here. I'm going to be sharing this morning on creating breathing room. There are some sermon handouts on the soundboard if you want to grab one. I'm going to start off by sharing my story and my own need for breathing room. So those of you who have been in our community for a while and you've heard my story and maybe you know my story better than I do, I ask your patients as I work through telling my story. You will also need a neighbor in order to fully participate in the sermon this weekend. So make sure you have someone you can turn to and say a few things. Don't be so scared. It will be okay as we move through. Trust me. Alright, so I'm just going to launch in. I was born and raised in the inner city of Washington, D.C., our nation's capital. I grew up in the southeastern neighborhood known as Anacostia. This neighborhood adjacent to the capital but separated by the Anacostia River was also separated economically by its poverty. It's also separated racially by its lack of diversity. It was the home of the abolitionist Frederick Douglas who was the first African American to break the racial barrier and purchase a home in this neighborhood in the 19, oh yeah, and start to the process of diversifying the neighborhood. However, by the 1930s the community had become a slum. Over a third of its inhabitants presently live in abject poverty. The community has an unemployment rate of about 22% and just to give you a reference point the unemployment rate for Michigan right now is roughly 6%. So this is just one neighborhood. And over 50% of the neighborhood's kids, including myself, lived in poverty. Now if I were to look back on my childhood and look at my immediate peer group, I'd note a couple things. First off is a quarter of my childhood friends are dead. Victims of a drug culture that was too enticing and therefore too ruthless. I remember as a young person attending funerals of friends who were cut down in their youth because of this trait. A quarter of my neighborhood friends are in prison, having received the mercy of a prison sale over that of a gravesite. A quarter of my friends having dropped out of high school now find themselves under the crushing economic modern day slavery known as poverty. But it is to God that I give the glory for rewriting my story. I'm so thankful and grateful. I'm just so grateful and so in awe of God's mercy to change our story. And this is where you need your neighbor. So go and turn to your neighbor and say, I'm glad that God is a story changer. At age 13, a cousin shared the gospel with me. The navigator's image will appear behind me. It was a hot August afternoon. And a note on the navigator's image, which is interesting. When you go up to the navigator's website and you see this picture on how to share the gospel with someone, they have an asterisk now as a footnote. And when you follow the footnote it says that this presentation of the gospel is most effective with baby boomers and women. And so that gives you an insight as to what's happening in terms of how people are receiving the message in this package. So anyway, at age 13 a cousin shared the gospel with me. It was a hot August afternoon. And I was presented with the basic truth as it were. I was the sinner on my way to hell. And boy, hell didn't seem appealing at all. And my cousin told me that today was the day of salvation. And if I wanted to go to heaven, I needed to repent and receive Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. So not being a fan of heat or being hot, I decided to pray the sinner's prayer. I confess my sin, though at age 13, I wasn't really in touch with all of my sin. I said that I believed that Jesus died on a cross for me. And then I confess with my mouth that he was raised from the dead. Now looking back on this experience, I think I would describe this experience as a fear-based transaction. I was so deftly afraid of hell that I was willing to do and say anything to avoid it. Now I had no idea what I had just done, but God, He is good. Why don't you turn to your neighbor and say, "We serve a good God." Now later that afternoon, I have what I can only describe as an outer-body experience. Now, if you're visiting friends and relatives here in Ann Arbor, don't be troubled. I will explain what I mean by this outer-body experience. So I made that confession in my aunt's living room. I went out onto her porch, laid down on a bench, and I fell asleep. And I had a vision or what I'm describing as an outer-body experience. And I kind of saw myself flying down on this bench, and I was kind of off to the right looking at myself. And I saw the, I guess, the best way I can describe it is I just saw what looked like a spirit liftoff of my body and a new one descent. And I would describe this experience to others later in this way. Paul talks in 2 Corinthians 5 verse 17, and he says, "Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. All things are passed away." And then I love how the King James throws in, "Behold, right? Take a look. Something's changing. All things have become new." And so I would describe this confession in this way. And what happened here is this experience cemented for me that an actual transformation had taken place. This experience would build for me a foundation on how I would connect with God. Now, in high school, I spent most of my Christian experience in a conservative, fundamentalist, charismatic church. And it was in this context that I developed, and I would ask your grace, your mercy, and your patience with me. Especially if you don't know me, just bear with me. There's some payoff in the end. And then if you do know me, I'm asking for anything that I've done that is good in your sight that you would just allow that to just be radiated towards me as I move ahead in my