Flatiron Launch | Full Service

Yeah, good morning. Thank you, thank you. On behalf of Flatiron Church, lead pastor Brian, I am excited to be here this morning with you guys. It's still morning, right? I guess it's afternoon, It's 12:10 now.

But as Bill said, I've been a resident for over a year. And for some of you, this is your first meeting of me. You're like, wait, I've never even noticed anything about Flatiron Church, which by the way, it's not about straight hair. Flatiron is a peak that sits on the East Valley. It amazes me how many people have lived here for years and don't know that. But if you've ever looked out, in fact, they were covered with snow just a few days ago.

But that peak that kind of sits there in the East Valley is Flatiron Peak. The reason we named our church that is when people look at that mountain and they think of God's creation, I want their eyes to go a little further up and thank him as their savior. Right? And that's what we want to do at Flatiron Church, make his name known. So a little bit about me, kind of who I am. I'm gonna introduce my family.

My wife of twelve years, her name is Melinda. She is my partner in ministry. And we have four kiddos together. The first, the oldest here is Cora. She's seven. She'll be eight this month. My boy is five and he'll be six this month actually. Both of them have birthdays.

And he holds down the fort. He does okay for himself. He's the only boy, so we get a lot of wrestling time in together. And the one on my shoulders, that's Mia. And Mia is three and she is the Spitfire. Every family has at least one. Some lucky families have two or all.

But she's ours and she's enough. She almost didn't get born in the hospital. She came so fast, sudden the side of the road was almost the place of her birth.

And she's kind of been that way ever since. Know, some kids come into this world and you're like, you're gonna do something. For good, I don't know. But you're gonna do something. And that's Mia. She's gonna do something. And then the last one, Ruby. Ruby's our youngest and she was unplanned. She was really actually

beyond the plan. We thought we were done. You know, a family of three kids in four years, we were just kind of wanting sleep again. And so when we found out we were pregnant, it was

a little bit of one of those kind of like, man, we had a different plan. And yet we are grateful that Vru is the last. And so some of us have some big moments in life, right? Those seasons, days, those weeks, those years. And for me,

2010 was one of those big years where multiple things came into play. The church that I would do ministry at for the next twelve years happened then. The wife that I would go on to marry, that woman was met in 2010. And so a lot of these big things happen.

And just to kind of set the pump here to prime the stage here. In 2010, I really interested in planting the church. You're doing the math. You're like, wait a second. I think you're thirteen years late. Yes.

And we're getting to why. In 2010, I was thinking at '24, let's do this, let's go. And everything I was reading was just, hey, see if you can start something. See if you can build a crowd. See if people will follow you. And so I did. I walked onto a local college campus with another guy. And at the end of that day, we had 10 people.

And at the end of three months, we had 50. And at that point, the pastor of the church I was going to started to take some interest. And I think he took a bit more interest because Melinda was the kids director and we had started dating.

And so I think he's like, who is this guy? Who exactly is this man around here? And so he comes out with me and he's looking and he's like, hey, I'll go to this college ministry that you started.

And he attends and at the end we're driving back and I'm asking him questions like, I really wanna know. I'm 24. I would love for this pastor to affirm this endeavor. And he does in some ways. He's like, Man, this is it's clearly an evident work of God. You've got a lot of giftings and people are coming.

And then he pauses. I'm like, What is that? Is that a good pause or a bad pause? And then he says, Do you trust me? And I'm like, Well, it depends on what you're gonna say. He said, Well, here's the thing. You're young. There's a lot of giftings that you have, but you kind of come off brash at times. And I feel like, well,

what if you put down college ministry? What if you came under the elders of our church? What if you got into youth ministry? And in that moment I felt like youth ministry, man, that feels like five steps back.

I don't know. And he could tell on my face that there was a little bit of like, I don't know if this is the right move for me. But how many of us have arise, we have those moments in life where we have a plan, we set the plan, it's probably even a good plan.

And then the next step that happens before us kind of throat punches us, kicks us in the gut a little bit. Maybe that's you here today. Maybe you've got your clenched fist over your plan for your life. And what does it look like to open those up?

By means of doing this, we're gonna be looking at the life of Moses. Moses also had planned for himself. He had a plan for his life. He had the desire with which he wanted to go. And the Lord would give him a next step that he couldn't possibly have imagined. And so here's our big idea. It's not your plan for God.

It's his next step for you. So as you're turning to our text this morning, we're gonna be in Exodus two eleven-twelve. Here's the question I want you to wrestle with. Where are you going to God right now with your plan like this?

When maybe, just maybe today, it's not actually about sending out Flatiron Church. It's about your step with us. Maybe that's gonna be to remain here and dig deep and pray from afar. But for some, he's going to call you to come.

And you're like, I just met you. Weirder things have happened, But let's be open to it, okay? Sticking to our text, verse 11 of chapter two.

