Intentions for 2010

It's good to see all of you here today. What a week it's been, huh? It's good to see the sun out today and And yesterday, Well, let me explain what we're going to be doing today. Today's a pretty big day in the life of our church family.

Tonight we're having our annual celebration and vision meeting that we have every year the last week of January or second from the last week of January, and we'll be talking about, what God has been doing in our church family over 2009 and where it seems like we're heading in 010. And we're going to be spending a chunk of time tonight bringing you as a congregation up to speed on the issue of our location as a church. We've done the work that we promised you that would be done in 2009, just getting feedback from consultants and a feasibility study that has been conducted to see what us staying here at Linden Street long term might look like.

at the same time we've been looking at other properties, just being open to that possibility, and we're going to be sharing as much as we can with you tonight to bring you in as a church body on a conversation that we as elders have been having for quite some time now.

So please make plans to be here this evening at 6 o'clock right here in this building for a time of worship and then just working through and celebrating. some of these things. And if it helps at all, there's refreshments afterwards. OK?

Make note of that. Well, given the fact that we're going to spend a lot of time on those kinds of things, tonight, I wanted to move some of what I had initially planned on talking about tonight into the morning, service and, just talking about some of the directions that we are heading in, for 2010. So that's what I want to do with the time that we have. If you want to give a title to the message this morning, it would be intentions for 2010.

2010 intentions. In fact, as of last night, I had 10. 2010 intentions. But for the sake of time, I had to ask three of them.

So, I couldn't reach that goal. So we have 7 2010 intentions. and we'll be looking at various passages of scripture. ultimately, we're going to look at seven intentions that are guiding us as elders that I want to guide us as a church as we are moving, well on our way into 200.

10, what is an intention? There's a lot of talk about intentions nowadays. In fact, there's a guy on PBS all the time, I forget his name, the power of intention, and a lot of focus on that and the power that comes when people really rally around particular intentions in their personal life and as organizations. That's not altogether a bad thing to contemplate being intentional.

And the value of that we learned the first Sunday of the year about Ezra and Ezra 7 who purposed in his heart. He experienced the blessing of God because he made some intentions. He had some intentions deliberately to do certain things, so the hand of his God was upon him. All that an intention is is it is a determination to act in a certain way.

All right, I think we all knew that before. We begin to look at the seven intentions that I want to guide us in 2010 and beyond. Let me just preface it with a few quick facts about this matter of intentions. First of all, your intentions reveal much about you, not all that there is to know about you, but when you observe a person or an organization's intentions, you can learn something about them.

and that can be good things that you might learn about them or even not so good things that you learn about them based on their stated intentions. I've shared this with you guys before, but a number of years ago, I asked one of my sons what he wanted to be, what he intended to be when he grew up. And he said, Well, I'd like to He didn't cough He said, I'd like to be either a pastor or a dictator of a country. So with those two intentions, I was able to discern something about his character.

My other son at a later point was in a conversation with him, and I asked him what he intended to be when he grew up, and he said, I would like to either be a pastor or a millionaire. So even with that, those intentions, at least at that point in his life, revealed something about him. So intentions are important. They reveal things about us.

But secondly, intentions by themselves are worthless, right? We all know that. In fact, the saying goes, the path to hell is paved with good intentions. Intentions by themselves mean nothing at the judgment.

If you're standing before God and God says you did not believe in my son. To say to him, but I intended to believe in your Son will carry no weight on the day of judgment. In fact, the truth is, if all of us were simply judged by our intentions, we'd be angels, right? We've got the best of intentions.

but intentions by themselves that are not acted on are worthless. Thirdly, even though intentions by themselves are worthless, nothing worthwhile gets done without intentionality, right? Kids, you never find yourself at noon during a day saying, Whoa, how did this happen? My room is clean, my chores are done, schoolwork is done.

How did that happen? It doesn't just happen. A 26-year-old doesn't say, Wait a minute, I'm a medical doctor. How did that happen?

things like that that are worthwhile, they don't just happen, they are the result of an abiding intentionality and then many sub-intentions that serve that particular goal. So nothing worthwhile ultimately gets done without intention. And then thirdly, or lastly, fourthly, Our intentions must line up with God's. It is good to have intentions, but you don't just make them up and fabricate them out of the depths of your own heart.

