Good morning, Resurrected Church.
My name is Richard. I'm the high school youth
director here at Rez. I want to tell you how excited I
am that you're here today. I was at the gym this week, ran
into an old buddy of mine, and he began to tell me his story,
how his son is taking off and started living his own way and
not living the way he raised him to live.
And he gave me a chance to share the story that comes from the
Bible where Jesus is talking about the prodigal son, how the
son took off, turned his back on the dad and just lived a life of
sin and debauchery and all the ways that dad didn't raise him
to be. But that son finally came to his
senses and made his way home. But what's key about that story
is that the father was there waiting for him to come back
with open arms. The father didn't say, hey, you
did this, you did that. He didn't start bringing up the
stuff that he did. He welcomed him home.
And whether you've been here for years, been a Christian for
years, or you're new to this whole Jesus thing, I want to let
you know that the Father is standing there with his arms
wide open saying, come home, I love you, I care for you, you're
safe with me. So Jesus is the way to the
Father. Would you stand and worship with
us this morning? Let everything there is breath,
praise the Lord, praise the Lord.
Let everything there is breath, Praise the Lord, praise the
Lord. I'll praise in the valley, and
I'll praise on them now I'll praise with them.
Sure, I'll praise with them, I'll praise with our number,
I'll praise with surrounding. This crazy is the water my enemy
is rounding. As long as I'm breathing, I've
got a reason to pray. The Lord, Oh my soul, praise the
Lord, Oh my soul. I'll praise when I feel you now,
praise when I don't. I'll praise kiss.
And no, your silly control. Because praise is whipping.
It's more than it's my praise is the shout that brings Jericho
to. As long as I'm breathing, I've
got no reason to pray the Lord. Oh my soul.
Pray the Lord. Oh my soul.
Oh, I won't be quiet. But God is alive.
How could I keep it inside? Oh my soul, I got so good.
He's been so good to us this year.
He deserves some praise this morning.
Here we go. I'll praise, I'll praise.
Kiss yourself. Praise.
Kiss you rain. Praise kiss.
You rose and defeated the great. I'll praise.
Kiss. You're faithful.
Praise kiss, you're true. I'll praise, Kiss this nobody
greater than you. I'll praise Chris yourself.
Praise Chris you reign. I'll praise.
Kiss. You rose and defeated the grave.
I'll praise. Kiss, You're faithful.
Praise kiss, you're true. I'll praise, Kiss this nobody
greater than you. Praise the Lord, Oh my soul, you
know. Raise the Lord, Oh my soul.
Raise Oh my soul.
Oh, I won't be quiet. My God is alive.
How could I keep it inside? I won't be quiet.
My God is alive. How could I keep it inside?
No, I won't be quiet. My God is alive.
How could I keep this Lord? Oh my God.
Let everything, let everything that is great praise the Lord,
praise the Lord. Let everything that is great
praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, Praise the
Lord. Praise the Lord, Praise the
Lord, Praise the Lord. We're going to keep praising
because our God's good and he deserves some more praise.
Amen. When he sees my soul, I'll
testify the blessings on blessings and poured on my life,
and I shall remember it. How could you be?
It turns away tears and new brains, chains of depression
broken by cranes. When I start remembering.
How could you be? Yeah, you can so, so, so, so,
so, so care to me. You can so, so, so, so, so, so
care. There's something there's always
weapons fault in the ground armies with every always round.
We now show from nether rain how you carry my cross.
You call me my name, love me like I was If you didn't leave
me that way. We stand now on live get it let
you take. Oh, you've been so so so so so
so get to me. Can you been so so so so, so so
get to me from morning to night, girls in their eyes I look back
on my life and no need to see. Can you been so so so so.
So good, so good, so good to me. Every day, every night, you're
always so good to me. We praise you, Jesus.
Say God is good, you say all the time.
When I say all the time, you say God is good When I say God is
good, you say all the time. When I say all the time, you say
God is good. When I say God is good, you say
all the time. When I say all the time, you say
God is good. When I say God is good.
What will you say all the time? When I say all the time, you say
God is so, so, so, so, so. Guess me.
Yeah, you so, so, so, so, so, so guess me.
Yeah. Good morning to God, the Lord in
the eyes. I look back.
My life can only see the morning tonight, those in the heart.
I look back on my life in order to see him in so so so so so so
good. Praise King Jesus, he's so good.
All right, guys, take a seat. It's going to be a little bit
different of a Sunday. We started doing this a couple
years ago. The last Sunday of the year.
We take a little bit of time to look back at the year and
celebrate the things that God has been doing in the life of
our church. And so we're going to do that
today. Our church has the never ending,
never changing mission of the Great Commission.
Every church has the same mission.
If you are a Bible believing church, you were commissioned
with the Great Commission and that is our responsibility.
But we have a culture here at our church.
We have things that we value and, and the way a certain way
that we do things and that shapes how we go about doing
ministry, how we form our goals. And so we are on a journey right
now, a vision that we believe that God gave us about two years
ago. And we think that often times
God will. You know, there's segments to
this journey. We're in kind of a three to five
year window of time where we set some goals of the things that we
believe that God is leading us to.
And so we talk about those every once in a while.
It's part of our churches vision.
We are finishing up year 2 of this vision.
So we're going to talk about progress that we've made and
things that we see God doing in the midst of that over the
course of this past year. And so there are four major
parts to our vision. We'll talk about those today.
We'll kind of celebrate a lot of our celebrations inside the
context of those four areas. And we set some goals a few
years ago that are we, they're called B hags, big, hairy,
audacious goals. You ever heard those B hags?
Some of these are big, some of them are difficult.
And we know they're God sized goals.
And what that means is either God is going to show up in power
or we're going to look foolish. And that's really where people
of faith should live. And so God has called us to
invest in four areas. We're going to talk about each
of those today. Here's one of the reasons that
we look back is not to pat ourselves on the back, but
biblically, if you read the Bible, God consistently tells
generations in the Old Testament to remember the things that he's
done because we're such a forgetful people that it doesn't
take us very long to forget how faithful God has been in our
past. And so we want to pause for just
a little bit of time today and look back at this year and
realize God has done some tremendous things in the life of
this church. It gets easy to overlook when
life gets busy or you're going through suffering or pain.
It gets really easy to overlook the things that God has done.
And so this should do three things for us today.
I hope it should encourage you. It should excite you, and I hope
that it inspires you. And, and, and part of the reason
that I hope that is that I believe that complacency and
comfort are the primary enemies of the American church.
We get comfortable and we get complacent and we stop pursuing
Christ the way that we were pursuing him at one point.
And then we wonder why faith is boring and God hasn't changed.
And so I hope this stirs you up today.
I hope it stirs you up to take a next step, whatever that next
step might look like. We're going to give you lots of
information and opportunities to take a next step with our
church. We have handouts celebrating
some of this stuff. We, we have a handout of just
all kinds of next steps. I think there's like 9 or 10
different next steps of things that you might take over the
course of this next year as you pursue Christ In the context of
the Res Church family here, we're going to celebrate a lot
of numbers. I want you to remember this.
Every one of those numbers represents people who have real
stories, who are being transformed by Christ.
And so as we celebrate some of that man, there's so many fun
stories. We will call out a few of those
stories, but we won't even get to tell all those stories today.
But God has been good to a number of people in a number of
ways. And So what we want to celebrate
is not just to glorify Christ today, but we want to celebrate
when we see Christ in someone and we see Christ in a lot of
you. And we want to call that out and
encourage you with it. And so we're going to start with
a video. Logan is going to walk through a
ministry that launched in our church this year called Regen.
And I want you to check this out.
Hello, everybody. My name is Logan, and I'm
celebrating the work that God has done through the
regeneration ministry here at Res Church.
Earlier this year, myself and seven other individuals
commenced from this program, and what that means is that we
completed the 12 steps of regeneration.
