Well, crossing family, Happy New Year.
I'm so excited to be able to spend some time with you today.
But what I'd like to do is I would like to start our time off
together today and in this new year in prayer.
So if you would do me a huge favor and extend your hands
forward like this, as if you were in a spot of surrender and
ready to receive, I'd like to pray over you.
Would you bow your heads? Heavenly Father, this church is
nothing. This service is nothing.
My sermons nothing. I'm nothing without your
presence. So we're asking you to do what
only you can do in ways that only you can do it.
Would you inhabit this place with your presence?
Would you release your spirit into our lives?
Take ground that has never been taken before?
Would you start a fire in this church that Satan can't put out?
God, we proclaim that you are undefeated.
You can do mighty and miraculous things at a moment's notice.
And you have done marvelous work in our midst.
You have blessed us and this church in ways we do not
deserve. And God, we are greedy for the
advancement of your Kingdom. And so we are asking you to do
it again. We've heard stories of revival
and region wide transformation, and we want you to do it again.
And we want you to do it in US. God, would you soften our
hearts? Would you steal our commitment
to you? Would you make us committed to
your ways and to your Kingdom? Heavenly Father, would you make
us allergic to apathy, allergic to laziness, and allergic to
comfort and instead create in us a desire to sacrifice for a
cause, to give our lives for a worthy mission?
And God, by your grace, would you allow us to make this region
the hardest place on planet earth to get the hell from?
In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
I want to welcome those of you who are joining online and
inside, as well as those of you who are joining us at one of our
physical locations. I also want to welcome those of
you who joined us at one of our Christmas Eve services and made
a commitment to go on a journey for one year.
I believe that if you stay the course that God will do
something special and significant, significant in your
life. And you need to know that the
heartbeat of this church is for you to find and experience an
intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
And before I jump all the way into the message, I do want to
offer a big thanks and I'm going to ask you guys to help me do
it. Would you put your hands
together for all of our staff and difference makers who made
one of our 42 in person Christmas Eve services and our
six online services happened, You need to hear me say this.
We could not have done it without you.
So to all of you who served in sacrifice over a week, that is,
you know, typically all about shopping and spending time with
family. You gave up some of that time
and you know, hopefully some of the time you're spending here.
You know, your wife couldn't shop and so it, you know, saved
you a little bit of money on the Christmas bill, but you made a
huge difference in the lives of people.
As I said, our mission as a church is to help people find an
intimate personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
Jesus said of himself for the Son of Man, that's Jesus in Luke
chapter 19, verse 10, came to seek and to save the lost.
That is the mission of the church, and that means that it
is to be the mission of the people who attend the church,
who are the church. So we as a group of people all
across this region want to be people who are about the very
things that Jesus was about. We want the focus of our lives
to be focused on the very things that Jesus focused his life and
his death to achieve. You might remember that last
year on Christmas Eve we launched our Weaver Campus to
help the people in that region find what we have found in
Jesus. They had 377 people in
attendance at their launch last year on Christmas Eve, which is
fantastic. It gets better.
Your hands are going to get tired and many of you you guys
joined me in at 3:00 every day praying that they would have 300
people in attendance 4 weeks in a row.
Their lowest attendance was on a was 161 on January 17th.
They were over 301 time in March and one time in April.
They were over 303 times in August and in September.
They were over 300 twice in October and in on November 9th
they hit their fourth weekend in a row over 300 and on Christmas
Eve of 2025 they had 536 people in attendance.
One of my favorite things I got to do this year is my boys were
gracious and they set their alarms for 3:00 too.
And so sometimes I would pray for the Weaver campus.
Sometimes, sometimes they pray for the Weaver campus, Dang it.
And one of the times when my kid was praying, he said God don't
just increase their numbers, increase their faith.
You might remember that last year we launched Vine Co Vine Co
Counseling Company. We wanted people in our region
to know that there is help and that there is hope when you are
connected to the Vine of Christ. We started with one staff
member, but we just hired our 4th.
We've completed 817 sessions, had 65 clients successfully
complete a pathway, and we are presently serving over 205
clients all across this region because of your faith and your
participation. Isn't that incredible?