Follow along with me on the screen if you don't have your Bible with you. One day when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and he looked on their burdens and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. He looked this way and that and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hit him in the sand.

Let's back up a little bit. This man Moses is 40 years of age, which is in and of itself a little bit of a miracle. See, when Moses was born, the Pharaoh at the time had said any male Hebrew was to be killed because he did not wanna see a generation of males rise up against the Egyptian household.

And so what happened for Moses is his parents were faithful. They didn't want to kill their child. They placed him in a basket and he floated and was eventually found within the household of Pharaoh. One of the princesses there found him.

And so Moses was raised. He was raised unlike most of his peers. He was raised in the Egyptian household. He was taught, he was trained, he was learned. And now he's 40. And his story is part of a greater story. Four hundred years Hebrews have been enslaved.

What began as Joseph moving over one of the initial fathers of the faith then turned into the pharaohs not knowing and being fearful of these Hebrews. And by the time you get to Moses, they're slaves.

And these slaves are beaten. These slaves are taken advantage of. These slaves are overworked and underfed and these slaves are his people. And so when he sees this beating happening, what fills him with rage is he's rightly understanding this is wrong.

This should not be. This is not the way it is meant to be. But what he does is he comes up with his own plan. And he enacts his plan. He doesn't ask God to intervene in this plan. He doesn't ask God's thoughts on this plan. He brings his plan to God.

And there's four things we can take from this. And even though most of you aren't gonna be accused of murdering an Egyptian, although I live in San Tan Valley, so you never know what's gonna happen. It's a little rough out there. But all of us have times where we bring our plans to God, don't we?

And then we're asking him to bless. The first thing we see when we do this is we decide the timing.

When we are engaged in bringing our plan to God, we're the ones that are deciding the timing. How do we know? Look at the text. Moses, what did he do? He acted. He saw and he acted. Just like with me and my pastor.

I looked and I said, hey, I feel called to plant this church. I figured it would be the next step. Grow this ministry to 50. Make that the beginning of the church. I was gonna decide the timing. The second thing we do is we begin to provide the strength.

For Moses, he was 40. He was in peak physical condition. And in that moment, what does he do? He murders the Egyptian. For me and my church planting endeavor, I was just beginning to preach and teach, and I was just beginning to wield my strength. And I have no doubt had I planted the church at 25,

there'd be a lot of wounded people because I hadn't yet come to the end of my strength. Thirdly, when we bring our plan to God, we declare our purpose for God. Moses actually was right in that he would one day help free Israel from Egypt. But by bringing his plan, he actually misunderstood his purpose.

And when we do these three deadly things, it leads to the fourth. We own the victory. And why is this deadly for us? When we live life as though we own the victory, where's God in the equation?

Let me ask you, does it work? Does it work? Can we live life owning the plan and putting the plan in play and just letting it be and asking God to bless? Where does it lead us? What happens if we live life that way? Let's look in our verse

13 of chapter two. It says, When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, he says, why do you strike your companion? And he answered, who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed that Egyptian? And then Moses was afraid

and thought surely the thing is known. And when Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and he stayed in the land of Midian and he sat down by a well. Rock Point, when we bring our plans and we make the timing in our own strength of our own purpose, owning the victory, we will inevitably

end where Moses ended. Scared, alone, isolated, filled with fear. And here's why. When we enact the plan, the timing's wrong. And you're thinking, no, no, sometimes I get the timing right. Yes, but is it worth betting it on? If you're wrong 99.9% of the time, we're just gonna call that a fail.

And yet some of us, we repeatedly go thinking, I've got this, I've got this, I've got this. When we provide our own strength, our strength betrays us. In that moment, he killed that man and he hid him. Yeah, he had the physical ability to take this man's life, but he had no ability to free Israel.

None at all, not with his strength. Your strength will betray you.

Thirdly, we misunderstand our purpose when we bring it in our own plan. That's part of why he was so upset. That's why he ran away. That's why he fled and hid. He's like, why am I not getting this? God, thought you had made me to help this. And it's like, it's true, but you have to wait on God's timing.

He has a plan. He has a step for you. And then when we own the victory, we ultimately will own the failure. When that plan fails, we crumble with it. Rock Point Church, how many of us, if we're being honest today, are holding our plans with tightly gripped fists?

And God's asking us to open those fists and take the next step with him.

For me, that looked like being in that car with my pastor and he had a fairly hard conversation.

And that hard conversation was simply, Hey, come take a trip with me. Like, you're kind of the last person I wanna talk to right now.

I said, yeah, come over. It's a church planning trip. It's a church planning trip in Phoenix. At least you'll enjoy the weather. So we did, hopped on a plane and got there. I remember wrestling with just this decision. And the more I wrestled with, the more I realized, I think he's right.

