WE ARE ROCK POINT CAMPAIGN | Vision Weekend | Sermon

Amen. How's it going?

Well, you look around this room and you understand why we need to keep building stuff. But I know here we are talking about

building campaign. We're wrapping up the two years of the We Are Rock Point but we're about to have to go into another two years to finish phase two and three. As you just saw in the video and I know what we're gonna talk about is I wanna envision us for what's going on around here. But I also know that I understand

when you see stuff like this, if you've in our church very long, we've actually jokingly said, you know we're gonna start calling our campaigns here we go again. And just give it here we go again one, here we go again two. It's gonna be like John Wick movies. They're just gonna keep going.

And I understand that could be exhausting because I've done every campaign we've ever had in the church. This will be like, I think it's number nine or 10 in twenty two years. So we're basically always having to do something. And it can be overwhelming.

It could be like, really? Why are we doing this again? Matter of fact, and you can feel tired and it's hard, it is, I get it. Even me as the leader that's excited about this, just this last week we have a group of, I think we gather pastors in the valley every quarter

and we bring in a well known, very experienced leader pastor that'll come in from anywhere in the country and just pour in into us. We get several 100 of them here. This last one that we had was here at Rock Point, and a guy named Gene Apple. Gene Apple came. He's got a huge church, been a pastor. You guys know Gene. Yeah. He's a great guy. He actually came and he goes, I wanna have lunch with you, Bill. So he came and I was eating lunch with him, and he was looking around and he's like, wow this place is amazing. How have I never been here? And I go, well I guess we're the largest church that no one's ever heard of, know?

And then he goes, you're building? How big is that building? We started talking about this stuff And he goes, it must be going great. I go, yeah, it's going great. But And then I started whining. I go, this weekend, man, we just did a campaign. We've been doing it forever. We need another $6,000,000

now. And I gotta start talking to the church about it. I know there's gonna be people like, ah, they're just asking for money and that makes me feel bad because I like to be liked. Then I was like, and then there's other issues with all the growth because now we're shutting down classrooms and the parking lots of disaster because we're gonna start building something from the first phases as facilities building back here if you're curious of what's going on. So now we lose more parking. People are irritated. The town won't keep up with us. They haven't widened the road. So us and the school just get to cry together about that and the crowds. And it's all these problems and our youth ministry is booming. But now we have this after school program and they come over here and he

loved our outside area. And I say, yeah, but all that furniture that my wife helps get, she designs all this stuff and brings it in and takes care of it. And they wonder, so she still has a job to keep doing it? Well, we're always building and someone has to keep an eye on that stuff because they keep breaking it. The the the students, they're expensive. You know, if you have a teenager, you know what it's like. And imagine having 400 teenagers

that come to your house every day. It's hard. So I'm telling them all this stuff that's like it all has to do with the fact that Jesus is doing something here and we're growing and he's sitting there watching me and goes, wow. That seems really hard.

And I am not the smartest mammal on the planet. But I had a sense that I go, you know, I don't think his sympathy is sincere. Because it wasn't. Then he smiled at me. Goes, Bill, come on, man. I travel and train and talk to pastors all over the world.

And there is not five pastors I know on this planet that has your problems. And all the rest would gladly trade theirs for what's going on at Rock Point. And I realized he's right. Instead of it, here we go again, we need to celebrate that here we get to go again. That's what's going on around here.

And so for the next couple weeks, which we're still gonna be in Matthew, but we're gonna jump a little forward and jump a little back. We are gonna actually look at what we need to be doing around here. Today we're gonna talk about this. We can't stop showing up because he keeps showing up.

We need to show up. We can't just stop

we can't stop showing up and being the church. We can't stop showing up and being involved. We can't stop going where God wants us to go because Jesus keeps showing up. Meaning he has already prepared a harvest for us. He's already prepared a plan for us, and there's a victory there. All we have to do is show up and go where he's called us to go. Man, we get to be a part of the victory. Matter of fact,

in Matthew 22 there's

a story where a Pharisee, they're trying to trap Jesus by asking him what's the most important command in law of Moses? Meaning I didn't read the Bible. I didn't do my homework. Can you give me the cliff notes? Tell me what the whole Bible is about. What is your most important thing you want us to be about?