In Regen, they really emphasize confessing your sins both to God
and to other people. And in that, it's kind of broken
down that idea that we have to have it all together, or at
least pretend that we do. Now, because Regen makes us
confront that sin, we're more comfortable talking about it and
in talking about it, that is how we find healing.
And it's benefited myself by helping me grow out of lots of
bad habits. It helped a lot of the other
graduates, and I know it's going to keep benefiting Rez Church in
that way. There are lots of stories
already from region. We had a pilot program where we
trained leaders for a year and they recently, about 2-3 months
ago, launched the first, the first iteration of region here
at our church. And, and so we're really excited
about having a recovery ministry here.
There are groups already in that that are going through that.
And, and Logan is just one of many stories.
We, I told you there are 4 main vision items that I wanted to
kind of classify or categorize everything by.
And the first is this concept of being known.
And here's what that means to us.
We believe that our culture has become increasingly isolated in
the past decades, in fact, particularly with COVID,
training entire generations to disregard intimate human
relationships in lieu of efficiency and convenience.
God calls our church to stand out brightly in The Dark World,
and we believe this means that Christians need to engage in
close relationships that look countercultural.
The hardest part of many disciplines in your life is
simply showing up. The hardest part of getting fit
is showing up at the gym. The hardest part of reading our
Bible is opening it. The hardest part of building
relationships is showing up for community.
And so we put a focus on showing up, being in community, and
growing spiritually. We want everyone in this church
to be in the process of building deep, meaningful relationships
with other believers and increasing in their love for the
Lord. We want to do things that foster
these deep relationships. Now, this means that we want to
keep finding new ways to introduce places for you to get
connected and to find people that are disconnected in our
church. And we want you to have real
clarity on what it would look like to take a next step to grow
in community and in your relationship with Christ.
And so throughout this process, we want there to be a gentle but
consistent urgency to be known. We want the invitation to
intimacy to be ever present in every area of our church.
And should a person choose to attend regularly at res and not
engage in community, I want that to feel uncomfortable because
you're missing out. I don't want you to feel like
you're missing out. And so we set some goals that we
wanted our church to accomplish over the next three to five
years. One of those is we want every
person at res to understand what a next step looks like in the
growth process. We don't want that to be
confusing. The second thing is within the
first three years, and we're two years in now, we wanted to see
300 plus people attending group every week and 60 or more groups
meeting weekly. And we want every person in our
church to be able to honestly say that you feel known by
others in the church. These are our goals for being
known. Richard.
We pray over that. Yes, Father, thank you that you
sent your son to show us what it's like to be in community.
He was never alone. He had his disciples with him.
Lord. So may everyone in here, Lord,
may our church be a church that we are known to each other, that
we would have intimate relationships with one another.
Lord that we would have 300 people attending group, that we
would have 60 plus groups meeting every week and every
person in this church could honestly say that they feel
known by other people in this church and that they could have
real community. Lord, thank you for this and
bless it in the name of Jesus, Amen.
A couple of things to celebrate
and and if you just think about a lot of the things that we've
rolled out over the last two years, you'll understand the
link to this like why? Why do we have a check in system
on Sunday mornings? Why do we print name tags and
ask everybody to wear them? Because we want to continue to
foster an environment where people are known.
Anonymity is not your friend, being known is your friend.
And so one of the big things that we track this year is how
many people showed up to a community group in 2025.
Yeah, this is amazing. So we have 289 unique group
attenders. That's an amazing number.
That's 200 and 92189 people getting in homes, sitting on
couches, getting vulnerable, confessing sins, gospel
transformation in their lives, becoming known to other people.
It's an amazing number. I, I, I think Sunday morning
attendance is important. Coming and hearing the word and
encouraging one another is very important.
But you can really understand the health of a church by their
small group attendance because it's easy to hide, you know, on
on in a Pew, on a Sunday morning, in a crowd.
But you get in a small group with 8-9 people, you're known.
That's. Right this past year we want to
celebrate this as well. We have 37 new members in our
church and we'll talk about at the end here an opportunity, if
you feel called to membership in the church, how you can take a
next step in that area. We also had some women's
brunches. Oh yeah.
We had a couple women's brunches this year and we had 85 people
attend, 85 ladies attend per brunch.
The ladies are turning out. Yeah, that's amazing.
They're turning out to get some good food and to get fed.
It's an amazing thing. We had 99 people this year who
gave to Res Church for the very first time.
That's pretty cool. You you actually have a story
about you came to the last women's brunch.
Yes, I was here at the women's brunch.
Tell me all about that. But my role is different.
I was here with some fathers and some youth, and we were taking
care of the kids so that the women can be over there getting
ministered to. Well, what happens in that while
there's goldfish flying juice boxes everywhere, Just help
fathers watch kids. Let them make a mess.
But. What we didn't do was let the
women come in and clean it up. We cleaned it up.
It was amazing times we see these fathers step up and help
out with the childcare. It was amazing.
We're going to have more of those.
We, we want to continue to find more opportunities for you to
meet people in the church and spend time with them.
And so we felt like those were really awesome opportunities for
women to not only start to build some community, but to do it
with the Bible open hearing from the Lord, you know, beginning to
build relationships. Here's a couple things that are
coming this year in February. It is my desire.
It's been my desire for about 3 years, by the way, to build a
photo directory of all of you. Now, I probably won't give it to
you, but I want it. And the reason why is I pray for
you by name. And there are a lot of you, a
lot of you like, like a lot of you.
And so as I pray for you, I actually want to pray for you by
face and by name. And so in February, on Sunday
mornings as you come in, there are going to be photographers
here asking to take your picture.
It's not so that we can create some sort of government
database. Watch.
You, they already watch you. You're on Facebook.
It's so that we, the elders who pray for you, can pray for you
by name and by face again, because we think being known is
actually really important. And so you're going to see that
in February if you want to take your picture.
There is a reason. It's because I told them to.
You can blame me for it. 2nd is I want to encourage you if you
have not yet attended a group, if you've not joined a group and
I'm going to keep putting pressure on you to go sit in a
group and and figure out if they're weird is you're weird.
It's not whether or not they're weird, it's just whether or not
you're weirds match. Let's be real.
And so we're going to keep doing that.
In fact, I want to encourage you with a story of of somebody who
joined a group and found their weird was his kind of weird, and
then Christ began to transform him.
So check this out. So, Michael, we want to just
talk about your experience and getting plugged in.
First of all, how long have you been at Resurrection Church now?
Consistently for about two years now.
OK, two years, yeah. And you're in a community group,
right? And tell me everything you're
kind of plugged into right now. So I'm in a community group with
Don Van Sickles Community group, which has been absolute blessing
to be a part of. It's that has led to so many
other chances to plug in here at church last year.
And around December, I mentioned joining the worship team and Don
kind of gave me the motivation to do it.
And then by January I was, I was auditioning in February, I
played my first, my first service.
And it's just been amazing. And then just a few months ago
you have, you invited me to your, your mentorship group.
And that's just been oh man. And the mentorship group has
been phenomenal. This has been so fun.
It's awesome. It's been, and I love to see
somebody that has just really taken everything that Rez has.
Right, you, you've. Stepped into serving, you've
stepped into almost every aspect.
You even told me that it's kind of changed your family's ideal
or view on on giving at 1.0. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
You wanted to say anything about that?
Yeah. We, you know, I, me personally,
I would always kind of be a little hesitant when we'd tie it
and be like, Are you sure that's, you know, OK, can we
afford that? It's something we can manage.
And then just recently, I've been like, take it, take it all,
take it all, you know? So, yeah.
And then just everybody at home has just been so, so, so
astonished by how, like, the whole family dynamic has changed
just from being able to serve in church and being involved so
much. It's just like they see the
difference. They see the growth.
So it's just been a total blessing.
Michael, thank you for talking to us.
Thank you, Dave. You're welcome.
Love you, brother. Love.