If you want to know what your intentions ought to be, if you truly want to be successful in life, go to God. Go to His word. Find out what his intentions are, and I'll tell you the code word to look for in Scripture. It's His will.

OK. Find out God's will, God's intentions for your life. Why did he even create you and put you On this planet, what are his intentions? Find out what those are and then let those things inform your intentions.

And if you do that, your intentions line up with God's intentions. There is power there. In Proverbs 19:21, you could actually translate the passage this way. Many are the intentions in a man's heart, but It is the intention of the Lord that will stand.

Ultimately it is the Lord's intentions that will endure. And if someone says, I know what God's intentions are, I don't want to do what God wants me to do, or I don't know what his intentions are, and I don't care what his intentions are, and ultimately you rebel against his intentions and you make up your own, your own purposes in life and try to achieve those. I'll give you a warning, and I heard this when I was in college. I'm going to quote it the best that I can.

It stayed with me for years. The speaker said this, if you buck against the Lord's will or the Lord's intention, and you go your own way, you are doomed to fail miserably, or To succeed even more miserably. You just might get what you want. Much to your chagrin.

So that is true for us as individuals, but also for us as a church, we want our intentions and our purposes to be governed by God's purposes. We want them to line Up together, so what, location wise, physically, location wise over the next 1 or 2 or 3, I'm not sure where we're going to be 3 years from now, but I do know that these intentions are going to be a part of who we are as a church. We will be located right in the middle of these fundamental intentions that have been guiding us for years and will continue to guide us.

Intention number one, let's go through these.

we will, by the grace of God, we can only do this through the enabling that God provides and independence upon Him. We will, by God's grace, keep the gospel front and center in all we do. And what, as a pastor, what I feel good about, let's just keep the gospel central and first in all that we say and do, and the gospel will take us where we need to go. It will transform us by the power of God into what it is that God wants us.

to be the gospel is a message. It is a piece of good news. It is the best of news. a God who has looked upon us in our bankruptcy as a result of our sin, and He gave us a gift, and that is the person of His Son who came into this world and lived a perfect life, died on the cross 2000 years ago, shedding His blood.

So that we might be saved. He was buried in a tomb on the 3rd day. He was raised from the dead by the power of Almighty God. Jesus Christ is now seated at the right hand of God with all authority in heaven and on earth to do whatever he pleases, and what he pleases.

He tells us, if you acknowledge your bankruptcy, and you look to me to be your Lord and Savior, I will be pleased to use all authority in heaven and on earth to save you. And to grant you forgiveness. When people come to Jesus by faith. They receive the forgiveness of sins.

They take the very righteousness of Jesus upon themselves. That's justification. They're made children of God. They're brought into relationship with God.

The Spirit of God is placed inside of them. Jesus Christ at the right hand of God is their advocate all day, every day, waking or sleeping day and night, good days and bad days, and He is there preparing a place for them. To dwell for eternity in heaven, that is, in a nutshell, the gospel. That is the best of news, and we want to keep that message front and center in all we do.

One of the things that we try to really focus on here at Cornerstone, because this is something God has shown us, this was not characteristic, I know, of my ministry prior to 2000. but many churches will preach the gospel and do a really good job of preaching the gospel to the lost, to the unconverted. Then when people embrace the gospel and they become Christians, those churches or ministries stop preaching the gospel to them and start maybe giving them rules to live by or whatever.

One of the things that God has shown us over time here at Cornerstone from His word is that the gospel, this message that I've described, it is not just a means of conversion to get a person saved.

God designed the gospel as The primary tool for sanctification every single day, every day you get up, God says, I've got a gift for you. What is it? It's the gospel. And he hands it to you, and you get to open up that package and make more discoveries and power for living is found inside of that.

That's just the way that God has engineered the gospel. And so we want that gospel to be for. Place Paul says to the Corinthians, I make known to you, brethren, the gospel with which I literally gospelized you, for I delivered to you as of first importance what I received. And then he begins to give the facts of the gospel.