A matter of fact, this is the passage where Rock Point gets its mission statement from of what our purpose statement is and it says here in verse 34, but when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees with his reply, he made them sad you see, they met together

to question him again. One of them an expert in religious law tried to trap him with this question, Teacher, which is the most important command in the law of Moses? Jesus replied,

You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is equally important, love your neighbor as yourself. The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.

And if you look through scripture when he says love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and love others. So it's love God, love others, which by the way is what all the 10 commandments are about. It's about how to love God and how to love others.

So what he's saying is that's what I want for you and it's what I want from you in a sense. I want you to have victory in this and that's where we get the mission statement of our church. Because how do you love God with all your heart, mind, and soul?

You look at what he's called us to do. Jesus in the book of Matthew and other places, if you love me, you'll come attend a meeting once a week where we talk about me and then you'll ignore me the rest of the week. Is that what he said? If you love me, you'll do what I say.

And he's not doing it as a threat. He's meant because it also says we only love him because he loved us first. So if I have really landed that Jesus died for me and I know that he's Lord, that he loves me that much, I obviously should trust Him with what else He wants me to do with my life.

And that's the concept of growing in our faith. Growing to trust Him more and more. Trust His love. And He's called us to go love others.

Our mission statement here is point people to Jesus by loving them like Jesus. It summarizes the command of what we're supposed to be as the church. And we are supposed to point people to Jesus and we need to and what is that? Point them into a relationship where they know Jesus' love and they love Him back. They worship Him back. Point them into a disciple them. He defines that a little bit more in Matthew 28 and then on into the rest of the New Testament of what a disciple does. But the idea is we are called

to point people to Jesus. We are called to bring the gospel in the world. Jesus is the hope of the world, but he's using us to spread the hope of the world. And that's our mission. That's what he built us for. And we get distracted. We struggle with that.

It's hard because Jesus also said in Matthew nine, the harvest is plentiful. He was talking about our mission to go to spread the gospel to the world and and get people to know Jesus. He said the harvest is plentiful. That means there's a huge harvest already out there. That's contrary to what most churches act like and we act like in the world. Like the world's going to hell. No one cares. We got to circle the wagons because it's so difficult. We got to fight for our rights as the church. And Jesus says, no, I've already prepared a harvest. Because notice it says the harvest. If you're a farmer, that's the last thing you do. You plant, you cultivate. He didn't tell us today. He said, you are gonna be the one that gets to do the fun part of farming. It's the part that feeds you. You get to bring in the harvest.

But he said, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. And he was challenging the disciples and he was saying, this is gonna be an issue. The issue is gonna be, there's gonna be a lot of people. There's this huge harvest out there, but not a lot of people are gonna get it about go be a harvester.

The biggest struggle he was calling on is the biggest struggle we still have in churches today. We wanna come to church, but we don't wanna be harvesters. We wanna come here, but we don't wanna really show up. We want Jesus to show up, but we don't show up.

And that's what we're called to be, to be the church. And that's what we need to talk about, because we need to build these buildings. We need to do these other things. We need to be harvesters. In other words, let me put it this way. Because if you don't hear this right, you're gonna be tired like I was with Gene,

and you're gonna start going, Man, here we go again. All he talks about is serving and money. Because that's where we're stuck. The workers are few.

Even in a church like this, that is a very generous church. I'll get to that in a sec. But let me tell you why this is important and why I'm not just yelling at us to give more. I love us. My dad was my baseball coach growing up. And one of the last years he coached, we were teenagers.

And we had a Saturday morning game. It was summer, so it gonna be hot out anyways. And he told us that night, guys, it was a Friday night. He goes, don't go stay up late and watch them to the movies, eating a bunch of sugar and being idiots.

He goes, be ready to play tomorrow because it's a game we should win, but I want you guys to be ready. Well, we all totally ignored my dad and stayed up half the night and showed up exhausted. It was hot. We felt gross. We were probably all dehydrated. And then we started to play terrible.

