Hope Church LV Sermons
The Blind Spot
I've recently had the privilege of my 15-year-old son obtaining his driver's permit. How many moms and dads can identify with reaching that stage where your kids get their permit, right? Yeah, well, this is the second time for me. My daughter's already done that. Now my son's got his permit and you think it's going to get easier the second time? It doesn't. All right? It's going to get easier the second time. It is a great test of your faith and your patience in God. Let me tell you what happens when your kid gets his driver's permit. You become a prayer warrior. Amen? I mean, you realize you're sitting in an automobile worth a lot of money that could end everyone's life and the controls are in the hands of your 15-year-old kid. And you're thinking, dear God, what does this world come to, right? I mean, we begin to pray, now, when your kids get their permit and you begin to teach them how to drive, one of the lessons that you have to teach them is the lesson of the blind spot. And we all know what a blind spot is, right? A blind spot is an area in which someone's vision is obscured. It's your blind spot. You know what it is? You're driving down the road. You look over in the side mirror and you think you see everything that's there and you start to pull over, right? And there's something there and they let you know that usually by honking the horn and gesturing wildly that you are pulling over on top of them, right? So they let you know some way or another, we're here and it's in your blind spot. You didn't mean to pull over on them and you don't want to pull over on them, but you just didn't see it. It was, you thought you'd done everything necessary and it was just a blind spot. Well, the reality is that blind spots don't just occur when we're driving, we can have blind spots in our personal lives. Areas of our personal life that we think we're doing okay in and it's a blind spot and it takes getting married, right? For somebody to point those blind spots out and your wife or your husband lovingly speak those truths, lovingly speak those truths into your life. I remember when my wife and I got married and one of the first blind spots she pointed out in my life was that when I'm in conversation with somebody, I have a tendency to cut them off, you know, and just speak right over the top of them and I guess I assume that I know where they're going and know what they're going to say and what I've got to say is more important so I just jump right in and I'll cut people off and I remember we came home one night and she said, honey, do you realize I'll do that conversation? You're just cutting people off and I cut her out off and said, are you kidding me? She pointed out a blind spot, that's probably been in my life my whole life but I never really noticed it until she said something, blind spots. It's not just a reality when we drive, it's not even just a reality in our personal life. Churches can have blind spots. If you're a guest this morning and you are visiting with us, maybe this is your first time when you're relatively new guest, this morning I'm going to be talking specifically to our church family about a blind spot, an area that we have recognized in our fellowship that we have to do better. And so if you are a guest or you're new this morning, I'm talking really to the hope family but I want you to understand something, I'm talking to this hope family on your behalf. We're a young church, we're just nine years old. Sometimes people look at our church because of the size and the scale of the ministry and they assume that we are fully developed, that we're a mature fellowship that's established and grown and but we're a young church, we're kind of like a teenage boy. A teenage boy reaches that age where they look like a man, I mean they're shaving like a man, they're tall like a man, their voice is deep now like a man, they smell like a man, I mean they reach that age of maturity and you could look at them and say hey that's a man but in reality they're still really socially very awkward and underdeveloped in a lot of areas, right? I mean there's still a lot of developing that's got to be done, that's our church. Our church is that teenage boy, we look like a large church that's established and grown but we are so young, nine short years ago we were 18 people sitting in my living room, we're young, we're still socially awkward, we're still underdeveloped in a lot of areas and it requires a lot of patience on all of our parts because we've got to grow as a church in some more areas and one of those areas is a blind spot that we have identified. I don't really think it's a blind spot because we haven't cared or because we haven't been intentional about it, I think it's just one of those blind spots that's there because we're just young and we've just grown so rapidly and we're trying to keep up. Now blind spots are not unique to hope, all churches have blind spots. Most churches in America the blind spot is the mission. Most churches in America the blind spot is they're so focused on themselves and believe that it's all about the church that they've lost sight of the big picture that God's at work in their city and all over the world and so most churches they're blind spot is to the mission. It comes so focused inside to the exclusion of what's going on around them, it's