And I hate that. I hate that. I just wanna move forward in this. I don't wanna be stuck in this. I don't wanna go to youth ministry. But as I wrestled with that, I began to think that maybe this was the right thing and maybe my timing was wrong. And what if that's us this morning?

Things aren't moving on our timeline. Things aren't moving as we wanted, but he's giving us the next step.

Look with me in chapter three from Moses, look at what this next step entails. It begins now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb,

the mountain of God. Another name for this mountain is Mount Zion or Sinai. Sorry, Sinai. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in the flame of fire out of the midst of the bush. And he looked and behold, the bush was burning yet it was not consumed.

And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned. And when the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called out of him out of the bush, Moses, Moses. And he said, here I am. Moses is now 80 years old. Forty years had gone by since he enacted his first plan. Forty years had gone by.

He's been a shepherd for forty. He understands working with the stinky sheep far more than working with the princes and royalty of Pharaoh. All of those dreams that he had early on, all the timing, all the strength, all the purpose he was bringing

has been beaten out years ago. And guess what happens? God shows up and says, take a step. And he does, he takes a step. He sees this burning bush and he comes towards it. And when God cries out Moses, he says, here I am. And he takes off his sandals to stand on holy ground to go towards God.

So what happens when we take a step? At this church planting conference that my pastor had brought me to, and I finally confessed to him. I said, okay, I think you're right. I'm gonna put down what I was hoping would be the start of a church.

And I'll come under the elders and the authority and I'll lead this high school ministry. Just could I potentially At the time Melinda was the kids director. I was like, could she come with me? So that way we get a male and a female leader in there and we can do this thing together.

He said, Nope, no problem. That's fine. And so Melinda and I take it on and very quickly I realized there's actually no high school students in this church. Take that back. There's two and they're both his kids. It's like, okay, I see, I see. I got juked here. It was like a Laban Jacob situation, right? And

what happens then is we start to build this ministry. Then fiance and I start to build this ministry. And while we're doing that, we're going through premarital counseling with this pastor and his wife. And that summer, summer of twenty ten, I get another call from him. See, we had just done our first premarital together

and it didn't go so well. In fact, it was awful. And he calls me up, he said, Hey, Brian, do you trust me?

And at that point, where am I gonna go? He says, hey, look, your fiance, Melinda, she loves you. She is over the moon for you, but she doesn't respect you. She's actually fearful of you because I'm kind of a blunt person. I was kind of a brash person. I could be very, very, very direct.

And I was steamrolling her. And he said, Hey, you don't wanna go into marriage like this.

What if you pulled back, you took off the wedding date and you learned what it looks like to walk with her and love her?

I had my plans, guys. In 2010, I was thinking, here's the church, here's the marriage. And at every step, the Lord gave me a different step. And every time I tried to plan that thing out, it was no. And that's not easy. It's not. But I have no doubt had I not listened to my pastor then, I would have planted an extraordinarily

dysfunctional church that wouldn't be around today. Had I gotten married without pulling back and learning what it was like to actually love her well, I don't know if we'd be married today. If we were, it certainly wouldn't be functioning well.

Sometimes the step God has for you is not easy. And sometimes that not easy step is preparing you. Do you see what he's doing with Moses? Forty years, for me, thirteen. For some of you in this room, he's been pushing you and making you go through a season of life far longer than you hoped for.

But he's doing something in that work. He's doing something through that tension. He's doing something and he's repurposing it. If you let him for his glory and your good.

And even when you get there, never arrive, right? You never like get to this moment where you plateau, I've got God figured out. No. Once she's got your first step, take a look at the second step, verse 10. This is what that second step looks like for Moses. He says, come, I will send you to Pharaoh

that you may bring my people, the children of Israel out of Egypt.

And if you're looking at this, you're probably thinking, Man, I bet you Moses was stoked for it because he was already wanting to do this forty years ago. He's like, come on, let's do this. But what's the very next verse say? It says, Moses says to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh

and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt. God, are you seeing what I'm seeing? I'm 80 years old. I've got 40 of sheep smell on me. They won't even let me in the palace.

And God responds, But I will be with you.

And this shall be the sign for you that I've sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain. Rock Point Church, the 10 commandments were given to Moses on that mountain, Mount Sinai. And the people of God did worship on that mountain.

It's not your plan for God. It's his next step for you. And here's what a next step in him looks like. Unlike the first where we decide the timing, we provide the strength, we declare the purpose, we own the victory. Here's what happens when we take the next step in him. He reveals the timing.

Yeah, but Brian, what if it's off? What if it's too long? Moses was 80. And that's the exact right time.

For some of you, you don't wanna go. You'd rather stay. No, no, this is good and he's pushing you. For others, it's you wanna go so much and you just need to push in. Let him reveal the timing. Second thing, when we take his step, it's he is the strength, not us, not us.