We're like phoning it in. We didn't even really wanna be there. Basically, we were there, but we didn't wanna be there. So we're losing to a team we should win. My dad pulls us together in the dugout for like one of those halftime

speech kind of things that he was good at. My dad was more like the way I preach. He was a little bit more throat punchy,

but he did it in love and he meant for us. And so what he does, he pulls us and goes, guys, what is going on? You're not in this game, man. You are not in this game. I told you that you gotta play your position. You gotta go all in. You gotta sacrifice. You gotta suck it up and do the hard things to play right now. And then one of the players

who tended to pop off and his I'm not gonna say his name but his initials were Billy Bush said, Well we're here aren't we? And my dad squinted with his one eye and says, Yeah. You're all here, but the player hasn't shown up yet.

You see, that's the problem. That's what Jesus was saying. He says, The harvest is plentiful. The workers are few. Meaning, and sometimes when you hear me say, we gotta show up. You gotta show up and play your position. And one of them is financially. We gotta sacrifice

to bring the gospel to the world. We need to do that. We get to do that. Just like playing baseball. I wanted to play baseball and I want to win at baseball. But when you get distracted doing other things then you show up then you hear this speech.

I was saying at least we showed up. You know why? Because I thought my dad was yelling at me and telling me I'm no good and telling me I thought he wanted to take something from me in a sense. But did he? Was he trying to take something from me or give something to me?

Did he hate us as a team or did he want us to think better or did he want us to win? He knew what we were really built for. He knew we wanted victory. He knew we wanted to do that. We just got distracted. And so he says, you gotta step up. You gotta show up.

And that's exactly what I'm trying to say to us now. My dad loved us. My dad knew what the game was. He knew what victory was and he wanted us to have that. That's what I want for all of us. But in order to do that, the players

have got to show up and not sit there and say, Oh, at least we're here. Why are you telling me to give or serve?

Because I want us to win and because I know that we need to love God and because he loved us and he says, if you love me, you'll do what I say. And he knows what victory is. He knows what we're built to do. And it's on the other side of hard work, on the other side of trusting him.

And that's why. And we already know that because look at the round. People keep showing up. Jesus keeps showing up. Lives keep changing. And we get to be a part of that. So what I gotta do is this is kind of a request. It's like kind of my dad's request. It's like, Hey, I need more players to show up. And so

here's why am I asking us to show up. Got these cards. You can actually go on Rock Point. And click on that and you can see that we are Rock Point campaign. We're going for another two years because we now know to do phase two and three we need 6,000,000

more. If you remember when we originally did this, our goal was 8,000,000. We're about to bring in 6,000,000 in two years. The problem is in the time we've been building this, you all know, you go to the store, you try to buy stuff, you look at your house loan, and that's why you're mad at who's president and such.

Well, that affects us as well. Everything got more expensive. Our loan that we started with when we started building this building was only gonna be at 3.25. It's now gonna close at 7.25. Think about what that does on $12,000,000 And so we need to pay for that. So part of that knowing the loan,

our house payment's gonna be a little higher, our finance team came together and said, we're not borrowing any more money. So we need to raise more money because before we just raised half of it and

put 50% down and borrow some. But we're not doing that anymore. It costs too much to borrow and we're not going to get house poor and we're not going be stupid. As matter of fact, our finance team, which is all volunteers, they're very smart people with money, they look at stuff and they give us their wisdom and they have three rules.

Don't be stupid. Don't be a barrier to what Jesus is doing and don't be stupid. So if you're worried about trusting us, we have two don't be stupids in three rules. And we're not kidding. That's what our executive pastor tells them every time. And the fact of the matter is

we have more than enough players in this church if they decide to get in the game to do this. Because we raised just about 6,000,000 in the last two years and that was six fifty families. You know how many families come to this church on a regular basis? Someone say, this is my church? 8,000.

What would happen if the other seven thousand three hundred and fifty five fifty. Three fifty. That's why I'm not on the finance team.

What would happen if we all showed up? If we all showed up, we would not only get that $6,000,000 we would pre fund what we're talking about next week of where we're going next, the next ten years. Because we want to keep growing, but 600 the weight rate we've been growing, 40% more room in here ain't going to last long.

How do we still reach people when we're done cramming people in this place? And that's what we're talking about next week. If everyone would sacrifice and step up,

we would see the harvest so much more because Jesus is saying the harvest is already there. The only thing stopping us is us showing up.