He's like, I gave you the gospel 5 years ago when I was with you, and when I gave you the gospel, I told you then what I'm telling you now. This is of first importance. This needs to be central and first in your thinking. And in all you do as a church, as we do that, live inside the good of the gospel, stay immersed in the realities of the gospel, preaching gospel truth to ourselves, letting the word of the gospel dwell richly inside of us.

what we experience? We experience God's power. We catch ourselves being changed. I've found this in my own life.

I wish more so if I were more faithful to stay in gospel mode, but There's two Miltons. There's, there's the Milton that's thinking his own thoughts, and you don't want to hang out with him. But then there's another version of me, and that's Milton in gospel mode, and he is loving, forgiving. He is joyful and catching himself being further changed.

That's to the degree that we are absorbed in the gospel, to that degree we experience the almighty power of God. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:18, he says the word of the cross, that's the The gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing. But to us, I, the apostle Paul, and everyone else that believes in Jesus, to us who are continuously being saved, it is the power of God, not just a location where God's power is, it is the power of God. In other words, it is the ultimate location outside of heaven where God's power resides and does its greatest work.

How many of you long to experience the power of God in your life? Raise your hand. This is where you find it. Go to the gospel, live inside of it, be immersed in it.

Recite these realities, read scripture, memorize scripture that is focusing on these realities. And I promise you, you will catch yourself experiencing the life transforming power of the gospel. Get it inside of you and just let it dwell richly inside of you, as Paul says. In fact, I don't want to be crass here.

But I would love for the gospel to be to us here at Cornerstone what Gatorade is. To athletes. In fact, I love Gatorade's logo. Here it is.

Because when I, when I see their logo, I don't think Gatorade, I think gospel because like, like that's the logo that I would design if by the know-how that G stands for gospel, the lightning right there, just the power of it. And is it in you? And that's the question for, for all of us every day, not where you saved 10 years ago by the gospel, but every day, is it in me? You've seen those commercials of Of high profile athletes, really dramatic musical score, a black and white screen in the commercial shows them in really dramatic moments.

Some of them are still pictures and others motion. It's all black and white, but what are they sweating? They're sweating in color and they're sweating Gatorade, and the question is, is it in you? And that's, I want us to sweat gospel.

We're different people. We're different people when we are bleeding gospel and sweating gospel when it is just dwelling richly inside of us. That's where the power of God is. So in our preaching, in our teaching, in our counseling, in our homes, when we look at scripture, and we see a command, don't be angry, forgive other people.

We don't just look at those commands and say, OK, I guess I got to do that. No, we connect those commands to the gospel because the gospel is the fuel that empowers us to do the very things that God is telling us to do. If you're feeling weak and anemic in your walk with the Lord, man, just ask, where are you in connection with the gospel, come to this location. Of the gospel.

So I don't know physically where we may be located in the years to come, but I want us to be located right in downtown Gospel City, what? That's where the power of God is. So that's our fundamental intention of first importance. a second intention that we have for 2010 and beyond is that we will preach and teach the scriptures and change accordingly.

here at Cornerstone, our desire, our passion is to preach and to teach the scriptures and then to change in response to what the scriptures say. Why do we do that? Well, Paul says all scripture is given by inspiration of God. It comes from him.

That's why we want the scriptures, and it's profitable for what? For teaching. It's profitable for reproof, which means it can point out what's wrong with you. Also, it's profitable for correction.

That's actually a positive word. It means it fixes what's wrong with you and for training in righteousness, and he goes on to say that the man of God may be totally equipped for every good work that God would want him to engage in, and that would include women, by the way, we preach and teach the scriptures. That's why every Sunday this is just an obsession of ours to open the Bible and just preach what the scripture says, and if there's promises, truths, encouragements, we preach that.

If there's rebuke, reproof.

A correction, then we want to speak that as well. In fact, I want you to think about this for a moment. one of the issues that church leaders think through is how, how do we attract the right people and chase away the wrong people. that's actually a significant thing and it's even talked about in the New Testament.