You awesome. So our second vision category
that we rolled out two years ago is this thing called Love the
10, and I want to explain what that means to us and what we've
been working on over the course of the last couple years when it
comes to this. We believe that the church is
Christ's plan for sharing the hope of the gospel to a broken
world. And we believe that as a church,
we are specifically called to impact the community that is in
close geographic proximity to the campus itself.
And so like, we believe that this church should be full of
people from this neighborhood. And when we rolled out this
idea, actually less than 50% of our church lived within 10
minutes of the the church campus.
And so as we looked around the neighborhood and realized that
the demographics of this neighborhood changed pretty
substantially over the last couple of decades.
And so we spent a lot of time kind of looking at the
demographics, like what what are the needs in these communities
and neighborhoods around the church?
And how can we go about meeting those needs?
Because when you begin to meet those needs, you earn enough
trust to be heard when it comes time to share the gospel.
And so we have built outreach teams that would allow us to
meet needs and to better understand those needs.
We're going to celebrate a lot of areas in this this category
of ways that we have engaged this neighborhood.
And our goal is that our teams and these initiatives would help
us to learn how to better care for the homeless, to make
connections in this community at local parks, to establish a
presence on our school campuses, which we've done and other
potential engagement opportunities.
And so we set these goals two years ago that in the next three
to five years, we would launch an independent daycare or
preschool that primarily serves this local neighborhood.
To create a community centre that is accessible to the local
neighborhood. To renovate our park for
community use. To put ministry on campus at
Bakersfield College and have 150 plus new people from the
neighborhood attending church at Res.
Elder Don, will you pray for our initiative to Love the 10 Love?
To Heavenly Father, we are, in our view, your sovereignty,
power, presence. We praise you at all things.
I bring before you the 148 thousandth souls who live within
10 minute drive to reach our church's doors.
Each carries joys and burdens, hopes and fears, stories known
to you alone. Some are simply trying to
survive, some on the streets. You know who they are.
May you bless these families, these people, the workers, the
children, the elderly, the lonely, and the thriving alike.
Let your spirit move among them, bringing peace where there is
conflict, healing where there is hurt, and opportunity where
there's need. Make Resurrection Church be a
beacon of welcome, a place where neighbors find belonging and
where love overflows beyond our walls.
Guide us to serve faithfully so that every person nearby may
know that they are seen, valued, cherished, and loved.
And may you, the Holy Spirit, work in their lives that they
would know that God knows them, loves them, has a plan for their
lives. And if they don't know you, I
pray that they may come to know you, to have an encounter with
Jesus Christ and their lives be changed for eternity.
We pray these things in Jesus name and for His sake.
Amen. Amen.
One of the ways that we begin to to push into this area is we
built some outreach teams to try to find a way to impact the
local community and local churches, missions and outreach.
And so we sent 67 different individuals from our church last
year. Yeah, we did.
To either other church campuses or to parks, outreach centers of
the Daughters Project, I mean, Keepers of the Cross, you name
it, we were sending people out. And we want to celebrate the 67
individuals that went out into the community last year,
specifically into our partners and partner churches.
Because of what you have done, there are people in this room.
I can't point at them because I don't want to call them out.
That we have come to love, come to call as part of our family
because you were willing to go out into the parks, into the
fields, into the people and actually say, hey, the gospel of
Jesus Christ is there. Come, come.
Let us show you what's happening at Resurrection.
Church in January, we're going to do something called scent,
and we're going to blow these numbers away in January.
Let's go. Yeah, we are.
We are. Excited about that?
Yeah. OK.
Hey, this is Celebration service.
Let's celebrate. Come on, this is our second year
of doing a camp that we called Res Mania.
Anyone remember that one? Res Mania.
There we go. Come on.
So 308 attenders, 158 volunteers.
That was 466 people that participated in a kids camp 4.
166, yeah. You guys showed up.
When we say this is a all hands on deck, you guys don't mess
around. You've brought the gospel.
So many kids. How many kids made decisions?
So 26 kids put their faith in Christ and gave us their name to
follow up with because of a kids camp.
Wow. Yeah.
We also did a youth camp here on campus.
We had 151 youth show up to our our youth camp.
We had 101 volunteers. God bless your soul for a youth
camp. So, so, so 252 people
participating in a youth camp here, 17 decisions for Christ,
22 people baptized. Yeah.
Serious. That means.
Five people, 70 people made
decisions, 5 people who did not make decision also decided when
I need to take that next step into getting baptized and that
that water was something else. Yeah.
So by the end of 22 baptisms, that water might have been holy,
but it was not clean. It was.
It was pretty rough. It washed away all their sins.
But yeah, it was. It looked like it too.
So one of the, one of the events that we did trying to reach the,
the neighborhood was something called Winter Wonderland.
That was a year before, but Winter Wonderland, we put up
little signs and balloons and banners.
And there was a guy named Trent who's driving by, sees the
signs, goes, you know, man, I, I need to go that I just feel like
I should go. Shows up, ends up over at the
prayer tent and realizes, man, God is calling me here and, and
to salvation. So from, from no, not having a
faith in Christ, not pursuing Christ, not in church, not doing
anything faith wise. Winter Wonderland.
I think we gave away like 2000 hot dogs or something.
So some, some cheesy hot dogs end up reaching this man for
Christ. And, and since then he's joined
into he's become a member, he's joined the church, he's joined a
small group. He's begin to serve all over the
place, serve on one of these outreach teams.
Absolutely crazy because of some hot dogs.
Another way, and this goes further than just two years,
another way that we have been making a consistent impact on
our community is that the church operates a thrift store in which
all the proceeds go to missions. That thrift store is called the
Junkateek Outlet. In fact, they're about to open a
second location and there's so many celebrations from that.
We tried to pick one, and we asked Elder Don to share just
just one celebration from that thrift store.
So I'm going to go out script. I'm shocked.
OK, so one of the one of the things I love to do is ride
motorcycles. And the reason you ride
motorcycles in the mountains is because you sit around a
campfire and lie to each other about what you did that day,
right? Yeah.
You celebrate. Remember, I almost died.
But I think this is what heaven's going to be like.
We're sitting around, we're talking Nathan Haverfeld.
I remember when you got baptized, baptized you, right?
And Bryce, Bryce Ivy, I remember when you got baptized and then
two days later you swap lanes on the 99 going north and wrecked
your car, totaled your car two days after getting baptized,
right? And then Michael Lee and
Tiffany, we have all these stories, but we have stories
that we celebrate. I think that's what heaven's
going to be like. I remember when I was lost, but
I was found. I just these crazy, I love
stories. I'd love to to hear stories to
celebrate. And I just love the idea that
we're coming together on a Sunday and celebrating what
God's doing in the lives of us. And I'm going to read this story
because I'll totally screw it up if I if I don't, OK, Because I
know this lady and she's an amazing lady.
Keely at Jado, we are celebrating God's faithfulness
through our partnerships with Keepers of the Cross.
In 2025, we were blessed to hire our second graduate from their
program, Keely Stokes. And on her story is a beautiful
testimony of redemption, courage, and forward momentum.
So I heard her testimony at a Jado lunch on Monday.
They have volunteers and and employees have a lunch and they
celebrate down there on Mondays. I heard Keely's story and it's
just amazing. She talked about being on the
streets for six years. Wow, six years.
So Keely shows up every day with a sense of responsibility,
diligence, and a heart anchored in prayer.
She leads with humility, works hard, and doesn't miss an
opportunity to glorify God and all that she does through faith
and perseverance. Keely purchased her own vehicle,
opening doors to greater independence and service not
only for herself, but for others as she faithfully gives
coworkers, rides and helps wherever she is needed.
In a bold step of faith, Keely asked her parents who care for
her daughter if she could return home after her graduation.
They welcomed her back with open arms.
Today, she is rebuilding a strong and loving relationships
with her daughter and helping ease her parents financial load
by contributing to rent. What God has restored in her
life keenly pays forward with generosity, patience and
kindness to volunteers and Co workers alike.