So yes, I'm challenging everyone that calls this church their own to take this, to pray about and say, God, what's the amount I need to show up with? But I am asking everyone to show up with something. And I'm asking for equal sacrifice, not equal amounts. Meaning I'm asking you get a little scared and sacrifice.

Choose to look at what you're doing with the rest of your money and say, what can I do to give to this? So if you've already been giving for the last two years,

what I'm doing is I'm continuing to give the same amount I did before. And now I'm praying with my wife. Can we up it? Can we get more? I'd ask you to do the same thing.

If you never give, just sit and figure out what you can do. But get scared. Equal sacrifice. Meaning you some of you might be in here. I get it, but it's hard. I'm broke. Yeah, you might be the widow's mite. For you a big sacrifice not might look like a big number, but God will take that and multiply that.

That He even said that widow's mite sacrifice is more of a sacrifice than someone else who gave more, but it wasn't a sacrifice.

So then my challenge is to you and some of this room, some of us we do quite well. Matter of fact, statistically the size of this church, we have pretty much the standard statistics of this area. And this area, the Queen Creek area around here is the highest median income in the state of Arizona besides Paradise Valley where it's a bunch of owners of teams and sports players.

But it's remarkably not that much higher. This is a wealthy area, whether we realize it or not. And so I'm challenging to some of you, you might already be on our list of good givers, but you've never gotten scared with what you've given.

And I'm going to challenge you guys. Get scared. You know why God asked us to do this? Those of us that are the most afraid and feel like we can't, it's for you the most. Because when we choose to get scared and trust God with our money in this way, you see him show up and you finally are released and have freedom

from that fear and control of will I have enough, will I have enough? You will finally see that it is the Lord God Almighty that takes care of you, not your paycheck. Giving is actually a gift God gave us.

And so we get a chance. So I'm going to challenge you. Get scared. And you know what? In a church this size, in an area like this, in the history of our church, one of my church points, I've been coaching him for a few years. He's a church about 300.

He went to build a building and someone gave a million dollars in his church. I'm like, what?

We have never in the twenty two years ever gotten a million dollars from one person. And in a church this size, I guarantee there's some of you that can do it and you know who you are. You have to get scared. You might have to sell it. You might not get to keep as much profit from something. You might have to do something, but you can do it. And I'm gonna challenge you. Do it. I I wanna challenge you. Matter of fact, I am praying that one of you does. What?

Let's go. I am challenging you. One of you. I'm praying that one of you will do it, and I'm praying that that is that person is five or six of you, actually.

See I'm not mad. When I challenge us to this case, I'm not yelling at us. I'm my dad coaching us. We're built to play this game. I want us to win because Jesus said the win's already there because he keeps showing up. All we have to do is show up. All we have to do is do what he asks us.

And that is the challenge. And you know what? Now I want to kind of shift gears and say, I wanna show you part of the reason why we get to do this.

Just one victory right now was we just did a every year our youth does youth night. It's just a night of worship where youth gather to worship and they share even though it's a bunch of singing worship, kids come anyways. They get excited about it that don't even know the Lord. So they had, like, a couple 100 kids come to Christ. And then we captured some testimonies on that night from just a few of these students, and I want you to watch this.

Before I started following Jesus, my anxiety was just really bad. Like, I would feel sick to my stomach, and I was just not okay. Like, certain moments would stress me out,

and I just didn't know what to do about it. And then after I started following Jesus, was like, oh, I need to pray about it. I need to talk to God about it. I just need to talk to people about it and get my mind off of it. I've always heard that God has a plan for me. And at camp, I've just felt called into certain things, and that's why I gave my life to him just to put my faith in him so I know that out there in the world, I'll be fine as long as I have him. I definitely realized, like, okay. This is my faith, and I'm gonna I'm gonna trust in the Lord and be like, I'm I'm all in even though also accepting that I'm not perfect. Right? And I'll I'll still fall short.