In order for me to move forward in the church, order for me to pastor and plant, in order for me to do marriage with Melinda well, I had to come to the end of my strength.

And there's an important reason why it leads to the third point, which is that he in our weakness, he repurposes that. The best men and women I know, the ones that I want leading with me are those who have the scars of Jesus, who have come to the end and have convinced themselves that they need him to move forward. Why?

Because it's a dangerous thing to think you can do life on your own. It's a dangerous thing to think you can move through life on your own in your own strength. You want broken and weak people who trust in Jesus.

And the beautiful thing is when he reveals the time and when he becomes our strength, when he repurposes our victory or our weakness, he becomes our victory. It's Jesus. It's we get to go with him. How do I know that? Take a look in verse 12. He says back to Moses, he says, I will be with you.

And that phrase, that sentence, that should remind you of another word, another phrase, another sentence from Jesus himself As he's nearing the end of his earthly ministry, about to ascend back into heaven, he's going to tell his disciples. He's gonna give them final words, final instruction to go and make disciples,

to go and baptize them. But the last thing he says, let's read it together. Matthew twenty eight eighteen through 20. Jesus came and said to them, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, son and holy spirit,

teaching them to observe all that I've commanded you and behold, and this is the phrase, I am with you always

to the end of the age.

When you're in Jesus, whatever step he calls you to take, he's with you.

When my pastor looked at me and said, if you trust me, don't move forward in this. The only path I had forward was my eyes on Jesus to say, You're better than even marrying her.

And in a way, the only way I could actually ever lead her is if my eyes are on Jesus. Same thing with the church. Man, I thought youth ministry would be maybe one year. Eight years later, two classes full have gone through. I'm still a youth pastor. And what did he teach me during that time? Patience and resolve.

How to continually push the gospel forward, even when it seems like no one cares.

And here's the thing, when Jesus is the victory, no matter what step he calls you to take, how dark it may seem, how scary it may look, he goes with you and he makes all the difference. I'll end with this. I didn't tell you where that church planting conference was.

It was in Arizona, I said that, but it was actually at a church called Cornerstone, which is about twenty minutes from here. And if you don't know the story of Cornerstone, Cornerstone helped Rock Point the same way Rock Point helps us, Flatiron. And at that conference, I met Bill Bush in 2010.

And I remember standing outside this building at Cornerstone, this massive sanctuary that looks a lot like this. And I remember thinking to myself, Lord, you would never use me to do anything this big.

You would never use me. How could I ever raise money? How could I ever bring a team and envision them? How could I ever go somewhere and actually lead in a way that produces change. And effectively what I was telling God is who am I that I should go? But Rock Point Church, I stand here today, thirteen years later,

19 people moved with me from Illinois, 19 to see a church start in a valley twenty one hours away from family and friends. We began that Bible study in my home in September. We now average 80 every weekend.

We have five baptisms next week.

Amen, come on. Five, five. When you go to God and you say, Who am I that I should go? Watch what he'll do. When you open your hands and you take the next step. Let's pray. Father, thank you for really just the culmination of things today. Being here, having been impacted so profoundly by Bill.

Lord, I pray for those here that are sitting and wrestling with their plan, wondering what it looks like to hold it open. I pray that you would give them strength and favor to do so, to take that next step, whatever it may be, that they would root themselves, that they would live their life in such a way

as to not try to hold on to things in their own way and own plan, but to follow you. And Lord, that you would fill them even in this moment if they're covered with fear or covered with shame or covered with the sense of just, don't want to go, that you would begin to fill them with a greater vision

that following you, yes, though it is hard and scary, you go with us. And may that be our joy and may that further bring you glory. And I pray this in your name, amen. Amen.

Take a seat. Thanks, Brian. Hey, I just wanted to ask him a few questions. Talk for a couple minutes before we pray and get on with our day here. But excellent job. Thanks for being willing to let me not preach for another week. It was fun. Yeah. You know what's interesting though? I've listened

to your story all these times. It's like you talk about this pastor that

asked you to trust him and then he gave you this great wisdom of warning like, don't plant a church yet, don't get married yet. And I always I keep reflecting on the first time I had to look you in the face and it was at the assessment center, you'd just been getting assessed to be a church planner. And I

said, do you trust me? And you remember what my word of wisdom was? Yeah, talk dumber. That was the phrase. Yeah, my great wisdom was if you trust me, you need to talk dumber. And it was because he's incredibly intelligent. This guy's brilliant. Smart.