During one of the very first meetings that I had with our
elders and, and our elders of the people who oversee our
church, I'll unpack a little bit of that next week.
I told them that I wanted us as a church to focus on getting
better in every area of ministry.
And we believe that if we focused on getting better, being
really good stewards of what God had already given us, that the
bigger, more reaching, more people would naturally take care
of itself. And so we wanted to be good
stewards of what God had already placed in our care.
And one of the big lifts of last year was to increase our focus
and our attention in the area of discipleship.
A team of dedicated people worked hard behind the scenes
for 18 months to develop and implement A discipleship
strategy here at The Crossing. But our biggest fear was that
statistically, story after story, churches that tend to
focus on discipleship end up losing their their evangelistic
edge. What ends up happening is a
church with the good godly goal of trying to be focused more on
discipleship end up becoming more concerned about growing
their people than about reaching the lost.
It is one of the cruel tricks of Satan and devastating realities
of churches all across the nation.
While trying to do the good thing of focusing on
discipleship, churches can lose their heart for the mission of
Jesus to seek and save the lost. So behind the scenes, we set an
ambitious goal of having 10,000 DB s s in 2025.
We wanted 10,000 times for people to open the Word of God
with other people. We wanted them to discover a sin
to avoid, a promise to claim, an example to follow, and a command
to obey. And then we wanted them to take
a radical step of faith and pray a prayer in faith that the Holy
Spirit would reveal to them not just how they were to obey that
passage, but who they were to share that passage with.
We were so committed to this as a team that we made this the
singular most important metric as a staff.
Which means that regardless of how everything else went, we
were going to measure ourselves pass fail on whether or not we
hit 10,000 DBSS. So that way we could say we were
serious about discipleship. And while we started off slow, I
am pleased to announce that as of December 31st, 2025, we had
10,258 DBSS as a church. There were 11 people in our
church who led over 100 DBSS. But my favorite stat is that two
of those people were non staff members.
People just like you who have regular jobs with regular bosses
who made a commitment to over 100 times part the Word of God
was somebody that they cared about.
And I will be sharing some of these stories with you over the
course of the year. You might be wondering, did our
emphasis on discipleship have a negative effect on our
evangelistic efforts? Which was our biggest fear?
By God's grace, I am pleased to announce, not in the slightest.
In fact, God ended up moving in one of the most powerful ways in
the history of our church. We had our best year ever in the
area of generosity. We sent over $250,000 to our
mission partners across the globe.
And presently as I stand here, the sun does not set on the
ministry that happens at the crossing or is funded through
the crossing through you. As you know, we're doing an In
Your Corner push through April of 2027 and part of that goal is
to fund capital projects for our mission partners.
And our hope is that of the next two years we will send over
$1,000,000 through our planned giving and our In Your Corner
offerings to support their importance and work.
Be on the lookout for upcoming mission trips so that you can go
and join and see what God is actually doing all around the
world. The crossing inside our ministry
to those in jail or in prison had a banner year.
Right now we are in the Adams County Jail and Pike County
Jail. We offer five services a weekend
at Western Illinois Correctional Center in Mount Sterling, as
well as servants in the women's prison in Vandalia, MO.
In 2021, the crossing inside had 30 baptisms.
They had 51 in 20/22/91. In 2023 and in 2024, we
celebrated 99 baptisms. But this year we are celebrating
159 inside baptisms. And if you're looking for
something to put in your prayer book, presently we have doors
opening to launch additional locations in Rushville,
Jacksonville and Galesburg. Our women's conference sold out
for the first time ever. It was the first conference
we've ever had that sold out with 1300 women in attendance.
Yeah, unbelievable. I was there.
Don't say the course, Clayton. It was incredible.
To those of you who were not able to attend, we're sorry and
we're on it. Our hope is to launch 2
back-to-back conferences in 2026 so that every woman, every
mother, and every daughter who wants to attend can attend.
So be on the lookout for that. Ladies Camp Crossing Camp had
its best year ever. One of our core values as a
church is downward. We will gladly give up the
things we love for a future generation we love even more.
To our incredible This Gen. team at all of our locations, both
staff and difference makers, thank you.
Thank you for making a big difference in the lives of the
kids and the students in this region.
