This past several weeks have been so encouraging, as we've gotten here from some of you and from five of our pastors about how God has been working in their lives. They challenged us to consider how God has been working in our own lives and to be willing to share our story with people. After all, you never know how God might use your story. And though we each have individual stories we could tell about how God has shown up in our lives, we as a church also have a story to tell about how God has shown up among us this year. He's not only been at work in individual lives this year, but he's also shown us his power among us as a collective group of followers of Jesus. You see, we have a story to tell. This has been an incredible year. God has been on the move at Bridgewater Church and we have witnessed him do just what he does, the impossible. We came into 2024 with expectation, believing God would enable us to accomplish great things for his name. Now, here we are nearing the end of the year and we don't want to miss the opportunity to reflect back on some of the ways we saw God at work among us. Back in February of this year, we reflected on the incredible blessings Bridgewater Church experienced in 2023 and shared the Church's new goals for 2024. Now, we set goals because we've been given a mission to make more and better disciples of Jesus Christ and because we have a vision to see God use us to create a missional movement in the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania and the Southern Tier of New York. Our goals represent the external fruit that we could expect to see from internal heart change in people's lives. They're their measurables or indicators that help us to know if we're hitting our target and they flow out of our core values. So let's review what our goals were and I'll report on our progress. We ask God to allow us to see 100 people come to faith in Jesus. So far 94 people have trusted in Jesus as their forgiver and leader. That is as of the date of this recording. We set a goal to see 125 people take their next step in baptism and 100 people have taken their next step this way. We ask God for a 10% increase in general fund giving. In the years not over and so far we've seen giving increase by 9% which is so exciting because we see in Scripture that movements of God are often fueled by the generosity of his people. We worked towards an ask God for a 15% increase in weekend attendance. How amazing that we averaged 2095 people a week in Bridgewater's worship services for a 13.4% increase over last year. We even worked to onboard 100 new volunteers this year. Would you believe we got to onboard 177 volunteers to engage in ministry roles for the first time? Many of them committed to be a part of the pioneer team for Elk Lake and while I'm on that subject we had a building given to us for this location. We've assembled work crews for innovations and the work has begun at this new site. We're looking forward to the launch of this site on Easter of 2025. We saw God provide a pathway for a new building for our Tunk County campus and we're just praying for a favorable rezoning of that property so that we could move forward on that. Our church voted to multiply by launching Conklin and Vestal campuses out as a new multi-site church. That's amazing. On top of that, so many of you have given generously to our vision 2024 efforts. It really is staggering to try to take in the things we've watched God do so far this year. So how should we as a church respond to what God has done? What kind of response would honor him? I'm so glad that we're not the first ones to ask this question. Others have been here before us and I want to take us to a passage of Scripture written on behalf of a group of people who saw God do incredible things among them. I think from this Psalm we'll get some guidance as to how our church should respond. Take a look with me at Psalm 145. I will exalt you my God and King and praise your name forever and ever. I will praise you every day. Yes, I will praise you forever. Great is the Lord. He is most worthy of praise. No one could measure his greatness. Let each generation tell its children of your mighty acts, let them proclaim your power. I will meditate on your majestic, glorious splendor and your wonderful miracles. Your awe-inspiring deeds will be on every tongue that will proclaim your greatness. Everyone will share the story of your wonderful goodness that will sing with joy about your righteousness. The Lord is merciful and compassionate, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. The Lord is good to everyone, his showers compassion on all his creation. All of your works thank you, Lord, and your faithful followers will praise you. They will speak of the glory of your kingdom. They will give examples of your power. They will tell about your mighty deeds and about the majesty and glory of your reign. For your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom. You rule throughout all generations. The Lord always keeps his promises. He is gracious in all he does. This Psalm is appropriate for us to consider because it reveals three responses we should have to what God has done among us. First, it shows us that declarations of praise to God and intentions to meditate on his work are important. Second, it teaches us that we ought to make commitments to tell the stories of the good things he has done. But the Psalm writer knew that gratitude shouldn't only be expressed in moments of praise and quiet reflection, but also in the willful choice to celebrate the work of God among the people of God. So third, we need to make sure that we are prepared to express our thanks to God by publicly making known what he has done. This is part of the gospel message followers of Jesus are to take to the world. And with thanksgiving approaching, we want to take some time as a church to thank the Lord for what he has done. Reflect on his goodness towards us and consider how we can tell the stories of what he has done for us. Bridgewater Church, we've got a story to tell. Who will you share it with? Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to Bridgewater. My name is Kurt. I'm the campus pastor here in Tunkanick, I've been traveling around and it's nice to be back here, back home again and with all of you. So what I wanted to ask you this morning to start off was how many of you have broken the rules and already decorated for Christmas? All right, all right, there's a few there, there's a few there, okay, all right. So typically my family, we decorate for Christmas the day after thanksgiving, all right. That's when it's permissible, all right. But I want to say, as most of you know, it's snowed on Friday. So the snow was coming down and so we didn't decorate yet, but I will admit that we watched a Christmas movie. We did it, we don't usually do it, laughter thanksgiving, but the snow was coming down and it was, we felt the moment. So I'm confessing that to you today, that's what we did. But I'm looking forward to Christmas, but we have thanksgiving first. So we're gonna talk about thanksgiving, we're gonna talk about how glad we are for the work that God has done this year. Josh shared a whole bunch with us here this morning about what God has done in Bridgewater as a whole and I'm gonna share with you this morning about some more details about us specifically here at this campus. So why do we do the things the way we do it here at Bridgewater? What is the why behind what we do? Well we just learned from the Your Story series that each one of us has a story of life change. So as part of the why is as new people come to church, the goal is to essentially say, come and see, come and see the work that God has done in my life. I want you to know. Come and see the work that God is doing here at Bridgewater, here in small groups, here in student ministry or in kids ministry. Wasn't that an awesome story this morning? I've heard that story probably like six times now and I still cry when I hear it. It's awesome to see what God is doing. And that begins, our purpose begins with Matthew 28, 19, and 20, where Jesus tells us to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. But what does making disciples mean? I can recall a time when I was teaching my son how to ride a bike, right, anybody ever done that before? You're teaching my son how to ride a bike. And you don't just say, oh here, just here, here's a bike, go do it, right, just give him some sense of guidance and next steps, right? So he started off with training wheels and he did that for a little while and then later on I began to teach him how to do it and that involved modeling how to ride the bike. That involved guiding him, like holding the bike up while he went along. That was another step, and then there was where we were at, there was this little hill and he'd use that to help him get going so he didn't fall over right away. So there were all these steps that he did, right, and I'd come alongside him and help him in those steps until he got to the point where what he learned he could apply on his own and he could do it. And then he rode the bike right on his own. I think that's similar to how discipleship works, how the process works when someone enters serving in a ministry. They're taught the process of how things go in that serving role, then they shadow someone in that ministry, then they do some preparation on their own. And it's different for each ministry, but the reality is there are next steps. And there are next steps in our walk with Jesus and we come alongside one another and we help each other as we walk with Jesus. That's why we say here, one of our core values is everyone has a next step. You heard Josh mention that we have 177 people that have taken their next steps in serving. Well I wanted to tell you about the people here in Tunkenic. We've had 18 new people serving guest services in 2024, 18 new people. By the way, guest services, I believe, and I think Amanda, she's not in here, so correct me if I'm wrong, I think, I think it's 32 people per week. That serve and guest services, for three services. So 32 people it takes, and so I want to thank them for that, but we have 18 new people serving and guest services. We have two new leaders serving in student ministry. I don't know if you know about this, but it's not just one person fending for themselves in student ministry. There are a ton of leaders that work together to minister to your teenagers, and we have two new leaders that have just become part of that core group that love Jesus and love teenagers, and so it's been awesome to see what God is doing there. And we have six new kids ministry leaders. So what you heard about kids ministry this morning, we have new leaders coming into there and helping, but they do need more, they do need more for sure, and you can find out out there in the back when you leave. And so also we have eight new small group leaders slash co-leaders. We've seen small groups multiply, and therefore we need new leaders or people who would host at their house. And then we have at least 14 pioneers from the Tunkana campus going for the Elk Lake launch. That's really, really exciting. So we have all this stuff that's happening, all the things that God is doing, and it reminds me of this, and basically related to the Your Story series. If Jesus is done a work in our lives, then we have a responsibility to share it with others. In Tunkana, we had a goal to see 30 people put their faith in Jesus as their forgiver and leader, and we have seen 17 so far in 2024 give their life to Jesus. And that is awesome. Now there's some really cool thing I want to share with you this morning about this. Now as pastors, we are called to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, which means that in a growing church, the pastors oversee and they teach, and then the members do more and more ministry, they invest more in ministry, and that causes the church to grow. And I see that happening here. As I'll say, typically over the years, a statistic that it's about 80% of those that are led to Jesus are led by Bridgewater staff in some way. That's 80%. And so I wanted to say one thing about Tunkana this year. Out of those 17, 13 out of those 17 were not led to Jesus by Bridgewater staff, but they were led to Jesus by you guys. You guys shared Jesus with people and they put their faith in them. That is what a growing church does and that's 76% the other way. And I just thought that was so amazing. What does that say about you that says you're invested, that says it's not about the pastor. It's about Jesus working in your life and helping you