Smart. Way smarter than me. But that's really not saying much. He really is smart. And Come

and from his theological background of how he's trained, he was taught to use all the big words when you're talking and pray. So he's just it was second nature to him. And so at the assessment center, when we'd be in these meetings and the guys would be watching and then we'd have to go talk about them in the in the meeting. I didn't tell them this till the first service, surprised Is

is is they're saying they're like, well, this guy's great. But man, I just I don't get it. And one guy's like, yeah, the way he's talks. One guy goes, I I need one of those word of the day calendars to understand what he's saying. And then the other guy goes, yeah. I go, I have 12 words written down that I have to go look up what they mean. And

and and it was like just the way he was taught to communicate. So I was trying to say, hey,

talk in a way that that that that that that people could understand. Talk dumber. So thank you. Because now they all understood you because you talked dumb enough for you. No. It's me that you Not you guys. Well, They laughed. Last service booed me. Yeah. They did. Last service They booed them. Extremely offended that I said that. So thanks for taking the joke. That was good. Anyways, let's get on with some of the questions.

Know, we're talking here. We're talking about the the church and and and and planting a church why. But I wanna ask you a two part question. The first part is, why should we church plant anyways? Why should you plant a church? Why do we wanna be a part of church planting? Why

should churches be planted? And then along with that, why you ended up with us, resonating with me because you had kind of another burning bush moment in this room actually

that kinda changed your view of you kind of had a prejudiced idea of like against a church like us. So go ahead and answer the first part. Yeah, the first one is why plant churches? The

number one reason is we simply don't have enough. And if you look in the East Valley, you might think to yourself, what do you mean we don't have enough? We have tons of mega churches and there's churches coming all over the place and don't we have enough to reach the people we have?

The reality is across The United States, there's something like 4,500 churches that shut down every year. And that was the stat from 2019. And we only plant about 3,000 churches. And so there's a deficit already of about 1,500 churches on average. And that's been the trend for the last decade. Well, in 2020 alone, 9,000

churches shut their doors and they never opened again. They never came back. Wow. You'd have to go back a hundred years to get to a place where you have so few churches for so many people. And so that's the first reason we need a lot more churches that are faithful.

And then the second thing is what brought me here? What brought me here is really the sense that I came out of a tradition that really valued the Bible and it valued understanding the word of God clearly and not pulling punches. And I thought in a big church like this, there's no way

that the pastor is gonna be able to preach and teach in a manner that's honest with his people and still have such a following. And so we met together and I was like, man, I really like Bill. I really got along with Dave. I got along with Randy. I love these guys. They're kind of my people.

But you know, I'm a little bit interested to see what the preaching is like. So I was like, well, let's go. I'll see how bad it can be. When we did, went right into the back row there, up there in the backseat Baptist land and kind of head against the wall and you know, and waited to see what would unfold.

Fortunately, wasn't Daniel preaching or waiting for training. No, wasn't Daniel. No, it was you. Like, for some Mac, he changes that every week, every service. I suppose they get different, So throw them off every go ahead, sorry. First service, ended up spitting out water all over my Bible. So I closed it today.

But no, I was up there and I just remember listening and thinking, wow, two things. And actually I kind of bawled my eyes out. And the first was he gave the gospel.

He told about the necessity of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection and how it's we who are in need and how through his blood, we are redeemed. We're reconciled unto God. And the second thing he talked about was he talked about the reality of sin and death and hell, and he didn't mince his words.

And I remember looking at my wife sitting up there, I was like, this is our home. This is where we're gonna be. Any pastor who loves his people enough to say the hard truths in a gracious way is a person I wanna be under. One of our core values of the church that's on the office wall over there is throat punch.

That's a core value here. If you're new, actually if you're new in the last month you probably don't even know who I am. I'm the lead pastor of the church. I've been out of town, I've been gone, been sick. So hey, sorry. They're like, who's this guy? Thought he was the lead pastor.

Now I forgot where we were. See, the last service man, we just get loopy. We get loopy. Yeah. No, it's a throw punch. It's just, you know, we're gonna say the tough thing, but at the right time and in the right way.

That's what we try to do. We're not gonna avoid it. It's basically what Jesus said, speak the truth in love. It means you gotta say the stuff that's truthful that we need. That's what We don't just need more churches that attract people to come sit in a room. We need more churches that hear the truth of how much God loves them and how that's the only way to be made right with God is through the gospel. And then what does that mean in your life? That's what it means in your life. And that's really kinda with your message today talking about hey, what's that next step? We always look at the plans

when God wants us to just take the step. And that's been asked a lot about as we've grown as a church, that's why we're up to five services. I mean, we're starting to run out of room even to start. We can keep growing.

We're gonna knock these walls out next. We're building that children's building and we'll put six seven hundred more seats in here. But I'm telling you at the rate we're growing guys, we're not gonna be able to go back to four services already by the time we move into the Get these seats. So

the truth is we can't just keep doing service service. So you run out of the potential of how much can you grow here. And then you gotta make the decision of what's next. And you're coming along and getting to know you and doing this mission where you helped us solidify what our next step is.