story. Remember, it's my story, and I'm wrestling with my story, and you're wrestling with it with me. All right. So now you have the build up. So now you're ready to expect the sacred cows that will be barbecued as we move on. All right. So it was in this context that I developed a distorted view of the Bible. And this distorted view was that first and foremost, the Bible was a manual for living. When, in fact, the Bible, first and foremost is the true story of our Creator God's involvement in a broken world, bringing about a return from exile. Here, I also developed a distorted view of truth. And the idea here was that truth was only found in the Bible, and therefore only in the church. Now, after high school, I went on to college at the College of Worcester in Worcester, Ohio. And as a freshman, I arrived bushy, you tell, and bright-eyed, ready to win the whole campus for Christ. Now, the faith that I had when I arrived at Worcester was generally individualistic. It was arrogant, it was otherworldly. My faith was just that. It was mine. It was a private religious experience. And the only reason I would share this faith with anyone else was to convince them to avoid their impending doom. Now, remember, my faith was otherworldly. It was almost entirely focused on escaping my present reality and getting to the other side where I love and Job, it says, the wicked cease from troubling and the weary they find rest. This faith had nothing to do with how I would live in the here and now. It was future, not yet. So a funny little thing started to happen during my time at Worcester. I was exposed to truth outside of the Bible, and I had to confront it. And I wasn't prepared for how I was going to deal with that reality. I remember, and I'll share an embarrassing story with you, I remember in a particular class that I attended weekly that I would spend my time in this class arguing with my seminar leader who happened to be a PhD in geology and accomplished PhD in geology. I remember arguing with her weekly that the fossil record proved nothing. I remember telling her and telling a friend in this class that the devil, yes the devil, he planted the evidence in the fossil record. And he did it to test Christians to see if we would believe. Now, I laugh as you did at that story in the sheer lunacy of my response, but since truth was found in the church and in particular in the Bible, I had to take a hard stand. I had to come up with some creative and maybe not so creative ways of answering the questions of those around me. Now, this friend not turned off by my response to the fossil record continued to have lunch with me. And it was at lunch one day when he asked because he was still attracted to Jesus and he said, "Do I have to believe what you believe in order to be a student of Jesus?" And here's the grace. Here's the mercy. I don't remember how I responded to him there. But knowing me and my wife reminds me of who I am sometimes, I'm sure how I responded. It wasn't as generous as I should have been. And you may be wondering, "Okay, well, what does that have to do with it?" Well, I think that these questions, his question about me and how I believe, have to do with the emergent community and the emergent generation. And the question before us as a church, as a community of folks who would want to create breathing room for them, is, is there room for them and their questions? Now, something else started to happen during my time at Worcester. I was coming to grips with my world view. Now, let me take a moment and unpack world view. World view can be defined as the assumptions or expectations, concepts, values, allegiances that shaped our perceptions of reality and our responses to those perceptions. Our world view consists of the lenses or filters through which we perceive reality. A world view is pervasive. It is structured into or embedded within a culture. A world view is oftentimes unstated. World view assumptions are not reasoned out but are assumed to be true without prior proof. My parents on a sunny afternoon didn't sit down and say, "Hey, Donald, let us teach you what your world view assumptions are." It's hard to realize that we are influenced by a world view in the same way that it's difficult for us to hear that we speak with an accent. I was in Cincinnati last week and was interacting with some southerners who called me a Yankee because of my accent and then I reminded them I was from Maryland technically a southern state. It didn't work. World views are multiple. Plural. There's not a single world view for all Americans, for example, though Americans share or tend to world view assumptions. Neither, and here comes another cow. Is there a single Christian world view? But Christ transforms every world view. In other words, none of us perceives reality on filter. We all perceive reality through certain lenses. So a transition started to occur because my world view started a friction point for me. My world view started to fail me. This failure caused me to ask some basic questions about the assumptions I had made. My assumptions about the Bible to be generous were just plain wrong. The Bible had become more than a manual for a living. Now, give me some space to work this out, right? Because certainly it gives us insight for how we are to live. And it gives us guidance on how we are to interact in this life. But if we play the whole concept or idea of a manual for living to its fullest conclusion, we arrive at a place that I don't really think we want to be. I'm a new homeowner here in Ann Arbor and we purchased some furniture from IKEA. Thank you. It's a lot to cross the barrier to buy a home in America, especially if you don't -- well, anyway, that's another sermon. So we bought this house and then we bought some furniture from IKEA. We like