult that had left this church to go to the mission field. In April 2019, we saw our 1000th baptism at the High Point campus, praise God for them, praise God for their faithfulness there, and in March of 2020, we ended up the week before the shutdown, God had moved our hearts radically towards adoption and foster care ministries and ministries of life and helping people in these situations, and on March 8, 2020, the church took up an offering for $250,000 so that we would be able to forever, hopefully, at least for the next few years, be able to say to our families to step off the sidelines, on the front lines, we will be your first supporter financially. In September of that same year, now this is all during the middle of COVID, you guys remember this, okay?

This is all right in the middle of COVID. In September of that year, man, our incredible worship team launched their first worship album, and it was an incredible night, man, of worshiping together and all of that. In the fall of that year as well, man, my heart was just wrecked when I got this phone call. In the fall of that year, the largest sending agency for international missions in the world, well, I got a call from one of the people that was there at the training, they do a couple of trainings a year, one of them is in the fall, and they said, brother, there are more people at this training from Mercy Hill Church than any other church in the country that are getting ready to go out. October 2021, some of you guys might remember this because I was so fired up about it about a year ago, we were able to launch our fifth campus, Mercy Hill in Espanol, where we see the gospel proclaimed in another language in our city.

Man, what an incredible opportunity to see more going in that way, seven people were baptized that following Easter. Man, also in that fall, we launched a student center, we had an opportunity to see over 200 students, man, come together and worship that fall and in December of 2021, so many of you were part of this, man, the church came together and in cash raised the money to buy the land for our future home and hub that we're going to be able to do ministry out of as the regional campus will move for years to come. In April then of 2022, so now we're here, okay, in April 2022, our first residency class graduated, we need to celebrate this more, okay, I mean, praise God. I mean, you know, if you guys understand where your generosity is going, I mean, we have these graduates, eight or 10 of these graduates line up that got a 36 hour master's degree in their theological studies while doing ministry here without ever leaving this campus one time, right here, able to train them to see them sent out.

And finally, the second weekend of September in 2022, we celebrated our 10 year anniversary and then we had a decision to make. Man, is what God has done enough or will we continue to lean in and to strive and to labor in ways that we never have. And I believe what's going to happen by God's grace is we anchor our hope in him and we begin to say, man, he gave us a mission that what happens is that 30 people on a launch team understanding what the seeds of that church were and what it became, that 3,000 people across five different locations decide to lean all the way in. And when we do, the story just keeps rolling so that by the end of the year in 2022, Mercy Hill has started a program in North Carolina to help 20 other churches over the next five years break 1000 in attendance and send 100 of their missionaries because to whom much is given, much is required. And then by the end of 2023, the regional campus has moved into the new home and hub because the church went deep and was willing to give of their time, talent and treasure to see it happen. And then by the time we get to 2025, we have our first true granddaughter church that is planted by one of the churches that we planted. And then by 2027, because of how many teams and college students we are reaching and sending to the nations, five unreached people groups have come off the board in Northern India that do not have the gospel being proclaimed in their language, in their home right now. And then in the fall of 2029, our college ministry starts their community group session and they break 500 for the first time.

And we understand what that means because 30% of our missionaries come from the college campus. And then all of a sudden in 2030, we see an 18 year old kid that because of the timeline was never in any other church. They went to the hospital, they went home and they were put in infant care and ministries and all that right here.

But now they're 18 years old. And that kid decides they're going to choose where they're going to college based on where our church plants are going that year. And then later on that year, we launched our 10th campus and truly make what God is doing at Mercy Hill accessible to everybody in the triad. And then in 2031, for the first time in Guilford County, there are more licensed foster families than there are kids needing placement. Praise God, not only because of the families here, but because the ministry at Mercy Hill has galvanized the church at large.

And we've become an equipper and a trainer of other churches in our community to reach their community in this area. And in that year in 2031, we also plant our 20th family church, which means that with that church plant, there would absolutely be more people worshiping in the family of churches than there are in the flock right here at Mercy Hill. And then in 2032 at Easter, we have a chance to do baptisms as we always do. And the 5,000th person is baptized at Mercy Hill Church. And then by that fall, we send our 500th missionary. You know why?

Because that's how it works. See, at Mercy Hill over the last 10 years, every 10 baptisms, we get to one sent one. Actually, every 10 first-time guests, we get to one baptism. We see 100 new people come through the door for the first time.

That's a sent one gone. That's what we've seen in the last 10 years. Maybe we'll get to see it again. My question is, man, what could God do with a group? Man, this, here's the thing about this.

I can dream and imagine this. What could God actually do? If we would lean all the way to the world, if we would lean all the way in? So here's my question to you. God's got you in this place for a particular reason. Will you lean all the way in and will you labor and will you strive? James Calvert in the 1800s was going to be a missionary to the islands of Fiji, the cannibals. And as he's getting his family off the boat, the captain comes to him and he says, James, if you stay here, they will kill you and all of your family. And James Calvert famously said, brother, we died before we came here. Why are we here?

Is it to build a life or is it to give one away? I'm wrestling with that. And I want to put my yes on the table like I never have. And I pray that you will as well. Man, let's be that launch team. I want to stand up at 2032.

Probably won't be on this stage, okay? Stand up at 2032 and say, man, the story isn't just 10 years seedlings of a church, but at the 10 year mark, this church bought all the way in again. Let's pray. Father, we come before you. Lord, our lives are yours at our baptisms. Father, we have decided that to live is Christ.

We have died to this old life. And God, I pray that you would renew a fire in us like has never been before. Lord, convince us to set our hope on you. Convince us that you are living, God, with a great mission. And Lord, I pray for that. We will toil and strive. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.