To those of you who joined Jennifer and I in providing
funds for scholarships, and to those of you who participated in
our golf outings that fund additional scholarships, thank
you. What you did made a Kingdom
impact. You see, in 2021, we had 1061
kids attend camp. In 2022 we had 12113 kids attend
camp. In 2023 we had 13179.
In 2024, we set another record with 1608 kids going to camp.
But I'm pleased to report that for the fifth year in a row,
they shattered a record and we sent 17151 kids to camp.
Our Uncommon Conference set another record with 12130 men in
attendance. And what you guys might not know
is that during the entire week of Uncommon, behind the scenes,
we host pastors and churches from across the country and we
give away all of our learnings and all of our resources to them
for free. We take them out to nice meals,
we take them golfing, and we allow them to meet with our
different teams and learn. And we cover all of their
expenses except travel. It is our gift to them.
We want to be in their corner as well.
We also allow pastors to attend our conference every year free
of charge, no matter where they are, even if they're locally,
because we just want to help them.
And some of them have said, hey, would you help us launch an
uncommon at our church? And so we seed them with
finances in order to do that. And in 2026, we will likely have
18 uncommon conferences. Here is a map of the States.
And three of them are going to happen internationally.
Where is it? Kenya, Africa.
Dominican Republic in Quito, Ecuador.
So if you don't want to go on vacation and you want to go to a
men's conference, we'll even let women go to that one, I guess.
Super Bowl. As you know, every year we try
to leverage Super Bowl weekend to reach people who are close to
us and who are far from God. Last year we partnered with
Riding High Ministries and as promised, the best sermon ever
preached at our church was preached by a whole horse.
In 2023 we had 7633 people attend our Super Bowl.
In 2024 we had 8283, but this last year we had 11,377.
Our Christmas services were also a roaring success.
In 2022 we had 7529. We now average way more than
that on a normal weekend in physical attendance at the
crossing. This year we set another all
time record of 12,932 people on Easter weekend.
You may have joined me in praying at 3:00 not just for
Weaver, but for 15,000 people to attend one of our physical
locations and to hear about what about the Jesus we've fallen so
in love with and God heard our prayers and 15,195 people walked
through our doors. However, people walking through
our doors on Super Bowl or Christmas or Easter is not the
end goal. People attending our services
for the first time is a great step, but it is not their last
step. Kids going to camp is awesome,
but it is not enough. We want people to take steps of
faith and then to continue to take steps of faith.
Our goal is for people to fully engage in the mission of Christ.
And when we say engaged, we're talking about a person who
attends, is baptized, serves, invites disciples, gives and
shares their story with others. We believe that these six
disciplines are massive faith builders in your walk with
Christ. That if you want to grow
spiritually, these things will put you in a position to do so.
That is why I'm so excited to announce that a team has been
working behind the scenes for the last eight months to help
every single one of you take your next step of faith.
I am pleased to announce that our app just got more personal.
How personal? Well, every time you open up the
app now, it actually has you on the app and it actually
highlights the steps that you need to take.
So this is what happens when I open up the app.
And you'll notice right there, that first one right here, that
that's the Baptism 1, which means I should, I should really
consider getting baptized. I've heard good things about it.
I've heard a guy mention it a couple of times.
So when you hop on there, you might go hold on a second.
Why isn't that late? I've been baptized like I've
been baptized. In fact, I've been baptized
twice and I probably need to get baptized 1/3 time, but that's
for another day. All you have to do is just let
us know you got baptized at a different church.
You just the only reason it's not late is because you haven't
told us. You'll notice that my attendance
thing isn't lit. Well, I just need to check in on
the app. And once you do start doing the
things and paying attention to the steps that it's put in front
of you, it'll eventually you will have a complete profile.
And that is not the end game. But it is just steps for you to
take to help you grow because we believe that a pattern of
regular attendance, regular serving, regular giving is going
to help you grow in your relationship with Jesus Christ.
If you were to go golfing with me and I've, I've picked you out
of the crowd to go and have an intentional 3 hours with me at
the start of the 6th hole. I always ask you this question,
what is the next spiritual step that you need to take and how
can I help you take it? Which the fact that I've let
that out of the bag means that some of you are going to start
saying no to wanting to go golfing with me.