When you look in the New Testament, there's reference to savage wolves and warnings to believers to beware of dogs. That's talking about human beings that are dogs that are dangerous. John in First John speaks of those that went out from us who were never of us, and Paul even talks in First Timothy about handing some people over to Satan, which means he excommunicated them from the church. He said, I showed them the door.

and, to the Corinthians, he tells them to remove a particular person from their midst. So there, there are wolves, there, there are, people that, that we would want by the way we do things for them to either be transformed by it. That's the ideal, but if they refuse to be transformed by it, that they're actually chased away by that. And what is the right way?

What is one of the most significant ways that we can attract the right people and chase away the wrong people? There's a divinely inspired way, and that is to preach the word of God, the scriptures, incessantly. In fact, Paul states this. Look what he says in 2 Timothy 4.

He's just stated the benefits of the word of God, of the scriptures, but then he says to Timothy, Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction. Now look at his reason. Obviously one of the reasons is because it's beneficial for God's people.

He just stated that at the end of chapter 3, but look at his other reason, because the time will come when they, which is some in your audience, will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. Isn't that a strange reason? Preach the word. And here's one of the reasons why, because there will be some in your audience who won't like what you're saying, and they're going to turn their ears away and go after those who are saying what they want to hear.

What he's saying is preach the word incessantly. Because it will bless the people of God and transform lives, and those that don't like what it says, they will turn away and go to those that are saying what they want to hear. We can learn from this that the incessant preaching of the scriptures attracts the right people and chases away the wrong people. Guys, we have no idea.

I don't even know. To what degree we have been spared great hurt and dangers just by keeping the gospel and keeping the word of God front and central in everything that we do by incessantly preaching the Bible, we don't even know those that maybe have been chased away who could have done great damage. Ravenous wolves are not comfortable under the incessant preaching. Of the word of God.

And so we want to stay faithful to this for the edification, the building up of the people of God, and also to counter those that might come in amongst us as we find in the New Testament to spy out our liberty in Christ. And to begin to espouse false doctrine. If suddenly next week we just stopped preaching the Bible and just got up here and told stories, ravenous wolves would begin to feel very comfortable amongst us, and that is like the worst thing that we can do for you, the precious people of God.

But what, we don't want to just be a church that That studies the Bible and preaches and teaches the Bible.

We want to preach and teach the Scripture and then change accordingly. You see, at Cornerstone we're on a journey. We're heading somewhere. I don't know fully where we're heading.

I feel like Abraham. God said, Hey, I want you to leave where you're at. I want you to go to a place that I'm going to show you. And Abraham didn't say, Well, can you just tell me exactly where before I pack up and leave?

No, he left trusting that God was going to show him where he needed to. And up and that's where we're at. We, we have some ideas of where we're heading, but what? We're being guided by the scriptures as we study God's word day in and day out, week in and week out, and we want to be governed by scripture.

And as we study and preach and teach the word of God, the holy scriptures, whatever it says that might contradict us, well then we want to change to bring ourselves into conformity with that. If God's word tells us to stop doing something that we're doing, then we need to stop doing that, right? And if we're not doing something that God's word tells us we need to do, then we need to stop whatever we're doing and start doing what he tells us to do. If God's word says, I want you to make something a priority, and it's not a priority here at Cornerstone, well then we need to change our priorities and prioritize what God tells us to put.

In a very high place we want to be pliable in the hand of God. We study the scriptures and week by week Cornerstone is changing and being transformed by the gospel, by the power of the gospel, and by the scriptures, and we are nowhere near where we should be. But what, just the 18 years I've been here, I've watched our church become a different church year by year. And it's because of the scriptures, as we've sought to align ourselves with what we're learning from God's word.

We want to teach and preach the scriptures and change accordingly. There's a third intention for 2010. That we believe is a biblical one, and that is that we will nurture loving relationships which serve as a matrix for spiritual growth. what a matrix is?

It's a context, an environment in which something grows and is nourished and flourishes. that's what, that's what a matrix is. And one of the things that the Lord has shown us through the study of the word of God is that loving relationships is an essential matrix for Individual spiritual growth. In John 17:23, Jesus prays for us.