And now that I accept that, and I'm like, I it's just a free gift, right, that he gives you every day. And I think I never really understood that, and it's more of

I'm understanding, oh, this is this is huge. Right? Going to camp and just accepting Jesus into my heart just changed my thought process on everything and, like,

how I would see things and just, like, some of the trials that I wouldn't do would endure. I wouldn't be like, oh, this is the end of my life. I'm kinda just like, oh, this is God using this to make me a stronger person and make my testimony stronger so one day I can share it with others. Going to camp,

I met Jesus. I found a reason to, like, keep going and to keep

fighting. I pray and repent. I know he'll forgive me, which is awesome that we have a God like that. I've seen how much happier I am and the peace that I have and just the love that I can share to others. Jesus has set me free from trying to please everybody around me. I don't carry that burden of trying to please anybody else anymore because I don't have an identity in anybody else. It's on Christ. I've been set free from temptations.

I've been set free from anxiety, depression. Jesus has set me free from needing to be perfect. Jesus has set me free from anxiety. Because of Jesus, I am set free. Because of Jesus, I am set free. Because Jesus, I am set free. I'm free. I'm free. Free.

Stories like that are happening by the hundreds and the thousands around here. That's victory. That's a harvest. When you harvest food, you celebrate that. Right? Because it feeds you. The harvest Jesus is invited to

doesn't just feed our soul and feed our purpose and feed that desire in us to to to have a life that meant something. It feeds someone else as well. And I get it. A lot of you that struggle with this because money's controlling you or you feel like you don't have it in you, you can't do it, and it's hard.

And I think sometimes we have the wrong view of what it means to follow Jesus. We think coming to church is, I come and get to know Jesus so life will get easier. Jesus never promised easier. He promised better. It's hard to follow Jesus. It's scary to follow Jesus. But the difference is following Jesus leads to victory.

And here's the here's the here's the fact that many of us don't realize. It's hard to not follow him too. Life is hard. My dad taught me that, and I taught my kids that. Bushes do hard things. Not not because it's just it's because

life is hard. No matter what you do, it's gonna be hard. Following Jesus, running from Jesus is gonna be hard. It's hard. It's hard to be married. It's hard to get divorced. It's hard to sacrifice and give

and be generous with your time and money. It's also hard to live so busy running after stuff for yourself and spending all your money that you're getting so far in debt that you're worried about money all the time, and you're fighting with your spouse all the time. It's hard whichever way you go.

But you gotta choose your heart. My dad taught me this. He wasn't just my baseball coach. If you're new around here, I say this all the time, but seems like every week there's 500 new people.

He was a decorated war hero from World War two, Korea, and Vietnam. He was a soldier.

And when I would whine about how hard it was to do the right thing, to go the right way, he looked at me and says, son, in combat, you got two sides. And guess what both sides experience in combat? The same thing.

They go through the same weather problems, the same supply problems, the terror of it, the blood, the guts, the battle, the fight, the sweat, the tears, the the fear. Both sides experience the same thing. But at the end, one has a victory and one just has defeat. And he goes, and you know what makes that decision?

You know who wins and who loses? The one that moves forward wins. The one that goes backwards loses. And he said, but it's the same thing. And he goes, and it's gonna be hard.

Life is hard. Doing the right thing's hard, but doing the wrong thing's hard. He goes, so choose your hard and choose to go forward because when you move forward, you win. Same hard, but there's a victory at the end.

And that's why I'm trying to encourage us. I'm not yelling at us. I'm trying to love us. Know what I'm doing right now? I'm yelling for us

because that's where the victory is. You're gonna struggle no matter what you do. So here's why it's logical to just go ahead and and show up and give God and and serve and give your money and sacrifice and go above and beyond and try to it. Because at the other side of that, Jesus said, I'm already there. I had a harvest, and you will have victory.

That's where victory is found. So you can waste your hard on nothing but defeat in the end. The Bible says that's the way that leads to death. What he's saying is you're gonna run after that, have the same heart, the same pressure, all this stuff, and it's just gonna end in defeat. Or we can win.

And that's what I'm asking us to do. Choose your heart. Because that's what Paul was saying to the church in Corinth in second Corinthians.

This was a church much like Rock Point. It was the newest church of the New Testament, yet it was the biggest. It was blowing up. It had people coming left and right. They had to beg people to not go to the 10AM service as well. Hint.

But they also were a wealthy area, but they didn't act like it.