I say it on the 6th hole. So that way you can fumble
through your answer and then at the turn you get a little bit of
a breather and then I can turn up the heat on holes 10 through
18. The goal is I want people to be
able to take steps of faith and I desperately want to help you.
Take it now. Through our app, you will have a
personalized dashboard that will help you grow in your
relationship with Jesus. It is going to give each of you
a tailored experience here at The Crossing.
It will help you connect. It will help you grow.
It will help you stay in the know.
It will become your go to place for all things that are
happening at The Crossing at all of our locations.
But because it is unique to you, every time you open it, it will
guide you towards your next step and put the opportunities and
resources that you need right in front of you to help you take
them. There might be some of you who
are wondering, why are we doing all this?
Why make a major investment in making our app more personal?
I would say, why should the world do a better job of
leveraging technology than the church?
You see, the world wants to take.
It wants to take your attention, take your money, take your
preferences, and shove you into its algorithm and exploit you.
But the church, it wants to give.
It wants to give you hope in the storm, help in the trial,
certainty for the future. It wants to give you what it's
found in Jesus so that you can have it too.
There might be some of you who are wondering why talk about all
the numbers, I'll tell you. Because the Bible loves numbers.
In fact, if you were to read your Bible cover to cover, you
would read Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and when you get to
the 4th book, you'd be confronted by its title,
Numbers. We love all the incredible
things that Jesus did in the miracles that he performed.
And we know about those records. Are those miracles because
somebody cared enough to tell us?
We love that Jesus fed the 4000 and the 5000, but how do we know
that he fed the 4000 and how do we know that he fed the 5000?
I'll tell you because somebody cared enough to count here at
the crossing. We count.
We count because you count to God and you count to us.
We love the story of Jesus leaving the 99 to go after the
One, but he would not have known that one was missing unless
someone cared enough to count our core values as a church.
They ground us outward. We will do whatever it takes to
reach people who are far from Jesus.
Yes, even let a horse do the preaching downward.
We will gladly give up the things we love for a future
generation we love even more. You may not always like the
music or the preaching or the volume.
Me either, but I went there to be young people sitting in my
seat when I walk into church. During one of our Christmas Eve
services, I came out of the prayer room with the elders and
I walked to go to the seat that I sit in before I come up here
to preach, and I couldn't sit there because it was full of
young people. I want there to be no seat for
me in this place. Relevant.
We will do fresh things in fresh ways to reach people.
Nobody else is reaching. When the world is divided over
politics, we'll preach on it. And then during the election,
while everybody else is freaking out, what we'll do is we'll have
a worship night right in the middle of it.
Innovate. We will take big faith filled
risks and never insult God with small thinking and safe living.
And sometimes we'll get it wrong and sometimes we'll make
mistakes. But I would rather try and be
criticized than have a perfect record of never trying at all.
Make leaders. We will develop leaders who
honor God and inspire people and they will change the world to
grow. We will never stop measuring and
changing and moving for growth because nothing matters more to
God than people. We are one.
The Church is the hope of the world and we can accomplish
infinitely more together than apart.
Here at the Crossing, we have an audacious, God sized goal to
make this region, all 10,000 square miles of it, the hardest
place on planet earth to get the hell from.
And I want to see it happen. I want to see it happen in early
childhood and elementary ministries.
I want to see it happen in junior and Senior High School
ministries. I want to see it happen in
counseling appointments and late night talks at camp and at our
conferences. I want to see it happen in
Quincy, at our 48th St. 929 campuses.
I want to see it happen in Macomb and Kirksville and Pike
County and Lima and Mount Sterling and Keokuk and Monmouth
and Jacksonville and Weaver and everywhere in between and
everywhere where God leads us. There are over 418,000 people in
our region who don't know Jesus and I want to find them.
I want to love them. I want to reach them and baptize
them and help them get engaged to the greatest adventure of
their lives. I want to see it happen in them
and I want to see it happen in you and I want it to happen in
me. You might be on to it by now,
but the video playing behind me is of the record setting 1389
baptisms that happened at our church this year.
My kids are on that video. My neighbor down the street that
I prayed for for six months is on that video.