lead others to Jesus. This is why we're seeing so much spiritual growth here in Tunkana. I had a, so this morning God decided to completely throw off my numbers by doing something in between second and third service by the way. Somebody came up to me in between second and third service and said they wanted to give their life to Jesus. So it's not included in that 17, but they made a decision this morning to give their life to Jesus and that is awesome, truly awesome. There's nothing like following Jesus. But you'll hear about that next week. We also saw 30, the goal for baptisms was 30. To see 30 people make their next steps in baptism. Thirty people to say, to tell the world that I am a follower of Jesus, identify with him in his death, burial and resurrection, and we saw 30 people baptized at Tunkana campus this year. So we have one baptism to go, so I'm sorry no one else allowed to be baptized. No, no for real. We could have 30 more. Well, I don't know, 13 was pushing it last time, so I don't know if we could do 30 more. But if God is working in your life in this way, please talk to someone about it. Because God is doing some great things here and we celebrate them. There's so many things that we can measure, like we can measure baptisms, we can measure salvation and things like that, but there's things that you can't measure, that I assure you that are happening. The end goal is to see more and better disciples, but how does that happen that occurs on our ongoing commitment to pursuing Jesus? I want to celebrate with you this morning that we've seen out of the 350,000 vision giving, we've seen 281,251 and 79 cents that have been given for vision giving this year. And that will help us move towards a new building in Tunkanic. No, no. So we presently, we are looking at buying the Presbyterian Church. So as Josh mentioned, we're just be praying about the variance for the, to come through for the Tunkanic borough, so that's the next step for that. And then part of the vision giving is also the Elk Lake launch that is at Easter time and multiplying leaders at Bridgewater as well. So how do we personally know how to pursue Jesus? Well, part of the way we do it is by consistently attending on Sunday morning services, we take to heart what is learned as we study God's Word on Sunday morning or in small group or in our personal time, we apply those scriptures to our life. And that's how God wants us to grow. If you look at the scriptures in the New Testament, you'll see many prayers. You see Jesus teaching us about prayer in Matthew chapter six. And then his prayer, did you know Jesus prayed for us? He prays for all those who will believe in John chapter 17, Jesus prays for us. But we also have a ton of prayers in the epistles that the Apostle Paul wrote. He wrote, he prayed 32 times. And one of these prayers is found in Ephesians 1 verses 15 to 19. But as we get into that this morning, I'm going to give you some background on the book of Ephesians. So Ephesus was the city where the church, where people were coming to know Jesus and it was the epicenter of Greek and Roman worship of other gods. Paul spent two years there leading people to Jesus and starting a growing movement of followers of Jesus in Ephesus. Then some years later, he writes a letter from prison to the believers at Ephesus. And he writes this book of Ephesians, and as we can see here, it's split up into two. The first three chapters there say the gospel story. So essentially those first three chapters are talking about those who place their faith and trust in Jesus have been chosen and are an inheritance. And it's by grace through faith that you're saved. That we were formerly spiritually dead and we were made alive in Christ. And then in chapters 4 to 6, it shifts and it says, okay, Jesus did this in your life verses chapters 1 to 3. Now live in a manner that's worthy of your calling in verses 4 to 6. Talks about how we should live our lives because of what the work that Christ has done. So he begins this entire book with this prayer and this desire for the Ephesian believers. And so we're going to start out here in verse 15 of chapter 1 says, "Ever since I first heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for God's people everywhere." So the Apostle Paul starts out speaking of the reputation the believers in Ephesus have. He continues in verse 16, he says, "I have not stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly." So as a result of this reputation that he's heard, he's thanking God for the Ephesian believers. He's praying for them more and more because he keeps getting encouraged by their faith. He's thanking God. I'm thanking God for all of you. It's because of your investment in his ministry that there's so much growth. If you've been involved in that, then you have seen it. You've tasted and seen it, the Lord is good. You've watched him work in the lives of others and that encourages you to keep on. That's why we celebrate these things because we see God doing a great work. But if you're sitting there saying, "Well, hey, I haven't done very much yet, maybe God's working in your heart to make a decision, make a decision whether that be a decision to start serving God or decision to share Christ with other people or maybe it's a decision for yourself to come to know Christ or help others make their next steps. Let's see what Paul says moving on to verse 17. He says, "Asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God." So in the process of your seeking and helping others to come to know Jesus, Paul's prayer to the Ephesians and for us is that we would be wise and knowledgeable in God. Spiritual wisdom just does not happen on its own. It doesn't happen just by attending Sunday morning. It just doesn't happen just by going to small group or to student ministry. It happens through your own personal time in God's Word. Listen to this in verse 18. He says, "I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called, his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance." How about that? You ever have someone say that about you? You are my rich and glorious inheritance. Man, that's awesome to hear that. God talking about us in that way, his rich and glorious inheritance. And I love how it's worded here, too, that our hearts will be flooded with light. That sounds