And it's high priestly prayer, and he says to the Father, I pray that they may be perfected in unity. And if we're not careful, we might look at that and say, I know what that means. He's praying that we will have a perfected unity. But that's not literally technically what he's saying.

What he's saying is, I pray that those who believe in me will be perfected, meaning I pray that they will individually reach spiritual maturity. They will reach their intended destination of being everything, Father, that you want for them to be. That's I pray for them to be perfected, but then look at this. Here's the context.

Here's the matrix in unity. In other words, unified loving relationships in a community of faith, that is the matrix within which individual believers reach spiritual maturity. Does that make sense? And so we want to nurture that back in 2004 we I stood in this pulpit on a Sunday night and went through a document that the elders had drafted entitled Compliments and Criticisms of Cornerstone.

How many of you were here back in 2004? And after a three year dialogue that the elders had gone through, we, we, we identified some things that we were doing well as a church, but also I believe there were like 7 criticisms that we had arrived at, and it took some of us like 3 years to like Fully embrace those criticisms and, and many of those things, both the good and the bad, we, we're able to arrive at in dialogue with many in our church body as we listen to you and, and to your heart.

And the second criticism of ourselves as elders. that we identified to the congregation was this that in our church there was an insufficient network of relationships in the body, and we said this while we have rightly expected our ministry, a Bible proclamation to cause people to grow in practical Christian living and service, we have not put adequate energy into developing a network of meaningful relationships to serve as the environment in which our people can be ministered to and grow in such areas.

That's basically what We're acknowledging his weakness on this very point that is now an intention. Every year, this was presented to the congregation, I believe the week before we then presented the care group solution, not as the cure-all to all of our problems, but As a structure of ministry that would bring people together in unified relationships, providing that network of relationships that would bring us at least a few steps closer to the biblical model, we need to invest ourselves heavily in studying and preaching the word of God.

Proclamation is absolutely vital. We've already seen that, but as elders we need to invest equal energy into nurturing and maintaining.

and overseeing a network of relationships within which, which serve as the context in which individual spiritual growth can happen. Ephesians 4:16 Paul says this The whole body being fitted and joined together according to the proper working of each individual part causes the growth of the body. This sentence is a grammatical monstrosity. The subject is the whole body, and the verb is causes the growth of the body.

So the whole body causes the growth of the body. Got that. How does that happen? Look what he says.

Being fitted and joined together. How does growth happen? With us, spiritual growth as a church and as individuals, how does it happen? one of the things that has to happen is that we need to allow ourselves to be fitted and joined together in loving, unified, Christ honoring relationships with one another.

It's in that context of relationship and community that we flourish spiritually. So we intend to continue to nurture. These, this network of relationships through a care group ministry and then there's other, you guys are so networked, it's unbelievable here at Cornerstone that, not just through the care groups, but also the men's and women's studies and, just on your own with believers, not only here at Cornerstone, but even outside of Cornerstone. All of these relationships are absolutely vital to us really flourishing as individuals.

Number 4, a fourth intention is that we will nurture in 2010 and beyond a strong and biblically qualified eldership. We will nurture a strong and biblically qualified eldership. I don't know if you would have necessarily thought the way that Paul and thus the Holy Spirit did, but on the island of Crete there's this fledgling Christian movement. There are people that are getting saved and Paul leaves Titus on the island of Crete to handle this, this fledgling Christian movement that's going on, and one of the first words out of Paul's mouth as he Gives Timothy direction is.

I'm sorry, Titus direction is in Titus 15. Appoint elders in every city. Titus, there's a lot of things that you're going to need to do, but there are people getting saved. God's sheep are coming to faith in Jesus Christ, appoint elders.

They need shepherds. It's that important. It's at the top of the list of what needs to be done. This is God loves his sheep so much.

He wants them to have godly shepherds. By the way, We've talked about this before, but An elder is a pastor is an overseer, right? Elders, pastors, overseers, those are all synonymous terms. Every elder at Cornerstone is a pastor.