A guy from my DBS who used to only watch online is in that
video. But when he said yes to Jesus,
so did his wife, and so did his brother and his mom who lived in
Macomb. Every single one of those videos
started with an invitation. They walked past a greeter who
held the door and smiled. Someone filled the communion
cups that weekend, not knowing that somebody was going to take
that communion for the very first time.
Someone checked in their kids. Someone cared for their kids.
And for some of the families, it was the difference maker who got
to tell those kids about Jesus for the very first time.
Someone showed them that it's OK to go to the steps and pray and
that it's OK to lift their hands and worship.
You might be bored with us doing an invitation every week here at
the crossing and telling people to start an intimate, personal
relationship with Jesus Christ. But if you invited them, if
you're sitting next to them, you are waiting and praying the
whole surface for us to talk about it.
You might be wondering, how many more times am I going to hear
it? But they're hearing it for the
first time. Let me be clear.
I want to make this region the hardest place on planet earth to
get to hell from. And I will unapologetically
preach the whole council of God's Word.
And I will call you to the biblical standard.
I will unapologetically ask you to give to support the mission
because I believe that God uses it, expects it, and blesses it.
And just know that every time I talk about it, I'm the first one
to give to it. Why look behind me?
That's my why. I believe that God's way is the
best way, and I'm betting my whole life and my whole eternity
on it. I'm asking God every single
morning to do it again and to do it again in US.
Yeah, we've grown by a ton, and yes, we've had broken all kinds
of records at this church, but we don't exist to break records.
We exist for the 410,000 people we have yet to reach.
And God, in His great mercy, has allowed us to partner in His
great work. And every step you take, God
uses to prepare the step for the the next step for the lost in
our region. Therefore, we can't stop.
And we won't stop because we believe that God is real.
We can't stop and we won't stop because we believe that Jesus is
alive. We can't stop and we won't stop
because we believe that the Bible is true.
We can't stop and we won't stop because we believe that God
loves the whole world. We can't stop and we won't stop
because we believe the debt has finally been paid.
We can't stop and we won't stop because we believe that there is
hope for the hopeless, peace for the anxious healing for the
broken. We can't stop and we won't stop
because we believe that there is no one who is too far gone.
We can't stop and we won't stop, and until this region is the
hardest place on planet earth to get to hell from, we can't stop
and we won't stop. We're moving to a time of
decision. To those of you who are here
today and you have never started an intimate, personal
relationship with Jesus Christ, we are here for you, but we
can't take steps for you. And you cannot expect to live
the Christian life until Christ resides in you.
And so today I want to encourage you to take an evaluation of
where you are, are you in Christ, and what stands in the
way of you being in Christ. And in just a few moments, the
people around you are going to stand and sing and some of them
are going to come to the steps and pray.
But I want to encourage you if you're watching online to type
in the chat, I need to talk to somebody or click on the button
that says I want to begin an intimate personal relationship
with Jesus Christ. And if you're here in this room,
I'll encourage you to walk right over there by the baptistry
underneath that screen and talk to somebody.
In my experience, often times people know that they need a
relationship with Jesus Christ, but there are questions that
they need answered before they begin that relationship with
Jesus Christ. And what I'm challenging you to
do today is to ask the question to start the journey.
My life has been completely transformed by the saving work
of Jesus Christ and the grace and mercy that He has poured out
on my life, and I want you to find it too.
This year could be your year, but today could be your day and
I'd hate for you to miss it. To the rest of you in the room,
to those of you who already have a relationship with Jesus
Christ, will you join me at the steps?
Would you beg God to give you a can't stop, won't stop attitude
this year? Will you join me at the steps
and beg God to do it again and to do it again in US?
Would you stand with me? God?
We want it all. We want absolutely everything
you're willing to give to us. God, we want to see people that
we care about come to a saving relationship with you.
God, we want to be used in a powerful way by you.
God, develop and instill in us a desire to seek after you.
God, those that are listening to my voice right now that don't
have a relationship with you, God, speak louder than all the
voices in their head. God, help them to hear your
voice and to follow it. And God, to those of us who
already been following you, put a burden on us that's so heavy
that the only way we can carry it is through the power of your
Spirit. In your name I pray.
Amen.