IKEA. Great place. You should visit. And one of the things about IKEA that makes the furniture work is that you have to assemble it. So we needed a drill. Well, I've never owned a drill because I've always lived in an apartment. I haven't needed a drill. So I went and bought a drill from Sears and, you know, everything like, you know, these appliances, stuff, they come with manuals, right? So the first thing I did after purchasing the drill was I sat down to read the manual. No, no, I did. What I did is I took the parts out, realized the battery needed to be charged, put it in the charger to the light turn green, put it into a cordless drill, found the bit, and I made me a chair. I know it was awesome. And then I sat in the chair and it worked, right? Now, if we think about the Bible, the Bible, as a manual for living, the only time I'm going to access the manual for the drill is when it doesn't work or I'm in crisis, right? And is that really how we want to approach this narrative, this story, the story of the creator God, the God of the cosmos who decided that it would be good for him to make man in his own image. And not only that, but that it would be good for him to have relationship with man. And not only that, but it would be good for God to teach man what it meant to be human. Is that how we want to approach this text? I certainly didn't. And it was only as I started to investigate that there was something fundamentally flawed in my only manual for living view of the biblical narrative that I realized there was a richer, deeper, true story that was there. Now my assumptions, with my assumptions to the Bible under check, I started to wrestle then with my assumptions about Jesus. I started to see his life and ministry and purpose and death very differently. No longer did I believe that Jesus only lived to die. No longer did I believe that Jesus spent his entire ministry teaching us how to get to heaven. No longer did I believe that Jesus came into the world demonstrating God's incredible mercy and love in order to sell us fire insurance. See, I had to start taking Jesus seriously. I had to come to grips with the reality that Jesus was political, that Jesus had aims, that he had goals, that he had an agenda. Now when I started to approach the Bible as a narrative, and yes, I believe it's a story, the truest story ever told, I realized that this was a powerful life-changing story. I saw a theme emerge from the narrative when I started to look at it as a narrative. I realized that this story, this Bible tells the story of exile and return, exile and return that we have been exiled from the garden and we want to return home again. And Ken has been doing a fantastic job pressing some of the themes of exile and return out because he's been talking about how the temple and some of its descriptions had this river running through it. It's our desire to return home again. And then something else happened when I started to see the narrative as a narrative and I saw that theme of exile and return, I realized that my story was tied up in that story. That I myself was in exile. First, I was in exile from God. I didn't realize that I had decided to turn my back on him and I needed to find out what it really meant to be human. And the only way that I could do that was through a relationship with him so that he could teach me what it meant to be human. I also realized that I was in exile, broken, hurt, crushed, wanting to find, rest, welcome in freedom. And I'm so encouraged by what Paul shares with us in Galatians chapter 5 verse 1. He says this, "It was for freedom that Christ set us free." See, it was for freedom that Christ saved us. Turn to your neighbor and say it was for freedom. Now, I needed a place. I needed a place that would allow me to wrestle with my worldview. I needed a place. I needed a place that would allow me to shape my faith. I needed a place that would welcome me and my questions. I needed a place, and I'm not sure if I'll have any witnesses here. There might be one, but I needed a place where God hadn't been reduced to a formula. I'm going to keep going and I'm not sure I'm going to have any company, but I needed a place. I needed a place where everybody just didn't know all the answers. I know. I don't have any witnesses with me, but I also needed a place where there was a mystery about God. Something sacred about the divine. That's what I needed, and I want to tell you, I want to tell you that I found that place. You know where I found that place? Right here. I found it right here. I found that place, and it's the vineyard, and in particular, it was our local church, so I'm going to have a little love fest for a moment. I want you to know, I love the vineyard. I love the vineyard. I love who we are. I love our values. I love how we do church. I love that we are a community that is serious about Jesus. I love that we want to create space for people who have questions about God that they can feel at home and welcome here, that they can work through their questions, and they can find truth, they can find rest, they can find restoration, they can find peace in this place, and we get to do that. We get to participate in that. We are a movement of people who love Jesus, and we take them seriously. We encourage inclusion. You don't know how important that is. We believe that everybody has the right to participate. We are a kingdom people, and we live within a kingdom reality. We are people who are active in our spirituality, and we encourage the integration of our spirituality, our faith, and our intellect. You don't have to screw your head off and let stuff come in unfiltered. Keep it tight. So what does it mean for us as a local church with a mission of focus to create breathing room for those who need it? Let me give you