Keely's life reflects the gospel and action, restoration,
responsibility and a willingness to serve.
We are deeply grateful for Keely and for the privilege of
witnessing God's transforming work in her life.
Amen. Amen.
It's one thing to say that the the the Gospel transforms lives.
It's another thing to literally walk through someone's life as
it's being transformed and and watch as Christ changes them.
Two years ago, because of this initiative, we decided we wanted
to do something around Christmas time.
And So what we did is we collected the names of families
that needed a scholarship to one of the camps or they were part
of our Children Hunger Fund. We have a couple different food
programs. And so all those names, we
contacted those families and we just asked the parents, hey, do
you need help for Christmas for your kids?
Then everyone that said yes, we got lists of what their kids
were into. We bought them, you bought them
gifts. We then called the parents, had
them come and wrap the gifts so that the parent could give the
child the gift from them and not from someone else.
And so I want you to see a couple of the celebrations
around a program we call Give Joy.
It's beginning to look a lot like this everywhere.
You take a look at the 5:00 and 10:00.
It's listening once again with candy canes and silver lands
that glow. Hi Rez Church, my name is
Matisse Camelli and I have the opportunity.
No, I have the privilege of helping with Give Joy this year.
What a blessing you have been and you have really turned out
again. This is our second year that we
have the opportunity to provide gifts for families and it is
such an amazing experience that I get to share a letter from a
family that received gifts last year.
I just wanted to say thank you for getting Christmas gifts for
my kids. I really appreciate getting
gifts for my youngest daughter who wasn't able to attend your
VBS. My husband said when that he
came to pick up the gifts, everyone was so sweet and kind
to them. They were also really a surprise
that everybody knew all of their children's names.
They enjoyed the opportunity to be able to wrap up their own
gifts. They had a lot of fun
experiences while they were here.
They had two birthday parties in the coming months and they also
had a daughter a couple months later.
So being able to be provided with Christmas gifts was a huge
blessing and a joy to their lives.
Thank you again for sharing your love and encouragement to all of
our families. All right, let's stand up and
worship some more. I searched the world, but he
couldn't feel me messing to Prince treasures the pain and
never real. And then you came along.
We'll be back together every time is now satisfied hearing
alone. Oh, there's nothing better than
there's nothing better than Lord, there's nothing.
Now I'm not afraid showing my weakness, my fair is and floors,
but you see them all and you still call me pray because the
God of the the mountain is the God of the valley and there's
out of place your mercy, grace won't fly me again.
Better deed, Lord, is there deed?
Nothing is better than you. Lord, is there deed?
Better deed There's gotta be. Better deed, Lord, is there
deed? Nothing is better.
You turn lordy to tense in, you give beauty for answers.
You turn shame into glory, and you're the only one you can.
You turn lordy to tense in. You give beauty for answers.
You turn shame into glory and you're the only one you can.
You turn crazy into college. You turn falls into armies.
You turn season 2 highways. You're the only one you.
You're the only one you have. Lord is nothing singing out.
Lord is nothing. Nothing is baby.
Oh it's nothing that is nothing that in the Lord is nothing.
You turn crazy into goddess. You turn falls into armies.
You turn season into you're the only one you can.
You turn graves into garden, and you turn seas into Holland.
You're the only one you can. Come on, give God some praise.
He's turning graves into garden. The way to explore all, the
wonder of His grace, the power of salvation, all that pulled me
from the brain. This hope is not empty.
And forever He will reign. He won't be put to shame.
Oh my soul. Sing to the God of the ages.
Sing to the Lord of creation. Sing his praise again.
Sing like the heavens away. Roar like an army of ages.
Sing his praise again. The moment of rest.
I have never been the same. His love took me calm.
My sin was washed away. Now I stand here, forgiven and I
know that I am safe. I won't be good to shave.
Oh my soul, sing to the God of the ages, sing to the Lord of
creation, sing his praise again. Oh my soul, sing like the
heavens awake. Roar like an army of angels.
Sing His praise again. Remember how our God has never
failed, never failed us. Remember that His name will make
away, He'll make away from the cross to the grave.
He is risen and he reigns. Praise the Lord.
Sing His praise again and remember how our God has never
failed, never failed us. Remember that His name will make
a way. He'll make a way.
He is risen and here. And praise the Lord in his grace
Sings to the God of the ages, sings to the Lord of the
creation His praise again. Roar my soul, sing like the
heavens away, roar like an army of angels, Sing His praise
again. Call my soul, Sing to the God of
the ages, sing to the Lord of creation, Sing his praise again.
Oh my soul, sing like the heavens away, roar like an army
of angels, Sing His praise again.
Sing His praise again. Oh sing his praise again, Oh,
sing us praise again, Oh sing us praise again.
Oh, how our God has never failed, never failed.
From the frost the great he's rising, and he brings praise. 1
Seeing his career, life has never failed, never failed us.
Remember that his name will make a way else to the great he is
rising, and the praise to the God of the ages.
Sing his praise again. Sing like the heavens are away,
More like an army of angels. Sing his praise again.
All right, have a seat.
The third of our vision items that we're celebrating and
looking back on and remembering is this idea of reaching our
circles. And here's what that means.
We believe that one of the most powerful signs that our church
body, that's you all say me, is living out gospel culture, is
that you would begin to display a willingness to engage those
people that are in your sphere of influence with the gospel.
And so our job is to boldly speak the gospel, but also to
humbly earn the right to be heard by serving them and loving
them. And so I think one of the, one
of the travesties of, of Western culture is this myth that we
separate our lives and that there's a sacred part of our
life and that there's a secular part of our life.
And if you read the Bible, that's not in there.
Every part of our life should be lived on mission for Christ.
Everything that we do should be for the glory of God.
And this means that every aspect of the common life is a
testimony to the lost world. We're called to live our entire
lives as ambassadors of the gospel.
And so in a world now that is where people live these
artificial lives on social media, if you will simply invite
people into the messiness of your real life, it will have
massive gospel implications. And our conviction as a church
is that we should be following the Bible's consistent command
for hospitality by opening up our homes and doing missional
work at our kitchen table in the company lunchroom and the ride
to work with a Co worker. And so we set some goals around
this concept two years ago that in the next three to five years
we would have 300 or more gospel stories where you have invested
in someone for the sake of the gospel.
That we would see 400 or more new guests in the first three
years and that in our annual survey we would see a 90 plus
percent response that you invited someone to church.
Vance, will you pray over this? Sorry, like Heavenly Father, we
just thank you Lord so much for the opportunity we have to be
salt and light to those around us.
Help us Lord to be good witnesses.
Help us Lord be authentic to be real in those areas where we
struggle to not try to put on a face trying to be something
other than we are. The Lord, help us simply to love
others with your kind of love. Give us hearts.
Lord, we thank you for how you're working in our lives.
We thank you, Lord, for how you're working in our community.
And we lift this next year up to you.
Help us Lord, to love those around us in Christ name.
Amen, Amen, Amen. So I I know that this is working
and here's why. We said two years ago we set a
goal, 400 or more guests would come and and that would largely
come because you are inviting them.
Last year alone. How many first time guests do we
have, Vance? 276 it's happening folks.
It's happening. We're.
Going to have to set a new goal. We're going to set a new goal
before we leave today. Those are rookie numbers.
We got to pump those numbers up, all right, Decisions for Christ.
This past year we had 43 people give their life to Christ.
That is awesome. That means they made a decision
to surrender their life to Christ.
They went to the back, they, they gave their name to someone.
They, they, they asked us to pray with them, to celebrate
with them, to follow up with them because they wanted to
pursue a relationship with Jesus.
Now, let me tell you why it's such a big deal in America right
now. Only 20% of churches are
growing. 80% of churches are in decline.
Of the 20% of churches that are growing, only 2% of churches are
growing because people are coming to Christ.
The other. The other 18% is people just
transferring from the 80% they're dying 2%.
That's. Sad.