We've always been a part of church planting. Like I said, but what's different about it is this is your first came a resident. It feels like hey, this is rock point. This is who we are. But what are we gonna do next? And really when churches start to run out of the growth potential on their main campus,

there's one of two tracks you can take. And one of them is you can clone yourself. That's like the satellite models. Some of you might have gone to some of this. A lot of the larger churches around here, it's a satellite. That means they have multiple campuses, same church name, same stuff. They usually,

other than one site, it's the teachings on a video screen. And they just kind of It's basically like franchising your church. And there are some advantages to that. Not knocking it works well, it reaches people. I don't have a problem with it per se in that regards. And it does seem to expediate

the process because the mother ship can just like, we're gonna build a building. We're gonna build a building over there and have another satellite. And you don't have to redo systems and all that. You can share systems and things like that. And so that tends to work in that way. The other model is to have kids

and ask to raise up another leader. And yeah, they have your DNA because it's like you have a child. You put your DNA, but they are themselves. They are gonna go have their own house. They're gonna go and like the phase we're in now. Like what did you You described yourself as this to me. I thought it was said a flat iron is like a college kid that's got their own apartment but raids the pantry. Yeah. Yeah.

Comes home to do laundry on the weekend. Exactly. And that's where we're at with them and that's what we wanna be. And so for us, when we were looking at it, we don't, I don't. And our leaders at the church we've been praying over finally realized we don't like the idea of satelliting. We don't wanna do it.

And I'm probably terrible enough in person. I'm probably worse just on a screen. So that wouldn't be a good idea anyways. But the reality is that And then he'll share a little bit why in a minute of like what's good about a church plant. But we just felt like that's not who we're supposed to be.

And then I was thinking and everyone said, Yeah, but if you satellite, there's all these advantages. And it was usually about combined resources, shared stuff quicker. And I looked at my friends that were challenging me with that and I said, But why can't you just do that for your kids?

Why can't you plant a church and do the same thing? Why do you have to have so much control? Why does the name Rock Point have to be on it?

It's about the kingdom. It's about getting more churches. We don't need less churches, we need more churches. I mean, think about it, we're net losing 1,500 churches a year in The United States. I mean, did that work out for Blockbuster? When they started going backwards. What is there one left up in Oregon? Oregon.

I doubt the last church would be in Oregon, but

Oh man. Definitely not. You save it all for the last service. Definitely not Seattle. It's not gonna be there, that's for sure. Seahawks fans and pagans. That's all will be left.

But Sorry. You can't help me. This is like Last service is always longer, man. I do this all the time.

But yeah. So that's it helped us land where we're going next and that is to do this more. I mean we've already been doing it. But to actually not just be a part of church planting. And we've adopted churches. We've helped churches. I coached churches. I coach a guy in other states and other countries. We're still doing that. But how do we raise up and actually have our own? So like a matter of fact, you just finished the residencies in the coach mode.

We actually had yesterday we have a new resident that just moved here Monday. So we have another resident taking over and coming in that's gonna plant another daughter church for us. Yeah. And he's gonna be out in the West Valley. And so he'll be a little bit further away. It'll be harder for him to raid the pantry.

But yeah. He'll have to drive home week But with that being said, part of why we're doing this is because it is a shared thing. And and and they say that the quality of a church is is often not found in in the people you attract, but in the people you send. And if you

know Brian and Cliff and their families and the people sitting over here, the people that have already become a part of a church. If that's true, then Rock Point's a great church. Because this is a great team. And part of what we're doing now is some of you might have come to Rock Point in order to meet them.

And it might be your next step to grow and to be involved in what God wants you to do next might be to go be a part of this church.

To connect in some way. A matter of fact, loved it in the passage you just thought I didn't have time for it was when Moses kept complaining, God, I don't think I can do this. He said, Well, what's in your hand? And it was his shepherd's staff. He'd been a shepherd for forty years. And he said, put that down before me.

And that was saying something deeper than just And he empowered it and did miraculous things through the power of the staff. And what I think he's saying is, I'm gonna take what you have and who you are

and I'm gonna empower that to do what I've asked you to do next. And so his whole message today for all of us is whether we're gonna be a part of this or not, is I hope you heard that every one of us in this room, including myself has to ask. God is constantly asking, what's in my hand?

And am I willing to set it down in front of them in order to point people to Jesus by loving them like Jesus? That is our call. If you're a Christian, that's what you need to be about.