And he was challenging them. They started questing his authority. Well, we don't really like Paul because he tells us what to do. You know, kind of stuff like that. So when he wrote this, he's like, are you kidding me? He was trying to get them to go all in in their own church. Serve. Be more loving.

Be an example to the community. But also, he wanted them to give to an offering that went beyond them, to the church in Jerusalem was struggling. And what's ironic is Corinth had the money, but the churches in Macedonia who were poor had given a lot. They went far more.

So he's asking him to just live out the he's saying, get in the game. Show up. And how he decided to motivate him is he wrote about the hardships it was for him to bring the gospel to them. And I'm telling you guys, I started this church.

I can relate to everything he said. His was way more brutal. He literally got beaten, put in prison. But there's some lines in there that in my heart, I feel like that's what I did to bring the gospel here. And I'm inviting you to join me in this because when you hear what he says,

he talks about some of the most brutal things. But on the other side, he says, but here was the victory in it. Here was the victory in it. Here was the victory. Do you want a victory on the other side of your heart?

Then you gotta show up. You gotta show up where Jesus is asking us to show up. So here he goes. He says this, we live in such a way that no one will stumble because of us. No one will find fault with our ministry. In everything we do, we show that we are true ministers of God. We patiently endure troubles

and hardships and calamities of every kind. We've been beaten, put in prison, faced angry mobs, worked to exhaustion, endured sleepless nights, gone without food. We prove ourselves by our purity, our understanding, our patience, our kindness by the Holy Spirit within us, and by our sincere love.

We faithfully preach the truth. God's power is working in us. We use the weapons of righteousness in the right hand for the attack and the left hand for defense. We serve God whether people honor us or despise us, whether they slander us or praise us. We are honest, but they call us impostors.

We are ignored even though we are well known. We live close to death, but we're still alive. We have been beaten, but we have not been killed. Our hearts ache, but we always have joy. We are poor, but we give spiritual riches to others. We own nothing, yet we have everything. Guys, that's what my call is to us.

That's what I'm hollering about right now. There are way too many in this room that need to show up for the victory because you're just gonna keep running into hard and get nothing out of it. So why don't you lean into the hard that'll take you where you really wanna go? Why don't you get in the game and step up?

Because these last words he says to them, I say, these are my words to you. Just like Paul saying to a church he started. I'm saying to a church that God let me start. He let me be the first knucklehead on the scene.

And here is what I say to you as he says this to them. Oh, dear Corinthian friends. So, dear Rock Point friends, we have spoken honestly with you, and our hearts are open to you. There is no lack of love on our part. No lack of love on our part.

But you have withheld your love from us. So I am asking you to respond as if you were my own children. Open your hearts. When he said to us, what he meant was to the call, to the mission, to what Jesus has allowed us to be a part of. And if you can't fight that fear in you, that control in you that won't let go,

you're just gonna experience a whole bunch of heart and defeat, where you could experience a whole bunch of heart and victory. So what I'm saying, deep with how much I love you guys, now is the time. Now is the moment that if you have ever decided I want the victory of what God's called me to do, do it now. Show up. Show up.

Choose your heart this day. Choose your heart, and then make a commitment to that. And the heart I'm asking us to do right now is financially get involved in what we are doing. Make a pledge

and follow through and watch what God does. You might feel like you have nothing, but you will possess everything. You might feel like you're broke, but you will make many rich. Your heart might ache at moments because it's scary and hard, but you will have joy because you chose the hard that goes where Jesus is.

So I'm begging you. I'm pleading with you. I'm hollering for you, not at you. Show up. So we're not done yet, but we're gonna do something special. We're gonna stop right now and celebrate that because the only way you're gonna truly show up is when you remember who you're showing up for. It's Jesus

that does the victory. It's Jesus that showed up first. It's his foundation. He will never fail. And if he said, I have a harvest for you, you can trust that. So we're gonna celebrate that right now as we sing.

Told you we're not done yet. What I wanna do before we wrap up this song and leave is I wanna give you a little bit more of the taste of the victories we've had just this year.

Because I I I wanna encourage those of you who give here. Those of you that are in the game. Those of you that have shown up, this should encourage you because you are a part of this. God used you. But I also wanna motivate those of you that is are here, but you haven't shown up to say, hey. What would happen if you did?