a blind spot, they're giving little money but they're not really engaged in the mission of taking the gospel to the ends of the earth and not hope, we're kind of just the opposite. At Hope we began as a church understanding from the very beginning that when God birthed our church He had the nations on His heart and from day one we've been passionate about taking the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ to our city and the ends of the earth. We just commissioned two teams this morning, we'll have sent about 15 teams this year working on four different continents, training thousands of leaders all over the world, we've given away over four and a half million dollars in our nine years as an investment in God's activity in the world, we're not blind to the mission and don't miss hear what I'm saying this morning, we're never going to become blind to that but we've recognized that in the middle of being committed to the mission we also need to be more effective at establishing life changing relationships inside our family of faith. We must, we must get better at connecting people. It's not either or, it's not we can either have dynamic community or we can be effective in the mission, it's not either or, it's both ends. We want to have dynamic community that spills out into mission. We want to be community on mission. That's the real heart of the New Testament, the heart of the New Testament is biblical community where disciples are being made, people are being connected and it's spilling out of that fellowship touching the city and the ends of the earth. Let me give you two major areas that we got to focus on as a church and just hang on with me for a minute, we're headed to a text of scripture this morning but I want to give you two major areas that we must focus on. Number one, we must focus on connecting new people to the family. Listen, each and every week they're in this service, they've been in all our services. Each and every week we have people visit our church for the very first time, every week. There's never been a week in my nine years here that we have not seen new people visit our fellowship every single week for nine years and every week those people come in, they're all seeking, some of them are seeking Jesus. They've come into our fellowship today, maybe you're here and life is not what you thought it was going to be and you've had some church background or you've got a grandmother somewhere that loves Jesus and you've come today seeking Jesus. You're looking for somebody to point you in a direction so you can enter a life changing relationship with Jesus Christ. Today some of you that are here today, you walked in the doors of this fellowship at some point in the last nine years and you were seeking Jesus and through the ministry of this fellowship you found the person of Jesus Christ and your life was changed. Sometimes people come in and they're seeking a fellowship. They already know Jesus but they're disconnected. Some of you came into this fellowship, you were disconnected from a church family and you came in looking for a point of connection, a place where you could find family. Hey, some people come in and they're seeking and they don't even know what they're looking for. They don't know enough to know it's Jesus or a church. They just know life as I know it, isn't good. And they've walked through our doors just looking for an answer. I don't want you to answer out loud, okay? Hear that again. Don't answer out loud but I want you to try to write a number down. If you were going to guess in the last 30 months, it's 130 weeks, most of which have been spent right here in Silverado High School. If you were going to guess how many people have visited our church for the first time, walked in, sat down, filled out a connection card and handed it to us. Now, you know what that means, right? I mean, they fill out the card, they're saying, "I'm seeking." I'm not even counting the secret shoppers, right, who just slip in under the radar and slip out before the offerings. They don't have to have any commitment, no, no, no, no contracts, you know, nothing, you know, they're just observing. I'm talking about people that walk in the doors, sat down through an entire service, filled out a connection card, gave us some information and basically said, "Hey!" I'm seeking, right down a number, 30 months, 130 weeks. Let me tell you what it is. Over the past 30 months, we've had 7,134 people visit our church for the first time and fill out a connection card, 7,000, 134 people representing over 23 hundred different family units. They walk through seeking, "Hey, listen, they sat right beside you." I'm not talking about 10, 7,134 different individuals, filled out a card. If you do the math, if we had just retained 20% of those people, we had 1,466 people in our three services last weekend. If we just retained 20%, you know what 20% of 7,134 people is, 1,426 people, means it had been double. Now, don't miss hear what I'm saying. This is not, this is not about church growth. We've never been about that at home. We're not looking to be the biggest church in town. Listen, the first building we built only sat 400 people. It was never our desire to try to be the biggest church in Las Vegas. That is not the issue. Here's what I'm saying, 7,134 people that were created by God, that are precious to God, that