And I think a new church gives an opportunity for some of you to get involved in a way you never thought. And so I'm gonna encourage some of you to go talk to them and maybe be a part of this. But before I say how to do that, the question I wanna ask is, some of you might say that sounds intriguing,

but you've had your life changed here. You've experienced stuff here and there is an advantage to an established church. We have more ministries. We have the bigger buildings. The pastor has bigger biceps than him. Oh, that's true. In all seriously, when you go to

a church plant that's in a school that doesn't have everything, most of the time even if you're intrigued by it, you're more worried about what you're losing,

what you're putting down rather than what you're picking up. What would you say to someone like that? Like what is the advantage of becoming a part of a brand new church, becoming the tip of the spear? So to speak. I think the first thing that I wanna address just right off the bat, younger pastor, you might assume, hey, is he gonna be as theologically sound as Bill has been? Is he gonna hold fast to the word of God? And one of the things I wanna just encourage you guys with is, as Bill and I started talking and getting late nights just going through theology and where we stand on things, in many ways,

I don't know if I could have found a better fit. Coming out of seminary in Illinois for twelve years, I constantly felt like I was having to take this thing and just defend it even within the walls of the church. And I found Bill and I just remember thinking, wow, I found a friend who actually walks with me in this.

And so we don't come, it's not like we're trying to shoehorn this thing, we just line up. And so if that's a concern and that's one of those things you're like, hey, I'm not sure if I would.

I don't think that has to be. In fact, I don't think it has to be at all. The second thing I would say, what do you gain? One of the things you gain is relational activity within the core team.

If you wanna have dinner at my house, there's a good chance you can make that happen, right? There's a good chance we can have you out unless you're weird and then it's a kid thing and we won't do that.

I don't even have dinner at my house. So that's kind of an impressive thing. Depends on if you wanna be weird. If you're not weird, we'll bring you over. So it just depends on Bill here. But like that's And for some of you, you're thinking, well, that's actually like a negative. I'd rather sit in the shadows. And that's where I would say, what is the next step?

Right? You don't grow in the shadows. You grow in community. And so that church plan is one of those things where you're gonna get to know us and our team and you never know, they may be the best friends that you've had a hard time finding.

And then the second thing or the third thing, kind of pro is that some of you have a lot of leadership potential

and you haven't had a chance to exercise that yet. You haven't had a chance to serve in a capacity yet. And I would say for some of you, you'll come into a church like ours in a church plant phase and be able to exercise some of those giftings, some of those strengths that are kind of unearthed within you. And you might discover you're extraordinarily good at something that otherwise you would have never pushed into had you not come into a church planting context.

And that last answer is kind of why the reason why we'd rather have kids than clones, because I think church plants offer an opportunity for people to expand and develop more leadership than you would have before. Like you said, I think there's some of the room that you might not even know a gift you have

until you got involved in something like this. And it's true. So I would encourage you to look at it. Matter of fact, say this is tugging on someone's heart. I think the other fear is people say it's all or nothing. There's one option. Either I burn the bridges,

I say goodbye to Rock Point and I go over there. It's a permanent kind of thing. But there's actually multiple. You have three different ways that you can actually be a part of what's going on to different degrees. What what are those? If I wanna get involved, what are those three What are your three steps? When I introed the sermon, I think I I mentioned there's some of you that you're gonna be all in. This thing has been primed long before you ever came. And now that I'm up here, you're like, that's very clearly where God has us going. I've already talked with multiple people in lobby

that that's their story. For some of you, you're like, no, no, Rock Point's where we're gonna root, we're here, but we wanna pray for you from afar. We wanna potentially even help give some funding with your church. To that end, we're five people raising support.

I've got a team of about 120 people who give money each week and basically support my salary. And the reason we do that is because as an early church, we don't want to burden ministry

trying to pay the salaries of the pastors. And so we have all of our ministry staff raise support for the first four years so that every dollar that goes into a Flatiron is used for Flatiron ministry. And so to that end, you may come alongside and say, hey, we're gonna give over and beyond,

just log onto website and we wanna bless you in that way. But for many of you, you may join for a season. A church plant is really the first three years of a church's existence.

And during that time, they're trying to build up leadership teams. They're trying to figure out who their elders will be. They're trying to figure out what their ministries should look like. That's a great time to come in, especially if you have

kind of a wrestling with this is to come in and serve for a year or two or three. It doesn't have to be a permanent thing. You can come in and stay there and then go back to the mothership. And you know what? You've done a work that was absolutely essential, helping this church get off the ground.

And so, yeah, any of those. All of Yeah, when we moved out here, Rock Point, we had five families that come, but one of them came, he was able to take a sabbatical year from his job. And they moved all the way from California with the sole intent of just being there for the first year.

And it was huge. They helped us get stuff started. They helped develop that DNA,

the sequences and then handed off what they helped us with and then went back. So it's not an all you can get involved in many ways. But the reason we're willing to share this is this is what we do. This is the way we're gonna continue to reach people. And I consider Flatiron kind of its family. So yeah, it's it's own church but it's got our DNA. We're we're together on this. So if you're serving there, you're serving. It's it's you're a part of what we're doing as a church. And it's a privilege for us to get to do this. We're in this together. It's like we're we're we're Flatpoint Church. No.