sort of strange a little bit, but I promise you it's not mystical. It's not magical, okay? It's our daily walk in our time with God. Each and every day he floods our heart with light as we pursue him and his word, as we have a mindset of prayer throughout the day to please God with our lives. You know, one of the ways that I've seen this happen, and it's not a number that you can report, but it's in the process of small group when someone is interacting with the scriptures and they begin to understand a particular passage and how it applies to their life, right? The light comes on. Have you ever had that happen where you're just, you're not really understanding the scripture and then as you just continue to study or you give your life to Jesus, then you really get it. You really get it. The light comes on. They might say, "I used to have a very difficult time understanding God's word, but now it's beginning to make sense." That's not something we can put on a screen, but that's life change, the impact of God's word in somebody's life, because you know, this book can be overwhelming, right? If you just open it up to some random place, it could be overwhelming. But the reality is, as we spend more time studying and learning, we can grow in our walk with Jesus and our hearts can be flooded with that light as it says in that scripture. I don't know about you, but those are non-measurable. We cannot see some things that end up leading us to the things that we can see. Like we see people coming to know Jesus, we see people making their next steps in baptism, but there is work going on behind the scenes, work in people's lives that we can't just quantify, right? But it is quality. It's a work of Christ in each individual's life. That's why we encourage us to do life, each one to do life together as we walk with Jesus. Continuing on, Paul says in verse 19, "I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God's power for us who believe Him." This is the same mighty power that raised, going on to verse 20, that raised Christ from the dead and seated Him in the place of honor at God's right hand in the heavenly realms. What would it be like if we had that faith to believe in God's power even more than we do now? God is powerful, there is no doubt. You know, I'm thankful for all that He has done this year. I truly am, but I don't think He's done. I think He's going to do more beyond what we can ask or think. And I think it's pretty incredible what He's done so far. And He but He wants to work in and through each of us. I don't know if you remember the statistic when I shared in my testimony, sermon, but what I said is that you will see significant improvement in areas of your life if you spend four days per week greeting God's Word. Now, this particular statistic broke it down for somebody that read their Bible one day a week, two day a week, three days a week. And for some reason, on four days a week, I don't know what that's about other than it's more than 50%. Four days a week, there was a statistical difference in change in people's life. Let me share some of these statistics with you this morning. In lonely drops 30%, anger issues dropped 32%, bitterness in relationships dropped 40%, alcoholism drops 57%, sex outside of marriage dropped 68%, feeling spiritually stagnant dropped 60%, and viewing pornography drops 61%. Those are some significant statistics on areas that affect us. Now those are all areas that are negative things to be overcome, but the most exciting part of this statistic is what I'm going to put on what's going to be on the screen next. And that is this, sharing your faith jumps 200%, 200%, discipling others jumps 230%. Because you know what happens when we just get engrossed in God's word is that it changes the way that we think. It changes our perspective on the world and the way that we see things. And we have that mindset of sharing our faith and discipling others and that is what it's about. So there are two things that I want you to take away from today's message. These things that I believe are happening in the Titanic that we're thankful for today, I believe they're going to happen more. And even more when we see, we're going to see people come to know Jesus and taking their next steps as each person continues to pursue after Jesus and invest in the work that he is doing in their own lives and then in the lives of others. And you do this by the first one is we need to be in God's word consistently. It can't just be something that I got a taste on Sunday morning, it was good, I was fed, or at small group or in student ministry, but it's something I pursue on a daily basis consistently. For God's word to truly change your heart. It's about that time spent with him in order to attain the spiritual wisdom that are mentioned in these scriptures that are talked about today. We must not only attend on Sunday morning, not only attend small group, but we must be in his word every day. Certainly we need to tell others about him. We need to tell others about him. It's a natural outflow of the work God does in our lives. If we understand the incredible greatness of God's power for us, then we must share about him with others. Not only because it's commanded, but it's a natural part of gaining a deeper knowledge of God. Sometimes we can get caught up in our growth with God that it's about just about feeding ourselves. No, there's a purpose in getting to know God more and that purpose in gaining that deep knowledge of God is a desire for others to know him too because that's the work God's going to do in our lives and that's the ultimate goal. That's my prayer for you and for me as we go this week, as we go into the holidays that we're thankful for all that God has given to us and that we're ready for what he's going to continue to do. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day, Lord. I thank you, God, for your free gift of salvation. Thank you for the young man that gave his life to you this morning. God you are continually at work and it just blows me away. I pray, God, that we would be a part of what you're doing. You're going to do great work regardless because you are great. I just pray, God, that we would be invested in what you're doing and continue to see life change here at Bridgewater. We love you. We praise you in Jesus' name, amen.