Jesus Christ went to the cross to die on their behalf, 7,134 people. And we are responsible to be stewards of the people that God sends through our doors. The Bible even says in the book of Hebrews, one day, we will give an account to the Lord for their soul. We must do better at connecting new people. Number two, we must do better at connecting people within the family. Not just new people, but people that are already attending the event. But church is more than a weekly event. Church is community. It's doing life. It's getting involved. We have an organization here in Las Vegas called Connection Power. It's a Christian-based company that helps serve churches across America over 2,000 churches that they serve, helping them use tools to get people connected. They did a survey of 9,000 people over an 18-month period all across America that had gone into churches and over 18 months gone out, left churches. And they asked them, "Why did you leave?" And there was an overwhelming response. Matter of fact, the top two reasons tend to one outnumbered every other reason. Listen to what they were. Number one, they left because they couldn't make friends. Number two, they left because they couldn't get meaning. Meaningfully involved. You hear that? Couldn't make friends, community, couldn't get meaningfully involved, mission, community on mission. That's the very heart of what the church is. And listen, I've got to be honest with you this morning. I know you've heard it. I've heard it. Inside of our church, people say, "Pastor." I'm having a hard time getting connected, a hard time making friends, and having a hard time finding a place to serve. Now, there's a difference in being a friendly church and being a church that makes friends. We're a friendly church. I mean, we'll shake your hand off, man, coming in the door. And listen, and we know we'll stop being friendly, that's a good thing. But that's easy. Making friends, that's different. That means you've got to get involved. I wrote down something this week, I want to read it to you. That's what I know. People will come to a church because of preaching and music. But people will only stay at a church because of relationships. People will come to a church when they like the preaching or like the music or they like what's happening up here, but they won't stay for that. You know, I grew up in a great church in Alabama. My dad was a pastor. I love the church I grew up in. From the time I was in first grade, I graduated high school, I loved the church. First Baptist Church, Muscle Shoals, Alabama, that's where I grew up. I don't remember a single sermon. Now, that's a little discouraging when you're a pastor. But you know what I remember? I remember relationships. The staying power, the stickiness power, the community power is in relationships. And it's really the essence of making disciples. And listen, for us at Hope, it's an extra challenge for us because without having a facility, a lot of the things that churches get to do to create some of these relationships we don't get to do. I mean, things like, hey, it's Sunday night, everybody brings some food, we're gonna have a big potluck, we're gonna fellowship, we're gonna hang out, we're gonna throw a ball game up on the screen, we're just gonna just get together and enjoy hanging out. We don't get to do a lot of that. Why is that? Because first of all, we gotta pay five grand to go rent someplace and then we gotta bring in a hundred volunteers to set it up and take it down and we know those same hundred volunteers gotta come back on Saturday at one o'clock and start setting up and take it down again. It's a challenge for us. So it's difficult for us to create this kind of community. And here's what that means, challenges are not excuses, they're opportunities for us to get more creative in how we do it. We gotta do it. We must make disciples. We cannot be content with a weekend event. Life change happens in community. So why is this a big deal? Well let me give you the answer. Just look at this text of Scripture on the screen and it's not where we're gonna stay but I wanna read these verses out of Ephesians 1. It's actually a paraphrase out of the message, listen what it says. He Jesus is in charge of it all. Has the final word on everything. At the center of all this Christ rules the church, the church is Christ's body in which He speaks and acts by which He feels everything with His presence. Do you hear what He said right there? We are the body of Christ. Say that out loud with me this morning. We are the body of Christ. I want you to turn to the person next to you. Look at Him and say we are the body of Christ. Don't leave the person on the other side out and I look the other way, do the same thing. We are the body of Christ. Hey I want you to get this today. We are the body of Christ and listen Jesus you can't read the gospels without understanding Christ's passion for people. We love people, we, where is the body? How does He desire to love people today? We, when we say we are the body of Christ, we are not talking about some people in an office. We, because I hear people say the church is not getting me connected, we, I don't know how to say that anymore emphatically, we, it's us. We got a blind spot. Let me show it to you in the life of Jesus, Matthew chapter 9, we are going to turn right there, we are going to stay there the rest of our time, I want to show you three principles we are done. Matthew chapter 9 verse 35, you don't have a Bible look on the screen, that's what it says. Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness, verse 36, seeing the people, seeing the people. He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited, like sheep without a shepherd, then he said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few, therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest." Now here's what I want to do, I want to show you three things that's Jesus. And if we're His body, they've got to be us, here's the first one, Jesus sees people. The Bible says seeing the people. There are several words in the Greek language that we translate with the word see, one of them is the word blepho, it just means to casually glance at, but this is not that word, this is the word ora-o, which means to see and to take notice of. It means to see and perceive. Let me give you a definition. The word see here means a genuine awareness of who people are from God's perspective. To see them, let me say it again, to see them is a genuine awareness of who people are from God's perspective. When Jesus saw the people, He saw them from the perspective of the Father. Listen what He says about them. The Bible says first of all, three things He noticed, He noticed they were distressed. The word distressed is the words that could be translated, battered, bruised, mangled, ripped apart, harassed, troubled. It's a word that depicts someone wearied from a journey which seems to have no end. Jesus saw them and they were exhausted, they were tired, they were worn, sin had worn them out, religion had worn them out, life, circumstances, situations had worn them out, and when Jesus saw them, He noticed they were exhausted. Then the Bible says He noticed that they were dispirited. It's a word that means to throw or cast down, to scatter, it depicts somebody that's laying on the ground as a result of mortal wounds. Here's the picture. It's a picture of people that were defeated, they'd reached the end. Hey, can I be honest with you this morning? Our city is filled, especially with what's happened in our city in the last 24 to 36 months. It's filled with people who are exhausted, life has worn them out, sin has ravaged their lives and they're defeated, they feel like they have no end. Jesus said, then He saw them as sheep without a shepherd. They were defeated, they were at the end of their rope and without a shepherd. And they didn't have anywhere to turn, no direction, no one to guide them, no one to provide, no one to give them any kind of encouragement. John MacArthur said it this way. They were helpless and defenseless, spiritually battered, thrown down and without leadership or supply. Here's what Jesus saw, He saw them in light of God's divine purpose. He knew when He saw them, He knew that God had something better for them. That God's design for their life was a relationship with Himself. That design was not for them to be distressed and dispirited without a shepherd. God's design was to be living their lives out of the overflow of intimacy with God. I said a moment ago, 7,134 people have come into our fellowship in the last 30 months seeking. Here's my question for you this morning. Have you even noticed they were here? I'm not talking about 25 or 30 people, 7,134 people in the last 30 months have walked through one of these doors, they've sat down beside you. Did we even see them? And I don't, again, I don't want you to answer out loud. I don't want you to raise your hand. I don't want you to send me. I just want you to think about it. Have you even met one of them? In 30 months, have you met one of those people that walked through these doors and sat down right beside you, filled out a card screaming, "I'm seeking." Have we even noticed that they were here? I would just make this as kind of a side note, but it's just a good time to talk about it. You know one of the biggest challenges I had adjusting from East Coast to West Coast church culture? Biggest challenge I had, people in the West get to church late. They just do. We just come late. It's kind of our culture. I mean, and it's not just churches. I mean, you go to a ballgame in Los Angeles, you go to a Dodger game, it's the third inning for anybody, even comes. You just come late, but let me tell you, well, that's a big deal because church is not an event that you attend. It's a community that you're involved in. And if you just slip in after everything starts and slip out before it's over, you're missing incredible opportunities to connect with other people. If you take it out into our city, 95% of our cities unchurched, and statistics say that 9 out of 10 people that are unchurched, if a friend invited them to church, they'd probably go. Where we see them? Why don't we see them? How can you miss 7,134 people? Let me give you some examples. I think of how we missed them. One of the reasons we don't see people's seasons of life, we just kind of get busy, kids, work, other activities, and we live at such a busy pace, man, we just blow into church and blow out because there's just too much going on. And all the while God sent us over 7,000 people and we just missed them. Another reason we don't see people sometimes is because of, let's just be honest, self-centeredness. We