First of all, that's sad. Second of all, that means we're
the 2% because people are hearing the gospel of Christ and
in transformative things are happening in their life.
Yeah. Most definitely, Most
definitely. As a result of the last two
years of people meeting Jesus, that means we have a bunch of
baptisms this year. How many?
83. 8083. Baptisms now how?
How? How many did we have baptisms
just a few weeks ago? How many total?
18 baptisms a couple weeks ago. Thanks God.
So let me give you some context for that.
In America, we're a Southern Baptist church.
The average Southern Baptist church in America right now in
2025 had 2.5 baptisms this year. Wait, wait, wait a minute 2
Where did they get the? Hat they just put their legs in.
I want you to understand that to have 43 people come to Christ,
to have 83 people be baptized, means that God is doing
something transformative and miraculous in our midst.
And I don't want you to miss it or think it is commonplace,
because it's not. No, no.
It is God's working. God is working.
It's not us, folks, it's the Lord.
IA couple years ago, Sean, who's going to join me up here in a
minute was, was far from the Lord.
Life was a mess, all sorts of craziness.
And as he begins to pursue the Lord, people in his life in his
circle noticed. And as God began to transform
him and do something miraculous in his life, people saw it.
And and I want to tell you it is one of the most compelling,
contagious things that will ever happen as you begin to see God
miraculously transform someone who you thought could never
change. And so as a result of what was
happening in Sean's walk, his family started showing up to
church and then he got to baptize his sister.
And it's got to begin to change her life at work.
She begin to just live differently.
And as a result of that, the people at her work begin to
notice and she begin to talk to people who are hurting and
suffering. And I got a phone call out of
the blue at church the other day and I pick it up and there's a
lady that I've never met asking how, how do I buy my husband the
Bible? Like what does that look like?
How do I tell the what? And I'm like, what a what an odd
random call in the middle of a day.
You know, I'm just talking about, OK, here's how you find
the ball. You know, and I and we, we end
up, we have our staff is really good investigators.
And so they space book stocks and people.
And I didn't say that out loud. And they found out was a Co
worker of Shawn's sister. I don't want you to miss what's
happening. It's not people that went to
seminary, that's some people that got ordained right.
It's it's people that love Jesus.
Jesus begin to do transformative work inside their life.
They begin to actually pursue Christ wholeheartedly.
And then everything changed. And when everything changed,
everyone noticed. When everyone noticed, more
people changed. That's actually the gospel.
That's being solved in. Life Vance, you and I do
something with some elders and deacons and prayer warriors
every single Sunday morning. We have for almost 2 years now.
Well, we get up early, we get here at 6:30.
What? What do we spend our time doing?
This is great. 6:30 at the building, at the very back of a
property behind the gym. That's our office building.
A group of us. Some are elders, some are
deacons, some are just folks that have a big interest in
prayer. We gather at 6:30 and we pray.
We pray to not just for our church, we pray also for
churches in the communities. We pray for lots of other things
as well. And in that time, we've got to
know another pastor who also has a heart for prayer.
And this is Pastor Johnny from Columbus Street Baptist Church.
It's a little church just a little ways up on the Bluffs
above us. And he has become a regular at
our 630 prayer meeting. So by the way, this is a bit of
an ad, OK. If you're interested in prayer,
we would love to have you join us.
We we pray, we pray for about 40 churches by name, their pastors,
their family members, their kids, their wives, their
congregations, the life of the church, most of them here in
Kern County, some of them all around the world.
We pray for them every Sunday morning.
Then we send them text messages during the week to let them
know. We got a lot of people praying
for you and Pastor Johnny started joining us and praying
for those churches as well. We've been praying for his
church for a while and we want you to hear from him.
Good morning, Rez. This is John Lucero, my pastor
down the street at Columbus Street Baptist Church.
I just want to give a word of encouragement that the body has
done to allow your elders, allow your pastors of this church to
join together in prayer. For other churches.
I have witnessed it first hand, week after week after week.
I've been given the privilege and opportunity to join in with
that. And it's, it's a very powerful
source of encouragement, knowing that the local church is doing
its job and praying for the rest of the body of, of Christ.
I witnessed it first hand. Thank you all the Saints at Rez
for allowing your staff and your pastors to to do this.
And just want to thank you for the investments you've made in
our church and the other churches here in Kern County.
God bless. Amen.
The fourth thing that is on our
vision roll out that we rolled out two years ago that we've
been working on is preparing people to lead.
And, and here's what I mean by that.
I'm going to read this to you, but I also want to explain
something. This is the second largest
Southern Baptist church in the county of Kern.
And I, we, we begin to realize that if we aren't producing
pastors, ministers, directors for ministry to plant churches
and revitalize churches, who is it that we expect to do it?
We're the second largest church in our denomination in this
county. And we're not doing it, are we?
I mean, there's one left. I mean, I don't know that we
have any excuses. And so the, the Bible is
extremely consistent on 2 values that we often set apart.
We, we, we set them almost at odds at one another because on
one side, the Bible would say there's this clear call for, for
older, more mature Saints to lead and to guide the church.
And on the other side, there's a clear call for the church to
invest in and raise up young leaders.
And in the past 20 years, the American church has shown a
really troublesome trend. Church congregations are getting
older twice as fast as the national population.
Churches are dying because they're getting old fast.
The average clergy person is getting substantially older.
And so we believe that it is our job to raise up and train the
next generation of church leaders.
And if we want to empower them, we're going to have to make
space for them in positions of authority in our church.
We're going to have to be open to God calling them to do this
in other places, to send them out.
And so we want to intentionally investigate more ways to do
this, from internships to co-ops, to takeovers to church
plants. We've been working on this for
about two years. We're going to announce some
stuff today to reach other neighborhoods and other
communities in Bakersfield to plant more churches, to
revitalize more churches. And so two years ago, we set
some goals for the next 5 years. Number one, we want to formalize
our ordination process to ordain and send ministers.
Secondly, we want to build a pipeline of pastoral training
and opportunity to produce ministry leaders to send out,
not just to keep. And 3rd, we want to proactively
seek partnerships for planting, replanting, revitalizing
opportunities. We pray over that, Sean.
Yes. Lord, we are humbled at the move
of your spirit in this church, that on this Sunday we get to
sit and experience the fruit of our labor in Your spirit.
That we get to rejoice that people are coming into this
church building and hearing the gospel for the first time.
We rejoice on salvations. We rejoice for baptisms.
And God, we rejoice that you are equipping the Saints for the
work of ministry is that you simply do not call us into
salvation, but you call us to equip us for the work of
ministry. So God, that is our prayer as
that we become a light, a beacon on the hill for this community
that is lost, that you would continue to equip and raise up
ministers to proclaim the good news of the hope of Jesus Christ
to those who are lost. And it's in Jesus name we pray.
Amen. Amen.
One of the churches that we got to support of the last two
years, we got to support a church planter.
Send Network has is part of the SBC.
We partner with them to plant churches.
And so someone that's near and dear to our heart is planting a
church in Pasadena. In fact, you know him because he
was your first small group leader, right?
Yes, so. My wife and IJC, we've been
coming to rest for about 5 years.
When we moved to Bakersfield from Orange County, our first
group leader was Derek Berry. A lot of you probably know
Derek, and I don't know about you guys, but have you ever
looked at a pastor and he just had head pastor vibes?
Yeah, Yeah. That was that's Derek Berry,
man. His, his theology is so
encouraging. He puts Jesus so high.
And, and it's an honor to say that we've been able to partner
with Derek Berry and his church plant in Pasadena.
Because of the the giving here at Rez and the way we we
formalize missions, our missions department sent their church
plant $20,000 to get started. Praise God.
And since they planted, we got to go down to their inaugural
service when they commissioned and had their their first
members. They have since merged with a
church in Pasadena and have a permanent church building now.
And so we're very excited for them.
Yeah, We've also, we've also gotten to partner with a church.
There's a little church in Wasco called Griffith Ave.