Every elder at Cornerstone is an overseer. First Peter 5 says, I exhort elders among you, pastor of the flock of God, overseeing. The Acts 20, Paul called to himself the elders of the church and says, be on guard for all the flock among you, which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to pastor the Church of God. So, pastors, elders, overseers, those are all the same.

Well, we've got 8 elders here at Cornerstone and I love our elders. We're not cookie cutters of each other by any means, but philosophically we're like on the same page and from that platform of just agreement on how to approach the scriptures. we're, we're getting so much accomplished by the grace of God in our times where we meet together even as we face some of the complex issues that are before us right now and assessing our future, and, and so forth, but we, we want us as elders to be biblically qualified.

We've noticed over the years, and this has been our philosophy over the last 18 years.

that where there are excellent and biblically qualified shepherds, God will send His sheep. That's just, that's just how we've operated off of that premise where there are godly, biblically qualified shepherds, God will send His sheep, and he's been doing that. But what? We need more elders.

We need more elders here at Cornerstone, and I have every reason to believe that God, who has already been bringing people our way, we've not been doing gimmicks to try to get people to attend Cornerstone. We're not offering anything for free other than a book for those that visit, but we don't even advertise that. We're not even doing half the job we should be doing and getting the word out about what God is doing here. We're just showing up and doing what we do.

And what, God, here's our problem. God has been attending Cornerstone, and he's been bringing other people with Him. We give him the glory for that, but everyone that he brings to us requires a shepherd. It increases the burden on the shepherding ministry here at Cornerstone, and we ultimately in the months and years ahead, we need more elders.

I'm spending time with certain men in our church with that goal in mind, but I also want to say to all of the men that are here today that if God touches your heart, you think that, what, maybe, maybe not, or maybe in the near term, maybe in the long term, but I, I think there's a possibility that God might want me to be a shepherd of His people in some capacity. Then I want you to come talk to me directly. Call the office, come talk to me directly. because I, I want to talk to you.

It's a great thing, Paul says. He that desires the office of overseer, that's an elder, that's a pastor, it's a fine work that he desires to do. It's one of the best jobs in the world. You've got the best boss ever.

That's Christ, the chief shepherd, the chief pastor, and you get to work on behalf and serve those whom Jesus purchased with his own blood. Amazing, amazing privilege. but we, we need to develop more elders and so we want to really pursue that leadership development was important to us in 2009 and it's only becoming more important as we consider possibilities of what God might be doing in the days and months ahead. Well, there is a 5th intention we have to move on, a 5th intention that is guiding us in 2010, and that is that our elders will keep giving away ministry to the people of God.

I don't want to belabor this point. I just want to say that, That you should not view ministry, and I don't think you do because we've gone over this before. The people of Cornerstone should not view ministry as something that pastors do. and everyone else, just, they just pay the pastors to do the work of the ministry.

The biblical picture is that you are a congregation of volunteers. You are a congregation of ministers, and there are pastors that Christ has given to the church to equip you to do the work of ministry. In Ephesians 4, it says, and Christ gave some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry to the building up of the body of Christ. And so we really passionately want to do our job of equipping you and training you.

And by the way, the word Whipping could sometimes mean mend like mending nets in the Gospels. In Galatians 6:1, it means to restore a sinning brother. So whatever it is, whatever may be messed up in your life or whatever counseling is provided, whether there's mending that needs to happen in your life, in your marriage, in relationships that are that are in your life, whatever restoration needs to happen, whatever training, whatever equipping, that's one of the roles of pastors and elders to do that for the people of God so that they can then soar in the work of the ministry.

So it's not like the elders do all the ministry.

No, we're trying to give ministry away to the people of God. And just, look real quickly at Romans 16 here on the screen. This is, this is our message to you. Paul says, concerning you, my brethren, I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to admonish one another.

That word admonish just means to be an instrument of change. In the lives of your brothers and sisters, Paul says, Man, I'm looking at you guys. You are full of goodness. You've got Jesus inside of you, and you're full of all knowledge, and I can say that about you because you're in chapter 15 of this letter that I'm writing called Romans.