walk into a weekend event and it's really all about what I'm getting out of it. We came in because I needed something today. I need my pick me up for the week. I need God to speak to me, and listen, nothing wrong with that. But if we're not careful, we get so self-absorbed in what we need out of it that we forget that there's people sitting all around us. And Jesus wants to love them, do I? Another reason we get, we don't see people sometimes is spiritual activity. We get so busy doing ministry. Well, I don't have time for people, I got to go do ministry. I got to go serve over here. I don't have time to, ministry is people. And if we're not careful, we can get so busy and all that we got going on that we blow right past the very people, God's bringing into our fellowship for us to connect. Hey, Jesus was busy. If you read verse 35, it says he was going through villages. He was teaching. He was proclaiming he was healing, city to city. And yet in the middle of all that business, he saw people. Second thing I want you to see about Jesus, Jesus feels compassion for people. He didn't just see them. The Bible says seeing the people, he felt compassion. He didn't just notice, but he had a response to what he noticed. The word compassion here is the strongest word in the Greek language for compassionate pity. And it describes a pity and compassion that moves a man to the very depths of his being. You could literally translate this word compassion to a deep aching or an agony on the inside. Jesus saw the people and he hurt deep over what he saw. Let me give you a definition of compassion. It's a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering. You see, compassion is not just feeling sorry for someone. Compassion is a feeling that's accompanied by a desire. Don't miss this to get involved in the life of another person to alleviate the suffering. It's not just God bless you, be warm, be filled. No, it's a desire to get involved. Hey, that's what church is. It's doing life together. It's getting involved in each other's lives. It's experiencing dynamic community and out of that community spilling out to touch our city and the world. And many times what is the most attractive quality of the church to the world is this very sense of community. As you study the gospels, man, I was shocked as I read through the New Testament this week over how many times it says Jesus saw people, felt compassion and got involved. Let me give you a few examples. Matthew 14 says he went up on a shore and he saw a large crowd that was sick and the Bible says when he saw them, he felt compassion and he got involved and began healing their sickness. The Bible says in Luke 7 that Jesus saw a woman who was from a city called Nain and from that city she was a widow. She'd already buried her husband and when Jesus runs into her, she's now going to bury her only son and she's grieving and she's experiencing sorrow. And the Bible says in Luke 7 when Jesus saw it, he was moved with compassion and he got involved in that situation. The Bible tells us in Matthew chapter 15 that Jesus saw a large crowd of people. He'd been teaching them for two days. They had nothing to eat and the Bible says when Jesus saw their physical need of hunger, the Bible says he was moved to compassion and he got involved in the situation. The Bible tells us in Mark chapter 1 that Jesus saw a leper who'd been isolated from his community because of his leprosy and when Jesus saw his loneliness, the Bible says he was moved to compassion and he got involved. Did you hear those four examples? Somebody was sick, somebody was grieving, somebody had a need and somebody was lonely. And when Jesus saw those things to the very core of his being, he was moved and he got involved in our church. People get sick. People grieve, people have need, people get lonely. We are the body of Christ. He is moved with compassion and he desires through us to get involved. We can't just attend an event. It's so much more than that. Let me give you the third principle I'm done. Jesus invites us to join in his activity of connecting people. Jesus saw it, he felt compassion, but then notice what he did in verse 37 and 38. Then he said to the disciples, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest." It's an interesting word there, send out. In the Greek New Testament, most of the time when you read the phrase send out, it's the phrase as the word appostello, we get our word apostle from it. Someone sent out on a mission, a missionary, but this is not the word appostello. This is the word echbalo, it means to throw out. One Greek commentator said that this can refer to workers, listen to this, who are already in the field and they just need to have a fire lit under them to thrust them out of their comforts and into the world of need. Here's the point, Jesus saw these people, he saw their need and he was moved to compassion and then he looked at his people and he said, "Bag God!" That's the word beseech, beg God to light a fire under you to get involved. Let me give you my paraphrase of those verses. The opportunity is great. The number of people involved in it is not. Take God to wake us up, that's really what Jesus said, the harvest is plentiful, 7,000. My dad passed her to church for 20 years in Memphis, Tennessee, I don't know if they had 7,000 visitors in 20 years, we've seen