a definition of what it means to create breathing room. This definition is it's the relief we need to draw life from intimate connection with God. Room to breathe in hope, peace, joy, purpose, love, and room to breathe out, sin, frustration, judgment, anger, bitterness, lust, apathy, shame, and guilt. See, some who are in the conversation, there's an emergent community and a conversation that's happening about what the church is and what the church will become. Some have argued that we need to just totally marginalize or replace the church model that we have today with something else, something better. I really argue against that. I believe that the greatest force for change and transformation in our culture in our local community is the local church. With locally minded folks who believe in the story, in the message, living within a kingdom reality, wanting to humbly press that out for a group of people who need to receive welcome and inclusion, I think that's the most powerful force that we have in changing the culture in the community. And I believe that we have that here in our local church. So church is that creatively and faithfully reveal grace. We'll create breathing room for the disconnected to connect, for the disfavored to find favor, for the discounted to count. And when we do this, we will create space for people to ask their questions. We will create space for people to discover God. We will create space for people to be transformed and changed by Jesus. We will create space for restoration and for renewal. So let's take a look at a group of people who were in need of some breathing room. My biblical text for today will be John chapter 19, excuse me, chapter 20 verses 19 and 22. It will be projected on the evening of the first day of the week when the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders. Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." After he said this, he showed them his hands and his sides. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again, Jesus said, "Peace be with you as the Father has sent me I am sending you." And with that, he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit." Here we see the beauty of breathing room in a nutshell. People cut off from every source of life, locked in a room when suddenly they find that things are different than they were just moments ago. And God himself is there with them, breathing his new life into them, if only they will receive it. Let's take a look at the disciples. First of all, the disciples were disconnected. The community that they had been born into, the community that had once been the community of promise for them had cursed them. So here they are, huddled together behind locked doors, cut off from their original source of life. And they're disconnected even from God because it seems to them that everything they knew, everything they believed must have been wrong. They've had a worldview failure. The things they believed and took for granted were challenged. And I know what it means to be disconnected because I've been disconnected. I've needed, and I needed, at that time, a community that would welcome me, that would carry my burdens, a community that would love me. Deeter Zander says this about the emergent generations. He says, "That family is more frequently defined as those who will love us, not those who produce us." And that has become so true for my store, finding those who would love me when those who produced me rejected me. And that's what we get to become if we're willing. So the question before us is as a local church, if we're willing to create breathing room, do we really want to do it? Are we willing to create breathing room for those who need it? The disciples are also disfavored. They've gone from the most blessed of the people, favored to be called friends of the miracle-working Messiah. But now the so-called Christ, the would-be Messiah, has been disgracefully killed, crushed, and cursed to hang on a tree. The kingdom they put their hopes in has been a mirage, and they're left with nothing. Disillusioned friends of a fraud, all of them. The world turned against them, holding not even pity for them. And I remember falling out of favor when I started to wrestle with my worldview and my basic assumptions. And I started to question those in the community that I was in at the time. I remember that it was there that I received my harshest critique. It was there that I received just the accusations, the contempt, the condemnation. There wasn't really room for me to breathe. And so my question to you, churches, are you willing to create breathing room for those who need it? Finally, the disciples are also discounted. Once they had dreams for glory, sitting at the master's hand, healing the sick, casting out demons, forgiving sinners and welding, God's authority. And when people who are wrestling with their worldview and their basic assumptions come to the table and start to ask their questions, sometimes they feel marginalized. Concerned that those who are entertaining their questions won't take them seriously just because they ask. But here, church, I would ask us to remember. There's some folks who've gone before us who have asked questions, like David. In Psalm 13, he starts off, "How long? How long, Lord?" He was the man after God's own heart. Or maybe Mary after the messenger of God said to her that she would be with child, and she asks, "How can this be?" "I am a virgin." And maybe you can write those two off because of their lack of faith. Maybe they just didn't have a trust relationship with God, but how do you answer our Lord on his cross? "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" See, questions have always been a part of our relationship and connection with God. We get to bring our whole