Baptist. And we got to go out there.
We've we've sent teams out there, we've helped them with
their harvest festival, with outreach events.
We've gotten to send some of our preaching team out there at
various times in order to give their pastor a break because he
doesn't get a lot of breaks. And since then, Pastor Kevin has
actually come. He joins us now weekly on
Wednesdays at our preaching team meeting when we're working
through preaching and sermons. And he drives in from Wasco and
sits with us, gives us ideas and a lot of rez series that we
preach here. He'll take some of that creative
stuff and he'll go back and preach those same series at his
church in Wasco. And so we're really excited at
what God is doing out in Wasco. We've, we continue to try to
find new ways to partner. If you hear a call for Griffith
Ave. Baptist around here, that's
probably us trying to find more ways to partner with them.
And so make sure you jump in. There's another church plant
that's not our church plant, but we've been partnering with as
well, and that's Northside. Yeah.
You want to talk about them? Yeah, I think it's super cool
here at RES it's, I mean you can see that we're equipping leaders
to go into the mission field. We want teachers, preachers,
administrative workers. So we're planting, but not only
that, we're also revitalizing. So I think it's super cool.
I look at Wrest Mania and I'm looking at all these amazing
bounce houses we have and the go Kart track.
And it's amazing that we've been able to sew into North Side to
revitalize the church and also with all of our cool toys.
Yeah, so Valley Baptist has sent two families in the last year.
I'm sorry, 2 pastors and then a bunch of families from their
church and financial support to revitalize 2 local churches.
One of those was Northside and so we got to partner with them
by sending all of our bounce houses over for, for some of
their events and sending teams over to help them.
And our, we have a little pine Derby track we got to send over
and all sorts of fun stuff like that.
And so very excited. They have grown substantially
since they have started here this year.
They're not even 12 months in and God is already saving people
at that church. It's, it's pretty amazing.
And then also had an opportunity this past year to go and partner
with Grace Baptist Church and go to their men's retreat and
preach at those men's retreat. And I'll be honest, whenever I
go preach at something with guns, I'm always worried that no
one's listening because they're just ready to get to the
frisbees and the firearms and the food, right.
And so, but I will tell you that as a result of getting some of
these men's events that I get invited to speak at, we've
gotten to see people sometimes years later show up and go, Hey,
I, I heard the, the gospel, I heard you preach this scripture
two years ago, three years ago, four years ago.
And, and I just wanted you to know.
And so like we continue to find ways to sew into other churches
and other organizations. I do want to celebrate a couple
things. One of the first things I want
to celebrate is you've heard this before.
We're going to keep talking about it.
Mentorship, which is a 2 year commitment, usually very early
in the morning. It's a lot of reading, it's a
lot of work, it's a lot of discipline has borne just
amazing fruit in the lives of people in our church.
We currently have 50, four people going through a
mentorship right now. Amen.
Yeah, Praise God. Sean, you went through a
mentorship and now you're leading a mentorship group.
You want to talk about that? I also tell myself when I get on
stage, I'm not going to cry. I might cry.
I think all of you have seen me cry at this point.
Yes, we have. Yes.
So yeah, 2 1/2 years ago, my my life was at a rock bottom.
Alcoholism, drug addiction. I had quit a career job, was
getting kicked out of my apartment.
My wife was moving to South Carolina and I met with the
elders and they said, hey, we want to be your accountability.
We want to love on you to get you through this time.
So I started mentorship and I was half brain dead at the time.
I mean, I could barely think, but I praised God that there
were men in my life who rallied around me, who encouraged me,
who held me to account. And I can say today that not
only have I graduated mentorship, my relationship with
my wife is being restored as we speak.
But now I am a mentor, helping men walking the same path that I
once walked. So Amen.
It's amazing. Amen.
Very cool. One of the so many stories you
guys just don't get to see one of the dreams that we've had for
a couple years again for raising that next generation.
We we've poured a lot of resources and time into hiring a
full time high school pastor and a full time middle school pastor
because we really think the next generation gets ignored
unfortunately at too many churches.
It's why America is in the position that it's in today
where churches are getting really old, pastors are getting
really old. There's no one to raise that
banner up. And so we've poured a lot of
energy and resource into those. One of the things that's come of
that, it's not just the the growth and the pursuit of Christ
in the middle school and, and the, the high school rooms, if
you've been in there, but they have actually begun to develop
their own worship team. And so they're now youth that
lead youth in worship on Wednesday nights.
We're going to talk about some stuff in just a minute that's
coming because of how hungry our young adults are right now for
Jesus. There's some there's some great
stuff coming. Before we do that, I want you to
see two more stories of God raising people into leadership
that had no idea they were ever going to be in leadership.
But as God begin to work in them, what you saw developed in
them through a sanctification process LED them to leading
ministries in this church. So take a listen to this.
Hi, I'm Chris Heinberger and this is Brenda Mayer.
We are here to celebrate Brenda's journey through
leadership and guest experience. So you don't know it, but Brenda
started in the coffee shop. And once Brenda raised up
leaders that she was able to hand it off to, she became a
door holder, a grader and a bulletin passer router.
I know it's not proper English. It's OK.
And then she moved into service lead on a Sunday morning, and
then we moved her into guest experience director.
And that conversation began at a Starbucks where I said, hey,
you're already doing this. What do you think about taking
it on officially? What was your reaction to that?
Holy cow, what am I doing? And you're doing a great job.
So what have you been your wins in guest experience this year?
I have really gotten to enjoy meeting new people, helping
hopefully my team gain new skills, stretch them a little
bit. I've been asking people to do
jobs that they don't normally do.
So that because that's kind of the way I came up is Chris would
say, hey, can you drive the car today?
Hey, can you do this today? And when you have all of those
pieces, then it's easier to jump into something like this.
Absolutely. So what are your goals for 2026?
I think my goals for 2026 are to get more people good plug, good
job, get more people into guest experience and and just do the
best we can to serve our church. All right, fist bump girl.
Thanks. Hi, I'm Jessica and I'm so
excited to be here with Brandy. This is Brandy lease and I've
got to know her very well. And one of the things that I've
really enjoyed is just seeing her grow.
She came to church, she started serving and then I could see
this natural leader come out in her.
So I made a big act. And what did I ask?
I asked her if she would like to be our RES Kids Sunday director.
What did you feel when I asked you that question?
Honored but overwhelmed. Honored Roblox and scared that I
could not fill the shoes of the previous Sunday Director.
You're doing you're doing wonderfully.
All right. So can you share with us some
really like big wins that you've had in kids recently?
Volunteers? I've been able to shoulder tap
and get more volunteers that I have to choose from.
Our numbers have been consistently up.
So kids are coming, parents are coming.
So growth, too many kids is an amazing problem to have.
And just the Sundays are running very smoothly now.
They've just become like second nature.
Awesome. All right, So what are you
looking forward to in 2026? More.
Kids, more volunteers, more fun days, and just sharing the love
of Jesus with these young hearts.
But come on campus. Awesome.
We're so glad that we can celebrate Brandy's leadership.
All right, I'm going to holler at you for just a minute because
I don't believe in having a Sunday where the Bible is not
open. And we're not, we're not talking
about just at least a little bit.
So if you have your Bibles, turn with me to Matthew 28.
We're just going to read a couple verses today, and then
we'll end our service. This is Jesus.
Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to
which Jesus had directed them, and when they saw him, they
worshipped him. But some doubted.
And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on
earth has been given to me. Go therefore, and make disciples
of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all
that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you always to
the end of the age. We call this the Great
Commission. It is the same gospel message
throughout history, for the last 2000 years, across different
cultures, across different regions, ultimately to multiple
generations. We have been commissioned, if
you call Christ King, to go and make disciples.
He gave us Scripture, He gave us prayer, taught us how to do it,
and he gave us the Helper, the Holy Spirit.
And it is our job, we believe, to diligently seek God and to
pay attention to where He is at work.