That that's a terrible name. Well, said it better. You said I don't remember. Rock iron. Rock iron. Rock iron. That's a better name for that's almost too manly of a I don't feel like I'm manly enough to go to rock iron. I I can't do that. So And I would say, lastly,

if you're here and you're wondering what's the next step. Yeah. Today at 05:00, we're gonna meet at Jack Barnes, which is where we do our Sunday evening meetings. Jack Barnes Elementary. Jack Barnes Elementary. It's off of it's off of Queen Creek Road in between Ellsworth and Chrisman in Queen Creek.

And we meet there every Sunday evening. Once we grand open in July, we'll start doing two morning services.

But tonight, Bill and I are gonna be there at 05:00. We've got dinner, we've got childcare. We'd encourage you to come. That's where you're gonna hear not a rehashing of this, but you're gonna hear the plan for how we take this thing from my house to an actual grand opening. And here's the thing by God's grace and the favor he's given, we're already well positioned even before this weekend to do just that.

And so I wouldn't say if you're at all feeling this tug or wondering, come tonight, we got dinner for you, bring the kiddos, we'll take care of them. If you can't make tonight, then the next step would be showing up on a Sunday night, getting to know the team, checking it out, seeing if that would be a fit for you, the Lord would have you there. But that's really the next step.

And then finally too, like what I have Brian preach on anyways is even if this isn't where God had you to be involved, I hope that today was at least open your eyes and challenge you to go, hear God say, What's in your hand? And what's your next step to take with me in your life? To really

walk in the direction he wants you. Not just look at those burning bushes from afar. That's really cool what God's doing over there. That's kinda interesting. That's awesome. And then ignore it, but draw close.

And I love in the passage, like the theology teaching comes around, the first step is always to draw close to God. The next step is then to step out with God.

And so I'd hope that you would be thinking about that no matter what is in your life. But if God is speaking to you, maybe you were here for such a time as this to be a part of what's going on with Flatiron. Encourage you to go talk to them out there today. So here's what I wanna do to close this off. I just wanna pray for them, but he's got part of his team here. They're over here, you guys come on up on stage. Come on up. He brought the non weird looking ones so it wouldn't scare you guys.

So all the non weird ones coming up here. As long as Cliff's not here, we're fine. Oh no, Cliff is He is here. There he is. His mustaches. Cliff's the executive pastor that moved out here. Yeah. And he grew a mustache so he didn't look like he's 12.

Come on up. Let's hear. Gather around all around the back of us here. Come on, come on. Yeah, come on on both Send her on around here. Come on in. Huddle up, huddle up. And as I pray, I I you know what? I have speaking of us being in the boat together on the Sea Of Galilee and experiencing

that, I picked up this rock the first time I was in Israel off the coast of the Sea Of Galilee. Right there on shoreline. And I've kept it for years. I don't know why, just had it. And I set it there and it just reminds me of where Jesus walked and how he taught his disciples and to be faithful.

And then I realized I'm gonna give it to Brian here to keep for their church to do the same thing. Keep it someplace to remember to pray about how we're all in this boat together.

And then we are better together. Because then when I told Brian this the first time, he says, Well, you know what I wanna do then? Is the first daughter church that we send out, he's gonna give them this rock. And then the goal is someday yeah. The coolest thing is think about how cool it is. Someday in heaven,

I hope there's a conversation where we see meet how many other guys got this rock. How cool would that be? Amen? Amen.

Amen. This time I'm giving it to you and you can keep it. So you had to give it back to me the other time. I did. So don't lose it. Sadly, Melinda's not here. So So it's all on you, man. I may lose It's all on you. Maybe you should give it to your executive pastor. He might lose it too. Yeah. Although he looks kinda shifty I

don't know my stuff. No. Let's pray together, man. Father God, I just thank you for, this team. I thank you, for everyone on this stage. I thank you for their trust of you and their walk. And Lord, I pray that first and foremost, they would always pull and walk close to you.

And then Lord, I pray you protect them, their families. And then Lord, I pray the same thing for all of us sitting in here, all of us watching online. But Lord, I also pray specifically for my friend here, I thank you for his friendship. I thank you for his humility. And all of his story, Lord, as talented as he is

and he's always been willing to step back and say, Okay, I'll be teachable in this moment. So Lord, thank you that that teachable spirit is infectious. And Lord, I pray that he continues to be that way.

I just pray a simple prayer that the fact that we took the time to talk about this right now, that you would grow his team. But Lord, I pray that you would grow all of us. And the fact that we took the time to talk about this and that

we've been given the privilege to be a part of what you're doing. I pray that there are thousands and thousands upon people that are in your kingdom with you for all of eternity because we got to do this. I

pray this in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on the We Are Rock Point app for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.