doubting self with our whole believing self into his presence, and he's created space for us. Are we willing to create space for those who need it? See, creating breathing room means joining with Jesus in revealing grace. Creating breathing room means joining with Jesus in revealing grace, not judgment, but grace. Through spirit-empowered expressions of peace, spirit-empowered promise of participation in resurrection life, and the spirit-empowered call to kingdom ministry. And see, as a local church, we have these gifts of grace that we get to give away. I want to tell you about them. There are three. Back to the top. On the evening of the first day of the week, when the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them, and he said, "Peace be with you." See, the first gift of grace that creates breathing room is Jesus' presence, which promises and announces His peace. See, a few things happened all at once for the disconnected disciples. First, despite the locked door, they were not alone. But not only were they not alone, they were really not alone. They were not alone at all anymore. Why? See, in their aloneness and their disconnection from their community and with each other and with God Himself had actually, ultimately, been a result of Jesus' absence from their lives and their world. So it was His presence all by itself, which made the difference between disconnection and connection. It's the difference between fear and peace. See, Jesus, a simple statement, "Peace be with you, gets through the heart of the matter." This isn't some empty shallow peace. No, this peace Shalom is wholeness, well-being. It has a relational emphasis. It's a greeting that says, "You know what? It's all right between you and me." It has the ability to say, "You know what? It's all right between you and God." This peace says that every fear that's within you should flee, and that you could spend again the rest of your life in a settled condition of peace. See, Jesus' presence, which announces His peace, is a gift of grace, which creates breathing room for the disconnected to connect. When we come together, we bring with us His presence. Have you been in worship and not sure what's going on, but you just have this sense that there is a presence here? I remember it the first day I came to the vineyard. It was down in my land, and I'm sitting in the pews, and I'm just crying for no reason. I'm not sad. I'm not, you know, my emotions seem to be okay, but I am overwhelmed. Why? Because it's His presence that's in the place, and sometimes we just respond. Our bodies are responding to the sacred and the divine, and it's just, it's so good. Now, some of us, some of us would be afraid to create breathing room, and what I would say to you, there is nothing to fear as we create breathing room for those who need it, because here's the key. We are partnering with Jesus, and when we partner with Him, we receive His presence, and with His presence comes His peace. The second gift of grace, which creates breathing room, is the promise for participation in resurrection life. Now, resurrection life is in the room, and it's set everything straight. Wandering life, when it's revealed, has a way of making everything clear. Just when it seemed that God had it in for them. There would be Messiah, right? Messiahs did not die on a cross. That wasn't the picture that they had in their mind of a successful Messiah ship. So they believed, rightly so, that death, that God had abandoned them, because they saw the one in whom they put all their hope, their trust. They anchored everything He was hanging on a cross. And so they thought, "That's it. God has given us up, and death is coming." But then resurrection life walked in the room, and said, "Wait a minute. The story is not over. I am here. That is why they are overjoyed when they see Him, because they realize it wasn't God that was against them. It was death. And guess what? Oh, death. There's your victory. Oh, great. Where's your sting? It's all been wrapped up in His resurrection life, and we get to participate in that life. We get to change someone's story. We get to give new purpose to someone's story. And that's because we tell them, and we allow them to participate in His resurrection life. See, whenever Jesus reveals to the disfavored the promise of participation in resurrection life, it creates breathing room for them to find favor. The third gift, which creates breathing room, is His call to ministry. Note again the use of Shalom here. Peace be with you. Part of resurrection life comes in the call to King the ministry. Jesus isn't just giving His disciples any job. He's giving them His job. Just when they thought their lives were wasted or destined to be ruined at best. Jesus shows up with the highest call ever given to a human being, as the Father has sent me. I send you. Implicit in this idea is that the disciples count, and don't we all want to count. They count to God. He's not just announcing peace to them out of pity. No. Much more than that. He's not just promising them resurrection life that they can be generous and benevolent. No. Much more than that. He's placing some of His eggs in their basket. He's taking a risk on them. He's laying His life on their lie. Now, when the previously discounted enter into God's purposes, they began to experience the full extent of His grace, of His love, of His life. See, Jesus' call to King the ministry creates breathing room for the discounted to count. And this is our heritage as the vineyard. This is our legacy. We believe that everybody gets to play. That everyone has some aspect of God, however little or much you have, that we all want to be blessed by. You all get to participate. Finally, these gifts together create breathing room for us to receive the Holy