That is just laying out for you in a detailed way what the gospel is all about. And if you have read and listened to and internalize what I've been saying about the gospel up to this point of the letter, I can say that you are filled with the knowledge that you need to be an instrument of change in the lives of your brothers and sisters. That's our view of this body. We want to give away ministry to you.

We want you to learn how to counsel. And to be instruments of change. In the lives of others. We want to continue doing that, become better at that.

A 6th intention is that we In 2010 and beyond, we'll provide Mercy Ministry to those that are in need. Several years ago, we just Being moved by the study of scripture to this conclusion, we concluded that we want mercy ministry meeting material, financial, emotional, spiritual needs of people that are in dire need. That that's not just something we do as a token that we can point to and say, oh look at that, we do that. No, but where that ministry is brought closer to the heartbeat of what we are all about as a church, God says that's pure and undefiled religion.

To visit orphans and widows and their affliction, and I just want to commend you guys. Our Agape Fund. In 2009, look at this, you guys gave $36,000 in 2009 to the Agape Fund and the Agape team, there's five men in our church that manage those funds, and no one guy on the Agape team can make an independent decision. Three members of the team have to agree on something.

Before a disbursement is made, but you gave $36,000 and over that length of time, $34,500 of that was dispersed to your brothers and sisters in times of need. Some of them may be sitting next to you and you don't even have any idea how close they came earlier this year to having their utilities turned off. This is hard times for a number of people in our church. There's a number of people that are unemployed, many that are underemployed.

Going through tremendous hardship and by giving to the Agape Fund and those funds being dispersed wisely and judiciously, carefully, these funds have been able to be passed on to your brothers and sisters in their need and their affliction. And by the way, the Haiti relief fund that we talked about last week, the Agape team for this year 2010, earmarked 2000. That automatically was sent to Crossworld to help missionaries there with the relief effort that's going on, but we gave you the opportunity to give last week.

You guys lined up to give $2800 just on the spot last week, and I want you to know that that continues today and next week, so there should be an Agape Fund box outside, and you have opportunity over the next two weeks to continue giving to that, and every penny will be dispersed.

To help our brothers and sisters in Haiti to minister to the needs of the Haitian people and to do so in the name of Jesus. Well, there's a 7th. And final intention that we'll look at this morning. And that we're wanting to make, a priority in 2010, and that is that we in 2010 will honor the household as the first location of worship, ministry.

And instruction we will definitely be saying much more about this in the The weeks to come, but 2 weeks ago, looking at 1 Timothy 5. There was a principle that jumped off of the pages of scripture at us. And compelled our attention, and that is this principle that they Members of the church must first learn to practice godliness in regard. To their own family, Paul applies that specifically to caring for parents in the extremity of their need, but Paul would definitely happily apply that principle to whatever other area, saying that the first place where godliness is practiced is in the home.

And toward one's family members, we learned that the most important things you will do this week on behalf of this church body will occur inside of the context of your marriage, your relationships with people in your home, your mother, your father, your, your children. This is the first place, and it needs to be honored as the first location where godliness is nurtured and practiced. And so we want to honor the household in this way. In fact, I want us to really think of Cornerstone.

We've been talking a lot about facilities as elders and facility issues, but from the standpoint of households, I want All of us to think of Cornerstone as a church of multiple facilities, what by that. If you own a home, if you're renting a home, we're just renting here. This doesn't belong to us, but we would say this is our facility for worship, ministry, and instruction. But if you own a home, you're renting a home, you're living in an apartment or a condo that you're renting or that you own.

I want you to consider that a facility where worship and ministry takes place. In fact, does whatever home you own, does it belong to Jesus Christ? If it does, then it would belong to his body, right? You would never give something to Jesus that you would then withhold from his body.

No, just, just view your home as an outpost of Cornerstone Fellowship Bible Church. It's just part of Cornerstone's facilities. Now don't worry, we're not going to come knocking at your door saying, this is our facility and we we need to use your house this week. We're not going to do that.

We're going to view your home as belonging to you, but you voluntarily view your stuff and your home as a facility and you're like, what, one of the best ways that I can serve my church body is to use this facility as a place of worship. God deserves to be worshiped inside of the walls of this facility. And as a place of ministry and hospitality where ministry can be rendered to my brothers and sisters and also as an evangelistic outpost to the lost, the early church, man, they took their, they took their houses and sold them to meet the needs of those who were in need, and I'm not saying you need to do that.