We get ourselves into a lot of trouble when we try to dictate
where God should move. You ever done that?
You decided you had some dreams and God just needed to come
fulfill them for you. Bill Clem tells a story in his
book Disciple about moving his family to the Midwest.
And on the first of those dark and starry nights out in the
Midwest, his kids encountered fireflies.
I don't know if you've ever seen fireflies.
It's quite the phenomenon. And so they captured a bunch of
the fireflies and they put them in a glass jar, only to wake up
the next morning and they were all dead.
Just dead bugs you see free and flying around.
They were vibrant and amazing, but stuck in a jar.
You don't get light and life, you get death.
And we do that often when we lean on religion instead of
seeking God. When we think that God will
respond in a certain way to our emotions, our incantations, our
Pretty Little traditions, and that God will just do whatever
the formulaic thing is that God does.
Here's the thing. You cannot put God in a box.
The whole point of the second commandment isn't simply about
idolatry. It's the idea, the hubris, the
arrogance of mankind to think that they could ever represent
God with a statue or a picture. He's God.
That's why when they asked his name, he said, I am, I am.
We cannot contain or control God.
Instead, our job is to follow him.
We worship him, and we go where he leads.
I didn't come to this church as a pastor with a plan, a little
plan of, oh, here's exactly how God's going to work.
I had no idea. Instead, the elders and I humbly
sought God and we observed where we saw him at work and we built
the plan. And we will change the plan when
we see where God is leading, what he's doing, because we're
two years in to following God, because we see him at work.
And as we followed God the past few years, we have celebrated
tremendous things that we have never celebrated before.
Not because we came up with the ideas, but because we got on our
knees, We poured our hearts out to God, and then we paid
attention where he was moving. And so now two years of just
following where God's leading to be known, to love the 10, to
reach our circles and to prepare people to lead, we are making
significant progress in those areas.
So we have not hit sixty groups yet.
We haven't hit 300 people every single week showing up to a
group. But man, we're making progress.
And if you aren't, if you're not in a small group, I'm telling
you, it will change your life. It will change your life.
If you're in a small group and you have heard our call for
needing more leaders, more small group leaders, the first step to
that is you need to be a member. So if you're not a member, but
you feel called to be a member of this church, I want you to
ask your small group leader, hey, how do I do that?
And we will get you started becoming a member of this
church. We have five year goals to
launch a daycare to put a ministry on campus at
Bakersfield College in Cal State.
And this year we plan to put a full time missionary on campus
at the college campuses in Bakersfield.
Do I know how exactly yet? I do not.
But I see God at work. I see Him at work in the young
adults in this church. I see him growing a hunger for
the Lord and people from 16 to 26.
And I'm not going to ignore it. We set a goal for 150 new people
from this neighborhood attending res and we're well well on our
way to finishing that well before the five years.
We set a goal of 400 plus new guests and we hit 280 this past
year alone. We're well past that number, and
we are on our way to preparing leaders.
We will finalize this year an ordination process, and we will
launch in the spring a test version of our pastoral
residency program here at RES to start ordaining and sending
pastors from this church to plant churches, which means
there's going to be some gospel goodbyes.
They're going to be people that you absolutely love that are
going to leave here, not because they're mad, but because God has
a call on their life that they cannot ignore.
We're not going to get mad at that.
We're going to give God glory for that.
And every single one of you can be a part of what's going on
here. Say me listen every there are so
many ways to take a next step and step into what we see God
doing as you begin to notice what's God is doing in your life
and in the context of this church family to step into that
1st is this. If you don't know Jesus in a
personal way, I in just a minute, I'm going to explain
what it looks like to meet him and to understand that he is
king and and this is the most important decision you're ever
going to make. Secondly, throughout this year,
you're going to hear us talk about it over and over again to
get into community group, to serve and to give.
We, we think that there are 4 signs of engagement to show up
on Sunday, to show up to a community group to serve and to
give. They're just the four consistent
things you see in Acts. We're going to talk about them
all the time. They are healthy, they're
biblical, and God will use them to transform you.
We talk about them every single month at a lunch for people that
are disengaged. We're going to we're going to,
we're going to have a lunch every single month in 2026 just
for people that have not been able to find a way to get
engaged yet, for you to come to that lunch and hear more about
how to get engaged and take a next step.
And we're going to continue to offer you opportunities.
And, and some of these sound maybe like very basic goals.
And for some of you, that's all you really need right now is a
basic goal. You just need to take a next
step. Here's what I believe.
I believe that a church maintains and builds momentum
not when a small group of people go and do supernatural crazy
things, but actually when when a majority of the church begins to
be captivated by who Jesus is and what he's doing here on
earth. And when we begin to see that as
a majority of a church, as we, as this happens and spreads in
the in the pews and around our church, it has an exponential
effect. And what it leads to is revival.
It leads to a city turned upside down in the most beautiful
possible way for the glory of God.
You see, every single one of us has been commissioned by Christ
to go and make disciples. The Great Commission was not for
pastors and preachers. The Great Commission was for
auto mechanics and school teachers, Stay at home moms and
baristas. Pastors are called to equip the
Saints for works of service. You are enlisted in his army if
you call him king. You were called to live like it.
And here's the thing, Kings don't make suggestions.
Someday I will stand before Christ, and I will answer for
every moment of my life, and I will answer for everyone of you
too. And I want to answer well.
I want to hear well done, my good and faithful servant, and I
want you to hear it too. So maybe you know, Christ is
King and you want to know what's next for you.
Well, I've got a few things and we handed them out on a little
paper today. There are a bunch of things
coming this year. There's so many that if I just
tell them to you verbally, you'll forget about them.
So I want to give you a, a take home to look at them.
Here's something I want you to think about because you might
need to start planning now. There's a conference April 30th,
May 1st, 2nd, right in that time frame, very beginning of May
called Thrive. I want every single one of you
to go, man. I would like the hotels that
have space problems because there's too many people from
Bakersfield up there. It's in Sacramento.
We will carpool up there. We'll be in vans and minivans
and cars and do Rd. trips and all sorts of fun stuff.
But it's our opportunity as a church family to go up
somewhere, to be encouraged, to be inspired, to spend time
talking about what God is doing, to begin to dream about what God
can do. So I want you to go and, and
you're absolutely right, you're going to have to take time off
work and you're going to have to, oh, there's complexities to
it. It is difficult and it might
cost some money and you might have to get a hotel room.
But listen, once you all do that for Disney anyways, right?
Because here's the thing, we don't have any problem spending
and investing money in the things that we love.
So take the risk. Worst case scenario, it was a
trip to lovely Sacramento. Most churches have about 2 to 3%
of the members of their church doing all of the inviting in the
church. That is the statistic. 2 to 3%
of the people in the church do all of the inviting, all of the
evangelism. Say me, I want you to commit to
reaching the lost in 2026. Not 2%.
Not 3%. If you call Rez your home, I
want you to commit to reaching people who are far from God.
Every single one of you. We're going to spend the next
month, all of January, on a series called Sent.
Because you have been sent, you have been commissioned.
And we're going to talk through ways that you can begin to learn
what evangelism looks like, the ways you can begin to explain
your faith, ways you can partner with organizations all around
Bakersfield to make an impact in people's lives.
We're going to offer you ways to join in local partnerships.
We're going to invite you to an evangelism conference here in
town at Valley Baptist in February that you can sign up
for. That's free.
All you have to do is show up on a Saturday.
We're going to have two guest speakers in January specifically
invited to come and share with you about missions and reaching
the lost. This year it is our goal to put
a full time missionary on our college campuses here in
Bakersfield for them to raise up teams from this church to go do
events at Bakersfield College and Cal State Bakersfield.
I believe that right now Cal State Bakersfield is the black
hole of the gospel in Bakersfield.
There are no churches within 3 miles of that campus that
actually match anywhere close the demographic of the campus.