What else would God do for us in victory if you did? And I'm gonna rattle through. I asked my staff just this last week, just give me some wins that have happened this year. I got 27 pages. I narrowed it down,

and I'm just gonna rattle these off. Feel free to cheer. Feel free you can get loud. I'll just get louder. I have that ability. And

I'm just gonna go through them and let it build so it could and just know that I'm gonna go through them. Some of these are big numbers, some of them are individual stories. Because for every big number is a bunch of individual stories. So here we go. When we moved when we started Rock Point in 2002,

in the first eleven years, we were in a school, and we got all the way to 1,100 people. People gave. We built the original building. In the seven years we're in that, we went from 1,100 to 3,000. And then we people gave and we built this building.

And in the four years we've been in this building, we went from 3,000 to two weeks ago, we had 8,600. We tripled again in half the time. What would happen if all of us choose to show up? What would happen next? What would happen? Because just this year, we have seen 3,389 people come to know Jesus. We've baptized 803

of them so far. We planted three more churches just since February. Our safety and security team, here's a few of these unknown ministries. You wouldn't think what are they up to? Safety and security is sending 20 to 25 qualified leaders with our church plan echos,

so they will start with a fully functioning activated safety and security team.

Our facilities team, which most people think they just clean up and set up, but they consider themselves a ministry that points people to Jesus by loving them like Jesus. They do it so well. They are currently coaching 11 other churches in the valley on how to do that. They are actually

one of the primary ways they do is working with community service probationaries, people that court ordered to do community service. And, yes, it's hard. Some of them have stolen stuff. Some of them have showed up and and backslid, but tons of them have come to know Christ and found recovery from being around here. In

our outreach ministry, we do a thing called Angel Tree, which we support kids and families who have incarcerated parents. This past year, we gave donated gifts to give a Christmas to 215 families. In the spring, we partnered with Prison Fellowship and did a basketball clinic, which had 300

students go, kids go. 75 of them made a decision for Christ. And during the caregiver session, 10 of the adults did. And a matter of fact, on all those big numbers, one of those stories is Julia.

Julia is one of seven girls being raised by her grandparents because her mom and dad have been in and out of prison most of their lives. She came to the God at Christmas. They took care of their Christmas for the girls. They then went to the camp,

and Julia and three of her sisters gave their life to Christ. And Julia actually asked the leaders to pray for her that she could control her emotions so she didn't make the same mistakes her parents parents did and lose her future. Our backpack collection.

Rock Point young adults and small group collected 200 backpacks that filled supplies for needy families. Our compassion clinic did 650 bags of groceries for families four. They actually did the the the partnered with compassion Queen Creek community resource event, which we serve 550 needy individuals offering $88,000

in medical and dental and other necessary needs. Our car ministry. You think, what's the car ministry do? Well, all they've done so far this year is help 50 families with car issues, and most of them were single moms that had no money.

Our car show, the cars and coffee, contend to go over 400 cars come. But the bigger deal is it's an outreach. The people that put it on, the volunteers,

they come, and they are now starting to come to church. One of those is Joe and his family. The guy named Joe, he he loved the car show, but he what he really was impressed is when he came into the coffee shop and the volunteers, he felt the love, he felt cared for, and he felt like they weren't asking for anything in return. And so he was so excited. He never would go to church. He immediately called his wife on the way out and said, I would go to this church. That next weekend, he brought his wife, his kids, and his grandkids, and now all of them serve in greeting people in our ministry at the church.

Our coffee company, like, another random ministry, wouldn't think people, oh, it's just for us to have coffee. Over 72 people have come to Rock Point this year for the first time because of first going to the coffee shop.

We average five new people every weekday showing up that have never been on this campus, and they ask about this is a church.

And Bill will talk to them. They will pray with them. They will spend time with them. They will show them the love of Jesus. A matter of fact, we have a group of older gentlemen, they're veterans, who get coffee every morning here, and included in this group is a man who wants nothing to do with religion. But

since he came, his wife came, she started coming to church.