it in the last 30 months. The harvest is plentiful, the opportunity is great. Our involvement in it is not. God, we beg you to wake us up. How do we remove the blind spot? Well not by preaching one sermon, I mean let's just be honest, one sermon ain't going to fix it, it's a step and there are many steps and I want to give you a few of them as we close them, we're not going to stand and sing today, that's not the way we're going to end our service this morning, but I want to give you some of these steps to help us remove a blind spot. Here's the first one, we've got to do better at connecting new people to the family. There are a couple of ways you can help us. This morning as you leave, there's a kiosk out in the courtyard that's simply on the top of it says connection. If you would be willing to help us get new people connected, we need what are called story-gatherers, we need people willing to simply on a weekly basis make a few phone calls to people that have given us some information to say to them, hey we want to help get you connected, we want to hear your story. If you would be willing to help to get involved, I'm asking you and we dismiss our service, go back there to that kiosk that says connection, walk up and say to them I will help, I'll be a story-gatherer, I'll call some people, I'll make some calls, I'll be a story-gatherer, I'll be happy to do that. We must be a better steward of these people. A second way you can help us this morning is you've noticed, if you've been attending, we've kind of changed the way we do our guest center format back here. Used to, we would have people drop their connection cards in the offering basket and then come meet the pastor at the end of the service. We've changed that. Now we say hey, take that connection card, go back to connection key to the guest center back there because we want to meet you, we want to give you a gift, we want to get to know your family. Why are we doing that? Because we want to be a better steward, let me tell you, just a practical example, we've been doing that for about six weeks. In six weeks we've had four people walk back there, give a connection card to somebody and give their life to Jesus Christ by talking to somebody right back there at the guest center. Now those are four people who used to, amen, praise God for that. Those are four people who used to would have dropped it in offering basket, we'd have never heard from them again. And now we're starting to connect with people and hear their stories and help some of them find a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. If you'd be willing to help us about once a month, coming early, sitting through a second service and serving in the guest center, go back to that connection kiosks today and say hey, I'll help, I'll help. There's a second step that we're going to take. After the first of the year, we're going to be sharing with you a brand new small group's strategy for us here at Hope. We've been working on it for 12 months. We've been praying, we've actually been piloting some things inside our church with about 20 or 25 different groups as we've been trying to work out some of the kinks and understand better how we can do small groups because small groups are not the answer to everything, but small groups are a huge part of helping people get connected. And up until this point in the life of our church, let me tell you what we've been. We've been a church, an event with a few good small groups doing submissions. Here's what we want to be. We want to be a church of small groups on mission. You hear the difference? Not just an event with a few groups and doing some missions, but a church of groups. Here's what that means. If we're not in groups, we're not really involved in the life of the church. That's where we're moving. We're going to be sharing some things after the first of the year. We're going to need more leaders. We'll get you more information, but be looking for that. Third thing I want to do this morning is I want to introduce some new people to you. I want to ask three new team members to come this morning. We've been in some staff transition over the last 12 months, and we've been prayerfully waiting and just asking God to really solidify direction and strategy instead of just going out and bringing new people onto the team. We've actually kept some vacancies on our team for almost a year just trusting God to show us what the next steps we're going to look like. We didn't want to just get people on board and then change strategy. We really want to know the direction God was leading us. So I want to introduce a few new team members to you this morning. First of all, I introduce Tom McCormick. Tom is our new, what we're calling, pastor of Missional Communities, and you see his family up on the screen. Tom will be focused on this issue of helping people who are already in hope get connected by getting involved in groups, and the real impetus is making disciples that we are a community on mission. Tom's been serving for the last seven years at the First Baptist Church of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida in this capacity, and his family joined us November 1st, and the next weekend he went hiking at Red Rock Canyon and broke his arm. So welcome to Las Vegas, amen? But we're glad Tom and his family are here, bless you, man. And I want to