I think if you wanted to find the place most devoid of the
gospel in all of town, all you have to do is walk to Cal State
Bakersfield. So we're going to go get it
because they need to hear about Jesus.
This year. We're going to start a residency
program to begin to prepare pastors to send away.
That is the scariest thing I've said all day.
As much as you go, man, we need a lot more help.
We sure do. And we're going to send people
away anyways because that's the gospel before you leave today.
They're going to be QR codes and there's a link on our website
just in case you miss it. You just go to resurrect dot
church slash Bible. We're going to start a new Bible
reading year reading plan January 1st.
I want you to join with us. This be our third year doing it.
We're going to do it via the EU version app this year so you can
all friend one another and we can see who's not not reading,
That's all. You can't see that it's a joke.
I want listen, you want to grow in Christ, open your Bible.
You want to hear from God, read your Bible.
You want to hear from God out loud, read your Bible out loud.
This year we're going to invite 1000 people to church and we're
going to see at least 250 of those actually say yes to that
invite and come and hear the gospel preached.
And many of those people are only going to come if you invite
them. So what we decide is we're going
to have a fun time measuring this.
Here's what we're going to do. We have someone building this
big wall of plexiglass that you can see through.
And we're going to take ping pong balls.
And every time you invite someone, when you come in on a
Sunday, I want you to take one. I want you to write the name of
the person you invited. I want you to put it in.
And they're going to start stacking up.
And every time one of those invites comes, there's a
different color ball. And I want you to celebrate the
fact that that person said yes. And I want you to put your name
on that. And I want you to put it in.
And every time someone gives their life to Christ in 2026,
we're going to write that down. We're going to put it in the
wall. And every time someone follows
salvation with believers baptism in 2026, you have whatever color
you're going to put their name on it.
You can put it in that wall. And by the end of the year,
we're going to have a whole lot of ping pong balls.
We celebrated 54 people are in mentorship right now, but the
next round of people who's going to go through mentorship, you're
sitting in the pews right now and God's been at work in your
life and you've been hearing about this and you're like, man,
I wish I was in that. Well, guess what?
You can be in that. You talk to your small group
leader, they'll get in touch with us and we'll do another
round of people that are really going hard after Jesus.
Baptisms are coming up. Again, if you have not stepped
forward in obedience and never been baptized believers baptism,
we're doing that in February. You can sign up for it right
now. I mentioned a moment ago that
the most important decision you'll ever make is to know
Christ personally as king of your life.
So if you're here today or you're watching online and
you've never done that, I want to give you an opportunity to do
that. You see, for so many of us, this
is how it works. God has been wooing us and
working on us, sometimes for years, and we wonder what it is.
See, we think we're the one that has actually been seeking Jesus,
But the fact of the matter is, most of us have been rebellion
against God, and He's in the loving, gracious way, pulling us
to Him. And so maybe that's you today,
maybe you showed up or you're watching online and God has been
after you for some time and you weren't sure what that really
was. And you're realizing in this
moment that is actually Jesus trying to save you.
The message of the Bible is that every single one of us was born
dead in sin, under the curse of sin.
And it is only Jesus redemptive sacrifice on the cross that
enables us to have any sort of relationship with God at all.
And so if you desire that, I want to give you an opportunity
to surrender to your life to Jesus today.
Will you bow with me for just a moment as we close our service?
If that's you. Someone that's never put their
faith in Christ, but is is realizing that God is calling
them to salvation. The Bible says in Romans 10 that
if we would declare with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and
believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead, that
we can be saved because with the heart 1 believes, with the mouth
1 declares and is justified. So if you want to give your life
to Christ today, I just want you to with everyone, heads bowed
and eyes closed, say this prayer quietly or silently after me.
Jesus, I know I am lost and I need to be saved and I want to
put my faith in you, surrender my life to you and be adopted
into your family so I give everything to you, Be my Lord.
Please Jesus, if you said that prayer for the very first time,
will you be brave and raise your hand for me to see?
Thank you, thank you. Put your hands down in Jesus
name, Amen. You said that prayer for the
very first time. Welcome to the family.
We're going to close and I'm going to get you out of here,
but I want to leave you with a story.
I believe that we are, we sit at a tipping point right now in our
church. God has not given us a small
blessing, Amen. These past two years have been
tremendous. He has been so gracious to us,
but my question for each of you is what what will we do with
what God has done for us? God has provided for us.
He has moved tremendously in our midst of the we could be
encouraged and see it. What's next?
When I was thinking about this over the holidays as at home and
all the family at home, you know, as a kid, I grew up really
poor and so soda was a luxury. We bought 12 litre and you
weren't allowed to drink it during the week.
You had to stare at it. And then on Sundays after
church, everybody could get a cup of soda.
And so as a dad, it bothers me like to no end to walk around my
house and there be these soda cans have been left out and
they're like 3/4 full all the time, right?
Like, are you wasting all this soda?
My daughter was home for the holidays from out of town, and
she took our car to the store on Christmas Eve.
And as she's leaving an intersection, right as the light
turns green, she she pulls forward in the car and it
shudders and stops. And she's like, yeah, Daddy just
shut off on me. And then right after it did, a
car blew the red light at 50 miles an hour, missed her by a
foot. You see, the car has a safety
feature and it saw that the car wasn't going to stop in the
intersection and it shut the car down and lock the ABS up.
That was Christmas Eve, and I was thinking over the holidays.
Oh how different my Christmas Day could have been in the ER or
at the morgue instead of sitting at home with my family around
the fire And it made me think. I wonder how many times God has
saved me and I didn't even realize it.
Friday I I was walking through the house and only to find
another can of lukewarm Dr. Xevia.
You know what's funny is it didn't bother me at all.
She's just happy to have my daughter alive and healthy.
There are countless number of things at this church for you to
complain about, to be annoyed by, to wish were different.
It's totally true. In fact, if you're to look for
them, it won't be hard to find them at all.
We tend to find what we're looking for.
But what if you and I overlook? I I think we get in a habit of
overlooking all the time what a treasure it is for God to be
moving in our midst in such a way that he is, God is at work
in our midst. We see it, we see miracles
happening. I get the benefit of sitting
with pastors in this town and, and they ask, hey, what's going
on? And I get to share just little
bits of what I shared today. And they cannot believe what is
happening here. It is such a tremendous thing.
And I don't want you to miss this.
I don't want you to miss what God is doing in this moment just
because there are things that are uncomfortable here or I
can't imagine missing a move of God.
And so I don't want you to simply see that it's happening
and not be part of it. I, I, I don't, I don't want you
to hear about these stories and wish you were part of it, but
never, never be part of it. I don't want you to get to the
end of your life and look back and go, man, all those things
were happening and I never stepped into it.
So I just want to encourage you to step into what God is doing
to this church right now. Don't be passive.
Don't spend your energy and time looking for the things that are
wrong because I guarantee you will find them.
Rather, notice what God is doing and step into what He's doing
and it will never be the same for you.
Our prayer team is going to come up right now to pray with you.
No matter what's going on in your life, we want to pray for
you and with you. If moments ago you made a
decision, a declaration to follow Christ with your life.
There are tables in the back. They say I raised my hand.
We want to celebrate with you. We have a gift for you.
So will you stand? We're going to sing a song and
we're going to respond as the Lord leads.
As you leave today, let me pray over you for 2026.
Father, we thank you for this people and this time and this
place that you have called and commissioned.
You call them your own. You call them your sons and your
daughters. You've put Your spirit in them,
that you've called them on mission to live out the
remaining days of their life, however many, however few, they
may be on mission to know you because there's a day you're
going to call them home and there will be no more tears and
be no more pain. So God help us to step into that
in 2026. Father, shine your face upon
them. Be gracious to them.
Pour out Your blessing upon them.
God, help us to turn to this Dark World and let them know the
only thing that really matters, God, that you are real and you
are true and that you love them and you're calling them home.
Protect this people as they go out.
God in Jesus name, Amen. Be well Church, see you next
week.