They've been praying for him. And lately, now he's been showing up. She's coming in here. He's sitting out there. I don't know. They might be in here. You might be in here now. Hey. If you're out there in the lobby, you can come in here. We won't bite. We love you.

And they've been praying. Our our coffee ministry has been praying for this man because we show up because Jesus keeps showing up. In our youth ministry, we have a thing called seminary,

and it's it's a Christian release time. Like at a sky school, they could sign up for a class, come over here, and they come to learn how to know, grow, and go for Jesus. They present the gospel. We've had we've had people that aren't even Christians sign up, come to know the Lord. We've had people get saved. But right now, if you didn't realize this, as far as Christian release classes in The United States, we have the largest one in this nation. And

one of them students that went through all four years in it felt called to ministry, went and got his degree, and now we just hired him last week. His name is Mason, and he is our new director of the seminary. In our preteen ministry, they've had four straight weeks of breaking records for their Highliest Week in attendance,

and it's mainly because they're dragging their parents here. They have been filling out these challenge cards in preteen, and they've been taking it serious, hence why the attendance has grown so much. So way to go preteen. They've actually also added 30 new volunteers

since January 1. High school, last year, their fall kickoff was 276 students. This year was 386. Last year, during their fall time, 299 youth ended up signing up for community. This year, so far, it's at 441

in small groups. They started a youth student leadership team that has 44 students running their own ministry. They also have,

have so many involved. They've started a serve crew where they send volunteers to children's ministry and everywhere else to serve in our church. Man, we gotta show up because our students are showing us up. Okay? They've baptized 56 kids, high schoolers since January.

Middle school, a 139 middle schoolers were baptized the last year. 667

middle schoolers have signed up for a community group. And one of them that's in there is Avery. She was in the video we showed a little while ago. She's an eighth grader who got saved in sixth grade and has continued to grow and and step into different leadership roles in youth. She is on fire for Jesus, they said. She even got her mom to start serving with her, which they said is a huge blessing. And get this, and her current mission is to get her dad to know Jesus.

Matter of fact, in middle school, they have prayer cards. The number one prayer request that middle schoolers are having in their groups is I want my dad to know and follow Jesus. Amen to that. In our kids ministry, preschool has grown by 21% from last year. K through three is up 14. Preteen's up 8%. Kids total's up 7%,

and special needs is up 21%. We have got to keep showing up cause Jesus keeps showing up. We need to raise the money to do this building because we need more room for our kids. The eight thirty service,

nine of the 11 classes closed because they were full. I didn't even get the numbers. I'm pretty sure they probably all filled up in this one. We need the more room because they're coming to Jesus.

We need more room for their special needs because it's blown up. Because the number one thing we've heard in our special needs ministry is how many parents when you parent special needs, that's for life.

And they have come here and said this is the first church experience where they've ever both been able to come in and worship together. Yes. And in our special needs, we got the ability in this this year already to host a special Tim T. Vote, Night to Shine. It's a special needs prom for for special needs

students and adults. And we had a 127 honored kings and queens who attended. We shared the gospel, and 55 of them came to know Jesus. And in our special needs, last but not least, all these big numbers come down to little stories. There's a woman named Dawn who has a 26 year old special needs daughter

who had does not speak well. She doesn't have spontaneous language. She mainly will only repeat a couple lines from a song or a couple one word responses when prompted. But she's been coming here. Cheyenne is her name, and Don's been bringing her. And just recently,

Don was woken up to her 26 year old special needs daughter who doesn't speak spontaneously, shoving her and saying, it's gonna get church. Church. Church. Do you get it? She gets it.

She loves it here because she knows Jesus. There's a joy here because people have loved her. They have pointed her to Jesus by loving her like Jesus. And even though she never spontaneously says anything, the first time she says this, church,

I wanna go there. Jesus, people have loved. That's our mission. She gets it. Do you get it? We need to show up and be the church. So choose your heart, choose the wins, choose the victory, and show up.

Amen. Amen. Can we get an amen? Amen. Hallelujah. Go old school there. Hey. I just wanted to say, hey. Thanks for being here. I love you guys. Please pray about how you're gonna show up for our campaign because what would happen with all these victories already if we all showed up? Thanks

for joining us for service online this weekend. Be sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on the Rock Point Church app for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.