I'm just saying if they were willing to liquidate their houses, can we at least be willing to make use of our houses as a facility for worship?

And ministry, we really want to emphasize that theme when you think of it in this way, Cornerstone has hundreds of thousands of square footage. of facilities for worship and ministry and in many cases instruction in the things of the Lord. What we're going to try to accomplish this year, we're already cranking on this, is we're going to develop a profile of a godly household, just a minimum profile of what what we would, what the scriptures would, would say ought to be seen in, in a Christian.

A household in terms of a marriage and child rearing and whatever we're not going to try to get overly specific to where we're bordering on legalism, but just what's a what's a scripturally rooted minimum profile of a godly household we want to put that together.

And in terms of worshiping together, instruction of children and others, and ministry of hospitality and what have you, we want to then present that at some point in 2010 to the congregation and then just like we did the care group ministry, we announced the care group ministry, told you what it was going to entail, and then we asked for people to sign up and to volunteer. We're going to do the same thing, families in our. Church to say, what, that's what I want. What you're describing there from the word of God, that's what I want for my marriage.

That's what I want for my household. Count me in. I'm willing to be involved in this network of families that are committed to these same goals. And then we as pastors and shepherds.

We'll give the best of our pastoral leadership to providing help, direction, resources, oversight, and whatever accountability that you might feel that you need to be a help to you in your marriage and in your household. when we started our care group ministry, we hired Carlos Limtiaco to be the pastor of care groups because we knew that this needs pastoral ministry and oversight where we got someone who's studying stuff and reading stuff and providing, resources to and direction to our leaders and care group members.

Well, we wanna We want to put pastoral resources behind this as well, to where the home is really the hub, the first place, the first location where our investment goes as elders and as a church to just be a help to you in your household. I'll just show you this.

This is the last slide. We are a church where many assemblies happen all the time on various levels. The ultimate in the first assembly is an assembly of family members together to worship God, to do ministry together, to minister to one another. That's families gathering in homes for the purpose of family worship.

Then there's care groups where several families assemble together for similar purposes, and then there's the Sunday morning gathering where the whole church body, all of our families and individuals come together to do worship and ministry to one another along with all of the other times that we gather together. But we were truly wanting to not just add this emphasis, but to have this emphasis, make it central, and then reevaluate all of our ministries and allow this emphasis to govern the structure of how we do church.

We'll be saying more about this in the days to come, but And there's even more, intentions that we'll be sharing tonight, but I appreciate you listening this morning. Let me ask you to bow your heads.

We're going to take up an offering in just a moment. We would encourage you to give as the Lord leads you to give, prayer requests that you might have, praise items, comments, anything. You can put those on the back of the comment cards and put that in the offering bags as they go by in just a couple of minutes. Let's pray Together Lord God, You have directed us.

We are not in doubt over what our priorities ought to be. I am encouraged when I look at where we are as a church today compared to 10 years ago. We're not, we're not who we were. But we are not, Lord, all that we ought to be either, and we are on a journey toward that destination.

Whatever we are doing right, Lord, we give you the praise and glory and ask that you would empower us to excel still more. Those things that we are not doing well, Lord, show these things to us, convict our hearts of these things, help us to learn. And give us wisdom on how to move forward in a way that, that is more consistent with your will. Lord, we can honestly say to you that our desire to just come to your word, Lord, just speak, just show us from your word, all that you want from us, and we're telling you right now before we even know the full scope of it, we will listen, we will hear, we will, we will obey by your grace.

We just, we want to do church in a way that, that caters to you. We want to be the church that you would want to attend and make your presence felt and known at. Thank you for the things that you've shown us this morning, the direction that you have developed in our thinking over a period of years in community with one another. That serves to further refine our focus for 2010 and beyond.

Receive these funds, Lord, that we give to you today. And use them for the glory. of Jesus Christ At the same time, we give ourselves to you in Jesus' name, and all God's people said, Amen.