Spirit. Because without His Spirit, we can accomplish nothing of value. We must be Spirit-led and Spirit-empowered. And as a people, when we realize that we are being led and empowered by His Kingdom, we welcome the reality of His Kingdom and the reality of its Kingdom. See, when we gather together each weekend, and we give of our time and our energy to create a welcoming environment for those God is calling, we become what we were intended to be, communities of hope, answering the despairing culture with God's love and His grace. When we take our active selves, and we walk into the heart of our communities, and we bear the image of Jesus, His humble, gentle, open-handed heart to those who need to hear His message most, we offer them hope in the midst of their despair. When we love church, when we pray, when we care, we get to do something. We renew. We transform. We change. We restore. We give new hope. We give new purpose. We create space for those who need it. My question to you is, are you willing to create breathing room for those who need it? Stand with me. We're going to celebrate communion. The band can make its way back. I want to let you know about an upcoming sermon series that Don is going to be leading, starting next week. It's called Simply Christian, a four-part sermon series. We're going to tackle some of the questions like, why do we expect justice? Why do we crave spirituality? Why are we attracted to beauty? How will the world be made right? These questions take us to the heart of who God is and what He wants from us. In this four-part series, we're going to take a short walk through the Christian faith and try to tackle some of these questions. This would be a great opportunity if you are connected with folks who are exploring what it means to be a student of Jesus or what it means to be a Christian. You want to invite them to participate in the sermon series. This would be a great opportunity for you to invite them to come along. We're going to celebrate communion, but I have a few ministry calls that I'd like to share with you. First up, my wife had an insight about anybody who might be here who would identify with the form of the Christianity from my youth. You are interested or may be responded to the message in some way and you'd like to step out and embrace emotionally minded expression of the church or the community, but you're not sure how to approach that. I'm going to be praying up here on the right, but the ministry team will be in the wings so you can respond in any wing. There might be some who responded to the call to create breathing room in our local community here in Ann Arbor, but you're just not sure what that's going to look like. So you're not committing to do anything, but you're just wanting to say yes to what you feel God is doing in your heart. The next one was anyone who's been wounded from a previous church experience where you had questions and you were wrestling and maybe you were just not welcomed in that community and it just created a wound for you and it hasn't healed yet. I would love to pray with you. I would specifically love to pray with you there. Janet Nutt had a dream because she heard the sermon last night and shared it with me this morning. There might be some parents here who are finding it difficult to create breathing room for your kids in particular your teenagers and you want some help with that. Pete says, "Thank you." So I don't know what that means. So Barb and Glenn, I'll be over here to the right. And then there might be some of you who are here who haven't had an opportunity yet to say yes to Jesus. You haven't created a breathing room for him to enter into your life. And as we were going through the sermon, you had just a quickening. You had a revelation that today was the day that you should get in the stream, that you would start your journey of falling in love with him and allowing his love to transform you and to renew you and transform you. And if you're here tonight or this afternoon and you're willing to come forward, we would love to pray with you to get you started on that journey. So Paul gives this insight to this mill which we get to celebrate, this mill that Jesus left us and it's a celebration of what he's done for us. For I received from the Lord what I now pass on to you, the Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed. He took bread and after he had given things, he broke it and said, "This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way after supper, he took the cup saying, "This cup is a new covenant in my blood. Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me. For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." If you're not responding to any of the ministry calls, I would ask that as you celebrate communion that you would just pray a simple prayer if you'd be willing, it's America and we're glad we're not British, right? Except for those of you who happen to be Britain, we're glad you're here. And there's room for you here at the table. Thank you. But if you're willing, if you're not responding to the calls, but if you would, when you come to celebrate communion, would you just say a simple prayer? Just ask the Lord to reveal to you where you can create breathing space and breathing room for those who are in your life, in your jobs, in your neighborhood, in your family. Amen? So we're going to celebrate the band's going to lead us. You guys, you got like three songs possibly that you can do. Is that all right, Ken? All right. So you got three. Do you have three? You do. You have the river. Yeah. You got three. So Elizabeth, they're going to do all three. Let's make two lines down the center. I'll be in the wings if the prayer ministry team can join me. We'd love to pray with you. Praise God. [MUSIC PLAYING]