introduce Alan Ratatouya, and Alan, for some of you, is not new. Alan and his family have been in our church for the last four years as members of our church. Alan started the company that I was describing earlier here in Las Vegas called Connection Power that works with a couple of thousand churches, really all over the country and around the world, to help them do a better job of connecting new people to the fellowship. And Alan is joining our team as a pastor of Connections in a bivocational role, continuing to do what he does with his company, but also joining to help us in doing better at connecting these 7,134 people and those yet to come to introduce them to Christ and help them take their next steps on that journey. So we're honored to have Alan and his family joining us as well. And then last but not least is Aaron Garcia. We have been for the last about eleven months without a family ministry's pastor here at Hope, and we've just been praying through that process and wanted to really define our strategy a little bit more so we knew exactly the type person that needed to be in that role. And Aaron and his family, you see them on the screen, they have been serving for the last several years in Colorado and the church there leading in family ministries. And Aaron's mom and dad, Jess and Judy, are actually in our church, they're the people that are smiling the most today. They've been in our church for several years and this is their son and their family, but Aaron is a gifted, gifted leader in the area of family ministries and he's going to help us do a better job of helping families with children and students get connected so that disciples are made and we're on mission together. So welcome all three of these families, that bless me, we're excited to have them here. What am I saying to you today? I hope you're hearing my heart, we must fix the blind spot. We must do better at connecting people. We must do it together. Let's pray. What would you speak to us right now? And God, would you really just create some transparency in these next few moments? As you sit there with your heads bowed and eyes closed, I want to ask you a couple of questions and listen, I need you to be honest with me. I need you to be completely honest with me. The first question is, are you connected? Are you somebody who says, "Man, my family, we're here, we're at Hope, we're in a group, man, we've got many, we've got friends, we've got place to serve, we are connected." If that's your testimony with nobody looking around right now but me and a few of our pastors, if your testimony is, "Man, we're connected, we've got friends, we're serving," let me see your hand, just hold it up for a moment, just hold it up, leave it up for just a minute. You can put it down, I need you to be honest with me, if you're here this morning and you would say, "Pastor, we're one of those families, we're not connected. We don't have the, "Man, we're needing the relationships, we need places to serve, we don't have a group that we're involved in, my family, we're not connected, I'm not connected." If that's your testimony with nobody looking around but me and a few of the pastors, I want you to raise your hand, just hold it up for a minute, hold it up, be honest, be honest. All right, that's what I thought you can put them down, it's been the same in every service, it's about 50/50 in every service. If you're here today and you're connected, we need your help. If you're here and you're not connected, we want to help you. Now, let me give you a little disclaimer, all right? You're going to have to be patient with us. I'm being honest with you today, we got a blind spot, we need to ask your forgiveness, but you're going to have to be patient with us because one sermon, one weekend is not going to fix it, but I want you to hear my heart, we are resolved to fix it. If you're here today and you're not connected, I'm going to ask you to do something. I want you to take your worship folder, tear out the connection card, if you don't have a worship folder, just grab something, an envelope, something out of the seat pocket in front of you and here's what I want you to do, I want you to write down your name, your email address and your telephone number and I'm going to be honest, now listen, last night a whole bunch of people raised their hand and only a few of them gave us their information, now listen, we can't help you if you don't give us your information. You say, well, I've done that before, I know, but I'm telling you today, we've messed up, we've made some mistakes, we want to do better, we need you to give it to us again, give us the grace of giving it to us one more time, your name, telephone number and email and when you leave the service today, there are going to be some people standing at the back that all have red jackets on, they like the Delta people at the airport, all right, they got red jackets with great tops and when you walk out this morning, I want you to give your name, telephone number and email address to one of those people in the red jackets and we're going to help get you connected, now be patient with us, but it's our desire to help get you connected, Father, Lord, would you continue to develop us and make us the church that you want us to be, Lord, we love you and it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. (gentle music)